This conversation with Mike Castro in the Practical Metaphysics group continues from 'Einstein's God Model.' In response to my post on Einstein's God Model, Mike Castro wrote: {Sounds fascinating... I'll check it. Thanks. Love the phrasing "the ground of being, pure consciousness embedded in an infinite field of potentiality". A nicely precise formulation... {I did a visualization meditation on dying one time when I was particularly abstracted from my physical body and even part of my mind... I felt I had reduced the footprint of my actual "presence" to a translucent blue-green pea on top of where the pineal gland sits... The very thoughts in my head were "observable" in front of me, they were not me. Inside the pea of me there was only buzzy-ness, the bliss of pure receptive lucidity and for some reason, the color blue green... Also some warmth... G. - Wonderfully described. Though I have had none like it, while reading I can feel your experience. Would love to abstract from the thoughts in my head. {What I saw/felt when I visualized my physical body dropping away was, first of all, a very pleasant cessation of the staticky, almost white noise, that the physical world projected (the fact that I was in NYC at the time may have had something to do with how staticky the physical felt). G. - I feel the staticky noise of human society even in the semi-rural area where I live. {Then my consciousness released in a flash in all directions, but felt and visualized as a 2-dimensional planar expansion to represent the very specific electro-vibrational signature that encoded the flavor and perceptual focus of presence of my personality, as it were. G. - Yes, the 'specific electro-vibrational signature that encodes the flavor and perceptual focus of presence of personality' is very much how I conceptualize it. But, is this to you our essence, or another layer of the onion? {This plane expanded in all directions until it encountered a point of interference somewhere (vibrations similar enough to mine to actually cause interference)... And that's where my attention instantly gathered to begin to reincarnate... G. - Fascinating! {These fields of similar energy that acted as gathering spots for related consciousness were not necessarily in the physical as we know it... You could go to a place of "weirdness" that was subjectively real to your whole crew but not necessarily "objectively real" to all of us, like the physical plane perhaps is. In other words you could go to an astral planet tailored to your specific psycho-karmic needs, or whatever... G. - The movie brings this out some. One line that was predictable was in a conversation about what the afterlife is like, and someone said, as I recall, 'It is whatever you expect it to be.' I wonder, is there an 'objectively real' that is something different than our expectations? Or do our expectations create the only actuality there is? I lean towards the ground of being as the only actual. How I experience that, however, may be flavored by my expectations until I can let them go entirely. {I mentioned this experience to my Dzogchen instructor and he asked, "How do you know about the Blue Pearl meditation, it is not written about anywhere and is only taught as an advanced practice after much preparation, because It can be hazardous without previous proper training" (which turns out I kinda found out for myself, but that's another story). G. - I'd like to read your story. {I mention Dzogchen cause I love their formulation of presence/reality/our own being.... Essence = Emptiness Nature = Lucidity Energy = Ever-arising (sine-wave-like I imagine... We all need down time reconnecting with the singular infinite voidal source of all before coming back full strength for another round of creative engaged lucidity...). G. - Getting such needed down time in the constantly staticky world of Man is a challenge in itself. {And we do this eternally cause emerging as virtual presence from the void means inevitable infinite beginnings with no possibility of an end for any of them... G. - Perhaps it is possible to retain whatever mastery we realize here, on other planes. Mastery in this case is to me total service to the ground of being, being an agent of unconditional love. I look forward to reading your insights from watching the movie. May I publish your comments with your name in posts on the Whole Human blog? Gary R. Smith Hey Mike, you wrote: 1. I do believe there is an 'objective reality' thankfully or we'd all be stuck in our echo-chambers and never really perceive, communicate or learn anything meaningful. G. - Meaning, I believe, comes from human ideas and emotional attachments. Anything in my life has only the meaning I give to it. To use an old cliche, 'we are the creators of our reality.' I feel we are in a cosmic sandbox for playing, experimenting, exploring, learning, and growing creatively. The ground of being is the sandbox. There are forces of intelligence which have their own motives and devices and create realities for those who are not awakened enough to consciously create their own. What, for example, would be for you meaningful perception or communication? Mike 2. The other implied question at the end, whether we get to keep our sense of self and keep growing... YES!, that's what I think. I think it has to be that way somehow, there's an internal consistency requiring this, which might be possible to delineate a little bit, if not actually demonstrate or prove... G. - I feel that this varies between individuals according to their degree of awakening and mastery. Most are recycled. I think few retain a coherency of consciousness to pass beyond the astral planes of the earth. But, it is possible. Like you, I cannot prove it. It is a feeling, and subject to adjustment. Mike 2. As to the many layers, at some point I think we each connect directly to the void itself... if we want to know what it means for the void to awaken, we need only remember (through how many layers is a different story). There's a mysterious difference/identity of the void with the ground of being (the Lucidity of Emptiness?) G. - Here's something I have been playing with, two overlapping writings which are still being formed - how do you see the void fitting in?: TIMELESS AND TEMPORAL TRANSFORMATION Mike Castro Hey Gary R. Smith, I think you're really on to something crucial with TIMELESS & TEMPORAL... I think I know the stillness and everything you say resonates true. Similarly TRANSFORMATION, I agree with all of it, though I think I might add a point or two... But I love the sparse lucidity of the language, almost poetry, reminded me of some of mine my one copy is buried somewhere but I almost remember a short one, something like: TOTALITY CHORD it's wavelength is from here to infinity It's frequency from forever to NOW But yeah, I