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Post by laughter on Feb 25, 2018 4:54:49 GMT -5
Making simple-simple of the words in this case just makes it easy for him not to look. This is a rug that demands pulling. I don't know about the average enlightened Joe, and I don't mean to take a hard position, but sensation should not be viewed as proportional to the gruesomeness of the conditions or the level of imagined suffering involved while watching it, but rather like the volume control on your stereo that simply won't go above 10 no matter what. There is no biological reason for it to do so as it serves it's purpose admirably by then. To the dismay of the human torture community, there is a limit to how much pain can be caused no matter how creative they are in it's production. We'll have to agree to disagree if your bottom line is that the end of suffering means pain can never get to a point of being intolerable, and there are plenty of examples available to illustrate this other than torture. I had to go to an emergency room once because I spilled tea on myself. Granted that this was years before I got all enlightened and stuff, but I'm firmly attached to my inflexible mental position that self-realization doesn't immunize oneself from their own clumsiness.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Feb 25, 2018 12:07:13 GMT -5
I don't know about the average enlightened Joe, and I don't mean to take a hard position, but sensation should not be viewed as proportional to the gruesomeness of the conditions or the level of imagined suffering involved while watching it, but rather like the volume control on your stereo that simply won't go above 10 no matter what. There is no biological reason for it to do so as it serves it's purpose admirably by then. To the dismay of the human torture community, there is a limit to how much pain can be caused no matter how creative they are in it's production. We'll have to agree to disagree if your bottom line is that the end of suffering means pain can never get to a point of being intolerable, and there are plenty of examples available to illustrate this other than torture. I had to go to an emergency room once because I spilled tea on myself. Granted that this was years before I got all enlightened and stuff, but I'm firmly attached to my inflexible mental position that self-realization doesn't immunize oneself from their own clumsiness. My two worst cases of pain were as a teenager, one a sinus infection, one a big toe ingrown tonail infection (you could see the puss oozing under the toenail). In both cases I begged my parents to take me to the hospital after 11:00PM. (Pain past a 10).
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Post by enigma on Feb 25, 2018 19:37:50 GMT -5
So the 'spiritual thinking that we get lost in' is intuition and instinct? That doesn't make sense to me. No, the opposite. When we get lost in spiritual thinking, we ignore intuition/instinct. I must be saying something that is confusing you, but I'm not sure what. You're not telling me what the spiritual thinking is that you're talking about, and since that's what I've been asking for, I find the answers unsatisfactory.
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Post by enigma on Feb 25, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -5
When you do something that extends your limitations everything stops and there is only this lift. There is significant pain but the skill is being conscious of the body sans the adverse reaction. If the mind gets in the way, you become very miserable and quit training. It is very difficult to continually progress because the overload has to continually increase to stimulate further adaption. Getting stronger is only an adaption to stress. Sometime a lifter will reach a 'plateau', and regardless of diligent training, can not increase the weight lifted. They then have to examine their training program and make alterations to shock the body in new ways to create just the right kind of stress to force an adaption. The mistake you are making is equating 'resistance training' with psychological resistance. Resistance training is finding ways to produce the stress which best forces an adaption - and a significant reduction in psychological resistance is integral to that end. In the lifting game, pain is gain. In the psychological game resistance to pain is the avoidance of suffering - and that backfires every time. I'm saying that ultimately, all resistance is physical-psychological resistance, yes. With that said, I also believe that speaking of physical resistance and psychological resistance as being more separated can be useful, so as to explore the workings of the psychology. There is physical resistance any time you use your muscles to walk or talk, etc. Do you find a psychological component to that? If not, then all resistance is not physical-psychological.
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Post by enigma on Feb 25, 2018 19:44:29 GMT -5
Messy is just mind's way of feeling at home, but either you suffered from the mess you made or you did not. You never did both. I disagree. I'll give you another example. I used to play rugby, which was physically and psychologically hard. Every game was suffering from beginning to end. And yet, when the team were playing exceptionally well, and functioning as a very cohesive unit, there was a joy...perhaps even an exquisiteness....to the experience. As I said, I guess you see suffering, by definition as 'being in hell'. For me it is usually a lot more subtle than that. Most folks are suffering to some slight extent, most of the time, but it is off set by other feelings. No, I recognize that suffering can be minimal, but the idea that you're just feeling one thing at a time applies to all feeling. It doesn't have to be suffering. I think you're letting your thoughts about it take priority over your actual experience.
