Love is enough for me to hang with while trying to avoid a lack of it by infusing love into all if I can; we are all different though which is what makes life interesting, to me. You and I could go back and forth all day, and may find much to differ about in our own realities, it's actually fun for me, most of the time, as I imagine it is for you too.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

No. I don't find fun on that. That proves what you just said. We are all different, though we are part of the same, the One.
I don't focus too much in measuring myself with respect to others. I focus more on improving myself and help others in ways I think I can do that effectively.

Clau

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

How can you gauge your progress without something to compare it to, as in "others" progress, or lack of? Seriously and sincerely.
Love
Bette
PS. The idea of feedback evidence has come to me, the results from choices to use to gauge spiritual growth, but I will let my question stand.

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I already know a lot about myself. I know a lot I can improve on me and I know also I can learn a lot. I just don't do what you like to do. That's why also we have different careers. We are learning different lessons and our interests have some important things in common (like MBT and spiritual evolution) and others which are not quite the same.

Anyway, if you want to go further send me a pm. I don't like to deviate this thread too much away from what Montana intended originally.

Clau

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Okay Clau, we can go pm if you prefer as I request more information from you to help me understand your meaning. Please tell me what you think "I like to do" (in a pm if you like) in the context you have said this in the above quote. All I said is what do you gauge your progress on if not other, basically, not specifically that I like to do that. While it is off topic, and going pm is ok, it also seems selfish of me/us to do so when something good can come of our gaining an understanding of each other, for others possibly in a similar situation.

We seem to be in a struggle of sorts with me annoying you and you annoying me. I've long believed we notice in others (and are annoyed by) what also resides in our behaviors. If I can figure out what in you makes me continue on this quest for understanding you, then I may be able to understand myself better.

Please bear with me. I had intended this to be a pm, but it is just a quote, so be it.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Montana,

What I was aiming at in my first post in this thread was that complex expressions or structures of words do not necessarily produce the most powerful concepts. Neither complexity of construction nor of meaning are necessarily the most powerful in result. Fractal constructions, whether you are considering the Mandelbrot Set or the expression of our PMR reality 'around' us are highly complex, yet are the result of an iterative application of a relatively simple set of rules (a fractal construct) with multiple fractal levels superimposed and interacting. This seems to be the basic way our PMR VR works/is constructed.

There are signs in the scientific literature, whether you are talking mathematics, biology, medicine or quantum mechanics that the basic concepts of Tom's My Big TOE are starting to be applied, not necessarily based upon Tom as the source, but spontaneously arising in the developing thinking of some researchers, perhaps with their own prompting from NPMR sources. That these disparate disciplines can make advances based upon the realization that our reality arises from consciousness, the Consciousness System, as opposed to a physical reality.

My understanding of Consciousness Space seems as complex to me as anything I have dealt with yet it contrarily seems that the more you understand it in depth, the simpler the basis of this reality appears to be, the basis from which it arises and is constructed and develops. And the more you learn, the more there seems to be to understand yet the simpler the system appears to be in total concept. Rather than wonder about faith and what that concept arises from, I now find it more profitable to consider Intent. And the greater the power of your Intent seems to be, the more simple your Intent must be with lower entropy and greater love capable of being expressed.

This leads me to think that reality contradicts your statement: "To express complex ideas, the expression needs to be as complex as the idea itself."

I think that your original post, expressed as a question about what is faith, which I first tried to answer, is more a matter of what should you have faith in. Aging can bring a dimming of ability or desire to make the effort to deal with complexities. But I find that it is more that I tend to prune away the unessential and deal with the core reality instead. Perhaps the time will come for me yet when I just can't do versus don't care. Perhaps I will be given the opportunity to leave before then, when I am of no more use to the purposes of the system here within PMR. But at present I feel that it is a choice of what matters versus "wordiness and intellection".

Basically to me, the core of reality requires nothing like faith, including faith that there is anything worth having faith in. It is possible to perceive directly the core of reality, sufficient of the reality behind the model of MBT that you can also perceive the general shape and characteristics of that part which you cannot experience directly but fill in with logic. Faith is not even needed to take an intellectual understanding to an experiential level. To use phrases from a much earlier time and purpose, ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find. Not so much faith, but the brass and persistence to ask and the open minded skepticism to evaluate the results.

That's how it appears to me in any case.
Ted

Good post Ted!



Agree 100%. Remember E = m c^2



Agree with this also 100%

I prefer to replace faith with: Incentive of spiritual evolution and understanding of Big Truth. The joy is in the journey.

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Thanks to all for the kindness of your patience.

I can see by the responses that I haven't made the meaning clear at all though. I'm puzzled by that, but feel challenged to try again, but where?

