Spirit

[Loki]

I find it remarkable how concepts and ideas, as they depend on our private conscious experience, can drive so much change all around us - the world is fashioned after the level we are at psychologically. I know many like to reduce human activity down to hormones, pheromones, atoms, particles, neurons, and such, but if you're honest with yourselves, there is such a thing as the purely psychological - where inward, private perspectives and ideas transform the social and technological climate.

But what do we call inward, private conscious experience? It is not material. Yet it drives so much change. Whether you are a hard nosed atheist or a religious person, you cannot deny the immaterial nature of consciousness. It is a thing with no real substance, yet it acts on the material. Moreover, a man can elevate his mind to new regions and dimensions of psychic space and will his perspective onto the world, changing it. Such a man is a spiritual man, insofar as he goes beyond the current world, and breaks into a new one, forming a vision of a new world. He breaks into a new psychic space, new frontiers, new realities. He leaves behind the old world, sometimes referring to it as hell.

I say this to you GF as a strict atheist. I have no sympathies for cosmic consciousness, telepathy, the esoteric, intelligent design, or immortal soul. I am as stark as they come.

But you cannot deny the duality between the material and immaterial. Sure, they are dependent on each other. But the immaterial, the inward life of man is a truly wondrous gift and man is in the position to experience dimensions of his conscious that will have never occurred and will never occur again, granting him powers to engage in creation, play and births of new worlds.

I look at the changes in Egypt as a conquest of spirit. The people broke into new psychic space and willed their way into a new social climate. It is only the beginning for them, and resources will largely dictate how well they get on their two feet, but it was interesting.

Everyday you're going to be in social climates, where each individual wills his spirit, trying to take the moment into his direction. There are times where it's competition, and times where it's a cooperative play or collective mission, but each of us can be of spirit. Meaning, we can each go beyond our personal and collective worlds and find something new, and we can take each other there. It really is a will to power, every day.


This all reminds me of a Nietzsche quote:

Around the hero, all things turn into tragedy; around the demi-god, into a comic play; and around the God, all things turn into - did you say "world"? - FN

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I look at the changes in Egypt as a conquest of spirit. The people broke into new psychic space and willed their way into a new social climate. It is only the beginning for them, and resources will largely dictate how well they get on their two feet, but it was interesting.

Although there are some other parts of your interesting post I'd like to comment on, it has to wait for it needs a bit more consideration on my part. But I can start with a simple question.

If the changes in Egypt will not turn out for the better, if social unrest, economical decline and lack of ideas how to turn it around will cause lots of misery in the coming years: would it change your outlook? Or would you go to another example of hope and rebellion, and expect this new item to turn out better according to your ideas?

[Loki]

If the changes in Egypt will not turn out for the better, if social unrest, economical decline and lack of ideas how to turn it around will cause lots of misery in the coming years: would it change your outlook?

No, not at all. This is hard for me to explain... but I was only using Egypt as both an analogy and a concrete example. It's an analogy insofar as it is only a very pale extreme of how far this spirituality can go. It's concrete insofar as the psychological energy of Egypt's population shifted, deviated, brightened and intensified. The main point is that the inward individual is free to roam in a purely abstract landscape, and this freedom toward abstraction can produce physical changes in the world if need be. But the physical changes in themselves are not ultimately what's important. The main thing is that the individual moves inwardly, in other mental dimensions. If he feels physical secure, his thought will be free from worry, and his thought processes will be creative and free. This may lead to practical applications where he can produce subtle to major changes in the world, or he may remain entirely private, but just as free.

To give you a better idea of what I think is unspiritual and why I think that:

Human thought tends to orient itself around the physical. The entity’s social, sexual, and heirchical position among friends, community, and Society influence it’s thought. Thought becomes polluted with gross emotions steming from need for sexual security and validation. What percentage do human comments and behavior stem from insecurity, worry and anxiety about ones physical worth to others? Quite a bit, and this reflects the inner thinking, which is likely generated by a soul in the throes of very primitive, animal concerns. The result of this is slavery to money, fame, or approval from others.

