snowyowl

There's a theory that Christianity is a blend of Judaism with other traditions like Greeko-Roman pantheon + philosophy, with a bit of Egyptian mystery religion too. The whole story about Mary being impregnated by the holy spirit and Jesus being a son of God comes straight from the demi-gods of pre-Christian paganism. The Gods often used to have sex with humans (in the mythology) and have supermen/women offspring. Also a book I read (forgot the name) pointed out that Jesus wasn't alone in claiming to be the Jewish messiah. There were quite a lot in the ancient world.

To me, the season is itself the reason. It's dark so we have lights. It's midwinter (can't grow any food), so we feast. We bring evergreen nature into the house to celebrate the survival of the green through the winter. Pine trees, holly, ivy etc. Weather is bad so we hunker down in the family nest, a symbolic hibernation until the dying sun is reborn, a few days after the solstice we can notice the rebirth of the sun (ok son of God if you're Christian) as days start to lengthen. Stonehenge was celebrating midwinter at least as much as midsummer, there's archaeology to support it. In summary, we (in the temperate zones) always wanted a good festival to cheer us up at this time of year. Merry Yuletide everyone!

@Someone here "But why can't we have a map /theory That comes close to describe the fundamental nature of reality?" 'Fundamental nature of reality' is a belief too. I kinda believe in it to keep a grip on my sanity, but what if there's no fundamental, no ground to reality, and it keeps going (in both directions, micro and macro) like an infinite fractal? In which case, all theories and maps are just relative to their level of magnification of the fractal. Useful of course, but not fundamental. The ultimate is the infinite relativity. Just a 'what if', not worth losing sleep over.

He's a president in a democracy not a dictator. So if you voters don't elect enough congress-people and senators to support him, then his hands are tied. And you want them to be tied don't you? At the moment politics is fairly evenly split between liberal and conservative so the leaders don't get a free run to do what they want.

@Gregory1 @Natasha he's new here, let's be kind folks. There is something in his post though. When God has become apparently split up, the splinters (ie us) need a bit of comforting and surrender is one way to get that.

Nahm gave me advice on stopping thought above: It's a bit cryptic but what I do when relaxing is to not try to relax but to let go. Like when going to sleep, the harder you try the more you stir things up and the longer it takes. Like trying to flatten the lake by ironing it, rather than waiting for the waves to die down. When meditating, for instance. If I have thoughts or general restlessness, I just let it run, no judgement, give it space like a wild horse but without consciously feeding it with more energy. It usually runs its course and fades away into peacefulness, which can sometimes take most of the meditation session, but that's ok. Sometimes I'm restless the whole time. Sometimes I settle down quickly. It's all ok. Let it come, let it be, let it go. The technique I usually practice is Diana Winston's spectrum of awareness, which is actually 3 techniques that the mind chooses from depending on how relaxed / restless you are to begin with: focused awareness, choiceless awareness and natural awareness. I don't know anything about psychedelics so can't comment on that.

@Raptorsin7 You are noticing what's going on so defo the right track. The visual field is always there while your eyes are open and it's not dark. So from what you say, this sounds like an issue of focused attention vs peripheral awareness. Unfortunately thoughts have this habit of gate-crashing into attention and pushing other fields (like vision) into the periphery and, worse still, into external objects.of which the thinker is the subject.

@Raptorsin7 in my explanation, the thinker is only a symbol (not 'real') so it's dissolved when you realise it isn't a perception, rather it's the thought which is a perception and therefore 'real'. Pointing is only imaginary after all. But if like me you need a 'how to', well that's the spiritual practice isn't it: meditation, relaxation, chanting, movement, watching the sunset, whatever works for you really.

Ok maybe this is all to do with pointing. Most perceptions (forms of consciousness) are just themselves. Sights, sounds, smells etc. Thoughts, including the I thought, are perception-pointers, a specialised type of perception which isn't just itself, it's also symbolically pointing to something which isn't itself. So they entail a split, a separation between this (the symbolic thought which points) and that (what's pointed to). I is the thought which self-references to the thinker. Symbolically of course.

But everything we type here goes through a thought process (it's words), so to keep saying "that's a thought" is true enough but I don't get your drift. I find things in perception first (inbetween typing). Even thoughts exist in perception ... nay, thoughts are perceptions (there's no in perception). Edit - typing is also perception so perception continues.

@Nahm well yes, but we need to think about it to have this discussion

I don't disagree, but ... isn't the I thought a consequence of feelings of aversion and desire such as: hunger >> I want food fear >> I want out pleasure >> I want more cold >> I want heat As if there's something conditioned or instinctive going on. The mind programmed to create the I thought for self-preservation.

"EXACTLY! Stop denying your current experience. Want it. Like fucking WANT IT. 100%. Trust and go all in. God/Love will become self evident." Ok I have likes and dislikes. But this is the impossible ask. Wanting a dislike is easy to misinterpret into trying to replace dislike with like. So instead I practice just being passively aware of the problem, without trying to change it, or having any intention towards it. But that's still making it into a system. Putting this into a practical context, the 'problem' I'm trying to deal with is anxiety. Resisting the anxiety is just feeding it with energy, instead the practice I've learned (from headspace) is around opening up to it, loosening the separation between a 'me' who doesn't like it, and the anxiety. But it's all me, the liker and the liked, the disliker and disliked, are not two already. That's where we got the problem from in the first place.

