What do you really KNOW from authentic Direct Experience? [/quote]
Interesting question...hehe...reminds me of Morpheus question to Neo in The Matrix, "What is reality?" which in turns comes from the question of Pilates to Jesus , "What is truth?". Good question to stimulate interesting conversations, so I jump in
Not to debate, you already wrote it's not your intention, but just be-cause.
My answer to your question is quite simple.
What you know through authentic direct experience is what are all the thoughts and beliefs you personnally hold as true.
It's a feedback process. Life in 3D is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The world "out there" matches the personnal energy one's is holding. I don't mean it precisely matches the images we hold in our imagination, but rather the overall resonnance of our vibrations. You won't receive a gift or have an accident because you foresaw this exact gift or accident, but your vibrations created them in your life. Your thoughts and emotions have drawn the event lines that lead to these events.
Many scientists, in particular quantum physicists and perceptual psychologists, question the fact that there is really something "out there", but a flexible matrix, a universal womb of all potentials, and what we perceive is what we project on it. What the bleep do we know?
What we know from experience is what we project in it.
As I see it, "Authentic direct experience" not only mirror conscious thoughts, beliefs, values and judgments, but also the unconscious ones, and that's a huge difference, since our conscious part is only but the tip of the iceberg. And, when gazing at the mirror of physical life, one's have to remember the gap effect: some of the things you manifest in your life root from previously held, old thoughts, since 3D physical world is not a world of instant manifestation, as in non-physical realms ( That's why I have learned through direct experience, too, that when changing direction in life, it initially takes some consistancy of intention through time, even if results don't show up immediately. )
In my authentic, direct experience of everyday life, I also observe that, to add to the complexity and "fun" of the Game, all that I know from my experiences is known through the set of beliefs I hold at the time I interpret it. for example, if I see the same movie 3 years later, I won't see it the same way, and what I will know from it will not be the same, since my vision has changed. In Bruce's books, he refers to the perceiver, and the interpreter, as two parts of our self. Those two are evolving, and the knowledge that comes from direct experiences changes too.
Obviously, in my perpective, there is not only one Truth, and even personnal truth is in a constant state of evolution. And I can never say to someone that he is wrong, only that her or his truth does not currently matches mine. I won't start a war to prove my truth neither (but I can see that certain religions and political ideologies do so...)
What I feel is when someone is using the terms "authentic direct experience", the focus is on having the courage not to loosely adopt a conscensus truth as your personnal truth, but have the courage to consciously experience it, casting it from your own creation of this truth in your personnal life, so you have proven to yourself that it is possible to manifest it. If I succeed in my attempt to levitate. I can say "I know that human being can levitate, I have done it myself"
This does not mean that knowledge acquired through a personnal, authentic direct experience is absolute knowledge! If I can levitate on earth, that doesn't mean I can levitate on Mars, or another planet where the gravitationnal effect to overcome through consciousness is not the same, or it is not sure neither that I will be able again to levitate on earth on friday at 8 o'clock. But direct experience overcome the possibility of some tricky things linked to non-direct experiences such as false testimony, special effects on video, and the like
But are these useful, sometimes? Fiction movies open the mind to new possibilities, dreams are the starting point of a new breakthrough.
The only constant thing is change, and to think that any vision of the world is THE vision marks the end of a creative life, in my opinion. you begin to create the same things and situations over and over. It's good for security, but you get bored. And mental immobility can lead to fondamentalism.
In you question, you mention "beliefs" as an unsafe source of knowledge:
" What do you really KNOW? I'm not talking about what you have read, what you have heard, what your beliefs are, but what do you really KNOW? "
I would like to mention that the beliefs/value/preferences I see as the source of what we attract into our life is not "the things we think we believe", but what we really do believe and hold as true. If someone "believes" he can fly and falls down when he jumps over the edge, he just think he holds this for truth, he didn't really believe he could fly, there was doubts somewhere, probably at an unconsciuous level. Robert Monroe always called people to change their beliefs into knowns through direct experience. What I call "beliefs that manifest in life" would correspond to a "known" in Monroe's language (words are limitating, don't they?). If the falling guy overcomes all of his doubts, then he he will fly, but that will not be an easy belief to hold perfectly, because there is no support in the global human consciousness for a "flying guy" to truly exist. How far a truth is from the global consciousness determines the level of difficulty of manifesting it in 3D life.
will be happy about comments and will follow this thread
Peace and Abundance to everyone!
Wiz