Ashes to ashes?

[W4TVQ]

I get bogged down from time to time in the paradox: only what God creates is real; what man makes is not real, but illusion ... but boy, does that illusion feel real when I drop a brick on my toe. Trying to live as if what we see, feel and experience is "not real" is demonstrably a bad idea, as when the Christian Scientist denies the reality of his child's pneumonia and the child dies for lack of treatment.

Ruby Nelson has some useful words in that respect: To call the web of human sub-creation "appearances" is not to say that it is imaginary. Actually, it is real, painfully -- sometimes inhumanly -- real and active. Within this web of collective forces are included many experiences which have been accepted as the way life is -- wars, conflicts, violence, strife and troubles in any form, poverty, disease, old age, cycles of death and rebirth, the struggle of mankind to understand himself and his universe.

Since such imperfections have generally been accepted without question, very few of my lost children have tried to find perfection by coming to realize that I have already given to each and every one a mind that knows all things and has all power, and a life force which cannot age since it is the essence of eternal youth.

... The "heart" is like a vast reservoir constantly being filled with whatever you pour into it through the surface mind. ...if you have filled your reservoir with accepted human beliefs in limitation, then you are limited in all your actions. But if you are willing to empty out your heart and let me fill it with eternal truth, you will experience a transformation.

Well, easier said than done. But it makes it possible to live with the arena of experience in which we are currently operating, regardless of whether it is "real" or "illusory." We simply view it (to borrow Buddha's term) as "impermanent", and remember that we cannot transcend it from any point of beginning except where we are -- within it. According to Buddha, one does not deny the existence of the impermanent, but simply uses it as means to transcend impermanence. Like the wall that isn't there if you don't look at it, or the tree that makes no sound if it falls where no ear can hear, the transcended state becomes an awareness that the impermanent was not there in the first place until we saw it, and ceased to be there when we do not see it. But as long as we saw it, it was there. Depends, presumably, on how much we have emptied our reservoir of human thought and thus allowed divine thought to flow in and refill it.

Personally, I think the wall is still there if I am not looking at it. That is because I cannot state that my mind is the only one, or that it operates independently. The Buddha made much of "inter-being" and "inter-dependence." Nothing exists in and of itself, apart from everything else and everyone else. It is not just my mind that is perceiving the wall, but the collective mind of all God has created. If the "web of sub-creation" is an iullusion, it is a mass illusion. If you and I look at the sky, we both see a blue expanse with white clouds in it. The sky is a creation of the collective consciousness, of which we are part and parcel. So is the wall, and the tree. These things are creations of the collective consciousness, and will cease only when the collective consciousnes in its entirety ceases to observe them.

The correlary to that is the very thing that ACIM teaches, that if you or I should transcend the illusion, we bring all other minds to that level along with us. Nothing that one mind does can be done without affecting all minds. SO: we actually could bring about world peace simply by ourselves attaining nirvana. Awesome.

JMO
Namaste
Art

[W4TVQ]

Come to think of it, "we actually could bring about world peace simply by ourselves attaining nirvana" is in itself a false statement. The Heart Sutra (as interpreted by Thich Nhat Hanh) teaches us that "we meditate not to attain enlightenment, because enlightenment is already within us." "Does the rose have to do anything? No, the purpose of a rose is to be a rose. Your purpose is to be yourself." And therein lies the worm in this apple: we are "striving and competing" to be anything and anyone except ourselves. So the key to nirvana is "not striving and competing to be anything or anyone else." Not "attaining nirvana," but "unattaining everything else."

"There is no need to put anything in front of us and run after it. We are already a Buddha so why not just take the hand of another Buddha and practice walking meditation?"

Namaste
Art

[Speculum]

It is enough to be human. In fact, it is Divine.

[jenjulian]

I have attempted, but I just can't succeed in seeing the world around us as something I've created with my thoughts or something that is not real. I also cannot really find a benefit in this view. It feels like a forced view that I'm questioning something that doesn't lend itself to needing to be questioned. As it has been posted, even if this is true, what is the need to go there?

I can connect more to the idea that Art is talking of, that the world is impermanent and that it is constant change, but not that it is not real. I like your second thought Nancy, that we need to retire from assertions and be our world. I've had times like this lately, and this is becoming more and more my state of Being.

I also liked Stephan's egg and egg tooth analogy. I wonder what the egg tooth is in us? Our mind? does it chip aware at the egg. Is it our heart, that allows Light in and is able to crack the egg from within.

I enjoyed Ihavesayso's discussion of his drill and its power source. The tree is the most majestic thing in nature to me. I walk by them and they talk to me, their old quiet wisdom. I like the idea of needing to be rooted to the earth, whether it is imaginary or not, it is where we are, and needing the light that is not from here to grow.

By the way...I just adore all of you. What beauty and light you all bring. I'm so grateful for this time of learning and growing.

Charin Echo,
jen Meillier