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Thread: Sam Hunter's exploratory thread regarding the validity of fantastical projections

  1. #16
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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer
    The ego is part of survival and motivation. We need to be raised so that we control it rather than the reverse.

    Part of our general stupidity is our emotional immaturity. We can't listen and work together because we need to be 'right'.
    I will take being funny as a complement. Thanks.

    Maybe there is a bit more to emotional maturity than a common view might suggest, being "right" has strong survival value. The ego issue certainly adds to the subject-matter of emotional maturity, that is to say.

    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer
    Communities would have wise men/women and leaders to help protect them.
    Unless they hold their "wise men/women" back from such a role. Queue Sam's predicament.

    Quote Originally posted by Sam Hunter
    Let's go further Icam88...

    Let's discuss the possibility I raised regarding the feeding of the archetypes and how the waking state individuated egoic mind interacts with the dynamic of the whole being to bring forth via interactive relationship the "individuated being" seems to have with what appears to the waking state individuated egoic mind to be an external reality whereby that reality is excited and thus returns reflections that so many folks interpret these reflections as validations of the theory of their individuated egoic mind.
    You lost me. I only understand my big words.

    By whole being, do you mean the community, or something more (like the spirit) of a single individual?

    What is an "Individuated being"?

    Do you mean simply to say that feeding archetypes inflates the ego resulting in further personal emotional vestment to fantasy. The externalization of excitement in turn [hopefully] generates excitement in others so that when excitement is shared, a sense of auto-validation of the vestments and fantasy is created... ...and cause the fantasy to be accepted as more than just real... ...the inflated ego is further inflated. That then we further feed the archetypes?

    Sounds like Wall Street.

    Quote Originally posted by Sam Hunter
    Its my opinion that if folks can recognize this dynamic and this reaction, some who are so emotionally attached to their theories may instead become less attached and that would result in a better understanding of how the reality works and a better understanding of who and what we actually are and what we can actually do at the level of the individuated being.
    an idealist.

    If only.

    Maybe people require pain for such a recognition of the dynamic. Seriously, the problem is much more widespread than this online forum. I'm not sure if people simply don't think, or if they are performing as in accordance to some predefined set of rules and routines.

    Quote Originally posted by Sam Hunter
    I will again speak from experience - I can now talk freely and without polarity to others who believe they are the reincarnation of Horus as I now have a deeper understanding (of course this is all and only my theory though Jung and others who have garnered respect from an informed community) of how another can actually come to that belief. Yet simultaneously I can also be prepared to take a different route if that individual goes to the next level where followers become enchanted and then the next thing you know, there's a major distraction machine... call it ScamTV selling false hope.
    Reincarnation of Horus? WTF man. Are you making this up?

    Here is a song that popped into my head upon reading this Horus thing:

    Last edited by lcam88, 12th November 2015 at 16:09.

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    LOL, I believe Sam did once really believe he was the reincarnation of Horus. LOL, I do chuckle at these notions. How many people have been the reincarnation of Cleopatra? King Tut? List goes on. Edited to add: I think it's great Sam can look at this all now with objectivity and detachment. I think the longer one keeps working on themselves they can relax the ego portion a bit and take a good hard look and have a laugh at it too.

    "Everyone seems to want to be the reincarnation of a heroic and noble soul, a Mary Queen of Scots, a Charlemagne, or a Chief Geronimo! No one seems to come up with stories of reincarnation as a lowly **** boy, a medieval whore, or an Adolf Hitler?"

    "Stories of reincarnation and past lives offer an abundance of hope with an absence of evidence. Feelings and anecdotes of unexplained coincidences are not evidence [8]. I understand the hope and desire for having more than one chance to live a life. But hope and wishful-thinking is not proof. Not close. As a former yoga monk turned skeptic, I confess I used to believe in reincarnation– in that past life."

    http://skepticmeditations.com/tag/reincarnation/
    Last edited by ERK, 12th November 2015 at 16:22.

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    A vague memory, and I can't even say it was me, is of a world illuminated by red light and hot, in the memory, it seemed artificially 2D, almost like an old nintendo game. Very big sun and a fish-eye wide angle view all around as viewed from atop a rock or small ledge... A glimpse only. I recalled this about a year ago or so, and that is why I'm on this fascination now about Proto-Saturn.

    I have a few prenatal memories, pleasant ones, and then my first memory is at about 2 years old. I can never tell whether remembrances of experiences of other individuals in a different time are memories or imagination.

