Hi Lucy-
Now will that be My religion, Your religion, or our Uncle Rabbi Irving's religion, or maybe our cousin Mullah Nasruddin's religion ... ?

We all have a partly similar idea, but the problem is that the common set of beliefs is a small, countable, number of beliefs, plus a large and uncountable set of differences. Being egotistical, we unfortunately seem to dwell on differences.

Aside from that minor problem, the idea is a good one. All we need to do is to agree - I think you've hot on a basic human problem, that we all live in independent worlds that actually have a relatively limited degree of overlap. I admit that it doesn't look that way, but if we view every discriminable trait between two sets as a "dimension", what we have in the everyday world is a common meeting place that's defined by external factors in the space we necessarily share, and thus can agree on. Maybe we already have our C1 agreement space defined, but we call it "reality". 

dave

Forget religion,

Look at C1 all around you.  People turn thought into reality, and don't even know it, per se.  My wife is constantly growing and potting plants in the house, with beautiful results.  Gardens are tended and grow, and spread beauty.  A home develops its "feel" or flavor by what is bought/placed/crafted. 

On a larger level, cities, lakes, bucolic parks are concrete examples of thought turned into reality.  Western science consider all this to be an accident.  Afterall, we are just a collection of subatomic particles, cells, chemicals which want to propagate itself due to the presence of a genetic code....right?  Where does thought or consciousness fit in?

We are constantly constructing in C1.  Houses, pools, bridges, personal space - what have you. The more amazing feat to me is not that we create constructs in c1, but that we don't give our mind/spiritual nature any credit for what manifests in the "real world." 

Once you understand that applied intent can create, you can use your own introspection to see how your own "unsaid" intentions still manifest in your life.  It is with this profound realization (the result of what is commonly called "soul searching") that we can finally become the captains of our own ship, fate, and destiny.

Matthew

Actually, Lucy, you've got me to thinking... 

Let's start with the assumption that God-Mind is fragmented into all the various personalities we encounter, whether as mosquitos, as amoeba or as people. There is nothing except their innate origin to hold this group together. That makes it rather hard for God to talk to Itself.

So now allow there to be a collection of abstract conditions in some limit state, past which there is no logical path. And let these be equally a product of God-Mind. They might, in fact, b no more than what the Hindu calls "dreams flitting through the mind of Brahman". That's OK, since we all share that Mind, so we all have access to these in some manner.

Now let's develop these conditions in some manner, so that they come to interact and relate to one another, forming ever bigger collections of relationships. Since these are abstractions, they can add without being "used up" - like when you put someone's phone number in your address book, it doesn't "use up" the number. (Ie: addition with replacement.) Further, let's make it slightly more probable for thngs to join together than to separate, so that by chance alone there will be a tendency for all these conditons to interact. After a (very short) while all these conditions will be so varied that there will be conditionos relating to other conditions in exactly the same way as the physical furniture of the everyday world interacts.

We know the world only through its properties, the "thing-in-itself" is forver hidden. Moreover, we only know the properties as they change. That which is static is invisible. Since the manner in which things interact is fully defined by their properties, which is to say, the conditions of their existence, there is no way to tell that these "things" are made of some kind of "matter" (whatever that might be) or whether they are simply limits to our ability to see beyond their nature. Either way it comes out the same, these abstractions that we all share appear to be a common reality with knowable properties, logical cause and effect interactions, and rigid definitions with which we are all forced to agree. In a sense, the world presents itself to us according to its atitude toward us, which is the dynamic flux of sensations that it delivers.

But notice - this gives us (1) a common reality that is shared by all, in spite of our individual differences. (2) A common meeting place in which we can interact, so that God can indeed talk to Herself.  (3) A system in which we can become involved by adopting some existentially definitive trait, such as breathing, as the identification link between our individual God-fragment-mind and the "things", so that we can act and react to one another. That means that God can play with Himself in various different ways, like sending us spam, junk mail and so on, as well as being the person who objects to receiving same.  The Hindu says that this is "God's play", in Sanskrit, "lila". And the world is imaginary, even if it is God's imagination, so it is reduced to "illusion" or "maya".

With respect to C1, it seems that C1 is already a construct. Thus, aside from observing that we tend to fit ourselves to the commonality in non-uniform ways, you might notice that we have effectively created a collective "reality". 

What would be interesting at this point is to figure out how to get back to the God-level so that we might participate in the creation part, instead of just coping with matters as they arise. As DocM put it, we can do it by intention - just the same way as raising or lowering a finger, as in Bruce's "silly little finger bending exercise".

