JosephM

i personally don't see God as vulnerable nor with any other human characteristics that seem to me as mere projections of our ego. The ego may think in relationships and conceptualizes a relationship between 2 separate beings. The reality of the I is the manifestation of God as the very core of ones existence. There is in my experience no otherness in the presence of God.

I would differ as the I is not the body. The i has a physical body but it is not the i or the I in dualistic terms. It is merely phenomenon. Perhaps you cannot tell .... but why is it when you wake you see time has passed but you had no rememberance of it nor of space or location in that state you call deep sleep. That is the nature of the formless. The state exists and can be entered into and out while awake whereby it can be subjectively experienced as ones true identity/home and core of existence. All mentations stop and realizations arise spontaneously and not as a consequence of thought processes.They arise in awareness if coming out of intuition. One suddenly knows.

I would say when you are in deep sleep the i vanishes but the I is all that is present . You still exist but you have shed your ego. That you can't consciously bring back remembrance is because it is formless and beyond time and space. Great discoveries come as intuition from that state.

Hazardous to your Health...... Yes, or an unavoidable and necessary stepping stone for some.

Thomas, The problem with questions and our words such as context, content , reality, meaning of life , Unmanifest, why , I, i , etc is that they need so much more elaborate defining and even when this is done for every answer 2 more questions will pop up. It may be interesting but It seems to me one could spend a lifetime trying to understand what we are trying to convey and still not get a subjective glimpse of reality . Perhaps we would get only concepts that keep us in the same illusion of perception. The thinking mind seems to loves to get bogged down in thinking and concepts. It may make one feel more alive as an i but mentations such as these reinforce attachments to the the i as ones identity making it more difficult for seeing that which we have created concepts for. For what it is worth here is a bit of what seems to me wisdom. Truth / Reality is always present with each of us, just as in allegory , the sun is always present but may not be seen if it is obscured by clouds, the earth, trees , mountains or any other obstructions to its light. Truth is in my experience like light in many ways. Christ (not a man) is that light that lights every man/ woman that comes into the world (John) You can equate that with Life and Truth. But to know it at least in a radical subjective manner, you need to see it clearly. The biggest obstacle to seeing is in my experience the ego ( identity with the thinking mind as self ) . You have to lose your life (self ) to find it. Most major religions speak of this although one has to dig deep to find it among that which has been corrupted of the original teachings. To me, these are the biggest axiomatic positionalities of the thinking mind that obscure us from such a seeing. They all are positions/opinions/beliefs and represent attachments.......... The good need to be rewarded and the bad punished People can be different than they are Things are either good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust, fair or unfair The mind is capable of recognizing and comprehending truth from falsehood Life is unfair because the innocent suffer while the wicked go unpunished It is critical and necessary to be right It is necessary to win Rightiousness must prevail Perceptions represent reality wrongs must be righted Things happen by accident or else they are someone else's fault As you can see it involves letting go of all cherished positionalities because nothing one believes is true. These axioms are illusions that create suffering and destruction. They are to an extent barriers to Reality because they create a multitude of dualities that arise from linear perception which is flawed. None of the axioms above are true. All these beliefs are wishful thinking of a make-believe world. Absolute justice is intrinsic to creation but invisible to human perception. In my experience, surrendering such axiom positions as well as the fate of the world to God results in an experience whether briefly or permanently of clarity of vision that resolves all questions and illusions. Just gazing, Joseph

Paul, To me sin was introduced when man starting judging and creating laws and opposites Essentially identifying himself as separate from the rest of creation . ( forming an ego identification) . When we make a law, whether written or unwritten for others, we are essentially judging ourselves ( because in reality we are not separate). And then when we do the same thing we sin. That is why Christinity teaches that before the law sin was in the world but without the law sin was not imputed. But when the law came sin revived. Christianity teaches us not to be under the law but rather dead to the law and alive to the spirit. That is to be free from the law of sin and death. As you are aware, no single person was responsible. Adam and Eve are figurative characters as in myths to make a point. The Bible never said apple tree. It said they did eat from the tree of good and evil. It's applicable today. We constantly measure and judge others and then because we have the same human frailties , we do the same thing and are judged of ourself and guilt and condemnation follow. Jesus is recorded teaching as you measure others you are measured, as you judge others you are judged. As you forgive you are forgiven. The argument you want to hear might come from a strong fundamentalist who accepts the Bible literally as superior to science. As you know You probably won't find too many here. Some of my relatives just won't hear anything contrary to their teachings. I understand and am okay with that as blindness seems to affect us all. ?