I am tempted to do a full explication of Proust's passage above, which thing seems to state the case more clearly than I can, but also wouldn't care to have a flock of rotting astral tomatos pitched at me either. :-) So I will hold off on that tactic for now.

At least, this trying to explain what I understand of the idea seems to be helping me to wrest pieces it from the primordial fog.

So, OK, here: Let's go back to casteneda:

There was a time, when Don Juan was teaching Carlos about dreaming. Eventually, Carlos learns that one can dream a 'double', a second self which can travel and take action in this world. Juan also has a friend, Don Genaro, who was evidently well accomplished in the art. And one day Don Genaro visits (materializing out of a swirl of ashes, as I recall) in his "dreaming body". Carlos, always playing the dumb fop, asks Don Juan some along the lines of "But, but, is he is real as I am"? And they both look at him an then start laughing, and Don Juan explains: No, he is not as real as you are. He is as real as Don Genaro is."

From the book "Tales of Power", we learn that 'power' is something that a person, or any being, deploys to make 'the world' real. He assembles both himself and the reality in which he exists with it. Without it, he can do niether. If a person loses power, he has ill luck and becomes vulnerable. If he loses all, he dies.

(Now, I know that many people feel that Casteneda was a fraud. I don't. I suspect that what he did, likely under advice from his teachers, was to fictionalize his work to protect himself. Any person in the public eye gets a virtual swamp of various astral and thought forms glogged at their consciousness, and for sensitive persons this can be a nightmare. When writing about fringe topics it is an occupational hazard, even. The things learnable from what CC writes are far too consequential to dismiss them just because I don't know all the details of the events that lead to the books being written.)

Now, relatedly, occasionally, we meet a person, an animal, or even a plant, that seem far more real than their companions or other examples of their kind. For instance, I once saw a daisy plant in flower in a neighbor's yard, one of six plants, that was clearly in a class of its own. It was like it glowed, or had a greater presence, or was reposed in some unique form of magnetic field all its own. It did not have more or larger or more brilliant flowers. There was nothing obvious in its physical structure that I could point to, and dismissed it as some sort of fluke in my own perception, maybe some cryptonesia relation to something I saw in the distant past or something. But then a few days later, pulling into the driveway with a friend, I mentioned it, pointing to it, and instantly he said "Yes! Patty and I were talking about it the otbher day! Isn't that something!" But we never did isolate just what that 'something' was.

Occasionally, when at the track, you will see a racehorse with this kind of 'glow'. And what a bet it turns out to be! For no matter what that horse's record, it presently has this 'power', and no other horse will pass him, no matter how slow he runs. This is in part what horseracing handicappers of old refer to as "class" (though most handicappers these days derive a sense of class from earnings).

I am thinking now that this "class-stuff" is much the same as the "invisible magnetic field stuff" is much the same as CC's "power-stuff" and is much the same Proust's "faith", by which he could or could not invest displays of feminine beauty with the "reality" that he used to. In this last case though, we have Proust projecting the power on to things he percieves, rather than sustaining and bringing into high profile his own existence.

This hopefully will be clear to anyone reading who can identify examples of this "heightened reality" of particular persons, places or things from his or her own past experience. And it seems like we all must see this as various points in our lives. You might not be able to recall one at first, but maybe later, in a day or two, some memory will surface and you will say to yourself, "Oh! ....I bet that's what that lunatic was talking about.....!~"

Individually, the various concepts are relatively mono-dimensional, but taken together, for me, they give each other a depth that makes it seem like workable idea, and of a very practical nature: We each have, at this moment, a certain amount of "power", by which we sustain our individual realities and ourselves within it. It varies over time, place circumstance, and person.

And yes, I think now, after all, that Proust's faith-stuff is the same thing as CC's "power". And this demystifies Carlos' concept, for me, and makes it attainable. One can see at a glance, if one train's oneself to look, I imagine, the relative amount of 'power' in any person, place, or thing. As Don Juan puts it, (aproximately, going from memory here), when first explaining the idea to Carlos "At first the idea of power is an absurdity. One can't even imagine it. Then he begins to get the idea, but he is not sure if it is real or if he is just deceiving himself. Then it becomes real and he is stunned by the immense value of what he sees..."

So. I have got my original question answered. Thanks all. Of course, I'm aware that I might well be the only one that came this far along this thread, ;-D , but if anyone else is out here: It would be great to have a discussion about this whole 'power' idea on this forum, with this group. But I will also be rereading some of CC's work and seeing what I can develop further about it. If anyone's here and interested I will share, but otherwise I will let it drop here.

Does Tom cover this at all in his work? (I confess, I have taken his advice and am consuming it in small chunks, now presently revisiting the ideas of 'belief', 'ego', 'fear' and 'entropy'.) If anyone has followed out to this far, you can see how he might want to. It would be fine to hear his thoughts on it, whether he sees anything in it or finds it to be totally dissable non-sense.

