This is a queer passage to read out of context, and so I offer it. Or, rather, and so it is offered through the agency of consciousness.....
http://www.llresearch.org/newsletters/is...998_4.aspx Wrote:Each of you has come to feel comfortable with imaging and ideating the self as a spiritual being. Each of you is awake in a land where many slumber. And so to each of you there are special opportunities both for service and for pain, and spiritual pride is a distortion which each seeker becomes aware of in a subtle way, over time. It is that which remains when the fears have been shaken up and the cave has been left. It is the distortion or fault peculiar to those who have worked the hardest to realize who they are, and where they are going, and whose they are. So let us look at the possible way to work with this dynamic of spiritual pride.
Within this instrument’s spiritual system, pride, like envy, greed, lust, and sloth is considered more of a vice than an actual sin, a kind of excess of a good thing. It is good to be humble, and yet one can justly be proud of one’s good works, one’s good habits, one’s ethics, one’s conduct. When one is attempting to do everything that one can to live a good and holy life, one is peculiarly apt to feel some pride in one’s self. Now can you see how that feeling is a separator between the self and the world about the self’? It is based upon the assumption, which is an illusion, that one is responsible for the self and at the base of be self one is one’s self. This is a sticky, sticky point, and we would ask you to look closely at this matter of identity, for as long as there is self there will be pride in self or a feeling about self that does separate one from another. If one is still thinking that one is still living one’s own life, one is not yet beyond spiritual pride. This instrument is aware that she is not beyond spiritual pride and has often said that this is the one vice that she cannot find a way to remove from her personality, for even though she attempts to work on her humility she has a pride of self that thinks self is right. There is a righteousness there. There is an inherent lack of eagerness to taste other souls’ flavors. There is a desire to retain some boundaries, some uniqueness of self which is completely understandable in an illusion where there is no way to discover in any way that can be proven that one is not separate, that one is not, at base, one’s self. And yet we say to you that as far as we know, at base there is only the One Great Self, that Love which is reflected in each of the Creator’s children which each of you is.
As long as you think that you have a self that you need to defend you shall be working with spiritual pride, and so entities for the most part are working with this no matter how persistently and purely and devotionally they have sought for truth year after year. Yet still there is the sense of “I” am searching. “I” am looking. “I” am seeking to become the best that “I” can. Conversely we have found that coming into a fuller awareness of self is actually a process of subtraction, simplification, and elimination of things from the defended self until finally the self is empty and the barriers are down. Is this safe to do within your density? No. Not at all, not in the sense of the preservation of the physical body, or the spiritual body within incarnation.
I think I was still in high school when I had occasion to be invited to take a tour of a Trappist monastery. While there, we came across some visiting Buddhist monks from Korea and I was struck by how expressionless they were, how seemingly devoid of personality. At that stage of life, to me this display of dispassionate spiritual emptiness was simply repulsive. I actually felt threatened by it. Perhaps I still do?
Um, I mean, perhaps feelings of worry and threat appear across vista of a self-aware field of babbling consciousness?
May be related.
Quote:1.7 ▶ Questioner: [The question was lost because the questioner was sitting too far from the tape recorder to be recorded.]
Ra: I am Ra. Consider, if you will, that the universe is infinite. This has yet to be proven or disproven, but we can assure you that there is no end to your selves, your understanding, what you would call your journey of seeking, or your perceptions of the creation.
That which is infinite cannot be many, for many-ness is a finite concept. To have infinity you must identify or define that infinity as unity; otherwise, the term does not have any referent or meaning. In an Infinite Creator there is only unity. You have seen simple examples of unity. You have seen the prism which shows all colors stemming from the sunlight. This is a simplistic example of unity.
In truth there is no right or wrong. There is no polarity for all will be, as you would say, reconciled at some point in your dance through the mind/body/spirit complex which you amuse yourself by distorting in various ways at this time. This distortion is not in any case necessary. It is chosen by each of you as an alternative to understanding the complete unity of thought which binds all things. You are not speaking of similar or somewhat like entities or things. You are every thing, every being, every emotion, every event, every situation. You are unity. You are infinity. You are love/light, light/love. You are. This is the Law of One.
May we enunciate this law in more detail?
Without the ego, I feel much of the richness of experience is lost. The palette simplified to 'Self-dominated' or 'bad-self'.
The killing of the baby, the child, and the adult. Leaving only soul behind. On the other hand, we have that which would have us focus only on the physical as valid. A physical reduction-ism that is strongly represented in many cultures.
(09-07-2018, 03:44 AM)GentleReckoning Wrote: [ -> ]Without the ego, I feel much of the richness of experience is lost. The palette simplified to 'Self-dominated' or 'bad-self'.
