The Century of the Self

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Hi Laird!

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?

It's not unreasonable but it's just not the way I tend to look at these things. Perhaps "the forum" is simply as it is, say the top 20 active members on this list which includes easily you and Alex with the multiple accounts combined although it remains all rather fact of the matter. Then again, even this view seems outdated by now. My forum is the world as I cannot draw distinctive lines between the nature of the debate, sentiments and people here or anywhere where people enter into exchange of ideas on life. Also any "spiritual" ideas are just fundamentally repeated everywhere else, just in more or less diluted forms. How could truth be anything else than what everything and everyone is constantly repeating and demonstrating, fully realizing it or not?

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"?

Well, the last time I think I discussed spiritual forces with you it was about evidence, hearing and seeing things, anecdotes, experiences and so on. Very tangible but at the same time a matter of interpretation and very hard to "catch the spirit" in these cases. With "materialist" I mean putting them as only external, out there, as something to ward off or deflect, protect against. But who is being protected? Which being is that? And that point I think a way less materialist environment could be created to address the topic.

... 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)?

It depends if linguistics and all the signs and symbols would be for you something artificial and fake or abstract, something divorced from self and spirit. Although I try to keep the amount of spirit low in my language for ulterior purposes, I suspect you might have been missing the point of those statements.

[Dennis Mahar]

Every night I meditate and recollect the events of the day and discover the points where the distinction blurred between Spirit and ego, where I fell prey to 'the world', where Reason went missing and Spirit was left unguarded.
I used to wince about it and generate justifiers, all the excuses.
now a have a sense of wonder that it could be that way.

[Pye]

I think I know what you mean, Dennis.
And one of the ways the distinctions (if we simply must have them) between “ego” and “spirit” can be teased forth is when we blame an object for our subjective reaction to it. Like the picture of an eye or something. In this confusion, we blame the eye for our own complicated reaction to it. The eye, of course, is just an eye, and only when it is viewed (by another eye!) can anything be said to belong to the eye itself. So if we remove the common denominator [picture of eye, picture of anything, carrots, coffee tables, swear words, et al)], we land where we could have been (and are) all along: expending our energies examining not-the-eye, or its motive for being there, but the nature of our own reaction to it. There’s where we can strike some light on the subject, not the object. . . . .

I know, though – it seems more complicated than that when it comes to the sexual dialectic. Put a feminine eye out there, spell your name “pye,” or even just avatar some straight-up sexualization, and these objects will become the objects of blame, of influence, that certain subjects will say they cannot transcend. In the sexual dialectic, men often feel themselves ‘victimized’ (I’ve actually heard it put this way) by the plethora of sexualized images against which some men will say they cannot help themselves. So powerful is the influence of the object, that looking to the subject-who-views it as the source of its “power” is not the first thought, perhaps not even the second. Instead, we place ourselves in the position of “victims” to it. :)

The objects are to blame, then, and men in general have taught women in general this weird lesson very well. Women in general know all about this, perhaps way less as a statement of their “power” and way more one of understanding men’s “weaknesses.” One part of this is common sense, in that most women know this seems an animal and/or non-negotiable response on the part of males, and responsibility (or abuse-of) is on the part of females.

You must give us eye-ing or pye-ing females a little break here for the short-range of vision we sometimes have regarding what can be sexualizing – or “victimizing” to a male. After all, we’re on a discussion forum that promises something a little better than having to service, cater or conform to male weakness.

[Alex Jacob]

In the sexual dialectic, men often feel themselves ‘victimized’ (I’ve actually heard it put this way) by the plethora of sexualized images against which some men will say they cannot help themselves. So powerful is the influence of the object, that looking to the subject-who-views it as the source of its “power” is not the first thought, perhaps not even the second. Instead, we place ourselves in the position of “victims” to it.

Here is an interesting exercise in seeing: from a height and looking down-into.

• The essential nature of the whole realm of existence where we are is from top-to-bottom and through-and-through a sexual realm.

