Reagarding Faith......

[Sacred Fool]

  
I expect this will be a very brief thread, but as an experiment, as an endeavour to resolve a mystery, I will put out the question: Is it possible here to have a discussion of faith without, instead, blabbering voluminously about belief?  Can faith be honored faithfully without the thread becoming a depository for credos and personal ideological speculation?  I ask this because this forum is entitled, in part, "Spiritual Developement," and there's not a whole lot more important in that department than faith.  And yet, these pages are heavily crowded with speculation and received dogma while being a bit light, in my view, on matters of inner communion with Divinity in one form or another.

It may be that very few of us have any faith substantial enough to mention, and if that's the case, then the mystery of why such discussion is so scant is easily solved.  Otherwise, I would heartily welcome here conversation on this particular topic.

So. how shall we define the distinction between faith and belief?  I offer you Q'uo's point of view.

Faith is often misunderstood among your peoples for they confuse faith with belief. Belief is always belief in something--perhaps a creed or a system of tenets that form a dogmatic system. A believer believes specific points or speaks to a specific creed.

Faith, on the other hand, has no content. It contains no knowledge. It is an attitude. It is the attitude that knows beyond doubt, regardless of the circumstances, that all is well. And the entity who is living a life in faith cannot be daunted by circumstance. Faith is an attitude which assumes that the infinite Creator, the higher self, and that self which planned this incarnation before taking flesh have provided ample opportunities for learning and for service, sometimes involved in learning is suffering. Sometimes there is sorrow and pain, yet one living a life in faith knows that that which is happening is perfect. It is precisely what is needed to advance spiritually and to be of service. Consequently, such an entity cooperates and harmonizes with circumstance and allows creativity and imagination to play a part in the flowing forward of events.

Faith does not recognize closed doors. Faith abides, patiently, trustingly and with infinite attention. For there shall come those hints, inklings and information from spirit that shall illuminate the situation within the present moment. And this faith is that which shall serve you well, my brother, as you learn to listen to and communicate with your guidance system.

Personally, I find this a gorgeous passage, and one which gives a simple, yet eloquent description of a spiritually well balanced relationship with life.  Do I "believe" it?  Yeah, I suppose, but more to the point I find that it resonates deeply in such a way that I can sense Spirit through its clarified vibrations.  I can feel multiple aspects of my energetic mosaic-of-self line up with one another to gesture that this verity resonates in their hearts, and it is good.

Whither does your faith lead you?  Where do you feel it?  What proportion of the day and night do you commune with it?  Is it just a peripheral concept floating in the breeze, or is it as central central to you as your spine?
  
  

[BrotherInWaiting]

Perhaps were we to commune in faith, there would be no talking! Or, it could be about the weather or some goofy video just as much as it could be about God or the Egyptians or the light.

On your initial point -- I don't know what to make of this forum yet, but am happy it's here, even if it's strange.

[Sacred Fool]

I don't call anything that I think faith. It's important to me to balance logic and emotion and spiritual pursuits with your physical orientation. I am not a follower. I will not walk a plank in faith to anyone or anything.

Just for the sake of clarity, the point in the OP is that faith is not, and cannot be, supported by logic.  Faith is a different animal altogether.  It is about communion with life as an Earth being concurrent with beingness beyond this world. 
Logic is a tool only of this world.  For example, once you enter a dream or other realms of deep consciousness, logic has very limited value.  Faith, in these realms, is a far better friend and guide.

Faith/belief is in my opinion is the attitude that you couldn't be wrong.

How do you distinguish this from mere arrogance?

Infinitely beating heart of the creator

https://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthre...?tid=18226
One Universal Mind
https://bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=18190

The holy ghost or ruh is the epitome of Sahaja Yoga. You feel a cool sensation on your palms and your head. It is your energy vortices unblocked and balanced completely. This isn't possible in my opinion if the palm chakras are neglected like they are in most meditations.

http://sahajayogaencyclopedia.org/index.php?title=Ruh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rūḥ

"To attain Tajalli ar-rūḥ, (the ultimate manifestation of divine truth in the human soul) the Salik (Sufi aspirant), must cultivate the following 13 spiritual qualities or virtuous practices, thus facilitating the gradual awakening in order of the various centres or subtle plexuses of his/her jism latif (subtle body).
Irādah or Commitment to God
Istiqāmah or Steadfastness in the way with God
Hāya or Shame in committing evil
Ḥurīyyah or Freedom: Ibrahim Bin Adham said, "A free man is one who abandons the world before he leaves the world". Yaḥyā Bin Maz said, "Those who serve the people of the world are slaves, and those who serve the people of ʾĀkhirah are the free ones". Abū ʿAlī Daqāq said, "Remember, real freedom is in total obedience. Therefore if someone has total obedience in God, he will be free from the slavery of non God"

Are these items of your experience or are they merely thoughts to you?  If they are merely thoughts, then how much depth, how much value can they have?
 
