Living the self-examined life

[Moonbeam]

Caravaggio: Most eloquently expressed. I empathise with your take on all those scenarios. But I lose you when you refer to your 'feelings of guilt'
Neither of us is guilty for trying to help a lost child, it is the nastiness and conformity of the fearful weak that lurks as a label. We are NOT to blame. We should not ever assume guilt if ignorant judgment tries to label us as 'dangerous' in the context of the events you list.

M: You seem to see the same thing I do, the potential for being labeled dangerous. It is that awareness that I have that helping can put me in danger, that I seek to avoid even as I seek to help the child. I believe that I am capable of recognizing the tendency to suspect the motives of others and the danger that represents to me because I too am suspicious of the motives of others. This unconscious tendency to mistrust the motives of others has its origin, is in my opinion, due to the fact that I was accused of having bad motives as a child. I was caused to feel guilt that I was innocent of and thereby learned to be cautious. I am not now and wasn't then guilty, but I learned how to feel it anyway. In shout, there are facts about how we feel, that we are not guilty, and feelings that we unconsciously feel even though wrong, that we feel anyway. This is why it is important to know what you feel, not via logic or reason, but by the actual experience of what we do actually feel. You may find as I did, guilt and other things where none was suspected.

C: It might be 'easy', as in lazy, but it is a route to disaster. Rosa Parks refused to be a '******' at the back of the bus. She challenged the all-pervasive stereotyping of black people at the time and changed the law (after one hell of a struggle). She fought the law and the law had to be changed. She is my guiding star, when challenged by this type of situation.

M: The scales of history can tip at a single event, but the change of weight from the heavy to the lighter side may have been the work of centuries.

C: Again, agreed. But could you explain what is meant by "the timeless child of being". Is that where we start or a point we should aim for?

M: Both, I think. You were born not as tabula rasa, but as a neural net of near infinite capacity. You could have adapted to any human culture that ever existed and millions more that are, hopefully, yet to come. As a child you had no identity and no ego attachment to one. As an adult, I believe, one can drop the identification. I once had a vision of myself as a bird in a cage. I may be a bird that can sing, but the range of my experience is defined by my cage.

C: Superb metaphor. But here I reject the assertion that there is "nothing to do". We cannot accept the unacceptable, if we enter that zone it is personal annihilation. I might end there, who knows, but I shall resist it as long as I breathe.
Is that just my 'ego' struggling for the unattainable?

I don't know anything. This is what I would say:

For me the unacceptable I was forced to face was that good and evil are the same, that life has absolutely no meaning. But that is exactly the truth I had to admit and it killed me. I was washed away by emptiness loneliness and grief. My world turned black and I knew I would never be happy. So I just let go and died to all my dreams.

My unconscious assumptions were that if life is good one can be happy, one can be happy if life has meaning. Only when I gave up on all that could I see that happiness is my being. The truth isn't out there. The truth is me and had always been. I never had to prove the good or reveal life's meaning. My being just had to appear and it did when the I I call me surrendered and disappeared.

 

[norseamd]

Somewhat busy right now but I will come back and give my response to your question Caravaggio.

 

[Caravaggio]

Somewhat busy right now but I will come back and give my response to your question Caravaggio.

Thanks for the update. No pressure. I await your response with eager anticipation.

 

[Caravaggio]

This is why it is important to know what you feel, not via logic or reason, but by the actual experience of what we do actually feel. You may find as I did, guilt and other things where none was suspected.

Logic and reason are good, but I agree that they are not a complete set of 'life tools'. I do guilt when I am guilty, but I don't carry it around at other times. I am mostly a kind person (I have little civic awards for some of this stuff). But being a long term victim of group sadistic bullying as a child has honed my senses. I live life like I was on 'point' duty in some Vietnam jungle war film. Tense, alert, be ready. Sad, you will say, but far better than being the victim. I once had dental treatment that involved deep sedation. My wife could not stop laughing at me: " Hey you are relaxed!, what's going on? "
It was the Valium. I don't like that sort of numbness. It leaves a person open to silliness and vulnerability.

The scales of history can tip at a single event, but the change of weight from the heavy to the lighter side may have been the work of centuries.