When the conditions in the brain are generous and mature enough, thought becomes entirely abstract, joyous, creative and free. The psychic space where logic and imagination rule, becomes the real, while ones social prestige or popularity becomes trivial and largely irrelevant.

Advanced Individuals have less of a need for permission to exist, due to inward depth, and hence are more generous at giving permission to others who seek a mirror. The psychological, inward man is free to roam his thought.

Or would you go to another example of hope and rebellion, and expect this new item to turn out better according to your ideas?

Whether or not physical, social and economic conditions remain good or bad is not so much the point. For brief or long lasting moments, thought frees itself from the desire for physical security and can roam psychic space. Inward experience is non material and to explore it free from worry is heaven.

[Blair]

Human thought tends to orient itself around the physical. The entity’s social, sexual, and heirchical position among friends, community, and Society influence it’s thought. Thought becomes polluted with gross emotions steming from need for sexual security and validation. What percentage do human comments and behavior stem from insecurity, worry and anxiety about ones physical worth to others? Quite a bit, and this reflects the inner thinking, which is likely generated by a soul in the throes of very primitive, animal concerns. The result of this is slavery to money, fame, or approval from others.

The human animal has never been anything more than that. Evolution has made this so, and it's never going to change, in fact it is becoming more fierce with each passing day. The wise spiritual path is to opt out of a silly race, rather than trying to transcend it (which leaves its illusory power intact).

[Bob Michael]

The human animal has never been anything more than that. Evolution has made this so, and it's never going to change, in fact it is becoming more fierce with each passing day. The wise spiritual path is to opt out of a silly race, rather than trying to transcend it (which leaves its illusory power intact).

Yes, the wall-to-wall dog-eat-dog human condition is only going to continue to get worse until most of it goes up in huge clouds of radioactive smoke and dust. However, I believe some of us will transcend the human, all-too-terribly-human in us and will survive and go on to propagate the finished and finally perfected human species forward after all the smoke and dust settles.

[Bob Michael]

I look at the changes in Egypt as a conquest of spirit. The people broke into new psychic space and willed their way into a new social climate. It is only the beginning for them, and resources will largely dictate how well they get on their two feet, but it was interesting.

I see it as a conquest of the blind and ignorant herd and simply a redecoration of the same old prison. And surely not a 'breaking into a new psychic space'.

[Bob Michael]

Whether you are a 'hard nosed atheist' or a religious person.....

I say this to you GF as a 'strict atheist'.

Have you any resentments towards religion or perhaps a religious upbringing? Or perhaps towards authority?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

but I was only using Egypt as both an analogy and a concrete example.

Yes, obviously, as was I by suggesting another outcome which would make it an example of a different line of reasoning about this.

The main thing is that the individual moves inwardly, in other mental dimensions. If he feels physical secure, his thought will be free from worry, and his thought processes will be creative and free. This may lead to practical applications where he can produce subtle to major changes in the world, or he may remain entirely private, but just as free.

Well, that was the reason I asked the question, which was actually the question: is it always a good thing, this movement inwardly in other dimensions, this conceptual freedom? Are the practical applications always for the better?

When the conditions in the brain are generous and mature enough, thought becomes entirely abstract, joyous, creative and free. The psychic space where logic and imagination rule, becomes the real, while ones social prestige or popularity becomes trivial and largely irrelevant.

Another good case could be made arguing for logic and creativity needing quite a few severe restrictions, rules or laws to develop. The "suffering" and "pain" argument of the genius oven. Before the spirit even can think of "breaking through" to anything it first has to germinate.

Advanced Individuals have less of a need for permission to exist, due to inward depth, and hence are more generous at giving permission to others who seek a mirror. The psychological, inward man is free to roam his thought.

Does that mean the restrictions in his social existence, religious upbringing and peer pressure do not count anymore? Many highly valued contributions to wisdom didn't form in specifically "free" or permissive societies. Perhaps the forces stacked against advancing are more subtle and diverse to blame it on restricted societies?

