A Revitalization of Spirit

[Auburn]

So this might take some deep thought to answer,
but I thought some members here might enjoy the challenge? <.<
It's a tough question so I'll ask it first, and explain what I mean below it..

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o) If you could imagine an experience (not necessarily bound to known physics) that truly would be so complete/perfect and take you so aback that it profoundly changed your identity/Self --- what would that experience be?
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I suppose this is aimed in a large way at people who are within a sort of apathy toward existence, or too comfortable in a worldview that has become flat and dampens the ignition of imagination or inspiration into life's *magic*.

Do you remember what it was like to be a child and discover reality for the first time? How everything seemed so open-ended, so intriguing and unknown? What experience would be so profound that you'd find yourself back in that place? Or what experience would change who you are so fundamentally, that you'd never conceive of yourself as you have up til now?

Spoiler

Another related alternative to this question is, what would be an experience so perfect and overwhelming that you'd feel your soul couldn't expand any larger. (or.. do you know what your soul desires most deeply? not just in an earthly sense but in a sense outside of physical laws as you've come to know them through life, and learned to restrain your imagination within them)

 

[nexion]

My experience of discovering reality for the first time didn't happen until I was a teen, and was more of a nightmare than something desirable.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Taking away the knowlege and exhaustion that has built up, the same could be achieved for me by placing me in the wilderness or in a different enviroment to what I am used to, with different sets of rules and different responses and needs.

Aside from the above, any experience I can think of that in any way changes me or is perfect, has no clearly defined outcomes and as such is an assumption to what could and would happen to my identity and my sense of self.

One that is really close and captures the idea is reincarnation, I think.

 

[Cognisant]

Digitization of my mind.

When my software exists independant of any particular hardware then I am free, with the right infrastructure I'll be able to travel between the planets at the spead of light (at whatever bps rate the hardware supports), to have multiple selves existing in parallel, to make backups of my memories and laugh at death's impotence.

 

[PhoenixRising]

o) If you could imagine an experience (not necessarily bound to known physics) that truly would be so complete/perfect and take you so aback that it profoundly changed your identity/Self --- what would that experience be?

Becoming hyper-aware (capable of capturing every detail of each atom in a system at the same time as being able to comprehend the system as a whole). And then extending my conscious awareness to the entire universe and self-actualizing o.o

Imagine, being able to introspect into the depths of a super-massive black hole.. to perceive the edge of the universe and know its nature and its shape.. to embody that shape and therefore understand how it feels to exist as all things, and what place a race of living creatures plays within you.. to realize what infinite existence really means.. to gaze out into the cosmic expanse, whatever may exist outside of this world, and experience a whole new level of mystery and wonder.. What sort of questions would a universe ask once it knew itself entirely?

If there is a bliss for me, it would be this. To truly and completely know all at every level of my being.

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

Waking up on another world. I'm so very tired of this one. This other world could have its own problems but they would be different problems (presumably). I want a new. A something else. That's all. I by no means have learned all there is to know about this world. No one ever has. And I'd by no means learn everything there is to learn about this new one. It's just some days (or weeks, months) I feel like I've learned all I want to about this one. Scratch that, some days (weeks or months) I just don't find anything I want to learn about.

 

[Pyropyro]

Accessing the Akashic records

 

[DelusiveNinja]

Strangely, I see this occurring clearly.

The vision that could produce this effect would be a vision that shows me the future. Reality will be paused, but during that moment, I will enter an OBE (out-of-body experience). During the OBE, in a rift of time, my "world line" (to reference Steins;Gate) would have to be replaced, no more like cloned, creating a temporary timeline of events that showcases the future that is produced as a result of my current mindset/worldview.

It would be like pressing fast forward on a VCR, except I would be able to hear every subvocalized/vocalized word of thought and to see or understand every decision I make without being able to alter them. I will be essentially watching the plane fly, understanding its direction and destination, while simultaneously occupying the role of a mere spectator of its pilot's (the me from a different "world line") journey.