Thomas, Life is meant to be lived. You can put whatever meaning you want to it. Philosophers and theologians among others have been debating it for centuries . For me it is an unanswerable question except to say that life is its own meaning. What is life's own meaning? Speaking of existence in this physical realm perhaps we could say life's meaning is simply to unfold. But I can not speak for life because i can only live it. Life speaks for itself as it unfolds. In my experience, in reality there is no subject or object and the question of meaning disappears.

No problem Thomas, By the way, that was just me quoting an old school Buddhist. Anyway absolute reality is changeless. The Bible confirms that God is the same , yesterday, today and tomorrow and numerous other passages saying basically God is changeless. Change is an illusion of time. In reality nothing is happening. When the illusion of duality collapses , there remains only the state of the infinite I which is the manifestation of the Unmanifest as the Self. No subject, no object. There is no distance, time, duration or locality. All is self-evident, self aware and self-revealing. Form is merely an expression of the potentially of consciousness. The formless / Unmanifest is the substrate of form. Form and creation are merely an observation. Don't expect to fully understand this as a concept as it is a subjective experience or some might say realization.

Yes you could say the i is, however , an old school Buddhist might say no , that only absolute changeless reality is , and all else is fabricated like a coat of many colors and is delusion. In my view, the ego structure is not consciousness , it is more unconsciousness in dualistic terms. Content is an arbitrary point of focus as in the amount of data or for that matter form that is included. Consciousness is context which is the totality of that which is in the case of God or the entire universe with no boundaries. I do not require meaning other than life itself which is its own meaning ( not has its own meaning) , self evident and self-effulgent which is experiential and not conceptual. How can I say more?

It does seem that way.

That's correct. As I said the i presents itself as an individual with a name and story. But of course it is not singular nor is it really many.... It is one. Content is not consciousness. Good question. The i cannot know the I / God / Reality because it has inherent limitations and its dualistic nature projects the vagaries of the ego. God is the absolute subjectivity that underlies existence and the capacity for awareness is beyond time, place and all human characteristics. There is no why. Life is its own meaning. Context is not subject to content.

Simply and most briefly put the i is content and the I is context. The small i or ego which is illusion, imagines itself as the thinker behind thoughts and the doer behind deeds, so that all which occurs becomes a reference to self (i ). It then sees itself as a supposedly independent sole entity. Context is the totality of everything or Rom might say the total universe.

Cause and effect is the illusion. There is nothing in the universe causing anything anything else. Such as a this causing that. This is merely a precondition of that. All observed phenomena arise out of the totality of the evolution of Creation as it unfolds to perception as progressive observation . PS The cause of anything is not an identifiable single element. It is rather a composite that constitutes the actual source that accounts for observed phenomenon .

Rom, I guess you are entitled to have your own private definition of foreigners. I used this one..... Foreigner - noun - a person born in or coming from a country other than their own. None of my living relatives in the US nor the majority of people I am acquainted with fit that definition and consider themselves American not foreigners. Perhaps, you are not being as clear as you suppose in your statement. Yes, open borders are not just about the US but the context of my question was. ?

Actually I like to look at it not as a position. It is difficult to describe and something less than accurate in words. In reality creation is not separate from the creator . They are 1 and the same yet that which is created is subject to decay and the creator is not. The only separation is in the physical mind that resides in the ego.

Call it what you like. I have no problem with what you have said in your paragraph in dualistic terms.