Both versions of history are equally valid. But the exciting histories are those which focus on the 'pivotal moment'. You know the sort of thing: Stalingrad, Hiroshima, DNA, the WWW, 9/11.

You were born not as tabula rasa, but as a neural net of near infinite capacity. You could have adapted to any human culture that ever existed and millions more that are, hopefully, yet to come.

Agree, completely.

As a child you had no identity and no ego attachment to one. As an adult, I believe, one can drop the identification. I once had a vision of myself as a bird in a cage. I may be a bird that can sing, but the range of my experience is defined by my cage.

We are all caged by norms and expectations. Some say free will is a delusion. But in my view it is essential for mental survival that we believe ( even hold the deluded belief) that our choices and actions matter. That our actions are, at least in part, spontaneous and voluntary. The alternative is just too depressing.

For me the unacceptable I was forced to face was that good and evil are the same, that life has absolutely no meaning. But that is exactly the truth I had to admit and it killed me. I was washed away by emptiness loneliness and grief. My world turned black and I knew I would never be happy. So I just let go and died to all my dreams.

That is too scary to comprehend. That sounds like a complete collapse of self. An involuntary psychic 'reboot'. Is that what you mean.

Yet what is left, after this erasure of self seems happy enough. Wise and chilled. How do you explain your survival? I'm guessing that you do not think in terms of a personal goal or 'progress'?

My unconscious assumptions were that if life is good one can be happy, one can be happy if life has meaning. Only when I gave up on all that could I see that happiness is my being. The truth isn't out there. The truth is me and had always been. I never had to prove the good or reveal life's meaning. My being just had to appear and it did when the I I call me surrendered and disappeared.

if the 'you' that others call you, disappeared, What is left of 'You'. You seem pretty tuned-in to me? How do you manage that contradiction?

 

[norseamd]

Both versions of history are equally valid. But the exciting histories are those which focus on the 'pivotal moment'. You know the sort of thing: Stalingrad, Hiroshima, DNA, the WWW, 9/11.

When you read history, grand strategy, and world history you can start to understand just how important the longue duree actually is in the universe.

 

[Moonbeam]

I am quoting my original words to help me remember what your quotes are in response to so that I may better know what I need to further explain, if that makes any sense.

M: This is why it is important to know what you feel, not via logic or reason, but by the actual experience of what we do actually feel. You may find as I did, guilt and other things where none was suspected.

C: Logic and reason are good, but I agree that they are not a complete set of 'life tools'. I do guilt when I am guilty, but I don't carry it around at other times.

M: I agree. My point was to stress the fact that in my opinion the difficulty with knowing what one feels by feeling it is harder than one can imagine. I am a nobody, certainly, but I'm pretty sure I'm not on the edges of any bell curve, pretty normal in most ways I think, but when I first touched the pain I had no suspicion was hidden in me, I was simply blown away. I simply couldn't believe I could hurt that bad.

C: I am mostly a kind person (I have little civic awards for some of this stuff).

M: I have no doubt whatsoever that this is true, and you are also for me an amazing delight to talk to.

C: But being a long term victim of group sadistic bullying as a child has honed my senses. I live life like I was on 'point' duty in some Vietnam jungle war film. Tense, alert, be ready. Sad, you will say, but far better than being the victim.

M: I think we are all like that to some degree. I was told by my teacher that we have all been through a concentration camp. I believe we are all stocked, as it were, by a nameless terror, and that the fear of relaxation is actually the fear that it will get us if we drop our guard. But the dilemma with that is that it already did get us and what we fear now is remembering when with all the feelings we felt when it did.

C: I once had dental treatment that involved deep sedation. My wife could not stop laughing at me: " Hey you are relaxed!, what's going on? "
It was the Valium. I don't like that sort of numbness. It leaves a person open to silliness and vulnerability.

M: When I was given laughing gas in the dentists chair as a young teen, I had a sudden feeling of fear so great I know why people killed themselves. Then I realized I was in control of how much gas I needed with a hand pump and backed it down, hehe. These days I am silly and vulnerable to a horrid degree, but my little niece just loves me.

