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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."
Woody Allen
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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thanks for relating your experience... it evoked memories of experience very similar to those that I had...
funny though that you felt the need to relate it, if they were like mine, there was so much more to it than the description.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: To the extent that it (mind) is objectified, the objectification takes place with a "mediation community" which includes instructors and practitioners with whom you can "compare notes." That is not a subjective exercise, and the validity of that process, and other processes (e.g. science) have yet to be established. Interestingly, no one in the "mediation community" or in the "science community" believe that an individual can come up with the answer on their own by studying their own mind in isolation of all other minds.
It’s just not like that, Ed.
Years ago I said to you in one of these threads here that the final or ultimate teacher resides in you. The others, the external ones, are merely guides along your way. External teachers appear to be particularly good or useful in developing competency through practice, like in school, where one learns basic skill sets.
In our parlance, those skill sets could refer to watching thoughts, feelings, intentions, images, textures, sensation, etc. What are those, where do they come from, where do they reside when you have them, and where do they go when they seemingly disappear? And, what do “you” have to do with any of them? Are “you” in control of any of them? (I mean they are your thoughts, feelings, etc., aren’t they?)
Implications arise, and those conflict and / or are integrated.
With practice should come discipline, honesty, and more astute observation skills.
Practice is static, occurring in controlled environments (like laboratories, like gompas, like dojos). At some point, however, one moves off the pillow, graduates from school, takes lessons and skills and applies them to dynamic conditions (read, “mundane real life”). At that point, one should leave dogma. Communal and institutional norms, beliefs, and values should be left behind. One becomes the final arbiter. As the Buddha said: “Yo, dude, don’t believe me—look for yourself!”
Relying upon teachers will only take one so far, ever—in any domain.
In reference to PSP, I’d say later that relying upon a “me,” “I,” or “self” will also only take one just so far. That can be seen if one is honest, observant, and disciplined. Seeing no “me” or “I” or “self” as most of us conceptualize could not be available for discovery by checking-in with others consensually. It’s something that must be seen and discovered for oneself. (Liberation is impersonal.) Once that discovery occurs (i.e., passing through “the gate-less gate”), then non-stop flow begins to arise.
(Nice articulations, Lovesgas.)
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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A Trillion Lives
I dreamed I lived a trillion lives,
Was born and died a trillion times,
The home of all my trillion minds,
A pulsing fluctuating hive,
The cacophony of my jive,
Such madness I could not survive,
It drove my conscience to connive,
That on my sword I was to dive,
Their memory I cannot revive,
The history of it you won't find,
What sacrifice I did contrive,
But woke well rested still alive.
-Bushman
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Interesting. Compare...
(a) "On the other hand art for example can very easily incorporate a reductive understanding, such as science practices, into its corpus, but it's unlikely the reverse will occur. If you need to construct a hierarchy, I suggest you place art and religion higher than science. What reason has 'science' for airplanes?" -lovegasoline
(b) On the other hand art for example can very easily incorporate a reductive understanding, such as science practices, into its corpus, but it's unlikely the reverse will occur. If you need to construct a hierarchy, I suggest you place art and ??tbd?? higher than science. What reason has 'science' for airplanes?"
The claim / prognosis: As soon as ??tbd?? emerges... as soon as it is developed... "religion" as understood traditionally under all its superstitions (eg, a personal intervening loving God Jehovah) and barbarisms ("God hates fags, infidels, adulterers...") will pass away. Like astrology.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/6-stabbed-jerusalem-gay-pride-march-article-1.2309506
Sometimes people use the words "religion" and "spirituality" because other words and their content are not (yet) available.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"What leads you to believe that astrology has 'passed away'?" -lg
Really, that's the level, or grade, of conversation we'd have? Inspired by your previous post, I thought we might do better.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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there are still people who believe that you can be possessed by demon spirits...
why is that relevant?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Lovegas: . . . art for example can very easily incorporate a reductive understanding, such as science practices, into its corpus, but it's unlikely the reverse will occur.
