Legit post, joedirt

edit; Damn, my post came on the second page!

joedirt, we'd be pretty stupid and insolent to try to nail it down.
I'm a wanna-be writer, and a friend of mine asked me: "Well? What did you write this time?"
I don't feel like writing anymore. It's just way too powerful to describe with words. They have to send a freaking poet like Blake, Aeschylus or Homer cause this is pure poetry. I'll only profane it.

But you are still talking about awareness, expanding of consciousness, and so on... You are not saying: you just got your mind fucked by a substance, this is a hallucination, none of it is real.

this. but I would also add 'indefinable' to the description. i wouldnt equate God with 'creator' either, necessarily. 'Creator' just sounds a bit...beardy. A bit, 'I did this in seven days.'

This could just be the fact I was raised catholic though.

Whatever 'it' is, it's a long way from having a beard.

Hahahahaha! Cool... Well, think about God's beard on your next trip - it might pretty fast turn into sugar, then into glass, then into laughter.

About the Creator thingie... I'm studying philosophy and there have been countless discussions if the Universe has ever been created... The simplest argument against it is: if it's infinite, there would be no start, no end, ergo no creation.

made of sugar, then glass, and grows out its eyeballs rather than its chin, and dances a jig when you see it

Seriously though, it may not have eyeballs, let alone a beard. It may have a billion. Infinite eyeballs.

Indefinable.

"Visionary artist Alex Grey has sketched an inspiring rendition of the DMT molecule. Alex's art helped me begin thinking about these questions much more clearly. Let's look at it carefully and consider how it reflects the necessary properties of such a chemical."
- Strassmnan

OK... I'll bite. Every time brother joedirt clearly expresses his outlook and evenly-balanced philosophical stance, I pulled on to chime-in (tossing in my 2000 cents worth). Such a centered state of inquisitiveness is wise and worthy of much admiration. It makes my heart smile broadly when I see the dual activation of reason and intuition, operating as a seamless whole. A unified balance of Yin & Yang, for sure! So, I am inspired to join the discussion, in my own overly verbose way. After all, this is the kind of thread I really enjoy reading and hopefully, can contribute to in a cohesive and reasonable manner.

Having been raised in a Christian Science household, metaphysics was something I grew up with. So for myself, there has never really been a conceptual schism betwixt science and religion. Both approaches require discipline, concentration and keen observation. One relies more heavily of reason and one more on intuition... but they complement one another beautifully, eh? Either extreme activity is less than the fusion of these dualistic hemispheres of cognition.

I believe that we are what we were created to be, those would exist in a realm of duality, called to unify our own divided state of mind/self/being and so, prepare to merge within the whole of the Cosmic Being which IMO, looks out from behind the eyes of all material life forms, seemingly inanimate physical objects, astral entities and even the emptiness of space. I speculate this totality feels itself as existent within all hearts, within all forms & phenomena. Still, it remains Void of any fixed and singular form; remains free of any dimensional limitations. A monumental paradox for our human sensibility to grok, that's for sure!

That being said, in terms of the common vernacular for the idea of empirical "science", no creed, mystical practice or "religion" can be truly considered a pragmatic branch of scientific study. Or can it be? It certainly has been before, throughout the cyclical ages of mankind (until the Age of Reason dawned), especially within Eastern thought. Which, if one digs into the heart of Gnosticism, Alchemy or perhaps be inclusive in Sufism, it's essentially the same scheme of understanding, which the Eastern paths are truly all about. Much like the idea of the Tao in Chinese thought, the highest principles are those of an awakened degree of observation and then, a desire to fuse consciously with the Oneness.

So, from an early age, I was encouraged to push the barrier of my own limits in understanding, using scientific principles and to steadfastly cultivate a detailed conceptual formatting of what I really mean, as a tiny human being, when I utter the word "God". I've had an intense desire to touch the very fabric of the Divine, since before I even developed my rational capacities to their fullest. In other words, the my view from my windowsill has been that of an explorer and as such, must never, never, never simply accept ANYTHING at face value and operate or believe in a distant Omniscient Being, with blind faith alone to verify it's reality.

