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Originally Posted by Charbucks  I should have inserted sarcasm tags around the post you were responding to. |
Humor always contains a core of truth.
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But saying that the entire world is an illusion that you can modify? That's just ridiculous.
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All truths begin as blasphemies.
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Why do you care so much about eating animals if you can just imagine up another one? They're not really there anyway.
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I don't care about animals, I care FOR animals. I care for the illusion, because it is me, and I am it. My caring for animals is me caring for a part of my larger self. If I want to create a joyful illusion, I 'do unto others as I would have it done unto me', because 'what goes around come around'.
If I want to create a hellish experience, I create a hellish experience for others (people, animals, etc). Yet that is something that one tends to stop doing as awareness grows.
You're right, "they" are not really "there". There is no there, and there is no they. There is only me, here, now.
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I'm glad you can distinguish between a movie and reality. Sure, shit happens in a movie, someone gets kills, molested, cheated on, etc. Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me cry. Sometimes it keeps me up all night with crazy imagery flashing in my mind, but I know that these things are different from the real world.
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Exactly. Your understanding that it is only a movie lessens your suffering. You enjoy the drama, but if it gets to be too much, you remind yourself 'it's only a movie'. Were you to forget this, it could become a terrible experience.
Likewise, as people have forgotten life is an illusion, they have created lives that are terrible experiences. Life was never meant to be terrible, but joyful.
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Can you truly say that the real world is just another movie?
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Life is not a movie. That was an analogy to help you understand the creation and relief of suffering based on how "real" you believe an experience to me.
Life is an illusion. But we are not mere actors, pretending to be what we are. We are BEING what we are - choosing to be a particular object within the illusion. We can do this mindfully or mindlessly. There are many levels of awareness.
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Do you honestly not really suffer when you see pain?
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Just because I speak of higher levels of mastery, does not mean I have fully realized all of those levels. It is possible to understand mastery before it is realized. What determines the true level of mastery of a being is not what that being knows (as is commonly believed), but what that being demonstrates of what it knows.
Many is the person who came to great understandings but never put them into practice.
Often I perceive pain as illusion. In that case, there is no suffering involved. In fact, often there is no pain, because when you see it as illusion, you tend to go another way that doesn't create pain. (See the animals comment above.) In some case, I still get drawn into the illusion, forgetting it is an illusion to a large degree. Rarely do I forget completely - there is usually a layer of awareness that it is an illusion even as I am suffering.
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If you get in a fight with your significant other, do you grab a bag of chips and wait for the "good part"?
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Not sure I understand your question. But I don't get 'in fights' with people I love - that is a contradiction I rarely demonstrate anymore.
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You still didn't answer my question of how the universe can be an illusion while at the same time having some greater meaning that only those with super mind-expanding higher thought capacities can understand.
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I thought I did. If you still feel I haven't, or if you haven't understood the answer, you'll need to clarify the question for me.