M: The scales of history can tip at a single event, but the change of weight from the heavy to the lighter side may have been the work of centuries.

Both versions of history are equally valid. But the exciting histories are those which focus on the 'pivotal moment'. You know the sort of thing: Stalingrad, Hiroshima, DNA, the WWW, 9/11.

M: Most of that I wish had never happened.

M: As a child you had no identity and no ego attachment to one. As an adult, I believe, one can drop the identification. I once had a vision of myself as a bird in a cage. I may be a bird that can sing, but the range of my experience is defined by my cage.

C: We are all caged by norms and expectations. Some say free will is a delusion. But in my view it is essential for mental survival that we believe ( even hold the deluded belief) that our choices and actions matter. That our actions are, at least in part, spontaneous and voluntary. The alternative is just too depressing.

M: I do not need a motivation to live. The purpose of life IS to live. I believe that a truer form of spontaneity is only possible when we are not motivated by feelings we are unconscious that we feel but do anyway.

M: For me the unacceptable I was forced to face was that good and evil are the same, that life has absolutely no meaning. But that is exactly the truth I had to admit and it killed me. I was washed away by emptiness loneliness and grief. My world turned black and I knew I would never be happy. So I just let go and died to all my dreams.

C: That is too scary to comprehend. That sounds like a complete collapse of self. An involuntary psychic 'reboot'. Is that what you mean.

M: I have no idea. I do not actually think I know what those things are. I am not a very sophisticated person. I don't really know very much, so I will go to the next of your questions and hope for better luck.

C: Yet what is left, after this erasure of self seems happy enough. Wise and chilled. How do you explain your survival? I'm guessing that you do not think in terms of a personal goal or 'progress'?

M: Every time I think of progressing, of having a goal, I remember that I already am and that I went to sleep thinking about things. As Meister Eckhart once said, guess I have read a few things, The Eye with which I see God is the same Eye with which he sees me.

M: My unconscious assumptions were that if life is good one can be happy, one can be happy if life has meaning. Only when I gave up on all that could I see that happiness is my being. The truth isn't out there. The truth is me and had always been. I never had to prove the good or reveal life's meaning. My being just had to appear and it did when the I I call me surrendered and disappeared.

C: if the 'you' that others call you, disappeared, What is left of 'You'. You seem pretty tuned-in to me? How do you manage that contradiction?

M: Hehe, I read something else that I also now remember too. A man is three things. Who he thinks he is, who others think he is, and who he really is. Who I really am is a nobody. I am when nobody is home.

When I searched for truth it was because I was deeply in pain. I hated this world and all of its evil. I wanted to know that there is a good and that life has meaning but I was looking for a truth that I only assumed was what I needed. When I went deep within myself to discover why I suffered, what was the cause of my pain, I went way way out there in a deep and focused state of concentration and thought. When a blast of wind shook the house I was in, I became suddenly totally aware of that and I awakened in the now. The concurrent experience of these two states of awareness, falling one after the other, caused everything to become suddenly clear. I am real only when I am in the present. To be in the present means the past and the future are dead. There is no me, there is only the silent perception of being here.

Now I only saw that in a flash, but I think there may be those who live there all day.

 

[Caravaggio]

....but my little niece just loves me.

Surely that implies that you are more than 'nothing', as you assert?
You obviously mean a lot to her. Are you only 'alive' in those reflections of caring?

A man is three things. Who he thinks he is, who others think he is, and who he really is. Who I really am is a nobody. I am when nobody is home.

The first two are relatively easy to investigate by logical questions to the person and his/her friends. But who adjudicates on the third element? How can it even be tested, against what yardstick?

When I searched for truth it was because I was deeply in pain. I hated this world and all of its evil. I wanted to know that there is a good and that life has meaning but I was looking for a truth that I only assumed was what I needed. When I went deep within myself to discover why I suffered, what was the cause of my pain, I went way way out there in a deep and focused state of concentration and thought. When a blast of wind shook the house I was in, I became suddenly totally aware of that and I awakened in the now. The concurrent experience of these two states of awareness, falling one after the other, caused everything to become suddenly clear. I am real only when I am in the present. To be in the present means the past and the future are dead. There is no me, there is only the silent perception of being here.

