Permanence VS. Change

Nick_A wrote:

IMO a lot of New Age practice like channeling only serves to potentially taint us on the inside. Perhaps it would be better if we could lose enlightenment rather than damage ourselves on the inside from our innocent ignorance. But if this is the human condition, and we are capable of damaging our budding soul, it is better IMO to be very wary of charlatans.

This is the most popular point of view in our culture. It requires the least amount of effort. When you are ignorant and innocent, you have little in the way of discernment skills. Your entire well being depends on others.

This philosophy is promoted, in one form or another, by most of our social, political, and religious structures. We are influenced to a great extent by this body of thought.

Yet there is the choice to follow conventional wisdom or think for yourself.

I am pleased to see you present this view for evaluation and consideration.

Thanks,
John

will they always have that enlightenment? Or does the enlightenment come and go? Can it be lost?

In my opinion, I don't think that anyone can ever be unenlightened, that once you KNOW KNOW something, you can never forget something like Essence. One can always try to ignore it or block it out of one's system, but to completely lose it on all levels--your physical, mental, and emotional level (the level's of the physical domain)--is impossible...unless you have memory loss. Because we all are enlightened in the nonlocal domain of interconnectivity and in the quantum domain of energy exchange, the only part of us that does not understand infinite potential or interconnectivity naturally--due to the mind and other blockades--is our physical selves. Thus, I think to be enlightened is to know and understand and FEEL Essence on the physical plane as well as all the other planes. So, maybe Alzheimer's disease, which will make one forget things, can ultimately wipe out our epiphany of the Universal Truth, and although we may innately feel that truth, we still have to be enlightened once again explicitly and on the surface?

In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.
- Author unknown

Do you agree? Or is change much simpler than that?
What are the catalysts and inhibitors of change?

Funny and so INSIGHTFUL!

Change comes naturally and is always a part of life--but I think that refers to more physical change and the chances of things happening in life. What Anita's quote is referring to is more the change in opinion, emotional wise and personality. I would say that I agree with that quote because when we truly change permanently from one stafe to the next, it is because we realize the the old no longer works. Sometimes we try to change because we feel like the change will be better for us, but speaking from experience, I always end up right back where I started when I get tired of trying to be 'good' and 'smart'. Thus, I think that to truly change...and not ever go back to our old ways, we must feel so bad about the old ways or we must really, truly KNOW and UNDERSTAND that the old WON'T work.

Therefore, I feel that sometimes it does take a huge, drastic event to change someone, but that is not always the case. Say a person is lazy and does not want to pick his daughter up from school, so he tells her to walk home. Then, on her way home, she is kidnapped and is never found again. This kind of tragedy will leave a scar of shame and guilt on the father that he will try to NEVER be lazy again--to both atone for his sins and in fear that what happened with his daughter might happen again. However, even though this kind of change may go on for the rest of his life, changing out of fear or guilt is not really a complete change. The OLD us is still there somewhere, waiting to come out once we feel as though we have redeemed ourselves.

To truly change, I think that it takes a less dramatic process. We simply have to realize that the old way can never work and that the new is so much better. We have to be ENLIGHTENED. Which, of course, seems really hard, but it is really not. We just have to clear our mind, shut the ego-mind up, and realize/feel how our ways are hurting our lives and those of the people around us. Knowing that will certainly help us change--not to help others, but to help ourselves.

Thus, I would say that WE, our intuitions, are the catalyst of change. Understanding our flaws and our power to become better is what eventually makes us change. No self-doubt! Self-doubt is the inhibitor, that and our physical bodies. When we feel tired or frustrated or lost, we often want to find the quickest and easiest way out of whatever problem we are in. Let's say I have a test tomorrow, but I'm so tired, so I just decide not to study. That's my fatigue getting the better of me. We must TRANSCEND beyond the physical needs and limitations of sleep, sickness, or any other thing to truly become better--to become the superhuman that we all have the potential to be.

So, that's what changing is all about...making yourself better? Eventually becoming infinite potential?

