Topic: Destiny, Fate, and Accidents

[nichi]

I am responsible for my words.  I am not responsible for how you take them.  

You are responsible for the Intent behind your words, which you have stated was to simply yank our chains. This is irresponsible and amoral in the sense that your words cease to have any integrity, when they are "used" simply for an effect, which is what you stated in the other thread.

I feel like I'm in the twilight zone, so I'm going to step back here.

[nichi]

A pointless question rife with baited trap.  It's irrelevant, and matters not.

Take a look at where you are, Todd, here in Soma, full of seers and folks learning how to see. It is most certainly relevant.

[Gunslinger]

What is your purpose of doing 'spiritual work'?

To expand my awareness.

What is it you are seeking by this argument?

What argument?

You focus on mental arguments and disregard things like seeing/perceiving world directly.

Is that so?  Do I do this all the time?  Even when I'm not here?  Do you know what I see and what I don't?  Do I have to tell you what I see?  You think I'm provacative now, just imagine what would happen if I told everyone what I saw.  For now, it's sufficient to just hold up a mirror.

That makes the whole discussion fairly...unreasonable.

Granted, it does to some.   

[erik]

You think I'm provacative now, just imagine what would happen if I told everyone what I saw.

Not provocative, unreasonable.

[daphne]

You think I'm provacative now, just imagine what would happen if I told everyone what I saw. 

The mind boggles!!   

[Taimi]

I agree with this...

Morality is not absolute, or would you be agreeing with the Christian Fundies that they are?  I am responsible for my words.  I am not responsible for how you take them.  You let me provoke your automatic responses, with words that were not directed personally, insulting, degrading, or lewd.  Thus, you LET ME create your reality.  And that is the ONLY way I can create your reality--with your consent.

[Gunslinger]

 

[Jahn]

We are not here for mind-boggling games. We are here to grow and share our growth.

I must make a definition clear - when Todd declares that we create our own reality he does not mean that we do that but that we create "Our perception of the reality".

That is a huge difference. If I could create my reality I would have some million dollars on my bank account and talking to Dalai Lama on the phone.

We would never be allowed to create our reality because those circumstances is set from above and before. But we can be co-creaters of our reality and the key to that is to be beyond opinions and a screwed up perception that beliefs, fragmented parts and charges have on us in the beginning.

So please choose the words more carefully - otherwise we only fuel misunderstanding.

[Gunslinger]

Jan:

I acknowledge what you are saying.  I appreciate it, as well.  Thank you for expressing your ideas.

Now, if our minds are not boggled now and then, they become sedentary.  :-)  And they do not grow.

JAN:  "I must make a definition clear - when Todd declares that we create our own reality he does not mean that we do that but that we create "Our perception of the reality"."

Jan, please make it clear that that is your definition, not mine.  I realize that you are translating your thoughts and feelings through English, which might not be your native language.  I appreciate that, greatly, for I have only one language.  I also want you to know, and also others here, that I choose my words with the utmost care, and in the most impeccable way that I can.  To be precise, I mean exactly what I say, within my limitations.  I may address elsewhere the mechanics of reality creation, but here let me say that we DO create reality, and we do so through the projection and reception of energy through perception.  This is an extremely foreign conception, I know.  Because it is so different, it may be difficult for those mechanically minded to agree that we create our own reality.  But, I mean exactly what I said, WE CREATE OUR REALITY.

If we get out of our own way, Jan, it won't be long before we do win a million dollars and the Dalai LLama calls US, humurously speaking.

It does rankle me a bit when I read that "we would never be allowed to create our reality".  I'm taking your words literally as an accurate expression of what you mean.  By whom would this allowance be granted? By what right?  By what power?  I didn't grant this right or power to any thing or energy outside or foreign to me.  I have no other gods before me.  In this physical reality I was born into, there are certain assumptions like governments and parents and other adults that have putative power to allow me.  That also was created by me, for my purposes and intent.  (A very difficult concept to understand, also.)  I appreciate where you are coming from, and why.  However, it is not necessary to believe that there is a power that is greater than us.

Opinions are like noses, Jan.  Everybody's got one.  Yours are due the same credit as mine, and this is as plain as the one on your face.  From this point on, it can be understood that misunderstanding is our own creaton.  It may not be.

Thanks,
Todd

[nichi]

I must make a definition clear - when Todd declares that we create our own reality he does not mean that we do that but that we create "Our perception of the reality".

If I understand Todd accurately, he means that we create the whole kit'n'kaboodle, not only our perception of it.  (Right, Todd?)

[tommy2]

Whenever I get into relative concepts like love, reality, honor, honesty, energy ...... whatever, and I am relating to others these things which are within my inventory, I always try to remember not to use words like, "we", "always", "never", etc.

And do you all know why?  Because I would leaving the bindings of my definition of "impeccable words".  I, personally, cannot because such terms have just too many significances, inferences and potential meanings.  I know I used "always" in the first sentence of this post because I was using it in the first person and I followed it with the word "try".  I did this on purpose, as I am sure most of you know.  I always attempt to do this because my words are imperic in use.  

