The Century of the Self

[Alex Jacob]

Only the 'bright-eyed intelligence' capable of discerning the decisive element at every juncture and of supplying the most effective instrumentality is an adequate characterization of her ideal. Consummation, the immediate present, action here and now - that is Athena. She is spirited immediacy, redeeming spiritual presence, swift action. She is the 'ever-near'.

Camile Paglia in her work Sexual Personae writes a good deal about Athena's eye as an emblem of something uniquely Western: this instrument of vision that looks into things penetratingly. (Thinking of the eye of Kunga's former avatar which had an Athenan look to it).

Okay, that's all for this evening. If y'all haven't slaughtered each other by morning... ;-)

This one goes out to Dennis.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

To me it looks like this is getting out of hand.

Why can't we be friends?
Why can't we be friends?

Everyone should sign a declaration of openness.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

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.

You act like self-contradiction contradicts anything real besides your perspective of my words.

Thought is meaningless, the undeniable fact of the matter which shows all of your complaint is untrue can be seen right here:

All my actions flow, the same way actions/reactions happen in a person without the use of thought. Or how a bird learns to fly without any discussion or introspection, I am universe doing what it's doing, that includes thought, but I am not a self or person deciding what I think.

Thoughts are nothing but meaningless imaginations of the mind. They are very complex, and even convincing enough to have people like you think they are in control.

[Dennis Mahar]

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.

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

Causes/conditions.
is it a special requirement of yours that a dumbass machine adjust for you?
this is how compassion becomes an egoic posturing when thinking about emptiness isn't undertaken.

You failed Boot Camp Kunga.
You're on latrine duty for a week.

Tomas,
I have not tasted alcohol or drug for 30 years.
make something else up.

[guest_of_logic]

Kunga's new avatar looks to me like a galaxy in the shape of an eye. I'd make the associations "starry-eyed" or "eye in the sky". I wouldn't make the association Dennis has made. Kunga has never exploited her sexuality in that way on this forum, and I don't expect her to start to.

-----

Diebert, it seems then that your point is not that eradicating clinging is always and necessarily more important than the material conditions in which a self finds itself, so much that clinging is always a spiritual issue whereas material conditions are never a spiritual issue - hence your desire to see the discussion of this thread (in a spiritual forum) change direction.

In this, I still disagree, and I don't think that you or anyone else will find that a surprise, nor a surprise why I disagree: it is because I view spirituality differently than you do. You (and the forum in general) seem to make a sharp distinction between "worldly matters" and "spiritual matters". You do this, essentially, because you are atheists: you see no spiritual dimension "behind" or "beyond" the material. If you are at all allied with Kevin's views, then, to you, "spirituality" is synonymous with "truth", where "truth" is an ultimate logical abstraction. To talk of "the spiritual" as a concrete noun in the way that I would talk about it would be, in your eyes, if I understand you correctly, to reify an abstraction.

In contrast, I define the spiritual as primarily that which emanates from and is sourced in God. I do not so much define spirituality as "truth" as I define "spiritual" to be a possible qualifier of "truth". In other words, it is not so much that "spirituality is truth [and that that is all that it is]" as that "truths can be spiritual [but that spirituality is more than that]", although I'm comfortable enough with the former as a figure of speech.

In contrast to myself (and, depending on how they are framed, to Alex, who rejects some such things as part of the "Graveyard of Meaning", yet accepts others as mysterious yet real phenomena) your atheism in particular involves a lack of belief in spiritual forces that can influence the material plane. To you, it seems, there is literally no way in which these forces could exist, because, being immaterial (a category I'm not sure you would even accept in the first place), they could not have evolved, and yet "evolution is the only game in town" to atheists - and so, you deny their existence.

