Thread: A Cowboy's Dream of Indians -- Spirit Quest

This is very true...people seem to think that spirituality begins and ends with whichever church you go to, or which god you believe in
But it's like that dream showed. You're never really at the end, because spirituality is all about knowing yourself on the inside.
And you can never really do that i don't think...because you are always growing and changing in different directions.

Originally posted by irishcream
This is very true...people seem to think that spirituality begins and ends with whichever church you go to, or which god you believe in
But it's like that dream showed. *You're never really at the end, because spirituality is all about knowing yourself on the inside.
And you can never really do that i don't think...because you are always growing and changing in different directions.

Well, it MIGHT end. The Young Brave Whathisname did not preclude the possibility of finally getting so close to God. He only insisted that when it would happen, one would know it without the benefit of the Placebo Effect.

As suspicious as I've grown to become concerning 'Gurus' I do think that it is possible to be Realized and Enlightened within a lifetime. The First Magnitude Catholic Saints must have been realized. The Great Zen Patriarchs were realized.

It is the major flaw of Christian Religions, those derived out of Paulist Doctrines, that the entire Spiritual Quest is foregone, deleted, and considered quite unnecessary because of a theoretical belief in an instant conversion -- a magical salvation which owes its potency to the murder of Christ. It'd be all well and good if anybody were ever 'converted'. But one only has to look at the Christian World and Christian History to know that Paul had sold everybody a quite worthless bill of goods.

Not that some good did not come from it. After all, there was a little bit of Christ left in Christianity. The Sermon of the Mount survived the editorializing of the paulists. But the most damaging factor was the explicit Doctrine that with an automatic Salvation, one's sins would be forgiven. I know they don't preach on Sunday that you can rape pillage and plunder one's fellow man and get away with it, but isn't that exactly what it means when you teach people that by murdering Christ their sins are forgiven. It quite tells the worst sort of 'christian' that they have Religious Sanction to commit any Crime. One only needs to look at the Bishops to see that.

Spirituality is always there. It is when you choose to acknowledge it that you can see it again and again.

I know they don't preach on Sunday that you can rape pillage and plunder one's fellow man and get away with it, but isn't that exactly what it means when you teach people that by murdering Christ their sins are forgiven. *It quite tells the worst sort of 'christian' that they have Religious Sanction to commit any Crime. *One only needs to look at the Bishops to see that.[/b]

exactly. that's the bit that's always bugged me in church, that christ died to save us.
what happened to accountability?
and when you say it 'might' end. Okay, it can end with each separate person, as they die and leave this world, but then it begins in someone anew...
i think every day, someone is in the process of discovering their spirituality and themselves.

Originally posted by irishcream


and when you say it 'might' end. *Okay, it can end with each separate person, as they die and leave this world, but then it begins in someone anew...
i think every day, someone is in the process of discovering their spirituality and themselves.

Even Death might not offer much of an improvement in some people's spiritual lives (ha!) -- the Hindus believe that failure to achieve some Absolute Enlightenment must be followed by rebirth. Catholics believe that a purification in Purgatory would be required.

One can be and many have been Enlightened within their lifetimes, that is 'many' in absolute numbers, though scanty when considered as a percentage of the entire population.

One can be and many have been Enlightened within their lifetimes, that is 'many' in absolute numbers, though scanty when considered as a percentage of the entire population.[/b]

which rather begs the question 'what's after that?'
i mean, if you succeed in being enlightened in your lifetime, i know that's a great thing to be sure, but if you've been enlightened, then that is the ultimate right?
and say you get enlightened at my age???
what else is there to aim for?
it would be like a 'living death'....
maybe this is doubt speaking...maybe i'm doubting myself.

Wow this has been quite the interesting read.

Liz, I think it WOULD take a liftetime for someone to be truly enlightened. And if they had learned all there was to learn, perhaps their only purpose left in the world before God see fit to take them is to allow them to teach others what they know and help lead them in their own paths of enlightenment.

Yes, very interesting indeed. Imagine what it would be like now if Christ had died of old age! I don't think institutionalized Christianity would be as popular as it is now.

Originally posted by irishcream


which rather begs the question 'what's after that?'
i mean, if you succeed in being enlightened in your lifetime, i know that's a great thing to be sure, but if you've been enlightened, then that is the ultimate right?
and say you get enlightened at my age???
what else is there to aim for?
it would be like a 'living death'....
maybe this is doubt speaking...maybe i'm doubting myself.

Oneself does not always have to be the problem which keep's one going. I would still have my 4 indoor cats, and 5 outdoor cats. Enlightened or not, somebody must feed the kitty.

In India its been encouraged to renounce all material things, but looking after material things could certainly provide one with employment. I suppose those people of India wished to encourage a more outgoing orientation in their enlightened souls and so they forbade them to simply attend to their Stock Portfolios all day.

