Understanding What's happening

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Whatshappening
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Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Hi everyone, my Name is Gary, enjoying the life here in the beautiful B.C. I've been in the building industry all of my adult life, recently completing 30 yrs. I started out as labor, packing lumber, then became a carpenter(self employed for a long time), After 20 yrs of that I moved on as site superintendent for 10 yrs. which is still ongoing.

Over those long years I began to realize something and, do my best to, continue realizing. I realized, for the most part, it's up to me to get right with reality. I know there are changeable parts and unchangeable parts, of reality. I know reality is a bit tricky that way.

I know, sometimes it's hard to understand what's happening . Going to other people doesn't help much, it seems most of us has the same problem. Which is why I am here.

"Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the Path to Enlighten". It's the concepts in the comment such as "ultimate reality", "path to enlightenment" that stand out for me. My experience suggests the path to enlightenment is incidental to understanding Ultimate Reality.

That being the case then, it seems, understanding reality is the main concern, enlightenment will happen indecently (effortlessly).

So now I want to get to know this reality thing. I want to get to know it so I can understand what's going on. Hence my first question, how many realities exist?

Exist
Gary

P.S. I don't want to know everything, I want to know enough so that I can build an understanding of "whats going on".
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Bob Michael
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Bob Michael »

Whatshappening wrote:So now I want to get to know this reality thing. I want to get to know it so I can understand what's going on. Hence my first question, how many realities exist?

Hi Gary, From my own personal life experiences, which has included much suffering and change both inward and outward, I've come to find there are two realities. The reality of living in the darkness of self-centeredness and self-delusion, which in retrospect I lived in for a considerable part of my life, and the reality of living in the light of love, truth, and understanding. Understanding of myself, my fellows, and the human condition. And the transition from living in the darkness to living in the light began in earnest for me some 34 years ago. It was a slow process which included many excursions back again into the darkness even after having been well-immersed in the light for considerable periods of time. And today the process or journey continues to go on with a finally fully awakened and aware conscience and now entails a conscious and vigilant effort to perfect myself so as to be fully in the light at all times and under all circumstances.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Dennis Mahar »

What's going on?

Ego's accord themselves 'special' status.

Once this delusion is entrenched.
Ego runs a 'special' project or 'Noble Cause'.
To keep their 'specialness' intact necessitates them having to 'beat up' everyone else.
Reason has failed.

Take a cup to the Ocean.
Dip it in and pull it out.

You've got a cup of water.

Call that cup of water 'Me'.

Dip another cup.

Call that 'You'.

Differentiated.

Tip both cups back.

One and the same.

Undifferentiated.

Not the same.
Not different.
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Blair
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Blair »

Whatshappening wrote: I know there are changeable parts and unchangeable parts, of reality. I know reality is a bit tricky that way.
May I ask two questions of you Gary?

What parts of reality do you think are changeable, and unchangeable? Can you give examples.

Why do you think reality is 'a bit tricky'?
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Dennis Mahar wrote:What's going on?

Ego's accord themselves 'special' status.

Once this delusion is entrenched.
Ego runs a 'special' project or 'Noble Cause'.
To keep their 'specialness' intact necessitates them having to 'beat up' everyone else.
Reason has failed.

Take a cup to the Ocean.
Dip it in and pull it out.

You've got a cup of water.

Call that cup of water 'Me'.

Dip another cup.

Call that 'You'.

Differentiated.

Tip both cups back.

One and the same.

Undifferentiated.

Not the same.
Not different.
I'm a simple Dude, not sure what your point is. Sounds like a call to mediocrity...please explain...I might be missing something important.

Missing
Gary
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Alex Jacob »

You might be also not at all missing something. Is it just me or is it somewhat clearly distinguishable how each opiner so far gives the sense, as with that famous line in The Princess Bride (!) that they are 'selling something'?

It seems to me that we make an error when we conclude things too quickly; when we imitate the conclusions of another, and when we establish ourselves as salesmen...or priests.

