MikePaterson
Transcendence anyone?
Posted on: 02/18/2012 13:31
I've tried hard to describe what I suspect is a not uncommon experience that realtes to religion in ways I'm never entirely sure of, but that find coherence in Christ's teachings. Yet much of Christianity also seems to carry a lot of junk baggage that makes Christ's teachings less accessible. Also, it seems to me, transendence is not a great priority to many Christians and an anathema to some.
Where does it sit with you? Is it a part of your experience? I know hat for some of you it is paramount… do you experience alienation as a result (as I often do)?
My first encounter with "transcendent experience" was something that happened to me, rather that anything I’d looked for. I was not spiritually curious; I was a cheerful atheist.
It has, for me, some particular characteristics:
1. It deconstructs habitual ways of perceiving, and of interpreting what is perceived.
2. It dilutes one’s sense of “self” and makes it freely permeable, or temporarily erases it, producing memorable sensations of unity with the whole of what is experienced.
3. It overwhelms our normal attentive controls, creating an inescapable focus on what is being perceived.
4. It erases one’s sense of time and alleviates normal physical awareness of temperature, pain, pleasure, hunger… but can draw sensations (rather than explicit memories) from the pallets of one’s past experience.
5. It is emotionally powerful but non-specific: all of our emotions seem to be simultaneously at play, but in ways that do not feel contradictory: peace, anger, love, pain, joy, desire, frustration… all are experienced as resolving into awe.
5. It affects the intellect deeply, but is non-rational: we experience cognitive reallignment, leaving us at a loss to fully or persuasively communicate the needs we feel to reintegrate “selfhood”.
7. It leaves us feeling deeply changed. It seems to re-tune our discernment so that we find meaning more readily and are more aware of the vanity of our habit-formed intellectual explanations and analysis.
8. It bestows meaning, not explanation. (Without it, I’d have found religion too ridiculous to bother with.)
Once experienced, it’s a state that becomes increasingly accessible. It is the way, I think, I pray most effectively. Just now, I looked out the window beside me. It is snowing. Each flake is dancing it’s own, erratic, fleeting story earthwards, there to pile into a melting mass — it is beautiful: an intricate, delicate, silent ballet, a narrative of how little we see of all that passes, as we too pass… a sweet tragedy impossible to mire in words.
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MC jae
MikePaterson wrote: Just
Posted on: 02/18/2012 14:56
Just now, I looked out the window beside me. It is snowing. Each flake is dancing it’s own, erratic, fleeting story earthwards, there to pile into a melting mass — it is beautiful: an intricate, delicate, silent ballet, a narrative of how little we see of all that passes, as we too pass… a sweet tragedy impossible to mire in words.
I don't really know what you're talking about, but that last part was... beautiful.
InannaWhimsey
good thread and i hope people
Posted on: 02/18/2012 16:55
good thread and i hope people take the opportunity to riff with you
as an anchorhead of mine, i'll let Colin Wilson speak first
Arminius
Seeker, What were you
Posted on: 02/19/2012 07:28
Seeker,
What were you seeking?
Enlightenment? Beauty? or Truth?
Seeker,
You found what you were seeking,
Enlightenment, beauty, and truth,
Then why are you weeping?
Did not unstillable hunger drive you?
Did not unquenchable thirst propell you?
And now,
That the hunger of your heart is satisfied,
And the thirst of your soul quenched,
You weep?
Stranger you became, in a strange land,
Connected with everything and everyone
And
Disconnected from everything and everyone:
God among men.
You wanted it!
MikePaterson
Wilson is great — thank you
Posted on: 02/18/2012 18:54
Wilson is great — thank you Whimsey.
Since my first such experience, I've never had a nightmare I recalled, and I've never really felt fear since… but I've found it a bit of an alienating "gift": so much trepidation, caution and defensiveness — timidity even — on every hand. An insight came to me after engaging with the snow today:
We're never more, never less, than all we might becone… destiny is now.
WaterBuoy
Transcendance is a EUE
Posted on: 02/18/2012 20:22
Transcendance is a EUE ...
That is an extreme usual environment in which nothing happens and you can hardly wait to get out of ID(as primal driving 4's) like heaven where nothing spectacular ever happens causing Cape Bretoners who arrive there to rush of'to 'elle ... where they can burn up Blast Furnaces causing explosions that drive CEO's and political Genus to erurdate in Bing Bangs that can be viewed anywhere except in those eloos've rings where the common folk thing they are CEO's and polity causing general collapse of the wholly system .,. that few talk about as very hairy!
Thus the creation of the surrounding Ephraim ... causing a paean in the as is ... existentialism as Ute isle ize'd ...
But remeber it's just a word ... idealism like meig Ode ...
blackbelt
MorningCalm
Posted on: 02/18/2012 21:26
Just now, I looked out the window beside me. It is snowing. Each flake is dancing it’s own, erratic, fleeting story earthwards, there to pile into a melting mass — it is beautiful: an intricate, delicate, silent ballet, a narrative of how little we see of all that passes, as we too pass… a sweet tragedy impossible to mire in words.
I don't really know what you're talking about, but that last part was... beautiful.
Mike is looking at the beauty of the created, I would agree with him, Only a Beautiful Creator can creat beauty, God is the greatest landscaper
Kimmio
Moving, yet
Posted on: 02/19/2012 00:38
Moving, yet still...
It's Always, Nothing and Everything.
As the Artist of Time creates destiny...
Casting white light through the crystal prism of each soul
Defining the colours of thought and motion
perpetual....
