I have spent lot of years mainly figuring out what myself and this reality is all about. I've questioned everything I thought I knew about myself and reality. By doing so I constantly became more and more clear about my own conditioning and belief-systems. I saw that every belief I had was just that: a belief that I had taken for granted but that had actually nothing to do with the truth. In fact I've come to see that every belief I had was like a filter in front of truth. Truth isn't something mind can grasp, it's actually the very opposite, everything mind thinks it understands actually takes it that much further from the truth.
So I was questioning everything about reality and saw that eventually even the concept of material universe was just a hypothesis. All we can know for certain is our experience and the phenomenon it contains. Everything outside our experience is hypothesis, even the concrete nature of the universe.
But even more than that I figured out my own ego and belief systems I had about myself as a person. That seemed more relevant at the time. I was always puzzled by the idea that my past life dictates who I am. That would mean that if I were to born in completely different circumstances I would became a completely different person. I could never buy that, I felt that essentially I should be the same regardless of the circumstances. Difference is only in the accumulated beliefs and conditioning and I thought if I could get past those I would find my true core being.
So I continued to go deeper into myself and then in one ordinary day when I was sitting in a car and figuring these things as usual something happened. I suddenly felt total freedom, my issues with self esteem and self-confidence were suddenly gone, it felt instantly like there is no going back. It wasn't like I got suddenly perfect self-esteem and confidence, but experimentally those two words lost their meaning completely. All the subconscious stress about how I have to perform in life etc. were gone instantly, I felt I was free from all the concepts. I see the reason for that to happen was that my mind didn't anymore identify with any of those thoughts that made me a person of certain kind and that also ultimately made me uncertain about myself. My self esteem and feeling about myself was gradually getting better while in the middle of this process but that milestone was something I didn't anticipate.
And what does this story of my life have to do with free will? It is because how I experience it has changed from what it used to be. Before when I fully identified with my past and thought I knew what kind of person I am based on that, I had a sense of "free will" because I identified with the conditioning from which basis the choices are made. I identified myself as the maker of those choices. That event somewhat changed my identity from the doer to the witness, or to be clearer it kind of contains both aspects simultaneously now. So in my experience "I" don't have that identity as a clear cut entity that makes the choices anymore. I am more anchored in the present moment were there are no choices to be made, nor is there a maker of those choices.
Things just flow naturally and events follow each other. Of course there still seems to be this person who "chooses" to write this post, but it is like in the flower example: does a flower choose to bloom or is it just the flow of life that happens naturally?
When you speak of the dissolution of the I into any kind of identification, you are still speaking of having detached yourself from it. So it is a contradiction that you speak of natural flow, because if it were so, you would simply blossom like the plant forms its flower, but you would not speak of naturally blossoming.
In order to detach yourself from an identification with your past self, it requires believing in this past identification. However, since it is impossible to reach a precise definition of the past self, you can only identify with what you believe to be your past self in the present.
This view is a Buddhist one and it has a lot to offer. However, I would argue that whenever you think you have understood something fundamental, found the stone of wisdom so to speak, you have already lost it again (also a Buddhist way of thinking about it).
I think it is entirely appropriate to use the I-form without inverted commas. I am real. I am alive. We couldn't talk to each other if I wasn't. The sun is real. It shines onto earth and it warms your skin. The coast is real and so is the water. The butter on the toast is real. So is the milk and the cow from where it comes.
There is always a possible, a probable and a preferred way of living life. What I favour does not exclude the other, namely the possible and the probable.
Thinking too much about oneself can be just as useless/useful as thinking too little.
it resonates with some aspects of buddhist teachings
but it was not invented by them and i would not credit them with my own view of this
because at the time
i had never encountered any of their writings
Be that as it may, wherever this view comes from, you recognise something true about it the moment you look into it. The fact that I am only able to look at my former self from my present perspective is an intuition that everyone has, but doesn't really deal with or rarely comes across such formulations. Personally, I first came across such expressions through intensive listening to Buddhist monks and I therefore attribute it to them without marginalising anyone else. I am also quite satisfied with the fact that it makes up a significant part of Buddhist teaching, as it opens up to me in a completely different way to Christian teaching.
Honour to whom honour is due. And vice versa.
ok, of course that makes sense
but i think generally it is misguided to ascribe specific ideas to specific sources
if the ideas are true and useful, they stand on their own
no "appeal to authority" needed
If I came across something you said you have found out by yourself, and I didn't find out myself but through a specific source, in this case listening to ordained monks, I don't reject the message only because it was presented to me by an authority. I have no problems to acknowledge the wisdom of someone - whether it may be a monk or a bus driver. The monk himself refers to what he had studied and accepted as true, often through scriptures (written by authors = authority).
I do that a lot. When I read something I tell the person of what this reminds me. There is nothing new under the sun and I like to give credit to those from whom I lend a special idea. I see nothing misguided about that.
agreed.
i pick up a lot of stuff from movies and television shows
but i have yet to find any idea that originated from a movie or television show
Are you saying that you also apply this to theologically motivated writings? I agree, they all refer to something that was said or written either before their time or in a different place.
If they had no reference point to something that already existed, they would have to have thought it first. But the idea that a person had an idea that had never been thought or formulated before cannot be true, if only because people grow up among people and are therefore under the influence of people from birth.
Whether they consciously or unconsciously draw on sources, they access them.
In order to prove that a person is the originator of a unique idea, there would have to be people who grew up outside of human society. In other words, they grew up without a mother or father, for example among animals. However, such a test group does not exist.