For brief or long lasting moments, thought frees itself from the desire for physical security and can roam psychic space. Inward experience is non material and to explore it free from worry is heaven.

Then what is the relevance of the Egyptian example? People seemed more upset about material well-being and personal modes of public expression. The crowds seemed to represent strongly the massive unemployed youth, wired through the web into a stream of unreachable opportunities. The truth is that the old regime was advancing the economy reasonably well considering everything stacked against the desert nation. This might not change with democracy at all, apart from gaining more uncertainty when governments come and go (Belgium has arrived there already and strong voices rise to just end the state altogether).

What I find interesting about the Egyptian example is that it might show the future not of the Arab world, but of the Westernized world. When consumer demands do not mach anymore economical realities and a lack of vision and ideas result in aiming for some scapegoat to blame: being it some authoritative government, the over-permissive Left or Muslims. In each nation mileage varies.

[jufa]

Man lives in a reality which has no logic or reasoning to be or exist. So man's belief that matter and flesh are real thrives because men cannot comprehend their journey into the maze of their thoughts is an illusion. In this illusionary state of belief there is a beginning birth, growth, maturity, reverse evolution, and death. Men do not enter into this state of being because this state of being could not exist if man's thoughts were not the foundation, forming, and building of it. This means any state of being man is aware of lives in the man not the other way around.

Human thoughts are man's contemporary ideas of ancient interpretations compiled to form his contemporary illusory state of being. Man's beliefs are also the states of being which are the fabric and structure of man's physical thought existence. The physical man is what he thinks, believes, and his interpretation of those beliefs appearing to him as his outer objective visions, or inner subjective feelings, which are the forms of his states of being being stated by him.

A state of being is totally dependent upon the trend of thought being thought. Death does not void the thinkers dependence upon the thought. This state of being neither adds anything to the thought, nor takes anything away from the thought. It gives the reality of what is thought to the thinker, whole, perfect, complete, and pure until that state of thought either becomes the living demonstration of the man, or has been eliminated from the thinker's soul by the purification of obedience, mercy of the Mind of Chrsit.

Now it is to be understood man's living according to his thought formation in this plane of Consciousness is made visible and invisible in harmory to the pictures, words, an space which man visualize and accept as reality. We all know though, God is Reality and that Reality is an unreachable metaphor for the human mind of believers and non-believers alike. So then the human consciousness, locked within the ceiling and walls of the collective universal mind, is in a state of imprisonment within the human state of thought. This imprisoned human state of thought keeps the spirit of man earthbound in the non-material principle of "everything after its kind."

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa

[Loki]

but I was only using Egypt as both an analogy and a concrete example.

Yes, obviously, as was I by suggesting another outcome which would make it an example of a different line of reasoning about this.

The main thing is that the individual moves inwardly, in other mental dimensions. If he feels physical secure, his thought will be free from worry, and his thought processes will be creative and free. This may lead to practical applications where he can produce subtle to major changes in the world, or he may remain entirely private, but just as free.

Well, that was the reason I asked the question, which was actually the question: is it always a good thing, this movement inwardly in other dimensions, this conceptual freedom? Are the practical applications always for the better?

I think it depends on what our values are. If we value the free, inward, creative life of man, then some practical applications may undermine the physical stability required to generate such free states of consciousness. Any physical situations that make the entity frightened of his physical position in space will destroy his spirit, limiting his thought to his organisms safety.

When the conditions in the brain are generous and mature enough, thought becomes entirely abstract, joyous, creative and free. The psychic space where logic and imagination rule, becomes the real, while ones social prestige or popularity becomes trivial and largely irrelevant.

Another good case could be made arguing for logic and creativity needing quite a few severe restrictions, rules or laws to develop. The "suffering" and "pain" argument of the genius oven. Before the spirit even can think of "breaking through" to anything it first has to germinate.

Yes, I think that's where wisdom comes in. Spirit alone is not enough, there needs to be the wisdom to maintain and preserve spirit. There are some "attitudes" that I think destroy spirit. A man may break into lofty abstract psychic space, but if he is not fully aware of his need for physical security, social position and sexual relationship, then his psychic activity will become polluted and eventually dragged down by his mundane, egotistical worries.

