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Yes, here is where he directly called me egocentric, imagining I'm making up definitions of words:
Now this is a cop out. Put up or shut up. If you can't give an example, you have no point, just insults.
Yeah don't let some distract, when what some of us have put is amazing, and can help progress our consciousnesses...
I think I just get tired of linear thinkers. No imagination. No stretching. It must be this way, within these lines, in this box, as they've learned from others. (which in 95% of the time they only think they understand anyway). It's not just this instance, but all of them has really worn on me. I hope for so much better.
Yes, I would hope it would be about deepening one's understanding, not only intellectual but spiritual understanding in pursuit of Knowledge, rather than being about defending the purity of one's own ideas and beliefs. Talk about clinging creating suffering! There you go! Right there.Even though posting in the debate section; hopefully some of us can have Satsang, as there are some amazing intellectual minds on here.
You're not the only one, sat in the country before, looking around at nature that is so dynamic, and integrated; yet then realizing the square hedges, with the square fields, made by square people...When it is the circle of life!
Within my own NDE, i learned that we get to see the ramifications of every action, and to understand how it affected people... Feel for those who don't realize this, and therefore always put in 100%.
Yeah, attachment to ideas; when clearly everything we see in this reality, gets corrupted in someway.
We learn the most from the hardest paths; especially if we learn to transduce negativity.
Yeah, attachment to ideas; when clearly everything we see in this reality, gets corrupted in someway.
The trick or magic, if you will, is to be mindful of this AS you are going about your days. When you consider the ramifications of your actions (and inaction) life gets just a little bit easier.
While I don't agree on the wording, it's not that it gets corrupted, all ideas are "corrupted" from the get go due to trying to convey non-linear reality into three-dimensional symbols and verbal expressions. Again, if people really understood this and to not take anything verbatim as being "the gospel", as if written in stone, their lives would be less complicated.Yeah, attachment to ideas; when clearly everything we see in this reality, gets corrupted in someway.
I rather like negativity. It's like fertilizer that foster more growth. It's a part of being an entity in physical clothing, enjoy it for what it is.
I try not to think like that, though there is some truth to it. Experience should teach one, fairly quickly, when to speak and when to smile and walk away. It's rarely ever worth getting upset over.Though it is nice to have spiritual conversations in this crazy world; often learned the most from the flies around manure, making us go the opposite way.
OK a couple of specific questions to narrow it down...
- Did you have a sense of self within the experience?
Any details about this aspect are helpful.
- Did you have a sense of ego?
- Did you have a soul?
A remarkable story, Eliab ben Benjamin.
And that understanding must be restricted to that particular view on the topic of "ego"? Then why do Buddhists talk about "getting rid of the ego"? You think the separate self is being referred to in the sense of Western psychology? Is the understanding I expressed "woolly"? I would say it's a complex topic, and complexity is what you are going to get. This is some very subtle stuff you're dealing with here, not little boxes one can tuck away on the shelf easily.
Within multiple cultures, we used a terminology for soul, self, our life, that comes from the root of breath, Atman (Sanskrit), Nephesh (Hebrew), Psyche (Greek)... Please add anymore cultures you're aware of to this list.
Though because of this we've identified the soul, as being the self; thus we've then had Buddhism, and other religious authors remove the self (Anatman).
Yeshua says to hate our psyche, not to save our psyche, not to love our psyche...
Which clearly is all just a mess of presenting a clear understanding.
Some Buddhist believe they're soulless, as Buddha didn't give a definitive answer...
Clearly we all have a soul in this physical body, we have some form of self identification, which can be interlinked with our ego.
When we're dead, we still have a sense of self, even when in Heaven.
@Eliab ben Benjamin Could you please help share what you remember from your NDE as well, and anyone else who has had first hand experience of Heaven, please share, as we could do with finding a definitive answer between us.
The sense of self is stronger in Hell though; which makes me question how much it has been linked to our ego through life.
