[Opinion] Fragmented Consciousness

[Xenophon]

I started considering the notion of multiple selves a while ago, and it seemed to fit quite nicely for a time. I began trying to put different selves "in the drivers seat" for different circumstances and noticed some benefits occasionally. My inner dialogue became enriched, with new ideas coming up that went against my usual grain, some useful, some that didn't quite fit my moral compass. I ended this practice after about 6 months when I noticed that dialogue coming up when I wasn't looking for it. Felt I was getting close to tinfoil hat territory and decided to call it an interesting psychological experiment that wasn't suitable for me to continue with.

I don't have any instances of dream characters acting out of the ordinary, so I'm not sure we're talking about the same experience, but my determination is that yes, what we've been raised to believe is a unique, isolated "individual" is actually comprised of many parts possessing or containing some form of consciousness. These parts often work so well together it gives an appearance of a single entity.

Good point. Many ancient cultures taught that any individual's "soul" was more of a committee. Different parts had different duties. And, depending on circumstances, different ones could come to the fore. I remember the Iliad has Odysseus debating himself as to whether to run or fight (his buddies have all broke and run), "while as wild boar he bore down on the Dardanians." A Greek would have said his "thymos"(spirited part) had taken the reins of his body.

 

[Ziran]

That's fine, define God a more complex way that satisfies your mind then. To me this definition does it justice. The mind/ego will always seek to understand God in an intellectual way, but truly it can only ever be experienced by your being, which reaches far beyond the intellect. I understand this will not be satisfactory for you though, but for me it is more than enough.

A detailed understanding is an opportunity. Understanding is not limited to the mind, but, is enhanced by it. Flattening concepts and washing out details is shallow not deep.

A balance of experience, which is just being, even using the word balance taints the experience because we are already arbitrarily labeling things as good or bad. An experience is, our interpretation of that experience is not the same thing.

Ah. So balance is not your god, and reintegration is not the goal. The ideal you are describing is absolute detachment which is the opposite of reintegration. It's a version of oblivion. Not to worry friend. If you have fully detached and cannot distinguish between good and evil, there will always be people like me who can. It's an important skill because freedom cannot exist in isolation.

Freedom requires thoughtful judges to establish borders, boundries, and territories and defend them. Otherwise freedom will always be under attack, and those who are detached will not have a space to thrive. Freedom isn't free.

Experience rape and murder?

Yes, that is part of life. It happens in the animal kingdom as well,

Choosing to behave like a vicious animal is consent to be treated like a viscious animal including but not limited to a cage and a collar.

all of life is God experiencing itself.

Repeating it does not make it true.

These experiences happen

That's a childish reason for doing something harmful to others.

is it considered tragic in a world where life is constantly in a cycle of change? Only if you create a separate identity for every being, if you forget that all of creation is God essence experiencing itself.

Didn't you write that it was a false teaching to consider oneself at the center of the universe? What you've written above is a completely self-centered perspective where no other identities exist except for your own. Now are asserting no other god concept exists except for your own and you are imagining yourself as it. I told you this would happen.

Reintegration is not oblivion. It's not denial of everything other than oneself. It's much closer to "taking stock" and making a proper accounting. It's clarity, not negligence.

and light is not the same as peace. Perhaps it is pointing that peace comes from light, and evil from darkness.

True, light is not the same as peace. The contrasts are light-vs-darkness, peace-vs-evil, forming-vs-creating-vs-making.

The word origin is not terribly important to me, as the broad concept that God is all, which includes, our arbitrary groupings of things good and evil.

Invoking Isaiah doesn't work if the meaning of the words are ignored and if their meaning is flip-flopped. Isaiah did not write in english. The verse doesn't say God is all, the verse says God is the creator of all. That's a big difference.

Invoking Isaiah also doesn't work if good and evil are imagined as arbitrary:

5:20​

​

הוי האמרים לרע טוב ולטוב רע שמים חשך לאור ואור לחשך שמים מר למתוק ומתוק למר׃​

​

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!​

I understand you have an eye for technicality, and that is good thing if it solidifies your beliefs and enhances your practice, but its not terribly important for me. I prefer to explore broad concepts and have my experiences lead me to my conclusions.

As I wrote previously, it depends on what each person wants to do.

"These are important distinctions IF, big IF, one is seeking to establish a connection with this source and/or if one is seeking to understand how this source is reflected in themself and in others, and/or who "we" are and what "we" are."

Yes, if a person wants to understand, details are important. If a person wants to decieve, if deception is inspiring for them, they will avoid those details, or hide them, or distract from them, or deny them.

That's fine with me, I wish you the best

I appreciate that, and I believe that you mean it. But. If what you've written is followed to its logical conclusion, those good wishes are hollow. If we are all one consciousness, and there are no individual identities, then any rape, any murder, any theft, against anyone is a rape, a murder, a theft directly against me. Advocating for rape and murder in principle is advocating for rape and murder in practice. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

 

[Lemongrass00]

A detailed understanding is an opportunity. Understanding is not limited to the mind, but, is enhanced by it. Flattening concepts and washing out details is shallow not deep.

I think you missed my point, you do not have to agree with my viewpoint, but the way I've come to view God is shaped by my experiences, and certainly not shallow to me, sorry that offended you friend.

Ah. So balance is not your god, and reintegration is not the goal. The ideal you are describing is absolute detachment which is the opposite of reintegration. It's a version of oblivion. Not to worry friend. If you have fully detached and cannot distinguish between good and evil, there will always be people like me who can. It's an important skill because freedom cannot exist in isolation.

Freedom requires thoughtful judges to establish borders, boundries, and territories and defend them. Otherwise freedom will always be under attack, and those who are detached will not have a space to thrive. Freedom isn't free.