think you're on to something here too, something that might be very useful and timely. So, with respect to PERSONAL V. UNIVERSAL MEANING, II just wrote something on another post (there's one out there by somebody Manser about nihilism that drew some responses from me) about the sense I had after more or less stripping down to my pineal, that the experiences each of us go thru in the many various possible ways of becoming, nevertheless have key points of commonality... Coming into being is coming into being, it's pretty much of one taste for all, I guess with many possible spices or whatever (the extended Buddhist or Pre-Buddhist Tibetan metaphysic shamanic literature goes into aspects of this) but otherwise universal and transcendent, in other words, objectively meaningful somehow... That's my current working hypothesis. There's a related question of whether it's possible to come into self-consciousness starting as a pure spirit being, or do we need the physical to better visualize individuation... But I believe the individuation can then be passed on to be built upon in the full consciousness possible in the stillness of the timeless overview, that we conspire to forget when incarnating for maximum experiential effect, or more likely it just requires a certain difficult or subtle level of mastery of presence to pull off not forgetting... Again, I think Dzogchen or Vajrayoga Buddhism have some insights here. (If that other post ads anything I'll cut and paste)... Finally, the couple of points I would add to your TRANSFORMATION metapoetics... Basically that beyond (and apart really, we all still have to go thru the personal changes) what any of us can do by way of personal transformation, I think this vertiginous moment of change we've been perched on planetarily my whole life at least, but feeling REALLY EDGY LATELY, like we're already dancing on the actual edge collectively, like the fool... This moment calls for all of us going all out on all levels, it seems to be an amazing point of potential quantum shifts in collective experiential realities... I think there's CHAOS THEORY that relates... That we should not hold back from whatever levels, venues and means of "compassionate engagement" (to quote or paraphrase something Buddhist again) may work... To wit, in our case as twenty1st century humans, that includes culture, politics and probably mostly "healthier economics" as a common ground foundation for the rest (including personal enlightenment if there's any intention of using this planet as the staging ground)... Anyway, without further ado, as the say in showbiz, here's the activist project I've been working on recently, just two, short, key explanatory essays from first inner circle outreach launch... But I think the extra points I would add to your exposition are in there somewhere. Gary R. Smith M. - TOTALITY CHORD it's wavelength is from here to infinity It's frequency from forever to NOW G. - Beautiful! I love it! Also love your term, 'metapoetics.' M. - universal and transcendent, in other words, objectively meaningful somehow G. - Interesting. I think I can see how 'universal and transcendent' could be 'objectively meaningful' - with a meaningfulness based on what it is. M. - There's a related question of whether it's possible to come into self-consciousness starting as a pure spirit being, or do we need the physical to better visualize individuation. G. - It feels so, that 'we need the physical to better visualize individuation'. In my 'on-going conversation with cooperative networks of conscious particles through the focal point of Heartstone,' it came out to the effect, or it could be interpreted, that 'pure spirit being' does not well 'visualize individuation.' Individuation requires borders, and a 'pure spirit being' is border-less. Although, if there are networks of conscious particles.... well, those borders are not as defined as the borders of a physically individuated being, as the boundaries of the sun are 'not as defined' as those of the earth, as perceived on the plane in which we write. M. - key explanatory essays from first inner circle outreach launch... But I think the extra points I would add to your exposition are in there somewhere. G. - Where are the essays, Mike? Mike Castro Not really essays as such yet... More pamphleteering as it were... On the link I sent, it's the activist/economic project I'm trying to launch, like yesterday. Here it is again, StrategicUtopian.com. There's also an FB group page but that doesn't have a presentation as orderly as the blog... And the points I refer to are really more implicit in that the whole project is a call to everyone for active engagement and stepped up responsible engagement of the physical... That's the main point, I don't know about 2... "Engage the physical as if it were a magnificent fruit of the spirit... And engage the extended community represented by our global civ, as spirit co-creators... So politics, culture and especially economics really count, even spiritually... Should be part of everyone's "Wholistic Engagement Protocol" or whatever... In a healthy society... That paragraph including "Heartstone"'... Consider my mind blown a bit... For one, I totally believe in your ongoing conversation, for two I'm not at all surprised at their answer... And three this might be a really good place to finally download, as it were, my vision of how some boundaries may have in fact been possible in pure spirit that may have allowed for individuation in the Pre-manifest... That's exactly what this one vision was about, and I've never known what to do with it really... Anyway I'm on the fade, but this has been exhilarating really, obviously there will be follow up... Laters friend Gary R. Smith Thanks for the link, Mike. This is a page that is worth a few re-reads to more fully digest. I like much of the wording: 'ACTUALIZE FUNCTIONING PORTIONS of the humanly-scaled, self-governing, self-employed, self-sustained and eco-sustainable network of coops & communities that we believe can seed the NEW EDEN EARTH.' 'we ALL need to start Conscious Changes TODAY! (whenever today really dawns on you, no pressure)' 'NETWORK of entrepreneurial COOP ventures (not politics, not activism as we know it, not entrepreneurialism quite as we know it either… no “Us v. Them”… no stress, coercion, threat or resistance)… strictly WIN-WIN networking towards sustainable resources and nurturing extended communities (eventually globally).' 'MEANINGFUL POSITIVE VALUE for your coop/community, not necessarily profit. We suggest that THE PROFIT MOTIVE has, in many cases, outlived its usefulness and is now part of what is KEEPING US FROM TRUE PLANETARY PROSPERITY.' I'll post a link on the Whole Human blog and include this in our public conversations.
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