That all depends on your sincerity now doesn’t it?
A
It sounds a bit like you imagine some kind of symbiosis - an interesting thought…
According to the Genesis account, Mankind lives as a “living soul†(Gen. 2:7) after God blew into his nostrils the vital breath of life and his divine inspiration giving him intellect. Breath and heartbeat are the two vital rhythms of life on which mankind focuses in prayer, bringing us back to the source of life and inner harmony.
It is hard for mankind to cut their identity off from something so existential, which shows that sin, if indeed it is final, is intentional. Unintentional sin, out of ignorance or in adversity, is forgiven.
Shalom
Iron Dog,
Interesting you see my questions as complicating things when they aim exactly at simplicity. The complexity begins when these questions go unanswered. Your example has absolutely no relevance to the questions asked. Physical acuity isn’t the issue here.
JT
Though simple as it is, Tentative makes a good point and a desired effect on the thought process on this topic. And the ultimate goal at which is a bit hard to think about it total awareness… and how would one know it. Without previous experience of total awareness how does one learn unless taught to do so?
Lasko
One would have to be God to have total awareness. Self awareness for us is a partial awareness, it is the experience of becoming aware as opposed the majority of the time in which we lack any self awareness. This experience immediately begins to seek an even higher awareness. Soon the experience fades into the guidance of our normal automatic pilot that finds self awareness nothing but a nuisance in striving to maintain the status quo.
And I agree with you on this completely Nick, and Godly awareness as expressed in this conversation is unattainable by the human mind as we know it.
Thought you’d never ask. 
I thought that I could leave you in Bob’s hands and I myself could go and climb trees, but I see that you won’t be sated until I answer your questions, so…
Ok, this is something that only the sinner can know. You would know because your conscience would tell you. Your conscience as the voice of your heart - your true nature. I won’t hear of those of us that cover our conscience up to the nth degree and say “but my conscience is clear”…that is just simply a cop out. If you walk your talk, the conscience is uncovered, loud and clear.
There are always going to be layers, even when we understand to the deepest level we will understand that there is yet more to learn. The adept knows that he knows nothing and is thus wise. A truly aware person will never broadcast that they are truly aware, because they know their limitations. The most enlightened people that I have met have always humbled themselves and admitted that they themselves are still learning. So there is no decision that we are truly aware, there is only a moment to moment state of realisation. And then life carries on…
“Before enlightenment chopping wood carrying water, after enlightenment chopping wood carrying water…” The activity is exactly the same but the experience is different.
We ourselves understand the soul of the world, but there is nothing external to ourselves that can measure that.
Without going outside, you may know the whole world.
Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven.
The farther you go, the less you know.
Thus the sage knows without travelling;
He sees without looking;
He works without doing.
- Tao Te Ching, Chapter 47
A
Exactly what is ‘unintentional’ sin? You seem to believe that we sin intentionally? How so?
Surely in order to be forgiven our trespasses, one has to repent? Surely sin is sin?
A
Hi Angel,
Thanks for the dance, 
and since I started this, a clumsy pirouette of my own…
I would agree with those who see man as inherently neither good nor evil, but with the free will potential to be either or. If there is inherent capacity, it is the ability to know the difference. Or as Essence says, we have conscience.
I would suggest that there is only one sin, and that is to knowingly attempt to act coercively. Either toward others or ourselves. Bob and several others have mentioned being with (or without) the ‘holy spirit’. Though my language is different, the understanding is largely the same. The spiritual and numinous world evolves and moves as it does. Sin rears its’ ugly head the moment we try to force the course of this movement into our pre-conceived notions of ‘how it should be’.
On the question of awareness/unawareness; First, thank you Angel for biting your tongue and not telling me what you really thought of my question. 
The question of ‘knowing’ awareness was of course, a bogus question. The easiest thing in the world is to ask a question for which there is no answer. Our awareness is always from a particular perspectival position. We never ‘know’ anything from a position of nowhere. That is the point, a point we often forget or ignore. Awareness is both experiential and personal. Moreover, awareness is a on-going, flowing process that mirrors our experiencing, which is itself an on-going fluid process. All of this happens from our unique perspective which constantly moves as it interacts with our experiencing and our awareness thereof. In short, all is process.
This is why I’m uncomfortable with the use of ‘levels’ and ‘layers’. These words imply edges and boundaries much like the rungs of a ladder and lead us into the illusion of ‘seeing’ what is process as static ‘things’. Our knowing, being, and acting are always of the moment, constantly changing.
