Presence

[WIP]

Of course. And we do subconsciously.

You miss a very important fact: Cause ALWAYS precedes effect.

Not so! We are predisposed to believe every effect has a cause, and we are hardwired to believe that causes cannot be random, but are a result of deliberate intelligent agents. Not only is this why we look for supernatural explanations for natural phenomena such as the weather and earthquakes, floods and volcanoes -- but this predisposition to believe that there are no coincidences keeps lotteries and gambling casinos swimming in money. If gamblers who blow all of their money didn't believe in luck or destiny, they would leave after they lost their first 50 dollars and the casinos would have to close their doors!

And since so much new age interpretation of consciousness, such as the blather written by Deepak Chopra, tries to draw upon the strange interractions of subatomic physics, it should be noted that cause and effect have no bearing in the principles of Quantum Mechanics -- where every possible particle event has a range of probabilities that cannot be determined beforehand, and virtual particles can pop into existence from the fabric of space-time and then quickly vanish back where they came from, when they re-combine and annihilate each other.

It doesn't mean that the brain functions according to the rules of quantum mechanics like Chopra insists; if it did most neuroscientists contend that the brain would be unable to function. But just the same, it's a mistake to assume that because cause and effect are crucial in the world of "middle dimensions" that we live in, that this is how the Universe operates also.

One cannot ~find~ what one does not expect, first. Astronomy is advancing because scientists "expect" that there is something more. While they generally theorize that there are boundaries to the universe, or that the universe is expanding it could not be UNLESS someone wondered about the possibility and investigated it.

Scientists can be just as prejudiced in their opinions and desires to prove theories they've invested their time on, but the scientific discoveries have many times turned up unexpected results, and the discovery that the rate of expansion of the universe is accelerating is one of them! Before accurate measurements of red-shifting distant galaxies, cosmologists were debating whether the gravity of the universe would be able to slow down the expansion enough to cause it to contract. There was an assumption before the concept of Dark Energy came along that it had to be slowing, and it was just a question of whether it was enough to slow it down. No one expected the results that have turned up, and that's forced cosmologists to incorporate the findings and propose new models.

Now when it comes to psi phenomena, the point I was making is that it has been studied, and besides the chicanery, there is nothing to support it. One psychologist I've read - Susan Blackmore, spent over 20 years looking for evidence of supernatural or psychic phenomena and came up empty.

You are very much "stuck". First of all the ego cannot be "suppressed" until one understands where it comes from, what kinds of control over our lives it presents and how powerful we have made it. Trying to suppress it is like pounding your fists against concrete - the harder you pound the more resolved the concrete is to just "be there". While many ~peaceful~ religions have a sense of "being" there are some who "get It". As such many of the ancient teachings - including those preserved in the Bible - are meant as a guide to access our "true nature" beyond the control of the ego. While religion can impose, oppose and oppress, faith releases and forgives. Understanding that everything that happens to us is because we choose it leaves us with the question "Why would we want it?", instead of "Who is to blame?" (the usual question of the ego)

The chemical xhaos that show us in the brains of depressed or mentally ill patients is an "effect", not a "cause". The cause is the internal struggle between the ideas imposed on us and our true nature to be self-full, literally a struggle between our ego and our eternal presence.

Love....and Joy... are not emotions. They are states of being! While you are trying to intellectualize this discussion, you are not only missing the points, but are exemplifying the control and tactics of the ego. You denial is a shield the ego uses as defence.

This is where circular logic can become delusional thinking. There are real people who cannot balance their neurochemistry to prevent depression or psychosis without drugs. People who are schizophrenic can become paranoid and start thinking that their psychiatrist's are trying to poison them! The last thing they need is a pentacostal faith healer or a new age mystic telling them that they have some special mental technique that will solve all of their problems!

We may have a sense that our minds' are different than our physical bodies, but the mind-body connection cannot be denied, otherwise alcohol and drugs would have no effects on our mental states.

[WIP]

Charterrights, what these EGO driven people refuse to see is that we are all two parts. EGO wants, needs to be the controlling force, EGO is the negativity in us. All the things we learned in our life.are in our EGO. EGO hates and fears Presence. Sarcasm, changing the subject, making fun of others, showing how important we are or how educated we are all come from EGO.

If we look at our next statement and decide whether it is coming from Presence or from EGO we scare the devil in EGO. If we chose Presence as you are then EGO loses power. We do not need to judge, EGO demands that. We do not need to have the best, to control others, to put others down. EGO demands that.

This is why these people are so fearful that they need to do everything they can to shut this discussion down. EGO demands it.

We cover up the fear in us by putting others down, this is what these people are doing.

Well, let's review! Since this is the third thread that you started to promote the teachings of self-help guru Eckart Tolle, I'm surprised you have offered so little to back up the teaching that depression, suffering and anxiety are the result of a struggle with the Ego's control of our thinking and behaviour; and we have to follow some new age - likely Buddhist-derived practice to escape from the being driven by negative emotions and feel enlightenment. Fine and dandy, but you have offered precious little to support this way of looking at the human psyche as opposed to other self-help techniques that Oprah also promotes:

A very basic description of how the EGO works is this. I state that the sky is blue and you state that the sky is azure. Both statements but when I next say I know it is blue, then that is the EGO at work.

The EGO is our need to control, argue and fight.

What I have learned is that I check out my motives for anything I am going to say and if it is negative then I know that the EGO is there waiting to start something.

