Seeking advice

[Seamus]

Hi pirataloko,

Thank you for taking the time to follow up with me. Am I understanding you correctly? You are telling me that:

1. Learning is fun
2. If I open up to this I may begin to feel grateful for the lessons my parents offer me, rather than resenting them for "interfering/controlling/etc"

If this is the case, you have certainly given me something important to consider. I thought about it last night after reading your post, and I felt ashamed by my behavior. At the same time I felt (and feel) a new appreciation for my parents and how they have sacrificed, and what they have tried to teach me over the years.

Hi Seamas, it sounds like practicing EE might be worthwhile. I'm unfamiliar with the other meditation you are referring to so I can't really give advice one way or another, but I do know that consistent practice of EE will be very beneficial for stress and anger.

As per my understanding, Vipassana is a seed-less meditation technique. EE/POTS is a meditation technique with seed. There are a couple of threads related to meditations with and without seed here
The Role of Meditation in the Work
WHAT IS MEDITATION??

I practiced EE every day since Sunday, and it is making an immediate an measurable difference. Thank you for your suggestions. I wrote a longer update in the EE thread.

 

[ana]

Hi pirataloko,

Thank you for taking the time to follow up with me. Am I understanding you correctly? You are telling me that:

1. Learning is fun
2. If I open up to this I may begin to feel grateful for the lessons my parents offer me, rather than resenting them for "interfering/controlling/etc"

If this is the case, you have certainly given me something important to consider. I thought about it last night after reading your post, and I felt ashamed by my behavior. At the same time I felt (and feel) a new appreciation for my parents and how they have sacrificed, and what they have tried to teach me over the years.

maybe you can also try something new, try not to plan how to act in your relationships with your family, just be there observing them, listening to them, allowing things happen without fear, maybe you discover that you are able to better use your knowledge and interact with others when you are relaxed without expectations and anticipations of what others can do or say to you.

Our past is a great source of knowledge but if we look at the present moment under that same premise we are never able to forgive others and ourselves.

You are the one seeing more, just open a new oportunity for you and those near you who will follow your example or not. :)

 

[pirataloko]

Hi everybody.

Hi pirataloko,

Thank you for taking the time to follow up with me. Am I understanding you correctly? You are telling me that:

1. Learning is fun
2. If I open up to this I may begin to feel grateful for the lessons my parents offer me, rather than resenting them for "interfering/controlling/etc"

If this is the case, you have certainly given me something important to consider. I thought about it last night after reading your post, and I felt ashamed by my behavior. At the same time I felt (and feel) a new appreciation for my parents and how they have sacrificed, and what they have tried to teach me over the years.

Seamas what i wanted to say is that learning can be fun, but obviously can be painfull, sad, interesting...... etc, the point ;) is the point of view, this point of view is able to make you experiment the learning in all the ways, so if you can choose why don't make it funny?

I'm also agreed with Ana

 

[Seamus]

Hi pirataloko,

Ok, I think I read you now :), thanks for the clarification.

maybe you can also try something new, try not to plan how to act in your relationships with your family, just be there observing them, listening to them, allowing things happen without fear, maybe you discover that you are able to better use your knowledge and interact with others when you are relaxed without expectations and anticipations of what others can do or say to you.

Our past is a great source of knowledge but if we look at the present moment under that same premise we are never able to forgive others and ourselves.

You are the one seeing more, just open a new oportunity for you and those near you who will follow your example or not. :)

Ana,

I thought alot about what you wrote. I have been practicing EE, working on my diet, and I got a bunch of exercise and sleep over the weekend, so I was feeling really good this morning. When some "family trouble" came up I tried to take your advice. Here's the story (sorry for the length):

My parents and I keep poultry on our land, chickens and turkeys, and they hatch many chicks each summer, so we end up with more birds than we need. We have been meaning to slaughter some "extra" roosters and turkeys for some time. When there are too many roosters they tend to fight with each other and they get rough with the hens, so stress on the whole flock rises, egg production drops, and the general "mood" in the barn goes downhill. We have been putting off slaughtering these birds for several months, and we've come up with many excuses. We committed to finally doing the deed today, and we were all determined to follow through with it.

After morning chores and breakfast my dad and I began setting up for the job and my mom began to act anxious. Although we have been living on our homestead farm for over 20 years, she gets very upset about slaughtering animals. It is worse with pigs, beef cattle and goats, but she has trouble with poultry as well. So she began to try to avoid having to do the job. First she mentioned that she had an errand to run and asked me if I thought it would be better for her to do it first and help us when she got back. I told her that I thought that the job would go quickly, as we were only slaughtering a few birds, so she might as well stay and help and run the errand afterwards. Then she started trying to control the situation. She wanted to move the place where we were going to kill, pluck and process the birds. She wanted to use different equipment (table, knives etc.) than what I picked out. She asked me what she could do to help and then reacted sarcastically when I asked her to take care of several things.