And so, what is my awareness? ummm, I knew that just a moment ago…
JT
Though I’m not much up on the spiritual sinny side of things I must admit…
Gets two thumbs up from me as the most palatable definition of sin yet…
Glad you like it Tab, however I don’t think it’s really an issue of whether or not we like the definition, it’s more an issue of what is the true definition. We don’t always like the answer and that in itself is sin. Tentative’s definition is not complete, we could be doing everything right and still be sinning - because there are subtle causes that we cannot see. I might be going with the flow but my intentions might be in question. I might be going to church every Sunday and I might be doing all the praying, all the work - but unless I reach into myself and manifest my true nature - I am not doing anything at all. And if I’m not doing anything at all, I am sinning.
A
Essential Angel writes:
You’re right of course, so I’ll clean it up with a little addendum: All of this assumes that we are being honest and sincere. If we ‘fake it’ with ourselves, we lose.
Sinning because there are subtle causes we can’t see doesn’t wash with me. Sinning is in MY heart. As long as I am being honest with myself, there is no sin, even if I’m doing the ‘wrong’ thing.
JT
OK. So for example, I might honestly believe that I’m in love with a married man. Does that make it right?
A
I think he is saying that it doesn’t necesssarily make it right, but it is still not a sin.
Hmmmmm, A toughie…
In the numinous world the right or wrong would depend on the man-derived morals in place -ie- the cultural norms.
As a spiritual issue, the right or wrong is less clear. It would depend on your personal unmediated sense of morality.
Separating out which is which could be the dilemma.
Marraige is a social convention. At issue is the question of committment for both you and the married man.
Clear as mud…
JT
Firstly when we (me actually) are talking - especially in a religious forum - we are always speaking spiritually…
Hmmm…the precepts are loud and clear. My point is this. The definition of sin is not black and white. Neither is the definition of honesty.
Incidentally, I’m not in love with a married man. And spiritually speaking, marraige has nothing to do with society.
A
Hi Lady A
Why not start at the beginning and admit that you, like me, are a sinner. How can we manifest an evolved nature without first distinguishing the real from the unreal within ourselves that maintain our various natures?
I once read this frustration described as sitting in a chair and trying to pick yourself up. The harder you try to pick yourself up, the greater the force pushing your behind down.
Here is an excerpt from the Journal of Father Sylvan that explains sin from what I regard as the Christian perspective.
I agree that it is not necessary to be in the state of the heart simply because as we are, it is not possible for us. However, fighting this egotistically as something we “should” be doing only serves to add “right and wrong” into something where it doesn’t belong. All that is required is the impartial experience of our nature. Shining the light of attention on ourselves and admitting our nature rather than trying to change anything is much more valuable from the Christian perspective as I believe it to be in any tradition initiating from a conscious source…
This is why sin has lost its meaning. The discrimination between what we are and our potential has largely been destroyed as part of the gradual loss of the perspective of levels of being. Real humility returns this perspective because it is innate knowledge. Spiritual humility is the recognition of our nothingness in relation to the higher. It is a natural awareness we find offensive because our ego struggles against it to retain its superiority in our lives.
The biggest “doing” we can do at the beginning is maintaining impartial self awareness through attention and allowing this light of attention to permeate our being through the experience of ourselves. From Simone Weil:
This is impartial attention and a very high quality of introspection. By evil she means what is the unreal within our psych that takes the place of reality. This requires sincere impartiality that takes years in esoteric schools to maintain. Yet there are those for some reason that are just somehow born with the need for truth that is far greater than the attraction of illusion always eager to interpret it.
Purely from the position of spectator - is not a deep analysis of the minutinae of ‘sin’ one of those roads which sends you into state of gibbering uncertainty - a quivvering lump that never actually gets round to doing anything from a pervasive fear of crossing some indistinct line toed in the sand of the mind…? Get yer trunks on and jump in, that’s what I say. You can always regret it at leisure later. Afterall - Who’s counting…?
Hi Tab,
Yes you can analyse yourself into paralysis, and many people do. They hit the wall of confusion and die. Wish they’d lie down and quit breathing our air… Still, there is something in our makeup that says, this is right and that is wrong. It doesn’t have to be connected to any ‘conventional’ explanation. It doesn’t necessarily have any explanation at all. Its just there. Trouble with that is that its all internal and we can’t get away from it. And we do our own counting…
JT
Tentative wrote:
… or the most difficult. 
On the subject of our “nature,” perhaps it is possible to see human nature as inherently good with the potential to live toward that goodness or to exhibit a tremendous lack of that potential? What I’m thinking toward here is, how do we perhaps say that creation is “good” as the poetic creators in Genesis 1 pronounced it, but not include human nature with the rest of creation? Are we aliens in our own cosmos? Of course, that is working with the premise that one believes there is something inherently “good” about creation itself.