The world of nature is one where, in general, the primary signal is female: say a flower for a bee, or certain scents designed to stimulate the male. The female says, in effect "I am ready for you" or "I am not yet ready for you".

It is interesting to make the effort to see the System as setting it up in this way, to elicit that special form of fertile communication and communion through which life continues itself. At a basic level of evolutionary biology, and at a somatic level not in the control of the female body, just like any other honeypot within nature, any given female body is only doing what the natural system dictates she do: be available to men and to communicate that. Obviously if a woman's mind is operating against her body she will find herself in a certain discord with her own self. I think such a 'discord' is noted in certain exponents of feminist thinking, maybe especially in the 'old school' of the 'first wave', but it has changed in the so-called 'third wave' where woman, as they say, 'embrace their female power of sexuality'.

Be that as it may, it is not at all incorrect for a man to see himself as the 'victim' of the sexual wiliness of the very system in which he exists. Because he too, at a basic level, is signaling in a similar way. Where the discourses get a little strange is where, because of a 'politically correct' overlay of rule (with guilt and shame and other mechanisms), a person countermands the physical sensuality arising in his own person when coming near the object, or when the object (in this case the 'she') demands that he not react as he is conditioned by the very System to react. The head is battling against the body and it is a source of a definite 'discomfort'.

In regard to the 'plethora of sexualized images against which some men will say they cannot help themselves' a man's game becomes rather peculiar: he must know what exactly is going on and understand that despite any mental or intellectual message a given woman puts out, that she is essentially lying, and that the 'real truth' is functioning, always, at a biological level and as part-and-parcel of a dictatorial system. So, if he is smart and adept, he learns to manage a multivalent signal-system, knowing always that the female is defeatable and will succumb, eventually, to the wiles that are part-and-parcel of her very self. May I include this strategy within the 'Hermetic'? Meaning: Don't pay attention to what is said but understand far more essential dynamics that operate fundamentally. The same functions on all levels, from politics to pussy.

Men and women both are acute victims of the very System that has created them. Managing that victimhood is where 'mastery' may lie. But it will never, ever change or become something different!

And one other small note: Athena's eye, as that eye seemed more to be (it was not 'doe-eyed' it was actually clear and a little aloof---or am I projecting? Heh heh) is not really the sexual, seductive eye. It is an eye that is particularly feminine and particularly allied, if you will, with Apollonian projects! I am basing this a little on Camille Paglia and Walter F. Otto. Paglia in 'Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickenson' focuses (!) on the eye of Nefertiti as it is represented in statuary, and it is really a unique eye, with a unique capacity for vision and for visualization.

Nefertiti is the opposite of the Venus of Willendorf. She is the triumph of Apollonian image over the humpiness and horror of mother earth. Everything fat, slack, and sleepy is gone. The western eye is open and alert. It has forced objects into their frozen frame. But the liberation of the eye has its price ... Western culture, moving up toward Apollonian sunlight, discards one burden only to stagger under another.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Dennis, the distinction between spirit and ego is easily blurred simply because they are fundamentally inseparable. But if I'd try to describe the dynamic it would be ego as an inward pointing, a shrinking vector and spirit as an outreaching, expanding vector. Spirituality then is left to be both and neither, more a balancing act of both, a breathing in and out. Paradoxically the way out becomes the way in, or in reverse. When your spirit was left unguarded it was because your breath was momentary caught.

Pye, that weakness and folly is also men's strength or at least history's driver; to launch a thousand ships for a face. Recently I was reading about research showing how the male brain responded to female curves (even abstracted) just like it did to hard drugs. Another major reward cycle! I think at a very fundamental level the imagery, fantasy and "idealized form" is an immense driver for much of our current behavior, linked not only deeply to lust (a modernized obsessing and over-exposure) but to ambition and striving. And this is not just for men, one could make the case the "female" brain falls even more victim to it, a self-seduction as it were although perhaps with different incentives and intensities. So when approaching this topic it's not so much men who need consideration, but it's then really the "couple" who needs saving from her own image.

