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sadhaka
Stranger
Registered: 05/27/11
Posts: 2
Last seen: 12 years, 9 months
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Struggling with Spirituality
#14520162 - 05/27/11 10:40 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I have found that I struggle with my ability to have faith, believe in and embrace anything related to afterlife (re-incarnation, heaven/hell etc.) This struggle expresses itself most clearly through my morbid fascination and complete fear of death. I don’t know why I cling so stubbornly to the notion that there is no afterlife, there is nothing beyond the physiological life that we have. I know there is a central consciousness which I can’t entirely explain, but I also think that when our bodies deteriorate, that’s the end of it. I can’t help but feel that way, and I would like very much to explore other ways that I can actively change that pattern of thinking. Help.
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auxiliary
Mr.
Registered: 05/03/09
Posts: 2,278
Loc: Thatoneville
Last seen: 10 years, 6 months
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: sadhaka] 2
#14520204 - 05/27/11 10:49 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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It doesn't matter. No one that's alive can say what death entails. You can only concern yourself with life and what you have in front of you.
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Cyclohexylamine
Turn on, Tune in, Drop out
Registered: 09/08/10
Posts: 14,327
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: sadhaka]
#14520220 - 05/27/11 10:54 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
sadhaka said: I have found that I struggle with my ability to have faith, believe in and embrace anything related to afterlife (re-incarnation, heaven/hell etc.) This struggle expresses itself most clearly through my morbid fascination and complete fear of death. I don’t know why I cling so stubbornly to the notion that there is no afterlife, there is nothing beyond the physiological life that we have. I know there is a central consciousness which I can’t entirely explain, but I also think that when our bodies deteriorate, that’s the end of it. I can’t help but feel that way, and I would like very much to explore other ways that I can actively change that pattern of thinking. Help.
Why do you have to have faith? It seems you are trying to live up to some standard. Be yourself. Do you need faith to feel safe? Isn't it better thinking for your self. Then trying to convince your brain of something you don't believe?
-------------------- Yes this is tymo - I just changed my name Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to awake from that dream? How would you know the difference between that dream world and the real world? There is NOTHING better than feeling that warm dissociative fuzz creeping up your body from IM K Something abut that anaesthetic rush... Qualitative Research Chemical Effects and Experiences The Wonderful World of Methoxetamine The 3-Meo-PCP Chapters, Part One
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Chronic7
Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: sadhaka]
#14520273 - 05/27/11 11:11 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Your mind is wrestling with all these ideas, but don't wrestle with your mind
Be at peace first & then understanding will naturally blossom in the presence of that peace
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OneU
Registered: 03/19/11
Posts: 763
Last seen: 12 years, 1 month
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Well, first realize, what is it that by changing you will change all of these 'filters'? It's not the belief in the afterlife or a disbelief in it. It's you. If you are seeking the more, then first you need to adjust yourself to be able to receive it. You can't see what you're not looking at.
Firstly, I would talk about your fear of 'death'. 'Death' is inevitable for all things. Death is not the end. With everything that goes, something comes to take it's place. It's the balance of life. If you spend your time pondering about something that will come regardless of how ready or not you are for it, you will pretty much have done nothing productive for you or other beings in your lifetime.
Faith isn't something you can take or have or be taught. It comes with experience or deep realizations. It is most challenging, dear brother, to break the societal programming. To free yourself from (no disrespect) a lifetime of mental enslavement is not an easy task. It's one of the infinite reasons this lifetime is so majestic. You must first realize that no scriptures or books or movies or people hold what you seek. They may point you to it or help you remember the way but it is and always will be within you. It was the safest place the truth could be kept.
I do not know you or your habits, so I cannot give you specific examples but a great way to start is to start doing healthy things. Eat healthy, drink plenty of water (something I struggle with from time to time), sit with yourself, give thanks to all things for allowing you to be (your mother and father, their parents, the people who have shaped your life and know their parents have helped them be in your life, animals, trees, rocks, etc.) as a whole, do some sort of exercise. Yoga, jogging, chi gong, nature walks, hiking, whatever brings you joy and fulfillment. Reading is a good way to help you remember. Visit your library or browse the web with keywords you are curious about. Write! Write your thoughts, observe them as they are, write about your life, bring out that clutter in your mind. Draw, paint, express your art (writing is a great way for this also), cook, garden, help people, whatever you want. No standards, no minimal requirements (other than breathing ).
