Steve - change of mind about SR

[SecretSeven]

Has anyone else noticed Steve's obvious change in mind about subjective reality?

[Akashic_Librarian]

Not really...what did you have in mind?

[backpocket]

Yeah. Instead of believing god is everyone, he believes everyone is god.

LOL.

What changed? I don't get it.

[Chado2423]

I don't think there is a change... i think he sort of sees both beliefs as one and the same belief. That we are all a part of God, and therefore by default God is within us, because we are God in his thinking. Not that we are Supreme Deity, unless you mean collectively... I guess it is similar to a Borg like mentality, but with a more positive intention.

[Brutha]

The problem is that Steves concept of reality is difficult to understand and the majority of readers probably don't get it completly.
When you don't understand a concept anyway, it is very easy to come to the conclusion that the author changed his mind.

That said, Steves thought show a bit of advancement through time.

[impaul99]

To understand the "change" you need to pinpoint the verbiage and concepts defined. If Steve says "I am God" for example, and you don't understand what he's reffering to with the word "I" then you're in trouble. Also, if he defines it and says "I = Consciousness", that's great, but if you don't understand HIS definition of consciousness then you're still in trouble.

I always define things this way:
God = Universe / Perfectness / NO EGO / Perfect Being
Consciousness = Ego in it's pure form / non physical / lasts multiple lifetimes
Paul = Physical manifestation in human body form of consciousness

Now, if peopel agree with those terms we could have a conversation about SR etc. If someone thinks that Consciousness has no Ego, then we need to dive deeper and define EGO and consciousness etc.

Without proper definitions of those terms, I wouldn't even attempt to find differences/similarities between Steve's version of SR and your own, or Steve's previous versions vs his new version.

For example, look at this from Steve's Post:
"This lens assumes that consciousness is the container in which objective reality occurs. This is not the limited consciousness of your own ego (that would be solipsism), but the larger God-consciousness or Source-level consciousness in which all of reality occurs."

Can you tell me what the word "consciousness" means in these sentences? I can't. "Limited consciousness of your ego"? Ego has limited consciousness? God-Consciousness? What is this that? Perhaps it would be clearer to remove the word consciousness altogether and have the words read this:

"This lens assumes that God is the container in which objective reality occurs. This is not your own ego (that would be solipsism), but God in which all of reality occurs."

See what I mean? See how all of sudden things get clearer, but perhaps this is not what Steve meant?

I dunno, to me, a discussion with words like conscioussness, ego, God, etc. without definitions for those terms, is fruitless.

[Steve Pavlina]

@impaul: You define Consciousness differently than I do. My use of the word Consciousness would be roughly the same as your use of the word God. I can't say I invented this usage -- it's similar to the way Dr. Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra use the term. Another word for it is Source.

You seem to be putting consciousness at the level of ego, mind, and manifestation but not the outer container of pure potentiality and pure awareness. Hence the confusion over semantics.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

@impaul: You define Consciousness differently than I do. My use of the word Consciousness would be roughly the same as your use of the word God. I can't say I invented this usage -- it's similar to the way Dr. Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra use the term. Another word for it is Source.

You seem to be putting consciousness at the level of ego, mind, and manifestation but not the outer container of pure potentiality and pure awareness. Hence the confusion over semantics.

Are you sure Wayne Dyer and Chopra are doing that? I used to think the same thing. However, both are students of A Course in Miracles and after I began reading ACIM and I learned about that subtlety I started seeing their teachings a bit differently.

The course says that consciousness is the beginning of Ego. It's kind of like a part of God (Pureness) thought to itself "I exist" and in that instant, consciousness was born and so was Ego. When we cease to "exist" and be "aware of ourselves" we go back to being Pureness (God). Until then, even if it's a super super super super tiny sliver inside it, consciousness still is Ego.

It's not a bad thing, it's not like it's a bad Ego, it just means that it is "seperate" from God. Meaning, if God wanted to split off a part of himself in order to experience what it would feel like not to be God, that split off part would be consciousness (the beginning of duality). At that point is where the Ego is created.

Another way of looking at it is that you can generally assign qualities like these to consciousness:
(1) Self Awareness
(2) Intelligence
(3) Desire to Express Love
...

As such, these qualities would obviously have to be describing something with Ego in it as anything else would have to be just Pure God. God can't be intelligent - he has to be beyond that. God just IS.

I dunno, hard for me to really explain it, but I finally "got it" when reading A Course in Miracles and I realized that Ego doesn't equal a bad thing. It is simply consciousness becoming aware of itself. Only to consciousness Ego can be a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, because consciousness itself is Ego and it can thus live in a world of duality where things like Good and Bad exist. To God, Ego is neither good, nor bad, because to God Ego doesn't exist. It's an illusion and illusions are not good or bad.