My first mall trip since being awakened... (Page 3 of 4)

It would appear that Craig's not gone. Hooray!

Not so. To say that you "know" something is to say that you have had sufficient evidential verification of a "thing" to have obtained proof of its nature or existence. People often use the word "know" incorrectly. How many times do you hear Christians say things like, "I know Jesus loves you," or, "I know God will judge your soul when you die"? But they don't KNOW this, rather they BELIEVE it. Knowing has little to do with how much you know; rather, it is true only if what you say you know has been proven to you through your own direct experience and observation.

Then this would be a case of, "do thou as I say, and not as I do." Your first post on this thread made an assumption that Will didn't know what he was talking about when he said he had been awakened. If, as you agreed, awakening is "relative and subjective," then you have no basis whatsoever to say that Will is merely given over to wishful thinking in this regard.

True: One is either awake or one is not. "Full awakeness" is not a very helpful term in this regard. I can't answer for him, but I will make an assumption (go me!) that he was indirectly referring to the three step process I mentioned earlier: awakening, remembering, and reunifying. Being fully awake implies being fully aware, and this can only come about when you KNOW who you are and why you are here. Knowing the ins-and-outs of the Matrix Control System means diddly if you don't have any idea of your own reason for being within it in the first place.

Perhaps you should consider why you have such a need to believe or trust him at all. What should it matter to you whether he truly is awakened or not? Makes no difference to you

Thanks NeoMatrix. Although, would you say that this definition applies to what Will is saying - that he has "awakened"? I suppose to be safer, we must await his own definition of the word.

Miminikelo said: ...being 'awake' is an integral part of the awakening.

Can somebody explain this to me? I still think it is paradoxical. IMO, I don't think using the word 'awake' is valid in this sense.

Let's apply it to the actual process of physical sleep. We are not "awake" when we are in the process of 'waking up'. It is an entirely different state of mind. So, in fact, Will isn't AWAKE because he is still in the process of 'waking up' - which he acknowledges.

This probably isn't 'correct', but I'd say that Will has increased his awareness and only having complete awareness constitutes 'awake'. But again, I'm not sure.

Yep! I was expanding and editing my post above, and I pretty much said the same thing, and adding my own "assumption" of what he might mean.

It is paradoxical. Being awake is the natural state of being that would follow the process of awakening. It is not really a part of the awakening process itself, but rather is the result.

Without a more concrete definition of what Will would view as being "awake", it is impossible to say. Needless to say however, that one cannot be both awake and awakening at the same time.

Can we ever "awaken"? If so, where do we set the bar for what constitutes an awakened state? Or do we admit that "awakened" only has meaning when relative to a lower stage of awareness from which one has passed?

Be careful not to confuse objective with absolute, or subjective with relative.

In order for there to be an absolute definition, the bar would be set as high as possible. If not, then there would be something higher than that bar to which the "awakened" state is just another form of sleep. So we'd have to raise the bar to the level of Creator-hood itself. Even if we grew to the level of oversoul or sixth density entity, being an individualized entity implies non-unity, still something within the illusion and thus sleep.

So I think looking for an "objective" (meaning, absolute) standard of "awake"  becomes absurd since only the Creator would be awake and everything else would be asleep...but since the Creator is by definition everything, well...

Therefore the definition has to be relative. There is no absolute "awake" point - just states called "awake" relative to the lesser state of awareness, which is "awake" relative to the lesser state of awareness, etc...

The problem comes when you say "I am awake" and claim that you have jumped the bar, that there is no farther you can go. You can claim your view is objective since lesser views are clearly subjective and fallacious. But thinking your view is also absolute means you then start defending your worldview against new information instead of expanding it.

And I think this would be yet another danger of subscribing to an absolute definition of awakeness -- by defining the bar at a certain height, you lock yourself into it. Why not just say "I am awake relative to where I was before, but will be even more awake in the future"? There's no more semantic paradox here than in the Preamble to the Constitution saying "in order to form a more perfect Union".

"Awake" can be relative without being subjective.

[p.s Welcome back, Craig.]

"You even admit this yourself. You say one thing ("I have awakened") and then say another ("...how I can achieve full awakenness")."

No, I wasn't contridicting myself. I was putting you on the spot to tell me how you think I can be fully awakened since you don't believe I am. Let me define how I consider myself awake: I consider that I am awake to the MCS and its agents and I realize the way I was living my life before this wasn't in the path of spirtualness. I used to be a slave to the matrix system and it cause me a lot of unhappyness. Now that I know about it and its agenda, I consider myself awake in that regard. Now if we were going by Neomatrix's system, I probably still am at step two right now.

Hey come on spiritual union is not just for the rich