(Years ago I was 'stranded' in BC at the Jericho Beach Youth Hostel. Met a strange but very accomplished young carpenter from Ottawa. We teamed up, I learned carpentry and for a year we made a decent living up there.)
Ni ange, ni bête
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Blair wrote:
Whatshappening wrote: I know there are changeable parts and unchangeable parts, of reality. I know reality is a bit tricky that way.
May I ask two questions of you Gary?

What parts of reality do you think are changeable, and unchangeable? Can you give examples.

Why do you think reality is 'a bit tricky'?
Sure...you can ask any question you like, I'm an open book.

I think of the unchangeable parts as structure. Stuff that I want to recognize for it's qualities so I can act accordingly. So I can change accordingly(example 1).

If I don't act accordingly then my results, my experiences, will reflect that. That will never change(example 2).

The tricky part is making sense of that with in your self.

Self
Gary
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Alex Jacob wrote:You might be also not at all missing something. Is it just me or is it somewhat clearly distinguishable how each opiner so far gives the sense, as with that famous line in The Princess Bride (!) that they are 'selling something'?

It seems to me that we make an error when we conclude things too quickly; when we imitate the conclusions of another, and when we establish ourselves as salesmen...or priests.

(Years ago I was 'stranded' in BC at the Jericho Beach Youth Hostel. Met a strange but very accomplished young carpenter from Ottawa. We teamed up, I learned carpentry and for a year we made a decent living up there.)
During your carpentry experience did you notice, who was the greater force? The young accomplished... or was it the project?

As to your other comments, I try to think in terms of what's right...not who's right. If I ever get whoooy please let me know.

Know
Gary
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Bob Michael wrote:
Whatshappening wrote:So now I want to get to know this reality thing. I want to get to know it so I can understand what's going on. Hence my first question, how many realities exist?

Hi Gary, From my own personal life experiences, which has included much suffering and change both inward and outward, I've come to find there are two realities. The reality of living in the darkness of self-centeredness and self-delusion, which in retrospect I lived in for a considerable part of my life, and the reality of living in the light of love, truth, and understanding. Understanding of myself, my fellows, and the human condition. And the transition from living in the darkness to living in the light began in earnest for me some 34 years ago. It was a slow process which included many excursions back again into the darkness even after having been well-immersed in the light for considerable periods of time. And today the process or journey continues to go on with a finally fully awakened and aware conscience and now entails a conscious and vigilant effort to perfect myself so as to be fully in the light at all times and under all circumstances.
Thanks Bob for sharing your mindset. I'm the straight up type, being in construction will do that to a person. I've had to learn, some, the hard way. I call it learning by fire, not the most preferred methodology. It involves way to much talking (yelling).

Anyways I've learnt to rely on simple fundamentals, it avoids the fire (usually). It seems you've identified the consequences of living the two lifestyles. It seems to me two consequences from the same reality. Does that make sense to you?

You
Gary
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Alex Jacob »

Well, one of our first jobs was for a German or Austrian contractor who took advantage of us right across the board. We built a stair set from the street down along the side of the garage to the main house. We had it up but only loosely tacked together before setting bolts. Someone came along and tried to walk down the stairs to the house. The stairs collapsed, the old man caught wind of it and fired us. That whole day we"d worked without having eaten anything. All we had was a coffee maker and a half pound of coffee...but he paid us our pittance and we went an ate about a dozen hamburgers.

So, I guess it is The Project that commands. Though with Lorne (the young carpenter) it was my personality that 'commanded'. Back down in the States, where he should have been successful and prosperous, he got back into drug use and pandering! I've often wondered what became of him.

There is a great attraction, and a certain amount of sense, in conceiving of ideas independently of the person concocting them. But I suggest that it is an error to do so. Since you have expressed interest in 'Ultimate Reality', and unless you were to stay strictly within a materialistic scientific approach with its mathematical langauge for describing it, to wade into any level of 'answer' to your question will involve you, quite directly, in religious systems of thought; cosmological systems for understanding just what is this 'reality', and the ethical systems that derive from those conceptions. You will be, with all that, not in a realm (of thought) comparable with abstract mathematics, but with social systems, long human histories, philosophies that derive from specific places and natural conditions, and systems of organizing thought and perception that are very often reactions to previous ones! So there is an element of struggle, even of battle! The old Chinese Zen folks were, by and large, in a tooth and nail struggle against their context, the system they were brought up in. Buddhism is said to be a reaction against an overwhelmingly vast and confusing conceptual system that entered into decadence, and in this sense (though it is intimately related, indeed built upon, what came before it), it is in a struggle against 'it'.

