03-18-05 6:16 am

GOD

I have used "god" only because "god" is nether he, nor she, nor it. It is a feeling of infinite intelligence, class and the source of all information, energy, matter and space that structure the universe.

It is the infinite potential that orchestrates information. Therefore God is the potential for all that was and all that is. However, for us to relate to we need to conceptualize it. For many, God is a virtual matter. In Sanskrit and Hebrew he is called different names. It really doesn't matter what you call god -- all of the above, or none of the above

- Chaz



C: [God] is a feeling ... and the source ...

Just removing a few superlatives there to get at the core.

While I don't feel the need to objectify the divine feeling into a "god" I've no problem calling it a feeling or even an intuition.

I can understand you calling it the source but I find that implies a seperateness I don't see. The source, the end and the middle are one whole.

C:[God] is the infinite potential that orchestrates information.

Well that sounds nice.

Potential is just a possibility, a speculation by a person about what might be. Likewise information exists as such only in the mind and the mind is what orchestrates it.

This would explain your perceived need to conceptualize it and its virtual aspects.

It would seem that you are saying "god" is a function of mind, a perception of what could be, a feeling of the divine nature, the way we source our information.

In essence we are god's creator.


Re: GOD

[This would explain your perceived need to conceptualize it and its virtual aspects.]

Yes!

[It would seem that you are saying "god" is a function of mind, a perception of what could be, a feeling of the divine nature, the way we source our information.]

yes!

[In essence we are god's creator.]

Very Yes!!!! ;)


C: Yes!

Why not just say so in the first place?

So what's the big deal?


Chaz, I'm glad you understand that we create our concept of god.

We create many concepts in our attempt to grasp the nature of reality, but concepts are just an echo of our thoughts wreseling with our experiences. They aren't the nature of reality. Any god we conceive of is not a true god, it is just our concept of what we think about gods.

The concept of god we create is always delusion. It is a poison in the mind. It is insanity. A mere concept can be imagined any way we wish and it will do and promise us what ever we ask of it. But it is juct a concept of god. It is just a concept of heaven.

Reality is where we are, not what we think of it.

Heaven is choosing to be a certain way and doing what is kind.

Earth is the garden and we were never kicked out, but our madness is choking it to death.


A short time later Chaz gave a rambling reply. Here is Swarm's following reply with salient excerpts.

Re: GOD

C: God is, you are not

The two are not seperate and which ever aspect you care to call is or is not is irrelevant. What is, is. What is not is only a concept and possibly a potential.

C: reality is an illusion...

What ever reality is, you are of a kind with it and your perceptions are tied to it. Pretending otherwise is self-delusion.

C: God is a Verb

God as verb is no different than god as noun since you don't ever actually do it.

C: concepts lead us to God

Unfounded concepts seperate us from what is and lead us into delusion and suffering. They poison the mind and bring insanity.

S: A mere concept can be imagined any way we wish and it will do and promise us what ever we ask of it.

C: yes, isn't that wonderful

No, it isn't because it can't do anything real and its promises are false. It's just pretend chaz.

S: But it is juct a concept of god. It is just a concept of heaven.

C: and these concepts are ture based on what and how you believe...

Yep, they are pure fantasy.

S: Reality is where we are, not what we think of it.

C: completely wrong, what we think of it is where we are.

reality is what you think

No, fantasy is what you think.

S: Heaven is choosing to be a certain way and doing what is kind.

C: heavenis whatever you want it to be

Your fanasty of heaven is whatever you want it to be. You experience of heaven has to be made.

S: Earth is the garden and we were never kicked out, but our madness is choking it to death.

C: Yes, logic and the analytical mind... Scientific

No, people who are more enamored with their fantasies, be they scientific or religious such as yours.

Power, fantasy, god, money or life. Pick one.





03-16-05 11:11 am

Naughty Kitten: OK so when I love someone, fall in love with them, I feel it so deeply. All I want is for their happiness, even if it's not with me. Usually, as I have said in another thread, regardless of the outcome, I am left with an amazing and lasting friendship.

My question is this; How do we get over the feelings of jealousy toward the other person our 'friend' has chosen? If I truly want his happiness, then how do I overcome the hurt I feel?

Any thoughts? Suggestions?

I just keep telling myself that I still have a wonderful loving friend, but it's really not enough. I want that feeling in my chest to go away! NOW!



