Belief or Disbelief? - - Which do you choose to suspend?

[nance]

If you cannot decide or choose one, both or neither, please speak your mind. Otherwise it is not a discussion.

If we are all and one; if Spirit is everything and also the emptiest of things in the sense that we have eliminated our sense of duality... where do you encourage belief or disbelief in your mortal mind; as conscious as I like to think I am, I must say, if I choose one only, then as a writer, I must choose to suspend belief; that way my disbelief could be the devil's advocate to my plots and theories. - - Even if I do believe in now and then as the same in any possible world.

What do you think, really? Perhaps the answer is to live in the center, and choose not to believe or disbelieve, but rather to just be...are you really able to live and walk and speak in this model as a sentient human being?

I hope someone takes this one up. For some reason Jules Verne, the MÖBIUS strip, and grains of sand are coming to my mind.

Enjoy the process! Love - Peace - Light and Puzzles to All!

[Marilyn McCulloch]

Yike. Heavy duty for me this morning/afternoon with all I have whirling through my brain. OK, Nance, I always believe. But my belief is wide open. If/when I am disappointed, I realize that my belief is always limited by my understanding of the true nature of all things and the ever-expanding nature of reality/duality/cosmic possibility. But I still always believe - in miracles, in the process, in the possibility and in the potential of our minds to function on the divine level. (read: essence, source, ever-opening flower) Oh, I remember now - there is a very simple answer for me, well two, really and they are entwined for me in the music of a band by the same name - YES - and "the word is love".

[nance]

Awesome response Marilyn! Just the way I can't seem to write it, short & sweet, I will have to confess a bit of devil's advocacy in this one, it is another one of my social quizes when the conversation lags, but alas, those folks aren't visiting this site despite my best efforts to recruit them. I hit upon this when I read Ahmere Baba, 5 years ago, and oddly enough it has gotten some good turn out in the jail with some of the older and more chill of Alachua County's finest, which made me very happy.

It's sort of like the thought:

"What right have I to celebrate only joy when our sadness was meant to be embraced and celebrated for it's full value to our growth, and deepening of soul as well?"

I fondly refer to this as our "fortunate tragedy" that is always so wonderifically memorable and I love and I celebrate it all.

Thanks for participating! I really love you Marilyn, Peace and thank you again for fighting the Nukes in the Okies Today! You are my kinda Mom! Love - Peace and Much Grooviness to you! xx n

[Erin Michelle]

I have long been accused of living in my own world, a blue crystal cave beneath the sea were i play. Filled with books and true, clear light. I've been called Nimue and it wasn't intended as a compliment. I can't decide which state I live in so I'm content with just "Being There." It's fitting I'm Chance the gardener. But I do believe in Love. I believe we are all firewired to Love through the act of creation and therefore we're all firewired to each other. I suspend belief and accept all offers. Yes, I love The Heart of the Sunrise.
Love, Erin

[nance]

Erin,

You astutely bring up one of my thought forms about belief, in that it is exactly a "thought form" and nothing more.

Therefore, if we suspend our list of all beliefs, and hence their entanglements we are better prepared, in my perspective to allow the correct response to arise in each moment of Now, as a succession of One Long Moment - and not to be wasted with forms of thought, or beliefs that would have us see time as what is real; when time is actually folded into our concerns we become more lost in the fiction of moments, as obstacles to be overcome, to reach for the future of moments, again and again.

This is what we believe, so we can reach the next thing we decide will be the emergent "form of thought" and the newest obstacle we create with the mind's thought, and thus making it into the form of our latest, burning emergency or crisis. An then it is that latest belief that we must attend to, in our mind's way of seeing, address this problem, once surpassed, go on to the next - CRISIS management in order that we be able to insist upon a belief - as necessary to activate us to "take on" or "take charge of" and in this endless loop of doom, choice is always based in an act of moving from one issue to the future issue and so on...then, this chaotic cycle we allow our beliefs to manifest, by virtue of forms and things and stuff of thought - it is and continues to become the ultimate conundrum and the primary cause of our blinding madness and insane trickery of the mind and thus our illusions, which are wholly based or rooted in our belief that these reactions are normal, necessary, and also how we measure our level of productivity!

I SAY BULL!!!! My yard stick is no longer a list of my accomplishments as a survivor of self propagating and never ending future or past of this kind of cyclic hell on earth!