This is what Ryonen's Clear Realization is all about in my opinion.

[Alex Jacob]

That definitely ISN'T an option any 'sharp-eyed Athena' should ever have to take, in my humble opinion. Now, what Athena would do is devilish, I admit, but here it is: she would get all the hot pokers set up, build the fire and make a big show of preparing to debeautify her face. And at the moment of rapture when those assholes actually thought she'd do it, she pokes out their fucking eyeballs with the hot poker. Et voilà! The ZEN solution!

Now, if I were running the Zen monestary I would leap at the chance to have such a beauty catering to my every whim. I would dissuade her from the Zen life but it would really be an enticement to jump in, forever. She'd be forced to wait outside for three days or something. And THEN I'd let her in under severe conditions, put her through Zen brainwashing mindfuck until her personality collapsed into my loving, dictatorial arms, and then I'd have the perfect brainwashed Zen fuck-bunny! Those dudes were just not thinking straight. Opportunity knocked and they blew it!

But as PT Barnum said: There's a Venus of Willendorf born every minute...
______________________________

This one goes out to Laird.

[Jamesh]

I'm getting I-strain from all this academic philosophy here these days.

Hey, where did we go
Days when the rains came?
Down in the hollow
Playing a new game,

Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la dee dah
Laying in the green grass
Sha la la la la la la la la la la dee dah
Dee dah dee dah dee dah dee dah dee dah dee
Sha la la la la la la la la la la la la
Dee dah la dee dah la dee dah la
D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d...

Instead of those alluring thus evil temptress eyes, lets all go the opposite of those beautiful eyes and change our avatars to chocolate starfish. That way we don't have to keep our Eyes Wide Shut to those evil EyeSocketPuppets.

[Kunga]

I fall in love with humourous guys....................................so knock it off !!!!!

:)

(I speak for myself, but it might apply to other women.....that intelligent & humorous men are a big turn on...much like the physical attributes of women can stimulate a sexual response in men )

[Dennis Mahar]

Pye,
Thanks for an intelligent response and quite on the mark.

To be self-realised is to distinguish 'human machinery'.

Rather than define 'human machinery' with a predicate calculus,
A distinction can be drawn concerning 'human machinery' that 'cognites' it as 'human machinery'.
In such a way 'dumbass machinery' is exposed and one experiences 'freedom'.
What people don't know that they don't know is now known.
What was unconscious acting out is noticed as unconscious acting out and to those self-realised, unconscious acting out is ridiculous and a charade.

The Tarzan/Jane thang.
A rough guide:
The majority of men think with their dick.
If women think with their cunt, they haven't got a chance (slut).
Women are 400 times smarter than men because they realise cunt has power and exploit it.
Men resent this power and try to control women.
How many times has a bloke promised the world to get at the gash.

It's nobody's fault.

There's a massive predicate calculus on it but for our purposes, to grok it is to move out of victimhood and greater possibilities for relationship open up.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

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.

Jamesh, "honest spirituality" is to do as you said, but it is first to honestly "diagnose" one's own position.

When honestly evaluating your own self and hence better understanding others, you see that experience is shallow and empty. First recognizing your own delusion and ignorance, then recognizing the delusion and ignorance of everyone else. Deep down, you and everyone else knows they are like little children with no control of their actions or their thoughts.

Nothing ever changed but how highly one might think of themselves. I'll use the same example as before... like a bird learning to fly, the bird doesn't know anything and it didn't even have to do anything, it just acted because that's how it was "made".

We are only acting/reacting to stimuli, we do not have control over our thoughts and hence they are meaningless delusions, if you watch them for even a second you will agree, they are exactly like those crazy imaginations you have while half asleep.

The only thing that convinces people otherwise (makes them think they are capable and intelligent) is that they are able to achieve and predict things, navigate, discover, etc.

This is a delusion in itself, they never did anything, the only thing that happened was future sensory experiences being altered by former thoughts. Life is a dream.

