Morality, my insight

[Artsu]

9 hours ago, Jacobsrw said:

It’s not even the desire to sin that is lost. It’s more so the inclusiveness of consciousness is realised. One becomes more expansively identified. Thus, realising that whatever is harmed outside of them is also equally harmed within them.

You're not wrong.

As we grow in love, we learn to take seriously the experiences of others.

At a certain point of love expansion, there will be so much love that there is no room for the absence of love. The individual becomes perfect, morally speaking. This process continues into life in the spirit world(s).

[seeking_brilliance]

its one of the foundations of civilizations. Do you see any surviving civilizations that didn't have a strong morality backbone? Not that their "morality" was exactly what we consider moral... but surely you get the idea.  

[DreamScape]

If you don't wanna play the game of life then that's fine.  But to navigate life you need to have a map, and you need to know when you're about to walk into a volcano and when you're walking on smooth terrain 

This realm is limited by design therefore you have to limit yourself. You can become unlimited and break the rules by choice, but you can also play the game by choice too. You can get to the point where you don't feel obligated and such.

Spirituality is about aligning with the forces of life, and embracing whatever comes your way. Not about denial, or avoiding. 

Pure survival has no rules, and you're completely free. To survive together, we create a social contract to keep the playing field clearer than it would be alone. 

Edited July 21, 2020 by DreamScape

[Danioover9000]

@Iksander

On 7/19/2020 at 3:16 PM, Iksander said:

As far as I can see morality is a stupid concept 

Why does a human need rules, should' s and taboo's to guide the way they live? 

Morals are self-inflicted limitations and illusions for fools and sheep 

   Not so fast. Are you arguing about morality, or ethics? Without morality, you'd be as close to psychopathic as you can be, without a moral compass signaling what feels right or wrong, it's that easy to do a lot of damage without any awareness of it. Here, morality is like intuition. As bad as humanity has and still is, a moral compass keeps humanity at bay.

   Ethics is  what you seem to be on about, so it's very simple: You can speak about your discipline, but not the discipline of most people. In fact, it's also thanks to ethics, aka 'social contracts, that you've survived this far. Like morality, without ethics, some people will come after you and do you harm without any fear of breaking any enforced rules.

[Leo Gura]

The limit of your morality is set by the limit of your consciousness, selflessness, and capacity to love.

The bottleneck is not morality. It's consciousness, selflessness, and love.

[Jg17]

14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The limit of your morality is set by the limit of your consciousness, selflessness, and capacity to love.

The bottleneck is not morality. It's consciousness, selflessness, and love.

What do you mean by limit of “consciousness” in this context? I don't think you mean it as the absolute because in my understanding consciousness as an absolute is basically Infinity and so is one with All, including the finite by definition. Consciousness as an absolute cannot increase/be limited (so as to determine love/morality in this context) except in so far as it does via relative forms. So I don’t think you mean the absolute.

Limited/unlimited is a duality that must ultimately collapse but there’s still the problem because then all you’re saying is that a finite form increases and that this finite form is included in infinity (the category of All). That would be true by definition but it’s missing the key detail: the definition of the finite form that you’re talking about.

For example, if the finite thing is the degree of inclusiveness of one’s sense of self - which I understand is the essence of the developmental models of morality you use - then it would be better to say so instead of “consciousness”? All things are consciousness but only your sense of self is your sense of self, as it’s a finite thing. It’s a kind of knowledge, a form that can come and go. So perhaps “understanding” or “knowledge” is actually a more accurate word than “consciousness” in this context. “Understanding of oneness” or something. I don’t know.

I could be misunderstanding but to me it’s as if if I asked you what ingredient (finite thing, the object) to add to make a better cake (increased morality) and you said “consciousness” (the absolute). It’s true that whatever I am going to add will be part of infinity, but you haven’t defined the finite thing (ingredient) just by saying consciousness, and that’s what’s asked for.

Edited July 22, 2020 by Jg17

[Leo Gura]

@Jg17 Consciousness is a spectrum from zero to infinity. The closer one gets to infinity the more "moral" one can be.

You don't need to hit infinity to make improvement.

A human is more conscious than a cat. A cat is more conscious than an ant. An ant is more conscious than a plant. And Obama is more conscious than Trump.

