Self May Be The Most Important Thing We Have.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Wow and school test results are really all just happening by chance? How do you read and understand that if you don't think about it? I am not only witnessing I constantly make decisions, even on a verbal level.
Write it down, act it out, sleep on it, I can decide to carry it around for a while, to think some more about it, that's not just happening that's following a plan, a strategy which was thought through or not, there maybe it starts to get foggy how free my will really is. But never the less actively thinking is a thing.

a reply to: Peeple

a reply to: Itisnowagain

I do exist. Just because Watts has some points in some things doesn't mean everything he has thought about is right.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: Itisnowagain

Wow and school test results are really all just happening by chance? How do you read and understand that if you don't think about it? I am not only witnessing I constantly make decisions, even on a verbal level.
Write it down, act it out, sleep on it, I can decide to carry it around for a while, to think some more about it, that's not just happening that's following a plan, a strategy which was thought through or not, there maybe it starts to get foggy how free my will really is. But never the less actively thinking is a thing.

All of that just appears - but there is nothing separate doing it.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Sure there is. I am seperate from you and I am doing it.

You are the ever present screen which unconditionally allows all that appears to appear - all that appears is passing - yet you, the space of awareness, never comes or goes.

a reply to: Whatsthisthen


If the 'Self" is ultimately important.... then Do Not sign up for one of those DNA tests which purport to tell you of your genetic & ethnic make-up...


because in the fine print of the contract to have them do the DNA test at $99. you agree to give up any claim you have on your genome or 'Self' expressed in your chromosomes & genes of your individual DNA
ETA: ~so you give up your right to 'copyright' any unique hidden trait or immunity you have in your biological body immune system~

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Birth and death. I come and go.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: Itisnowagain

Birth and death. I come and go.

Can you remember the beginning?

The appearance that you believe is you (the body) disappears in your experience in deep sleep - so yes the appearance ends.
But the aware space, the back ground, the screen is still present.

Right now deep sleep is still here (it is what you are) behind what is appearing on it. Beneath the sound and fury there is stillness.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Our perception seems to differ a lot. If that's your reality, fine. I like mine with more differentiation.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: Itisnowagain

Our perception seems to differ a lot. If that's your reality, fine. I like mine with more differentiation.

What is appearing is simply appearing and what appears is constantly appearing different.

a reply to: St Udio

The devil in the fine print . . . .

. . . . . and they own your first born.

a reply to: Itisnowagain


If one wants to lower one's boundary of self and become "one", that won't help anyone meet new "friends".

Reason being is they are not silly enough to lower their boundaries to just any other consciousness. There is something called predation.

I'm not saying your wrong in anyway. Just be careful.

a reply to: Whatsthisthen

What I like with your OP is that it is a nice penny-dropping account, using you own words and experience; basically intuiting things and letting the meaning flow out.

Some of what you have described can be found in many systems but under different terminology. However, yours is original because it is from your unique experience and not something read.

I particularly like your use of the word "boundary" in relation to the mind. This is very appropriate as you already know. Nothing can exist/manifest without applying limitation/boundaries. Yet, limitation and boundaries are synonymous to definition and geometry. So much can be explored on the theme of mind and boundaries. A powerful representation of this is the left pillar of the Tree of Life (looking at the tree from the back). The three spheres represent Lower mind , higher mind and archetypal mind and the boundary/limitation theme being common to all three. Sorry could not resist a bit of Qabalah.

In summary the unlimited gives birth to the limited self so as through experience it can become the unlimited self. Aparently its where the two become one. But in reality, one is and can never be anything other than one. a reply to: Whatsthisthen

a reply to: crowdedskies

Glad you liked it crowdedskies (nice smile).

and my own experience is all I have when it is all said and done.

The Qabalah I don't personally practice but I have crossed paths with it and ventured in once or twice.

The British occultist Violet Firth (Dion Fortune) said of Yesod that the vision there is of the Machinery of the Universe. Lots of interesting things in there I alude to here and there on ATS.

But that's as far as I care to go.

Just my "two bob's worth" here but I think Qabalahists need a strong boundary of self to go in those places.

a reply to: ancientthunder

'day ancient thunder.

In summary the unlimited gives birth to the limited self so as through experience it can become the unlimited self. Aparently its where the two become one. But in reality, one is and can never be anything other than one.

Is that a fact . . . .

Perhaps . . . .

It was, in a manner of speaking, my objective in authoring this thread to voice a counter to the concept of the Oneness of the mystics, if I may put it so.

Words are tricky things and are a double edge sword, so I won't split ontological hairs. (grin) Though the classical western God's white beard suggests there are many places to try . . .

But for myself, I maintain that outside of the realms of religion, self is important for without self there can be no "I".

I base this on the Nature Spirits and how they reproduce. I was fortunate to share the occasion with a Nature Being friend when she became a mother.

Where organic life requires sex for the most part, Nature Beings divide themselves into a half dozen or so child versions of themselves complete with memories going back through their entire ancestral lineage.

This is also so of other Beings such as the Asura.

That, of course is Nature Beings and not human beings. Human beings procreate through sex and not division.

Yet how different are we really?

In division the process of change is very slow. Go back five generations of Nature Beings and you come to the first to appear here on earth back in the formative days of long ago. That is a long time by our human reckoning.

In contrast, the evolution of organic life is blindingly fast.

Yet what is a "human"?

It is said that a human is a spirit that inhabits a body. Two aspects.

The body evolves, the body lives and dies. But what of the spirit within?

If I ask the oldest of the Nature Beings I know of her origin she says she came here from elsewhere and that they have always been.

If I ask the discarnate the origin of humans, they appear with wrists bound by rope and gagged, so they are under "obligation" not to speak. Thus a secret.

So what is the secret?

My educated guess is that the human spirit has more in common with the normal process of procreation.

One can always ask the neighbors what is plain for them to see.

Is that a fact . . . .

Perhaps . . . a reply to: Whatsthisthen

Haha, sounds very ozzie the fact part, but in reply to some of the things you have pointed out. Instead of fact, how about an idea? Then with regards to the mystics, well wasnt my intention to turn it towards their view. None the less, its what came to mind and if your basic premise is founded on some kind of truth? Then you get Bingo! The language of some of the mystics whoever they were, or might of been. Goes great with me! As for there, religious inclination doesn't really phase me anymore.

a reply to: ancientthunder

A blokes gotta have a sense of humour.

But really one can only go on what one experiences for oneself at times.

Some of the teachings worry me when applied in life. Harmlessness for instance can be inappropriate in some situations, in this world at least.

When I find myself in the next world, and cross paths with a mystic perhaps I'll lend an ear to him.

But until then . . . . . . .