[Dennis Mahar]

Diebert,

Dennis, the distinction between spirit and ego is easily blurred simply because they are fundamentally inseparable. But if I'd try to describe the dynamic it would be ego as an inward pointing, a shrinking vector and spirit as an outreaching, expanding vector. Spirituality then is left to be both and neither, more a balancing act of both, a breathing in and out. Paradoxically the way out becomes the way in, or in reverse. When your spirit was left unguarded it was because your breath was momentary caught.

That's the advanced course.
non duality.
This is suggesting the possibility of not so much commanding situations but of being in command of oneself in situations.

Pye is arguing such in her analysis of the subject/object relationship.

My language might be considered rough,
in some parts Philosophy is carried out brutally.
A brutal interrogation, a full frontal assault on Dasein to get Dasein to catch itself in the unconscious act of it's conditioned machinery.
To 'free' Dasein from it's misery.
It doesn't even know it's miserable.
It boasts a sense of humour which is experienced about 10 minutes a week. Big deal.

[Pye]

(Just to show a sporting side to this dire topic, I have to admit the little chuckle I indulged in when our new "French member" showed up. What has ever been "rational" about the sexual dialectic? It's its own raison d'etre . . . . :)

[Pye]

Diebert writes: Pye, that weakness and folly is also men's strength or at least history's driver; to launch a thousand ships for a face.

Yes, as we're often reminded :) But so, too, your couple-comment. I doubt those ships got launched in a vacuum of helpless maleness; I doubt that females are in any less-effective position in the dialectic that 'drives' history . . . .

[Kunga]

It boasts a sense of humour which is experienced about 10 minutes a week. Big deal.

At least I don't boast about meditating. How does your ego feel after you meditate Dennis ? Much better ?
Tell your Buddhist Monk friends how you meditate everynight after calling this woman you loathe a cunt.
Tell them how women use there femininity to lure little boys .....(and how this has made you a victum/cripple)
Tell them how compassionate you are & what a good teacher you are & how many students you have under your tutelage....
Show them what you hide from them....
Or maybe it's obvious to them....you must reek from the stink of your garbage you try to hide under your clean clothes.
Your compassion is full of puss.

[guest_of_logic]

Based on that list how can I reject the idea.

Hey Dan, I'd love it if you'd take some time to look into the studies done on diets like this. Check out the (separate) work done by Dean Ornish and Neal Barnard (amongst others), who have proved that a wholefood vegan diet (in combination with other lifestyle changes in the case of Dean Ornish's work) can treat, and in some cases literally reverse the progress of, all sorts of diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. Chances are, a diet like that would help to treat your own medical problems. And the diets these guys studied weren't even raw - the benefits of a raw diet are in all likelihood even greater. Seriously, check them out and run your assessments. I'd be interested to know what you think.

It's my position that everybody should, for ethical reasons, be at least vegan, and preferably fruitarian, but ethics are not enough incentive for many people - maybe health is enough incentive for you.

----

Deebs,

I'll try to be as brief as I can be whilst covering all points:

I don't accept your (cunning!) attempt to turn the tables on me; to frame a materialist outlook as the more spiritual one, and a spiritual outlook as the more materialist, especially not on the justification of the latter being based in "external" forces. I'm sure you're linguistically aware enough to know that my use of the term "spiritual" in this context is totally in keeping with standard use, as any check of a dictionary would confirm. Without wanting to be confrontational or dramatic in saying so (though I suspect I am!), I actually see your table-turning attempt as subversive.

With respect to "the forum", my point is unrelated to how one defines "it" generally; all I'm getting at is that your views are generally consistent with those of its founders and with those on the forum who support the views of its founders, which you seem to admit in your most recent post addressed to me. Why is this important? Because you so rarely explicate your views that this is a helpful key into understanding what they actually are.