I suggest that when we 'answer' these questions, we do so as persons, within certain contexts, having the base in a certain language, in a specific time, with specific goals and aspirations that are hard-wired into us. The first question, then, for the formulator of such a Grand Question is (I suggest): Who Are You? What has made you what you are? There is a great deal to this question, a great deal that can be said about that process (of knowing oneself).

No man who speaks can speak from outside of his context, his formation, his idea-structure, his time-frame, as well as his physical body with its relationship to all that surrounds him. It is very attractive to certain minds (minds conditioned in certain ways I might add) to imagine it possible to either see or describe 'Reality' from outside the perceiving structure, that is to say our own self. There is a great attraction to attempting to see, or of believing, that there can be such a thing as an Absolute Reality, some sort of catechistic list, like a Credo, that once we see and describe 'it' in that way, that we have apprehended it, hence Life, hence ourself, hence meaning, hence present and future (and everything in between). You can ('one can') throw up vast nets of ideas, tome upon tome, cosmology upon cosmology, metaphysic upon metaphysic, but at a certain point (though we have to use idea-structures and can't really get away from them) they all either vanish into thin air...or turn to dust in our hands. (I mean this in the sense that all our idea-structures are like relics, or images reflected in mirrors, or old ruins lost in time).

Anyway, just for the record and so you know that I understand you: My whole presence here and raison d'etre is more than anything about 'who'. I take very strong stances against the Absolutist formulations that drive many thinkers here, and very specifically with the persons who have formulated the ideas that got this forum off the ground (the Founders as they are called). And while I agree that ideas and ethics and 'models' of reality can and should be discussed, I suggest quite strongly to beware of those who tell you (and who themselves believe) that they have access to some sort of Absolute Truth and can provide it to you, or give you a little recipe book or a Life Guide to getting it.

It is much more about the Questions. A good question is infinitely more valuable than...a half-baked answer.
Gary wrote: "Going to other people doesn't help much, it seems most of us has the same problem. Which is why I am here."
There is a certain irony in this, I note. I will use it to support my previous statements: there is no one here who is not such a person as you describe, with all the problems and contradictions you seem to have noted. But, even if one remained within books (scripture, story, cosmology, myth) you would still in fact be very much with 'persons'. Perhaps if one went into the forest like an old Taoist forest-dweller and stared quietly at the swaying leaves, the rushing water, the flight of the raven, the spring flowers, maybe 'all that' would have something to teach? Ah but we are still social creatures, within a social language.

If you were to describe 'the problem' that we all have, how would you do it?

---The Alexians
Ni ange, ni bête
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Sounds like a call to mediocrity...please explain...I might be missing something important.
'Gary's' on Death Row.
'Gary' gets old, sick and dies.
'Gary's' concerned about mediocrity.
'Gary' wants special status.

Straight up.
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Bob Michael
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Bob Michael »

Whatshappening wrote:Thanks Bob for sharing your mindset. I'm the straight up type, being in construction will do that to a person. I've had to learn, some, the hard way. I call it learning by fire, not the most preferred methodology. It involves way to much talking (yelling).

Anyways I've learnt to rely on simple fundamentals, it avoids the fire (usually). It seems you've identified the consequences of living the two lifestyles. It seems to me two consequences from the same reality. Does that make sense to you?
Freely and joyfully offered, Gary. I've been a rip, shit, or bust kind of guy all my life, along with being a perfectionist. Often to the point of driving myself nuts. But I'm grateful for having had these qualities as my 'mindset', if you choose, is that slops, lazy, and mediocre people seldom make it into that greater reality. And if they do it's only in a fleeting and fragmentary manner and they're of little, if any, real value in helping others to discover permanent residency therein.

