BigSkyDiamond

i agree and intent can be every bit as low level. that's why i have to be absolutely meticulous and honest to the nth degree in clarifying and articulating my motive and reasons for whatever it is i am doing or asking for or trying to have happen

it's your life, who is in charge of it? Is he determining what you do, or are you? under what circumstances would any being (in physical form or non-physical form) put expectations on you as an adult? i am asking that in the general sense, and it is for myself to consider as well. So not trying to be pushy or judgmental. I am voicing a generic question that comes to mind reading that post. A good portion of my life for the first 40 years was spent cleaning up the messes in my life which stemmed from me trying to please others or fulfill their expectations. So I tend to be vigilant in that arena. and that great phrase: "expectations are pre-meditated resentment" my view is I don't have to "do" anything. it is enough to just BE. in my life, on the planet, in the universe, and as a child of Divinity. just my being is enough. I am the beloved of God. I am the child in whom God is well pleased. THAT is Beingness. (in my view, in my universe, in my frame of reference)

which brings to mind "magic" also. whether it is "good" magic or the other kind, not going there. It is an obstacle to Divinity (for me). The entities associated with "magic" of all kinds become a barrier in proceeding further to the level of Beingness.

since i tend to not trust people for the most part, i also don't trust entities. to my way of thinking it is just too risky. that's just me. for me Divinity is not an entity. And entities are not Divinity. When it is through a book or a teacher or a class or a training, then i can vet them including whatever beings in non-physical form they may work with. if it does not resonate with Beingness (for me Divinity is Beingness, just a different name) then i have no reason to interact with them or engage. Whether it is a physical person or a being in non-physical form. And there needs to be a compelling reason for me to interact with them. Divinity has helpers and emissaries, yes i agree. so bottom line i vet them. but i don't go wandering around seeking them out. They have to show up in the normal course of my daily life, and in that way i can vet them. and my motive needs to be clear and clean. "What is my reason for engaging" "Why would i interact with them" and i have to be honest with myself about that. my motive has to be vetted also.

there have not been many people in my life that i trust. however i do trust Divinity. to have my best interests at heart.

yes. i agree. it is the difference between what someone says and what a person validates and verifies for themself.

oooooh i like that . have you had those kinds of experiences and access all your life, or did it kick in at a certain age? it is fascinating to hear about this. did it take time for you to come to terms with it, were you always accepting of it? I remember in my family growing up i learned very quickly not to talk about any of this. Even asking about God was off limits. (The house was filled with books, education and school and learning were valued, but all those books on all those shelves, not one of them was a bible.) I was a voracious reader and over the years pulled every single book off the shelves to see what they were. I remember I had to sneak a bible into the house and hide it under my mattress and read it with a flashlight. I was about 10 years old.

i do something like that when trying to make decisions or choices. There is a red light and a green light. I visualize myself making one choice, and see which light goes on red or green. And then the other choice, red or green light. I have never thought in terms of light body. i also try and lean in to "how does it feel with _________ (this choice, or that choice)" and compare how each feels. It feels like a way of asking my intuition. I try to stay away from "better or worse" and stick with "how does it feel if i do this" "or that". I try to steer clear of "right choice" and "wrong choice" . sometimes the wording i'll ask is "which choice has my best interests at heart" and then test each one. A therapist told me once "there are no wrong choices, just different outcomes." I was really annoyed when she said that but it was useful in how i word things and bringing awareness to how I think. it's not about being "right" it is about discerning and following what is best for me. Making choices where there is perhaps incomplete information or when it is not clear to me which choice is best, using intuition to provide additional data.

i gotta say you have the most intriguing experiences to relate.

How do they differ? Is it my past lives are other times and places and countries I've lived. And parallel lives are the current me, but if i had say made different choices and then that life played out (like alternate endings reading a book). like "what if i had married my first fiancee at university instead, how would my life have been" not as a regret but as being curious.

