You are hereForums / Non-Duality / Non-Duality and Integration
Non-Duality and Integration
This thread wants to explore how the Absolute and the relative, The One and the many integrate beyond the divide of calling one 'reality' and the other 'illusion'.
Excuse me?
Let us not confuse United States puritan politics of ignorantly claiming the "higher moral ground" through lobotomy and violence with VIRTUE...?
'Necessary Suffering' can not be imposed, because it is based on Oneness and integration. 'Unnecessary suffering' can be imposed, especially self-imposed. Google Victor Frankl for the razor's edge on this. He went through the Holocaust on the premise of non-duality...
"'Necessary Suffering' can not be imposed, because it is based on Oneness and integration. 'Unnecessary suffering' can be imposed, especially self-imposed. Google Victor Frankl for the razor's edge on this", said wisdompoint.
Suffering is suffering, and pain is pain. There is a relationship between the two, of course, and it usually involves a strong connection/identification with a self. Suffering is often emotionalized pain.
I can either experience pain as pain, or I can experience pain as MY pain and invite the experience of suffering to accompany it.
When I experience pain as pain, it comes and goes. As all apperances do.
But when I experience pain as my pain, it tends to be felt a lot more intensely and last much longer. Enter suffering, stage left.
(Necessary or unnecessary) suffering is pain that has been heavily identified with a self.
Or a pain that has been judged.
Occasionally, I will experience "I am in pain". But when I remember that I am that too (pain, that is), I know longer experience "I am in pain"; I experience "I am pain" instead. And suffering has very little chance of being invited into the mix.
The next time that you experience some form of suffering which premised on a pain, try this experiment:
be the pain, not the person who is pained.
Your experience of suffering may significantly alter.
I have always done that since I was a child, especially when I had to go to the dentist. Everyone is surprised at how much pain I can handle this way.
Otherwise, I find your construct of "suffering" rather misleading. The simple fact is, that the capacity to suffer something has to be there BEFORE pain can be experienced at all.
How we "suffer" something and how we "act" on something is the more exact distinction; and with that distinction the Hindu Bias of non-duality promotes "suffering" as a fundamental principle of 'non-duality'.
This notion of "suffering" is essencing. We let go of our agency and merge. But that is only half the story, and not even the major Enlightened Hindus are content with that anymore starting with Vivekananda, a staunch Advaitist.
Integration is the key for the West, instead of getting sucked into the outdated Hindu Bias of suffering vs. doing. They are two sides of the same mystery as Aristotle recognized. The capacity of agency is as important as the capacity to suffer in any life form - but especially in self-awareness.
"I have always done that since I was a child, especially when I had to go to the dentist. Everyone is surprised at how much pain I can handle this way". - wisdompoint
When you are the pain, is there anyone there to endure it? I do not apperceive anyone enduring anything, when I am the pain. Can you be the pain and be enduring it at once? I haven't found that to be the case.
*****
"Otherwise, I find your construct of "suffering" rather misleading. The simple fact is, that the capacity to suffer something has to be there BEFORE pain can be experienced at all." - wisdompoint
Mis-leading to whom? And where is it that you want someone to be led to, and are concerned about them being mis-led away from? Is there a destination that you would like someone to be led to?
....
You obviously offered a conceptual construct by connecting pain and suffering in a certain way? I find this construct misleading. That is all I am saying. And I committed an argument to back up what I am saying.
Are you deceptive about your own constructs by excusing them absolutely, or do you suffer of non-dualistic amnesia?
Denying our own constructs is the typical circus of non-dualism....
Are you deceptive about your own constructs by excusing them absolutely, or do you suffer of non-dualistic amnesia? - wisdompoint
Either/or, eh?
I'll choose both.
I am both.
And any other potion that you may want to place on my plate.
Thanks for the offerings.
Hhhmmm...It is about "your plate" now and potions being placed on it by me?
I assume "your plate" is the plate of non-duality? Or is it the plate of how you conceptualize non-duality?
Let me know - if you feel like it?
Interesting topic, and one that I have grappled with for many years. For me, integration and responabilty become issues once awakening has taken place. I think prior to awakening we (by we I mean identified Consciousness) are (is) trapped in a cycle of conditioned thinking and responses that to say we are responsible for our actions is like saying a person who has cancer is responsible for his/her sickness. I think once we awaken to our true nature, then it is up to us to create from our true nature to the benefit of all (Consciousness).
Holding ourselves account-able at our highest point, even though we are suffering in relative ways, is the key to truly become liberated.
The ability to account for our selves from the point of the ONE does not seek guilt or blame, but empowerment on all levels of relative suffering and confusion.
For example cancer: There is necessary suffering and unnecessary suffering from the point of view of integration. Necessary suffering leads to a better understanding, unnecessary suffering leads to even more ignorance.