 

[Sacred Fool]

This forum exists to assist in the unfolding of a 14 level density vibrational energy complex hologram in the context of an Egyptian social memory complex

Uh, dude, guess what?  This thread is about faith.  Please respect this intention and do not crowd it with tangential third party propaganda.  Thank you.
 
 

[Sacred Fool]

Perhaps were we to commune in faith, there would be no talking! Or, it could be about the weather or some goofy video just as much as it could be about God or the Egyptians or the light.

On your initial point -- I don't know what to make of this forum yet, but am happy it's here, even if it's strange.

Welcome aboard, BIW.  In some sense, like life, these forums are what you make of them.  And I'm not sure what to make of either one yet either, myself.

And if you think these forums are strange, then you should meet the moderators!!
  
  

[Navaratna]

I don't call anything that I think faith. It's important to me to balance logic and emotion and spiritual pursuits with your physical orientation. I am not a follower. I will not walk a plank in faith to anyone or anything.

Faith/belief is in my opinion is the attitude that you couldn't be wrong.

How do you distinguish this from mere arrogance?

Infinitely beating heart of the creator

https://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthre...?tid=18226
One Universal Mind
https://bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=18190

The holy ghost or ruh is the epitome of Sahaja Yoga. You feel a cool sensation on your palms and your head. It is your energy vortices unblocked and balanced completely. This isn't possible in my opinion if the palm chakras are neglected like they are in most meditations.

http://sahajayogaencyclopedia.org/index.php?title=Ruh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rūḥ

"To attain Tajalli ar-rūḥ, (the ultimate manifestation of divine truth in the human soul) the Salik (Sufi aspirant), must cultivate the following 13 spiritual qualities or virtuous practices, thus facilitating the gradual awakening in order of the various centres or subtle plexuses of his/her jism latif (subtle body).
Irādah or Commitment to God
Istiqāmah or Steadfastness in the way with God
Hāya or Shame in committing evil
Ḥurīyyah or Freedom: Ibrahim Bin Adham said, "A free man is one who abandons the world before he leaves the world". Yaḥyā Bin Maz said, "Those who serve the people of the world are slaves, and those who serve the people of ʾĀkhirah are the free ones". Abū ʿAlī Daqāq said, "Remember, real freedom is in total obedience. Therefore if someone has total obedience in God, he will be free from the slavery of non God"

Are these items of your experience or are they merely thoughts to you?  If they are merely thoughts, then how much depth, how much value can they have?
 
 

These are experiences. The ideas written there relate to my experience. I bet plenty of people can relate to seeing a world of slaves, some willing and many unwilling.

I have felt the cool breeze on my palms flowing freely multiple times. Probably the most pronounced was when I was holding a clear quartz with green tourmaline inclusions in one hand with open palms, and another 6 inch tall piece of green/black tourmaline in my right hand facing a body of water and meditating for an extended period of time. It was very pronounced. It is what you feel when your rays are cleared.

I have been in classes with people practicing Sahaja meditation for the first time and them remarking on the unexplainable sensation of heat on their palms from a lifetime of absorbing negativity without proper outlets, only to one day awaken their kundalini [spiritual evolution] and be amazed that it shows them a sensory form of E.S.P. The hostility they absorb on an underlying level from people, whether ones they simply walked by on an open street or from people they shared angry homes/work[etc..] and having it purified/burned out of them.

To me homeostasis, a balanced vibratory complex, and Sahaj samadhi are all the same thing.

They are different names used to describe an identical concept.
more examples of the meaning of sahaja yoga
https://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthre...?tid=18215


"Just for the sake of clarity, the point in the OP is that faith is not, and cannot be, supported by logic. Faith is a different animal altogether. It is about communion with life as an Earth being concurrent with beingness beyond this world.
Logic is a tool only of this world. For example, once you enter a dream or other realms of deep consciousness, logic has very limited value. Faith, in these realms, is a far better friend and guide."

In my experience giving up the desire to control where the mind is going is the way to unplug what would otherwise be freely flowing energy.

Having a mental construct interferes. Trying to determine being right or wrong, faithful or faithless or holding on to these attitudes is attachment when ego death essentially means dissolving the idea of any fixed mode of being.

[Asolsutsesvyl]

It may be that very few of us have any faith substantial enough to mention, and if that's the case, then the mystery of why such discussion is so scant is easily solved. Otherwise, I would heartily welcome here conversation on this particular topic.

So. how shall we define the distinction between faith and belief? I offer you Q'uo's point of view.

[...]

Whither does your faith lead you? Where do you feel it? What proportion of the day and night do you commune with it? Is it just a peripheral concept floating in the breeze, or is it as central central to you as your spine?

I would say it has grown over a period of years. But initially, it was like something smaller within something larger, cultivated through effort and focus. Leading to an inner transition I cannot describe usefully. Half a decade later, it is more like a background to inner experience, while all the rest usually takes attention from the background when present.

