# the able yet weathered mind may not settle for anything less



## diagnosedindigo (Feb 10, 2009)

than to question....

the ideas and thoughts of asking how when where why with and so many other trigger questions has infiltrated my mind and plans to stay.
I cannot truly give myself to any particular religion because i cannot say i give in to you, i give in to say this is the real religion.
i was born under a gaelic grandmother, a christian mother, and a new age father. 
i have never believe that god was real, in the same sense i cannot believe that i am real. we are the god, i am that i am. we are connected with everything, we are everything. i can say i love everything, whether im upset at it or not, i do.
being raised to be allowed to read no other genre than new age, i have had been allowed to ask a lot of questions. like the movie "what the bleep do we know" i realize the true extent of the law of attraction. it's a hard pill to swallow but its there.
it's like. we know what is not real, and we know what is real, or do we? personally, after having dreams that are so real its like i never actually went to sleep, i can say i felt the same way i do awake in every manner. And yet the only difference was i was asleep and simply my brain made its own reality. whats to say it's not doing the exact same thing now?


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## Guest (Feb 10, 2009)

diagnosedindigo said:


> i have never believe that god was real, in the same sense i cannot believe that i am real. we are the god, i am that i am. we are connected with everything, we are everything. i can say i love everything, whether im upset at it or not, i do.
> being raised to be allowed to read no other genre than new age, i have had been allowed to ask a lot of questions. like the movie "what the bleep do we know" i realize the true extent of the law of attraction. it's a hard pill to swallow but its there.
> it's like. we know what is not real, and we know what is real, or do we? personally, after having dreams that are so real its like i never actually went to sleep, i can say i felt the same way i do awake in every manner. And yet the only difference was i was asleep and simply my brain made its own reality. whats to say it's not doing the exact same thing now?


I liked your post so much, it really resonated with me.

In a sense you are right, we are creating our own reality moment to moment. I've had that thought since I was 15, way before I ever suffered with Dp,d and recovered. People always seemed to be "Asleep" to me and I wondered why they wouldn't wake up, people are still asleep...Reality is as real or unreal as we choose it to be..it makes difference in the end. It's no longer a thought that consumes me, what had always consumed me was why others didn't see that or question it, I found that really very bizarre. I used to want to shake people and tell them to wake up and see it. It was always my thinking that, we are awake in the dream, not asleep like most are, and being awake in the dream of life means we can see its unreality.


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## diagnosedindigo (Feb 10, 2009)

and even if it is all a dream. it's still happening now. and i'm going to make the most of it, because times already past and thats all i had. i feel awake but i feel held back by those around me that don't realize it's life we're talking about. this isn't a weekend seminar where we speak in hush tones, or work where we have to compliment assholes. schools over, we can question motives. ....think straight balin....i once heard to truly life, you have to throw your mind away. thoughts hold doubts, i can attend to that. and doubts hold your spirit back which inevitably ceases the ability to make your own changes in the world.


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

Very interesting. I can control my dreams and in them I can do whatever I want. However, when Im awake, I have to abide by the natural laws of earth. I cant run, jump, and fly when awake. If this is a dream, then I want more control over it so I can do what I want.


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## diagnosedindigo (Feb 10, 2009)

Conjurus said:


> Very interesting. I can control my dreams and in them I can do whatever I want. However, when Im awake, I have to abide by the natural laws of earth. I cant run, jump, and fly when awake. If this is a dream, then I want more control over it so I can do what I want.


but thats just it, i can't do any of those in my dreams either. its like its exactly the same shit. the only difference is. well. i never really want to get out of bed? its more of a never get out of bed until things magically change kind of feeling than anything.


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

Are your dreams no different than every day life?

My dreams are always very weird and strange. Like the other night I had a dream that I was on an old pirate ship full of about 50 people I didnt know and a few of my friends. Everybody except a couple of my friends turned into werewolf zombies and we had to kill them all until eventually for some reason they all turned back to normal. Then I woke.


