|
Post by andrew on Feb 26, 2018 13:22:57 GMT -5
No, I wouldn't label it all as that, 'passive anger' is another kind of provocation. So, all provocation is at its core and intent, unconscious and/or malicious? I suppose that is to be distinguished from challenge, yes? And then, it is all based on whether you rezz with it or not, as to how you will categorize and deal with it... well to be honest, when I made the point about provoking, it was just an after thought, it wasn't something I said that was meant to be of consequence to the thread. But the difference between provocation and challenge, might be that a challenge is a questioning of one's belief systems, whereas a provocation is more about trying to instigate a felt reaction in another.
|
|
|
Post by someNOTHING! on Feb 26, 2018 13:42:00 GMT -5
So, all provocation is at its core and intent, unconscious and/or malicious? I suppose that is to be distinguished from challenge, yes? And then, it is all based on whether you rezz with it or not, as to how you will categorize and deal with it... well to be honest, when I made the point about provoking, it was just an after thought, it wasn't something I said that was meant to be of consequence to the thread. But the difference between provocation and challenge, might be that a challenge is a questioning of one's belief systems, whereas a provocation is more about trying to instigate a felt reaction in another. Yeah, I didn't see where the idea fit either, so just assumed we were gonna circle it back around to connect it with a suffering self at some point. I mean, situations/contexts can reinforce the balanced and (perhaps, still) unconscious structure of self-illusion if it is believed to be at the middle of and around which all else is happening. So, I was going with the idea of distinguishing provocation and challenge.
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Feb 26, 2018 15:22:35 GMT -5
Merely 1/2 the path. That which needs to be lost is an obstruction to what-can-be (but not now is). It's a matter of energy. To maintain the false requires energy and superfluously wastes energy, this takes place unconsciously. This ~deconstruction~ (Simone Weil's word, she knew of Gurdjieff's teaching through Madame de Saltzmann, and most of her mysticism is based on-this. See her Gravity & Grace) necessarily takes place only consciously. The ~new~ is built from this energy, transformed (In Alchemy this is symbolized as turning lead into gold). Without this transformation deconstruction In and of Itself means nothing. The reason I asked you about your path is that I see it as one of acquisition. The one who dies with the most books on his shelf and the tallest layer cakes in the freezer wins. No, judgment, really, just an observation. I have also said the point is to lose something every day, and I know full well what it means. It doesn't mean empty yourself out so that you can make room for growth producing stuff. It means empty yourself of the false so that only the truth remains. As Niz says "See the false as false and reject it. You must unlearn everything. God is the end of all desire and knowledge." The acquisition has nothing to do with anything outside self. I agree with most of you that ~ as we are~ there is no self, any self we think is, is merely imaginary, imaginary in the sense that 'we are not what we think we are' (the self we think we are is a false self). However, I don't stop there, which all non-dualists do. The acquisition is the acquisition of ~a certain being~, that not-now-is, we merely have in in embryo. And there are many spontaneous "abortions". The non-dualist is trying to cross a 100 ft chasm with a 95 ft rope. (Gurdjieff taught how to take apart the 95 ft rope and make a 100 ft rope).
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Feb 26, 2018 15:29:26 GMT -5
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. I'm going to guess you've never had a severe infection or a kidney stone.
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Feb 26, 2018 15:33:32 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'. There isn't a you playing it out. There are two (or more) autopilot impulses playing out (pre-programmed/conditioned impulses), neither one a you. Neither one is ~real~. So to say the energy is playing out, is correct.
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Feb 26, 2018 15:41:18 GMT -5
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. Quite brilliant I would say, exactly. ( For emphasis). {I wrote the post above (confirming what you wrote) before I read this}.
