Oh Ted~

You might be right~

Those definitions though just don't seem to embody the thing (process, really) I am trying to talk about.

Maybe it would be better described as "The fundamental will to assemble perceptions into meaningful compositions".

A common occurrence for older people is a waning of this "faith" stuff, this "fundamental will to assemble perceptions"..... they cease to bother to try to remember all their great grand children's names, for example, or will bring only a vague disinterest to the table when it comes to the candid discussion of social, moral or political issues. The mind and attention are still intact, but the will to use them has gone flacid.

Quite a bit different from, say, an 8 year old kid who can recognize every make and model of car or truck ever built at 400 meters though foggy glass, or who has memorized the atomic mass and electron shell structure of every element and dreams at night of expanding his closet to house his own well featured arrangement of a kilogram of all the elements in the periodic chart, with a few empty spaces for ones yet to be discovered.

Maybe a related word in american english would be "drive".... the will and gumption to pull new things or information together and/or make things happen according to some plan.

When people suffer a major disappointment, this will or drive or faith can get severely crippled.... "My gears got stripped", is a common expression by such folks, and I'm guessing more often than not, they never fully recover in this life.

So you see, it really is a practical matter to learn to identify, both in one's self and in others, its nature, its health, and how to manage it intelligently. Without it, one might as well be a ghost... of what use is free-will if there is no drive to employ it?

<Hands On Hips/> Not all of us arrived at this "Earth School" with a wheelbarrow full of scholarships, you know~ </hands> ... I'm a work-study student at best. Might even just be a janitor. Or even just rodeo stock for freshman spirit guides to practice on.

So I have to puzzle everything together from scratch.

Thanks for joining in Ted.

PG: Yes, I agree that 'practice' is related to the idea, in that the faith or drive, in as much at it exists, amounts to nothing if it is not deployed.

-Montana

PS: There have been some substantial solar flares the last coupledy-three days. If you're in the northern latitudes, might have a look at the night sky, could be some great auroras, near-full moon notwithstanding.

For some reason, maybe even because it is the "correct" thing, I want to call this the fundamental process. I don't think will has anything to do with it, it's just what we do. It's what I think of when people say we need to do something to "count", we already are doing something because we are always assembling perceptions into meaningful compositions, right?
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

there remains an understandable communication problem between those that arrive here via religious-based systems and everyone else, especially regarding Christianity

this gap has narrowed though, following some earlier food fights between myself and others

that being said, fasten your seatbelt whenever you bring Jesus-speak into the conversation! ; - )

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

sorry, but this sort of thing pushes my buttons, and I believe is too fundamental to let slide

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5614&p=32509&hilit=enemy+of+religion#p32509

sorry if I am misreading your intent

sorry for being a grouch

love is always having to say you are sorry ; - )

http://www.google.ca/url?source=imgres& ... OshQorYUyA

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Just a thought. MBT is a complex theory, and it is a complex reading. It takes a lot of your inner work, i.e. dismantle your beliefs (at least some of them), acknowledge your fear and ego, accept your smallness in many senses, etc., etc., etc. This is a huge job and responsibility, and it has been expressed and described time and again since ancient times in all cultures. A purpose of life has been a subject of philosophers and mystics, and most of these writings are complex. When you have to part with your beliefs, it seems this is always no easy or simple way out. I imaging that there are some lucky people, who have no trouble to resolve their beliefs and have no pain. I am not one of them, because I have too much fear. A couple of months ago I asked in my meditation to become free of my beliefs. Oh, it is so many of them pouring out from everywhere. Each time it hurts, more or less, and complexity of feeling and emotions to decipher, but it is never easy. (Sorry Montana, talking about myself. But it is the best thing to do, to talk about myself )

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

lol Kroeran,
I do realize that I may be opening a pandora's box with the Jesus - speak, but MBT is a theory of everything, and everything does seem to fit. Tom stresses many spiritual concepts in MBT. most of these concepts are not new. In fact they are very old ideas. The digital reality may be a new concept, and the quantum mechanics, probability distributions and PMR ideas are relatively new terms, but they also discribe old ideas very effectively. I have been looking for the common threads in all religions for quite some time and I have found many. If you compare the difference between (most) christian and rosicrucian ideologies it is basically that the christians say god became man, while the rosicrucians say man became god. The rosicrucians were considered heretics. similarly, The sufi's seek the path of love and unity, but are considered infidels by most muslim sects. The hindus also have their mystics that teach the unity of all things, and very intricately describe the illusion of this PMR, and the path to realization of the divinity within all people and things, while there are hindus that prefer to simply worship the gods and planets.
Personally, I do not subscribe to any one of these religions, but I do see the value of the teachings. If we apply the teachings (with practice) to ourselves, we will make spiritual progress towards love and unity.

