|
Post by topology on Jul 23, 2012 13:20:28 GMT -5
You are not rejecting thoughts, you are re-calculating the weight and value you are applying to thoughts. If you lose value for a thought or thought complex, it often begins to die off and atrophy in your experience. Here are two techniques I have used to recalibrated the weight and value attached to thoughts: 1) On the subject of epistemology, how we know what we know, Testimony from others is never sufficient for establishing a belief or bit of knowledge. The product of allowing testimony to support or justify beliefs is that people become parrots and long chains of reselling and skewing and reinterpreting occur. Testimony has its origins in someone's direct experience (unless it's origin is a lie) but each retelling degrades the quality of the knowledge. Each person the testimony travels through is a possible point of failure. Instead of testimony we must turn to our immediate and direct experience. The only way to know that someone who claims to be an expert is actually an expert is to become an expert yourself. Book learning is not sufficient, that is simply more testimony. Experience is necessary. You can use a book to guide you about where to look in the experience for maximal learning. Same with testimony from others, a tool for bringing yourself into the experience so that your knowledge is grounded in your first hand experience. So how do you apply this? For every thought, ask yourself: Where did i get this thought from? Who is the source? How could they be wrong about it? Can i find any validity for the thought in my present experience? Or is the thought purely speculative imagination, a Frankenstein pseudo experience taken from bits and pieces of unrelated experiences? The truth of a thought is how well the thought corresponds to your current experience (minus skewing interpretations). This creates three teirs of knowledge/thought. A) Pure Testimony (truth is unknown) B) That which is true in the present moment (contextual truth) C) That which is true in every moment. (universal or absolute truth) Most of what we think we know is A or B type knowledge. B is worth collecting for the contexts you will visit, but A type of knowledge should either be turned into B or C type knowledge by turning to the direct experience to reveal the truth. 2) the second type of challenging thoughts and thought complexes is to begin to recognize self-consistent interpretation schemes. For example, a fundy Christian that believes Satan will try to test their faith and convince them to renounce their faith, will interpret any and every attempt to challenge or question their belief as evidence for Satan trying to attack their faith. The belief interprets reality to be consistent with the belief and this anchoring the belief. This type of phenomena happens in may ways. Many people who identify with having been victized will interpret your lack of concern and buying into their victim complex as evidence of your being mean to them and further making them a victim. The only real way you are going to conquer your fear of rejecting thoughts means breaking something important or essential to you is to try it and see what happens out of curiosity. Something to also pay attention to. When you do practices like TM and you get into experiences of no-thought, that's not the end-all, be-all. You've managed to put the car into neutral. The gears are disengaged, which means the mind is idling and not performing it's natural and proper function. It's important to know how to shift into neutral so you can shift out in a different gear, but don't get stuck in neutral-gear with the mind disengaged. It is the mind's function to chew on and digest experiences, ever refining its understanding and model of reality. It's not about rejecting thoughts and becoming thought-less. It's about recalibrating thoughts and making them more truthful, less error prone. When you reclaim your misplaced value in a thought and see it is in error, the thought dies. Some thoughts carry a lot of emotional weight to them and you will need to process that emotion. Often this means grieving formthe loss of what your had invested yourself into. Or celebration in your reclaiming yourself from a thought-complex that had been ruling you. At the end of this road, you will feel more clear and present. This makes sense to me, Top. Working backwards in the thread which I often do, I found myself not quite getting the thing about rough/smooth. That's between Andrew and Enigma. There's nothing really significant there to understand. They are arguing because that is what Lilliputians and old married couples do. When we (the mind) begins to compare experiences together we begin to see dimensions of gradation. These dimensions can be bi-polar or multi-polar. A color wheel is multi-polar. The gradient between Hot and Cold is Linear between two poles: Scalding -- Hot -- Warm --- Neutral -- Cool -- Cold -- Freezing. The names of the poles are not even the extremes. Given a dimension of gradation, for each pole, you can ask how close to the pole it is. How hot is something? How Cold is it? How smooth is it? How rough is it? How red is it? How green is it? How blue is it? Just like optical illusions where there are multiple stable interpretations, is it a duck or a rabbit, is it a candlestick or two faces, the mind tends to fixate on one interpretation over another. The mind will fixate on one pole in the gradation over