BootsnAll Travel Community

Lets tackle some of the big issues!

We are intelligent beings, with a built in need to know and understand.

At first glance we see our lives as being finite....meaning that with a beginning, a middle and an end...yet how many of you have tapped, [if for only a moment in time], a sense of connection to that which is infinite...meaning without beginning or end...that which was, is, and always will be?

What say you?

What I wonder is how to tap into it. I can't honestly say I have had a connection.

I'm sure I've written this before, but the only time I achieve the feeling of the infinite is when I'm either in nature, and feel tied to the world and life as a whole, or on the precious few occasions when I've been out of the cities and really *seen* the night sky -- and understood the whole universe out there. It's so humbling, yet extremely peaceful and fulfilling at the same time.

(sorry, I'm not new blood to these boards, but I'm answering anyway. ;-)

I have connected with something that felt infinite, and I get the same feeling now when I reach an altered state of conciousness through meditation. It took chemical help to reach that point the first time, but since then I have repeated the experience with meditation alone. When I "touch the infinite" it is the most calming feeling I have ever experienced. I get a sense that everything will work out as it should, I feel connected to the universe in a way that dissolves the ego and removes the fear of death that plagues all humans.

The first time I was able to achieve an altered state of conciousness through meditation I actually had a psychic experience. I was at a Buddhist retreat here in Arizona, and while meditating I began to experience a sharp pain in my right leg. I thought to myself, "how much longer is this group meditation going to last?" Apparently I was not thinking to myself because the meditation leader responded in my head with "about three minutes, can you make it?" This boosted me enormously, and those next three minutes seemed to last an eternity, but the pain in my leg had gone away because I no longer felt constrained within my body. This connection I felt with the leader caused me to feel connected to the universe. That was the first time I felt I had "tapped the infinite".

psyberwraith, when you said you had the most calming feeling ever and you got a sense that everything will work out, reminded me of an experience I had. I never really knew what to make of it, so I have kind of kept it quiet in the back of my head. One fear I have is that all along I've been talking to God, but just never realized it. All the while wondering what's wrong with everything and being frustrated of not getting an answer.

I have always resisted surrendering fully to God because I was afraid of what he may ask me to do. For example, I thought that he may say, "ok, stop listening to rock music". These were my thoughts.

About a year ago my wife told me she wanted a divorce. We have 2 children. All I could think of was the future and how it wasn't going to be like I wanted. A few days later I was jogging and thinking about the future. I remember thinking, "Lord. I'm not dying, but it feels like I am losing everything I love. I'm tired. I don't care anymore. Whatever you want me to do Lord, I am here". In those moments I remember feeling like I had taken a lead jacket off. It almost literally felt like I was lighter - like I could float. I had the surest feeling that everything would work out and that I had nothing to worry about. It was an incredible calmness.
I never really knew (and to some degree still don't know) what to make of that experience. In comparison to your statement I had tapped into God. But it just kind of happened. I don't know how to actively do that again. By the way, were still married and it’s getting better!

Alan, your thoughts made me look at my experience from a slightly different perspective. What if the reassuring voice in my head was actually God, and I was not psychically connected with the instructor, but receiving reassurance from God that everything would be all right.

Maybe the moments of "oneness" or "enlightenment" that occur all require individual interpretation, and the source doesn't matter so much as the experience.

Hmm... You've got me thinking now.

From my experience, listening to and reading others posts, I think you are dead on when you say that what is required is individual interpretation. Would it be reasonable to expect God to address us all the same way? Would God not have every tool at his disposal? I have noticed that I talk to people sometimes and something they say is just what I needed to hear. I notice these things and I think that was too coincidental. I am starting to believe that in the end all you have is experience.

Yes, I receive "responses" all the time. Sometimes what someone is telling me connects with what I happen to be thinking at that exact moment.

Such experiences tell me that the barriers we experience are artifical.

But my environment also seems to respond to me...

