forgetfullness

[ark]

But, to reach some conclusion...if all of this is so complicated, what we need to do is to increase our capability to take into consideration much more factors, than we are able to take at present. How can we increase this capability?.

The answer is simple: as with everything else, by exercising. Practise, practise, practise....
For some of us practising comes easier, for some - harder. But those for whom it comes easier are not necessarily in a better position: quite often, what easily gets in, easily gets out. Quite often slow students achieve deeper results than the fast guns. :)

 

[j0da]

Wow, Ark, that was right on the spot (for me personally)! Now you've got me embarrassed :)

I've went through lots of materials with haste, understood maybe 30%, forgot half of that and then I wonder why I run in circles reinventing a wheel :( This trait of mine is quite an impediment and irks me no end. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to overcome it yet.

 

[Guest]

I've been contemplating the issue of forgetfullness taking into consideration all the answers provided by forum members, but, still couldn't reach satisfactory conclusions. It is not a reason to cry, for I think that with enough persistence one can find an answer to any question possible, yet it could require a lifetime(s) of research.

Since the issue for you is apparently not the reality or lack thereof of reincarnation, but why we don't sustain transincarnate continuity, things are actually much simpler, and to me a matter of perspective. It is absolutely true that you might spend your whole life researching the question of reincarnation, and still come to no satisfactory for all conclusions. Many have, in fact, done so.

The best you can hope is to come to satisfactory conclusions for you, which to me amounts to discovering your own prespective on reincarnation, which deeply involves the issue of remembering our "other" lives. Most people involved in researching reincarnation are actually more concerned with proving its existence rather than addressing the issue of forgetfulness in detail.

So a deeper examination of your question may in fact reveal the desire to elliminate forgetfulness, rather than a desire to prove or disprove reincarnation itself. For someone to tell you simply that such forgetfulness is natural and/or unavoidable would probably be unsatisfactory, in any case.

In summation, your perspective is one of wanting to remember and you approach this later on with the beginnings of a conclusion, which is in fact a widening of that perspective.

Of course, there is a problem of priority - which answers should one seek first. If someone solves THAT, his quest for truth/self/awareness will become AMAZINGLY easier. There are some some solutions to this particular problem provided already, named "ways", "bridges", "paths", etc. - but it isn't making the situation of an individual any simplier - one again has to CHOOSE. If he is cautious, and wants to make a reasonable choice he again has to seek answers for another set of questions! Is it justified to say, that we may be running circles for eons! See, Cicket, you aren't alone in frustration, bro.

Actually, priority has objective and subjective components. If one considers that your deeper question is how to remember, then you may sense that this remembering may hold valuable insight for you. As such, it may just be a priority, a path or bridge that can link different aspects of your development that may now seem at odds.

The desire to remember, is so much to prove reincarnation, but to understand the meanings of the memories themselves as bridges to deeper layers of your being. Usually, when our interest is drawn to a certain question, there may be a deep reason for it, regardless if that question seems obscure or impractical to others.

And given your choice of capitals, it may be that these memories will provide insight regarding current choices. You know one of the biggest seductions of some of the most "light-oriented" aspects of the new age movement was the seduction of being relieved of difficult choices: All will be fine, trust in the light, trust in the guides, trust in the space brothers etc. And this seduction is effective because choosing correctly is a real challenge. And because it is such, we need all the help we can get. In that context, getting into deeper layers of self, even in the context of past lives, can help us understand how and why we tend to make the choices we do, and how those tendencies are related to repetative patterns in our lives.

To avoid running around in circles for eons, as you say, one solution is to attain the perspective most congruent with who we are. This is, after all, a quest of self-discovery in the context of reality-discovery, and not simply a move to catalogue the ways and means of the world, natural/material, transphysical or otherwise. So your very sense of needing to remember or understand the reasons behind forgetfulness may conceal a hint as to how to gain a wider perspective, more congruent with your deeper self, in order to move along a path less likely to result in dead ends or endless circles.