That is a very sensible approach. It is good common sense and practical. I also like to ask myself questions such as "Does this system (or teacher) have my best interests at heart" "Do i trust this teacher (or group)." For me it is also helpful to ask myself "what appeals to me about this group" "what is my motivation in wanting to study this path" "or study with this person" and that can help me identify sticky intentions or red flag motives on my part. Am i going there to try and please someone, to impress someone, for the glamor or cachet it gives? Am I throwing money at a teacher or training because of the misguided notion that means it is better?

in a nutshell, it would mean that there is no "consensus reality" there is no "consensus universe" which we all inhabit. It would mean we each have our own universe. just like we each have our own distinct individual daily life and our own distinct individual beliefs and experiences. We each have our own universe. where are people on the concept of "there is no consensus reality" ? how do you feel about that? Tying this into the thread topic of God interacting with humans. well currently as humans it is evident that there is no consensus reality or agreed upon definition or experience of Divnity (God, Beingness). My observation is we each kinda sorta cobble together our own best fit. Which can change at different ages or stages even over the course of our own life. I don't have to look any further than my own childhood. My brother and I grew up in the same house, same parents, same family. And our descriptions and lived experience of what it was like growing up are worlds apart.

i am trying it on for size as an exercise for myself, in what would it be like for me to implement the belief "time does not exist" in terms of how it affects other beliefs i hold and i how i do my daily life. It is a byproduct of me logically trying to reconcile different beliefs i hold so they don't contradict within my own belief system. It reminds me of when i first picked up the belief "time does not exist" and i then had to reconcile "well then what about all my past lives." I was certainly not going to let go of my belief in past lives. They are too real for me. The solution was to have the past lives all simultaneous and happening concurrently. They become aspects of myself that I can be in contact with, the same way i do my "inner child" for instance to tap into that part of myself. The past lives are not separate from me they are still just me with a distinct set of wisdom and experience and lessons that are available as a resource. In the same way i learn valuable lessons such as "don't cuss out the boss at work" in this lifetime from my younger self, i can also learn from other experiences i've had (other lifetimes which are still me). my beliefs only affect my world, they do not alter any one else's universe. along the lines of "our beliefs create our realitiy." Tying that into the thread topic of "God interacting with humans" our interactions with God are determined by the beliefs we hold about God (Divinity; Beingness; the infinite part of our self that is the core of our being). It is not one size fits all. And it does not discount anyone else's lived experiences which are rich and varied and absolutely valid. It is not that we are "God running the world" running around being megalomaniacs claiming to be God. But we are building our own world and our own daily life. And our own universe. Just as we have different belief systems and experience life very differently, it well may be that we live in and navigate different universes. Beingness is within us so it is our birthright to connect with that part of ourself and live from there. Ii am trying to figure out what would that look like in daily life. An aspect of Beingness is to build universes and experience them. i am a practical person so i am trying this on for size in my own daily life. i always like seeing the posts with 'test it out, try it out, experiment with it.' yes.

I can check in how i'm feeling in the present moment. But that can be my only point to evaluate. Interesting, when I read this exercise, it occurred to me that if i am to put into action my belief that time does not exist, then that prevents me from going back an hour. I can only ever tune in and check in at the now present moment because that is all there is. And it means there is no me to observe from an hour ago. Because there has only ever been me in the present moment. There is only ever me in the now. That is a new development. That must mean there are no timelines? I'll have to see what else this affects. Tweak one belief and see what dominoes fall as a result. what is your take on this? what is the impact or effect if there are no timelines? how would that affect you? curious to hear.