If I didn't, in my less-than-humble opinion, I would think myself a little on the immature side with regards to my word usage.

Respectfully, tom

[Gunslinger]

If I understand Todd accurately, he means that we create the whole kit'n'kaboodle, not only our perception of it.  (Right, Todd?)

In a nutshell, yes.  Taking Jan's English usage literally, he says I mean "Our perception of THE Reality."  It's understood, I think, that we create our perception.  I would posit that perception creates our reality.  There is no THE Reality.  Reality exists.  There is no THING called reality.  Reality is action.  Reality is the collection of all actions in All That Is.  And All That Is is always and eternally in a state of becoming.  Hence, reality is always and eternally in a state of becoming.  Now, these words are drastically insufficient.  As Eric is wont to remind me, the distance between words and understanding is the chasm between knowledge and imagination.

My physical reality is the set of actions that I configure out of energy with my perception, filtered through my beliefs and opinions and some other actions. Our reality is the set of actions that we configure out of energy with our perceptions, filtered through our beliefs and opinions and some other actions.  Again, some imagination is required here beyond my words to see my meaning and to have some understanding.

I won't get into how non-physical reality is created.  I'm not there in my understanding and awareness, and besides, I don't think words can begin to trigger enough imagination.

I hope that clarifies, some.

[daphne]

I would posit that perception creates our reality. 

It is an interesting phenomena that as our perceptions change, so does our reality.

I wonder at times if there is a 'base' reality (or a 'the' reality) - reality is whatever is, the moment s ever now, as such, all realities exist, to me as some sort of angle on 'the' reality, that 'base' reality of what is.
Perhaps we need new words to be able to exchange ideas without coming up against locked meanings? Many paths do have these new words - unfortunately, often there is a reverting to the more common usage and communication and connectivity is lost.

I too see reality as a state of becoming - or rather I would say the interplay between the state of becoming and the state of being is an eternal cycle of motion. All there is, is motion, movement, substance taking form and dissolving form, awareness moving through rather like those zoom pictures as our attention is taken up by one point within the picture, and then another - reality is formed, a whole string of realities.

One of the interesting things I found about words, and hence my many years of being stuck in words, was that when I first started studying Kabbalah, I was fascinated by the translations in many instances between the Hebrew and the English. To me the Hebrew had a distinctly different understanding than its surface translation. And not only the translation, but also the approach - was difficult approachng it from both the western esoteric tradition and the Judaic.
When I discovered the energy behind the words, I could finally put my obsession with the 'right' words, and the 'right' approach, to rest - well.. a sort of slumber anyway!   

[Gunslinger]

Why does this have to be personal, Eric?

Anyway:

"the distance between words and understanding is the chasm between knowledge and imagination."

That is incorrect - words may or may not reflect individual's understanding of something. But they always reflect, they are not understanding. Besides, there are no words for reflecting very many perceivable things.

The distance between my words and people's understanding of them is sometimes a chasm of their own creation.

And now the question worth your life: what does it take to change your reality? Change perception? How?

Reconfigure the force patterns of energy, and project them through the force patterns of time in our space with our perception.  That's how, literally speaking.  *smiles*

[erik]

That does not work, Todd.
There are no shortcuts, no manipulation of energy substitutes changing self.

Want Enlightenment? Then Change Your Perception

http://krisraphael.com/2005/11/14/want_enlightenment_then_change_your_perc_1/

The Toltec Path gives us three Masteries, the Mastery of Awareness, the
Mastery of Transformation and the Mastery of Intent. In the Mastery of
Awareness we become aware of something, that when brought into
awareness, seems so obvious we may surprise ourselves that we missed
it. This something is:

Our perception determines our experience

This is an essential realization on a spiritual path, and can assist us
immensely in the living of life - our quality of life. If we wish to
have better experiences, we need to change our perception. If we wish
to experience All-That-Is, or the Nagual, we must change our
perception.

The fact that our perception is very limited is basic to Toltec
teachings. When we thoroughly work the Mastery of Awareness, we come to
understand that the knowledge we have acquired growing up creates a
world that is not real. We begin to understand that the world we
perceive is nothing but the result of the content of our knowledge and
our beliefs. How we perceive the world is determined by our
domestication.

Let me give a real life example of how our perception is determined by
our knowledge, or what Toltecs call, our inventory.

When I was a graduate student I was living in Japan studying cultural
anthropology. For part-time work I translated manuals from Japanese
into English. On one occasion I was translating a manual that said in
Japanese, “To start the machine push the ‘aoi’ button.” Because I
didn’t actually have the physical machine in front of me I didn’t know
how to translate the Japanese word ‘aoi.’ The word ‘aoi’ in
Japanese can mean either blue or green.

Therefore, a native Japanese speaker will point to a ‘blue’ sky and
say it is AOI. They will then point to a ‘green’ leaf and say it is
the same color - AOI. Due to their knowledge and conditioning, they
actually PERCEIVE the sky and the leaf as the same color.

This can be understood when we look at a color spectrum. The colors
blue and green are right next to each other on the spectrum. It so
happens that most languages of the west divide the spectrum of blue and
green into two colors. In truth, there are an infinite number of color
frequencies within the range of blue and green. We just happen to
divide the range into two basic colors and this is what we see.

