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wow. I am a better teacher than I am a student. Why surrender? Isn't it more an effortless allowing of the truth of spirit to express itself? Recognizing our truths within is work I'll admit. It takes so much energy to "what if" and "why" yourself all the time. I'm tired of analyzing my actions.
Originally posted by AnAbsoluteCreation
Originally posted by Boredinjail
I dont think very large groups of people will begin to think until it becomes a requisite to aquire power.
That's funny. But ironically, probably true.
Also, I think it is too narrow to think that development is restricted to those that were not indoctrinated as children. One simple developed perspective can tear open that veil of ignorance wide enough to surpass you or I. All we are doing is coming to terms with what we already know inside our spirits. While I agree that the untruths play a huge roll blocking the light from within, it can easily be discarded once a large dosage of truth is unfurled.
Surrendering to spirit is what is hard for most, because the spirit calls on us to do work. That is what holds us to be being "better teachers than students."
Cultivate the design.
AAC
[edit on 8-4-2009 by AnAbsoluteCreation]
Originally posted by seagrass
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler
I think you are very correct PT. I was also given some of your same opportunities, and yet those same people also had a hard time living the philosophy. In part from pressure from their parents. We tow part of line each time, trying to free ourselves little by little. I hope I can teach my children to ignore what I believe. It's hard to know what to teach them anymore, or even what beliefs should maybe be salvaged. I know that I had a conscience of my own as a child. I was born with a sense of right and wrong for myself. Somewhere along the line I did start buying into the beliefs of others and lost my way.
I am trying to get to know myself again. That is hard to do alone and we can know ourselves faster by bouncing off of others. But at the same time, you have to be pretty careful who you bounce off of.
I wasn't raised within a religion either. I was always grateful for that. I knew it was important that I was given an open door there. Still, you search for answers.
Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
I do believe human development has been held back for thousands of years in a deliberate and concerted attempt to create a human reality that is invigorating and profitable and enjoyable for a select few to the detriment of the majority of the masses.
That is what is holding human kind back, until the truth is taught from an early age on, most will have to make do living the lie.
I think I do as well, but I am in the process of remembering that. I am more comfortable everyday now. I get a little more "information".
I would suggest you do know yourself far more intimately and completely than you feel comfortable accepting.
Bouncing off others doesn't have to be about validation. It may just be more experience with this particular "personality". Something outer as opposed to inner. I can bounce my inner self off of things, ideas, beliefs as well as outer ones. Physical ones as opposed to subjective. I find I need to be more careful about how I bounce my own inner ideas more than with the outer ones.
In part that is because of the desire to bounce it off of others. This is called validation. Validation is in essence permission to be the person you want to be or feel you need to be, by a group of peers who are telling you it is correct and proper to be that person.
It is fear that causes me to conform. I have been excommunicated from my tribe. I looked at it as painful, very painful in the beginning. But my "beliefs" told me I could not "surrender" to theirs. I HAD to stand for my ideas. Ones that I do actually believe in. I wasn't trying to be oppositional. I was trying to be fair. I was trying to act in accordance with my beliefs. They wanted me to back down and conform. To appease their own beliefs. To validate their own ideas. What I thought I lost in comfort and safety, I gained in strength and conviction to be free of their beliefs. Something that continues to happen to me even though I felt I went through that ring of fire. I see there are more rings ahead, or at least there appears to have been more. If we can be self sustaining, self confident, self assured then perhaps we don't need our tribes as much as we think we do.
It is that process of validation that causes people to conform to a far more narrow view of reality. People are social, communal and tribal animals who seek comfort and safety in numbers. Being accepted by the tribe often becomes more important than your personal beliefs and perspectives. The hardest thing on any person is being excommunicated from the tribe because of one's beliefs, perspectives and phillosophies.
I was surrounded in my family with opposing views to my own. There was not one person who I could relate to. That is difficult for a child. I was called "weird" "different" "imaginative" etc.
I believe we all know the truth deep down but are simply taught to supress it from birth on for the sake of validation and acceptance and the absolution that comes from society and its rulers for following the rules and teachings that they set down to formulate the reality you will adhere too.
