The soul, suffering, healing, learning, and spirituality [Night Shift split]

I've never really liked the idea of blue-and-orange morality, since it sets itself as supposedly "alien" when a lot of examples would just be Evil under a normal definition.

Many examples would certainly be evil to our human perspective, but that doesn't take into account that different cultures have different perspectives on what is considered evil and what isn't. For example... rape. Obviously evil to anyone who thinks about its effects on the human psyche, but in some... cultures, rape is considered acceptable under certain circumstances. It's not even recognized as being rape or being evil to that perspective, though it is obvious to those on the outside looking in, with their understanding of what constitutes rape.

Problem is... different perspectives present different pictures of the same base action. It can be very difficult to look past our own perspectives to comprehend another's when we have a very strong, clear and definite picture of how we view something. An emotional reaction, as it were, for better or worse.

It seems you are trying to describe something you've experienced, but accepting it as veridical still unclear to me this is the status of all souls?

It is possibly the most surface-level experience I could have. A very tiring one at that, to be honest. It's like reaching a great distance, because it leaves me exhausted.

I cannot really comment on other incarnate souls... but if this world shares common themes, then there must be common themes to how incarnation works as well. Not really a "mechanism" in a physical sense... but if you have a better descriptor...

At best it seems there are some potentially privileged souls who get to wander the Real in search of experiences whereas other souls have to make sacrifices when incarnating if not having little to choice at all regarding their circumstances.

Incarnation isn't about choice... everyone has to make sacrifices. The soul makes the choices, but upon incarnation, that control is lost. The soul commits, and then has to basically more-or-less watch that aspect of itself go through experiences, feeling everything that happens. Some souls have a stronger ability to communicate via intuition, but that takes practice over many lifetimes. From both sides.

This reality is not a destination for mere exploration... it's about having experiences the soul could not have anywhere else... even those that have seemingly easy lives aren't getting a free pass. It's either because they've been through hell in previous lives, are inexperienced and want to play safe, but will find it ultimately boring, or are seeking a very particular set of insights that only that life can give them.

An easy life... is a life filled with no adventure, nothing to give insight, nothing to give growth.

I disagree. I think the subject here is directly down the alley of this thread's subject matter - it's just that this is a perhaps extreme actual real-world case, rather than a theoretical discussion. 

Well thanks. If you can stand it in the circumstances let's go on exploring the subject.

First, I am about halfway through this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/BEYOND-MATTER-e...B0CGQ5JHZP

This is Oliver Lazar's book about his glimpse of the spiritual world, followed by a very deep dive into science as he now sees it after his experience.
I have already mentioned it, and by now I would highly recommend it to everyone interested in this thread.

Just today the news reported the deaths of five skiers in the Alps. They were caught in a severe storm and died of exposure - a pretty unpleasant way to die, I am sure. My point is that people in this reality choose to take risks like this, accepting that they may not only lose their lives, but create misery for their loved ones.

If some people in this reality behave like this, is it so implausible that souls operating on a much larger time scale might accept similar 'challenges'?

David

Many examples would certainly be evil to our human perspective, but that doesn't take into account that different cultures have different perspectives on what is considered evil and what isn't. For example... rape. Obviously evil to anyone who thinks about its effects on the human psyche, but in some... cultures, rape is considered acceptable under certain circumstances. It's not even recognized as being rape or being evil to that perspective, though it is obvious to those on the outside looking in, with their understanding of what constitutes rape.

Problem is... different perspectives present different pictures of the same base action. It can be very difficult to look past our own perspectives to comprehend another's when we have a very strong, clear and definite picture of how we view something. An emotional reaction, as it were, for better or worse.


It is possibly the most surface-level experience I could have. A very tiring one at that, to be honest. It's like reaching a great distance, because it leaves me exhausted.

I cannot really comment on other incarnate souls... but if this world shares common themes, then there must be common themes to how incarnation works as well. Not really a "mechanism" in a physical sense... but if you have a better descriptor...


