fbpx
Menu

Peter

Forum Replies Created

Viewing 15 posts - 181 through 195 (of 931 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • in reply to: Life without dopamine #383702
    Peter
    Participant

    So many grammar issues in my post – it’s a vision thing – let me try again

    Hi Murtaza

    It takes a strong person to get help when they need it so well done. I watch my brother struggle with mental health issues, and I know its not easy.  Do you have access to talk therapy to go along with the medication assistance?  My brother found it helpful if only to accept that he needed the medication.

    You are asking a question that often comes up with the practice of Buddhism and the concept of detachment. I recognize that in your case the detachment your experiencing isn’t the same as choosing to practice the art of detachment. I wonder though if an intentional practice of detachment might help?

    A skillful practice of detachment is difficult, and my observation is that it often leads to the trap of indifference. If I’m detached from desire or an outcome why bother, what the point? Its not unusual to find that the more someone progress in the practice the more they tend to disengage with life.  I know that is a trap I often fall into.

    The intention of the practice is to be fully engaged in life, as it is in the moment, without attaching expectations, fears, hopes. Such Attachments tend to be based on the past with the affect of projecting oneself into some imagined future.

    What is the motivation to do things?  Life

    Regardless of circumstances, regardless of like or don’t like, you’re it, where even a choice of not playing is playing.  Life does not care, (in the usual way we define care) though Life does push, even demand, growth and new life. (Which is a kind of care) It’s just that the ego desire is that we had control of the process and that it be painless. (Growth always involves something “dying” so painless isn’t going to happen. Life devours life for Life. Every creation is a destruction, every destruction a creation)

    … I like watching movies and stories about mountain climbers. Have you noticed that 95 percent of the story tends to be focused on the struggle to get to the top, 1 or 2 percent about being on top with the remainder if any about the climb down and return to, what comes next… Happy ever after, we assume and don’t really wish to look further as the next story starts.   (As a metaphor the most important part of a journey is the return. To take back and apply what was learned. )

    As a society we like the moment on the top, the gold metal. But you can’t live on top a mountain. Can you taste the conflict? Its the drama of the engagement with the struggle that pulls us into the story is the struggle, while the moment on the top is almost a bitter sweet one. At some level we know that the moment at the top doesn’t mean that much…

    So which is it? The moment on top or the engagement that matters? When we tell our stories where do we spend the most time?

    I enjoy watching the Olympics and like to hear the stories about what happened after the gold metal winners go home. After achieving that height, how well did they descend?  How many handled the descent as well as the assent? How many suffered depression? It seems to me that win or lose depression doesn’t care who to won or lost. In either case it is the ability to descend well that is a determining factor.

    Is their choice here? I don’t know. I act as if there is. Its a work in progress… to engage in life as it is in the moment, saying Yes to Life as it is (A “knowing” that Life as it is, is Love) while detached from desire or outcome. Sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t.

    Joseph Campbell when asked a question about meaning and purpose said that There was no point in asking the question when You are the answer.  Life does not give you meaning or purpose it is you, regardless of circumstance, that gives meaning and purpose to Life. So, play????

    What is the motivation to do things without dopamine or reward?  What is the motivation to do things with dopamine with and without reward?

    I suspect the answer may be the same. You’re writing the story,

    in reply to: Life without dopamine #383699
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Murtaza

    It takes a strong person to get help when they need it so well done. I watch my brother struggle with mental health issues and I know its not easy.  Do you have access to talk therapy to go along with the medication assistance?  My brother found it helpful if only to accept that he needed the medication.

    You are asking a question that often comes up with the practice of Buddhism and the idea of detachment. I recognize that in your case the detachment your experiences isn’t the same as choosing to practice the art of detachment. I wonder though if a intention practice of detachment might help?

    That said a skillful practice of detachment if difficult my observation is that it often leads to indifference. If I’m detached from desire or a outcome why bother, what the point? I’ve often observed that the more someone progress in the practice the more they disengage with life.  I know that is a trap I often fall into.