I was trained up as a youngster for a musical career. But having never liked people or the entertainment field all that much, I spent my life being a multi-skilled tradesman with electrical work being my primary trade. Though the last 30 years or so of my worldly occupation has been a matter of stepping out of the wall-to-wall human rat-race, simplifying my life, and working just enough to makes ends meet while mostly working with a friend and being self-employed. Which minimized my contact with slops, lazy, and mediocre people (let me also add brown-nosers and freeloaders here), and of course the insanity of it all.

For the past 8 years or so I've been fully retired from any working involvement with the rat-race, thank God, but I'm surely not retired from life. I now like people (at least so so) and I'm in the business of helping others make the glorious transition from the darkness of the world to the light of "The World of the Spirit." And what a full-time joy such a vocation continues to be! It also helps me maintain my sanity in this mad and crazy world.
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Dennis Mahar wrote:
Sounds like a call to mediocrity...please explain...I might be missing something important.
'Gary's' on Death Row.
'Gary' gets old, sick and dies.
'Gary's' concerned about mediocrity.
'Gary' wants special status.

Straight up.
I'll bet you say that to all the boys...
Whatshappening
Posts: 70
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:02 pm

Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Alex Jacob wrote:Well, one of our first jobs was for a German or Austrian contractor who took advantage of us right across the board. We built a stair set from the street down along the side of the garage to the main house. We had it up but only loosely tacked together before setting bolts. Someone came along and tried to walk down the stairs to the house. The stairs collapsed, the old man caught wind of it and fired us. That whole day we"d worked without having eaten anything. All we had was a coffee maker and a half pound of coffee...but he paid us our pittance and we went an ate about a dozen hamburgers.

So, I guess it is The Project that commands. Though with Lorne (the young carpenter) it was my personality that 'commanded'. Back down in the States, where he should have been successful and prosperous, he got back into drug use and pandering! I've often wondered what became of him.

There is a great attraction, and a certain amount of sense, in conceiving of ideas independently of the person concocting them. But I suggest that it is an error to do so. Since you have expressed interest in 'Ultimate Reality', and unless you were to stay strictly within a materialistic scientific approach with its mathematical langauge for describing it, to wade into any level of 'answer' to your question will involve you, quite directly, in religious systems of thought; cosmological systems for understanding just what is this 'reality', and the ethical systems that derive from those conceptions. You will be, with all that, not in a realm (of thought) comparable with abstract mathematics, but with social systems, long human histories, philosophies that derive from specific places and natural conditions, and systems of organizing thought and perception that are very often reactions to previous ones! So there is an element of struggle, even of battle! The old Chinese Zen folks were, by and large, in a tooth and nail struggle against their context, the system they were brought up in. Buddhism is said to be a reaction against an overwhelmingly vast and confusing conceptual system that entered into decadence, and in this sense (though it is intimately related, indeed built upon, what came before it), it is in a struggle against 'it'.

I suggest that when we 'answer' these questions, we do so as persons, within certain contexts, having the base in a certain language, in a specific time, with specific goals and aspirations that are hard-wired into us. The first question, then, for the formulator of such a Grand Question is (I suggest): Who Are You? What has made you what you are? There is a great deal to this question, a great deal that can be said about that process (of knowing oneself).

No man who speaks can speak from outside of his context, his formation, his idea-structure, his time-frame, as well as his physical body with its relationship to all that surrounds him. It is very attractive to certain minds (minds conditioned in certain ways I might add) to imagine it possible to either see or describe 'Reality' from outside the perceiving structure, that is to say our own self. There is a great attraction to attempting to see, or of believing, that there can be such a thing as an Absolute Reality, some sort of catechistic list, like a Credo, that once we see and describe 'it' in that way, that we have apprehended it, hence Life, hence ourself, hence meaning, hence present and future (and everything in between). You can ('one can') throw up vast nets of ideas, tome upon tome, cosmology upon cosmology, metaphysic upon metaphysic, but at a certain point (though we have to use idea-structures and can't really get away from them) they all either vanish into thin air...or turn to dust in our hands. (I mean this in the sense that all our idea-structures are like relics, or images reflected in mirrors, or old ruins lost in time).

