Desire and control are the opponents of a person who wants to grow spiritually

[Navaratna]

Most people reading this are familiar with the idea of the ego as a filter that blocks access to what is referred to as intelligent infinity or to some as a collective unconscious.

In my opinion, desire and control are really what blocks a person from making progress in meditation. They interfere with a silent mind, which is the aim of a true meditation.

Desire and control indicate a lack of acceptance of reality in it's undistorted form. This preference gives a person bias. Imagine how much distortion goes in to your observation of almost anything you witness because of ego.

Bias is the distortion. Duality.

This idea might seem extreme because it'd be a natural response for someone to think "I need to desire things. I need to have preferences in where I spend time and how I interact with people. I want to have control over what I encounter."

However it's my idea that these are issues that we encounter because we have physical bodies. If we did not need to fend for ourselves on the material plane, these defenses and ego-oriented biases wouldn't need to exist.

This isn't dismissing or disregarding material life to any extent. This is just how I see the mind making progress during meditation.
I've been reading about projecting dreams and there are ideas about how you should try to be aware of your immediate surroundings in them and imagine expanding your surroundings so that the effect will carry over in to life when you are awake.

[Sacred Fool]

In my opinion, desire and control are really what blocks a person from making progress in meditation. They interfere with a silent mind, which is the aim of a true meditation.

What is your concept of "progress in meditation," exactly?  Are we talking about feeling wind on your hands or something more creative?....or more passive?
 
  

[mayojojo]

How would you define desire ?

[Cannon]

If by 'growing spiritually' you mean ascending to the next density, the Ra material disagrees with the idea that desire and control will block one's way. Instead, it is Ra's position that one polarizes their consciousness through polarizing events in one's life and, if you polarize far enough into either a selfless individual or an individual who is primarily concerned with themselves first and foremost, one will then graduate (and go into a society of like-minded individuals) during an event they refer to as Harvest. The negative path, also known as 'service-to-self', in which its members are primarily concerned with control over their own lives (and unfortunately, many ware concerned with control over other's lives) is not actually evil and, those within, though their lives are what would normally be described as egotistical, do in fact have the capacity for something similar to or in fact is entirely of what is normally considered 'spiritual'.

[Navaratna]

How would you define desire ?

"I want. I choose. I seek. I crave. I prefer." anything with an "I" is an ego.

When you give names to energies you witness even if you're speaking to yourself in your head.. That's desire, it's your mental projections. I am not describing permanently shutting off your brain. This has me thinking what is the difference between control and desire

When you pay attention to anything consciously clouding your mind from being completely clear in a state of meditation it's desire. Of course you need to breathe, but I am talking about if you had your ideas floating through your head and they were transcribed like some captions, then in my opinion that's the wrong way to go about clearing your mind for the most part..as ironic as it must sound coming from me in light of this idea. Those captions should be blank in meditation.

I'm describing meditation, this idea is not meant as a manual for everything situation you'll ever encounter.

In my opinion, desire and control are really what blocks a person from making progress in meditation. They interfere with a silent mind, which is the aim of a true meditation.

What is your concept of "progress in meditation," exactly?  Are we talking about feeling wind on your hands or something more creative?....or more passive?
 
  

I think progress is difficult to measure because you're unfolding layers of intelligent infinity. Measuring something that is a limitless domain seems flawed to me.

I'm trying to think of it personally for me, and I can say the feeling I get after a long meditation on a candle flame and tourmaline crystals with my palms facing upward is a feeling of regeneration and solidification. You feel more realized. You are looking in to your innermost being.
_
There have been plenty of studies done showing regions of the brain improving in size over months of meditation. Mostly in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. These two areas of the brain are thought of as the centers meant for memory and logic.

There's countless studies but here's an example of brain sizes being modified https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541490/

The large amount of melatonin that meditation generates/regulates is good for your healing process and sleep.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328970/

___

This might be off intelligent infinity, but the Akashic record will touch upon this idea. I read something interesting lately.
Jane Roberts who is known for the Seth entity has a mention of Edgar Cayce. The Law of One contains information about Edgar Cayce and the Akashic record. This is food for thought, but it is a good point and I think that it's very fascinating to see Seth and Edgar both queried about in Law of One, and then for Seth to answer a question about Edgar Cayce.