Thanks again,
-Montana

Thanks to all for the kindness of your patience.

I can see by the responses that I haven't made the meaning clear at all though. I'm puzzled by that, but feel challenged to try again, but where?

I am tempted to do a full explication of Proust's passage above, which thing seems to state the case more clearly than I can, but also wouldn't care to have a flock of rotting astral tomatos pitched at me either. :-) So I will hold off on that tactic for now.

At least, this trying to explain what I understand of the idea seems to be helping me to wrest pieces it from the primordial fog.

So, OK, here: Let's go back to casteneda:

There was a time, when Don Juan was teaching Carlos about dreaming. Eventually, Carlos learns that one can dream a 'double', a second self which can travel and take action in this world. Juan also has a friend, Don Genaro, who was evidently well accomplished in the art. And one day Don Genaro visits (materializing out of a swirl of ashes, as I recall) in his "dreaming body". Carlos, always playing the dumb fop, asks Don Juan some along the lines of "But, but, is he is real as I am"? And they both look at him an then start laughing, and Don Juan explains: No, he is not as real as you are. He is as real as Don Genaro is."

From the book "Tales of Power", we learn that 'power' is something that a person, or any being, deploys to make 'the world' real. He assembles both himself and the reality in which he exists with it. Without it, he can do niether. If a person loses power, he has ill luck and becomes vulnerable. If he loses all, he dies.

(Now, I know that many people feel that Casteneda was a fraud. I don't. I suspect that what he did, likely under advice from his teachers, was to fictionalize his work to protect himself. Any person in the public eye gets a virtual swamp of various astral and thought forms glogged at their consciousness, and for sensitive persons this can be a nightmare. When writing about fringe topics it is an occupational hazard, even. The things learnable from what CC writes are far too consequential to dismiss them just because I don't know all the details of the events that lead to the books being written.)

Now, relatedly, occasionally, we meet a person, an animal, or even a plant, that seem far more real than their companions or other examples of their kind. For instance, I once saw a daisy plant in flower in a neighbor's yard, one of six plants, that was clearly in a class of its own. It was like it glowed, or had a greater presence, or was reposed in some unique form of magnetic field all its own. It did not have more or larger or more brilliant flowers. There was nothing obvious in its physical structure that I could point to, and dismissed it as some sort of fluke in my own perception, maybe some cryptonesia relation to something I saw in the distant past or something. But then a few days later, pulling into the driveway with a friend, I mentioned it, pointing to it, and instantly he said "Yes! Patty and I were talking about it the otbher day! Isn't that something!" But we never did isolate just what that 'something' was.

Occasionally, when at the track, you will see a racehorse with this kind of 'glow'. And what a bet it turns out to be! For no matter what that horse's record, it presently has this 'power', and no other horse will pass him, no matter how slow he runs. This is in part what horseracing handicappers of old refer to as "class" (though most handicappers these days derive a sense of class from earnings).

I am thinking now that this "class-stuff" is much the same as the "invisible magnetic field stuff" is much the same as CC's "power-stuff" and is much the same Proust's "faith", by which he could or could not invest displays of feminine beauty with the "reality" that he used to. In this last case though, we have Proust projecting the power on to things he percieves, rather than sustaining and bringing into high profile his own existence.

This hopefully will be clear to anyone reading who can identify examples of this "heightened reality" of particular persons, places or things from his or her own past experience. And it seems like we all must see this as various points in our lives. You might not be able to recall one at first, but maybe later, in a day or two, some memory will surface and you will say to yourself, "Oh! ....I bet that's what that lunatic was talking about.....!~"

Individually, the various concepts are relatively mono-dimensional, but taken together, for me, they give each other a depth that makes it seem like workable idea, and of a very practical nature: We each have, at this moment, a certain amount of "power", by which we sustain our individual realities and ourselves within it. It varies over time, place circumstance, and person.

And yes, I think now, after all, that Proust's faith-stuff is the same thing as CC's "power". And this demystifies Carlos' concept, for me, and makes it attainable. One can see at a glance, if one train's oneself to look, I imagine, the relative amount of 'power' in any person, place, or thing. As Don Juan puts it, (aproximately, going from memory here), when first explaining the idea to Carlos "At first the idea of power is an absurdity. One can't even imagine it. Then he begins to get the idea, but he is not sure if it is real or if he is just deceiving himself. Then it becomes real and he is stunned by the immense value of what he sees..."

So. I have got my original question answered. Thanks all. Of course, I'm aware that I might well be the only one that came this far along this thread, ;-D , but if anyone else is out here: It would be great to have a discussion about this whole 'power' idea on this forum, with this group. But I will also be rereading some of CC's work and seeing what I can develop further about it. If anyone's here and interested I will share, but otherwise I will let it drop here.