Anyway, just for the record and so you know that I understand you: My whole presence here and raison d'etre is more than anything about 'who'. I take very strong stances against the Absolutist formulations that drive many thinkers here, and very specifically with the persons who have formulated the ideas that got this forum off the ground (the Founders as they are called). And while I agree that ideas and ethics and 'models' of reality can and should be discussed, I suggest quite strongly to beware of those who tell you (and who themselves believe) that they have access to some sort of Absolute Truth and can provide it to you, or give you a little recipe book or a Life Guide to getting it.

It is much more about the Questions. A good question is infinitely more valuable than...a half-baked answer.
Gary wrote: "Going to other people doesn't help much, it seems most of us has the same problem. Which is why I am here."
There is a certain irony in this, I note. I will use it to support my previous statements: there is no one here who is not such a person as you describe, with all the problems and contradictions you seem to have noted. But, even if one remained within books (scripture, story, cosmology, myth) you would still in fact be very much with 'persons'. Perhaps if one went into the forest like an old Taoist forest-dweller and stared quietly at the swaying leaves, the rushing water, the flight of the raven, the spring flowers, maybe 'all that' would have something to teach? Ah but we are still social creatures, within a social language.

If you were to describe 'the problem' that we all have, how would you do it?

---The Alexians

.


"Absolutist formulations" are fun food for thought like, absence of condition is condition. It's fun to think about stuff like that.

Fun
Gary

P.S. Regarding your other comments, I can't quite relate. Remember I've had a hammer in my hand for the last 30 yrs.
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Bob Michael wrote:
Whatshappening wrote:Thanks Bob for sharing your mindset. I'm the straight up type, being in construction will do that to a person. I've had to learn, some, the hard way. I call it learning by fire, not the most preferred methodology. It involves way to much talking (yelling).

Anyways I've learnt to rely on simple fundamentals, it avoids the fire (usually). It seems you've identified the consequences of living the two lifestyles. It seems to me two consequences from the same reality. Does that make sense to you?
Freely and joyfully offered, Gary. I've been a rip, shit, or bust kind of guy all my life, along with being a perfectionist. Often to the point of driving myself nuts. But I'm grateful for having had these qualities as my 'mindset', if you choose, is that slops, lazy, and mediocre people seldom make it into that greater reality. And if they do it's only in a fleeting and fragmentary manner and they're of little, if any, real value in helping others to discover permanent residency therein.

I was trained up as a youngster for a musical career. But having never liked people or the entertainment field all that much, I spent my life being a multi-skilled tradesman with electrical work being my primary trade. Though the last 30 years or so of my worldly occupation has been a matter of stepping out of the wall-to-wall human rat-race, simplifying my life, and working just enough to makes ends meet while mostly working with a friend and being self-employed. Which minimized my contact with slops, lazy, and mediocre people (let me also add brown-nosers and freeloaders here), and of course the insanity of it all.

For the past 8 years or so I've been fully retired from any working involvement with the rat-race, thank God, but I'm surely not retired from life. I now like people (at least so so) and I'm in the business of helping others make the glorious transition from the darkness of the world to the light of "The World of the Spirit." And what a full-time joy such a vocation continues to be! It also helps me maintain my sanity in this mad and crazy world.
"The World of the Spirit." What's that about? In the simplest terms possible...please

Simple
Gary
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I'll bet you say that to all the boys...
You asked 'what's happening'?

'Gary dies".
Straight up.

If you've been in construction for 30 years you may have noticed constructions perish.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Alex Jacob »

Interesting. I can imagine what you mean. But in what way, through what medium, will you receive organizing information about 'what is going on'?

It sounds like you won't be able to receive 'it' intellectually---it would take some time just to get familiar with philosophy, the structure of your own upbringing and the sort of worldview you have. The question becomes: what are you looking for?

Do you do any reading at all? What things? Have you ever been moved 'spiritually'? What was that like?

How will you interrogate and question those whom you ask for information, insight, guidance, or what have you? Must it be explained 'simply' as you have asked? What work are you willing to do?