Pain and elation,
as they scatter onto the black canvass of the Universe.
Where forever patterns of yesteday move in random
perfection, toward tomorrow.
Moving....
yet, still...
It's Always, Nothing, and Everything.
Arminius
Ah, Colin Wilson: Inanna's
Posted on: 02/19/2012 07:30
Ah, Colin Wilson: Inanna's Christ.
Arminius
My own enlightenment
Posted on: 02/19/2012 07:52
My own enlightenment resulted
In the highest joy
And
The deepest sadness.
The highest joy because I had found what I was seeking,
The deepest sadness because I could not pass it on.
Sure, I can live it in my everyday actions,
And try to express it in my creations,
But I can't pass it on.
If enlightenment could be bottled, and given away,
Like two drops of LSD in a vial,
Or the extract of a jungle plant,
I would surely do it.
The ecstasy of enlightenment could perhaps be given away,
But not the accompanying insights.
The insights have to be fought for,
By dropping to the lowest low,
And die,
To attain the highest high.
How did Jesus transmit the kingdom of God?
Or did he?
WaterBuoy
Oh, still moving ... Is
Posted on: 02/19/2012 08:14
Oh, still moving ...
Is that innate like word that's dark, untouchable ....
Lodged like a point in des cull? Angelique in de pynes!
As emotional dimension shouldn'tae ben here ... reeks of intellect ... like a hungry soul? Moor toby extracted than a mortal can imagine ... without the abstract side that conflicts with the absolute as struck ... two ethereal sides creating a media ... tempralally supportive ... until they float off ... like Semitics temporary psi'nz!
There's the spirit and there's the soul ... hue eM as you see fit ... their mallaeable, unlike the physical's IDe ... that believes its just infalleable an ineffable dream! All things must alter toa Muse the Gods ... they can't stand EUE indefinitely ... as extreme usual environment without without demands for the senses ... now if a mortal population could learn something; would that disprove antisocialism as a valid idealism? Th'Oz beyond in myth RIP-eL with laughter ... de dbile to the stoic that's never observed a lieb'r ... as they've never entered such a space with care ... such activity can warp lines into recessive Jinn's ... they regress ... to a point of thought ... small mind's emotions that are near nothing in the larger case defined in Web Stir ... a hairy tome for most ... w/o need for understanding ...
revjohn
Hi
Posted on: 02/19/2012 08:09
Hi MikePaterson,
Where does it sit with you?
The transcendent cannot sit with. It sits beyond.
I sense that it is there. I sense that there is a relationship between the transcendent and myself. I also sense that the transcendent is something other than myself. I can sense a resonance from time to time, like some harmonic vibration, something in the transcendent touches something in me and something becomes clearer, if only for the moment.
Is it a part of your experience?
It has been a part of my experience and I suspect it will be part of my experience again. The transcendent is not something I can conjure up or control. I never know when I will encounter it as something close or something far away. It doesn't seem to show up when I want it though I find that when I am in the midst of experiencing it anew it was what I was in most need of.
Again, I sense that it is out there, like whales in the ocean, I'm always searching for signs and then, to my surprise it breaches right beside me. It might stick around long enough for me to wonder how it got there or why it came to where I was and then it moves of as mysteriously as it arrived.
I know hat for some of you it is paramount… do you experience alienation as a result (as I often do)?
I wouldn't say that it is paramount. I would say that it is awesome.
Surprisingly no. There is a discomfort due to scale, the transcendent is much more than I am, it overwhelms completely and that immediately brings to mind that in the presence of the transcendent I am powerless to defend against it. At the same time the transcendent radiates no hostility. At the very least, I have never experienced hostility from the transcendent.
Like the whale above. It is so much more than me and yet the whale doesn't chase me from the ocean, the whale appears comfortable sharing it with me. There are depths that the whale can go that I cannot without mechanical help and even then my bounds are somewhat limited.
It is as if the whale understands that I am far more delicate than it is, that even accidental contact can damage me as divers are tossed in the wake of the whale so also am I tossed in the wake of the transcendent.
My first encounter with "transcendent experience" was something that happened to me, rather that anything I’d looked for. I was not spiritually curious; I was a cheerful atheist.
I get that. I wasn't an atheist. I had done all my Sunday School lessons and read my Bible and thought I had God worked out in a way that made sense and was happily content with things the way they were.
I was a boy who studied sailing but never put out to sea. Then one day the boat went out into deeper waters without my being aware of it and suddenly I was aware that I was being watched and the transcendent overwhelmed me.
Later, I had new understandings of words I had previously only known by definitions.
Once experienced, it’s a state that becomes increasingly accessible.
I almost envy you that. I agree with pretty much all of the rest of your characteristics save for this one. I do see, more readily, the signs that the transcendent has been present (the wake of the transcendent if you like) I have never been able to fathom the predicters of the transcendent the same way storm chasers predict tornadoes will spawn here or there.
Sometimes I feel the transcendent rushing in. As if the harmonic vibrations allows me to attenuate to where the transcendent is coming from and how soon it might arrive. I think that is probably more work for the transcendent than it is for me.
Grace and peace to you.
John
Arminius
Hi Mike: After my peak
Posted on: 02/19/2012 08:40
Hi Mike:
After my peak experience, I too had lost all of my fears, even the fear of death, and had no more nightmares, only pleasant dreams. Last night in a dream, you and I listened to The Master. Everyone crowded close to him, to see him and maybe touch him, but we were content to just sit down at the periphery and listen. Unfortunately, I don't remember what he said. But, right after I woke up from the dream, I posted the above poem and this post.