    The intention is to be fully engaged in life as it is in the moment without attaching expectations, fears, hopes all of which tend to be based on the past while projecting one self into some imagined future.

    What is the motivation to do things?  Life

    Regardless of circumstances, regardless of like or don’t like your in it and even a choice of not playing is playing. Life does not care, (in the usual way we define care’) though it does push (demand) for growth and new life (which is a kind of care, we just desire to control the process)

    I like watching movies and stories about mountain climbers. Have you noticed that 95 percent of the story tends to be focused  on the struggle to get to the top, 1 or 2 percent about being on top with the remainder if any about climbing coming down.  (As a metaphor the most important part is the return. To take back and apply what was learned during the struggle.)

    We as a society tend to focus on the moment on the top, the gold metal which would be great if life stopped their, but you can’t live on top a mountain. But this is a conflict as its the drama of the engagement that pulls us into the story is the struggle. So which is it the moment on top or the engagement that matters?

    I watch  the Olympics and pay attention to the stories after the gold metal winners go home. After achieving that height how well do they descend? How many will suffer depression? How many will handle the descent as well as the assent? Its seems win or lose depression doesn’t care who to attack.

    Is their choice here? I don’t know. I act as if their is. Its a work in progress… to engage in life as it is in the moment, saying Yes to Life as it is (Experiencing that as Love) while Detached from desire or outcome. Sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t.

    Joseph Campbell when asked a question about meaning and purpose said that There was no point in asking the question when You are the answer.  Life does not give you meaning or purpose it is you regardless of circumstance, that gives meaning and purpose to Life.

    What is the motivation to do things without dopamine or reward? What is the motivation to do things with dopamine with and without reward? I suspect the answer can be the same. Your writing the story.

     

    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #382137
    Peter
    Participant

    I would like to say something about this idea of love being communicated.

    When a relationship ends its common to hear someone say. “I don’t love you anymore”, – “you never did”…

    Is it possible to end a relationship as a experience of Love?

    Joseph Campbell* liked to tell this story of a samurai warrior, a Japanese warrior, who had the duty to avenge the murder of his overlord. After some time, the samurai found and cornered the man who had murdered his overlord. He was about to deal with him with his samurai sword, when this man in the corner, in the passion of terror, spat in his face. And the samurai sheathed the sword and walked away.

    Whether the samurai kill the man as a act of honoring his code (his center of “being”), or anger the murder would be just as dead. However, this is not a story about the murderer nor is it a story about justice, mortality or even the code of the samurai. It is about acting from a place of ones “being”, ones truth, responding to life needs from ones authentic center.

    If I say Love is the code from which I serve and respond to life, and someone has “murdered” – crossed a boundary that duty requires a response. It is possible to pursue that responsibility of accountability as an act of Love?

    (I argue here that personal, social wellbeing… meaning, purpose, joy.. arise from a experience of being loved which cannot exist without the experience of getting to be accountable. That nothing we do or are could be experienced as mattering and or experienced as “being” loved without the experience of accountability for the “good” and the “bad”).

    Love, accountability, responsibility, fear, hate, forgiveness, vengeance, justice, freedom… all have something in common. They all involve the setting boundaries. The question, from which do we draw on to build the boundary?

    With regards to relationship, it might feel necessary to use the energy of anger to create the boundary to end a unhealthy relationship. Perhaps better to say ending contact, as that is also a kind of relationship?

    The problem with creating a boundary using the energy of anger is that it burns and does not care what or who it burns. I would suggest that the boundary that ends a person relationship can be maintained from the energy of Love.  Ether way a boundary is created. It is possible to create the boundary without damaging the ‘code’ in order to fulfill the ‘duty required of the code’

    It may seem to be a impossible paradox, as a seeming paradox words fail… here is a riddle to ponder

    “Stillness is what creates love,
    Movement is what creates life,
    To be still, Yet still moving
    – That is everything!” 
    Do Hyun Choe

    There is a time for everything even the creation of boundaries from a place of hurt that may not feel like love, yet it still may be.