It's almost like if any of these topics have a contradiction in their placement or validity of info, it would show which channeling material may have valid or invalid info . It would mean that any of the channelings that have inconsistent info would be worthy of scrutiny. For example if Law of One Ra said that Edgar Cayce was a prior incarnation of Seth, that would be in contradiction to what Seth said about Edgar Cayce. Meaning one is either a false/fabricated [or solely a persons subconscious] channel, or the entity is giving false information.

This might sound kind of complicated but what I mean is that if we are trusting the information as real and legitimate and not something just made up by any of these people, the information should all be in agreement and it seems to be. But here is an idea which changes the way some people might think of what the Akashic record is. In one of the Seth books Seth says in response to a mention of Edgar Cayce:

I say this out of no misguided egotism, but because the essence of personality is the only meaningful basis behind idea. Any other approach would rob the material of rich dimensions, for I am the proof in my own pudding, you seem. This is not the Cayce material, with information seemingly coming from some vast storehouse of knowledge. In those terms no such storehouse exists.
Knowledge does not exist independently of the one who knows. [b]Someone gave Cayce the material. It did not come out of thin air. It came from an excellent source, a pyramid gestalt personality, with definite characteristics, but the alien nature of the personality was too startling to Cayce, and he could not perceive it. (Pause.) I am giving you the material through a personality that you can understand; one that is mine[/b], one of my favorite selves. (Smile.) In this way the point is made so that it is clear.

____

In other words Edgar Cayce was Ra-Ta and was visited by extraterrestrials of some sort that even he couldn't completely realize. This modified him and made him a point to which humans would gravitate toward and it gave him the innate power to energize millions of peoples psychic energy because he had a tremendous soul presence.
The comments about the pyramid are really in line with the Law of One and they predate it.

The Akashic record did not come from nowhere, maybe it was something left on our world or put upon humans by another intelligence we couldn't comprehend completely. Intriguing. From stuff I've read it makes people think it's like an Internet rather than a mind of some sort.

[meadow-foreigner]

Desire is idiosyncratic to the human experience. In a broader sense, the nisus that propels the individual back to Unity can be seen as Desire.
Since All is One, every engrossed, passionate desires are but the derivatives or the One Desire.

Desire correlates with Realization.
Between Desire and Realization there are the obstacles: Difficulty.

The point of human experience is to keep an ongoing Connection between Desire and Realization.
This Connection may be felt through various means, some more and some less biased.

In this sense, meditation is all about achieving/keeping a stable Connection within. You mitigate the tension in order to eventually cease it, so you escape the duality pleasure/pain and reach the fulfilling Stillness/Balance.

Control is founded on a dichotomy perspective, which is rooted on dissonance. A most dissonant state is a state most out of tune with the harmonics of the Creation.

Control seeks to impose and to manipulate. This is a biased, naïve partial vision of the Whole. It is true that you are Infinity. The detail that is most overlooked is: you are a fractal of Infinity within the fractal of Infinity. You are not exactly equal to the Whole. You are a zoomed-in version of the Whole, just as you see repeating fractal patterns when zooming in from the macro-fractal.

Trying to control others is futile because you are trying to control the Whole, which is yourself and everything that comprises what is perceived to be outside your 'self'.

Therefore, control stems from dissonance, which in itself is but a consequence of the depth of the Creation that we are now.

As a zoomed-in fractal of Infinity, you seek to align yourself with the harmonics of the Creation. The Creation is a Whole. From a divided modus operandi, you'll run in circles. Fuse within and keep that Connection ongoing and stable.

How do you seek your Connection?

[Navaratna]

Sahaja meditation which leads to Sahaj Samadhi is how I see my connection.
If I turn my attention on an object like a candle flame, a ray of color refracted through a glass pyramid prism, or on a natural body of water it's all the same. Give up control of where my mind goes.