The feeling of being at-one with everyone and everything I encounter—or actually being everyone and everything I encounter—remained very strong after my experience, to this day. And I saw everything, literally and figuratively, in a different light. The colours were more vivid, the contrasts sharper, and everything seemed to be surrounded by a faint halo, and I was not only outside but also inside everything.
Yes, it can be a bit alienating: So much love for everyone and everything! But, if one acts lovingly toward people, one is regarded with suspicion. When I look lovingly at women, they seem to think "what does he want?" Men react even worse; they suspect a homosexual come-on! The only ones who can stand the loving look, and even reciprocate it, are children. Plants, animals, and so called "inanimate" objects seem to radiate back the love I extend toward them.
I wonder whether the great sages of humanity, like Jesus the Christ or Gautama the Buddha, were able to transmit experiences of enlightenment. Or did they just express their own enlightenment in their everyday actions, and encourage and guide and others to seek theirs?
Perhaps this is all we can do: express our own enlightenment in our everyday creations and actions, and encourage other people to seek theirs, and act on theirs.
Because every one of us is a unique being—a unique edition of God, if you will—everyone has to find their uniquely own enlightenment, on their own terms, and express it uniquely, on their own terms. All we can do is encourage them. And, if we are exeptionally gifted, guide them.
MikePaterson
John, we have pink and red
Posted on: 02/19/2012 08:45
John, we have pink and red geranims along an extended window ledge under a picture window in our livingroom.
When I look at one of those blooms, I feel a rush of gratitude — instant prayer. In the morning I can spend an hour there.
I carry a smooth very black stone in my pocket that I found on a beach — it fits perfectly into the palm of my hand. It has the character of being handled some time in the past. I have no idea where it originated, it formed and will exist almost entirely beyond my mortal span. On one level, it's impenetrable blackness gives me the sensation of the imminent, transcendant mystery: surrounding us but impenetrable. It's hardness gives me feelings of its immediate ever-presence. Held in different ways, it arouses emotions or different qualities — our response to the unknowable is not unchanging but it is our own — and others will have their own "knowings". This is where Jesus' teachings move me to tears — they give assurance and form an organic truth in ways that are stunning… they connect everday life with the sublime and make far far more than literal sense: they speak to dimensions of "self" that they reveal in their telling. This is where my stone takes me, and it's not the stone — when I loose is (as I'm bound to) another stone will do.
The hard part about Jesus' teachings is trusting them deeply enough to travel with them — and seriously enough to "just get on with it," as my mother would say. That partt's an enormous challenge which may explain why great saints are a bit thin on the ground.
But all of this seems to be the polar opposite of all the experiences that society offers, from its forms of analysis and priorities to it forms of entertainment (so different from falling snow or geranium blooms). And this was what prompted an Iearlier thread I posted about the present times opposing faith and unfavorable for religion. Too much noise and too little respite from it.
revjohn
Hi
Posted on: 02/19/2012 09:24
Hi MikePaterson,
When I look at one of those blooms, I feel a rush of gratitude — instant prayer. In the morning I can spend an hour there.
I get that.
It isn't the geraniums that are the transcendent though is it? Aren't the geraniums, and their beauty, the wake of transcendence?
I carry a smooth very black stone in my pocket that I found on a beach
I have a collection of rocks. Nothing spectacular all symbolic. Each was taken from a preaching point I was leaving or the area surrounding it. I have had a thing about rocks for quite some time. Isaiah kicked it off:
Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the LORD; Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn;
Isaiah 51: 1 if any are curious.
I know that everywhere I have been in my ministry I have left bits and pieces of me behind. I also know that everywhere I have been in my ministry those places have rubbed off on me. I carry the rocks forward, typically they are the last bits I take from the preaching points as I leave. They are strewn about my office with all my books and stuff.
They keep me connected.
That connection is, for me at any rate, part of the harmonic vibration I experience with the transcendent. I was sent there and even though I have been sent elsewhere since there is a connection.
The hard part about Jesus' teachings is trusting them deeply enough to travel with them — and seriously enough to "just get on with it," as my mother would say. That partt's an enormous challenge which may explain why great saints are a bit thin on the ground.
Amen.
But all of this seems to be the polar opposite of all the experiences that society offers, from its forms of analysis and priorities to it forms of entertainment (so different from falling snow or geranium blooms). And this was what prompted an Iearlier thread I posted about the present times opposing faith and unfavorable for religion. Too much noise and too little respite from it.
I think that the experience society offers is the polar opposite primarily because it seeks to make the transcendent less. It seeks to harness that which cannot be harnessed and it seeks to control that which cannot be controlled. It takes what is beyond and overwhelms and renders it within and common. It commodifies what is not a commodity to begin with.
It resembles seeking yet utterly fails at finding.
Grace and peace to you.
John
MC jae
blackbelt wrote: Mike is
Posted on: 02/19/2012 09:51
Mike is looking at the beauty of the created, I would agree with him, Only a Beautiful Creator can creat beauty, God is the greatest landscaper
Ahh, thanks brother. I agree with you. The beauty of creation reveals the beautiful Creator.
MikePaterson
Here a geranium by the
Posted on: 02/19/2012 09:59
Here a geranium by the window…
Here's my pocket stone…
MC jae
(No subject)
Posted on: 02/19/2012 10:02
Mendalla
MorningCalm
Posted on: 02/19/2012 11:02
Not sure what your point is, MC, but the existence of these creatures points to the wonder and complexity of the universe as much as Mike's flower and rock. If one believes that a wondrous, complex universe must reflect a wondrous, complex transcendant Creator, then I think this is on the money. On the other hand, it would also make good inspiration for a particularly creepy alien civilization in an s-f movie.