    From what I’ve observed Anita response to those seeking dialog always comes from a place of love even when healthy boundaries require a dialog relationship to end.

     

    * Google Ep. 2: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth – interview with Bill Moyers

     

    in reply to: Comparison #381970
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Frances

    This year with working from home I very much understand the anxiety that comes from one day flowing into the next and that feeling of ‘nothing’. A seeming constant feeling as if there should be something more… then looking around watching others that ‘appear’ to be so much more engaged in life. which only intensifies that ‘feeling’ of nothing, creating a kind of self-fulfilling anxiety loop. My experience with such loops is that when left unchecked have led to panic attacks. Life’s way of getting our attention when the kinder ways haven’t been headed.

    Your brother sounds like he has the gift of being a catalyst, getting others to get out and do things. So nice to have someone like that in one’s life. I know I need that as I find it difficult to motivate myself to get out. That said, having such a gift would exhaust me so I’m ok with apricating it in others and joining them when I can. We all have our different gifts and roles to play.

    You posted under the Purpose category suggesting that this ‘nothing’ experience is associated with this thing we call ‘Purpose’ or ‘Meaning’. Your view of your brother then may be a projection of what you feel lacking in yourself. A sense of purpose and engagement with life and not so much a comparison as in you want your brothers’ life. If only you were more like him everything would be great…  Instead this may be a nudge from Life that you’re in a kind of rut that as yet can’t see a way out.  A practice of mindfulness can help you let go of the comparison which when unskillful tends to project the problem outwards as in a ‘something’ that could be solved ‘if only’ something outwardly changes to magically fix everything.  The if only and shoulds which tend to hijack the energy of change that needs to start from within.

    There is nothing like an unskillful relationship to this thing we call “purpose” and “meaning” to lead someone into a funk of stuckness of nothingness. (Purpose and meaning are something we get to experience but often mistaken as having to be a specific thing we do, should do, if only….  Only this or that action can be purpose, give me purpose… Purpose a something life is expected to give us when in realty it is something we give to life. We are, you are, purpose and meaning, Everything you are is purpose given to Life. We may not be that we are even looking for Purpose but engagement with life as it is in the moment. Something me may more easily do if we forget the whole idea of purpose, and doing so get to be surprised by a experience of it. )

    What is your concept/relationship of/to Purpose? Is it something you can generate from within or need others to validate?

    What are some of your brothers’ qualities that you might like to develop and work on for yourself?  Which qualities might you apricate but wouldn’t want to make your own?

    What small steps could you take to break this feeling of nothing and stuckness? Perhaps a change of perspective along with something that might push yourself out of our comfort zone and engage life differently?

    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #381873
    Peter
    Participant

    Here i am, no feelings, no desires, no goals, only consuming, like an animal, at least an animal doesn’t have awareness, the drugs has made me even more apathetic, more numb, i kinda like it, this is why i laugh at everything that happens to me, because its all just a big joke, all of this

    Beautiful… agony, bitter sweet. I used to wonder how it was that I felt so much, that I felt nothing at all? Why is it that the Buddha is most often pictured laughing?   “Dad I’m big but we’re smaller than small, In the scheme of things, well we’re nothing at all, Still every mother’s child sings a lonely song, So play with me, come play with me

    It’s all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for… it’s all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can’t you see the funny side? Why aren’t you laughing? ― Alan Moore: Batman: The Killing Joke

    “We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.” ― Alan Wilson Watts  – “The universe is the game of the self which plays hide and seek for ever and ever.” Come Play with me

    Most Conflict, inner and outer, has nothing to do with the present. It is always about the past or the future. We can’t agree on the details of what has happened or is going to happen. We desire certainties… but memory is a trickster, a work in progress, ever changing and we never know what is going to happen.  What is really in dispute is how we will deal with not knowing… For my part I prefer the gift of doubt

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #381866
    Peter
    Participant

    Normie
    A person gravitating to social standards, accepted practices, and fads of their own time & geographic grouping without broader cultural perspectives from which they draw.