Normally these behaviors would put me in a defensive stance because I am the one who "runs the show" when we slaughter poultry because I have the most experience with it, and I guess I am the most comfortable with the process. My normal reaction would be to feel offended, get angry and return her sarcasm, and generally escalate the situation. This morning however, I immediately thought of what you had written, so I tried to really listen to what she was saying and observe her behavior. I realized that she was probably feeling uncomfortable about killing the birds, which was making her feel anxious and upset and she was acting out on those feelings. So I tried to respond calmly and rationally, and to have some empathy for what she might be going through. I suggested that if she wanted to help us she let me "run the show", which is something we had agreed to before we started, so that she didn't have to worry about the details. This made her even more angry at first, so I told her that if she didn't want to help us she didn't have to just because she said she would, and that I would rather have her run her errands and have a nice morning than stay and kill chickens if she really didn't want to do that.

I don't know if it was what I said or how I acted, but the situation was completely defused and we ended up having a nice morning with each other, despite the grisly nature of the work. My mom was able to relax a little bit, because she let me worry about how we were going to "take care of the birds", and we worked much more quickly and efficiently than we normally do. It was also much better for the birds because we were all calm and focused, so there was minimal upset for them.

So I want to thank you for your sound advice, I had an excellent day today because of it.

Seamas

 

[ana]

glad for it Seamas, in the end you were empathetic and acted for the common good.
goodness! it would be absolutely traumatic for me to kill them too.

 

[Seamus]

Killing chickens is very difficult for me as well. I eat meat however, so I am trying to take some responsibility for this choice. We started raising animals for meat when I was a kid, and our philosophy has always been to give the animals the best life we could. I try to make sure that there is the least possible stress placed on them leading up to the act, and I make sure to kill them as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I feel an odd mix of sadness and guilt, an awareness of my own mortality, and what I could only describe as a predatory fascination with the mechanics of life and death. It is certainly a sobering experience, and one that puts me face to face, literally, with death. The modern food system completely robs people of this experience by turning food into a commodity, a "good" that is "produced" and delivered to supermarkets. When we buy food from a supermarket it is easy to forget about the animals that lived and died to provide us with our meat. It is easy to forget about how they were treated when they were alive, what they were fed, whether or not they had access to clean air and water. And it is easy to forget about the people who work to raise those animals and that food and the hardships that they are exposed to. I think about all of these things each time I am faced with the choice of whether or not I want to spend $6 on a pound of hamburger from my neighbor, or $2 on a pound of hamburger from the grocery store.

All of this doesn't make it any easier to actually kill them though. :(

 

[pirataloko]

Hi Everybody

First of all i want to say that i understand your point about killing animals for meat, and that's really a great pity.

However i have to expose that we're life and in these point in our evolution we need eat life to survive. So the the wisest way to take it is as a natural part in ours lives. In fact there is a lot of life in a lot of ways, stones, plants and animals. The question that appears in my mind is: Why we feel bad when killing a chicken (for example) and not when killing (voluntarily or involuntarily) an ant, cockroach or mosquito?

I'm going to answer this question in two ways objectively and subjectively, you'll say if i do it correctly

Objectively: In a general sense, life is life the only difference is the level of consciousness. So stepping on a weak stone and breaking it into powder, cutting a plant to take some food, or killing an animal for meat, are all an attack on life. When you see it another question comes to mind: Why we feel the compassion only according to the being we're killing? well this question can be related to several answers, may be we as 3D beings can feel that some kind of animals are nearest to our level and it's hard to kill them, or may be we're limited by our view about what is life and what isn't, or simply this world's ilusion affects our perception making some beings valuables in a sense and anothers not, or..... (there can be as may hypothesis as you can imagine).

When you are connected and you know that everything is the same, there isn't difference between stones, plants and animals... all is sacred and all is conected, life is sacred. In this point of view (I'm sorry if I am weary with the points of view) destroy a stone, cut a plant or kill an animal is the same because all them are life and the only diference is the level of consciousness. So i have to say that another way or point of view about this is part of the ilusion, chickens are not better than plants or stones they are simply more evolved.

So, IMHO the real question is why we make differences between the ones and the others?

In an objetive point of view it's natural to eat others beings, in fact they're doing the same in their respective levels and this is the way that the nature works, so there isn't a bad thing, IMO the bad thing is kill without reason because "they bother us", as we often do with some insects or weeds.