I am certainly not describing detachment. It is quite the opposite. I am not nihilistic nor have advocated for it, but one should have the goal to honor everything without becoming identified with it. Every experience is sacred, but not to hold on to anything, not to identify your ego to it. Good and evil do not exist, only within your own mind. There is no objective good and evil.

Consciousness freeing itself from identification is not detachment. It is the opposite, because that same consciousness will remember itself, and its true nature. Everything that was "detached" from, was never real in the first place. The things you are talking about becoming detached from are ego constructs.

Eckhart Tolle illustrates this by saying, "If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call him John, write out a birth certificate, tell him about his family history, and two minutes later he gets eaten by another fish - that's tragic. But it's only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none. You got hold of a fraction of a dynamic process, a molecular dance, and made a separate entity out of it."

Invoking Isaiah doesn't work if the meaning of the words are ignored and if their meaning is flip-flopped. Isaiah did not write in english. The verse doesn't say God is all, the verse says God is the creator of all. That's a big difference.

I was not using the quote as citing the power of the Bible as a 'shield' for my interpretation, but rather used my interpretation from, yes, the english translation to convey my point, not the Bible's. Don't get attached to any certain word, one should experiment and substitute words. Words are signposts, labels, pointing to these truths in various ways. Perhaps one shouldn't ascribe too much importance to exactly how the Bible was written by its authors. It was written by men after all, and just because their interpretation is a certain way, certainly does not make it "right", The Bible is designed to get you to investigate these truths on your own, not to blindly follow them or memorize hollow scripture verses.

Again, it is not a huge difference to me what the original meaning of the verse was by its human authors, as I was ascribing my own interpretation onto it based off my experiences. Besides, I do not think 'God' is Yahweh.

I appreciate that, and I believe that you mean it. But. If what you've written is followed to its logical conclusion, those good wishes are hollow. If we are all one consciousness, and there are no individual identities, then any rape, any murder, any theft, against anyone is a rape, a murder, a theft directly against me. Advocating for rape and murder in principle is advocating for rape and murder in practice. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Identity as illusion is one of the oldest and most widely attested to spiritual concepts. My point is not to convince you because again, your mind cannot ever comprehend something of this nature, sure it can enhance your understanding if you know the theory, but that theory is just a mental container, it is shallow and limited and can never come close to the level of understanding that is experienced by being.

Also, I am not advocating for rape and murder, if you can find me saying that please quote it. All these 'evils' come from a place of unconsciousness in the first place, from a lack of understanding your true nature, as God. People who commit rape and murder are aligned to the belief that everybody is fragmented, distinct, disconnected from one an another, and they are driven uncontrollably to commit those actions because of growth that egoic dysfunction, of that illusion of separateness from God.

It seems like you are becoming personally identified with the argument yourself which is being expressed by becoming emotionally frustrated and insulting my beliefs. I will once again state, that my beliefs are shaped by my experiences, maybe they are subject to change, life is impermanent. My goal was to have a discussion, not an argument.

 

[Xenophon]

I think you missed my point, you do not have to agree with my viewpoint, but the way I've come to view God is shaped by my experiences, and certainly not shallow to me, sorry that offended you friend.



I am certainly not describing detachment. It is quite the opposite. I am not nihilistic nor have advocated for it, but one should have the goal to honor everything without becoming identified with it. Every experience is sacred, but not to hold on to anything, not to identify your ego to it. Good and evil do not exist, only within your own mind. There is no objective good and evil.

Consciousness freeing itself from identification is not detachment. It is the opposite, because that same consciousness will remember itself, and its true nature. Everything that was "detached" from, was never real in the first place. The things you are talking about becoming detached from are ego constructs.

Eckhart Tolle illustrates this by saying, "If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call him John, write out a birth certificate, tell him about his family history, and two minutes later he gets eaten by another fish - that's tragic. But it's only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none. You got hold of a fraction of a dynamic process, a molecular dance, and made a separate entity out of it."


I was not using the quote as citing the power of the Bible as a 'shield' for my interpretation, but rather used my interpretation from, yes, the english translation to convey my point, not the Bible's. Don't get attached to any certain word, one should experiment and substitute words. Words are signposts, labels, pointing to these truths in various ways. Perhaps one shouldn't ascribe too much importance to exactly how the Bible was written by its authors. It was written by men after all, and just because their interpretation is a certain way, certainly does not make it "right", The Bible is designed to get you to investigate these truths on your own, not to blindly follow them or memorize hollow scripture verses.

Again, it is not a huge difference to me what the original meaning of the verse was by its human authors, as I was ascribing my own interpretation onto it based off my experiences. Besides, I do not think 'God' is Yahweh.


Identity as illusion is one of the oldest and most widely attested to spiritual concepts. My point is not to convince you because again, your mind cannot ever comprehend something of this nature, sure it can enhance your understanding if you know the theory, but that theory is just a mental container, it is shallow and limited and can never come close to the level of understanding that is experienced by being.

Also, I am not advocating for rape and murder, if you can find me saying that please quote it. All these 'evils' come from a place of unconsciousness in the first place, from a lack of understanding your true nature, as God. People who commit rape and murder are aligned to the belief that everybody is fragmented, distinct, disconnected from one an another, and they are driven uncontrollably to commit those actions because of growth that egoic dysfunction, of that illusion of separateness from God.

It seems like you are becoming personally identified with the argument yourself which is being expressed by becoming emotionally frustrated and insulting my beliefs. I will once again state, that my beliefs are shaped by my experiences, maybe they are subject to change, life is impermanent. My goal was to have a discussion, not an argument.

Good and evil only exist in one's mind? Hmmm...I guess I could say, "Go tell it on the mountain" like the ol' Biblebeaters' hymn says. Today, though, I'd say go sing it in Gaza.