What are we expressing?

[effilang]

I have come to a conflict in my thinking, having asked myself the following question:

 

What am i genuinely expressing? Is it my primordial eternal soul or the cognition of my brain?

 

When i act on a feeling, or experience a sensory impulse and react to a basic compulsion, am i expressing the intention of my genuine self; the eternal soul that inhabits this corporeal body, or am i expressing the sense motivated desire of the brain?

 

How does one learn to distinguish genuine motivation coming from the primordial consciousness from that of brain activity?

 

Can the soul truly express itself through the brain, or does the integrity of that expression rely on the development of the brain, in which case how accurate to our soul is really our physical and emotional expression?

 

Does the brain actually experience emotions or does its neurological network simply act as a medium through which to transfer the data to the soul, which can then experience the emotion?

 

Further, in Taoist alchemy, it is said that the practitioner must give birth to the immortal soul through the union of upper and the lower, then incubate the immortal soul through the period of spiritual pregnancy, after which it may be birthed and may leave the body through the bai hui.

 

How if, one does not yet have a soul, does one have a soul at birth? How many souls are there?

Is the soul or consciousness behind the brain, different from the immortal soul alchemized through meditation, and if that is the genuine soul, then what soul is it that doesn't yet exist that we express through the brain, or are we completely brain driven and our brain is the only source of consciousness until we give birth to the immortal soul?

 

How is the soul that comes into our body at birth different from the alchemical soul? Is it that the latter is exempt from samsara?

 

How many souls are there really? It seems there are several and each have distinct functions, do they merge for the final breakthrough? Does the soul that enters us at inception merge with the soul created in the dan tien through meditation for the final breakthrough?

Edited February 26, 2012 by effilang

[Marblehead]

You sure ask a lot of questions. Hehehe.

 

Personally, I like to live my life based on logic and reason most of the time. This allows for the routine things in life to be done with the least amount of effort.

 

But then, I do really enjoy living spontaneously - following my primordial instincts. Most of that is a total surprise because even I have no idea what I might do next.

 

I think that a good balance between the two makes for an exciting life yet we always manage to do what needs to be done.

[konchog uma]

i think that the brain is the tool of the soul, and can be utilized in its expression. But it is also existing in the physical body, which the soul is not, and so there is seperation. The brainwashing we see on tv and in media is largely designed to get individuals to act against their own higher good, or their soul's intention. So i think the neural pathways can be reorganized, depending on who you listen to, or how much media you take in, to go against the soul and spirit. You could say that on all levels that Self operates, the brain can be entrained to frequencies and patterns which are contrary to the good of that self.

 

Sitting in meditation and just watching the breath, becoming absorbed until your thoughts diminish, is a good way to get the brain back into tune with the soul via the body and the interal energies. But you probably knew that

 

I think that the brain can affect and be affected by emotions, but i find emotions to be oriented in the other organs and subtle energies. So there is a relation in my experience.

 

How many souls there are is probably in relation to the infinity of space in the omniverse or cosmos. So um a lot.

 

And how many souls to we have? That too depends on who you ask. The Maya say three, I posted an article about it here. The egyptians had multiple souls, but i don't know precisely how they broke it down, and the taoists also had multiple souls. So human nature seems to be some kind of aggregate thing, not in the buddhist sense of skandhas, but just that its not so simple as to think there is just one thing going on at a time.

 

Cool questions, i hope more people chime in with their thoughts

[idiot_stimpy]

Would you do the same as you do, if you didn't think?

[de_paradise]

As usually happens with me: I sit down and write something with my intellect, and "poof", a whole level or levels of meaning get crafted into it. I start to catch a drift of what deeper meaning I was trying to express and go with that, consciously writing that in. And while still keeping the surface original ideas going, as if toying with it, daring people to start going down the ladder with me to something still deeper.

[doc benway]

I have come to a conflict in my thinking, having asked myself the following question:

 

What am i genuinely expressing? Is it my primordial eternal soul or the cognition of my brain?

 

When i act on a feeling, or experience a sensory impulse and react to a basic compulsion, am i expressing the intention of my genuine self; the eternal soul that inhabits this corporeal body, or am i expressing the sense motivated desire of the brain?

 

 

I think you are "expressing" both, though when it comes to "the eternal soul" or the "genuine self," expressing may not be the best choice of words.

 

When you act, experience, and react, that is at the level of body and brain. That is where all of your particular desires, aversions, judgements, and motivations lie. That is the seat of your conditioning. The "genuine self" is pure and clear. It's not disturbed by biases or intention. Nothing sticks to it. It is more the source, the milieu of awareness within which all of the activity you can conceptualize occurs.

 

Just my experience and interpretation.

[de_paradise]

If give a task to your mind, it will seek to complete this task, whether you use or even apprehend the data it gives you or not: this is proven if by hypnotists who acess the literal part of your brain-- we call this the subconscious. It is more powerful than our regular conscious because it has memory access to all your experiences. The question is whether the subconcious embodies the data we call the soul, spirit, past lives, and etc, like void, akashic records, other people's memories. It gets pretty soupy, and if someone gave you a pat answer, I wouldnt trust them, because that only means they have not penetrated still deeper levels.

I just woke up, and I was thinking of this question.

 

There's a large component of "manifest reality" in what we write, the metaphors of the language, our culture, our present experience.

 

The deeper writers acess deeper parts. Some people cannot access these parts at all, they are uncreative.

 

What we write gets re-translated by the subconcious, and fit together with other metaphors and takes a path of its own. So what you write doest stop there, its rehashed in a bizarro way deep in your subconcious. The mind boggling bit is that these retranslated metaphors interact with your mind and manifest reality. This is to say, you affect your dreams, your dreams affect you.

 

I guess the conclusion would be, watch what your write.