the other. One person they may ask "how smooth is it?" another person may ask "how rough is it?" and a third person may pick a point somewhere in between the poles and switch which question they ask based on the position to the "left" or "right" of the "middle". Where you place your point of reference, one-pole, the other-pole, or somewhere in the middle doesn't matter. It's relative. Einstein claimed that relativity had no need for an absolute frame of reference. Any point in the universe could be called center, the frame of reference, and everything would still work out. There's still a little Gotchya hidden in there. The Geocentric view that the earth is the center of the universe and solar system works. We can make the math for the movement of the planets work, but it's horribly complex. The math for the movement of the planets simplifies GREATLY if we place the sun at the center of the solar system. This desire to have the math be simply expressed creates it's own gradient on interpretations and explanations. How do we relate this relativity to us and make this idea maximally impactive. There are two stable interpretations of the experience. We grow up being told by the world to view the world as the baseline frame of reference. In this interpretation, we are a mind inhabiting a body which lives inside a stationary world and we navigate through the world using the body. When riding a roller coaster we see this body being thrust about in the world by the steel cars. The alternative interpretation takes the subjective perspective, the reference frame of the "observer", as the baseline. Instead of a body moving through the world, we experience the world and body moving through "me". I, the subjective perspective, is stationary while everything else in the experience moves and changes. When riding a rollercoaster, you as the stationary frame of reference, never move. Instead the picture swirls and twirls and pressure manifests in different regions of the body. If you want to get a feel for this, find an empty open room and start twirling in a stable way so that you can maintain the twirling. The "whirling dervish" practice will take you to that still frame of the observer if you can let go of your visual experience and simply let it swirl and spin. If you attach to the experience and fight the spinning, you will get sick and puke from dizziness. If you can let go of the shifting experience , you will not get so sick. The question of which interpretation, which pole is the "right" pole, which frame of reference is the right frame of reference, is for Lilliputions to argue over. But your understanding of the experience is incomplete without understanding both interpretations and being able to slip from one to the other with ease. As ZD would say, it's both and neither. If you look at the board post history there is a gradation based on how much mental baggage is living inside the experience. Some Lilliputians argue that there should be no mental baggage. This lilliputian argues that mental baggage can't be helped and that cleaning up the mental baggage so that it doesn't get in the way is appropriate. Which Lilliputian will you become? . Who knows, we are all waiting to see what you resonate with.
|
|
|
Post by arisha on Jul 23, 2012 13:39:41 GMT -5
You are caught in the net of your own neti-neti, and will never be free, Enigma... Aw c'mon arisha don't be so hard on ole' enigma ... I know he's got good taste but I have no desire to know if he tastes good ... Me too. I am helping him to confess that he is wrong when he is wrong, and be free from his own illusions. Isn't it what this forum is for? I was said that people here are challenging each other's ideas. As Enigma is the one who has posted here more than 10,000 ideas I have to challenge him more. The more illusions one posts the more challenging he receives.
|
|
|
Post by topology on Jul 23, 2012 13:47:12 GMT -5
Aw c'mon arisha don't be so hard on ole' enigma ... I know he's got good taste but I have no desire to know if he tastes good ... Me too. I am helping him to confess that he is wrong when he is wrong, and be free from his own illusions. Isn't it what this forum is for? I was said that people here are challenging each other's ideas. As Enigma is the one who has posted here more than 10,000 ideas I have to challenge him more. The more illusions one posts the more challenging he receives. If every post corresponds to an illusion, what about the illusions you are racking up in your posts? Who should be challenging you about those?
|
|
|
Post by arisha on Jul 23, 2012 13:53:59 GMT -5
Me too. I am helping him to confess that he is wrong when he is wrong, and be free from his own illusions. Isn't it what this forum is for? I was said that people here are challenging each other's ideas. As Enigma is the one who has posted here more than 10,000 ideas I have to challenge him more. The more illusions one posts the more challenging he receives. If every post corresponds to an illusion, what about the illusions you are racking up in your posts? Who should be challenging you about those? Don't worry so much about that.
|
|
|
Post by topology on Jul 23, 2012 14:27:12 GMT -5
If every post corresponds to an illusion, what about the illusions you are racking up in your posts? Who should be challenging you about those? Don't worry so much about that. Sorry, Your suggestion didn't take. So let's ask again, who should be challenging your illusions, Arisha?
