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Thread: barriers to expanding consciousness

  1. #11

    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    I have the same problem with this.

    It's is exactly why my preference of type of literature changed. Until 3 years ago I was reading a lots of science-fiction, fantasy, adventure. It was before I went on the spiritual path.

    Now I don't anymore. And I don't understand why spiritually oriented people still would like to see those fantasy movies or similar. I don't get it. Because it's a parody.

    So now I only read non-fiction stuff. (Of all kinds by the way, not only metaphysical topics). I found out that reality (or what we think it to be) is so much more thrilling.

    I don't like those entertainment fantasy "realities" anymore. And I don't like them mimicking metaphysical concepts and things.

    I think I can sum up sleeper's worry in one simple sentence:

    NO ONE TAKES IT SERIOUSLY ANYMORE !

    It is all game, fun, action, special effects, illusion, fantasy ...

    The kids like to play in a virtual world of vampires or knights or future soldiers on their playstations or watch 2-3 horror movies per night, but hey ... it's all just entertainment and funny baloney, huh?

    And it really is getting parodied and travestied, the irony: mostly by so-called "rational" people -who are not necessarily rational but it is the narrow-minded label they like to stick to themselves.

    An example: Just think of the old staunch materialist and religion-basher "Mr Evolution" Richard Dawkins.

    When asked what he wants to do now after he retired from his office as university professor, he said he wants to write fantasy novels of the Harry-Potter type now. Just to prove how much EASY fun it can be to make things up (like all things spiritual are made up, as he likes to imply with this.)

    This makes me sick. Really sick.
    This collector of useless clutter.

  2. #12
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    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    I just wanted to place a marker on this thread- I do have a few thing to say (Hey sleeper, nice to see you after a while) about your dissertation, but ATM don't have time.
    I'll come back and write here when I do, if you want to read it .
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  3. #13
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    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    Quote Originally Posted by sleeper
    awareness isn't what needs transformation or enlightenment - it's the physical mind/body that does.
    I don't think the physical mind/body can be that. Transformed, yes, there is the illusion of transformation as a human experience, but that's just part of the ongoing story.

    Quote Originally Posted by sleeper
    the physical mind/body needs to attain high levels of realisation, then through effort, become liberated from the illusion/maya/samsara of the world by the illumination of the father-aspect of our soul.
    Okay. If that's what you think, that's fine. I'm not going to argue with you because I can't, but that's not my experience, anyway, and if you have have such a set-in-stone viewpoint, there's no use in me talking to you from my viewpoint, which is different.

    Quote Originally Posted by sleeper
    i do declare that there are physical barriers and they are important to the transformation and realization of the human being.
    I don't recall saying... Nevermind. I'm not going to even go there. You're very clear in your beliefs, and it's clear to me that there's no point discussing the matter from my experience.

    Namaste.
    May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.

  4. #14
    sleeper Guest

    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    Quote Originally Posted by CaterpillarWoman
    Namaste.
    *bows*

    Namaste

  5. #15
    sleeper Guest

    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    Quote Originally Posted by CFTraveler
    I just wanted to place a marker on this thread- I do have a few thing to say (Hey sleeper, nice to see you after a while) about your dissertation, but ATM don't have time.
    I'll come back and write here when I do, if you want to read it .
    Nice to see you as well and please do and i'd enjoy reading that, thanks.

  6. #16
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    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    Hello, sleeper.

    Ideas need to float in the common consciousness to be picked up by the receivers who are ready. Kids who fantasize about being Jedi, Harry Potter or any other of these modern-day myths might develop interests that one day bear fruit. People who can feel the grain of truth will always try to get closer to truth once they got some taste for it.

    For everyone else it is good entertainment.

    Agent Fox Moulder fueled my interest for UFOs. As did von Daeniken's books about paleo-SETI. The reading up about this took me here. And then places.

    Cheers,
    Oliver

  7. #17
    sleeper Guest

    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    Quote Originally Posted by Korpo
    Agent Fox Moulder fueled my interest for UFOs. As did von Daeniken's books about paleo-SETI. The reading up about this took me here. And then places.

    Cheers,
    Oliver
    Might i ask you a speculative question? I'd like you to entertain the implications and possibilities of different scenarios, if you're willing.

    how might your spiritual journey have different if you were never exposed to those above types of media at all?

    how might your spiritual journey have been different if you were instead exposed to anime and video games?

    how might your spiritual journey have been different if you (with all of your current experiences and knowledge and wisdom, etc.) could travel back in time and initiate your younger self onto the spiritual path? What would you want to do differently and what might you want to do the same?