Fermin: Good clarification, since you answered “essence” automatically the first time. True love huh, I see. I won’t go deeper toward that direction though. Haha, your last full paragraph in the post above mine sounds so you:P

Shawanne: Interesting story. Indeed, determination and the right willpower act as catalysts of change. ^^

Fiona: Hi Fee! I haven’t thought of enlightenment like that before, and your post makes me wonder why I had not think of it as something like maturity or wisdom. Yes, I agree that there are levels of enlightenment. So you’re proposing here that we are continuing to advance through the levels. Insightful!

Kenny: I had no idea what kind of laugh you meant, so thanks for clearing that up. Yeah I know what you mean about the failing, and eventually the lack of success may even lead to low self-esteem and self-confidence, which can be inhibitors of change. You’re welcome on the bio references.

Nick: Thank you for bringing different information into this thread, such as that quote about enlightenment and how it can be tainted. Your last paragraph is interesting, and leaves me thinking.

John: Indeed, and in fact this concept has been discussed in other threads on this forum (such as Kenny’s)




A sense of pessimism here - but do you think that things could always be worse? Or after a certain point, everything negative that follows does not affect us as much anymore? If there's unlimited potential upwards, how about unlimited potential downwards?



What won't kill you will only make you stronger.
We have heard about this. But what is your perspective?

things for sure can always be worse but the question is, are you going to let that thought control you?
actually, lemme rethink something. when you think that things could be worse, doesnt that help you have gratitude (one of the big important things The Secret mentions that we should have). so if you just have it put that way, then it's not neccessarily "negative" thoughts? as long as you dont dwell there.
i think.
you shouldnt be letting the negative be affecting you. but hm...is thinking that things could be worse bringing about negativity? i think you can think that, gain gratitude, and then just the thought pass/disregard it after that. it serves as just to be grateful. as long as it isnt anything more than that, i think its ok?

unlimited potential downward..isnt that what stephc's thread was about?

i can see that i am some how rubbing off on you. at least my pessimism is. haha

well, there is a saying that things can't get any worse right? but from my perspective, it can. it's just that people don't want to point that out it can. although people say that the unlimited potential is generally positive, but isn't that because people see from the bright side? when we speak about the unlimited potential, we have mainly focused on the good, but there is always a downside. let us focus on the negative for a sec. when we say things can't get any worse, doesn't something always happen still? like regret. i don't think the impact of regret is anything less than the pain of the moment itself. i think living in regret is probably worse than the worst. i don't know. that's just me for the moment, and i'm not very pessimistic today. so i can't really contribute right now. haha

but! from the optimistic mee
we can always see that theres nothing worse than death right? once you're dead, what else can happen. so that is the positive side of saying. there is no end to the good life you can get the designer stuff that you want, live in a great house, be spiritually satisfied, finding the partner for life, etc etc right? plus if you hate living in regret, just get memory loss or commit suicide, and then you're ready for the next life. okay. maybe this isn't really optimistic, but still. hehe

A sense of pessimism here - but do you think that things could always be worse? Or after a certain point, everything negative that follows does not affect us as much anymore? If there's unlimited potential upwards, how about unlimited potential downwards?

I guess that this does happen, in a way--taking the Secret into account, if we are having a bad day and start thinking, 'oh crap, today sucks, my life sucks, it's gonna keep sucking', then most likely your day WILL get more shitty, and it would maybe even continue onto the next week. Okay, exaggerating a bit here, but you get what I mean, right? XD. Though I also think that even though more and more crap might come towards one, the longer one is exposed to it might make one become stolid to those events...or does it just make them repress themselves even more? o_o; Hmm.

What won't kill you will only make you stronger.
We have heard about this. But what is your perspective?

If something screws with you and you don't get screwed, screw it right back 'cause apparently there isn't much damage. There are exceptions, of course, but that's what I think. Even though I might have worded it weirdly...XD

What won't kill you will only make you stronger.
We have heard about this. But what is your perspective?