    Many things can be revealed in memories/thoughts or imagination but that does not mean those revelations or memories necessarily require being treated egocentrically much less as a possession. That type of impulse can dilute the experience IMO.

    And indeed, it seems that claiming possession of thoughts or ideas, even memories of this life seem equally nonsensical.

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    I like to use the analogy of the iceberg

    We have seen pictures of icebergs where the small portion above the water is actually a small percentage of the overall iceberg.

    I see the individuated me much like an iceberg. I relate my conscious, waking state "me" to the part of the iceberg that is above the surface. I relate my sub conscious (still an individuated aspect of "me") to the part of the iceberg below the surface of the water. We know from understanding physics (mass and gravity) that the submerged portion of the iceberg has a far greater impact on the actions of the whole iceberg than the tiny portion seen above the surface of the water.

    The human ego of the waking state aspect of one's overall consciousness seems to (in most cases) express in a way that it could be determined by most observes suggests that ego has a vastly inflated view of "itself" in relation to its entire individuated being.

    Why I keep emphasizing individuated is that just as the part of the iceberg which is below the surface is immersed in the commonly experienced sea, so is ones individuated consciousness immersed in the common sea of all consciousness. And that seam between the two is in a constant and fluid state of change. There's no hard seam... it is molecule by molecule changing states from ice to water and thus from being directly connected to the iceberg to state change where it becomes unconnected. In addition, it is possible some of the iceberg above the water melts back into this same sea or before a part of it that has melted evaporates where eventually it is rained back down upon Earth and may be rained on land and on and on and on does the metaphor carry us - surely this can be "seen" with the mind's eye?

    So a case can be made via the metaphor that water is water and all expressions of water (such as ice) is still water, yet I could point to different expressions of ice and name each one and now we have individual solidified expressions of all and only... water.

    This metaphor, for me, is an example of how the All that Is reveals itself via metaphor that is reflected on many levels. I see the theoretical archetypes as working symbiotically with "individual expressions" (like me or you as we manifest through a physical body) as well as the "me or you" that many of us hope is, desire is something that remains individuated beyond the death of the physical body (and thus also may have existed before that body came into form).

    My opinion - The "soul' is a theoretical construct of our hopes, dreams and desires. Am I saying the soul is not real? What is real?

    In http://skepticmeditations.com/2015/0...f-mindfulness/ posted by ERK is found this quote:

    In Kornfield’s dissertation, he was not as concerned with low-level “unusual” or positive effects of mindfulness practice. He emphasized that the greatest results were due to classical Buddhism itself, that mindfulness transforms the meditator to see through the illusion of the ego-self and to recognize the impermanence of an illusory world.
    So from the point of view of "The Absolute" all is illusion. Yet how much illusion is it when we drop that heavy brick on our bare toe?

    Thus my view is that it is -

    BOTH! Real and illusion.

    Thus I am Horus (and I will reveal the evidence!) and my view that I am Horus is all and only egoic driven illusion which, because of my ability to create, I brought forth "real" evidence that supports my lovely theory.

    This last point can be summarized by the following and I state this as a TRUTH (though it is at best only my opinion).

    We actually do create our reality yet also, we create our illusions. Via our seamless connection to all reality, we generate the reflections from this strange dream machine which often we interpret in ways we then validate what we wish to be true... but that this doesn't actually make these things true."
    Last edited by Chester, 12th November 2015 at 18:55.
    All the above is all and only my opinion. It may contain some sharing of components of my current operating strategy and some foundational components of my current world view - all subject to change and not meant to be true for anyone else regardless of how I phrase it.

    It's just a ride

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGD...vgBsCHmlC13jOg

    https://www.facebook.com/samhunter57

    http://merlynagain.blogspot.com/

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    Seems that meditators, mystics, and people of faith advocate shutting “off” your brain so you can experience the holy spirit or altered states of consciousness. The intuition is worshipped and intellect is ridiculed. Why? Ego, or thinking for yourself, is considered dangerous to faith. It very well may be dangerous to faith, when your spiritual teacher, prophet, or guru is supposed to have all the answers. So, to follow one’s own reasoning and feelings, warn the gurus, leads you astray “off the path”. Of course, the gurus have a vested interest in you not thinking for yourself.


    more here: http://skepticmeditations.com/2014/0...-be-a-skeptic/




    We think of ourselves as savvy, informed individuals who approach the world with discerning eyes. But the truth is that we’re often remarkably gullible when it comes to pseudoscience and quackery. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it is surprisingly easy to tell quackery apart from real science.


    http://skepticmeditations.com/2014/0...pseudoscience/

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    I don't see this life in this body as the full story of my or anyone's existence. It's the state we're in now. We're in a different state when we're not in a body. It's all forms of energy. We have a kind of consciousness that can house itself in a body or exist without it.

