I would argue that games are a method to evoke emotional response by means of the stimuli the game will provide.

Without such chemical releases that evoke emotions games would be meaningless.

Thus I assert that Di is correct and that any spirit with said capabilities would have no desire for such feeble "games".

I never intended to imply that you called Abra silly – sorry if it came across that way.

And I most certainly didn’t get offended – for myself or anyone else. Sorry if that came across as well.

Although calling me silly for getting offended when I didn’t get offended might be considered grounds for getting offended.

Anyway…

No difference at all as far as I’m concerned. That was implicit in the Greek and Latin derivations I gave for “Atheist”.


I completely understand that and I have no argument with the logic itself, or how it is applied to the word definitions. So within that very highly specialized and rigorously structured context it’s a perfectly workable system.

Now lets “take it to the streets.” In an informal discussion between two acquaintances, one of them says “God exists” and the other one says “God does not exist.”

Within the context of that discussion, based on nothing more than those two statements, the first one could be called a Theist and the second one could be called an Atheist and there would be no reason to countermand either of those labels as they are documented in dictionaries as being acceptable.

___

There are many instances of using a word to represent the absence of something

black = absence of any color
empty = absence of any object
clean = absence of any dirt

No reason to exclude “absence of god” from that word list.

Belief in presence of god = theism
Belief in absence of god = atheism

The only problem I can see here would be in not differentiating between “belief in the absence” and “absence of belief in the existence”. If those two are identical to you, then I could see understand your point. I just wouldn’t agree with it.

In any case, my whole point was that Abra’s definitions were no less valid than your definitions, and that if “the number of people who understand the intent” could be used as a pragmatic measure, his definitions were the more valid of the two.

(Time for me to open the bottle of wine I got today. Hope it's good.)

Great posts Skyhook and Bushbilly.. I have a better understanding of atheism now.

So an absence is belief in God is different from the belief in the absence of God.

The first just does not believe, is not convinced, does not much care.

The second, believes there is no God, is convinced of that, and seeks to reason with believers and convert them to sanity.

But as Billy said, this is more anti-theist thinking.

True. "Antitheism" is actually a much more accurate word.

Not sure exactly what the “capabilities” being referred to are, but I think of “desire” itself as being part of the game, not an intrinsic property of the spiritual entity.

BTW – I have a hard time thinking of a game the size and complexity of this physical universe as being “feeble”.

I so love reading your posts Di.



I agree with this wholeheartedly. I do not adhere to the school of thought that we are here to learn. That is a very popular notion that I do not accept. And it is extremely popular almost to the point where people just take it for granted.

But I personally don't buy it. We are not here to learn, or to be judged. That's not why we are here. Life is not a daycare center for baby Gods. At least I don't believe that, and I have my reasons. Which I speak to a little further down in this post.



I agree and disagree with you here simultaneous, and this is because there are two different ways of thinking about knowledge.

One way to think about knowledge is in the idea of knowing what exists. Like who will win the superbowl. Or that compressed hydrogen can be made to cause nuclear fusion and produce light and energy. That's one kind of knowledge. Knowledge of things and events.

However, that kind of knowledge depends on the existence of those things and events. If they don't exist then the knowledge wouldn't exist. In other words, if football was never invented there'd be no superbowl. If this physical universe didn't exist there'd be no stars.

That kind of knowledge is fleeting and truly meaningless to a "God" or an eternal spirit.

God truly doesn't need to figure out the details. If you're excuse the use of ancient mythology, it truly does work on a much less technical level for God. God said, "Let there be light" and there was light.

That's how spirit works. The spirit doesn't need to figure out how to build a star.

It's magick. It's the magick of pure thought and intention. Manifestation by pure will.

Whatever you can imagine, you create.

Figure out the physics later, IF YOU CAN!

Maybe there is no such thing as physics. Maybe all that exists is feeble explanations that ultimately lead to conundrums and paradoxes. After all, at this point in time our science has discovered that this is precisely the boat they are in! We have some explanations, but have we just created those explanation by pure thought and intent? There are good reasons to believe that we have actually.

A spirit does not need to have the kind of knowledge that we humans typically think of as knowledge. The knowledge that spirit has is quite different. I think therefore I AM. That's all the knowledge a spirit needs to possess, for as a spirit, that single bit of knowledge is to know everything.