Mendalla
MikePaterson
They look like amphipods of
Posted on: 02/19/2012 13:32
They look like amphipods of some sort.
If that's what they are, they're the most seriously understudied crustaceans in the world… like little lobsters but not yet commercialised. Most are low-level clean-up guys in aquatic food chains, and we had shore-based ones in the New Zealand bush.They're harmless and quite nice wee things. If they are amphipods, they're every bit as ecologically significant and attractive as those "cute" Emperor Penguins in the "March of the Penguins" — and whose cozy colonies, in fact, smell dreadful.
Unfortunately, it's creatures like amphopods that get singled out as iconic scare-objects by fearful nature-haters who manage to do a lot of damage to our social health in their own deeply ignorant ways. Shark-phobia, for example, hits insane levels amongpeople who are very unlikely to ever spend time with one. When you have, you realise thay are extremely beautiful in their element and rarely pose a great threat to people — most domestic pets are more dangerous.
So, Calm: tell us what they are… how do you feel about them?
airclean33
Hi Mikepaterson--I Think you
Posted on: 02/19/2012 15:23
Hi Mikepaterson--I Think you will find they are Dust mites, they eat the dead skin you leav in your bed.
Mendalla
MikePaterson wrote: They
Posted on: 02/19/2012 15:28
They look like amphipods of some sort.
Ah, then they already have been used as monsters in an s-f movie. I think the small creepie crawlies in Cloverfield were inspired by amphipods.
Unfortunately, it's creatures like amphopods that get singled out as iconic scare-objects by fearful nature-haters who manage to do a lot of damage to our social health in their own deeply ignorant ways. Shark-phobia, for example, hits insane levels amongpeople who are very unlikely to ever spend time with one. When you have, you realise thay are extremely beautiful in their element and rarely pose a great threat to people — most domestic pets are more dangerous.
When I did my service on Beauty a few years ago, I did a piece for the kids where I compared a kitten (my son's Webkinz stuffed cat stood in since I don't actually have any pets) and a great white (found a really good poster-sized pic of one) and showed how each was beautiful. Sharks are among my favorite lifeforms on the planet, along with tigers and spiders (though I am, oddly, mildly arachnophobic).
How does this fit the topic? Transendence requires going beyond the everyday preconceptions we carry about the world to find the wonder and beauty that may not meet those preconceptions. Though I must admit, when confronted with one of the larger dock spiders at the cottage, transendence isn't the first thing that comes to mind.
Mendalla
InannaWhimsey
Mendalla, was the dock
Posted on: 02/19/2012 15:45
Mendalla,
was the dock spider anything like this?
MC jae
Mendalla wrote:Not sure what
Posted on: 02/19/2012 15:59
I couldn't agree more.
My point? All of creation is beautiful, flowers... pebbles... rivers... mountains... dust mites... human beings... it's all good.
MC jae
airclean33 wrote: Hi
Posted on: 02/19/2012 16:02
Hi Mikepaterson--I Think you will find they are Dust mites, they eat the dead skin you leav in your bed.
Yes, that's right AC, and Mike, I love them. They are such little tiny things, yet they do this really neat thing. To me, it speaks to me of my Creator who took everything into consideration when he created life.
MikePaterson
Dust mites: scavengers too.
Posted on: 02/19/2012 16:24
Dust mites: scavengers too. They''re extremely harmless… the worst they can do is give you hayfever if you're not especially house-proud. I'm glad you're fond of them, Calm…
…and that you find them so instructive.
MikePaterson
Mendalla: New Zealand has
Posted on: 02/19/2012 17:00
Mendalla: New Zealand has some quite large centipedes. I remember being delighted (and proud) when, after I scared one — 8-9 inches long — out of a piece of firewood and let it climb away up a tree…
… instead of squealing, my seven year-old daughter who was watching closely, exclaimed, "Wow, dad… it's SOO beautiful". She later did a bit of reserach and told me about the way mother centipedes tend their eggs, rolling each around in her mouth every day to keep fungi from killing them. After that, we found several and kept them as pets for a week or two to get to know them better, then we released them back into bush.
-------------
I think the peak experience (as Maslow called it) occurs when, knowing ourselves fairly well, we let ourselves go in a richly stimulating situation. Or focus in a wholly open way, and without reaction, on something unfamilar. But, once we've been there, it can be sparked by all sorts of deliberate little disciplines. It's like a kind of emotional-spiritual-cognitive tipping point… it's walking off the edge of all our habit-formed ways: taking an inner risk and falling into something inexplicable but "true".. I think it's, in native terminology, a "vision quest".
Before I got "into" it, I found it happening increasingly often: I did a lot of diving — jumping at night of a boat into a phosphorescent sea some miles offshore was amazing, making eye contact with orcas, with a mako and — on the same day — with a sunfish and a manta ray (again, both in deep ocean waters off a Naval launch)… getting mistbound on Mt Cook and totally disoriented, night skies, being the first person into a few limestone caves in New Zealand… now a flower, a piece of music, a cloud, a particularly appropriate word, a poem, listening to Maori chant and well-played peiobaireachd or Bulgarian kaba gaida, moving water… even my stone, do it for me. An open sea beach is something I find feeds my soul… and I very much miss the ocean where we are no (Ontario). But all of these things seem knitted together anyway. As are some memories… like finding out I was being so warmly welcomed at peasant funerals in the part of Italy I'm most familiar with (friends there were putting me up to it as a kind of cultural immersion exercise) was because the way of thinking is that, if you are a stranger with no particular reason for being there, you have been sent by god.To discover that after experiencing the warmth of the appreciation was crashingly humbling and and embracingly wonderful.
