Religion closest to the Law of One in STO practice

[Stranger]

Jainism, of course.

Concern for, and non-violence toward all living beings.

The entire article is worth reading.

[Jeremy]

Pretty sure plants are living beings also so that whole nonviolence towards living beings through vegetarianism is a paradox

Guess I should have read more of the article lol. Pretty cool to say the least

[Stranger]

Hierarchy of living beings on basis of senses
Jainism divides living beings on the basis of their sensory organs (indriya) and vitalities or life force (praṇa). Accordingly, the higher the number of senses and vitalities a being has, the more is its capacity to suffer and feel pain. Hence according to Jainism, violence to higher-sensed beings like man, cow, tiger and those who have five senses and the capacity to think and feel pain attracts more karma than violence to lesser-sensed beings like insects, or single-sensed beings like microbes and plants. Hence Jainism enjoins its adherents to completely avoid violence to higher-sensed beings and as far as possible minimise violence to lower-sensed and single-sensed beings.

[...]

Strict Jains don’t eat root vegetables such as potatoes, onions, roots and tubers. This is so because tiny life forms are injured when the plant is pulled up and because the bulb is seen as a living being, as it is able to sprout. Also, consumption of most root vegetables involves uprooting and killing the entire plant, in contrast to consumption of most other terrestrial vegetables, upon which the plant lives on after plucking the vegetables (or it was seasonally supposed to wither away anyway). Mushrooms, Fungus and Yeasts are forbidden because they are parasites, grow in non-hygienic environments and may harbour other life forms. Alfalfa is the only known plant that contains vitamin D2, which they may use directly or make vitamin D2 supplements from. Honey is forbidden, as its collection would amount to violence against the bees.

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I actually find it quite amazing that Jains have been aware of the existence of invisible microbes for thousands of years, while here in the West physicians who suggested that their colleagues should wash their hands lest they infect their patients less than 200 years ago were ridiculed and ostracized.

[APeacefulWarrior]

The problem with comparing LOO and any specific religion is that both the goals and methods are on totally different levels. Reduction of personal negative karma is really only a small part of the equation. Personal growth, understanding, and actualization are the closest thing to "goals" under the LOO, or at least in terms of graduating densities. What a person chooses to eat is going to have fairly minimal effect on all that, unless it's accompanied by serious lifelong contemplation of the philosophical principles.

This would certainly be ONE path for someone who's strongly polarized positive, but this isn't stuff you can really "minmax." Someone heading off to join the world's most pacifist religion won't necessarily make them any more positive unless it's a move that right for them, in their lives. Otherwise, there are innumerable other paths that would also lead\keep someone on the STO side, if that's what they want.

In a worse case scenario, someone forcing themselves into such a life and hating it would likely end up catalyzing more negative than positive.

Also, there's the long view here: Per Ra's descriptions, 6D entities who stayed strongly polarized positive for most of their existence have a much harder time graduating to 7D, and will sometimes do sudden heel turns specifically because they need negative experiences to be able to grasp 7D existence. So a life spent in pursuit of pure nonviolence could just as easily then necessitate a later life devoted to utter brutality.

I mean, if someone feels strongly drawn to such a life style, by all means... It's probably something they need, for whatever reason as it relates to their own growth. But someone who doesn't go "Gosh YES, that's the life for me!" may not be doing themselves any favors by trying to force themselves into it anyway.

Seriously, follow the path the feels right. There's no best or worst here. Just experience and learning and teaching and growth.

[Reaper]

I think I'm going to make my own religion.

[Stranger]

 Per Ra's descriptions, 6D entities who stayed strongly polarized positive for most of their existence have a much harder time graduating to 7D, and will sometimes do sudden heel turns specifically because they need negative experiences to be able to grasp 7D existence.   So a life spent in pursuit of pure nonviolence could just as easily then necessitate a later life devoted to utter brutality.

Can you find the quotes to that effect?  I don't seem to recall this from my reading.