    I don't fuss over reconciling, say, numbers of souls and numbers of bodies. Souls are outside of time and could be from anywhere in the galaxy or universe.

    My reincarnation story is boring and mundane. No one here's talking about it. Perhaps that's why we don't hear about the average/normal reincarnation stories. They're not exciting.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    Snake oil salesmen would always find someone willing to buy their wares. Towns and folk would warn each other and maybe he wouldn't be allowed in town to take advantage of people. They weren't stupid. Just lacking in experience and knowledge. A good salesman can close the deal. The buyer may never be able to know all the facts.

    Communities would have wise men/women and leaders to help protect them.

    I'm the modern world we have to be our own wise ones, our own keepers. And we can help each other with relationships of trust. The ego is always there ready to take attention and call the shots.
    Great post and points - yet still... if we did not have these salesmen, perhaps the world would be experienced in better ways by us all. By saying that, I call upon all snake oil sellers to stop it.
    All the above is all and only my opinion. It may contain some sharing of components of my current operating strategy and some foundational components of my current world view - all subject to change and not meant to be true for anyone else regardless of how I phrase it.

    It's just a ride

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGD...vgBsCHmlC13jOg

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    http://merlynagain.blogspot.com/

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    from this link -

    Six Red Flags Of Pseudoscience Claims

    1. Claims of Secret Knowledge – The so-called esoteric “sciences” like yoga, pranayama, or energy healing are almost always claims of secret knowledge available to the specially initiated. Typically, this secret knowledge is given to you through spiritual rites, mystical experience, or religious indoctrination. Real science is not secret.

    2. “It’s All A Big Conspiracy” – The claim is that the scientific community, Big Pharma, Big Government, Big Corporations, and Big Religions are hiding the real truth from us. Vast conspiracies, encompassing doctors, scientists, and public health officials exist only in the minds of quacks. The people who make these conspiracy claims apparently have access to some “secret knowledge” kept from the rest of us.

    3. False Flattery – Being “special”, chosen, or initiated into secret knowledge makes us feel, well…special, chosen, and “above” anyone else who is not. The exclusivity of many religious beliefs, gurus, and spiritual teachings apparently give us access to esoteric knowledge. To the initiated, to the graduates of esoterica, it’s flattering to think you may know more than others or are specially chosen.

    4. Toxins Are The New Evil – Juice cleanses, detox diets, and colonics are purges. The pseudoscientific belief is we are surrounded by poisons that get into our systems. Trouble is toxins are invisible and all around us, like demons. Nevertheless, pseudoscience claims that toxins are released into our environment and our body by “evil” corporations, drug companies, or inorganic foods. But the real science says the chemicals responsible for most diseases are nicotine, alcohol, and opiates.

    5. “Brilliant Heretic” as the Source of Information – Believers argue that science is transformed by brilliant heretics whose fabulous theories are initially rejected, but ultimately accepted as the new orthodoxy. Mystical revelations or pseudoscientific ideas dreamt up by mavericks are not “science” nor are they reliable sources of information. Revolutionary scientific ideas are not dreamed up; they are the inevitable result of massive, collaborative data collection, that gets tested over and over in labs to be either proven false and then discarded, or to be replicated and found true as a practical theory.

    6. Using Esoteric Scientific Theories – Quacks love to dazzle followers with sciency language. They invoke esoteric scientific theories, like Quantum mechanics or atomic particles, for example. But these are incredibly difficult scientific disciplines, heavy on advanced math. If you don’t have a degree in either one, you aren’t qualified to pontificate on them.

    When we don’t know to look for these six flags we easily fall prey to pseudoscience and sciency-sounding esoteric products or claims. Quack claims come at us daily, from many people and from many sources.

    Interesting that this (to me) is hard core skepticism - I am not a subscriber to hard core yet what I have found healthy is to make sure when I project opinions, I don't present them as truth. When someone projects woo - woo (even if it may be actually true!) as truth, this seems to always lead to divison.

