Transcendental Experiences

[peter]

Have you had one? What are they? Do they even really exist (apparently Richard Dawkins believes they're all baloney)?

There have been times in my life when I've been in very beautiful places where a sort of calm has overtaken me and I've felt a bit more 'at one' with everything else than I normally do. This hasn't happened often (I'm not a relaxed person) and when it has it isn't a Budda-like world changing experience - just a slightly more gentle feeling for a few moments.
Then there was one time, as a youth having taken LSD when I went out for a walk at 5 am on a summer morning, and it was like I could see the entire pattern on which the world was printed. Every leaf, branch and blade of grass was in place on the symmetrical order of the whole. Was this a transcendental experience? Occasionally at a rock concert I seemed to be submerged in a halo of sound and togetherness with the other concert goers, so much so that I seemed to be almost raised to a different level or place......what about this?

Have you any thoughts, experiences or insights into this most perplexing of enigmas (is it all just a psychological trick our brains can pull for example). What about meditation? I can't do it - I've tried, but my mind won't be emptied this side of a bottle of Jack. Tell us your stories.........

[Skyweir]

When I was religious .. I had some truly wonderful experiences. I have since come to understand that mind is capable of realising what I want it to, what I hope, aspire and the mind can manifest to some degree, elements of my faith.

I believe humans can reach a level intention and obsession, that enables them to see, hear, feel whatever their minds can imagine. I believed I heard and saw such things and I hadnt had LSD.

Some say theyve seen angels, heard voices, have powerful dreams, speak in tongues, have visions ... but I believe that they are products of the mind's belief capability.

Perhaps some beliefs and faith are not unlike LSD.

What you speak of I experience regularly .. those beautiful sensations you receive as you connect with nature, see the touch of sunlight on leaves, dew on petals, a spectacular array of flowers, the colours, the light, a caress of a gentle breeze, being enveloped in the gentle warmth of a perfect spring day.

These experiences I wouldnt personally call transcendental .. I think they are the sensations that people seek through meditation but I wouldnt describe them as spiritual per se.


I think humans have a premordial obsession with all things supernatural.. or you could prefer the word .. spiritual. I think its still how we are hardwired .. to explain what is beyond our anatomical senses of see, smell, touch, taste.

For example the sensations we feel, but can not touch, like love, joy, happiness, elation ...

We generally dont need to rationalise the negative sensations we experience the same way for some reason.. apart from assigning some negative sensations as evil .. like anger, hate and even some of the more powerful emotions like lust. It too is often categorised as evil.

But there is a lot I dont understand.. with the exception of those things I have experienced.

Im from the northern UK and my people .. believe in many things supernatural .. the most common being ghosts, the spirits of the dead. Even after generations of Christianity in my small village we still conducted pagan celebrations and practices .. all the while attending our small church on Sundays.

There is such a confluence of beliefs and ideologies across the planet .. systems that define the supernatural in different ways and acknowledge a spiritual dimension..

My experience has taught me to date .. there is only what we make, imagine and construe .. as real.

[peter]

Thanks Sky. I'm certainly a believer in 'altered states' of consciousness; anyone who has undergone a serious run of insomnia would understand Edward Norton's voice-over at the beginning of Fight Club where he says that during such times you are 'never really awake - never really asleep' ...... it really is something that is truly different. That the brain can swap into these altered states for whatever reason can't I think, be denied...... but these experiences could never be described as 'transcendental' in the common understanding of what the word means [whatever that is]. Would Jung's idea of 'collective unconscious' feed into the transcendental experience anywhere [don't really understand what collective unconscious really means anyway, but I figure it must have something to do with us all having some collective 'mind' beneath the surface of which we are unaware of - but are these minds in connection in some unexplained way or is it just that we're all singing from the same unconscious hymn sheet].

I think that I'm leaning toward the view of the transcendental experience as being something the brain does for itself [to satisfy whatever need it does] under certain conditions, meaning [alas] that the sense of Unity and connectedness associated with the experience is probably illusory - but I'd like to be convinced otherwise were it possible to be so. I'm open minded enough on the subject to think that it might.

[Fist and Faith]

I got nuthin'.

