Giving up The Ego to become a slave...

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by ChiForce

 

I disagree, I think the spirit of the universe is compassionate, happy and joyful, even humorous, since it is complete, and all good. There is no spirit without awareness, so the question I guess is what does self aware wholeness and completion look like or feel like, lacking in desire. That feels nice, happy and joyful to me.

I can't speak on half of the Universal Self. Its intention maybe painful to others but the end result should bring clarity. How often we act on behalf of this Universal Self and, on the personal level, you know it does not really bring joy to you. Yet, somehow, when you begin to perceive the world through the eyes of the Universal Self, things become clear and you can clearly see its true intention unfolded.

reply to post by arpgme

To each their own. I would point out that the end result of a world of ego devotees is, well, precisely what we have now.

Something to chew on if you've ever blamed "society" for a problem of yours.

Attaching your identity to a personality built on indoctrination and endless lies and social dysfunction, is a foolish thing to do. Don't blame your spiritual obstacles on religion. God has nothing to do with religion. Even the churches are slowly beginning to detach themselves from religious dogma. Ego's can keep you in a perpetual state of comfortable mediocrity.

Remember the tale of the Eagle? I'll make it short. There was an Eagle who fell from the sky and landed in a chicken coup. It hit it's head so hard, he got amnesia. Years later, a giant Eagle was circling above and saw him hanging out with the chickens. He swooped down, landed and asked the bird why he wasn't flying like an Eagle. To which he responded, 'I'm a chicken'

Our Ego's think we are chickens. It doesn't remember who we were before. Sure, letting Ego go, can leave you feeling empty and purposeless, this is what's called the 'Wilderness'. That's just the first step. Don't give up there. You have to strip yourself emotionally and spiritually , from everthing you have ever learned. There is no wisdom to be gained from a brain full of programmed reactions, burdensome thoughts and pointless opinions. Believing that you can get to the truth of yourself, while holding onto your Ego, is self sabotage.

That would be like a caterpillar trying to spread it's wings and fly within it's cacoon. Very foolish and ignorant. God has infinite tolerance for our stupidity. I would have erased mankind Eons ago. I see no point in watching blind fools destroying everything they put their minds into doing.

reply to post by NewlyAwakened


There are evidential causes of suffering to be observed in any society. It's not about ego but about fighting against the causes of this idiocy, hatred, and bigotry.

As an agnostic atheist, in response to pascal's wager, i'd rather think by myself than be servile or accept the delusions of other men. I'm sure if i'm wrong, upon my judgement day God will understand my honesty when i say i did not have the evidence but i tried to be a good person.

reply to post by arpgme


Want to know something even worse than religion being an obvious means of enslavement for the life of the corporeal human being?

How about the fact that the corporeal human being is actually the developing human being, like a 2nd stage of physical gestation, and that this whole "worship God, a god, the divine essence, or whatever it is that you're supposed to worship" notion is actually in place to prep you for after you "cross over" into your true final self - a fully developed and eternal human being. By that time, you'll expect to be either placed within the infrastructure of "heaven" or whatever you've accepted as the proper destination of the "soul", or you'll be programmed to have very little resistance to your "hell" or whatever you've accepted as being the punishment for rejecting the culturally approved destination of the "soul".

You can deny that this could happen to you because you don't embrace a religion, but the programming is so pervasive and completely overwhelming in its consistency and omnipresence, that it'd take a full understanding of how and why it's not true to overcome the visceral certainty that exists within each of us that the "hereafter" involves either structured reward or structured punishment in one form or another.

So, why would this be the case? It's simple. The same sort of authoritarians that created the order and conformity on this side of the divide were certainly not going to allow the other side to be a free-for-all. Earth's humanity is pretty late to the party, and the humans that rule the hereafter have been there longer than we can imagine. They introduced us - when we were very primitive - to the concept of God and spirit and non-physical eternal life. Then they just let the authoritarians among us do what they do and enforce this "truth" on the rest of us from birth. Never had to lift a finger - well, except for the occassional "miracle" or "supernatual" event. "Demon possession" has actually been the Catholic Church's best recruiting tool over the centuries. No one forgets who kicks demon ass in this world when things start looking particularly demonic. Certainly movies and books don't shy away from celebrating such "heroics". The pews fill after big surges in cultural promotion of that sort. Virgin Mary sightings too. All part of the same effort.