[bimgx=300]https://blogs.emory.edu/animec/files/2011/04/steins-gate-02-22.jpg[/bimgx]​

If we were talking more that one vision, then each time I came back from seeing all of the world lines that the current worldview encompassed, I would probably change my worldview and repeat this process, until I have filtered out the worldview that precipitated the most ideal reaction from the world.

After Thought:
The Sims, the game, has a more similar fast forward feature to what I am describing.

 

[nanook]

1) every stage of psychological development is like an awakening to newly recognized possibilities. my next cognitive stage would probably be integration of spirit and body, but i don't feel it coming yet. i probably need some healing to make that possible.


2) shadow integration can have similar effect: waking up to actually living old but suppressed possibilities. living self-actualization. there would be lots of areas to awaken to for me, since i have been very avoidant of real life.

3) spiritual state shifts (horizontal). body/soul/witness/nonduality. they are very conditonal and dynamic.

4) state-stages. very difficult to understand. in my understanding body stages are the stages of cognitive development, that i am constantly jabbering about. soul stages are perhaps related to integrative capability or self-actualization (mentioned in point 2), witnessing stages - i don't know about them - nondualiy stages don't exist in my understanding.

 

[Auburn]

Very curious replies! (sorry, been away for a while)

@nil - so what would have been a desirable discovery..? if the reality you found as a teen could have been what you wanted it to be..

@Blarraun - I see. What is it about the wilderness that would help reboot your mind? ..is it the raw struggle against the elements without the aide of tools? ..the appreciation of its beauty? ..tranquility?

@Cognisant - Hehe, so I'm curious. If you digitized yourself and thus now had the choice to pick whatever sort of mind(set)/mentality or OS that you wanted, would you change your basic experience of your Self?

You could decide to make yourself a different person, literally. You could decide to have different attributes of character, of personality, of anything that presently defines 'you'. Or would you retain your sense of Self just with some added extra powers? ...or you think maybe the experiences themselves would change your personality without the need to pick another one?

@IB - What if the new world also had drama, politics, taxes and so forth? :P

@Pyropyro - Yes! ...nice. That's the sort of thing that comes to mind to me. To suddenly stumble upon the reservoir of all answers, that would dramatically rekindle my sometimes dying flame of inspiration. I can imagine seeing into the Records and seeing the future, and the past, and even how everything leading up to that moment was inevitable - already written - even my reading of the record at that moment.

@DelusiveNinja - ( +1 for Steins;Gate reference!) ... but, so what would this "most ideal" reaction from the world look like?

 

[DelusiveNinja]

This topic excited me and I started talking to myself. Can I post audio of my rantings on this part?

Do you remember what it was like to be a child and discover reality for the first time? How everything seemed so open-ended, so intriguing and unknown? What experience would be so profound that you'd find yourself back in that place? Or what experience would change who you are so fundamentally, that you'd never conceive of yourself as you have up til now?

Voice Memo:

Spoiler

MP3 - http://picosong.com/PfRm/

Shinsekai Yori - I wonder if I was pronouncing it correctly.

 

[Auburn]

Please do!

 

[DelusiveNinja]

... but, so what would this "most ideal" reaction from the world look like?

The ideal precipitate can only be determined after it has been visualized with a worldview different from my current one. This is all assuming that my current worldview will not precipitate the most satisfactory "end game" experience. I can't say for certain what type of "end game" I yearn for deep down inside, beneath my ego(?) or beyond my awareness.

However, on the off chance that my current worldview is the most ideal, I will be satisfied with an empty death. Cognisant described what I perceive to be an empty death when he used the analogy of the sand castle.

It's infuriating, the entirety of my life is just a sandcastle soon to be swept away by a rising tide and tomorrow (figuratively) there will be nothing but the beach again, the grains of sand arranged differently but not meaningfully so, it's the greatest concieveable insult. Adding injury to insult is all the suffering one has to endure in a lifetime that never amounts to anything, it dosen't mean anything, there is no justification for it, life is needlessly random and cruel.