[Skyweir]

What do you mean by altered states of consciousness sounds interesting..

[Vraith]

I think that I'm leaning toward the view of the transcendental experience as being something the brain does for itself [to satisfy whatever need it does] under certain conditions, meaning [alas] that the sense of Unity and connectedness associated with the experience is probably illusory - but I'd like to be convinced otherwise were it possible to be so. I'm open minded enough on the subject to think that it might.

I'd say that all transcendental experiences are altered states of consciousness---but not all altered states are transcendental.

The connectedness is certainly a real thing subjectively. But I think it's real physically, too. And it always exists, the transcendental is when we're synced up and recognize it.
I often think the cause of the awareness is like good harmony. All the parts...sensory input, thought-flow, coordination between sectors, in particularly consonant relationship.
[[[and I suspect this is of/related to real, physical, function---just as harmony is a physical thing]].
And there are many flavors of it. A nice bright E Major, a D minor, the saddest of all keys---sure it's sad, but we LIKE sad under the right conditions.

[Linna Heartbooger]

I got nuthin'.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a fellow who drove me home one day when my car wouldn't start in the grocery store parking lot.

He was like, "You'd like my daughter; she's like you. (has faith, likes Bible or such)"
Me: "What about you?"
And he reached for an operating system metaphor:
He was like, "It doesn't run on this system."
Me: "Huh?"
And then he patiently explained how, say... you can't get a Windows application to run on a Mac, for example, and that was that.

I was raised to not expect anything outside of the materialistic universe.
And then that changed.
But even in those first years of reading the Bible and thinking it was true, I still got a surprise by how real angels and demons were to some people.
(you know; I was reading it with my own framework of expectations... so there's a sense in which you don't "see" what you don't expect to see... you make things that are some kind of concrete reality into a metaphor because "of course that's what it was supposed to be."

I see how people are prone to describing spiritual experiences in ways that are self-gratifying...
...and express too much certainty on the very points they should not be overly certain about.
(2 Corinthians 11:14 is a troubling thought... even after people have taken a great deal of effort to discern, they may need to discern again.)
But now I'm thinking that's been leading me to be toooo dismissive of what they are saying.

And then, I know a few people who are very careful in their thought, and are more in the situation where they can't avoid the awareness of such...
...and I see them as exceptionally reliable witnesses... but people who are not close to them will not tend to hear their reliable testimony..
...because they don't go broadcasting their experiences around.

Also, peter, here is a fascinating little snippet of a story that has really made me think.
(I have turned it over and over in my mind through the last few years.)

Adapting the Western approach to teaching theology in the East.
The first class I taught for the Asia Biblical Theological
Seminary (ABTS) was in Iloilo, Philippines, in 2001.
I was relatively new to graduate-level teaching: a young man
of 26-years-old, fresh out of seminary, and most certainly
an idealist. I had carefully planned my lessons but I was
still incredibly nervous.
Do I really have enough material
to talk for 40 hours? Will the students listen to a 26-year-old
professor? Should I be doing this at all?
While these questions
were definitely relevant, the first day revealed that I should
have been asking an entirely different question."

"Am I ready to teach in Asia?"

Twelve years later, Jim Blumenstock continues to recall
his first days at ABTS from its headquarters in Chiang Mai,
Thailand. "The topic was angelology. This was the easiest
topic for me to prepare since there was so little written on it:
just 18 pages in our textbook. Based on my notes, I figured
the lectures and discussion would last one hour; maybe
two max. Much to my surprise, the discussion spanned
two full days. What I thought was pretty straightforward
quickly became extremely complicated when the students
started asking questions."

The student's questions were overwhelming. "I was
utterly ill-prepared. I stumbled around, grasping for answers,
but realized that my training was woefully insufficient in
this area. Clearly, I hadn't given enough thought to these
passages, and obviously they had."

I love this story. I love it when someone - say a straitlaced Baptist who grew up in the West and is used to a neat, orderly logical world - encounters a need that was unexpected and not in his or her own framework... and then has to reach for resources that he/she may not have known even exist... and it's a huge upheaval, and yet he does, because love.