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Jul 23, 2012 14:31:46 GMT -5
Silver: Most organisms function without thought. An amoeba is intelligent even though it has no brain. It is only one cell, yet it eats food, excretes waste, moves away from dangers, etc. "Higher" forms of life likewise function without thought (as far as we know). Humans, and a few other evolutionarily-advanced forms of life, utilize imagination--thoughts, which is like having a personal computer and graphics generator wired into the organism. Imagination is extremely powerful and allows us to simulate the world around us through mental models, but most people get attached to their thoughts, and that is where the trouble lies. They believe that their thoughts are true. Because they never question the validity of their thoughts, they are jerked around by their thoughts like helpless puppets. The path of non-duality leads to freedom from thought--the ability to think without being attached to what is thought. Some of us call this "non-abidance in mind." The most powerful unquestioned thought for most people is "I am a separate entity, a person; I have an identity, a name, and a personal story." None of this is true. It is all an illusion. The truth cannot be imagined; anything that can be imagined is not the truth. If you go far enough on the path of Self-discovery, you will discover (and I am here using words only to POINT to what you will discover) that who and what you ARE is infinite and whole. In Christian terms there is only God, and you are one-with THAT. Who you THNK you are is not who you are. You are not a human being; you are what sees human beings. Neti neti is only one of numerous "skillful methods" that humans use to wake up and discover the truth. ATA, attending the actual, is another way. Mindfulness, simply watching everything that arises, is another way. Questioning "Who am I?" is another way. Most humans are sound asleep and living in a dream. The goal-less goal is to wake up and discover the living truth. If Jane Doe wakes up, she realizes that there was never a Jane Doe. When the Buddha woke up, he said, "Lo and behold, in all the universe I am the only one." Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." Nisargadata said, "I am THAT." They were all saying the same thing. Cheers. Zendancer Would you say 'dropping knowledge' is the same thing as Mindfulness? This is a great question, but it depends upon what someone means by those words. I understand mindfulness as a purposeful practice wherein one attempts to remain present and aware of everything that's happening. It includes looking and listening both inside (thoughts, words, images) and outside (the physical world of sights and sounds, etc) without attaching to anything perceived. It is a practice that is pursued by someone who is doing something in order to get something. All practices are like this, and it illustrates the problem with all practices--the idea that there is someone who needs to do something in order to get something. The practice becomes self-referential, and the individual periodically "checks" to see if progress is being made. A common thought is, "I'm becoming calmer and clearer which proves that I am making progress by pursuing this practice." It is not realized that "checking back" is a habit that reinforces the sense of selfhood at the center of everything that is the very thing needing to be transcended. I understand dropping knowledge as the purposeful letting go of intellectual knowledge in favor of body knowledge and direct knowing. It is the purposeful effort to look at the world without making distinctions. It is the practicing of non-conceptual awareness rather than conceptual awareness. Every adult who sets out to discover the truth begins with a felt sense of selfhood and a lot of ideas about who they are. This is a powerful and unavoidable illusion, and in order to penetrate the illusion of selfhood different traditions use different methodologies. The Zen method goes something like this: 1. Sit down and shut up 2. Count breaths until there is enough mental space to watch the breathing process without counting 3. Follow the breath or watch the breath until there is enough mental space and silence to practice zazen 4. Practice zazen (pure awareness without focus or content) 5. Zazen will lead to deep states of samadhi, which is a type of unity consciousness called "the dropping off of body and mind" 6. Deep states of samadhi will lead to mind unification and various realizations, insights, and understandings. It will eventually lead to the collapse of selfhood. Other traditions point to the same sort of process and emphasize practices such as mindfulness, neti neti, questioning, self inquiry, etc. After selfhood collapses, it becomes obvious that the whole practicing process was pursued under the illusion that there was someone practicing to get somewhere, and it is seen that there is nowhere to get. Who we are is always here and now and unimaginable. It becomes obvious that there is never anything separate from "what is," and after these realizations, there is only the freedom of pure being and non-abidance. It then no longer matters what the body/mind does. Everything is seen as the perfect functioning of the totality of all being. I am that I am, eternal, whole, complete, and manifesting just like this (at this point the body gets up, dances a little jig, smiles broadly, and sits back down.) Ha ha. From this body/mind's perspective both mindfulness and dropping knowledge are useful tools for finding the truth, but things that can be dropped after the truth is found. Are they the same? Not exactly. Mindfulness makes no attempt to drop knowledge; it dispassionately watches all phenomena, including thoughts. Dropping knowledege seems to me like a stronger effort to stop thoughts and become empty of knowing (but that may just be my interpretation of the words). The Buddha, in reference to meditation and other practices, said that after crossing a lake and getting to the far shore, the boat can be left behind. After crossing the lake, the boat is seen as empty, and even the lake fades away as part of an old dream. Beyond, only the empty, sacred, numinous, ineffable, eternal world of limitless being.