Anita! I'm going to answer your second question first because your first one is a little complicated for my half-asleep brain right now. When I read or hear this quote, the first thing that comes to mind is a man or a woman who is soaking him or herself in a tub of ice cold water to test their endurance, or someone punching a brick wall with knuckles that are starting to bleed just for practice and the test in it. Now, I don't really think that they are crazy for doing that--I mean like in building muscles, you have to 'hurt' your body to push it over its original limits. Thus, as long as the physical tests don't kill you, they will definetly make your physical body more enduring and stronger.

Yet, with the mind and emotional state of people, I don't think that they same 'law' applies. When we are faced with a negative comment or criticism, we may appear to take the criticism well--laughing it off as insignificant or just completely pretending as though we didn't even hear it--but deep down, we will get a little hurt by the mean thins that people say. That's the ego-mind, right? Caring about and getting hurt by what people think of us...Either way, since emotions seem to be the result of both Being and the ego-mind, we often DO get scarred by the hurtful comments people make about us. With successive, mean things that people say about us, we soon begin to lose confidence and our self-esteem, questioning our decisions or actions. Like in Remember the Titans, howCoach Boone kept yelling at Petey during the game and Petey felt really bad about himself, saying that he can't play with all that screaming and yelling, I think that that is the same way with a lot of us, if not all of us. Who wants to hear something negative when they have the choice to hear something positive?

The negative scars us, but it may hurt us so bad that we become stolid and emotionless to the world around us. Yet, there is a part of us that has been locked away because of such discouragement and the remaining part of us that faces that world is not really us because we may have lost of passion and curiosity and incentive to try new things and explore. Developing this hard 'exoskeleton' isn't becoming stronger--people may think that you are all strong and stuff because you don't show your emotions, that you don't seem to get scared at all or get hurt at all--but not allowing your true self, with all your emotions, to show in the world does kind of seem to me like one is fearing the world, a lot.

On the other hand, positive comments and encouragement are what build up our self-esteem, thus truly making us stronger. We become more confident about ourselves and the choices that we make--thinking that we do have the power to do the right thing, that the world likes us for who we are and what WE have to offer. Thus, I think that not all things that don't kill you make you stronger. Somethings don't kill, but they destroy you on another level--the emotional or mental level.

HI ^^

I think there should always be a balance between stepping out, and keeping something to ourselves. Like the chem equilibrium! In order for us to achieve an equilibrium within our lives, we need to work things out so that there is a balance. Its the same with stepping out and receiving the world and keeping something inside and staying passive. We cannot continue to put ourselve in the face of the world without stepping back once in a while and examining ourselves from within. Because self awareness is key to life and to the understanding of things, it is also important for us to quieten down the ego mind from time to time and really just listen to the inner voice speak and to manage that crazy ego mind so that it does not go into overdrive and overwhelm us. If we continuously put ourselves into the world without stepping back, we may become affected by the worldliness of the society, be tempted by the excessive material greed, and may even ahve the possibility of losing ourselves because we are disconnected from the universal soul, channeling through us from the inner being. Therefore, in order to protect and enhance that deeper, profound connection, it is also important for us not only to open ourselves up to new opportunities and experiences that the cosmopolitan world has to offer us, but to make time and space for ourselves and for the establishment of the connection wiht the inner being.