Mendalla
InannaWhimsey
Posted on: 02/19/2012 17:01
Mendalla,
was the dock spider anything like this?
Nice one. I've seen at least one bigger than that, though. Last time my family was up at the cottage (probably 5 years ago) we saw a mother with babies. The babies were about the size of house spiders and the mother ... we're talkin' small tarantula here. Love 'em but won't touch or play with them the way I do house and garden spiders.
And Mike, while I often joke about how lucky we are to have a distinctive lack of dangerous wildlife (other than large carni/omnivores like bears and, perhaps, cougars) in Southern and Central Ontario compared to other countries, it also makes for a rather dull ecology at times. Some huge centipedes or large hairy spiders would definitely liven things up a bit.
Mendalla
Kimmio
I wish I could appreciate
Posted on: 02/19/2012 22:13
I wish I could appreciate insects and spiders and creepy crawly things. I know they are all part of creation...I have an ingrained fear of them. I am squeamish about them. Dragonflies and ladybugs I can handle without squirming...and wasps especially scare me because I swell up pretty badly when stung.
Mendalla
Kimmio wrote: I wish I
Posted on: 02/19/2012 22:26
I wish I could appreciate insects and spiders and creepy crawly things. I know they are all part of creation...I have an ingrained fear of them. I am squeamish about them. Dragonflies and ladybugs I can handle without squirming...and wasps especially scare me because I swell up pretty badly when stung.
Actually, wasps are pretty much where my line gets drawn, too. Bees are okay. Wasps are the Devil's bugs
.
Mendalla
MC jae
Kimmio wrote: I wish I
Posted on: 02/19/2012 22:29
I wish I could appreciate insects and spiders and creepy crawly things. I know they are all part of creation...I have an ingrained fear of them. I am squeamish about them. Dragonflies and ladybugs I can handle without squirming...and wasps especially scare me because I swell up pretty badly when stung.
Let me guess... you like butterflies best.
Kimmio
MorningCalm wrote: Kimmio
Posted on: 02/20/2012 00:51
I wish I could appreciate insects and spiders and creepy crawly things. I know they are all part of creation...I have an ingrained fear of them. I am squeamish about them. Dragonflies and ladybugs I can handle without squirming...and wasps especially scare me because I swell up pretty badly when stung.
Let me guess... you like butterflies best.
How'd you guess?;)
But I am freaked out of moths. We have trees right outside our balcony (and no screen door...they're not on every door on the west coast like the rest of Canada)...so in late spring/ summer these HUGE moths sometimes fly in and hide out during the day, and then start flying randomly all over the place at night...they can be as big as hummingbirds, maybe bigger..seriously!
So if one comes in and does that...I have to wait until it settles down, lands on a wall or something and goes to sleep, and then I try to scoop it into a jar and take it back outside (often unsuccessfully, and it up and starts going crazy flying all over the place again, and I shreeeeek and jump out of the way and have to calm down and wait for it to calm down and land again...my neighbours must wonder)....I think I would be equally freaked out if a butterfly flew in and went all over the place like a dive bomber too though! It's a small apartment. This year, maybe I need to pick up a butterfly net for that purpose...or ask the landlord if he'll put on a screen door.
Same goes for mice. If I see one outside, I might say "Aww!"...but I had mice in my old apartment years ago. It was an old building...and again, I shreeked such a high pitched shreek when I saw one, tiny little thing scurried past me, I must have awoken my neighbours...putting out mousetraps sickened me, but it was the only option my landlord at that time offered.
So, admittedly, my relationship to flying bugs and little crawling critters is not very spiritual and transcendant....but it does make me realize that we are vulnerable. I also realize that they're "more scared of us than we are of them"...and ultimately we all fear death and value life.
Elanorgold
We had one of those big
Posted on: 02/20/2012 00:27
We had one of those big spiders in our yard last summer. It was scaaaarey.
Beautiful thread idea Mike.
Yes it is part of my experience, alienation yes, at times. It has been an important part of my experience, ever since I was 17. I experience it now in creating art, like my Youtube videos, in music and in love, of people and existence.
But truely feeling everywhere and all emotions at once, safe and understanding, laughing and crying at the beauty, has only happened a few times. Precious, life changing moments. No, cannot be bought, cannot be given. I think it comes from the desire to know it, and things have to be in place first. One has to be ready for it.
movie recomendation (again, and almost any chance I get): Contact, starring Jodi Foster.
Elanorgold
It also does not come more
Posted on: 02/20/2012 00:41
It also does not come more easily and frequently for me now. It was easier when I was younger and less set in my ways or weighted by life's necesities.
I envy you Mike for your lack of nightmares.
I find RevJohn's metaphor of the whale very appropriate for him and his experience.
Arminius
Elanorgold wrote: We had
Posted on: 02/20/2012 02:04
We had one of those big spiders in our yard last summer. It was scaaaarey.
Beautiful thread idea Mike.
Yes it is part of my experience, alienation yes, at times. It has been an important part of my experience, ever since I was 17. I experience it now in creating art, like my Youtube videos, in music and in love, of people and existence.
But truely feeling everywhere and all emotions at once, safe and understanding, laughing and crying at the beauty, has only happened a few times. Precious, life changing moments. No, cannot be bought, cannot be given. I think it comes from the desire to know it, and things have to be in place first. One has to be ready for it.
movie recomendation (again, and almost any chance I get): Contact, starring Jodi Foster.