When you accept the reality of not only a divine, immaterial source of spirituality, but also of immaterial forces both supporting and opposed to that divinity, and all acting on the material plane, and when you recognise that the material and the spiritual, rather than being sharply and distinctly separated, are instead deeply intertwined, then the relevance of that which Alex has put forward in this thread becomes that much greater. Then, it is possible to decide that the techniques that have arisen to control both the private self and public life by, essentially, manipulating and emphasising the role of (often superficial, often unconscious) desires, are a deliberate affront to true spirituality, in which, as is put forward in the writings of Saint John of the Cross (SJotC from here on), desires are rightly to be mortified with the eventual (spiritual) aim of union with God's will. (By the way, I was not aware of SJotC's writings until now, thank you for bringing them to my attention, they are very powerful. I found Dan's cheapening of them to be unseemly).

Now, you do not accept a view of spirituality incorporating God and immaterial forces, but you do share with SJotC a view that desires are to be mortified, and, what's more, you seem to be of the belief that selves ought to be in control of themselves, and that these - the mortification of desire, and self-control - are spiritual functions. Could there, then, be some common ground between all of us, in that we can all agree that those forces in our world (whatever their origin) which seek to emphasise and manipulate the role of desires in order to exert external control over selves are profoundly unspiritual forces?

[Dennis Mahar]

Laird,

Kunga's new avatar looks to me like a galaxy in the shape of an eye. I'd make the associations "starry-eyed" or "eye in the sky". I wouldn't make the association Dennis has made. Kunga has never exploited her sexuality in that way on this forum, and I don't expect her to start to.

Kunga has admitted her situation.
Charade.
At least she has guts.

What about you?

[guest_of_logic]

Dennis, if the direction in which you want to take this thread is a discussion of the ways in which [one's] life is a charade, then by all means go ahead and lead the way - feel free to talk about the ways in which your own life is a charade. I welcome that type of honesty. I'd only suggest you consider, though, whether a more appropriate place to have that discussion would be an AA meeting. Personally, I'd prefer to stick to the subject of the thread here. I doubt I'd participate in such a therapy session, if that's the right term to use.

[Dennis Mahar]

That's just pouting Laird.

Authenticity/inauthenticity is vital in Philosophy.

Philosophy, engaged as a sense of wonder, discloses inauthenticity remarkably.

I don't go to AA, never have you lying prat.
I run Alanon meetings for families affected by fucking alcoholics like you, you piece of shit.
Wake up to yourself.

[guest_of_logic]

What's gotten into you? Why all of the insults and cursing all of a sudden? What's gotten you in such a rage?

If it was Alanon and not AA then I'm sorry for misremembering. I remembered you talking about sharing at a 12 step program; I thought it was AA but if you say it was Alanon then fine, I accept your word.

[Dennis Mahar]

If you want a spiritual awakening Laird.
You have to cut communication with ratbags like Alex.
Running senseless attacks on QRS is a waste of time and health.

Make a list of all the people you've harmed with your stupid ways.
All the people who have had to worry about you, concerned for your well being.
The people who have been scared of you.

If you've got the guts you should make amends to them.

At the very least you must be authentic about your inauthentic bullshit.
bleeding from a gaping wound.

Justifiers are as miserable as the harms.

[guest_of_logic]

This isn't about me. You were angry and throwing around insults long before I arrived in the thread. You don't seem to want to talk openly about why that is, and what you want to do about it though. So be it, that's your choice.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You (and the forum in general)

The forum "in general" I consider pretty lost on most of the subject matters. It's a mystery to me why some keep referring to "it" as in my opinion it's really awkward, trying to create some kind of crowd where there isn't. Maybe because I see the topic matter as a highly individualistic affair, perhaps that's the difference. Each time it starts looking like something else, it's time to run away fast!

You do this, essentially, because you are atheists: you see no spiritual dimension "behind" or "beyond" the material.

In my view you often appear like the one lacking of spiritual dimensions or at least the understanding of them (you are not missing really anything). You talk like a materialist all the time! But keep on thinking the reverse although I do not know Kevin or his writing well enough to counter any references to him. Some of his video's are good, others I find lacking. Perhaps he's a mixed bag? I'm indeed more interested in impersonal truths and not the always murky sources.

In contrast, I define the spiritual as primarily that which emanates from and is sourced in God.

