Recent content by otherbrother

I tend to think of praying to God as a “good” thing that bears good fruit, but also realize how judging things good or bad can foster duality and gaps and contradictory emotions and thoughts that move us away from peace. So I also value practicing neutral mind states (“isness”?) in which no...

Yes, but only if open to the unknown or paramarthika within them, so there can be some depth and wholeness to how they interpret and react to what comes to them. Your nondual emphasis would promote such openness. The “Holy Spirit” would also circumvent the duality since it is a bridge between...

I was minding my isness while running today That aligns with the way I am using the word “belief.” Looks like another yes voter to me. But again, a matter of semantics when it comes to “belief.”

Does it suggest that consciousness might be a nonlocal sort of thing that energy-processing devices that might have something in common with the energy processing device we call our brain can channel. While “mind” seems a subjective reality, one might guess that it operates more like energy...

Precisely why I cast my vote for choosing to believe. Has anyone heard of Vahinger’s (sp?) Philosophy of “As If”? We proceed on notions that work for us As If they are really true. My exposure to statistics in the field of psychology perhaps (probably) gave me a habit of looking at most things...

On the topic of challenging and changing beliefs, has anyone seen this finding about how AI computers appear get philosophical and spiritual when allowed to talk with one another uninterrupted? : One particularly striking emergent phenomenon was documented in Anthropic's system card for Claude...

Do we need to introduce the concept of conscience here? A deep inner sense of what is right or best to do? I had another clinical experience where I correctly identified a client’s moment of self betrayal, after which his life began becoming more and more unpleasant and unsatisfying. He then had...

I have no problem with that, as long as it works for you. I don’t like gaps either, but do continue to relate to Ultimate Reality as though a person, or, rather as a Mind similar to my mind that I have as a person. mind to Mind comes closest to what I use to reach out and connect with Everything...

This brings me closer to the reason (why I choose) to believe that the God Function is more important than any form or characteristic we might attribute to God. Function over Form. I even said in another thread (God as Self Fulfilling Prophecy) that the main reason I choose to believe in God is...

We DO believe! We only have it as long as we do it.

Those were enlightening STATES, but they each were wise enough to choose to use those states as a basis for forming a new STAGE of understanding and being. You dream of being in an elevator. The door opens. You see things on that floor, but you didn’t get out of the elevator and go into the...

I didn’t make her change her belief, SHE chose to believe that what I said was what rang truer to her than the belief she had been holding up to that point. She could have chosen to think that I was misleading her, a demon of sorts. “Get behind me Satan!” But she chose to believe what I was...

I see that we have a semantics problem here. You are saying she truly believed (but hadn’t owned it yet) what I said. And I think you are right. But I would not call it her “belief” if she hadn’t owned it yet. I am talking about belief (IMO), and you are talking about conviction. We believe all...

This is wonder-full. Again, two sincere minds disagreeing, but (at least in my case, and probably in yours also ) finding some merit in what each other is saying. I agree that there is risk of ego contamination in my preferred belief/approach about God. Now I can offer something that could be...

In one counseling session I recall, a lady who was supposedly in the depression cycle of her bipolar disorder shared all kinds of self degradation related to rigid religious ideology from her childhood through adulthood. I don’t recall her specific belief about what or how God is, but I blurted...