SOUL

Well, you are describing many varieties aspects of this "absolute truth" and "enlightenment", even in this passage that I quote here as well as in the opening post and throughout the thread. Does everyone's experience of it have to mirror your descriptions exactly or you will say they are "not"?

So "the same" as you say this "absolute truth" is?

@Shanmugam So if I have a different personal experience of it than you say it is are you going to tell me I'm "not"?

When someone isn't ready, open or seeking to grow there isn't much anyone else can do or say to inspire or motivate them to want it. If your portrayal is accurate it is why she prefers to just complain about it instead of become active in working to transform it. Unfortunately, when you talk about it she sees it from the perspective of someone not wanting to do it so it's negatively received even if it's positively intended from you. By you speaking on it is likely a reminder of her choice to do as she does and not to change it so it adds to the inner angst she is thinking and feeling. Until she is ready to genuinely address it any input will be viewed with a negative bias that will make it difficult to bring about lasting change in her behavior and probably result in more uncomfortable circumstances and 'indelicate' conversations.

There is considerable naive mysticism within spirituality so it produces extreme mythical and magical ideologies that are denying and distorting of the physical manifest. Just as there is considerable naive realism within materialism that produces nihilist and cynical ideologies that are denying and distorting of the subjective metaphysical experience. Uniting into a whole experience accepting it for what it is as a holistic life appears to be one of the rarest pursuits, a realist spirituality or a spiritual realism... either way, it's seems to be the path least traveled but for my own life it's the way that is most fulfilling.

Both science and spirituality share a common blind spot, that there is some knowledge commonly seen as 'true' that is actually false. Science has a mechanism for eventually exposing this false knowledge through continuing use of the scientific method to discover and bring better understanding. Spirituality doesn't have such a mechanism and with it's subjective interpretation of experience someone or groups and even over many generations an assumption of 'truth' will persist about something that is actually false. So a 'dogma' in science can fall away if evidence reveals it to be false but in spirituality and religion those dogmas can remain with them potentially gaining strength of influence through group think belief in those tenets alone.

This is a thread about staying blissful surrounded by unpleasant realities....oh the irony. Laughter can work.... haha

@Joseph Maynor I don't know why you feel the need to heed your ego's desire to lecture others using other people's "stories" but you can rewrite that script. ....Baha! Oh... and just because you have chosen to believe that a story and belief free story is something preferable to you doesn't make it any more of a universal truth.

Life evolved a sense of self to keep us alive and evolved an ego to keep us interested enough to voluntarily join in but with awareness we can rewrite the script.

Go into the store and buy another bar but put it back in the aisle, you don't even have to tell anyone you did it or stop fixating on it, that'll work, too.

Use the same unattached observer technique of inner work while viewing media, it surely can be disheartening and frustrating with what is going on but when viewed through that spiritual perspective it's almost comical if it weren't causing so much distress in people. The media learned that pandering to the identity politics of us vs them made them more money than unbiased reporting does so they will eagerly cause emotional distress to get paid and act like they are noble in doing so. Or just not give them the eyeballs at all by finding sources that don't profit off of inciting misery, maybe just not look at it at all.

@Serotoninluv Well, with weather there are constants, the mountains, valleys and other topographical features don't move much. Then add that to the increasing understanding of how weather is formed and behaves as well as the data base of previous weather conditions and data tracking so of course "predicting weather" becomes more of a known quantity. Same thing with DNA, as we learn and we accumulate a database of understanding from experimentation added to the new knowledge that will come we will have a better base of understanding and manipulating the variables, however many of them there are, to get accurate results. Now consider the number of variables that are at work in the universe.... is it a stretch to consider them an infinite number? How could we count them anyway? How could we even account for them? Sure science does a pretty good job of observing effects but that's all it is, watching and from that having an understanding of how it behaves. They then call that the "cause" of them but it's just a behavior effect. Just like your name, scientists suggest love is merely a chemical reaction because they see the correlation between the chemicals and the feeling. They say the chemicals cause the love but if that were true every instance of the chemical would cause the feeling, but that's not the case since the chemicals correlate to more than just those feelings. So maybe the subjective experience of love is accompanied by the chemical reaction, not the chemicals causing it. It's recognizing the indeterminate interacting with the determinate as a whole and possibly why Da Vinci had an insight that transcended mere knowledge accumulation, it's recognizing the whole just like you said, a holistic approach.

