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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2011 21:33:08 GMT -1
Sounds good.But I wonder who the shamans and 'chaos riders' are for us today? Are there any? It has been suggested that their role is taken by the burned-out celebrities through whom we live vicariously and who 'take the rap' on our behalf for a 'chaos-riding' lifestyle. I'm not sure that that I find that prospect very appealing, which is not to say that it's untrue. I wouldn't agree celebrities represent modern day shamans, I think that term is still reserved for those who purposefully journey between the worlds for the good of their communities and the closest most celebrities come to that is the occasional accidental overdose. I think there are still shamans in the world today, but I feel that term has been claimed by too many people who have read a DJ conway book here and a John Matthews book there had a nosey around for a power animal. To me, the term shaman, is defined by experience, ability and servitude to the community.
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Post by Adam on Apr 6, 2011 5:18:13 GMT -1
Is it possible that existence in this realm means that life exists "outside" of directional time? Harking back to physics, the direct of time is akin to the direction the frames of life are driven, if you are in times arrow then you experience life as growing older, but if you are outside of time, then these segments of time may be available to you for you to be able to choose certain segments when appropriate. There are a fair few mythical references to the slow passage of time in the Otherworld/Land of the Dead, so that makes sense to me. It also makes sense that those present there are able to select the time they appear in as many of the stories refer to appearances at specific points in time, to accomplish specific goals .... that would be impossible if they had no control over when they appeared. It makes sense to me as metaphor but I think one has to be careful not to look like a new ager co-opting quantum mechanics to argue a mechanism for telepathy or for healing. Time distortion is also a well attested trance phenomenon and would be where I would tend to look first for a relationship between the experience of "faery" time and mundane time
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Post by Lee on Apr 6, 2011 7:22:36 GMT -1
something to bear in mind - has time actually distorted or is merely our perception that has?
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Post by Lee on Apr 6, 2011 7:23:40 GMT -1
i am thinking of dreams as an example, we know that dreams can seem like a long, epic narrative when asleep however by all accounts they take a matter of seconds 'in our heads'
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Post by nellie on Apr 6, 2011 7:52:02 GMT -1
How much do we actually know about time though? Isn't the passage of time a great deal about perception? I always half remembered that time is not the rigid thing we make it out to be from my high school science lessons.*
*wishing I paid more attention to reletivity now.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2011 10:48:56 GMT -1
If consciousness is a pre-existing potential, then it must be inherent in all matter, so while actual consciousness 'dies' - i.e. the relational experience of a complex being - the bits of consciousness must carry on, and have been around for ever. So, in this view, the Ancestors are all around us. But, of course, their complex being as ancestors has passed on leaving behind many things for us to inherit. It is these things we can hallow and 'place' in a Land of the Dead. In doing so we institute the relationship which, as you suggest, develops its own narrative structure. Fascinating discussion. I think what you are saying here is similar to my idea that part of the dead person ("bits of consciousness") remain which we can relate to (and create a narrative structure around). But the 'actual existence 'of the person ("the relational experience of a complex being") moves on to another relational experience - for me, as part of some cosmic energy (I think of it like the Dao). And possibly by relating to those bits of consciousness, that story, we activate it or make it more robust, potent. This isn't Brythonic, but interesting to see what a living culture believes about the ancestors perhaps: I did quite a lot of work with an African initiated elder ('shaman'?) from Burkina Faso a few years ago. The ancestors seem to be more important - or at least more appealed to and accessed - than the gods. Malidoma taught that the ancestors are just on the opposite 'page' to us, as it were. They watch us - it is apparently very boring in their world with not much happening - and are very pleased if we call them and include them in our lives, our worlds. They seem to need our interaction with them to manifest in our lives. It is our grief and sorrowing that helps them to cross to the otherworld and also a long ritual to 'ancestoralize' them. I participated in one such ceremony with him to ancestralise my parents who had recently died. This involved, in part, enacting a narrative whereby we made representations of our dead and then walked to place them in a sort of limbo where sacrifices were made and words spoken. At this point in the journey of the dead they are lost in a kind of fog and need help to find their way (compare the Tibetan Book of the Dead). We then moved them to another ritual place and kept an overnight