The point probably is this, there are no excuses or "illusion" ever...even not cancer.
As long as we don't understand our account-ability for our selves, for what we do, our emotion, our mentations, and what we think, individually and as a community - that long we are in peril of self-destruction.
This account-ability is not whimsically based on this or that program of moral, economical and spiritual improvement - it comes from the highest point (the totality) of our very own being, the untouchable and undaunted ONE SPIRIT in all of us.
Thank you Andreas, for this clearly formulated topic.
Maybe my comment will be less clear but i hope not.
Let me, just for handiness, call the illusory "Conventional Reality" and the s.c. Real "Absolute Reality".
Very provokingly dualistic, I know and I think that althongh AR is all there is, for some reason we are stuck in CR.
CR is all we have. It is mysterious,and this mystery is all we have to deal with. There is nothing to integrate and we have no power to do anything about it.
In the CR there are the exteriors that we mostly agree with each other about. If it rains, no doubt about it.
But how about the interiors, the states of mind, concepts, feelings and sensations? We cannot feel what the other feels nor show our interior to someone. We can only communicate by words or behaviors. In CR there are also different stages of developement. Someone understands more, others understand less.
To some persons can even happen (by grace?) that they reach some state of consciousness where the emptiness of CR becomes clear and, catching a glimpse of an other reality, the Absolute Unchanging they start suffering, feeling separate from it. Then it may happen them an experience (or even a permanent state) of being one with the AR and that all their purposes and actions are inspired by this "higher" state. But are they?
Maybe they are, maybe not.
I haven`t any access into this inspiration. If they will save us from self-destruction we shall see.
What I presume, since we are always dealing with interiors in CR, is that we cannot know anything about AR except our own personal experience of it. All we can say is that it is a state of mind that we cannot describe.
As for create something: God creates life, life is created.
What humans think they create, no matter on which level of consciousness, it is: - hybris.
This is a preliminary response that needs much more exploration in non-duality...
If there is no "illusion", there is also no "Conventional Reality" that is somehow different from an "Absolute Reality"?
'Interiors' and 'Exteriors' are one and the same structure or process of awareness. It can never be separated. They are absolutely inter-dependent. If we insist on "separating" them, it creates a path of disintegration and 'unnecessary suffering'...
There is no "illusion".
Spirit and Matter are ONE: Unity in Diversity: Integration.
The account-ability of self-awareness is a tremendous shift and crisis of life.
Here comes a preliminary comment to your response from me too.
Besides the problem of illusion vs reality we have also the query of suffering.
Unsolved and discussed during ages, but always vitally important. Therefore we never give up,
Tousends of years of reflection and a variety of convinctions of sages disputing with each others can only prove that, in spite of our evolved self-consciousness (interiors) and technology (exteriors), not much can be told that hasn`t been spoken of before.
We are the nth generation which is fighting with existential
issues.So I think we should consider this perspective and be humble about our capacities to formulate absolute truths.
Anyway we are always challenged to seek the Truth, so here we are.
The categorical refusal of the non-dualists to discuss the relative vs the absolute is like a fundamentalistic phobia.
Everything is ONE, I know. But in our limited relative world we have things that we can totally agree upon and others e.g. our feelings, sensations, phantasies, dreams (interiors) that demand an other approach (hermeneutics or interpretation).
I maintain that even the experiences or states of oneness or different interpretations of them must be relegated in the relative domain.
And our self-awarness is given to us to use in a hopefully ever deepening siral of understanding.And we are doing the best we can out of it no matter if we feel accountable or not. Everyone on his or her or its level of evolution.
Our suffering is also a very good example of how difficult it is to discuss interiors.
Yes, giving virtue to suffering. I remember Verdi`s beautiful Nabucco words.
It is such a big issue that I don`t know what to start with.
Maybe someone else has something wise to share about it.
Thank you.
Suffering is based on sentiency, or as the Buddhists say, 'sentient being'.
This is the first mystery, if there ever is one. Why is ther sentiency and the capacity to suffer something?
Suffering can be enjoyment as well as pain and pleasure. Once we connect to our essential sentiency, we are in touch with a most profound mystery of life.
But it gets even more amazing, once we consider life's capacity to act. And the most amazing thing is the resulting self-awareness of sentiency AND agency as an integral path of experience, learning and mastery.
"There is necessary suffering and unnecessary suffering from the point of view of integration. Necessary suffering leads to a better understanding, unnecessary suffering leads to even more ignorance." - wisdompoint.
That point of view qualifies you to be an exceptional prison warden or Secretary of Defense (i.e. "shock and awe", collateral damage).
Not to mention a God who is more than willing to send some of his children to hell for some necessary suffering.
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world.
I'm sure that that mindset is a significant contributor to that sad fact.