Hi Elanorgold:
I just read the book and must see the movie!
WaterBuoy
Contact is like an OBI
Posted on: 02/20/2012 08:41
Contact is like an OBI ...
Things that bug the ego-centric whereas Egos is out there (E-geist?) explicit wind of words that's dark in ava-st poe'L! Ink'n, b'linque'n and node one knight ... hed less hors'mon ...
Sort of like butterfly effect ... Papillion ... flight ouda 'elle? That is if you-are caught up by brae'n ... one should get out more ... lotta intellect out there toby had by the emotional ... as described by Webster: Just out a here mon ... OBI or just NDE? Shoqan spatial effects ...
Nei greist of the mille ... dark hole chaos of that just before that Don din d' night ... silkie Shadow on the page of mostly anon a muse things? Such opposed whiteout syndrome ... Vanilla's Kye that's a shiyr scream ... Kant see IT either ...
WaterBuoy
You do know what the modern
Posted on: 02/20/2012 08:46
You do know what the modern day prophet said about an incident with God (expansive mode of all-that-is) contact ... just a bust?
Man speaking to god is holai, likeascete, something frugal or missing ...
God speaking to man in physical terms is just crazy as metaphysical and we don't like hyper natural effects .. why we like to poke holes in the sky ... vast rheume of Skye ... infinite stretch of the mortal ... providing the ethereal or rare space of the uncondensed form (hommoe---Greek)? A word that bugs the best of us ...
WaterBuoy
For those bugged by mind less
Posted on: 02/20/2012 09:16
For those bugged by mind less opportunities of words in dead arc environment surrounding EUE ... the Dame Sel of the Spot alternate to Shakespeare's hoo dahs:
A plug must be enter Din ...
Blood Letting Shiyr …
Enough to cur tell the stoic inn aloe point …
As’s ‘đ arc when well-set; plastered!
Thus chi vas trolled in de mu’ udder’n …
By edit of vorm L’ess Ness …
Jack ora’ corè GUI Na veer …
Oenon whine escaped, confined Semitics; as Zions …
Silent Zea, just Isis whispers innate lie, indelible letters of 4!
Intelligent exchange in devoid of mind that can’t abide Charon?
Chi’de gutte IT, du peddled pheshas indi X’d form …
As fired in deux çï as floed; du ichthy parsé Tu ‘t…
Invert as rabi’ D-8, infinite dimension; rite-angled, well-Ba’al’d …
Who amon can’t due without as they are confined …
M’ness num in us but it must be said sos they won’t understand …
The hydro phobic form as regress …
Until the pile is upset as reciprocal folk in heaven’s tumblers …
As shiyr Shadow other wise know as EUE …
Me and de connective I, burning flame or just as amber of the past …
Os-hite’v anon sense, for mere meltdown, China syndrome …
Of the underlying hydro Ba’aL ICH on À Đoem-ism …
As beginning when particles in the primal stoe PID …
Co Jointed form, man couldn’t scie as part of …
The ways of the particulate divide …
With spatial attitudes becoming latitudes …
Instead of Ba’ attitudes on the mountain of sense less Ness …
That could develop into chi-ite storm …
Over what’s already been Dunne; get O’v’ite …
As is poe-mice-ole a wee word extracted from …
The Black Sea, flood of eM in the brae ‘n reverence…
Attempting escape and unknowable rime …
Form of ancient as salt as wisdom of creation …
Madge ‘ηa lexis in di null; realm if destroyer …
Andro gy nous Romans all lined up for destruction …
As decreed by their light-headed God of man …
Indifferent to the Levite sacred sort, fired in san …
Wit hou tiffon eis pushed to the limit …
So est eux until they all descend into ape uddle …
As if doem in oes was gamos de scent instead of as cede dead words …
Laid doubt for lack of understanding …
Metaphor of heavenly faux cup …
Inna Gael of great chaos of code exchange …
When one didn’t know what the other was due in …
And didn’t care but they’ll learn about …
What is in effaced as exchange of spitting dae mons …
We de þiles in dimension of learning …
Head-spatial form that Romans hated …
For ID was so difficult to get up again after …
Falling dhow ‘n with all that are moor …
And not many clews in higher waters …
That’s shamayim, fluid space of great anonymous consent …
As pure God form didn’t know either in the initiation …
Of purely emotional act …
That plugged the floe of the many year’d curse …
Of that superficial whoa man …
Knot having quies to th’s pot,as defined by Shakespeare as pot be damned; Don Quie Soudé irony mead!
And m'n came to mead's mind as a hun Aye; stamen-ist ICH portion of de flowering black pool of hugh manity
not knowing nothing as beginning from a point!
The rest is spatial, sort of abstract, emon without word!
Did I say emon was an ancient word for sole, the foot o'vite all that common folk weren't to know?
MC jae
Kimmio wrote: MorningCalm
Posted on: 02/20/2012 11:07
How'd you guess?;)
From those I've spoken with, mostly on-line, it tends to be quite an INFP thing. Why do you think that is?
Thank you for sharing the moth stories. I enjoyed them. I can just imagine trying to fight them off. The moths around here in suburban Toronto tend to be small little things.
Beautiful words. Nicely written.