vigil, telling stories about them etc until dawn when we moved them into a special ancestor shrine. (In some ways it was a bit disturbing for me as some parts didn't translate culturally for me and I do have a problem with sacrifice which I acknowledge is hypocritcal. But the sense of helping them on their journey was helpful and powerful.) Just to mention my experience of talking to the dead - or rather being talked to: the first person close to me to die was my father and I actually felt his presence very strongly to the extent that I was slightly euphoric and thought - "if this is death it's great cos in a way they're here for you more strongly". My father did speak to me two or three times - breaking into my thoughts out of the blue, once to ask me to do something I had agreed to do some years before for him when he died (which I was hesitating to do as it was quite difficult and potentially a can of worms). Another time, the day of his cremation, there had been some conflict in the family about funeral arrangements etc and us children didn't agree with what my mother wanted to do with the ashes, especially my brother and I. He suddenly spoke to me that morning and said 'Don't make a fuss about the ashes, Hil, it doesn't matter". After his funeral and cremation he disappeared - seemed to go far away to somewhere totally unreachable leaving me quite bereft. The first example I gave could have been my conscience butting in (while I was watching the news and not thinking about the matter at all) and speaking in my father's voice. The second example was putting forward an alien concept - it did matter very much to me at the time what happened to the ashes but I accepted what he said and didn't make an issue of it. So it could all have come from my subconscious - my memory of my father's voice drafted on to my active thoughts. But why did this stop after the funeral? If it was a protective mechanism, why didn't 'I' make it continue until the shock and grief had mellowed a bit? (Anyway, he seemed very cool about being dead which was actually very comforting!) What I am increasingly becoming interested in is what my subconscious actually is because I sense it is the key. There's interesting research going on now which shows that when we think we are making a decision we are in fact only becoming conscious of a decision which has already been made by a part of our brain without our knowing. So our experience of consciousness is really just a record for us of what has already been decided and acted upon. (John Eagleman explores this secret life of the brain or the 'cognitive illusion we call reality' is in his book Incognito www.amazon.co.uk/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/1847679382/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302084251&sr=1-1And then there's another new theory about the universe which says that it is actually a holographic projection from the far side of the universe. Which is interesting because it might relate to the Indian concept of Maya en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)(and begs the question, who or what is doing the projecting?) Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this but just thought I'd share my musings.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2011 12:42:08 GMT -1
It makes sense to me as metaphor but I think one has to be careful not to look like a new ager co-opting quantum mechanics to argue a mechanism for telepathy or for healing. I know absolutely nothing about quantum mechanics, so I've missed the meaning there a bit. However, I would say that if there's scientific evidence that supports the existence of a phenomena that's relevant to our experience, we should explore it. A few years ago the idea of being able to pick up on the feelings of another was a completely new-age idea, until we discovered mirror neurons.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2011 12:50:08 GMT -1
[ What I am increasingly becoming interested in is what my subconscious actually is because I sense it is the key. There's interesting research going on now which shows that when we think we are making a decision we are in fact only becoming conscious of a decision which has already been made by a part of our brain without our knowing. So our experience of consciousness is really just a record for us of what has already been decided and acted upon. (John Eagleman explores this secret life of the brain or the 'cognitive illusion we call reality' is in his book Incognito www.amazon.co.uk/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/1847679382/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302084251&sr=1-1 I've been reading about this recently, it's very interesting and raises some interesting questions about what we define as our "free will" ... I've often wondered whether, as some suggest, we do have two brains.The more ancient, instinctive "reptilian brain" and our more evolved, rational, mammalian brain. When people mention things like the concept of man as having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, I often end up thinking about the struggle between those two distinct parts of the brain and wondering if, for all our evolution and civilisation, our belief that we (as conscious and rational beings) are in control is, for the most part, an illusion. It'd be interesting to know which part of the brain the original decision is made and if it's the same region for all types of decision or whether the nature of the decision determines which system generates the intial response.