How could you remember something what hasn't happened yet? If really there is no time, then everything occurs at once. So it isn't about remembering, it's about awareness of other realities, other our own (?) identities, awareness of a wider scope of existence. Damn..I just realized that the question "why do we forget?" is valid and invalid at the same time. Heck But I'm not ready to put it in words yet...Gosh...now I have SOMETHING to think about...

By knowing ourselves, we know our path. Conversely, by having our path revealed, we know ourselves. The two reflect each other. In seeking to remember portions of our path that lack immediate context in our current life, we seek to know corresponding layers of ourselves.

It seems to me your train of thought has led you to a revelation that remembering oneself in other temporalities has to do with widening perspective from your present position, given the quote above. To me the issue is not so much the existence or not of time, but our perspective of what we call events. The fact that we tend to measure duration as it occurs in the present puts us in a frame where we posit that events out of our scope of present time duration form an unbroken continuity with each other. This is the continuity of the measuring instrument, such as the clock, and we tend to associate time itself with the instruments measuring it.

A measuring instrument usually consists of a scale of units of measurement. In the case of time-measuring instruments, when the end of the scale is reached it reinitializes in a cyclic manner. This also mimics natural time-pieces such as the orbital motions of heavenly bodies. Just as the number of fingers on our hands has inspired our particular base-10 counting system, so have the periodic movements of heavenly bodies, and our own earth for that matter, inspired the perception of time as progressive duration of repetative cycles. Current civilization, of course, has linearized this in a manner to serve its own purposes by posing a "beginning" of creation and a period of "end times" that concludes it.

My point in all this is that I for one know nothing about time, or if it even exists as such, outside of my own biologically based reference conceptions, and the hypothetical offshoots stemming from those.

What I do know is that there is information, patterns impinging on our awareness that seem to reference themselves as originating away from our present moment in relation to what we percieve as temporal progression. Since our point of present perspective is our only real objective reference, it is most useful to understand the relation of that information with the present point in terms of causality. In other words, we relate to the present as an effect of the past, and the future as a consequence of the present.

We can also use the word memory for both past and future-like oriented information, simply because we store it in our present-point matrix of perception. Whether this information is real in the sense that we consider our present reference frame is beside the point. What matters is that this information affects our present, and in particular our presence in that present by providing us an extended simulation of the patterns of cause and effect that define our existence (or at least to the extent that we can connect with them).

And so it comes back to choice, choices made and choices to be made, in the context of our indivuality as well as that of the greater world around us. So to come back to remembering, it seems that it constitutes a gaining of a perspective where the greater patterns of cause and effects become known, and when that territory becomes familiar we can navigate our own free will to change it into a greater harmony where the lessons of the past will not be in vain, and the presented probabilities of the future will not be inevitable.

But, to reach some conclusion...if all of this is so complicated, what we need to do is to increase our capability to take into consideration much more factors, than we are able to take at present. How can we increase this capability?

It is a matter of practice, of course. And what we practice is widening our perspective. We are in the present moment. That is our point of commencement in anything. So any information gained from what we call past and/or future, necessitates we remain firm in the present to ground that information, so it is not practical to "jump" ahead or "behind" ourselves, and lose the objectivity of our subjective position. Thus, we must widen our perspective in and of the now.

And you may consider the likelyhood, if you haven't done so already, that widening perspective of any area of life can help widen the perspective in others, similar to when you learn to lift weights in the gym, you are able to lift all kinds of different bodies easier. Since it is awareness that recieves this information, it is awareness that must be stretched, strengthened and released from the limitations of its conditionings. That's where practice comes in. It's like strengthening muscles in use it or lose it fashion.

The conditions of our society are geared to promote atrophy of awareness, and it is this atrophy that we strive to overcome. Already, your perceptions of time (whether coherent with the true nature of time or not) provide a valid foundation of addressing potential trans-present point information because they feel right to you, and as such something inside of you recognizes the model as useful for understanding the tapestry of cause and effect that extends from your present moment.