|
|
|
Post by topology on Jul 23, 2012 14:39:31 GMT -5
Zendancer Would you say 'dropping knowledge' is the same thing as Mindfulness? This is a great question, but it depends upon what someone means by those words. I understand mindfulness as a purposeful practice wherein one attempts to remain present and aware of everything that's happening. It includes looking and listening both inside (thoughts, words, images) and outside (the physical world of sights and sounds, etc) without attaching to anything perceived. It is a practice that is pursued by someone who is doing something in order to get something. All practices are like this, and it illustrates the problem with all practices--the idea that there is someone who needs to do something in order to get something. The practice becomes self-referential, and the individual periodically "checks" to see if progress is being made. A common thought is, "I'm becoming calmer and clearer which proves that I am making progress by pursuing this practice." It is not realized that "checking back" is a habit that reinforces the sense of selfhood at the center of everything that is the very thing needing to be transcended. I understand dropping knowledge as the purposeful letting go of intellectual knowledge in favor of body knowledge and direct knowing. It is the purposeful effort to look at the world without making distinctions. It is the practicing of non-conceptual awareness rather than conceptual awareness. Every adult who sets out to discover the truth begins with a felt sense of selfhood and a lot of ideas about who they are. This is a powerful and unavoidable illusion, and in order to penetrate the illusion of selfhood different traditions use different methodologies. The Zen method goes something like this: 1. Sit down and shut up 2. Count breaths until there is enough mental space to watch the breathing process without counting 3. Follow the breath or watch the breath until there is enough mental space and silent to practice zazen 4. Practice zazen (pure awareness without focus or content) 5. Zazen will lead to deep states of samadhi, which is a type of unity consciousness called "the dropping off of body and mind" 6. Deep states of samadhi will lead to mind unification and various realizations, insights, and understandings. It will eventually lead to the collapse of selfhood. Other traditions point to the same sort of process and emphasize practices such as mindfulness, neti neti, questioning, self inquiry, etc. After selfhood collapses, it becomes obvious that the whole practicing process was pursued under the illusion that there was someone practicing to get somewhere, and it is seen that there is nowhere to get. Who we are is always here and now and unimaginable. It becomes obvious that there is never anything separate from "what is," and after these realizations, there is only the freedom of pure being and non-abidance. It then no longer matters what the body/mind does. Everything is seen as the perfect functioning of the totality of all being. I am that I am, eternal, whole, complete, and manifesting just like this (at this point the body gets up, dances a little jig, smiles broadly, and sits back down.) Ha ha. From this body/mind's perspective both mindfulness and dropping thoughts are useful tools for finding the truth, but things that can be dropped after the truth is found. Are they the same? Not exactly. Mindfulness makes no attempt to drop thoughts; it dispassionately watches all phenomena, including thoughts. Dropping thoughts seems to me like a stronger effort to stop thoughts (but that may just be my interpretation of the words). The Buddha, in reference to meditation and other practices, said that after crossing a lake and getting to the far shore, the boat can be left behind. After crossing the lake, the boat is seen as empty, and even the lake fades away as part of an old dream. Beyond, only the empty, sacred, numinous, ineffable, eternal world of limitless being. ZD, it looks like you posted a sh!t-ton of knowledge there. You certainly seem to know what to say, when, how in order to pass on some kind of understanding. You yourself said we trade one kind of knowledge (conceptual/intellectual) for body-knowledge. But the only body knowledge you've demonstrated is the ability to sit still for a few minutes and type. But where did the content of what to type come from? Is not what you are typing also a kind of knowledge? Knowledge which does not get dropped?
|
|
|
Post by emptymirror on Jul 23, 2012 19:01:49 GMT -5
If you look at the board post history there is a gradation based on how much mental baggage is living inside the experience. Some Lilliputians argue that there should be no mental baggage. This lilliputian argues that mental baggage can't be helped and that cleaning up the mental baggage so that it doesn't get in the way is appropriate. What is mental baggage, and why does it need to be removed or cleaned up?