    Normies possess a lack of interest in ideas not easily accessible or being outside of their/society’s current range of acceptance. A straight. A follower.

    Most normies adopt a “popularity is the only measure of good or bad” mindset at an early age.

    Normies typically have a sense of cultural superiority over “counter culture” movements & foreign cultures. They will often try to discredit out cultures or choices falling outside of their majority think claiming those of other dispositions are mentally ill or out of touch with reality.

    By perspective normies of this generation would have been the social outcasts of the uber conformist 50s.

    Most normies don’t believe they are so. A deep generational delusion has since persisted -allowing them to believe they are defying a system of social rules long since defunct.

    This group can easily be molded to suit virtually any desired value system. In Americas capitalist system, normies have been adapted to consume whats easily attainable with little to no resistance. Popular is good. Therefore all that has been perceived to be vetted by their peers then is accepted.

    As their majority cultural definitions are rooted in shallow concepts and fads that soon expire they’re often then called old.

    Normie is a slang for a “normal person,” especially someone seen to have conventional, mainstream tastes, interests, viewpoints, etc. It is intended as an insult but often used ironically.
    Normie is also sometimes used by specific in-groups to refer and distinguish themselves from specific out-groups.

    Normie, another label and assumption to make us feel special.

    If you think your crazy your probably not so if you don’t you probably are are….  Perhaps a Normie is a person who doesn’t realize they are crazy. We are all individually the same, being unique.

    “You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us IS.”

    Thoughts that have never been thought by anyone else before… “I rather have the worst but original idea, then to follow a good one…” A new fad of the time, no so new.

    in reply to: My soul is shattered i need an honest advice please. #381553
    Peter
    Participant

    This close to the experience it may be difficult to detach the emotions from the analysis of the experience and learn from it.  Detachment here does not mean not feeling the emotions you have only that you avoid attaching your sense of self to them. We have emotions we are not our emotions. We have experience’s we are not our experiences. (That can be a hard one to grasp, as its all to easy to define ourselves and or be defined by a single experience. )

    You are not a ‘bad’ person because you feel bad or have done hurtful things to others. We all struggle and we all hurt the ones we care about most sometimes. Relationships are a crucible which will revel our best and worst qualities.  Shadow work (often projected onto the other) and mindfulness can help us separate the things that belong to us and the things that belong to our partner. Forgiveness, accountability, responsibility… are all tools that help us develop the ability to learn better, and learning better do better.

    Sadly its a reality that it is often the pain of a relationship ending the pushes us to do the work that might have saved the relationship.

    My experience and observations is that their is a tipping point when the past of a relationship becomes so heavy that only those where both those involved have truly learned to know themselves AND a have developed the art of Forgiveness AND have above, above average ability to communicate can over come. (Depending on those factors (and others) every relationship has a different tipping point that love, as understood in that experience, cannot over come. )  Love pushes towards life and growth, when the tipping point has been reached, LOVE may require a relationship to end if only to push us.

    Their is a lot to unpack in your post, a lot that you might learn from. Keep writing. Keep a look out for your victim and villain story’s. These types of stories can shine a light on our own projections and fears, areas that might require work.

    Other questions you might ask. Where in the relationship did you feel safe? Did you react or respond to you partner when you felt unsafe?  How so? How did your partner respond or react to you when they felt unsafe? Where your boundaries healthy ones?  How many of your boundaries were defined by fear and how many maintained by love? (Using the energy of fear and anger to maintain boundaries may be easier then using the energy of love. At least that has been my experience. )

    I wish you well on your journey. Its sounds so odd… but LOVE opens the door to being able to be grateful for the very things you wished never happened.

    From a interview of Stephen Colbert

    “…he is the youngest of eleven kids and … his father and two of his brothers, Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, were killed in a plane crash when he was 10.”