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Post by redraven on Apr 6, 2011 13:06:55 GMT -1
There are a fair few mythical references to the slow passage of time in the Otherworld/Land of the Dead, so that makes sense to me. It also makes sense that those present there are able to select the time they appear in as many of the stories refer to appearances at specific points in time, to accomplish specific goals .... that would be impossible if they had no control over when they appeared. It makes sense to me as metaphor but I think one has to be careful not to look like a new ager co-opting quantum mechanics to argue a mechanism for telepathy or for healing. Where does telepathy or healing come into this discussion? most of the material I have raised here has been based around the writing of Brian Greene's critically acclaimed Fabric of the Cosmos, which isn't exactly new age. Time distortion is also a well attested trance phenomenon and would be where I would tend to look first for a relationship between the experience of "faery" time and mundane time Again, time distortion is dealt with by Einsteins theory of general relativity. I understand you raising the concern of fitting scientific thinking into a"new-age" framework but I'm at a loss as to why telepathy and healing was brought into this discussion. RR
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Post by Adam on Apr 6, 2011 13:36:34 GMT -1
Again, time distortion is dealt with by Einsteins theory of general relativity. I understand you raising the concern of fitting scientific thinking into a"new-age" framework but I'm at a loss as to why telepathy and healing was brought into this discussion. RR For comparison purposes only. We are talking about a location and nature of a Land of the Dead. I would be very wary of attempting to co-opt science for this purpose because in my opinion it runs a decent risk of putting us in the same class as those who co-opt science, usually quantum physics these days, to "explain" telepathy, healing etc.
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Post by redraven on Apr 6, 2011 14:02:58 GMT -1
For comparison purposes only. We are talking about a location and nature of a Land of the Dead. I would be very wary of attempting to co-opt science for this purpose because in my opinion it runs a decent risk of putting us in the same class as those who co-opt science, usually quantum physics these days, to "explain" telepathy, healing etc. I understand your concerns about this but my intention is to address whether such conditions may be available for the existence of such a place. Any conclusions after that, may be based more in UPG but at least this UPG will have it's basis in fact, which is just how I like my UPG to be RR
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Post by redraven on Apr 6, 2011 14:08:19 GMT -1
I half remember something about thermodynamics (but don't profess to understand thermodynamics) - energy is never lost merely changed. Makes sense. RedRaven, your thoughts sound like this is how somebody might become an ancestor? Sorry Nellie, missed this first time around. I'm interested in possible mechanisms that could lead to the transformation into ancestorhood but it strikes me that the major difference between ancestors and deity is that ancestor retains essentially an humancentric aspect as if unwilling or unable to loose this human perspective and Gellifach's interesting post reinforces, for me, this humancentric aspect. RR
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Post by Adam on Apr 6, 2011 14:34:10 GMT -1
For comparison purposes only. We are talking about a location and nature of a Land of the Dead. I would be very wary of attempting to co-opt science for this purpose because in my opinion it runs a decent risk of putting us in the same class as those who co-opt science, usually quantum physics these days, to "explain" telepathy, healing etc. I understand your concerns about this but my intention is to address whether such conditions may be available for the existence of such a place. Any conclusions after that, may be based more in UPG but at least this UPG will have it's basis in fact, which is just how I like my UPG to be If my caution appears unnecessarily aggressive it is only because I'm dashing off responses in snatches of 5 minutes here and there... I merely counsel caution tis all...
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Post by nellie on Apr 7, 2011 8:46:04 GMT -1
I'm with RedRaven in that I like some fact to work with. Isn't there are happy medium where science and religion can meet? Surely every angle is worthy of some careful consideration - isn't there a danger of overlooking something with potential, in the haste to dissasociate from something a bit too new-agey? It's something I've found myself guilty of doing recently, and I personally don't want to be that way.
