But I think it was best explained by one of the “Secret” talking heads that said: ” If you create a void in the universe; the universe will refill it and then some”. And of course the Bible teaches that what we sow, we shall reap 10 fold.

I believe this is a principal that works. I also heard a complementing definition of greed the other day. Someone said that greed is not the wanting of more and more money, rather it is the holding on to the money you have and refusing to reinvest it to create more money.

His principal was: “Money only has value if you use it”. If you stick it between your mattres, it becomes “Paper”. If you put it to work in a T-Bill, it has value. etc…. You get the Idea.

Not saying these are my beliefs, but I believe part of it to be universal principals.

If I was having a conversation with you, and I really wanted to connect and understand your point of view, I would have to see things from your set of values and beliefs. Obviously one of those would be:

“God only gives us what He knows we need, there is no belief that if I give money to God, he will give me back more money. He gives us back much more important things, like eternal life.”

I can also discern from your beliefs that you believe in God and Eternal life, and most probably tithing. That’s cool, those are your beliefs.

Now, can you see if you were speaking to someone that is an atheist, doesn’t believe in eternal life or giving any money to church or charity, you’d probably have a hard time communicating if you were hard and rigid with your beliefs?

Meaning, if you try to project YOUR values and beliefs onto other people, you are met with resistance and it makes it hard to communicate.

-Paul

Very interesting concept with the stillness of the awareness. Another way I like to think of it is dreaming. In our dreams we may be running around in a building, but in “reality” we’re just lying there in bed not moving. It is only the illusion of running, but really our consciousness never moves in a dream. Well, like you mentioned in your comment, what makes us think that “real life” is any different?

When it comes to meaningful conversations, luckily we usually just need to “relax” a few of our beliefs not entirely drop everything. It’s amazing how much easier it is to have a conversation with someone when we just become aware that it’s OK for them to have their own beliefs and values.

What if someone dropped every belief they had about life, what would life become then?

What if we payed no attention to our thoughts as anything significant (re-patterned thoughts seem to be the cause of beliefs)? What if we stopped energizing out thoughts?

What would remain if all thoughts were seen as nothing but a passing cloud of utterances and noise that don’t matter (drop the label of thoughts, drop all the words and all thoughts becomes nothing but voiceless noises that make no sense, just utterances)?

My point is, that this life is a mystery and nobody has the answers to it, but we all think we do. We call this a body and that a chair, but those are just labels to make a feel better. What if we dropped all the labels? We wouldn’t know what the hell things are, in fact we don’t know anyhow. That chair could have been called ‘elfamanic’ and we would be comfortable with that word. Words/thoughts/labels/beliefs/concepts..etc they are there to make us so comfortable and feel as if we know something about this life….

What happens when we drop it all and start fresh and new, from an innocent perspective with no assumptions?

If we did that, the biggest question of all would arise and it’s not: ‘What is life?’, that is secondary. The biggest question of all: Who Am I? If we were to innocently look at who we are without the role: mom, husband, teacher, cab driver, christian, etc.. You would still be here rather those names/roles existed referring to you or not.

Most people think they are this little person in the head that is connected to the 5 senses. They think they are that body looking out the eyes and behind the eyes is who they are, but how can that be? The eyes are stimulus response to the brain. Maybe we are the brain? But how could that be, there is nothing inside the brain, the whole system of the brain is stimulus in response. Who the hell are you? Where is your location? Is it in the body?

I think if people investigate this by dropping all beliefs, they will find out that they are not who they were programmed to belief they are. There doesn’t seem to be anybody there running that machine we call a body. What the hell are we? What the hell are we doing? Is there really anything to be done?

If we get rid of the belief in the label: ‘empty-space’, it all becomes connected. If we get rid of the idea that there is someone inside this body thing, it all becomes pure awareness of what is. Then what is seen is that this awareness doesn’t move, it can’t move because everywhere the body seemly walks, it’s still there. It’s like a watching a movie screen and you see your legs moving as the images/appearances on the screen change. However the legs are not moving on the movie screen but the images are just changing. It seems like we are walking because it we feel the legs moving across the floor but feelings come and go and change just like the moving images on a movie screen. This awareness seems to just be sitting there doing nothing be being aware of the changing movie screen.

I don’t believe this is the case, but it’s my experience once I dropped all beliefs. Oneness is not a concept, it’s what is seen/experienced when all concepts are dropped.

Just something to ponder…

^ so true!

I have been attracting more meaningful conversations into my life lately and love I particularly enjoy conversations about spirituality.

I wrote a similar article entitled the power of conversation

http://www.aboundlessworld.com/the-power-of-conversation/

Thanks Paul for your thought-provoking post