Did you have a Spiritual Awakening?

fresco wrote:

snood,

Interesting that deists have a "me" which is "here to learn" but holistic spirituality seems to leave that "me" behind.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean - can you elaborate further?

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Forgive this immodest autobiographical note: Forty years ago when I took up meditation, I recall doing so for two general reasons (in the sense of motives/goals, not causes). One was to gain a kind of "transcendent" power, an ability to "rise above" the pains of life; the other was to achieve a totalistic sense of my true Self as one with the entire Cosmos, whatever that may be.
Now I sense that the only thing I need "transcend" is the illusion of an ego (inside me) to which everything "good" and "bad" happens. I am sometimes (I wish it were always) able to see that I AM everything I experience. I AM my experiences. "They" do not happen to "me." Relatedly, I am completely unable to identify with a totality except in the sense that I do not (when I'm meditating mainly) feel separate from and surrounded by that "totality." To see that you ARE the wall you are looking at, or the sound of the truck passing by is what I take Fresco to mean by "inclusivity." That's wonderful. I suspect that my deepest angst was the feeling of being alone, separate from everything, and that love and art are desperate efforts to unify with others and the beauty of objects. I now feel free from such a terror. Maybe it's just age, or having developed a social identity and a good marriage. But I think philosophy and meditation have had something to do with it. And it has occurred without any reference to another world beyond this world or another moral level beyond the ethical challenges of living one's life as well as possible.
If I never achieve the "enlightenment" of zen buddhism or the "salvation" of Christianity, no matter. What IS is good enough. It better be, for that's all there is.

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Yes, I also believe that the important thing is to expose this self's true nature. I cannot say I've done it, but I am working on it. This is my spiritual "quest", and I personally believe that it has enhanced the quality of my life and will continue to do so in the future.

I do not claim any "supernatural" guidance point. Seems pretty useless considering I cannot even fathom all of "natural".

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Thank you, JL - very interesting stuff.

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snood wrote:

I have a friend who often says that "everything is spiritual". When she says it, I take her to mean that everything she experiences is spiritual, and that her whole life really has no meaning except from a spiritual perspective. She thinks of everything as having a lesson in it - something for her to take with her on the journey. I tend to agree that the way I go about my everyday is much more important than "arriving" at some destination, and that the encounters and events of my everyday have something to teach me.

Fact is...everything MAY be spiritual...

...everything we suppose "exists" may be an illusion.

No real way to tell.

The folks who claim it cannot be...that there is nothing "spiritual" about REALITY...are just guessing...and their guesses are made based on damn near nothing.

The folks who claim it is...that there can be no other answer but that this is all an illusion and all spiritual...are just guessing...and their guesses are made based on damn near nothing.

To the folks who think the kind of observation I just made is pap and has no real value...I say: Chances are there is nothing more important than finally groking the observation.

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I think that the dualism of contrasting mind and matter or spirit and body presents the same kinds of problems created by the contrast sets, natural/supernatural, worldliness/other-worldliness, etc.: false dichotomies. Mind and brain imply each other, as, I guess, natural and supernatural do. But while the former set MAY serve some uses, the latter does not except in the most fantastical ways.

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JLN's elaboration is well put, and it may be that "purpose" only has meaning the level of "self".

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Fresco, that seems right to me. We, as ego-oriented selves, live our lives "purposively," with motives, ends, goals, etc.. When we project this reality onto Nature, we give birth to a teleological Cosmos--perhaps the most fundamental assumption of theology.

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duplication of the above

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Frank Apisa wrote:

snood wrote:
I have a friend who often says that "everything is spiritual". When she says it, I take her to mean that everything she experiences is spiritual, and that her whole life really has no meaning except from a spiritual perspective. She thinks of everything as having a lesson in it - something for her to take with her on the journey. I tend to agree that the way I go about my everyday is much more important than "arriving" at some destination, and that the encounters and events of my everyday have something to teach me.

Fact is...everything MAY be spiritual...

...everything we suppose "exists" may be an illusion.

No real way to tell.

The folks who claim it cannot be...that there is nothing "spiritual" about REALITY...are just guessing...and their guesses are made based on damn near nothing.

The folks who claim it is...that there can be no other answer but that this is all an illusion and all spiritual...are just guessing...and their guesses are made based on damn near nothing.

To the folks who think the kind of observation I just made is pap and has no real value...I say: Chances are there is nothing more important than finally groking the observation.

Grokking what? That its entirely possible that no one knows anything about the nature of reality?

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snood wrote:

Frank Apisa wrote:
snood wrote:
I have a friend who often says that "everything is spiritual". When she says it, I take her to mean that everything she experiences is spiritual, and that her whole life really has no meaning except from a spiritual perspective. She thinks of everything as having a lesson in it - something for her to take with her on the journey. I tend to agree that the way I go about my everyday is much more important than "arriving" at some destination, and that the encounters and events of my everyday have something to teach me.

Fact is...everything MAY be spiritual...

...everything we suppose "exists" may be an illusion.

No real way to tell.

The folks who claim it cannot be...that there is nothing "spiritual" about REALITY...are just guessing...and their guesses are made based on damn near nothing.

The folks who claim it is...that there can be no other answer but that this is all an illusion and all spiritual...are just guessing...and their guesses are made based on damn near nothing.

To the folks who think the kind of observation I just made is pap and has no real value...I say: Chances are there is nothing more important than finally groking the observation.