Glad the article was not deleted from the internet...
It is on Page 13 of this 32-page pdf file. "Message" Magazine, Volume 61:Issue 2, ABWE.

Im from the northern UK and my people .. believe in many things supernatural .. the most common being ghosts, the spirits of the dead. Even after generations of Christianity in my small village we still conducted pagan celebrations and practices .. all the while attending our small church on Sundays.

This is so honest. Yep, that happens.

[[[and I suspect this is of/related to real, physical, function---just as harmony is a physical thing]].

This is a good point...
...some of the "body = bad" philosophy of the stoics crept into my thinking very early on, and...
...just like sky's people's thoughts and practices relating to ghosts... I've gone along with trying to synchretize -THOSE- philosophies with my Christianity.

Sometimes when things aren't in harmony, I shouldn't be over-spiritualizing "oh, whyyy am I such a bad Christian?" I just need to eat!

[Skyweir]

Hahahahaha ... yes we can over amplify what a thing is, what we feel, what we think that MUST mean .. when mostly there really is a very simple meaning and explanation.

Like you mentioned kinda ... but when humans belong to a group .. they seek to impress that group, assure their peers that they are a worthy member of that group ... sometimes by overselling experiences I order to curry favour, approval and importance. So yeah what you said .. but I think you said it better lol

[lucimay]

When I was religiousI had some truly wonderful experiences. I have since come to understand that [my] mind is capable of realising what I want it to, what I hope, aspire and the mind can manifest to some degree, elements of my faith.

meaning you are no longer "religious"? (for the record, neither am I, meaning i am not any flavor of Christian or any other organized worship process.) I do subscribe to a certain belief in...say "things unseen or unexplained" for lack of better terminology, but that is not why i describe myself to others as "spiritual" rather than "religious". one of the "things unseen or unexplained" that i think of as "real" is my "soul" wherein, for no reason other than it *feels* correct to me, i believe resides my consciousness. i think i mostly believe that because since i was 2 or 3 i have had what i would describe as a "spiritual" connection to music. it does something to me that i cannot explain. i have often been heard to say that i believe that music is the closest we as humans come to "the divine". (and i'd categorize "the divine" as transcendental.)

(also for the record, do i believe in gods? oh yes, i absolutely do. what a "god" actually IS, however, is open to interpretation!! would i *trust* my "immortal soul" to one? no fucking way. these entities we think of as gods are WAY to capricious for me!! no way would i trust my soul to one nor worship said capricious entities! you don't even know what cray cray thing they'll do next for their own whim and pleasure!! )

I believe humans can reach a level [of] intention and obsession, that enables them to see, hear, feel whatever their minds can imagine. I believed I heard and saw such things and I hadnt had LSD

i would describe that as a trance state or, altered state. I've had them both on LSD and completely sober. (by the way, i'd call any type of substance imbibing as an altered state of consciousness. you're making your brain work differently by ingesting something that alters how your brain functions so, that, to me, is an altered state.)

Some say they've seen angels, heard voices, have powerful dreams, speak in tongues, have visions...but I believe that they are products of the mind's belief capability.

Perhaps some beliefs and faith are not unlike LSD.

schizophrenia (and other so-called "mental disorders") can produce similar things which are referred to as "hallucinations" or fugue states. seeing things that aren't actually there, hearing voices, etc. that's not about "the mind's belief capability." that's flat out seeing things that aren't actually THERE, a product of the dysfunction of the brain. not the same thing as transcendental consciousness i don't think. was joan of arc schizophrenic? possibly. or was something communicating with her, did she have extra sensory perception? can people *have* EXTRA sensory perception? i think some can and do and i think *that* would be "a different wiring" of the brain too, like schizophrenia. but i don't think it's the same as a transcendental state of consciousness.

These experiences I wouldn't personally call transcendental .. I think they are the sensations that people seek through meditation but I wouldn't describe them as spiritual per se.

correct. and since we still don't really understand the nature of consciousness it's kind of presumptuous to say that a transcendental state of consciousness does NOT exist (nor that it DOES for that matter.) but seekers will seek, won't they? and who's to say that is a worthless (or crazy) pursuit.