Some of it is true - the eternal existence part, and that part where you don't change besides dumping the corpse - but the whole worshiping God part, and the existence of hell and demons, is just the way they prep us before we're even "born" as what human beings actually are when they're fully developed. That way, they already know how to manage your inherent expectations, and thereby guide you into where they need you to be. Very simple, and with decades of corporeal development to prepare you, once you encounter any of what you were taught to expect, the rest just falls into place without any effort on their part.

No one wants a free-for-all, and I can appreciate that. Still, it's important that you walk in with both eyes open after you pass through whatever tunnel you may or may not "see" immediately after corporeal death. No one can make you do anything or go anywhere...well, unless you don't know any better. That part's important, so don't forget it. It'll make all the difference when you've left this corporeal realm.

Here is a good description of dying to ego and the need for certainty (what we think we know through our knowledge filters), to be born into God and eternity.


Few however possess the courage to dive into eternity and take on God-realization as their condition, and those who scoff at it, are merely ignorant, or fearful, or prejudiced, with "a negative contemptuous bias, prior to investigation, a methodology sure to keep a man in everlasting ignorance" (Herbert Spencer, Scientist, paraphrased).

The underlying esoteric meaning of all the great religious and spiritual traditions are about this realization, although they've been used as masks or as a defence AGAINST having an authentic spiritual experience (Jung).

But do not be so arrogant or presumptuous as to say that there's nothing to these studies and traditions, heck in India they spent three thousand years involved the "supreme science" of Bramavidya, withdrawing consciousness from sense experience and testing their discoveries, with every other endeavour representing an outcropping of that supreme realization.

To say "there is no God" is akin to denying one's own existence along with the phenomenal world. Please don't make that error, and instead be reborn of the spirit and the truth, in eternity now.


The law of life and love, can be either a harsh teacher, in the form of the law of karma, or, a kind and gentle, and tender, friend when we submit and surrender, our ego, in repentance. Then the only thing we are a slave to, is love, which, paradoxically, is a liberator, through the gateway of eternal life, whereby we are included, and embraced by God! Why would anyone in their right mind, cut themselves off from that or set themselves apart, in rebellion? That's insane!

Originally posted by NewAgeMan

To say "there is no God" is akin to denying one's own existence along with the phenomenal world. Please don't make that error, and instead be reborn of the spirit and the truth, in eternity now.

edit on 11-1-2011 by NewAgeMan because: typo

There is a god - a creator - but its agenda is very different than what we've been led to believe. We are definitely the central part of this agenda, and some of the humans will have a more direct involvement than others, but again, it's extremely different than the way that ancient people believed it to be. Much less dramatic and much less esoteric. Much more recognizeable to the average person, and much easier - when fully explained - to understand as being related to everything else that we know of life and over all reality.

The creator being - we have no possible means of connecting with it or it connecting with us. The logic is extremely strict concerning this, but there are beings that will gladly substitute if what you need is a god to worship. Plenty of them.

reply to post by NorEaster

It's not an "it" but a "person". The connection is available, when we recognize (re-cognize) that man was made in the image of God to contain nothing less than the fullness of the spirit of the living God, and where we fall short, one among us, did not. That's the connection. People simply do not understand the meaning and significance of Christianity's esoteric message, which is a message of hope and love and of bright, eternal optimism. And if God is on our side, then who or what can be against us? I wish to God that people would re-think this, without assuming, and without contempt, prior to investigation. It's about liberation, and being set free for the sake of freedom, to freely love, since love to be love MUST be free, and all-inclusive. Why can't people understand this? I cannot be the only one to "grok" it.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by NorEaster

 

It's not an "it" but a "person".

A person? Just who are you worshiping as God anyway?

And if God is on our side, then who or what can be against us?

