posted January 10, 2009 10:11 PM         

The argument reads thus:

Man has not gained power over Nature.

Rather, he has been forced to accomodate her every whim!

Every innovation is a further complication of life,
signifying the increasing conditionality of man's happiness.

Is the rise of civilization the fall of man?

posted January 11, 2009 01:45 AM         

The only thing I notice is that we don't live long enough to sustain the mature attitudes necessary for evolution.

posted January 11, 2009 02:01 AM         

quote:

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The only thing I notice is that we don't live long enough to sustain the mature attitudes necessary for evolution.

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Thats mostly true.

If we are evolving, its at a snail's pace.

quote:

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You may be right, though. We do complicate things when we create all these distractions for ourselves. We spend less time on our own collecting our thoughts, and allowing ourselves to express our genius. We're less relaxed.

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This isn't about "Simple Abundance".

I'm not saying we are complicating things,
or that we have the power to reverse this.

posted January 11, 2009 02:32 AM         

Then there are people who grow up in environments,
like the Amish, or certain indigenous tribes,
where the level of decadence is not as severe,
and they have more of a chance to reverse it,
or at least slow it down; on account of their upbringing.

posted January 11, 2009 05:12 PM         

Sure we 'adapt' evolve; we have had increasing rate of technological advancement, and things like medical advances, but are we spiritually advancing or still just experiencing life as it presents itself.

We may think about spiritual things; there may be the new age culture, and a greater looking into things - we may even have a lot of accumulated knowledge on spiritual themes but - where are we obtaining a lot of our knowledge from? the past aren't we?

Sure we're taking the knowledge of the ancient mysteries, cultures, sects, symbols, lore, practices etc, etc, etc, and giving it a new age spin - but are we evolving in terms of spiritual evolvement.

We talk about past lives, Karma, and refining of spirit but are we really only kidding ourselves.

I don't really have the answers but I don't see that we are more spiritually evolved.

Even the more spiritually inclined and aware of action people amongst us, are they anymore spiritually evolved than the people from history that we refer to and the knowledge that they possessed?

We all like the idea of having significant connections to the Egyptians, the Celtic priests, the Aztecs, Sumerians, Tibetans, ancient Chinese masters, Indian sages, North American Indians, African traditions, European mystics, tribal shamanism, oceanic magic/ceremony, indiginous dreaming/animal/land connection. So by latching on to all this does that make us more spiritually evolved. After all, these bodies of knowledge etc were integrated into living cultures. We have adopted them like trying on a new hat. Of course they have significance, however, can we claim spiritual evolvement or are we often just confused?

posted January 11, 2009 06:58 PM         

Maybe you have seen some of my posts on the topic?

It errupted into a ten page debate, with a dozen people attacking me.

Basically, I think it is the ego that wants kids. Or, wants its own kids.

The illumined heart cares as much for others' children.

Here is the analogy I gave:

Imagine that you have given birth to a child...

But you lost this child somehow...

The child is now an orphan, living in Africa, starving to death.

You can get the child back, if you really want to.

And you do still want a child..

So, what do you do?

Do you abandon the child you already have, who is starving somewhere?

And bring another soul into this world instead?

Or, do you try to recover your living child?

Of course, to the ego, this is an absurd analogy.

"The child in Africa is NOT my child," says the ego.

Couples say they want a child to be flesh of their flesh,
an expression of the union of their two selves...

But if their love is so pure, why don't they express it by adopting?

Let every interaction be an expression of their love,
and let their love overflow beyond themselves;
beyond even the union of themselves!

Love doesnt reject the children who are already here, already needing love.

Love doesnt want or need to drag in some poor soul from the astral;
or create vessels which act as vacuums, sucking in souls.

Period.

Of course, everyone will love at their own capacity.

But never fool yourself about this.

posted January 11, 2009 07:10 PM         

My point is that all those apparent advancements,
whether along spiritual, cultural, or technological lines,
have only become necessary on account of our de-evolution.