Me too, and although it was painful at times, I was actually a much happier person. Much more courageous and adventurous. More honest. But I was also being shown just how different I was in my own view from many of the people I knew. That is lonely and confusing until you find a like mind. I didn't talk to myself well then. I wasn't as self nurturing and understanding and accepting as I am trying to be now.
My path in fact has been difficult especially in my teens as I was compelled by my inner self to reject the political, religious and spiritual lies being foisted on my by the institutions of those entities.
I just don't want to teach them to not believe in what is right for them, even if what was right for me seems valid. I do tell them not to listen to others if it doesn't sound right. I may be helping to creating a rebel, which is "dangerous" in some possibilities, but I was one, so perhaps it is only natural that I teach that. My parents let me make good and bad choices. I originally thought they just didn't care. Not caring is actually, ironically, a gift. In terms of leaving out the judgment. But the "I told you so" and "I knew that would happen" statements were a little annoying.
Ultimately your children will school themselves in the way of the world to learn the ways of the world, if you choose not to teach them your beliefs, but society itself won't grant you or them the privelage of not allowing society and it's institutions to teach your children their beliefs.
Where my responsibility ends and their own begins.... Mine is to live in accordance with my own true beliefs. Not hide behind conformity and yet teach rebellion in the back room. That is confusion.
Then it becomes ultimately up to your children to either accept the easier road of validation and social acceptance that comes through adherence to conformity or if things that they have discovered and recognized in themselves ring true enough and important enough to accept and deal with the crushing weight of society and it's institutions as it comes crashing down on their young shoulders to force them into conformity.
There are no easy answers because the two laws that do reign supreme are freewill and confusion.
But we perpetuate it right along with them. We make agreements through belief and resignation. We allow it out of dependency. Fear.
The power ruling structure of civilized soceities are what perpetuate these confusions and myths in order to perpetuate their power and rule.
As more and more people do become aware, it's safe to say that those ruling and power structures will fight against it with a vengence to keep people confused and oppressed.
Hence the bad economy, hence the organized break down of family, the increased burdens of maintaining basic sustinence and shelter to rob time that might be used for spiritual awareness and awakening.
I don't need to change the world. I just want to change me for now.
The shift can occur, the truest thing about religion is that you are likely to be crucified for trying to bring it about in the masses.
Originally posted by AnAbsoluteCreation
Originally posted by Boredinjail
I dont think very large groups of people will begin to think until it becomes a requisite to aquire power.
That's funny. But ironically, probably true.
Also, I think it is too narrow to think that development is restricted to those that were not indoctrinated as children. One simple developed perspective can tear open that veil of ignorance wide enough to surpass you or I. All we are doing is coming to terms with what we already know inside our spirits. While I agree that the untruths play a huge roll blocking the light from within, it can easily be discarded once a large dosage of truth is unfurled.
Surrendering to spirit is what is hard for most, because the spirit calls on us to do work. That is what holds us to be being "better teachers than students."
Cultivate the design.
AAC
[edit on 8-4-2009 by AnAbsoluteCreation]
Originally posted by Boredinjail
What do you mean when you say this?
Surrendering to spirit is what is hard for most, because the spirit calls on us to do work. That is what holds us to be being "better teachers than students."
I want to know
It is fear that causes me to conform. I have been excommunicated from my tribe. I looked at it as painful, very painful in the beginning. But my "beliefs" told me I could not "surrender" to theirs. I HAD to stand for my ideas. Ones that I do actually believe in. I wasn't trying to be oppositional. I was trying to be fair. I was trying to act in accordance with my beliefs. They wanted me to back down and conform. To appease their own beliefs. To validate their own ideas. What I thought I lost in comfort and safety, I gained in strength and conviction to be free of their beliefs. Something that continues to happen to me even though I felt I went through that ring of fire. I see there are more rings ahead, or at least there appears to have been more. If we can be self sustaining, self confident, self assured then perhaps we don't need our tribes as much as we think we do.
