Nihilism Among Christians

I watched this other movie in which a woman fell in love with a man from India. He was a bit more evolved than her, and when she playfully asked what he would do if she simply disappeared and never returned, he replied in all seriousness, "Well, I would try to not expect you." She was floored by his response. But yes, I see what you are saying.

Suffering is learning, if only to learn how not to suffer. After all, it's the wound that heals! That can be taken two ways. It's a koan of my own creation.

 

It is a good one.

I would counter, that although the squeaky wheel sometimes gets greased, the wheel that is working properly, doesn't squeak.
It is not the problem that teaches, but the solution.

When you put your hand to a flame and discover it burns, there is no reason to leave your hand there to burn. Best to remove it and not put it back there again. To learn the meaning of suffering, is to no longer require it.

The perspective that causes suffering is that the world is valuable for what it has to offer. In Eastern terms, attachment to form chaining one to a cycle of perpetual recurrence. In christ terms, building your house on an unsound foundation of transience and having your house wash away.

There is a limit to our capacity for pain just as there is a limit to the existence of this particular solar system and then time becomes of the essence.

 

Ok, perhaps it is true, as you say, that it is not the problem that teaches, but the solution. I know that you're saying that the problem or the wound need not exist in the first place, but the fact that it does exist would seem to indicate that it is needed, and in fact could be seen as not a problem, but simply as a particular path; not a good path, not a bad path, but just a path. That is, there are no problems and solutions, only paths and destinations, or needs and fulfillments. Perhaps there is nothing negative about the process, and that to percieve/judge it as anything other than necessary is to . . . judge it.

Maybe the problem/wound and the solution/healing cannot be separated from each other. Maybe time, being an illusion, creates the appearance of a separation between problems and solutions; what else can you expect from an illusion? Alright, I sense that I am about to begin my rambling. It is a problem, is it not?

 

I am saying that we needn't keep being wounded or we don't have to hold our hand in the fire until the flesh melts off and the bones become charred, a first degree burn will do.

In eternity it does not matter at all, in time, it is tragic.

 

Yes, first degree burns will do, but there's nothing wrong with charred bone either. It tastes a lot like kitten. Oh shit! I guess the cat's out of the bag now--or in this case, into the kettle. Well, I guess there's nothing to do now but sit here and wait for the Authorities to arrive.

But seriously, what if one man's tragedy is another man's excitement and adventure? Would that necessarily make him/her perverted? After all, what is time for, if not to experience diversity? Who's to say?

The Buddha became enlightened. So, if you meet the Buddha on the road, maybe you kill him because he has no buisiness here; that is, unless he has forgotten something . . .

I have to mow now before the rain comes. I have a rider-lawn-mower, but I use my 22 inch push mower. It takes me three hours to do it. Others say I'm punishing myself. My contention is that those who have that opinion can barely walk two miles without stopping to make a phone call to someone to come pick them up and take them back home. Who is right?

 

Obviously suffering is allowed, I just say it is not required. There is a way out of suffering for those who desire it. Some think they prefer to be sick for secondary reward, sympathy and the sort and the attraction is critically strong.

Those who suffer are looking for something they believe they do not have yet nothing real is missing from reality. Truth, reality, transcends transience.

There is as always with me, a practical nature to what I am saying. Those in the throws of agony are prone to desperate acts and as such we are all subject to collateral damage. No one says they want strife yet they do not know how to avoid it.

All anxiety is caused by the misapprehension of what is so. Fear inevitably gives way to viciousness. Forgive them, they know not what they do.

A mind without anxiety is wholly kind.

There is a line of thought that suggests, if there is no problem, there is no reason for being. A line of thought that says the world is for learning otherwise we wouldn't be here. It is the idea of guilt.

A good teachers only desire is to not be needed.

 

We never stop learning. If you are here, you are in the process of learning. Tis just a path, and that which you have decided to judge as guilt is just a tool, not a sin, not an error, but just a tool on the path. Or, just a rung on the ladder that we've all climbed or are climbing.

All people play their role in the great mix of personalities and attitudes that gamely go together to bring all together. I am for you, and you are for me, but we are not all.

 

If you are here, you have attachments. Something drew you here. What is it, or who are they? Having said that, there is nothing wrong with attachments, unless you have an attachment to the idea of no attachments. Are you free of attachments, or are you simply trying to disconnect yourself from certain aspects of your reality due to some instilled sense of guilt about having attachments?

 

Knowledge is being shared. Learning does not have to mean trial and error.

Climbing from where to where. This world is sensational and we shall perpetually experience sensations, one followed by the other, some of which we may call pleasant and some not so.

What role?

 

I am open minded.

 

You ask: What role? Your role as the you aspect of the All, but of course.