Basically I agree with you when you say this is simply a work in progress, and I enjoy the exchange of ideas and information. I do hope that my comments do not offend


love is the answer
patrick

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LOVE is the answer

peace
patrick

Ya, you might well have been misreading me. If someone else finds comfort in the belief system, good for them!~ For me it was asphyxiating, though. Since (apparently) some of the boardies find criticizm of religion offensive, I'll spare us all the details.

As a belief system it can pretty powerful. "John of God" (in South America) is apparently a very powerful healer using that belief system. A seer, Charles Leadbeater, indicated that what happens on the Astral Plane is spectacular in Roman Catholic mass, far surpassing any other service of any other religion that he witnessed.. But it had to be a fully ordained priest. Go figure. And Leadbeater was a Theosophist at that.

Grouch? No worries.

-Montana

Faith in Russian is belief. Belief in Russian has a wide variety of meanings.

Faith is not a will of life or to live for me, but a very deep belief or trust. At the same time faith is more than just belief, since it has a spiritual connotation, when belief is something one trusts in with or without any reason or any desire to learn, explore about a subject. Faith is a hope as well, and it is a vision, and an ability to listen to oneself beyond a basic belief.

I cannot say what Proust's faith means to me, but it feels much different that belief.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Faith has a spiritual connotation for most because of its association to Christianity .. and all those vampire movies..
faith is realization

Faith is whatever you want it to be :D.

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I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

While I will occasionally make a pain in the ass out of myself when someone appears to diss the Nazarene or certain denominations, I also recognize that MBTOE is spirituality "for the rest of us", as Tom has said. The rest of us in this context is those who cannot or prefer not to approach AUM through the poetic language of the right hemisphere or the primal language of theism.

The intent then of MBTOE is to approach AUM through the technical language of the left hemisphere, and out of respect for that intent, and to avoid scaring people, I try to use the language of MBTOE, and restrain my religious impulses, though I occasionally can't resist a self indulgent lapse into gospel speak!

Perhaps you may have come to the same conclusion that I have come to, which is that the vibe that Tom gives off is the same that comes through the gospels.

It might be nice to have a place for graduates of the Christian system to gab about MBTOE off to the side somewhere where we would not disturb people.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Interesting data. Beyond all the weird belief bs in Catholicism, I still hold that there is something substantive and interesting going on in that system, and that it produces relatively high QoC individuals, but that has been my experience.

I prefer to view these systems like DNA, and 99% of DNA is just benign filler - you start with the observation of outlier manifestations of consciousness, then work back.

There is no reason to presume that some weird belief, true or not, does not stimulate entropy reduction

Again though, belief is the the most primitive element to Catholicism, and I presume you encountered one of those strains

What is unique is the intellectual richness, but even more so, the mystical experiential elements that interact with and stimulate that which we perceive to be the higher self

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Absolutely, the personage to whom we refer as "Jesus", should not be confused with all the persons or groups that subsequently formed and acted ostensibly in his name!

If Tom were to be estimated or judged by the doings of the boardies here, I'm not sure that that would get entered in the "asset" column of the ledger.

Neither, in my opinion, ought Jesus to be judged by the sometimes monstrous behavior of various factions through out the centuries.


-Montana

The man called Jesus had a message and a teaching for the spiritual growth of his followers. That message may have been twisted by men over time (self serving men) whether he was a man who became god, or a god that became man matters not at all (strangely, both could be true). Whether he was a man or a myth doesnt matter (the truth is still the truth) his message was not so unique or different from many other highly evolved IUOC's.
The Buddha had a very similar message, as did many advanced beings from the hindu tradition.
( those yogis who encouraged people to look inside themselves [thru meditation] to find the truth). I find it fascinating that the message of all these advanced beings is so similar to Toms message in MBT. The metaphors might change but the story remains the same. the fact that they all use metaphor and parables to describe the indescribable amuses me. The truth has been right there in front of our noses all this time

I hope that my comments do not offend, I enjoy the exchange of ideas and information

love is the answer
patrick

_________________
LOVE is the answer

peace
patrick

He was just a man, the answer is love though.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.