As soon as we get in to this explanation business, we create food for our egos to hijack.
And everyone in the world is doing what you do. You are in fact projecting onto others your own shadow. I said to someone privately who was offended by your unwarranted and unjustifiable insults to me, that it simply brought to mind for me the story of the Buddha where someone who didn't like what he had to say came up and spit on his face. The story goes,
He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter. And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?
“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something. Spitting is a way of saying something.
What I hear from you is an image of your own mind, not who I am. And what's more, it's not who the people in this thread are. I have made assumptions about people, knee-jerk reacted to what I thought I heard them saying. And this too for over a decade of being a forum moderator, so used to certain "types", that I assumed just a few key words, "trigger words" what sort of person they are. But the difference here is that when they point out they are not saying what I am assuming they are, I correct myself and learn from it. So far, you don't actually read the content of what I am saying, not giving the benefit of doubt, not trying to listen or understand that I understand quite clearly the basic truths you know (and basic they are), and what I am talking about is in fact not some metaphysical New Age nonsense. But you persist. And not just that, you insult me. You spit on all of us.
I am absolutely more than open to criticisms. It's how I learn. It's how I grow. I hold all my views with an open hand, not a dogmatic closed fist. What I hear from you in really what I more than accustomed to hearing from ex-fundamentalist Christians who have now found the "real" truth. It's the same "I have the Answers now, and all of you are wrong". Tell me you don't think like this. You know better than all the rest of us who have been on our own paths.
What I am, and have been talking about is not metaphysics. I have been talking about actual Western scientifically researched developmental studies. I've been tapping into semiotics, cultural studies, and a long list of investigations into psychology as well as comparative religious studies, East and West. The reasons for understanding these thing is very simple.
You have to integrate what you are exposed to in these luminous moments encountered in silence! You aren't living outside of the world, but within it. You have to have a some frameworks of understanding of the world in order to translate these experiences.
It is not necessary to know Integral Philosophy, in order to find truth and fulfillment in life. But for those of us, like me, who are interesting in not just spiritual, mystical exploration, but an exploration of the human condition, societies, cultures, religions, ecology, politics, science, and on and on, that is in fact not found on the meditation mat! Give me a break. It's not necessary to know this stuff. But you are assuming I am saying it is! That is entirely your own fantasy.
It's a process filled with addictive self delusions, and the fuel that keeps the whole ego circus going is thought in the form of mystical explanations.
Yes, and you assume a lot about me that is baseless if you think this is what I am doing. You have no idea of what I think or belief. I've not heard it repeated back to me yet. I am personally very well of where the pitfalls of my own ego lay. And it is not anywhere you have been stabbing at, as if it is your job to do so anyway. You don't know where those are in me. Like they say in AA, "Do your own damn inventory."
You are not my guru. You are not qualified to be. You appear in that stage of someone who's have a special moment or two and now think they know where everyone else is off track. In other words, a very immature stage, with lots of shadows projecting on to others to avoid what in actual Reality would leave you a humble person, not a judge of others, such as you are with all of us.
Like it says in the Bible so perfectly, "By their fruits you shall know them". Indeed this is true.
That's what's happening in this thread, and so many others like it. It's like an ego circle jerk where each of us help the others get off, and if anybody interrupts the jerking, they must be ignored, resisted, ejected, the self inflation show must go on!
You should realize when I read comments like these I see you avoiding yourself?
It doesn't help to switch from this explanation to that explanation, from this philosophy to that philosophy, from this religion to that religion, because they're all made of thought. Anything made of thought, including my posts, will be subject to the same division based problems.
It sound's like you've created your own metaphysical theology here. You have it all keyed down to one problem alone, thought. Just stop that, and the rest magically is fixed. You have found the singular "Way, Truth and Life". Again, this sound very former Christian to me.
Once we see that it's the nature of thought and not the content of thought that is the issue, our interest in explanations naturally starts to fade.
Franky, this is like 1st grader understanding to me. You really don't know what you are talking about in what you imagine I think or believe, despite my best efforts to patient and respectful to you regardless of the fact you have been rude and insulting to others. I feel badly for you actually, like that man who spits on his own mind. I honestly do not believe you have found Peace. You've probably taken a freedom experience, and are now substituting your ideas about it, a theology about it as the path to that release again. And damned be anyone who says otherwise, as you lash out at the through your own frustration for not in fact being at Peace. You are angry is it lost to you.
This is not the path home for you.
Mystical explanations are not necessary.
Who in this thread has said they are? I haven't, and I don't. Once again, this is an image in your own mind you a spitting on, not the actual person before you.
They create more problems than they solve. Every mystical explanation is really a claim that the experience itself just isn't enough, which simply isn't true.
Again, who are you talking to? It's not me, or anyone else in this thread.
Self appointed holy men of every religion hate this fact, because it means they are unnecessary too.
Thank goodness you can wear the robes now!
Look, I'm honestly hoping that you maybe stop and pause, and listen. Methinks you think too much! You assume endlessly.