Ryan Wilson2 said:If they are being born, does that imply that souls must die?
I will employ a parable by Alan Watts:
Life is akin to falling off a cliff. You are born at the summit, and then the doctor throws you down. As you descend, you spot a rock and grab onto it with everything you've got; suddenly, that rock becomes your entire universe, and you lose sight of everything else because you are so preoccupied with the stone.
However, you are going to hit the ground whether you cling to that rock or not; the only difference is that the quality of your experience will be vastly different depending on whether you are tethered to that stone. If you aren't clinging to the rock, you still have the freedom to experience the stone, but you aren't necessarily trapped by it.
A murky parable.
If you grab the rock, you will experience the rock, regardless of whether you intended to be tethered to it or not.
Non-attachment doesn't preclude the possibility of experiencing something; it simply offers greater freedom in choosing that very experience, because you maintain a much clearer perspective when you aren't bound to an object.
Water in a glass is clear. Once you stir Nescafe into it, you have tied the water to the coffee; at that point, the water is no longer clear—it has become the coffee.
Therein lies the distinction. In my view, if one does not attach oneself, one cannot truly live through the experience. Since we are physical beings, attachment is the only thing that can actually influence our experience.
The water isn't just "coffee-flavored" water; it is simply coffee. 😁
But you caught on...
Without water, there is no Gatorade. Water is the fundamental element; any additive merely clouds its clarity. In humans, water is clouded by thoughts, feelings, belief systems, and so on. But if you operate like a river, nothing can ever cloud you because everything simply flows through. It’s that moment of realization where you recognize something—not as something "new" or something "earned through struggle," but as something that was always present. It is the base of everything.
Everything beyond that point of recognition must be discovered for yourself. It's an individual experience, and it manifests differently for everyone.
Ryan Wilson2 said:But why would we ever need to forget that we are souls in the first place?
Perhaps this amnesia is intentional, a necessary step to allow us to fully immerse ourselves in this world.
Fixed.
Ryan Wilson2 said:I am genuinely at a loss here.
Is it not the case that emotions are merely a byproduct of our attachment to this earthly existence? Once we reach the realization that we are souls—that we are, in essence, beyond the physical—shouldn't all such attachments simply vanish?
Honestly, you spiritualists are impossible to pin down; no matter how I approach the argument, you always find a way to slip through the cracks.😁
Emotions are essentially a bodily sense. They signal various chemical balances and imbalances occurring within the body, as well as certain things outside the body (intuition is one such emotion). The actual chemical life of an emotion lasts from five seconds to five minutes max. Anything lasting longer than that is just mental repetition, not sincere emotion. Basically, emotions that live longer than that are illusions; they have no basis in reality, only in our heads.
