The Century of the Self

[Kunga]

Yes Dennis....it's a sign of egolessness/non-attachment when you don't have a avatar....i knew from the start
you were enlightened when i saw you had no avatar....
actually....you are attached to your own non-attachment.....
there are many here with avatars....many without...it's empty & meaningless
that it's empty and meaningless.....geddit ?

lol

[Kunga]

shit...i just lit the filter of my cig !

I hope Alex is ok...there was an earthquake in Colombia 6.5

[Dan Rowden]

The truth is that the insults don't mean anything, does anyone here actually feel any anger toward anybody else? I doubt it, so why not just cease fire, get back to that open discussion which has mostly been replaced by argument.

I know what you're going to say.

The fact is you are enabled to think, reflect and draw distinctions that ascertain the truth of the situation.
In such a way detachment is possible, grasping at straws less likely.

At the essence of detachment is a silent mind not a contemplative one.

All of the contemplation is as useless and meaningless as thoughts one might have while barely awake.

There is one single reason you would argue otherwise: People think thoughts are useful..... for discovery, survival, living, understanding etc. You assign some measure of credibility to them due to their use in navigating the mundane world, and so then people become convinced that their contemplations on ultimate reality are also reliable to some measure.

The mistake is clear, people are confusing being able to "get around" for understanding. In reality all that is happening is seeing followed by provisional and meaningless naming.

Thought is uncontrolled and flows constantly, machine, even your simple idea of it being useful for navigating is a delusion, all our experience flows along with thought. As opposed to there being an external place in which thought is useful for knowing and survival, it is more like a bird/animal/machine which does as it does because that's what it does, in other words, we are as smart as trees.

That's a lot of words and explanation for someone who thinks thought is meaningless. When oh when are you going to see the folly in your position on this? Your every post consists of self-contradiction. Thought is self-evidently not meaningless. It all depends on the focus and clarity, which itself depends on the level of valuing of being free of delusion. Yes, most people are wafflers, lost in the dance of useless conceptualisation, but this isn't necessarily true for everyone.

And at the essence of "detachment" is an absence of ego grasping. You don't get to that state just by deciding to. To do that involves irrational choices of a peculiarly religious nature. i.e. beliefs. No person can overcome millions of years of evolution without working at it, and that requires thought.

[Alex Jacob]

Kunga, I was standing at the balcony looking out when the bookcases started to rock. Just one thing fell off the shelf but it was resilient and didn't break. Thanks for thinking of me.
______________________________

I want to make a small clarification. In American terms, in terms of the American nation and its history, the war on Vietnam represented for the republic a severe and hubristic error the ramifications of which are still going on. With some reservations I accept basically Chomsky's analysis in The New Mandarins where he spelled out the nature of the designs, the interests involved, and contrasted that with the democratic sentiment that arose against it, to indicate that THAT sort of conflict was wrong indeed.

And in this of course, and bringing in Bernays and the notion of manipulation of self, the group of explications---this surprised me---that Diebert tossed out, above, are precisely those of propaganda fabrications. Because if the US actually would have had the intention of helping or defending the south, and I am decidedly attempting to link this with the Catholic/Christian ideals we have broached here, the US might have undertaken genuine social-oriented projects that might have established an alternative and one more attractive than communism-nationalism (of the sort developing). And it might not have unleashed a chemical war, a bombing war, and almost absurd levels of straight terror on peasants. But the US took the side of an expired colonial power (the French) in an era of declining colonialism and this is far more of a 'truth' than any idea of 'helping' or 'protecting' the south. The point? That it is exactly in this area where we are the contested field: our minds, our imaginations. We are attacked on every side by forces that seek to convince us or to cause us to submit to a will not our own.

In such a context, it seems to me, we are thrown into a tremendous confusion: we do not know how to relate to the present, we don't know how to sort through the endless layers of lies, and so in this way we are rendered ineffective as agents of positive social change. I mean that along the lines of the Catholic Workers (just one example of a defined value-system) as opposed to value-systems that are enforced on us, top-down.

I am certainly willing to concede that there are many conflicting layers in the Vietnam conflict, and they may be hard to sort through, but in actual point of fact the nature of that war, as one of straight terror and atrocity (if you accept Chomsky's analysis), may have been a factor in precipitating the destruction of the State.

The point, as I understand the point, is that there are not 'two levels' for the functioning of our spirituality: there is one level, the present, in time and in body. In this sense I think that Laird's examples were very apropos, and of course germane to the topic. And though I am willing to allow that a person's inner life and their conduct of it is in a special domain and should always be so, the area that interests me is that of the way ideas mould the world, and our idealism takes shape in the world. If there is anything at all that defines a European, Occidental self, it is within that: work in and on the world in accord with ideals. (And how terribly distorted it can all become!)

My impression overall is that when the lines to constructive activity in the external social world have been damaged or destroyed, that a pathological condition occurs. A person is thwarted and thrown back on themselves. Or rather that sort of 'human' activity which is so normal, so socially normal, is disrupted and we 'react' unwholesomely. And a great deal of our present, the present we know and live in, is in exactly this sort of condition.

I ask questions about this particular brand of spirituality, the one represented and 'sold' here, because I wonder if it has a link to the 'pathology' I describe above.

