Thanks for your response too, while we may not agree on key points, it is always valuable to explore such key topics with an open mind in order to find new balance and opportunity.
These are topics I have put vast amounts of time into, so I can easily talk for a very long time about them.
'Is there an I'?
I could, with a skeptical mind say 'That sounds like a lot of woo to me - of course there is an I' - but I will not, for reasons I will explain ;)
How 'you' relate to the concept of 'I' will depend on the definitions you are using for it and all the other related ideas and understandings. Any slight misunderstanding inserted into that equation can cause massive problems - including ill health and eventually death.
'I' is simply a word token used to denote self recognition/awareness. If there is an ability to notice, then there is an ability to notice that noticing is taking place, which then identifies a noticer. We can define that everything that exists is also us if we like, which in a sense is correct - however, we are also now individuated into 'streams' of being that have their own wills. Even if we deny and gloss over the fact that you don't know everything that I know (and vice versa) and just focus on the oneness, there is still a capacity to notice that a noticing is taking place, which can justify the use of the 'I'. It's not random that 'I' and 'eye' are the same word, phonetically speaking.
Anyway.. I feel to highlight that there is no way to reach truth while being truly skeptical. I used to think the same as you here (for a long time) - that questioning everything was the same as being skeptical, but it is not. Skeptical is a position that presupposes that the person knows in advance what is true, based on their own reasons and/or assumptions.
Not only is this pretty arrogant and closed minded, no matter how many beliefs we hold which try to claim otherwise - it's also fundamentally flawed once we understand something about our own power to create through consciousness. I appreciate you may also think this entire idea is nonsense, but I will point out that it is 100% impossible to know whether conscious creation of reality is possible or not, without fully accepting that it is for a while. This is because any thought structure which projects impossibility is part of the dynamic that leads to the thing being found to be genuinely impossible. The opposite is also true, if you fully accept something as real/possible, then it is more likely to be found to be so. I have proven this to myself over and over again - even going into areas that 99.99% of people think are impossible - I have found to actually be possible from direct experience.
What possible justification can there be for creating and form of sentient life, given the risk of intolerable suffering and the guarantee of a great deal of suffering and death, especially when there are already millions of children and billions of adults who so desperately need our help?
The sentient life exists already, whether you give birth to a new physical body or not. The spirit that enters the body during gestation already exists (you can learn to open to that level of spirit/self while human and communicate with the ones who might incarnate.. and out of body astral travellers even go to those realms and witness it). The other parts that coalesce to form a human baby also already exist, they are localised to the physical planet Earth.
So in this context, your question is inaccurate. The accurate version is along the lines of:
"What possible justification can there be for opening an avenue for the expression of sentient life, given the risk of intolerable suffering and the guarantee of a great deal of suffering and death, especially when there are already millions of children and billions of adults who so desperately need our help?"
- The intolerable suffering needs to end and it can only end through incarnation on Earth, for a variety of reasons which are deeply explained in the books I gave you. In summary, spirits/people have been dumping out their emotional body for aeons because they didn't want to be emotionally real. This essence contains seeds of experiential imbalance and is now stuck in the Earth's energy fields. There is no possible way to heal anything anywhere for long, without this being addressed. You won't escape the suffering by not doing the work, it will just last forever and you won't have any ability to change it. This is literally eternal hell, but it's not something that will exist as a punishment, so much as the result of not caring enough about self, combined with ignorance/unconsciousness.
I appreciate you have almost zero way to know if this is true or not - which is why I gave you the only source I know of that can open the doors wide enough to understand.
Given what I have said in point 1, there is a middle ground between us here. It absolutely is a huge problem for people to be producing children with no intention of learning how to come into balance. This is part of why I don't have children. Even though I do have intention to come into balance, I am not fully where I feel I need to be yet and obviously I am surrounded by people who have no such intentions. I need to be in the right time/place before I have children, but I may yet do that - sorry to disappoint! ;)
The millions of humans that need our help, if they die, will either reincarnate or will be moved on. There are processes underway atm that will be drastically changing how reincarnation occurs on Earth - the Earth herself has had enough of the imbalance.
This highlights another point - that the beings who are being born are also the ones who set in motion the actions on Earth that are causing the suffering today, they have reincarnated. So there is a process of karma and learning involved. These beings are meant to be learning from past mistakes by experiencing the results of their imbalance. However, due to epic levels of denial, they are mostly not learning any lessons and just continually making the situation worse for themselves and everyone else. This cannot continue, I agree - I just disagree about the solution.
I can't help but notice that the anti-natalist position specifically focuses on not having children, yet (at least according to one commenter on X who read my message on this topic) ommits to notice that this means total death of humans and animals. When this was highlighted, the commenter (who seems to be highly oriented towards anti natalism), basically didn't have any logical comeback, thanked me for the conversation and left.
I wonder if this focus is intended to bypass the unpleasant reality for these people, that their philosophy should actually lead them to kill themselves immediately, since every moment they are alive they open the door to more suffering. The fact that this is glossed over is a major red flag to me which suggests this is not really about ending suffering for some of those who push this agenda - and is more about preventing other people from having children, while attempting to ensure less suffering for their own children in the future. "Have less children everyone.. I've had my own children and yours will be in the way.. we don't want to have to go to war now do we?"
In any case, anti-natalism is, to me, 100% grounded in self denial, heartlessness posing as heart and ignorance. Please don't take these as insults or self aggrandisement on my part - all of these 'qualities' and problems in self are in me too and in everyone - they just play out differently in different people. I have focused for 20+ years on healing these in myself and have not finished yet. Self acceptance is the number 1 tool we need to constantly use in order to come into real balance. Being truly receptive to ideas that we currently define as 'impossible' or 'woo' can't hurt either.
Prevention is superior to a cure which is why I question people creating new life
Life has already been set in motion and so has suffering. It's too late to go back and undo the creation. Going back on ourselves is not an option, the unhealed compression, guilt and death would kill everything forever. Narrow opportunity exists now to heal and end suffering, I suggest you consider exploring in that direction.
i just cannot for the life of me see how someone wise, humane and compassionate would take such a huge and unnecessary gamble with someone elses life by creating them?
I understand that anything that anyone experiences has been drawn to them as a result of what they hold in (or have booted out from) their own energy field. This is an extremely complex situation and not one that can be understood from a few paragraphs. The main idea that people are triggered by in response to this, without them having full understanding of what is being said (and the reasons behind it) is that this is 'victim shaming'. However, there is no blame in my words here for anyone and the intent is to open those who will receive me here to come to a place of (what seems from the normal earthly perspective to be) extreme empowerment.
It is better for me to learn how to work with the energy of life on Earth and to balance here, then to have children and support them in further balance - than it is to simply do nothing and give up. Even if I fail, the alternative is worse. Death is not nothing, despite what those of limited consciousness have claimed.