We need medicines, and we invent medicines, because we've become sick.

We need religion, and we invent religion, because we've lost touch with God.

posted January 11, 2009 07:21 PM         

It concerns humility and ego-inflation, and I think it may be invaluable to many seekers.

Here is an excerpt:

Now, inflation is the principle risk that attends each person who seeks the experience of depth, the experience of what is occult, which lives and works behind the facade of phenomena of ordinary consciousness. Therefore, inflation constitutes the principal danger and trial for occultists, esotericists, magicians, gnostics and mystics. Monasteries and spiritual orders have always known this, thanks to the immense pillar of experience which they have accumulated over millenia in the domain of the profound life. This is why their whole spiritual practice is based on the cultivation of humility by such means as the practice of obedience, the examination of conscience and the reciprocal brotherly help of members of the community. Thus, if Sabbatai Zevi (1625-1676) had been a member of a spiritual order with a discipline similar to that of Christian spiritual orders and monasteries, his illumination would never have led to his revealing himself (in 1648) to a group of disciples as the promised Messiah. Neither would he have had to become a Turk in order to save his life and continue his mission ("God has made me an Ishmaelite-Turk; he has commanded, and I have obeyed -- the ninth day after my second birth", he wrote to his followers in Smyrna). Because he would have been spared positive inflation, just as he would have been spared the negative inflation of which Samuel Gandor, his disciple, gives the following description:

It is said of Sabbatai Zevi that for fifteen years he has been bowed down by the following affliction: he is pusued by a sense of depression which leaves him no quiet moment and does not even permit him to read, without his being able to say what is the nature of this sadness which has come upon him. (Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism)

The history of the illumined Cabbalist Sabbatai Zevi is only an extreme case of the general dangers and trials which all practicing esotericists have to face. Indeed, Hargrave Jennings expresses this danger and trial in a successful way concerning the Rosicrucians:

They speak of all mankind as infinitely beneath them; their pride is beyond idea, although they are most humble and quiet in exterior. They glory in poverty, and declare that it is the state ordered for them; and this though they boast universal riches. They decline all human affections, or submit to them as advisable escapes only -- appearance of loving obligations, which are assumed for convenient acceptance, or for passing in a world which is composed of them, or of their supposal. They mingle most gracefully in the society of women, with hearts wholly incapable of softness in this direction; while they criticize them with pity or contempt in their own minds as altogether another order of beings from men. They are most simple and deferential in their exterior; and yet the self-value which fills their hearts ceases its self-glorifying expansion only with the boundless skies... In comparison with the Hermetic adepts, monarchs are poor, and their greatest accumulations are contemptible. By the side of the sages, the most learned are dolts and blockheads... Thus, towards mankind they are negative; towards everything else, positive; self-contained, self-illuminated, self-everything; but always prepared (nay, enjoined) to do good, wherever possible or safe. To this immeasurable exaltation of themselves, what standard of measure, or what appreciation, can you apply? Ordinary estimates fail in the idea of it. Either the state of these occult philosophers is the height of sublimity, or it is the height of absurdity. (Hargrave Jennings, The Rosicrucians: Their Rites and Mysteries)

Let us say absurd as well as sublime, because inflation is always simultaneously sublime and absurd...

I feel so close to God, so inspired by His Spirit that in a sense I am God. I see the future, plan the universe, save mankind; I am utterly and completely immortal; I am even male and female. The whole Universe, animate and inanimate, past, present and future, is within me. All nature and life, all spirits, are co-operating and connected with me; all things are possible. I am in a sense identical with all spirits from God to Satan. I reconcile Good and Evil and create light, darkness, worlds, universes. (John Custance, Wisdom, Madness and Folly: the Philosophy of a Lunatic)

The state described by John Custance is characteristic of that acute mania, and the author himself in no way denies it. But would he still look at it in this way, one can ask, if he knew that his experience is found described exactly in the Brhadaravyaka Upanishad, which says:

He who has found and awakened to the Soul that has entered this conglomerate whole -- he is the maker of everything, for he is the creator of all; the world is his: indeed, he is the world itself. (Brhadaravyaka Upanishad)

Can one say with certainty that this text quoted from the Upanishads is based on an entirely different experience to that of John Custance?