The list goes on and on brother. Just remember, expectations and assumptions will only weigh you down. They bring nothing to your cause other than distraction and disappointment. Hold a clear intention in your heart from the day you wish to make a transition. Open your heart and eye to the possibilities. Be as unprejudiced as possible, discern the truth, pull yourself out of cyclic thinking. It is not the world we seek in the end.
I Love you. No matter who you think you are or what you think you have done, I Love you. Love yourself. You are an infinite being under a finite veil. Sounds a bit silly. Trust your intuition. Like a snake sheds her skin at once, you too will be able to shed your skin. It will be anything but easy.
Sacred journey brother.
Love.
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Lallafa
p_g monocle
Registered: 04/13/01
Posts: 2,598
Loc: underbelly
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: OneU]
#14522609 - 05/27/11 06:23 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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you are asking help with something that noone but yourself can help you with, people have good suggestions though, and it feels good reading them
-------------------- my tax dollars going to more hits of acid for charles manson
Edited by Lallafa (06/04/11 02:49 PM)
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder
Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: sadhaka]
#14522766 - 05/27/11 06:56 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
sadhaka said: I have found that I struggle with my ability to have faith, believe in and embrace anything related to afterlife (re-incarnation, heaven/hell etc.) This struggle expresses itself most clearly through my morbid fascination and complete fear of death. I don’t know why I cling so stubbornly to the notion that there is no afterlife, there is nothing beyond the physiological life that we have. I know there is a central consciousness which I can’t entirely explain, but I also think that when our bodies deteriorate, that’s the end of it. I can’t help but feel that way, and I would like very much to explore other ways that I can actively change that pattern of thinking. Help.
Perhaps this may be helpful. Perhaps not. Transcendental experiences, gnosis, in this life are important because they loosen our identification with form (bodily form). Looked at in a transcendental way, we are a phantasmagoria of shifting form from the union of sperm and egg to an elderly body expiring its last breath. I rather like to think of dying as slipping into a hot bathtub, as "the dewdrop slips into the Shining Sea" in Sir Edwin Arnold's poem, The Light of Asia. Even if there's pain, you are witnessing the pain as one becomes more and more dissociated from the body. I have used psychedelics for 40 years to learn dissociation from the body, its desires and its thoughts, from the perspective of awareness, of pure formless consciousness, which is itself 'effulgent,' or self-radiant. I have had more than one taste of being thoughtless, bodiless, ecstatically compassionate Light. In this condition, one Realizes one's true nature as 'Love-Light,' and the relief, the liberation from the illusion of fear and death anxiety is ecstatic! It is Eternal. Not unending time, not a intense moment, but an ecstatic moment that does not end (for lack of anything to say that makes sense). It is the supreme paradox and it's intellectually ineffable, but the bottom line is, the cosmic joke is: we've never needed to be afraid. Fear is the embodied-ego's device to maintain it's life of individuality in the face of its dissolution in Eternal Life. Fear keeps the body alive in space-time, but prevents Eternal Life from Realizing itself as the Eternal 'I AM' while the body's life predominates. This is what the mystical breakthrough is. This is what the story of Jesus is in the gospel of John means for each one of us, NOT just a mythic Jesus. Ultimately, the saying "I and my Father are One," is a statement of Ultimate Truth for each one of us as-yet unRealized beings.
+++ Peace Be With You+++
[Dead link, sorry about that].
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
Edited by MarkostheGnostic (05/28/11 07:16 AM)
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jivJaN
yes
Registered: 08/09/08
Posts: 4,245
Last seen: 10 years, 11 months
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: sadhaka]
#14523166 - 05/27/11 08:12 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Its normal that you struggle with these doubts. You would be stupid not to. We are creatures, easily deluded.
