I've reposted a response to Leslie from the Buddhism tribe...

Leslie: The orientations of what we call 'mind' here on the surface of the physical 3-D planet are very much involved with the physical.... and much of what is ascribed to the 'spirit' involves distortions of convenience in which the individual remains much a pawn in a cosmic game..... rather than the author of their own destiny.

Charles: Personally, I’m still not clear (personally) that we have much choice in our being or not being a pawn. Certainly its’ a feel-good to sport the idea that we have some degree of control, yet I wonder if what we experience as ‘authoring’ is but another level of the game, and that our location in time and place in what appears to be a never-ending swirl within swirls is more the author than we.

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Leslie: The real purpose of Buddhism as a philosophy is to ReMind us that we do come from spirit... that we Are, in fact, Primarily spirit... etheric awarenesses that are effectively lost in a complex web of incredibly convincing illusions called 3rd dimensional realities. Illusions, in that we believe we Are nothing but the physical body-brain..... and that the spirit is something separate.... when the Spirit is Of the Essence.... Always There. We Interact with each other Energetically in Subtle (and not so subtle) ways.... yet tend to only see it as a purely 'physical' interaction.

Charles: I don’t see the spirit as being separate from the physical body, maybe invisible to our granular organs of perception (which certainly vary between people) and tools our race has produced to enhance our perceptual limits... yet, I see cascading levels, some of which appear only when our states of mind have matured and detrimental aspects of our emotional lives have been quieted… maybe dreams within dreams within dreams and possibly some of the dreams reach out across the universe or even further. I sense a game of 3 dimensional chess, pushing into one dimension after another after another – each seamlessly integrated with and dictating the next.

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Leslie: The etheric light body that is both ours to manipulate (ourself being the pure mind beyond even the light body), and simultaneously intricately and inextricably involved with the evolution of the Cosmos (universe)... does 'evolve' (and so could be called 'transient') but in positive ways if we are not working in opposition to the intended flow of evolution of soul-spirit.

Charles: Need ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ be entered into the equation? Possibly we are a mere suspension perceived by organs having evolved as a property of the universe’s raging expansion - infinitesimal points of presence that could not have matured in any other way.
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Leslie: The soul-spirit of this cosmic universe is both ours and not ours... all is relativistic and can't be taken in literal extremes, as the anatman philosophy-teachings have been. The universe is a Blending of realities and Energies to the maximum, so that anything approaching what we might term an 'understanding' has to be framed and discussed in light of the relativities and perspectives involved.... and taking the premise of anatman to its logical extreme has Truncated the much more important perspective of reincarnating continuity of essential self... even as the cosmic soul-spirit goes through significant transitions.

Charles: Yes, ours and not ours. Sometimes such a subtle shift in our relationship with mind can appear to produce such dramatic results. Potentially, every point in the universe could be seen as an incarnation. It may be from one point of view that we (whatever we are) just happen to have the good fortune of being where the action is (from our perspective.) From other points of view we might be very boring.

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Leslie: As long as reincarnation is being actively denied as a reality by a belief structure representing itself as authentic Buddhism.... (or any other belief structure carrying the impression of authority)... then there is something of the appearance of an Active Denial of anything but the physical (in terms of what is acceptable for debates predicated on the assumption that density can claim dominance over that which is more 'energetic' in nature) ....... a pretense actively Excluding anything but what is Physically evident.

Charles: Must the concept of reincarnation be framed by the perspective you are suggesting? Does it really make any difference if we flip what you frame as the outer and the inner (external vs. internal?) Why would it matter if something is framed as a rarified (generally imperceptible) awareness of the inner world vs. something being external? Aren’t we really referring to the same thing? Isn’t the illusion of being fixated on one or the other a mere attachment of the mind?

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Leslie: Soul-spirit is 'Intertwined' with the physical... yet it is Far more Subtle than Air,... of a fineness such as that of the 'atoms' that are really infinitesimal flows-vortexes in & of the etheric. The physical is ultimately the etheric given to appear as in a very Dense form.... which is part of the illusoriness that is spoken of in regards to anatman. So we have dense bodies and dense brain patterns trying to discern the etheric. We are Unable to perceive an unimaginable cacophony of energies that science acknowledges is flowing through our reality...... why is it so unbelievable that there are entire dimensions of being beyond the perception of the body-brain... except by way of mind perceiving mind?

Charles: Or maybe the unimaginable cacophony is an unimaginable symphony.