Re: Jealousy

NK: All I want is for their happiness, even if it's not with me.

This is an excellent sentement. But it is an ideal and a goal to strive for.

Jealousy and the pain you feel is the distence between you and that goal.

There are a number of things that can be done. The "J" word makes it sound big and bad but like so many negative emotions, once you penetrate to its heart you'll see it was empty.

But to make it stop *Now* the fast path is to realize it is a manifestation of your innate silliness and turn the pain into laughter and joy.

That's kind of like juggling though so people have tricks to work up to it. What trick works for you is kind of hard for me to say.

It really sounds like you are most of the way there already. Usually there are a couple areas that trip most people up...

Desiring what you can't have such as possessing him, aversion to what is such as his attraction to another, unfulfilled lust, fear that you are less or he is lost to you, lack of control over the changes...

Emotions don't care about reasons, but they do have their own ways and logic of a sort. Generally I find that if I'm feeling a certain way it is in part because I'm holding myself in that emotion. If I focus on really feeling joy at my friend's joy the other feelings fade and loose their bugaboo status.

Sometimes it is helpful to articulate that he is free to live his life and you are free to both feel as you do and let let those feeling go and choose new ways to feel.

Sometimes there is healing that needs to happen and you just need to focus on other matters for a while to let the energies disapate.

Sometimes having a heart to heart with your friend is helpful.

Sometimes just seeing him happy is enough.

Either way, take heart in the knowledge that this too shall pass.






03-08-05 3:08 am

Löst: I pose this question as one who lives in the homeless capitol of the West Coast...

How do you view/deal with panhandlers? On the one hand, we're supposed to be practicing limitless compassion for all living things- but on the other hand, we know that giving alms to all who ask often assists their further deterioration...

Thoughts?


Swarm: If you give, give. But it is none of your business what they do with their money or their life.

If you don't give, don't make lame excuses like that one.


Barnaby: If your intent is simply to give, then this holds. But if giving is in the service of your true desire, which is to help, then you must ask: "What is helpful?"

I don't know that that question can be answered, but I think that holding it alive as a question is important.

A useful point of practice is: what is it in you that wants to help, and why?


Swarm: When I give, my intent is simply to give. I have no requirements or conditions. Giving is a privilege and I try to exercise it appropriately. It is also a crass imposition on the person receiving so I try to show my gratitude.

Help has nothing directly to do with giving. Help is something you do with some one. Giving is a transaction of goods.

I don't pretend that I'm wise enough to know what is helpful for another person so I ask. Then I decide if that is something I wish to do with them.

I think it is ridiculous to just give and help according to class or percieved need. If I see a person with a need I can assist I try to be of aid. Sometimes I choose to give superfluously and capriciously.

As for what's "in me," I'm a social being and giving and helping are correct on several levels.

Even some one who gives and helps for selfish reasons can't go too far astray here.

I have yet to meet any one who gives or helps too much.

Trying to control or change another person with your "gifts" or "help" is worse than doing nothing.


Mikey: I don't mean to sound like somebody's stern daddy, since there are obviously occaisions to give. I'm generally a softy and a lefty, but even Karl Marx said that if you don't work, you don't eat.

I'm at a loss to understand how somebody stitting on a milk crate every day of the week in front of a Blockbuster asking for money from every person who passes is doing "right work." It's taken me a long time, as well as a fair amount of mental anguish to realize that I don't want to fund a habit of uselessness.


Swarm: When we live in a land of tremendous surplus why should every one have to work? Especially when most of that work is useless and harmful? Part of why we have so few real artists and philosophers is because they have to wait tables and drive cabs.

Why do you think that sitting on a milkcrate working the crowd is not work? Begging is a traditional profession. It is definately considered right work and has a long association with buddhism.

Is that panhandler really the useless one?


George: Who has use? In the end our work and everything we've done is gone. It actually doesn' take very long for your you-ness to be completely wiped away by reality. We're all useless.

It takes the pressure off to admit it.


Swarm: "Use" doesn't come at the end.

When you are done with a job the tools you used have no further use in regard to what you were doing. But while you are working they may have been very useful. Utility is situational, not intrinsic.

That panhandler is showing us that our glorious empire still sucks in very important ways such as taking care of people. He is of far more importance as a panhandler than he would be as yet another corperate drone slaving for the system and pretending everything is ok and he has the right to look down on people he thinks are lazy or useless.