    Omni's great three words - "Beliefs divide us." My opinion is that this is too often true.
    Last edited by Chester, 12th November 2015 at 19:27.
    All the above is all and only my opinion. It may contain some sharing of components of my current operating strategy and some foundational components of my current world view - all subject to change and not meant to be true for anyone else regardless of how I phrase it.

    It's just a ride

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGD...vgBsCHmlC13jOg

    https://www.facebook.com/samhunter57

    http://merlynagain.blogspot.com/

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    Incredibly (yet my theory is that this is exactly how the dream machine works), I made this post just a few hours ago in this thread and specifically stated -

    These mystery traditions are often referred to as the perennial philosophy.

    I just now went to my e-mail and BAM there's a new e-mail from Tim Freke.

    I open the e-mail and there is a video being promoted.

    I begin to listen and at 3:30 ish in Tim mentions a book he read years ago entitled, "The Perennial Philosophy" by Aldus Huxley.

    This is an example of how "the reality mechanism" seems to work with regards to that which is of most importance to me and that which I might (in the moment) have great enthusiasm for. Again just my opinion... this is the heart of how synchronicity works.

    When younger, I interpreted these experiences as the universe "telling me something." Boy did that make me special.

    Now I simply see it as the way the illusory external reality expresses itself to my illusory egoic "self." Lot's of fun yet not to be taken too seriously.


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WaRwVKwX7A
    All the above is all and only my opinion. It may contain some sharing of components of my current operating strategy and some foundational components of my current world view - all subject to change and not meant to be true for anyone else regardless of how I phrase it.

    It's just a ride

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGD...vgBsCHmlC13jOg

    https://www.facebook.com/samhunter57

    http://merlynagain.blogspot.com/

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    I don't see this life in this body as the full story of my or anyone's existence. It's the state we're in now. We're in a different state when we're not in a body. It's all forms of energy. We have a kind of consciousness that can house itself in a body or exist without it.

    I don't fuss over reconciling, say, numbers of souls and numbers of bodies. Souls are outside of time and could be from anywhere in the galaxy or universe.

    My reincarnation story is boring and mundane. No one here's talking about it. Perhaps that's why we don't hear about the average/normal reincarnation stories. They're not exciting.
    I don't like to either. In fact, I e-mailed Tim that he inspired me to take his idea of paralogical perception and expand that to a term I created called, "Trilogical perception" which implies the leaving of space for the potential of the individuated being surviving beyond the body yet still not the All that Is.
    All the above is all and only my opinion. It may contain some sharing of components of my current operating strategy and some foundational components of my current world view - all subject to change and not meant to be true for anyone else regardless of how I phrase it.

    It's just a ride

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGD...vgBsCHmlC13jOg

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    http://merlynagain.blogspot.com/

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    Wanna be Horus? Just call him up...


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN9XAAndIxE


    and a good one to end on


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsgSlvjOZ4k
    Last edited by Chester, 12th November 2015 at 20:21.
    All the above is all and only my opinion. It may contain some sharing of components of my current operating strategy and some foundational components of my current world view - all subject to change and not meant to be true for anyone else regardless of how I phrase it.

    It's just a ride

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGD...vgBsCHmlC13jOg

    https://www.facebook.com/samhunter57

    http://merlynagain.blogspot.com/

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    Quote Originally posted by Sam Hunter View Post
    Six Red Flags Of Pseudoscience Claims

    1. Claims of Secret Knowledge – The so-called esoteric “sciences” like yoga, pranayama, or energy healing are almost always claims of secret knowledge available to the specially initiated. Typically, this secret knowledge is given to you through spiritual rites, mystical experience, or religious indoctrination. Real science is not secret.

    2. “It’s All A Big Conspiracy” – The claim is that the scientific community, Big Pharma, Big Government, Big Corporations, and Big Religions are hiding the real truth from us. Vast conspiracies, encompassing doctors, scientists, and public health officials exist only in the minds of quacks. The people who make these conspiracy claims apparently have access to some “secret knowledge” kept from the rest of us.

    3. False Flattery – Being “special”, chosen, or initiated into secret knowledge makes us feel, well…special, chosen, and “above” anyone else who is not. The exclusivity of many religious beliefs, gurus, and spiritual teachings apparently give us access to esoteric knowledge. To the initiated, to the graduates of esoterica, it’s flattering to think you may know more than others or are specially chosen.