Advanced Individuals have less of a need for permission to exist, due to inward depth, and hence are more generous at giving permission to others who seek a mirror. The psychological, inward man is free to roam his thought.

Does that mean the restrictions in his social existence, religious upbringing and peer pressure do not count anymore?

I don't think they would, but I think you would have to give me a more specific example if I were to really understand what you're getting at. Personally, I still have an acute sense of restrictions and law - but it stems from my own understanding of the nature of the empirical and the emotions. My sense of restriction and law comes from my conception of delusion.

Many highly valued contributions to wisdom didn't form in specifically "free" or permissive societies.

No, and I wouldn't value such societies either, assuming that by "permissive" we meant: indulge our fears and anxieties to exacerbate our animal nature. Competitive hoarding of material and even mental things out of status anxiety only creates more insecurity and fear and will not likely awaken ones creative and free flowing spirit.

Perhaps the forces stacked against advancing are more subtle and diverse to blame it on restricted societies?

I don't necessarily blame it on restricted societies, and I don't necessarily believe Egypt will be better off, I don't really have an opinion on political movements. It's just... my point was mostly that the psychic life of man is immaterial and very real and you can create new worlds and go beyond existing conditioning. But there is such a thing as spirit without wisdom, and such spirit is a small spirit. There is no real connection to the infinite that a wise person has when roaming his mind.

For brief or long lasting moments, thought frees itself from the desire for physical security and can roam psychic space. Inward experience is non material and to explore it free from worry is heaven.

Then what is the relevance of the Egyptian example? People seemed more upset about material well-being and personal modes of public expression. The crowds seemed to represent strongly the massive unemployed youth, wired through the web into a stream of unreachable opportunities. The truth is that the old regime was advancing the economy reasonably well considering everything stacked against the desert nation. This might not change with democracy at all, apart from gaining more uncertainty when governments come and go (Belgium has arrived there already and strong voices rise to just end the state altogether).

What I find interesting about the Egyptian example is that it might show the future not of the Arab world, but of the Westernized world. When consumer demands do not match anymore economical realities and a lack of vision and ideas result in aiming for some scapegoat to blame: being it some authoritative government, the over-permissive Left or Muslims. In each nation mileage varies.

Yeah, honestly, when it was announced that the Egyptian population "threw off" it's dictatorship, I didn't for a minute feel that it was necessarily going to lead to a better world for egypt. Without an abundance of resources, I'm not sure how well a permissive and democratic culture would work, especially with little experience and the presence of old emotional energies. It is definitely an example of spirit without wisdom.

Spirit (the psychic life) is all over the world, but yes, it's very rare when that spirit is entirely wise, with a sense of freedom that comes from an intuition for the infinite, rather than for another mere world.

[jupiviv]

But you cannot deny the duality between the material and immaterial.

What's there to deny? The material and the immaterial are distinctions. There's nothing wrong with those distinctions in and of themselves, but when you try to think of them as something that must exist, you would be putting yourself into a maze. There's no end to the train of clueless thought this kind of thinking might lead to.

Sure, they are dependent on each other. But the immaterial, the inward life of man is a truly wondrous gift and man is in the position to experience dimensions of his conscious that will have never occurred and will never occur again, granting him powers to engage in creation, play and births of new worlds.

If you want to be happy, then be happy. Don't try to justify it philosophically, because you'll ultimately end up being disappointed.

I look at the changes in Egypt as a conquest of spirit.

I don't. If you're defining "spirit" as "consciousness", that is.

[Loki]

Conquest was not the best choice in word. Consciousness has various levels, and the situation in Egypt was clearly a war between different abstract perspectives. There was a victor. It was a conquest to some degree. The spirit of it was certainly poor and small relative to the highest flights in consciousness/spirit.