[Lighthead]

 Per Ra's descriptions, 6D entities who stayed strongly polarized positive for most of their existence have a much harder time graduating to 7D, and will sometimes do sudden heel turns specifically because they need negative experiences to be able to grasp 7D existence.   So a life spent in pursuit of pure nonviolence could just as easily then necessitate a later life devoted to utter brutality.

Can you find the quotes to that effect?  I don't seem to recall this from my reading.

He's not going to provide them. I've tried to ask him to back his stuff up with Ra quotes too.

[Aion]

I guess so, there are various religions with lots of close ideas to the Law of One. Tibetan Buddhism, especially in its Tantras is incredibly close to the Law of One. Shaivism in some forms is incredibly close to the Law of One. Sufism also has a lot of good ideas as well.

Concern for and non-violence towards living beings is a fundamental of numerous eastern religions. In the western occultism it is seen more modernly by such mottos as "Do as thou wilt, but harm none."

I think any path that is potentially striving towards positive polarization will have this element.

[APeacefulWarrior]

Gee, thanks for not even waiting an hour before declaring that I wasn't going to respond, Lighthead.  If I overlooked a reply from you in the past, I apologize, but that's not much of an excuse for being so rude.

Anyway.

This is a subtext to quite a lot of Ra's comments about balancing, especially before 7th Density.  He never came out and said it in a single quote, but I believe it's pretty clear from context.

First, more polarized a being gets, the easier it is to change polarities. While not stated, this would certainly imply that it happens with regularity. That which is easy is virtually always common.

19.18 Questioner: I assume that an entity on either path can decide to choose paths at any time and possibly retrace steps, the path-changing being more difficult the farther along is gone. Is this correct?
Ra: I am Ra. This is incorrect. The further an entity has, what you would call, polarized, the more easily this entity may change polarity, for the more power and awareness the entity will have.

As for timespans, while this query was on a slightly different topic, he establishes very clearly that it often takes a long time for a positively-polarized entity to learn love of self (STS) when placed in a position that it needs to:

69.11 Questioner: Can you tell me of the situation that the Wanderer finds itself in and why the path back cannot be the simple moving back into the same value of positive time/space?
Ra: I am Ra. The path back revolves, firstly, about the higher self’s reluctance to enter negative space/time. This may be a significant part of the length of that path. Secondly, when a positively oriented entity incarnates in a thoroughly negative environment it must needs learn/teach the lessons of the love of self thus becoming one with its other-selves.

When this has been accomplished the entity may then choose to release the potential difference and change polarities.

However, the process of learning the accumulated lessons of love of self may be quite lengthy. Also the entity, in learning these lessons, may lose much positive orientation during the process and the choice of reversing polarities may be delayed until the mid-sixth density. All of this is, in your way of measurement, time-consuming although the end result is well.

Also: Notice that he outright states that it's necessary for the Wanderer in this position to learn Love-of-Self as a way of embracing its other selves. They are STS, so the Wanderer must become STS to be able to embrace them as other-selves. I see no reason to think this situation would be different in different situations. How else COULD someone learn to embrace STS as other-selves without knowing the STS experience for themselves?

And that knowledge of both positive AND negative is needed for 7D transition is absolutely implicit in the materials, although I'm not sure if Ra ever says it so bluntly.  The Creator is in all things, and enjoys all things that his creations enjoy.  To join in unity, an entity would have to be able to do the same.

16.22 Questioner: Thank you very much. In previous material, before we communicated with you, it was stated by the Confederation that there is actually no past or future… all is present. Would this be a good analogy?
Ra: I am Ra. There is past, present, and future in third density. In an overview such as an entity may have, removed from the space/time continuum, it may be seen that in the cycle of completion there exists only the present. We, ourselves, seek to learn this understanding. At the seventh level or dimension, we shall, if our humble efforts are sufficient, become one with all, thus having no memory, no identity, no past or future, but existing in the all.

In the Creator is all that there is.  To merge with the Creator, a 6D entity has to be able to accept\enjoy\love every activity in existence.  Including the negative ones.  The Creator thrills whenever a creation thrills, whether it's from orgasm or murder. The Creator loves being sheep and wolf equally, in all things.  7D is the density of unity - the abandonment of polarities.  That includes the abandonment of the idea that any activity is any less deserving of love than any other.