It's not rocket science.

[Jg17]

@Leo Gura so... isn’t that to say that consciousness is relative?

The idea that consciousness is a spectrum is tripping me up. 

If a human has more of it than a cat then it isn’t the absolute undifferentiated substance of reality. A human doesn’t have more existence/reality than an ant despite having a more complex bodymind. I thought of consciousness as the Lego blocks out of which all forms are made, whether relatively simple ones like ants or complex ones like humans, and not something differentially distributed to entities (in the way that mass is). I thought the differences between ants and humans are not the degree to which they are forms in consciousness - they are equally images on the screen of consciousness/reality. The differences are biological essentially, which is like the differences in how you doodle two different cartoon characters on paper. One can be almost a small black dot and the other can be a 3D-looking person but they’re both equally on the page.

Obviously I get what you’re pointing to re the “consciousness” of an ant, cat and human, but is consciousness that simple? A child basically knows that difference between an ant, cat and person. I’d have said they’re differences of body/mind. Have I confused myself about what consciousness is?

I’ve seen your video about ‘what is consciousness’. Has your understanding changed since then or have I not grasped the video?

[Artsu]

2 minutes ago, Jg17 said:

@Leo Gura so... isn’t that to say that consciousness is relative?

The idea that consciousness is a spectrum is tripping me up. 

If a human has more of it than a cat then it isn’t the absolute undifferentiated substance of reality. A human doesn’t have more existence/reality than an ant despite having a more complex bodymind. I thought of consciousness as the Lego blocks out of which all forms are made, whether relatively simple ones like ants or complex ones like humans, and not something differentially distributed to entities (in the way that mass is). I thought the differences between ants and humans are not the degree to which they are forms in consciousness - they are equally images on the screen of consciousness/reality. The differences are biological essentially, which is like the differences in how you doodle two different cartoon characters on paper. One can be almost a small black dot and the other can be a 3D-looking person but they’re both equally on the page.

Obviously I get what you’re pointing to re the “consciousness” of an ant, cat and human, but is consciousness that simple? A child basically knows that difference between an ant, cat and person. I’d have said they’re differences of body/mind. Have I confused myself about what consciousness is?

I’ve seen your video about ‘what is consciousness’. Has your understanding changed since then or have I not grasped the video?

How much consciousness does half a human have?

Is consciousness just a bunch of equally sized balls?

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Jg17 said:

@Leo Gura so... isn’t that to say that consciousness is relative?

No. And yes. It's both. Depends on what context you're using those words in.

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The idea that consciousness is a spectrum is tripping me up. 

Why? Isn't it obvious that you are more conscious when you are sober or meditating than when you are in a food coma?

If consciousness cannot be increased, then what is this work we are doing? What is spiritual practice for? How could awakening happen unless consciousness was asleep?

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If a human has more of it than a cat then it isn’t the absolute undifferentiated substance of reality.

It still is. Just because some parts of the universe have less or more light does not make the universe any less made of light. It's all light in various degrees.

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A human doesn’t have more existence/reality than an ant despite having a more complex bodymind.

No one is saying an ant has less existence or reality than a human. Both are made of consciousness, but they are not equally conscious.

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Have I confused myself about what consciousness is?

You're not fully conscious of what consciousness is or can do.

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I’ve seen your video about ‘what is consciousness’. Has your understanding changed since then or have I not grasped the video?

It hasn't changed.

You just need to add to your model that consciousness comes in degrees of self-awareness and various states.

Consciousness is like water. It can be murky or crystal clear and everything in between.

[Jg17]

1 minute ago, Artsu said:

How much consciousness does half a human have?

Is consciousness just a bunch of equally sized balls?

I don’t knowww

Do you mean a human body cut in half lol? Well I was positing that consciousness is infinite, the substance of everything and omnipresent, and therefore not increased or decreased by any alterations/combinations of the structures which are constructed with it. It’s like when you take apart a Lego structure, there aren’t less bricks (although a higher-order construction has dematerialised, but it still exists in potential). So... one human has infinite, half a human has infinite. 

If you were meaning the difference in consciousness between a live and a dead human then I’m less confident. It’s like the comparison between the consciousness of a rock, a cat and a human. It’s common sense that a human is more conscious than a rock. We even say a rock has no consciousness.