I think humans have a primordial obsession with all things supernatural.. or you could prefer the word .. spiritual. I think its still how we are hardwired .. to explain what is beyond our anatomical senses of see, smell, touch, taste.

My experience has taught me to date .. there is only what we make, imagine and construe .. as real.

surely we DO have an obsession with all things unseen or unexplained. no doubt about that. but since we really don't understand the *brain* and how it functions, much LESS the nature of consciousness, i prefer to stay objectively neutral on the subject because i have had experiences that lead me to agree with Hamlet.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

[Skyweir]

mmm.. a delightful read Luci .. and I am nothing if not presumptuous

I think your comments re mental illness are actually quite genius .. and I dont think Ive ever considered that before, not in that way.

I am ... since my .... religious days ... quite cynical and arguably suspicious of things alleging the spiritual.. ironically lol because it doesnt make sense to me .. in that I cant appreciate the logic to spirituality. I think its a platitudinous terminology for things, sensations we .. in our individual states of consciousness cant adequately explain.

Your gods smack of Elohim cheeky mischief making gits bored with .... whatever it is they do to exist

So I guess my perspective is open to discovery.. but it is at this point where I am ... the result of the culmination of my experience and the things Ive learned from those experiences ... and it what I think Though it is not intended to offend .. and I acknowledge I do not know all. This keeps me open to change.

As to music .. that I totally get .. and your comments re music resonates with me .. music, arts of all kinds. My take is that religiously inclined minds also draw a connection with the divine. I think if there is any one beauty in human existence, it is music. Of course there are more than one beauties to human existence BUt music .. oh music is quite a phenomenon.. it is capable of expressing sooo much. Much like poetry but through more than just a beautiful arrangement of words. That humans can make music, sounds not just sound. Music can lift, soothe, trigger memory, marry and amplify feelings of happiness, joy, love .. and it can motivate, inspire and communicate ambience, fear, suspense .. you name it. Music is capable of manipulating human feelings and thereby experience. I think it is that power in music and tbh all art forms that communicate a sense of divinity.

You see to me divinity is a human construct .. wherein lies the irony .. that its a mortal construct . But as it is sooo powerful we elevate its description naturally to a faux eternal realm of existence. And I think humans quest for eternity is more about our arrogance as a species than reality or truth. Now these are only MY thoughts and as they are mine .. I can be as presumptive as I like .. though it does not mean I wont read or even consider alternative views. Cos I do and I wil ..

I am personally inspired and elated for want of a better word .. mmm .. maybe elevated by music, performance arts, art, literature, poetry, scientific discovery, learning, the natural world and all its component parts.

If I were religious I might be prone to believe that all these forms are divine, and evidence even of the divine. I see them as elements of human existence and for the arts the power of human creative capability.

[peter]

From personal experience I either have to consider an altered state of consciousness as the difference between peter pissed and peter sober ........... or more what I mean, as the difference between peter straight and peter fucked up on LSD. That's an attempt to humerously put something that I think is fundamental to the understanding of what constitutes an altered state of consciousness. In every drug I ever took (and I tried many), in every state of euphoria or dismay that circumstance ever placed me, I was always - always - of this world. LSD was the only one that had this ability to pick you up and dump you down sideways into another place; a place that looks (hallucinations aside - they are not, contrary to belief, what acid was all about) the same.......but isn't. So no, for me being pissed or stoned isn't an altered state - you have to have that otherness. Now as I said, insomnia can take you (somewhat) there, and I'd guess that extreme fasting could do it as well. Agonizing pain also places you in an 'elsewhere' for a while, but by and large, in the normal run of things we stay in our regular groove of consciousness.

Music can transport me (in a fashion) to a 'higher place's - but it's still very much of this world and I learn nothing of a 'higher degree of connectedness' from it; I could never describe my experience of it, even at best as transcendental, not if I have any understanding of what it is meant to mean to have a transcendental experience.

It sounds terrible to ask it so bluntly, but has anyone actually had what they would describe as a transcendental (as opposed to the broader altered state) experience? Please don't let Dawkins be right again!

[Vraith]

but has anyone actually had what they would describe as a transcendental (as opposed to the broader altered state) experience?

