That's a very nice and almost poetic expression Alan of the 'now you see it, now you don't aspect that seems to surround questions of individuality and universality - it points up very nicely the likely futility of getting stuck on any single perspective.

Not at all convoluted. ( that's my space)

My sense is that it's all mind bogglingly multidimensional. Not only are we required to using empathy and intellect eventually drop selfishness so we can slide between seeing all the multiple perspectives capable of adoption by individuals in C1 (normal physical reality) consciousness, we are also probably required to eventually drop belief in an individual self and eventually even in the absolute nature of any perceived reality to become able to transition up and down the continuum of levels of consciousness that take us from individuality to God/source.

It seems to be so much about coming to rest in the natural state - about connecting with the wisdom available from our true selves and dropping all of our conditioned beliefs so that the above becomes possible.

That as your piece suggests eventually requires dropping all teachers and all paths. Even in the earliest stages we seem to be required to take responsibility for our own path - start leaning any any reading ready made belief system and almost all progress stops.

And that's only from the vantage point enjoyed by a physical human. It probably grows lots more complexity as we move on to other existences.....

I think we are still talking about self realization, or enlightenment, thus the end of suffering.

I too view life as a dream like quality when I see I'm not who I was yesterday, let alone who I was in another century. I think we are moving out of religious dogma as a whole, but still, we need a new language in that case. what I think about that is the marriage of science and religion produces in time the new language.

Vajra, my dog is evolving on the other side. She is still with the same form as I knew her to be. this is an experience I had with her, which is not your experience I know and so I won't be believed by everyone that I meet with her, and she is like an extension of my consciousness.
I am agreeing with you the development of psychic abilities is not an indication that the psychic is necessarily enlightened, but psychics would indicate that all life is in a process of evolution and that same process is the act of becoming more unlimited, and also we can then begin remembering our first advents within matter.

Imagination is a creative process. I believe Einstein attained enlightenment simply from this one statement I quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Religions are belief systems..but they are limited in the concepts they point to, and they develop in a society because there was a need for something to believe in other than waking up in the morning, going to a boring job perhaps and inspersed in there is the question "what's going on?"

or to illustrate further "who am I?"  in the end, it's you yourself decides who you are and what is possible and what is impossible.
Alan, it is exciting what is happening to you. I can see you are not limiting yourself within your beliefs.

didn't you have an NDE?  People who have, they are not necessarily psychic but I do believe they come back specifically to tell the others about the other side as best they can.

as to what it is that survives...during my occassion where I died, as it was entirely real to me, at the same time tailor made to my studies and ways of thinking, what survived was a sense of adventure, an enthusiasm trait, a willingness to walk into the unknown, and a trust that something was taking care of me despite I had forgotten my source and felt alone on occassion.

the source, lo and behold was the very space I existed in. it had an intelligence built into it, or an awareness of "me."
This I call PUL, God, Source, Life itself, Higher Self, Disc, I existed in a body of space, an individual, a spark, alive and safe and whole, of one piece and with absolutely no fear, only pure joy and totally alive.

Alan knows this. I am flesh and blood temporarily and grateful I am alive because I finished the main intentions for incarnating, and that's the moment I seemed to die and had a marvelous time in that space of freedom from my lesson plan.
I know who is my teacher, my best friend, all these roles you can think of, and it has nothing to do with religion as the collective view it.
we life and move within the very substance of life principle, we fragmented and we come back together at some point. We have nothing to lose by exploring the depths of our own minds and imaginations.

everyone is equally within Love and equally loved. Source is PUL. Intelligent, all pervasive Energy consciousness individualized. all knowing and has also been called the Creator.

Hi LaffingRain,

Sorry I missed the chat, what a day I had.  Anyway I wanted to clear a few things up that I said because I am very bad at getting my points over. Goodness knows I try.  When I say dreams or imagination, I am talking of real reality.  I am not saying oh this is just fantasy or something unreal.  This reality is very real for the time being, but I think we will have other types of realities also that are very real.  I take my dreams and imagination very seriously in a humorous way.
I believe in simultaneous time and oh boy!  Some of the beings I've seen.  I don't think we will be humans forever.
I am also not an atheist, but I get upset that God or All That Is has been made out to be a monster.

So I will say this another way.  When we get through with this experience, however long that takes our individual consciousness lives on although connected to other consciousnesses and will have other experiences.

Anyway, just sharing my view which is always subject to change.  PUL   

AOK too....

Ian, I've been reading a new slant on an old idea..karma. Tolle, he wrote the popular book A New Earth. In it he says there is a collective pain body, as well a personal pain body.