There's a difference between thinking this way in meditation...and thinking this way in a permanent vegetative state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samadhi#Etymology

Sanskrit
Various interpretations for the term's etymology are possible:

sam, "together"; a, "toward"; stem of dadhati, "puts, places": "a putting or joining together;"[web 2]
sam, "together" or "integrated"; ā, "towards"; dhā, "to get, to hold": "to acquire integration or wholeness, or truth" (samāpatti);
sam, "uniformly" or "fully"; adhi, "to get established: : a state wherein one establishes himself to the fullest extent in the Supreme consciousness;
samā, "even"; dhi, "intellect": a state of total equilibrium of a detached intellect.
sam, "perfect," "complete." dhi, "consciousness": a state of being where "all distinctions between the person who is the subjective meditator, the act of meditation and the object of meditation merge into oneness."
sama, "equanimous" dhi,"buddhi or the intellect"

[Aion]

To fight control and desire can turn in to another battle, giving up and surrendering is rooted in desire.

I think it's interesting that on the one hand we look at the idea of ourselves as a fractalized echo of the one infinite creator, but in that often do not see in the creator those things which we ascribe to ourselves.

Does the creator desire? If we remove the "I" from our language, what is left there? Does that somehow make the desire vanish from existence?

Although it may vanish from our own experience, it does not vanish from existence. Samsara is also sustained by the one infinite creator.

Instead, we look to escape our condition, we go "inside" for some, or "outside" for others. Some think samsara is the real truth, others think it's all a lie.

To mine eyes, we're all just kids in a playpen.

[Navaratna]

To fight control and desire can turn in to another battle, giving up and surrendering is rooted in desire.

I think it's interesting that on the one hand we look at the idea of ourselves as a fractalized echo of the one infinite creator, but in that often do not see in the creator those things which we ascribe to ourselves.

Does the creator desire? If we remove the "I" from our language, what is left there? Does that somehow make the desire vanish from existence?

Although it may vanish from our own experience, it does not vanish from existence. Samsara is also sustained by the one infinite creator.

Instead, we look to escape our condition, we go "inside" for some, or "outside" for others. Some think samsara is the real truth, others think it's all a lie.

To mine eyes, we're all just kids in a playpen.

"equilibrium of a detached intellect" in the definition I think communicates it pretty well in the etymology of samadhi.

Some of the Seth and Law of One concepts kind of conflict with how I think. I wouldn't say absolutely everything about them is 1000% correct. Yet that's not bad, don't you think these entities intentionally made it a part of the puzzle for us to wonder if they were "real" or not? It's sort of a paradox to try so hard to separate an individual consciousness from an entity yet to have that entity tell you that there is no separation between anything. Lol so you are channeling you. In a way?

Jim Mccarty and Q'uo use the word faith. As much as I am in agreement with most of his practices, I don't like that word. I never have. It's thinking without evidence or confirmation. That doesn't work for me. As spiritual as I am or how people describe how we need to be talking about spiritual things on here and act like it's sacrilege to stray off that domain, I can't help but think that information and spiritual information are not different from each other. Whether a person describes something as spiritual, or whether they understand how hormones and homeostasis functions in the body and how it gives rise to illuminating sensations...it's the same information. "Spiritual" or "bioelectrical-chemical atomic vibratory" sensations are the same to me for the most part.

Seth describes desire that people should have because without it there's no direction/compass or something along those lines.

Shri Mataji of Sahaja meditation says kundalini is your pure desire. Of course desire can be good or bad, which brings us to free will.
3rd density. I just finished listening to this video and learned something very specific about the 3rd church of Revelation. The scriptures say of the Pergamum [3rd chakra] that it is at this point that humans souls were given a sword with which to commit good or evil with.
Free will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTc9IZH0Ed8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_churches_of_Asia

I think the word spiritual is used as a rubber stamp and I've encountered plenty of people mocking the term because of how loose it is.
I knew a guy one time who said that whenever someone mentioned anything about spirituality he would instantly reply "Do you have a job?" which is just too funny to me.

Desire can be used interchangeably with samsara in my opinion. It's a word with limitless interpretations. Do you desire genocide or desire meditating in a koi pond? Desire peace and emptiness or desire an empire?