    4. Toxins Are The New Evil – Juice cleanses, detox diets, and colonics are purges. The pseudoscientific belief is we are surrounded by poisons that get into our systems. Trouble is toxins are invisible and all around us, like demons. Nevertheless, pseudoscience claims that toxins are released into our environment and our body by “evil” corporations, drug companies, or inorganic foods. But the real science says the chemicals responsible for most diseases are nicotine, alcohol, and opiates.

    5. “Brilliant Heretic” as the Source of Information – Believers argue that science is transformed by brilliant heretics whose fabulous theories are initially rejected, but ultimately accepted as the new orthodoxy. Mystical revelations or pseudoscientific ideas dreamt up by mavericks are not “science” nor are they reliable sources of information. Revolutionary scientific ideas are not dreamed up; they are the inevitable result of massive, collaborative data collection, that gets tested over and over in labs to be either proven false and then discarded, or to be replicated and found true as a practical theory.

    6. Using Esoteric Scientific Theories – Quacks love to dazzle followers with sciency language. They invoke esoteric scientific theories, like Quantum mechanics or atomic particles, for example. But these are incredibly difficult scientific disciplines, heavy on advanced math. If you don’t have a degree in either one, you aren’t qualified to pontificate on them.

    I agree with your description of this, Sam, that it's "hard core skepticism." It seems really more of a reaction of the academic/industrial establishment towards a very real social shift that they won't be able to stop. There is a lot of woo-woo stuff out there, but I think the most harmful of all of the woo-woo stuff by far is coming from so-called experts, especially the medical experts that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year with prescription medicine, chemo/radiation therapy and other "treatment." And even though this happens in the US it is not accepted practice in many other nations, and the US is far from #1 in health care by just about any bracket we could find. Always following the line set aside for us by authorities is at least as dangerous as stepping out on a limb with someone else's nonsense.

    I actually strongly disagree with every single sentiment expressed in the above list of points with the exception of #3, with a caveat. We are all special, and valuable simply for being unique human beings. Esoteric knowledge doesn't make anyone any more valuable than anyone else in the grand scheme of things, but what do scientists have to do with esotericism? By point #6 above, whoever wrote this article should take their own advice and not "pontificate" upon things in which they are not qualified. In fact I wonder how they are qualifying themselves to even write this article in the first place. Ultimately we get back to having to be accepted by academic authorities, like a modern day priestly class, to have our thoughts approved for public consumption. Not to mention it's no secret that the typical technically-minded person does not also have a forte in liberal arts type subjects (the whole left brain/right brain split), let alone anything more esoteric than that.

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    I am unsure which is worse, dogmatism or hard core skepticism... wait, perhaps they can be seen as one and the same.
    All the above is all and only my opinion. It may contain some sharing of components of my current operating strategy and some foundational components of my current world view - all subject to change and not meant to be true for anyone else regardless of how I phrase it.

    It's just a ride

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGD...vgBsCHmlC13jOg

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    http://merlynagain.blogspot.com/

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    The above was written bu this man:

    Atheist Ex-Monk
    window-light-659525_1280
    CC0 1.0
    For 14 years, I was a monk. After leaving my religious profession, I stopped believing in supernatural entities. I felt alone as an atheist, ex-monk in a world of believers.

    That is, until I joined The Clergy Project.

    The Clergy Project is a network of 6491 current and former religious clergy that do not hold supernatural beliefs. In a private online community The Clergy Project members may safely discuss being a clergy person who has rejected the supernatural, the family stresses related to their rejecting the supernatural, and the unique challenges of leaving their religious career.

    Roughly 95% of The Clergy Project members are currently within or formerly from Christian denominations2: Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and so on. I’m one of the exceptions being formerly from an Eastern-Hindu Swami Order. The Clergy Project featured a story about me on their public website.

    Below is an edited version of my story that originally appeared on The Clergy Project

    I was known at the time as Brahmachari Scott. For 14 years, I was ordained a monk of Self-Realization Fellowship Monastic Order, a religious organization founded in the U.S. in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda, the acclaimed Yogi who wrote Autobiography of a Yogi and was the first Indian-Swami to permanently make his home in the West.