Post 16

Now, I'm not going to argue over whether Tolle's techniques are helpful or not; there are many people who buy his books and he's even starting somewhat of a cult-following with meetup groups forming around the U.S. (and probably Canada too), but whether or not people find peace of mind attaining "presence", it does not mean that this is an accurate description of the mind.

And what I find even more troubling is that this view is taught as if it is an absolute, irrefutable dogma. When you say:"when I next say I know it is blue," you declare this declaration of certainty to be the work of the "EGO", but for myself, if I want a description that has elements that can be cross-verified by research on brain function, I would prefer an hypothesis being developed by neurologist Robert Burton , who proposes that our feelings of certainty are not the result of an intellectual evaluation of evidence, but the feeling of certainty is a sensation( just like our emotions) that we do not have conscious control over. From my perspective, this is a better explanation of why people hold fast to cherished, even irrational beliefs, and why some people seem to be almost addicted to the need to be right about everything and seem unable to change their minds on a given issue.

Of course Burton isn't advancing a self-help book, but just wants readers to become aware that absolute certainty is unattainable, and that we should rank our beliefs in a range from highly plausible to unsupportable with evidence. From there, people can form whatever belief systems they choose with a less dogmatic approach and a willingness to change and adapt their beliefs when necessary.

Back to Tolle, I was reading this interview he did for a fan forum, and it comes across that even though he is trying to cast a wide net to appeal to people with all kinds of belief systems, he is certainly not going to get any Christian fundamentalists:

first I picked up a copy of the New Testament almost by accident, maybe half a year, a year after it happened, and reading the words of Jesus and feeling the essence and power behind those words. And I immediately understood at a deeper level the meaning of those words. I knew intuitively with absolute certainty that certain statements attributed to Jesus were added later, because they did not "emanate" from that place, that state of consciousness, because I knew that place, I know that place. But when a statement emanates from that place, there is recognition. And when it does not, no matter how clever or intelligent it may sound it lacks that essence and it does not have that power. In other words, it does not emanate from the stillness. So that was an incredible realization, just reading and understanding "beyond mind" the deeper meaning of those words.

..........and then I knew why all of the anti-Eckart Tolle sites on the internet are run by Christian fundamentalists! Hey, I wish all Christians applied higher criticism to the Bible and didn't insist that it is the "inerrant word of God" but they do! And Tolle speaks as if this is how all Christians are supposed to view their religion. If he was a little more modest, he would acknowledge that this is his personal interpretation of Jesus and Christianity, or he may have been better off if he never brought up the subject in the first place!

But my biggest concern about the wisdom of Eckart Tolle is that much of his appeal comes from his claims of transcending his own serious problems with depression and suicidal thinking, and this may have worked for him and many who read his books; but a de-mystified, unenchanted understanding of the mind is needed to acknowledge that mental illness is a physical problem also. Our minds are not disembodied spirits! Our thoughts arise from the interactions of neurons in our brains, and some people may not be able to balance their neurochemistry without antidepressant drugs, and they should be encouraged to continue medication when needed, not told that psychotherapy can cure all of their problems.

[charter.rights]

I've never read Eckart Tolle..... and I'm not familiar with his ideas or assertions.

ALL mental illness is rooted in a spiritual problem. The mental illness along with its physical and emotional issues are but symptoms of the greater problem.

Medication works? Well partly, but not without also treating the emotional and mental symptoms simultaneously. It is the "spiral" of depression of which brain chemistry plays only a role. At the end of the day until one recognizes what the spiritual problem is, it is bound to reoccur - perhaps over decades.

Simply intellectualizing (again) doesn't permit you to understand the "connection" that everything has to any other thing. The ego uses over anal lies ing as a shield to protect you from exploring a place that would see its demise. Your patterns are clear and I would suggest that you have pretty much come to the end of your understanding. Perhaps you will revisit this when you get a revelation?

BTW WIP....You do realize that intellectualizing mental illness is part of the reason people end up in depression.....?

Edited August 22, 2008 by charter.rights

[WIP]

I've never read Eckart Tolle..... and I'm not familiar with his ideas or assertions.

That's why I mentioned him in the response to Margrace. Tolle has created a synthesis of Buddhist meditation, New Age Mysticism and influences drawn from many religious traditions to become one of the most popular self-help gurus........but we probably never would have heard of him if he didn't get a big push from Oprah.

ALL mental illness is rooted in a spiritual problem. The mental illness along with its physical and emotional issues are but symptoms of the greater problem.

"Spiritual" in the narrow sense, is a word used to define supernatural or immaterial phenomena that cannot be otherwise proven to exist, in contrast to the material world that can be examined. From my POV, if we can't detect it, measure it, or even theorize how and where it might exist, then it doesn't exist and we should explain effects with the natural phenomena that can be studied and explored.

The physical and psychological issues of mental illness can be examined and treated; it may not be a perfect system, but if you know anyone with a lifelong mental illness, the treatments available today are far better than what they were 20 or 30 years ago. But identifying mental illness as a spiritual problem, as opposed to physical illness being a non-spiritual problem, puts blame on the individual for sickness they may not be able to control on their own. This belief that our minds are not constrained by physical factors of brain function plays a part in the stigma against the mentally ill mentioned on another thread.

Medication works? Well partly, but not without also treating the emotional and mental symptoms simultaneously. It is the "spiral" of depression of which brain chemistry plays only a role. At the end of the day until one recognizes what the spiritual problem is, it is bound to reoccur - perhaps over decades.

