Beyond Faith

Great communication with long time Vipassana Meditator:

Hi T. ... yet it is typical of ACIM fundamentalists dangerous thinking that this life on earth is shit, and what is beyond is "heaven".

Dear ron,I think we are the lucky ones who have found something beyond faith...

as for me... thats not the kind of leap I want. it didn't work for me since I was a teen...

but yet... there was always some kind of faith that believed more was possible than what had been revealed to me. ...but it involved not placing faith in alot of other things along the way.

Yes... that looking-forward- to-heaven dogma made the Manifest Destiny possible. its OK to kill all manner of life in the name of your God... after all, their only barbarians and animals. We've been given dominion... blah, blah...

I was raised by my Geman/Swiss grandmother who was raised Lutheran and danced through many Christian faiths thru her lifetime... only to die, still searching... an active member of two churches. Both ministers officiated at her funeral... a Seventh-Day Adventist minister who was my childhood friend and a Baptist minister who was one of Grandma's closest friends - he turned to her when he needed counsel.

Grandma had religious fervor - a Scorpio like me... but her search was always with the confines of Christianity. When I set off on my own spiritual explorations - she worried I would end up in a cult.

I was long past believing in anything... yet always knowing that I must live dharma, must do the right thing as I best understand it. When I stumbled across vipassana, it was with the notion that it would be just another frequent hour here or there with a group... I had no idea it would be beyond any other experience - intellectually, spiritually, socially, organizationally... nearing utopia.

And, I had no idea it would separate me from most in a way that is inexplicable. I am an intellectual... and have spent many years learning from others experiences and expressions... but I have little interest in it now, yet cannot separate myself from the literate person that I created.

I think that vipassana has somehow shifted my consciousness to a place where I percieve more energetically, than intellectually or emotionally. I can look at a picture of a person or house... and smell them and feel them vibrationally. I don't know how this happens... and its only been a few years now - about as long as I've become a hermit. If I'm that sensitive at a distance... can you imagine how intense being there is? Ha!

I've always been a prophetic dreamer and have visions... but the strange sensitivities that have developed since vipassana are, well strange.

Generally speaking, I think that spiritually inclined people are way more complex and capable of infinite ways of being crazy, than materialistic people... they're much simpler to understand. Yet... that very inclination is an indication of an evolved spirit... seeking sustenance.

"For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts, it drinks even of dead waters." ~Gibran

Its interesting that ppl associate agitation with a heightened state - and equanimity with bland and boring. ...and its impossible to explain dancing with the atoms to someone who hasn't... like explaining an orgasm to a child.

Face it, Capt... you've leaped... and left many behind and your only real connection to them now is your compassion. You are wonderful inspiration... and will one day die an old young man.