Reply to Akasha appears below: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, akasha_108 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anonymousff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, akasha_108 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [SNIP] > > > That Awareness is expressed in the lifes of all in infinite ways is > > of > > > little surprise. However, what I was seeking to confirm (or refute if > > > there is no confirmation -- same process) is that there is some > > > commonality to the so called experience of so called awakening. As a > > > rough analogy, while all humans are unique and different, there are > > > are core features of commonality that allow them to be classified as > > > homo-sapiens. > > [SNIP TO END] > > > > *** > > I like to think that there is one underlying reality that all forms > > and expressions of enlightenment take part in. That may be asking too > > much, but I'd like to take it as a starting point. > > Why not similataneously hold that there maybe is commonality and also > mayber there is NOT commonality to all human expressions or experience > of spritual unfoldment. It seems if you take ONE possiblity as true as > the strating point, you may be chasing your tail.
**** REPLY TO AKASHA: I feel very disappointed that you dismissed this discussion so easily. It is as if you didn't bother reading past my first paragraph and formed an opinion on that basis alone. Somehow, I think you misunderstood me. To better explain the point of view I was expressing, I'll use an analogy that you recently used: physicists acknowledge that some phenomena are best described by Newtonian physics, while others are better describe by Quantum Mechanics. However, an underlying assumption is that these two methods of describing and explaining phenomena are in fact describing the same universe. So that was my starting point. I chose to assume that there is one universe within which different people get "enlightened". This says nothing about the description of that universe, or the character of the enlightenment of anyone in particular. For example, this same universe may support an enlightenment in which God or Personal God plays an important role, an enlightenment in which there is no God, an enlightenment in which the ultimate truth can well be described using words like "Self", or an enlightenment in which there is No Self. These various forms of "enlightenment" may be on some sequential path, or they may be mutually exclusive end states. All of that is up for grabs, as far as I'm concerned. And yes, maybe there are forms of "enlightenment" that have no commonality whatsoever with other forms. What if everyone exists in his/her own universe with its own rules? What does that mean, really? Does it mean that the person's experience alone defines his/her universe? or that everyone else's universe doesn't really exist as far as I'm concerned? Well, we could go that way. But I don't find it very fruitful. I've included my original post below. I was hoping to get a more thoughtful reply from you. But, if you don't want to, well, ok, it was fun, I guess... a **** ORIGINAL POST REPEATED: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, akasha_108 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [SNIP] > That Awareness is expressed in the lifes of all in infinite ways is of > little surprise. However, what I was seeking to confirm (or refute if > there is no confirmation -- same process) is that there is some > commonality to the so called experience of so called awakening. As a > rough analogy, while all humans are unique and different, there are > are core features of commonality that allow them to be classified as > homo-sapiens. [SNIP TO END] *** I like to think that there is one underlying reality that all forms and expressions of enlightenment take part in. That may be asking too much, but I'd like to take it as a starting point. Then, the question arises, within that reality, how much room is there for variation of experience that could meaningfully be called "awakened" or "enlightened"? Some differences may be accounted for by people being at various "stages". Thus, for example, you could have some speak of the world of change as unreal. While this sounds like a fairly advanced perception, it may be a reflection of the Self/Non-Self duality that M. associates with CC. Others might speak of the world of change as utterly real, and seamlessly connected to the unchanging, which sounds more like a UC perception. One confounding factor brought out in various autobiographical accounts is that "awakened" states may be experienced at first as "ultimate" because they all have some quality of unboundedness, infinity, immortality about them; whereas, it is only in retrospect that they may be recognized as transitional states moving on to more "awakenings". But all of this presupposes that there is one more or less general outcome (with many minor variations) for everyone who is destined to "awaken". That could be a false assumption. If we take it that advanced practitioners of many spiritual traditions have "attained" to the states that they define as awakened, how are we to account for the variances in description? Is some of this just a problem of trying to describe the ineffable? Would all of these people agree with each other about their states (if not their descriptions of them) if they sat down and talked to each other, as Dr. Pete has suggested? Or are there possibly fundamentally different "realized" states? For example, could it be that the Hindus experience "Self-realization" while Buddhists speak of there being no Self (big S or little), because these are different experiences of the underlying truth? To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