Thirty-eight years ago I knew a tranquil man of mature age who taught English at the YMCA in the capital of a Baltic country. Now, he revealed to me one day that he had attained a spiritual state which manifests itself through "the eternal gaze" and which is that of consciousness of the identity of the Self with the Eternal Reality of the world. The past, present and future -- seen from the pedestal of eternity, where his consciousness had its abode -- were an open book for him. He had no more problems, not because he had resolved them, but because he had attained the state of consciousness where they disappeared, having become of no importance. Because problems belong to the domain of motion in time and space; he who transcends this and arrives at the realm of eternity and infinity, where there is neither movement nor change, is free of problems.

When he spoke to me of these things, his beautiful blue eyes rayed out sincerity and certainty. But this radiance gave way to a dark and angry look as soon as I raised the question of the value of the "subjective feeing of eternity" when one is not aware of or one is unable objectively to do something more towards helping humanity, be it in spiritual (or other) progress, or in the alleviation of spiritual, psychic or bodily suffering. He did not forgive me this question and he turned his back on me, which was my last impression of him in this world (he made his way to India, where soon after he died as victim of an epidemic).

I recount this episode in my life only so that you may know, dear Unknown Friend, when and how the very serious problem of the forms of, and the dangers of, spiritual megalomania were awakened in me, and how I owe it to this objective experience that I began work on this problem, some of the outcomes of which I am in the process of showing.

Spiritual megalomania is as old as the world.

~ Meditations on the Tarot:
A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism
Letter VII, The Chariot

posted January 11, 2009 07:33 PM         

Because I think and look at this world in terms of the concept of Maya, I have a hard time understanding the desire to bring a child into it. I guess that's it though, it's another earthly desire. I don't mean to imply i'm 'above' it or the next guy, but I don't think it's possible to see a certain way and then also want to have a child. Those two don't fit together. Then, not everyone sees that way, so there you go! Then there's the whole "householder" path. You can still work things out for yourself taking that route, but why? Seems like a dangerous game to me - the karmic implications or delusion that comes along with it. I also think about certain enlightened people throughout the ages who became parents. Was it often something that happened to them before they understood a certain way or was it conscious choice on their part? I wonder. And I'm sure it's different for each. When you see the falsity of the world how do you bring another into the mix? I have a hard enough time remembering on my own from day to day. There's a whole lot more to say, but I'm afraid I'll p'ss people off. I've often heard that since I havent had a child I'll just never understand. Until one does they just don't realize the beauty of it etc. No, I think I understand that and can see where they are coming from....really. In more ways than one.

The child parent relationship seems to be one that would generate a huge amount of karmic attatchments or holds. I'd love to gather a few hundred spiritually advanced or enlightened people and hear their thoughts on this. I'm sure maybe around half of them would be parents themselves.

posted January 11, 2009 08:59 PM         

quote:

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there is something deeply, profoundly gratifying in dignifying a turd

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posted January 23, 2009 06:19 PM         

i think a lot of people just don't trust themselves to be truly bonded with a child they did not conceive and bear themselves. once you have brought a child into the world your sense of responsibility for their care and protection is HUGE. (though a lot of parents APPEAR not to really care for their kids, another paradox). and many people fear the "baggage" an orphan brings within them...

posted January 24, 2009 06:08 AM         

These treasures in life,
are not hard to find,
when you look in your heart,
your soul, and your mind.
For when you are willing
to share what's within,
Your fervent search
for riches will end.

The joy and the laughter,
the smile that you bring;
The heart unafraid
to love and to sing.
The hand always willing,
to help those in need;
ones quick to reach out
to labor and feed.

Thanks for the energy,
encouragement too.

After all the greatest treasure being Love.