The most important thing I got from my early education with metaphysical issues, was that we CAN find whatever it is we are searching for within our own minds. That THOUGHT itself was an avenue to pierce the myriad mysteries which surround us in this anthropomorphic paradigm. That within the mind of an individual, our antennae to the realm of pure ideas, lies a connection to everything else in this material multiverse and even beyond the borders of it's dimension.

When I was 10 years old, I very nearly drowned in our swimming pool. After some confusion on my part, I found myself floating 12 feet above my own prone body. My father was pumping the water out of my lungs and I watched him performing CPR on my unconscious physical body. Being a child, I enjoyed the buoyancy and freedom I felt. Yet, I clearly recall my sequence of thoughts.

"How can I be flying above my body? If I am not that person laying on the ground, who or what am I? If I am not my physical body, what am I made of? I must be a soul! Yes, I am the soul which lives inside of that little boy."

I felt so elated and free that I was in total bliss. This was even better than candy or ice cream!!! I was drawn to look up above where I floated, hovering between the 2 worlds, and instead of seeing a powder blue sky and puffy white clouds, as it had been just moments before, I saw only an expanse of blinding white light. Well, not exactly "white", as it seemed crystal clear and all kinds of pulsing colors seemed to be emanating out of the strobing epicenter of the radiating luminosity, like the rainbow fractals I would see on psychedelics, only 8 years later.

Even though I was still a child, I KNEW instinctively that the Blinding light was God's true spiritual form... a form that crossed from the abode of the Divine, to the realm of this lovely material universe. Was it God who sheds light from within our own sun and the billions of stars in outer space? Is God somehow a being of pure light or is the light of God all that we are able to initially SEE of this infinite presence?

Currently, I think that there exists this Supreme state of being that patiently awaits us all to join it's awareness in a Heavenly vibrational frequency that exists always and forevermore, right here & now. I'd theorize now that the material universe is overlaid upon it's seemingly limitless energy field and shimmering effulgence.

So, I felt I had to choose between ascending into the light and die materially or to return to my prone body. I thought about my grandmother, my parents, my brother and my good friends. My emotion swelled. I just couldn't allow them to suffer the sorrow and heartache caused by my death. I wanted so badly to merge within the great light, but after a few moments of prolonged hesitation, I willed myself back into my dying mortal frame.

This was followed by the most intense pain I've ever felt! And I've had 8 infected teeth that had to have root canals done. The sheering pain of nearly drowning was several times more agonizing. I would have screamed but my mouth was too busy coughing-up chlorinated water. My lungs felt like they were about to burst open! There was the searing sensation of a millions pinpoints of severe pain within my chest.

Honestly, too this day, I am torn if I made the right choice. Or did I even have a choice at all? Is free will a compromise we make with the universe or our decision alone? I do not know for sure but I think I am learning little bits and pieces of the whole, as I follow my chosen spiritual path.

I left the church when I was 16 years old, as I had begun to smoke marijuana and I didn't feel comfortable within the structure of any religion, or the strict dogmatism of the whole church-going mentality. I had begun to find something other than faith to inspire me towards greater understanding of what God actually means... I had found ENERGY coursing throughout myself and everything else outside of myself. This energy was intelligent and so loving, no words can accurately describe it. Perhaps Sacred is sufficient? I really, really like that word.

Also, I had begun to do Seon Buddhist sitting meditation (Zen), through my involvement with Korean martial arts, so something was rapidly happening to my capacity for keenly -focused perception. And I guess that it has been snowballing for 38 years and counting? Such progressive training allows for a gradual attunement to an immeasurably powerful current of (seemingly) insubstantial energy, which we are simultaneously, both a tiny part of said flowing current... and existent within the very center of this formless, swirling fulcrum of energy current. Like what John C. Lilly calls, The Center of the Cyclone (a good read).

I believe that God is found within oneself, as oneself, not merely in an organized human place of worship. Is not God too infinite, too grand to be housed in a man-made box? Is not the cosmos itself the abode of the Divine? Are not also the subatomic levels of manifestation, which exist everywhere as matter within space and conversely... space within matter, the "Throne of God"?