As simply as i am able to put it the small i is the ego which takes on the identity as separate from the rest of creation and believes it is the mind, physical body and identifys with its story as who it is. It is the illusion. The large I is the I am or creator and source of the small i. Or what you might refer to as God or the higher Self.

In my view, If you identify with the mind as i ( paul) then you can say Paul is choosing his beliefs . If you do not identify with your mind as Paul then you see your beliefs are metely unfolding rather than having choice.

Paul I think Rom believes we have choice just not free choice. It seems to me, The mind makes the choice. I have a mind but I am not the mind. It is a tool and when i do identify with it it is the small i or ego. I have a story and a mind but i know it isn't I. The I is bigger than my story or mind and not subject to decay. It is in dualistic terms eternal. The conundrum is that the mind is created but not separate from the I. Joseph

Good try Paul, Your point is well taken that you can't force yourself to choose otherwise but ...... CHois/ noun noun: choice; plural noun: choices 1. an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. "the choice between good and evil" Choice is sometimes limited but you at one time made a choice to follow the evidence rather than custom. For you if the evidence changes you will make a different choice. Yes, your choices are biased towards evidence just as others may be biased towards tradition but the mind makes a choice based on your predisposition and a myriad of other factors. Still your mind makes a choice / decision between the 2 or more possibilities no matter whether you believe you have choice or not. Now when you put the word free before the noun that makes it a whole different ball game. Joseph

I see where you are coming from. You already made your choice not to believe in Santa . You can't force yourself otherwise so you don't see it as a choice now so you choose not to change it. Choice is choice . I agree it is limited and not free but you seem to be redefining the word choice. Joseph PS Unless you are finally coming to the realization that there is no one there (self - Paul) to be making a choice. In which case, i would say you are correct. Choice is an illusion as is Paul and everything is just happening / evolution.

It seems obvious from appearances that we do not choose our initial religious belief system. We are usually born into it. However as we progress/ evolve using reasoning, logic, experience and study we have the opportunity to discard old belief systems and try out new ones. Of course , as you know, not all are able to break free of old teachings since it can be a painful experience to leave the 'herd'. Yet the choice for those who are interested in progression is there. Unfortunately some of us value acceptance among peers more than change or entering new territory. So in my view, choice is always there even though limited by our individual situations, needs and desires.

A simple answer would be to say that the brain functions on detecting differences and preferences. When we strongly identify with it as me, it no longer becomes just a tool but rather an entity of its own that we identify as me and begins forming perceptions based on its survival, pleasures and desires given to it by others and its experiences. Of course that would make no sense to one who identifies as such as once it takes on a life of its own it fights for its survival which we can see is sentenced to death anyway. That is why most major religions teach some sort of dying to self to realize ones true identity. And since it is seldom realized, some religions decide to go another route and teach an afterlife to satisfy the ego rather than its extinguishment.

Rom, i probably won't be much help on the more controversial aspect you mention. In my experience there is just Life. No beforelife or afterlife to debate or believe in. Paul, I think we both agree that our choices are limited by a myriad of factors so that it would be difficult to prove we have total control over choices or even what we believe. We like to think we do but reason, logic and experience seems to point otherwise. As far as choosing our beliefs go, I would not try to convince you either way but I would say , it seems to me if you truly believed you had no choice at all in what you believe, you probably wouldn't have a problem with shedding your belief system. And the paradox in my view to that is if you do shed it, guilt would not be able to arise and there would be no more question or concern of what to believe or not or whether we really choose our beliefs or not.

Neither can I imagine saying that. Perhaps nothing needs to be said. You do what you can , is sensible and leave it at that . Or else you take the other approach with open borders and allow things to deteriorate where perhaps we all fall and are able to do nothing for ourselves or others? Joseph P S. A word that comes to my mind is 'overload'. It can be dangerous. It seems to me, Sometimes the best intentions give the appearance of compassion but are lacking in sensibility and are doomed for failure to accomplish that which they suppose.