Yea. Several...if you accept what I'm about to say as a reasonable definition.
I can do altered states, several species of them [but not with furry animals gathered in a cave and grooving with a Pict---though, that's not entirely true, since genetically I'm fairly Pictish, and grooving comes into it] pretty much at will, just doing different kinds of breathing and meditating.

Altered states, in my perspective [and LSD only did this kind for me], change how things seem. Transcendental states are a change in how you are "with" things, how you are---to steal and recontextualize somewhat a phrase---being-in-the-world.
[[that's a new-ish perspective/position. The more I think on it, the clearer it becomes that there are distinctions]].

So, some:

A couple times with shrooms.

In the desert [drug-free, too, one, it was]

A number of times with music. [[music, when I'm listening, not when it's just background, almost always involves/triggers an altered state. But DOING music...and once a performance in a musical...that's led to transcendental.]]

Several times on long bike rides [[it's reliable, alterations happen practically immediately, the larger begins right around the 75th mile. Not EVERY time, but consistently/regularly. If I could afford the time, and wasn't getting old, I'd probably do it a lot]

Once, and recent-ish---a strange, unexpected, "coming upon"---just standing outside a bus-stop, waiting for my next connection crossing the country [well, crossing 1000 miles of the country.]
I wrote about that one somewhere around here. At the time, it just seemed a bit cool, an altered state/shift in how things looked. But it's been...I think 2 or maybe 3 years now? [or maybe just a bit less? I sometimes have trouble with time-placement when recalling]].
And it made a so-far continuing change [I thought I lost it at one point, but it came back] in how, even in un-altered states of consciousness, I live in/think/relate to/conceptualize spaces and shapes, especially large shapes/scales.
Not life-altering in the sense of "I'm a completely different person, in a totally different universe."
But a little life-altering, like "I have this little stream of extra data I didn't have before."
Like, "I used to hear from 20hz to 20khz, but NOW I hear from 15hz to 22khz." Both not that much yet really significant at the same time.

[Zarathustra]

I've had a handful of transcendental/ecstatic experiences, and they were always on shrooms, never LSD (though I've had both). The loss of the ego, the breakdown of the self ... it's much more than a "feeling of oneness with all things," though that's certainly part of it. Intellectually, I can revive the sense of oneness with all things every time I look at the stars or read about physics/biology/philosophy, etc. No, this was something different. Not a conceptual understanding, but living it. It's a moment that wakes up you to the Here and Now more than you're ever awake in life. Every time I felt this, it was bliss. It was almost like God was there telling me, "It will be ok. Everything will be ok. All of this is right." I felt like someone could cut off my leg and I wouldn't care. I wouldn't be me. I could bleed out and the universe would be fine.

Scary, I know.

But another time I literally thought some Other was contacting me. An alien, an angel, God, it didn't make a difference. There were other people in this universe watching us, and I felt like I'd tuned into their frequency and they were suddenly aware of me and I was aware of them. I picked up some trans-dimensional party-line phone.

I saw an angel as a young child. I don't believe in angels, but I saw one. I was fully awake, standing up, holding hands in a prayer circle with my parents and some of their friends. I looked in the corner of a brightly lit room, and a glowing being was standing there. For some reason, there was no head. But there was an aura that looked like wings.

The logical part of me thinks all this is rubbish. But I experienced it. I have a hunch that it's more than just my brain malfunctioning and just so happening to produce the certainty that we're not alone. The feeling Other is real.

I think it's aliens. I think they are monitoring us right now.

[peter]

I've done magic mushrooms maybe half a dozen times (psilocybin not those big red ones with white spots) and found them a wonderfully clean psychotropic compared to acid - but while the state I found myself in was certainly 'altered', transcendental? ......no. I had fun, communed deeply with friends and felt enriched by the experiences, but I never got the kind of thing that seems to have been granted to you guys.

But let's just say that this is my loss, and let me put a further question to you; do you think your transcendental experiences were/are in any sense real?I'd think that to qualify as transcendental in my understanding of the word you'd need to be experiencing something that was taking you to an existant higher place/plane not just a deeper mental one. Secondly I think you'd have to be able to bring something back from it. How would you say your experiences stack up in these terms?