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Post by Heron on Apr 7, 2011 8:55:56 GMT -1
Fascinating discussion. I think what you are saying here is similar to my idea that part of the dead person ("bits of consciousness") remain which we can relate to (and create a narrative structure around). But the 'actual existence 'of the person ("the relational experience of a complex being") moves on to another relational experience - for me, as part of some cosmic energy (I think of it like the Dao). Yes, something like that. And bits of consciousness form different relations : becoming part of, say, a tree, a river and eventually perhaps another human being. Over greater expanses of space-time they may leave Mother earth and become part of another star system, but within our 'home' frame of space-time, we belong here and our conscious elements are shared with the rest of the Planet in a relational series. ... and come into relationship with the gods. Because the relational connections remain without a physical manifestation, unless we bring it into play. Which is to formalise that process of bringing the relational connection into play. At which point we - the living - have the choice of cutting the ties, or maintaining them. Though at the 'macro' level, we can attempt to re-instate ties with whole groups of ancestors at some historical distance from us, as with the 'reconstructionist' project. Letting parent go, free to continue living through us, as, whether we like it or not, they will continue to do.
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Post by Adam on Apr 8, 2011 8:43:43 GMT -1
I'm with RedRaven in that I like some fact to work with. Isn't there are happy medium where science and religion can meet? Surely every angle is worthy of some careful consideration - isn't there a danger of overlooking something with potential, in the haste to dissasociate from something a bit too new-agey? It's something I've found myself guilty of doing recently, and I personally don't want to be that way. I've been pondering my reaction to this a couple of days now and I think I know where it stems from, and why it triggered my thoughts related to new age... All to often (and this is where my quantum example came in) I see science being co-opted to give someone's ideas some spurious credibility... the science is distorted and misrepresented to a largely science non-literate audience to provide lecrture circuit and book selling credibility to some charlatan. RR emphatically does not do this ;D so the large part of my response was the-part-of-the-iceberg-under-the-water unconcscious kneejerk reaction stuff. Ignore everything I said before. I will say that the minute you take "fact" from known science and use it as a what-if for metaphysics, it is no longer science, as it is no longer testable. But I absolutely agree that should not restrain honest speculation which could, at some time, lead to ideas for experiment or provoke other ideas entirely. That was the long answer. Short answer was I was talking bollocks ;D ;D ;D
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Post by Lee on Apr 8, 2011 8:47:21 GMT -1
I've been pondering my reaction to this a couple of days now and I think I know where it stems from, and why it triggered my thoughts related to new age... All to often (and this is where my quantum example came in) I see science being co-opted to give someone's ideas some spurious credibility... the science is distorted and misrepresented to a largely science non-literate audience to provide lecrture circuit and book selling credibility to some charlatan. RR emphatically does not do this ;D so the large part of my response was the-part-of-the-iceberg-under-the-water unconcscious kneejerk reaction stuff. Ignore everything I said before. I will say that the minute you take "fact" from known science and use it as a what-if for metaphysics, it is no longer science, as it is no longer testable. But I absolutely agree that should not restrain honest speculation which could, at some time, lead to ideas for experiment or provoke other ideas entirely. That was the long answer. Short answer was I was talking bollocks ;D ;D ;D This.
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Post by Adam on Apr 8, 2011 9:14:41 GMT -1
I caught up with the 1st half hour of History of Celtic Britain and was quite taken with the shots of young Mr Oliver in the Great Orme copper mines. I wondered if the land of the Dead *was* to have been understood as literally being down, or underground, or at least accessible through caves, how would mining in this way have influenced stories... there must have been a high mortality rate among the miners, who worked in the dark in confined spaces underground (I also wonder if these mines also gave rise to stories of caves with a wealth of hidden treasure)...
Further, the Lord of the land of the dead appears to be a proto myth figure from the P-I-E stuff I've looked into, being sacrificed to create the earth and thus being the first to die, paving the route to death... it looks to me as if in the P-I-E versions, his body became the earth as a result of his death/sacrifice... his soul or spirit going to the land of the dead as the first of the dead to become their ruler... does this have any pertinence to the nature of and location of a land of the dead?
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Post by nellie on Apr 8, 2011 12:20:05 GMT -1
Adam - I know just the kind of books you're talking about. I finished reading one not so long ago. Everytime a little bit of science that caught my interest it was followed by a lot of stuff I found hard to belief to the point where I wasn't even sure how credible the quoted so-called-science was either. The book made me think though!
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