--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "lurkernomore20002000" <steve.sun...@...> wrote: > > I've got to figure out what this refinement of experience > that seems to grow in my life is all about. I like the idea > of saying, "this is cool, I am operating at a more quantum > level of consciousness", where I am a little more aware of > what I perceive to be the story behind the story.
Just as a question, what is wrong with referring to the same phenomenon as, "This is cool...I am becoming more and more aware of what is?" That is actually more accurate, IMO, and doesn't have to borrow terms that may have nothing to do with what is going on. You are becoming more aware of things that have always been going on -- this statement covers "refined perception," and it also covers enlightenment itself. I prefer plain words to explain plain experiences. Dressing the experiences up with buzzwords to make them sound more "sciency" just doesn't float my boat. I can see how some might prefer them, especially if they are trying to *sell* the experiences to others, but I'm not. I'm just describing my experiences, and trying to be as accurate about it as possible. So I prefer the "Quaker" approach -- "plain." Putting more clothes on an already cool experience doesn't make it cooler; it actually detracts. > And I'd like to figure out what it is that seems to be pushing me > towards greater awareness about things. Since I'm rapping about language (essentially), look at the way you phrased that, Lurk. Something is IYO "pushing you" towards greater awareness. I have also experienced expanding awareness, but I would never be tempted to use language that implied that the cause of this came from "outside" myself, or that anything even had the *ability* to "push" me towards it. For me it's just the natural process of becoming more aware of What Already Is. *None* of these exper- iences of heightened or expanded awareness have ever been "new." They -- including enlightenment experiences -- were merely heightened perception of things that had always been going on. So I would tend to describe them using that language, and not dress them up with buzzwords. For me, the word "silence" works better than the word "samadhi" to describe the subjective experience of deep transcendence. It reaches more people, and gives them more of an ability to conceive of and identify with that experience than a term borrowed from a dead language that requires a "definition" that has been supplied by someone else. Maybe it's the tech writer in me :-), but I think that "plain" is more "user-friendly." > Maybe I am just mood making, but my real life experience > doesn't suggest this. I like the comparison between quantum > phenomena and the growth of awareness. It works for me, > but that's just me. No problemo. "Plain" works better for me. I guess that my only point in all of this is that "quantum" would never have occurred to you as a metaphor with which to describe your experiences of growing awareness unless someone had not planted that term *in* your awareness. It is a "supplied buzzword," like "samadhi," and IMO more exclusionary than inclusive. In my experience in the spiritual smorgasbord, traditions that are "buzzword-heavy" (be it Sanskrit terms or those borrowed from "science") tend *also* to be a bit "self- importance heavy." That is, the spiel presented to the followers of the tradition is how *important* these buzzword-heavy experiences are, and thus how *important* that makes *them*. By contrast, the teachers and traditions I've encountered that use plain, ordinary, everyday words to describe plain, ordinary, everyday experiences of growing awareness and enlightenment tend to *not* try to develop a feeling of "specialness" in their students. They emphasize the ordinariness of the experiences, and the fact that they are available to everyone. In other words, my suspicion is that the use of "high- fallutin' language" to describe the ordinary may be a function of the desire of some people to be perceived as high-fallutin'. I could be wrong about this, of course, but that's how I'm seein' it this morning over coffee. > But what also works for me, is the notion that our world as a > whole is moving in a particular direction, one where a "quantum" > leap may be required. As Confusious say, "May you live during > interesting times", or something to that effect. Here we must agree to disagree. I don't see that the world is working any differently than it has at any time in its history, or that it has a particular direc- tion that it's moving in. If anything, man's inhumanity to man is greater and more widespread now than at any time in its history. A child in Africa dies every six seconds while we chow down on veggie burgers and throw the scraps away. It is good to remember that the saying you quoted was a Chinese *curse*, not a blessing. Again, isn't some of the appeal of believing that one knows "the direction the world is moving in" is that it's a way of saying that one knows the future? I don't know the future, and I don't think anyone else does, either. We can perceive trends and make educated guesses, but those guesses are colored by 1) our own desires, and 2) our own conditioning -- what we've been told the trends we perceive "mean." Things *are* changing faster now than they have in the past, just as a result of the changing pace of technology and speed of global communication, but I'm not convinced that there is any new "direction" to that change. To quote another old saying, "Plus ca change, plus le meme." The more things change, the more they stay the same. Just my opinion. YMMV.