[Bob Michael]

Conquest was not the best choice in word. Consciousness has various levels, and the situation in Egypt was clearly a war between different abstract perspectives. There was a victor. It was a conquest to some degree. The spirit of it was certainly poor and small relative to the highest flights in consciousness/spirit.

We Americans focus on the problems in Egypt and elsewhere in the world and fail to see that our own country is fast going to ruin. Just as individually we focus on the faults of others and fail to look at our own. While everywhere the blind continue to lead the blind. And the huge ditch is soon ahead. Nothing has really changed since the beginning of time.

[m4tt_666]

i agree, the majority of man seems comfortable in his niche where technology has brought us and we as a species are slowly degrading our morals in the midst. i only hope that i die before i see the day where my sanity, as i view it objectively, is compromised.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

If we value the free, inward, creative life of man, then some practical applications may undermine the physical stability required to generate such free states of consciousness.

Indeed, in terms of priority, some measure of security, shelter and food come first. Physically as well as psychologically. The free state of consciousness is already the case but not realized when the pot is being stirred all the time. This free, inward, creative life of man: I see it as what used to be the outward now turned inward as a result of a less responsive, less dynamic environment in the civilized world. Inward freedom might turn out to be just as illusive or duplicitous as the outward one ever was.

A man may break into lofty abstract psychic space, but if he is not fully aware of his need for physical security, social position and sexual relationship, then his psychic activity will become polluted and eventually dragged down by his mundane, egotistical worries.

But isn't our "psychic space" an expansion of what was earlier the psychical universe? The same desire for space, position, sex, accomplishment and conquest occurs. It's perhaps the very drive that maintains that space, like all other spaces.

Competitive hoarding of material and even mental things out of status anxiety only creates more insecurity and fear and will not likely awaken ones creative and free flowing spirit.

Then again, what drives the creativity of the spirit? Are the ideas not competing, isn't there some anxiety to discover, conquer, to reach for some kind of different status in your own hierarchy of values?

Spirit (the psychic life) is all over the world, but yes, it's very rare when that spirit is entirely wise, with a sense of freedom that comes from an intuition for the infinite, rather than for another mere world.

So are you suggesting the Egyptian people might actually be rebelling against their own delusion and ego but will probably just embrace a new "worldly" master instead?

[Bob Michael]

i agree, the majority of man seems comfortable in his niche where technology has brought us and we as a species are slowly degrading our morals in the midst. i only hope that i die before i see the day where my sanity, as i view it objectively, is compromised.

The problem goes far deeper than this, 666. Humankind everywhere has become so deeply desensitized and dehumanized (robotized if you will) due to the continuing 'fall of man' that there's absolutely no awareness of this fact at all in the vast majority of people. Nor is there a possibility of making the return to fullness of human being for most people. Hence they unknowingly and blindly live and die in a state of ignorance, alienation, and self-centeredness while collectively continuing to trudge onward to Armageddon. Which has been foreseen by many for thousands of years. But only recently does man have the means to quickly and easily destroy most of himself and the things he's created which makes this grand and necessary planetary cleansing event most definitely close at hand. After which things will finally be well, happy, and peaceful for those relatively few who make the cut, so to speak.

[Loki]

If we value the free, inward, creative life of man, then some practical applications may undermine the physical stability required to generate such free states of consciousness.

Indeed, in terms of priority, some measure of security, shelter and food come first. Physically as well as psychologically. The free state of consciousness is already the case but not realized when the pot is being stirred all the time. This free, inward, creative life of man: I see it as what used to be the outward now turned inward as a result of a less responsive, less dynamic environment in the civilized world. Inward freedom might turn out to be just as illusive or duplicitous as the outward one ever was.

The civilized world, at least where I experience it, is as responsive and dynamic as it ever was. But it depends on what you mean exactly, which I'm really not sure.

As for the illusiveness or duplicitousness of a outer or inner world, the notion of illusiveness or duplicity only arises when there is desire in contrast to barrenness, as desire becomes problematic when desirable objects are lacking. In my flights of consciousness, I assure you, nothing is lacking, it is entirely full, and outcomes do not matter. There is no desire guiding the experience or chasing after anything. The mind is entirely playful, spontaneous, creative and abundant.

