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WBraun
climber
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Aug 31, 2011 - 12:49am PT
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99.% of the time when someone says "I" with emphasis they point to their heart because that is the seat of the soul.
This why people have incredible "feelings" when someone sings from their heart.
When someone sings from their mind it's mechanical, robotic and people become disinterested very quickly ....
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Aug 31, 2011 - 07:05am PT
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Long before any of those critters were ever conceived in design. Actually, longer than time itself. But I do not expect you to even understand let alone accept that answer.
Chief... You are right, I do not understand your answer, at all.
Please enlighten me. If you yourself understand it [your answer/belief], and you believe it is reasonable, then you should have no problem "reasonably" explaining it in detail.
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matlinb
Trad climber
Albuquerque
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Aug 31, 2011 - 09:27am PT
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Using the math (Hartouni) and language (Largo) areas of the the brain to process and describe their interaction with the world in only one way. It could be that Hartouni and Largo inability to share a common view of the world is nothing more than an expression of the strengths of certain areas of their brains. To quote a famous expression, “our strengths are our greatest weaknesses.”
There are other “right brain” areas which are used to process our interaction with the world. I recently read “My Stroke of Insight”, by Jill Bolte. Here is a TED talk she gave on the subject www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU. In so much as these right brain areas are found across many species, they are ancient in our evolution and deserve every bit as much “respect” as the newer areas of the brain. Just because you fall short in describing your perceptions of the world in language or science does not mean that these perceptions are not common to all mankind, or even all higher order animals. Furthermore, Dr. Bolte argues that if more people cultivated their right brains the world would be a happier and more peaceful place.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Aug 31, 2011 - 12:15pm PT
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Another literal approach:
"Lost ye way in the dark, said the old man. He stirred the fire, standing slender tusks of bone up out of the ashes.
The kid didn't answer.
The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made the world, but he didnt make it to suit everybody, did he?
I don't believe he much had me in mind.
Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions. What world's he seen that he liked better?
I can think of better places and better ways.
Can ye make it be?
No.
No. It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?
I dont know.
Believe that."
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Paul Martzen
Trad climber
Fresno
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Aug 31, 2011 - 12:43pm PT
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Werner states, Look at almost everyone's post in this thread.
They all start out with "I think".
This means they have no clue and are using their mind accepting and rejecting with their senses.
You can't understand consciousness and mind if one falsely identifies with ones body.
The root cause of all misunderstanding is one "thinking they are the body" .....
I prefer to preface my opinions with, "I think... In my experience...I feel... In my opinion" because I only speak for myself. It is only my viewpoint and not the viewpoint of God or science or ultimate truth. Only my viewpoint which I hope reflects truthfully on some tiny part of the larger picture.
I object strongly to the idea that we are not our bodies. My life feels much more wholesome when I am using my body and not just my mind. I have been profoundly influenced by Bioenergetic Psychotherapy which uses body exercises and body techniques to work with our minds and emotions. So I am biased on this matter.
If consciousness and mind are separate from matter and held back or hidden by matter, then it makes sense to eliminate as much as possible the influence of our material bodies in order to better experience true consciousness. If we can eliminate the noisy influence of matter, then the signal of consciousness will be easier to detect. But that has not worked very well for me.
I think the material world around us is an incredibly complex and fascinating place. I think people often underestimate it and sell it short. We get fixed in certain patterns and viewpoints, so the world starts seeming bland and boring and fixed and dead, when it is just our personal viewpoints which are fixed and dead. If we think the material world is dead, but we are alive then it is only logical to think that there must be something else besides this dead world from which we get life and consciousness.
In dance, when I move with feeling and emotion and spirit, it feels nice. If I have a partner who can also move with compatable feeling and we resonate in our movements, then it really feels beautiful. Whether it looks beautiful is something I prefer to not think about. Some might say we are moving from certain chakras or from our hearts or from our spirits. I personally, don't find those ideas helpful. I am aware of inertia and acceleration and centers of gravity and how amazing it is to speed up and slow down in time to the music.
