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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 18, 2010 - 02:10pm PT
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fet--not all tribes have chiefs. the navajo didn't, until white man insisted that they do.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Jun 18, 2010 - 02:19pm PT
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Yes Tony, but when there was a decision to be made certain individuals would be more likely to offer their opinions and be more forceful about convincing the tribe to go in that direction.
I have a lot of respect for the spirituality ideas of native Americans. To me it seems a much more reason based view of spirituality, keeping us inclusive with nature, rather than exclusive of it. When I kill something like a black widow spider I aplogize to the spider, and it makes me feel better about having to do it.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 18, 2010 - 03:23pm PT
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The thing is
whether you believe in God or not, your life experience is subject to the quality and nature of our mind. If your mind is jacked, somebody could hand you a million bucks and you could have the most desirable woman there is, and the money wouldn't move you, and you'd get sick of her in no time.
So, spiritual goal or not, it's worth considering your priorities and actions, doing some study on "Self Help" in its various forms and do a bit of work in the direction of knowing yourself, your mind and emotions. That's the thing that directly pays off in life, while other pursuits can contribute in a more secondary way. It's certainly possible to approach climbing in a way that focuses the mind and looks at our psyche, but you have to be mindful to do it.
Until you have a handle on your mind, you are a slave of your childhood, your circumstances, and your emotional distortions and we all have em. Repression and denial just divides and contracts you, makes you numb.
Still, this is a fairly basic and self-evident fact, that our experience is totally filtered by our mental state, and yet as society, or as individuals, we rarely take action on this most basic element of our existence. It's not taught in schools. Not much money goes into it's study.
Why not? We're all running around striving to be happy. It's like priority number one but science barely studies it. Religion touches it but has tons of baggage and detritus from history.
We're fools. We deny our deepest needs. We don't attend to our highest welfare. We live blindly
Peace
Karl
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Jun 18, 2010 - 03:35pm PT
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Karl, you have a good point. For something so important we don't give it enough attention or maybe many people do but not in the most constructive ways. Also you can make big changes in you outlook and happiness but I think a great deal of it is inherent in our personalities and also influenced by our upbrining and environment. My young son bounced off the walls in the womb and is still that way to this day. Before he was even born his personality was in place. Change is possible but you always have that starting point which may be the biggest factor.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 18, 2010 - 03:36pm PT
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fet--joseph campbell contrasts two approaches to killing, from two closely related tribes.
the bushmen of the kalahari, terrific hunters in their difficult desert environment, pray to the soul of their intended victim, apologizing for the upcoming kill, explaining how they have a family to support, enumerating their dependents.
the pygmy tribe of the congo jungle exhibits an apparent crass cruelty, mimicking the death throes of their prey, making great lighthearted sport of it. he notes that they live in an abundant environment. perhaps it's a way of dealing with the same twinge of heart.
hey--i'm a carpenter and i have the same scrupes about trees. you can check out my way of dealing with all the guilt on the great tree thread.
karl, i probably agree with you, but i think most self-help books are written by fools for an audience of same.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 18, 2010 - 04:23pm PT
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I’m reminded here of William James notion of the “spiritual or mystical experience.” He felt these experiences had two primary elements: ineffability and noesis.
Ineffability “leads the believer to feel that his life is continuous… with a wider self from which saving experiences flow in.”
Noesis is the “knowing” of such an experience. “…questioning the validity of these experiences is futile, for believers have had their vision and they KNOW – that is enough – that we inhabit a spiritual environment from which help comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger soul whose instruments we are.”
So the question is really an epistemological one. How do we know?
Those that haven’t had the experience simply can’t know in the way those who have had the experience know.
So I would ask the question how is it that some are made privy to such an experience while others are left out?
Do we automatically assume the inferiority of those not having a spiritual experience?
…and isn’t the lack of spiritual experience also a valid noesis, isn’t it every bit as valid as the spiritual experience?
Also, isn't unrepeatable personal experience as knowledge a kind of narcissism?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 18, 2010 - 04:37pm PT
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karl, i probably agree with you, but i think most self-help books are written by fools for an audience of same.
That's something of a blanket statement which may be true in cases. If so, it only makes the non-fools more foolish for not paying attention to the basic study of fullfillment and wholeness in life.
Fet- it's true that we bring stuff into the world and childhood molds us in basic ways that are deeply ingrained. It's still possible to work on this deep stuff and at least embody the healthiest undistorted version of ourselves, whether we're introverted, hyper, or whatever, but we're creatures of habit so change doesn't come easy, particularly when we don't consciously seek and study it.
Most people's lessons in life come from neither science or religion, but from crashing their car, the breakup of their relationships, or others stresses. Pain makes man think. It can swing both ways, instead of learning our lessons, we can shut down and go numb... dead. Best to address things/life upfront like a bold lead cause we're on the stone for life. No amount of science nor atheism is going to free you from yourself and religion can help-hinder-blind as well.