    “I learned to love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”

    I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien’s mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of G_d are not gifts?’ ”

    Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of G_d are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”

    He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I’m grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.  I felt so guilty to be grateful’. But I knew it was true.

    “It’s not the same thing as wanting it to have happened,” he said. “But you can’t change everything about the world. You certainly can’t change things that have already happened.”

    Consider that this is coming from a man who millions of people will soon watch on their televisions every night—if only there were a way to measure the virality of this, which he’ll never say on TV, I imagine, but which, as far as I can tell, he practices every waking minute of his life.

    The next thing he said I wrote on a slip of paper in his office and have carried it around with me since. It’s our choice, whether to hate something in our lives or to love every moment of them, even the parts that bring us pain. “At every moment, we are volunteers.”

     

     

    in reply to: Letting go of my home #381505
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Diane

    I’ve always like the 2001 Movie Life as a House. 

    I always thought of myself as a house. I was always what I lived in. It didn’t need to be big. It didn’t even need to be beautiful. It just needed to be mine. I became what I was meant to be. I built myself a life. I built myself a house. – Life as a House

    As a metaphor I’ve wondered if this isn’t something we subconsciously  do. Through the years I’ve notice that most of the people I know doing renovations would end up leaving something undone, something that would always bother them, that they would get to… Then when they finally addressed it they ended up selling a  few months latter. I’m not sure if that says anything about human nature or not.

    I think that when we grieve such a change after putting so much work in it we are also grieving a imagined future that can not be. All the work you put in for this imagined future feels like regret but nothing we do or learn is lost even if we must move on.

    A part of you seems to be aware that the renovation wasn’t just about  bringing the house back to life. If this house was interpreted as if it were a dream… What associations come to mind when you think of House? What feelings do you connect to when you look at your work you completed? Which room ‘talks’ to you the most? How are you like this House? It might be worth while to examine it.

    As for regret…

    It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living.
    Easy to wish we’d developed other other talents, said yes to different offers.
    Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
    It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have.
    It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be.
    It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

    But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.
    We can’t tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
    ― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

    A ‘house’ it seems is always a work in progress.

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    • This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #381303
    Peter
    Participant

    I’d like to add on to what TeaK Mentioned – I very much agree that a good Therapist would be helpful in the healing of past. They can help you give to yourself what others should have given you.  

    “Sometimes you have to find a way to to give yourself what someone else should have given you”.

    In Jung’s path to Individuation the first task is coming to terms with the mother and father complex. Your parents may have influenced how you relate to the mother and father architype however this is not about one parents. This is coming to terms with your own ability to nurture and protect (healthy boundaries) and provide for yourself. Individuation requires that at some point one takes ownership of becoming their own ‘mother‘ and ‘father‘. Our life experience with our parents and other family  may have given a good or bad examples, and influenced our own ability to care for ourselves but it does not define it. Even so we must take ownership.

    It’s not easy, by the age of 5 most of use have determined how we are we will respond to life. How we will nurture and protect ourselves.  That is what TeaK is getting at. If we want to move past that 5 year old response to life you need to ‘talk to him.

    Last thought. Some mistake the call to ‘love others as oneself ‘ as a command. I view it as the reality in how we love and that if we can’t love ourselves we are going to find it difficult to love others. How you love yourself will be reflected in how you love others and what they intern reflect back to you. (Why relationships are crucibles of self discovery (becoming). The good the bad and the ugly will show themselves).

    You can’t ‘fix’ what others failed to give you but you can start learning to love yourself in more skillful ways.  A part of that will be accepting the things you cannot change about yourself and focusing on what you can.

    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #381297
    Peter
    Participant

    hope is a double edged sword

    i really don’t like false hope, again i really don’t care about hope or hopelessness, i only care if this hope its true or not, is it true that i might change in the future ? yes, though there is a lot of things that stay with me, false hope (or dreamy thinking) is what most people do things for, a some kind of illusion, i saw that people deprive motivation from such things, i lived in a fantasy world for a long time, but when i saw reality, i saw nothing worth living, and i still don’t, at least in the past the false hope and the dreamy thinking gave me enough reason to think its worth it.