Who's against you? No one is. Not unless you feel the need to manufacture enemies on behalf of a god that needs you to need him. No one has a god that is on their side and opposed to anyone else. If that was true, then this tribal god would've eliminated all threats long before they ever became threats. This is, after all, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent god that instantly exists within all instances in time...right? This is the Christian god you're referring to. Correct? I don't want to mix your god up with the All that possesses everything and everyone within itself and consists of me, you and everything else that's ever existed or that will ever exist. That god probably isn't anyone's muscle in a fight, but then I could be wrong. After all, who'd that god fight? That god is everything all at once.

I wish to God that people would re-think this, without assuming, and without contempt, prior to investigation. It's about liberation, and being set free for the sake of freedom, to freely love, since love to be love MUST be free, and all-inclusive. Why can't people understand this? I cannot be the only one to "grok" it.

You and 2 billion other folks seem to have it "grokked" to a reasonable certainty.

That said, of course, that doesn't make what you've "grokked" true. And for the folks who'll likely find themselves a victim of that bit of "grok" - as has been the case for many milliuons over the centuries - I have little choice but to offer them the freedom to liberate themselves from the tyranny of extremely detailed expectation, as they make the big transition from flesh, bones, blood and gore to the true physical nature of the fully viable human being.

You can yowl all you like - and please enjoy yourself with as much outrage as it takes to achieve a full and cleansing satisfaction - but I have my marching orders. And many to free along the way. I've just started my work.

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by NorEaster

 

It's not an "it" but a "person".

A person? Just who are you worshiping as God anyway?

God is spirit and truth, who is both innerent and transcendant.

Your whole post simply shows that you misunderstand me and what I was saying. Also, the love of Christ cannot be blamed for the ignorance and barbarism of man.

reply to post by awake_and_aware


Thinking for yourself doesn't work if you are only reacting to the information you have been given.. That basic principle re-enslaves most newly awakened human beings. Money and power, silenced the hippies. For us, they wizened up and decided to use our stupidity (under the guise of intelligence) against ourselves.

reply to post by Visitor2012


That's why you study to gain enlightenment, look at philosophical arguments, appreciate the value of evidence and the scientific method. Knowledge will set us free, the truth will set us free.

Faith is not truth. It's a mockery of the truth and human intellect to suggest that any of these religions are "truth" or "fact. Even if any of them were true, i would not want to be servile to this questionable entity.

No man can claim to know of the existence of God let alone know this entities thoughts, yet some men seem to know what to do to prevent "hellfire". Any one cares for the motto of this website and/or is a thinking person cannot believe this nonsense.

reply to post by awake_and_aware


I think it's a tragedy, when someone uses religion to block their view of themselves and the truth. This goes for people who spend energy on anti-religious rants, all while ignoring the presence of God in their own lives.
Blindness is the issue here, both believers and nonbelievers can't seem to go beyond themselves. They're both too busy proving each other wrong.

Better go within and see the truth. There is much more to see..

You don't study to become enlightened, you study to become a follower. Nothing wrong with that as long as you know who the teacher is. And in all honesty, there is nothing wrong with jesus's teachings, regardless of what religion has turned it into. But if you followed his teachings, you will find that it leads to freedom as well... And much more beyond the influence of your unique life form energy. I would say that Jesus is to the spiritual journey as a trainload of fierce body guards is to a celebrity. You're going to need all the backup you can get.

reply to post by awake_and_aware

Faith is the only rational response to an Absolute, which although entirely reasonable to posit, cannot be understood. Many of the brightest minds in the world today have deduced that the manifest world is and must be, a manifestation of an Absolute, and all indication is that the universe (one song) is an information processing, non-localized quantum holographic computer, which, in the fullness of eternity, if it wasn't already, has had plenty of time to become self aware. Fortunately, discovering ourselves emersed within it, we may then deduce that the human experience is of value, and ordained according to the purpose of the higher will or intent of such an Absolute, which obviously seeks to have a varied experience, such that we and "it" might re-discover one another in eternity. Of course what I'm suggesting here sounds like utter nonsense to the atheist mind.

"Therefore fear not little ones, nor let your hearts be troubled, because it pleased the father (first father ie: first/last cause, Absolute) to SHARE his kingdom with all his children."

And what do we find from the quantum paradoxes, but that it takes two to tango, or to close the circle of a manifest existence, one who sows, and the other who reaps.