Now I only saw that in a flash, but I think there may be those who live there all day.

You refer to God quite often. I have lost my faith but yours seems still to be there.
You will have noted religious echoes in your experience described above. And I am guessing you have contemplated the parallel between your 'wind that shook the house' moment and the wind that brought with it the 'tongues of fire' in the Pentecostal experience of the tongues descended on the heads of those 'touched' by the spirit.
These moments are rare, even in the Bible (Moses sees the burning bush which conveys the command of God), the New Testament equivalent is probably Saul's 'Damascene moment' of hearing the resurrected Jesus command him to go to Damascus and to stop his persecution of the Christian community there.
Do you see your experience as of personal theological significance?

Yours was transformational. Mine (described in an earlier post) was at first very meaningful yet ultimately very sad and it left me floundering for a long time.

I'm glad that your 'revelation' brought you out of your despair.

 

[Moonbeam]

Caravaggio: Surely that implies that you are more than 'nothing', as you assert?
You obviously mean a lot to her. Are you only 'alive' in those reflections of caring?

M: No. By saying I am a nobody, I mean that I am in my opinion very ordinary. I can't see anything special about me that would suggest that my experiences require any special gift. The one thing used to take a lot of ego pride in was that I always tried to tell the truth no matter how much trouble that got me in. I think, with a bit of self duplicity, I was able to maintain some ego self respect. Having pride is kind of silly, but having self respect is, in my opinion, the most valuable thing there is. I believe you know exactly what I mean by experience. Anyway, I do think that my honesty did take me a long way. It caused me to question so much that I destroyed all that I held sacred.

So what I mean also by being a nobody is that while I used to be full of this and that notion of reality, I sort of unlearned everything. I developed, I guess, not by adding things but by taking them away. Everything I used to know I don't know anymore. I used to think more than I do now. My head is a lot more quiet. I think I irritate many people who imagine they know so many different truths, because I can see that like me, while they may think they know, they don't really. They have a lot more to unlearn.


C: The first two are relatively easy to investigate by logical questions to the person and his/her friends. But who adjudicates on the third element? How can it even be tested, against what yardstick?

M: Well that is the question now isn't it. All I know is that in one moment I suffered in a state of profound despair and a second later I understood everything and calmly fell asleep. I would say that there is a conscious state possible for any person, in which everything is simple and clean, a place where doubt doesn't enter in. In my one little moment of being here, there was no room for anything else but the universe as me. Maybe its like knowing if you had an orgasm or not. It makes a big first impression. At any rate the one who needed to test and prove things to others died along with a lot of other things. But I still feel that nobody can truly be happy so long as others suffer. Thy will be done on earth as in heaven, I guess. I think is part of being real, love and compassion for others.


C: You refer to God quite often. I have lost my faith but yours seems still to be there.

M: Well I lost the god I was told as a child exists, the one who is supposed to be out there on a cloud somewhere, but I found a paler version. I grew up wild and unuttered in religion and had no real training by deeply spiritual people so all the things that torment people in a secular and dark world like our present western civilization tormented me. Why is it that there are millions of only Gods and everybody just happens to believe in the one they grew up being told is that one and only God. Statistically, it struck me as being rather remarkable that only I could be right. My religious castle, in short, was built on sand.

But I believe that the experience I had is not unlike, in many ways, the mystical experience of some religious people, those who believe in a monotheistic god and those who are from less god centered eastern traditions.

I believe, in short, that there is one truth and now we experience it and what we say about it is dependent on the path we took to find it, the product of our time and our location and culture. I have read from the Sufis the notion that religion is a bridge to reality, that once across the bridge the religion is left behind, but that the religious, most of them, have fallen in love with the bridge. Others have to go through the gorge the bridge was meant to cross. That was me in my small way I guess.

So for the lucky, I believe they find God, but the less fortunate, like myself, only find out that God is really their true self. I believe there is absolutely know way to know if God is God of if God is the true self, the projection of our potential and deepest selves out there, because in the state of unified being I described the universe and the self merge into one conscious state. It only matters when you think back on that conscious state. When I do that I get the short end of the religious stick.