My POV was different in that consciousness is not an emergent property differentially possessed by these objects but that it’s what they both equally are made of, and that the obvious differences we see between them (that we normally think of as degrees of consciousness) - moving about, talking, sleeping - are in fact just differences of how the substance (consciousness) has been structured, like how I could put 100 Legos in a single-file vertical stack or I could make a 1:1 scale model of a car or something, and in both cases, despite differences in complexity (an emergent property), I’ve only ever used Lego blocks... but Leo has suggested otherwise and I’ll contemplate that 
 

Your point about balls sounds like atoms. But no, consciousness is infinite (not limited to any particular form) and equally sized balls/atoms are structures made of consciousness. They are one possibility within infinite consciousness. By “Legos” I was not meaning that reality is ultimately made up of many many many small irreducible blocks, although I can see obviously why you might think that. Hmm. Bad analogy perhaps. I was using it to mean that although the Lego constructions might be very different ( human vs ant) they are combinations of the one same essence. 

Again, I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go along.  

[Dylan Page]

@Leo Gura So your level of consciousness = your awareness of truth?  

[Jacobsrw]

On 22/07/2020 at 5:37 AM, Artsu said:

At a certain point of love expansion, there will be so much love that there is no room for the absence of love. The individual becomes perfect, morally speaking. This process continues into life in the spirit world(s).

Indeed. It’s as if the duality of good/bad dissipate and all that remains is the flow of oneness. Non-duality means there is no need to harm, since harm is predicated on one separating what deserves it and what does not. Oneness is a powerful principle  

[Artsu]

20 minutes ago, Jacobsrw said:

Indeed. It’s as if the duality of good/bad dissipate and all that remains is the flow of oneness. Non-duality means there is no need to harm, since harm is predicated on one separating what deserves it and what does not. Oneness is a powerful principle  

Well, good/bad doesn't dissipate. One becomes increasingly good as one grows in love, and can see good and bad in others.

From one's own perspective, it can seem that the duality is dissipating, because good is becoming the new norm.

Edited July 22, 2020 by Artsu

[wwhy]

On 7/20/2020 at 0:16 AM, Iksander said:

Why does a human need rules, should' s and taboo's to guide the way they live? 

Morals are self-inflicted limitations and illusions for fools and sheep 

We do not need rules, we have them. You are free to break them any time you feel like, just realize that there will be consequences.

Rules are just there as guidelines to keep you alive as a member of a deeply social species. You can also always run off into the mountains and live by yourself with no rules.

[wwhy]

On 7/20/2020 at 3:34 AM, JosephKnecht said:

Morality is created by the weak to neutralize the strong. 

Morality is used by the strong to protect the weak. 

Thus, morality is the modality through which power is distributed equally between the strong and the weak.

Strong people still need to sleep, don't they? And who is there to protect them then?

I think morality is more about getting along.. human beings weren't built to live alone, regardless of how strong or smart a particular individual is.

[Jacobsrw]

13 hours ago, Artsu said:

Well, good/bad doesn't dissipate. One becomes increasingly good as one grows in love, and can see good and bad in others.

From one's own perspective, it can seem that the duality is dissipating, because good is becoming the new norm.

Good and bad never existed to begin with. It has always and was always created by the mind. Good and bad dissolve once ones consciousness expands simply by the fact morality has no objective existence

[Artsu]

11 minutes ago, Jacobsrw said:

Good and bad never existed to begin with. It has always and was always created by the mind. Good and bad dissolve once ones consciousness expands simply by the fact morality has no objective existence

Ok, then what are sins?

[Jacobsrw]

9 minutes ago, Artsu said:

Ok, then what are sins?

Another arbitrary construction of the mind.

Any idea, though, theory or activity of mind is self created and fundamentally groundless. It only relates to the relative existence we call human life, which is purely mind stuff. Beyond this is consciousness and that is all that exists no distinctions or parameters.

[Artsu]

7 minutes ago, Jacobsrw said:

Another arbitrary construction of the mind.

Any idea, though, theory or activity of mind is self created and fundamentally groundless. It only relates to the relative existence we call human life, which is purely mind stuff. Beyond this is consciousness and that is all that exists no distinctions or parameters.

So is what you just said, so why are we having a conversation?