Well you lost me here when you said "the perfect being". I don't know of any perfect beings. In fact, from my point of view the very idea of 'perfect' is subjective. If you were to ask a spirit if it is a 'perfect' being it would probably break into a hearty belly roll of sincere and uninhibited laughter.

The very concept of 'perfect' would be meaningless to a spirit because that's nothing more than a 'judgment'.



What limits?

How can you say there are limits on a spirit?

The only way there could be a limit on a spirit is if that spirit wanted to do something, but couldn't do it. That is the only sense in which spirit could be limited.

Moreover, I personally don't hold that spirit necessarily needs to be unlimited. All spirit needs to be is vastly more capable than me.

It may very well be possible that spirit doesn't even have the answers to it's own existence. Perhaps spirit has no clue how it came to be either. Who knows. Maybe spirit has just accepts that it is and isn't concerned with the details.

I do confess that I have always had the this problem concerning the existence of a supposedly "all-knowing" God that has always existed.

Humans seem too feel that, until we discover from whence we came, we cannot truly know what we are!

Well Duh. If we hold that same standard up to an eternal God that has always existed, then all we are saying that is would be impossible for God to know what it truly is if it doesn't know from whence it came.

That's a conundrum right there.

Can spirit truly know it's full true nature?

Well, from the human perspective that would seem impossible. To know your true nature in it's entirety would seem as impossible as defying gravity by lifting yourself off the earth pulling only on your own bootstraps.

The very idea of 'eternal spirit' suggest that spirit cannot know from whence it came because it wouldn't have come from anywhere! That would be unknowable. Like Spider is so fond of saying, "Even God cannot know that which is unknowable". If spirit has no beginning and no end, then spirit cannot know of things such as birth and death.

You just can't know about things that have no reality.

An eternal spirit cannot know from whence it came since the very concept implies that it did not come from anywhere. An eternal God cannot know its own true nature by the very nature of being eternal.

God itself would need to chalk it's own existence up to random accident.

In fact, God is necessarily an atheist or at the best an agnostic.



Probably not. But then, does anything ever make any sense?

The term "matrix" actually refers to a womb. I believe that spirits are manifested (or "born) of the universal body. I don't think they automatically "know" everything when they are new. If they do, then they are here to remember. (Besides that, if spirits knew everything, they would each be as all knowing and all powerful as one might think "God" is.) So individuals DO learn with experience. Either way I think experience is in the mix somewhere, and one cannot easily gain experience without "learning."

On the idea of a perfect being.



I agree that 'perfect' is subjective. But spirit that is working on manifesting bodies of the physical world (to inhabit) are indeed working to perfect the vehicle. I believe that evolution is the tool for this process but on a more personal level I believe that is why an interest in cloning and gene therapy and DNA research develops on more evolved planets.

To date, at least in this reality the human body seems to be the most popular model. But 'they' are still working on that too. The human body is near perfect already, but there are a few things they are working on to improve it. They want it to have the ability to regrow a severed limb and they want to increase its lifespan to about a thousand years.

That is the way I see it, many make a break down of atheism.

Some would call me a weak atheist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_and_strong_atheism

Cant say I am endeared to this qualifier. Nor can I really see how it makes more sense.
Well feeble from the perspective of the capabilities of a human, vs that of a creating spirit NRG.



The thing is that for structures to exist and continue to keep the same properties (ie to avoid pure chaos) requires consistent physics you have said so yourself. So even if this god spirit does not need to understand its own physics there must be some standard, it must keep to the rulebook once it has started page one, page two cannot contradict page one without going back and starting over, the rules must remain consistent regardless of our understanding of them.

Within this light a creator would have to understand the rules on page one to keep the rules on page two consistent.

Unless the rules where a natural property of this god spirit and there is no other set of rules it could use. But then that would imply something transcends this god spirit: the rules.

So either this god spirit does understand its own physics or physics transcends this god spirit. So we either have innate knowledge, or innate rules.

Well it's obvious that humans learn within an incarnation. But that doesn't automatically follow that we are baby Gods learning to become omnisicient spirit.

In fact, the latter conclusion implies that we would eventually grow to become all-knowing then.

But they we'd be right back at square one.

