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MH2
climber
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Aug 26, 2014 - 08:12pm PT
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Thanks for the reply, PSP also PP. One of my climbing partners a few years ago was severely dyslexic. He could not handle conventional school. He could not read without great difficulty. However, he was very smart. If he was shown how to do something, like tie a knot or build a stairway, he only needed to see it done once and then he could do it himself. He was creative, also. Last I knew he was making beautiful wood furnishings for homes in the Taos area. And skiing a lot.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 26, 2014 - 08:46pm PT
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He wrote:
"The difference, and this is crucial in understanding much of the discussion having transpired on this thread, is that the practitioners of fiddle playing or hard math or sonnets are not ---as a matter of course, establishing and sustaining ironclad antithetical distinctions between their transcendent discipline versus normal default modes of mental functioning. A fiddle player is not positioning his special knowledge or experience as an equivalent ontological or epistemological rival to ordinary non-fiddle knowledge . Nor is the fiddle player requesting that you spend years fiddle playing as the indispensable condition for validating your considered criticisms of any non-empirical heuristic claims ,with which ,on the face of it, you just might happen to disagree .
"To do so creates an unbridgeable chasm based upon an oppositional framework . IMO it's about high time to bring the "meditative arts " into proper appositional perspective, like fiddling, as a healthy corollary to daily living ---and thereby hopefully rid it of any awkwardly high pretensions of a profoundly existential nature."
I see this as an emotional rant whereby the discursive is feeling done out of knowledge that is rightfully held as its own, usurped of its hegemony by some high-blown woo. In my experience, what is being said is that there are more than one way to use the mind, and while the content and experiences of the various paths are not mutually exclusive, there are limitations to both discursive and open focus modes that immediately come up in the practice. The belief, if not the conviction that the discursive cannot wrangle all of reality is based on a certain view of mind.
When I say “discursive,” I am thinking in a technical sense, specifically per the techniques of using the three cornerstones of sentience – awareness, focus and attention – in several ways.
The discursive use of the mind can broadly speaking be said to be the technique of objectification. To create a mental object, we need to tease out one person, place, thing or phenomenon from the rest of reality. We do this by narrow focusing our awareness, which is the similar to the “capture” or “lasso” function on a graphics design program like Photoshop.
Here, we basically cut out a horseshoe or a planet or an ocean (“narrow” focus is a very relative term) and hold it apart from the rest of reality, whereby this “object” of our awareness is given our attention (“pay attention”). Think of awareness as light, focus as a magnifying glass, and the burning orange dot is our attention that is “paid” to whatever we are objectifying.
Through this discursive process we can work up our fantastic measurements and physical breakdowns of discrete physical phenomenon. Obviously we can never achieve this if our awareness was toggled wide open and we never focused on a given pine cone or quark or honey beaver.
The limitation of narrow focusing is that while sentience can be consciously used to isolate out most any damn thing, by objectifying it “out there,” and crunching the data with our meat brains, sentience cannot escape itself, so to speak, to posit itself, external to and separate from itself, for discursive viewing.
Put differently, the observer is indivisible and borderless and whatever it objectifies “out there” can never include itself, AS sentience. This strange phenomenon is comically referred to the impossibility of kissing your own lips.
Mentally speaking, whatever is viewed can never include the viewer.
The question then becomes: By what means can we use sentience to view and experience sentience itself (not the physical processes, or objective functioning, believed to "create" sentience). One way is open focus introspection.
In this attentive, borderless awareness exercise, we all begin by trying to somehow still “look” at ourselves from the open focus perspective. Somewhere in the process the looker or “I” drops away and there is just looking sans looker. But “looking” is no longer an apt metaphor. Here we are simply abiding IN sentience - wre all of our faculties - from an alert being state. Full emersion in the moment to moment experience of being sentient and being present as the panoply of people, places, things and phenomenon blow through our field or awareness, fast or slow. At first the whole shebang will seem chaotic and untenable. Then we slow down and empirical impressions are made about the basic nature of the shebang. The mistake most people make is believing that these impression are synonomous with discursive data, which is the data stream you get from narrow focusing. This data, drawn from the forest, not the trees, is of another order, neither above or below the discursive, but by no means selfsame.
This experience, while impossible to quantify or perfectly describe, is one not open to narrow focus discursive thinking, and gives one a glimpse at the all, which strangely, is not the same as the stuff or objects (meaning it's NOT the sum and substance of al the stuff out there) that flash through awareness.