Should we obediently accept the stories we read in the Torah/Bible/Koran without any personnel contact with this force, which we humans label Divinity? So too, is not the whole of creation composed of THAT which initially caused quantum fluctuations in the first place? I honestly feel that Einstein was correct, there is indeed a Unified Field of Energy. A Grid of interconnection if you will. Which appears absolutely accessible subjectively, yet, cannot be proven to any other individual. So, if this can be perceived subjectively as a hyper-reality and an immanence, is this not most palpable to the soul of humankind? The third time I ingested LSD, back in 1977, this became overwhelmingly clear to me!

Therefore, how can a God which transmuted itself from the emptiness of immaterial being, into material being, be that far away from THAT which it becomes? Are we then God dreaming we are mortals... or are we mortals in need of an awakening, whereby we SEE that we are all God-substance, all one whole of awareness? And if everything in existence is brought into being from the radiance of Divine Being, then in truth, WTF are we? Logically speaking, we are all God. And furthermore, if we are all part of and therefore, NOT at all separate from the living essence of Spirit... thus, all that exists has always been composed of Brahman, the Indivisible Lord.

Now, this idea births the realization that the old Judeo/Christian/Islamic Deity is NOT separate nor apart from oneself, nor everything else in this perceivable universe (as well as the eternally unborn formlessness of the Clear Light of the Void).

Surely, as reason dictates metaphysically, either everything is God or there is no God at all. Our species incessant need to anthropomorphize God is quite an unfruitful projection. Is it not better to seek awaking from our own mirages and personal delusions about the Omniversal whole?



I have come to believe that when we cultivate enough transcendental experience within this Field of Intelligent Being, we do actually KNOW. It is on another level than deduction. It is instant and definitely a REMEMBRANCE. A direct and special type of knowledge, one in which we actually loose ourselves, our very ego-selves, through temporary immersions, psychic attunement & conscious union.

Knowledge appears in many forms and in some rare cases, without any form at all. Then it is more a feeling of interconnection or perhaps, a suspension of knowing the universe we are born within on another level, altogether. For many a psychonaut, there is a calling to find this expansive state within ourselves and merge within it's unified frequency of energy, to taste of the wholeness of the totality, (the eternal light and indivisibility of the Omniself).

Not meaning to write an autobiography, folks. It's just that these states of consciousness are not just limited to entheogens and tripping one's brains out. Mystical experiences are common with our kind, as it is a pre-programmed aspect of our inner nature. Sensory deprivation, NDE, meditation and/or OBE and deep moments spent in contemplation, can all facilitate these profound shifts in awareness. Oh yes, did I leave out LOVE? True love occurring outwardly as: love of family, love of another sexual self, love of living, love of the singing breezes and shimmering rays of sunshine.

Is not love itself, as a thought-from and vibrational frequency, across the board, the most Godly state to experience? Psychedelics sure do bring this to the fore, however, and with deeply respectful usage, they are truly a Godsend, no pun intended.

Yes (by your definition)

I believe i come in contact with a higher power, but not divine one. I believe the intelligence encountered is one of a conscious earth, mother gaia. I think humans exist on a living, conscious earth the way we have bacteria living on our skin, neither being aware of the others thoughts, actions, etc...

Yes... no.. I don't know. What is god again?

Hello...

YES

Also, I can relate to your experience most definitely...

My feeling, simply is the phenomena of consciousness pervades every stretch of the universe including us, and upon key neurotransmitter activity we simply perceive that infinite bottom-level-structure of existence that runs through it all..including us. At the core of everything..it is THAT. Pure undifferentiated awareness (consciousness). And that pure undifferentiated consciousness has evolved and manifests itself over grand scales of time to eventually again realize itself.

But I do not think (like others have said) that it's the God of old ..white bearded man or any sort of humanoid figure or intelligence............

It just simply IS.

I think "God" is a presumption we bring into the admittedly overwhelming event. In my experience, God has antennae and fangs and eyeball festooned tentacles. Best to check all baggage at the gate.

All of your replies have been a great solace to me. Thank you, I didn't expect that.
With love,
Dora

To me, God led me to the experience in the first place by leading me to the people who offered it and providing a safe environment to do it in. Then, during the experience, for me, he is behind it all, however one might define it as spirits or guides or self. I cannot imagine such a profound experience without God being behind it because to me he is the orchestrator of everything. And, I accept.