Other cultures divide the color spectrum up differently. (It should be
noted that modern Japanese now has more words for colors such as
‘midori’ for green and ‘buruu’ equivalent to the English word
‘blue’ and so on.)

When studying different cultures, Anthropologists found that different
cultures have a different number of words for colors. Some cultures had
five words for different colors, others had as few as four or even
three words. What was even more significant, however, was that in some
traditional cultures, if there were only three words for colors, they
would only see three different colors! Their language “colored” their
perception. Their perception determined their experience of color. They
only experienced three colors.

A baby doesn’t see blue or green until he is taught the words that
define the colors. He sees the total color spectrum from infrared to
ultraviolet as different “shades” of just ONE color. The words we are
taught define the boundaries of the bundles of frequencies we perceive.
When we are taught the word blue we learn a concept called blue. The
concept defines a particular range of frequencies within the color
spectrum, which is bound by the concept blue. When a color frequency
falls within that range we call it blue. As the baby grows into a child
and learns to speak, it no longer sees ONE color with different shades.
It sees SEVERAL distinct colors defined by the vocabulary it has
learned. It sees blue, green, red and so on. This is an example of how
our language defines what we perceive.

The same is true of sounds. A native Japanese speaker does not hear the
difference between an “l” sound and an “r” sound. Unless they study
English they perceive them as the same sound. A native English speaker
hears two distinct sounds because that is what he or she was taught. To
the English speaker, the “p” in “pit” sounds the same as the “p” in
“spit.” However, to the Chinese speaker, these two “p” sounds are as
distinctive as “l” and “r” are to the English speaker.

There is no right or wrong in this. It is just what we have learned. In
actuality, there are an infinite number of sound frequencies between
“l” and “r.” But an English speaker hears just two. There are an
infinite number of color frequencies in the color range bound by the
word “yellow.” But the English speaker perceives everything within the
“yellow” range as “yellow.” We may have a few words for different
shades of “yellow,” but we still perceive them as a shade of “yellow.”

The average man or woman believes they know reality. They act and react
according to what they believe they know. But what they know is the
past. It is just one concept added to a concept added to a concept, a
belief added to another belief in their inventory. Their inventory just
grows horizontality. It has no depth. When we “see” and have
knowingness it comes from another plane. It does not come from the
horizontal plane of our knowledge inventory.

As the above examples illustrate, WHAT WE PERCEIVE is due in large part
upon what we have learned. With all of our conditioning and learning,
by the time they are adults, the average person has little ability to
perceive WHAT IS. This is why Toltecs say that as long as you have
inventory (knowledge), you cannot perceive the Nagual.

A pre-requisite for a true spiritual path is to first become aware of
our beliefs (inventory), and then be willing to let them go. Until we
eliminate our beliefs we can never perceive reality for what it is.
Until we clear out our inventory, we will never know self, as we cannot
see self as it is.

If we are unable to know self, we are unable to transform self and our
lives in alignment to higher spiritual principles. We will continue
with failed relationships, lack and difficulties in life.

To transform something we must first see it for what it is without
avoidance and denial. We must be clear enough and free enough from our
beliefs and stale knowledge to see things as they are.

In the Mastery of Awareness we stalk different aspects of ourselves.
Stalking perception is a powerful exercise. When we stalk our
perception we bring into awareness why we perceive things the way we
do. This can be a basic thing like why we see the colors we do or why
we hear the sounds we do. More important, however, is to stalk the way
we think, feel, act and react. Do we perceive something as wrong or
right because of beliefs we have been taught? Do we have unresolved
emotional issues that cause us to feel nervous around our boss?

Unresolved emotional issues can dramatically throw our perception off.
For example, say our boss hasn’t called us into his office for a long
time and we begin to perceive that he doesn’t appreciate or like our
work. However if someone were to ask our boss why he hasn’t called us
into his office for a while, he may say it is because he trusts us to
do our job without a lot of supervision. We have misperceived his
actions. Why? Perhaps we have unresolved emotional issues about
receiving approval from our parents or those in authority positions.
This emotional issue perverts our perception. In this example it causes
us to misperceive our boss’s actions.

As we stalk our perception we will find many ways in which it is
determined by our domestication, our education, our language, our
beliefs, and our emotional wounding. We will also begin to see how our
perception actually determines our experience. In the above example we
may be experiencing insecurity at work due to our misperception of our
boss’s actions.

Toltecs of ancient times discovered the importance of stalking
perception. Through the Mastery of Awareness we come to realize that
the world that we thought we knew, doesn’t really exist at all. We see
it as just a dream - a dream consisting of our conditioned assumptions
about the world, and our agreements with others in the world. With this
new perception comes the freedom to enter a new dream, the dream of
heaven.

Want enlightenment? Change your perception. Want to change your
perception? Clean, clear, heal and strengthen self. Fully engage your
awareness, make no assumptions, and throw your knowledge and beliefs
out the door. See self and the world with the beginner’s mind.

Love and Light,

Kristopher