JL
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 26, 2014 - 09:00pm PT
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Could the rise of Buddhism in India and China---at least partly---have historically amounted to a sort of social levee , or dam, against the sometimes unchecked rise of regional warlordism?
could this type of religion just fit better with their type of government?
No dictator wants to share the podium with another, especially one that says He's The Creator of the Universe.
Then there's the authority that God bestows upon each individual being solely responsible for their eternal destiny, that would be hard to swallow as a communist.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Aug 26, 2014 - 10:02pm PT
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Somewhere in the process the looker or “I” drops away and there is just looking sans looker (JL)
So when you speak of the "I" dropping away, that is merely part of the process or journey to your final goal. When PSP talks about the "I" dropping away there seems to be more of a social aspect involved, becoming selfless, benign, etc. It doesn't appear that he goes as far as you in the process. ???
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MH2
climber
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Aug 27, 2014 - 07:16am PT
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In this attentive, borderless awareness exercise, we all begin by trying to somehow still “look” at ourselves from the open focus perspective. (JL)
This is not what happens for me. I may be able to see my nose and feel the chair I sit in but my 'self' as such has nothing to do, nothing to say, and is present only as part of whatever is around it.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 27, 2014 - 07:36am PT
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the role of technology in the ... shaping of the mind... the human mind is surely strongly influenced by technology... The collective is forming.
Homo technologicus collectivus, lol!
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 27, 2014 - 07:39am PT
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Find he who conjured language and burn him!
Will our eyes migrate to our chin?
Kinda wish the Selfies would wrap it up at some point. I mean, how many ways can you slice that onion?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 27, 2014 - 09:10am PT
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Tvash: Aug 26, 2014 - 09:58am PT
. . . as you say it. So it is. But, was that all it was . . . as you've described it . . . "traveling in unfamiliar wilderness for extended periods of time?" Or was there more? Have you said all that there was about it? Is that your final answer? Is there a final answer? (No?)
Jan: . . . it takes both meditative wisdom and compassion to become enlightened.
A nitpick: Absolute boddhichitta only seems to come when wisdom (emptiness) is realized. Then compassion is seen and understood. In the meantime, compassion looks to me most of the time as maudlin mawkishness. It serves no one but the believer as a proof of their own self-goodness. Both are signs of delusion. (Neither self nor goodness can be found.)
Jgill:
My comments were not about routes. I was speaking a bit more (non) metaphysically. I was using climbing as a route to higher ground.
The love of exploration seems to go to something very deep and intrinsic to our nature. We wont to explore because we want to find ourselves, and we do so by throwing ourselves out into the world in innumerable ways. But if that is all that it takes to explore who and what we are, we'd have found satisfaction and ourselves by now after so many lives and years.
Solving our riddle of what and who we are solves us, at which point we should finally be able to rest.
Pragmatically (and personally), when would that be, John? It seems to me that to finally rest, we'd have to give-up on finding answers to an unending list of questions. What would it take to completely let go of those? (You don't really want to jump off THAT cliff, do you? I mean, . . . then what?)
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 27, 2014 - 10:52am PT
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I don't explore because I want to 'find myself'. I know where I am. I explore because I want to lose myself in the world.
Seekers. Curiosity, addiction, dissatisfaction, narcissism, or just another form of being stuck?
Speaking of 'self', not too many seekers in service work, I've noticed.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 27, 2014 - 11:46am PT
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MH2 said: In this attentive, borderless awareness exercise, we all begin by trying to somehow still “look” at ourselves from the open focus perspective. (JL)
This is not what happens for me. I may be able to see my nose and feel the chair I sit in but my 'self' as such has nothing to do, nothing to say, and is present only as part of whatever is around it.
In fact once you get jiggy with open focus work, your nose and your sensations are all like your self - simply elements of ALL that surrounds you, inside and out.
Imagine that you didn't have a localized perspective, but were totally present and sentient. What might that experience be like for you?
And Tvash, any viable path these days has a service component, usually a big one, having NOTHIGN to do with recruiting neophytes. This is an outgrowth of the recovery moment, where service is the cornerstone to augment narcissism - our tendency to be "bound by self." And "self" here means being entirely addicted to self-serving behaviors, not to the agency of being, which most traditions hold as divine, however you might understand that word.