How can you see and see again but never see, hear and hear again, but not hear, think and think again, but never understand..?

reply to post by Visitor2012


Atheism is not a religion.

We arn't closed minded, and we certainly arn't prejudice towards other people BECAUSE of Atheism.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

Faith is the only rational response to an Absolute, which although entirely reasonable to posit, cannot be understood.

Nonsense. faith in itself goes against rationalism. Humans proclaiming to have knowledge of the absolute, of the objective source of creation.

Agnostic Atheism is the honest stance that states "We don't know" There is currently and has never been any way to verify the claims that each religion makes. So how did they form their dogma? How did they find out the beliefs of an enitity which can't be proved. This is the only rational response to faith.

Faith is believing a teapot exists orbitting a planet that is out of range of our best telescopes. You have no reason to believe this, and the only claim to it's truth can be made by claiming you cannot disprove it's truth.

You could state you have faith, so much that you believe there's a crystal buried in your garden. Without digging, how can you proclaim this as truth, as fact? The only way you could get me to renounce my "Atheism" of such a said theory is to dig the crystal up and show it to me.

Please don't compare faith to science, suggesting that it is a valid tool for discovering the "truth".

reply to post by awake_and_aware

"The God Theory" by Bernard Haisch
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249274834&sr=8-1

Haisch is an astrophysicist whose professional positions include Staff Scientist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Deputy Director for the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. His work has led to close involvement with NASA; he is the author of over 130 scientific papers; and was the Scientific Editor of the Astrophysical Journal for nine years, as well as the editor in chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

an excerpt

If you think of whitte light as a metaphor of infinite, formless potential, the colors on a slide or frame of film become a structured reality grounded in the polarity that comes about through intelligent subtraction from that absolute formless potential. It results from the limitation of the unlimited. I contend that this metaphor provides a comprehensible theory for the creation of a manifest reality (our universe) from the selective limitation of infinite potential (God)...
If there exists an absolute realm that consists of infinite potential out of which a created realm of polarity emerges, is there any sensible reason not to call this "God"? Or to put it frankly, if the absolute is not God, what is it? For our purposes here, I will indentify the Absolute with God. More precisely I will call the Absolute the Godhead. Applying this new terminology to the optics analogy, we can conclude that our physical universe comes about when the Godhead selectively limits itself, taking on the role of Creator and manifesting a realm of space and time and, within that realm, filtering out some of its own infinite potential...
Viewed this way, the process of creation is the exact opposite of making something out of nothing. It is, on the contrary, a filtering process that makes something out of everything. Creation is not capricious or random addition; it is intelligent and selective subtraction. The implications of this are profound.

If the Absolute is the Godhead, and if creation is the process by which the Godhead filters out parts of its own infinite potential to manifest a physical reality that supports experience, then the stuff that is left over, the residue of this process, is our physical universe, and ourselves included. We are nothing less than a part of that Godhead - quite literally.

Next, by Ervin Laszlo

Science and the Akashic Field, an Integral Theory of Everything, 2004
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249275852&sr=8-1

And, his other seminal work
Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos: The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1249275852&sr=8-6

Ervin Laszlo is considered one of the foremost thinkers and scientists of our age, perhaps the greatest mind since Einstein. His principal focus of research involves the Zero Point Field. He is the author of around seventy five books (his works having been translated into at least seventeen languages), and he has contributed to over 400 papers. Widely considered the father of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, he has worked as an advisor to the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2004 and 2005. A multidisciplinarian, Laszlo has straddled numerous fields, having worked at universities as a professor of philosophy, music, futures studies, systems science, peace studies, and evolutionary studies. He was a sucessful concert pianist until he was thirty eight.

In his view, the zero-point field (or the Akashic Field, as he calls it) is quite literally the "mind of God".

