sirguessalot

wonderful topic...self-awareness plz permit a tad rant as i pass thru... yeah...journaling is an amazing way to see our "selves" from elsewhere, as it were. for 4 months now, about 200 of us have been practicing twilight journaling, where we develop a habit of writing before we even fully wake up. Henriette Anne Klauser has been our mentor in this, as well as other things. we find that as we write about our dreams...our dreams become clearer, more vivid, more memorable. as if our dreamlife responds to our paying closer attention to them. dare i say that for thousands of years, in all corners of the world, journaling (or any form of re-telling) and dreams have been the bread and butter of spiritual practice and disciplines. without such habits, we lose the lessons that are thought in our dreams. but also, the folks i work with in hospice (monks, nuns, harpists, nurses, doctors, etc...) have been practicing journaling around how contemplative prayer and meditation effects their work. not in how it heals anyone, but in how their deepening self awareness helps them become better healers. this spring, the 200 of us are going to get back together and share and compare notes. ... on another note...from what i have learned, self-awareness is not merely a deepening of knowing who we are (and god knows that are a hundred way to do this), but an actual expanding of our notions of the word "self." like i have often mentioned around here in the past...our sense of self expands and changes, whether we like it or not. death, being perhaps the ultimate breaker of self awareness. as we deepen our inner awareness, we shed our earlier senses of self identity. we stop thinking we are merely a body, and realize that we are also a soul. and then we stop thinking we are merely a soul, and realize that we are spirit. perhaps even our definition of the word "spirit" and "soul" changes with our experience of it and so the meanings of scriptures change as well as our perspectives are reborn and perhaps even realize that the spirit that we are, is not limited to our small self or merely something seperate we have within our smaller sense of self but something that exists and permeates the entire universe yes, when the sun rises in the morning it rises WITHIN our awareness the sun is not merely out there somewhere...but WITHIN our awareness yes, our awareness extends to the ends of the universe and we are all swimming within each other utterly soaking wet with each other we are stains on the walls of each other's souls whether we like it or not and we are also our awareness and so self awareness has no bounds, except that which we give it indeed, we find that our truest and oldest self existed prior to the big bang prior to creation and we have simply forgotten this and for thousands of years, in most all traditions and cultures, meditation and contemplation, it seems, is the pretty much a way to practice dying..in that, our sense of self dies and is reborn into this greater something. such grand divinity and spirituality becomes something ordinary, universal and free but something has happened in both religion and science (and language) that has limited our access to greater self-awareness subjectivity and objectivity have both been dramatically flattened, limited and crippled spiritual xenophobia does not allow us to compare scripture with scripture and shared reality-scripts have replaced actual spiritual practice and transformational experience and so forth and its not that we are merely meat-sticks and must get something put in us (like VP said) but that we are NOT mere meat-sticks and have never been...we only think we are and so the journey of self-awareness is one of a series of often brutal humiliations when we realize that who we think we are, and what we think we are made of is likely completely correct, but also severely wrong for being so so limited and partial we have given up our birthright for a scrap of meat or a mere scrap of conceptual thought yet, we are not our thoughts nor are we are bodies and if we can somehow realize this prior to death we are blessed and free ... ok, rant over thanks for starting this thread great wiki article, too, Tbone...a lot of helpful links anyway...i hope someone gets something out of my clumsy stumbling words peace

sweet dreams, brother Roy in life or death, may we have you with us forever

every story that is ever told is told for true reasons faith in possibility is a useful illusion faith in impossibility is useful illusion so...i believe it is possible that life becomes a reunion of faith and reason like wine and a glass beauty and truth are even better as one

all of creation is an ocean of angels tongues and we are soaking wet in tongues the tongues are the waves and frequencies of the cosmos to smile is to speak in a tongue to cry is to speak in a tongue to curse is to speak in a tongue to dream is to speak in a tongue to die is to speak in a tongue as sound speak to our ears light speaks to our eyes just as a good footrub speak to our toes and the smells of flowers and smoke speak to our nose sometimes i wonder if it would help us all to spend more time listening to the chorus of angels that surround us before we attempt to say so much about them