Depending on what you think God is or where he is, everything emanates from him. But if everything is spirituality, we haven't accomplished much, haven't we? Like saying "everything is love" and move on with a life filled of rejecting this while embracing that.

your atheism in particular involves a lack of belief in spiritual forces that can influence the material plane.

You always have misunderstood my view on this. It's only how you argued for spiritual forces and how you caught them inside some materialist frame, which I dissected and rejected. And you protested with a loud voice! Because I think this is about attachments, some quick fix and not about higher realities in the end.

By the way, I was not aware of SJotC's writings until now, thank you for bringing them to my attention, they are very powerful.

But nearly everything that's fundamental in St. John's writing is diametrically and fundamentally opposed to all that Alex has said on this forum. That's the main reason I went with the topic for a while because Alex was trying to use a tradition he doesn't accept at all. In fact he threw SJotC as insult to the "Quinians" if you'd care to check the archive. He is not in that tradition at all and that's how he was caught to be like a wind vane, not very reliable in these discussions, to put it nicely. You need to start inquiring with a bit more effort and reading with a bit more attention. That would be my advice here.

but you do share with SJotC a view that desires are to be mortified

Well, if you read carefully you'd see I stated very clearly that it was not my philosophy, to challenge attachment in that manner without understanding more of it. What was inspiring to me is the stated connection of desire, will and affections for people, things and world with the mystical "union with God". When St. John writes about love, he always writes about how God wants to be loved. And that this is the only key to discover how to find out how to love truly, not only "god" but the whole of nature, how to care about all living things without trying to extract something out of it. All other self-centered passions are vain in that light, even when other people might still get help and comforted by selfish acts nevertheless.

Could there, then, be some common ground between all of us, in that we can all agree that those forces in our world (whatever their origin) which seek to emphasise and manipulate the role of desires in order to exert external control over selves are profoundly unspiritual forces?

There's a lot of common ground. Just realize first I do not dismiss your notions of forces at work. What I was dismissing was your earlier attempts to turn them into something proven or scientific in any sense, locked in some description and measurement. As I wrote earlier I've no problem with a mystic addressing his "Beloved" in the same way as invoking a dark force to signify a negative effect which might be conjured by our own actions and words or those of others. But these "things" live more in language and poetry than in fixed forms or scientific meanings. But that doesn't mean I've a lot of ideas about how these forces work and under which (beautiful) names they can hide.

[Dennis Mahar]

This isn't about me. You were angry and throwing around insults long before I arrived in the thread. You don't seem to want to talk openly about why that is, and what you want to do about it though. So be it, that's your choice.

I'm not angry nor have I a mean bone in my body.
I'll give it to you straight.
In a tone that may get through to you.

You whinge about your human rights.
What about the human rights of those you've harmed and troubled in your rampages.
Running amok, drunkenness and cruelty.
Face it.

I talk to you in this way because I think you'll fathom it.

[Jamesh]

GOL said
In contrast, I define the spiritual as primarily that which emanates from and is sourced in God. I do not so much define spirituality as "truth" as I define "spiritual" to be a possible qualifier of "truth". In other words, it is not so much that "spirituality is truth [and that that is all that it is]" as that "truths can be spiritual [but that spirituality is more than that]", although I'm comfortable enough with the former as a figure of speech.

No. As far as I can see everyone wants something that isn’t there. You want spirituality to come from a higher source, so you can go back to it, and QRS followers want causality to be the magical creationary God (whereas I believe causality can be explained).

Seeker said: “Thought is meaningless”

It is only meaningless in an ultimate sense, and as no-one actually lives in an ultimate state, to call thought meaningless is not rational.

Logic is the basis of all thought. Emotions were developed by logic, causal logic – if they were not they would not have been an evolutionary adaption.

There is no more honest spirituality than to strive to understand reality as best one can. All other forms of spirituality are ego-emotion plays, or sometimes cognitive volatility caused by things like drugs, starvation etc. In both cases they are about feelings, which makes them not spirituality at all but the opposite – our inherited animal state.