Grokking what? That its entirely possible that no one knows anything about the nature of reality?

Uhhh...yeah!

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JLNobody wrote:

I think that the dualism of contrasting mind and matter or spirit and body presents the same kinds of problems created by the contrast sets, natural/supernatural, worldliness/other-worldliness, etc.: false dichotomies. Mind and brain imply each other, as, I guess, natural and supernatural do. But while the former set MAY serve some uses, the latter does not except in the most fantastical ways.

Since JL has indicated these are all "false dichotomies"...something he apparently knows...

...it makes sense to suppose he does not grok the obvious.

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JL wrote:

Quote:

Fresco, that seems right to me. We, as ego-oriented selves, live our lives "purposively," with motives, ends, goals, etc.. When we project this reality onto Nature, we give birth to a teleological Cosmos--perhaps the most fundamental assumption of theology.

There is an aspect of this that has been on my mind lately.

It is the dualism of free will and determinism.

Unlike the dualistic notions mind/body, mind/matter, action/acter and so on, the aspects "free will" and determinism seem mutually exclusive.

Still I suspect they are merely the dualistic counterparts of this evolution wich influences us, thus empowering us to influence, wich has in essence given birth to the very problem.

I am seeking a non'dualistic way of understanding the concept of will.

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Cyracuz,

References to Capra (The Web of Life) yield his overview that "science" must move away from its reliance on "control" as a paradigm for "successful explanation". This is a plea for a shift in epistemology where "systems" (from the cell to the cosmos) should be viewed as "organizational" rather than "purposeful" in other words "goal direction" loses its anthropocentric element of "will". Capra also points out that "determinism" is an aspect of "linearity" whereas "systems theory" is based on non-linear models such as "chaos theory"

If we also remember that "time" has been deconstructed by modern physics (together indeed with the separateness of "objects") then it should be easy to see that "will" has no "real" arena within which to operate except at a very local limited level. It is also evident from this perspective that "God's Will" is as simplistic a projection as "God's Beard" and this is reflected in the views of those academic theologians who accept modern physics and go for a "non-interventionist deity".

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Cryacuz, I gave my perspective on the false debate between free-will and determinism in an earlier post which I cannot find.
A further note on that argument might be that they both derive their appearance of legitimacy from the erroneous assumption of the ego. Free-will obviously implies an agent, a being that freely decides between options, and determinism implies a self that is unfreely affected by an external world of causes. If "I" only exist as an expression of a unitary cosmos, then all the so-called causes that affect "me", ARE my true Self and, as such, "I" cannot be their victim, as it were. I am both the causes and that which is caused. Where did the debate go?

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JLN,

I think your position was stated here but it needs a little sifting !
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15508&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

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Could be this......

"Subtle thoughts all. Let me add some off the cuff notions: There is the illusion: "'I' choose". In actuality the choosing just happens as a result of an array of forces, some chemical, some cultural conditioning, and most, unconscious, except for the most consciously pragmatic decisions. "Choosing" then is a term we apply to the end product (some kind of action) of a series of natural events. There is no free will--even in the case of consciously pragmatic decisions--because there is no agent to possess it. Nevertheless, there IS something we might call freedom. The "natural events" resulting in a choice are part of the spontaneity of nature. I say spontaneity because nature is not restrained by something outside of "it." Yet nature's "freedom" is not the freedom of some macro-agent; nature has no agency; it just is (and mysteriously so, I must add). Nevertheless, like you, I AM that nature, and THAT is "my" (oh the chains of grammar) freedom. So there IS freedom if you identify with the totally of this cosmic process but none if your point of reference is the ego/self. "

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Yes, thanks Fresco. Actually, I was thinking of a post made just a matter of days ago.
And I might perhaps this somewhat problematical response to Randall Patrik who, unfortunately is no longer around. [I put some changes in brackets].

Yes RP, i see this as a false issue, a pseudo problem. If we are absolutely free to think and speak as we wish, then our acts are all uncaused, and we can't imagine that. If our behavior is absolutely determined then our social interactions are [the] mechanical sequences of robots. The reality must be [I would change that to "may be seen as] some kind of blend [perhaps dynamic dialectical interaction] of both agency and constraint. [But] From the mystical point of view, my volulntary actions are expressions of an objective universal process, but since I am an essential part of that process, I am both free and unfree depending on angle of perception.

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fresco wrote:

Could be this......

"Subtle thoughts all. Let me add some off the cuff notions: There is the illusion: "'I' choose". In actuality the choosing just happens as a result of an array of forces, some chemical, some cultural conditioning, and most, unconscious, except for the most consciously pragmatic decisions. "Choosing" then is a term we apply to the end product (some kind of action) of a series of natural events. There is no free will--even in the case of consciously pragmatic decisions--because there is no agent to possess it. Nevertheless, there IS something we might call freedom. The "natural events" resulting in a choice are part of the spontaneity of nature. I say spontaneity because nature is not restrained by something outside of "it." Yet nature's "freedom" is not the freedom of some macro-agent; nature has no agency; it just is (and mysteriously so, I must add). Nevertheless, like you, I AM that nature, and THAT is "my" (oh the chains of grammar) freedom. So there IS freedom if you identify with the totally of this cosmic process but none if your point of reference is the ego/self. "

Fresco, is there any physical proof for this theory? Scientific or whatever?

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Did you have a Spiritual Awakening?

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