Now THAT would be something to imagine and see! Please, please, please.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: there are still people who believe that you can be possessed by demon spirits...why is that relevant?
I’m very interested.
Yes, there are. Put an ancient mask on and let it come alive through you. Be a channel. (Improvisation.) Let the unconscious express itself.
As for the other: “relevant” to what, I think, is the important question here. How you answer it will take us into one of a great many realms.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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'Train Horn Now'
What writes me?
Surrounded within the sulfurous volcanic grotto the arrows fell,
Think fast or breathe your last,
Going over the minutes counting down to the brick wall collapsing when the earth started shaking,
Walking on the sandy pebbly beach as the water splashes onto my shoes,
There's that trumpet again,
Again and again,
Think fast,
Or lose your train of thought,
The long train horn blows,
Wait for it lonesome on the hour and as you do it will sound again too soon,
The long train horn blows,
It's alright,
It's just another moment away from the moment away from now.
-bushman
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Put an ancient mask on and let it come alive through you. Be a channel. (Improvisation.) Let the unconscious express itself (MikeL)
Not only that, but it's contagious . . .
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Lovegasoline: DMT, Perhaps you believe that the only thing that’s really serious is science, and that’s where all these things come from.
I believe that the only thing that’s really serious is silence, and that’s where all these things come from.
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WBraun
climber
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Not silence,
But from Life itself ......
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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I believe that the only thing that’s really serious is silence, and that’s where all these things come from (MikeL)
If you have no ears with which to hear, nor eyes with which to see all is emptiness and silence.
(We're spiralin' down here . . .)
A little imagery that was unexpected to spice things up.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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If you have no ears with which to hear, nor eyes with which to see all is emptiness and silence.
so without any smell or taste, would it be no-thing ; )
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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^^^ Yes, down where there in no physical extent . . .
;>\
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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so No calculating, jus nose in the corner lotus style <: -(
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 12, 2015 - 11:43am PT
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Been swamped with work so I fell outta the loop for a sec. Here goes - briefly...
Ed wrote:
I don't get it, Largo, so perhaps you can help educate me...
my first person experience is mine and mine alone... yet you state that your reports of the experience are "...trip reports - and the same data has been reported for centuries throughout the experiential literature." Yet TRs are a description necessarily written with a narrative that makes them accessible to other people. That is, not first person experience...
To the extent that there may be an agreement on such reports, that is objectifying the experience, something you said is not possible.
Yet you just invoked the "experiential literature" to validate your own reports.
What am I missing?... is the experience objective or subjective? If subjective, what am I to make of the "objectivization" of the experience, be it a scientific one or one from "traditional literature?" Why would one be more valid than the other?
--
First, I would remind that there are many phenomenon and truths that have become establishd that go directly against what our intuition/common sense and sense data for ages told us has to be just so. Science was especially insightful is establishing that the rock over there was not "solid," but when looked at closely the atoms comprising said rock were most empty space. Or that time and forms and fields (not void, which does not bend) were not fixed "things," but rather all were mutable and that the constant was the SOL. It is likewise the case that equally counterintuitive facts are to be found in the experiential realm.
That much said, recall that a discursive probe will always focus on the stuff or the things in experience, so in that light, Ed was quite right to interpret my comment on trip reports as referreing to the CONTENT or qualia of experience. the counterintuitive part is that as one's no-mind meditation starts to deepen, the focus shifts away from content to the fundamental nature of the traveler's perception, so to speak, as opposed to WHAT is being percveived. Meaning - WHAT is being objectified is not content, which is impermananet, but rather, preception itself.
But because this is a tricky process that is devoid of a "watcher," and does not resemble a Cartesian Theater, before developing the ideas further, it is helpful to make clear the distinctions between subjective and objective.
To dial this all in, consider the following question:
What does both the subjective and objective have respectively that the other does NOT have. Put diferently, what does the objective have that the subjective does not have, and visa versa?
JL
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