 

I think divisions are corridors of refraction and that we are equal to any aspect.
I do not feel I have a role as an aspect. I may choose roles for myself and assign roles to others. These are mental constructs and do not encompass the height and breadth of what we are.

 

Sure, I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together. But you forget that you live in a duality, and you forget the reason for that duality. You may be attempting to divorce yourself from that reality.

 

Duality is an appearance fostered by a split mind. There is no but. There are not different levels of reality but there are different mental constructs of it.
What do you think the reason for duality is?

The only divorce I have attempted is from my ex-wife and it was accomplished.

 

More on the "but", of things.

Difficulties persist because people think they discover some truth and try to use that truth to make illusion real. If you really have truth, truth will dispel the illusion.

 

The duality is essentially a tool or classroom that you yourself are now using. It allows for a frame within which you act out the part of you sitting in the chair you are sitting in. It allows for the appearance of up and down, left and right, yes and no, etc. etc. It is like a game of monopoly where you agree to play by the rules to meet one particular challenge/difficulty or another. If you are not here for the challenge, then what are you here for? You may say that you are onto the game and that you see it from afar, and that you recognize it for the illusory play that it is, but I still hear your dice rolling, and your piece is still on the board! So . . .

You share in this duality in that you are subject to its qualities no less than anyone else. If you really have truth, then yeah,truth will dispel the illusion, and you will cease to be here because, well, what would be the point? We choose not to dispel the illusion because we're not done with what we intended to use it for. You are here because you have agreed to suspend reality in favor of your agenda.

As far as the reason for the duality, the reasons are as many and as diverse as the aspects populating this space and time. You are essentially asking me what your agenda is. I'm afraid I can tell you only about mine, and maybe not even that.

 

Joy! Again, it is simply not so that if there is no problem to solve or no improvements to be made then there is no reason to be here. We are here for experiential conjugation of self. We owe the world nothing and it owes us nothing.

What duality? I have no requirement to be muddle headed.

We are not in illusion. Illusion is not real. We may have ideas that make us envision ways and means that are not in fact at play.

If you can't tell me what my agenda is then how can you say that I am here because I have agreed to suspend reality.

The duality is in your split mind.

 

You err when you interpret my comment about challenge and difficulty to mean that you owe, or are owed, something. You are believing that I am referring to karmic debt based on guilt or something like that, when in fact I am referring to your challenges and difficulties.

The fact that you are here is proof that you have suspended reality. Otherwise you would not have found yourself facing the challenge or difficulty of living with someone that you did not know you didn't want to be with. Neither would you have faced the difficulty of divorcing that someone. You may catagorize that chosen experience as joy, but then, what would not come under the heading of "joy" given that criteria?

You chose to be be here. You chose to adhere to the conditions here in order to learn something. Why are you judging the workings of this duality to be synonymous with muddle-headedness? Is it because there is nothing to know, and all is clear?

You have agree to suspend reality. That is a given. I can't tell you what your agenda is because I don't know why you have agreed to suspend reality. Perhaps there is more to relationships that you are needing to understand. Or, perhaps there is less to relationships that you are needing to understand. At any rate, that is why you are here. Relationship is all there is! What else would you be exploring?

 

Not my leap of reasoning, yours.

You doubt that you are real? The fact that I am proves that I am real.

Simply, all anxiety is caused by the misapprehension of what is so. A split mind is a confused mind.

No, I categorize such experience as nightmare.

I did not create myself but I choose to remain, to accept the gift of life.

in this instance, I am asking, what duality?

Again, I cannot judge what you have not described.

No, that is whacked.

The I am I call myself is the same I am you call yourself. Knowledge is being shared. There has been no suspension of reality but we can be deluded.

 

When I asked you what you are here for, if not the challenge, you replied that you are here for the joy. You went further in your answer to say that we owe the world nothing, and it owes us nothing. Is it really such a leap for me to infer from that comment that the idea of owing or being owed was a reference to the idea of karmic debt?

Also, you seem to have projected the notion that I have said that you are not real, when what I said was that you have suspended reality. Actually, such a projection is a good example of the ways in which we suspend reality, opting instead to favor what we momentarily prefer, and then living according to that projection. If not you, then who agreed to suspend reality in favor of what you have mistakenly projected??

If I tell you to think about a lemon cut in half, and to think about putting one of the halves in your mouth and biting down on it, you will experience an increased flow of saliva. You are responding to something that isn't real. You don't know it, but this reality is much like the lemon, or rather, the idea of the lemon. If you were not suspending reality, I couldn't be here, since the division between us is an illusion--an illusion of your own making.

It is only my opinion, but I would say that you are what is known as a "floater." You are neither above, nor below. Your feet are not touching the ground because you are afraid of what you will perceive there; and what it is that you believe you will perceive is based on the past, much like the nonexistent lemon which causes so much drool. Being grounded is not a bad thing.