[lucimay]

omg I just typed a big long post about something that happened to me and when I hit submit it errored me out!! hahahaha.

ah well...

i have had one experience that i think falls under the category of transcendental.

as zar described it was the loss of the ego, the breakdown of the self.
i felt that i "disassembled" and "reassembled" in a fraction of a second.
in that fraction of a second i understood everything and my place in the everything and understood how everything is all connected to the everything.

not going to go into the whole story again, took me too long to type it the first time and choose my words carefully and shit and i just don't want to do it again, but i will tell you this. it was at a midnight mass on chrismas eve in the late 80's at the Newman Center. a friend of mine was friends with the priest there, Father Noll, and he led an "invocation"...and well...invoked!!

[Avatar]

I've had a handful of transcendental/ecstatic experiences, and they were always on shrooms, never LSD (though I've had both). The loss of the ego, the breakdown of the self ... it's much more than a "feeling of oneness with all things," though that's certainly part of it.

I just never get that. Don't know if I'm perhaps too egotistical, but no matter what, shrooms, acid, any psychotropic / hallucinogenic whatever, I've never experienced that ego-loss / oneness / whatever.

My ego (identity / apartness) is always firmly in place.

--A

[Skyweir]

Its all wrapped up in that stubbornness Avo

When you mentioned bike rides .. I used to be a runner .. and Id run a marathon distance every Saturday and .. it got to the point .. I lost track of the distance, the environment and could not even feel my feet hit the ground. At those times I felt a sense of euphoria.

Perhaps altered state

Also when riding I was super excited about a break we got in a case and was .. again euphoric .. I was so happy in the moment that I didnt see the road, the traffic or the lights change .. and I careered right into a car. I was literally wrapped around the bonnet .. it brought me back into the present and I tried looking around but my face was smack up against the metal surface of the vehicle. my bike had gone under the vehicle .. I should have been hurt .. but I wasnt. Wasnt in pain .. didnt suffer any damage at all. My bike on the other hand could not be ridden.

That was a cool experience.

My gut feeling is that hearing voices, feeling euphoric, seeing anomalies .. are not real .. to me theyre not.

When I was 8yrs old living on the Scottish borders .. on xmas eve I was getting ready for bed and I heard the tinkle of bells and went to the window and high up in the sky .. I saw Santa on his sleigh travelling across the sky. Now my rational mind knows that was not possible .. but its a memory that has stayed with me my whole life. And because of it I love xmas.

The mind can be elated .. we can .. especially with drugs experience heightened experiences and sensations .. but I personally think they are likely just drug fuelled hallucinations

[Vraith]

Secondly I think you'd have to be able to bring something back from it

An alien, an angel, God

Id run a marathon distance every Saturday

hearing voices, feeling euphoric, seeing anomalies .. are not real

My ego (identity / apartness) is always firmly in place.

To P..., I have. I even told y'all about one. It sounds like at least Z and L have, too.

To Z...Haven't quite had that one. But next door to it. I have this tattoo of a mantis. People who know me well, but not REALLY well, think it's related to my martial arts thing. But that's not it, that' just a little concrete synchronicity. It has to do with:
For a while, over many years, I'd have occasional dreams in which this red mantis would tell me things, important things...that I'd never recall upon waking.
THEN, several years after the last of the dreams, while I was hiking in the desert, talking to myself in my head, [call me odd, but doing things alone, I often do this. Me: Well, that's a pretty weed. What do you think it is? Me: It looks kinda like a thistle...hey, remember that poem about thistles? Me: Yea. Not bad, a little formulaic.] ANOTHER voice joined the conversation. And it was the voice of the mantis. The conversation got me back to writing, when I hadn't written a damn thing except under duress/coercion in years.

To Sky: Running almost never did it for me. I ran for years, but only to aid the things I really was into. Running, I was aware in every foot-strike exactly what state I was in, and it was a perfectly normal state of me hating running.

To Sky#2: They're real. Real in different ways, but real, just like Math and Mother are real, but differently.