    Purely speculative inquiry.

    ~dale.

  8. #18
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    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    How would my journey have been different? Hmmm. Hard to say.

    My life was full of clues, actually. But what if I had not exposed myself to those media? There would have been others. But something always sparks the interest.

    I think millions of people have read about the Beatles going to India. But how many would at some point get a book about their guru to find out why? It's a clue, broadcast far and wide, but not many follow it.

    Let's say I did not expose myself to those things I mentioned. Let's say something totally unrelated - like for example trying to learn a method called "Superlearning." Turns out the appendix of the book mentioned all kinds of weird stuff - Rahja Yoga, psychic phenomena and energy lines. I didn't look for that. I looked for a practical skill. But this waited there.

    I also had an interest in psychology. So I wondered about interpreting dreams. Turns out the book I read back then was recommended to me later, but also the book contains chapters about lucid dreaming and OBEs.

    So, no matter what the medium, the message got through. It was broadcast through all available means to spark my interest.

    I was exposed to video games. Heavily. I didn't like anime that much, though. There's always plenty of distractions, but you never know what sparks one's interest. So, kids watch "Dragon Ball Z," I watched "Dexter's Lab." I don't know if it did me any better than them.

    I doubt I would have listened to myself. Maybe that's what I do now sometimes. But first I needed a reason to listen, and I had to follow seemingly harmless impulses to get there, I doubt anybody could have told me to go there,

    Cheers,
    Oliver

  9. #19
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    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    For some reason I couldn't get to this sooner, maybe other people had a lot more to say than I- sorry if I repeat what others may have said, I'll just comment as thoughts pop into my head.
    Quote Originally Posted by sleeper
    Semantical signifiers as lexiconic barriers to communication.
    And
    Conceptual framework as the mechanism of contextual comprehension.
    In other words:
    How do you know if your audience understands what you mean when you say it?
    Or
    Pragmatics.
    That's quite the comprehensive text you got here. Wow! It's a keeper.


    I’m troubled by what I see as a trend; the obscuring of the valuable meaning of valuable words and also adds worthless meaning to the same words. In other words, it is our experiences that contribute to our conceptual framework that we use to translate what we see and hear; translate that into something coherent.

    So many people from diverse backgrounds are flocking to spiritual knowledge that I should feel enthusiastic; spiritual seeking is a good thing, however, I’m concerned about the magnitude of the misunderstandings and proclamations that are occurring today. Even though diverse groups flocking to spirituality use much of the same language, they generally mean much different things when they use them and that is contributing overall to a contamination of spiritual knowledge which does not portend well for future generations.
    I almost disagree- even though a greater number of people are exposed to certain ideas, I find that everyone without exception interprets what they read or learn information in whatever supports their comprehension, and this has been always true- if you take a look at contemporary religions you will see that there are as many interpretations of christianity as there are groups- some have such differing beliefs that they don't even believe that the 'other' ones are christians, and have different understandings of concepts that are thought to be universal in this specific religion- the Holy Spirit is going to be taught one way in a Pentecostal church than in a Unity church, for example.
    This doesn't mean that there are many kinds of Holy Spirit, it just means that my understanding of it will be different than the Mormon who knocked on my door yesterday, and I don't expect us to agree on it anytime soon.


    Spiritual knowledge has been garnished from thousands of years of hard work and preserved in multi-cultural texts, traditions and by discipleship. Now that we are technologically capable of widely disseminating this information, it should be properly done – humanity has the resources to do it. Why, instead, humanity chooses to create mindless entertainment – I don’t know.
    I can answer that- some groups believe that to attain any type of progress (spiritual progress, that is) we have to be exposed to some ideas, and it doesn't matter if the brain understands it, because the truth doesn't have to be understood to be recognized, only remembered. So this information is out there partly to be made conscious, and to cause interest in it, as many people have become interested. It doesn't matter if someone else doesn't believe or understand it, chances are they wouldn't have anyway.

    But I do know that at the pace the spiritual contamination is going, future generations will have trouble distinguishing truth from fantasy.
    The thing is, that I don't know anyone who categorically knows truth from fantasy, because truth is truth somewhere, and the only fundamental truth is not context-dependent.


