Worshiping The Dark (A Rant against The Light)...

Originally posted by Itisnowagain
reply to post by Reflected

 

Are you looking for enlightenment?

What Reflected is saying is that you fear or distrust or somehow do not enjoy the consequences of reality so you opted to lose all sense of reality in exchange for an escape from the bad feelings.

But it's an illusion. You did not actually escape. Your calmness is a loan. What goes around comes around. Gravity and time and karma will eventually overwhelm you in your last days.

It's very common for people to lose their sense of reality because of perceived threats. It's kind of like how a deer stares into the headlights of an oncoming speeding car. I can imagine the deer being so afraid or perplexed that an invented reality occurs in the mind of the deer. Instead of running, it stays in place. The real dillemma is how hte individual responds to perceived threats.

You just need to learn how to cope with stress without turning to escapism.

We live in a world with a lot of dangers. Conflict was a selection pressure. People who responded well to conflict persevered. But there're still some bad genes lingering in our genetic pool.

Escapism may not be entirely rooted in genetics, but it probably has some connections. It might be that our newer brain, having given us an ability to imagine, backfires in some people. Instead of imagining fake realities to make this (shared) reality better, they use fake realities to escape.

reply to post by jonnywhite


Haha...you just described Christianity, and why I dislike it. Congrats.

Balance, my friends. Balance in all things will teach you in all things. There is no reason to be extreme, even if the motion of extremism does equate to purpose in our minds. That is an illusion we have created to drown our insecurities at being little tiny dots in a little dot in the middle of a little splotch in the great vast expanse of the universe.

reply to post by jonnywhite


I do not fear because i am always here where the happening is happening. I do not escape into mind made imaginings.
I am here and now, timeless being.

reply to post by AfterInfinity

There is one problem, however.

If religion or cultism or spiritualism are a form of escapism then why do so many people practice it? If it were bad, wouldn't evolution have removed a great deal of it from our genetic pool?

Belief in god is common.

We know that belief can cause a lot of intolerances and conflicts between people.

However, these're only the negatives. There're positives too.

Belief can ease the mind. It can bring families together. It can make people help each other.

It's possible that this form of escapism has benefited our survival chances.

This may explain why escapism (as it's popularly known) still persists. Maybe the benefits of imagination in science and innovation outweigh the negatives of those who abuse it to escape.

reply to post by jonnywhite


The truth shall set you free. Escapism.
Beliefs are the chains that enslave you.

reply to post by jonnywhite

If religion or cultism or spiritualism are a form of escapism then why do so many people practice it? If it were bad, wouldn't evolution have removed a great deal of it from our genetic pool?

Take a look around you, at the world you live in. All of it. Do you REALLY have to ask that question?

It's easier to create an escape than allow the people to realize something is wrong and rise against you.

reply to post by AfterInfinity

You assume that common people could exist without their leaders and elites.

Perhaps we need elites and they need us.

And maybe religion or spiritualism or cultism just randomly benefited the elite. It wasn't created by them. In fact, we probably have always had a upper class and a lower class. Smart people and dumb people. Weak people and strong people. The power law curve and the bell curve.

The world is so interwoven that it's hard to see what caused what. Easy to confuse. I don't pretend to know what the exact benefits or negatives are since the cause and effect are unclear. I just think that, for whatever reason, evolution has determined that religion and spiritualism and cultism (if a form of escapism) are beneficial to our continued survival. Similarly, escapism (as it's popularly known) might also be accepted since imagination also benefits innovation; it's not just a tool to abuse.

reply to post by jonnywhite


There is no stress because i am not in conflict with what appears. I am here and appearances are appearing. I am not offended by any thing that appears because i am not a solid thing with edges, it appears in the space that i am. I am the seeing knowing presence.

reply to post by jonnywhite


Or maybe a giant meteor will appear out of nowhere and cut the planet clean and half, sending one side spinning into the sun and the rest hurtling through space to collide with the moon, destroying all semblance of the only life that ever managed to be cultivated by the "dice game" that is the universe.

My point being, if you spit in one hand and "maybe" in the other, which fills faster? I'm working off of what I see, not what I speculate without due cause.

Originally posted by Reflected

reply to post by Reflected

 

...Anyway good luck, I'm sorry your life made you so sad before you decided to opt in to escapism.

edit on 14-9-2012 by Reflected because: (no reason given)

edit on 14-9-2012 by Reflected because: (no reason given)

Opting for silence/stillness isn't opting for escapism. It's the Exact opposite. The silence he's talking about is a silence full of activity. A state in which what logic cannot see is revealed. Within silence, Vijnana is found.

Vijnana: the faculty or plane of consciousness above buddhi or intellect, also called ideality, gnosis or supermind, whose instruments of knowledge and power form the vijnanacatustaya; the vijnana catustaya itself; the psychological principle or degree of consciousness that is the basis of maharloka, the “World of the Vastness” that links the worlds of the transcendent existence, consciousness and bliss of saccidananda to the lower triloka of mind, life and matter, being itself usually considered the lowest plane of the parardha or higher hemisphere of existence. Vijnana is “the knowledge of the One and the Many, by which the Many are seen in the terms of the One, in the infinite unifying Truth, Right, Vast [satyam rtam brhat] of the divine existence.

reply to post by D1ss1dent

A state in which what logic cannot see is revealed.

There is nothing logic cannot see. Logic is a telescope, limited only by the directions we point it in. If there is something logic does not tell us, it is because we have failed to point it in the right direction.

Seems perfectly logical to me.

reply to post by AfterInfinity

You say that because you think that intellection is the pinnacle of mankind but it is not.

Silence is not an option. The silence is always here behind the noise. Only when the noise stops does the silence announce itself.
Know thyself as that and let the band play on.

reply to post by D1ss1dent


I say that because I believe intellect - true intellect - will SHOW us that it is not the pinnacle. And then it will show us where to go from there.

reply to post by AfterInfinity

Phrased that way, I can only agree with you. I see the intellect as a mechanism trying to reproduce, incorrectly and through efforts, an higher latent faculty (found within silence) that doesn't need to seek.

Intelligence Energy.
youtu.be...

reply to post by arpgme


Being in the light also teaches fearlessness, maybe both are paths to the same goal in the end.

reply to post by shamanix2012


If you follow either path long enough, you'll discover that you cannot complete one without using the other. That's the definition of Yinyang philosophy, or Taoism.

You are the darkness that sees light.
The light can be deceptive. Find the darkness, the void, the emptiness to know peace as the light is sound and fury.

The darkness is the seer and the light is the seen (scene). They are one coin with two sides.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


obviously, lol.