JamesThomas

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Posts by JamesThomas

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  56

  Adventures in Meditating......

  by freedomloverr in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i know a lot of you do meditation and i thought i would share a recent experience with you all.

  it's been almost 2 years since i left the mental bondage of the org.

  and it's been a journey with lots of twists and turns.

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  JamesThomas

  Popper's counsel here is among the most helpful and elegant one could hope to find.

  He is a rare gem. We are fortunate that he has joined us.

  j
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  28

  Has being a Witness made it hard for you to love Jesus?

  by jwfacts in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  whenever i hear the word jehovah i still feel warm and fuzzy.

  he was the god that i spent hours talking to in prayer, petitioning, thanking, pleading with.

  he was my father, the creator, the one who we would worship for eternity.. jesus on the other hand i never spoke or prayed to.

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  JamesThomas

  My feelings are very much those of Narkissos.

  Being raised as a JW, the most difficult part was feeling a sense of love and admiration for the Bible expression of Jehovah. This guy was way too repugnant for me to love and cherish; but I was stupid, and blamed myself.

  After the Witnesses, I came to love and appreciate Jesus as my Master. Then, a time came when there was no need for any deity or god story, as they were seen as a distant mirage compared with the immediate presence of reality.

  j
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  34

  Spiritual Self-Assessment

  by purplesofa in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  worth taking a look at:.

  http://www.martycrouch.com/spiritualassessment.html.

  spiritual self-assessment.

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  JamesThomas

  Knowledge is only possible when we can say something.

  Intellectual "knowledge" perhaps. But this is only superficial. The sounds of a few vowels and consonants, and the thoughts which they echo, can in no way capture life; only present a facsimile. One can sit quietly without thought and by placing acute and clear awareness on the body and sensations, come away with a far richer knowledge -- even if it is a wordless and indescribable knowing -- of what it is to live, than compared to every word ever written and spoken about life.

  Words and thoughts are only empty verbal or pictorial interpretation, one or more steps removed from the reality these mono-dimensional representations feebly attempt to convey. On the other hand, silent, non-labeling, non-defining, non-interpreting, and open conscious-awareness has a wondrous way of meeting directly with life and reality. It's as if words and thoughts are structures of separating boxes and walls; whereas silent attention is free and boundless. Certainly the conscious-awareness which scans a thorough and lengthy autobiography, is not any of the words and thoughts. The awareness is real, the words are not.

  Raw, immediate actuality is not within words and thoughts; it is closer; it is in the still awareness which all existence moves and is experienced within. It can be realised that the reality and the silent conscious meeting with that reality, are same meeting same. They are one. This has to be seen first-hand. The meeting has to be made. Believing it, is only words and thoughts, and so not at all the reality to which we are referring.

  In other words: we are not what we think. We are deeper, far richer and more real than words, thoughts and beliefs about "self" can ever convey.

  Are you repudiating knowledge?

  No, not at all. If I seem to be implying that, then it is likely my weakness of language. Intellectual knowledge is a wonderful, useful and excitingly evolving tool. I am only saying that there is a Reality that is closer than all mentalizing: The conscious-awareness which all intellectualizing happens within and which gives all knowledge it's existence and validity. Most people champion intellectual knowledge. It doesn't need me, and I choose to point elsewhere. But this does not mean I disrespect or discount intelligence and learnable knowledge. In fact, I often wish I had some. The knowledge I am pointing to can not be learned. It's what we truly are.

  If there is data and there are practical uses of knowledge of data why would we doubt we can know other things?

  I don't doubt. In fact it was while looking at thoughts and knowledge that the curiosity arouse to want to know what was seeing the thoughts. Can it be realized what we really are? The way to know is through acute observation, very much like how a scientist examines new species and things, that they may show and teach him or her.

  Or, is "knowing" even important to you? Don't know; just asking!

  Actually, it's all about knowing. What is true? What/who, am I, really? These are the questions that have lighted the way. Not the words so much, as the deep yearning ache to want to genuinely know. However, the realization of the true depths of self can not be known as things and objects are known. It's just too immediate, vast, raw and real. It is not known so much as lived. It's not something we can hold or fit in the mind, it's what we really are. It's what existence is.

  j
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  35

  Where do you go for your spiritual needs?

  by Blindbutnowisee in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i never was baptize as a jw.

  i use to study with them for years, i even went as for as becoming a unbaptize publisher.

  i gave up being a publisher because i did not feel genuine in my efforts to preach.

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  JamesThomas

  Hey, poppers. We posted at the same time. Had I seen your post I would not have said anything that might detour from your words.

  Not surprisingly, though, I see we both spook on the same basic message.

  Actually I have never had the need to make such a purchase.

  That said, I imagine it would be more of a spiritual experience than I ever got in a church.

  j
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  34

  Spiritual Self-Assessment

  by purplesofa in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  worth taking a look at:.

  http://www.martycrouch.com/spiritualassessment.html.

  spiritual self-assessment.