Incarnation isn't about choice... everyone has to make sacrifices. The soul makes the choices, but upon incarnation, that control is lost. The soul commits, and then has to basically more-or-less watch that aspect of itself go through experiences, feeling everything that happens. Some souls have a stronger ability to communicate via intuition, but that takes practice over many lifetimes. From both sides.

This reality is not a destination for mere exploration... it's about having experiences the soul could not have anywhere else... even those that have seemingly easy lives aren't getting a free pass. It's either because they've been through hell in previous lives, are inexperienced and want to play safe, but will find it ultimately boring, or are seeking a very particular set of insights that only that life can give them.

An easy life... is a life filled with no adventure, nothing to give insight, nothing to give growth.

I think this presents a reality where everything is just meaningless...IMO at least...If even the most horrid violations are not truly Evil then what is there to learn?

Beyond that, I just don't the evidence gives us a clear picture on whether this is real or not for all souls? I get the idea that there is a theme/reason to this reality but it seems to me the varied afterlife descriptions don't really give us that unified conclusion.

People come to a city for a different reasons, it seems plausible that this reality that we exist in as fleshy incarnates has also be used by different groups of souls/spirits with varied privileges and factional goals. 

This obviously leads to questions about whether the most transcendent experiences are less universal truths and more the benefits of belonging to certain clubs, but if nothing else this at least shows a parallel between this life and the next when otherwise the contrast is quite bizarre.

Many examples would certainly be evil to our human perspective, but that doesn't take into account that different cultures have different perspectives on what is considered evil and what isn't. For example... rape. Obviously evil to anyone who thinks about its effects on the human psyche, but in some... cultures, rape is considered acceptable under certain circumstances. It's not even recognized as being rape or being evil to that perspective, though it is obvious to those on the outside looking in, with their understanding of what constitutes rape.

There is also the reverse of that. For long periods of time people were led to believe that lovers having sex outside marriage were committing a mortal sin. Things like dating and just moving on, consensual sexual variations etc were considered too awful even to discuss. This is still true in many societies.

Morality is a lot more complicated than people think.

David

There is also the reverse of that. For long periods of time people were led to believe that lovers having sex outside marriage were committing a mortal sin. Things like dating and just moving on, consensual sexual variations etc were considered too awful even to discuss. This is still true in many societies.

Morality is a lot more complicated than people think.

David

I'm not sure about this, at least if we contrast the central feeling of Love that seems like a powerful key to a lot of Survival-related phenomena vs the hunger for power and control we see across religions (including supposedly secular religions).

This isn't to say there aren't complicated situations where good people can disagree, just that I think we can sometimes just see Evil and recognize it as such. As for these varied societies and their mores, we might look at who is the victim and who is writing the moral codes - men seeking dominance over women, the upper caste exploiting the lower castes, the wealthy who judge the poor, etc...

I'm not sure about this, at least if we contrast the central feeling of Love that seems like a powerful key to a lot of Survival-related phenomena vs the hunger for power and control we see across religions (including supposedly secular religions).

This isn't to say there aren't complicated situations where good people can disagree, just that I think we can sometimes just see Evil and recognize it as such. As for these varied societies and their mores, we might look at who is the victim and who is writing the moral codes - men seeking dominance over women, the upper caste exploiting the lower castes, the wealthy who judge the poor, etc...

Unfortunately, I suspect this is a subject that it is hard to pursue without breaking the taboo on politics.

David

Well thanks. If you can stand it in the circumstances let's go on exploring the subject.

First, I am about halfway through this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/BEYOND-MATTER-e...B0CGQ5JHZP

This is Oliver Lazar's book about his glimpse of the spiritual world, followed by a very deep dive into science as he now sees it after his experience.
I have already mentioned it, and by now I would highly recommend it to everyone interested in this thread.

