URBAN
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"Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
—Melody Beattie
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Our lives are full of neutral situations that are made pleasant or unpleasant by our mental attitude and our thoughts.
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I’m not certain what happens when you’re actually dead. However as a retired hospice nurse seeing many people die, I have experienced that if you believe in some sort of higher power youre dying process is much calmer, easier, peaceful. I’ve experienced some horrific death experiences and many more wonderful ones sometimes people speak to others that have passed. Other times while waiting to die they may talk about some one or thing being in the way. The part that gets my heartstrings is when their faces light up with a huge smile as if they are seeing something/someone I simply do not know, but have never seen a look of pure glorious joy, beauty, and overwhelming happiness on faces except at that point on some people. Then they usually lay back and calmly pass. I hope my mother I am caring for now gets to experience that glory
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What religions are oldest and are there any new ones?
The oldest religion in the world is considered to be Hinduism, which dates back to about 7,000 BCE.
Judaism is the next oldest, dating from about 2,000 BCE, followed by Zoroastrianism, officially founded in Persia in the 6th century BCE but its roots are thought to date back to 1,500 BCE. Shinto, Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism and Taoism bunch together around 500-700 BCE. Then along came Christianity, followed about 600 years later by Islam.
Answering as a Hindu:
No living creatures have a soul - including humans.
A soul is not something we have. It - pure living consciousness - is what we are. What we have, as auxiliary possessions rather than our essential nature, are bodies.
Yes, all living creatures have consciousness and selfhood, fully and equally.
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By way of an answer, allow me to offer a wonderful quote by the late Douglas Adams (of Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame) from his posthumous volume, The Salmon of Doubt:
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
In short, no, the world is not set up for the benefit of man. We are just not that important. No, we evolved to live in this world.
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ENERGY X CONSC
NOT MATTER AND FORM
“The Autobiography,” he said, “can be seen as a Dwapara Yuga epic in which many problems occur, but are all resolved with the understanding that energy and consciousness, not matter and form, are the ultimate reality.” What a brilliant insight!
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dwm
low-carb dieters lose mostly lean mass (water and protein).
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- Dieters often blame themselves when diets fail, but they may chase that initial, rapid weight loss again, which has been called the “false hope syndrome.”
- Regarding body fat, nearly all studies show more fat loss on low-fat diets than low-carb ones—16 more grams of daily body fat lost on low-fat diets. That’s like four more pats of butter melting off your body on a daily basis with the same number of calories consumed.
"Life is harder when you expect a lot of the world and little of yourself.
Life is easier when you expect a lot of yourself and little of the world.
High standards, low expectations.
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Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald on what makes a brilliant mind:
"The test of a first-rate intellect is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
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Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the value of daily surprises:
"Try to be surprised by something every day. It could be something you see, hear, or read about. Stop to look at the unusual car parked at the curb, taste the new item on the cafeteria menu, actually listen to your colleague at the office. How is this different from other similar cars, dishes or conversations? What is its essence? Don't assume that you already know what these things are all about, or that even if you knew them, they wouldn't matter anyway. Experience this one thing for what it is, not what you think it is. Be open to what the world is telling you. Life is nothing more than a stream of experiences — the more widely and deeply you swim in it, the richer your life will be
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Shankara, the commentator, interprets the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1/2/1) and says that the term asat stands for Hiranyagarbha (cosmic self).
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NITYA
nitya which stands for that which is beyond the division of time (past, present and future) and which is never known to be destroyed or deprived of its existence. It is also the cause of all the divisions of birth, existence, growth, diminution and destruction.
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In Advaita, such an anadi tattva, beginningless ontological element, is called Brahman. In Sabdadvaita of Bhartrhari, it is Sabda Brahman that is anadi (Vakyapadiya I.1). The term anadi is used for vasana (false knowledge consisting in an entanglement with the worldly objects) in Buddhism, in the sense of involvement with the unreal, non-existent, in this case the worldly entanglement, is beginningless. But when it is used for the real or existent, it means the eternal being; something that is always there; that which is the first cause of all existence and is uncaused. Hence, it is not subordinate to any of the other existing or ‘real’ entities belonging to any part of time.