Usually, I do not think in terms of faith, so it was useful to have it pointed towards in such a way.

Rationally, I do not see my life going in any particular direction, and don't find it particularly sensible or meaningful. Faith may be a good word for what makes the difference between feeling bad about life seeming to go nowhere, and somehow feeling quite differently and not heavily while seeing the same thing. I mean a calm lightness which is not a numbness, but replaces the heaviest feelings all the same.

[Jeremy]

This is absolutely the most difficult aspect of the material yet, I would say, the most basic as well which yet again we find ourselves in a paradox. This illusion is so complex and well designed by ways of the veil that I find it practically impossible to stay within the mindset that all is truly well. To have that faith and steadfast attitude in every waking moment seems unattainable in my eyes though I'll freely admit that it's due to a lack of discipline more than anything else.

Yet despite the lack of discipline, I have the belief that we aren't meant to perfect this ability anyways. As they say, 3rd density is meant to begin to learn the ways of love, not perfect it.

Yet when I mention discipline, I find myself circling back to the difference you originally mentioned between belief and faith. Does discipline have more to do with faith or belief or is it more causality? Does belief begin the process then once the discipline has been honed turn into faith based upon the constant work upon the self? Or can you wholeheartedly have faith without the work at all?

[Navaratna]

It may be that very few of us have any faith substantial enough to mention, and if that's the case, then the mystery of why such discussion is so scant is easily solved.  Otherwise, I would heartily welcome here conversation on this particular topic.

So. how shall we define the distinction between faith and belief?  I offer you Q'uo's point of view.

[...]

Whither does your faith lead you?  Where do you feel it?  What proportion of the day and night do you commune with it?  Is it just a peripheral concept floating in the breeze, or is it as central central to you as your spine?

I would say it has grown over a period of years. But initially, it was like something smaller within something larger, cultivated through effort and focus. Leading to an inner transition I cannot describe usefully. Half a decade later, it is more like a background to inner experience, while all the rest usually takes attention from the background when present.

Usually, I do not think in terms of faith, so it was useful to have it pointed towards in such a way.

Rationally, I do not see my life going in any particular direction, and don't find it particularly sensible or meaningful. Faith may be a good word for what makes the difference between feeling bad about life seeming to go nowhere, and somehow feeling quite differently and not heavily while seeing the same thing. I mean a calm lightness which is not a numbness, but replaces the heaviest feelings all the same.

I think finding meaning in life develops out of the idea that all systems seek connectivity.

Think of how many more people there are than 500 or 100 years ago, and all the energy that went in to connecting continents with seafaring vessels and now telecommunications in the past few decades.

It's a tendency of all systems, living or non-living.

That last part of your message kind of sounds funny to me because I remember how I was years ago with this understanding..it's nothing new to me.
homeostasis=balanced vibratory complex=Sahaj samadhi

I remember one time I tried explaining my perspective to someone younger than me and he mocked me for saying something like 'I seek an equilibrium with my surrounding environment.' He started as imitating me like repeating what I said like in an auto-robot text speech app.

Once you understand it this way, the Ra materially is practically finished in terms of it's practical purpose. Graduate through the densities/balance your vibrations. Ok...so you understand. Now...trying hard to convince people of your way of thinking is a complete waste of time for the most part in my opinion. That is oftentimes what people hate about religion.

OH WAIT I MIGHT NOT BE SOUNDING SPIRITUAL ENOUGH! Sorry peregrine

I'm joking...but
...lol it doesn't need to sound so mystical. It's awareness of the nature of vibration.

Once you understand you don't ascend to heaven you just become a more chill person. What exactly else is there you should want? The only thing left to do is find people who agree with you and put the understanding in to practice unless you want to go tell your neighbors and community at large about the incredible channelings of an Egyptian social memory complex and have them murmuring amongst each other about if you need to be put in a straitjacket.

Coming across as a boring or average person doesn't matter at all. A person free of bias wouldn't be very controversial or exciting.
It's not your job to be a circus act on a unicycle once you're 'enlightened'... to keep people entertained and inflating your ego.

[Navaratna]

This is absolutely the most difficult aspect of the material yet, I would say, the most basic as well which yet again we find ourselves in a paradox. This illusion is so complex and well designed by ways of the veil that I find it practically impossible to stay within the mindset that all is truly well. To have that faith and steadfast attitude in every waking moment seems unattainable in my eyes though I'll freely admit that it's due to a lack of discipline more than anything else.

Yet despite the lack of discipline, I have the belief that we aren't meant to perfect this ability anyways. As they say, 3rd density is meant to begin to learn the ways of love, not perfect it.

Yet when I mention discipline, I find myself circling back to the difference you originally mentioned between belief and faith. Does discipline have more to do with faith or belief or is it more causality? Does belief begin the process then once the discipline has been honed turn into faith based upon the constant work upon the self? Or can you wholeheartedly have faith without the work at all?

