Today I experienced...something

[bbbamI]

Wow, and here I was thinking "Stray Cat Strut"....

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

It has always been a surreal experience for me. Everything around me was so vivid and alive while I simply did not exist. Yet, I was able to see it all and feel it.

how can you know that you "simply did not exist". the closest you might be able to describe such "an experience" would be one of coming into or going out of existing, not one of nonexistence which would be nonexperienced.

An altered state and not chemically induced -- wish I could experience that. No epiphany?

from what i've read on some forum discussions, seems mostly the kids today are less into epiphany and more into using their dreams as video gaming. could be worthy practice nonetheless. epiphany can be so overrated and perhaps not all that long lasting.

you will likely understand yourself better and more deeply by exploring yourself on your own than by instruction of a book. but while a book is good for confirmation of what you might have just personally experienced, i suppose, there's also the "why bother reinventing the wheel" argument, especially when in western culture this type of thinking seems so very less than ingrained that we just might be a few 1000 years behind our times. so, here's a wheel:

How to learn to have Lucid Dreams

like the third world industrializing, playing catch-up can be dangerous. but for those without the patience to learn themselves just what they are made, one can force the issue with a bit of trauma, as khan suggests....

All human societies have sought mind-altering experiences through various combinations of drugs, fasting, meditation, physical activity...

Fainting game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[bbbamI]

how can you know that you "simply did not exist". the closest you might be able to describe such "an experience" would be one of coming into or going out of existing, not one of nonexistence which would be nonexperienced.

I feel my heart beat, the sun on my skin, my hair touching my face, the moisture in my mouth and on my lips. When I have this experience, I feel none of that. It happens in a flash and I'm not aware of going out of or coming into existence. I simply observe everything around me. Everything I observe seems to have life...and a soul.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

not to discount any wonder of such experience, simply saying that acknowledgment, recognition or awareness (etc.) alone of phenomena implies both observer and observed, so confers separation, not at oneness.

 

[bbbamI]

I understand. The experience is strange and even more difficult to explain.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

"die before your death"~~the prophet mohammed

 

[Walt34]

meanwhile, below on a cruise-liner, several hundred innocent souls seeing a light-aircraft plummeting down into thier summer vacation bliss, seemingly with nobody in control (or the pilot under the influence of mild-altering drugs) were frantically running for cover, sheltering thier children or down on thier knees praying for deliverance. But hey, just as long as you were in the zone! :d

;d;d;d;d;d

 

[Meadbh]

I am guilty of this sterotyping . In fact Meadbh , I thought you were a guy . Your avatar used to be a guy sitting on the beach . So I guess we are all gender confused on the internet.

Moe, IIRC I got that photo from the web and just thought it was cool!

Meadbh (aka Audrey Hepburn in my last avatar)
Definitely a girl!

And speaking of avatars.....I see you are now the Girl from Ipanema, complete with fruit basket on head.
Next thing you will be saying you are a man.

 

[bbbamI]

We can state our gender on our profile and post replies with reference to same, however we are unable to prove we are a particular sex on this forum. Hmmmm....

Yours truly,

Leo

 

[missionfinder]

I've gotten the feeling often. Whether its in a crowd watching a child play, looking at the stars, alone in nature... its always the same yet different each time. I often get the feeling when I smudge (if you know what that is you'll understand).

 

[noworkethic]

missionfinder-

I don't know what smudge is. I'd like to unless there is some reason you can't say...

 

[tangomonster]

What may be interesting to you, Khan, and others who have experienced this (I haven't very often---and when I have, it lasted all too briefly, but was still pretty wonderful) is a book I've just started to read:

Standing in the Light by Sharman Apt Russell

Amazon.com: Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist: Sharman Apt Russell: Books

It's about pantheism---a religion/way of thinking and being/philosophy that I had never heard of (amazing what you can learn when FIREd!). The book blurb notes:

Everything is connected, and the web is holy.” So wrote Marcus Aurelius, the starting point of Sharman Apt Russell’s wise and haunting new memoir about her life as a pantheist. Perhaps no other religious philosophy is as simple and inclusive as pantheism. What is, right now, is divine; there is no god apart from the universe itself. In Standing in the Light, Russell explores the history of this tradition from the Stoic philosophers to the Transcendentalists while reflecting on her own life during a year spent in the mountains and desert of southwestern New Mexico. A season of banding birds, the migration of sandhill cranes, the panicked charge of a young javelina-nature provides the inspiration for meditations on subjects ranging from Buddhist thought to the death of her father, from the Quaker tradition to the sadness of children leaving home, from global warming to the ineffable loneliness of human experience. With a humane heart, an inquisitive mind, and luminescent prose, Sharman Apt Russell invites skeptics, scientists, and seekers everywhere to join her in her exploration of the soul of pantheism.

 

[Khan]

missionfinder-

I don't know what smudge is. I'd like to unless there is some reason you can't say...

I think it's burning herbs (sage for one) for smoke/smell and purification.

 

[haha]

This thread showcases a whole new aspect of the ER crowd. One that I would not have expected to find.

Ha

 

[Khan]

This thread showcases a whole new aspect of the ER crowd. One that I would not have expected to find.

Ha

Spiritual or introspective or transgendered?

 

[haha]

Spiritual or introspective or transgendered?

LOL!

Spiritual! I am no stranger to transgendered- a guy I know recently had a hysterectomy.

Ha

 

[Meadbh]

I've gotten the feeling often. Whether its in a crowd watching a child play, looking at the stars, alone in nature... its always the same yet different each time. I often get the feeling when I smudge (if you know what that is you'll understand).

I do understand. I have felt that way in a sweat lodge.

 

[Khan]

What may be interesting to you, Khan, and others who have experienced this (I haven't very often---and when I have, it lasted all too briefly, but was still pretty wonderful) is a book I've just started to read:

Standing in the Light by Sharman Apt Russell

Amazon.com: Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist: Sharman Apt Russell: Books

It's about pantheism---a religion/way of thinking and being/philosophy that I had never heard of (amazing what you can learn when FIREd!). The book blurb notes:

Everything is connected, and the web is holy.” So wrote Marcus Aurelius, the starting point of Sharman Apt Russell’s wise and haunting new memoir about her life as a pantheist. Perhaps no other religious philosophy is as simple and inclusive as pantheism. What is, right now, is divine; there is no god apart from the universe itself. In Standing in the Light, Russell explores the history of this tradition from the Stoic philosophers to the Transcendentalists while reflecting on her own life during a year spent in the mountains and desert of southwestern New Mexico. A season of banding birds, the migration of sandhill cranes, the panicked charge of a young javelina-nature provides the inspiration for meditations on subjects ranging from Buddhist thought to the death of her father, from the Quaker tradition to the sadness of children leaving home, from global warming to the ineffable loneliness of human experience. With a humane heart, an inquisitive mind, and luminescent prose, Sharman Apt Russell invites skeptics, scientists, and seekers everywhere to join her in her exploration of the soul of pantheism.

What is, right now, is divine

I have seen this referred to as : "That which is."