Could Nothingness Be Another Dimension In And Of Itself?

[Straw Dog]

Higher Consciousness and its experience is not a 'self-improvement' 'feel-good' excercise, like having your nails done or getting a shampoo.

You're right, dude. It's egojitsu! It's a way for us to judge our own consciousness as somehow being 'higher' than all those other poor fools whom just don't get it.

Get out there and experience something raw! Put yourself in an uncomfortable situation that no systematized instruction can possibly predict! Get real!

 

[godnotgod]

Is this particular dichotomy between natural and social identity perfectly contrived?

What particular limitations do you naturally experience?

Does not compute. Rephrase.

Why do you desire 'purity'?

Nothing in the way to contaminate the present experience.

Is a static state of emotional experience desirable?

Whaaa? oxymoron here. Let's just say that Higher Consciousness brings an end to the fluctuations back and forth between relative joy and relative suffering, the 'ups and downs' of life, the result of the fictions of those living in Identification, a drama in a script written by others. Why indulge in their lunacy to the point of allowing them to drag you down into their quagmire? The point of living is to find real lasting joy and to cut through the delusion that only brings temporal joy, which always in turn brings temporal suffering.

 

[Straw Dog]

No, not in the sense of an individual self, or ego that has identity. Reality has no such identity. Identity is in Time and Space; the true nature of things is not. It is free of such contamination. It is Unborn, Uncaused, Ungrown, not in memory or history.

Whatever.

It's my nature to identify so deal with it. I'm happier than I have been since... well, since I can possibly remember. How do you account for my happy-go-lucky agency?

 

[godnotgod]

You're right, dude. It's egojitsu! It's a way for us to judge our own consciousness as somehow being 'higher' than all those other poor fools whom just don't get it.

Get out there and experience something raw! Put yourself in an uncomfortable situation that no systematized instruction can possibly predict! Get real!

No, you're wrong here. Higher Consciousness is not what you imply: an egotistical exercise over others. It's 'higher' because it is above delusion and suffering, but it is not in the least condescending. Otherwise it could not qualify to be called 'Higher Consciousness'. Understand?

Get real? Ha! I don't need to eat sh*t in order to know that it really is sh*t! Don't you know? Buddhists negate life. It's fiction!

 

[godnotgod]

Whatever.

It's my nature to identify so deal with it. I'm happier than I have been since... well, since I can possibly remember. How do you account for my happy-go-lucky agency?

If it is authentic, then it must be close to your true nature, unless you're just putting yourself on. I, too, am very happy, but that is just our real human nature. Nothing Special, you know. You know, you actually COULD be happy because your true nature gets to play the part you are now playing in Identification. That is something only you can know. However, Identification is temporal, and will end someday. Then there will be sorrow over its loss. So the question one finally must ask someday is: Is there something beyond all of this back and forth, up and down business? Something that does not fade.

The Human Route


Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.


Then what is the one pure and clear thing?

Zen Master Seung Sahn

 

[Straw Dog]

If it is authentic, then it must be close to your true nature, unless you're just putting yourself on. I, too, am very happy, but that is just our real human nature. Nothing Special, you know.

Hmm... Maybe it comes down to a confusion of language.

It is nothing special, and yet I accept my sense of self. It is natural and I am predominantly happy these days. It is also somewhat normal for me to say this on Religious Forums at this particular time in the morning. However, I do not feel compelled to become obsessive about any particular line of thinking.

In fact, I shall simply eat and sleep, then wake up to go recite Shakespeare in the afternoon for a play (Twelfth Night) that I am actually performing for in a live show in the future.

Follow your bliss!

 

[godnotgod]

Hmm... Maybe it comes down to a confusion of language.

It is nothing special, and yet I accept my sense of self. It is natural and I am predominantly happy these days. It is also somewhat normal for me to say this on Religious Forums at this particular time in the morning. However, I do not feel compelled to become obsessive about any particular line of thinking.

In fact, I shall simply eat and sleep, then wake up to go recite Shakespeare in the afternoon for a play (Twelfth Night) that I am actually performing for in a live show in the future.

Follow your bliss!