What happens when a spirit becomes all-knowing?

That's the problem.

The idea that spirits need to learn anything implies that they are 'advancing'. But if they are advancing then what would be the end result of that?

This is especially problematic when the idea of eternity comes into the picture.

If learning is the purpose of it all, then there would be no purpose once everything was "learned".

So then the argument might be, "Well you can never learn everything!"

But then it just deteriorates into the idea that it's not truly about learning at all, but rather it's just about experiencing. You can never experience everything.

That makes more sense.

Also, the idea of learning makes no sense if in every new incarnation we come in having no previous knowledge.

That pretty much flies in the face of the idea that it's a learning experience. That would either suggest that we were just created at birth (which implies that we just happen to be in our FIRST incarnation), or that knowledge is erased between incarnation (but that flies in the face that it would be a consecutive learning process).

So I just don't see this idea that we are baby Gods learning to become wiser.

That just doesn't seem to fit the picture on so many levels, IMHO.

The idea that spirit is all-knowing (in the sense I described in my last post), and just enters incarnations for the pure enjoyment of it makes much more sense to me.

Yes, there is learning within the incarnation. That's what makes the incarnations interesting!

But the spirit itself isn't learning anything knew (at least not in terms of knowledge that would be important to its existence as a spirit). It's just learning about the incarnation that is is currently participating in.

I see no problem with this philosophy.

Not to imply that this gives it credence. But I'm just saying that I see no problems with it.

I do see problems with the idea that spirit actually needs to learn something. I have many problems with that on many different levels. Not the least of which is that it would imply that spirit isn't any better off than the human condition!

I mean, if we're going to invent a higher self, why invent one that isn't any better off than our own predicament.

Spirit that needs to learn things isn't much better off than a human. It would be in the same predicament (i.e. having unanswered questions and no fully understanding its true nature)

If there is such a thing as spirit, then surely it is the ulimate existence. If it is anything less then all it would amount to is a higher form of human suffering and despair.

Not much gained there.

Billy:

Here is a picture of your significator card coming from my Tarot deck:

KING OF SWORDS

Actually I have this all figured out.

Truly I do.

I've thought about this problem most of my life and I've come to a conclusion that I'm totally satisfied with. Although it may be hard to share in a post.

In science we believe that we are 'discovering truths'.

However, it is quite possible that we are not discovering truths at all but rather we are creating them.

Think of it this way. This is kind of like a parable so bear with me:

~~~~

I am God. I create the sun by pure thought.

How do I do it?

Simple.

I imagine a ball in the sky that glows with bright light.

What is the physics of the ball?

I have no NO CLUE!

Yes! I am GOD! And I have NO CLUE what makes the sun work! I don't need to worry about how it works because that's not how I created it.

I created it by simply imagining a ball in the sky that glows.

PERIOD!

~~~

Ok, so now humans see this ball in the sky glowing and they say, "Hmmm? I wonder how that works?"

At first they imagine it to be the camefire of a God.

In fact, in very early astronomy, before the knowledge of atomic physics, scientists did indeed believe that the stars may be fueled by coal or some other such source of fuel.

So they guessed. It's a burning lump of coal.

But that didn't fly.

So they had to DREAM UP something else to explain it.

Well, they continued to guess until they came up with atomic physics as a plausible explanation.

Stars are made of hydrogen gas undergoing nuclear explosing at an astonishing rate of burning millions of tons of hydrogen per second! WOW!

But hey the idea makes sense!

So now, as God, I say to the humans, "Hey that's a clever idea, thanks for explaning how that ball of light glows."

The same is true with all of science. Science is mankind's explanation of how things work.

Now you may argue, "But we know now that this really is how they work!"

Of course this is how they work!

That's because this is how we finally decided that they should work.

We are explaining the magical world that God had created from pure thought!

This is part of the adventure of an incarnation, trying to make sense of it via rational explanation.

I think Skyhook eluded to something along these like several months ago in a completely different thread.

We create reality by mutual agreement.

We create physics by mutual agreement.

In fact, many times we mutually agree to be wrong for a while.

Like with classical physics.

We thought for a while that we had it ALL FIGURED OUT! Physics was coming to an end. All we needed to do was tie up a few "Loose Ends" and we would have explained how God had created the universe!