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## diagnosedindigo (Feb 10, 2009)

completely everyday mundane life. i admit no wonder im confused. confusing?
1. pirates were always badass, it comes to no surprise they can kill werewolves much less zombies.
2. bitches can fight vampires, but the T-virus is too much? hooligans!


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

Yeah if I didnt have crazy dreams I probably would be confused too. I can see why that'd mess with your head. If it's any consolation, Im in the mundane world right now rather than in one of my wild dreams. So you must be too, unless Im just part of one of your dreams


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## diagnosedindigo (Feb 10, 2009)

lol, you are so right! i'd like to thank the academy, the people i made, oh and of course my mother and my agent.lol

i'd say my imagination is the only thing i have to use yo make sure i can still tell what breaks what. sometimes if i just tell myself to believe in my imagination strong enough, it'll feel like a dream, so then i could have a reality to come back to when im done!


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## Guest (Feb 11, 2009)

diagnosedindigo said:


> i feel awake but i feel held back by those around me that don't realize it's life we're talking about. this isn't a weekend seminar where we speak in hush tones, or work where we have to compliment assholes. schools over, we can question motives. ....think straight balin....i once heard to truly life, you have to throw your mind away. thoughts hold doubts, i can attend to that. and doubts hold your spirit back which inevitably ceases the ability to make your own changes in the world.


Absolutely.

People don't know that they are alive and it's that vividness that I was trying to express.
I used to ask people "Do you ever actually _really_ feel alive. like really stop and think that you are alive, can't you feel that?" I would feel so awake and vivid in those moments...Hard to explain...Everyone would just look at me and ask me what I was going on about..they just thought that I was mad. It was those moments that made me think that everybody was alseep and I couldn't understand their trivial pursuits and their shallow bullshit like gossiping and greed...etc..I wanted to shake them.

The point is that it doesn't make any difference whether it is a dream or not, it is as real as it isn't. Reality is ironic like that, double edged as you say.....We can therefore turn it into a negative or a positive or neither because these beliefs are so limiting. We can choose, we choose in every instance.


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## diagnosedindigo (Feb 10, 2009)

hurray for spirit! 
i certainly have my fair share of near life experiences. it's just a shame that others just want to sit around and do nothing, when there really is so much to do! i think they hold back by making excuses. like no money, the heat, the cold, that's stupid. yea lets do that! oh. i can't.


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## Guest (Feb 12, 2009)

LOL

I like that term "Near life experience", that is it! :mrgreen:

You know the biggest excuse for not living is that we are all going to die eventually I think...That may be true but why focus on death so much if people aren't going to live, when they haven't even woken up yet. A lot of people who fear dying are still dead, what they really fear is life.

In another post you wrote about dreaming that you are dreaming..Reality is like that..an ironic infinity of endless mirrors. Because the dream is as real as much as it isn't real, people get lost in mind bending concepts trying to figure out infinity, only to come full circle and face to face with what already was-_That they are infinity_ and infinity can not "figure out" infinity. :wink: Although, it can try _endlessly_.


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

In the beginning, there was the end.


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## Guest (Feb 12, 2009)

In the beginningless beginning there was no beginning and no end..and not no beginning and not no end.


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

It was the middle of the beginning of the end- at least before it began to begin.


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## Guest (Feb 12, 2009)

There is a beginning and an end because there is no beginning and no end. Because the no beginning and no end are really not not no beginning and not no end...You must continue to transcend...... Until you can't anymore.


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

Spirit said:


> There is a beginning and an end because there is no beginning and no end. Because the no beginning and no end are really not not no beginning and not no end...You must continue to transcend...... until you can't anymore.


That's what you think.


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## Guest (Feb 12, 2009)

_I am being serious_. I bent my mind in every which way possible in the past to see this like a mental contortionist...

It's okay now though... :mrgreen:


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

Lol I couldnt follow it anymore. Oh, feeling dizzy wihth sparklies in vision.


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## Guest (Feb 12, 2009)

Yes lets stop.  :arrow:


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

Better now, blacked out for a moment.


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## Guest (Feb 12, 2009)

You blacked out? Maybe you should be at home Jesse.


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

Yeah feeling a little light headed, can't go home though, I have to work.


