Hello ATS!
I have been doing some more contemplating/meditation and I have presented myself with another question that I have no clue what to think of it.Anyways while I was reflecting I thought to myself a couple quotes...one from ATS's own Hidden_Hand a looooooong time ago:
"If you want to enslave a man,allow him to believe he is already free"

and a different yet similiar quote from "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass:
"You don't seem to understand,YOU ARE IN PRISON,if you are to get out of prison the first thing you must realize is YOU ARE IN PRISON,if you think you are free,you cannot escape"

and one we've all heard before:
"Go with the flow"

Now taking all that into consideration,I started thinking and whenever I start contemplating I like to think of things in a "fractal-sense"...now if the universe is so keen for experience and truely wishes that we all learn to just love each other unconditionally and cooperate why do we exist in a realm with no oppurtunity for progress?Now sure there are still many others in the world living Life unaffected by the status of the World,and still have a comfortable nice happy life full of experience and more experiences in the future,I like to consider these people "babies" of the universe,as when any baby is born we wish to protect,nurture,and secure a future for them...very similiar,and most people in such a position usually even manage to maintain childish characteristics.

Now there are the others of Earth who are homeless,fighting poverty and famine and escaping the situation seems almost hopeless...and the amount of struggle and hardship we would have to face to get out of the rutt seems to be "Going against the flow" Think about it,if you were some homeless guy on the street,you have NOTHING but all the time in the world TO YOURSELF,you have NO oppurtunity to experience the world and probably no chance of ever changing.....but why???
I believe maybe because we have lived before...we HAVE experienced many many many things many many many times..."God" does not wish for us to Experience "Life" anymore,but for some reason we are afraid to die and wish to stay and experience all the things we never experienced(unknowing that we already have!)So we choose to stay here,and the only sigh "God" gives us to wake up is the lack of experience and how difficult your dreams and wants are to acquire.

Another thing I was tripping on..Lets just say that we are existing in a "Grande Illusion",is it possible that our needs/wants/emotions are only a trick into making us want to stay?For example when we are happy is when we are most content like we have "not a care in the world" and when we hear of something that can bring us happiness we will "go against the flow" to get it.In this Life that would be progress but on a Universal scale,it could possibly mean taking a step back.

So I have a tendency to not write that well but if anyone on ATS understood that replyreplyreplyreplyreply

Hi liked your post/ideas, think I get what your trying to say. Re the Grand Illusion part, I agree to a certain extent. I'd like to point out that religious beliefs for the many would prevent them pondering death option ie many believe rightly or wrongly that God decides when we are born and when we die, emotions/wants/needs don't come into it.
Just my thoughts what do you think?

I get the gist of your post, and it makes me think that it is the true guise of religeon, a way to live on.

Interesting ideas, to be sure. I have often pondered on the meaning of our existence. It seems to me that we are spirits within a physical body, and the spirit is trapped within the body like a child is stuck at school all day. Some kids take full advantage of the education offered to them, and others float through paying as little attention as possible.

I remember reading an alternate version of the "Adam and Eve" story from Lost Books of The Bible (I think). The story made more sense than the one that made it into the official bible version as the Book of Genesis. In this "lost" version, Adam and Eve were spirits who were living in the spiritual realm where the were no bodies and no darkness, only perpetual light. They were wicked and became uppity, so God sent them down to Earth and trapped them in human bodies (one male and one female). Their initial reaction to being imprisoned was to freak out. They felt things like cold, heat, fear, pain, and when the darkness came, they hid in fright, not understanding why the light went away. They begged God to release them but he said it was their punishment, they had to learn and get right again.

They tried to kill themselves by throwing themselves off cliffs, etc., but God always intervened and said the only way back was to live life on this planet, learn to be good and humble, and when the bodies gave out in old age, they could rejoin the spirit realm.

So, in essence, we are here "in school", and whether we take advantage of what is offered or not is up to us. That's where Free Will comes in.

the wants,needs and emotions part I kind of feel are more "clues" then anything of what our real purpose is,not all things we think we need or want are what WE want,I believe the ego is responsible for the clouded decisions,but even when your about to do something wrong,you usually know what your doing is wrong but you do it anyway that is the ego driving the decision making.
I believe God can have control over who is born into existence and not have control over who is born...much like on Earth some children we mean to have and plan for them in preparation,and others are on accident yet are a blessing.Everything is in fractal pattern,if you can just read the patterns around you and connect and associate them with something higher...least in my opinion.

I was more centered around the "You are in prison" part...how "If you think you are free you cannot escape" and everyone everywhere works hard so that them and all the people they love can have a happy comfortable life.But what brings happiness??some money?a nice house?materialism rents happiness to us and substitutes for Love.Love and Happiness are practically siamese twins,surgically separated of course,we chase Happiness because it makes us feel exactly the same as when we have Love in our life.But Happiness I believe is a distraction,or I should say more accurately most of the methods in which people obtain happiness are WRONG and because they are happy they believe they should keep on doing what makes them happy OBLIVIOUS to the wrongness in it.The 7 Deadly Sins are a perfect example of things that bring happiness yet throw people in a negative state unknowningly to them.except Anger and Envy,however I would like to say that Anger can be the emotion for lack of happiness and Envy is not being happy with what you have and wanting what something else to make you happy...Im not trying to bash on happiness...I just thought it was a really trippy thought xP

Originally posted by FissionSurplus
In this "lost" version, Adam and Eve were spirits who were living in the spiritual realm where the were no bodies and no darkness, only perpetual light. They were wicked and became uppity, so God sent them down to Earth and trapped them in human bodies (one male and one female). Their initial reaction to being imprisoned was to freak out. They felt things like cold, heat, fear, pain, and when the darkness came, they hid in fright, not understanding why the light went away. They begged God to release them but he said it was their punishment, they had to learn and get right again.

this is exactly the case I believe for some of us...I believe some of us have already lived through the cycle of Life many times,have ascended,and at some point we did something that was against God's Will and as a punishment get stripped of everything and downgraded a couple dimensions.

I don' t believe that if we come back to earth it is as a punishment. I'd like to believe in reincarnation where we as spiritual beings experience all of life in human form. By that I mean experience being poor, rich, born male or female, studying and having a profession or family. Perhaps we choose before being born what experiences we want to learn 'this time around' the free will part is choosing the correct path to learn the lessons.

Maybe if we don't learn them or have more to learn, we are born again into a new life on earth ...to go through it all again till we learn or wake up ...