So, my body is important to me and I am happier when my mind and body feel at one, when I don't feel any separation. But if I sit here at the computer too long, not using my body in a healthy way, I start feeling pretty bad.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Aug 31, 2011 - 12:49pm PT
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Paul, worthy post.
I think the material world around us is an incredibly complex and fascinating place. I think people often underestimate it and sell it short. We get fixed in certain patterns and viewpoints, so the world starts seeming bland and boring and fixed and dead, when it is just our personal viewpoints which are fixed and dead. If we think the material world is dead, but we are alive then it is only logical to think that there must be something else besides this dead world from which we get life and consciousness.
Hear, hear.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Aug 31, 2011 - 12:51pm PT
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So, did you guys get anywhere yet?
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Aug 31, 2011 - 01:20pm PT
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Chief... You are right, I do not understand your answer, at all.
Please enlighten me. If you yourself understand it [your answer/belief], and you believe it is reasonable, then you should have no problem "reasonably" explaining it in detail.
That is not possible as it is an "inside job" sort of speaking. One must do their own research and then come to the place where they themselves accept the concept/s that exist and have done so since before time.
Enlightenment is an eternal infinite process of self. Each individual comes to their own place of "mind". That is the beauty of it all.
Understanding through ones meat brain has nothing to do with it at all.
So, do I understand you correctly... You CANNOT reasonably articulate what it is you believe, and why?
If, so, that begs the question... How can you have any reasonable undestanding of whay you believe? And, more importantly, how can you claim to to be true with such certainty if you cannot even explain it?
See... I too am into edification, and that demands at least a moderate understanding of things in order for me to objectively weigh them.
Would you not agree with the statement:
One's certainty of something should be directly proportional to one's understanding of it AND the evidence that supports it?
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 31, 2011 - 01:35pm PT
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This is a purport from the Bhagavad-gita:
The symptoms of the self-realized person are given herein.
The first symptom is that he is not illusioned by the false identification of the body with his true self.
He knows perfectly well that he is not this body, but is the fragmental part of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
He is therefore not joyful in achieving something, nor does he lament in losing anything which is related to his body.
This steadiness of mind is called sthira-buddhi, or self-intelligence.
He is therefore never bewildered by mistaking the gross body for the soul, nor does he accept the body as permanent and disregard the existence of the soul.
This knowledge elevates him to the station of knowing the complete science of the Absolute Truth, namely Brahman, Paramatma and Bhagavan.
He thus knows his constitutional position perfectly well, without falsely trying to become one with the Supreme in all respects.
This is called Brahman realization, or self-realization.
Temporary relief of the external body and the mind is not satisfactory.
For man, mind is the cause of bondage and mind is the cause of liberation.
Mind absorbed in sense objects is the cause of bondage, and mind detached from the sense objects is the cause of liberation.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 31, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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Werner, Kicking Mule Records summed all that up a bit shorter with:
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Aug 31, 2011 - 02:07pm PT
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man is beast, evolved.
no more, and probably less.
the mind of a tree
could coach well every human zen wannabe.
to stand forever,
stout and beautiful;
playing well with all worldly forces.
that's my role model.
all this complex bullshit trying to summarize
our disgusting beauty impresses me less
than,
the wooden splinter in my palm.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 31, 2011 - 02:21pm PT
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I think the material world around us is an incredibly complex and fascinating place. I think people often underestimate it and sell it short.
I consider attitudes and beliefs which attempt to disassociate 'mind' from meat as chauvinist forms of human exceptionalism held by people who on one hand grossly underestimate meat (or don't trust it) and on the other cannot bear the reality that 'they' are wholly at the mercy of the quality of their meat.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 31, 2011 - 02:29pm PT
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The Chief: ...meat brain has nothing to do with it at all.
Why bother with meat at all? Is this ethereal and eternal life intrinsically exhibitionist by nature in that it needs the [material] world as a stage? Seems a pointless rubric at best and a bizarre form of eternal ritualistic torture at worst. Why bother? Why wouldn't all 'souls' just be 'perfect' from the get go? Who's trying to prove what to whom? Or maybe it's all just a cruel virtualization...