Naming Hal Puthoff, Roger Penrose, Fritz-Albert Popp, and a handful of others as "front line investigators", Laszlo quotes Puthoff who says of the new scientific paradigm:

[What] would emerge would be an increased understanding that all of us are immersed, both as living and physical beings, in an overall interpenetrating and interdependant field in ecological balance with the cosmos as a whole, and that even the boundary lines between the physical and "metaphysical" would dissolve into a unitary viewpoint of the universe as a fluid, changing, energetic/informational cosmological unity."

an excert from Science and the Akashic Field, an Integral Theory of Everything

Akasha (a . ka . sha) is a Sanskrit word meaning "ether": all-pervasive space. Originally signifying "radiation" or "brilliance", in Indian philosophy akasha was considered the first and most fundamental of the five elements - the others being vata (air), agni (fire), ap (water), and prithivi (earth). Akasha embraces the properties of all five elements: it is the womb from which everything we percieve with our senses has emerged and into which everything will ultimately re-descend. The Akashic Record (also called The Akashic Chronicle) is the enduring record of all that happens, and has ever happened, in space and time."

Laszlo's view of the history of the universe is of a series of universes that rise and fall, but are each "in-formed" by the existence of the previous one. In Laszlo's mind, the universe is becoming more and more in-formed, and within the physical universe, matter (which is the crystallization of intersecting pressure waves or an interference pattern moving through the zero-point field) is becoming increasing in-formed and evolving toward higher forms of consciousness and realization.

God cannot be explained. He cannot be argued about. He cannot be theorized, nor can He be discussed and understood. God can only be lived... (Bhakti..?)

To understand the infinite, eternal Reality is not the GOAL of individualized beings in the illusion of Creation, because the Reality can never be understood (and why would we want to and ruin the suprise) it is to be realized by conscious experience.

Therefore, the GOAL is to realize the Reality and attain the I am of God state in human form."

~ Meher Baba (parentheses added by me)

So you see, we're not ALL idiots, those who rationally and reasonably extrapolate an absolute, even a self aware universe.

A dead and inanimate universe OTOH, indifferent, without cause or purpose, that's another matter, that doesn't seem to hold up, even to a cursory analysis, which is why I guess most people are intuitively believers at some level.

It's my contention that the atheist position, is unreasonable, in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


That's pantheism. I'm talking about organised religions and distored views of a personal, anthropomorphistic God. These claims are untrue, this type of revealed wisdom cannot possibly believed unless evidence stands in it's favour. So far nothing.

Again it's like claiming you have a specific type of crystal in your back garden without looking. It's nonsense, how could you possibly know this based on "faith"?

I'm not talking about simply labelling what we experience, see and disover as God. I'm not talking about the position that God is nature or reality itself. Again, this is the pantheistic view.

reply to post by awake_and_aware


Again in regards to the pantheistic stance on "GOD" - I'm more than happy for that belief, it doesn't cause prejudice and doesn't make irrational claims about absolute morality. But just remember everytime we discover new things about nature and the universe, the pantheistic will simply extend the scope of God. You're better of calling it "THE FIELD" "THE FORCE" "THE ETHER" "THE ENERGY" or something just as corny

reply to post by awake_and_aware

Unless it might also be called the spirit of the universe, who's law is the law of life and love, whereby the human being, as a created being, through the breadth of cosmological evolution, as the "last who is first" so to speak, is made to contain nothing less than the fullness of the spirit of the living God, or made by consciousness for consciousness, well then the Christian story, mythological allegory of the fall of man, etc. becomes a valid framework for understanding both God's intent or will towards man, and man's relationship with the divine, or what I would call an indespensible i-thou relationship, with the Absolute, or the Godhead, who is all good, all loving, but also just and merciful yet unwillling to make any compromise with sin and evil, being perfect, and holy. Are you starting to get the picture now? It's a frame, whereby context and framing is everything, and the will to meaning the highest will, and also the most reasonable thing, when examining issues regarding purpose, and cause ie: all creation was made by the father for the son (which is not solipsistic from the POV OF a human being relative to the Absolute).
It's meaningful and it works, but it's just woefully misunderstood when viewed only in terms of its literalist, "conservative", exoteric meaning.

Carl Jung proposed that to beecome a fully individuated person, self realized, that the individual, in order to differentiate himself from the "mass-man" - must have a working theological framework through which to enter the "fray" with his entire being. That's what I'm up to.

What are atheists up to in the grand scheme of things, that's what I'd like to know..