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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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A person trying to depict consciousness emerging from the brain
A bird trying to depict consciousness emerging from the brain;
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jgill:
I’m doubling down on what Jan just said.
I can’t help but smile. “Not me,” says you in our conversations about mind, but here you are portraying what can’t be said.
I, too, have been looking much more closely at the images that you post. And the names you give them or the way you talk about them. There are these mathematical determinations that you declare, but then there is all that other stuff that you vaguely link-up with what we’re talking about here.
:-D
For all its woes, life is GOOD.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Thanks, Mike. Cheers!
;>)
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Anyone who wants to define the mind need look no further than this thread of nearly 15,000 posts. Mind is the mechanical and arrogant imposter that exists solely to perpetuate the illusion that it is the central reality. Like Donald Trump, it does this by continually tweeting masquerading diversions from what is real and true.
Mind cannot know truth, love, beauty, the divine. It cannot know peace. It can only run in circles around its own confusion. That's its nature. That's all it will ever be able to do. (By design.)
Anyone looking for resolution through this thread is destined for endless manifestations of frustration and unfulfillment. Maybe we're asking the wrong question. Perhaps the first response to the title of this thread would be to first know who's asking. After it becomes apparent who's asking, then we'll probably want to ask an entirely different question.
Truth is simple. Always. To find it, one must guide one's attention in the direction opposite of mind. If mind is NOT our central reality, then what IS?
Could it be we're utterly clueless about our central reality, because its power and indispensible presence are totally usurped and smothered by the relentless mind? Has been for countless eons?
These are rhetorical questions. PLEASE, do NOT try to answer them here! Go in. The answers to all these questions do exist—clearly, simply, profoundly—but only when we're prepared to recognize them. Getting 'prepared' can be the brutal part.
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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LOL
I'm not sure how that's intended, Dingus. I'll just take it as an observation.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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When I was a teenager and was homeless living on the beach in the Santa Barbara area for one summer, I used to drag around a guitar without a protective case. After a month that guitar looked remarkably like the object in the above photo-- whatever it is.
Ah...sweet rememberances...
I think I eventually traded that legendary guitar for a tub of yogurt and a baguette of French bread.
What I wouldn't give to play it again-- just one last time.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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The answers to all these questions do exist—clearly, simply, profoundly—but only when we're prepared to recognize them. Getting 'prepared' can be the brutal part
Want to spell that out a little, Larry? Are you a Zen person like the Wizard (JL)?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 3, 2017 - 06:27pm PT
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Ward, that's a great post. Gotta give it up to that one. So many moments are the "heart of the lotus." It can be found anywhere, at any time, but it won't be information, per se, rather a broken-hearted melody on an old guitar...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Veil of Spirits
While awaiting the Wizard's comments about DMT's window-watching experience, I thought I would re-post this since it displays the same kind of double imagery, one prominent in front, and the other faintly in the background. Blow up your screen to see additional layers.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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What I wouldn't give to play it again--
Hmmm...
If we could spark a sufficiently close buried memory?
Brought to you by Step In The "Same" River Twice™
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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I have been noticing the narrative more lately. How when the alarm goes off at 6 am what is the narrative doing; is it resentful? (I don't want to get up; I am tired etc.). I notice it. I notice how it is a made up story ;I actually have a choice if I notice it; I can let the narrative go and with out the narrative notice the feelings without judgement without the "I". Without the likes and dislikes.
So there is narrative to notice and when the narrative is let go that is also to be noticed.
If you are meditating when the narrative falls away the breath becomes more noticeable; the view in front of you is more evident, it is as if you wake up. You are not riding your motorcycle around in your narrative ; you are present with your senses. Present.
Then you notice the feelings; what are they without "I" attached to them? They are quite vibrant and intense. If you don't get too excited by them they fade and you are left with just raw presence; another fascinating place.
I went on my 8 day sitting retreat first week in March and blocked ST at work; between the two I haven't had much to say.
On a climbing note i met a guy skiing yesterday and told me an interesting story about a 1971 ish climbing accident on Mt Ritter where 4 died and one emerged 5 days later (his friend) does anyone know of that?
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WBraun
climber
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does anyone know of that?
I was on that recovery, with Eric Beck and Loyd Price who posts here also.
Mead Hargis (R.I.P) also part of it.
We flew from Yosemite by helicopter to Banner and Ritter.
Blah blah blah .... too much to write and say.
Let Eric or Loyd give the story .....
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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What I wouldn't give to play it again-- just one last time.
I hear yah mahn. once I traded a bitchin brad bowman for two grams of some sweet sensie. I ripped on that deck.If only one more ride..
RIP BB 79' 360 Storke Rd. IslaVista
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Truth is simple. Always. To find it, one must guide one's attention in the direction opposite of mind. If mind is NOT our central reality, then what IS?
you tell me. i dig what ur diggin, but I gotta tell ya you gotta buck up on your language. Your gonna get stampeded around here✌️
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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When serendipity (a thoroughly erroneous concept) brought me to this thread, I immediately recognized that I’d be in for an ‘experience’ if I chose to participate. Frankly, I was impressed that a topic called ‘What is “Mind”?’ existed on SuperTopo—more impressed that it had this many posts, and was still going strong six and a half years on. Nonetheless, this is really stepping out on a limb.
Little did I know, John, that the first person to engage my post would be a guy I was in awe of back in the ‘70s. Your style in life, climbing, and mathematics I imagine, leave no doubt that you take everything that captures your attention very seriously. This is one serious dude!
And that speaks of sincerity, which happens to be the first principle of consciousness.