It goes back to dualism and ego-bias. If you choose to prefer to think a certain way, you have put yourself in a trap. Mental silence and powering down the body during meditation is a method developed to experience reality without filters rather than modifying it and pushing your own slant on bearing witness to the way everything is.

I have never once thought of faith as something useful in understanding spirituality from an intellectual standpoint. Never. That puts in my mind the image of a ditzy Christian chick that isn't used to dealing with real difficulties.

Maybe that will come across as insensitive, but I don't suspend reasoning because of my feelings about how I wish things were.

Bias, bias, bias is your number one enemy in recognizing intelligent infinity.

*gazing in to infinite light* yet...*squints* wait a minute what if that---what if that static is....*static intensifies*that thing that we were talking about early! *static deepens* am I supposed to have this other opinion? *points to fun-sized mirror* or this one? *shuts eye* I don't know...faith..or reason? Or do I believe? *grabs cross necklace*
__
No.

Maybe they should use a different word than faith in these readings. To each their own. Calling it something else that would suggest the same idea might be a better way for that message to resonate with me. It's just like how thinking of LOVING everyone would vibe a lot better with people if it was more communicated as "Have a positive, radiant, caring force toward everyone, enemies and friends alike" from the standpoint of it is the only way to cleanse evil. Loving everyone...lol. It'd help if the word in English for that didn't also mean being in bed with them.

[AnthroHeart]

If you have worked with God and felt him strongly and know he exists, is it still faith, or more a knowing?

[Asolsutsesvyl]

If you have worked with God and felt him strongly and know he exists, is it still faith, or more a knowing?

I'll generalize this a little, to something also part of my experience during the past years: having known/worked-with something otherworldly which has been personally related to as divine. The attitude towards that experience is best described as "a knowing", I think.

As for faith (as defined by Q'uo and peregrine) in relation to that experience, it plays two roles. Just before it all, faith reached a little peak. Later on, as a result of metaphorically being through heaven and hell, faith increased over time. Things which are heavy no longer weigh me down to the same extent, in the same way, even though every-day negativity is still as common in my life.

[AnthroHeart]

In reaching God to purify me, I had to make my field dense enough.

It is so dense that a painful 3/4" inch boil on my skin disappeared in one hour after my teacher cleared my meridians.
My field just dissolved it once the energy flowed.
The boil formed in 2 days due to blocked energy.

[Diana]

Personally, I don't resonate with either faith or belief. Beliefs are solidified mind constructs, and as such, block evolution of consciousness because no new information that conflicts with those beliefs will be absorbed or considered.

I think a problem with considering faith, aside from religions hijacking the word and perverting it, is the "all is well" addition. If you accept what is, rather than distort the acceptance by adding a condition (all is well), then it makes more sense to me.

There is an underlying connection to all, for lack of a better description, that one may feel. This connection is not, for me, a comprehension of everything being "well," or that everything will be for my own good, or that suffering will make sense and seem like a good thing at some point, or that sometime I will be with "the Creator," or I will end up in bliss somewhere out of the difficulties of 3D. All of these are conditions.

The connection rather, for me, is an acceptance of it all as it is out of the construct of time. There is a richness to existence that one can grasp at certain moments which blossoms into a feeling of great appreciation and humility. This acceptance is not based on some higher entity setting things in motion, or even myself as a higher being setting this life in motion, because I think everything is evolving all the time, simultaneously, like a big soup.

Accepting existence as it is, without putting the condition on it that all is well, allows one to flow with existence whatever it is. As Ra said, at some point, existence is "mystery clad" beyond a certain point. As everything evolves and changes, if one is accepting of the nature of the universe, one may work with it unimpeded by the underlying matrix of this existence.

I think the phrase  "all is well" has been hijacked in a similar manner as "faith." It implies that we shouldn't make judgments/discernments on conditions here, because it's all for our own good in the end. But I suggest that the view can be larger and less linear. Within the context of the whole, which may be thought of as Intelligent Infinity, all things just are, and in that sense, one may agree, or have faith that all things are what they are, and everything is. But to add the caveat that all is well, sounds like a human emotion or need thrown in, a condition that sounds like human judgment.

So, do I have faith and how does it work in my life? No, I don't have faith, but I do have acceptance. I also have an innate "knowing," for lack of a better word, that I as a being am limitless, but here in 3D I am limited by certain existential boundaries. According to Ra, one major boundary, namely the veil, is an experiment. I am not obligated by existence to think this experiment is okay just because ultimately all is well. This would signify that I am just a "victim" of whatever someone(thing) else decided was going to be an efficacious way to operate 3D. That goes against my grain. I can accept the nature of existence, but I do not have to agree with decisions other entities have made on my behalf. This is said with the comprehension that my current life is ephemeral, but it is still a life. And to me, all life matters, every life, and though fleeting it all still matters. Because if one thing matters, everything does.

It seems to me that entities must strike out on their own, while accepting and working with the matrix they find themselves within. The constant change and movement of manifested reality drives this evolution of consciousness.

