09-14-2017, 04:34 PM
Jim's point about thinking he was pursuing that path of the open heart is really important. I don't think I did anything to open my heart; like Jim, it happened to me. Choice enters in when we diligently lay the groundwork for a new balance by feeling emotions deeply, I believe, and kind of showing the heart that it's safe to come out. One can also create space in the mind for new, fresh thinking to have room. But the heart emerges in it's own time, I suppose.
I'm glad that Austin and other expanded on the way that irresponsible use of thought hampers our ability to feel. This is a brand spanking new idea for me in my spiritual journey, so important that it makes the preceding 20 years of seeking feel like I was doing it in black and white.
With respect to Buddhism, I really am a n00b, I should make that clear. But I think there's something I never understood about the detachment that's so integral to practicing Buddhism. I used to think that detachment was an overcoming or ignoring of catalyst in order to not let it affect you. Now I think I totally misunderstood it, and I suspect many have the misconception I had. From my reading it's much more about letting catalyst affect you directly and completely so that you aren't addicted to the idea that everything needs to be settled, resolved, worked out and tied up with a bow. You get used to the ambiguity and sometimes up, sometimes down nature of phenomenal, third density reality and don't tie your sense of rightness and wrongness to the whimsy of mood or circumstance. That is a much truer and human detachment, where we're not detaching from experience but instead detaching from our expectations, our need for experience to always be a certain way, our way.
I'm glad that Austin and other expanded on the way that irresponsible use of thought hampers our ability to feel. This is a brand spanking new idea for me in my spiritual journey, so important that it makes the preceding 20 years of seeking feel like I was doing it in black and white.
With respect to Buddhism, I really am a n00b, I should make that clear. But I think there's something I never understood about the detachment that's so integral to practicing Buddhism. I used to think that detachment was an overcoming or ignoring of catalyst in order to not let it affect you. Now I think I totally misunderstood it, and I suspect many have the misconception I had. From my reading it's much more about letting catalyst affect you directly and completely so that you aren't addicted to the idea that everything needs to be settled, resolved, worked out and tied up with a bow. You get used to the ambiguity and sometimes up, sometimes down nature of phenomenal, third density reality and don't tie your sense of rightness and wrongness to the whimsy of mood or circumstance. That is a much truer and human detachment, where we're not detaching from experience but instead detaching from our expectations, our need for experience to always be a certain way, our way.
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