Fran11

How do you do your self-inquiry exactly? Anyway, if you stay in deep concentration long enough, it will naturally deepen into Savikalpa Samadhi (ego death achieved using a support object). Not the best kind of ego-death for God realisation, but still it's quite deep.

A bit off topic but yes, appearences can be said to be absolute because they are an aspect of the absolute. Or relative because they are changeful in our experience. None of this terms does justice to reality, so whatever. In the other topic I was refering to the relativity of linguistic truths specifically, different subject.

"Pain" is a linguist concept of course, but it points to a relative distinction in conciousness. Again, animals don't have a language and still they experience what we call pain.

Oh thanks I clearly didn't understand that. Thanks for dispelling my ignorance Lord Jesus.

I didn't say that. I said as long as there are senses there will be imaginary distinctions in conciousness. You can realise that they are still an aspect of the one conciousness. Consider that if an enlightened person's conciousness didn't differentiate colours, he wouldn't be able to see.

Awake and see.

God of course. Pain and pleasure are both God

Yes. A sensation, like you said above. In the absolute sense they are always the same, wether you label them or not. But in the relative sense they are not the same, also wether you label them or not. Colors won't suddenly look all the same to you just because you stop labeling them. Conciousness creates reality by imagining distinctions, these are not to be confused with our human mental distinctions. As long as you are experiencing the senses, relative distinctions in conciousness will invariably be there.

I try to find the point but all I read are assumptions about me. Will I recieve the actual argument by email?

Yes. The animal kingdom clearly shows that conciousness designed certain objects of perception to be inherently painful or pleasent prior to the arising of these labels.

Again, only applies to humans.

Those concepts only apply to humans. Your dog must be very smart if it can label things.

+1

Try torturing your dog instead of petting him, he doesn't label things so he'll be cool.

Yeah, even higher than Jesus, who supposedly instead of feeling pleasure in the crux asked why had God abandoned him. @RedLine you should consider becoming the next mashiah (Just kidding, don't be offended please)

So if I was being skinned alive as part of a cartel torture but I accepted it, would it feel like pleasure? C'mon man.

It's not static but a dynamic balance. In low economic developed countries, relatively free markets (without rigt-wing exaggerations) cause more business oportunity and developement. More deveilery also, but at this stage the material conditions are so poor that is worth the trade off. As a country becomes more developed, it can tax more, limit abuses better, sacrificing a little bit of business oportunities in order to prioritize focus on more subtle social aspects. This usually comes latter and it may be counter-producent trying to skip phases. Like @Leo Gura showed in the World Value Survay video, happiness of societies stops increasing with economic developement after a certein point, thd trade-off made before starts not being worthy anyomore and values change.

LOL Best reply.

Language is a consensus. Each word is a label/symbol. In order for language to work, we must first agree on what aspects of our direct experience we are going to apply a particulat label or not. The label/symbol itself is greatly arbitrary. A cat doesn't look like the word "cat". It's just something we agree upon because it's useful. This consensus is imperfect for two reasons: - Many objects are going to share the same label (all the "cats" in the world, we call them like that). - And more importantly, there will be disagreements on wether some things diserve that label or not (which is why in this forum people discuss things like if we should say reality is everythingness/nothingness/both/whatever). Because of this two factors, we cannot convey absolute truth (direct experience) using language. When we use language, if we both agree that it corresponds with our direct experience we will say it's a true. But a third person may not agree with our use of labels and consider it false, this happens because it dependends on our prior consensus, which is imperfect. Therefore, a statement being true/false is relative. These disagreements happen all the time in everyday life, so it's not about being "overly-techincal". What counts as "cheating in a relationship" for example, is not the same for everyone. . For some a kiss will be chating, and for some only sex will be cheating. People use labels differently This happens because what we are transmitting is not our direct experience. I hope this helps .

Again, the need for a common reference point in order for language to work is precisely what relativity means! You seem to think realativity means non-usefulness or something like that.

We're just trying to get different points across man. You yourself say you cannot convey absolute truth using language without a reference point. And I say that's precisely what relativity (lingustically speaking) means. I do not deny language is useful to discuss these topics if you are already into spirituality, that's what the forum is about, but that doesn't make it absolute. If you could really convey absolute truth with language, a materalist would realise God just by you explaining it to him. As you know, that's far from possible.

We're on the same page then.

Hey, thanks for replying Maybe I wasn't clear enough about that point. I don't propose we end genders. My intention was to point out that they are becoming progressively irrelevant because of natural social, human and spiritual evolution. Not because anyone is forcing it or should force it. In this moment they are still relevant, of course. I was making a prediction by saying they will probably be trascended in a couple generations, but I could be wrong of course, which is why it's good to read you guys. I knew this post would make me look like a crazy radical liberal, but please give me the benefit of the doubt

I think these two are ultimately incompatible and GC is only a step towards GD. Masculine and femenine are existencial principles which find expression both in body and mind. A particular body generally expresses only one of this principles (there are edge cases), but a particular mind always has a very variable proportion of both. In the past, for survival reasons, women were rised by societies to be mentally as femenine as possible and men to be as masculine as possible. This of course was done unconciously, such that in the past there wasn't even a conceptual difference beetween "gender" and "sex" like we have today. As technology developed and survival conditions changed, it became no longer necessary for men to be hyper-masculine and women to be hyper-femenine and people are now generally much more balanced regarding these energies, which is a lot healthier than repressing one pole of the spectrum of course. Stereotypes about each biological sex still remain, but it became clear that these are not biological facts but social constructs. That's what allowed us to develop the notion of "genders" as a distinct concept than "biological sex". Society is advancing towards the deconstruction of these stereotypes called "genders", and GC is only an intermediate step which will ultimately be transcended. If a biologically born male happens to have a mind that leans more towards the femenine than the masculine, and he says "I'm a woman in a man's body", he's actually reinforcing these stereotypes. He wouldn't consider himself a woman if it wasn't for his cultural programming. Consider a parallel with the abolition of slavery. GC is the equivalent of having a black person having to legally change his race to "white" in order to be free, because society won't accept him as being black and free. Would you defend this in the XXI century? It would still be an improvement from the previous situation, but we wouldn't glorify it as an ultimate ahievement. Please understand I write this thinking about the next level, not to trash on the achievements we already got

It isn't, that's the point. Each "moment" exists beyond time from the absolute perspective.