In this context I feel faith can be a hampering mechanism to movement, as opposed to acceptance, which is a way of removing blockages to movement.

[flofrog]

I remember as a small child having faith as peregrine mentions in the beautiful Q'uo words. I think it was latent after but not relied on as logic took over.

today it feels so strong that everything seems in place all the time despite apparent chaos, it's like looking and listening to a lake in the evening, when things are dark and if a small boat passes by, wavelets come and then calmness comes back

[flofrog]

     I can feel multiple aspects of my energetic mosaic-of-self line up with one another to gesture that this verity resonates in their hearts, and it is good.


  

exactly so. just beautifully said

[Sacred Fool]

I remember as a small child having faith as peregrine mentions in the beautiful Q'uo words.  I think it was latent after but not relied on as logic took over.

today it feels so strong that everything seems in place all the time despite apparent chaos, it's like looking and listening to a lake in the evening, when things are dark and if a small boat passes by,  wavelets come and then calmness comes back

Most lovely!

Yes, the capacity to enjoy freely either of those general states (the logical and the emotionally encompassing) as circumstances allow also took me a long time to develope.

Personally, I don't resonate with either faith or belief. Beliefs are solidified mind constructs, and as such, block evolution of consciousness because no new information that conflicts with those beliefs will be absorbed or considered.

I think a problem with considering faith, aside from religions hijacking the word and perverting it, is the "all is well" addition. If you accept what is, rather than distort the acceptance by adding a condition (all is well), then it makes more sense to me.

I understand your point, Diana.  If "all is well" is believed to be a fact in real time, then one blocks opposite or contrasting experiences from one's consciousness.  And yet, as it is used here, the term has no basis in fact and is not logically derived; which is to say, it is actually NOT solidified and is not a mental construct. 

Instead, it's more like, after eating a refreshing bowl of ice cream on a hot day, when one feels inherent satisfaction, there is no mental construction needed: the satisfaction is just inherent in the experience.  Of course, when one experiences the vicissitudes of the outer world (where mentation plays a key role), this kind of satisfaction is not the most commonly felt response.  Yet, do you find, when tuning in below the waves of outer disturbance down into the deeper regions of self, that there is an inherent satisfaction there--not in the sense of escaping the outer world, but in the sense of feeling a bit closer to the warm center of Creation?  Isn't that what you sense when you purify and more deeply settle into your own experience of what you refer to as "acceptance?"   In that feeling of oceanic acceptance, is there not also a sense that--ahem--all is well.....or something similar to that?
 

If you have worked with God and felt him strongly and know he exists, is it still faith, or more a knowing?

In the sense of this discussion, to feel and know God is a knowing born of faith because such things can not be proven to the logical mind here on the surface of 3D.

This is absolutely the most difficult aspect of the material yet, I would say, the most basic as well which yet again we find ourselves in a paradox. This illusion is so complex and well designed by ways of the veil that I find it practically impossible to stay within the mindset that all is truly well. To have that faith and steadfast attitude in every waking moment seems unattainable in my eyes though I'll freely admit that it's due to a lack of discipline more than anything else.

I would see your first clause above and raise you one.  That is, I think this is one of the most difficult aspects, not just of the material, but of wandering here in 3D.  To have faith in every waking moment--and during sleep as well--is such a vital requisite for doing serious work in consciousness (deeply engaging many levels of self), and yet it is, oh, so challenging!

Yes, I think you're onto something with the idea of discipline, but maybe not in the sense of guarding over and goading yourself to move in the "correct" direction.  Perhaps the discipline is more about developing a habit of peripherally looking back at self in each present moment to see how deeply one is resonating with that deeper sense of self?  And when one notices that resonance could be deepened, then allowing it to drop a bit deeper into that area of self that doesn't think, but knows the world by knowing it self?  After all, we're here to know ourselves by seeing our reflection in 3D mirrors, right?  Then perhaps we also can know 3D by feeling it reflected in the still pool of our own depths?



[quote pid='277228' dateline='1589534417']
Asolsutsesvyl

I would say it has grown over a period of years. But initially, it was like something smaller within something larger, cultivated through effort and focus. Leading to an inner transition I cannot describe usefully. Half a decade later, it is more like a background to inner experience, while all the rest usually takes attention from the background when present.

Usually, I do not think in terms of faith, so it was useful to have it pointed towards in such a way.

Rationally, I do not see my life going in any particular direction, and don't find it particularly sensible or meaningful. Faith may be a good word for what makes the difference between feeling bad about life seeming to go nowhere, and somehow feeling quite differently and not heavily while seeing the same thing. I mean a calm lightness which is not a numbness, but replaces the heaviest feelings all the same.
[/quote]


"Believe" it or not, I "think" I can feel through the murkiness of your comment sufficiently to catch your drift.  What you describe reminds me of a frog egg in the mass of jelly (smaller thing in larger thing) which finally becomes a tadpole and swims around more or less randomly (without going anywhere) as it developes form (legs, head...I mean, deeper awareness of self on various levels).  Someday, my friend, you may grow up to be a frog.  In the meanwhile, your faith in the general process, some would say, is something worthy of your nurture and warmth.