Rather than simply considering this a temporal tapestry, you can consider it a web of the patterns and tendencies of your being, deeper layers that are not visible at present. And this is not simply a psychological perspective, but involves real dynamics of cause and effect related to how events flow in your life, your current destiny path as it were.

As you learn to widen perspective in all things, I believe simply turning your attention in the direction of the information you seek, and according to the model that feels as the right reference tool at the time you do so, you can gain the remembrance you seek. And it may be that this direction may be right for you and not for others, so generalizing it may be useful. Discussing it, however, can help widen everyone's perspective and even inspire some others to address things in a similar manner accroding to inclination.

 

[Nathan]

Just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons ... I thought falling from Eden played a major part in our lack of past life memory.

Session 990828
... Okay, we had these guys; they fell from Eden, but they were still fairly close to the original concepts, in some terms. Once they jumped into the physical bodies, as you put it, what was their level of conceptualization regarding the universe? Did they still retain some understanding at that point?
A: Kind of like the understanding one has after severe head trauma, vis a vis your normal understanding in your current state.
Q: So, they were traumatized; they may have had bits and pieces of ideas and memories, but they may also have lost a great deal altogether. There may have even been a sort of "coma" state of mankind for many millennia. But, after they woke up, with the bits and pieces floating around in their heads, they may have begun to attempt to piece it all together. So, they started putting it all back together.

 

[ark]

I've went through lots of materials with haste, understood maybe 30%, forgot half of that and then I wonder why I run in circles reinventing a wheel :( This trait of mine is quite an impediment and irks me no end. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to overcome it yet.

I do not know whether what I will say now will help you or not. But it may help. The key word is "struggle". It is only through struggle that WE go somewhere. Otherwise we go with the wind.

Now, C's mentioned that "all should come naturally". Is it not the opposite of "through struggles". I think it is not. To struggle may (and perhaps should) become your nature. You see, struggle may give you pleasure and satisfaction. Struggle may even be entertainment. Every little batle with your own resistance that you win is one more reason to be proud. It counts more than tons of "easy knowledge" that you get from other people. And, perhaps, that is all that counts...? So, when I say: "practice!" - I also mean "struggle!". Through your own, personal struggle, you are learning your own, personal lessons that are unique. Then you can share your personal experiences and knowledge with other people. Sharing is important. It is through sharing that other people learn from your struggles and you learn from the struggles of other people. It is through networking that we can fuel our "intent". When I read how someone has failed - I decide: "but I am now richer, since I think I got an idea why this person has failed, so let me try the impossible". And when I read how someone succeeded in this or that, I think to myself - well, I can do it too, perhaps slower, perhaps not as perfect, but I will make an effort.

And that is why I am keeping on my site the piece: "I will persist until I succeed." And I had to persist to put it on the web - as I had to ask the publisher of "'The Greatest Salesman in the World" for the copyrights permission!:)

Of course sometimes we are trying to mimic someone else instead of finding our own goals. Then we start to struggle in a wrong direction, and there are no successes, no rewards, no feeling of making progress. In such a case it is good to re-think our target. There are infinitely many directions that we can go. Not every struggle is meaningful. When we hit a hard wall - it may be unreasonable to struggle with this wall. It may be reasonable to struggle to LEARN about this wall, its structure, its purpose, and then we may even decide to change the direction. We may need to take a "bird view" of the scenery, to see both ourselves, past and future, and the wall, from above. And here "instinct" and "observations" are important. Therefeore it is necessary to struggle - so that we develope these qualities in ourselves.

 

[Cricket]

Actually, life after death, the existence of "densities", the existence of soul, spirit and anything in inner development that cannot be directly explained through neurochemistry is an assumption. Really proof means proof for everyone. The choice, however, to commence with esoteric explorations I am afraid can only be based on proof for you, or rather enough proof for you.

