Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Trust in Science

Harmony with the universe, I think, comes from realizing that it does not conform to your wishes and beliefs. Like any partner, you got to learn to accept it for what it is, warts and all. This doesn't mean you can't work with reality to make changes. It means you have to work with reality, at least in some part of the process, to make changes.

You can boil water at sea level by creating pressure, yes. Perhaps I should have specified that by stating "at sea level" I was implying at a specific pressure, Jeff? No. You knew that. You're just trying to show me that for every rule there is an exception (except when there isn't). I get it. Just as I am sure you get the significance of knowing you have to change the pressure instead of increasing your desire for it or visualizing harder.

Faune, the wonder of reality is that we get to both share in it AND have our own, unique experiences of it. But reality is reality. You might like shrimp tempura, I might hate it, but it's still shrimp tempura. There isn't any loss of unique experience by admitting that it's the same piece of shrimp tempura from which we both took a bite.

A blind person can feel a painting and because of his or her enhanced sense of touch will probably have a more rich tactile experience of it than a person who touches it and is not blind. Same painting, though. Two totally different experiences of one reality.

Being realistic doesn't mean living without color. Reality is where we get our experiences of color from after all. And for all its limits, reality offers a tremendous amount of choice... real choice.

The longer I live the more I realize that fighting for limitlessness and freedom in youth was a wasted effort. I really do think that if I had only been able to see my limits with sobriety and work within them I would have achieved much more and had a much more satisfying life.

Believe me, I have lived a very privileged life. My problems have often been because of lack of limits. I have experienced more freedom in certain areas than a lot of people. I got whatever I wanted. As I look back, I realize that if I hadn't been able to simply just get whatever I wanted, I would have had to work within limits, and this would have made me ask the important questions like, "This thing I want so badly, is it really worthwhile? What would it be like if I had it? Is it really worth it?"

Instead, there was a tremendous amount of waste. I had more than others, but from a certain perspective I had much less.

Limits aren't so bad, so long as they do not strangle you.

Re: Master Lin....

Let me start off by saying that I respect energy workers. I don't know what it is they do, really. I don't know if its subtle energy or if something like subtle energy exists. I *suspect* it does. I don't know. I have experienced healing at the hands of an energy worker, so there you go.

I haven't read his book. But I bet that what happened is that there was something about the particular circumstances that allowed the electricity to pass through him without harming him. A lot of the sensational stuff that people do to impress others is based on laws of physics, and anyone can do it. Firewalking, beds of nails, wood breaking and all that stuff. It's to impress people who don't know what's really going on.

I think the way the quantum world works (from what little I know) is pretty amazing. It appears to me that through probability, this crazy stuff at the quantum level gives rise to the fairly predictable world we sense and live in. Things look crazy at the quantum level, I think, because of the limits of our senses and tools and our fresh acquaintance with it. As time goes by and we learn more and more about it, I am guessing that we'll discover something that makes us go, "OH! So that's how it is! Well, that makes perfect sense!"

May take us a while to get there.

When I see new agers taking stuff like the split screen experiments as evidence that consciousness creates reality, I get pretty upset. I think they are jumping to conclusions and making a mockery of Quantum Mechanics.

I guess my opinion of it is summed up this way: just because something appears magical, that doesn't mean magic exists... it just means that the universe is filled with mystery.