06-13-2020, 11:23 AM
(06-12-2020, 07:20 PM)Stranger Wrote: Hi, Diana. I've had some insights lately that may speak to your concern, for whatever they're worth. It's a concern I've shared and one that has bothered me throughout my life, so I get what you are saying.
All is not "planned for the highest good of all" because, from the viewpoint of the Creator, there are no "all." There is only the Creator, who knows itself to be eternal, immortal, unthreatened by anything.
The Creator knows that nothing can possibly harm it or diminish it in any way. From this safety, it chooses to experience all the possibilities that it's capable of experiencing. They might not be pleasurable but they are exciting; and however bad they get, they are temporary, and it can move on to other explorations. Therefore, it is unconcerned.
So what it did is come up with role-play games where it gets tortured and killed and starved. Think of it as you going for a spicy Indian dish. You know you'll sweat and your mouth will burn but it's an interesting and kind of fun experience, and you'll be totally fine afterwards. Heck, you're even willing to pay for the privilege!
The mistake we make is in not realizing our identity with the Creator. We're not a part of the Creator, nor a fragment, we're not a creation - we are THE Creator *itself*, the only one, in a temporary state of amnesia, enjoying the experience from within, so to speak. You, right now, are THE Creator, wearing a mask; but the consciousness experiencing yourself is THE CREATOR's consciousness, directly that with no separation.
Whatever we don't like about what we see - it is still the case that *I* ordered this, *you* ordered this (there's no difference) - and then forgot. There's only one of us here. There is literally no one else.
So if I dress up as Caligula and execute a peasant, and then dress up as the peasant and die in pain, it's still just me d***ing around. Except the Creator - YOU, ME - does not need to pause for a costume change, but does it all simultaneously.
The Creator is not doing it to us, or to the animals you and I both love and care about - it's doing it to itself because it finds that, on the balance, it's worth for IT to have these experiences.
For the record, "I as Stranger" don't love it either. But at least I now understand it somewhat better.
Very well put, Stranger, and insightful.
The concept which throws me off is the idea of The Creator in the above ideation. In simplistic terms: If I consider Bohm's impersonal implicate/explicate universe and a field of infinite possibilities, I can see the suffering here as choices being made. But when I consider the scenario you have outlined above, with a Creator desiring to experience:
Quote:The Creator knows that nothing can possibly harm it or diminish it in any way. From this safety, it chooses to experience all the possibilities that it's capable of experiencing. They might not be pleasurable but they are exciting; and however bad they get, they are temporary, and it can move on to other explorations. Therefore, it is unconcerned.
...it is self-interested on the part of a being, if the OIC can be called such, to manifest entities who must provide those experiences; while at the same time it seems a viable, if mystery-clad, process. This brings me back to the idea that I don't like the way things are set up here. Thinking I am part of the OIC does not help me to like or rationalize the concept. Suffering IS ephemeral, as all things are that are manifest. And however much contact with intelligent infinity creates boundless joy and bliss, there is STILL everything ephemeral happening in space/time, and that is as real as anything else.
I don't really mean to focus on the negative aspects of existence, but I have a curious mind. There is much beauty here and richness of life. I continue to explore the concepts which arise in my world to explore. In an effort to work with, and not push against, apparent immutable realities, I have been studying the archetypes to more efficiently work with the structure here.