When we are acutely aware and present and attentive to each breath that we breathe, and we focus on each step as we walk, rather than allowing our minds to race into the unreal moments of "thinking ahead" and "planning" that put any one at their destination before the arrival...such as walking from our car to our front door; how many times do we let the mind or mental trickster, project us into our get home, list of tasks before the vehicle has yet to be parked properly, yet there we are, and off we go into our illusion: "feed the dogs, check the mail, go potty for the firs time since I left this morning!!!"

When we haven't greeted our pets yet, and all they really want is acknowledgment, much more than food, and prior to unlocking the door, we are already at the phone in our crazy little minds as a form of thought, checking our messages, and in this rush to move into each of our thoughts as a place we actually believe we will be in, as in the reality of our future moments, we are ill prepared for the arrival to the phone, where we find that our service has been mistakenly shut off. NOW - We are sent into immediate shock, we become unhinged in our confusion, and the belief that what we experience is shattered and we become a cycle of reactions that are self propagating and always behind our current truth, of NOW.

The thought forms that come and go are not necessarily useless in and of them selves, if we are aware of what they are, a form of illusion that we can say hello to, accepts the passing of what these notions are about while in an aware state, without believing or buying into the hallucination of this kind of fiction that is always only the past or the future. Once we recognized this catch 22, then allow our consciousness to discern the real state of presence and live only in this moment, right now ad accept thought, and release it - - gently as another one of our crazy little mind games and follow with our real ability to see the truth and beauty that is normally overlooked, or that we would miss by being present and then not seeing the dandelions growing in the cracks of our walkway, as we move in the real moment of this presence and there by allowing belief to be suspended naturally as the innately correct response to where we are RIGHT NOW.

Never mind the rest of you perceived list of things you believe to be in you nearest future; for this moment, let the answering machine be eliminated through our "distraction filter" - so that we greet our pets with purely loving and focused attetion, before we rush to the next obstacle of feeding them.

Right Now, by suspending our beliefs, we gain immediately the benefit of a major shift in consciousness; Right Now we will see beauty and spend less time reacting, and this is one of many of our forms, that we do have the power to harness, as an ally to our truth and as a passepartout, or turn key to the real, I mean REAL beauty that life holds in our life of the long Now!

The notion of thought and thus, the fiction of any single thought or thing, that is more real and necessary to our attention, than acting in an aware and presently, active, interaction with this very moment, by Being - and responding from within, is primal to our engagement with the collective that is our act of living - the primordial illusion of this material plane is anything that is not, being here right now.

Focal point, NOW, moment here, and now, asking ourselves out loud until we actually get it, not BELIEVE in a concept of Now, BUT KNOW for CERTAIN the answer to this question:

WHERE AM I RIGHT NOW? I AM ALWAYS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!

The rest as my dear uncle taught me many years ago, "It doesn't matter anyway!" Changing this one and only behavioral habit, is what will change our thought forms and allow our feelings to guide our energy and allow each moment to be our innate and peaceful sense of WHAT IS, and thus, let it float to the front of our consciousness and this is what will allow the right RESPONSE to be the choice we make, and the new sign post of an awareness that is responsible and not reckless and reactionary.

Belief and disbelief, can fall to the way side, and we are still in the same moment, as we are, and will be except that we have the ability to ENJOY THE PROCESS OF LIFE - ALL OF LIFE - AS A BEING WHO IS BEING ALIVE AND AWARE OF IT BEFORE WE REGRET LOST MOMENTS, BEOFRE DEATH, AND WELL WORTH LEARNING, because, I know where I am always only an active part of Right Now. My memory, which is not now, cannot haunt me, if I have actually lived interactively with my experience and therefore see not the rhyme nor reason to wallow in that past because it is no longer a fundamental basis of any thing that is me, exactly, right her and right now.

The more finely attuned to the only "real" form there can ever be, which is right now, as an opportunity to be and embrace each moment is to see that we are not a series of linear moments, but alive, only and forever right now, the one long now.

This way is the most powerful and the only means we have to live fully and also elongate our lives in conscious gratitude of where we are; by not looking to the future that is in our mind, a form we imagine, or worrying about the gone-ness of anything past that is not anything functional in thought or form worthy of our truth and duty to evolve and focus upon our response in regard to each moment without a sense of worry or regret.

This is one of the most essential lessons of the purpose of Being - Where are you Now?