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## Guest (Feb 12, 2009)




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## Guest (Feb 12, 2009)

No they are not. :arrow:


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## diagnosedindigo (Feb 10, 2009)

well albeit airheads, i doubt they'd make good airship pilots. silly blondes. lol. the my just drive the thing backwards from the start to the end! afterall thats how it really started. same course, just different directions.


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

what is living?
how can one say that another person isn't living?

this is a very reasonable question
it is the same as fuzzy logic
when do you start calling an apple a core?

i mean, when people are on "death drive" that doesn't mean they aren't living

there are two kinds of death, physical death, and ego-constriction, which is soul-death, a state we necessarily go through
people often lose some of their soul-death when they are suffering
so when they emerge from it, there being less ego, they can then truely live
and that doesn't involve appearing to live in the same sense that other people define it

i see peoples pictures on facebook, bright faced, and huddling together in clubs and bars like conjoined twins
they call that living
and who am i to say it isn't? they are alive

but what life matters more: the physical life or the life of buddha-awareness?


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## Guest (Mar 18, 2009)

It all matters-All life matters, noone was disputing that, the problem is that THEY don't know they're living, they don't fulfill their potential, they live how they think others want them too or how they think they're supposed to, they live half asleep and mechanically, and they love without passion ......And I'm sorry but that's not good enough for me or what I wish for others, even if it kills me I'll spent every last breath trying to motivate people and trying to help them to realize their full potential. That's my passion. ALL people are important, all of life is important. You know, noone can say they aren't living but they just aren't doing it with any passion and that's the problem. They don't need to wake up and realize they're alive for others necessarily, but to wake up to themselves and know themselves fully, people just don't do that nowadays, they plod along lost in the maze of it all focused on trivial small insignificant things and then they die with no passion and the worst, most tragic part of that is that they just don't care. It's not an ego focus-they don't have to do anything great and wonderful, noone mentioned Buddha or enlightenment, they can just live and know they're living with a bit of passion of awareness.

The Buddha's awareness isn't something different from the physical life, that's a distinction in duality.

I will die knowing that I lived, that I was aware of it and that I did so with passion, I'm satisfied, I'll have no regrets when my final hour is here.


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## Conjurus (Oct 25, 2008)

I wont quote you. :wink:

But I love your post Lynsey. I hate how my family and most of the people I know around my town are simply content to live here in this little town and just work until they die and never experience anything. I'm so excited for my future and what it holds- I want to start a new life in basically a new world. I want to get out there and live and I cant wait to learn about things such as buddhism and magick.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2009)

Conjurus said:


> I wont quote you. :wink:
> 
> But I love your post Lynsey. I hate how my family and most of the people I know around my town are simply content to live here in this little town and just work until they die and never experience anything. I'm so excited for my future and what it holds- I want to start a new life in basically a new world. I want to get out there and live and I cant wait to learn about things such as buddhism and magick.


And you will. Life is for living, so just say Eff it and live it all to the fullest. :wink:

Thanks Jesse.


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

just to clarify what i meant when i said what matters more physical life or buddha awareness, i didn't mean buddha-awareness in opposition with physical life. what i meant is that the physical life serves the purpose of finding buddha awareness and isn't an end in itself. that's all. therefore, whatever a person does, whatever they think, they will eventually realise their true nature, which is that all is buddha, and the details of how passionately or dispassionately they lived probably won't matter, nor how much they even suffered.


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## Guest (Mar 21, 2009)

Rozanne said:


> just to clarify what i meant when i said what matters more physical life or buddha awareness, i didn't mean buddha-awareness in opposition with physical life. what i meant is that the physical life serves the purpose of finding buddha awareness and isn't an end in itself. that's all. therefore, whatever a person does, whatever they think, they will eventually realise their true nature, which is that all is buddha, and the details of how passionately or dispassionately they lived probably won't matter, nor how much they even suffered.


