snowyowl

@Superfluo Love and goodness are wise and canny, they give people what they need, not what they want. Think about your own desires, is it loving to yourself to give in to them all? Spend the day gorging on cheetos and netflix, or discipline yourself against the grain with spirituality and self development work? Similarly, allowing someone to exploit you isn't being loving to anyone, that's a naive version of love.

I get triggered by some opinions too, but if I try to follow it through I soon discover that I'm nowhere near as well informed as my ego fancies itself to be. So it's an opportunity for humility and engaging in a gentler way, to tease out a little more insight. Feisty opinions can be useful as grist for the mill, exposing my reactions which may remain hidden otherwise. Three bows to people who trigger me, you're (inadvertently) helping me on the path _/|\_

We can call it a physical world within the dream (idealism), or a dream inside the physical world (materialism). To me these are the same, just two sides of the same map. Actually there is neither dream nor matter, until we start to create ideas about it. That's when the One becomes Two.

** Alert this post is rather theoretical please bear with me *** Materialism "The philosophical belief that nothing exists beyond what is physical." Physical "Pertaining to the world as understood through the senses rather than the mind; tangible, concrete; having to do with the material world. " - Wiktionary I've basically come through a scientific materialist background too so this is an interesting inquiry. Ok, so effectively, materialism means that physical matter / energy is everything. This is still philosophical monism, with the word 'Matter' substituted for what others here like Leo call God, Being, Absolute Reality, Love etc. The important point is that materialism isn't a dualistic philosophy. You are just using a different label for the basic stuff, the suchness of existence. Does awareness, consciousness, the mind exist? If you say yes, then that must mean that matter is alive, conscious, aware, at least in the complex forms of animals. Where then is the cut-off between conscious and unconscious matter? If brains are just a collection of atoms then we're saying that atoms have come together to create art, science, society - the same atoms which exist anywhere else. If it's just the way the atoms are arranged which makes the difference, then either: there must be a small level of sensitivity or consciousness inherent in each single one; or, it's the structure rather than the content which creates consciousness (which doesn't really sound like materialism any more). IMO it's still very much worth a materialist doing spiritual practice, not to judge any ideas as right or wrong, but to simply be the universe contemplating itself, just like any other spiritual seeker. In that space of silent meditation, all these labels such as matter, mind, physical, consciousness, etc melt away and then what is left?