The killing of the baby, the child, and the adult. Leaving only soul behind. On the other hand, we have that which would have us focus only on the physical as valid. A physical reduction-ism that is strongly represented in many cultures.
The ego exists to lovingly protect us and raise hard questions to challenge us. It is a loving act of service. I have learned to daily thank my ego for it's loving service and consider it a friend, along with my higher self and other etheric allies.
(09-07-2018, 03:13 AM)blossom Wrote: [ -> ]May be related.
Quote:1.7 ▶ Questioner: [The question was lost because the questioner was sitting too far from the tape recorder to be recorded.]
Ra: I am Ra. Consider, if you will, that the universe is infinite. This has yet to be proven or disproven, but we can assure you that there is no end to your selves, your understanding, what you would call your journey of seeking, or your perceptions of the creation.
That which is infinite cannot be many, for many-ness is a finite concept. To have infinity you must identify or define that infinity as unity; otherwise, the term does not have any referent or meaning. In an Infinite Creator there is only unity. You have seen simple examples of unity. You have seen the prism which shows all colors stemming from the sunlight. This is a simplistic example of unity.
In truth there is no right or wrong. There is no polarity for all will be, as you would say, reconciled at some point in your dance through the mind/body/spirit complex which you amuse yourself by distorting in various ways at this time. This distortion is not in any case necessary. It is chosen by each of you as an alternative to understanding the complete unity of thought which binds all things. You are not speaking of similar or somewhat like entities or things. You are every thing, every being, every emotion, every event, every situation. You are unity. You are infinity. You are love/light, light/love. You are. This is the Law of One.
May we enunciate this law in more detail?
Yes, that looks good on paper, but I’ve never experienced it. Have you? And even if such catalyst were offered me, I expect my lower levels of consciousness would succeed in making the experience seem to be all about this “me” thing.
That is a fascinating quote, Peregrine. Is it just me or does it almost sound like they are advocating a kind of psychological dissociative state? Yet I've often wondered how to think about the kind of transparency of personality they speak of without losing one's need to be unique, to be distinct and to bring that conscious attention and identity to the table. One person once told me that true enlightenment is when you are more an observer of your life than a participant, and that the ego can carry on and you can learn lessons without you needing to be invested in it or even necessarily taking the same kind of responsibility. I think there is a sense in which we don't understand human agency, that it's far more complicated and tentative than simple "responsibility" as we understand it legally and morally.
Another, perhaps orthogonal, perhaps contradictory, way to view it is with the emphasis on "tasting other souls". To me, this implies a kind of radical compassion where you are fully willing to experience other's pain as your own, our imperative to avoid other's pain being one of the primary vehicles of separation. It's not necessarily always hard to empathize with people's positive and neutral emotions, that's not really something that challenges us. We only can fully identify with them if we identify with their totality of emotions, and that's when we'll see something in the mirror that causes us to work, but also gives us something we don't already see. That's the taste a soul can impart, perhaps.
Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention! This is a really interesting excerpt that I want to spend more time on, as the character and boundaries of the individuated self is something on which I've spent a lot of time thinking and musing.
(09-08-2018, 10:37 AM)rva_jeremy Wrote: [ -> ]Is it just me or does it almost sound like they are advocating a kind of psychological dissociative state?
Yep, it seems to be pretty much just you.
(heh heh heh)
For moi, it ties in with Ra & Q'uo's description of healing energy (above yellow ray) coming in
through a being, not
from it. It also is reminiscent of Ra's line about the chakras being like notes of a flute and a spiritually advanced being just allowing the Creator to blow through it, allowing the melody to go where it will.
So, I wouldn't call it dissociative, exactly. But it could appear that way because the instrument is operating according to non-standard rules of the road...to muddle metaphors just a bit. It's a state of uncommon freedom that might look out of place in the context of everyday life.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy will...........
Just remove the sense of I/thou identity and you'd be in a place to close to where that quote is coming from. I guess the common thread is a very high vibratory state of surrender and peace.
Thank you Peregrine for such an interesting thread. Like you I met a few buddhist monks and I never put it into words but you are so right on target, there is this feeling of impersonality, totally, and at the same time so warm inviting any exchange of ideas
(09-07-2018, 02:06 AM)peregrine Wrote: [ -> ]This is a queer passage to read out of context, and so I offer it. Or, rather, and so it is offered through the agency of consciousness.....
http://www.llresearch.org/newsletters/is...998_4.aspx Wrote:Each of you has come to feel comfortable with imaging and ideating the self as a spiritual being. Each of you is awake in a land where many slumber. And so to each of you there are special opportunities both for service and for pain, and spiritual pride is a distortion which each seeker becomes aware of in a subtle way, over time. It is that which remains when the fears have been shaken up and the cave has been left. It is the distortion or fault peculiar to those who have worked the hardest to realize who they are, and where they are going, and whose they are. So let us look at the possible way to work with this dynamic of spiritual pride.