yes...and then somebut oh well, geo...i think you kind of grasp it but yer also thinking too hard and your thinker is getting the best of you cuz its almost too simple and as smart as you are yer almost entirely missing the point of the point so...its obviously not a matter of being intelligent but perhaps...a matter of being willing to actually perform these simple kinds of injunctions i wonder... how do you distinquish that which is inside from that which is outside? not on paper, or in mere thought....but as you sit there reading this as you sit and notice your self...where would you draw the lines to distinquish the inside and the outside of George Aar? is the universe all inside of you? or all outside of you? i dont really think there is one right answer some people include their clothes, or their house or their care some people dont even include their skin and bones some people cant find their interior and some people cant escape it but its really just a simple inquiry into subject and object relations and i'm kinda sorry to keep asking you stuff like this, but i am suddenly curious as to how someone so rational can miss it so...just tell me to shut up, i guess cuz i could be wrong...but im under the impression you actually want to know what im talking about sounds like a very good way to be, to me almost sounds buddhist and other things where one realizes that the universe really is all is just endless streams of dying crap which was the conclusion of a lot of so-called enlightened perspectives in a lot of classic religious thought any 'holy map' of reality was considered a map of samsarra...or a map of hell and some would say "heaven goes all the way to heaven just as hell goes all the way to hell" which kinda meant, if you were in heaven everything is below you and anything below you is obviously hell and if you were in hell everything is above you and everything above you is obviously heaven and so...the higher into heaven we climb the deeper the hell is below us and vis verse no matter where something is along this 'chain' it can only get some degree get better or get some degree worse thats it and so 'God's point of view from his loftiest seat' was pretty much an atheistic point of view from basically having 'wrestled God and won' ...God finally realizes he is an atheist for the first time and so 'God becomes a new man' reconceived, in a sense but not yet born again which reminds me of how, in some art there were only two faces for this deep sense of 'buddha mind'..or whatever the buddha was either shown as being terminally bored ...or somehow laughing or grinning irreverently in selfless wonderment of all that is that was it and this perspective was basically called things like "the witness" almost as if God realized he is an atheist who cannot die and so he has no reason to continue looking for himself or taking any of this mountain of endless crap too seriously sitting here all alone above and beyond all this crap and so God's only choice is to engage which means he has to descend into hell and help others see the way through all the crap which was when God-as-father becomes God-as-mother 'able to come down' she is the one who stops the bleeding does the diaper changing etc... i dunno not talking about you, geo just chuckling at the notions like when one sees something horrific happen something that blows our mind and we cant think straight and we say something like "holy crap!" ...we are expressing an old old truth of reality perhaps you can see, where, in a sense...how God the atheist is saved from hell ...by finally realizing how good, true and beautiful all this poop really is

exactly if "reality" = truth and "faith" = interior perspective of truth they are related but never equal :blink: of course, many mistake faith (their inner map of reality) for reality itself but some refuse to admit that this interior perspective has any value at all both are handicapped in their partial approach to reality ... and so, ok, geo, do you have an interior sense of being? i mean, right now. breathing, farting, blinking, whatever... ...can you distinquish that which is inside of geo from that which is outside of geo? and...where would you draw that line between what is inward and what is outward cuz not everyone draws the line in the same place

yeah, i hate to say it, but i think you are being pretty dense, geo which is fine with me tho...im not sure which post you are refering to nor do i know what it is you dont understand can you gimme a word or phrase that makes the least sense? cuz i dunno looks like im obviously somehow being dense myself ...hm...density...

interesting how often the psalms come up around these deep dark topics and most often from personal experience and intuition a few interesting notions from forgotten history... is how whether one was alone or in community most of the psalms were written and meant to be sung in the darkest and troubling times of life whether it was in the old hebrew culture or in medieval europe this was a huge part of healing and medicine and whether due to an ongoing depression, or the onset of some other long dark night of transition ...but also for those who were actually suffering and dying in the original european hospitals and hospices and way-stations along with other things, different psalms were prescribed often accompanied by instrumental music and other singers and the monks and nuns actually took notes on the results for centuries (before most of the notes were burned) not as a replacement for anything, but as something that assists ALL healing modes for especially for those times when other types of healing was not working and all one had left was singing, or listening to the singing, or feeling the singing certainly a different kind of 'midwifery' at work and what i also find interesting, is how for many centuries the psalms were being used this way by jews, christians, muslims (and others) who basically spent centuries collaborating in these kinds of healing arts using psalms and music to heal and sharing notes and stories with bigotry i guess the children of abraham must have found something more important to do than fight and the psalms (along with Job) were some of the only things from all their scriptures that they honored tho...another real kicker... how most every other culture on the face of the earth has had some version of music thanatology as medicine for what other medicines cant cure east west north south blues gospel rock n roll yada yada yada songs to get us through when we can no longer find a way around ...just sayin and so...imo, there IS power in that for all us sogwaps the innocent, holy, brats that we all already always are

