SOUL

I've spent alot of time camping out in the wilderness and in NM I spent alot of time near some hot springs. We used to sit in the springs at night and watch the light show as we called it. These mysterious lights zipping across the sky, even sitting motionless for an hour or so until the military jets come to check them out and they'd wait until the jets get real close then in an instant race off away at a speed that made those jets look like they were the ones sitting still. This would go on all night long, night after night. I'm not going to claim anything about those lights other than they were silent, moved in ways and at speeds that no known human technology can. If there were a long history of crashed 'ufos' then we'd have come across them many times before even if we had no clue what to do with them. This suggests it hasn't happened before...or since, too.

This is just speculation but if we are being visited by some extra terrestrials the question I would pose is why have they never crashed before and why does it seem like they only crashed at the time they did? Humans were only exploding atomic bombs in the atmosphere for a very short time and it was during that short time in which the only really widely 'known' crash is to have supposedly occurred. Could it be that setting off an atomic bomb in the atmosphere messed up their technology enough to take one of their crafts out of the air and crash? Again, this is just pure speculation.

One member thinks alien insanity is boring...duly noted.

In a world that requires a dollar, you seem to believe he provides a dime, but really he's only offering his two cents.

@Princess Arabia Oh, I am simply enjoying the moment of pure innocent revelation, there is nothing to correct. It's grate!!!

Contemplate the notion of rude awakening...then realize it isn't.

I said it is absence of conflict in response to you asking what is 'our peace', that's what peace is, an absence of conflict. I never said avoiding conflict, that's what your mind told you I said or how you interpreted what I said but I never said it. To avoid a conflict, the conflict would have to exist and someone is avoiding it by going around it, or they are taking action to not meet it. Or we could suggest it means that someone is a-'voiding' the conflict, they are negating or erasing it. This would also be saying someone is doing something or efforting in some way to 'void' out the already existing conflict. Peace is the absence of conflict, not the voiding of conflict, so your interpretation of what you heard me say is the falsehood, not my words. Genuine inner peace is an absence of conflict in our consciousness, and the only thing to do to find inner peace is to not do the thing.

Why confront truth? What is truth that it needs to be confronted? Why be in conflict with truth? Who is determining what the truth is that needs to be confronted? Your egoic design?

Yes, if we transcend the avatarization(even a word?) of the internet and embrace the humanity behind the pixels then it can connect people to each other. Especially for people that have been shunned and shamed by portions of society so they can actually feel they are a part of a community instead of apart from society. We can acknowledge the uplifting and connecting potential without ignoring the reality of finger pointing at 'fools' and othering that goes on all too often.

Peace is the absence of conflict....'our peace' would refer to an absence of conflict, distress or self suffering within our own consciousness. Now applying it to some of the dynamics going on with social interactions, including online. So 'being at peace' would not only an absence of conflict but is also a presence of harmony that exists in our own consciousness and expands from our own consciousness in perception to all expressions of consciousness we perceive. This may be a challenge when encountering differing opinions and expressions that don't resonate with our own. It can create a conflict within us if we believe our own perspective to be 'right', 'good' and 'truth' with others that differ are 'wrong', 'bad' and 'false'. This forum is replete with examples of this but is not limited to this forum.

The term troll existed before the internet, people just repurposed the term to describe behavior on the internet. Some like to use the term as in someone is being a 'troll', which in folk lore aren't considered human, so feeds into the dehumanizing aspect of using the term. There is also the behavior of trolling, which uses the fishing technique of trolling as an example of how someone would bait to catch a fish and the posts some would use to bait arguments. The internet is good at reusing old concepts for new meanings and is useful in that way. You may not be dehumanizing others, that is appreciated, yet it would be hard to argue that this electronic medium of social interactions hasn't created more separation between us as a society so is also increased the dehumanizing. It's just interacting with avatars now. Those who are doing inner work may have a deeper insight into the self suffering of an appearance of separation and identity with avatars. Which touches on a point of this thread about calling the appearance of others' avatars fools as an expression of inner conflict. Of course, one can have criticisms about the discourse that goes on here without allowing it to disturb our peace. Especially if one has transcended identity with the avatars, the words, the opinions and the appearance of separation the behavior exhibited would reflect it.