    I think we agree here though I would not label hope as being something that is true or not true. Hope for me is a skill a person can work on, it’s paying attention, keeping ones eyes open for possibility and then acting on it.  One should not be defined by how one defines a specific hope or goal. Its more of a direction, open to pivot when required. In Buddhist speak its developing a detachment from a specific outcome while engaged.

    I also spent a great deal of time in a fantasy world of hoping for something to magically change and or pretending that it had. Lots of if only this or that, lots of shoulds and unfairs with little action.   Hope with eyes closed.
    Taking time not to hope, as I was hoping for the wrong things, without falling into a trap of indifference and hopelessness created space for me find some peace in the moment.  I have learned to practice hope with care

    in my case i don’t label a thought as negative or positive, that’s an outside judgment

    It can be but it can also be a judgment that comes from ones inner dialog and it can be difficult to separate the two.  Your posts suggest to me that both are present but I could be wrong.

    im not trying to find a solution, i already know what it is

    The advice of taking time not not dwell on ones solution and or sufferings still holds.

    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #381275
    Peter
    Participant

    You asked for advice, so here it is: first thing for you to do is to stop trying to find a solution to suffering, stop looking for a way out- for the rest of 2021. For the rest of this year, give zero thought to ending your suffering, completely remove your attention from this topic. Do this today,  let me know how it feels for you, and we’ll take it from there (one step at a time).

    For what its worth I think that’s good advice from Anita.

    There was a time in my life when I felt similar to what you talk about.  Like you I got discouraged when people  suggested I be more positive. The ‘think positive’ advice, as a defensive pessimist I wasn’t built that way and that wasn’t going to change. I was not going to be able to change my thinking by replacing it with ‘positive thinking’. Then it occurred to me. What if I just left the space blank. That to my surprise I was able to do. I changed the stories I was constantly repeating to myself with no story. A kind of mindfulness I guess thought didn’t know it at the time. When the negative stories came, I didn’t try to change them but more important in time I found I didn’t have to dwell on them. Its difficult to describe.

    I shared some of T.S Eliot’s pomes before. I repeat this to myself when I find myself filling the space of my self talk unskillfully

    “I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing”  – I discovered as you mentioned that like toxic positivity, hope is a double edged sword, to easily done unskillfully.  Better not to hope then hope unskillfully.  It is important to say that this is not hopelessness.

    wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;” I was very naĂŻve and didn’t have a great relationship with the ‘idea of Love’. Not having to fill a time of waiting with unskillful stories of ‘Love’ turned out to be very freeing.

    there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. That the  waiting becomes the faith and love??? I love that.  Challenged me to re-evaluate my relationship with faith and love. *

    Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:” How very true for me at the time. Wait without filling the space with stories, negative or positive.  I live in my head so was very surprised to discover it was possible. Those moments when I let thoughts go…

    So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” The problem of opposites. A change in perspective, the possibility that one can be detached and engaged, still while dancing! Find that the way out of our suffering isn’t the light but first the darkness, isn’t up but going down. A experience discovered in the waiting..

    * Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled pistis into us—that is, trust and loyalty. – Jung

    Waiting becomes trust becomes a experience one can lean into.

    “If you think you imagine yourself taking the position of esthetic stasis, you’ll understand about withdrawing fear and desire for what happens, and about samsara being nirvana, the still point in the mist of the turning world. That’s all there is to it. Then the world becomes a display of things from which you are disengaged, and yet, voluntarily, you can become engaged “joyous participation in the sorrows of the world.” It is very different from being compulsively linked.”