But the real question for us all, is how serious are we? Can we walk off the battlefield with our head in our hands? Smiling? Rare is the individual who reaches that attainment—which is really only the beginning of the journey.
As I started this reply, my wife came in and reminded me that if we were going to have ‘chicken with 40 cloves of garlic’ for breakfast, I needed to get on it. It needs to be in the oven at 215˚ all night. So that’s what I’ve been doing while I contemplated what to say to you.
I buy Mary’s organic, whole, heritage chickens grown in the Bay area, something you may see in Colorado. I’ve seen them packaged in different ways in different parts of the West. Here, they are sold in very tightly secured, tough, food grade plastic. But you never know what’s going to be inside one, when you open it. The little bag in the chicken’s now hollow core may contain a liver, part of a gizzard, maybe a heart. Or maybe a neck and two hearts. Sometimes there is nothing inside. Tonight I scored. It was full of livers.
I had to laugh, because it reminded me of Forrest Gump, saying, “Mah Momma always say-id, life is lahk a box uh chockluts. Yew never know what yer gunna git.” There's an individual unencumbered by mind, full of seemingly unconditional love and dripping with humility and wisdom. We don’t need the IQ of Forrest Gump to excel in the spiritual journey—but neither does it hurt.
Living as we are in a dual universe in the last and most decadent age of existence for this cycle, true love and humility are the only two qualities that will get us home. And I’m sure you’ve noticed, this place is not home.
How do we get there? To true love and humility, I mean. Well, there are lots of purposeful, divine mechanisms in place, and many of them tie in to the brutality alluded to in the part you excerpted. Saints and Masters throughout the ages have been keenly aware that an individual generally has to have been flattened by the world before they’re truly ready to walk the true path. Ego has to be at the end of its rope without a knot at the end, before it’s willing to consider its own crucifixion.
It’s not quite as gruesome as that may sound, but it’s every bit as serious. And a true Master embodies a degree of Love unimaginable to mind. Any mind that is continuously exposed to a genuine Master eventually realizes that it will gratefully give up the charade in exchange for the presence of that Love and the Sound. Unfathomable and irresistible, if a soul’s lifetime has arrived to begin the most difficult journey known. Yet simultaneously the easiest.
That’s all I meant.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Then you notice the feelings; what are they without "I" attached to them? They are quite vibrant and intense. If you don't get too excited by them they fade and you are left with just raw presence; another fascinating place.
so do you think we are able to direct our most intimate intense feelings where we want?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I've found this thread coming closer and closer to providing diminishing returns...
and while Largo likes to try to get me in my pigeon hole, he hasn't really a clue about many things, one thing confusing the "causal chain" as a part of the physical description of the universe.
For that one, he could perhaps look at Ted Chiang's short story Stories of You Life which was the very much more thoughtful basis of the movie Arrival, the screen play for the movie was perhaps more accessible to the movie-going public, but the short story pursued a more interesting set of ideas.
And he reminds us that there are multiple quantitative descriptions of physical phenomenon, and that those quantitative techniques form equivalent ways of describing the phenomenon. In particular, the approach of variational calculus which does not presume a "cause and effect" setting.
Largo is always demanding how the "steps" of the causal chain go, it is one way of thinking, a "differential" way and one can think of it as a force causing an acceleration on a particle.
But another way of thinking about it has to do with considering the entire path of the particle of interest, and that that particular path is an extremum of it's action, the difference between it's kinetic energy and its potential energy. Here we don't have a causal picture of what goes on... we are considering the property of the entire trajectory.
Now both ways of calculating give the same result, that is the sense of equivalence.
Chiang uses the example of Snell's law, and Fermat's principle of least time... that is, light will take the path which minimizes it's time to go from A to B... one could ask the question, how does light figure this out? But it is only confusing if you cannot see that these different ways of looking at the physical problem give you the same answer, the conclusion being that Largo's insistence that physical theories are required to invoke the "causal chain" is incorrect, they do not.
This is a mind bender I'm sure that Largo will object to... he can ask his carpool about the calculus of variations, and it's role in describing the universe, and the implications for this sort of causality.
This apparent teleologic description by way of the calculus of variations is equivalent to Largo's mechanistic prejudice... but this teleology is woo-less.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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WB said "We flew from Yosemite by helicopter to Banner and Ritter."
Thanks WB; the guy who told me the story said he was asked to do the ritter climb but declined due to that spring's bad weather patterns; while the climbers were doing the ascent he was skiing at Mammoth and noticed a dense shroud of clouds around ritter and knew it was not good.
BB; I am not interested with directing my feelings as I am with becoming more intimate with their nature . Being able to just be with them without reacting one way or the other. Observing them; what are they.?
ML mentioned the other day that if you smile it will typically make you feel better. sometimes while sitting, and distanced from narrative, if I smile it triggers intense joy. What's with that? If I look closer I have no idea what joy really is except it isn't dissatisfaction. So I direct back to the question of what is this without the discursive?
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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the physical mind will go to any length to maintain its magnificence by denying the existence of the spiritual mind
from birth we are trained for physical success, so the physical mind never shuts up
the vast spiritual mind tries to be in touch with us, yet rarely uses words and is thus commonly drowned out by the constant chattering of physical mind
once transcending denial, ample evidence becomes apparent; and working together creates a powerful combination
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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that is, light will take the path which minimizes it's time to go from A to B...
Yeah, that sounds woo-less. I think the woo-full model shows how to take ur time and do it the right way. I guess unprecebable for those tossed by luck and chance?
Sorry, just an emotional outburst;)
PSP, Thanks. I'm trying to grasp a grip too. Some I love and some I hate
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