Just today the news reported the deaths of five skiers in the Alps. They were caught in a severe storm and died of exposure - a pretty unpleasant way to die, I am sure. My point is that people in this reality choose to take risks like this, accepting that they may not only lose their lives, but create misery for their loved ones.

If some people in this reality behave like this, is it so implausible that souls operating on a much larger time scale might accept similar 'challenges'?

David

On further thought I don't think this example means too much in context. It appears that souls may sometimes choose very much much greater "challenges" than the Alpine skiiers did. In this real-world case the threat of suffering and death was only a probably remote chance that was well compensated for in the minds of the skiers by their sure enjoyment of the thrills of the mountain skiing. And the period of suffering leading to their deaths was quite limited.

Contrast that with the extreme example (if soul choice of upcoming lives is a real phenomenon) of a soul apparently deliberately choosing a fetus with a known birth defect (or a disease like the mother's AIDS for instance) that predictably had a 100% probability of dying after a long grueling illness lasting months or even years, with life experiences being mainly of extreme suffering, and no compensation. Or a soul choice of a fetus being born of a starving poverty-stricken family in Africa where the child will almost certainly die of malnutrition or be killed in warfare.

It appears to me that we actually agree that human physical life from the human perspective can sometimes be in fact hellish, a seemingly endless valley of suffering, with no justification whatsoever from the human perspective. To the human personality it is completely natural and expected that the suffering is a vast injustice imposed by some other being, since the vast majority of humans live their lives (per the higher spiritual design) not conscious at all of their souls, but only of instinctively identifying themselves with their personal memories going back to childhood, their human personalities, their physical bodies, and sometimes also their human social identities.

By the higher design of reality the vast majority of humans are trapped for a lifetime in this limited and sometimes terrible existence. 

I can accept that there probably is much or partial truth to your description of the complex dynamic of the human person/soul relationship.

But our crucial difference is that I see this as a great wrongness inflicted on humans. This is because I consider long human experience of innocent meaningless suffering to be a fundamental existential badness that cannot be expunged by there being some sort of mostly humanly incomprehensible higher truth that supposedly justifies it.

In my view, that these very numerous extremely unjust from the human standpoint suffering experiences undeniably exist in spacetime and in consciousness is itself an unexpungeable badness that sullies the overall spiritual/physical reality design. It's wrong in a fundamental way because of its extremely high cost in human suffering. To paraphrase an old saying, "Stop the world - I want to get off".

Sorry for the late reply. I decided it best to wait for my mind to contemplate your words for a while. I realized that I was overthinking it, and that the answer was a lot simpler than I was thinking it to be. Though it may not satisfy you. Then, for some things, words just aren't enough. Only the right experiences can fulfill, alas.


The reality is that souls make complicated choices, and choose to put pieces of themselves into complicated situations, all for the sake of experiencing challenges that will incite growth and increased understanding.

Free will and the unpredictability of incarnation makes a soul's journey complicated ~ souls don't always succeed in what they want to achieve from a lifetime. Sometimes, unforeseen circumstances get in the way, necessitating the soul to try a different approach in another lifetime.

This world is not an evil place of suffering... it's a complex mesh of intersecting lives each pushing towards some individual set of goals. Souls know the theory before they first come, but it's nothing like experiencing it all firsthand... and it's not easy for a soul to intervene in a life already in progress, which is why miracles are rare. As for why... the only insights I get is that it has to do with free will... the soul or spirit guides cannot intervene if the incarnate doesn't truly wish for it to.

It's a messy reality, but well intentioned, despite the grimmest appearances. There are no words that can sooth emotional pain, alas... except to say that this reality has no unexpungeable badness or cruelty to it. There's no fundamental wrongness, except in our perceptions. But those perceptions themselves are part of growth... even the darkest mindset has something to teach us, once we can find our way out of the blackness of it.

We may not like it... but then, we cannot recall why we chose to incarnate to begin with. My intuition is rather silent on that. I suppose it would ruin things, for myself, at least. Though I was never really one for spoilers, anyways... surprises are nicer, for better or worse.