 

[Auburn]

Voice Memo

(Wow, you're describing exactly what Jung describes about the child's mind. The way he words it is that the child's mind is essentially unconscious, unaware. Allowing for it to interpret the world from that place, ascribing value and meaning to things as they relate to those unconscious impulses.)

One thing that I've come to conclude is that Bliss comes from ignorance of reality and the immersion into the unconscious - which has its own built-in sense of what reality is/will be like. Thoughts and archetypes that the mind feels and senses ought to be true.

A clear example of this is the widespread belief in God. The belief in God is not necessarily a rationally-born one (there are many more reasons to believe alternative theories to life's mysterious origin) but one born from the *sense* that we feel from our inner psychology. It feels as though there is a reason, it feels as though there is a guiding force, an omnipotent essence giving birth to all of this. This is an unconscious sense. It is a disenchantment, and one of those sad things you mentioned, to realize that there isn't such a 'reason'.

Another one (which I just made a thread about) is the Anima. The feeling that somewhere out there there is this perfect feminine entity that will meet you and provide all one's desires. In an ideal world, which operated according to one's unconscious, every male would indeed find their anima in physical form and spend eternity with it.

Another reason why the unconscious is so blissful and inspiring is because it is where 'soulfulness' lies. Yknow that feeling of spark... of passion and life, and purpose? When you feel something warm in your heart, and a "cherished" specialness to an idea, person or thing? It stems from one's own spirituality, which is the exploration of the inner bowels of the psyche. The stronger one delves into their inner psyche (the Unconscious), the more of that internal psychic energy they uncover as they feel the origins of that vital energy.

The neocortex, with its ability to rationalize, doesn't give us the emotional overwhelm and purpose that the lower brain does. It takes away from it, in fact, by reasoning away the fallacies of our primitive instincts. But it's in that instinctual core that we have any sense of vigor. Of spirit.

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In light of that, my own personal answer to this question is...

Suddenly having some God/Goddess peel back the curtain of reality as I know it and reveal to me that it was all a lie. A theatrical set. And to then be swept off into an altogether different plane of existence, which was the real one all alone, that resembles more of the dream world of humanity.

A world in which magic exists, and souls are visible as energy, and there is so much unknown --- but not boring unknown (like IB stated), but a whole unknown world that I'd die to explore... that I'm itching to explore and that I know won't disenchant me by exploring it... but invigorate my spirit.

I'd like to see what love looks like, what color it is, and how it floats in the air, and how it changes shape into lust or jealousy or hate. And all sorts of unimaginable things.

 

[Latte]

I'd like to not only understand, but have full mastery in directing the usage of the current extent of the potential of my cognitive formats and those that I can construct as a human. To be able to be anything I could when I want to.

And then to realize that I can be something beyond that, which I don't understand. And to enter into it, to explore and wonder anew, as a child of the valley past the hill where I end as a human being. It makes my body tingle to imagine it. I am euphoric.

 

[nexion]

@nil - so what would have been a desirable discovery..? if the reality you found as a teen could have been what you wanted it to be..

I was a fool back then. My ideas about reality were ill-conceived and had little value. I was content to live without considering anything beyond what I knew or understood. There was my own limited perspective and reality, and nothing else.

Now I understand that this change, though certainly not desirable, was indeed very good for me. My expanding and dissolving mental barriers allowed me to explore things and ideas I would have never dreamed were possible.

It's like living in a dream and then gradually waking up to reality. You know that the dream is better, and you will cling to it with all of your being, but you can't stop the inevitable onslaught of what is real, and eventually you realize that reality is where you should have been in the first place.

And to then be swept off into an altogether different plane of existence, which was the real one all alone, that resembles more of the dream world of humanity.

A world in which magic exists

I relate very much to this, but not at all in the way you said it. For me it's more about the ability consciously forcing my will on reality through nothing more than mental effort.