Here's a problem,... this blackbody radiation isn't quite right. Let's dream up a little better explanation that does it more justice!

WHOA!

What happen?

Quantum Physics is born!

All of a sudden we have a BILLION unanswered questions that seem far too paradoxical to even begin to explain.

And here we almost had an explanation for how God created the stars!

Maybe ultimately there is no explanation.

God just said, "Let there be light", and there was light. And all the explanations of how that happens is just man's futile attempt to explain God's magic.

We haven't even come close to explaining it really.

Sure, we've done a nice job with coming up with the theory of atoms and atomic physics etc. But look where it ultimately leads! Quantum Physics!

Totally paradoxical unexplained phenomena that appears to be just as magickal as anything.

Have we truly made any progress at all in explaining physics?

I'm sure you will attempt to argue that we have, and I agree that we have done a great job at making up rules for God's magick.

But were those really the RULES that God used to create this stuff?

Did God actually need to sit down and figure all of this stuff out ahead of time? Of did he just say, "Let there be stars, and let man figure out how they might work".

I'm beginning to believe that this latter situation may very well be the case.

Maybe physics isn't even necessary at all, we just think it is. We just think that everything needs to have an explanation but in truth it doesn't.

We could have gone a totally different route and not become scientically inquistive at all.

We could have just said, "Ok so there's a ball of light in the sky. I'll accept that. Now let's go play music and dance!"

But no, we had to explain what that ball of light was and how it got there and how it works, etc, etc, etc.

So we made up an elaborate scheme to explain it. We are creating physics as we go.

God is laughing saying, "Hey I just said, 'let there be light', you guys can figure out all the rest".

Of course, let it be known that when I say "God" I'm talking about our very own omniscient spirit and not some absurd mythological egostist.

In the begining when I said, "I am God" read that as "We are God".

The "I" applies to all of us in this context.

We are both God, and the mortal idiot simultaneously. Because this is what we have choosen to be in this incarnation.

This is Eastern Mysticism and it has much merit, IMHO.

Not really. I don't think there is any single entity that is "all knowing." I think all information is accessible, but I don't think that one entity is at all times "all knowing."



That never happens to an individual in my opinion.



Whatever the spirit individual decides they want to do. There are many things to do in the universes.





Learning is not the purpose of all. The purpose is expansion of life.

"Everything" cannot be learned by one individual. But the purpose of learning is always growth and expansion. Infinity allows for infinite growth. If you are not learning and growing, then you are dieing and shrinking.




You as an individual can never learn or experience everything because the universe is expanding. If the universe was not expanding, given infinity you could eventually learn and experience everything.



Temporary memory loss in a single incarnation is only temporary. All lessons and memory are retained by the higher being. The memory or knowledge of other incarnations must be hidden when living one life at a time because the space-time environments are different, and humans are actually living their lives all at once throughout time... simultaneously. (according to the Leading edge research group) And I agree that this makes perfect sense to me.




That is probably because you think of the oneness of spirit in general and you don't seem to have a concept of individual spirit beings like the higher selves.



We don't "invent" a higher self. It invents us. We are individual spiritual being having a human experience.



Having new things to do and learn is what keeps growth in tact. If it were not the case, the universe would be dieing.... given infinity, it would be destined to die which means that it is dead already. This is not the case in my opinion. We are alive and expanding.



Not true. Spirit is NOT the ultimate existence.

If it were, then there would be no need to manifest into the lower worlds and experience being human in the physical universe.

We are here (in the physical and material worlds) for the expansion of the universe itself.

By reasoning back, IF there were no important reason for our human physical existence ~given the intelligent source we arise from,~ then we would not be here at all.

There is a very important reason we are here.

That reason is growth and expansion that is necessary for the continuum itself...necessary for life and existence.

The continuums are what keep spirit and the universes in the expansion mode.

If you are not growing, you are dieing. If you are not living and experiencing and learning, your are dieing.

(To be or not to be, that is the question.)

All I see in your philosophy is to take the human condition and extrapolate that up one level can call it spirit.

I think Red's argument that such an extrapolation would be futile is quite compelling.

Moreover, you're implication that if we are not growing we are dying would imply in this context that spirit can die.

Once again, that just pushes the mortality of human existence onto spirit and you haven't gained a thing.