The entire point is I'm describing is to empty the chatter during meditation. Not to go about life as an empty barrel.

However when it comes to faith or belief I'm just going to say no thanks.

[Aion]

Personally, I think there's something to the idea that we have the ability to be creative, and I see the empty mind as the blank canvas.

That being said, a great many works of art have arisen from people allowing their subconscious to chatter about, so I think in some way I am often trying to reconcile my art with my spirituality.

In the end, it appears to me that all of the 'great teachings' lean towards the idea that it is possible to be creative within reality. I think that is freedom from "cycles" because creativity is progression.

I do agree with you on the point of silence in meditation, although I do think that the method for getting there likely differs for each individual.

I've definitely met people like that who are immediately turned off by anything spiritual. Just gotta chuckle about it.

[Navaratna]

So many of these famous icons in to this kind of thinking talk about art and the power of it. Our creativity is what makes us human.

Creating, expressing. Seth said something along the lines that a person that meditates and doesn't have a creative drive is like the other extreme end of being a workaholic that doesn't see any meaning in anything but is "successful". I think I have fallen in to that at times. Meditating like a stump all day doesn't get people interested in you. Not that that is the point, it's just that no one seems to enjoy lazy people. There's more to the picture than meditating all day even though it can be helpful on a personal level. Trying to get people interested in illumination by talking to them monotonously about meditating is bound to fail. I think it's amazing how Law of One gets people fascinated in this topic in a way that isn't even visually artistic other than tarot.

The name Toltec, the founders of the Teotihuacan civilization meant "person of art." Seeing the mosaics and art around the interior of Teotihuacan is incredible. You see what kind of space they were in.

The Egyptian artwork even though I don't know many of the terms is so telling to me. Osiris as a green skinned man usually means only one thing to people at first glance.

The Sumerian Ningishzidda, Egyptian Mehen, and Caduceus/Neshustan/Leviathan [lotan] are very inspiring symbols and in my opinion there's little room for debate on what they mean because they are all the coiled serpent.

I think a giant ouroboros figure 8 with many different colors and artwork representing the different planets and colors of the spectrum would be great to try to illustrate

7 chakras for the ROYGBIV lower human half, 7 more for the higher solar half of the 14 densities

[Aion]

People get interested in Law of One because of the aliens, maaaan.

[Navaratna]

People get interested in Law of One for whatever reason but I think it's fantasy thinking that everyone who ever related to it would meet up together and everyone would be automatically be friends and love each other. There would be hot girls, neckbeards, weird guys and all that together means no s*** certain people wouldn't like each other or want to hang out with each other at all.

LoO is a wonderful idea and I think people like how it makes you feel like you belonged to this consciousness. I don't know if you watched the Edgar Cayce Egypt video in the Olio thread I made but towards the end it's an effort to put you in to past life regression.

Ra says social memory complexes exist when everyone is driven toward one purpose, and that's what the video describes. Something like

"Who is around you right now? Withdraw your senses. Do you remember these images of Egypt? What were you trying to do with your community? The task wasn't completed but the framework was set."

The Sumari in Seth is a whole other dimension of it, with more matured humans and it's less populated. Seth states he was once a Sumari lieutenant of some sort.

[Spaced]

Wanting to grow spiritually is desire.

Silencing the mind in meditation is control.

Accept your desires, be aware of what you can and can't control. Growth comes from acceptance and awareness of the self.

[Aion]

People get interested in Law of One for whatever reason but I think it's fantasy thinking that everyone who ever related to it would meet up together and everyone would be automatically be friends and love each other. There would be hot girls, neckbeards, weird guys and all that together means no s*** certain people wouldn't like each other or want to hang out with each other at all.

LoO is a wonderful idea and I think people like how it makes you feel like you belonged to this consciousness. I don't know if you watched the Edgar Cayce Egypt video in the Olio thread I made but towards the end it's an effort to put you in to past life regression.

Ra says social memory complexes exist when everyone is driven toward one purpose, and that's what the video describes. Something like

"Who is around you right now? Withdraw your senses. Do you remember these images of Egypt? What were you trying to do with your community? The task wasn't completed but the framework was set."