    Still

    “We would rather be ruined than changed
    We would rather die in our dread
    Than climb the cross of the moment
    And let our illusions die.”
    ― W H Auden

    But then what our our illusions? Choice? Skillful or unskillful choice?

    in reply to: The 7 Levels of Consciousness #381157
    Peter
    Participant

    In my opinion, if we are to truly find bliss within our Consciousness, we must remove our ego from the equation.  Any attachment, regardless of how small, to our ego can be detrimental to the self

    I think here the question of language, spoken and unspoken as it concerns the experience of Consciousness arises to which the ego appears to play a necessary role. When trying to make something conscious and communicate that to others or ourselves, the I immerges. It is  extremely difficult to reference a experience of consciousness without pronouns, without the I.

    I would argue that the ‘ego’ plays the necessary role acting as the channel between the unconscious becoming conscious.  The error is the assumption that the I is in the drivers seat. The task then is not to ‘remove the ego’ but detach from it, and assign it its proper place. You are not your ego, you have a ego that plays a important role in experience and consciousness.

    I personally find this perspective more useful as attempting to remove the ego at best ended up in science at worst ended up a exercise of frustration and or disengagement from Life.

    The still point of awareness sees the ego, detached, and dances.

    There is a Buddhist story of the beginning where a it becomes aware of itself as the void. When It became aware of itself its first thought was it could be ended by another, but realizing it was alone had nothing to fear.  This awareness of aloneness led to the desire not to be alone and so the world was created. No longer alone no longer safe???

    The tension of opposites creating consciousness, (the knowledge of the tree of good and evil – not the same thing as the knowledge of what is good and evil) coming at a price that as it creates it undoes itself….

     

     

    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #380918
    Peter
    Participant

    I’m taking a social media break.

    Just wanted to say thank you for challenging me Murtaza. I hope it didn’t feel like we were gaining up on you.

    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #380884
    Peter
    Participant

    So anyone who challenges your thinking must disagrees with it

    no, though why challenge such thinking ? what would be the point?

    To learn and engage with others, to develop better arguments?

    No one as you point out can fully understand another. If the criteria with engagement with another is that they must fully understand you  and where understanding means agreeing 100% with your life philosophy and never challenge you… I don’t think that’s makes for healthy relationship. One thing I am certain of is that relationships challenge everyone involved. Perhaps its one of their purposes as they create the crucible for growth and becoming. (I assume here that Life desires/demands growth) It’s perplexing or a wonder as a relationship may be experience as healthy or unhealthy, the possibility of growth is always present. More madding that it often takes a unhealthy relationship to create the growth.

    If I understand your argument you believe that the accumulative past experiences will eventually become hardcoded and so determine a individual reaction to the present moment. That argument can’t be disproved as you can always say that anyone who questions it only questions it because of their past, their nature and nurture have conditioned them, its in the gens, at at some tipping point can’t be changed?

    i asked you a simple question, if you really do have freewill, can you say NO to life? not only saying no, but having the same attitude and beliefs as someone saying no, its a hypothetical question i know, but tell me what do you have to do to end up saying No? cause you really can’t, you simply say yes, lucky i would say

    Not really a simple question: My view on freewill is that we have it but that it is very difficult to exercise. Between stimulus and response, the time between the unconscious and conscious, measured to be about a half second, we react or respond. In that half second the present becomes the past (filtered by our past and future hopes).

    A person may practice meditation and mindfulness to make the gap between the unconscious and conscious as small as possible. The do this by making the filters conscious. A skillful practice removes the unhelpful filters as well as any cognitive distortions we may have. This creates the possibility of influencing the experience of the present. It does not change the present only the experience of the present which then becomes memory, and then may or may not become part of a filter through which future stimulus will be processed.  A filter replacing a filter, the reflection of the present moment  always a reflection of the past, there is always a gap. (perhaps a Buddha might be able to remove the gap)

    My personal experience has shown me that mindful reflection can change the experience of memory/past and that doing so has change the experience of the present. The painful experience of a relationship ending can be the worst experience of someone’s life, then latter discovering that experience lead to personal growth and strength. From one perspective that’s just messed up, from another amazing. Both experiences now in the past as memory combined, bitter sweet. Is their choice in how the present will be experienced with such a past, now memory?