With the success in developing new antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs over the last 20 years, there are many psychologists who are becoming concerned that psychiatrists are bypassing psychotherapies because writing prescriptions is easier and doesn't require as much effort from doctor and patient, so no doubt there may be alot of cases of over-prescribing drugs just as there are in other health issues.

But again, if mental illness is categorized as a spiritual problem, where does that leave someone who cannot be treated by some spiritual practice alone?

Simply intellectualizing (again) doesn't permit you to understand the "connection" that everything has to any other thing. The ego uses over anal lies ing as a shield to protect you from exploring a place that would see its demise. Your patterns are clear and I would suggest that you have pretty much come to the end of your understanding. Perhaps you will revisit this when you get a revelation?

Are you kidding me? Who is coming to an end of understanding? It's the people who have declared they have found all of the answers and don't need to learn anything new.

The problem with your mystical approach to understanding the world is that you are assuming that the inner experience (revelation) is the ultimate truth. But what if it's not! If you are willing to accept that the brain can generate perceptual errors interpreting information from the outside world through the senses, then you have to accept that it can also create cognitive illusions interpreting our inner experiences. The brain does our thinking for us, so it could create illusions from interpretations of inner and outer experiences. The only reason we are aware that we are thinking, is because our brain's tell us we are thinking.

I have had experiences of oneness or transcendence or whatever you want to call it, although not in a while -- I haven't had the time to set aside to practice meditation regularly in quite a few years, and maybe that's why I am less likely now to declare that this experience was the real one, and not a sensation of knowing generated by brain function.

Since it now seems that the sensation of knowing is generated often independently of results of our evaluations of evidence, the sense of "revelation" may be created by the brain generating sensations of certainty independently of the thought process entirely. After all,

the feeling of losing a sense of self can be correlated with a decrease in activity in the Parietal Lobes of the Cortex( which normally provide our awareness of the world around us), so can we trust that the sensation of having a revelation is the ultimate truth and not an illusion?

That's not the explanation mystics are going to accept. Mystics interpret the inability to verbalize or explain this experience as resulting from the fact that it is too profound for our physical selves to comprehend afterwards. But there is no denying that it is a subjective experience, and mystics have many different interpretations of its ultimate meaning;

BTW WIP....You do realize that intellectualizing mental illness is part of the reason people end up in depression.....?

If they are dwelling on negative experiences or past negative moments in their lives, I'm not surprised that intellectualizing would feed the problem. But some may learn to develop "spiritual" practices to relieve depression. But there are very physical explanations for why these spiritual practices are effective:

Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain's emotion center. That could explain meditation’s purported emotional benefits, because people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to “let them go.”

[charter.rights]

That's why I mentioned him in the response to Margrace. Tolle has created a synthesis of Buddhist meditation, New Age Mysticism and influences drawn from many religious traditions to become one of the most popular self-help gurus........but we probably never would have heard of him if he didn't get a big push from Oprah.

"Spiritual" in the narrow sense, is a word used to define supernatural or immaterial phenomena that cannot be otherwise proven to exist, in contrast to the material world that can be examined. From my POV, if we can't detect it, measure it, or even theorize how and where it might exist, then it doesn't exist and we should explain effects with the natural phenomena that can be studied and explored.

The physical and psychological issues of mental illness can be examined and treated; it may not be a perfect system, but if you know anyone with a lifelong mental illness, the treatments available today are far better than what they were 20 or 30 years ago. But identifying mental illness as a spiritual problem, as opposed to physical illness being a non-spiritual problem, puts blame on the individual for sickness they may not be able to control on their own. This belief that our minds are not constrained by physical factors of brain function plays a part in the stigma against the mentally ill mentioned on another thread.

With the success in developing new antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs over the last 20 years, there are many psychologists who are becoming concerned that psychiatrists are bypassing psychotherapies because writing prescriptions is easier and doesn't require as much effort from doctor and patient, so no doubt there may be alot of cases of over-prescribing drugs just as there are in other health issues.

Are you kidding me? Who is coming to an end of understanding? It's the people who have declared they have found all of the answers and don't need to learn anything new.

The problem with your mystical approach to understanding the world is that you are assuming that the inner experience (revelation) is the ultimate truth. But what if it's not! If you are willing to accept that the brain can generate perceptual errors interpreting information from the outside world through the senses, then you have to accept that it can also create cognitive illusions interpreting our inner experiences. The brain does our thinking for us, so it could create illusions from interpretations of inner and outer experiences. The only reason we are aware that we are thinking, is because our brain's tell us we are thinking.

I have had experiences of oneness or transcendence or whatever you want to call it, although not in a while -- I haven't had the time to set aside to practice meditation regularly in quite a few years, and maybe that's why I am less likely now to declare that this experience was the real one, and not a sensation of knowing generated by brain function.

Since it now seems that the sensation of knowing is generated often independently of results of our evaluations of evidence, the sense of "revelation" may be created by the brain generating sensations of certainty independently of the thought process entirely. After all,

the feeling of losing a sense of self can be correlated with a decrease in activity in the Parietal Lobes of the Cortex( which normally provide our awareness of the world around us), so can we trust that the sensation of having a revelation is the ultimate truth and not an illusion?