    Naruto is a is an fictional ongoing Japanese manga series (anime, manga, movies, card game and video game) about a young ninja. Here is an excerpt from narutopedia, regarding naruto lore:

    Chakra (ãƒÂャクラ, chakura) is essential to even the most basic jutsu; it is a mixture of the physical energy present in every cell of the body and the spiritual energy gained from exercise and experience. Once mixed, it can be channeled through the chakra circulatory system, which is to chakra as the regular circulatory system is to blood, to any of the 361 chakra points (called tenketsu) in the body. Through various methods, the most common of which is hand seals, the chakra can then be manipulated to create an effect that would not be possible otherwise, such as walking on water.

    Here is some non-fiction; excerpts from Wikipedia’s chakra page:

    “The Chakras are said to be "force centers" or whorls of energy permeating, from a point on the physical body, the layers of the subtle bodies in an ever-increasing fan-shaped formation. Rotating vortices of subtle matter, they are considered the focal points for the reception and transmission of energies.â€Â

    “The central role of the chakras in this model is the raising of Kundalini, where it pierces the various centers, causing various levels of realisation and resulting in the obtention of various siddhis or occult powers, until reaching the crown of the head, resulting in union with the Divine.â€Â

    One excerpt is fantasy, one reality How do you know which one is which? How would a Naruto fan distinguish the two?
    I will give you an answer from my own experience (not theoretical, this actually has happened a few times):
    Occasionally a young kid will google chakras or psiballs or kiballs or something from Naruto, and find themselves here or in other energy-work oriented websites. They originally want to know what is possible, and are flabbergasted when they find out that people do learn to make energy balls and run energy, etc. Invariably they want to find out how to do it, just because it seems cool. Then they read more about it from actual practicioner (such as Robert, or other psi sites, for example, the old psipog (or however it was called). Then they realize there is a lot os serious material and get to one point- find out what this is really for (and get more into real spirituality) or decide that it's too much work for results they are not that interested in. These are the immature kids, who then go on to the next thing.
    Out of that initial 'dude' group some end up becoming some kind of practitioner, the rest go on a more traditional life, and like some, end up looking at spirituality when older.
    Or not, the cycle goes on.

    If you were a gamer, how would you tell the difference between a gamer-fan-website, and an astral projection website? An anime-avatar website and a kundalini website?
    Most gamers I know already have a fansite or website they're into- they don't learn to do 'stuffs', they want to talk about this or that character. If anything, the only thing they learn from those anime sites is maybe some cultural context about other cultures (like we talk about Abe Lincoln or MLKing, they may be exposed to eastern cultural icons), something they probably won't learn in regular school, so I consider it a good thing.


    Of course, to the layperson, both excerpts seem equal in regards to believability and strangeness, fantasy and pragmatism, in their likelihood to empower and in their likelihood to be a total waste of time. To the gamer, meditation is a waste and gaming is a worthy pursuit. To the truth seeker, the inverse is true. But how is the truth seeker to recognize the spiritual path if, at a young age, they began systematic predictive-programming that prevent them from recognizing it?
    But the same can be said of regular western culture, with IM and FB and smart phones and texting- they turn anyone into an ADD person, even if they didn't have the problem in the first place.
    I believe the spiritual path is a calling, that propels you to look for answers, and will continue to pull you until you find whatever suits you. If you feel the call something like an anime site will not be interesting to you. So IMO it's not the medium that's important, it's the drive itself.


    Spiritual practice is the only liberation from the entrapments of illusion, maya, samsara.
    I won't argue this because it's the truth for me, but I'm sure some will disagree with you.
    If liberation appears to be a childish game,
    I don't think that any of these things cause anyone to think this is liberation, just like religious rituals never did take the place of firsthand mystical experience. I don't think that just because cartoons depict eastern spirituality as a sort of 'superhero' achievement this means that it will be confused with liberation- if anything, it is just the westernization of these ideas what changes their focus, and let's face it, the western mindset was there in the first place.

    then what truth seeker would choose liberation? In other words, if one doesn’t’ believe in Santa clause, doesn’t believe in Naruto, why should one believe in Chakras and therefore pursue enlightenment?
    You don't have to believe in chakras to pursue enlightenment- you don't even need to understand chakras to run energy, but you want to want to do it, and that's what matters, IMO. The call, the drive, is what matters, IMO.

    Spiritual teachings are a blessing from the learned elders of our past. By absorbing the wisdom of their teachings, we can see things that were formerly invisible; we can chart our own course in the universe, our destiny. Without them, humanity is doomed to repeat the same mistakes (or worse) with each successive generation.
    That is true about any history of any culture.

    …………………à ¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢ €¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â⠂¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦Ã¢â‚ ¬Â¦Ã¢â‚¬Â¦..