I have the benefit of seeing what life was before the internet, and there were trolls back then, too. The internet just amplifies it, it makes it appear like there is more, or it's getting worse or some other form of dramatizing it. The context and scope become abstract. There will always be some new form of social interactions to use, that's just how we are wired as a species. Add in some technology, and it can cause some to lose all humanity, if some humans weren't already adept at dehumanizing. Again, just amplifying it. Our work in the face of all the antics is actually not a doing, it's being at peace.

@Princess Arabia This is the internet, there's no use for sincere apologies, do you think we are emotionally mature and mentally healthy here? Pfft

@Princess Arabia touché and bravo.....but please, paragraphs.

Just straight to the point, if someone uses another person's ideas of success they won't measure up to it, and it's not just because what one seeks for in life is not what someone else does, which can be a powerful insight in itself. Genuine success is not something accomplished, it's a state of being. Of course, I just pointed out the part about using another person's ideas about success...so feel free to disregard mine.

No need to create any self suffering from it, it's really nothing to let it disturb our peace. Words are whatever. Just be.

Over the years, I've come to recognize that a word like enlightenment is rendered almost useless because it means so many different things to so many people that it has lost all meaning as a word. Sure, it has book meaning yet a unique translation for each person, so can barely be used to say anything for us. Then in those years I've come to recognize the word truth is pretty much like enlightenment, it means so many different things to each person the word truth itself has lost all meaning. Yes, truth is the state of being true, but it also means being loyal, fidelity. People just want to believe their truth as if it's fact, this is innate in mind. There is another word that the meaning has so many variations it almost ceases to be useful in communicating anything about one's experience. This word is awake. Those three words have such an ineffable effect on each person that definitions can not represent them accurately. Meaning just about anything and everything to anyone of us, so really, it means nothing to all of us. Does this make them meaningless? In the way that they have no meaningful effect in us so to speak, from those three experiences for the lack of a better word? Or the opposite, they are three very powerful experiences which can mean more than any thing to any one of us. Yet, we can talk for years about them with others and still not really know how another soul perceives them. Although, it appears quite obviously to us if we have the inner life harmony that comes from realizing one's meaning and our being resonates with it, so emanates presence. The behavior it inspires in us is as infinite as the expressions of meaning we have, yet it is crystal clear to those that have this presence the distinctions of what harms and what heals. Again, for lack of betters words.

@Anahata Oh, you are pointing at something, ok, well, then nevermind.

If you divide white light with a crystal or water it creates a rainbow and if you combine the rainbow of material pigments together into one it creates black. Contemplate that...

Ah yes, another person on the forum telling others 'you are doing spirituality wrong' with even calling out Leo to explain your way through how you think he is doing spirituality wrong. To be fair, Leo himself also does this on the forum. I encourage everyone to realize liberation, which is the cessation of self suffering because once one abides in that all 'truth seeking' with the accompanying parsing out of what one believes is the truth is recognized for what it is. Until then, good luck with the mystical mumbo jumbo, I hope it leads you to well being.

I will mostly frame this in the context of romantic relationships but it is generally accurate about almost everyone so we can be aware of it when we interact with others. I have found that people will reveal to us so much about themselves when they are talking about others, especially past relationships. We will learn how they will talk about us to others and about us as a past/present relationship. So when we meet someone and specifically in the case of someone we may view romantically listen closely to what they say about others and their past relationships. It doesn't mean it's always a red flag if they have anything negative to say about others or their past relationships but be aware of how they talk about these others and what they say about themselves in the context of the circumstances and narrative they are portraying. This gives insight into how they think now and how they likely will tell it presently, not what they think and say of it in the past or the future, though. We can even apply this to ourselves, be aware of how we view our own relations and what we say about them. The aspects of the circumstances we highlight or ignore, the narratives we create about them and how we portray them. I've been aware of this for a very long time and even catch my own mind trying to 'tell stories' about past, present and future people and situations that I will not believe because it's just self bias. Also, be aware of how we 'tell stories' about others to others, it will give insight even to oneself about how we think about and view it all. It will help to interrupt the reflexive bias the mind will conjure up and allow us an opportunity to view things in clarity. Finally, don't beat yourself up because of this, even as I have said all this stuff about being aware of how people tell the stories of the things in their life it does seem like you take some responsibility for them though they might not be yours to claim.

Truth is some conscious agent efforting to verify what it perceives as real for justification....wisdom is that conscious agent realizing it doesn't require justifying effort to be at peace with what is so is in liberation.

So raging at others who don't accept your word as gospel truth is now them raging at you? Wow...just wow.