10-22-2010, 03:58 PM
Those who have responded to this thread, you are all incredible people. Your consistent orientation keeps the fire burning bright.
Reading this thread, a question about the validity of all personal experience rises to the top of my mind.
Among those with a broad range of study and experience, there is an understanding of the subjectivity, malleability, and personal nature of reality. The further I have gone along the path, the more I have iota by iota chipped away at the tendency towards judging that which is outside of my web of perceptions. In so doing, I believe I have become more open-minded, more able to accept the validity of ones assertions for themselves.
And in theory, I feel like I can and should be able to greet everyone's perceptions with the same legitimacy I view many of my own - regardless of whether or not I agree with them - especially when I take the illusory nature of all outer forms into account along with an understanding that the universe is infinite and we are all things.
But then I am confronted with a tale such as has been presented here, and I experience a conflict similar to what I believe many or most of you undergo in this and similar situations, well captured in Ali's post:
There is a conflict between wanting to embrace all perspectives as valid and equal, especially in light of the knowledge of how provincial our own understanding is, but wanting to reject that which flies in the face of everything we know to be true.
In this particular thread, I do feel as others have stated, that GW is consciously fabricating this tale for purposes of self or potentially other-self humor. But when the far-fetched is presented as "true"...
I don't think open-mindedness extends forever. I think that boundaries must be drawn somewhere. Generally speaking, the further out those boundaries are and the less they interfere with loving the other self and seeing the Creator within them, the better.
But there must be a point when an entity departs from healthy, stable reality and rather than transcend circumstance into higher states of awareness which go beyond the body, instead regresses into some pathology or way of viewing the world which adds rather than decreases distortion.
Let's say that I was 100% sincere and told you all that I was currently existing as a french fry and described my tale of moving through opening and closing enamel rows of white blocks to be covered in liquids dissolving my form to be passed down a tube and into a sack of gastric hell. While it might prove quite an interesting yarn, and while philosophically speaking I, the entity, am the french fry in a universe of unity, would even the most open-minded indulge my delusion?
Please, I am not saying that anyone should have responded differently here! I love you all for expressing doubt without the slightest shadow cast over the love in your heart. I only wish to make the point that even open-mindedness must have its boundaries somewhere.
Perhaps nothing is "impossible" in this universe, but there must be some basis for sorting between the more and the less distorted.
I don't have the definitive answer... just the question. : )
KYAYBC,
GLB
Reading this thread, a question about the validity of all personal experience rises to the top of my mind.
Among those with a broad range of study and experience, there is an understanding of the subjectivity, malleability, and personal nature of reality. The further I have gone along the path, the more I have iota by iota chipped away at the tendency towards judging that which is outside of my web of perceptions. In so doing, I believe I have become more open-minded, more able to accept the validity of ones assertions for themselves.
And in theory, I feel like I can and should be able to greet everyone's perceptions with the same legitimacy I view many of my own - regardless of whether or not I agree with them - especially when I take the illusory nature of all outer forms into account along with an understanding that the universe is infinite and we are all things.
But then I am confronted with a tale such as has been presented here, and I experience a conflict similar to what I believe many or most of you undergo in this and similar situations, well captured in Ali's post:
Quote:Also, I'll just be honest, I'm having some trouble with discernment. I have seen and heard many many crazy things. But your story goes above and beyond all of it. I have nothing to compare it to but to just reject it because of that doesn't seem right either.
There is a conflict between wanting to embrace all perspectives as valid and equal, especially in light of the knowledge of how provincial our own understanding is, but wanting to reject that which flies in the face of everything we know to be true.
In this particular thread, I do feel as others have stated, that GW is consciously fabricating this tale for purposes of self or potentially other-self humor. But when the far-fetched is presented as "true"...
I don't think open-mindedness extends forever. I think that boundaries must be drawn somewhere. Generally speaking, the further out those boundaries are and the less they interfere with loving the other self and seeing the Creator within them, the better.
But there must be a point when an entity departs from healthy, stable reality and rather than transcend circumstance into higher states of awareness which go beyond the body, instead regresses into some pathology or way of viewing the world which adds rather than decreases distortion.
Let's say that I was 100% sincere and told you all that I was currently existing as a french fry and described my tale of moving through opening and closing enamel rows of white blocks to be covered in liquids dissolving my form to be passed down a tube and into a sack of gastric hell. While it might prove quite an interesting yarn, and while philosophically speaking I, the entity, am the french fry in a universe of unity, would even the most open-minded indulge my delusion?
Please, I am not saying that anyone should have responded differently here! I love you all for expressing doubt without the slightest shadow cast over the love in your heart. I only wish to make the point that even open-mindedness must have its boundaries somewhere.
Perhaps nothing is "impossible" in this universe, but there must be some basis for sorting between the more and the less distorted.
I don't have the definitive answer... just the question. : )
KYAYBC,
GLB
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but love unexplained is clearer. - Rumi