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Can anyone explain this please?

edenworkshops

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Can anyone please explain what this phrase means?

"Free from the illusion of objects and free from desire of the opposite"

I realise this is not to do with the book, but it is a deeply spiritual question.

Thank you

Richard
 
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Freedda

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... explain what this phrase means? "Free from the illusion of objects and free from desire of the opposite"
Where is the phrase from? A book or a particular person?

Also, it reads and sounds to me like it's part of a longer phrase or paragraph. I can't glean much meaning from it as-is.
 

edenworkshops

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Hello

It is in the broadest sense a phrase known in Yoga, and in particular, it was said to me by a very lovely Yogi about 16 years ago.

Thank you for your insight

Warm Regards

Richard
 

Liselle

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"the desire of the opposite" sounds like "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" to me
 

Gmulii

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Illusion of objects and the desire of opposite. Will comment a little about the first in the way I could possible imagine someone using it.


Tao Te Ching first paragraph:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.


So we give things names and they become "objects", things around us. And they are many, many, many. We can say Ten Thousand Things, as a vast amount of "objects" and definitions in the world around us.
This is very deeply covered in Buddhism as well.
Here the important part is knowing that the "names" are not what they represent.
They are a way our mind can categorize what we are seeing and how to interact with it.

The reality is beyond that.
But that can be difficult to explain. And we can look at studies of how the words we use affect perception, or we can view parts of Buddhism or Daoism or many other things, instead of all that I will post a quote from a book I enjoy that is from a very different origin. As I think its clearer there.

LORD OF LIGHT by Roger Zelazny said:
Yama and Ratri moved to the back of the room and settled to the floor.
Somewhere, Tak too, was listening.
Sam sat with his eyes closed for several minutes, then said softly:
"I have many names, and none of them matter." He opened his eyes slightly then, but he did not move his head. He looked upon nothing in particular.
"Names are not important," he said. "To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it.But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.'
"If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words,though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality, the Nameless. "Therefore, I charge you, forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream.

"The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth."

What is the illusion of objects...
Well, if we look the world around people are grasping at their own definitions and words they have given, they are fighting for the meaning they find in them and the meaning they don't want to see. And little of that has to do with what we actually are, as we are much beyond the words we use to help our mind interact with that.
Nothing wrong with the mind, nothing wrong with words, but if we allow that to be as encompassing as it has become for many people, there is much more important things being "overlooked" while always still there. Like tha Tao.

If we look at the world right now, in parts of it(US for example), people have gotten even more lost in the labels they use for everything, so much that they have deeply starting to recognize all that as real. Nationalities, races, genders, politics all that has its own very distinct labels and most of the people there are doing all they can to make them more and more real.
But its not, its just labels, making the world much simpler, someone is bad, someone is good, someone is from a specific nationality, or religion, someone is affiliating with one thing or another... Reality is much beyond all that and the deeper they gets entangled in labels and words the more they will see the "ten thousand things" and their names, while they won't be able to see the Tao and the nameless.
And the more far away they will be from any real beneficial community or their own heart, as all that labels are just creating division in the mind.

Its all just "alignment" and attuning the mind. The Chinese systems are very good at that as well, but to be fair most worthy metaphysical or spiritual systems will provide some paths with that.

And it can be difficult to describe in a few sentences, so any path you choose will provide some clarity on that, in the metaphysical/spirital schools be that west or east.


 

edenworkshops

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Hello Gmulii

Thank you for your most erudite reply, I was quite staggered by your insight, I am a poor example of enlightenment but enlightenment just the same. I live ina very isolated part of France and would welcome a conversation with someone such as yourself, you can contact me at [email redacted].

Warm Regards

Richard
 
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Gmulii

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Hello Gmulii

Thank you for your most erudite reply, I was quite staggered by your insight, I am a poor example of enlightenment but enlightenment just the same. I live ina very isolated part of France and would welcome a conversation with someone such as yourself, you can contact me at [email redacted].

Warm Regards

Richard

I'm really focused on the Chinese metaphysical systems in their practical application last few years,though, so this was a little detour. : )
But if you are interested in that, I'm really not the best source out there.

I can recommend Papaji and Gangaji for the essence behind it. But in general any spiritual school will do better job then me, I'm just noticing that as its in so many systems, but my focus is on other stuff, right now.

Will post something to follow the info from there if you want. Some simple ideas like "where is me" and "how many miles away from inside", but look in this context how strong effect it can have(his English isn't perfect, but its more then enough to get):

My mail is [redacted], although I'm really not the best source on this, but its repeated so much in so many of the spiritual systems, while learning other stuff we start to get sense of it as unavoidable.
 
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hilary

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Hi Gmulii, hi Richard,

It's great that you've connecting via Clarity. However, if you post your email address on a web page in plain view, the bots will descend on it like vultures and add it to every spammer's list on the planet. So I've edited your posts to remove the email addresses, hopefully before they got harvested.

To contact someone privately from here, you can use the private conversations feature. Click/tap on their username next to a post and choose 'start conversation'. You can always share email addresses via private conversation if you like, since those aren't public web pages.
 

d_squared

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Can anyone please explain what this phrase means?

"Free from the illusion of objects and free from desire of the opposite"

I realise this is not to do with the book, but it is a deeply spiritual question.

Thank you

Richard

"Something" exists, but everything we perceive about the "world" is not it .
This is no different from the situation of a radar operator looking at a "bleep" on his screen . He can only guess and speculate about the "object" he detected. Our instrument (the five senses) are vastly superior to the radar, however, it is working the same way . What it presents us is just another bleep, which is so sophisticated that it gives us the illusion of being "real" .

This illusion applies not only to the "world" we see outside, but also to everything we think we know about ourselves .

Our desire shapes the bleep we perceive . :cool:
 

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