The word spirituality should mean “to see what is beyond oneself”. This takes being emotionally open to truth and logically assessing what are the most true observations of nature.

So that is honest spirituality. The other kind is rational spirituality – it includes what it means to have a physical life. It is irrational to deny the necessity of ones animal nature - including the interconnectivity of human life, a desire to be entertained, periods of joy and disgust - except where one has been caused to have a goal to do precisely that.

Thought is the apex, but it is not all we are, so for most “honest spirituality” will only be valued a smidgin. We are not Futuramian “Heads in Jars”, except some almost are in those unusual circumstances where an attachment to deep thinking developed early – usually due to a higher sensitivity to reality. So it makes the most sense for the bulk of people to develop a Truth-Emotion system of spirituality.

You don’t want this animal nature to cause you pain though, so you control it with wisdom as best you can. Truth stills remains at the core of this rational spirituality. Truth in this case is rational because it provides an opportunity for control of ones ego, and an opportunity to be an advantage to others. It is only an opportunity for control though, truth has to be heeded at the right times, and generally is not. If the ego becomes uncontrolled the spiritually becomes solely emotional, all about the feeling self, and irrational.

Irrational spirituality is most rampant, endemic. Religion provides a ready made Truth-Emotion system of spirituality, that is totally false. Science is a Truth-Emotion tool of the ego providing satisfaction by the creation of order-sets, used to impress. New-agey stuff like universal consciousness, provides ego pleasing by making feelings the apex of truth.

Honest spiritually has a 3rd party relationship to the self, with The Whole looking back at the self, thus the self becomes a point fading into emptiness - though only when thinking spiritually.

If you are young, you can change course from one spirituality to another, but otherwise, you will never achieve the most honest spirituality

Someone with a high depth of honest spirituality, may also have an abundance of rational spiritually, or they may not. Someone with a highly stable rational spiritually, will have a superior degree of honest spirituality...and vice versa. There however can only be one pinnacle. You cannot understand the nature of reality fully, and also have the most rational human-interconnectedness spirituality, or vice versa.

[Alex Jacob]

But nearly everything that's fundamental in St. John's writing is diametrically and fundamentally opposed to all that Alex has said on this forum. That's the main reason I went with the topic for a while because Alex was trying to use a tradition he doesn't accept at all. In fact he threw SJotC as insult to the "Quinians" if you'd care to check the archive. He is not in that tradition at all and that's how he was caught to be like a wind vane, not very reliable in these discussions, to put it nicely. You need to start inquiring with a bit more effort and reading with a bit more attention. That would be my advice here.

I will say, if you will permit me to interject here, that this is certainly true in a superficial, surface sense, but not necessarily so in an internal sense. To cut precisely to the chase: the spirituality and the 'spiritual life' that I have been involved with, not necessarily voluntarily, had a great deal to do with just finding my own bearings and in dealing with certain forms of trauma that, I think, all of us have experienced in our upbringing, our family life, our cultural life, and in the events of the world that just keep rolling on. Unfortunately, in those early years, I did not have the sort of self-consciousness that I do now, nor did I understand exactly what 'the road' I was on was really about. And that is why I mention a kind of spirituality, a way of being and relating to life, that unfolds 'on the roads', where the prayer is 'to the roads' and where God is a god who oversees the roads, and where spirituality and Vision [quest] are all jump-started by a prayerful relationship to this sphere where everything is occurring. You could very well describe it as 'external' and quixotic and you could very well contrast it with a cloistered, separated or monastic path, and this would be superficially so, but not necessarily essentially so.

Again, every man has to follow the signs and indications that are inherent in hisself, and spirituality is a working with the self and following a path that arises out of oneself. It never would have been appropriate to me to retreat from phenomenal life into a cloister, and yet I spent large episodes of time in very definite solitude where my primary activity was one of prayerfulness. It is just that for me the categories of God, or what God is or can be, had exploded-expanded away from a singular potency that SJdlC would have identified and held to. And yes, when solitude became intolerable, I very much went back into the world. But in this specific sense I went back 'hermetically', and that means a way of being in the world or interacting in the world---on any level---where one is interacting, essentially, with the Divine Force.

