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December 17, 2011

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Well, now that's not what I expected to hear. I feel like someone has picked up all the cool toys and left me alone in the spiritual sandbox!

So, you're saying that this is it, all there is, because it is, and there are no "other" realms that we can gain entry to by "waking up" and merging with "the one".

I'm so curious about the process you went through that brought you from where you were when you wrote Return to the One and where you find yourself now. It would appear to be an about face in the opposite direction.

Have you abandoned the search for explanations as to why the world is the way it is and materiality as a reflection of some unseen spiritual form?

In one of your posts you talked about death and having the man call your death "gerbil"...which cracks me up by the way...what do you suppose happens when we die? My sense is that this spirit or energy that makes my body move, my heart beat, and my brain cogitate goes somewhere, perhaps reuniting with something greater. What is is that enlivens the materiality? One minute its there and the next...boom! It can vanish.

Well, you've given me something to ponder. Thanks and enjoy that Mini!

margie, be assured that you're not alone in the spiritual sandbox. You've got about six billion people for company, since almost everybody on the planet believes in a spiritual side of existence.

I used to. I don't anymore. But I could be wrong, just as the six billion people could be wrong. Each of us will find out after death -- unless I'm right, then there won't be anything to find out. Or experience.

Hopefully you're correct: some sort of conscious energy survives, while the body dies.

However, the answer to your question "what enlivens the materiality?" could be simply "life." Do we ask, what enlivens photons which come from the sun and illuminate Earth? What's wrong with saying "electromagnetic energy is what photons are; nothing else is needed to explain them."

I still embrace the notion of returning to the One. But perhaps what we seek is right in front of us. Maybe our sense of seeking is what keeps us from finding. It could be that the thought "something is missing from my life" is the reason we feel that lack. Could ending the search be the key to returning to what we really are?

I am aware that there have been belief systems that envisage our 'essence' as being a trapped 'divine spark' trapped in an evil body, and nature (Orphism, Gnosticism), and that via 'purification' rituals this trapped spark could return to its 'spiritual home' beyond the planets and 'Archons' (Gnosticism)--knowing their names would help the initiated escape their power to send them 'back' to the material realm.
Now, Orphism--an ancient Greek mystical school, was influenced by Eastern mysticism which also posits a 'oneness' from which the 'many' are in exile from until via various means, meditation, and lifetimes and 'karma' they may once again become the 'one'--so you can see the same theme going on here.
Orphism influenced Christianity, and there agin we see the belief of 'fallen' nature and the person born with 'original sin', and the goal once again is purification so as to gain a heavenly reward and eventually a transfigured life in a transfigured world-------------All these belief systems (and these aspiration become unconscious in the secualr world whose goals act OUT these unresolved divisive religious memes. Such as Transhumanism--upgrading the body and nature for 'immortality' via man-made technology etc)
HOWEVER, I am far more attractwed to the Pagan (countrydewller) understanding of the Land of Faerie which is believed to be the warp and woof of so-called ordinary reality. This has been suppressed both by orthodox religion and orthodox science which reveals its taboo nature. In this understanding materiality isn't only 'materiality' and 'spirituality' isn't only spirituality---it is 'something else'---some thing ungraspable but very very 'real'. Ie., if i say 'real' I leave out 'not-real', but reality is both, and more. Ungraspable

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