Individual will, reality creation and miracles

[Nikolai1]

And to leave sanity behind as well.

I think any true spiritual growth will make you fear your sanity, but you have to fight the fear and do it anyway. Sanity is a very conventional term.  It is much prized by conformists and conservatives, and only they will be afraid to undergo the personal growth that is the spiritual path.

 

That's what my government thinks.  Wrong!

When I say that mind becomes common property, this is a liberating movement.  If you have no sense of the one mind, then you must intepret the words in the only sense you have.  This may lead you to think that one mind is 'herd mind', or 'totalitarian mind'.  The fear of these is justified, the trouble is: the fear will make you think that all the sages are talking abut something undesirable.

 

There is no greater barrier to spiritual growth than people intepreting the spirituall life in worldly terms.  Ah me! all those Chrisitans who think they understand Christianity...and have no greater religious concept than collecting money every Christmas for the poor.  They are blocked by the words!  It would be better if they had never gone to church at all!

[Marblehead]

It is my opinion that your arguments are sound and valid.

 

The only real argument I have is that many turn to the spiritual and forget to return to reality.

 

But the point you made regarding the pretenders is valid too.  But that is found within many religions.  And that is the reason why I separate the concepts of religion and spiritual.

 

A number of people have accused me of having fear of going deeply spiritual but this is not a valid accusation.  I have seen that side and considered it a dark side and simply refuse to go there.

 

I get plenty spiritual when I go out to my gardens or back to my fish ponds.  That's about as close to nature as I need to get.  In the summer when the water is warm I even get in the ponds with the fish.

 

You already know how I feel about "herd mentality" so I won't speak to that.

 

But I am cautious, especially with my mind.  It takes only a short time to get it polluted but a very long time to clean it out afterwards.

[Nikolai1]

The only real argument I have is that many turn to the spiritual and forget to return to reality.

Yes, that's true, but we can't let their errors dictate our own lives.  And the opposite is also true, many cramp themselves by pinning everything on the 'material' world which they consider the foundation for all truth.

 

Of course these two approaches need to be harmonised.  There comes a time when we realise that the seen and the unseen worlds are not in tension with each other.  We could say that the exist on the same spectrum.  Matter is perhaps 'dense thought'; thought is insipient matter.

 

The spiritual awakening aids this vision hugely because for the first time we are no longer under the impression of a subject/object split.  Our thoughts are as much 'out there' as the birds and the trees are.  

 

A hardcore materialist would simply discount the above paragraphy as 'more of the same spiritualism'; but the vision is not spiritual but rather the vision where the unseen realm of thought and the seen realm of matter are united into the same thing.  This is a healing vision; it brings great peace; and the fluidity and felxibility of thought is injected into the material world in a way that allows the miracle to occur.

 

A number of people have accused me of having fear of going deeply spiritual but this is not a valid accusation.  I have seen that side and considered it a dark side and simply refuse to go there.

Going deeply spiritual is only a dark side when it remains divorced from the material world: the worldview where wishes and dreams and poetry are good and bodies, and concrete and cities are bad.  You are right that there are plenty of people who are like this and they do end up in the dark depths before very long.

 

But true spirituality both includes the material and transcends it.  It transcends it by re-uniting it with the poem so that 'beautifual architecture is nothing but a frozen sonnet'.  

 

True spirituality is in ltself an emptiness.  It is the place from where we are free to see mind and matter reunited and healed.

[Marblehead]

Nothing really to disagree to your post.

 

That word "miracle" was still there though.  But I understand your wish to use it.

 

And if you do consider true spirituality to be emptiness then I can say I go spiritual every time I get into my empty-minded meditation.

[Nikolai1]

And if you do consider true spirituality to be emptiness then I can say I go spiritual every time I get into my empty-minded meditation.

When I talk about emptiness I mean that experience of non-duality - where the sound of your own heartbeat is as 'out there' and as distant as rhythmic thunder; where the candle is known and understood so intimately that you feel the purpose of its movement...and where 'you' are nothing other than the locationless vision that sees all this.

 

I think until we have experienced this, inner and outer, mind and matter, spiritual and worldly and all the other pairs of opposites will remain separate and unhealed.

[Marblehead]

Fairly expressed.

 

During my meditation there isn't even a heart beat.  There is nothing.  Reminded me of the thread about "minor death".

[Nikolai1]

Marblehead, have you ever experienced the uncanny, the miraculous?

[Marblehead]

Marblehead, have you ever experienced the uncanny, the miraculous?

Yes, but I couldn't label it.  Only once though.  It was a very nice experience.  If I were to label it now I would label it "Oneness".

 

I have experienced deja vu once that I could never explain rationally (logically via cause and effect).

 

So yes, even I admit that things happen that cannot be explained.  You call them miracles.  I call them things I cannot explain.

[Nikolai1]

So yes, even I admit that things happen that cannot be explained.  You call them miracles.  I call them things I cannot explain.

And do you try to explain them? Because that to me is the key difference.

 

Going back to the placebo.  Medicine acknowledges what is happening but makes no attempt to explain it.  Were they to try, everything would have to be rethought, from scratch. A massive, daunting project that the profession shirks.  Easier to carry on as if they understand what is what.

 

But when we come to understand how a miracle might work, or deja vu, or the placebo we start to get a conscious handle on it  And when we have a handle on something it is able to be brought under the jurisdiction of the will.  This is what I see the wu wei sage doing.

[Marblehead]

I see what you are pointing to and I agree with you.

 

My first was the deja vu experience and yes, I did try hard to explain it but found no answers whatever.

 

The second, "Oneness", I didn't try to explain.  I couldn't even ask the question:  What was that?  The experience was enough.  Perhaps if I had questioned it I would have ruined the memory of the experience.

 

But I agree with you, modern medicine concentrates almost exclusively on correction of the symptoms:  repair as opposed to prevention.

 

I haven't spoken to the placebo effect because my knowledge is lacking.  Yes, I know it works.  Yes, it is our mind doing the healing.  I have no idea how it works.  Psychological healing; by self or by another.

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

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"But when we come to understand how a miracle might work, or deja vu, or the placebo we start to get a conscious handle on it  And when we have a handle on something it is able to be brought under the jurisdiction of the will."

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This is what I see as the goal of cultivation - to realize the entirety of Creation into Consciousness.

 

Starting with physical body existence, bringing all "automatic" and "somatic" functions into Consciousness.

 

And going beyond that.

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Nikolai1]

This is what I see as the goal of cultivation - to realize the entirety of Creation into Consciousness.

 

Starting with physical body existence, bringing all "automatic" and "somatic" functions into Consciousness.

 

And going beyond that.

Yes, and of course not just bringing the automatic inner into consciousness but also the automatic outer.  The automatic outer is understanding the significance of the planets and the spheres; the processes of nature; the moral aspect of physical laws; the equivalence of physical laws like gravity and emotional laws such as love; the correspondence between the macro and the micro - the planet and the person

 

The artists and the poets and the astrologers are ahead in the is respect very often, and the creative powers of this group are prototypes of the sage's wu wei.