No, I am not afraid of death. Why would I be, when I believe I'm going to be with God in Heaven.
gecko46
I did a lot of diving —
Posted on: 02/20/2012 11:59
I did a lot of diving — jumping at night of a boat into a phosphorescent sea some miles offshore was amazing, making eye contact with orcas, with a mako and — on the same day — with a sunfish and a manta ray (again, both in deep ocean waters off a Naval launch)… getting mistbound on Mt Cook and totally disoriented, night skies, being the first person into a few limestone caves in New Zealand… now a flower, a piece of music, a cloud, a particularly appropriate word, a poem, listening to Maori chant and well-played peiobaireachd or Bulgarian kaba gaida, moving water… even my stone, do it for me. An open sea beach is something I find feeds my soul… and I very much miss the ocean where we are no (Ontario). But all of these things seem knitted together anyway.
[/quote]
I've had many similar experiences, but never thought about the word "transcendence" to describe them...more pure joy (ecstacy, perhaps), awe at unparalled beauty, wonder, living in the moment and forgetting all else....magical. Perhaps an "out-of-body" experience.
- last night walking the dog, the sky was brilliant with stars, incredible. Astronomy isn't one of my strengths, but it seemed as though all the major constellations were demonstrative. I saw a couple of shooting stars or comets.
- placing my hand in the mouth of a baby gray whale in Baja, Mexico, to feel the baleen plates in its mouth, and rubbing its gums, patting its craggy and barnacled head
- last August, a young humpback that spyhopped directly behind the zodiac, and the whale and I made eye contact momentarily, each curious about the other. Connecting with another species is always an uplifting experience for me.
- last fall returning from Lake Huron after a thunderstorm and looking in the rear-view mirror to see a brilliant double rainbow. I pulled off on the shoulder to watch this beautiful phenomenon while other drivers sped by, unaware or uncaring
- I, too, like rocks. I collect them, all shapes and sizes. They find homes on my windowsills and in my rock garden. Each one has a story.
- kayaking when cerulean blue of water and sky meet, and all else is forgotten in a dream-like trance. I love being on the water.......
- although not fond of insects and snakes, I have learned to look at them and appreciate their myriad shapes. The complexity of design of a spider-web fascinates me as does watching the wing-fluttering of a hummingbird.
- yes, and poems, a piece of music, an unexpected connection. The little girl in Ecuador who looked deep into my eyes and even my soul, although her mental illness did not allow her to make a verbal expression.
- a kindred spirit....honesty of emotion. A fellow orca-lover in BC with whom I watched 3 orcas frolic in a sunset and we turned to each other with tears in our eyes, and he said, "I am deeply moved by what we have witnessed".
I'm grateful for the sensitivity I have been gifted that allows this awareness of the natural world and that takes me beyond the humble and insignificant being that I am. I don't go looking for these experiences...they come to me, unexpectedly...that's the best part.
These for me are the places and times where I experience the creative energy that may be God.
I love the description of David Bowman's transformation as described in the final pages of "2001; A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke.
WaterBuoy
MC, It is like Sisyphus ...
Posted on: 02/20/2012 12:05
MC,
It is like Sisyphus ... something for the overly emotional to get over so you'd know something ... would just blow the mytacism (defined in the medical dictionary as fondness for the letter "M" as golden arcane image of bicameralism) seeing things 2-ways ...
Wouldn't that just bend a person all out of shape?
Leading one to ponder mitochondria ... cartilage that holds the head together, or in place ... or possibly might have darker connections to the soude's IDe as the bloody spot cursed by lear-in' ... Shakespearean phun! If the holy (H) is silent; you get a pun ... sort of ironic damon that'll take you in Circe's!
Some say intelligence and philosophy is evil ... how to explain I John 3:20 becomes a paean full enigma as common as John is a Jack bouncing up ... scrood edged Jack ... of great Levite OZ ... that's an ancient power of hyper's crypt of sublime nature that could give rise to clews ... a line on the condensed larger Taurus! Source of unlimited fecundity ... as IT befalls us --- Dante in hubris? Hue breeze ... ruagh eh ... photo plas'm-ICH?
airclean33
Death an enemy , I do not
Posted on: 02/20/2012 12:23
Death an enemy , I do not fear. He has stood waiting though out these years. I know sometimes He ,was close at hand. But God has seen to it, I have a longer Life span. Today He waits for me I know He thinks He knows my fait. But what He don't understand , is many years ago I died. He has missed His chance you see. For my life, now is not in earth. But safely In GODS HAND.
MC jae
WaterBuoy wrote:MC, It is
Posted on: 02/20/2012 12:54
Wouldn't that just bend a person all out of shape?
Boy, I'll say! You never know when something like that is going to sneak up on you unawares and then... wowsers!
Yeah, they'll do that for sure. Good point there WB.
Here it comes again -- and here I go!
Arminius
A few decades ago, a forester
Posted on: 02/20/2012 14:34
A few decades ago, a forester told me how to view two-dimensional air photographs in 3 D without artificial aid.
He taught me to put two identical air photos side by side, look at each one with one eye, concentrate, and suddenly the two will merge into one and jump into 3 D focus.
I tried it, and it worked! A dead two dimensional world suddenly lept into three dimensions and came alive, with real tress, shadows, mountains, and valleys.
Later in life, when I had transcendental experiences, I realized that transcendence works similarily: dead two-dimensional reality is transcended and comes alive in three dimensions.
Mendalla
Arminius wrote: A few
Posted on: 02/20/2012 14:41
A few decades ago, a forester told me how to view two-dimensional air photographs in 3 D without artificial aid.
He taught me to put two identical air photos side by side, look at each one with one eye, concentrate, and suddenly the two will merge into one and jump into 3 D focus.