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Post by enigma on Feb 25, 2018 19:51:18 GMT -5
That's cool n all, but getting back to the topic; the split mind is about wanting two incompatible things at once, and being distressed by the fact that they don't both happen. This is a fundamental immaturity at best, and insanity at worst, but more to the point, it is always unconscious behavior. Well all I can say is that I am often exploring two (or more) options at once, but it's very rarely distressful. Mostly I am curious about how it will play out. Even when there is a building incongruence in regard to something happening, my experience is mostly curiosity...an awareness that at some point that new action will happen, but knowing that that won't happen....until it happens. That's how it is for me on these forums at times after a prolonged and intense conversation. I can be aware of a sense of 'being moved off a forum'... a sense of heaviness, a sense of not really wanting to continue with the conversation, even a sense of resistance to being there....but then I'm also aware that the energy has to play itself out. I would say there is a mild suffering involved...a bit of a 'chore' quality to it, but not a big deal. I log in until the movement to log in is just no longer there. I can perhaps only recall once that I made a 'decision' to leave a forum. What does it even mean to say 'the energy has to play itself out'? YOU are playing it out because you want to be on the forum and you don't. Since you don't want to make one choice and let the other one go, there is a 'mild suffering involved' and a need to blame your childish wants on 'an energy that needs to play out'.
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Post by enigma on Feb 25, 2018 20:42:53 GMT -5
I don't know about the average enlightened Joe, and I don't mean to take a hard position, but sensation should not be viewed as proportional to the gruesomeness of the conditions or the level of imagined suffering involved while watching it, but rather like the volume control on your stereo that simply won't go above 10 no matter what. There is no biological reason for it to do so as it serves it's purpose admirably by then. To the dismay of the human torture community, there is a limit to how much pain can be caused no matter how creative they are in it's production. We'll have to agree to disagree if your bottom line is that the end of suffering means pain can never get to a point of being intolerable, and there are plenty of examples available to illustrate this other than torture. I had to go to an emergency room once because I spilled tea on myself. Granted that this was years before I got all enlightened and stuff, but I'm firmly attached to my inflexible mental position that self-realization doesn't immunize oneself from their own clumsiness. Well, the examples presuppose that you're more enlightened than the average Joe, and quite simply, I don't know that to be the case. As I say, no hard line here, just an attempt to try to pry apart the physical from the emotional a bit and see if those extremes that we love so dearly are really slam dunks after all.
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Post by enigma on Feb 25, 2018 20:50:14 GMT -5
We'll have to agree to disagree if your bottom line is that the end of suffering means pain can never get to a point of being intolerable, and there are plenty of examples available to illustrate this other than torture. I had to go to an emergency room once because I spilled tea on myself. Granted that this was years before I got all enlightened and stuff, but I'm firmly attached to my inflexible mental position that self-realization doesn't immunize oneself from their own clumsiness. My two worst cases of pain were as a teenager, one a sinus infection, one a big toe ingrown tonail infection (you could see the puss oozing under the tonail). In both cases I begged my parents to take me to the hospital after 11:00PM. (Pain past a 10). If nothing else, the point I would like to make is that when you've got a 50db emotional amplifier attached to the output of your physical amplifier, you really don't know what 10 feels like with that emotional amp switched off. I know from personal experience that the difference can be quite dramatic.
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Post by lolly on Feb 25, 2018 23:06:31 GMT -5
When you do something that extends your limitations everything stops and there is only this lift. There is significant pain but the skill is being conscious of the body sans the adverse reaction. If the mind gets in the way, you become very miserable and quit training. It is very difficult to continually progress because the overload has to continually increase to stimulate further adaption. Getting stronger is only an adaption to stress. Sometime a lifter will reach a 'plateau', and regardless of diligent training, can not increase the weight lifted. They then have to examine their training program and make alterations to shock the body in new ways to create just the right kind of stress to force an adaption. The mistake you are making is equating 'resistance training' with psychological resistance. Resistance training is finding ways to produce the stress which best forces an adaption - and a significant reduction in psychological resistance is integral to that end. In the lifting game, pain is gain. In the psychological game resistance to pain is the avoidance of suffering - and that backfires every time. I'm saying that ultimately, all resistance is physical-psychological resistance, yes. With that said, I also believe that speaking of physical resistance and psychological resistance as being more separated can be useful, so as to explore the workings of the psychology. EWell there's resistance like lifting weight, and resistance like the futility of trying to avoid/avert painful sensation which is present. These are not the same meaning of 'resistance', but maybe Enigma will explain context to us one day.
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Post by tenka on Feb 26, 2018 3:05:12 GMT -5
A conscious bunny that knows the difference between carrots and sand, lettuce and water will do so because they have an identified structure in place . All this structure is built around / upon how it identifies with itself otherwise it would not be able to distinguish / differentiate one thing from another . The mirror experiment that you speak of is about reflections of self awareness .. The same applies to a bunny perceiving in reflection of itself in life experience . I don't know what reflections of self awareness are. The experiment is about self awareness. Bunny fails the mirror test. In a way it's good news because it means he can't suffer. Reflections of self awareness are within experience . Did you understand the structure I spoke about? Do you understand that there requires an element of self identity in order to identify with something else? How would you say the bunny identifies and differentiates food from another bunny without the use of a mirror?
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Post by andrew on Feb 26, 2018 3:35:20 GMT -5
No, the opposite. When we get lost in spiritual thinking, we ignore intuition/instinct. I must be saying something that is confusing you, but I'm not sure what. You're not telling me what the spiritual thinking is that you're talking about, and since that's what I've been asking for, I find the answers unsatisfactory. I did, it is the reframing and redefinition of 'suffering' without awareness that it is being redefined for a specific context and a specific exploration. It is a temporary redefinition, because intuitively you still know that babies/animals suffer.