When we learn to change our self to spend our conscious moments more closely aligned to our feeling mind or soul, or "what is" the real - the only real that any living creature is able to actively study, we will ultimately come back to our own Being, and for this gift, this tremendously amazing essential Truth in Life Now, the I AM is WHAT WE RECEIVE AS THE REWARD AND PEACE GAINED THROUGH OUR AWAKENING TO THE CONSCIOUSLY AWARE SENSE OF NOW WITHOUT WORRY.

It is not actually an autopilot, but the closest thing a living being can do is to track the course of our flight, and practice not to resist what we are - where we are, in each moment and respond by adjusting the course in measured and responsible small adjustments. Other wise we spend all our energy in over compensation or as we say in sailing Over Steering because of reactionary and involuntary movement.

Be your own self conscious monitoring devise in every moment and you will feel the course and adjust accordingly. It is an innate ability of alchemy that we all have to harness.

I learned a lot of what I have learned in regard to this kind of suspense of belief and also disbelief, in a Class on Jules Verne, and also Comparative Mysticism.

Yesterday - I began reading Mr. Eckhart Tolle's book, "A New Earth." And I am not even going to re-read this post for the fictive thought form that is coming to mind, now is one of seeming to have plagiarized his work; but that is a passing notion, I will choose to refute, so I can be in my moment of breakfast instead because my rising response is: I am here and now I know that we have all siad this for well over 20,000 years or more and so, "It doesn't matter anyway!"

Hey Lily! Kiss my wonderful uncle for me!

Thank you Erin for meeting me on the common ground I was waiting for someone to walk on with me!!!! I Love you! So far, you are in for the final round of Belief or Disbelief - It is Always your now to choose!!!

The Word Is Love! BOOM BABY!!!


Erin Michelle said:

I have long been accused of living in my own world, a blue crystal cave beneath the sea were i play. Filled with books and true, clear light. I've been called Nimue and it wasn't intended as a compliment. I can't decide which state I live in so I'm content with just "Being There." It's fitting I'm Chance the gardener. But I do believe in Love. I believe we are all firewired to Love through the act of creation and therefore we're all firewired to each other. I suspend belief and accept all offers. Yes, I love The Heart of the Sunrise.
Love, Erin

[Marilyn McCulloch]

I love the "one long moment of now" Nance, and Erin! That is where I want to be, and I am there. We do have to remember that we are only remembering everything we have been told about the nature of our world, our life, our reality, and who could possibly tell us about our own reality? When I was a child, my mom was repeatedly asking me "When are you going to come out of your dream world??" I couldn't imagine leaving it, ever. The Be Here Now is ever present, but most are, as you say, too preoccupied with going from one expectation/construct to the next and they do miss it. My family reminds each other frequently not to live in the past nor the future...did you see the Star Trek movie where she shows Picard how to slow time to nearly a standstill? I loved it...that's what we're after. I want to read the book too - Eckhardt Tolle "A New Earth" - you are my third friend to mention it. Now to the now of dark chocolate mocha...ooh - that is perfect in the moment satisfaction. I know the word is Love ~ it is after all, all you need. ;-) (yay Beatles, those trippy boys)

[Erin Michelle]

Love brought us here and now. Love will guide each of us to see we can't expect anyone to keep their promises. We need to choose to love people who don't need to promise anything. Love is the only reason I joined. I saw the Love pouring over Carlos and I got soaked. I knew you would be here wrenching open the fire hydrants. Thank you.
Love, Erin

[nance]

Erin -

In light of our earlier discussion, how do you view, Love, innate, as our guiding light, if indeed, there are certain types of trauma and illness that can eliminate our sense of all emotions, love included?

My first thought is that it falls back to the majority who are in tact, to simply show our ability to Be Love and Feel Love as part of each moment that we are present and able to do so. It may not fix the loss of emotional cognizance, in those less fortunate, but it could happen, and it is a good role that can be displayed for others who are healthy and of course the children and others who may carry some form of "plague of bitterness or resentment" that by the very nature of it's suppression, can only lead to misdirected anger... so perhaps someone misquoted the great master Gandhi?

"Be the LOVE you want to see." [And change will follow]??" xxn

Erin Michelle said:

Love brought us here and now. Love will guide each of us to see we can't expect anyone to keep their promises. We need to choose to love people who don't need to promise anything. Love is the only reason I joined. I saw the Love pouring over Carlos and I got soaked. I knew you would be here wrenching open the fire hydrants. Thank you.
Love, Erin

[nance]

Marilyn -

My now is sad that I am unable to share your mocha delight... so my response is to be a cheeky monkey in regard to your 1st, 2nd, and now, 3rd directive to read Eckhart Tolle by repeating what a friend once told me:

"IF three people tell you that you have a tail, perhaps you should pause and take a look at your A - -!"