    New spiritual aspirants are immediately met with their own inadequacy: their inability to concentrate, inability to remain still, inability to remember what they're supposed to be doing, difficulty in overcoming boredom, etc. In order to advance on a spiritual path, one must overcome one’s self; a minimum level of humility is definitely required.
    Again, the opposite is true in cartoon media and in video games especially. Those activities reward hubris, aggressiveness, selfishness, a sense of entitlement and boasting. Staring at a screen or even playing a video game does not require concentration but it does require quickly adapting to rapidly changing visual stimuli.
    So what I’m tried to illustrate above is that the contextual framework that is developed is considerably different and that is shapes the character and therefore the behavior of the persons involved.
    If you look at how our cultures have evolved, you will see that survival required speed, fast thinking, and quick adaptability, so the tendency for the human to do the opposite from meditative or mystic practices have been there since day one. Only when culture become stable we see things like ashrams and monasteries and the like, and only selected members are able to live in these conditions.
    So it's a cultural thing, and anime and cartoon media is just a reflection of how society works- like I said before, there is always something of a mixed bag of tendencies when you have a mixed bag of people living together.

    So do I think it's a bad thing? No, I think those that can handle deep spiritual things 'get it' even from Naruto or Dragonball Z (OK, maybe not from DBZ) but these media, which are, by the way, modernized storytelling that has always been part of chinese or japanese culture, only in electronic media- the story of DragonBall (the original with Goku) are just the stories that were told to children from the Monkey King/God- in cartoon form.
    Is it 'polluted' or 'wrong'? I don't think so, I just think that when you popularize mythology something gets lost, just like what the Hercules movies did to Greek Mythology,

    So, no, I don't agree with your viewpoint.
    Which is OK, if we all had the same viewpoint the world would be so boring!

    ===
    ps. sorry about the smelling pistakes, I'm in a hurry. Hurry hurry hurry!
    https://linktr.ee/CoralieCFTraveler
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  10. #20
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    Re: barriers to expanding consciousness

    Hmmm.

    Spiritual knowledge does not necessarily come from the elders. It is in a sense renewed with every generation and put into new forms. Teaching ancient insights is not necessarily the best way. In my opinion, it would be better if people of each generation found their own access and taught from that, every time renewing the contact to the source of the material and spinning it out in a new way.

    Some dig ancient texts, some don't. There is a wide variety of needs for different ways to be taught. The advantage of our times is the multitude of information becoming freely available.

    In fact, thinking back, I wonder how many "ancient Chinese secrets" were sold for a long way as the only and true way to enlightenment - like the Qigong Dr Yang teaches - and actually misled people? I do no longer believe enlightenment derives from an energy practice, and if it does in some cases then because it was a practice that helped unravel, understand and release old psychological structures and not so much one of running energy from A to F through related point B-E. I think there was a lot of marketing, secrecy and ill-led ideas even then.

    So, how do you go about being a spiritual seeker? You basically do one step and spirit does 10 steps for you if you are willing. Seemingly trivial events can be trigger points. It's all a matter of what you resonate with. And the resonance will decide what you follow and what not. If you led a life based on this resonance you would lead a truly spiritual life, no matter what happens around you.

    What you cannot do is live a life just focussed on just studying teachings. Various needs are built into the human being, and even having fun or being entertained is part of it. Laughing at a joke or watching Shrek 4 can be fulfilling experiences, you just need to develop a sense of when to stop. Life can't be all work or it is dull and feels actually void of life. Just as the lives of many who just idle their time away with too much gaming feel void of life and purposeless. All work and no play - or vice versa. Both is true.

    Clothes need to be washed, meals need to be prepared, the body needs to be taken care of, and the spirit needs to be taken care of, and sometimes you need to do things for fun. You can be incredibly busy and have long days full of activity if you mind all aspects of yourself. But I think you can also burn out very quickly if you just try to do only do "the right activities" or "what's important." Liberation matters to me, but I don't think it is found by living an ascetic life.

    In fact, if you live your life in all aspects, you will recognise things you no longer need. You effortlessly cast them off, no struggle. The tree does not cast off its leaves in summer, there is a time for it. When the tree no longer needs them, when the leaves served their purpose. And as the tree turns inward for winter so does the human being sometimes in the course of its spiritual evolution to be reborn anew in the next spring of his life. It's no effort for the tree to cast off dry leaves, and so it is also little effort to cast off what is no longer needed once you recognised from within you had enough. That's actually my lived experience - a shift of needs and casting off of what no longer serves me well. But if I had tried to do it by force - no way.

    Cheers,
    Oliver

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