C: You will have noted religious echoes in your experience described above. And I am guessing you have contemplated the parallel between your 'wind that shook the house' moment and the wind that brought with it the 'tongues of fire' in the Pentecostal experience of the tongues descended on the heads of those 'touched' by the spirit.

M: No, I know nothing about the Pentecostal stuff you mentioned. It really was a gust of wind that caused my attention to shift. It was the experience of that shift that made pieces fall in place and an insight to occur.

C: These moments are rare, even in the Bible (Moses sees the burning bush which conveys the command of God), the New Testament equivalent is probably Saul's 'Damascene moment' of hearing the resurrected Jesus command him to go to Damascus and to stop his persecution of the Christian community there.

M: Interesting. I have family members who when falling asleep sometime experience a whooshing sound that scares them to death. I have heard it's the result of some kind of shift in conscious awareness, one sometimes referred to as astral travel, leaving ones body. I used to have something absolutely bizarre and inexplicable happen to me when I had high fevers as a kid. I used to be able to produce that terror on will by focusing my mind in some sort of way. Things would start to pulsate and dimensions start to shift but it also scared the shit out of me so I never went anywhere. Hehe.

C: Do you see your experience as of personal theological significance?

M: I am not sure what that is. What happened to me that mattered is that all the emptiness, the loneliness, and the sadness that the universe is empty of love and meaning disappeared in a moment, to be replaced by the understanding that everything I had sought out there had always been hidden in me. The universe doesn't have to love me because I love it, and my love is infinite. Just don't try to cut in front of me on the freeway.

C: Yours was transformational. Mine (described in an earlier post) was at first very meaningful yet ultimately very sad and it left me floundering for a long time.

M: I floundered for a long time too. Somewhere in one of the books, is it the Apocrypha, Jesus is said to have said, Did you but suffer you would not suffer. I believe that grief, unlike rage and sadness and depression, is a real feeling and when you feel it you remember and heal. Maybe even you don't have to remember everything. I don't know. But grief in my opinion is self love, the empathy for self that was denied long ago. We live under a boat that has capsized and have to swim down to swim up.

C: I'm glad that your 'revelation' brought you out of your despair.

M: Thank you. I do not suffer as I once suffered. I don't experience despair, but I do feel pain. I live in a world full of suffering that is totally needless but about which I can't do a single thing. I live in a world full of monsters for which there is nothing to do but forgive. I don't find that easy.

 

[MongGrel]

Kurt Vonnegut

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut


I still do not agree with some of his ideas, but grew up a Lutheran in Indiana myself and still do not lean as liberal as he did.


Reading Harlan Ellison, Robert Heinlein, Hemmingway and various other people took that edge off a lot ATT, but the Free Thinker thing Vonnegut promoted is a good thing, IMHO.


Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampeters,_Foma_and_Granfalloons

I used to eat books before the Internet, I rarely do these days I guess.

That and some college courses in Philosophy and World History when I was in the Marines in Hawaii that never amounted to a degree, but were enlightening.

I'm a non graduate of Chaminade

Chaminade University of Honolulu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaminade_University_of_Honolulu

 

[Caravaggio]

To Mongrel (59)

Yes, Kurt Vonnegut, he saw a thing or three.

I've only read "Slaughterhouse Five". It took me a while to work out that it was his real experience of being in Dresden when the RAF and USAF levelled it in two days in Feb '45.
The scenes are barely imaginable, his descriptions have extraordinary power, most certainly still pertinent today.

 

[Caravaggio]

To Moonbeam, 58

Thanks for that full explication.

I realised that the wind was a real meteorological event, I knew you were not using metaphor there. It is just the coincidence of the wind and the sudden insight thereafter, would lead many people to interpret it as having a special or numinous personal 'meaning'.

I had not heard about the Sufi belief that religion is a 'bridge' to understanding, and that people end up being distracted by worshipping the bridge, rather than journeying to the destination on the other bank.

I'll treasure that insight!

 

[Rebel_L]

To Moonbeam, 58

Thanks for that full explication.

I realised that the wind was a real meteorological event, I knew you were not using metaphor there. It is just the coincidence of the wind and the sudden insight thereafter, would lead many people to interpret it as having a special or numinous personal 'meaning'.

