This is all just from the POV that LoA is real, ignore and discard if you choose. This here post is not about arguing *if* it is true, but rather what the particulars are
if it is.
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Originally Posted by Max Power  Why is this realm so dense? In dreams you can create just about anything, but here it's more challenging. Is that the way we've chosen it, to make it more interesting rather than just having god powers in a physical reality, I'd imagine that would become boring very quickly. |
If all was like dreams, and completely unlimited and un-'dense', the very concept of time would be a moot point, since one could just exchange a whole scene with something else. It would probably be impossible to experience suffering and fear and joy and achievement and desire, and to explore different mental states, without a 'dense' reality with egos and whatnot... Actually, even lucid dreams can be somewhat 'dense' - I recall Steve wrote something about how he couldn't fly immediately, but began with a sort of high jumps, and trained to be able to fly in lucid dreams.
I think all the tension and worry and frustration that we have about the reality we are primarily in, the one in which we are 'awake', causes us to focus more on limits and slowness and 'density' and such create it. It establishes 'denser' beliefs, because we start out at low, fearful levels of consciousness.
By LoA/IM, if we worry about something and then see an indication that it might happen/be so, we will be inclined to believe it more and see more indication, up to and including full manifestation.
Our underlying beliefs about the 'density' of reality are always active. Other thoughts are influenced by those.
Dreams are not subject to logic - indeed the logical mind is turned off in dreams that are not lucid. Dreams exist at the level of imagination, we are very aware that they are subject to our minds and exist at the level of our minds, we have no limiting beliefs that the dream-reality is something that exists outside of us independently of us.
This 'physical' realm, on the other hand, is subject to logically structured beliefs of movement and gradual change and laws of physics and such. It's actually not more challenging. You're believing in, aware of, gravity right now - and it is so. If you had a thought of flying, it would be colored by that belief, so you could imagine flying, but you'd at the same time know it's only imagination. According to the most extreme version of LoA (the one that would be most congruent with SR), this realm works just as fast - it's actually not more dense, more seperated from your mind, it's just that you believe that it is. What is challenging - equally challenging everywhere - is changing your beliefs. If you believe it is impossible to feel pain in dreams, you would never feel pain in dreams unless you started doubting "hmm, maybe it is possible to feel pain and other bodily sensations in dreams" - you would likely experience that more or less immediately then as we know (believe completely) that dreams are subject to our most fickle imagination.
Also responding to other comments in this thread - LoA isn't just about thinking, which seems to confuse many people - it's not about fickle thoughts. It's about changing underlying beliefs, what you 'know' about the world. We can percieve both imagination and physical reality at once. If we look at a table and imagine an apple is on it, that is different from being aware of an apple being on the table and percieving it as so, knowing it.
Visualising works to the degree that it influences you to believe that it is possible and will happen to you. You think more and more of the possibility, and then things come into your life that reinforces that it is so, so there is a feedback loop imaginationthought<->perception - depending on one's definition of thought, perception can be said to be thought too, but we have the ability to see one thought as seperate from another.
If you think of a dragon, you know it's just a fantasy. If you constantly worry that people are going to harass you, and believe the world is a threatening place, that is what you will experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Max Power Can someone really fly at will, but they don't share that with anyone for fear of being locked up. If you could fly or manifest amazing things instantly would you go around sharing that information with people? I think the kind of person who could master this plane isn't the kind of person who would brag about it.
Max |
A person who can fly at will will not meet a person who believes people cannot fly at will, and vice-versa.