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Feb 26, 2018 15:57:47 GMT -5
Have seen the movie, yes, very good. (May come back to the other. ....If there is no suffering then all this is merely a game, we're all bots and robots and pin-balls). I wouldn't reduce realization to identifying with such mechanical cause-and-effect bound devices, no. Have you considered or thought about pure creativity in your studies? Take a look at it in the spirit of a fountain of youth kind of idea, with ALL eternally spewing forth and appearing as unique perspective to No-Thing. It's ok if, at first, mind doth protest and vague messages beginning with "But...." start appearing. That's indicative of mind's limitation. Yet, and this is important, it is still possible to do and it is ALL happening without even the slightest effort, like, all the time. Tell me if this does not make the body wiggle and, eventually, the mind giggle. There is a most excellent book by Joseph Chilton Pearce (which everyone could benefit from, but especially parents of small children, or better yet, prospective parents), Magical Child. Of course what Pearce writes about fits within my paradigm, that's why it's brilliant (and Pearce backs up most of his ideas with current science). But he says that we are the most intelligent we will ever be, at birth. So creativity is ~built-in~ from the start. Pearce says we are all essentially born geniuses. This is FAIAP proved out because we learn more in the first two years of life than we will ever learn in any two year period the rest of our lives. Picture being born as a clean white sheet of paper, there are unlimited possibilities. We are born with the greatest number of neurons we will ever have. Pearce says all children are born with a predisposition to learn how the physical world operates, he calls this unbending intent. All that is necessary for this to be fulfilled is for content for exploration to be supplied by parents or primary caregivers (stuff for exploration, "toys", basically anything within safe bounds, "concrete" stuff, abstraction comes later, built upon the concrete). But what happens is everything the baby/small child learns is like a line being drawn on the paper, what is learned is stored in the neural structure, as connections between neurons. Things go well for about the first two years of life, learning is exponential. But then what is already learned begins to form a base for further learning, instead of the clean white sheet of paper, the pristine mind. So what the child has learned begins to narrow and limit the child's exploration. This continues, for most children, until about the age of six give or take. At about this point all learning occurs through what the child has already learned, thus all learning becomes constricted. What we know as the prodigy is a child who happens to find itself in a prefect environment, and whose inborn talents get nourished. At birth, we are all a potential Mozart. The more a parent imposes their own psychology upon the child, usually in the form of punishment, the more constricted the child's learning becomes. The job of a parent is not to 'teach' but to provide a safe environment and content for exploration. (My sister has 4 kids who now have children, and small children. I see much of what I would call abuse every time I am around them, and have to bite my tongue. Some physical abuse (spanking) but mostly psychological abuse, that is, imposing their will upon the child (teaching stuff, how to "behave"). But society wouldn't call it abuse, just "normal" parenting). So yes, I have considered creativity. (Pearce goes on to explain that at first he thought once the child grows up, this possibility of being a prodigy/genius is forever lost, but he later changed his mind and considers it possible for "Nature's Plan" (pretty-much his words) to be recovered).
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Feb 26, 2018 16:26:58 GMT -5
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. A goal to play out all of your desires, (responsibly?), is a recipe for suffering, and not only irresponsible, but childish and immature. Along with biological self awareness comes the response-ability to choose wisely and sanely so as to mitigate the suffering that inevitably results from that internal conflict. The lower animals that lack self awareness don't have that problem. You can't imitate those animals as your mind works differently, and if you try you just start behaving like an animal. You DO have the capacity to make a choice. When I have some time, I'll explain what nonvolition really means. *Your desires aren't bigger than you, they are your creations. I'm not suggesting you not want what you want. I'm suggesting you can't have two mutually exclusive things at the same time. A sign of maturity is being able to choose one and let the other one go completely. Reading, I was just about to say Andrew understands nonvolition better than you do. I'll still say it *, Andrew understands nonviolition better than you do.
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Feb 26, 2018 16:29:03 GMT -5
A goal to play out all of your desires, (responsibly?), is a recipe for suffering, and not only irresponsible, but childish and immature. Along with biological self awareness comes the response-ability to choose wisely and sanely so as to mitigate the suffering that inevitably results from that internal conflict. The lower animals that lack self awareness don't have that problem. You can't imitate those animals as your mind works differently, and if you try you just start behaving like an animal. You DO have the capacity to make a choice. When I have some time, I'll explain what nonvolition really means. Your desires aren't bigger than you, they are your creations. I'm not suggesting you not want what you want. I'm suggesting you can't have two mutually exclusive things at the same time. A sign of maturity is being able to choose one and let the other one go completely. I can seemingly 'make a choice', but ' committing to a choice' is pretty much beyond my capacity...because I don't believe in a chooser. At best, the chooser appears, it is superficial, and the energy (or motivation/desire) to maintain and perpetuate this 'chooser' isn't there. I'm not frightened of suffering, so that's just not much of an issue. I might responsibly work WITH desires to create stuff, but I don't see desires as 'my creations'. At most, if I was to create a piece of art because the desire was there, I would say the art was 'my creation', but not the desire itself. By the way, where did I say that I had 'a goal' to play out all my desires? Can you specifically quote me on that please? Or were you just generally saying that if someone had that goal it would be a recipe for suffering? It would be a very odd goal to have. See, Andrew understands nonvolition better than you do.