I'm not sure about this, at least if we contrast the central feeling of Love that seems like a powerful key to a lot of Survival-related phenomena vs the hunger for power and control we see across religions (including supposedly secular religions).

This isn't to say there aren't complicated situations where good people can disagree, just that I think we can sometimes just see Evil and recognize it as such. As for these varied societies and their mores, we might look at who is the victim and who is writing the moral codes - men seeking dominance over women, the upper caste exploiting the lower castes, the wealthy who judge the poor, etc...

Well... we often see "Evil" as such from our existing perspective. It's obvious to us, because it contrasts most heavily to our perspective, making it appear all too obvious. An interesting question would be... would we still have our perspectives if we lived and grew up in a vastly different culture... interestingly, I think we can, depending strongly on the spiritual growth of our soul, because our past life experiences can play a large role in how we respond to new things we've not encountered before and haven't formed a current life response to based on current life prior experience. We're not just blank slates, after all...

But then, you have so many people who really are just products of their environments... the rich and wealthy? All too often, the children of that class are raised purely in that world, so they actually believe that everything is theirs to control and have.

Its origin isn't evil... but ignorance and lack of experience to understand the suffering of those beneath them. They are blind to the suffering of others, and so never seek to understand suffering.

But it is our responsibility to try and force circumstances, if we are in a position to be able to so, that make the rich and wealthy pay for their greed. To show them that their greed is not right. That their world isn't all that there is.

So I would almost have to conclude that the lives of rich and wealthy come from a place of ignorance and so arrogance. Inexperienced souls that have no concept that what they're doing is harmful. A lack of understanding, and so a lack of empathy and morality.

In other circumstances... I could see it as a challenge for a soul who wishes to see if they can resist temptation... a massive one at that. Could they choose the moral choice over greed? A few can make that choice... many simply fall prey, despite trying.

I do wonder if I could survive such a challenge... or whether I'd just lose myself in such a lifetime... I don't want to know, actually. I think I know the answer, given my current life perspective.

On further thought I don't think this example means too much in context. It appears that souls may sometimes choose very much much greater "challenges" than the Alpine skiiers did. In this real-world case the threat of suffering and death was only a probably remote chance that was well compensated for in the minds of the skiers by their sure enjoyment of the thrills of the mountain skiing. And the period of suffering leading to their deaths was quite limited.

Contrast that with the extreme example (if soul choice of upcoming lives is a real phenomenon) of a soul apparently deliberately choosing a fetus with a known birth defect (or a disease like the mother's AIDS for instance) that predictably had a 100% probability of dying after a long grueling illness lasting months or even years, with life experiences being mainly of extreme suffering, and no compensation. Or a soul choice of a fetus being born of a starving poverty-stricken family in Africa where the child will almost certainly die of malnutrition or be killed in warfare.

Without the context of why a soul would choose such a miserable and / or short life, it's not fair to judge a soul for a choice.

I would be rather asking "why would you put yourself through such a hell? What do you even get out of it?"

I'd compare it to those that put themselves through extremes in general ~ like a hiker who pushes themselves thousands of miles or kilometers, often going hungry or thirsty. It's like they have some death wish, or have something crazy challenge they wish to prove they can overcome.

I can only compare it to the ridiculous extremes that humans will deliberately put themselves through, despite the misery that will be involved.

I will engage in eating super-hot chili peppers, only to regret everything in the moment, afterwards laughing about the absurdity of what just happened, contemplating that going to the toilet the next day will be painful.

Maybe that point is that we do irrational things for irrational reasons... and souls aren't too much different, sometimes. But the menu of choices they can choose from is much vaster.

Besides that, souls don't always know what they're getting themselves into... as free will is a thing, after all. A soul might be wise enough to know what they can handle, while other souls don't know what they can handle, but they'll try anyway, while others just play it safe. But once a soul is incarnated, it's on the ride... and it can very rarely be interfered with, and most souls won't want to, as they might miss out on some insight.