Maybe, just maybe, a quick route to.new and radical avenues of knowing might come (non-intellectually) through psychedelics?

I have a feeling though that it is the person who defines the answers even before the questions are formulated. To ask the Questions is still, in my view, directly related to the Who Are You part...
Ni ange, ni bête
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Bob Michael
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Bob Michael »

Whatshappening wrote: "The World of the Spirit." What's that about? In the simplest terms possible...please
Here's my best shot at describing the 'World of the Spirit' for now, Gary. It's also a good exercise for myself for the present moment. Thanks for asking, as it helps in my own ongoing spiritual development. Though such a state is really impossible to describe, since others will never understand anyway unless they themselves are 'there' or have been 'there'. But attempts at it must and can be made.

The 'World of the Spirit' is a term I got from the book 'Alcoholics Anonymous'. In the same book it also makes mention of a 'New and Wonderful World' and also of having "found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed." It also mentions that "most of us feel need look no further for Utopia. We have it with us right here and now." All of these descriptive terms for this rather rare state of consciousness and being are to me the same as Christ's "Kingdom of God" or "Kingdom of Heaven". He also said, "My kingdom is not of this world."

And this "World of the Spirit", etc. is state of mind, body, and spirit whereby the world becomes totally transformed and all fresh, alive, and brand new each and every moment. The world and all the people in it become perfect in every respect. And to experience this rare state of existence requires undergoing a radical shift in consciousness or the manner in which the brain or the mind functions. This can't be made to happen though in times of deepest despair and darkness a true 'surrender' may occur upon which this shift may take place in a person. At least this has been my experience. But then in order to stay in this frame of mind, body, and spirit or full and total being there's a need to then purify the mind through the process of rigorous self-critical awareness, change, and character development. I'll keep it short and sweet and end here. But then perhaps I've gotten overly long-winded afterall. It's my tendency, especially when knowing I have something of value to say. But it's all good (and quite enjoyable to boot).

Hope this has been helpful, Gary.

P. S. An afterthought while bussing between libraries.

Being in that 'World of the Spirit', etc, could also be said to be like sprouting wings and soaring through life much like an angel, while having no concerns or involvement with all the petty cares, troubles, and miseries of the 'fallen' or non-spiritual world. Save for trying to make some big improvements in it.

May I ask you 'Whatshappening' in your world, Gary, whichever world you may be in, or perhaps maybe you're standing on the threshold between the two?
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Dennis Mahar wrote:
I'll bet you say that to all the boys...
You asked 'what's happening'?

'Gary dies".
Straight up.

If you've been in construction for 30 years you may have noticed constructions perish.

Yes I have noticed that, but there's more.

While it may be the case that all construction (and constructor) perishes, the constructs never do.

In other words, there are parts of reality that come and go and parts that remain constant.

Can I not claim any constancy at all?

Constant
Gary
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Alex Jacob wrote:Interesting. I can imagine what you mean. But in what way, through what medium, will you receive organizing information about 'what is going on'?

It sounds like you won't be able to receive 'it' intellectually---it would take some time just to get familiar with philosophy, the structure of your own upbringing and the sort of worldview you have. The question becomes: what are you looking for?

Do you do any reading at all? What things? Have you ever been moved 'spiritually'? What was that like?

How will you interrogate and question those whom you ask for information, insight, guidance, or what have you? Must it be explained 'simply' as you have asked? What work are you willing to do?

Maybe, just maybe, a quick route to.new and radical avenues of knowing might come (non-intellectually) through psychedelics?

I have a feeling though that it is the person who defines the answers even before the questions are formulated. To ask the Questions is still, in my view, directly related to the Who Are You part...
"But in what way, through what medium,..." Simply put and like everyone I rely on my perceptual equipment (and trail & error). That's a general comment though and I suspect not of the sort that answers your question.

You'll have to excuse me I've caught a Flu. I'm not in any condition to give thoughtful comments. Thanks for the "back and forth" so far, I'll be back.