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name Allahabad, was actually coined by the British, when they combined adjoining towns Prayag and Illahabas - that Akbar had set up, overlooking the Prayag in 1583
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The word guru is a compound of two words, gu and ru. Gu means darkness and ru means light. That which dispels the darkness of ignorance is called guru. The energy and action of removing darkness are guru. Guru is not a person, it is a force driven by grace.
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We are Consciousness having bodies.” -Sri Nisargadatta
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Imagine a ‘field of energy,’ inside of which all planets, creatures and their lives/bodies/thoughts reside. Your true ‘identity’ is that Field, not any one individual or occurrence inside it. You are Being.
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Yet the non-dual Being apparently delights in dreaming Itself as ‘two,’ or two trillion, and enjoying a dream-of-separateness - for what might seem like an expanse of “time,” but in fact there is no time (‘mind’ can’t comprehend that, either.:-) During that ‘non-duration’ of time, Being’s dream-images will think of ‘themselves,’ their bodies, minds and consciousness, as quite real
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“The point of asking ‘Who am I’ is never to get the answer; it is to dissolve the questioner.” - Ramana Maharshi
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Consciousness is not a thing, that could be either separate or non-separate from other ‘things.’ Consciousness is the Field or Space in which all things reside, including all bodies and brains, whether alive or dead.
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I will tell you real truths.
- You will lose everything (over thinking, distress, myth)
- You start coming to know about truth.
- The moment you enter deep in silence, you will taste the beautiful moments.
- It may be possible you will get no deep experience even after involved in rigorous practice.
- If there is possibility, you get something significant, otherwise you will just wish I could experience.
One best thing I have found, you become honest. This is significant thing which I find in people who walk on the path of spirituality
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DTHING
Dutch saying “een mens lijdt het meest, van het lijden dat hij vreest” which roughly translates to “a person suffers the most from the suffering he fears”
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An even bigger surprise: in a universe that has both mind and matter, mind is the senior expression: it is far more likely that matter arose from mind than the other way around, though post-Darwinian biologists ceaselessly haggle the converse
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Be it “matter”, “spacetime”, or anything else imaginable, consciousness is the only “substance” that knows it.
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What am "I"? - A Discussion with Claude 2 (Anthropic)
What is common and unchanging about these three statements?
I am something.
I am nothing.
I am everything.
Okay, let's analyze these statements:
"I am something" - This asserts the existence of an "I" that is something, some entity.
"I am nothing" - This asserts the existence of an "I" that is no thing, no entity.
"I am everything" - This asserts the existence of an "I" that encompasses all things, all entities.
The common and unchanging aspect across these statements is the presumption or assertion of an "I" - some subjective experiential presence that serves as the basis for these declarations. Regardless of whether this "I" is professed to be something, nothing or everything, there is an underlying assumption or introduction of this first-person perspective.
So in summary, the unchanging component is the concept or experience of "I" - the first-person quality of these statements remains constant, while what that "I" is asserted to be changes from something, to nothing, to everything. The common thread is that subjective perspective of "I" rather than the objective nature of what that "I" is.
"I", with reference to a body/mind, AM experienced.
"I", without reference, simply IS.
You make an excellent distinction here. Allow me to summarize:
When referring to "I" in association with a body and mind, there is an experiencer - an "I" that is subject to experience, perception, thought, and sensation due to its linkage to a physical form. This is "I" with a lower case - a localized and contextualized sense of self.
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spl relaty + gravity = genl relaty
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WAITER WATCH
When I see people put their phone face up next to their plate, I think they are trying to multitask and perhaps won’t be as present during the meal,” she says. “On the other hand, some people will put it face down on the table, to show they’re paying attention. But it’s the ones who hold their phone in one hand during their whole meal, either taking pictures or looking at it, that worry me—are you really enjoying the experience of eating out? And are your companions enjoying eating with you?”
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Our hearts beat 100,000 times a day, but we tend not to worry about their maintenance unless there is a problem
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"For fast-acting relief, try slowing down."
-- Lily Tomlin
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EDISON - I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention that had 1,000 steps."
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Sometimes the only scientific answer we can give is “We don’t know.”
― Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
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“Every fact of science was once damned … Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy.” —Robert Anton Wilson
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MY INNER WEIRDO
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THE SPARK OF MADNESS IN SLF
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“All the hypotheses about the early universe . . . are pure speculation. They're modern creation myths written in the language of mathematics.”
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