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Jul 23, 2012 19:36:19 GMT -5
The illusion of separation doesn't make separation the case or existence not singular. That's why it's called illusion. Yes, it's relative. One of the dualistic polarities is defined in relation to the other. Ideas are relative and dualistic. Ideas cannot be relative AND oppositional. There is no smoothness AND roughness, even though it seems like there is. If you want smoothness, that's fine, but then what we are talking about is relative smoothness. Relative to what? Relative implies a reference. You mean relative to no-smoothness? What could no-smoothness mean? How is that defined? How do we know when something has a quality of no-smoothness when no-smoothness is not a quality? Usually, peeps say that because they reify love as some absolute divine quality, and relegate fear to illusion. They do this because they love love and fear fear, not because they're pointing away from opposition. They're actually hip deep in opposition the whole time.
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Jul 23, 2012 19:44:46 GMT -5
And there is no problem with the judging thoughts that you agree with, well because your agreeing with them. It's the ones that you don't agree with that block the connection. I would say the thought 'I am this mind/body' is one that peeps agree with, but which 'blocks the connection'.
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Jul 23, 2012 19:45:48 GMT -5
I agree we don't want to explore neuro-science. Since you aren't the mind, you can potentially go way back, you just can't go there with the mind. As you suggest, most thoughts are stimulated by other thoughts, or in a labeling framework, by sensory stimulus. However, the fundamental core of every thought is the same.....imagination. Imagination is employed in a dualistic bifurcating process of identification. That is, an ungrounded, nonconceptual, perceptual quality, such as 'smoothness' is literally imagined into existence, and supported by an opposing imagined quality (roughness) such that a mutually defining dichotomy is formed conceptually and appears to acquire a kind of actuality. The.....um.....qualia that 'smoothness' refers to exists experientially and non-conceptually, but the thought 'smoothness' does not exist until the dichotomy is literally imagined into existence from nothingness. The thought, then, is a conceptual reflection of what some are calling direct experience. All thought is imagination, parading into Noah's Ark two by two so that they can mutually define and perpetuate their imaginary existence. Smooth seems true because it's not rough, while rough seems true because it's not smooth. The whole structure is standing on air. Every idea, no matter how complex, is built upon layers of dualistic polarities, resting on a solid foundation of impish imagination. NO THOUGHT IS ULTIMATELY TRUE. And the whole bunch you've produced right now is not true as well, right? ULTIMATELY
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Jul 23, 2012 19:58:15 GMT -5
So much talking about the invalidating of thoughts... means so much contradiction and confusion... The contradiction and confusion only appears in your mind.
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Jul 23, 2012 20:10:02 GMT -5
What you're really talking about is ignoring the thought; not caring whether the thought is true or false. Easy to do when there is no attachment to it, but impossible to do when there is. Hencely, what's being addressed in this plan is attachment, not validity of the thought, while the purpose of neti-neti is to remove attachment by invalidating the thought. Why should a thought dissolve by staring it down? I've answered this as if "staring it down" was replaced with "just witnessing it" ... "staring it down" implies that you're waiting for it to go away. The only answers I've heard, read or conceived of to that question are all rooted in spiritual speculation about the witness or the observer. You see if you consider this question ... just let it lie in your minds eye awhile, it goes away just like the rest of them ... unless you're attached to the speculation that is. I'm not trying to be flip here ... I've seen others reply testily to the question with the retort "who is it that wants to know?" ... but that's just the recursive loop in action at it's finest, although in the consideration of "who wants to know?", if it's answered internally with silence ... well then ... I think where you're going with this is the mind-split presentation, and that's fine ... ultimately you're right, fighting fire with fire, just like any other practice, will eventually stop working ... but you see, what I've described there isn't that. The most direct and honest answer to your question is that I don't know why, and it's not because I don't care why or haven't looked into it.[/quote] I hadn't intended to connect it to a split mind thingy, just genuinely curious how/why that would work. Obviously, if a thought is 'witnessed' without doing anything with it, it will move along, only because that's what thoughts do, but I assume that you mean such thoughts will not recur. My experience is that thoughts occur in the first place because they seem true and useful (there is attachment to them). Witnessing them doesn't seem to make them any less true or useful. Hencely, they keep recurring. It seems the conditioning needs to be altered in some way.