@Serotoninluv I'm just using that term to communicate that it's a whole lot of them but why assume it's not an infinite number of them? Or even suggest its limited to quadrillions of them?

@sgn Reading some of those links you gave there is an interesting point about the drawing a conclusion before the questions are even asked. There is quite a bit of that in non-duality/enlightenment as well, it's basically priming to 'see' it a certain way, with a certain conceptual paradigm. Although, that article writer sure exposes some 'culty' stuff about it....

@Serotoninluv You make an interesting point about whether it's really 'random' if it just is a lack of awareness about the infinite variables that contributes to the outcome. An infinite cause and effect so to speak which is just another deterministic method and it would suggest if we could orchestrate the variables we could effect an outcome which is the idea behind genetic manipulation. Although, allow me to take a philosophical view of this, if there is only order there wouldn't have ever been the infinite variable universe we observe. There requires an element of chaos, for a lack of a better word, for the infinite variability to exist in the universe and also cause the entropy that is observed. This may not quite be 'random' as we understand it but there is an indeterminate element that contributes to what is happening in the universe. The interplay between order and chaos manifests in the observable universe, a 'dance' between the deterministic and indeterminate, what 'absolute' forms that these exist in may or may not be something we can discover using the scientific method. So, it may not be 'random' but it's not fully deterministic, either.

The "I am" affirmation can be useful in our inner work when the ego brings us past thoughts and emotions to be identified with. "I am" is an empowering tool for being present in the moment and eschewing the past identities we may be attached to. When it becomes dogmatic is codifying it into a "truth" that is projected out as a universal "truth" for everyone instead of recognize it's personal in nature and actually is evolving present being not stagnant in identity.

@sgn There definitely is a gimmicky 'cure for all' that makes people 'always happy' rhetoric found around it that can be problematic. The simplicity of it doesn't seem out of place because awakening is simple even if it's not always easy or that one method works for everyone.

Absolutely, there is, although I won't venture to explain what I experience as revelation in exploring it other than it's a 'feature' for the evolution of the universe.

Just another marketing of a repackaged generic 'self awareness' method, it is what it is. If someone actually does the self examination any method will work and it's just a matter a preference when it comes to who one gravitates towards as a guide or even if one needs a guide.

It's all knowledge accumulated by methods of discovery but they are different methods to acquire understanding about different areas of scope. Spiritualists can be just as dogmatic if not more so than the scientific minded and if people were more open to accepting the potential in each of these fields of knowledge instead of just exploring one while denying the other it would lead to a sense of equanimity when encountering challenging ideas.

@Ocean That's the point, I'm never 'right', it's always just another turtle.

@Ocean Only if you see it....

@Ocean Only when observed....

@Ocean You appear to still be missing the point, beyond just the infinite number of "story" variations that can be, just the mere observation of it alters it irrespective of how it is interpreted or communicated. That isn't just a story about it, that's how it behaves regardless of the story about it.

It's all content, the screen, the movie, the absolute, the Truth, infinite, awareness... it's all content. Just through observing it, it behaves differently than as it is unobserved so everything we experience it as is different than it is as it is. So just because someone slaps a label on it whether that be "absolute" or "Truth" and thinks that they are observing in awareness the "it is what it is" what they really are expressing is their subjective experience of it that behaves different than it is unobserved. This is why i responded to a poster's authoritative statements about 'what is' with it's just their 'belief' since that's what it is, their subjective experience they believe is 'what is' and/or the 'truth'.