[mkirkpatrick]

Thanks William,what is our will,my will,and who am I you?All good questions,not all that easy to answer,but here goes;we are our will,yet Will enshrouds a mystery,a mystery so
hidden that we fail even to recognize it as a mystery.Will so fundamentally,so intimately
constitutes our very self that we stay utterly unaware of it.If fact,we cannot be directly aware of our will.Find the wind?We cannot see the wind itself,yet it possesses a sometimes awesome power.Will forms that part of us who genuinely says "I",the one who sees by means of our awareness.More subjective than awareness,will is the "user of awareness".We can be aware of our awareness,but we cannot be directly aware of our Will,because will originates beyond awareness.At best we can,so to speak,ride it.open it,
become it.


This mysterious Will matters to us profoundly and immediately.For our personal journey through life,our relation toWill is crucial.In particular,to go very far along the spiritual path
requires more and more resolve,and the resolve to let go of our many attachments along
the way toward a stabilized presence.

It is in the ultimate ablity of alignment of "our" Will with that of the Absolute,so that we become as One! Where we can then say;I am that I AM!

regards michael.

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Will is one's choice desire to think, and to do...

regards,

[mkirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Lloyd Gillespie

Will is one's choice desire to think, and to do...

Yes that it Lloyd,right on the money.

Where does attention(will) come from?To take it practically,we ask whether we can approach the source of Will in our own direct experience,within ourselves.This appears impossible,because will cannot be objectified.Will can never be the object of our awareness,because will is always the subject;the seer rather than the seeing or the seen.

To move into theseer and behind the seer,we can use attention as a kind of a rope,
guiding our steps back along itself toward its source,back beyond consciousness.

The Korean Zen Master Chinul coined an appropriate phrase."Tracing back the radiance".


The source of that radiance lies within the noumena,residing in the Absolute.

Within the Will there is a deeper aspect,one that arises at times that causes us to feel
connected to and a part all,it brings in its wake a feeling of "awe" and a profound sense
of "wholeness"this is that which I would call "the presence"we can approach presence
from front or from behind.From the front,the side of sensory perceptions,we approach
through quiet relaxation and meditation,letting thoughts,emotions,and sensations settle
down,until we become aware of the gaps between them,and then aware of the consciousness filling those gaps.

As our energies settle,consciousness may coalesce likebeads of water joining to form a
pool.We rest in the pool of consciousness,not entangled with its contents,not lost in sensations.Then the foundation for presence grows strong.

regards michael.

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Energy is the absolute self-fundamental substance, acting and reacting, on/in/of itself. The way I see it, we have all been debating fundamentals, which are in fact, identicalities of the fundamental absolute. When we can all see substance and energy are actually, identical twins, of the one absolute, and neither is functional or valid, without both at once, we must come to the conclusion, we've simply been debating a moot point. And this is true for both sides. Energy is nothing without substance, and substance is nothing without energy. This dichotomy has been argued for many, many centuries, and turns out to be nothing but a word definition game of silly mis-understandings. When they are understood as the absolute one, force/substance, of the entire universe, debating differences of mind, spirit, consciousness, matter, substance, will, cognition, perception or whatever, vanishes into the moot points of the ontic words we have all over-worshipped, for centuries. If it's all energy/substance, it matters not what definitions we apply, it's only one true definition, so all points of difference become automatically moot. If we can allow this, then maybe we can allow each side of spirit and science to define their own sides, in their own languages, as it's all simple linguistics of varrying ideas.

Just think about it for a second, if it's all energy/substance, it matters not at what stage we define innanimate to annimate, or whether we define mind as finite or infinite, or one chooses consciousness and spirit and the other doesn't, as it's all the same exact energy/substance, from infinity, to now, to a future infinity, or from the finiteness to the infiniteness, if it's all energy/substance, and all came from energy/substance, and is all always going to be energy/substance, even in any changed state forms, it's still absolutely self-fundamental energy/substance___and the mind can't think beyond this state of all, unless you just want to think up things and nothings, that can't possibly exist. Such above definitions of self-fundamental energy/substance, can't ever be defined beyond this point, so it doesn't even prevent it being God, if the believer thus chooses, and not if another chooses not to, but any absolute proofs, beyond the self-fundamental energy/substance state are absolutely impossible. I just don't think this has ever been stated before, at least not in this way___I guess the wording of the first sentence, above, was too simple, to have been thought of, before...

More later, on the oneness state of the duality of the hydrodynamics of electrodynamics, which actually ties all the above together, as science/religion unifications...

Regards,
Lloyd

[mkirkpatrick]

Just to say Lloyd,that this is a very interesting reply from you,thanks.

regards michael.

[Dr. Waldrope]

Hi!!

I just want to weigh in here a bit. First of all, everyone has made some very interesting statements. Semantics is everything.
Just a note on will (and intent):

Carlos Casteneda pointed out a very important thing about will as it applies to manifestation of the mind in the material.

Intent is what you want to achieve(flying, teleportation, or whatever).
Will is what drives it.

Inshallah,

dr.w

[mkirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Dr. Waldrope

Hi!!

I just want to weigh in here a bit. First of all, everyone has made some very interesting statements. Semantics is everything.
Just a note on will (and intent):

Carlos Casteneda pointed out a very important thing about will as it applies to manifestation of the mind in the material.

Intent is what you want to achieve(flying, teleportation, or whatever).
Will is what drives it.

Inshallah,

dr.w

Thanks dr.w.i too read Casteneda many moons ago,some think him a fraud,I enjoyed the
books though,fraud or not,btw Inshallah is the Turkish saying,we hear it every year when we go there,i think it means "if allah so wills".

regards michael.

[Dr. Waldrope]

I realize that many consider C. C. to be a fraud. However, he made a very good point about the validity of co-subjective observation. I think he was using a semi-fictional vehicle to disseminate perfectly valid shamanic concepts.
I like the title of this thread... it reminds of something I posted here early on... As above, so below.
Look within to understand that which is without.
Cheers, dr.w

[mkirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Dr. Waldrope

I realize that many consider C. C. to be a fraud. However, he made a very good point about the validity of co-subjective observation. I think he was using a semi-fictional vehicle to disseminate perfectly valid shamanic concepts.
I like the title of this thread... it reminds of something I posted here early on... As above, so below.
Look within to understand that which is without.
Cheers, dr.w

Thanks dr.w.Thats right C C. did make sense and was accurate in points of shamanic
concepts.

The primary objective of beings who have evolved to the point of self-consciousness
is self-understanding,for when this is fully achieved,realization reveals the true being
that is a wonder to behold.


regards michael.

[Dr. Waldrope]

Indeed M.

Re: the actual process of self-understanding-

First, one must develop the ability to be objective about their self.
This is quite difficult as it requires us to be brutally honest with ourselves about ourselves. Our ego works against this, of course. Here is an exercise I did many years ago...
I made a list of all my self-perceived traits(good, bad, and indifferent).
Then I gave this list to as many people who knew me as I could (casual friends, lifelong friends, mere acquaintances, family, etc.) and asked them to review, correct and/or edit it in any way they saw fit. The results were astounding...(and I thought I was such a cool guy.)

After a 4 year period of study and meditation, I conducted this exercise again.(some of the people enlisted were the same...some weren't)
The results this time were markedly different. Almost everyone agreed that my self-assessment was mostly accurate.
The operative point here is that in the latest exercise, I was much more objective and honest with myself. While hardly a discription of my higher self, I suppose it gave me a more acute sense of who I was on this plane.

I continue to examine my self in the most objective way I can(knowing that it is ultimately impossible to be completely so.)

objectively yours,
dr.w