Some of the hints we get about this are the experiences of people who are mounted by "entities", disembodied spooks who generally are terrified of being destroyed. This alone suggests that residency within a body might well be possible for numerous "people" at one time - perhaps a partial explanation for multiples as well. We also have experiences of ESP when I phone my wife and discover that she was just reaching for the phone to call me. Or Tantric meditation in which it becomes hard to tell which body we occupy, or the equivalent when people meet in some kind of projection. All of which is suggesting that we actually have more options, but have not as yet discovered them.

On the other hand, were we to understand all this, I wonder whether there would be anything left to talk about? 

dave

This is really interesting. I guess we don't talk about it more because all these angles are valid and it is challenging to know how to fit them together.

C1 probably was somehow an already-existing structure...but without the humans, would it continue to exist? And what does that mean?

Anyway, there is a mixing of personal and group in this that is difficult to disentangle. For me, that probaly means I don't know how I as a little individual exist within the context of the group. We live in individual worlds but that exists within some kind of group consensus. And we can ignore some of the group consensus..(how else could we create our own destinies?..). Still it seems it would be interesting to have some kind of agreement that some of that group consensus is based on stuff that is arbitrary. Or as Matthew says, ' we don't give our mind/spiritual nature any credit for what manifests in the "real world."   ' Or, as Tim put it, "we began telling stories without enjoying them as stories, taking the stories as "real" instead. "

I guess I'm trying to figure out how to collectively get back to the God level, Dave. And frustrated that as Matthew points out, this takes alot of soul searching. How do you make collective soul-searching happen?

hard question Lucy. your last question "how do we show that to someone else?"

some would joke around  and say speak softly and carry a big stick.  but thats just a joke to me too so insert laughter.

I think the answer seriously how to show, is by behavior example.
when I was driving my twins home one day they started hitting each other and screaming at the top of their lungs. now, I don't know about the rest of you mothers and fathers, but I have a problem driving whenever I hear an F# scream off the scale; I turn into a nervous wreck.
Had to pull the car over and take control. I suppose u might say it was my purpose for incarnation to be their mama. but at the moment...

since I couldn't drive right then as I would surely injure some innocent person if I tried, I pulled over and taught my kids what would happen the next time they acted badly. I simply started walking home and left them in the car (fortunately, home was only 8 blocks away.)
kids, like adults, don't listen to reason when they're fighting for supremacy. so behavior did the job. since they didn't want to end up walking home and destroying the mom's nervous system, they quit fighting while we were driving at least.
I don't know how I got some respect that way and some drastic measure is often needed when raising kids, but it boils down to walking your talk without having to injure the child to get its attention.

but there seems to be an inner child in all of us, me included, but we end up disaplining ourselves somewhere along the road and then since we're all connected, people notice other people's behavior more than the stories they tell.
its really none of my business what anyone believes, as long as their belief is not harming life or keeping me from doing what I enjoy.
and I do believe we create our own personal reality and this effects others.

I see religion as having degraded through too many interpretations over the years, but that we all needed those guidelines, otherwise we would be committing adultery, stealing every thing not nailed down, making cowboys leave town, having a war every 20 years or so, well, you get the picture. religion has some road signs to follow. its just that you can't believe anything you hear until you take it inside you and see where that thought goes, and make more decisions whether it rings true or is just more spam and commercial.

if you go way way back before we had so many religions, you go to myth stories. imagine this, this is gross. spirit was producing weird animals within matter. thats when man/woman came about, but spirit had to go back to the drawing table, what a mess! thats what Noahs ark was, I conjecture, there began to be 2 of each kind so we wouldn't mess up (as this curious spirit thing, which had no idea what to do with Earth!)
so no I don't believe there was a real ark, its symbolic of spirit moving over this planet.

but then we have this 10 commandments thing, like thou shalt not kill. kinda religious? you'd think it would be an easy road sign to follow, religious or not. but nope. we still make certain kinds of killings ok with society agreeing. then we have dont commit adultery. we should divorce our spouses first and THEN play around! we don't follow that one. too old fashioned. but its common sense and saves a lot of trouble in our society if we followed that commandment.

I dont know what the other commandments are, maybe stealing is a no no. but they are good guidelines so we can't blame the inception of religion, nor the gun that kills people, so ban the gun. it's not that simple.

I know, religious people are pain in the....as they think they are right. I have an idea, next time the somebody comes to your door pushing religion, put a fart toy under the cushion and position them unto it! see what happens. love ya, alyia