I think that any attempt to extrapolate the spirit realm from human experience is bound for failure.

All that can possibly produce is a spirit realm that has the very same problems and conundrums as the human realm just taken to a higher level.

In other words, it's solved nothing. The spirit in this case would be in the same predicament as the human condition just simply at a slightly higher level.

At least the scenario that I offer give a whole complelely differnt realm of existence. It explains everything.

If you hold to the "learning ideal" then you're stuck in school for eternity.

I'm not saying that this can't be reality. I'm just saying that if it is reality then spirit isn't any better off than the human condition.

That's the bottom line. It just means that suffering and ignorance are all that reality ever has to offer on all levels of existence.

All that picture does is immortalize the human saga really.

Abra:
"If you hold to the "learning ideal" then you're stuck in school for eternity."

Yep. What's wrong with that? If you aren't learning you are dieing in my opinion.

Abra:
"All that can possibly produce is a spirit realm that has the very same problems and conundrums as the human realm just taken to a higher level."

Yep. What ever gave you the idea that the "spirit realm" is perfect? You are still holding on to Christian ideals of heaven where everything is always perfect and we don't have to do anything but live in an orgasmic clench of bliss and peace with each other for eternity. This is not the case.

We are intricately connected to the spirit realm.. there is no drawing a line between the two. So your idea that the Human condition is pathetic and the spirit realm must be "perfect and wonderful" is a fantasy.

Abra:
"At least the scenario that I offer give a whole complelely differnt realm of existence. It explains everything."

No, it doesn't. At least not in my world view.

Experiencing is learning. You cannot possibly experience things and not learn from them, if you do, there is no point in experiencing anything.

Spirit and the "human condition," being intimately linked and connected, both seek to grow, learn and push forward towards better experiences, expansion of existence and better ways to live life and better ways to be and exist.

It is a never ending journey.

Of course you learn things from experience. But that doesn't automatically imply that the reason you are having the experience is to learn.

Much of what you learn is only applicable to the situation at hand. Once you are out of that situation all that knowledge is no longer useful because the situation no longer exists.

Physical knowledge is of course a prime example. You can learn all you possibly can about computers, but then if you leave that and become a gardener all of that previous knowledge about computer is useless.

Moreover, if knowledge isn't carried from one incarnation into the next then it would be lost knowledge anyway. And clearly knowlege isn't carried through. No one ever saw a baby that was born already educated.



Because if it's not, then it's just an extension of the predicament that we're already in.

Again, let me state that I'm not saying that you're model can't be true. All I'm saying is that if it is true, then being spirit isn't any better than being human.

So why bother?

All that scenario produces is to take the human predicament and immortalize it.

To be perfectly honest with you Atheism is more attractive to me if that's the case.

I don't want this crap for the rest of eternity.

Human life was fun while it lasted, and my own personal life could have been far better had I had better mentors as a child. Or if I had made better decisions (but I hold that the reason I didn't make better decisions is because I had poor mentoring as a child, having been born into a Christian society didn't help either)

I mean, when in Rome do as the Roman's do.

It's hard to live in a dog-eat-dog society without talking on some of the characteristics of a dog yourself just as a matter of survival!

I mean we live in a competitive-based society. If you'd like to live a cooperative-based lifestyle that just isn't going to work. It's truly not a choice in a competitive-based society.

So many choices are actually made for you within a given incarnation.

We have seen pockets of cooperative-based communes that work, so we know this is a feasible ideology.

You claim that we all agreed to the rules before we got here. Maybe so. But this would be no different from a human going to a picture show and then discovering half-way though it that they don't like it.

You might say, "Well, just get up and walk out then".

But in life that means suicide. That's a pretty desperate EXIT door.

You'd have to truly be disgusted with the movie to a great degree to take that exit.

But according to you, it wouldn't do us any good anyway. Because according to you the EXIT isn't any better than the movie!

At least, I'm suggesting the the EXIT leads to peaceful fresh start and a potential new choice.

Abracadabra,

In one of my former lives I committed suicide. Or perhaps I just I had a dream about it. In the dream of it, immediately after I died I knew it was a big mistake. My problems were petty. I said: OOPS!

Because of that experience in that former life, I have always vowed in this life never to kill myself. I did not remember that life, but I remembered the lesson and the promise I made. When I glimpsed the past life in a dream I knew the reason for my promise.