I disagree, if a person lives in ignorance their whole life, commits bad actions and has no appreciation of how life should be lived, has no regard for their own life and the well being of others or has no awareness of others, it's unlikely that they will realize their true nature in that lifetime. The "All is Buddha" is not actually a Buddhist concept or in the Buddhist doctrine-it's too general. Also their is a path to be walked, set out by the Buddha over 2500 years ago, so we can use our physical life as a means for realization. Those acting and living in ignorance can't fulfill that path, and because the physical life can't be distinguished from Buddha awareness one must for that very reason have a desire to attain the realization of Buddha. For that realisation compassion is a must, one must live with compassion and compassion IS awareness. I just got this status quote from a facebook friend-an ordained Buddhist Rinpoche lama-

"Wisdom without compassion is like dried shit on a stick to shake in others faces" :lol:

This is now going off topic as most debates tend to do around here.


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

this still applies i think to some of what was written earlier in the thread:

does God evolve people through a process which has been intelligently designed?
or do we evolve ourselves?

or is our active participation in practises a kind of step in God's evolving us?

I do agree that much is accomplished by a human being who engages in the Boddhissatva's Path, and it would be ideal if everyone was consciously on it! Apparently, there have been times/places where virtually everyone was encouraged to aspire to be a Boddhissatva or take the vows, in Tibet. Apparently, the Mahayana tradition saw it as the ideal path for everyone, ultimately and got everyone to "give it a go!".

this ties in nicely with something else i read the other day in Autobiography of a Yogi

It said that every society has a caste system whether it intends it or not. On the World Service the other day, they also described society as a "self-organising system". In Autobio of a Yogi, it said that people fall into different categories of mind quality and therefore life-purpose and that these all somehow contribute to the whole. It also said that the within-caste reproduction was designed to keep the race healthy and that people who are hybrids don't survive as well.

I felt this possibly applied to myself, actually, even though it sounds very fascist I wondered if there was a grain of truth in it.

My main thing now is The Work and I think in that mindset, the idea would be that everything is fine as it is and it isn't a mistake. So I'd say that it is good for people to play whatever part they are playing in society because in the end it will lead to our liberation. But I do think that, in this day and age, practising the dharma, or Right Understanding (we are one) is very very hard because there is so much roleplaying, money issues and boundaries of authority.

I have to admit i need to do a lot more of The Work in order to fully reconcile with how other people think and live as it has caused me distress since i was a child and really i feel very cut off from people when i imagine how they see themselves and what their purpose is in life etc. what they are willing to do in order to protect what they believe in.


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## Guest (Mar 24, 2009)

Rozanne said:


> I do agree that much is accomplished by a human being who engages in the Boddhissatva's Path, and it would be ideal if everyone was consciously on it! Apparently, there have been times/places where virtually everyone was encouraged to aspire to be a Boddhissatva or take the vows, in Tibet. Apparently, the Mahayana tradition saw it as the ideal path for everyone, ultimately and got everyone to "give it a go!".


Yeah, in Tibet, most of the Tibetan people have never even heard of the word "Buddhist" -To them it's just their way of life so everyone is encouraged to aspire to the path and children are given to the monasteries and ordained at a young age. There are two types of Bodhichitta that a Bodhisattva can develop. The first is aspiring Bodhichitta and the second is actual entrance onto the bodhisattva path. Everyone can aspire and generate aspiring Bodhichitta and practice the path-that aspiration which must be there first will lead to the actual Bodhisattva path. Practicing the dharma is not so hard really-only when we imagine an ego who is practicing. But sure, ideally you have to simplify your life as much as possible at least to begin with and set the right conditions. Right understanding is understanding the illusion of ego and the understanding of emptiness, understanding karma and understanding what actions should be taken and which ones should be avoided and knowledge into the path thereof..The path unfolds spontaneously.


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## egodeath (Oct 27, 2008)

Rozanne said:


> i see peoples pictures on facebook, bright faced, and huddling together in clubs and bars like conjoined twins
> they call that living
> and who am i to say it isn't? they are alive
> 
> but what life matters more: the physical life or the life of buddha-awareness?