That's not the explanation mystics are going to accept. Mystics interpret the inability to verbalize or explain this experience as resulting from the fact that it is too profound for our physical selves to comprehend afterwards. But there is no denying that it is a subjective experience, and mystics have many different interpretations of its ultimate meaning;

If they are dwelling on negative experiences or past negative moments in their lives, I'm not surprised that intellectualizing would feed the problem. But some may learn to develop "spiritual" practices to relieve depression. But there are very physical explanations for why these spiritual practices are effective:

Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain's emotion center. That could explain meditation’s purported emotional benefits, because people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to “let them go.”

Ah again you miss the point. "spiritual" is neither supernatural, nor personal. It is the connection between all things material and ethereal, both hard and soft etc. It is understanding that there is a connection between us that does not require the brain to cognitively rationalize. You might call that intuition, or "intention". These influences don't control us since we are always prone to our own free will. But when harmonized they increase in power and in influence.

Take a soccer team for example. When players have trained together over long periods of time in many situations it becomes unnecessary to call for the ball, or direct someone to receive a pass in a certain position. Instead even though the game is dynamic and cannot be predicted with any certainty, one intuitively knows where the other player is, and then feeds the ball threading through a number of players to reach its target. Repetitive training doesn't generate this skill. It is in the player already and if the coaches are smart, they help players retrieve it and use their intention as a means of communication.

On the other hand, spiritual can also mean the root of our selves - beyond the physicality of our bodies or the chemical reaction in our brains. It is the whole of self, including all things that make us up - from experience to understanding to knowing to being. When one is prevented from acknowledging their own soul (as they always are in the control of the ego) there is a persistent internal struggle that takes place. Trying to be someone you are not - such as in role playing as fathers, husbands, sons, co-workers, business leaders etc - just makes you a "trying" person. The societal roles placed on us through ego rearing, are not who we are. However, our caregivers have conditioned us to believe that is all we are, when in fact these are nothing but relationships and things we as soulful people choose do. We are only successful in these relationships because someone else (another ego) confirms it for us. These limitations produce minimal-thinking lemmings who might take a different turn now and then, but for the most part are nothing but predictable obsessive-compulsives. In many cases within the struggle of the ego, a deeper psychosis becomes the only visible escape. Yet deeper psychosis is nothing more than a stronger hold by the ego.

If intellectualizing were an answer to mental illness, then once on drugs it would be easy to assume that a mental patient could think her way out of schizophrenia. However that very attempt by a schizophrenic simply leads to a deeper psychosis. The reality is that no one can retrieve themselves out of mental illness or even depression on their own. Instead one must first surrender to the illness and let those who have been provided to the patient help out in their own ways. If they were successful through drug therapy alone then the patient would be restored to the lesser psychotic where the ego is once again in control and the patient becomes a servant to the masters in role playing. Only when one is empty of the ego (this is a huge and risky step) can fear be removed and the mind opened to its potential. On a smaller scale this might be equated to learning calculus where at first we are taught the simple equations where calculas rules. In order to understand that derivatives can be used just as effectively we must free our dependence on the long equation and open ourselves to see that there are easier ways to understand complex problems. And then again math is an abstract concept that cannot explain a simple word like"no".

The simple equation does not and can not explain the universe. And even though there is a method to explain a great many parts of it, the parts do not equal the whole. And while science will eventually catch up to explain a great many wonders, it is still behind because those who want to question it are confined to limited and prescribed answers within the restrictions of their knowledge, perceptions and time-constrained agendas. The ego is a constraint and a commonality in all limited thinking.

Philosophical questions are not posed to answer the whole of the universe. They are presented to challenge the limited thinking of the ego and expand one's intuition about the world we believe we see. In essence our physical bodies are a sum of our parts - individual in nature with a collective knowledge of history and connection to the Source of all knowledge. Each part is then subdivided into smaller and smaller parts down from cells to DNA to molecules to atoms to neutrons, electrons and protons all the way down to the empty space that resides between each bit of energy. Limiting that knowledge because one intellectualizes from the confines of the ego, does not equate to defeating God (although that may be what you believe you are doing).

You are thinking that the physical is more important than the unseen and the micro, yet you cannot detach one from the other. They co-exist, being reality on one plain and changing knowledge and perceptions on another. Once one understands that it is possible to see from an alternate place in the universe and interact on yet another different plain, it becomes clear that the ego's intellectualizing and rationalizing is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Intention and will have more influence on life and the physical world than all the understanding gained through a controlled and limited education.

But again, if mental illness is categorized as a spiritual problem, where does that leave someone who cannot be treated by some spiritual practice alone?

Just as mental issues have a spiritual root problem, so does a physical symptom have an emotional root, and an emotional symptom have a mental root. Since symptoms of mental illness occur on all levels treating the symptom while healing the spirit are equally important. The ego operates through clues. If it recognizes a certain feeling, or obsesses on a particular thought, it will continue to believe it is unwell. The interconnection of illness must be treated at each level until restoring spiritual health is made possible in order to challenge the ego's control of self. As long as a symptom presents itself a spiritual remedy is not possible. Those who would try to go directly to a spiritual cure are fakes and shamans. Only relieving the fear of illness at each state can accomplish a lasting release from the spiritual problem.

[WIP]

Ah again you miss the point. "spiritual" is neither supernatural, nor personal. It is the connection between all things material and ethereal, both hard and soft etc. It is understanding that there is a connection between us that does not require the brain to cognitively rationalize. You might call that intuition, or "intention". These influences don't control us since we are always prone to our own free will. But when harmonized they increase in power and in influence.