it seems obvious that we each have an interior perspective (like our faith/imagined story of cause) and an exterior perspective (like truth/reality...which is highly measurable yet ultimately UNmeasureable) as well as shared interior perspectives (which can also be a shared faith) and if some would stop confusing the three than perhaps others would stop being so confused but we tend to devalue perspectives that are essential to our favorites

geo...for what its worth i agree that we are all pretty much dolts in ways that are beyond our own understanding (duh) but whether or not it should be any different really is a matter of faith and expectations it seems ...not that i dont cherish impracticality God is also quite a lucky klutz, imo

hi, 1searcher in my opinion these are all very interesting, useful and important questions and they could all use a makeover to make them even more because they really seem to be jumping into reason at midstream which we then typically follow out to sea without ever getting to the source of wisdom imo, its asking even better questions of our first questions that takes us to any sort of wellspring Why should one be a christian? i dont think anyone could answer this question very well. I would have to first ask things like...what do you mean by "christian?" cuz good old words like 'christian' seem to have lost even more of their use these days how does God help you on a practical, everyday basis? as above...but i would add by practicing better ways of letting God help me on a practical everyday basis Is it just a mental or emotional thing? i have found that thoughts and emotions are really just made of the same substance and that our mind feels and our heart is highly intelligent Is it a coping mechanism that helps you deal with life in this world with all of its questions and happiness and tragedies? yes, but i would say that every single aspect of life itself is a coping mechanism ....even God, whose must ultimately cope with being the only God Does being a Christian help you feel that you're not alone? the difficult c-word, again. further complicated by the word 'alone.' do you mean, without friends or family in society? alone as in unmarried? or otherwise without a close partner alone as in deeply misunderstood? alone with your joys and triumphs? alone in the universe as a dying and suffering mortal? :blink: I mean, God doesn't get up in the morning for you, doesn't go to work for you, doesn't give you money, doesn't deal with the mundane details of everyday life and living, doesn't do a myriad of things for you, so how does He help you on a practical, everyday basis? well, that is a bit of a loaded question, complicated by the nebulous G-word if one believes that God is up in the morning whether i am or not and God is with me in my work...even when i am working on being lazy and that God gives all money to anyone who has money...even thieves and thugs and that God is dealing and moving and being in every mundane myriad detail of life, anyway... ....the final question only seems to work if i agree to your definition of the G-word :blink: but...if i was to stick to how i define God from my own experience with scripture, for example...i could answer ...How God Helps Me On a Practical, Everyday Basis... God helps me on a practical everyday basis simply by being everwhere present and invisible without God, i would not be experiencing i would not be remembering i would not be breathing i would not be feeling i would not be dreaming i would not be seeing tho oddly, i am also that experience and i am also that memory and i am also that breath and i am also that feeler and i am also that dream and i am also that seer and without God i would not such a fine mirror to see me and so even the simple feeling of being is enough of a mirror for me our eyes feel waves our ears feel waves our heart feels waves our very bones feel in waves life moves in waves of waves of waves in God and we are already always soaking wet with the eye and mind of God and so God teaches me to swim and teaches me to sink teaches me to see teaches me to dream teaches me to feel teaches me to breathe teaches me to remember teaches me to experience perhaps simply because they wont stop happening and they wont stop changing God is with us as we are being born God is with us as we are dying whether or not these things occur on a practical, everyday basis depends on whether one is practicing them daily, or not and to what depths and degrees although...who can choose such things, anyway? so God helps me choose by being both hot and cold by being both near and far by being both wild and tame by being both within and without by being both generic and exotic by being both invisible and obvious be being both the one and the many by being both changing and unchangable be being both understood and misunderstood by being both endless and without beginning or end God has no opposite whether i like it or not which keeps me on my toes practicing (or not) til the end of time

thanks jard, cuz yeah such states of introspection only always improves as 'the chariot of self' is improved which means..not only diet, but quality of food, nutrition, sleep, dreams, medicine, affections, family, environment, etc... wellness and self-improvement has no upper limit, it seems though i think the capacity to go through any such dark night helps us when those other things are somehow failing us, or not an option, for whatever reason