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Post by andrew on Feb 26, 2018 3:36:12 GMT -5
I'm saying that ultimately, all resistance is physical-psychological resistance, yes. With that said, I also believe that speaking of physical resistance and psychological resistance as being more separated can be useful, so as to explore the workings of the psychology. There is physical resistance any time you use your muscles to walk or talk, etc. Do you find a psychological component to that? If not, then all resistance is not physical-psychological. Sure! The mind and body aren't separate at all. Hence why walking can get tough after a while and folks have thoughts of stopping.
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Post by andrew on Feb 26, 2018 3:45:33 GMT -5
Well all I can say is that I am often exploring two (or more) options at once, but it's very rarely distressful. Mostly I am curious about how it will play out. Even when there is a building incongruence in regard to something happening, my experience is mostly curiosity...an awareness that at some point that new action will happen, but knowing that that won't happen....until it happens. That's how it is for me on these forums at times after a prolonged and intense conversation. I can be aware of a sense of 'being moved off a forum'... a sense of heaviness, a sense of not really wanting to continue with the conversation, even a sense of resistance to being there....but then I'm also aware that the energy has to play itself out. I would say there is a mild suffering involved...a bit of a 'chore' quality to it, but not a big deal. I log in until the movement to log in is just no longer there. I can perhaps only recall once that I made a 'decision' to leave a forum. What does it even mean to say 'the energy has to play itself out'? YOU are playing it out because you want to be on the forum and you don't. Since you don't want to make one choice and let the other one go, there is a 'mild suffering involved' and a need to blame your childish wants on 'an energy that needs to play out'. Hmmm how to explain this. Okay. Desires are like 'currents' in a river. When you are in a current in a river, you have to go with the current, until the current ends, and you move in a different direction. So, yes there are conflicting desires, but these desires aren't 'mine'. I can't switch them on and off. I don't choose a desire, and I don't choose to stop desiring. To an extent I can mitigate and manage a desire, so that I am working with it intelligently and responsibly, and playing out the desire in an appropriate way, but these desires are ultimately bigger and more potent than 'me', the apparent chooser and decider. So the energy (movement) of desires (and conflicting desires) is allowed to play themselves out. The conflict is not usually a big deal, it is like a river where 2 currents are intersecting, it happens as part of life. I don't have the capacity to 'make a choice' and 'let the other one go'. The apparent chooser and one that 'lets go' really only has that seeming power when it is believed in, and even then what's probably happening is more a suppression of desire. In my experience, I experience desires fully, even conflicting desire. They resolve themselves without a whole lot of 'me' getting in the way. If you notice an animal....it's never 'choosing one desire' and 'letting one go'. The desires play themselves out. Have you ever watched a cat 'undecided' whether it wants to go outside or not lol? In the end, it never 'decides'...the energy has played itself out. We are different as humans in the sense that we can work with our desires, we can be intelligent in our handling of them, we can consciously use focus and attention for our perceived benefit, but I am no longer the kind of human that 'commits' to a decision. Instead, I follow movements responsibly. And this does mean that I don't fit easily into a world, in which folks are expected constantly to 'commit' to a decision and are then judged and blamed for their seeming lack of 'commitment' to that decision.
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Post by andrew on Feb 26, 2018 3:49:09 GMT -5
I'm saying that ultimately, all resistance is physical-psychological resistance, yes. With that said, I also believe that speaking of physical resistance and psychological resistance as being more separated can be useful, so as to explore the workings of the psychology. EWell there's resistance like lifting weight, and resistance like the futility of trying to avoid/avert painful sensation which is present. These are not the same meaning of 'resistance', but maybe Enigma will explain context to us one day. yes I do understand the distinction and see value in it, but again, ultimately it's the same thing. There is pain for the body in lifting a weight that is too heavy and so the mind says...'this pain is unpleasant, let's do something about that pain by dropping the weight'. So then the lifter has to find the discipline of mind to shut the story up, and focusing keenly on the desire to lift the weight.
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Post by andrew on Feb 26, 2018 4:13:11 GMT -5
I disagree. I'll give you another example. I used to play rugby, which was physically and psychologically hard. Every game was suffering from beginning to end. And yet, when the team were playing exceptionally well, and functioning as a very cohesive unit, there was a joy...perhaps even an exquisiteness....to the experience. As I said, I guess you see suffering, by definition as 'being in hell'. For me it is usually a lot more subtle than that. Most folks are suffering to some slight extent, most of the time, but it is off set by other feelings. No, I recognize that suffering can be minimal, but the idea that you're just feeling one thing at a time applies to all feeling. It doesn't have to be suffering. I think you're letting your thoughts about it take priority over your actual experience. I think it might be the reverse. The concepts/thought can make it seem as if it is just one thing at a time, but the actuality is that experience is multi layered and complex. Kind of like if we glance at a river we can see it is moving in one general direction, but if we look closer we can see currents are intersecting and many things are happening.
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