Your negative attitude about life is clearly apparent by your post. It will continue to attract unhappiness and discontent into your personal reality.

"Perfect" is subjective. It is a matter of opinion. The spirit worlds are varied and infinitely different from each other. Where you reside in the spirit worlds after you leave this one might depend on what you believe and what you expect. So if you expect it to be much better than this one then it probably will be... until you get bored with that perfection and strike out on your own again for some new adventure and challenges.

I am sorry for you that you are not thankful and appreciative of the life you have now. I am sorry for you that you don't enjoy every moment and you seem to look forward to death as if that will solve your problems and bring you peace and/or happiness.

But while you are here, my suggestion would be to make the best of every moment and quit complaining. You may wish you did after you die and loose your physical existence.

The physical existence is an extremely powerful one, and it is desired by many spiritual entities who want to come here.

Life can be as good as you make it Abra. This is the first day of the rest of your life and all you do is look at your past and what you have currently manifested in your life and dwell on that and blame your past and blame your upbringing and basically feel sorry for yourself and complain.

Its very sad and depressing, because I like you very much and I wish the best for you. You are one of those "Yeh but.... " people who reject suggestions and solutions to your problems because you choose to wallow in your predicament blaming and complaining.

This is when I realize that I have to just shrug my shoulders and walk away (and shut the hell up) because I realize I do not have the ability to help you.

Do you just want sympathy, not solutions? In any case, you have your own ideas about every thing and you have no room for mine so I will not bother you with them any longer.

I hope you figure it out.

Abra said…
Well put Abra. I must admit you did a better job of explaining it here than I did in that thread months ago.

You should write a book!

We have free will but there may be consciences to how we this exercise this will.

Some who believe in God think our lives are predetermined. If God had predetermined all we do then there would be no need for a heaven and hell. God would predetermine all of us as good people.
If you don't believe in God then obviously you're using free will as there is no one to predetermine you

I'm not complaining, I'm just telling it like it is. You're the one who's putting labels on it.

In fact, most religions claim that the human condition is suffering and pain. So this idea most certainly didn't original from me.

All I'm saying is that if life after death is just more of the same then I'm not impressed.

Besides, why should I limit myself to such a petty view?

Just look at this universe.

Clearly whatever created it is not petty.

So why should I buy into a petty philosophy that suggests that being spirit isn't any better than being human?

You had a vision and so have I.

You're vision was that you commited suicide in your past life.

My vision was that I died and went to the spirit world. The spirit world was precisely as I'm trying to describe. In fact, that dream was where I got the idea.

When in the spirit form we know everything that is important to know.

The problem we have as humans is that we think that it's somehow important to know everything in the details.

But in the spirit world the details are totally irrelavent. And spirits innately recognize this.

When you are in the spirit form you know how things are manifest. They are manfiest by pure though. No need for science.

A shining sun is good. There's no need to understand the details of why it shines. It's totally irrelavent.

All that's important is that it provides light.

Spirits know this.

There's nothing to learn.

It's just not important.

In my dream there was also a light that I innately felt as "god" or my primary source of existence. This light gave rise to my being.

It appears as star not in the sky, but in the mind.

It is always present. It is neither here nor there. It is out of reach, but no distance away.

It is as much as part of me as anything else. It's like my shadow, it's always with me. It's like my heart, it's always providing me with life.

It's like a rainbow. When I move it moves. And no matter how hard I might try to reach it, it will always be just out of reach. Just like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

I know that this light is my life force. God if you want.

It wants nothing from me. It doesn't want to be worshiped anymore than my shadow wants to be worshiped. It's a part of me.

In my dream I knew that this light was God. God was not the least bit threatening nor judgmental. God emanates pure unconditional love.

Pure unconditional love.

No conditions whatsoever.

It has no wants.

It poses no threats.

At least not in my dream.

As a spirit (and I was a spirit in my dream) there is absolutely no yearning to question what God is or how it manifests your existence, or anything like that.

The urge to know those things simply doesn't exist.

They aren't important.

Just like knowing how the sun shines is not important if all you are interested in is LIGHT.

Spirits are concerning with the "HOW" of things.

Who cares how?

That's not important.

All that's important is the result.