Harriet: The panhandlers bug me, but I appreciate the sentiment that their presence on our streets serves to remind us of the resource distribution inequities in our system. I have something they're willing to sit on the street and beg for. That's a very important reminder, I think.


Mikey: All that I'm saying is not to spoil somebody who doesn't become healthier for it.


Swarm: All I'm saying is that its none of your business. The panhandler isn't a child and you aren't his dad. He has his job and is his own boss. *You* may not want to do it, but it *is* right livelihood. He may even be looking for a different line of work but that is hardly your business unless you want to hire him.

Giving is a privilege.

It doesn't bestow the right to judge or control the recipient's life.

There is no difference between you and him except that you are sucking up to a system that is corrupt and distroying the planet and he has abandoned it. That is why you have money to give.




03-14-05 3:14 pm

Alanna:

Once, the poet Bai Juyi asked Niaowo the monk about zen.

Bai Juyi: " How should life be led so that oneness with the dao is possible?"

Niaowo: "Avoid all evil and preform all good"

Bai Juyi: "A three year old child knows that to be true"

Niaowo: "A three year old may know it, but not even a hundred year old can do it"

Moral: The assumption exists that if people know what they should do, they will do it, but we underestimate people's ability to fail themselves. Everyone knows what they SHOULD do, but how many actually do it?


M.T.: What is this about 'good' and 'evil'?

Good only can exist as a contrast to evil.
And both are contextual.
There is no such thing as 'good' and 'evil', save perhaps in context of of an individual 'self'.


Swarm: That is why help and harm are better than good and evil.

Help and harm relate directly to the reality of a being instead of just being a conceptual dichotomy.


Alanna: Yes...i agree with you....

But can one not help in a good or bad way and can't one also harm in a good or bad way as well?

what I mean, (because i think you may have more trouble understanding how harm can be good and bad) is that someone may harm another, but that harm may create a reaction in the victim (if you will) that could potentially produce 'good vibrations'

What do you think?


Swarm: There are two people in the case of helping and harming.

The one who offers and the one who receives.

There are also no gaurantees either.

I can intend to help/harm but screw it up.
I could actually do the help correctly but the other person screws it up or refuses it.
We could both succed in both regards but there could be unforseen side effects.

However if you intended to harm then no matter the final effect, you still intended to harm. The ends may mitigate the means for the other person, but they do not justify them for you. Intending to harm is still wrong even if it results in help.


Alanna: Yes....

Good can only exist in contrast to evil and we know WHAT good is because it has something (evil) standing in opposition to it. BUt does this mean, that since both forces exist, that we should not strive to have one radiate from within us more strongly than the other? I would like to make others smile and generally radiate light, and goodness. That does not mean I sleep with the lights on, or that I am not aware that evil exists.....I just don't want to be a source of it.

If you're saying that 'good' and 'evil' don't exist, well that's another argument then as well, and then the self also does not exist (as you mentioned) and we are all just what we are existing as one pulse in the natural order of things, and then there is no choice really whether we are good or evil, especially since the 2 don't exist in the first place.

Help me out a bit....what do you mean when you say good and evil don't exist?


Swarm: "Good" and "Evil" are distortions of a single indivisable and amoral whole of reality on the basis of our petty likes and dislikes. (I will use "Good" and "Evil" to distinguish the religious/absolute moralistic terms from ordinary good and bad.)

In choosing to label some aspects of reality/personality absolutely and inherantly desirable and others absolutely and inherantly undesirable, you distort your understanding of reality and cause untold suffering.

You can't radiate either because they aren't actually real. In trying to do so you only set up a form of bigotry and prejudice.

You need only look at the xtians who work so hard at trying to worship "good" and hate "evil" that they become the very force of evil they would despise.

Love because you love. Cultivate it because you love to love. But don't try and make it more than it is by calling it Good or you will find it corrupted by your pretense.


Alanna: Thanks for such a clear response.

I've actually struggled with this 'type' of thing for a while now. I realize that everything has its equal opposite and all things exist in duality, but I've been struggling with getting my brain OUT of the good/bad seperations. I always 'think' of things existing in 2's and that one is positive and one negative. I know this is something I must work on.

I do love because I love to love, I just need to get it out of my mind that that's the 'good' thing......

Thanks!


Swarm: There a two kinds of duality:

That which divides things into two opposing natures, and that which doesn't.

;)