To Av: I'm not sure precisely what the others mean by dissolution. It might be that I haven't had their experiences, either. For me, "I" wasn't so much dissolved/gone. It was just extended, nebulous, looser, more fluid, more porous, less bounded, sharp-edged, less distinction between "in" and "out," and less important.
But "I" was always "there," aware and involved.
But normally talking about it, it's easier to think/speak of it as connected/dissolved.

[peter]

There are two definitions of real; the reality of what you are thinking (ie. it's existence as a thought in your head) or the harder reality of having a not necessarily physical, but a wider applicability beyond the confines of one's own mind. (No - there are no doubt many more definitions, but let's stick with these.) These experiences you describe seem fleeting to me and therefore most likely of the first order. I don't know any of you beyond the pages of the Watch, but it seems to me that if one had the gift of a transcendental experience of that went beyond just being a personal thing into the true realms of being granted a glimpse of the higher reality, one could not come back from such a place without being changed to a significant degree - say Budda or the like level of change. Do any of you live your change?

[Skyweir]

Well said Pete .. and I feel similarly on this.

I am open to being wrong of course .. because I do not possess a dominion over knowledge and experience. But as a religious person I had experiences .. I saw spirits, heard voices, felt the spirit countless times, felt spiritual .. but I did experience these things ... in my head .. to my consciousness. I believed these experiences were real .. outside of my experience, despite no one else but me witnessed them or could corroborate them.

Since learning that my understandings of a historical Christ was in error, and that I could not find any evidence of this characters actual existence let along his divinity .. I had to rethink what I had experienced.

I see that many religions believe and execute miracles, heal the sick, do stuff like that .. I have come to believe that it is not that any one individual possessed the power to heal .. but believed they did and the receiver also so believed. I think from my explorations of these things that such powers do not come from one god .. or two or even three gods.

They are generated from within .. and as humans we are capable of convincing ourselves of miraculous events, instances and feelings. That we convince ourselves that the feeling we feel .. ie euphoria means X .. it can mean nothing other than X .. and we go on from that to build a specific and fanciful framework to host and explain the inexplicable.

V you said they ARE real .. in what way are they real just to you as mine were very real to me ..

I think the distinction you made Pete a very insightful one.

You have to bring something back from that experience .. see to me when I believed in the phenomena I believed in .. I did bring back personal strength .. in not only that experience .. whats that called .. self actuating or something .. but I did that too .. absolutely .. but also a softness to my character, a greater love for humans as I saw them as a beauty not seen before or as clearly .. I saw worth and value in my world and my efforts to be of value to humans within my sphere of influence.

I see these as all good things and they were GOOD .. the entire paradigm I had built through my belief .. was GOOD .. it was pure and euphoric and rewarding .. it was further self actuating .. and over time .. it became central to my existence.

Its why we raised kids who had no homes, its what led me to want to help and serve people and take genuine joy in that work .. Its what enabled me to love so broadly .. soooo many humans .. not all deserving of that love but I did not discriminate.

I treated the most heinous criminals with compassion and was always polite .. to the point of frustration to my colleagues. Theyd fucked up .. I had a job to do .. that didnt require ME to punish them. THAT wasnt my job nor was it within my remit to do so. Some I personally fucking loathed with a passion .. but expressing that to them was not my job. Plus .. for obvious legal reasons also

Discovering that my entire paradigm .. my world was not as I believed .. was utterly shattering. I was devastated .. but as I worked my way through .. I started to see what I believe ... is clearly. And hence my opinion that humans create their own transcendental experiences rendering them by very definition ... not transcendental in the actual meaning of the word.




And I fucking loved running .. it was definitely my go to place .. all fears, concerns, problems would leave me as I ran. I could get so lost in that experience .. I literally felt I ran on clouds. When you hit that rhythm, that sweet spot .. there is nothing quite like it .. but thats from my very personal experience. I actually started running again recently .. worst fucking experience ever .. getting through that first stage is the pits. My father ran at 70 every single day. Im not far off 60 .. and I have to say he was the bomb. I doubt Ill ever run like that again.

And I have run suspects down on foot before when i was a general duties officer. That was fun .. lol .. well not that fun really

Ahhh the stories I could tell