    Mom raised me Roman Catholic. I attended weekly Catechism classes and Sunday masses. By age 16, I rejected church doctrine–my questions were terminated with the same refrain, “you just have to have faith”. I stopped believing and attending church, and became indifferent towards organized religion. What I had been taught to believe about the supernatural as a Catholic‒-about God, Jesus, and the saints‒-only slept for a few years. Later on my beliefs would be dramatically reawakened when I discovered Eastern religion and meditation.

    Autobiography-of-a-YogiAt age 19, in college and at a party, a buddy’s Uncle introduced me to a book: Autobiography of a Yogi. The Autobiography captivated me. I devoted myself as a student, meditated twice daily, and regularly attended Self-Realization Fellowship temple services. The endless spiritual answers, meditation experiences, and like-minded religious friends were comforting.

    I quit college, sold my small business, and left home for good without telling family. I was going to live as a renunciant at the Hidden Valley Ashram Center near San Diego.

    Monastery routine consisted of meditation, classes, recreation, 9-to-5 jobs: ministering to a worldwide religious congregation at the Self-Realization Fellowship churches, temples, meditation centers and groups, and spiritual retreats. Each monk received $40 per month cash allowance, room and board, paid medical care, and all-you-could-eat lacto-ovo-vegetarian buffet.

    To say that I renounced my quest for truth by leaving the Self-Realization Order would be incorrect. Ironically, reliable “realization” came as I questioned and thought deeply about what I was taught by religious tradition and spiritual authorities.

    CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
    CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
    Transitioning from the monastery and back into the world took years. Day-by-day, I met new people, challenged old ideas, built a career, and went back to university to complete bachelors and masters degrees.

    Only family and close friends knew that I was an ordained monk in a Hindu-Swami Order. While I read an article in Scientific American magazine I admitted to myself “I’m atheist”–a skeptic of supernatural entities. Then I began to come out to others that my 14 years as a meditating monk lead me to atheism and skepticism.

    Beliefs in supernatural entities adds layers of complexity that aren’t necessary. The world makes more sense as it is without postulating that there’s some divine being who is somehow in charge of things.

    I’ve never regretted leaving the monastery, nor looked back after renouncing religious life. Down-to-earth, practical pursuits are enough to fill me with wonder: things such as cycling on backcountry roads, engaging in discourse on ethics or business, or volunteering to help community or hanging out with family and friends.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer
    I don't see this life in this body as the full story of my or anyone's existence. It's the state we're in now. We're in a different state when we're not in a body. It's all forms of energy. We have a kind of consciousness that can house itself in a body or exist without it.
    I bolded the undeniable truth. I'm not sure about any of the rest anymore. Maybe the body is actually a crutch and consciousness is consciousness regardless.

    Quote Originally posted by ERK
    Seems that meditators, mystics, and people of faith advocate shutting “off” your brain so you can experience the holy spirit or altered states of consciousness. The intuition is worshipped and intellect is ridiculed. Why? Ego, or thinking for yourself, is considered dangerous to faith.
    Interesting observations and good questions here. In fact no one answer fits everyone; people share experiences that they found meaningful.

    In a certain way, I'm advocating that faith in general is dangerous. Insofar as you entertain theories, fine, but if you start ignoring evidence in light of the beautiful theory in mind, then there is but little difference between the two.

    Quote Originally posted by ERK
    The good news is that it is surprisingly easy to tell quackery apart from real science.
    That is true, you look at the evidence and ask questions. Science these days has become orthodox science or protestant science, that is to say, faith based science. It seems there are only a select few who are willing to stay pure to the scientific method. So real science is actually quite a rare bird.

    It has been three days now that I'm examining the Electric model to see how and where the science fails. And indeed it may just be the real thing, actually based on good observation and reasoning.. I have yet to find evidence that contradicts or that is ill founded by evidence of some kind.

    Yes there is quite a bit of theorising and quite large speculations on the table with the Proto-saturn idea, but as yet, I cannot say it is impossible or even improbable. Part of the problem is that modern scientific knowledge is too mathematical and too complex to really understand without being an expert who believes in the math. That is where the Electric model appears so plausible, it is based on simple principles that are easy to understand. Math is a tool used to describe, model and even predict observations; it is not a source of truth in and of itself. To base a theory on math, therefore, is obviously an ill conceived idea. You describe a theory with math and then, with a model, you can make predictions that can be tested or verified.

    That is unless you choose to ignore belief and theory all together and just know with your thinking mind.