The idea of a soul is equally valid as the idea that all these concepts are no more than " temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose "
@markos
i have went from foolishness to gnosis and back again to a state of uncertainty. back and forth from "peace" to entertaining my anxieties some more. Is this not what we are dealing with here ? The angst of not knowing ? How would you live your life if you knew it wasn't the only experience you will have ? I reckon the game would get pretty damn boring. What narrative would be left should we assume there is one at all ? Its not knowing that allows us to be whoever we want. The uncertainty is what gives us choice. Freedom is in the limitation for against all the undeniable truths existence might hold, we are free to believe and act upon some of most retarded shit that can be thought of.
Struggling for my own identity and living in a world of ever entwining misery and joy i have grown weary of the dichotomies. Life.. death. Truth.. illusion. Good.. bad ?
It is now a matter of keeping balance between knowing.. and not giving a fuck.
-------------------- --------------------- All my posts in this forum are strictly fictional. They are derived from an acute mental illness , from which i am forced to lie compulsively. I have never induced any kind of mind altering substance in my life and i have no intentions whatsoever of doing anything illegal. If I have ever suggested such a thing it would have most likely been , due to my personality disorder and i probably do not remember it at all..
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder
Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: jivJaN]
#14523295 - 05/27/11 08:35 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I don't know how old you are, but the "not giving a fuck" attitude has a shelf life. Late adolescent angst passes, but late adolescence extends to the middle 20s. Beyond that, clinical depression in adulthood, or Despair in old age (Erik Erikson's Integrity vs. Despair stage of life) can be behind that attitude. Death anxiety is manageable even without drugs. A spiritual life is lived to realize 'life without form,' transcendental consciousness, cosmic consciousness. Transcendental consciousness becomes the jeweled centerpiece around which a spiritual life crystalizes. At worst, death is like sleep. We do that every night. If one is in the here and now, one doesn't fret about waking up in one's bed later. At best, the dawning of the Clear Light will be of ecstatic Realization and Final Liberation from the prison of our fearful egoic mind - always fretting about what its end will be like.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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circastes
Big Questions Small Head
Registered: 01/14/10
Posts: 8,781
Loc: straya
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When you realise you are solely consciousness and your perceptions are a reflection of your consciousness, whether or not you even have a body becomes completely irrelevant. Death just becomes some irrational myth or concept. There is only eternal life... only an eternal consciousness... and you're that, and everything is that.
Try and realise all this and you should begin to feel love/God within you in exceptional amounts. It doesn't take time to realise it but it does take time to be able to stay there... that will become a task for you, and it's a fun task because you FEEL yourself improving into a divine being, it's beautiful really.
There's no reason why, even at a young age, you cannot bring the entire thought process to a halt and discover peace and love/God within yourself. I'm there now. You just have to undo your conditioning. You might find your have to be crafty, but it's all in the name of fun...
All in the name of fun...
-------------------- My solitude... My shield... My armour... TESTED WITH FULL FORCE
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jivJaN
yes
Registered: 08/09/08
Posts: 4,245
Last seen: 10 years, 11 months
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You misunderstood me.
-------------------- --------------------- All my posts in this forum are strictly fictional. They are derived from an acute mental illness , from which i am forced to lie compulsively. I have never induced any kind of mind altering substance in my life and i have no intentions whatsoever of doing anything illegal. If I have ever suggested such a thing it would have most likely been , due to my personality disorder and i probably do not remember it at all..
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Chronic7
Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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lolwut
bad motherfucker
Registered: 08/14/10
Posts: 2,782
Loc: back in black
Last seen: 2 years, 10 months
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: circastes]
#14525252 - 05/28/11 07:33 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
circastes said: When you realise you are solely consciousness and your perceptions are a reflection of your consciousness, whether or not you even have a body becomes completely irrelevant. Death just becomes some irrational myth or concept. There is only eternal life... only an eternal consciousness... and you're that, and everything is that.
Try and realise all this and you should begin to feel love/God within you in exceptional amounts. It doesn't take time to realise it but it does take time to be able to stay there... that will become a task for you, and it's a fun task because you FEEL yourself improving into a divine being, it's beautiful really.
There's no reason why, even at a young age, you cannot bring the entire thought process to a halt and discover peace and love/God within yourself. I'm there now. You just have to undo your conditioning. You might find your have to be crafty, but it's all in the name of fun...
