I'm not actually the one using mental gymnastics, oddly enough.

Yes you are because you're changing my premise. This is the very thing I'm trying to get you to stop doing.

It's a common trick amongst people that find a premise difficult to explain so they change the premise and address that.

I see things as they are.

You see things as you've learned to see them. You may have changed this over time to align with a world view, a religious or spiritual belief system or whatever but you can't say with certainty that you see things as they are. This implies that you have all perspectives at your disposal which is like a bacteria in your stomach being able to describe the sun and universe. It simply can't conceived of such things.

Your unwillingness to admit this limited perspective coupled with your firm belief that you "see things as they are" deludes you into a false sense of assuredness about the reality around you.

You are letting your mind get in the way.

No I'm using my mind to try and understand a dilemma. I also won't let myself be deterred from a premise that stubbornly refuses to yield.

Now why this occurs is of great importance.

When I speak of God, I don't mean a boss in the sky. I mean the ground of pure awareness that we all are. Some call it the Void. The Void was the thing that was before the Big Bang. It is pure nothingness. But this pure nothingness animates and creates all that there is. In this way it is kind of an alive nothing. It makes your heart beat and it animates the flight of birds. It is even that which looks out of your eyes right now. It is what you truly are.

You've just described your world view. OK great. So what....that doesn't address the dilemma I've posed. You continue to deflect to other topics. Stop doing that.

Take a look inside and see it for yourself.

Your assumption here is that I haven't done this. Or that I've only done this in a cursory manner. You're wrong.

Where do all of your senses feed to? Who is hearing and seeing and feeling right now? Try to go to the center of where it all feeds to. What is behind your eyes and ears? What is there? A Void, right?

You want me to agree that it all goes to a void so as to support your world view. This is something I can't do because adaption of a world view to explain a dilemma isn't necessary.

Truth isn't subject to world views.

I'm in search of the truth.

That is the real you. The real Self of all things. Another way to do it is to try to think of yourself without senses and without memory. What remains of you? An aware Void. It's what makes your body walk and the birds fly.

Fine fine that's all well and good but irrelevant.

In this way, the bird is just as much you as your left arm.

WRONG

You're conflating two dissimilar things. While you've been working hard to postulate a world view and then lead to a conclusion that these two things are the same, you're ignoring a reality based on physical observations.

My arm doesn't have feathers. I don't flap my arms and take off.

While these are simple observations they can't be dismissed because they speak to the very heart of the dilemma I've posed.

Sure, you might not feel any control over it, for it all happens spontaneously, but do you feel any control over your heartbeat either?

You're confused about the dilemma then and you're making a false equivalence here.

I'm not saying my inability to fly is uncontrollable like my heartbeat is uncontrollable. I'm saying I can't flap my arms and take off from this earth. Yet if I'm a god, I should be able to do this. I should be able to learn this ability. Yet in all of human history, we don't have any evidence that anyone has ever done this.

This is what I mean by saying that maybe you didn't look close enough.

I actually knew what you meant which is why I called them mental gymnastics. You're trying to reframe the dilemma in your world view and use that world view to explain a possible solution to the dilemma.

This is a mental gymnastic.

It's also a very common tactic by a great number of people. I've experienced this same trick numerous times and I've used it myself to win an argument.

Yet it's still a trick and doesn't address the very real and often very scary dilemma I've posed.

Go beyond the senses and the mind. Reality is there in its clarity.

You obviously don't know me nor my experiences. My username obviously doesn't spark an hint in you about my past postings. That's fine. I'm just another Redditor discussing a topic online but one thing you're failing to understand about me is that I've had quite a few discussions like this both online and in real life. I've explored the nature of consciousness and religion.

Now I'm no expert but you're continual references to "go inside" assume that I haven't done exactly that and still have questions.

This is likely because you, like me, have found a lot of answers by going inside. You've discovered things that were revelations to you, like they were to me also.

When basic questions persist and dilemma stubbornly refuse to conform to these new realities, it's often tempting to resort to mental gymnastics so as to preserve the current world view. Well fuck all of that because if a particular dilemma can't be sorted within the context of current experience, then it's a mental gymnastic and likely not real.

Hope that helps.

It doesn't because it dodges the dilemma I've posed.