Just One Look Forum Archives

I find myself posting my thoughts here quite often and I'm not really sure if they have any meaning to others (or even myself) or if they are just kind of noise, but I tend to give a lot of attention and energy to things I really get into. Perhaps I should moderate myself a little here. But here goes...

I watched John's retreat videos of last year and in the latest one (#6 as I recall) he talks about humanity being one creature. That the feeling of me in each of us is not just similar, but is actually the same creature (did I get it right?). This is quite mind boggling. I used to entertain the same idea years ago when I fretted about things I didn't have, and I thought that the "other me's", as Krishnamurti called them , too, have those things, so I shouldn't worry about them. But it was just an idea, and it didn't console me much. And it felt quite a freaky idea. Am I going to come to see it as true, obvious, not just idea, as looking works it's way and the effects of fear fade? I feel it might change quite profoundly how you relate to others. Or maybe not, as the fact of separation also stays...Is this the porousness John talks about? We are one creature, manifesting as many "subcreatures" and therefore have the situation where we experience separate lives but know to be one.

I also feel that all this theorizing is just kind of entertainment, because it changes nothing fundamentally, and we will see it for ourselves in due time, maybe.

Seppo

I agree with you on at least one point Seppo, this changes nothing, and is actually irrelevant except to suggest the cause of newly noticed sensitivity to the presence of other people and empathy with their states of mind. In fact the only reason I ever mention the oneness of humanity is to point out that it is just the case, and has no significance whatsoever. The experience of this oneness is seen to have always been only the ordinary experience of life as a human being. We are led to believe that oneness is a special state absent of any diversity, but that's just a misunderstanding brought about by the context of fear.

It's good to have you in this conversation.

John

Thank you, John.

So oneness doesn't feel like anything out of the ordinary? It's just a fact we rest upon in our diversity and separateness? That would make sense. Perhaps it's that ideas feel very significant, not the actuality, which is just there. The idea that I'm in others, so to speak, is quite strange to me because "I" is still my personality. This is just philosophical speculation I suppose, in the absence of real change in the angle you see things from, but when the shift completes itself it's just how things are. The theory comes after the fact, not the other way round, as is the case when you try to change things by getting the proper understanding first. So separateness and individuality is actually the special state we are here to enjoy when oneness is a given?

Anyway, It seems that when understanding doesn't feel like the key to salvation no longer this kind of ruminations won't be that important anymore. I guess I'm not there yet.

Seppo