Take a soccer team for example. When players have trained together over long periods of time in many situations it becomes unnecessary to call for the ball, or direct someone to receive a pass in a certain position. Instead even though the game is dynamic and cannot be predicted with any certainty, one intuitively knows where the other player is, and then feeds the ball threading through a number of players to reach its target. Repetitive training doesn't generate this skill. It is in the player already and if the coaches are smart, they help players retrieve it and use their intention as a means of communication.

Hold on now! Repetitive training is exactly what develops this intuitive sense. Try replacing a few players on the team, and see how well their intuition functions! When it comes to individual skills, the elements of shooting a basketball or swinging a baseball bat, are all done at the unconscious level out of our conscious awareness. Learning a new skill or muscle movement has to be coordinated by the Premotor Cortex, but this is a slow, inefficient way of getting the job done, so as soon as repetitive action ingrains new skills, the premotor cortex is left out of the loop, and the athlete may freely think that their actions are being directed by a higher power( provided they win). None of this demonstrates any evidence of outside factors involved in our mental activity.

If intellectualizing were an answer to mental illness, then once on drugs it would be easy to assume that a mental patient could think her way out of schizophrenia. However that very attempt by a schizophrenic simply leads to a deeper psychosis. The reality is that no one can retrieve themselves out of mental illness or even depression on their own. Instead one must first surrender to the illness and let those who have been provided to the patient help out in their own ways. If they were successful through drug therapy alone then the patient would be restored to the lesser psychotic where the ego is once again in control and the patient becomes a servant to the masters in role playing.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to dealing with mental illness, there may be many people who are able to do it on their own without outside help! The point of drug therapies is that a person with a serious mental illness can be reset to a rational mode of thinking so that they can get back to work, repair family and other relationships, that would otherwise leave them broken and isolated, unable to get better regardless of what spiritual or psychotherapies are attempted.

You are thinking that the physical is more important than the unseen and the micro, yet you cannot detach one from the other. They co-exist, being reality on one plain and changing knowledge and perceptions on another. Once one understands that it is possible to see from an alternate place in the universe and interact on yet another different plain, it becomes clear that the ego's intellectualizing and rationalizing is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Intention and will have more influence on life and the physical world than all the understanding gained through a controlled and limited education.

Again, this idea of 'seeing from an alternate place' is a thought process, and just as an out-of-body experience can be induced mechanically with the subject believing that their minds are floating above their bodies, sensations of oneness cannot be assumed to be real experiences either! There is no guarantee that any thought process is certain since our sense of mind is created by by the brain in the first place.

[Oleg Bach]

if we all realized that in each of us there is a Presence. That Presence is part of the universe and God is the universe? HOw woul we change the world or even this forum if we all recognized what the Ego in us is and what we could do if we decided not to allow it to control us.

You must open up to a state of spirit possession - to allow the universe to reside in you - or as some put it - let good and right prevail. This creative presence is God - or commonly called goodness...first we have to have some class and the definition of class is the old title of "Your Grace" - so what is grace? - It is the undeserved mercy of God...in other words you must realize that we are not all equal and some are smarter and stronger - with better genetics---so you must be noble - and a noble person is a generous one who serves and loves humanity..because he or she has grace and is not governed by fear and spite. As Christ said " The kingdom of heaven is at hand" - it is here and you have died and gone to heaven - your choice..your will - but remember ..There are irritants caused by humans who "would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven" and those that "do not enter the kingdom of heaven and block others from doing so" not to mention "violent men that try to take heaven by force (earth) -- these are irritants...and it takes grace to understand that evil is stupity and not to give it or feed it your energy - grace be upon you - enjoy.

[margrace]

You must open up to a state of spirit possession - to allow the universe to reside in you - or as some put it - let good and right prevail. This creative presence is God - or commonly called goodness...first we have to have some class and the definition of class is the old title of "Your Grace" - so what is grace? - It is the undeserved mercy of God...in other words you must realize that we are not all equal and some are smarter and stronger - with better genetics---so you must be noble - and a noble person is a generous one who serves and loves humanity..because he or she has grace and is not governed by fear and spite. As Christ said " The kingdom of heaven is at hand" - it is here and you have died and gone to heaven - your choice..your will - but remember ..There are irritants caused by humans who "would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven" and those that "do not enter the kingdom of heaven and block others from doing so" not to mention "violent men that try to take heaven by force (earth) -- these are irritants...and it takes grace to understand that evil is stupity and not to give it or feed it your energy - grace be upon you - enjoy.

Yes within each of us is grace/presence and EGO, the way to use this knowledge is to think before I say something and ask myself if this is EGO replying. Or one can be by themselves and these worrisome thoughts come into ones mind. The idea is to acknowledge them but not let them have any control, just go back to watching your breath come in and out. When we give into EGO/thoughts we lose the serenity and peace within ourelves.

Years ago I heard someone say the if people are content then nothing will get done.

[WIP]

The mystics here don't seem to be getting the most crucial point: You cannot use the mind to "step outside" the mind. And it's the most extreme form of intellectual dishonesty to even imply that you can transcended your conscious thought process or "ego" in order to find another, more exalted plane of being. How can you ever know that? In other words, to say that one is "stepping outside" one's normal thinking patterns for the purpose of analyzing one's thinking patterns is a meaningless paradox.