As you mention on other thread, anyone else would deny what was going on. I can understand that, while on a esoteric development, one engages with a esoteric causality, opposite to objective (positive) causality. Esoteric causality is another discourse, and uses it own definitions and procedures of validation: Don Juan appearing to 4 men, each one giving a different report of what they saw.
And that skares me. It skares me to attempt to be operative through a discourse where definitions, processes of validation and certainly the very same experiencies, are on my own to define, validate and experienciate.
It skares me to be alone. To be building personal "experiential validations" while those I love are there, around me (family, by instance). Am I to pretend nothing is wrong, so I wont worry, instance, my mother (getting old)? This is called "discipline": To be seeing the very same Lucifer ;) without blinking.
And if I were alone, it skares me to face such a tremendous panoramics like the ones you have been expossing, all by my own.
Is this a catch 22? I think it is fear. Fear to the lonelyness. But as you said, how can anything kill a immortal being?
And I think it is also attatchments from my part to the things and persons: Do not want to loose people (ex-wife WAS included here!). Or more immediate: Do not want to hurt them with my struggle.
I know this is getting a bit personal, but I know others can apply this reflections to their own case.
So, to pursue or seek "enough proof" for my self, I think that requires a territory where the seeker would had time and space to crack the veil, by force if needed, if at least to obtain some diminute proof of a esoteric causality sort of discourse -a effect of my Work (efforts) on the reality, whatever that means.
And one intents to obtain a positive effect which would lead one to progress and inner growth; which would come to indicate to the seeker some light in some any sence. And not a hole out of the whihc, perhaps, one would never find a way out.
Yet, I think a "positive effect" DO demands the presence of objective causality in any given point along the experience, because the STO influence is not, by definition, "personal".
But I guess one has to reach such a development as to be able to recognize the positiveness of the effect: To achieve perspicasity and/or discernment, and that is what one gets by the means of going through that dark experiences which are, therefore, already there, waitting the seeker who finds it's self, on facing them, on the posittion to "do something about it".
And while all that happens, one works with one's own definitions.

Basically, those who have had experiences considered as proof in reality have an event that can be explained in terms of esoteric causes. To them that is the most likely explanation, but rarely is it the only possible explanation. Yet one will never get results in such things unless one suspends belief (very hard to do) and keeps moving and observing the bits and pieces of evidence that do accumulate.

And that event was possible by accepting the existance on the world of a esoteric causality. And this acceptance is there thanks to the fact that one was able to suspend belief (stop judging/thinking, backbones of the objective causality), therefore, exposing one's own self to this posibility. On gathering "evidence" one is (this is a hipothesis of mine) actually delimitating a esoteric causality. Kind of like de-bluring it out from the objectivelly causal terrotory or, as has been called, crystalizing a new set of "laws" which are valid only to the one experiencing them.
And then? Does one reaches a point where suddenly one's own concience starts to act in a more universal way, and so one can take one's own "evidences" and "definitions" as operational to a wider espectrum of the territory? Thats what Gurdjieff did, no?
Is not like I said: "If reincarnation exists...". Better more like: "Because there is reincarnation..." and so the delimitation of the concepts start to build inside one's self, and I rtekon this procedure has gone beyond the faith way to operate.
Because Faith cancels the causality. It exposes a objective causality there where there is a esoteric causality.
I can see this "cooking" on the self-observations, particulary of the functions: One starts to delimit them out from the wholeness of the I's, as if one were starting to localize one particular frecuence or noise out of a big scandal. Faith, in this panoramic, would not explain such a frequence one has localized: Faith would re-absorb it into the belief, provoking not a suspention, but a feedback, quite much like the one the microphones produces whe approached to the speackers.
This is how I can understand the next:

Progression of development provides results, but unless you are willing to act as if such things as soul and spirit and afterlife etc exist, no results will come because perception is limited to a narrow window of objectivity, which is often just a more collectively acceptable set of assumptions.

