I guess Alysia i was thinking of the view behind this paragraph lifted from the web ( which you will recognise) when i held back from trying to reconcile the various concepts:

'According to the Zen tradition, at a teaching assembly Shakyamuni (the Buddha) held a flower up in one hand, and turning it in His fingers, winked. Mahakasyapa, one of the Buddha's chief disciples, smiled. 

The Buddha confirmed that Mahakasyapa had understood His teaching. The Zen tradition claims this as the first instance of what it terms wordless mind-to mind transmission of the truth outside the scriptures and claims Mahakasyapa as the first patriarch of their tradition. 

If only we will listen, though, each flower has a wordless teaching for each of us. The scriptures are always guideposts, summaries or hints and true teaching is essentially wordless and finally consists of feelings and knowledge that words can never fully convey. Amida's (the Buddha of Compassion) call too is, paradoxically, entirely wordless. Memory is wordless. Aesthetic emotion is wordless. Love is wordless.'

It's very Buddhist, but the view is perhaps generally applicable. I suppose if i read it correctly it's basically saying that conceptual thought is only a prop, not the reality. 'Don't mistake the pointing finger for the moon' is what the Zen guys say.

That's not to say that getting the thought sorted out is not important, or that it's not fun but it's not the critical element in our story. It seems to me that when we get into concepts that we need (as we normally do) to stay light, and especially to avoid drifting into preaching or defensiveness. Regardless of what's written or said our thoughts are our own....

Moving back to the discussion of ideas in this forum. I couldn't agree more Alysia that it's an amazing learning opportunity ( we're all contributors to the Sitter's Digest) provided we can as you say remain open and always search for what rings positive/true.

It's a bit of a privilege in fact to be able to exchange views with you lot!!! Now back to the fun stuff...

Thanks, Alan, I like the metaphor of a PC you used there, often notice how we have come to use the computer to compare and explain how we fit into things. I do find sometimes how tortured is the path of the individual and how restful it is to go AHHH and just meld in with the god consciousness and let go of it all. But I guess, (just guessing) that there must be some very real inherent value, (value is too weak a word) in the struggle of the individual, although as Stuart Wilde often reminds us, Life Was Never Meant to be a Struggle. Vee

I figure love is like a super glue. If we love something, even if for false reasons, we have a hard time letting go of that something. Eventually, we learn to love what is truly worth loving, and as long as we keep loving it, it'll stay alive.

If we come to the point where we truly love ourselves, our spirit selves, as long as the energy of love is available, we'll keep applying super glue to our existence.

We come to the point where we truly love ourselves, only after we've evolved to the point where we choose only those aggregates that enable us to be wise and loving.

When I had my night in heaven experience, I felt like I was a being who was formless, but yet still existed as a definite being. I did not feel like I was alone. I felt like I was with God and may other beings, who also existed in a formless yet definite way.

I've had a couple of experiences where I was more conscious than usual while asleep, and I abided as an awareness/energy being, as another awareness/energy being taught me how to do so. These experiences did not feel like a dream.

There was also the experience I shared on another thread. The one where I walked around a town (not physically) while being happy and excited about being a part of one self. I walked up to complete strangers and hugged them, and they were happy to hug me back, because they also understood that we are a part of one self. Yet, we also understood that at the same time we are unique and distinctive beings. It is only when we try to view others being something other than parts of the one self, that we run into problems.

I've had other experiences that support the above, but instead, below are what some people have found during NDEs.

From Mark Horton's NDE:
"Still moving (backwards always for some reason) I suddenly just relaxed completely and allowed "myself" to dissolve (?) open up (?) merge (?) into the "oneness" that surrounded me. The ex- plosion of emotion and (again words are almost useless) over- whelming "love" that I now felt made any previous feelings I had experienced even during this episode, however "long" it had/was/is going on, seem like nothing! I cannot possibly put into words that any human language has that feeling. I was ev- erything, I was nothing. I was everywhere, I was nowhere. I was everywhen, I wasn't. My intellect had expanded to contain every thing, time, place, and even being that was, is, or ever would be! I was unique yet I was the tiniest part of the whole. I know this is sounding like gibberish... it even does to me a times when I read it on paper; but to have been it! Words don't exist to describe the joy and love and warmth. It truly is inde- scribable! "

Another experience:
"Now this is very difficult to describe, but time ceased to exist. It had no value there...past and future were completely non-existent. I was traveling in an intense, burning now. Now was everything. I ceased to be a noun (person, place or thing) but became a verb (an action). I was Ray-ing instead of Ray. This is the best I can do to describe what no-time is like. It is beautiful in it's own intensity and burning Now-Ness.

I was given a huge message at this point. The Being told me "This is Who You Really Are", as the Universe opened up to me. I could not tell the difference between myself and the infinite galaxies. I became all-powerful and all knowing - and yet I was still Ray. I cannot describe this better than this, but this "story" feels so inadequate next to the real thing.