[Dan Rowden]

If you are incapable of perceiving that human nature is fundamentally fucked up then you have no inner life at all, least not one that involves anything more meaningful than an Alice in Wonderland kind of adventure. The world is disgusting, Alex. The irony of its existence lay in the fact that its potential and beauty lay precisely in the fact of the things that makes it disgusting. If you can't be ugly, you have no real hope of being beautiful. But the path to that beauty comes with and through the labours of facing the depth and reality of that ugliness.

Then the path beyond that entire duality can begin, but here I start to speak of things you have never been able to properly grok...

[Dennis Mahar]

Yes Dennis....it's a sign of egolessness/non-attachment when you don't have a avatar....i knew from the start
you were enlightened when i saw you had no avatar....
actually....you are attached to your own non-attachment.....
there are many here with avatars....many without...it's empty & meaningless
that it's empty and meaningless.....geddit ?

You're a fuckin' liar.

That eye is feminine wiles.
a display of 'cuntness'.

You know the majority of men think with their dick so you wave your cunt around as a winning formula.
you pull an idiot in that's on the other end of the dick and smother mother it.

Keep your cunt in your pants.

dumbass machinery.

[Alex Jacob]

PS: I think my avatar is the most non-egoic of all.

Dennis, you proposed that we enact a scenario where you become my disciple and I teach you all kinds of things through exquisite spiritual tortures. Let's begin with this.

Let it sink in and let all your next posts reflect the tremendous inner growth that will come popping out.

[Dennis Mahar]

PS: I think my avatar is the most non-egoic of all.

Alex and think is a contradiction in terms.

[Tomas]

PS: I think my avatar is the most non-egoic of all.

Alex and think is a contradiction in terms.

Well dude. And your opinion of Dan's avatar?

[Dennis Mahar]

get out of the way Tomas.

[Kunga]

OMG....Dennis.
It NEVER crossed my mind that that eye would turn anyone on !
It's just a plain eye without makeup even.
You have a sick mind.
Are you drunk ?

I'm glad you are OK Alex.

[Dennis Mahar]

OMG....Dennis.
It NEVER crossed my mind that that eye would turn anyone on !
It's just a plain eye without makeup even.
You have a sick mind.
Are you drunk ?

I'm glad you are OK Alex.

Quit lying for 10 minutes for fuck's sake!

[Kunga]

Are you drunk ?
Don't lie.

Of course you are,
that why you didn't answer me
as to not lie.

I'm psychic don't forget.... :)

[Dennis Mahar]

You told us.
Your circumstances are a charade.

Don't backpedal now.

[Kunga]

If you wanna hash something out PM me OK ?
It's not very professional to speak this way, here, on this discussion forum.
Dan will delete all this b.s.

[Dennis Mahar]

Boot Camp is tough.

the machinery must be penetrated.

[Kunga]

Boot Camp was a piece of cake for me.
I was already trained for it before I got there.

[Dennis Mahar]

You don't have to change anything in your circumstances necessarily.

the truth is it's a charade.

geddit?

you know cunt is power and you capitalise.

[Kunga]

I hate sex Dennis. I have no desire .

[Dennis Mahar]

It's not a matter of hating or loving anything.

For the most part human interaction is 'charades'.


can we get that straight?

[Kunga]

Was it a charade when that father raped his 5 year old daughter & beat her to death ?
Get real.

[Kunga]

I know what you are refering to about human interaction being a "charade",
being that all this is,is of the same energy/nature, but still , we are responsible for our actions
and their consequenses.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

For the most part human interaction is 'charades'.

This is very true, which is why I asked that question about the path of solitude. Maybe it is better to "give in" then it is to cut out 'charades', which would be effectively ending all the fun for reasons that don't really exist.

[Alex Jacob]

If you are incapable of perceiving that human nature is fundamentally fucked up then you have no inner life at all, least not one that involves anything more meaningful than an Alice in Wonderland kind of adventure. The world is disgusting, Alex. The irony of its existence lay in the fact that its potential and beauty lay precisely in the fact of the things that makes it disgusting. If you can't be ugly, you have no real hope of being beautiful. But the path to that beauty comes with and through the labours of facing the depth and reality of that ugliness.

Then the path beyond that entire duality can begin, but here I start to speak of things you have never been able to properly grok...

This statement, in my view, is a kind of 'core' or essential understanding that is essentially true. It is not that I cannot grok what you write, or how you choose to deal, inwardly, with those inner and outer facts, it is actually something else...

[Tomas]

OMG....Dennis.
It NEVER crossed my mind that that eye would turn anyone on !
It's just a plain eye without makeup even.
You have a sick mind.
Are you drunk ?

You too?

I've thought for quite some time (3, 4 years?) that Dennis is a hard core alcohol drinker ;-)

Though Dennis knows well enough not to mess with Dan's avatar.

What convinced me of that was about the electric dog collar he put on his own dog. Imagine, he hasn't the balls though to test it on himself, though. Lazy.

At least the dog knows it is a dog but Dennis doesn't know the real Dennis, just a paper cutout of himself.

It also explains his bizarre writing style. He can't put paragraphs together because he cannot decipher too many lines atop each other.