Like Jesus said, the way is narrow...there are plenty of distractions for religious and agnostic alike.. but life is in your face.. How you going to deal with that?
Peace
Karl
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Jun 18, 2010 - 04:45pm PT
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A while back there was a nod to Rush, and Neil Peart certainly has influenced my thinking. I think it's pretty cool for rock and roll lyrics to touch on philosphy, but then again there's a reason there's more nerds than hot chicks into Rush.
FREEWILL
There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance,
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance.
A planet of playthings,
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
"The stars aren't aligned,
Or the gods are malign..."
Blame is better to give than receive.
Chorus
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.
There are those who think that they were dealt a losing hand,
The cards were stacked against them; they weren't born in Lotusland.
All preordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate.
Kicked in the face,
You can't pray for a place
In heaven's unearthly estate.
Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete.
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jun 18, 2010 - 05:36pm PT
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Dr. F wrote: "did zen meditation for years, I know what these transcendental states are like."
I have no idea who your teachers were, but they didn't know a thing about Zen if they were encouraging you to nurture or even pay attention to "transcendental states." This sounds like the stuff you encounter with classical eye-closed meditation.
JL
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Jun 18, 2010 - 05:45pm PT
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FWIW!
One third of the angels fell with Satan, they are not all knowing(omniscient)but they know about the past because they were there!
This is who SOME of the so called fortune tellers, psychics, etc. are communicating with! They cannot foretell the future, but they do know something about the past...as in from one second ago!!
They have NO benevolence for the human race WHATSOEVER, so...BEWARE!
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 18, 2010 - 06:05pm PT
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Largo, in my reference to a "causality train to nowhere" I'm simply making an oblique reference to your rather strenous push to get to a discussion about 'emptiness' and 'nothingness', i.e. "nowhere" - "a causality train to emptiness" doesn't have much ring. Not having either background, I'm guessing being way into labeling and formally structuring the language or vehicle of thought must be what psych and philosophy folk do. And I suppose the retort would be without such formal and rigid [logical] structuring you simply can't have a reasonable discussion or exploration, but I guess I'd disagree to a certain extent.
From my perspective I agree one certainly needs to 'formalize' and structure explorations which drive to the edge of human knowledge and beyond, but at a some point as you approach or cross the boundary of the 'unknown' then it strikes me that strong adherence to any one formal approach is just as likely to run you out of gas as it is to get you anywhere. At some point you're just running a thought and logic exercise that has more use in organizing what you don't know than pushing the boundary of what we do know.
So to some extent it seems to me that driving the argument of "material reductionism" into the dirt is just another form of containerism, i.e. I'm only going to look at 'thought' or 'consciousness' from this one [logical] container's perspective. Again, I'm guessing this form of logical containerism must be what philosophers do, but never having taken a philosophy course I couldn't say. For myself I don't really consider your conjoining of 'materialism' and 'weak substantivalism' (in the way you present the coupling between them) to be all that particularly valid or, to some extent (and possibly ironically) to be just a matter of [relative] perspective. The container or weak substantivalism 'view', where a universe can exist with nothing (no material) in it and material objects are regions of spacetime, doesn't at all seem exlusive of, or in opposition to, 'materialism'. I think it's just a different way of defining 'material' - similar to a view everything is made up of a collection of vibrating strings which are themselves just rolled-up dimensions.
Seems to me that just because you or I can't fathom follow a [causality] trail from a thought back to some specific state of atomic particles doesn't mean it doesn't happen, just that we can't figure it out at the moment and possibly never will.
For me what makes religion so objectionable is it is based on a relentless fear of unanswered or unanswerable questions - that there is nothing more frightening then an unanswered question. Religion is all about making up answers to quell, calm, and harness a very real human fear of the unknown. I guess I find it a bit disturbing when folks who claim to operate on science or reason start doing the same; when they start 'making sh#t up' to fill the voids represented by the unknown. For me, the fact that I can't necessarily connect the dots between a thought and an the chemical / atomic state of an arbitrary set of neurons doesn't make me feel the need to suddenly start 'inventing' non-material protagonists to help me make that leap simply to smooth over a logical bump in my road to understanding.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 18, 2010 - 06:13pm PT
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good stuff again, paul. "some are privy while others are left out". it is what it is--evolution works that way. we're sitting here trying to philosophize about a lot of varied experience and find a common thread. some can seek such experiences and find them, others come up with nil, others find something they didn't seek, as i did.
tripl, don't worry about me. i know how to handle the suckers. i've learned where the big bad wolf is, and he isn't in hell by a long shot. if you want to accelerate your learning process, enroll in the school of hard knocks, as karl mentions.
and, karl: we're all god's fools, said the man for all seasons.
fet: i never met a rock lyric i liked. the deeper they try to get, the quicker they lose me. i think the deepest poets don't set out to be deep. it surprises them.