Subjectively: Curiously i had been thinking about kill chickens these days, and i have the impresion that to do it in a less traumatic way (and i'm not speaking about a quick dead) can be posible. A few days ago i was in the country and i went to see my neighbors' cat through the metal fence, the animal was far from the fence...... and i don't know exactly how or why but i closed my eyes and focus my mind and heart in the animal, that comes to me. It makes me realize that as everything is connected our thoughts and feelings can be focused and find answers in every being.

So if you are going to kill an animal and you focus your mind and heart in it explaining what is going to happen, why is going to happen and you thank to it, if it has an effect you can found two kind of responses: submission - acceptance or negation - rebellion. IMHO the normal response will be submission - acceptance because the nature always give and the animal will end its days paceful and knowing that in some sense has served his purpose, if this is effective could be noticed if the animal is quiet before it dies.

I'll go even farther in this i believe that the animal voluntarily could leave its own body, but i don't know how or how expain it.


*(all the subjective answer is based in personal intuition and hypothesis that can be absolutely wrong, i hadn't experience them and therefore nothing supports it, if you want to experiment it is under your own responsability)

I hope it helps

EDITED:

In the case you percieve a negation - rebellion response in the animal i would not kill it respecting its free will whereas there may be reasons unknown to me and the animal has something to do in this life.

 

[ana]

Killing chickens is very difficult for me as well. I eat meat however, so I am trying to take some responsibility for this choice. We started raising animals for meat when I was a kid, and our philosophy has always been to give the animals the best life we could. I try to make sure that there is the least possible stress placed on them leading up to the act, and I make sure to kill them as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I feel an odd mix of sadness and guilt, an awareness of my own mortality, and what I could only describe as a predatory fascination with the mechanics of life and death. It is certainly a sobering experience, and one that puts me face to face, literally, with death. The modern food system completely robs people of this experience by turning food into a commodity, a "good" that is "produced" and delivered to supermarkets. When we buy food from a supermarket it is easy to forget about the animals that lived and died to provide us with our meat. It is easy to forget about how they were treated when they were alive, what they were fed, whether or not they had access to clean air and water. And it is easy to forget about the people who work to raise those animals and that food and the hardships that they are exposed to. I think about all of these things each time I am faced with the choice of whether or not I want to spend $6 on a pound of hamburger from my neighbor, or $2 on a pound of hamburger from the grocery store.

All of this doesn't make it any easier to actually kill them though. :(

i understand and you are right, i am not judging you, obviously this is how things are right now. :)

 

[Seamus]

i understand and you are right, i am not judging you, obviously this is how things are right now. :)

Thanks Ana, I didn't think that you were judging me. I was just trying to share my thoughts and feelings on the subject.

 

[Seamus]

Hi pirataloko,

I will have to give your post some thought before I respond fully.

However i have to expose that we're life and in these point in our evolution we need eat life to survive. So the the wisest way to take it is as a natural part in ours lives. In fact there is a lot of life in a lot of ways, stones, plants and animals. The question that appears in my mind is: Why we feel bad when killing a chicken (for example) and not when killing (voluntarily or involuntarily) an ant, cockroach or mosquito?

This is a very important question. It is easier to identify with a chicken, or a cow, or a dog, than an ant, cockroach or mosquito, or a carrot, potato or head of broccoli, OSIT.

Is it ok to squash a mosquito if it is biting (feeding on) you?

Just out of curiosity, have you ever killed an animal that you later ate?

Thanks for your thoughts :)

Seamas

 

[pirataloko]

Well about your curiosity yes i kill fishes and octopus that i after ate.

And i have been helping or present with chickens, rabbits, turkeys and pigs.

 

[obyvatel]

The question that appears in my mind is: Why we feel bad when killing a chicken (for example) and not when killing (voluntarily or involuntarily) an ant, cockroach or mosquito?

This is a very important question. It is easier to identify with a chicken, or a cow, or a dog, than an ant, cockroach or mosquito, or a carrot, potato or head of broccoli, OSIT.

Is it ok to squash a mosquito if it is biting (feeding on) you?

There are some interesting comments about animals in T. Illion's "Darkness Over Tibet". There is an article on this book by Laura here . Here are some interesting excerpts regarding Illion's view of animals.
In the book, Illion traveled alone across the wilderness and slept in the open. On being asked whether he was ever attacked by animals he responds
[quote author=Darkness Over Tibet]
"Seldom, " I answered. "The animals which are on the rising branch of life are very kind to me. I do not think even a lion would attack me, although I never met one. I have had very pleasant experiences, though, with bears and some other so-called wild animals."
...........................
bears have a soul, although they are only at times individualized.
.............
"Are there soulless animals too?"

"Oh yes. The animals on the descending branch of life are soulless.

"Which ones, for example?"

"There are many. Ravens, rats, mice - vermin, for instance."

"They behave like a soulless man?"

"Yes."

"Did these entities inhabit men before?"