That said, it seems to me that you didn't really engage with the main point of my second post to you, which was that, consistent with the forum founders, your atheism leads you to make a sharp distinction between "spiritual matters" and "worldly matters", and that it's likely that you do this because you see no spiritual dimension "behind" or "beyond" the material, so that, if you are at all allied with Kevin's views, you define "spirituality" in terms of abstract, ultimate "truth", as opposed to one's relationship with a non-abstract deity and its manifestations, upon which one's material activity and circumstances have a bearing. Phew, that's one massive run-on sentence, but I think it covers everything. The extent of your engagement with that point seems to have been the aforementioned attempt at table-turning, and your apparently reluctant (because of how peripherally you made it) acknowledgement that you define "spirituality" as (abstract) "truth", through the statement, "I'm indeed more interested in impersonal truths".

I "protested with a loud voice" your "dissect[ion] and reject[ion]" of my arguments for spiritual forces because, from my perspective, they were not rationally based, and were instead ideologically driven. From my perspective, your "dissection" amounted to the choice to consistently, in the teeth of the evidence, suggest implausible material coincidences or unknown material factors, or, in the case of faith healings, temporary material spontaneities. Your "rejection", was, then, in my eyes, better framed as a "denial".

And with all of that, it might seem that I'm shifting focus from our common ground, but that's not entirely the case: I simply don't see how we can establish what our common ground is unless/until you elaborate more fully on what your ground is. I am aware that you ignored my partial invitation to do so in my last post, albeit that I expected you to do so and said as much.

I understand that you might choose not to continue this conversation, and that's fine, but the invitation's open...

This one goes out to Laird.

Well met, Alex, and this one goes out to you, with apropos (even if taking themselves far too seriously!) lyrics:

Brotherly Ass
=============

This internet township
Is a trove now to read
But my hope's for an opus
And always will be.
Some day we'll return to
Our narratives, our arts,
And we'll no longer burn
To bleed blood in these parts.

Through these screeds of reduction
That QRStians inspire -
Their wish, against suffering,
For their acid, their fire -
Don't let us deserve to be bagged
In our cheer and disarm,
We'll be not besmirched now
My brotherly Ass.

There's so many distant words,
Some men choose different ones,
Could be that just one word
Would enrich a listening soul.

Now there's not much to tell
Of the prurient delight
In the bid to stoke hell,
Every man in the fight.
But I wish this place be all right
And every psyche, because
Ain't cool when there's war
Between "others" and "us".

[Alex Jacob]

Well, here is my response. Define what you value and fight for it! And only because I came across it: John Trudell on the Christian World View.

[guest_of_logic]

Paradoxical as it is, then, I'll fight for peace... or at least "civil" war.

Something John Trudell said there got me thinking, to look at the history of how our ancestors were "civilised", and the brutality involved. It could be interesting.

[Alex Jacob]

Oh yes, the Roman conquest of Europe, the imposition of everything we call civilization, and then a grand melding within the Mediterranean cauldron. Sado-masochism at its cultural high-point.

[Kunga]

I am the black dakini, goddess of the Void
I am the night sky empty of stars
the lake without reflections
When I take on human form, I am wrathful in appearance
With skin and hair that is blue-black
And jewelry that is of jet and ebony

In a sky of deep sapphire blue
I sit on a lotus with petals of gold,
and a center of black velvet
When I have two hands, I hold the vajra and bell
When I have four hands, I also hold the noose and the goad
In my six armed form, I add the axe and the mala.

My true form is in the depths of space,
The vast reaches of silence
But with the sound of HUM I emerge,
in the form of a spinning black vajra edged in gold
Around me are HUMS like beads on a string
Spinning, exploding, shooting blue pearls of light
in every direction.

I am called by many names.
As Nairatmya, I am the dark face of the Void
the waves upon the lightless ocean
I am the crow-headed goddess, flying high
my feathers in black, green, blue, and purple
I am the black goddess of death
holding the world in my arms
as I return to the deep waters
I am the mother who brings forth children from dark nothingness
who watches their lives and their deaths.