I had not heard about the Sufi belief that religion is a 'bridge' to understanding, and that people end up being distracted by worshipping the bridge, rather than journeying to the destination on the other bank.

I'll treasure that insight!

The conversation between you and Moonbeam has been one that has been meaningful to follow. I can identify with much of what Moonbeam says, and I have a feeling we have had fairly parallel journeys. If we go with the bridge metaphor though I have been on the bridge for most, if not all my journey and did not climb through the gorge the way Moonbeam did. Perhaps I have not fully crossed the bridge yet or perhaps using a bridge leaves one with a different understanding of things, or perhaps its just a difficulty in language when I read what Moonbeam writes but there seems to always emerge some conflict between the realities we see around us. It has been very good to see you help flesh out his thoughts.

 

[Caravaggio]

To Rebel, re 62.

Firstly, sincere thanks for those kind words.

To develop your analogy about the positions of Moonbeam and myself; I see Moonbeam as an explorer who (wittingly or otherwise) went across the bridge and made it to the other side where he has awakened to beautiful weather and calm nights.

I came to the bridge and worried about the integrity of its construction. I jumped up and down on it for a while and felt it creak, so I retreated to the safe side, imagining that the bridge would soon crash to the valley floor, taking all on it to their doom.

Amazingly, the bridge is still standing but I doubt that I'll summon the courage to make another attempt to cross.
But many people make successful attempts, late in life, it seems....

 

[Moonbeam]

To Rebel, re 62.

I came to the bridge and worried about the integrity of its construction. I jumped up and down on it for a while and felt it creak, so I retreated to the safe side, imagining that the bridge would soon crash to the valley floor, taking all on it to their doom.

Amazingly, the bridge is still standing but I doubt that I'll summon the courage to make another attempt to cross.
But many people make successful attempts, late in life, it seems....

Hehehehehe! We have always been on the side we think we want to cross to. Crossing the bridge is just a change in perspective, like turning around and walking away from the bridge saying, that was an easy crossing. Don't you think you crossed just such a bridge when you change from a victim of bullying to the person you are today. Anyway, I do know that talking to you here has made me very happy because I have found one more treasure this world has to offer.

 

[Caravaggio]

Thanks MB, I have also enjoyed our discussion.

?....We have always been on the side we think we want to cross to. Don't you think you crossed just such a bridge when you change from a victim of bullying to the person you are today. .....

It was an important journey, certainly, but I can't take any pride in its completion as it owed everything to biological changes at puberty rather than acquired wisdom.

One day I was a little bullied kid, not much further down the road testosterone production kicked-in and roared through my body in quite an amazing way. (Jeez, that felt good then). My neck suddenly went from 13 inches circumference to 18 and I pulverised the boys who had been my bullies.

I might have reached physical maturity but was still a kid in terms of life-lessons.
Having acquired some competence in fighting I was in danger of enjoying violence too much. A poor learning outcome. Women later persuaded me that constant fighting is 'uncool'.

 

[Moonbeam]

Thanks MB, I have also enjoyed our discussion.



It was an important journey, certainly, but I can't take any pride in its completion as it owed everything to biological changes at puberty rather than acquired wisdom.

M: I guess for you it was hormones and for me it was wind.

One day I was a little bullied kid, not much further down the road testosterone production kicked-in and roared through my body in quite an amazing way. (Jeez, that felt good then). My neck suddenly went from 13 inches circumference to 18 and I pulverised the boys who had been my bullies.

I might have reached physical maturity but was still a kid in terms of life-lessons.
Having acquired some competence in fighting I was in danger of enjoying violence too much. A poor learning outcome. Women later persuaded me that constant fighting is 'uncool'.

M: Ah, a two stem change in perspective, the steps are the bridge but the crossing is what matters, or if you will, the change in perspective.

At least you did something. All I did was something as useless and thinking. Anyway, I'm a nobody and maybe you feel something like that too.

This reminds me of the Wizard of Oz. The journey over the yellow brick road of sleep to get back home again, the cowardly lion seeking his courage and the tin man a brain seeking a truth out there when what they sought was always within.