--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > --- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > > --- In [email protected], "L B Shriver" > > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <snip> > > > > No story no pain. > > > > > > Bull. The story is that there has to be a story. > > > > Attachment to attachment. > > I'm going to expand upon this, trying to speak as Rory > does to the enlightened being that is Judy rather than > the person who is going to interpret my three words > above as a slam. > > They're not. They're a direct commentary on what I see as > the real issue here. Rory (if I have interpreted his words > correctly) seems to be saying that the "pain" of feeling > "hurt" when someone tells you the truth is not your pain. > It's not even pain. It's the death struggles of an ego > trying to assert itself and survive. It's nothing more than > a shadow that is growing darker as the light shining on > it becomes brighter.
Let me take a stab at trying to straighten this out, as briefly as I can. Intellectually, I know all this stuff, everything Rory has said, everything Barry has said in this post, about the nature of "ignorance." I've heard it over and over and *over* again, and not only that, I'm completely convinced it's true. I'm absolutely positive that I were I to become realized, I'd be saying the same things on my own hook. What I hope I *wouldn't* be doing is to couch them in terms that suggest realization is a matter of psychology, of intention, of ideas, of stories, that the willingness to do a little tweaking here and there of how one thinks and reacts can bring realization about. That may turn out to be difficult, because that may be how it all looks to me then; and because we lack a good vocabulary for expressing what it looks like in other terms. But I hope I remember MMY's dictum "Knowledge is structured in consciousness"--not in psychology, not in the mind, but in consciousness--and its corollary, "Knowledge is different in different states of consciousness." That's *experiential* knowledge, not intellectual knowledge, not psychological insight. Another way to say it is, "One's experiential reality is different in different states of consciousness." In the state of consciousness we've been calling "ignorance," one *cannot know* experientially that the bars of the cage don't exist; and the intellectual conviction that they don't exist *does not affect* the experiential knowledge that they do. As I said in earlier posts, something *else* has to happen for experiential knowledge, the experiential reality, to change. "Attachment" in the sense MMY uses the term is not something that can be dissolved by intention (other than the intention to sit down, close one's eyes, and begin TM). Nor can it be dissolved via intellectual examination or psychological probing. <snip> > In these discussions, Rory has been telling > you that you are free, and you have been asserting, over > and over, that he is mistaken and that you are not. He is speaking from his state of consciousness, in which the experiential reality is that I am free. And I'm speaking from my state of consciousness, in which the experiential reality is that I am not. Both of us can be right; these are not mutually exclusive propositions as I just phrased them. The mistake is for him to suggest *my* experiential reality is that I am free. <snip> > For now, in my opinion, you seem to be terribly attached > to the cell being real. You don't even try to rattle the bars > or to examine them to see if they're real. Very much au contraire. I'm constantly rattling them. And they make a lot of noise when I do. > You already > "know" that they're real. Anyone who says differently is > obviously fucking with you. So what you do when some- > one tells you that the bars aren't real is to try to make the > person who's telling you the truth feel bad about telling > you the truth. You try to make the person who has caused > you "pain" feel pain himself. And here, sadly, you veer off into putdowns, and inaccurate ones at that (as per usual). I made it *explicit* to Rory, and I'm pretty sure he understood, that I was NOT suggesting he had any intention of "fucking" with me, to the contrary, in fact. Nor was I trying to make him feel bad; I told him that as well. What I wanted him to do was to *empathize* with my pain. And indeed he did, to his credit. Moreover, as I also made clear, he was "causing" me no more than annoyance at the misunderstanding. When I described my pain, I was recalling what I had felt the first time I'd been told, "Oh, you're not really overshadowed; you're not in ignorance; you're already enlightened." That was years ago, and I got over it, but it did leave a scar. I just hate to think of other people having to experience the same kind of pain when it's so utterly unnecessary. I *hoped* I might be able to communicate the nature of the problem, but I don't think I was very successful. Bottom line, I'd suggest to realized people that while speaking the truth of their own experiential reality is fine and important, if they can't empathize with the experiential reality of the unrealized, at least they should try to avoid contradicting what the unrealized say about their experiential reality. Just accept that their experiential reality is different from yours. It would never occur to me to tell a realized person what *their* experiential reality is. I'm not in their state of consciousness, so how could I know? By the same token, why on *earth* would they think they can dictate to me what my experiential reality is? It seems to me, based on my observation of what realized people have said about the state of ignorance, that the stages of experiential reality are not backward-compatible, as it were. You can't fully recall the experiential reality of the dream state once you are awake. <snipping the rest, which is mainly just Barryblather, more of his elaborate fantasies about my psychological makeup> One last point: I've been discussing the situation of a realized person telling the unrealized person what the latter's experiential reality is. The situation of an *unrealized* person telling another unrealized person that the latter's experiential reality is "really" that of realization is a very different, and much more repellent, can of worms that I won't address here. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! 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