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  JamesThomas

  Gentlemen? Poppers, maybe.

  Here's a flower for you, dear nvr:
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  34

  Spiritual Self-Assessment

  by purplesofa in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  worth taking a look at:.

  http://www.martycrouch.com/spiritualassessment.html.

  spiritual self-assessment.

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  JamesThomas

  Thanks poppers. Nice to see you here.
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  34

  Spiritual Self-Assessment

  by purplesofa in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  worth taking a look at:.

  http://www.martycrouch.com/spiritualassessment.html.

  spiritual self-assessment.

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  JamesThomas

  Purps.

  Mmmmm, love your picture

  I didn't know you were so young.

  j
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  34

  Spiritual Self-Assessment

  by purplesofa in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  worth taking a look at:.

  http://www.martycrouch.com/spiritualassessment.html.

  spiritual self-assessment.

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  JamesThomas

  Terry,

  First, I have never asserted that we are a "spirit". The questions you quoted me as asking are not attempts at selling anyone on being a "spirit", or presented to help people determine they are a "spirit". I'm not sure what the hell a "spirit" is, and I don't much care. So, we may be talking apples and oranges here, and this probably can't help but confuse further comment, but I'll go ahead anyway. Fool that I am.

  My experience with my own existence has consisted of:

  1.Awareness without lexicon or context; a swarm of sensations followed by...

  2.Analysis of perceptions focused onto causes and effects

  3.Contact with others guiding a language into channels of speech/response

  4.Development of identity, personality and history

  5.Ego and determinism

  Notice that all that followed that which I highlighted in yellow, is contingent upon it (Awareness). All these things are mental constructs happening where? Within awareness. Awareness gives them existence. Awareness gives dreams existence to.

  In other words, if I was ever a spirit (without a meat body) there is no awareness, no consciousness and no history of being.

  So, how can we simply assert into being that which is not a part of our awareness?

  How/why assert into being a SPIRIT?

  As an individual we can only assume: if there is no body, there is no awareness. Like we can not know what's in the next county until we go there, we can not be certain until the body is gone or until Conscious-awareness itself somehow informs us before then, whether or not conscious-awareness is totally dependant upon the body.

  As far as "assert into being", it seems it is possible for many to assert into being that existence extends only as far and as long as the body exists, how can we do this and why? Personally, I don't want to assert anything here, but rather desire to see first hand what is or is not true.

  We can be TOLD and persuaded we existed, etc. But, that coaxing and cajoling isn't really our own identification of self.

  I agree completely.

  To be totally honest all we know with absolute certainty about our existence, is what you stated first, there is "awareness". Everything after that, everything that awareness is aware of, may be a dream or thoughts and circumstance mistakenly incorporated into a "me".

  So the point is to not be cajoled into any "identification of self". Lets work with what we genuinely have. Lets investigate sincerely, thoroughly and severely into the one and only reality we have: conscious-awareness. How deep does it go? What am "I" at the core? Does consciousness exist only as far as the body?

  I can't say, because that would only be cajoling, and that don't work. Nothing said, thought or believed, works. The only way is via radical and open, nakedly honest, first-hand observation into conscious-awareness. That's why I ask the questions I did. They are not something the mind can authentically answer. We need to go deeper than the mind. Deeper into what sees the mind.

  Understandably, this may seem strange or even crazy to question what we have for so long accepted as the beginnings and ends of self and reality. But it may require a radical stepping outside past bounds in order to discover further. Are we right now experiencing the totality of our present being? As far as I can see, there is only one way to find out for certain.

  j
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  5

  ok, your youtube moment is in...

  by stevenyc in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu8ddyz68km.

  spellbounding !.

  enjoy!.

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  JamesThomas

  Gives one a new respect for our hoofed friends.

  Buffalo. King of the jungle.

  Thanks for posting that.

  j

  I see a new Disney movie coming.
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  27

  The Eden Story

  by choosing life in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in the garden of eden, god supposedly didn't want adam and eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.

  he preferred they remain innocent and incapable of deciding for themselves what is right or wrong.. along comes satan who wants them to eat of this tree and says they will become like god, knowing good and bad for themselves.

  he says they will be like god.. as we all know, they chose to eat and find out what they were missing.

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  JamesThomas

  Choosing life, you pretty much recapped what I was saying.

  Interesting how many of the sacred scriptures of different religions have kernals of truth to be extracted.

  Yes, perhaps at the core of all religious writings is hidden the same truth. However, I am no fan of the Bible as it seems 99.9% of the time it is a divisive trap which reinforces a sense of separate broken self, and so then prolongs the suffering of mankind. Yet, once you have seen the fallacy of the isolated-self, there can be seen glues within the Bible. In other words too often the Bible is a map whose roads are only visible once you have arrived at your destination. Such a map, if dry, is good for starting a fire.

  Eckhart's book on the other hand, explains the goal, twist and turns of the journey as clear and precise as probably has ever been drawn out. I hope you enjoy it and come to see the treasures within yourself to which the book can only point the way.

  j