I love you! xxn

Marilyn McCulloch said:

I love the "one long moment of now" Nance, and Erin! That is where I want to be, and I am there. We do have to remember that we are only remembering everything we have been told about the nature of our world, our life, our reality, and who could possibly tell us about our own reality? When I was a child, my mom was repeatedly asking me "When are you going to come out of your dream world??" I couldn't imagine leaving it, ever. The Be Here Now is ever present, but most are, as you say, too preoccupied with going from one expectation/construct to the next and they do miss it. My family reminds each other frequently not to live in the past nor the future...did you see the Star Trek movie where she shows Picard how to slow time to nearly a standstill? I loved it...that's what we're after. I want to read the book too - Eckhardt Tolle "A New Earth" - you are my third friend to mention it. Now to the now of dark chocolate mocha...ooh - that is perfect in the moment satisfaction. I know the word is Love ~ it is after all, all you need. ;-) (yay Beatles, those trippy boys)

[Erin Michelle]

You got that Ghandi thing down girl! I am forever blessed in Jesus. From the time I was little and skinned my knees every Sunday running up the church steps I have been loved. Maybe it's because I almost died in surgery as a baby. I have never been afraid of that unimaginable voice that comforts me. You have everything you need. You are here because I sent you. Whenever I give in to fear, the mind killer, I remember that voice and I know there is nothing here on earth that we are asked to go through that we cannot bear. God is just dog spelled backwards to me. I have no religion, only Love. Love is there for everyone. It's inside everyone right now just waiting. I was given a name for that love but it doesn't matter what you call it as long as you call it out. Let it shine. Feel it good. Call it anything you like.
Love, Erin

[drmike]

Hi Nance,

Long time, good to see you continue chatting.

Hi ladies! Let this confused male jump into the fray. He is what I have to add.......


Background
Interestingly I was talking to a friend about this very subject recently. He is a very laid back gentleman, who works a job with a city utility company for the last 25 years. I was shocked to hear these famous words come out of his mouth: "To be or not to be. That is the question."

My Experience
I experienced this force literally taking control of my life in college for the first time, big time. I had bought a car--an old Honda with bad brakes. However I was going to use it to get to W LA vs. riding the bus from the Valley. On the way home going down the 405 my brakes failed due to not having any of note. I spun out of control and hit the median going about 80MPH. The car made several revolutions in traffic, going through the other 4 adjacent lanes. It is a miracle that the other speeding cars did not make impact. The car stopped right the offramp leading into the Valley. I turned the ignition and it started. I drove that vehicle from that point approxiamtely 4miles to 3 blocks from my apartment, where it finally just gave out. I got out of that car, and never saw it again. Why am I here, and not dead? If it was not my time why not? Why did the Power not send me "up"--or where ever I am supposed to go? Or is it just probabilities and differential velocities, and that?

In my experience, God is always has control. We are given arenas in which we can have dominion, but I suppose these are nothing but the mundane--like making the decision of when to get over to the gas station before the tank is empty, or chosing the right clothes before exiting the door. When I am letting God run the show, my whole life "feels right" and their is no pain, stress, or tension. Unfortunately, none of beliefs can be proved or disproved. And that is the beauty of belief and faith. However, I have experienced that repeated acts of goodwill seem to be rewarded (i.e., karma), and the converse is true as well (bad works are punished big time).

It may be sad to think it, but I question how much of this "freewill" bit really gets into play. For if you are like me, when I do it my way--I'm usually wanting somebody or something to "fix it." Perhaps as I grow into greater knowledge of living a harmonious and balanced life, my will can become more in tune with Laws of Nature and the Spirit.

Go figure.

I hope this answers/addresses your topic.

Please inform from your expericence.


God Bless,
Mike

[Henning Stumm]

Belief is a great motivator, belief is gives us determination, belief gives us hope in our darkest hour, belief gives us the strenght to "face the day".

disbelief creates a vacum, disbelief creates chaos.

I leave it at that.

One Love
Henning

[John F. Scotti]

believing or dis-believing have to do with the mind. are you your mind? being transcends mind.
what is has always been and always will be. the final solution for the health care plan will demonstrate this.
dear obama: please read Plato's Republic and apply to the current situation.
or do what Carlos Santana did: listen to Metatron
(facts are facts)
what is................is
beyond belief, yeah, that's where we truly are...................(and always will be)