Does Tom cover this at all in his work? (I confess, I have taken his advice and am consuming it in small chunks, now presently revisiting the ideas of 'belief', 'ego', 'fear' and 'entropy'.) If anyone has followed out to this far, you can see how he might want to. It would be fine to hear his thoughts on it, whether he sees anything in it or finds it to be totally dissable non-sense.

Thanks again,
-Montana

Montana,
Are you referring to this, http://books.google.com/books?id=kkTfpV ... th&f=false.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

LOL! That's awesome Bette! How on earth did you find it? I will give it a close look when I can! Thanks much!

-Montana

Montana,

Castaneda holds a special place in thought for myself as well. So do others from the Zen and Taoist traditions. And I agree with you and do not feel that he was a fake. I have briefly toyed with the idea of trying to relate his descriptions of reality to the MBT model of reality but don't have the time to invest or see sufficient value just because I once spent a lot of time reading about and thinking about his world. But in general, realizing this to be a virtual reality, you can relate much of what he described to being entirely feasible in a VR. To see IUOCs as ovoids of light threads with an assemblage point where they assembled their understanding of their experiences. To see 'allies' that instead of appearing as ovoids of light threads appeared as just what they appeared like when you were not 'seeing' them.

This PMR VR is perceived within your point of assemblage, as good a way to state it as any, based upon an input data stream. And this data stream can be generated so that you experience an ovoid of light threads when 'seeing' or not seeing one when 'seeing' an ally just as readily as seeing what you normally see by normal vision processes. There are no eyes nor normal nor abnormal vision processes, there are only your interpretaion of an incoming data stream. And the difference in perception is likely to be related to your perception of the data stream rather than that the data stream gets varied to create this effect. And to see the scene behind the scenery or to see Mescalito in a peyote trance seems like a simple trip into NPMR in just the right place. So power is just a matter of slipping between these two VRs readily and manipulating the VR in just the right way. I could give you a link to my own web site where I described a parallel between CCs description of the flow from the eagle and the return flow and the same thing described by Robert Monroe as he made his 'trip' to the farthest point of this reality where there was an inflowing and an outflowing stream. Basically a metaphor for the data streams of the RWW which generates the PMR reality. One as the source of the PMR reality and the other as a metaphor for the way that we eventually return to and are the 'food' of the eagle. Do you see that the eagle is a parallel concept to The One and that food is a metaphor for our experiences here, i.e. experience which generates value, for The One?

I have experienced the glow you describe but related to things, like a book, that was being brought to my attention and for a person who was being brought to my attention. In the case of the flower you describe, it was a matter of catching your attention and making it known to you that there is more to reality than the simple and ordinary descriptions of society.

But I am much more intent on extending my understanding of MBT and helping Tom here than with playing around with CC's world view.

Ted

You are welcome much. I just did a quick "proust the question of faith" google search.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Ted,

You tied those two ideas together nicely and I will revisit your website.

Going back to older stuff about the complexity of Proust's writing, (I feel I should defend the poor fellow! His work gets so much abuse!),

Here: HOW many novels do you know of in which the first paragraph the narrator begins his monologue in Monroe's 'Focus 10'? :

http://For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.

Arguably, the entire novel, a long meditation on memory, and by way of course, the whole of human experience, happens in a state of Focus 10. And this clause infested sentence structure seems well suited to carry at the relatively dense nuance that thoughts thunk in 10 so often seem to have, and slip awway from us when we surface back in "1".

I admit, I had to be tricked into reading that work in the beginning. Someone (whose opininns on literature I respected) remarked that a person who hadn't read it wasn't really literate. (It was intended as a somewhat smug statement, I thought.) So I read a little, just to get a sense of what he might be thinking. Well: I read the first paragraph and said to myself: "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait a minute. What just happened?" And it took several re-readings to grasp it. And I realized, well, yes, this is about as difficult as learning to read the first go-round was.

With practice, one can regularly absorb thoughts that are that complex, and I maintain that having that (sense of easily managing complex thought-form structures) available is a great asset.

And it should not be confused with complicated lanaguage that is meant primarily to confuse and obfuscate, like the master's thesis that presents a solid wall of ,marxist, feminist, deconstructive criticism about the tale of Jack and Jill. Proust is very careful with his words, they have a purpose. I grant that the style of language is 100 years and more old now, but that is a style issue.

Again, just following Proust's style of detachment to his own ego, and detachmentment even from his own perception, is a great learning oppportunity. He leads us again and again into insights that are almost teaching lessons in the act of prophecy (in the sense of seeing into the heart of a matter).

So, just, good stuff, IMHO.

Hope you enjoyed the above paragraph... here is more if you want some:

http://www.authorama.com/remembrance-of ... ast-1.html


-Montana

Thank you Montana, and I agree this makes one think hard.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.