I liken what he says to the collective area of consensus agreement that the Earth is flat, for instance, or that death and taxes are absolutes. for instance I no longer pay taxes nor do I believe I will die.

ok, I still pay gasoline tax. 

the trick is to my perceptions, not to pursue enlightenment as an objective, but to take a look at the pain body and heal the pain. physician heal thyself idea. pain in the body for instance is usually a blockage, if we remove the blockage, either with a doctors help or with a practioner or just with a natural talent of shifing our mental horizons, we begin to allow the blood to flow into those areas which were blocked.

we can treat the symptom and often do, buying time. but to find the root of pain, at it's inception, that is known as preventative medicine. I think that's where we are headed in the future.

I'm not saying the body holds the illness, I'm saying the body is a mirror of what you think and believe about yourself.

a most useful vehicle of consciousness and learning then.

There's a few cats I'm looking forward to meeting again too. Not to mention several still around that are very good friends and that have helped me a lot. (have been and are a really calming and centering influence through difficult times)

They have somehow been involved in several varieties of quite powerful experience too. That said I'm sure they could just as easily have manifested as something else - that their 'catness' was a lot to do with my own orientation.

My experience has mirrored what you say Alysia about the body expressing our pain as illnesses and other problems - I've had several instances of releasing stuff with immediate physical consequences -  pain, gut function, postural issues, sense of smell and so on.

UG Krishnamurti writing about his enlightenment experience talks of major changes to his skin, all his senses, the movement of joints, need for sleep along with many varieties of experience.

So it seems fairly clear that mind can in a very direct and short term way by energetic means influence the physical body, maybe even that the choice to manifest a body in a particular form eventually as Alan says becomes optional.

Tolle has a lovely way of conveying stuff in very accessible terms I think. It seems clear that when we  experience pain and try to push it away from us/suppress it that we do create a 'pain body' - probably one that has an existence that follows us after death.

This is the same idea I think as the creation of gods (the result of our grasping after 'nice' stuff) and demons (trying to distance ourselves from 'nasty' stuff) in Tibetan Buddhist teaching that I've written about before - the thinking is that our mind creates them and they live off our energy. Both are harmful.

Big deal stuff like say major childhood traumas or major obsessions (like the pursuit of power) can become enormous but remain suppressed, therefore behaving as unconscious energy draws.

Chod is the practice used to send love to and re-integrate them as they otherwise make us ill - there's been some very good results recorded as a result of AIDS patients using it for example.

All of this starts to sound very like karma, but as SHSS says there seems to be a lot talked on the topic that swings it back conceptually into a sinners/good guys space which is not what it's about. Quite how it all works at the systems level is difficult to figure out though, especially given the complexities of the 'who am I' question.

Luckily it's usually possible to float the most 'outrageous' (in conventional terms) ideas here for discussion without drawing any sort of negativity...

Hi Ian and all. as regarding the pain body and it's relation to karmic principles, we need to do as Sshs suggests to go beyond karmic implications, or try to do that.

one of the ways I began doing that is to let go of a belief in Murphy's law. (Anything that can go wrong will)  another way of believing in Murphy's law is a mindset which experiences a major string of what is seen as good luck. automatically when something really great happened in my life, I started looking over my shoulder for bad luck to follow, or to plummet to level I was used to again. Before, I used to say when bad things happen, they happen in threes.

this came true. but I stopped those beliefs because I was producing their outpicturing, to be creative that way. things still break down, but it's no longer "wrong" that they break down. its just what is happening, what is, and you just go ahead and fix it if possible, or ask another to fix it.

so we may see in the human body as a cell is dying, it is being replaced also by a new cell.

the pain body might be explained as holding unto something that is fading away of necessity, like holding unto yesterday because a fear exists of the future, which is silly, as the future hasn't happened yet. or I should say manifest reality is in our hands.

speaking of the white hat versus the black hat and we all want the good guy to win. I see the two players as One Act, in agreement on spirit levels, so that next time, the good guy is the bad guy perhaps. an example is Robin Hood, doing something considered bad in order to produce good.
all this is to express how we are not players doing a solo run here.
the performer on stage would not be much without the audience and the applause can either be addictive or can cause a soul to even graduate ELS with the audience's help towards that.
but as I see it, you cannot separate the performer from the fan. it's a joining.

the same with a relationship between two people who join. either in a contract or just live together, is a joining. from out of the relationship is born a product of the joining, a spiritual product.
here maybe the product is seen as a child is born from the union.
I'm thinking in terms of PUL is a product that changes the world.
then I'm thinking of how creative a substance is doubts.

and I'm thinking doubts is uncertainty, and is a type of suppressed fear, the pain body.
then I'm thinking where there is love, there is no possibility of fear being in the same space.