User:Spiritual1
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What is the Spiritual One?
This is a question many Spiritual Peopleask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:
Survival and temporal success ...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you ...to be always satisfied ...to live, go to school, work, and die ...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race ...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life ...to compete or co-operate with others ...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance ...to gain and exercise power ...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book ...to eat ...to prepare for death ...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution) ...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution) ...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially ...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent ...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate ...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means (see life extension) ...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate) ...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life ...to seek and find beauty ...to kill or be killed
Wisdom and knowledge
...to master and know everything ...to be without questions, or to keep asking questions ...to expand one's perception of the world ...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers ...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes ...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom ...to understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos ...to lead the world towards a desired situation ...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by man about life
Ethical ...to express compassion ...to follow the "Golden Rule" ...to give and receive love ...to work for justice and freedom ...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment (see utopia) ...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment ...to serve others, or do good deeds
Religious and spiritual
...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God ...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context ...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace ...to become like God, or divine ...to glorify God ...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness) ...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity) ...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell ...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity) ...to reach Heaven in the afterlife ...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life ...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment, and atonement ...to understand and follow the "Word of God" ...to discover who you are ...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced (see Buddhism)
Philosophical ...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers) ...to know the meaning of life ...to achieve self-actualization ...all possible meanings have some validity (see existentialism) ...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore: ...to die ...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose) ...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning) ...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception" ...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever (see nihilism) ...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory (see solipsism or nihilism) ...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"
[edit] Higher Consciousness
Higher Consciousness - also called Super Consciousness (Yoga), Buddhic Consciousness (Theosophy), Objective Consciousness (Gurdjieff), Christ Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness and God-consciousness (Islam and Hinduism), to name but a few - are expressions used in various traditions of spiritual science and psychology to denote the consciousness of a human being who has reached a higher level of evolutionary development and who has come to know reality as it is.
Evolution in this sense is not that which occurs by natural selection over generations of human reproduction but evolution brought about by the application of spiritual knowledge to the conduct of human life. Through the application of such knowledge (traditionally the preserve of the world's great religions) to practical self-management, the awakening and development of faculties dormant in the ordinary human being is achieved.
These faculties are aroused by and developed in conjunction with certain dispositions of character such as patience, kindness, truthfulness, humility and forgiveness towards one's fellow man – qualities without which Higher Consciousness is not possible.
The concept of Higher Consciousness rests on the understanding that the average, ordinary human being is only partially conscious due to being under the sway of inferior impulses and preoccupations. As a result, most humans are considered to be asleep (to reality), even as they go about their daily business. Gurdjieff called this ordinary condition of humanity 'waking sleep' an idea gleaned in part from ancient spiritual teachings such as those of the Buddha.
In each person lie potentialities that remain inchoate as a result of the individual being caught up in mechanical, neurotic modes of behavior where the correct use of energy for personal spiritual development has not been understood but is squandered in unskillful ways. As a result of the phenomenon of projection the cause of such a person's suffering is often seen to lie in outer circumstances or other individuals.
One prerequisite for the development of consciousness is the understanding that suffering and alienation are one's own responsibility and dependent on the mind's acquiescence (through ignorance, for example). Traditionally, both in the Eastern and the Abrahamic spiritual traditions a person who sought mind-body transformation came under the tutelage of a Master (Rabbi, Sheikh, Guru, Acarya, etc) who would oversee their progress. In the past, as today, this education would often involve periods of retreat in communities (ashrams, monasteries, meditation centers etc.) whose sole purpose is the cultivation of awakening.