This is so wonderful. Free will on steroids, i love it. bold above i want that on a t-shirt, or better yet in an elixir. i can't stop grinning.

it's a haiku. when i read that, my head tingled. So now i must pursue that vastness. --- Lairg

Somehow it does not surprise me that you are part of the celestial choir.

i think part of it too, is that for Beingness, the "universe and everything in it" (Existence as we are calling it) is not the only game in town. Beingness is far more vast than that. When i am in physical reality, my perspective and understanding are limited in scope. As fascinating and intriguing as it all is in Existence (life forms, physical and non physical beings, taking on the different roles, having the different experiences) it is still limiting because humans are limited. Whereas dwelling instead from the vantage point of Beingness offers a far more sweeping vista. if has humans we can't understand the ways of Beingness, then it seems logical to experience as Beingness instead. That is our birthright. Since Beingness is the core of me then that is the vantage point i need to be claiming and inhabiting. circling back to Beingness making the decision to build this universe and then live in it and experience it, yes that is logical. But as Beingness i can also say OK i built this house and lived in it. Now i want to do something else without the limitations of this house. it's feeling cramped. time to experience something else. Even at the mundane secular level we get to do that. Humans have free will. Then it logically follows, how much more so do we then have free will as Beingness. you've got me thinking more logically Lairg. Good on you! I like that.

i keep coming back to this. so then not only are all my different lifetimes occurring simultaneously. But then also all moments in my current lifetime are in parallel too. I had not looked at it that way. i saw them as separate parts of a timeline (but still linear) that i could jump backwards to or forwards to. Like beads on a string. But if they are all simultaneous (parallel) then that is a different perspective. Then it's more like thin disks of film with images (moments) all stacked on top of each other. Like negatives when we took photographs with actual film in the camera. So when you opened your eyes and found yourself in a different room, was it like your consciousness was looking through the eyes of another you that was in the other room (you popped into that other you body); or was it more like your same body popped over into the other room and you physically landed there. I have always been wary of inserting myself into other timelines because of not being able to come back. (physical relocation has not interested me for that reason.) but it's felt fine "rescripting" my past for instance helping my younger me. And it's felt fine contacting my older me for wisdom and guidance, that has felt fine. Because it feels more like communicating without the concern of getting stuck or putting my current me at risk. I appreciate hearing your perspective.

you can have your own ideas though, what it means to you, how you interpret it or understand it, what your own view is, what it brings to mind for you. That is what this thread topic is for.

It always felt to me like it was two separate sections put together, the first four lines felt so different from the rest of verse 42. At times i wondered why the first four lines were not at the start of the Tao Te Ching.

i am always on the lookout for easy ways to compare a lot of different translations. These are the two sites I have been using. If anyone has any other "compare text" for the Tao Te Ching please let us know. Thank you. compare verses (Garofalo) https://www.egreenway.com/taoism/ttclzindex.htm Terebess https://www.egreenway.com/taoism/ttclzindex.htm

for those who may be wondering (I was so i looked it up) he has done the entire book. I was curious how he presented other passages. it is here

OK got it. so then Prana flows or emerges from Self, and Self is top of the chain?

Thank you for the full post with many insights. Much appreciated. The One giving birth to Two yes for me that is "non-duality" which steps down to "duality" or "polarity" the "world of opposites." that is how i understand it. it is easiest for me to understand duality in terms of watching my thought process. when i can see that all people are the same in our humanity it is non-duality. when i start making judgments good-bad, right-wrong superior-inferior, it is polarity thinking. "us and them" yes that is very valid. Time (and space and form) does not exist nor is it applicable at all stages described. I have always seen this sequence as going from finest to densest. So it is a progression or stepping down, like vibration is stepped down and has differing results. Or moving back up the chain from densest to finest. I see it as a practical map of how physical matter (densest, the ten thousand things, the universe and everything in it) comes into being which can be traced all the way back up to the finest, the source (Tao) but i agree it is not dependent on time and space at every level. My understanding is that time and space and form only exist at the very densest level (ten thousand things). As a physical human in a physical universe, time and space and form are characteristics but at all the other levels / stages they are non-existent and not relevant. The physical human body i currerntly inhabit is finite and has a beginning and end, and is subject to time it belongs to the ten thousand things. But the part of me that is infinite belongs to and has the characteristics of the Tao: unborn unformed unchanging no beginning no end always was always will be. The body comes and goes. The infinite part of me does not. always was and always will be. thank you for the illuminating insights docB