Brilliant thread! And I don't mean this just on a mind level - I believe this is one of the most fundamental questions facing humanity currently.
Sorry my response below is so long - I am just catching up.
Until this week, I hadn't visited this forum for almost a year. I must confess Nark, even though I always found your insights thought provoking and interesting, there was always an element of mind fuck with them.
Now ... I don't know if it is reflective of my own growth, or a gradual softening in your own methodology (prob both), but I find such resonance with everything you have said - an understanding and knowing that comes not only from just experience or learnt knowledge - but time to digest and integrate this experience and knowledge. My guess (and at best it is that, though I trust that these things are often born from within a deeper place) is that, in starting to reveal your own experiences (eg on your profile) there is a deepening happening where you are embodying all knowing and taking no ownership or placing no ownership on others.
From my perception, there is a fresh element of kindness running through your words. This whole thread is testament to this because I completely understand where you are coming from in the deepest moral sense.
I have been watching my sister in these past few months go into the sheer terror of mental suicide and it is such a difficult thing to watch (yes, she is still a JW). I try telling my family I understand what she is going through, I too have experienced it but (a) I can see they don't quite think I have, because my experience was private and hers is 'dramatic' and (b) that is cold comfort to most of them because their greatest fear is that - if she survives this experience intact - she will of course "end up like" me :) (lol, a possibility I find immenseley amusing).
The thing about kindness is - there is the objective kindness of desiring individual liberation - not only themselves, but for collective consciousness sake. Then there is the personal empathy and compassion for the journey you know they will take through the abyss. As one of my mentor's describes: "This is not for the faint hearted". Therein lies the rub, we talk about this at the level of the mind because it feels like it is happening at this level, yet my experience is that there is no separation of the experience between mind and emotion. Both need to be supported.
Above and beyond, we question ourselves, whether this is a necessary path for everyone to take - even if our instinct is that it will eventually be met by every human in their lifestream.
I stick to the drama paradigm: you can't escape playing a role, but you can become conscious that you are playing a role. At best that might make you less dogmatic, not more, as you learn to laugh at the play while playing...
I often wonder whether it is necessary to be doing this consciously or enough to be doing this instinctively and whether I can even tell the difference when observing others.
It was not "discussion" in the sense of arguing with a worthy partner. It was rather a sense of mutual trust and harmony, allowing each of us to follow on the thought of the other, knowing we would meet again at the next step. It was extraordinarily light.
This is all I want now and I endeavour to meet others in this way. I know the path I have taken to this realisation. Whilst obviously this is the path I advocate - I am not interested in whether it is ultimately right or wrong or how others perceive it. I only want to meet others in the above place of truth and I really don't care how you got there, because the wonderful thing about being in this place of flowing truth is that your path was indeed different to mine. It is not a 'meeting in the middle' only (this goes back to our discussions on duality and balance), rather it is a continual merging and separation which allows for growth, freshness and vitality.
In a sense, once you get past the mystical trappings (some never do, blessed are them!), you realise that you have fallen in love with death itself (or, at least, with "something" one of whose many names is death).
Interesting - because for me it was the experience of realising I had fallen in love with life itself :)
I find myself agreeing that I would not recommend this to anyone - yet by my very actions I find that I am. The ego still fears and even if I have learnt to live with that fear in myself, I certainly still fear for others (eg my analogy of the coin toss in other thread). The impulse within me to keep growing, to keep evolving, propels me to live in a way that will affect those I meet - such is the dynamic of life. All I can learn to do is to be softer, more tender and patient with others - creating an embrace that hopefully will support them through this time when it visits. And if it doesn't, I try to let go any need on my part that desires it to happen for my benefit.
Why is anything not understood defined as 'mystical'?
Re your comment on born again. I was just pondering the concept of reincarnation yesterday and considering how I have 'reincarnated' since leaving the JWs. On most levels my life resembles nothing like my previous life - yet there is an essential nature within that still feels unchanged. This seems to neither come nor go - I have just become more attuned to it and my ability to 'be' this is what has changed, to be conscious of it. Yet I am this and always have been.
You speak of the 'aftermath' of such emerging experiences. It may not come as any surprise that I am a doula (birth support person, for those wondering) in secular life, and as such I see it encumbent on those who have come through such experiences - who have arrived at knowing themselves in this wholeness, to be there to assist others in making the transition. All the while trusting in the implicit life force that knows how to do this quite naturally without us needing to do a thing!
I have got to the point where - if the person is asking the q's they are somewhat ready on a level. The wise person will - without limiting - assess their 'need to know' and speak both to this and to the innate knowing that is beyond. Sometimes it is just as simple as not saying anything and just listening, other times it is sharing through stories, teachings, words or actions. By being that which you know they already are, you allow room for that stillness within them to give rise to truth - until they have gone through the transfiguration and learnt the life skill of being able to do this for themselves.
R.Crusoe:
I see society as Tolle does and am amazed I only learned of him in the past two weeks!
Maybe if I had earlier I could have lost the pain of much inner conflict which gave rise to some of what I have written - both poetic and otherwise!
Would you see society as Tolle does if you hadn't experienced the pain of inner conflict? Btw, I have never been called to read any of Tolle's works and the video you first posted is the first time I have heard him speak. Like your experience with Tolle, I am a new fan of Ken Wilbur and am grateful to have someone else's broader perspective of my experience. Sometimes the information appears to come after the experience, sometimes the experience appears to come after the information. In reality there is no beginning or end - we just tend to put up sign posts retrospectively for poignant or profound moments. My feeling is that I am usually just catching up with that which I already knew :)
I try and teach my children that they already know everything - they are only here to remember that they know.
And it seems to encourage ignorance and loveless reaction in some respects to loved ones who may be having a tough time of life and what it deals to them. If you encourage complete 'passive peaceful indifference' within close family frameworks, life all too soon can become superficial, artificial and detached on a permanent basis.
It looks like this externally, hence the resistance by most (and the labelling). In reality it feels and is quite different through direct realisation. The words sound the same but the living of them is a huge paradigm shift.
You ask some very important questions which are worthy of being with.
I personally know it to be used oftentimes in the most insidiously controlling ways - silence like a cancer grows!!
Using silence to seemingly demand conformity can become a very destructive and dangerous practise.
I just wonder about any systems which advocate silence as a caring response = not because of how well intended they are but because of how in reality they get applied! A speechless action is ripe for misinterpretation! I do not recommend it as standard practise!
This comes back to intention, trust and intuition (yours and theirs). If it feels like control - use it as an opportunity to explore that truth within you.
Nvrgnbk:
We're all screwed up.
Some more than others.
Let's all try not to be so screwed up.
But if you suffer due to your being screwed up or someone else being screwed up, that's good.
It's precisely that suffering that will make you aware of just how screwed up it all is.
With that awareness, things might get just a little less screwed up.
Love this - the great 'cosmic joke'! :) Why can't we all just play together nicely?