One of my favorite Saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi (died in 1918) would, when he was younger, mind his own business but had a hobby of watering a particular empty lot, and turned it quite into a garden. India is littered with no good beggers and it was assumed he was just one more, but people began to notice miracles in his proximity, which would bring more people by, which would result in reports of more miracles.

Its like the Saint or the Enlightened Person becomes the Consciousness of the Community. The Enlightened Person's personal Quest maybe over, but then starts the Quest for the sake of his Community.

Saint Bernard was perhaps the best example of that. His community went from being a brotherhood of a few fellow monks to being Western Europe.

Originally posted by Aquanina
I think it WOULD take a liftetime for someone to be truly enlightened. And if they had learned all there was to learn, perhaps their only purpose left in the world before God see fit to take them is to allow them to teach others what they know and help lead them in their own paths of enlightenment.

The thing about Learning is much the same about finding what is lost... it is always in the last place we look.

One does not have to know everything. One nees only to come to a coherent mental model of what one knows already, which must have some correspondance to Reality. It is the experience of 'all the pieces coming together'. Knowing Everything would be to include all of the pieces. However, the Outline of Reality could still be quite representative of the Truth without the absolute resolution of containing every particular fact. For instance, we can have a photograph of a horse -- we could compare this to complete knowledge. But we could put beside it a pen and ink drawing of a horse done in no more than 40 or 50 lines and all who regard it would see a 'horse'. The more complete a System is, the better, but what matters more is that the System's Intellectual Model of the Universe actually corresponds to Reality. This becomes questionable when discussing Moral Systems in an evil World, but in such cases we need to substitute What is Possible for strictly what is real.

Another instance of Knowledge can be exemplified in the playing of music. When one is first starting on an instrument, one can discern one's part in a song and play it perfectly. But it will only be as complex and intricate as one's ability can have it. But several years later, playing the same song, one's part will not be any more perfect than it had been when it was simpler, but it will reflect the higher level of skill and insight. the important element in both cases was a True Vision of the Essense of the Song. One has to 'know' the song.

Now, about teaching other before one drops dead... I think Aquanina is writing my epitaph. hey! I'm not dead yet!

Very insightful leo. Nice posting enjoyed reading it. That's why I think wisdom/knowledge, experience, is talent ability and power. And all this is seeing truth and that is true freedom. I guess that could be defined as enlightnement.

This is where we get into a grey area. The thing is if it is infinite it would not be possible to know all of the unknown. Infinite potential keeps going. So the one thing 'god' is always trying to do is make the unknown known, and that is part of the understanding of the freedom of the infinite perception, which is connected like some kind of ever expanding hologram. Everything being connected as above so below yet infinite. So the individualized evolving entity's within it keep growing. Like there is always someone looking over you. That sees more of the picture. That has more freedom, and because of this lives in a more blissful reality. Because it just keeps getting better and better. As you go along you just get more and more great. Larger and more magnificent. You gain more and more life.
but at the same time your perception is limited to that which you have worked for. And you can never see the rest of what you are connected too, because you are growing within it. if that makes sense.

Yet is is all here! And it is one thing. It just depends on how you look at it.
Some may say a rock is dead and not alive at all. That is it not moving. The particles in that rock are moving and they are moving at incredible speed and there is so many of them that makes up that rock. So is it a dead rock not moving. Or is it billions of particles and life moving at incredible speed to make the thing called 'rock'.Or 'tree' or anything else.
Which is true? Is the rock moving or not moving. Is the tree or that animal an entity of it's own or is it connected to the billions of different life forms that make it apear that way.

It is the same with everything and we are all connected to the process. So God is a process which is connected to you as one, and the concept of what 'enlightenment' suggests is non existent and elusive because of the infinity of it all.

Originally posted by NirvanaStarseed
...which is connected like some kind of ever expanding hologram. Everything being connected as above so below yet infinite. So the individualized evolving entity's within it keep growing. Like there is always someone looking over you. That sees more of the picture. That has more freedom, and because of this lives in a more blissful reality. Because it just keeps getting better and better. As you go along you just get more and more great. Larger and more magnificent. You gain more and more life...

yeah... Old Sai Baba of Shirdi was receiving visitors when this one Lady dropped a pair of her spectacles at his feet. Well, she thought that was sign that she should offer these glasses to the Old Fakir. But he turned them down saying that he already had his spectables and he paid 40 Rupees for them. Nobody knew what he was talking about until one of the oldest devotees clued everybody in -- it seems that Old Sai Baba had first become 'enlightened' 40 years previously. This would support your notion that Enlightenment is not a static experience, but indeed gets better over time.