To actually answer the OP in the best way that I understand it (I'm not exactly sure there's any I perceive or think about that doesn't cause my Self to change), I would say that it would be the realization of the fantasy I posted here: being an immortal, incorporeal consciousness drifting in the cosmic ocean, barely aware of its own existence, living within the ceaseless and iridescent dreams. Self-awareness and survival are far too much work.

I notice that your point with this thread is supposedly to bring people out of "apathy towards existence" and evoke a childlike fascination with the "magic" of reality. I regret to inform you that I have never once considered reality as something magical; it is simply what is, and that my apathy towards existence will probably never go away. That's alright though, I am content in life and it is not going in any way I don't want it to go currently, so all is well.

EDIT: also this.

 

[DelusiveNinja]

I notice that your point with this thread is supposedly to bring people out of "apathy towards existence" and evoke a childlike fascination with the "magic" of reality. I regret to inform you that I have never once considered reality as something magical; it is simply what is, and that my apathy towards existence will probably never go away. That's alright though, I am content in life and it is not going in any way I don't want it to go currently, so all is well.

That's what I thought as well. Is there any truth to this assertion @Auburn?

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

@IB - What if the new world also had drama, politics, taxes and so forth? :P

It would still be new drama, new politics, new taxes and new so forth.

I'm at the stereotypical age where I'm supposed to have some sort of midlife crisis. Maybe it's something that simple. How many years do those things last? I feel like I'm going on 8-10 and counting.

(Wow, you're describing exactly what Jung describes about the child's mind. The way he words it is that the child's mind is essentially unconscious, unaware. Allowing for it to interpret the world from that place, ascribing value and meaning to things as they relate to those unconscious impulses.)

I'd like to have that back if indeed I ever had it. I guess there's a flaw in my wanting a new world thing. I'd still be carrying the baggage of 46 years observing this one.

 

[Auburn]

@DelusiveNinja - I enjoy provoking thought ^^ Particularly about one's inner drives. But I certainly wouldn't expect a single thread I've made to make any drastic change in another's perspective. I don't have a strong agenda to this thread.. just a desire to share and receive the desires in others.

@IB - Yeah. :P So, really, you'd need an experience that stripped away those 40+ years. That made you realize reality doesn't operate that way, and that all you've thought to be true isn't true anymore. Like being in a universe with different laws.

One thing I've often imagined is uploading my consciousness into a virtual reality program that allows for 100% Presence, and run different physics. Have my most simple assumptions revoked -- like objects having defined shapes, or shadows being cast, or things making sounds when they hit stuff. And instead have a sort of synesthesia x100 where all our senses take new forms. Or a physics where life isn't about following a single linear direction but one where various directions branch and you literally experience yourself transversing several of them at once.

@nil - I don't think you were necessarily a fool. It only seems that way now, because you've already developed a perspective of what reality is, and everything not fitting it seems nonsensical. The human psyche adapts itself to the reality it finds itself in... but whose to say reality had to be *this*?

I also think the human psyche is programmed to become complacent. (not saying this is a bad thing, but an adaptive mechanism). We stumble into life's realities and learn to accept that "it is what it is".

(I think people do this with things that seem unavoidable, like death, to use an example. Later they reason things like "eh, I don't mind if I die.. i wouldn't wanna life forever anyway" ..but that sort of view is an adjustment to perceived inevitability and less so the authentic desire from within, if it was allowed to flow without restrains in reality.)

I like your immortal-incorporeal-consciousness fantasy! Oh how many times I've dreamed similar dreams.

 

[Grayman]

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o) If you could imagine an experience (not necessarily bound to known physics) that truly would be so complete/perfect and take you so aback that it profoundly changed your identity/Self --- what would that experience be?

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I prefer to experience a 'near' complete connection of minds with everyone. The change in my soul and mind would be astronomical. To imagine such a thing or contemplate it would be impossible.

I would only hope that it would not last and I could go back to being an individual. Then again perhaps, being a different person, I will have a different opinion. Perhaps I would forever be stuck in that experience if it was left up to choice.