DMT: Its hard to be a filet mignon when all you got is chuck.
I think the idea (if you buy into it) is you start with flank and as you work through your sh#t and then become worthy of better grades and cuts.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 31, 2011 - 02:54pm PT
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An interesting blog with a good roll of allied blogs in the side bar:
neurophilosophy
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FredC
Boulder climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Aug 31, 2011 - 03:56pm PT
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Werner, I agree that we are all stuck in our "I's". That seems to be where we live (myself for sure. There might be value in trying to wrestle with this intellectually.
As someone mentioned somewhere up the thread, there are some mostly eastern based systems that suggest they might offer a way to climb past the intellect.
Before someone starts that ascent they need to have some kind of logical framework that supports roping up and putting on those different shoes.
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FredC
Boulder climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Aug 31, 2011 - 04:05pm PT
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It is true that most of the countries in the east don't have the material system thing together. No doubt about it.
Happiness though is another thing. It would be cool to get a good measurement of "gross national happiness" as they are working on in Bhutan. I wonder how they average US person with all the high tech and good medical care would rate? I don't have the data.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Aug 31, 2011 - 04:09pm PT
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A perspective on thinking traps and the masters of the soul and consciousness
"There was once a fox who was so utterly without cunning that he not only constantly fell into traps but could not even distinguish a trap from what was not a trap.… After this fox had spent his entire youth in other people’s traps … he decided to completely withdraw from the fox world, and began to build a den [Fuchsbau].… He built himself a trap as a den, sat down in it, pretended it was a normal den (not out of cunning, but because he had always taken the traps of others for their dens).… This trap was only big enough for him.… Nobody could fall into his trap, because he was sitting in it himself.… If one wanted to visit him in the den where he was at home, one had to go into his trap. Of course everybody could walk right out of it, except him.… The fox living in the trap said proudly: so many fall into my trap; I have become the best of all foxes. And there was even something true in that: nobody knows the trap business [das Fallenwesen] better than he who has been sitting in a trap all his life."
Some even become gurus.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 31, 2011 - 04:30pm PT
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"people... cannot bear the reality that 'they' are wholly at the mercy of the quality of their meat."
Yes, now we're getting somewhere.
Actually, you're at the same place you started, and where you'll end up.
The obsession to investigate what will only confirm or bolster your extant beliefs is that no learning is not only possible. After all, materialism is as predictable as the rigid determinism its espouses. But is this so, incontrovertibably? Nope. Not even close.
You might want to investigate the idea of "contrary action" to get another POV on being "wholly at the mercy" of our meat impulses and imperatives. What's more, this all is once again the knee jerk retreat back into quantifying, which is not the drill. It's like watching a climber who only knows how to mantle, then when he flounders, hearing how mantling alone is the valid technique, and how all of us lybackers and face climbers can't bear the stress of the really grim mantleshelf. Caramba. Pull a jam or an arm bar here and again, dood. You're wearing us out . . .
Remember, most people with no mental training believe that only through narrow focusing and discursive thinking can insight be had. In fact when your mind relaxes (your focus opens up) in the bathroom or on a drive or just walking to the store, thinking about nothing, the most remarkable things often pop up. That's the whole point of staying with raw experience, with nothing. Its the opposite of going where you need language and so forth to know the terrain, and terra incognito to most folks.
Unfortunately I am getting no takers here so I'm not getting any consensus on the questions and terms John S. asked early on, which was my hope. I gave a brief run down of what I found - an awareness field, qual/stuff floating past, a flow or process of subjective experience, et al, but no one else has ponied up any first-person insights, just more looking at the brain and experience as a thing and rendering one more third person functional analysis, including the mistaken belief that anything else is priestcraft. Arrrrrrrrg.
It's almost as if people are afraid of getting intimate with their own minds. If you treated a friend like you treated your own mind - with these deadly, 3rd person objectifications and so forth, said friend would think you were insane, or an alien. And no, I'm not suggesting you approach your mind with a Hallmark card - but a ruler won't do neither. Not this time.
Just some thoughts . . .
JL
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