Any introspective analysis of the human mind is necessarily weakened and corrupted by the fact that the only tool we have for performing that analysis is the human mind itself. Everyone who has a transcendent experience may feel that their mind is unextended (or limited by brain function), but modern neuroscience can induce the sensation of the mind leaving the body, complete with visual perceptions of being outside the body, and it has been noted many times that meditating subjects who experience transcending time and space and have a feeling of oneness or "presence", show a decrease in function in the parietal lobes of the Cortex (the area of the brain responsible for giving us our self-awareness and orientation in time and the space around us), so declaring mystical insights as irrefutable facts rather than beliefs, is a delusional, potentially dangerous outlook. History is replete with cult leaders who have extrapolated their mystical awareness to determine that all of their beliefs are revelations from God or a higher power!

Put another way: No analysis that makes use of the mind can be independent of the mind. (And every analysis uses the mind, even if you don't think that's what you're doing.) That means no such analysis can be truly self-critical, either. In all likelihood, the greater perceptive power some new age guru like Eckart Tolle uses to reach insights about the deficiencies of ego and conscious thought is just another manifestation of ego, and this makes the idea that these are absolute universal truths even more dangerous. We can all speak of ourselves in the third person. That doesn't make a person enlightened. It just makes a person sound pompous and arrogant.

New age mystics denigrate emotions as something to transcend or transform into non-emotional awareness states. But emotions are central to how we perceive our world and determine the importance of our memories.

Getting back to the source of the latest new age wisdom, Eckhart Tolle feels that Oprah is the most suitable vehicle for the transmission of his message? Well, in one sense it MOST DEFINITELY IS!! It probably has a lucrative contract. Oprah has turned idiotic, self-indulgent psychobable like The Secret into a bestseller, so Tolle no doubt allowed his "Ego" to capitalize on the promotional potential of a partnership with Oprah. So the millions he made from The Power of Now hasn't sufficed? Then Oprah promotes A New Earth and generates more millions. coupled with the high cost of his retreats and his take from those, as well as CD and DVD sales......this is the paradox of the guru who is claiming to transcend the material suffering and remove the egoic structures in others by making a s$$tload of money! He decries the Ego, yet promotes himself like an Egomaniac. He claims he is a type of Monk, yet he is running a multimillion dollar company, selling all kinds of junk to people.

[margrace]

I was listening to a discussion on people who talk outloud, we tend to consider them unstable, but don't we all do that in our head all the time. So what is the difference. Thoughts come and go, we either give them credence or we do not. The problem is that a lot of people think you cannot do anything about them. But yes you can, you can acknowledg a thought and decide whether you want to persue it or not. Yes you do have that power. The idea that you block thoughts, as some on here seem to think and abhor, is not what Tolle is saying.

Kabat-Zinn says

The only way to free yourself from a lifetime of being tyrannized by your own though processes,--- is to come to see your thouhts for what they are and to discern the sometimes subtle- but most often not so subtle-seeds of craving and aversion at work within them. When you can sucessfully step back and see that you are not your thoughts and feelings and you do not have to believe them and you certainly do not have to act on them, when you see vividly, that many of them are inacurate, judgemental, and fundamentally greedy, you will have found the key to understanding the way you feel.

I know a lady who thought that everything she saw on TV was the only way to live. So her life has been one of frustration and wanting. This is why people advocate that we cannot control our thoughts, this is what our business world does not want us to do. You must be unhappy and want everything they promote and their EGO thrive and survive on that theory.

Of course we all think, to say different is just stupid, but what we chose to think is our own business and having others tell us we must think this or that is unproductive. At least for them.

Just now we can see the fruits of these thought beliefs in our country, why would we need huge homes, fully furnished to make us happy?

[Rue]

if we all realized that in each of us there is a Presence. That Presence is part of the universe and God is the universe? HOw woul we change the world or even this forum if we all recognized what the Ego in us is and what we could do if we decided not to allow it to control us.

If people became enlightened one would think they would be more likely to be;

1-vegetarian

2-get this falun gong hare krishna ron paul evangelical born again baby with gas sort of grin

3-say and do positive things

4-share

5-wait for their turn and line up a lot

6-share cookies

7-try hug people

8-forgive everyone

9-give everything away

10- give away their guns and porno dvds

11-be synpathetic to Paula Abdul.

On a more serious note-since your question is rhetorical the simple answer is anything is possible when it comes to the results of human behaviour whether it be positive or negative.

If one engages in positive actions one would suppose logic dictates the results would then be positive and so those engaging in positive acts have in theory the unlimited ability to trigger positive results.

My problem is I am a tad cynical and I find people who tell me the above about positive actions usually want to sell me something I do not need which they claim will help me be positive.

Someone trying to tell me I need to by their product to be able to be positive is someone I am inclined to want to urinate on. Now I know that is not positive but at my age its very easy to aggravate my prostate.

[WIP]

My problem is I am a tad cynical and I find people who tell me the above about positive actions usually want to sell me something I do not need which they claim will help me be positive.

Someone trying to tell me I need to by their product to be able to be positive is someone I am inclined to want to urinate on. Now I know that is not positive but at my age its very easy to aggravate my prostate.

The problem is the person selling the claim is presenting it as an one-size-fits-all solution to everyones' problems. I know, as well as you do, that people come in all shapes, sizes, attitudes and beliefs, and some people are happy just living their everyday experience and have no interest or desire to explore the inner world through meditation or other mental exercises. The Eastern traditions that are the source of nearly all new age wisdom never bothered to offer enlightenment to the average person. One had to become a monk and devote their lives to the monastery, if they wanted to learn the practice. The idea that meditation, tai chi, or yoga is something for everyone to practice, is a Western approach.