    –––

    Oh Sam, I do like your reasoning and the way you express yourself. However, I feel inclined to add a few comments that may take the tone of a retort. In spite of its tone, please consider this to be an actual real point and a real question.

    Insofar as you say

    Quote Originally posted by Sam Hunter
    Yet simultaneously I can also be prepared to take a different route if that individual goes to the next level where followers become enchanted and then the next thing you know, there's a major distraction machine... call it ScamTV selling false hope.
    The protection of followers from scam aspect is clearly a call from the Ego. Perhaps a defensive one based on your values and the "Golden rule", how you would like to be protected from a scam not completely obvious to you. It is a new and different angle of the ego that the you have identified in a ScamTV feed that has been creating an apparent following based on blind faith.

    And as I declare above that your values and intellectual discourse, are admirable to me, I find myself naturally positioning myself in alignment with the ideas you are sharing, my ego at work.

    But you must also know that for someone vibrating with the ideas you are attacking, that same egoistic propensity to defend likeness and the investments made are going to surface.

    Pardon me for vulgar or harsh word that follow:

    Examining the situation from as distant a position from the ego as possible, an analogy: If I held my sphincter tight for a whole day, and then excreted the entire holding of my bowels in the middle of a conference room floor at a venue you and I hypothetically attend, and you happen to step on the pile, it would not be your first impulse to go and tweet about how smelly a certain spec you may find on your shoe happens to be. It would be appalling that you even had to witness the event.

    The main differences here on TOT is that you happened across a mind dump of some creative and even talented forum member. While the mess in the middle of the floor is likely to get lots of attention and may even become topic for the next half hour or even the rest of the day, it all begs to wonder why so much attention is given to something so crappy. If you indeed recognize the low levels of value both from the ego and mind excrement on screen, it too would beg to wonder why your acute and well refined attention is due to the subject matter?

    One possible answer indeed is that you are being a crank. You are tearing down the walls of fantasy entertainment that someone with nothing to do has bought a ticket into. I may be wrong, of course. Hell, I certainly would disagree with that and I may even think your actions noble.

    Strictly speaking something like:

    Quote Originally posted by Sam Hunter
    In Kornfield’s dissertation, he was not as concerned with low-level “unusual” or positive effects of mindfulness practice. He emphasized that the greatest results were due to classical Buddhism itself, that mindfulness transforms the meditator to see through the illusion of the ego-self and to recognize the impermanence of an illusory world.
    So from the point of view of "The Absolute" all is illusion. Yet how much illusion is it when we drop that heavy brick on our bare toe?

    Thus my view is that it is -

    BOTH! Real and illusion.

    Thus I am Horus (and I will reveal the evidence!) and my view that I am Horus is all and only egoic driven illusion which, because of my ability to create, I brought forth "real" evidence that supports my lovely theory.

    This last point can be summarized by the following and I state this as a TRUTH (though it is at best only my opinion).
    We actually do create our reality yet also, we create our illusions. Via our seamless connection to all reality, we generate the reflections from this strange dream machine which often we interpret in ways we then validate what we wish to be true... but that this doesn't actually make these things true."
    A well refined and tuned position you present as argument for your position. Something that aspires to the pleasant acceptance for individuals who seek zen type of synchronistic coexistence with ideals of some guru preaching. Perhaps. Perhaps others are in awe of your creative intellect to inflect on the meaning of spirit, life and mind.

    But it may also appears you are taking an absolutely abstract idealism, conflating it with ego and putting it out there as some cornerstone of validity and truth to then support absurdity. Absurdity insofar as my analogy with the feces in the middle of the conference room.

    You do realise your actions create your reality too, just as ego, thought and even the mere focus of your attention. Not just your imagination. That is all very real (just as it is imaginary).

    So I'll say again:

    If you find you are getting negative responses perhaps one option is to ponder whether your message helps build the little fire a group is huddled about, or whether it appears to extinguish those flames, perhaps provoking a response with protective meanings.
    Me, I value individualism over collectivism. I don't care to be part of the herd; I think the herd mentality is quite retarded. That, perhaps, is why I am not charismatic. And it (as well as my ego) is also the basis from where my curiosity about this volition to protect the herd that you are exhibiting may come from.

    So What real value is there in this investment to you?

    PS: You know you can't be a reincarnate of Horus. An immortal doesn't die; you would have to be Horus himself in all his splendor and as large as life.

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