Perhaps flofrog has further perspective to add?
 
  

[Navaratna]

All is one, no distortion in Ra's message

[Sacred Fool]

Something about the Law of One and Mccarty's commentary on it which doesn't make much sense to me is how the Tarot he said in recent interviews is something he wanted to remove the astrological symbolism from.

Uh...what? That to me shows how on a slight level, he alone didn't understand some underlying data he was channeling.

I don't know if you're read the Ra Material, but there are many times when the Questioner inquires about items like a group of stars and is told that these were superfluous decorations added later by another people and were not essential to the meaning encoded in the Tarot symbolism.  Jim McCarty's desire, as I understand it, is simply to strip the Tarot figures down to their essential elements because, after all, those things are confusing enough as it is without people having to puzzle over tangential elements.
  
  

[Navaratna]

Alright

[Sacred Fool]

To me homeostasis, a balanced vibratory complex, and Sahaj samadhi are all the same thing.


In my experience giving up the desire to control where the mind is going is the way to unplug what would otherwise be freely flowing energy.

Having a mental construct interferes. Trying to determine being right or wrong, faithful or faithless or holding on to these attitudes is attachment when ego death essentially means dissolving the idea of any fixed mode of being.

It's an interesting question as to whether this line of approach lies within or largely outside the realm of faith. 

Let's say your vibrations are in relative harmony and you do not control your mind.  First of all, when you say "don't control your mind," I'm assuming you don't mean one should simply follow after it as it jumps about randomly, because you'd have damned little chance of balancing your vibes with that approach.  So, what exactly do you mean there?  What levels of depth and superficiality are you controlling or not controlling?

Now, balancing energies and monitoring mentation could be viewed as workmanlike activities, mostly devoid of emotion.  And faith involves putting away the tools of the workday and settling into the deeper parts of self via pathways of emotion such as, for instance: devotion, surrender or otherwise attuning to purified vibrations of Spirit.  Looking at the process thuswise, the idea of ego death is a far less violent matter.  There's no need for slaughter.

Jumping to a new spot, how does one match the one's own vibe to Divine vibrations, like OM, for instance?  Is it merely through mechanical preparation or does the process ineluctably involve finding those inner vibrations via purified emotions?

Here's my view.  To really make a shift to a new class of vibrations involves a complete phase shift, something which cannot be accomplished merely through personal effort.  It requires a linkage with larger universal forces, and these linkages are not granted based upon anything less than profound faith.  Nothing else, that I'm aware of, can bridge necessary unseen spans of mystery.
 
 

[Sacred Fool]

And I don't know if you read the thread I linked, but  6 x 4 Zodiac houses  is 1 Axial precession. You would have to eliminate the number of cards to remove this ordering.

  
  
WHOA!!!!!!

I'm sorry you had to type all that in response to my post.  I was just trying to be factual there, not argumentative, because I personally find those cards neither interesting nor useful, and have no interest in discussing them.
  

[Navaratna]

All is one, no distortion in Ra's message

[Diana]

I don't know if you're read the Ra Material, but there are many times when the Questioner inquires about items like a group of stars and is told that these were superfluous decorations added later by another people and were not essential to the meaning encoded in the Tarot symbolism.  Jim McCarty's desire, as I understand it, is simply to strip the Tarot figures down to their essential elements because, after all, those things are confusing enough as it is without people having to puzzle over tangential elements.

To clarify, the astrological symbols in the tarot were not without meaning, they just weren't relevant to Ra's messaging.

[flofrog]

of course I can't resist the hint of a question about my frog family.

so about faith...  

I think that when I was about 21 or so, even though I had then discovered how interesting buddhism was, we had a dinner conversation with my dad, my brother and I.  My dad was a very, very brilliant and (!) rigorously honest economist in france.  He had been arrested by the gestapo in 1942 because he was giving  fake economy numbers to the Nazis.  He was taken to Buchenwald which was an extermination camp  but after three months was transferred to a small place in Austria by a lake,  frozen three months  a year, and this was a camp of people considered as hostages.  So supposed to be deleted one after the other  in revenge if something happened in france.  He was freed by the Americans and because the captain of the camp had let his office opened at night from D Day so a small trio of prisoners could come and listen to the bbc, two other prisoners and my dad tried for two hours with the american general to save the life of the German captain who was supposed to be executed immediately by the US general, as this  was the  military rule when a concentration camp was liberated for the top person in charge of it.  So that was in vain.  My dad came back to france looking thin as a ghost but alive.