There's nothing wrong with practicing meditation in itself; I'm just trying to get back into the habit of regular, daily meditation, and I can vouch for the fact that it has been helpful for me to develop self-control and reduce stress in my life. My concern with the way Buddhist and other Eastern traditions teach techniques of developing inner awareness, is that the inner, subjective experience is presented as the ultimate, reliable truth, to be trusted more than our conscious thinking abilities to use reason and logic to understand the world . A sensei, guru, or other spiritual guide is continually interpreting the descriptions of the pupil's experiences, and molding and shaping the way they apply their new found wisdom in everyday life. This obviously gives the spiritual guide a dangerous degree of power and influence over the students, since they are taught to distrust the senses and their thinking and reasoning abilities. If the spiritual guide has no evil intentions - no harm done, but many cults are formed around teachers who tell their followers they must cut themselves off from their families, give all of their worldly possessions to the cult leader, and go out and sell flowers at the airport all day.

This wouldn't be a problem if the inner experience was treated as a belief generated by the same mind that interprets the outside world as accurately as possible; if the student had doubts about the teacher, they would question some of his ideas and practices; but when the guided experiences are presented as directly experiencing "reality," the student who has been sucked into some cult like the Moonies or the Hare Krishnas, or the less intrusive new age cults that hawk an endless stream of books, DVD's and lectures, find themselves conditioned to ignore or suppress the doubts being raised by the rational mind, and keep right on giving!

[charter.rights]

The mystics here don't seem to be getting the most crucial point: You cannot use the mind to "step outside" the mind. And it's the most extreme form of intellectual dishonesty to even imply that you can transcended your conscious thought process or "ego" in order to find another, more exalted plane of being. How can you ever know that? In other words, to say that one is "stepping outside" one's normal thinking patterns for the purpose of analyzing one's thinking patterns is a meaningless paradox.......

Of course I can see how you would come to this conclusion using a limited perspective. And THAT is where your problem lies. You confuse the limitation of "ego" awareness with eternal intelligence. And while our awareness of a state in thinking terms might be limited to physiological responses, intelligence thrives well beyond the limits of the chemical and physical brain functions you seem to worship. In fact just in physiological terms, cell intelligence responds to injury long before the brain has recognized the problem. As well, intelligence can be realized within the plant world, within the movement of particles through space and in universal science. Time is an intelligent construct that was not invented by humans. Our discovery of time or awareness as a concept does not replace it as a brain function. Even the bending of time is not invented in cortex region but is merely observed there. Energy is intelligent.

An overseas flight from say New York to London might be predicted to take 8 hours. Yet halfway through we fall asleep and only awake once we arrive for landing. The 4 hours are not simply lost because we were not aware of them. However, when we arrive we postulate that we consumed the full 4 hours in travel even though we are not awake. Those kinds of assumptions are what limit our thinking to perceptions of the ego. When we remove ego awareness from our minds, we can shave hours off a trip. When we perceive things through the ego we can make a 4 hour trip seem like 10 -especially if the ego is not stimulated into its usual expectation of excitement.

You position - that thought originates inside the mind and therefore inside cerebral chemical interaction is far from reality. Intelligent energy, carries intelligent thought through us and we are simple vehicles in which it is realized. Life goes on well beyond the cessation of brain function, or death of the physical body. As it is with intelligent design the energy which not drives us becomes something else to arise as a new entity whether we are embedded in the energy of the wind, or our old physical vehicles become worm food. Just like birth is not a beginning, we exist as part of the universal Creation. ~Awareness~ of birth or of death processes is not a certification of physical morphology. It is simply an observation of ~some~ stages of energy.

God "could be" all that intelligent energy which binds the universe and beyond. The experience of God is not that same thing as the rationalization of God, the latter being drawn from ego's limited knowledge and projecting it in perception. The latter is why many religious people appear hypocritical. They try to rationalize the belief without the experience. As such they are incapable of replicating the experience as proof. Thus "...faith without words is dead..." (James 2:20)

Until you have had the experience you cannot know or understand the extent to which the Is exists. Cause is ALWAYS preceded by effect. No one needs to rationalize that, one just needs to have faith it is true.

James 2:26

"For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."

This isn't religious mumbo jumbo, it is real-life application.

Just added in edit: It isn't necessary to become dogmatic about the cause of every event and thougth. One need only understand that we humbly do not know the reason and accept that things happen because we asked for them. There are no other reasons.

Edited August 29, 2008 by charter.rights

[WIP]

Of course I can see how you would come to this conclusion using a limited perspective. And THAT is where your problem lies. You confuse the limitation of "ego" awareness with eternal intelligence. And while our awareness of a state in thinking terms might be limited to physiological responses, intelligence thrives well beyond the limits of the chemical and physical brain functions you seem to worship.

Well, first of all, it's a supreme act of arrogance to call my experiences "limited" because I don't want to jump to the same conclusion as you that feelings of transcendence are evidence in themselves of actual transcendence of ego and the mind itself!

Again, your absolute, dogmatic certainty of being right is coming from a sensation of knowing, not actual knowledge itself. You are certain that you are transcending the physical because you have a sensation of transcendence. You can just accept the experience in itself without trying to prove its authenticity, or you can run off and declare that no more evidence is needed than the feeling of transcendence, and that it informs your other beliefs about your inner nature, the soul, supernatural forces, gods etc. That does not make these forces real! And if your waking, objective, rational consciousness is weighing the evidence, and finding these beliefs lacking when lined up against new scientific evidence that is being learned about our world, then the ancient, unverified beliefs should be replaced; not the new, scientific evidence! Many Eastern traditions caution the new practitioner that their newfound sense of awareness and feeling at one with the universe can lead to an unhealthy sense of self-importance. Instead of transcending ego, they are in reality inflating the ego beyond all proportion.