JL
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 27, 2014 - 11:59am PT
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Service as an outgrowth of the recovery movement?
None of the service folks I'm thinking of - and that's a pretty large crowd at this point, have ever experienced an addictive day in their lives, you self-absorbed moron. They're just good, selfless people who believe in making the world a better place and who don't have time in their schedules for your brand of narcissistic bullsh#t.
One just won a landmark case involving a flagrant violation of the Voter's Rights Act in our state. You know, real sh#t that actually matters.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Aug 27, 2014 - 12:36pm PT
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The love of exploration seems to go to something very deep and intrinsic to our nature. We wont to explore because we want to find ourselves (MikeL)
I explore out of curiosity, Mike. In math I play with simple concepts and try to create a tiny bit of new knowledge of no real significance. I'm just interested in seeing where a path will take me. I'd be doing the same among the rocks if I still climbed. If "finding myself" means generating that tiny thrill of discovery, then I plead guilty . . . but that's not it. I'm not introspective. To explore my psyche would be a droll slog.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 27, 2014 - 12:54pm PT
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Plus, it's handy to know a few places where you can hide a body should the need arise.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 27, 2014 - 01:14pm PT
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None of the service folks I'm thinking of - and that's a pretty large crowd at this point, have ever experienced an addictive day in their lives, you self-absorbed moron. They're just good, selfless people who believe in making the world a better place and who don't have time in their schedules for your brand of narcissistic bullsh#t.
In the "work," what just jumped up in our boy Tvash is known as "The Beast." Behind this is a self-ritiousness (his friends are above all addictive behaviors, and are the more better, more altruistic, purer article) that feels itself offended - the very core of the ego-bound "I." We all have it, but rarely is it seen so transparently as in Tvash's last rant.
You might want to review what ppssppss was saying earlier, cowboy - or keep eating that broken glass and stinking up the joint, believing yourself a white rose.
JL
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Aug 27, 2014 - 01:44pm PT
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Next page.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Aug 27, 2014 - 01:45pm PT
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I see this as an emotional rant whereby the discursive is feeling done out of knowledge that is rightfully held as its own, usurped of its hegemony by some high-blown woo.
You are referring to something I wrote under the influence of about as much emotion as required to peel an orange. Hardly a "rant".
As far as the deranged notion that the "discursive" is feeling "done out of knowledge that is rightly held as its own" is a silliness begging to be summarily disabused. That which you refer to as "discursive" is nothing less than what I have called "default modes of consciousness". And as such is about as native to the human experience as our putting man on the moon ,unravelling the structure of DNA, and the capacity to do mathematics and write symphonies. I don't think such "knowledge" actually runs much risk of being "done out" by a few dudes doing precious little more than electively sitting around in lotus positions over the recent course of the last few thousand years.
Through this discursive process we can work up our fantastic measurements and physical breakdowns of discrete physical phenomenon. Obviously we can never achieve this if our awareness was toggled wide open and we never focused on a given pine cone or quark or honey beaver.
What is being suggested here is that one form of awareness is "toggled" wide open and the other is narrowly focused--- a false dichotomy which ,on the face of it , cannot be logically sustained.
It has not been established that the human brain is in any way capable of being aware of everything at any prescribed moment. Therefore any and all forms of of awareness are inherently exclusive and narrowly focused.
No matter what the labored disciplined employed to break this limitation, it is of no avail--- the brain is doomed to this inherent narrowness . Bummer,uh? This is the evolutionarily-driven default consciousness.
Rule of thumb: if you are alive then your awareness is narrow-focused. If you are aware of absolutely nothing then you are dead. Moreover, if you are alive you cannot be aware of everything.
Therefore if you are alive and aware --- then your brain occupies a narrow band of activity otherwise known as life. Your awareness is not open-ended. All awareness is narrow and finite. That's what awareness does. There is no "open focus" override switch ---only relative forms of narrowness. Life in general proceeds by chopping the world into manageable segments and fragments to be consumed . The brain, following the dictates of biologic survival , figuratively and literally does the same thing.
No pursuit , discipline , or ideology is so lofty that it can validate any outlandish claim to vault the mind into full awareness of everything. This is not possible. To suggest or claim that such an unbounded awareness is attainable by any means--- is a high pretension which should be reported forthwith to the Better Business Bureau.
Mentally speaking, whatever is viewed can never include the viewer .