I hold the hope that, while this progression takes place, it would be maneagable or benign (since this my my pure intention). You are quite correct EQ, and has took me some days of reflection to get to understand it: Willing to act as if such a things exists, is to (even "invoke"!) provoke evidence towards this end. Ultimatelly, afterlife, spirit, etc is not important. It is not important to see ghosts of UFO's or one's self sleeping there at the bed... What is important is what one DO with all those events/evidences: At the end, is not even one the important thing: It is the others.
Ok I see lizzies and I travel on UFO's and I remember all my previous lifes.... so? Who are you slaving with that stuff? Or who are you liberating? It does not matters if I have got previous lifes. What is important is what I am DOING with that info.
And not DOING for me! Although I think there most be a stage where one is to build one's strenght as to be able to actually DO things, in the sence the own integrity should be on the priority since when one stops, all doing stops.
I can only hold the hope I will do fine for me, and for all those around me. Is not precisely THAT the compromise?
This is the serious compromise.

And if you, Cricket, should one day get impressions difficult to explain in any other way, at least you have a format of understanding that may help in gaining more understanding of yourself and your life where other formats may fail to help.

Yes, and you Mr. are on my thanks-giving list :)

To answer your question - how do I know there is reincarnation?
I will be completely honest with you - I don't know that there is reincarnation, I'm only taking it as probability.

Way to go, bro! Esentially I think there is not any other angle to see this and other problems IF one is engaging with the spiritual growth, I see that now... and I breath more easy now!
There is a choise to make. And then... Practice, practice, practice...

j0da, EQ, Ark.. thanks so much for your clarifications and elucidations!

 

[j0da]

I'm back from short vacation in mountains, where I had some time to work on the issue a little bit deeper. As the 'reason approach' brought some results I thought I could broaden the search by retrieving some info from 'the inside' (or unconscious, whatever).

I formulated a question "What important thing have you forgot?" and asked my girlfriend to run this question on me repeatedly in scio manner. I was aware that such 'random' recall could get me into trouble, so we didn't go very deep - session lasted about one hour. After first fifteen minutes of 'usual' answers regarding everyday activities some deeper thoughts and ideas started to emerge. After we were finished I took some notes and here I'd like to share them with you.

1)forgot the key to unlock knowledge
2)answer is inside
3)afraid of knowledge
4)fear of knowledge imposed or fear of knowledge belonging to another entity/attachment, but identified as mine
5)I forgot that I forgot in order to learn how to remember (and broader meaning - to learn how to navigate multiple, entangled thought/idea traps)


Well, that's most of what emerged during one hour. There were some other things, but they were rather hard to convey in words. A fogged idea of an hologram was one of those - hologram of something like multidimensional rubic cube which signified the level of complication. I sensed that in order to understand the universe throughly would require mastery in 'playing' with such cube, where billions of factors connect with each other, intersect, switch connections..it's hard to describe. Heh...comparing my ability to handle multiple factors with that hologram I'm not even in the kindergarden :O It's even very questionable, if such 'multidimensional factor cube playing' is available on our earthly level. Seemed rather like..godlike ability?

But, returning to the points..

Ad.1 and 2. Those were vague and not very revealing. One can find those ideas in various books, in various paths. They seem obvious, but maybe one shouldn't make a mistake of disregarding obvious things. In many instances what is 'obviously known' isn't known on the deeper level than intelectual consideration, so..

Ad.3 and 4. This one was where the real fun begun, or where things got really interesting. I must emphasize, that this answer wasn't only 'thought', it was actually felt. Fear was increasing during working with this idea, as I was digging deeper with the issue of forgetfullness. I had very strong sensation that there ARE SOME THINGS which I'm afraid of knowing/confronting/acknowledging. I had also a sensation that fear can be imposed on a being, embedded in it's inner construction by outside forces. On a shallow level this can be perceived in eg christianity, where one can very often find such 'wise' phrases as 'curiosity is a first step on the road to hell', but those barriers are quite easily overrided if one is of questioning nature. Maybe there are some programs/implants running inside us, constituting another, deeper levels of 'status quo protection'. And finally there is this notion of 'entity fear' - when one isn't well acquainted with his inner construction, with different "I"s is't easy to confuse the ownership of emotions.