I am a wrathful emanation of Vajra Dakini,
she of rainbow crystal
Yet I am also her origin out of the dark void.
I dance with my bhairava
to the drumbeats of the heart of the universe
And from our dance come millions of whirling comets
Who form the guardians of the vajra worlds
When the dance is stopped, the comets return
And the universe is re-absorbed into our footsteps.

I create from the void and call things back to return
I tear apart form and attachment
My nails tear bonds to ribbons
which dance in the winds of prana
Those are my prayer-flags, and the banners of my warriors
They scatter the shreds of karma
before the winds of the Void
To create the dances of the worlds

I may be of help to the aspirant, but I am dangerous
For I will take away all he possesses
If he gives them up gladly,
we will dance together in their ashes
But if he clings to them
He will lose his mind and his heart.

I seek only beings ready for full liberation
Leave all behind and we will find beauty
In the emptiness that remains.

[Dennis Mahar]

It's a good thing your buttons are pushed Kunga.
Have you had a dream involving a snake lately?

[Pye]

gawd, you two.

I can hardly think of two more people on this forum who have sweeter or more chocolately middles surrounding their obviously huge and reaching hearts; their tears, their desires, their compassion, their protective prickly anger. In between the skirmishes, each has expressed their best visions for all from their hugest of hearts.

One huge heart stabbing at another huge heart. I'm surprised you can't feel that stab like to your own, every time you stick it to another.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I don't accept your (cunning!) attempt to turn the tables on me; to frame a materialist outlook as the more spiritual one, and a spiritual outlook as the more materialist, especially not on the justification of the latter being based in "external" forces.

Actually I might be cunning but not turning, the dialog hasn't changed at all since our last 2x4 discussion. There I had a constant painting of you with: black and white fundamentalism, asserting unquestioned "facts in the realm of phenomena" , emotionally investment in those facts (a good definition of materialism if I ever gave one), immature reasoning supplying illogical "solid reasons" and "research" as being real and not some product of mental confusion. The fact of you not doubting yourself at all there with your "clearly outlined position".

But still I remain the "materialist"? In my view it's always you who have been misunderstanding and reversing the tables, flipping the cards and cheating with the dice, as far as our discussions went. At the same time I remain willing to keep talking also because you seem like such a sincere guy who really tries to put his thoughts out there as coherent as possible, following the trails. And that is already a rare thing.

I'm sure you're linguistically aware enough to know that my use of the term "spiritual" in this context is totally in keeping with standard use, as any check of a dictionary would confirm.

Any proper dictionary would gave many differing definitions and certainly not one that could be claimed. Aren't you sure you are playing a trick here? Wikipedia helps by saying straight away that the term spirituality lacks a definite definition unless perhaps some kind of search for "the sacred" which could be said to be the extremely unordinary and worthy.

It's true I've bent the definition of materialism a bit but it was really based on your attempts to prove the supernatural through "evidence" last time, especially the physical, experimental and mathematical. Although I questioned it (negating) using some form of methodological naturalism, this didn't mean I view the whole of the spiritual in those terms!

..., if you are at all allied with Kevin's views, you define "spirituality" in terms of abstract, ultimate "truth", as opposed to one's relationship with a non-abstract deity and its manifestations, upon which one's material activity and circumstances have a bearing.

It's just that I'm not sure why it looks so completely abstract to you. Is that the same as "impersonal" perhaps to your mind? Perhaps this is an area we can reach a better understanding, perhaps without invoking whatever it is what you have taken away from "the forum" or Kevin in the past. Just try to pretend like I'm a different guy coming from a completely different angle, just thrown into this forum like yourself, trying to make sense.

[Kunga]

One huge heart stabbing at another huge heart

We're not stabbing the heart Pye....it's more like this :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBYmiqad_-M


lol

[Pye]

okay, Kunga, but it's still uck(!) either way :)

[Dennis Mahar]

The old warhorse in her drunken escapade was bleeding woundedness Pye,
A bit of headbutting between pals arcs up the spirit a bit.
She seems to be firing on 8 cylinders again.