...This morning, I after parking my car in a lot by the lake, I stepped out to find a metal chain with a medallion that resembled a steering wheel. For a few weeks now, I've had a number of dreams that involved cars, driving, steering.

A happening like that makes me feel like a happy fool--God's fool.

Of course, such experiences only have the meaning we give them. But if the result is positive, why argue with belief?

It's really interesting reading these posts; such different perspectives.

For example, I experience the calming, 'everything will work out' feeling fairly often; but I've never attributed it to a God speaking to me, or something outside myself. Instead I view it as me being fully at peace with myself, and I'm able to step outside myself and see myself in relation to the world at large, and in relation to history and the future - time. So for me, I've always seen it as an internal process.

I've been thinking a lot lately about religion; and I theorize that perhaps all of it boils down to our individual disposition/personality, and how our brain processes information and experiences. The same experience can happen to X number of people, and yet each person may come to his own understanding or view of what happened, and the significance of the experience. So perhaps that's why one religion really speaks to one person, another religion to another person, why some people are atheists, why some don't practice anything, why some view the universe as God, why others view God as more of a humanlike figure....etc.

Hi all

There is only one true path to immortality or 'tapping into the infinte' as Old Hippy would put it.

While our lives are finite our legacy is not. You only have to look into the eyes of your children to see this, after all what else of you will be left behind when you're gone? It's the only real gift a person has.

All the best
Smuggs

Well my hip friend, I can't say that I have tapped that which is truely infinite, but give me enough time and I'll get there. I normally don't speak of it lately since I'm normally in a square town (lately unfortunately), but that which is truely infinite is accessable only by this forum's namesake...spiritual travel. You probably knew that already though, lol. Actually, as soon as I get done with this crappy college dry spell I'm heading down to Peurto Rico to live a simple life and I'm not leaving until I've mastered the art of that which is referred to as spiritual travel. Smugg your so right too. Peace

The confines of our culture get in the way...I can feel it in my bones, that life was not supposed to be this disconnected from the earth...that something is terribly wrong with the way we live and how we treat this planet...

I thought I tapped into the infinite when I was a christian and felt the ups and downs of the dogma religion puts you through...but I've realized that wasn't and is not the real deal...

The thousands and thousands of different tribes that we so brutally erased or assimilated tapped into the infinite pool of life everyday...

I will only truly be able to connect with anything remotely real and infinite when I am as much a part of nature as that blade of grass, those salmon, the trees, and those gazelles...

i have had some interesting experiences, tapping into the "infinite" (how funny we put a finite term to it! hehe). in one of my "darker" moments, i was standing on my back porch, in tears, begging for something more. for some sort of sign that im carrying on correctly, because i was being told the exact opposite by everyone i know (sans a few). i felt a raindrop on my shoulder, almost even like a finger tapping! i was standing in the open, no clouds, no rain. as i looked up and to my left to see what caused it, i looked directly at a shooting star... just as always though, the experience was more than the sum of its parts.

another is i was meditating with my dog, now deceased (irrelevant to all here but me, but thats ok ), and had my first touch of "god." i hesitate to put it into words, but ill try! i simply felt LIKE light. it was like i was viewing through my eyes, and the "eyes" all around me, that this being was pure, white, blinding light. i also felt an -extraordinary- power pulsing through me. i do not know how long this lasted.

a third is every day life. every moment, we are all in touch with the infinite, simply because we are in touch with the finite (conceptually). its like music... the first time you hear a song, you may not hear everything. the second time, you hear a few things you didnt the first. does this mean they were never there? no, they were always there, but in a flawed, yet completely valid, perspective they simply did not exist at that point. Just because we do not see the infinite in everything, does not mean its not there. "'infinite' and 'finite'" are like "'up' and 'down.'" They are concepts, and if we think we -exclusively- know the definition, or, that our definition is exclusive, its like our first time listening to that song...