All in the name of fun...
There's no escaping death, and theres no escaping life - unless you kill yourself. Don't worry about what may or may not be after life, and don't focus on your own fear of death...use the anxiety/fear to appreciate life more and recognise the gift that life is. We're individual incarnates of eternity and love, may as well enjoy it.
-------------------- Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth, and taste...
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OneU
Registered: 03/19/11
Posts: 763
Last seen: 12 years, 1 month
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: lolwut]
#14525632 - 05/28/11 10:13 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Like Eckhart Tolle said: "Death is not the opposite of Life, Death is the opposite of Birth. Life is eternal."
Bringing suicide up is never a good choice imo. Suicide is leaping into death so I don't understand how it may be escaping it. As for escaping life, life has many processes, many phases and many "forms and formlessness". Everything is life.
Markosthegnostic posted a great video here but didn't post it correctly, so on his behalf, since it was so beautiful, I will repost it:
(just copy the link in it's original format here and it plays )
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deff
just love everyone
Registered: 05/01/04
Posts: 9,425
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: OneU]
#14525716 - 05/28/11 10:34 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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nice video
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Delicious Apes
Registered: 10/31/08
Posts: 3,642
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: sadhaka]
#14526572 - 05/28/11 02:01 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
sadhaka said: I know there is a central consciousness which I can’t entirely explain.
Probably not
" but I also think that when our bodies deteriorate, that’s the end of it."
Now you're onto something
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zzripz
Stranger
Registered: 12/23/08
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Loc: Manchester, UK
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: sadhaka]
#14526846 - 05/28/11 04:07 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
sadhaka said: I have found that I struggle with my ability to have faith, believe in and embrace anything related to afterlife (re-incarnation, heaven/hell etc.) This struggle expresses itself most clearly through my morbid fascination and complete fear of death. I don’t know why I cling so stubbornly to the notion that there is no afterlife, there is nothing beyond the physiological life that we have. I know there is a central consciousness which I can’t entirely explain, but I also think that when our bodies deteriorate, that’s the end of it. I can’t help but feel that way, and I would like very much to explore other ways that I can actively change that pattern of thinking. Help.
...LOL. Sorry, but it dont make any sense to me why someone would fear NOT being conscious. I mean when you go to the dentist, or have a surgical operation and are put to sleep, often you not aware, and next thing you are waking up as though immediately. Some people report NDEs, but they often claim that they felt no pain or fear and didn't wanna return to their bodies.
Now WHY do you think past religions made people fear Hell? Cause it was because they'd be CONSCIOUS. So I can dig THAt fear---ie., burning in hell fire for ever and ever--being tortured by demons. THAT I can dig being frightened about, but not non-consciousness.
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder
Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: circastes]
#14528521 - 05/28/11 10:29 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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'Real fun' can be arranged as Funeral. I always tell kids that f-u-n are the first e letters of funeral, particularly in connection with the 'choking game,' huffing inhalants, and some other oddities of adolescent stupidity.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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circastes
Big Questions Small Head
Registered: 01/14/10
Posts: 8,781
Loc: straya
Last seen: 7 years, 9 months
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lol.
So I was thinking in the back seat of a car today as I went into a town, that perhaps the idea of oblivion comes from our initial experience of oblivion - the first consciousness in the contracting uterus. Facing the birth trauma removes fear of death, says Grof. So perhaps the convincing nature of there being a death awaiting us is just that unconscious trauma expressing itself.
In the end there's only You and it's up to You. Not in a metaphoric, mystical way, but literally! Literally! When you see it, you'll shit bricks.
-------------------- My solitude... My shield... My armour... TESTED WITH FULL FORCE
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eve69
--=..Did Adam and ...?=--
Registered: 04/30/03
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Loc: isle de la muerte
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Re: Struggling with Spirituality [Re: circastes]
#14529745 - 05/29/11 07:51 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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sadhaka, being a seeker means that you have the sense of truth beyond what others have found, and often a seeker always remains a seeker even amongst what little truths and half truths other have decided are final.... remain true.... that's all.... sadhana bestows its own variety and cannot be given, taken away....
-------------------- ...or something
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