So at that dinner for the first time we asked our dad if he knew which frenchman had denounced him to the gestapo, and he said he knew. We asked him if he had done anything against that man, and he said no and we asked him why, and he said because in those times of war/occupation you never knew why someone would denounce you, perhaps he was saving his own family in exchange.  Then we asked him if he had any revenge feeling against the germans, and he said Germany after the peace of 1918 was under such economic sanctions that the country literally was famished for years, and it gave way to the crazy growing dialectic of Hitler but if you had been a young german then, this was like someone out to save your country.   At the  end of the dinner, I remember my brother and I were together and we talked about this, and we knew by then  that our dad had definitely, even never talking about it, some deep dark memories from that past,  and we thought, you know its like he will have faith in men or life as long as he lives, whatever happens.

So you know I have a feeling  that that kind of faith is very close to unconditional love, and it is faith because our dad was always, always an optimist and he used to tease us saying, you are not going to be a pessimist, it is such an easy way !!!

yeah,  pretty nice  as  I think of it  

[Sacred Fool]

Out of respect for Peregrine I'll add a little more to the ideas of spirituality.

Thanks.  Oh, and thanks also for looking up the 76.6/76.7 Q&A as well.

Everything is information. I bet it could all be reduced to binary code.
This isn't demeaning or insulting to the experience of the soul. It's realization.

This seems an unlikely supposition to me, as I don't see much to support it.  Methinks it would be pithier to say that all of manifestation is one form of vibration or another.

This energy I think I realized from a young age is something that can be harnessed but passes most people by. They either try and confine it to religion, or think it's b.s. and don't trust religion. There are exceptions, and most would just call themselves mystics.

How do you harness it?

Meditation, divination. Focusing on elements with meditation. Holding energetically dense objects such as jewels/minerals or natural magnets.

This is where I would disembark from your tour bus because that's an wholly ego-driven question and approach, so far as I can tell. 

If you don't mind my saying, your words and your attitude towards others in your postings here, plus the great volume of postings, would seem to reveal a person much more acquainted with relating to self than with others.  If that is the case, then the reason I would say these things might be a bit mysterious to you.  My intention here is simply to reflect back to you my own perception of this inter-change of thoughts, for whatever that might be worth.

One can view the approach of how to harness energy as exactly the way Ra describes the negative approach the unconscious: taking goodies for one's own benefit as opposed to courting the maiden and accepting a collaborative relationship.  In my experience, the latter leads to transformation, whereas the former conduces to a long, long path of unsatisfied acquisitiveness.  But, naturally, you're free to choose.

The few times when I've spoken with religious people I think or sometimes have to even tell them "NEWSFLASH I don't worship anything..."

If you would open to the deeper aspects of the experience of worship, you might appreciate that forms of it can be excellent ways to match various sacred vibrations.  But of course, that path--like any other--is not for everyone.

Thinking that objects have energy and that your mind can vibrate objects with this "mana" or "spirit" of mental concentration isn't worship. It is divination, a word which has more meanings than prophecy. Inner revelation is another meaning of the word divination.

Call it whatever you like.  Such practices can be valuable for those in the earlier stages of discovering their ability to sense reality beyond the 3D consensus variety.

Religious people love tossing that word "worship" around, just like with the word "faith" in their god. I don't have a scrap of faith.

Don't worry about it.  Some day you will find some scraps and eventually create a beautiful tapestry of faiths-of-many-colors, I feel sure.  Call it, my faith in you.
  
  

[Sacred Fool]

yeah,  pretty nice  as  I think of it  

What a wonderful narrative!

I agree wholeheartedly that his profound resonance of faith is very much akin to Divine Love.
  
  

[Sacred Fool]

 
Yeah, I think you're right about that, I'm a whole lot more like Jesus than you are, especially when it comes to humility!*  But, you know, that's not the only game in town.  Maybe you can be more like Rahu than me?*  You'll have to work at, though.  I have a "head" start on you.
 

*humor intended
  

  

[Asolsutsesvyl]

The discussion has begun to branch out towards how people live life a bit more generally. I'll include more than in the previous post, where I left out everything tangential, at the cost of making it not only short but "murky".

I would say it has grown over a period of years. But initially, it was like something smaller within something larger, cultivated through effort and focus. Leading to an inner transition I cannot describe usefully. Half a decade later, it is more like a background to inner experience, while all the rest usually takes attention from the background when present.

Usually, I do not think in terms of faith, so it was useful to have it pointed towards in such a way.

Rationally, I do not see my life going in any particular direction, and don't find it particularly sensible or meaningful. Faith may be a good word for what makes the difference between feeling bad about life seeming to go nowhere, and somehow feeling quite differently and not heavily while seeing the same thing. I mean a calm lightness which is not a numbness, but replaces the heaviest feelings all the same.

"Believe" it or not, I "think" I can feel through the murkiness of your comment sufficiently to catch your drift. What you describe reminds me of a frog egg in the mass of jelly (smaller thing in larger thing) which finally becomes a tadpole and swims around more or less randomly (without going anywhere) as it developes form (legs, head...I mean, deeper awareness of self on various levels). Someday, my friend, you may grow up to be a frog. In the meanwhile, your faith in the general process, some would say, is something worthy of your nurture and warmth.