Specifically in respect to SJdlC, I picked up and read Dark Night of the Soul during a period of the most intense 'prayerfulness' but also inner, psychological difficulty. For myself and many of my contemporaries the circumstances were pretty challenging: this was at the height of the 1980s where, in American life, it was all turning back to overt materialism and we were a group of [young] people attempting to hold to a higher vision, to discover that ground and to live it. We carried that out in the way that we could: in the highlands of Colorado, adapting sweatlodge traditions and a desire for purity and clarity within our selves with various other spiritual ideas and practices, and we did this with a unique and particularly American intensity (and that is why I mentioned Emerson, Melville, Whitman and Thoreau because, if you'll permit me to say it this way, we were 'the sons & daughters' of those influences and traditions). So, although I myself could not project myself into a cloistered imagined space as I read him (once or twice through and no more), nevertheless in a very real sense I am my contemporaries applied a kind of monastic singularity to our spiritual conduct over a period of years.

So, my dear and talented Diebert, you are not quite right in what you say here, but of course we are all in this blind space attempting to guess at what the other is on about. But I have never held back from attempting to clarify any part of my presence, in all its multivalence. I am interested in defining a self that is in itself 'the hermetic instrument' and the manifestation of 'the god Hermes'. What this means is that man is the seer, man is the divinator, and it is in the crucible of self where 'spirituality' is occurring. When one penetrates any particular form or tradition, transcends it as it were, all that is there is really a relationship to phenomenal existence: the self in relation to something ineffable. 'Hermes' is the god who moves between all the realms, both the land of the living and the land of the dead. Hermes is the possibility of the reception of 'truth', is the supreme divinator, is the Guide to self that we all are becoming.

[Kunga]

Laird,

Kunga's new avatar looks to me like a galaxy in the shape of an eye. I'd make the associations "starry-eyed" or "eye in the sky". I wouldn't make the association Dennis has made. Kunga has never exploited her sexuality in that way on this forum, and I don't expect her to start to.

Kunga has admitted her situation.
Charade.
At least she has guts.

What about you?

Dennis...the only reason I changed my avatar was because it was pissing you off so much.
I wasn't attached to the eye (like you).

Laird....The avatar (of the eye), that I had, before the "Eye of God"(now),
was a big brown(feminine), doe-like, innocent-looking, eye.
I didn't see it as sexy/seductive, as Dennis did. But it revealed his deep penetrating issues with the feminine.


People can't help what eyes they were born with Dennis.
Do you have a hissy fit every time you see a beautiful women ?
I am not beautiful, so don't worry.

[guest_of_logic]

Hi Diebert,

Re "You (and the forum in general)": you've mentioned on a couple of occasions that (and I'm paraphrasing from memory here) you generally don't have a problem with anything David has written on his blog, and that you understand why David expresses himself as he does. Along with these statements, from your general presence on, and input into, this forum, as well as your opposition to some of the ideas of others (myself included), consistent with the type of opposition I'd expect from (and in some cases receive from) guys like Kevin, David and Dan, I've inferred that your views are to a close approximation consistent with those of the forum, at least as represented by its three founders. Do you think that's unreasonable of me?

As far as your suggestion goes that if everything emanates from God, then everything is spiritual, I'd suggest that a more refined definition than the one I offered would take into account substance ("light", spiritual substances versus "dense", material substances) and quality ("divine" quality of spirit versus "diabolical" quality of spirit), so that that which is "of God" is "light" and "divine". I'm sure you've come across this idea or ideas like it many times before though.

I'm not really sure what you mean that my argument for spiritual forces catches them inside a "materialist framework". What do you mean by a "materialist framework" in this context, and how would you distinguish it from a truly "spiritual framework"?