There have been countless numbers of cult leaders (some grew into major religions) over the years who developed an attitude that their subjective, transcendent experience was not only the ultimate reality, but trumped the beliefs and experiences of others who had different perspectives; so placing these experiences on a level of trust above the knowledge that we gain through objective analysis of the world is already a dangerous pathway that humanity will have to outgrow to prevent extinction sometime in the not-so-distant future! It's because the religious outlook on the world is still supreme, that most of the world's population cannot accept individual mortality that they try to purchase everlasting paradise and are trapped in unhealthy religion-based superstitions that impose economic hardships, encourage people to have more children than they can properly care for, and discount other real dangers threatening the planet!

In fact just in physiological terms, cell intelligence responds to injury long before the brain has recognized the problem. As well, intelligence can be realized within the plant world, within the movement of particles through space and in universal science. Time is an intelligent construct that was not invented by humans. Our discovery of time or awareness as a concept does not replace it as a brain function. Even the bending of time is not invented in cortex region but is merely observed there. Energy is intelligent.

This is no proof that energy is intelligent! In fact, before cell division and metabolism were understood, the now discredited belief in Vitalism was invoked to provide a magical explanation for processes that were beyond comprehension at the time. Most people can't accept gaps in understanding of the world, and feel a need to fill in the blanks with supernatural explanations.

Your comments on brain function and awareness of time are also unproven assumptions. We do know that the parietal lobes of the cerebral cortex are correlated with our awareness of time and our orientation in space. Right now there are several subatomic physicists who contend that our sense of time is likely a construct of brain function, and question the progression of time as an accurate description of the space-time dimension. But that's still up in the air; the point is that time may very well be a figment of our imagination; but nevertheless, an essential illusion needed for our conscious understanding of the world around us.

An overseas flight from say New York to London might be predicted to take 8 hours. Yet halfway through we fall asleep and only awake once we arrive for landing. The 4 hours are not simply lost because we were not aware of them. However, when we arrive we postulate that we consumed the full 4 hours in travel even though we are not awake. Those kinds of assumptions are what limit our thinking to perceptions of the ego. When we remove ego awareness from our minds, we can shave hours off a trip. When we perceive things through the ego we can make a 4 hour trip seem like 10 -especially if the ego is not stimulated into its usual expectation of excitement.

??????????? We have no choice other than make the most likely assumptions about events that occur while we have been asleep or otherwise unaware of them. We still cannot assume that our sense of time, either fast or slow, or even non-existent during meditation, has any bearing on the way others are experiencing time.

You position - that thought originates inside the mind and therefore inside cerebral chemical interaction is far from reality. Intelligent energy, carries intelligent thought through us and we are simple vehicles in which it is realized. Life goes on well beyond the cessation of brain function, or death of the physical body. As it is with intelligent design the energy which not drives us becomes something else to arise as a new entity whether we are embedded in the energy of the wind, or our old physical vehicles become worm food. Just like birth is not a beginning, we exist as part of the universal Creation. ~Awareness~ of birth or of death processes is not a certification of physical morphology. It is simply an observation of ~some~ stages of energy.

I have not made any declarations that mind is limited to physical neuralchemical and neuroelectric reactions; but if we allow for particles or elements of our universe to have sentient properties, they still require a physical medium to function. When the physical vehicle becomes wormfood, it does not generate any more energy, and that dissipated energy dissolves into entropy. There is nothing to hold it together after bodily death.

I am not aware of any form of energy that exists without a source. Do ghosts exist? If so, how do they store information, how does this energy remain together without dissapating even though it has been cut off from its source of energy (the body). These idiots who do these ghosthunter shows never bother to offer up theories to explain how a ghost can function, nor do they mention recent neuroscience research that stimulating the left angular gyrus with a mild electric shock can induce sensations of a ghostly presence nearby. Answering these problems is an essential step before anyone should take ghosts and other supernatural entities seriously!

God "could be" all that intelligent energy which binds the universe and beyond.

Could be! But this sort of god would be the pantheist god, that is inextricably connected with the physical creation. This creator would not be able to function without being connected to the physical universe. This "intelligent energy" would not exist without a physical medium any more than other forms of energy can exist without a source.

The experience of God is not that same thing as the rationalization of God, the latter being drawn from ego's limited knowledge and projecting it in perception. The latter is why many religious people appear hypocritical. They try to rationalize the belief without the experience. As such they are incapable of replicating the experience as proof. Thus "...faith without words is dead..." (James 2:20)

Until you have had the experience you cannot know or understand the extent to which the Is exists. Cause is ALWAYS preceded by effect. No one needs to rationalize that, one just needs to have faith it is true.

James 2:26

"For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."

This isn't religious mumbo jumbo, it is real-life application.

Yes it is religious mumbo jumbo! It is based solely on esthetics and a contention that because an experience feels right, it must be right. And the two don't necessarily go together.

Just added in edit: It isn't necessary to become dogmatic about the cause of every event and thougth. One need only understand that we humbly do not know the reason and accept that things happen because we asked for them. There are no other reasons.

What's dogmatic is the practice of placing an unverifiable supernatural answer on every mystery that is still unknown. It is less dogmatic to leave it in the unsolved category and wait for better explanations.