And speaking about our pessimistic questions... I think it was somewhat addressed in my forum thread before. (which was about the law of attraction if by any chance you still remember) Someone from an external source mentioned that as with the law of attraction, there is also the law of repulsion and the attraction of negative things. When we have negative emotions and are emitting those pessimisitic attitudes, and since like attracts like, mmore of that bad stuff will come. THey are like foul smelling, dirty oil spills in the sea, ruining and dirtying the waters and contaminating our beings. Things cannot always go the way we want them to, and i think part of living in this world and in a generation liek ours, is to learn to stay positive even in rough situations. If you choose to wallow in that pit of pessimism and the negative emotions, you will become more and more trapped and it will become increasingly difficult to break free of those binding thoughts. Things may continue to worsen due to the fact that you keep yourself in that never ending sea of negativity. And if we continue to complain and feel angry towards the world for presenting us with tough situations and difficult circumstances, we will never get out of them either. It is like when someone falls into a deep deep well. If they just stand there at the bottom of the well, complaining about why there is anyone coming to rescue them, or why the well had to be there so that they could have fallen in, they are likely to be more frustrated with the situation and not be able to come up with a solution. But if they could just calm down adn think about what to do to get out of the situation, perhaps change their attitudes towards soemthing positive, things will turn out for the better. It is the same when we are caught in unfavourable situations, since GRATITUDE is a huge part of the law of attraction, we could apply feelings of gratitude or just positive emotions into our lives and thus totally change our perspectives on the outlook of things. And when our perspectives are shifted, the whole situation will shift because we are virtually standing at a different (perhaps better, higher or more well rounded position) and we are able to get a better view of the whole situation, instead of maybe only the negative side or a small portion of the whole event. And often times, when we are able to obtain a more holistic view of a situation, the individual small parts become insignificant and thus our worries, anger, and other negative emotions surrounding that smaller, negative portion of the situation will also lighten and become not so important. We might even laugh at ourselves at the end of the day for having being so caught up and absorbed with the smallest, insignificant part of the circumstance...

I hope that sorta answers your questions...

Hey Anita

I think your question can be led to : is there a limit to suffering?

Its funny how we want to say, or we dare to say humans have unlimited potential in growth, transcending upwards, going passed the limits, yet we want to say, yes there is a limit to suffering, or should i say, we want to set a limit to suffering because its bad and transcending is good, suffering is degradtion and transceding is inclination. Yet, I personally think we should go passed this bias and allow the fact that negativity, sufferage can come and attack humans and shape humans in unlimited ways.

Man, why do we suffer? As ms Kay mentioned during class, humans have the ability to grow without suffering, yet we do not harnest it. I suggest it is because of inertia, because of the lazyness, because of our inert physical body slowing down our spiritual to do things. The spirit is unlimited in growth, yet the physical encapsulates this spirit slowing it down, and giving it barriers to cross, obstacles to jump over. but anyways, suffering i suggest, is key to growth. Think of it like this, suffer often comes with pain, and yet why do we feel pain? Isnt it the brain producing pain? Essentially, our being doesnt feel anything, yet the brain produces something our body doesnt like, hence pain. Pain! Product of our ancient mind in order to protect speices to not make the same mistake, hence growth, the process of learning. Yet, this evolutionary trend has not yet left us. Again, this is a hypothesis.

So many of you might be confused. I have no idea what im trying to say, or maybe i do. To tie up. I have no idea if pain, sufferage is a product of being or a product of mind and physical. But product of being is limitless, product of the mind is held among bars of limits.
Again, this is a theory.

the law of conservation of matter states that matter cannot be created or destroyed.

i think this is enough to show that everything is permanent, though not necessarily in the same form.

when we die, our bodies decay, and the atoms from the body flows into nature, and will eventually finds its way into the bodies of new organisms.

I believe our souls, though not exactly "matter," are also permanent, as they are beyond the physical domain and exist mainly in domains where things do not simply cease to exist.

Joyce: We have a choice whether to be shattered or encouraged by obstacles. Yeah, when we think that things could be worse, we learn to appreciate and cherish the current conditions. So in a way, it actually helps in the other way? Yeah, I realize that the second part has been discussed in StephC’s thread. But since it kind of ties in with my thoughts, I wanted to rephrase and ask it. My question was originally related to transcending downwards, therefore I had to change.

Ivy: Living in regret can really consume people, as they keep thinking about what they have done or the lack of what they have done. Haha, you’ve got some extreme suggestions there. I’m sure there are better ways!