The lie you are addressing is so deeply ingrained in humanity, that it is incomprehencable to most. It is the lie of: religion, governments, parents, economies, friends, society at large, good v. evil, greed/materialism, black v. white, science v. faith.
The things that we encounter everyday are misrepresentations intended to keep us asleep, and the masses continue to submit.
I have the deepest, (boundless), sense of gratitude for myself, and for you, (and all of us with open eyes). We have been given an extrordinary gift, this consciousness.
We have and it’s being exercised in so many ways and levels some vibrating as brilliantly and energetically as ever was while others are just dull hums dimly felt. We all should be tremendously thankful and I am, that there is such a bounty and variety to love and enjoy and learn and discover, giving and taking in the ways that we can and the ways that we do.
The glass is half full or the glass is half empty, the fear of loss the hope of gain. There is something odd at play when hardly a soul wants another’s to ever achieve that full glass before they do. I think all that could change when people perceive the fullness of their cup in a way that eclipses the notion that there are other cups to be rivaled instead of loved and filled. We have to accept better that responsibility that there really is just but one cup and we all share it, and to stop perpetuating and manifesting such an illusion.
The reality, (not the intended interpretation, but an actual sense of reality), is so powerful, everyday is a transformative gift. The ability to see all things in a shade of gray rather than as defined has had a huge impact on my own life. The ability to let go of false "need", the ability to be truely honest, (with ones self and others), and to find deep peace and tolerance often make me seem like a lunatic to the people around me, and the greatest of all transformations I have undergone in my ever evolving shift of consciousness, is that I no longer care if I look like a lunatic.
They say there is a fine line between insanity and genius called success. They truly are though one in the same for to be insane one truly must reject what others define as reality and one must truly be ingenious at its application. Loving people and finding empathy for them, tolerance, and a forgiveness of your self that you thought there was something you need to forgive in others, allows you too happily and contentedly permit people their follies and indiscretions no matter how it might injure you to bear witness to and feel. Sharing it simply with them and being there to love and help them in the ways you can and feel are wise become its own truest reward and richness. I love people and I love life and I love that people love me how ever they see fit to love me.
It is nice to interact with awake people, even if only on ATS. Great OP, and subsequent posts. I will be back to this thread, there is much to be said.
There is so much to share, it’s wonderful you enjoy that too. Thank you so much for replying posting and sharing.
I would conform where I wanted. But I was always placing myself on the outside of it even when I would try. I wanted to be all things and none. I didn't want to be labeled and confined or restricted by it. Somewhat of a social butterfly, but not belonging anywhere. Independent and a loner, but social. Met a lot of people this life. Interacted in many "phases" and tried on different costumes so to speak.
Fear plays a big part in life. Believe it or not I have always feared conforming! I often think and worry, I will be lost and so will everyone else by extension if I submit and go along with this thing or that thing too. Fear is truly a double edged sword.
Originally posted by seagrass
I went to Borders today and bought the book Oneness. I had a coffee and was sitting in the lounge area near the exit doors with sensors.
I looked at a woman who walked in and we both smiled at each other. Then another man talked to me. Then the next guy that walked in I looked away from. I NOTICED it. I sat there wondering why I did not have a pleasant moment with him also. A few minutes later he walked out fast with a handful of books and got into the car I had been noticing sitting in the middle of the parking lot. They drove off. I for some reason got the first three numbers of the car...but then ignored the rest. The people in the shop all noticed. They had been all head down in their books and computers not making any connections with each other. Then they all smiled or laughed or said something. Then everyone went back to doing what they were doing. I was sitting there wondering why I was more affected. I kept looking at everyone just reading as if they didn't care. I realized it must be important to me for some reason. I found it odd that no one cared. Almost refreshing actually. I thought it was odd that I was actually excited to watch a minor crime happening. I thought it was also odd that I was the only one who was. I also find it odd that I didn't really want to connect with the guy on any level before, and then was anyway.
Anyway, weirdness happening on a daily basis is supposed to be a symptom of the shift.