So, a highly-positive 6D entity is going to have to have knowledge of negativity to be able to have that love for the negative as well as the positive. It needs to know love-of-self just as much as love-of-other.  This would be a necessary pre-requisite to shedding polarity entirely.   A purely positive path will only get an entity as far as 6D, and its knowledge of negativity is going to have to come from somewhere.

There's no karmically clean path through existence, as human philosophies reckon such things. An entity might attempt to devote a life (or other incarnative cycle) to one polarity or the other, but by the end of the road, they will have had plenty of experience with both.

But of course, that's just the big picture. When talking about an individual life, that's just about the entity and the choices/challenges they've made pre-incarnation that help dictate what sort of life they're going to (hope to) end up leading. It's not that I'm saying there's anything wrong the Jainist path, just that there's no OPTIMAL path. They all wind back and forth through both polarities, and they all end up at the same place: Unity.

[AnthroHeart]

Well that's good because I have about as much negativity in my life as I do positivity.

[Stranger]

APeacefulWarrior, I don't see how your quotes substantiate your position that all entities have to experience both paths. If that were the case, Ra would not be attempting to balance out the negative karma acquired by accidentally impinging upon this world in its efforts to help. Nowhere does it say or even imply that each entity has to walk both paths on the way to unity, and your argument that experiencing STS is required to love/accept STS is specious. Even here in 3D, I can perfectly well love and accept a murderer without needing to murder anyone myself.

It's perfectly fine to have whatever beliefs and understandings make the most sense to you. However, I think it's important, on a forum dedicated specifically to clarifying Ra's actual teaching, to not preface with "per Ra's descriptions" statements that are not found in Ra's descriptions.

[Aion]

At least two entities of Ra DID experience the negative path though, so Ra must have that experience in their complex of memories.

89.27 Questioner: Were some of Ra’s population negatively harvested at the end of Ra’s third density?

Ra: I am Ra. We had no negative harvest as such although there had been two entities which had harvested themselves during the third density in the negative or service-to-self path. There were, however, those upon the planetary surface during third density whose vibratory patterns were in the negative range but were not harvestable.

[Aion]

You all realize that once we become a social memory complex we will all have the complete experience of both paths available to us through our planetary mind, right? We just gotta work on unifying.

[AnthroHeart]

You all realize that once we become a social memory complex we will all have the complete experience of both paths available to us through our planetary mind, right? We just gotta work on unifying.

Then I won't have to keep asking questions. I will just know.

[APeacefulWarrior]

APeacefulWarrior, I don't see how your quotes substantiate your position that all entities have to experience both paths.

If not, then that leaves a lot of unanswered questions:

How could an entity learn to love STS entities as their own self, without having direct knowledge of STS life?  

How could an STO learn the love of blood and pain, without having experienced a love of blood and pain?  

And, not knowing that love, how could merge into unity with a Creator who does know such love, as well as all other loves?  

Because seriously, I just spent an hour compiling that post with quotes when requested, rather than going to bed.  If you believe I'm wrong, it's time for you to do some homework and find quotes that answer those questions in a way that's different from how I believe they are answered.  

But I really do not think you'll find that Ra said, anywhere, that an absolutely positive path will ever lead to Unity.  It's contradictory to the very idea.  God experiences ALL things, and God loves ALL things.  Full stop.  Ergo, an entity achieving Unity must also love ALL things.  Even the nasty ones involving screaming and viscera.   It's not exactly enjoyable for most of us to think about about how much the Creator loves the rapists and the murderers, as well as their activities... but he does. Just as he loves everyone\everything else.

That's abandonment of polarity. That's Unity.