If you have the result why question the source?

What's to be gained by questioning the source?

Well, here's the key!

For humans there is a lot to be gained by questioning the source. This is because humans are limited in what they can do. By questioning how things work, they can take advantage of them and use them to do more things.

However, for spirits that's totally irrelavent.

As a spirit there is nothing you cannot do. All you need to do is imagine what you want and there it is.

There's no need to learn anything.

What about morals?

Don't spirits need to learn morals?

No.

And the reason for that is simple. All spirits are prefectly egalitarian. No spirit has anything that some other spirit might want and can't have. Also, it's completely impossible to force a spirit to do anything it doesn't want to do. So no spirit could do something nasty to any other spirit even if it wanted to.

I fully understood all of this in my dream. There simply isn't any motivation for greed, control, jealousy, etc, etc, etc.

All the things that humans fight over simply isn't a problem in the spirit world. There is nothing to fight over. All spirits are completely egalitarian in every way imaginable.

And that solves all problems.

I confess, that this was my dream. And maybe that's all it was, just a lucid dream. I'm not truly claiming otherwise.

However, I will say this much. If I can imagine such a spirit world that has no problems whatsoever, then surely the creator of this awesome universe can do even better!

I'm just a mere mortal man. Surely I can't out-think God!

The other thing that has occurred to me as well is that maybe my dream represent my future in the spirit world. Maybe all spirits don't go to the same place I'll be going to.

Simless once posted a joke about this beautiful heaven where athesits were going and all of a sudden the earht and sky opened up and a whole lot of people fell from the sky and were swallowed up in the bowels of the earth.

The atheist asked the caretaker of heaven, "What the hell was that?"

The caretaker said, "Oh those were Christians, they won't have it any other way".

So maybe everyone won't experience the spirit world in the same way?

Maybe you're destiny is to forever be learning and struggling. Maybe that's what you want.

Maybe my destiny is to go to the spirit world I dreamed of where all that exists is unconditional love and a lot of non-threatening spirit to play more games of reincarnation with, only those reincarnations will be a lot pretty than this one.

That was the intuitive sense that I got from that dream. In fact, I did enter into a brand new incarnation in the very dream with another spirit.

But I'm not going to describe that here.

In any case, I think Smiless is probably right. We probably all do different things when we die becasue none of us can agree on what would be a good scenario.

The idea of eternal struggling and learning just doesn't appeal to me. Once in a while is ok, but for eternity?

No thanks.

By the way, I'm enjoying this life much more than you know. Grumpy old men are a mirage.

What you see is not what you get when you walk up close and actually make contact.

You are telling it like you think it is. It is a perception.



You are right, it didn't, you just decided to agree with the majority of people who complain and whine about the human condition, which only perpetuates that perception, helping to create and maintain that condition.




That was your conclusion, not mine. I never made that claim.
My claim is simple. When you die, you don't suddenly have access to all knowledge. You don't suddenly have the power of a god. You are only kidding yourself if you think that.





My vision was of a past life where I learned the value of life.



I agree that we don't need to possess every detail. Responsibility is shared in the spirit worlds.

If you have learned to control your "pure thought" in this world you would be able to use the law of attraction to attract and manifest the reality you desire and find the joy that is yours for the asking.

Can you even control your dreams? Can you consistently have lucid dreams and control everything in them? If not, you will not be able to use your thoughts to create or control anything in the spirit worlds.

If you don't learn to have control over your thoughts in this world, what makes you think you will be any better at doing it in the spirit world? It takes practice just like anything else. In the spirit world, one single negative thought would then create that negative thing instantly. Think of hell and presto! you are in hell.

Do you think that when you die you will suddenly have the power to control your thoughts after refusing to learn that skill while here in this reality?

In the spirit world, imagine a monster, and it will appear. (You might never suspect that you created it.)

But (hopefully) you will not have this power in the spirit world unless you learn it here or somewhere in your journey. It would be equivalent to giving a third grader a surgeon's knife and telling him to perform brain surgery. He does not have the experience to perform brain surgery. He will not be allowed.



Even if that is true, so what?

But the babes who think there is "nothing to learn" will be taken care of (by others) until they are experienced enough and skilled enough to utilize what they have learned and actually contribute something to the expansion of the universe.