You got a main part of what I had in mind with that metaphor: inner life having changed greatly, comparing a few before-and-after stages. In not really being clear where I am going, at present in life, I've also been thinking of that as currently moving through a "corridor of change" of uncertain length.

One detail leads things around in a curious circle, the idea of "faith in the general process". Before the current stage of growth of faith, I had something else. I was very deeply, and rigidly, devoted to the best abstract ideals I could find; that was my spirituality before mid-2015. It was all personal discipline while pulled between abstract hopes and fears. What I called faith back then is very abstract, concerned with the big picture of everything and not something which greatly touches life in practice.

The change happening after that is impossible to describe well in writing. But the newer personal process which began resulted in the destruction of the old main hopes, fears, and discipline. In their absence, there's now the current stage of growth of faith. The faith is almost like something which is there instead of a vacuum.

Everything old which remains in such a way that it is there instead of the faith begins to feel very tiring. But the transition from what is old and tiring, to something which is somehow free from that, seems slow and gradual.

Does discipline have more to do with faith or belief or is it more causality? Does belief begin the process then once the discipline has been honed turn into faith based upon the constant work upon the self? Or can you wholeheartedly have faith without the work at all?

Some grow into faith more naturally or easily than others, and so it is with all other spiritual qualities I know of as well.

For me, in hindsight, discipline came from belief. The group I learned with considers itself beyond belief and the limitations of belief systems, because it believes that what it believes is true, making it the truth instead of a belief system - but I can no longer swallow such games. All the ideas I held true which are connected to hope, fear, and effort (and more) are plainly beliefs, when viewed with simple intellectual honesty.

A little bit of faith may have been there all along, the part which came naturally and easily. But all the rest came after discipline led to a change in inner life.

Some teachings describe a pure drop of faith in the heart as the main result or achievement of the spirituality which relates to the heart. The type of faith which is there even in the complete absence of optimism may be of such a nature, perhaps.

This is absolutely the most difficult aspect of the material yet, I would say, the most basic as well which yet again we find ourselves in a paradox. This illusion is so complex and well designed by ways of the veil that I find it practically impossible to stay within the mindset that all is truly well. To have that faith and steadfast attitude in every waking moment seems unattainable in my eyes though I'll freely admit that it's due to a lack of discipline more than anything else.

I would see your first clause above and raise you one. That is, I think this is one of the most difficult aspects, not just of the material, but of wandering here in 3D. To have faith in every waking moment--and during sleep as well--is such a vital requisite for doing serious work in consciousness (deeply engaging many levels of self), and yet it is, oh, so challenging!

Yes, I think you're onto something with the idea of discipline, but maybe not in the sense of guarding over and goading yourself to move in the "correct" direction. Perhaps the discipline is more about developing a habit of peripherally looking back at self in each present moment to see how deeply one is resonating with that deeper sense of self? And when one notices that resonance could be deepened, then allowing it to drop a bit deeper into that area of self that doesn't think, but knows the world by knowing it self? After all, we're here to know ourselves by seeing our reflection in 3D mirrors, right? Then perhaps we also can know 3D by feeling it reflected in the still pool of our own depths?




Perhaps flofrog has further perspective to add?

so about faith... [...] So you know I have a feeling that that kind of faith is very close to unconditional love, and it is faith because our dad was always, always an optimist and he used to tease us saying, you are not going to be a pessimist, it is such an easy way !!!

It is quite a contrast to the mentality I've had. Maybe it is not really pessimism which is the big difference, but rather being very deeply alienated and, even though caring a lot when relating to individuals, being very cynical and misanthropic when considering humanity in general and the big picture.

Your family story is one more story where one of the themes is that some people can go through a lot of difficult things and still be really optimistic.

A kind of counter-theme is in the distanced, weird nerds who, when asked how they arrived at their bitter, cynical and disillusioned views, simply respond that they have because they have been thinking. (It may not be a very good response, the word "thinking", but it is a honest best effort at a good response.) That's how I was in the mid-00's.

One of several possible keys to such differences may be the "sense of self" that a person has. My guess is that, in the case of your dad, it was large and well-developed, with a good sense of personal identity.

Whereas there are persons who have undersized and poorly-developed senses of self, with a very vague sense of who and what they really are beyond having a reliable memory of facts of their lives. Such a lack of identity is a separate question from how strongly principled or idealistic a person may be. But people with poorly developed senses of self have no way of knowing what is and is not important or serious from a more mature perspective. As a result, inner responses are simplified regarding that, making a person either unusually serious or unusually unserious, very generally.

Perhaps people with unusually good senses of self can survive anything without becoming less positive. While people with unusually poor senses of self, if they see some things deeply, can easily become embittered and cynical early in life.

[Diana]

@ flofrog: That was a beautiful story about your dad. Thank you. <3