|
|
|
Post by Beingist on Jul 23, 2012 20:37:25 GMT -5
I've answered this as if "staring it down" was replaced with "just witnessing it" ... "staring it down" implies that you're waiting for it to go away. The only answers I've heard, read or conceived of to that question are all rooted in spiritual speculation about the witness or the observer. You see if you consider this question ... just let it lie in your minds eye awhile, it goes away just like the rest of them ... unless you're attached to the speculation that is. I'm not trying to be flip here ... I've seen others reply testily to the question with the retort "who is it that wants to know?" ... but that's just the recursive loop in action at it's finest, although in the consideration of "who wants to know?", if it's answered internally with silence ... well then ... I think where you're going with this is the mind-split presentation, and that's fine ... ultimately you're right, fighting fire with fire, just like any other practice, will eventually stop working ... but you see, what I've described there isn't that. The most direct and honest answer to your question is that I don't know why, and it's not because I don't care why or haven't looked into it. I hadn't intended to connect it to a split mind thingy, just genuinely curious how/why that would work. Obviously, if a thought is 'witnessed' without doing anything with it, it will move along, only because that's what thoughts do, but I assume that you mean such thoughts will not recur. My experience is that thoughts occur in the first place because they seem true and useful (there is attachment to them). Witnessing them doesn't seem to make them any less true or useful. Hencely, they keep recurring. It seems the conditioning needs to be altered in some way. Any idea as to how or even if that can be done?
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Jul 23, 2012 20:40:29 GMT -5
I agree we don't want to explore neuro-science. Since you aren't the mind, you can potentially go way back, you just can't go there with the mind. As you suggest, most thoughts are stimulated by other thoughts, or in a labeling framework, by sensory stimulus. However, the fundamental core of every thought is the same.....imagination. Imagination is employed in a dualistic bifurcating process of identification. That is, an ungrounded, nonconceptual, perceptual quality, such as 'smoothness' is literally imagined into existence, and supported by an opposing imagined quality (roughness) such that a mutually defining dichotomy is formed conceptually and appears to acquire a kind of actuality. The.....um.....qualia that 'smoothness' refers to exists experientially and non-conceptually, but the thought 'smoothness' does not exist until the dichotomy is literally imagined into existence from nothingness. The thought, then, is a conceptual reflection of what some are calling direct experience. All thought is imagination, parading into Noah's Ark two by two so that they can mutually define and perpetuate their imaginary existence. Smooth seems true because it's not rough, while rough seems true because it's not smooth. The whole structure is standing on air. Every idea, no matter how complex, is built upon layers of dualistic polarities, resting on a solid foundation of impish imagination. NO THOUGHT IS ULTIMATELY TRUE. Right, yes, I see exactly what you mean: I can't fit a car into my head. There is a speculation here, and that is that there is a car, but that's just a version of Descarte again ... "I think therefore I am" .... "I think there's a car therefore there's a car". To drill down into this, all thought is abstraction, and we can use scienceology here to our benefit to, for the sake of argument, accept the idea that thoughts are manifest in the brain, and from there see that all the brain can do is construct a projection of the car inside of our heads expressed as a pattern of electro-chemical activity. Using the concept of imagination to describe it is somewhat provocative (Gee. Whatasurprise. (laughing hard now)) and one can always retort about having to stop short of walking into the bumper of a car or losing the keys. But that of course misses the point. The only loophole I see to your conclusion is the statements that mathematicians can make, which I touched on here. The expression of paradox that no thought is ultimately true including the thought that no thought is ultimately true is one of those opportunities for the mind to accept the gift of clarity. I don't really understand what you're saying in the 'absolute truth' thread, so I can't relate it to a potential loophole here. (Maybe you can clarify the loophole?) I'm not really concluding anything, I simply see that all thoughts are imagination at their core. As for getting run over by an imaginary car, one never gets run over by a thought, and it's thoughts that we are talking about rather than sensation. Does the sensation refer to a vehicle that hit a body? We're back into the realm of thought again. As for paradox, it seems I've become the paradox curmudgeon as well as the split mind practice curmudgeon, and A and I have hashed it all out ad nauseum. In this case, the apparent paradox is resolved in allowing thoughts to be valid in their own imaginary context. It's contextually true that you posted here, but it is not ultimately true. In the largest context, there is no 'you' posting, no actual temporal framework in which you 'posted', no actual objective events occurring, etc.
|
|