Within this instrument’s spiritual system, pride, like envy, greed, lust, and sloth is considered more of a vice than an actual sin, a kind of excess of a good thing. It is good to be humble, and yet one can justly be proud of one’s good works, one’s good habits, one’s ethics, one’s conduct. When one is attempting to do everything that one can to live a good and holy life, one is peculiarly apt to feel some pride in one’s self. Now can you see how that feeling is a separator between the self and the world about the self’? It is based upon the assumption, which is an illusion, that one is responsible for the self and at the base of be self one is one’s self. This is a sticky, sticky point, and we would ask you to look closely at this matter of identity, for as long as there is self there will be pride in self or a feeling about self that does separate one from another. If one is still thinking that one is still living one’s own life, one is not yet beyond spiritual pride. This instrument is aware that she is not beyond spiritual pride and has often said that this is the one vice that she cannot find a way to remove from her personality, for even though she attempts to work on her humility she has a pride of self that thinks self is right. There is a righteousness there. There is an inherent lack of eagerness to taste other souls’ flavors. There is a desire to retain some boundaries, some uniqueness of self which is completely understandable in an illusion where there is no way to discover in any way that can be proven that one is not separate, that one is not, at base, one’s self. And yet we say to you that as far as we know, at base there is only the One Great Self, that Love which is reflected in each of the Creator’s children which each of you is.
As long as you think that you have a self that you need to defend you shall be working with spiritual pride, and so entities for the most part are working with this no matter how persistently and purely and devotionally they have sought for truth year after year. Yet still there is the sense of “I” am searching. “I” am looking. “I” am seeking to become the best that “I” can. Conversely we have found that coming into a fuller awareness of self is actually a process of subtraction, simplification, and elimination of things from the defended self until finally the self is empty and the barriers are down. Is this safe to do within your density? No. Not at all, not in the sense of the preservation of the physical body, or the spiritual body within incarnation.
I think I was still in high school when I had occasion to be invited to take a tour of a Trappist monastery. While there, we came across some visiting Buddhist monks from Korea and I was struck by how expressionless they were, how seemingly devoid of personality. At that stage of life, to me this display of dispassionate spiritual emptiness was simply repulsive. I actually felt threatened by it. Perhaps I still do?
Um, I mean, perhaps feelings of worry and threat appear across vista of a self-aware field of babbling consciousness?
It's funny you say that we always said my husband must have been a buddist monk in a past life because he has no desires, no passions, no pain even, "no distortions" as the marriage therapist literally said years ago. He is/was just happy enough, content, nothing bugs him. He actually describes himself as a non-playable character as if this were a video game. He just is and it is but he's happy.
At the time of marriage counselling it made me feel extremely alone with all my pain and baggage because he couldn't even begin to relate. Couldn't empathize even if he wanted to. Sometimes it is nice to have someone go into your pain with you and help you up but he couldn't. Now as I am healing I find I am becoming more detached, even from this identity as a finite self. I don't have many desires beyond the moment. One or two maybe. I think to most people though I would now be considered boring lifestyle wise as I no longer need much.
I still have some passions though for those I love. Not all of us are cut out to be monk level detached.
It's interesting though how you experienced them. I was so busted up when I met my husband at 17( him also 17)that his lack of distortions felt extremely safe to me. I knew he wouldn't hurt me further and I had no more threshold for further catalyst.
Once I had healed a bit though it bothered me greatly, like the monks bothered you. Now I get it, but only recently. lol
I'm certainly not monk level detached except a moment or two ever few months lol but at least from where I stand now I understand it.
In meditation and communing with all that is I often take off the mask of glow and speak as one with them refering to glows life in 3rd person. I can shift it a little at a time. I am not sure where my perfect balance is for that in this life but it is an interesting experience.
Thanks for sharing your experience, it gives perspective.
I never interacted with the guys in orange, but saw them for a time at close range through a window. Perhaps, had we spoken, I would have discovered that they enjoyed some basic human characteristics?
It's funny how differently an older and a younger self view the apparent near absence of a personal agenda on the faces of those fellows. In my early years when I was full of impulses and plans, it struck me as tragic that they seemed to have had a personality-ectomy. But now it feels much different. Now I'm more in sync with their general groove. Then I was focused on self-directed doing, now I mainly interested in tuning my vibration: combing out the harsh areas and slowly making it more true to what I identify internally is purity of spirit.