Heaven is Oneness, like we still have a sense of self; yet our focus is all about the source, thus we're one with the consciousness of all.
Within us understanding this better, we can help people on the road to enlightenment; as we've all got a soul, which is like a dynamic spark of energy, a flow, a musical melody, a tapestry of colours, etc.
Our sense of self isn't from God/Brahman having a self, as it has no self; we can say it is the only self existing being in reality; yet it doesn't have self orientated thinking, it is completely selfless, else it would make more point of being seen and understood.
Our self isn't a bad thing, though we find many selfish, self orientated people in Hell; it is due to not recognizing that life is here to learn Oneness, and thus being selfless.
Think self is our souls identification process, we recognize our soul as we have a sense of self....
Then we can recognize our soul as having a sense of selflessness...
In other words to put it into binary we see our sense of self as 1, without a self as 0; yet both are an identification of existing in someway.
I don't know if soul is the right word. That would imply some sort of ghost thing attached to our body. You seem to describe a dualism as existing but then pushing for monism?
Both are right, we exist in a Matrix manifested by the CPU, there are multiple dimensions separated by vibrations, with us somewhere in the middle.
The ego is our inner/outer reflection with the outside world.... Thus it can become false, it isn't the real you, it is a projection.
In many of the religions people don't tho, due to the language barrier...
IMO and as a Buddhist, my view of the ego and getting rid of it has more to do with getting rid of the ego in the sense that we serve it. It is much better to serve humanity and NOT the self. The self has no meaning save that we are trying to achieve enlightenment, ultimately. Perhaps a more utilitarian word would be to get rid of hubris and attempt for humility and service to humanity.And that understanding must be restricted to that particular view on the topic of "ego"? Then why do Buddhists talk about "getting rid of the ego"? You think the separate self is being referred to in the sense of Western psychology? Is the understanding I expressed "woolly"? I would say it's a complex topic, and complexity is what you are going to get. This is some very subtle stuff you're dealing with here, not little boxes one can tuck away on the shelf easily.
That's correct. But nothing I am saying is vague or meaningless. It has very clear meaning. When I hear someone say these sorts of things about what I am saying, I hear someone who is probably too lazy or afraid to apply themselves to penetrate what is being said and blaming me for it to avoid in their own minds looking stupid either to themselves or others.
Ditto here.
When we learn to speak additional languages, we realize how longer words make things harder to translate... “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein
Yes, absolutely. You can't, nor should want to "get rid of the ego", anymore than you would want to get rid of your feet. You need the ego to function as a human being, whether you are enlightened or not, the same way you need your lungs, enlightened or not. It's what allows us to function as social animals in society and culture, or on a more basic level be able to survive life by recognizing the difference between that tiger and me whom he is seeing as prey.
. As I said in another post, all what this "getting rid of the ego" means is shifting the center of gravity of our self identification away from the whole self-reflexive individual personality as the exclusive set of eyes you see through. It doesn't mean you pluck those eyes out and throw them away, anymore than you chop your feet off when you are no longer a child, who at that stage of development could only see, was only capable of seeing themselves as their body. The "self" of a very young child is their body. That is the "ego" at that time to them. So in this sense they "got rid of" that body-self as the dominant set of eyes they understood themselves as. But yet we do in fact retain a recognition of our bodies as "me" while we develop higher stages of ego development, each time "getting rid" of the previous, less developed, less sophisticated self-sense.Another word for it, is growing up.
Well, ok. Sure, to some extent this is true. I didn't want to insult people's intelligence by talking to them like six years olds here. "The ego is this little ball that lives inside your head that you think is you....When we learn to speak additional languages, we realize how longer words make things harder to translate... “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein
If someone says respectfully to me they don't follow and ask for me to clarify, I certainly can restate things in perhaps simpler language. But when they respond like a six year old calling me a big stupid, or something.... why should I?