Shawanne: With that attitude, even if the day does not get more sucky, one will have the tendency to look at the more negative parts, using them to support the claim that it just gets suckier. The longer one gets exposed to it, one might become numb to these feelings? Maybe. It would take more severe crap to tumble that person down, since they’re used to crap? So in a way, this is supporting “What won’t kill you only makes you stronger.” Haha, your “screw” sentence reminds me of a screwdriver. XD

Fermin: So “no pain, no gain?” Your comment about negative things remind me of the negative enforcement that we have talked about earlier in English class this school year. In a way, that person that you just described is seemingly “adapting” to the society today, developing an exoskeleton and mask to "survive" in society. But I agree, that person is not really living in the now. Instead of killing, some things could slowly eat us away, which is like Dimmesdale in the Scarlet Letter. That can be even worse than killing sometimes, since that is like a slow torture.

Soph: I like that situation that you created with the well. I see that along with others, you have highlighted the importance of attitude when it comes to negativity.

JT: Good job expanding from my original questions! Indeed, my question can be considered that way. I like that hypothesis, about growth being a product of learning. Fredrick Douglass has said that without struggle, there would be no process. But will that evolutionary trend that you mentioned leave us? Are we better with it or without it?

Hen:

I believe our souls, though not exactly "matter," are also permanent, as they are beyond the physical domain and exist mainly in domains where things do not simply cease to exist.

It is mainly a matter of which domain we’re talking about, then?

Oh and at what point do we realize the change that's happening to us?

Fiona has brought this up, so why don’t you guys explore this?



“My general categories would be
Non living things change most slowly.
Living things change much more quickly because of evolved responses to environmental conditions.
Sapient beings change faster still, because of their potential to learn and adapt themselves.
The products of sapience; ideas, concepts etc. can be resistant, but have the potential for the most rapid change. and are perhaps the most ephemeral things of all.

However there are exceptions. Certain elements have very short half lives, while some ideas last a long time.”

This is a reply from an external forum to my question of what is something that resists change the best. What do you think?


“We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves."
-Lynn Hall
Your thoughts?

“We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves."
-Lynn Hall
Your thoughts?

We keep learning even when we're out of school; there are some things one can never learn without experience. How can we 'know' who we are just by going to school and looking at textbooks, or just going to work and staring at a computer screen/whatever job you have all day? As we grow, our bodies deteriorate, but not necessarily our minds. As we grow, it becomes more and more clear to us who we are; although we may not get to the point in which we know ourselves inside out, we learn from our surroundings and most importantly ourselves. We'd never progress if we blocked out the new, and if we let in the new and let it come to us, wouldn't we also be learning about ourselves and evolving more and more into the person that is us in a way? Hm. I dunno if this is worded clearly or not, I'll have to keep thinking about it. XD

Hey Anita
I think the quote is extremely true. During the process of growth, we are just getting to know ourselves a bit more. Without education, without guidance, without nurturing, it is almost impossible for our minds to fall upon the question: Who am I?

Mr. Guenthers famous quote

The reason people are on this earth is to find the reason people are on earth.

Again, i believe, the biggest question in life is the search for self. And personal opinion, i believe its the most important question. Education gives us knowledge, yet we are not our knowledge. Education provides us with equations, yet we are no our equations. Then WTH are we? We talk every single day about things that are not ME.

Its a weird phenominom that people are trying to understand themselves. Yet, people say, only you understand yourself. You are yourself, yet many times you dont understand yourself. thats a weird feeling dont you think. Yet i agree with the quote. I believe growth is a process of searching for identity.

Shawanne: Indeed, you can’t know who you are just by doing those stuff, since many other people are doing the same things as you. One needs to go out and EXPERIENCE. One needs to apply that to real life in order to feel the essence.

JT: Yes, people who have trouble obtaining the basic necessities of life already are not as likely to ask that kind of question as someone who possesses all those blessings. Thanks for bringing in that quote! I agree, what good use is everything that we learn if we can’t apply it to ourselves? If we don’t even know ourselves? Through the process of searching for our identity, we are constantly learning, absorbing, and growing.

Thanks to everybody who participated in this thread! Your answers and questions to my questions are all greatly appreciated. They have all helped me to understand the world, my surroundings, and ultimately, myself better. Thanks for accompanying me through this journey! Even though the week has ended, we will continue this journey nonetheless. Please don’t hesitate to bring anything new up!