Namaste Aanandinii,
I need to clarify my position in this search. I know what I believe in, but I haven't found a match in looking at the different schools and sampradāyas so far. It's not that I'm lost, and I'm looking for something that I COULD accept if I give in or bend some things about myself. That would not work for me. It's got to be a match. I know these things:
Advaita is not-two.
Vedānta is purpose or end-goal of the Vedas.
The wide-ranging definition of monism is that everything eventually goes back to the source it came from.
Animism is the belief that everything around me possesses either a soul or some form of energy (poor choice of words to describe what I see, what I feel).
Whoever or whatever created all this is formless, with no name.
Let's look at animism more closely. It is defined as follows: Animism is used in the anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of some indigenous tribal peoples,[5] especially prior to the development of organized religion.
Now... What existed before THAT belief system of the tribal peoples, in their history in the remote past? THAT is where I come from.
The didgeridoo thing - that is something I do every single day, throughout the day. For some reason, I'm drawn to play several times a day. I feel like if I do it, I will eventually come to something that is beyond me at the moment. You must remember that when my mother had major surgery while carrying me, there's a possibility that the general anesthesia put something in my brain to sleep, in addition to my hearing. See, my hearing is like being half asleep or not fully aware. Imagine when you are talking with someone, and you hear someone else talking to someone else nearby. You know the voice is there, but you can't make it out because you're focused on your conversation. Now, take that semi-aware state of hearing, and that's what it sounds like to me, only I'm listening to it with my full attention. Like my hearing is half asleep. Like I can't fully wake it up. I would imagine the same thing has happened in other parts of my brain, because I do not see what other people see, only a vague sense that there's something going on, like amnesia. I've been trying to remember what it is (beyond this physical life??) my whole life.
I notice that I have genuine feelings of animism. I worked on a farm last summer. I felt bad about pulling weeds and invasive plants in crop beds. I felt bad about pulling dying/old crops when it was time to return them to the soil in composting. I even misled my manager when he spotted a squirrel and asked me to watch him while he went to get his gun. Once he was out of sight, I hurriedly got the squirrel out of the area in one direction, and I led the returning manager in another direction, claiming I saw the squirrel bound off in the other direction. I actually felt terrified for the squirrel's safety and felt very compelled to get him to safety.
I would genuinely feel appreciation to the travel trailer for housing me, my Jeep for getting me where I needed to be safely. I would pat them with my hand in appreciation and say, "Thank you for..." Any bug in the house, I will pick it up and carry it outside. Naturally, I developed attachments to stuffed animals as though they were my children, with spirits who can travel anywhere, play with any animals within a range. When it was time to say goodbye to broken/worn things, especially cars, I would take a moment to acknowledge its history with me, pat it, and initiate the process of reclaiming this spiritual essence from this thing back into myself, so that now this essence was no longer a car; it could now experience through me driving a car and know what it was like when I was driving it. When I did that, that sad feeling of saying goodbye was no longer there, because the essence was now within me. It was just a car, made of human-made pieces put together. I've experienced this five years ago. My old car gave out on a major trip, and I ended up driving back in a new-to-me car. A year later, I discovered major problems, so I traded it off for another car, my Jeep. Each time I did this, I would reclaim that essence, and transfer it to another car, and do it again 'til I got to my Jeep. The last time was much easier once I learned to reclaim that essence so that it is always with me. I can feel it when I do this. I freak out sometimes when I drop something through the floors of old buildings and I can't retrieve it, like I'm leaving behind something. It has become very strong in me.
I like many things in SD, but I suspect that I function inside at a level of a Sanātani of many thousands of years ago, long before the Vedas were revealed.
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Originally Posted by grames
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