Well, there is 'self', the character we play in the state of Identification, and then there is Self, our true nature. You, an actor, should have a good feel for Identification, which is the character you are playing in the Shakespearian drama, all the time knowing who you really are. But now, imagine for a moment that you would at some point in the drama, become so involved with the character that you would clean forget who you really were, and actually think yourself to be the character you are playing. Not likely in a contrived stage play, but now take it to another level entirely, where life in general is the drama, with the characters playing out their various roles, totally immersed in that character to the point of thinking that character to be real, when, in reality, they are fictional in nature, our true natures being asleep. What I mean by Identification, or fiction, is the accumulation of images and experiences throughout our lifetimes we identify with as 'I', where 'I' is merely a frozen self-concept of who we think ourselves to be. We are not in reality a thing called 'I', but an action. No one has ever been able to locate this thing we all call 'I'. It's an illusion.

 

[godnotgod]

It's my nature to identify...

Who is it that is doing the identifying?

 

[Straw Dog]

Well, there is 'self', the character we play in the state of Identification, and then there is Self, our true nature. You, an actor, should have a good feel for Identification, which is the character you are playing in the Shakespearian drama, all the time knowing who you really are. But now, imagine for a moment that you would at some point in the drama, become so involved with the character that you would clean forget who you really were, and actually think yourself to be the character you are playing. Not likely in a contrived stage play, but now take it to another level entirely, where life in general is the drama, with the characters playing out their various roles, totally immersed in that character to the point of thinking that character to be real, when, in reality, they are fictional in nature, our true natures being asleep. What I mean by Identification, or fiction, is the accumulation of images and experiences throughout our lifetimes we identify with as 'I', where 'I' is merely a frozen self-concept of who we think ourselves to be. We are not in reality a thing called 'I', but an action. No one has ever been able to locate this thing we all call 'I'. It's an illusion.

I believe that I may catch your drift!

I'm not so much into method acting, for example. It's more a matter of aloofness from a vast number of characters rather than specific attachment. I discern between a deeper sense of self that is open and flowing from a shallow concept of self that is closed and fixed. A flexible identity is very useful for a wide range of practical affairs. Let yourself flow freely...

 

[Straw Dog]

Who is it that is doing the identifying?

This particular enclave.

 

[godnotgod]

This particular enclave.

But now, you see, there is the identity itself, and the identifier of the identity. And who, or what, is it that is the observer/identifier/knower of the enclave? You see the dilemma?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Never has so much nonsense been spouted by so few.

 

[Papoon]

I agree. Imagination is far more powerful than I think the average human animal suspects.

That hit me while I was writing the first part of my autobiography several years ago. What I was writing was so "out there" you got a contact high just reading the material. (It's far richer than anything presented in this thread, for example.) For my own mental stability I had to treat the material at "arms length" and wrote from my decades old meticulous notebooks... often verbatim. What I was somewhat bemused by was how, at the very least, this was all the product of some pretty artistic mental footwork. I deeply appreciated that it could indeed just be all a product of my imagination. Days later, I was having dinner when it hit me, "But what if I'm right? What if this isn't my imagination?"

I guess my point is that it is incredibly enticing to get carried away with your own thinking, especially when you have rather profound experiences that defy description on which that thinking is based. The thing to remember is that the map is NEVER the territory. This should be repeated on a daily basis lest we let our imaginations carry us into the land of make-believe.

I agree with a lot of what you say...and much of what the die-hard anti-mystics are saying...and some of what the mystics are saying too, LOL.

But there is an elephant in the room. The oceans are dying, species extinction is accelerating, there is the biggest slave trade in history, all cultures are being turned to superficial ****, most forests have been destroyed...etc etc (meaning general catastrophe) and the general catastrophe is primarily driven by a tiny minority of the human race who have clearly, demonstrably, stolen almost all the wealth ever generated and used politics and religion to play global illusionist misdirection games- and you guys are spending hours every day, a huge percentage of your time, engaged in this endless ping pong game of mutual humiliation while everything worth more than fetid dingoes kidneys is being either appropriated or destroyed. And showing no interest in identifying and dealing with the monsters who have reduced humanity to a pathetic degraded herd which is about to be annihilated.

Displacement much ?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I'm not so much into method acting, for example. It's more a matter of aloofness from a vast number of characters rather than specific attachment. I discern between a deeper sense of self that is open and flowing from a shallow concept of self that is closed and fixed. A flexible identity is very useful for a wide range of practical affairs. Let yourself flow freely...

