What does non duality mean to you?

[Dreamer screamer]

18 hours ago, Alchopwn said:

Not everything arranges itself in a system of opposites.

Yes it does if one can control EVERYTHING!!!  which is what we are seeing today in a duality.   POsitive and negative    + and - now think how the world fits into this duality, and is there possibly an imbalance????

[Duke Wellington]

16 hours ago, Alchopwn said:

I think the strongest feeling of non-duality I ever had was when I was poisoned by fly agaric that had accidentally wound up in venison stew I had made, because we went bow-hunting, and we shot a deer and butchered the carcass on a patch of poisonous mushrooms in the dark.  After the vomiting was over, and I had faced my fear of death, I was overtaken by a feeling of great equanimity wherein I was struck by the truth of the line from Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2 "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so."  I was able to consider the pain I was feeling purely as a sensation without immediately considering it to be bad.  Similarly the smells I would normally consider disgusting in the area I was not offended by, but instead I suppose I was able to consider them more objectively.  I felt that nothing was intrinsically good or bad, even though my intellect was engaged enough to know that I shouldn't test the proposition by setting myself on fire.  We were the better part of half a day's hike from out car, and we lit out for a hospital at first light, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

Society and people think its their place to define good and evil.

Thats why it changes from society to society, and people to people, throughout history.

[Alchopwn]

19 hours ago, Cookie Monster said:

Society and people think its their place to define good and evil.

Thats why it changes from society to society, and people to people, throughout history.

You raise an interesting point Cookie Monster.  According to Anthropology, laws don't change all that much from society to society.  Yes, laws often only apply to "in-groups" meanign that the treatment of "out-groups" can be completely inhuman, but within "in-groups" the laws between societies are surprisingly homogenous across cultures, with the main difference being that some laws are considered more important than others being the main inconsistency.  Obviously there are outliers, but fewer than you might expect.  I personally found this fact to be surprising when I discovered it, and would previously have agreed with you 100%.  Human are odd beasts.  Just when you think you have them figured out, they seem to deliberately confound your expectations.  (I hear this from parents with toddlers all the time)

Edited July 30, 2022 by Alchopwn

[Duke Wellington]

15 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

You raise an interesting point Cookie Monster.  According to Anthropology, laws don't change all that much from society to society.  Yes, laws often only apply to "in-groups" meanign that the treatment of "out-groups" can be completely inhuman, but within "in-groups" the laws between societies are surprisingly homogenous across cultures, with the main difference being that some laws are considered more important than others being the main inconsistency.  Obviously there are outliers, but fewer than you might expect.  I personally found this fact to be surprising when I discovered it, and would previously have agreed with you 100%.  Human are odd beasts.  Just when you think you have them figured out, they seem to deliberately confound your expectations.  (I hear this from parents with toddlers all the time)

I wonder if its because people are driven by their psychological baggage.

They lie to themselves about it, to the point where their construct makes sense to them, but of course everyone else can see the inconsistencies.

[Alchopwn]

19 hours ago, Cookie Monster said:

I wonder if its because people are driven by their psychological baggage.

They lie to themselves about it, to the point where their construct makes sense to them, but of course everyone else can see the inconsistencies.

Nah, the rules are pretty constant across cultures.  I think more-or-less the same things p*** everyone off.

[Guyver]

On 7/28/2022 at 5:15 AM, Alchopwn said:

Not everything arranges itself in a system of opposites.

This sounds interesting.  It raises many thoughts and questions in my mind.  Can anything truly arrange itself?  And, can you think of an example of something arranging itself in a system of non-opposites?

[Alchopwn]

11 hours ago, Guyver said:

 Can anything truly arrange itself?  

Life itself is the best example imo.  I am not one who believes in a creator.

11 hours ago, Guyver said:

And, can you think of an example of something arranging itself in a system of non-opposites?

Firstly and most obviously, many things that humans have assumed are opposites are not opposites at all.  The classic examples being dogs and cats etc.  These are false opposites.  Most people also think that Hot/Cold and Light/Dark are opposites, but temperature and the presence or absence of illumination appear on a spectrum and the idea of opposition is a human overlay, of use to humans, but irrelevant to nature.  The fact is, most systems in nature are complex, and not comprised of binary opposites, but have multiple variables, and while science correctly tries to simplify these systems so that they can be expressed mathematically, this is a form of reductionism.  Useful, but reductionist, as it removes and even hides complexities, often describing them as statistical outliers.

[Marcus Thaddeus Horatio]

On 7/27/2022 at 2:51 PM, Shari Holmes said:

Can anyone tell me what made you decide to agree with non duality? 

Yeah, my own research I guess