In _the Dharma Bums_ Jack Kerouac (Ray Smith) wants to get wasted in an alley instead of going to a lecture at the Buddhist Center, and this gets his friend Japhy very upset. They fight all day and finally Japhy goes to the conference without Smith. When Japhy returns he's also wasted and reports that the Japanese representatives had brought gallons of sake and they spent the whole time getting drunk.

"There's wisdom in wine, goddamnit...Have a shot!" (Dharma Bums, 144)

Philosophy is great, but sitting around thinking about life is not living it. Although it may feel like you're going someplace higher, sometimes you just have to go out, get high on whatever it is that gets you high, and live.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2009)

egodeath said:


> Philosophy is great, but sitting around thinking about life is not living it. Although it may feel like you're going someplace higher, sometimes you just have to go out, get high on whatever it is that gets you high, and live.


Yes, and that IS the whole point.  You are living, as long as you know that and are aware of that. It's not about going someplace higher or philosophizing life-the point is most people don't even achieve being fully human while they're dreaming of heavens and better things because they are asleep to living and being alive here and now. People focus on the afterlife and death and heaven and what not so much so that they can't live because they're to busy thinking about death and other things. We are alive-all we gotta do is live, with awareness.


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## peachy (Feb 9, 2008)

egodeath said:


> Philosophy is great, but sitting around thinking about life is not living it. Although it may feel like you're going someplace higher, sometimes you just have to go out, get high on whatever it is that gets you high, and live.


so fucking well said. it took me a couple years to get this through my head. philosophy was my crutch for dp and now i feel fucked without it but the fact is i wasn't really living. so thank you for saying this and reminding me once again.


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## egodeath (Oct 27, 2008)

peachyderanged said:


> egodeath said:
> 
> 
> > Philosophy is great, but sitting around thinking about life is not living it. Although it may feel like you're going someplace higher, sometimes you just have to go out, get high on whatever it is that gets you high, and live.
> ...


Any time. I've got a liter of vodka that wants to be drank...care to join?


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## peachy (Feb 9, 2008)

oh my gosh, hell ya


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

for me, philosophy has never been about philosophising. i consider it a way of alterating consciousness and thats how i understood it since i was a kid. mind-consciousness....

if you want to alter your consciousness using alchohol, go for it. sometimes i've used drugs and alchol and food in conjuction with my mind trips, but on the whole i've found that the most enlightening moments were lucid dreaming and attempts at tantric sex, or singing with a view to experimenting with energy consciousness. if you find alcohol good....fine.

i remember when i first had a drink it immediately put me into altered states which i started recording in my mind for mind-consciousness purposes. i believe thats what you are doing too though you may not realise it. you do it to unlock your mind, taking away social inhibitions helps with that.

socialising does my head in. i just can't cope with it. i'd rather be at home doing something with my head and that, as i see it, is my path. perhaps some of us aren't here to live, in the conventional sense. i'd put myself into that category. socialising, for me, feels too intrusive when i could be tripping around the universe or out with the fairies.

it has taken me literally all my life to get to the point to be able to assert this to other people, instead of introjecting their belief that i should be different to this.

obviously there is some inner conflict. i feel i care about people a lot i just find that it is too much to process and have spent years processing some pockets of psychological information.

I analyse mind-consciousness, that is my first memory, in the cot. Its what I do. Appart from learning compassion, it is what I do and I don't see anything wrong with that. It isn't a substitute for love. It is an offering to that of God within, to pleasure myself with thoughts about the miracle of existence.

i think people don't like thinking if they are unsure of the places it takes them. there is such thing as enjoying dreaming. imagination is important. partly because we are imagining stuff all the time, so I want to know more about my imagination. just like travelling. it is exactly the same because if you can call to mind different states of consciousness whilst you are doing nothing that is pretty profound.

it doesn't serve a practical purpose and that is what is so genuinely creative about it.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2009)

Rozanne, 
Noone here said there was anything wrong with YOU doing that. Maybe your root fears of rejection cause you to project that belief onto others? Maybe its taken you this long to accept it about yourself rather than having others accept it?

I liked your post though, it's a way of life, it is you, I get that totally.


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

I take everything everyone says as if it is directed at me, even when they are talking about other people it hurts.


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