Then the Being guided me and introduced me to another being of the most Incredible Beauty and Love that anyone could comprehend. It was a Greater Being of intense Light. It was God. The first Being guided me to this Light and let it enfold and swallow me up. I became one with Love times a million, billion, trillion forever and ever. We were made of the same stuff! Every Being that had ever existed in all of Creation was now part of this Greater Whole Being called God. I was one with all of them, and yet I was still Ray...all powerful, little old me!"

http://www.cinemind.com/atwater/RayNDE.html

Another experience:
"I understood (I use this term because I did not actually hear) the drops were the experiences of all who had lived. The experiences existed as separate items yet belonged to the whole. The whole was the collective knowledge of all. I understood there was no individual, just one, yet each experience was individual making up the whole. This concept of ONE is so foreign to any description I can give, there seems to be no way now of describing it. My previous understanding of one was a single uniqueness. In this case one is something else. Many being one and one being many, both existing simultaneously in the same time and space. I further understood that the collective experiences are omniscient knowledge. Everything that has been spoken, heard, and experienced. "

http://www.cinemind.com/atwater/KenNDE.html

To change tack on this discussion a little. We've had quite a lot of discussion of issues of self, ego and the afterlife (not just in this thread), and have ended up with mixed views on the nature of 'self'. Some have found the Buddhist idea that transcendence of self is ultimately necessary if we are to return to reality/achieve complete realisation a bit too radical. 

A more moderate view might be that we can't function in the world without some sense of what we are vs. the reality we live in. Egolessness arguably doesn't mean losing this ability, only any grasping/attachment that causes us to try to position self relative to it according to some mind made sense of 'what should be' - whether that is suppression of self out of say some mistaken religiosity, or of seeking advantage for the self.

The idea seems to be to remain in the 'natural' state if you like - to relax and allow ourselves to be guided by intuition so that we go with the natural flow of events. Perhaps the Tao, if we are to draw on another tradition.

This sounds fine, but it gets interesting (and possibly quite radical) if you stop to think what might be left if we all achieved this.

I'm still reading Robert Pirsig's Lila (a discussion of values) which draws on this sort of thinking to posit that most of us live from a learned framework of static values - a static view if you like of what 'I' am, need and want; and how this and all the other 'I s' (the "We')  should as a result act in the world if we are to prosper. This changes very slowly, and it's effectively encoded in the culture of our time by which we are all conditioned.

This is in some ways i guess 'going with the flow', and interestingly enough it does tend to produce an apparently relatively trouble free life. But it's pretty sterile.

He goes on to say that there's a few who despite knowing these values are driven to try new ways of living - that live from intuitively received dynamic or evolving or maybe even radically changing values, and become the leaders of change in our world. Great teachers, artists, musicians and social pioneers come to mind in this regard - people ranging from the Buddha to Jesus to those in the 60s who experimented with new ways of living and kicked off the New Age or whatever you want to call our era. Also those 'off the wall' types living very ordinary lives that only seem to make sense in retrospect.

This is not an easy path - the forces of conservatism (the defenders of static values) in society will turn on such people (harbringers of change) and perhaps even literally crucify them.

But this for them is 'going with the flow too. It's just that their intuition (heart or deeper knowing side) is feeding a different message to that received from the intellect (head) by those that adhere to static values.

I suppose the question I'm posing is what is the 'right' behaviour in light of this? Static values alone would simply leave us more or less stuck - living in a society that provides relatively little opportunity for spiritual development and progress.

On the other hand if everybody lived wholly from intuitively received dynamic values we at minimum would be faced with an absolutely incredible rate of change in the world (potentially for the good), but could if too fast see some sort of societal or functional melt down out of there being more variety and faster change around than most of us could cope with. This would potentially cause a reversion to selfish/violent behaviours resisting change in some cases too.

The reality seems to be that the 'flow' is controlled by maintaining the correct balance in this and all the other variables that determine our rate of evolution of consciousness and everything else- that it's by definition right as it is.

But imagine if we really get motoring at some point in the future  - we could perhaps in the end when our total reality becomes no longer the right learning environment (too perfected and not challenging enough) or we no longer are bound by karma to imagine it into existence do the old 'blink out to a higher reality' trick. And in doing so perhaps prove the truth of the Buddhist idea that ultimately form (including physical self) is empty - of no relevance once we've superseded it.

It actually might just be happening. We've through history seen a progression from individual rule of the fittest, to more highly organised rule of the fittest groupings and nations, to the Victorian rule of public morality/societal values as a means of curbing the excesses of selfish power, to the reassertion of a higher sort of individuality which is also at times selfish and indulgent within that framework (post WW2, really accelerating from the 60s), heading perhaps now into a more balanced individual responsibility and ability to draw on a blend of intuition and wisdom to better live from love.

We may of course blow it before we or any sub group gets that far and get sent back to zero. Spiritual snakes and ladders.....

Sorry if I'm rambling.

HI Goerge,

Yes indeed in my case i can remember no previous incarntion although this does not mean that i have not had any previous lives.

alan

You're welcome Kathy, and thank you for what you wrote. I agree with what you say. I still have some fears I'm not completely letting go of, and I can feel these fears present resistance at times within my heart chakra. When I let go of fear, I'm overcome with pleasant feelings.

I believe we need to become certain that what we truly are can never be harmed by anything.

Thanks Kathy for your post, I (unfortunately  ) seem to never get tired of the reminder to simply let go of fears.

Vajra, from your post, I myself see the problem is, you can either be driven by a program taught to you by someone, or living from intuition- but when the latter is the case, you somehow are thrown back to the first, as then the things you receive through intuition are then programs as well. So, the point has to be to discern between stupid, not satisfying programs and the true self-appropriate programs for our actions in this world. How can we discern between the two? Finally, we always have to come back to an honest and clear review of how we feel, isn't it? Do we feel free or do we feel narrow and under pressure.
  Then there is another aspect, when it is the aim to really realize the illusion of the physical world, then we won't be any longer here in this reality. We can't have it all, both the "illusion" of living a life as a human being, and at the same time to be entirely de-attached from this illusion.

Spooky