Here are my beliefs. I have meditated for so long to the point where everything or almost everything by now has faded away. From the ashes, I am building something new based on realities I witness. So here they are.
1 Agnosticism. I don't perceive a god. I had a theophany in a dream of the Brahman, but I don't believe he's the highest god. 2 Everything is permitted. I don't have a moral code.. anything that I do is not based on my morality but on intuition. I don't think volitionally anymore so I think and act based purely on spontaneity and intuition. 3 karma. I believe in karma, as the energy of action. Prayer is impactful. I do it daily. Just like meditation pranayama and fasting and austerity, I believe it destroys karma that I have accumulated during my non-spiritual life phases. Thoughts? Please share them.
I want to have spiritual experiences and better mental health through meditation, but I don't want to lose my volitional thinking. Is that really what happens in the end?
Yep. I mean you can still think meditatively but the process of active thinking and contemplating may come to an end if you advance far enough.
Uh, do all methods of meditation lead there? Which one do you do?
No, there are western meditation techniques that don't lead to a loss of volitional thinking. I do eastern meditation, dharana type. I focus on a mental object and blot out all other thoughts. Henosis and hermetic meditation are the two I know of that are western and probably will not stop you from thinking actively.
Do vipassana or metta lead there? I could look into Western traditions too.
Yeah I think Vipassana and metta probably lead to that since they are meditation without thinking. Western techniques involve actively thinking about higher things, which means you are spending half an hour thinking instead of focusing.
If you want the same effect but with thinking remaining intact try meditative prayer for longer periods.
>I don't want to lose my volitional thinking
You will not. Alignment with the consciousness beyond Brahma is the shedding of all behaviors that we find distasteful. It is the freedom to act with complete compassion and knowledge, without the shackles placed on us by violence and entropy. It is the cultivation of active consciousness itself. The suffering and conditioning of this world makes us helpless to be our true selves.
Having no thoughts is a phase, hopefully a short one. Feels good to rest in silence after thinking all life, yet it's lacking. The silence can remain while the mind and higher mind think, so in daily life a fully healed human enjoys silence with layers of thinking happening.
>you are spending half an hour thinking instead of focusing.
That is not meditating but thinking.
Meditation means deep contemplation buddy. It's just not dhyāna.
Buddy you are confused. Awareness of awareness or focus on focus is needed, people who contemplate don't get the benefits of meditation and it shows.
>I believe in karma, as the energy of action.
I didn't understand this. Karma is energy that allows us to act?
No, the energy we produce when actively engaging in things. Volition produces this energy. Without volition there is no karma roduced.
>everything or almost everything by now has faded away
That's terrifying to me. Things I used to be emotionally attached to are met with a cold, calculating, reptilian mindset. I'm losing my humanity and I'm scared.
Well. Prayer is a good remedy for hopelessness. I might be agnostic but I till pray.
>pray
I don't know which God to pray to.
Praying to Jesus who said don't pray me is a joke.
I don't know if Ganesh is an egregore or a real divinity or the player behind my avatar(a)
Shall I pray what, the Sun ? The Moon ?
Who do you guys pray to ?
I'm fine with hopelessness. Just wanted to exclaim that I'm taken aback by how easily one can lose connection to this place the moment they find something better.
I agree for the most part except while I don't follow a "one god" there are 5 that I follow, and I can't bring myself to accept karma as being realistic because I've seen too much evil done to good people and too much good for evil and I'm supposed to simply believe that post mortem they'll be punished in their next life, which to me is a clean slate and therefore shouldn't be judged on the actions of a past life, that's stupid.
It makes more sense that your soul is punished in the afterlife before reincarnating, if it reincarnates at all.
I also see karma as inherently selfish for that matter.
You do good things, so that in the future or in you next life, you will be rewarded as such. I think to truly do a good deed, you must do it for no other reason than to be good, you should expect no reward, no praise, at most, self satisfaction. One could argue that karma is this way, but from everything I've heard, it's a dogma of selfishness, "what goes around comes around" and I don't agree with that.
I don't have that conception of karma. I think karma is not moral, but volitional. If you do things with a lot of thoughts behind them you get as much suffering, if you don't act with much volition the effect will be small. Whether you are doing evil or good doesn't matter. I have the same idea as you. Karma is not punishment for sins. The afterlife is.
So for you, karma is about reducing suffering?
And on another note, do you have long term goals and an end game goal so to speak? What is your purpose in life, if I may ask?
Yes. Karma isn't good or bad, it's just energy we create through any action whatever the morality. My goal is enlightenment, that is my purpose in life.
Thoughts on Nietzsche? "Life is suffering, to live is to find meaning in the suffering."
I personally have seen suffering not to be a bad thing as many other do and not something to be avoided because suffering is a teacher in my mind. That's to put it simply though.
Yes I also think suffering creates character. I myself have suffered a lot.. went through years of intense suffering.
Buddhists don't believe in god, but pray. You don't have to pray to anything. You can simply pray for the prayer itself. That's what I do.
Correct me if I'm wrong you seek to reduce karma, therefore reduce volition and ultimately reduce suffering. So would this reduce your character as well?
Hm. My character is the essence below the volition. You can call it loss of character, but it's actually a refinement of the character, removing all things attached to the pure self and character.
Your character is a spiritual pseud on EerieWeb, roll for initiative
so would you not say the volition is not to remove sufferinf but to instead remove impurities?
Impurities.. yeah should be removed. Suffering cannot be really controlled by us unless we develop spiritually.
I gotta go but thanks for the morning (for me at least) conversation. Have a good one.
>here are my beliefs
Ok? So what do we do with them? Tear you a new butthole?
Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
>1 Agnosticism. I don't perceive a god.
And why would you?
You are not practicing the right way in order to perceive deities, or spirits or energies.
If you focus on void, you will experience void.
If you focus on a deity, such as by a mantra dedicated to that deity, you will start to experience the energy and consciousness of that deity.
Agnostic buddhism is such a sad religion, being the religion for people who don't even believe in God or a soul.
>I am building something new based on realities I witness.
Be open to putting it all to trash, none of it can go all the way to enlightenment.
>Brahman, but I don't believe he's the highest god.
Highest by definition, if you find something less than the highest it's not Brahman.
read Aghora
Your application was rejected.