A man may break into lofty abstract psychic space, but if he is not fully aware of his need for physical security, social position and sexual relationship, then his psychic activity will become polluted and eventually dragged down by his mundane, egotistical worries.

But isn't our "psychic space" an expansion of what was earlier the psychical universe? The same desire for space, position, sex, accomplishment and conquest occurs. It's perhaps the very drive that maintains that space, like all other spaces.

If you were driven by a desire for position, sex and physical space, you would feel worry or anxiety. The states of consciousness I speak of are entirely free of worry. I can only describe these states as an unemotional spontaneous flow of insight. There is a certain joyousness, but not the manic, panicked and desperate kind.

Competitive hoarding of material and even mental things out of status anxiety only creates more insecurity and fear and will not likely awaken ones creative and free flowing spirit.

Then again, what drives the creativity of the spirit? Are the ideas not competing, isn't there some anxiety to discover, conquer, to reach for some kind of different status in your own hierarchy of values?

There is a cautiousness, for sure. Careful, cautious observation of ones mind, but there is a certain rejoicing in the freedom of not needing or desiring any particular thing to be.

Spirit (the psychic life) is all over the world, but yes, it's very rare when that spirit is entirely wise, with a sense of freedom that comes from an intuition for the infinite, rather than for another mere world.

So are you suggesting the Egyptian people might actually be rebelling against their own delusion and ego but will probably just embrace a new "worldly" master instead?

Although their revolt was impressive, I don't see the Egyptians as in any really remarkable position. Theirs is a situation ripe for some fairly mundane human activity.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The civilized world, at least where I experience it, is as responsive and dynamic as it ever was. But it depends on what you mean exactly, which I'm really not sure.

It's my current social theory. Civilization cannot afford the same dynamics as a lawless, unexplored or untamed land. So after the taming, one can see introvertion and decadence arising which end up threatening the civilization as it becomes less responsive to outward sudden changes.

[m4tt_666]

one mans Apocalypse is another mans salvation i suppose.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

one mans Apocalypse is another mans salvation i suppose.

Baptism, indeed.

[Bob Michael]

one mans Apocalypse is another mans salvation i suppose.

Genuine 'salvation', which is a very rare thing in these last dark days, manifests only in having a perfect relationship with the Infinite or Love. Or to at least have undergone a radical transformation (having had a complete or radical change of both mind and heart) and then be conscientiously and with complete abandon aiming towards this goal (spiritual perfection). And with this in time there comes a keen sense of all-knowingness, or all-feelingness, if you will.

[m4tt_666]

salvation, as with everything in life is subjective and could take on many forms. now with that, if 'salvation' were to befall an individual who wasn't so bright as to recognize this, could it still be considered 'salvation', not by the individual, but perhaps a third party, and if so, the third party then feeds off another persons 'salvation' making it his own.

with that it is my belief that if there is any 'salvation' to be salvaged, it is merely a construct of the brain projecting it's unconscious beliefs onto those third party individuals and is only possessed by an individual because in its true form, it is not his to own. seems selfish but i believe that is the basis of human nature and every one of us is left to the discretion of those individuals closest to us, and on a larger scale everything, living or otherwise, that has taken action in the past that has helped shape the world in which we inhabit and their thresh-hold for greed. what we take we rarely give back.

[cousinbasil]

Genuine 'salvation', which is a very rare thing in these last dark days

You sound like you are ready to go any minute, as usual. Don't change a thing. Just remember that if you let it get too dark, there won't be enough light by which to build that Ark.

[Bob Michael]

You sound like you are ready to go any minute, as usual. Don't change a thing. Just remember that if you let it get too dark, there won't be enough light by which to build that Ark.

Things are going rather well here at the moment, c/b. Thanks for the encouragement. One-day-at-a-time I'm continuing to develop the right approach for the successful building of that 'Ark'. I think I might name it the 'Church of Self-Overcoming'.