xexon

Be compassionate with all things.

Compassion was the centerpiece of Jesus' message. It is the ability to feel beyond your personal space that brings you closer to the kingdom. When you can feel all of creation as a part of yourself, you are rewarded by becoming all of creation.

You are no longer confined to a human shell and the plastic cocoon it spins around itself and calls reality.


x

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Destroyer of Worlds

AB517

I knew it was compassion (“love” doesn’t apply here). Experience, understanding, compassion then to Love. Love here means selfless even when the recipient is not in need as the word “compassion” implies. I need the spark of “someone in need” to drive me to compassion; I know this weakness of mine. Maybe in time it will self sustain itself and grow. Compassion is the weakest link in my chain of experiences.

If you are talking metaphorically I understand. More than that would be like a radio separating itself from the music it plays.

xexon

You "love" because you identify with it as a part of who you are.

Love of self is a difficult thing for very many people, but until you do, you are going to chase your tail in the material world.

Duality is an illusion built by the 5 senses. One of the best ways to displace it is looking into the eyes of someone who truly needs you. That connection of the eyes looks beyond the self for a fleeting instance. It throws physical laws out the window and joins two souls for a few moments in time.

Their pain is your pain. And you will do whatever it takes to help them. It might be an old woman who's fallen in the streets, or a loved one dying a slow and wasting death. But you'll do whatever is within your power to help.

Because you love.

Love is the ability to see yourself in something else.



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Destroyer of Worlds

AB517

I not sure about this.
I have more of a western view in this area I guess.

I see a flame in the other person and I want it to burn as bright as it can be. I would like it to be for them, of them. I have trouble seeing myself in others, so I use the idea that the flames are actually one so maybe my flame can be seen, although I don’t really care as long as the other flame shines bright. Here I lean more to the western philosophy, the east turns to far inward for me, almost selfish in nature, but that is just my opinion and has no barring on what others do, it is for them not me, as you already clearly see.

The closet thing to love I think I feel is when I hold my children in my arms, all my anxiety melts away, it was an amazing feeling the first time I felt it. At that very moment my life changed, it was no longer about me, myself was rinsed away in the waters of a child’s love.

I find it fascinating that some people need to turn selflessness back into themselves. The true crossing of the “line” is an outward flow with no expectation, or reason, for the reverse (or feedback). That is not to say that the body does not need some positive feed back (here meaning pleasure), that nation would be just wrong.

This is why I do not believe in transcendence of the body in the body’s life time, it needs some type of “motive” to drive it, either internal desires or external, self serving needs. Neither of witch do I mean only negative connotations.

xexon

Think of yourself as a leaf on the God tree.

You know about your identity as a leaf. You can even see other leaves close to you. What you are unable to see is the tree that connects it all together.

Once you become aware of this, you're still a leaf, but now you can feel through the tree. You can feel all the other leaves. You can feel the roots in the ground. You can feel the earth floating in space. You can feel the unviverse where it's located.

Its like the pulling back of a camera lens. When you've pulled back all the way, there isn't anything left but God.


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Destroyer of Worlds

AB517

This is the exact example I use when discussing this area. I also use an example where the leaves are our experiences in the tree of life.

Skepticologist

This post has predictably meandered its way far afield from the original proposition, i.e. what do you think about heaven and hell?

My initial question is, WHICH heaven and WHICH hell? Is it the Christian concept of heaven with gates or pearl and streets of gold for heaven, and the lake that burns eternally with fire and brimstone for hell? Or is it the Muslim concept of heaven as a place where you've got 70 nubile virgins at your disposal (great if you're male; of dubious value if you're female, since "virgin" denotes someone with insufficient experience in carnal undertakings to give you much of a buzz); and I'm not sure what their corollary concept of hell is. Or some other concept among the thousands that have been proposed over the years; indeed, the thousands and/or millions of years that humankind has been cogitating on such matters?

The problem with this line of reasoning is that we've been conditioned to consider all possibilities from a cause-and-effect perspective. Life is the cause, and what is the effect?

But maybe there is no effect of life. Maybe we just live it, for better or worse, according to whatever principles define good and bad for us, and then we die, and that's it. Those among the living we leave behind will doubtless continue to noodle the meaning of life and/or existence and, depending on what concept they choose to accept, they'll die with a certain expectation of an afterlife that will almost certainly not materialize.

Much as I'd like to understand the meaning of life and the effect of the way I live my life in this mortal realm, I've got not one clue to lead me to understand it.

So, like any real agnostic, I'll just admit I don't know and look forward to a time after I die when I will know . . . or not.

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"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

xexon

Why do you want to wait until you die?

Do you have some form of handicap that prevents you from chasing after the divine this very moment?

In reality, there is only the present moment.

Any deviation from it could be called hell.


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Destroyer of Worlds

shadowind

how can you know intill then?

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remember "for mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescirbe to oursleves is liberty"-rousseau: the concept of the general will "if we can not reconcile all opions, then let us endeavour to unite all hearts."-?"to be is to be perceived"-? "‘We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know’-Robert G. Ingersoll

xexon

Death only affects the physical body.

The awareness that you have now is the same you have after death, but with fewer limitations.

To enlarge your awareness, you have to use awareness to do it. It won't happen while you rot in the grave. That part belongs to religious mythology.

Now is the time.

If you wait for death to reboot you, you'll always be looking for death, not eternal life.



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Destroyer of Worlds