The Sumari in Seth is a whole other dimension of it, with more matured humans and it's less populated. Seth states he was once a Sumari lieutenant of some sort.

It's true people don't always get along, there has actually been Law of One gathering going on for many years now. I was very fortunate to be able to attend one and met Carla the year before she passed away and I'm grateful for that opportunity.

However, I feel like the reconciliation of opposites is kind of Ra's jam.

[Navaratna]

Yeah. I bet the crowd is nice.

I'm really reluctant to think that reading books no matter how real and powerful their content is that it will ever be enough to turn people in to angels.

I'm not bitter, but I think fakeness is a real thing among a lot of people that call themselves spiritual.

There have been a lot of times where I've just felt like people go for that look to make themselves look attractive and oftentimes it doesn't tell you anything about their real attitudes. I don't lose sleep over it. I'm only skeptical that like a billion people are ever going to read Law of One and agree even though mosques and churches fill up every weekend.

[Navaratna]

Wanting to grow spiritually is desire.

Silencing the mind in meditation is control.

Accept your desires, be aware of what you can and can't control. Growth comes from acceptance and awareness of the self.

Silencing the mind isn't controlling it, it is minimizing it's activity. You can't completely eliminate desire and control but minimizing them to the lowest level -during meditation- is what I am describing. Not during the other portion of your life which has you going about your survival routines.

If you're operating a wrecking ball with a crane and buttons, and at one point you take your hands off the console and levers so that the ball doesn't continue on swinging and smashing the wrong building, you're giving up control. You still have to go on your lunch break later to eat and go home from work but in that moment giving up control is beneficial so you don't wreck the wrong building. [mental static from mental projections]

[AnthroHeart]

Most people reading this are familiar with the idea of the ego as a filter that blocks access to what is referred to as intelligent infinity or to some as a collective unconscious.

In my opinion, desire and control are really what blocks a person from making progress in meditation. They interfere with a silent mind, which is the aim of a true meditation.

Desire and control indicate a lack of acceptance of reality in it's undistorted form. This preference gives a person bias. Imagine how much distortion goes in to your observation of almost anything you witness because of ego.

Bias is the distortion. Duality.

This idea might seem extreme because it'd be a natural response for someone to think "I need to desire things. I need to have preferences in where I spend time and how I interact with people. I want to have control over what I encounter."

However it's my idea that these are issues that we encounter because we have physical bodies. If we did not need to fend for ourselves on the material plane, these defenses and ego-oriented biases wouldn't need to exist.

This isn't dismissing or disregarding material life to any extent. This is just how I see the mind making progress during meditation.
I've been reading about projecting dreams and there are ideas about how you should try to be aware of your immediate surroundings in them and imagine expanding your surroundings so that the effect will carry over in to life when you are awake.

Disagree totally.
My desire and passion for anthros opened me to intelligent infinity. It was an extremely strong drive. I just had to balance myself along the way.
You should explore your desires (and lusts) keeping them in balance with love, to your heart's content.
Then when you can accept who you are, you can grow.
It took me all the way up to meet God and be purified by him. Not to say that I'm at that level, but I strive to be like that more and more.

But this is just my path. Yes, I do surrender rather than control. But I just intend for the energy to work, and it does. I don't force it. I just set the intention.
So maybe that's a form of indirect control.

[Navaratna]

It's semantics at this point. I view any desire as a bias. I view any desire as a controlling attitude [but that isn't as bad as it sounds]. Because you prefer things a certain way.

It seems to by flying past people that I'm talking about -during- meditation, but I am sharing my own method. I've practiced for many years. It's what works for me. It isn't a fact that everyone needs to agree with.

[AnthroHeart]

Well, meditations can be either no thought, or focusing. You can do intense energy focus during meditation, which was what I did.

[Navaratna]

I think a part of it depends on what you're trying to manifest.

For reflection, gazing in to bodies of water works
To dissolve mental tension, a candle flame is helpful
To attract wealth, a colored tourmaline crystal
To clean pathogens, absorbing copper ions in to the skin and bloodstream with an azurite held against the skin should be helpful. The copper also helps to conduct electricity.