[Stranger]

Again, APW, it doesn't say anywhere that I've seen that each entity has to become all things. Rather, each entity has to -- exactly as you said -- accept and love all that is. In fact, each entity's job is to provide a unique strand of lived experience that adds on to that of every other entity, in an infinite creation. It is precisely the uniqueness of each entity's experience that is so valued. As Tan.rar has pointed out, when all blends back into unity, the experiences of each entity are combined into the total sum of experience available to the Creator to draw on in understanding itself. Therefore, there is no need to be all things - but rather, to accept and love. It's not necessary to love blood and pain - but only to love the entities who love blood and pain. That's easy - we can do it right here in 3D. I can't find the quote offhand, but I do recall Ra saying explicitly that the third density is the density of choice, and the remaining densities are devoted to refining the choice that has been made.

Thank you for the time you invested in finding those quotes, and for participating in this discussion.

[Nicholas]

The best listeners make the best practitioners in my experience. Religious orientation to me is akin to what colour curtains you prefer. Every set distorts the light somewhat. Seeing through and beyond these surface preferences has helped me in my own pursuit for truth, yet on any given day I sometimes feel hopelessly confused. Objective assertions are inevitably tinted by our own internal biases and distortions. If we can galvanise our focus on the truth and allow love to light our path, I don't think we will stray too far from it.

[APeacefulWarrior]

Well that's good because I have about as much negativity in my life as I do positivity.

A lot of Ra's comments on the subject of catalysts are relevant here. The TL;DR as I read it is simply that there will unavoidably be a huge amount of both positive and negative catalysts/experiences during an incarnation, especially here on Earth during Harvest-time. The experiences themselves matter far less than how the entity chooses to process/interpret/polarize them.

While you-the-incarnation are in some ways bound by the choices made before entering this life, it's still entirely within YOUR ability to choose whether you polarize towards positive or negative. Your reactions to the events that happen to you -what you think about them, how you act afterwards- will be what shift your polarity either way. Through mindfulness, meditation, and other practices aimed at understanding one's self in context of the world, this deliberate polarization of the catalysts/experiences can be accelerated.

If you seek to be a more loving, giving person, then try to be mindful of your actions and BE the person you want to become. Don't focus on the setbacks, focus on times when you can look back and think, "Hey, I was really loving just then" and know it's true and not just wishful thinking.

Or if your goal is negativity, it's quite easy to sit and stew and let your anger simmer until it becomes the source of your powers and inspirations.

Ra gives a very detailed description of all this in 50.5:

50.5 Questioner: Will you give that?
Ra: I am Ra. We paused to scan this instrument’s consciousness for permission to use its experiential catalyst as example. We may proceed.

This is one instance and extrapolation may be made to other entities which are aware of the process of evolution. This entity chose, before incarnation, the means whereby catalyst had great probability of being obtained. This entity desired the process of expressing love and light without expecting any return. This instrument programmed also to endeavor to accomplish spiritual work and to comfort itself with companionship in the doing of this work.

Agreements were made prior to incarnation; the first, with the so-called parents and siblings of this entity. This provided the experiential catalyst for the situation of offering radiance of being without expectation of return. The second program involved agreements with several entities. These agreements provided and will provide, in your time/space and space/time continuum, opportunities for the experiential catalyst of work and comradeship.

There are events which were part of a program for this entity only in that they were possibility/probability vortices having to do with your societal culture. These events include the nature of the living or standard of living, the type of relationships entered into in your legal framework, and the social climate during the incarnation. The incarnation was understood to be one which would take place at harvest.

These givens, shall we say, apply to millions of your peoples, those aware of evolution and desirous in the very extreme of attaining the heart of love and the radiance which gives understanding. No matter what the lessons programmed, they have to do with other-selves, not with events. They have to do with giving, not receiving, for the lessons of love are of this nature both for positive and negative. Those negatively harvestable will be found at this time endeavoring to share their love of self.

There are those whose lessons are more random due to their present inability to comprehend the nature and mechanism of the evolution of mind, body, and spirit. Of these we may say that the process is guarded by those who never cease their watchful expectation of being of service. There is no entity without help, either through self-awareness of the unity of creation or through guardians of the self which protect the less sophisticated mind/body/spirit from any permanent separation from unity while the lessons of your density continue.

(And, of course, there's nothing stopping those "more random" people from waking up and taking control of their polarization either...)