There is this story of a wolf girl who grew up among them. In order to be able to communicate with the girl, she first had to learn the human form of communication. The moment this happens, she is already under the influence of humans and their feelings and beliefs.
have you ever been in a situation where someone complements you on your dress and you simply thank them for the complement ?
sometimes they might ask, where did you buy that ?
and perhaps you made it yourself and you simply say "i made it myself"
but did you make the cloth ?
did you base your dress design on some combination of other dress designs you've seen ?
did you invent cloth ?
did you grow the cotton ?
who was the first person to grow cotton and spin it into thread ?
should you give them credit ?
have you ever noticed how, although on first glance, the butter appears uniform, there are subtle variations within it ?
yup :)
the same is true of the cosmos itself
It is actually not mysterious to realise that everyone wants to be everything because they want it. It is precisely the ability to mentally identify with every conceivable characteristic that makes communication with each other possible in the first place.
What Buddhists warn against, however, is committing to a particular identification and then believing that only that one thing is important (i.e. true). The identification with being unattached by any identification whatsoever is in itself an identification.
In my opinion, the human experience is to realise that what we believe to be true is fallacious in some aspect after we have tried it. Wherever something is perceived as true, it is only temporarily true, always for oneself, since one never knows exactly whether another person has exactly this temporary realisation. They may have already left this meeting point (like a railway station) while you have only just arrived. The already left one held his former - and your now present - realization for a while as correct, but then found it to be falsified. He moves on to the next level.
And on and on and on it goes. I think the end goal is to lose fear of death/pain.
But since it is impossible to not identify with some thing, there is the way to identify with anything and everyone in a certain situation, just to leave it behind after the situation passed. So, you ought not to become entirely a certain character but you can, for a while. Until it's time to leave it behind in order to cope with the next situation.
When I travel and I make a halt at a restaurant, and I see myself confronted with a crowd of bikers, I can become this biker for the time being there. I can talk like a biker, walk like a biker and behave like a biker. I need not, though.
I also can ignore the bikers and have a meal and leave. Would be less interesting, though.
LoL :D
However uplifting and enlightening these Asian-influenced views are, we ourselves are Christians and not Buddhists according to our heritage. We have churches instead of Buddha sites, we don't sing Asian chants but those in our own language when we come together as Christians and traditionally deal with the burial of the dead or get married in church.
Just as a Buddhist ordained monk would not hold a Christian mass, a Christian priest would not do it in the Buddhist manner. But the fact that each culture challenges its own and questions its theologies and puts intellectual effort into pointing out trial and error, I think is a good thing.
If we mix everything together, we blur it and run the risk of treating the spiritual as a commodity, so that the theology bought as a commodity is immediately commercialised.
Similar to the science of material things, there is a state of the art period. Until the current kind is considered disproved. But until then, a heart surgeon will follow the latest methods of bypass surgery.
In the same way, a theologian is concerned with the application of state of the art aspects of theology until it is considered refuted. In order to refute something, you have to become an excellent debater and scholar of the material involved.
But it is not refuted because the Christian theologian now completely throws out his own and adopts one from the other side of the world instead.
It is refuted because he has developed further as a Christian. How could it be otherwise? The Buddhist monk identifies himself as a monk and is recognisable as such by others. He has to be, how else would he be recognisable?
Nevertheless, both the Buddhist and the Christian theologian continue to develop and will verbalise aspects of what was once perceived as correct as error and likewise as an erroneous aspect of the doctrine as verified.
There is never a time in life when one remains undecided. But if one believes that one is undecided because everything seems already decided, one is wasting one's mandate on life.
you would think that
i'm going to guess you haven't met very many buddhist monks
Without already looked into the video,
it remains true that someone who works in a Buddhist monastery, has been ordained and can therefore officially be called a monk, is recognisable as such to others. I wasn't talking about anything else.
You can of course be a Buddhist or a Christian without ever having to have entered a church or worked in a monastery. You can believe in the sacrament of marriage without ever having been married by a priest and you can be a deeply spiritual person without ever having come into contact with any of that.
All this and more is possible but is it also most likely?
You don't go to the box club if you want to swim. If you want to meet other swimmers, you're more likely to meet them in the water than at a car club meeting. That's why it's useful that we have such designations.
Of course, one could be a liar. In order to find out if someone lies, it's up to the involved.
Nirbija
Once you are able to detach from those miseries and memories, "you get to that elimination of the subject-object distinction," she notes. Nir means "without," and so Nirbija means "without seed." "You get to that point of what they call 'onliness'—not loneliness," she adds. "It's a state of eternal bliss and being one with permanence."
Overall, "it's about getting through that first stage of recognizing those connections," Sundaram says, "and then the second stage is erasing those connections such that you start to see what Patanjali calls the object in and of itself."
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/samadhi
Welcome to the jungle ! lolol...
Where consciousness is the vehicle - the manifestation - of all the unconscious drives that really run the show...(the rest is just ego, pretending to be the boss lol)
I'll be doing own 'mind model' for this - a-la nietczhe-ian 'souls' and drives theory + Jungian collective unconscious/archetype theory...
A 'model' that I have yet to see discussed anywhere - one that fulfills/ticks many boxes.
It satisfies/explains many conundrums, as I see them.
We will see how it works out.
All just concepts (obvs) in understanding and illustrating the minds functions as best we can - or mind/body mapping to be more accurate.
i love mind models, i'm sure it will be interesting
Your insights remind us of the complexity of human consciousness and the ever-unfolding nature of our understanding. 🌿
thanks
Re🤬eD
https://medium.com/@timothydmoody/lora-v32-from-heltec-everything-you-need-to-know-def4d36fdfaf
🤳
The scene whwere Danny A gets him outta the hospital is great.
That whole movie is great.
🥓
A matter of perspectives
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Yours Is Nothing :OH SO 🤳
What an example of vanity.