    I don’t know, your argument still stands, maybe its all determined by our gens or maybe its all an illusion. Yet even so, a Buddhist might say one approach to such a illusion may be more skillful then the other. A philosopher may say either way you are accountable. Was that an exercising of freewill? I can’t prove it.

    With regards to the idea of answering Yes and No to Life. I grew up the the semiconscious notion that because of ‘sin’, man broke life, but could fix it, usually by following the rules and being ‘good’. This notion in hind sight was really saying No to Life but we can fix it!

    In the first half of life this was very useful as it gave me meaning and purpose, Energy to engage with life. Not so much as it was but as I was trying to shape it. Some are able to maintain that view point but in my opinion, only if they refuse to look at life as it is. I could not and hit my head against the problem of , pain/evil – the problem of duality, the problem of opposites.  This turned to a time of depression, when my response to Life was a ‘No get me off this ride’.

    That prove very unhelpful. After much search of how others dealt with this response/reaction to Life I explored a response of Yes. This response didn’t change the past or present however it did change my experience of my past and imagined future. Its difficult to describe as its a personal subjective experience. As a taste I would describe it as bitter sweet. (the teste of life?) There is a sense of peace, even contentment but also sorrow that comes with a Yes, which feels like a paradox but isn’t. A Yes does not look away from the reality of Life but flows with it

    Today I move from No let me off this ride and a Yes, the challenge has been falling into a trap of indifference. Can a person remain still as they dance with life? To be contemplative and act, knowing their actions will end as all actions do?

    Their is the practice of sand painting. The artist spend hours creating a masterpiece, takes a movement to ‘see’ it and then destroys it. Such is Life as it is. Can their be pleasure in the creating and a detachment of the inevitable end of all things, all moments? This is what I wonder… My own experience answers… maybe. I’m a work in progress , each moment a practice that starts anew.

    When I find myself distraught. I take a breath and ask myself, how am I in this moment responding to Life. Most of the time its a reactive No, I don’t want to play. The dis-ease most often arising not from the moment but my reaction of No. Wishing to ‘fix’ Life, that it be other, and not wanting to play.  In the next breath I attempt to be more skillful with my answer and sometimes even succeed. This of course does not disprove your theory of Life.

    in reply to: wouldn’t be a mercy if i just ended my life? #380821
    Peter
    Participant

    I wonder why you addressed the following question to.. the normies in this site who are way less qualified to judge and advise you

    i didn’t address it to normies, i address it in the hope of finding a none normie person that can agree with me, agree on my logic

    So anyone who challenges your thinking must disagrees with it, (all or nothing), and disagreeing is a normie to be dismissed?  If you are certain in your reasonings why reach out? Why the need to find someone exactly like minded?

    i believe in the here and now, the past is already gone, and whatever has been produce from such past, can’t live here

    That’s why you say you’re “created in a way that guarantees misery”  i say this because of the combination of my past and current needs and desire and beliefs and values and goals

    If the past can’t exist in the now, why should it influence the present, why not choose your present as you will?  Viktor Frankl  argued (and Science backs up) that “Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” He talks only of the possibility. His observation in the concentration camps shows that most will not choose but instead summit to fate. Either way end was the same for those that choose to respond with ‘grace’ or those that gave didn’t. Only the inner experience of the moment was different.

    It is true that the ability to choose and what is chosen in a moment may be determined by the cards a person one has been dealt. The choice a illusion of fate.  Still the process between stimulus and response exists and so the fate of the possibility of picking new cards.  The past is gone, the end determined, yet their is space between that fate allows us to play with. Why not play? The past is gone, their is no requirement that we hold on to all the cards we were given, especially the ones that only exist as memory. A duality and paradox, Fate and choice existing in the same moment?

    In the space between stimulus and response we filter the present moment though the filters of our fears, hopes, expectations desire… almost all of which are based on memory of the past and memory is a trickster.

     

Viewing 15 posts - 181 through 195 (of 931 total)