"Perhaps, many thousand years ago. When they lost their soul they began to move downward."
......................................
" There are two currents of life. One is moving upward and the other downward. The moment one loses one's soul one is precipitated into the downward current."
[/quote]

Usually normal human beings have a natural aversion to pests and vermins which according to Illion are on the descending branch of life and so perhaps he would not hesitate to squash a mosquito for example. Similarly, it may be much more difficult for normal humans to kill some other animals possibly on the ascending branch of life in a wanton manner.

fwiw

 

[pirataloko]

Hi everybody

Obyvatel, if you do a search you'll find that when Laura asked the C's about this book, they told her that it was a representation about 4D.

It's not refering to 3D animals, but there can be a reflection from 4D to 3D.

And yes, our unconscious perception about the animals (souled or not) can do that we feel empathy or not according to the animal.

But i have to repeat, in an objetive point of view all them are the same and all them are playing their role there isn't difference, we can feel pleased with one group of animals' role and unpleased with the other one, according to our resemblance to one or other.

Attachment and aversion to one kind of animal doesn't stop being an ego jucie.

 

[anart]

Hi everybody

Obyvatel, if you do a search you'll find that when Laura asked the C's about this book, they told her that it was a representation about 4D.

It's not refering to 3D animals, but there can be a reflection from 4D to 3D.

Hi pirataloko, the C's said that,

A: It is a disguise for conveying truths of a spiritual
nature as well as a depiction of 4th Density realities.
Q: (L) Did he physically travel to Tibet?
A: No.
Q: (B) Sounds like he gained some inner awareness
and used a story to convey it. (L) Did he travel
anywhere?
A: Yes.

So, while they say it is a depiction of 4th Density realities, they also say that it conveys truths of a spiritual matter. I don't think this means that all the content of the book relates only to 4D. That's just my take, however.

And yes, our unconscious perception about the animals (souled or not) can do that we feel empathy or not according to the animal.

But i have to repeat, in an objetive point of view all them are the same and all them are playing their role there isn't difference, we can feel pleased with one group of animals' role and unpleased with the other one, according to our resemblance to one or other.

I'm not certain that this is the case. In fact, I think it quite possible, if not probable, that some animals are on the upward path and others are on the downward path. Gurdjieff also suggested such in Beelzebub's Tales. I think it's also possible that some animals are 'leaning toward' STO and some are 'leaning toward' STS, just like humans, as above so below.

 

[obyvatel]

Hi everybody

Obyvatel, if you do a search you'll find that when Laura asked the C's about this book, they told her that it was a representation about 4D.

It's not refering to 3D animals, but there can be a reflection from 4D to 3D.

Hi pirataloko, the C's said that,

A: It is a disguise for conveying truths of a spiritual
nature as well as a depiction of 4th Density realities.
Q: (L) Did he physically travel to Tibet?
A: No.
Q: (B) Sounds like he gained some inner awareness
and used a story to convey it. (L) Did he travel
anywhere?
A: Yes.

So, while they say it is a depiction of 4th Density realities, they also say that it conveys truths of a spiritual matter. I don't think this means that all the content of the book relates only to 4D. That's just my take, however.

That is my understanding too. There are some parts like animating dead bodies in the underground city which most probably refer to a 4D reality. Illion's depiction of certain eastern "spiritual" ideas and practices in the book are very accurate and relevant to the 3D reality we are familiar with. So I do not think that the whole book is a depiction of 4D reality.

[quote author=pirataloko]

But i have to repeat, in an objetive point of view all them are the same and all them are playing their role there isn't difference, we can feel pleased with one group of animals' role and unpleased with the other one, according to our resemblance to one or other.
Attachment and aversion to one kind of animal doesn't stop being an ego jucie.

[/quote]
While all life most likely stems from the same Creator and each life form plays its role in the universal scale, the view which can really consider them to be all the same or equal is the view of the Creator. STS and STO could likely be considered equal in the eyes of the Creator from a certain viewpoint but as a human being in 3D we try to fight the STS characteristics and polarize in a STO direction. This may not be out of any judgment against creation fueled by self-importance but due to a personal choice. Such a choice, may manifest itself as a liking towards STO and aversion towards STS. Similarly, the liking or aversion to certain animals could be such a natural personal choice which may not necessarily be connected to egotism - though it could be.
The way I see it, one could say "I like dogs, cats ..... but I do not like mosquitoes ( I am yet to find anyone who does) " and this would not necessarily imply egotism or judgment on creation. Further one could also decide on keeping the area where one lives free from pests like mosquitoes and cockroaches for health reasons. If however someone says that "mosquitoes and cockroaches have no right to exist and I will hunt them down and exterminate them wherever they may be hiding - even if they are not causing any problems for me and others" then that could be closer to a judgment on creation - OSIT.