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Feb 26, 2018 19:25:48 GMT -5
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. Lots of peeps find it challenging to know what they're feeling when.
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Feb 26, 2018 19:30:18 GMT -5
Yes. It sounds brown bearish to say it, so I haven't, but that's the bottom line. It would be much easier to talk about existential suffering but nobody cares about that. They care about physical suffering, probly because there are lots of extreme examples to use to refute the arguments. Yeah, it does sound brown bearish on a conceptual level. I spose free will and suffering walk hand in hand for the same lack of loss. Loss, if it could only be given... Spiritual thievery is a challenging profession.
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Feb 26, 2018 19:45:46 GMT -5
Is that redefinition somehow culled from spirituality or spiritual thinking? (I feel like I'm pulling teeth here and I need to use the arm of the chair for leverage.) what do you mean 'culled from'? (you sound like you are suffering a bit here hehe) I'm still looking for the relationship to spiritual thinking that you're talking about. I'm needing to use quite a bit of resistance in the extraction, but resistance is not suffering.
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Feb 26, 2018 21:04:54 GMT -5
A goal to play out all of your desires, (responsibly?), is a recipe for suffering, and not only irresponsible, but childish and immature. Along with biological self awareness comes the response-ability to choose wisely and sanely so as to mitigate the suffering that inevitably results from that internal conflict. The lower animals that lack self awareness don't have that problem. You can't imitate those animals as your mind works differently, and if you try you just start behaving like an animal. You DO have the capacity to make a choice. When I have some time, I'll explain what nonvolition really means. Your desires aren't bigger than you, they are your creations. I'm not suggesting you not want what you want. I'm suggesting you can't have two mutually exclusive things at the same time. A sign of maturity is being able to choose one and let the other one go completely. I can seemingly 'make a choice', but ' committing to a choice' is pretty much beyond my capacity...because I don't believe in a chooser. At best, the chooser appears, it is superficial, and the energy (or motivation/desire) to maintain and perpetuate this 'chooser' isn't there. I'm not frightened of suffering, so that's just not much of an issue. I might responsibly work WITH desires to create stuff, but I don't see desires as 'my creations'. At most, if I was to create a piece of art because the desire was there, I would say the art was 'my creation', but not the desire itself. By the way, where did I say that I had 'a goal' to play out all my desires? Can you specifically quote me on that please? Or were you just generally saying that if someone had that goal it would be a recipe for suffering? It would be a very odd goal to have. Your 'intent' is to allow desires to play out. "Goal" must have triggered some resistance. Desires form in your mind according to conditioning. They aren't bigger than you. I don't recall using 'committing', but If I did it was probly a poor choice of words. I don't mean making a decision and sticking to it. I mean choosing one and letting the other go. Of course you're frightened of suffering.
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Feb 26, 2018 21:06:33 GMT -5
Ultimately it's not the same thing. When you lift a tea cup to your lips, there's no psychological resistance created. Not overtly so, no, but if you make a heavy enough tea cup, you will notice the resistance more obviously. Or if you don't really want the tea, you might notice it a bit. But hey, what if you don't?
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Feb 26, 2018 21:25:22 GMT -5
The reason I asked you about your path is that I see it as one of acquisition. The one who dies with the most books on his shelf and the tallest layer cakes in the freezer wins. No, judgment, really, just an observation. I have also said the point is to lose something every day, and I know full well what it means. It doesn't mean empty yourself out so that you can make room for growth producing stuff. It means empty yourself of the false so that only the truth remains. As Niz says "See the false as false and reject it. You must unlearn everything. God is the end of all desire and knowledge." The acquisition has nothing to do with anything outside self. I agree with most of you that ~ as we are~ there is no self, any self we think is, is merely imaginary, imaginary in the sense that 'we are not what we think we are' (the self we think we are is a false self). However, I don't stop there, which all non-dualists do. The acquisition is the acquisition of ~a certain being~, that not-now-is, we merely have in in embryo. And there are many spontaneous "abortions". The non-dualist is trying to cross a 100 ft chasm with a 95 ft rope. (Gurdjieff taught how to take apart the 95 ft rope and make a 100 ft rope). Acquisition refers to knowledge, none of which is ultimately true. All of which can potentially obscure what is already present, which does not need to be grown.
|
|