Soul names

[Ali Quadir]

One of the obvious problems, Ali, is that ego - mine, yours, or anyone else's - sees what it wants to see and reacts in order to prove its point. While a mind thinks its clever at picking things apart, it can't experience what it talks about; the all that is. It's too busy experiencing the all that I think I am.

I am aware Taha. And if anyone has an ego it's me. I'm not trying to rise above it. It should be logical I'm the peanut between us considering my views in this matter. But I kinda like my ego. It responds well to suggestions for change.

The ego is like this 4 year old focused on survival in the most rudimentary sense of the word. Physical mental or self image. Unguided it can cause disasters because it lacks a greater understanding. But guided by a loving parent (higher self) it can be a wonderful beautiful thing. It has a purpose. If you try to stop it from fulfilling this purpose it will cause great anxiety and inner pressures. Which will come out as the sages warn us in terrible ways. But with tutoring. It can come to understand that true survival is found in building bridges between people. Creating unity in difference. Not in creating divides. It can actually be taught to identify with the higher self. This is not subdueing or worshipping the ego it is pragmatically calling it to perform the role it was created for. And as we become spiritual masters it will mature with us. I think part of being whole and human is having a healthy ego. One that sees the unknown as a place where the lover resides. Or at the very least not as a place to be feared.

What I was getting at is that it's all well and good to play games with the mind, but that's what 99% of the population do 99% of the time. By Medieval thinking I meant not Medieval concepts, but the same mind-set that keeps following the same grooves, arguing the toss right now as 500 years ago, as 5,000 years ago, etc. Nothing much apart from culture and technology has changed.

I would not know. I wasn't there that I am consciously aware of. I imagine there are subtle structural changes. After all man kind evolves and our understanding of ethics has increased a great deal since those times. Technology pretty much turned us all into children with the knowledge of sages. Even if this is no guarantee for success as is evident it is a good position to work from.

Being an alien has no bearing upon what I suggested. Anyone from any race or level of being can remain constantly cut off from oneness, thinking that some higher state of mental functioning is the way to discover everything.

Actually... None of us can ever be cut off from oneness. You'll always be part of this universe. You can't get away from it in any way no matter where you go you will recreate it along with what you're running from. The mental state itself is a similar reflection of the whole. Even if it excludes all symbols of the whole it still is part of it. The possibility of being cut off is illusory. They'd be non events and clearly if they exist they're not. However you do not require to be cut off to be fearful of it. You just require to believe you could be cut off.

What spiritual teachers have been saying for eons is that the way to truth is by letting go of the mental toys and seeing what's already there.

True... However, I have met around a hand full of people in spiritually very high places. There was a millionaire, a great musician, a paranormal healer and a Buddhist lama. None of these are as you describe they should be. But I have accepted them to be the real deal. Yet I've met hundreds who pretend to be just that. I've seen this real deal fellows take of the public masks. There is a tremendous amount of unrealistic expectation. People still seek savior figures and ascribe all kinds of wonderful qualities to them. A good example would use peoples worship to refer people to their own power.

That certainly is not belief, as you say, "that mind is inferior to some imagined or real higher function that would somehow kick in as soon as we've reached a certain stage of enlightenment overriding all previous functions". Not at all. It has nothing to do with mind being "inferior", and only the limited mind could assume such a thing. Thus showing the truth that ego/mind and all of its cleverness is separation, even whilst it shouts about 'integration', and some other mind 'not connecting' or 'not grasping the point'. Grasping is a constant condition of the ego, clutching at some system of beliefs it holds about how everything is, a neatly constructed set of models. A neat and tidy prison.

Do you understand why I put the two statements in bold? Both of them express the belief that the mind or at least part of it could be inferior. And that we need to stop using this to attain a higher level of functioning.

I would suggest transmutation over renunciation though.

Actually, it would be wonderful if by being better informed, knowing more, and increasing our capacity for rational thought and ability to prove points brought true happiness and awareness of who and what we really are. Sadly, as every spiritual teacher worth listening to has ever said, it doesn't. I guess my point is simply that the only way to discover true nature is to go beyond our thinking, our imagining, and our constant need to recreate our universe based upon what we perceive as our safety zone. If that can be done by logical thought and rational argument, then it looks as though we're already on our way to the perfect world.

You are correct. We must go beyond. But not by abandoning the here. We must include beyond in the now. Ego will be ego and mind will be mind even if they are guided by ideals dictated by the higher self. They are the methods we use for humble tasks. Many humble tasks though often work towards higher ideals.

Upon consideration, it seems I've made an error in offering something which wasn't asked for. My apologies. I shall try not to do it again.

I won't accept them. I value your opinions, every single one of them, asked for or not asked for. To make matters worse if you'd hold them back I'd have to come drag them out of you... In this case our disagreeing may be based on our egos and choices. However both of us are guided by our higher sense of justice and compassion. Even though my ego tells me I am right I know that you are not wrong.

From the QM perspective, which (if I'm understanding correctly) defines 'sound' as specifically an interaction between waveforms and hearing receptors, I wonder: Does this exclude the way other trees will perceive the waveforms emitted by the falling of one of their neighbors? In other words, according to QM, is sound only sound when it's perceived by ears, as opposed to when the vibration is perceived through some other perceptive function? I'm not asking for the purpose of argument; I really don't know, and I'd like to understand.

I usually imagine it like this. When you become aware of something then it's real. It may not be what you think it is but it is real. If you tie a string to it and then connect that to the cause, and back to the cause of the cause, and back to the cause of the cause of the cause. And so on. Then anything that can be reached by following the string has had it's wave function collapsed.

The tree makes a sound if you can connect your awareness to the wave form so that it becomes defined so that you know about it....

So this means that there does not need to be anyone in the woods for the tree to make a noise. You could have a tape recorder running while the event takes place. Wrap the tape in an envelope and put it in safe storage for 100 years. Then after 100 years have your grandson open the envelope and play the tape. He will be the first person hearing the sound, and his consciousness will collapse the wave function and in effect create the sound from possibility even if we're talking about an event that is supossedly 100 years old. Time is a property of quantum events. It is not a medium in which quantum events take place.

Basically this means that if you're able to change events with the power of your mind. You can change events that have occurred in the past. Providing that you do not know their outcomes before you try to change them. As soon as you know them, they're fixed.

It's really really weird. And it gets much weirder than that.

There's a many worlds interpretation that I usually refer to as possibility. It means that every time you make a choice you become two realities one where you chose one option and another where you chose the other. Your awareness follows only one of the options. While the other state exists in possibility and some of their effects bleed through it is just not real to us. We usually perceive it as randomness. Btw, in the matrix, when Neo chooses his pill you can see in the reflection of the sunglasses two Neos each taking a different pill and going their own way. That's a reference in popular culture to the many worlds theory.