yeah there is something strangely holy about the view from the bottom tho, i prefer 'scoundrels,' myself or something like 'silly grubby little angel monkeys'

a few thoughts, danny some you may already have thought of saint brigit's cross has some rich history and is one of those timeless archetypal symbols also, as you may know...the tao is thought of as a very profound cross also, i cant tell whose noticed but every single piece of my artwork is based on some sort of cross as homages to notions of divine intersection...or thresholds in a lot of my work...the cross is often represented as an invisible force that shapes the rest of the piece but more interesting to me than my work, is how i would really love to see what kind of original cross people doodle up for themselves especially because of how symbols can become incredible mandalas for soul work cuz i think the process of creating our own original symbology for things (especially the cross) ironically seems to connect us even more to the old old symbols that originally shaped us its like our art somehow becomes original again and again one of my favorites is the hand sigil i sign on my art always reminds me of my fondess for the number five

too funny, socks i also like what you said around this... i think is perhaps one of the most important things cuz in spite of all our general and exaggerated kinds of delusions and confusions there are still timeless things about being in circles of authentic friendship that we can trust twi, culture, the hubbub, whatever... all talked us out of being able trusting our own interpretations of our own experiences of dark nights let alone share them with other we are taught to flee darkness, hide from it, cover it up, and basically not enter into it friends are those who sit with us and listen the art of friendship was the original confession booth where one went to deepen the ordinary soulful reflections which is especially helpful in those dark nights of the soul where there are neither clear cut rules nor clear cut questions like being able to be fully alone together where yes any port will do on such dark nights the lines between family, neighbor, alien, enemy and friend can eventually tend to fade away and still be ok

yeah...ya gotta hate to love nice cheery halloween threads like this...hehe but i tell ya...there is such amazing wisdom at the gsc, at times ... so, ok...here is an article you may or may not find as comforting as i have, sogwap cuz what you describe sounds like classic christian notions of a Dark Night of the Soul in my experience and understanding such a 'dark night' is not the same as garden variety depression though is often misunderstood because it can and does often occur during depression as well as during illness, suffering and dying, loss, grief, etc... it even comes after huge successes i guess guys like abe and jesus might call it 'the loneliness of god' things like: ...crying drops of blood in the wilderness just before dying ...a view from the cold dark bottom of things ...wrestling with a shadow god yada yada its a harsh place, really akin to a struggle with bodily death and in fact, quite all wrapped up together with it people are known to live long rewarding lives after coming through even the darkest of dark nights almost as if it naturally occurs in life in order to give us a sense of "ah..now i am finally experiencing for myself how and why there was a big bang in the middle of nowhere" or some such thing i mean, how can one really claim to know God's heart if one have never actually sat silent and alone in the clear dark long enough to recognize the sound of a such a silent and invisible God ...and still found peace there? as if life simply always somehow stubbornly and faithfully always becomes spiritual at the end of the road and we are to doomed to never stop meeting our next ultimate whateverness where neither science nor religion seem to address it adequately enough ... it is was also described as foolishly sitting in the threshold of a door that has always already been wide wide open and always will be one that requires only the tiniest flicker of attention to see a mere 'twinkle of an eye' as it were and that was the 'good news' wrapped in an oft-embarrasing 'punchline' ... i can even imagine how the old wise ones might shake their head and say that we have forgotten how to teach our children about these simple kinds of things which is a large part of why the world is up to its ears in unprecedented levels of greed, vengeance, power, envy of dying old men who never learned some even say that the earth as a whole is going through its own dark night of the soul and we are still a worm in a cacoon the only way to be awake to see the other end of the road is not by going around...but by going through the clear dark cuz life cant skip winter forever if it ever expects to come full circle so...it seems the old ones would practice something simple to ground themselves at times like this ...like centering prayer, or speaking in tongues, or singing the psalms it really helps to have friends who realize such things and who often want to fix things that arent broken which is why monks and nuns were such quiet people, i guess i dunno

yeah, just me a riff, of sorts thanks, too :B)