I like that. I used to do some acting and found that playing different roles was very liberating

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I agree with a lot of what you say...and much of what the die-hard anti-mystics are saying...and some of what the mystics are saying too, LOL.

It isn't really an argument about mysticism, it's about people getting attached to speculative beliefs and confusing those with authentic insight. There is also a lot of misrepresentation of science and Buddhism going on, continually trying to twist things to suit personal agendas and preconceptions. Lots of ego, lecturing and preaching, being "ultra-spiritual".

 

[Papoon]

It isn't really an argument about mysticism, it's about people getting attached to speculative beliefs and confusing those with authentic insight. There is also a lot of misrepresentation of science and Buddhism going on, continually trying to twist things to suit personal agendas and preconceptions. Lots of ego, lecturing and preaching, being "ultra-spiritual".

Sure.
What about the second paragraph ?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Sure.
What about the second paragraph ?

I have a very low carbon footprint and I don't waste anything. I try not to make things any worse. What else do you think I should be doing? What are you doing about it?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Such as 'space', 'time', 'location', 'consciousness' and 'ojjectivity'.

No, I'm talking about the reification of consciousness, the reification of light, whatever. These are essentially religious beliefs, and nothing to do with authentic insight.

 

[Papoon]

I have a very low carbon footprint and I don't waste anything. I try not to make things any worse. What else do you think I should be doing? What are you doing about it?

Investigating. Encouraging others to do so. Examining the ways that this global crime is perpetrated and how it is hidden in full view. Taking personal responsibility for my part in the community complicity. Doing my best to 'think outside the two dots'. Overcoming the programmed alienation which we relabel 'privacy' and defend compulsively.

Lots of things. Primarily , refusing the powerful urge to dissociate, displace, and ignore. And defying the conditioned reflex to behave like a normal citizen who accepts that community is a pleasant fiction to be outwardly displayed whilst actually hiding in the foxhole of narcissistic nihilism, which is the statistically normal state now as far as I can see.

Persisting in communication with animals.

Allowing my heart to break, and my despair to express, then picking myself up and carrying on with dignity and determination.

Being relentlessly honest with others, even strangers, about our miserable state of incarceration in cities which are effectively workhouse prisons.

I could say much more.

Here's an example... Investigate the Carlyle Group. Look at their corporate structure, major investors, business advisors, and peculiar activities. Just a salient example of what is hidden in plain view.

 

[YmirGF]

I agree with a lot of what you say...and much of what the die-hard anti-mystics are saying...and some of what the mystics are saying too, LOL.

But there is an elephant in the room. The oceans are dying, species extinction is accelerating, there is the biggest slave trade in history, all cultures are being turned to superficial ****, most forests have been destroyed...etc etc (meaning general catastrophe) and the general catastrophe is primarily driven by a tiny minority of the human race who have clearly, demonstrably, stolen almost all the wealth ever generated and used politics and religion to play global illusionist misdirection games- and you guys are spending hours every day, a huge percentage of your time, engaged in this endless ping pong game of mutual humiliation while everything worth more than fetid dingoes kidneys is being either appropriated or destroyed. And showing no interest in identifying and dealing with the monsters who have reduced humanity to a pathetic degraded herd which is about to be annihilated.

Displacement much ?

Holy negative hysteria, Batman. Clearly, like godnotgod, you have a rather dim view of the "modern" world. Though I understand that the world has its problems and challenges, I don't see it in the extremely negative way that you describe above. In some ways we live in the most spectacular of times this world has seen. I have a tremendous amount of "faith" in my fellow human animals and believe, perhaps naively, that humanity will rise to face its challenges... be it global warming/climate change, the threat of Islamic fanatics... etc... I don't believe in an Illuminati-like 1% who are so fueled by their lust for power and control they are willing to sacrifice us on the altar of desolation and destruction. I like to think I am a pragmatic realist and am surrounded by many like-minded individuals. My glass is half full, but it sounds like yours is less than half empty. That is unfortunate but I am quite sure there are good reasons why you think the way you do.

I don't think the answer to the problems facing humanity is to promote more lies and shadow truths. I think human animals are mature enough to hear a more realistic narrative than what is being trotted out in this thread. I know I don't treat most humans as if they were mindless children and I don't understand why some tend to think that is the special tonic that is need in our age of the special snowflake syndrome.