Back
Gary
Whatshappening
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Whatshappening »

Bob Michael wrote:
Whatshappening wrote: "The World of the Spirit." What's that about? In the simplest terms possible...please
Here's my best shot at describing the 'World of the Spirit' for now, Gary. It's also a good exercise for myself for the present moment. Thanks for asking, as it helps in my own ongoing spiritual development. Though such a state is really impossible to describe, since others will never understand anyway unless they themselves are 'there' or have been 'there'. But attempts at it must and can be made.

The 'World of the Spirit' is a term I got from the book 'Alcoholics Anonymous'. In the same book it also makes mention of a 'New and Wonderful World' and also of having "found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed." It also mentions that "most of us feel need look no further for Utopia. We have it with us right here and now." All of these descriptive terms for this rather rare state of consciousness and being are to me the same as Christ's "Kingdom of God" or "Kingdom of Heaven". He also said, "My kingdom is not of this world."

And this "World of the Spirit", etc. is state of mind, body, and spirit whereby the world becomes totally transformed and all fresh, alive, and brand new each and every moment. The world and all the people in it become perfect in every respect. And to experience this rare state of existence requires undergoing a radical shift in consciousness or the manner in which the brain or the mind functions. This can't be made to happen though in times of deepest despair and darkness a true 'surrender' may occur upon which this shift may take place in a person. At least this has been my experience. But then in order to stay in this frame of mind, body, and spirit or full and total being there's a need to then purify the mind through the process of rigorous self-critical awareness, change, and character development. I'll keep it short and sweet and end here. But then perhaps I've gotten overly long-winded afterall. It's my tendency, especially when knowing I have something of value to say. But it's all good (and quite enjoyable to boot).

Hope this has been helpful, Gary.

P. S. An afterthought while bussing between libraries.

Being in that 'World of the Spirit', etc, could also be said to be like sprouting wings and soaring through life much like an angel, while having no concerns or involvement with all the petty cares, troubles, and miseries of the 'fallen' or non-spiritual world. Save for trying to make some big improvements in it.

May I ask you 'Whatshappening' in your world, Gary, whichever world you may be in, or perhaps maybe you're standing on the threshold between the two?
Thanks and by all means you can ask. Today I'm in the world of the flu...

I'd love to explore your comments...once I'm feeling better.

Feeling
Gary
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Bob Michael
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Bob Michael »

Whatshappening wrote:Thanks and by all means you can ask. Today I'm in the world of the flu...I'd love to explore your comments...once I'm feeling better. Feeling, Gary
Wishing you a speedy recovery, Gary, while eagerly, but patiently, awaiting your return.

Bob M.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Can I not claim any constancy at all?
deconstructed by the flu.

Impermanence is an undeniable and inescapable fact of human existence from which nothing that belongs to this earth is ever free.

Flu will pass.
ForbidenRea

Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by ForbidenRea »

I've worked construction jobs my whole entire life. From the age of 18 on up. The propogated theorum is that most construction workers are seriously getting disguises from other workers such as spirits they cannot comdemn. So, simply saying; they come to the conclusions, facts, meanings, and importance of their jobs and realize if they cannot deal with the entity inside of them they're whole existence is becoming albeit worse.

To rely on an underoath.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Understanding What's happening

Post by Dennis Mahar »

If a nail is swept into the corner of the shed with other sweepings, or sits in a nail bag, or on a shelf in a shop.

Is the possibility of nail expressed?
I would say for nail to be nail it would have to be afixing 2 pieces of wood together.

The true being of a nail is constituted in an Act.

The being of a nail depends on a constructor.

The being of a constructor depends on a project.

If a house is the project, the intricate web of equipment being the possibility of its equipmentness can be seen.
Wood woods.
Nail nails.
plaster plasters.
roof tile roof tiles.
constructor constructs.
house houses.

A house is a gathering of equipment being its possibility as an Act.
The house is the constructor and the constructor is the house.
No separation.

It follows that 'existence' is project.
Looking more deeply it can be seen existence is projection.

Not one piece or part in a project including the constructor is self-established.

Astonishing.
Intricate web of connectivity in causal relationship.
Not seeing the logic of it constitutes equipment failure in human being.
Reason is necessary.
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