im sure most everyone has heard me say this before but i think it bears repeating a few things i find faith in... is how faith most naturally unfolds in a spectrum of ways and as such, is quite measurable, mappable, malleable and develops in waves and textures along lines and types within each of us and...neither wanting to notice it as such nor lacking the words or civil environment to describe it will make reality go away reality it seems has a loving habit of just sitting there in the clear silent dark and doing its thing yet we are always stuck with some sense of faith we need a map of our experience with reality and so our faith is what we expect to happen how we explain what happened how we engage with what is happening "here be dragons" is what it often says at the edges of our faith though we often mistake our map for reality when the map is best served in addition to reality the illusions become useful again once seen as the truths that they are and as the most infamous scriptures seems to illustrate trusting the nature of mystery is the only way through such wilderness letting the inner darkness lead the edge of our attention and what was shadow becomes the clear light which radically changes the view and humiliates us again and any practice that deepens self awareness is still really only deepening more of our map exposing our naked interiors to our self but it is a very very important sliver of the big story and something no one can do for another though we can go anywhere together its like taking lamps into darkened caves investigating the contours and cracks discovering the paintings on the walls expanding interior experiences of our existing maps of reality the substance of this vessel which holds our worldviews is deeply textured and layered and there are a lot of surprising twists in the plot on this journey of expanding reidentification tho the notion that there are things like arts and sciences and games and sports of mapping and charting the truths and languages of inner worlds... ...is likely a tad too many leaps at once for some there should be no shame in that tho there likely is we are often so deeply unable to trust this kind of faith we often react as if we've been asked to eat a live snake, or something yet, scripturally, we are instructed not only make leaps of faith but to prepare for making more such leaps from faith to faith most likely forever fully alone...fully together like monkeys swinging through a forest of branches each leap invites a certain cognitive risk remapping our faith is an earth-shattering move after the major crack in the vessel finally gives often sending shockwaves throughout even our physical body and yet, that we are each such a field of vast interior castles of faith a vast field of faiths in each other like many streams in a single ocean natural fools born looking for water in the invisible truth so anyway...these 3 words have been like a compass for me and have faithfully helped me remember my way through things ...curiousity ...precision ...kindness

sitting here reading around a bit more and found where Parker Palmer found the title for his book "hidden wholeness" from "Hagia Sophia" by Thomas Merton: "There is in all things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness, This mysterious Unity, and Integrity, is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans" i had to look-up "fecundity" = pregnant, fertile, etc...

thanx, veganxtcand yeah...i'm never sure what to say, either "see you on the other side" ...perhaps? i dunno some day i would like to think i can find the courage to write of my experiences here who knows...maybe i'll find a voice for it during the retreat we'll see, i guess gawd...this really is one of my favorite lines from a song it says so much, ihmo, one could spend many days and weeks and months with just it cuz it really seems to challenge the notion that one can be outside of God's presence or that God can be somehow be distant or away or elsewhere in some other place than within God which perhaps, is a big part of why the song has been used in end of life care for so many thousands of years and in many cultures and religions ... ive heard it said that hell goes all the way to hell and heaven goes all the way to heaven no matter where you sit the rungs of jacob's ladder go forever in both directions and no matter what rung you wake up and find yourself upon there is always still a rung directly above and a rung directly below though depending on the object of our attention one may not always realize this very ordinary thing yep...what is hidden is hidden and if one cant respond to what is broken (though that sense of sense of self will be 'smoking like a wick' one's perspective does not include the whole picture perhaps its not that we are 'becoming something new' but that we are really just becoming more 'wholly aware' of that which we already are by taking a step or more 'backward within' and adding new perspectives to those we already have so that one can see, or more deeply feel (or touches) that which has always already been there 'from the beginning,' as it were we gain a radically newer sense of our same ole original self which is how we are simply angels sitting on rungs and have already come a long long long way on a journey that will never ever end

very cool...thanks Clay, TL and Roy and everyone for all that yeah here are some quotes from that article on the quakers i find very refreshing and appealing

i have a sense that this was asked in a wide open way almost as if you were asking the space inside of a circle but it is such a timely question for me because i am actually going on a silent retreat for 3 days-and-nights very soon one that is adapted from some Christian stuff even older than the quakers that also draws from the work of Rumi so...i just want to say yes, to that and out here in the open, if i may before i have to pull myself away from this reflective ride we are on and get back to work this week has been so crazy that i am way behind (tho i may go play in chat a bit...if i can try not to put too many folks to sleep) :ph34r:

a few thoughts on contemplative history of various christianities... some strange resemblances between what i have learned of and from those schools of 'practicing silence,' (such as the quakers) and the infamous pentecostal account, is how they actually basically practiced the most curious and strange thing...which typically went like this... shut up sit down and dont go to sleep pray only silently to yourself (which, it sems, could be anything from speaking random sounds that you feel or repeating the same syllable or song or wise saying over and over again) and do this for many hours a day together (or alone...if you have to) or if you are a hardcore practitioner follow a wise teacher of such things and do this for periods like nine full days (such as that one account) ...man oh man...i dont know about you...but this sounds like pretty extreme stuff, to me.... and so simple things like your own breathing your own heartbeat your own thoughts your own feelings and your own dreams become of paramount importance and worth paying close attention to (though you really cant help it, because that is all that you have to work with in such a state, anyway...which is kind of the point) and of course, there are a thousand other elements that can be and have been added to this kind of thing just as there are and have been a million recipes for bread or wine in other words...we are free to find ways to celebrate and decorate such an act partially because, i'm sure, one can imagine how quickly one might become terrifyingly bored but the idea for folks like that was to do this kind of thing as often as possible to the degree that one is are finally able to maintain that curious new perspective even while we are out-and-about in the world and perhaps it is not hard for one to imagine how this becomes a most critically valuable skill if one is trying to fix, or help or heal or teach anyone else, including ourself (which are among the most common of human tendencies, it seems...a bunch of helpers from the get-go, by nature) which is perhaps why this school of first century healers were so deeply devoted to such a path as to consider it quite the blistering ordeal or why certain groups of pioneering american christian thinkers saw the value of practicing being silent together for longer than a mere minute prior to even opening their mouths when in a circle of wise elders and so something strange and troubling (and often truly sad-making) is how us average modern can only be still for 15 minutes or less yet continue along in this chronic sort of search-and-rescue-and-repair-and-control mode makes ya wanna say "do me a favor and stop doing me favors," ya know? and im sure its not hard to imagine how horrific that might beging to look if it got out of control for too many generations in a row .... ok so...maybe this kind of thing sounds too familiar... you know..."you guys all go and be in silent prayer for many days before you speak of this stuff and dont forget to pay attention to your breathe and your hearts yada yada yada and i guarantee that you will meet me via the air some day very soon" ...and other such things ... oh yeah...and one of our typically favorite parts of all.... ..."there really ARE NOT HARD RULES about this kind of thing except the laws of love, of course"

hm i could be wrong but ya know...something pleasantly strange in do see in all that, Clay is how there seems to be almost NO figures of speech, flowery language, metaphors or poetry in what you just wrote i see nothing unscriptural blasphemous or ungodly really nothing Jesus would condemn should he be posting here in fact its almost got a fundamentalist nature in its straight-talkingly-truthfulishly-literalismicality-ness yet naively childish and mythic in its hopeful expectations of how the universe can really work which is both hot and cool imho :blink: sometimes i wonder if perhaps the old saying is even more true, that "in my father's house are many mansions" though also having to do with how we can and do actually inhabit each other as well as a lot of other things in many many ways and as beings, there is a sense of us that is so expressive as to extend far beyond our bodily self one that overlaps and encompasses each other and then on until the ends of the universe ... of course...all this is mostly an expression of possibility because consensus reality most often seems to be quite a different place altogether ....sometimes

yeah, Abi i hear ya about the lifelong struggle in terms of healthy communication of actual shared meaning tiz the common heart of all relationship, it seems requires certain radical levels of clarity and i am finding that there are very potent and sophisticated arts and schools of practicing notions such as 'open inquiry' like learning new tongues, as scripture says, but using the languages we already know because it not about the actual words, per se but how the words are being used and how we are actually being with each other when we use them interfaith dialogue conflict resolution the great peacemakers of history etc... all benefit from increasing our capacity to find a genuine shared interior space via higher levels of dialogue and discourse and when 'we mutually understand how we understand each other' we will find ourselves in an amazing 'place' though it is not a very common place to find ourselves in which is why i think we cherish real friendships so much i have seen varieties of these arts of 'open inquiry' in everything from catholics to quakers to hopi to jews to sufis to buddhists to psychologists to druids to role-playing gamers and kids such higher orders of human speech are quite ordinary, really and have been around since the beginning which is what makes them "divine" imo but when the majority has somehow come to believe that no such higher dialogue is possible let alone beneficial to them well...it dont take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens next just read the news these days, i guess