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Jun 18, 2010 - 06:39pm PT
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"enroll in the school of hard knocks, as karl mentions."
I have lived the school of hard knocks, believe me!
And I prefer the Way that Jesus "mentions!"..."straight and narrow."
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 18, 2010 - 06:53pm PT
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Just so long as you know that the "Narrow" Jesus mentions isn't "Narrow Minded"
Nobody gets there through dogma or closed mindedness. (not saying you are but some think that way) The guy who made the universe doesn't value blind faith and taking other's word for things above all other moral qualities.
For me, I think Narrow means that the source of ourselves within our own being-awareness as we are created of it's essence (in it's 'image') yet we look outward or upward for God. There are many view and paths there but they are external, conditioned, and ultimately not the real. Our essence is real and connected with Spirit. This can be experienced by anyone and indeed, everyone experiences it all the time as their witnessing consciousness itself. It's just distorted and covered up by all our thinking and crap
Peace
Karl
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 18, 2010 - 07:17pm PT
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yikes, largo--healyje's all over your case!
here's one i came across just this afternoon, tripl--i'm going up to arcata next month and was doing a little research on the area:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_Wiyot_Massacre
the big bad wolf pounced on these folks in the dead of night in the form of intolerant christians out to stamp out pagans. look out, buddy, he could get you too, and he just might be wearing a great big jesus mask, as i'm sure these guys did.
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Jun 18, 2010 - 07:24pm PT
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Matthew 12:12-14:
"Therefore whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 7:12
"Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it." Matthew 7:13
He is talking about the wide/broad gate that leads to Hell(destruction)!!
"Because narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way that leads to life." Matthew 7:14
He is the "narrow" gate that leads to life(eternal life/heaven).
We are all guilty, over and over again of breaking the law because Jesus states that if we have ever even got angry at another person we are guilty of murder. If we even just lust after a women/man we are guilty of rape!!
"All have sinned and fall short..."
Only He can fulfill the requirement, forgive us and lead us...
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Jun 18, 2010 - 07:35pm PT
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T Bird- "Big bad wolf...in the form of intolerant christians..."
I read your link and it said that they were "gold miners"???
Said nothing in regards to "christians"!
You are jumping to conclusions...what did karl say about being "narrow minded"?
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 18, 2010 - 07:37pm PT
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that straight and narrow mind
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jstan
climber
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Jun 18, 2010 - 07:40pm PT
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"For me what makes religion so objectionable is it is based on a relentless fear of unanswered or unanswerable questions - that there is nothing more frightening then an unanswered question. Religion is all about making up answers to quell, calm, and harness a very real human fear of the unknown. I guess I find it a bit disturbing when folks who claim to operate on science or reason start doing the same; when they start 'making sh#t up' to fill the voids represented by the unknown. For me, the fact that I can't necessarily connect the dots between a thought and an the chemical / atomic state of an arbitrary set of neurons doesn't make me feel the need to suddenly start 'inventing' non-material protagonists to help me make that leap simply to smooth over a logical bump in my road to understanding."
Extremely well said Joe.
Along these lines another possibility has occurred to me associated with our almost primal enjoyment of music. Music is really satisfying because, with a good tune, you know beforehand what the next note will be and exactly when it will come. The enjoyment includes a sense of security that arises when your prediction comes true, exactly. I wonder if bible readings from passages one has read regularly every so often for the past forty years are not just this same search for confidence and seeming omniscience. All the words are right there in the same place they were the last time you read it.
If true, the interesting thing about this is, the whole thing is subliminal.
Unconscious.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jun 18, 2010 - 07:58pm PT
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Healyje:
"For me, the fact that I can't necessarily connect the dots between a thought and an the chemical/atomic state of an arbitrary set of neurons doesn't make me feel the need to suddenly start 'inventing' non-material protagonists to help me make that leap simply to smooth over a logical bump in my road to understanding."
Is that what you were thinking I was driving towards: "Inventing non-material protagonists to help me make that leap simply to smooth over a logical bump in my road to understanding."
I actually agree with much of what you said, especially the challenge to bore into the unknown. That's what eye's open mediation is all about - moving past symbols and linguistic formulations - and is probably why I always liked doing first ascents.
The efforts to drive this discussion into "the cloud of unknowing," or nothingness was a bust because there are species of materialist so hard core that to them, there is no space between atoms or thoughts, no emptiness, no context or background. All is stuff, or sourced by stuff, and stuff sourced by stuff is simply latent stuff. The map is the territory, and there is no open terrain on the map. None.
That, by any definition, is a dead end per any exploration beyond or other than, stuff. I even asked the trick question: Is it possible for you to imagine a dimension, context, or empty, borderless container or (fill in the blank)that was not material, and some were not even willing to try and imagine it, even as a thought experiment. So hey, have fun with all that stuff.
JL
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