@nuwu yes, I think all these words were created to use in everyday relative life rather than describing the absolute. I can say, 'there's nothing in my pocket' and that makes sense in a conventional way, but in an absolute sense it's nonsense.

Why all the shouty capitals? If God wants to delude himself into thinking he's little me, who am I to go against God's will? Isn't wanting something other than this experience the problem?

This is human nature, how groups of people bond together in a tribe. When I used to belong to a church, everyone started talking in (approximately) the same way. Then I left and joined a Buddhist group and guess what, the group-think set in when we all started quoting the same ideas, Zen stories etc. Even Krishnamurti forums have people who try to ape his style of language. We could frame it as a leader/follower mentality, which is a bit uncomfortable, well then the answer is for us to get our own original insights and express them individually. But that takes more work and it's easier to get lazy and follow the herd!

Nothing is a kind of paradoxical word, as it's a concept pointing away from concepts. A word pointing away from everything, and therefore bizarrely pointing towards everything at the same time. Not sure what you mean by unknowable though, perhaps you mean unknowable conceptually. But just sitting here in my room I know it, by being it. (Although ofc the 'I' word is a redundant appendage of the grammar).

When I think about "one" or "unity", in normal life, I'm putting a boundary around an area and calling it one 'thing'. Example, when I count one orange, I'm using the skin of the orange as the boundary to separate it from everything else - even though within that boundary there are many other possible groupings such as segments, layers of skin pith etc, cells, seeds, molecules, atoms. So in a sense I'm creating the oneness with my thought. The trouble is, that type of oneness needs a boundary with an inside and outside. But the oneness of everything is different because it is boundless, outside-less, and infinite. Nothing / non-existence also seems to have the same qualities, it has zero dimensions but has an infinite number of members (think of how many things that don't exist). That's why I use oneness as a limited metaphor for truth rather than saying that reality is actually one. Except can we say there is a boundary between existence and non-existence: something either exists or it doesn't? This is a duality I haven't collapsed yet. It feels like I exist now and after I die I won't exist. But if this duality is an illusion then it means I neither exist nor not-exist already, and won't after death

I'll watch the video later, but it sounds rather like he's combining the best of both Buddhism and and CBT type therapy. Traditional religious systems don't have all the answers, it helps to be open to different approaches.

I get glimpses of nonduality sometimes but mainly I'm too busy dealing with my stages blue and orange shadows ha ha

@DocWatts If only we could break free from the two-party state which we've been locked into for a long time (UK as well as the US). The voting system seems to encourage negative tactical voting - eg I hate this party so I'll vote for the other one to keep them out - I remember during the US election we had this debate. So you've got a govt which thinks it has public support for these policies when actually its main base is to keep the Republicans out. Was this privatisation policy in Biden's election manifesto? If not, why does he think he's got a mandate for it.

So Biden is going round privatising like mad, in a way which Trump never imagined?? I've just had the rug pulled from under me of how I thought US politics works. Looks like the Democrats are way more conservative and pro-private capitalism than I realised. What's happened to liberalism in the US? (I hardly dare mention socialism too!).

I too think of both Russia and China as empires rather than countries, and that we aren't so well educated about the ethnic diversity they both have. The stage blue desire to keep them as unified "countries" leads to insecurity about breaking apart, and therefore high levels of support for strong demagogue leaders. It leads me to wonder, to all those forum members who dream about a unified world govt, how's it going to happen in a liberal democratic way without ending up with a dystopia like a bigger version of Russia/China? The EU is one model, though it only has a limited amount of centralisation and already shows similar tensions between the centre and the regions, as we can see in the USA.

The slugs and snails in my garden are doing the same thing to my flowers and veggies right now. And no doubt the ants have bugs which infect them and eat them too. In fact gardeners do a similar thing with nematodes to kill slugs and other pests organically, rather than use toxic slug pellets. Without our body's self-defence systems like the immune system, we'd be toast in a matter of hours. What's the alternative, how can life exist without feeding off life?

One theory is that it's based in the brain stem (reptile brain), the sympathetic nervous system, and such things which are beyond our conscious control. Which is why it seems such a struggle when we try to apply the usual self control and will power to problem solve. I'm still doing the headspace course, and one insight I've had is that my anxiety is fear based on my thoughts about what will happen or is happening. But the actuality of what's happening in my perception is very rarely fearful. For example I worry about what I think other people are thinking about me, and judging me; there's a huge projection going on, of which I'm hyper sensitive to the negativity of my own thoughts. The headspace course is very much meditation and mindfulness based, so it may not be helpful for you. The idea is to slowly, gently, repeatedly, examine and soften our relationship with the anxiety feelings, rather than expect to 'get rid' of them.