You write: 'But these "things" live more in language and poetry than in fixed forms or scientific meanings'. You leave some room with qualifiers like "more", and with your comparison, but can you see how, without those, your statement looks pretty much like a categorical denial of spiritual forces, inasmuch as constructs of language, which are effectively what you reduce them to, are neither "spiritual" (at least in any non-abstract sense) nor "forces" (again, in any non-abstract sense)? Or would you disagree with that? As I wrote in my last post, we apparently have different definitions of "spiritual".

You also leave room with your opening statement, "Just realize first I do not dismiss your notions of forces at work", and with your closing statement, "But that doesn't mean I've a lot of ideas about how these forces work". I understand that you rarely accede to requests like this, but if you're feeling especially generous, then I'd like to know of any ideas that you *do* have. In particular, I'm curious about what middle ground you imagine between spiritual forces as I conceive them, and spiritual forces as nothing other than constructs of language.

I won't comment on SJotC because I'm not familiar with his writing, except that I think that what you echo of his writing about loving God (and nature) as He wants (it) to be loved is spot on.

----

Hi Dennis,

Well, you seem determined to make this about me, so I suggest we drop it.

----

Hi Jamesh,

I don't think that "to see what is beyond oneself" is such a bad definition of spirituality, but I would tinge it with the flavour of SJotC that Diebert introduced above: not only seeing what is beyond oneself but also treating it (I won't use the phrase "loving it" as I doubt you'd be receptive to it) as [you "see" that] it wants to be treated.

----

Hi Kunga,

Raw is beautiful!

[Alex Jacob]

Some ideas about Hermes as a way of understanding 'spiritual endeavor'. Jungian in orientation.

An interesting review of The Homeric Gods by Walter F. Otto by Edith Hamilton.
________________________

This one goes out the all our friends in The Netherlands.

[Dennis Mahar]

Spiritual has nothing to do with.

Wiki refences to Jung, Homer.
materialist frameworks
God
'Eye of God'
feminine
sexy/seductive
SJdlC

All that rubbish is avoidance.
imaginery 'out there shit' to seem impressive at dinner parties.

Charades.
Woundedness.
bleeding from a gaping wound.
Spiritually sick.

Let's play shoot the messenger like it's an original idea.

[Dennis Mahar]

The funny thing is each of you know exactly what I mean.
There have been points in your Soliliquoy where an interruption of 'normal transmission' evented.
A glimpse of true nature.
perhaps it has happened several times.
Spirit flooded your mind. Clarity happened.
It all opened up.

It faded.

Survival options then became the move.
Oh well, back to charades.
Keep drinking, watch a movie, roam around wiki, find a 'strong' ego.
Get a cute Buddhist tag like 'Joy of all Goddesses'.


same shit, different day.

[Dan Rowden]

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.

You act like self-contradiction contradicts anything real besides your perspective of my words.

Thought is meaningless, the undeniable fact of the matter which shows all of your complaint is untrue can be seen right here:

All my actions flow, the same way actions/reactions happen in a person without the use of thought. Or how a bird learns to fly without any discussion or introspection, I am universe doing what it's doing, that includes thought, but I am not a self or person deciding what I think.

Thoughts are nothing but meaningless imaginations of the mind. They are very complex, and even convincing enough to have people like you think they are in control.

Why are you speaking when there's no reason, by dint of your own words, to listen to anything you say? If I want meaningless waffle I may as well go outside and listen to the birds chirping. At least that's pleasantly melodic.

[Kunga]

Dennis....take a good look at the charade you're playing here.
I made a list....but deleted it...don't wanna piss you off anymore.

Do you think you are perfect ?

[Dennis Mahar]

No, I'm not perfect.
deeply flawed,
character defects.

what about you?

[Dan Rowden]

Hi Kunga,

Raw is beautiful!

Yeah howdy, look at all the amazing intellects you'll be associated with if you go raw: Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Uma Thurman, Elizabeth Hurley, Donna Karan, Natalie Portman, Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon, Alicia Silverstone, Sting, Cher, Lisa Bonet, Brooke Burke and Margaret Cho.

Based on that list how can I reject the idea.

[Kunga]

I know I have many flaws.
It's overwhelming.
At least I haven't lost my sense of humor !