I tried it, and it worked! A dead two dimensional world suddenly lept into three dimensions and came alive, with real tress, shadows, mountains, and valleys.
Later in life, when I had transcendental experiences, I realized that transcendence works similarily: dead two-dimensional reality is transcended and comes alive in three dimensions.
We actually used those in Geography class in high school. Looking at 3D air photos of glacial features IIRC. It's quite amazing once you get the hang of it. And I like your idea of 3D as a metaphor for transendence.
Mendalla
Darrel Tessier
Yes, Yes, Yes... love this
Posted on: 02/20/2012 16:35
Yes, Yes, Yes... love this thread.
Love the poetry!
Love the Transcendence!
Love the fact that bugs are small and not too big... imagine if spiders were several feet across or dust mites wieghed 90 lbs, Yeeeeech!
Kimmio
I can only imagine what we
Posted on: 02/20/2012 20:28
I can only imagine what we must look like to them Darrel (good to see you btw)! Pretty frightening probably. Can you imagine what we'd look like to a fly? That certainly puts things into a different perspective!
And what would a snowflake or a drop of water look like to a fly? Come to think of it most flies have never seen a snowflake...chilling, fascinating, perplexing? A frosty maze? An icy crocheted sweater? Cold spider's web? Would a raindrop be an opulent crystal puddle? A looking glass into a different dimension?
Darrel Tessier
Yes... the transcendent view
Posted on: 02/20/2012 22:26
Yes... the transcendent view is like going from a flatlander 2 dimensional world and popping up into a 3rd dimension and getting a whole new outlook with greater depth, clarity, beauty etc. Or... another metaphor (maybe its an analogy) is evident when one considers the leap in consciousness between wakefulness and dreaming. The qualitative difference between the two is very significant for our sense of what we call "reality." Being awake is more solid, crisp, continuous and, well... real! Now if we look at another leap in consciousness, that is transcendence, it is like another step up that makes our waking consciousness seem like a dream and the transcendent reality far more real! This is what those having NDEs will say. They have no doubt their expereinces are real... they're hyper-real, more real than real! NONE of them buy into the reductionist view that their expereince was some form of hallucination or firing off of brain electro-chemical discharges. Its absurd to them. Why? For the same reason a person who is awake will not confuse his expereince with that of a dream! (See also, Plato's "Cave!")
What did the Buddha say when he was asked who or what was he... an angel? No! A god? No? A saint? No? Then what? He said... "I am Awake!"
I imagine we could say the same about Jesus. He was awake to the Father's Presence!
WaterBuoy
Now if one steps into a mind
Posted on: 02/21/2012 12:00
Now if one steps into a mind is that like a cave or just wormhole in space of dirty dipping by Dantean Comedy?
Some would call that a subversive power but is a thinker the only way out of the oppressive mode in which the mortal pool operates on rule alone without use of the bicameral mind ... the joining of a vaulted space by a media that supports it all in a degrading form of anti Semitic matte ... disallowing the common space.
That once was known as mêmè as provided by all-there-is but who'd accept that in a world where God was mortal ... and might be lead into stoop Idée by those knot having a good knowledge of word ... stretched into linguistics of story telling the bull or fecundity of sole singularity ... just beyond the innate powers of a mortal before the bust out ... the cracking of those powers that confinde the sah Rae ... the head light that allows one to see into the Shadow and what awaits a person willing to learn and leave sic idioms behind! While they probe under the mystical tree pof loci ... a thorning issue to say the least as learning tends to be a paean ... a pion ... or just Piscies ... an ethereal phesh? Neigh phesh ... now that brae 'n fued in old Celtic myth ... similar to a hed less hoers man ... needing Toby bridled until learning something of the object of affection ... that is ineffecable ... that is you can't spreak about thus it is wrote/wrought in metaphor ... dualities of just de deuced ... isn't that the devil in satyr? Dar Ka ... a spirit in Egaen bin myth that's pithy ...
WaterBuoy
Arm, The flayed Toute
Posted on: 02/21/2012 12:07
Arm,
The flayed Toute nature of stepping up to 3D, or beyond, was covered some time ago by a neuroscientist in The New Yorker when they discussed the problems of children of cross-eyed appearance having their eye's corrected too late in life ...
The consequences are an enigma ... although in rare cases some get depth vision later in life with weird side effects ... sort of like those that learn to read metaphoric allah as well-aged whine ...
Can cause the subject matter to overturn into objective of reverse psychosis type ... rather inverted in their actions ... something that would undoubtedly Canan or reflect as eccos effect ... sometimes know as Ego that some people never wish to acknowledge as cognizance of other's reality ...
Ain Knot a chi-ite ... often felt to fall from heavenly spaces as satirical humour ... bloody phun-ai or just plasma like ... the elite in nature are a pain!
Arminius
Hello everyone: One
Posted on: 02/21/2012 13:28
Hello everyone:
One could regard the subjective reality of our memory and concepts as two-dimensional, and the real, ontological or objective reality as three dimensional.
Most people think that their subjective or conceptual reality is the real reality. They live under the permanent illusion that their subjective, two-dimensional reality is absolutely real. They confuse their map with the territory.
Then, one magical day, when the veil of illusion drops and they see clearly, and see and experience the three-dimensional objective reality for the first time, they see everything in a new light and in a new dimension. It is like a miracle: the miracle of awakening from an illusiory reality to the real reality: the miracle of Transcendence.
We do, however, require the subjective reality to realize the grandeur of the objective reality. The ecstatic statement I wrote above is a result of just that. Thus, the real miracle happens when the objective and the subjective reality complement each other.