Ad.5 This point got me really thinking, because it strongly resembled some cognitions which I had during my scio sessions.
It represents certain degree of confusion, which is very hard to dismantle by linear intellectual approach, maybe even impossible. I mean when we already know that for example 'we forgot that we forgot' everything becomes clear, but to FIND that we are in such condition in the first place - it's completely another story. And, this one isn't even very convoluted, we can imagine situation where one 'forgot that he forgot that he forgot' and it's the point where the trap becomes deadly. I've already encountered in myself confusions consisting of 6 'lies' layered one over another. Freeing oneself from such confusion is quite a relief, but in the same time it clearly shows how complicated things can be in our universe and how entangled our minds are.

But, while those points may shed some light on the reasons/construction of forgetfulness, it is still a blind man searching ;)
A couple of days ago a stack of books arrived and without hesitation I grabbed ISOTM as an entry level reading. What a surprise! An 'entry level' delivered such a punch, that I immediately realised the futility of my 'chaotic' approach to finding answers to questions which boggle my mind. At present I'm willing to consider that I shouldn't write a single simple post about anything (not mentioning this one), but instead shut up and do some serious study and work. Well - this feels uneasy...

 

[Guest]

A fogged idea of an hologram was one of those - hologram of something like multidimensional rubic cube which signified the level of complication. I sensed that in order to understand the universe throughly would require mastery in 'playing' with such cube, where billions of factors connect with each other, intersect, switch connections..it's hard to describe. Heh...comparing my ability to handle multiple factors with that hologram I'm not even in the kindergarden It's even very questionable, if such 'multidimensional factor cube playing' is available on our earthly level. Seemed rather like..godlike ability?

I think the csio method you mention, as a way to access the subconscious, is not dangerous. It sounds like association to me, a psychological technique that goes beyond csio particulars. I think such methods are useful, especially when we balance them with analytic consciousness. If you are purely analytical there can be only one conclusion: nothing is certain, nothing can be proven, anything is possible, at least as far as esoteric matters are concerned.

'Chaos' is not all bad, when balanced with order. In fact it is chaos that leads to reorganization into greater order. IMO your vision of the holographic "cube" is remarkably coherent, and regarding your questions of existence, you may want to meditate on it as a reference to help you understand things. For example, what role would such a model play in the reincarnation dynamic?

And why a cube and not some other shape, like a sphere for example, which has no sharp edges? Probably because a cube is easier to reference regarding your question, with its sides, corners and edges, and the fact that you can make a Rubik's cube easier than a Rubik's sphere.

I think we might want to consider that today's humans can be tomorrow's "gods" in terms of ability. You seem to have your own information source here in this psychological method. I think that is invaluable, especially since you admit that analysis is not to be discarded.

As to "fear of knowledge", for me this is really a fear of "wrong knowledge" or being "fooled" (which is your 4th point I guess), and has greatly decreased as more knowledge has accumulated. Regarding the 3ed, one needs to consider that it is not us who benefit from this "fear", but those who want us to remain ignorant. The Matrix conditions us deeply to its own ends, and often has us think this conditioning is simply "our" problem.

As to Ad.5, the convoluted entanglement of our confusion is the reason why our unfoldment is so slow, like untying a sequence of gordian knots. With the holographic cube, you may have "jumped" to a brief flicker of remembrance of one of the last knots to be untied. And it seems overwhelming because you still have a long line of convoluted entanglements to be resolved before you are really ready to APPLY the revelation concealed behind the image of the cube.

And it may be that this revelation ties to your identity very deeply. Why THAT particular vision, and not something else? It may help to look at all the five points as continuations of the same theme. And it seems to be a theme with which on some level you are very intimate. So do not brush off the first two points so lightly. IMO the key (which is inside) may just be related to this vision of the holographic cube. Why not explore that possibility? Pretty cool all in all ;).