I'll deal with this one when I have more time.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 27, 2014 - 01:55pm PT
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Nup. This beast's comments are not self-referential. I know - impossible to imagine, right?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 27, 2014 - 05:41pm PT
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Tvash: I want to lose myself in the world.
And you don't think that's finding yourself? (Hmmmm, take the blue pill.)
. . . have ever experienced an addictive day in their lives, . . .
You are hilarious.
Jgill: . . . that tiny thrill of discovery, then I plead guilty . . . .
John. Why would you need to? What don't I understand? If there is ANY challenge worth undertaking (and there aren't, not really), then what could be better than finding out about yourself? For me (and maybe you want to sing along here with me), the most rewarding experiences showed up when I stretched, was deeply challenged, when I changed in my core, when I saw the emptiness to a choice of action or decision that I invested heavily in. Then I learned more about myself; and when I did, then I learned so much more about the world I found myself in.
This makes me introspective? Let's see, what's the opposite? Would the opposite be oriented to "things?" To achievement? To everything that is external to you, yourself? To anything that lies outside of you?
I suppose that is the dividing line between us. You think all those things "out there" exist as you see them. I don't; I think they are all made-up into the forms that we converse. It's not the "them" that matter; it's the forms that we make-up.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 27, 2014 - 06:40pm PT
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What you are seeing here from Ward and Tvash is what psychologists call disowning - whereby a person identifies with a set of primary selves (ritious, serving, gracious, correct, etc) and disowns the opposites and projects them "out there." It is an entirely unconscious process that the subject not only holds near and dear, but will also heap virtue on top of it, and if truly delusional, will claim it is the dirctt province of truth or God. What you won't see in this clusterf#$k is eithr consciousness or change.
The most delusion aspect of Tvash's angle is that NONE of his friends in their hallowed service are subject to ANY addictions, a Homeric whopper that Mike corrrectly pointed out is "hilarious." As though Tvash his own self is not obsessed with being "right," a "top dog," addicted to ritiousness and judging, etc.
Then we have these fantastic sweeping statements by Ward, delivered with the full furnace blast (aka hot air) of his faux academic rambling:
Says our boy Ward: "What is being suggested here is that one form of awareness is "toggled" wide open and the other is narrowly focused--- a false dichotomy which ,on the face of it , cannot be logically sustained (apparently because Ward himself says so.)
It has not been established that the human brain is in any way capable of being aware of everything at any prescribed moment. Therefore any and all forms of of awareness are inherently exclusive and narrowly focused.
No matter what the labored disciplined employed to break this limitation, it is of no avail--- the brain is doomed to this inherent narrowness . Bummer,uh? This is the evolutionarily-driven default consciousness.
Rule of thumb: if you are alive then your awareness is narrow-focused. If you are aware of absolutely nothing then you are dead. Moreover, if you are alive you cannot be aware of everything."
As usual, Ward has tied his mind into a knot of his own making. Awareness is not narrow and finite, Ward, the relativfe breadth of your awareness is a function of your focus. Yes, the brain DOES narrow focus by default, but this by no means ALL it can do.
From what data and empirical evidence have you draw your conclusions? Nothing at all but his own silly speculations. "Vauliting the mind into full awareness of everything" is the point in which Ward betrays not carefully reading what I said, ie, that an open focus does NOT give one a grasp of the sum of all "things" in reality, because it is not focused on things, which is what the disursive process does, and which Ward rants so ritiously about as being the "only" way the mind works.
This is a primitive denial device we see in most any subject in which a person does not grasp the basics but insists to God and country that he does. Simply jump up and down and swear that (fill in the blank) does not, in fact, exist. But when pushed for the data from which these fantastic claims are made, we find once more that Ward, God bless him, is simply guessing, and fobbing that off as a wonky kind of universal truth.
But again the most fantastic of all the claims so far concerns Tvash's fellowship of friends who suffer from "no addictions whatsoever."
"Hilarios" indeed.
If you want to get jiggy with a rudimentary level glance at the way attention and focus can work, including the modes which Ward insist do not exist, spend a few minutes on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJrpf5OM8cI
JL
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 27, 2014 - 06:49pm PT
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^^^i like this!
This is why i read all ur posts. Your pointing at others' opinions(or reasonings) which is opening my eyes to different perspectives i didn't realize were out there. Thanks
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