Can people change?

Talking Ass · Post by **Talking Ass** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 10:05 am

No one, and not I certainly, ever denied 'causes and conditions'. The part that you do not seem to understand is what men choose to do within 'causes and conditions'. Men build, through time, within 'causes and conditions', and what arises from that is not 'arbitrary' as you seem often to imply. Nor are the meanings and the values that arise in these contexts. You seek to enforce a strange sense of 'valuelessness' (you have a whole set of words you employ: emptyness, meaninglessness) which is what I take issue with.

Does Johann Wolfgang von Goethe own Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?

I think this is a (er-hum) meaningless question. It is a rhetorical question the answer to which, most definitely, you possess. BTW, Jufa would answer it similarly to you, if I read him right.

You could say---folksily---that at a certain point, he took himself and ran with it...

I donno, maybe Monsanto owns him now... ;-)

Dennis Mahar · Post by **Dennis Mahar** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 10:30 am

Do you own choosing?

Bobo · Post by **Bobo** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 11:20 am

Does Johann Wolfgang von Goethe own Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?

Goethe does not inherently exists therefore your question does not inherently exists.

Are you asking if A is A?

mental vagrant · Post by **mental vagrant** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 1:18 pm

Talking Ass wrote:No one, and not I certainly, ever denied 'causes and conditions'. The part that you do not seem to understand is what men choose to do within 'causes and conditions'. Men build, through time, within 'causes and conditions', and what arises from that is not 'arbitrary' as you seem often to imply. Nor are the meanings and the values that arise in these contexts. You seek to enforce a strange sense of 'valuelessness' (you have a whole set of words you employ: emptyness, meaninglessness) which is what I take issue with.

Does Johann Wolfgang von Goethe own Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?
I think this is a (er-hum) meaningless question. It is a rhetorical question the answer to which, most definitely, you possess. BTW, Jufa would answer it similarly to you, if I read him right.

You could say---folksily---that at a certain point, he took himself and ran with it...

I donno, maybe Monsanto owns him now... ;-)

You think choice isn't an illusion? Choice seems to recognition of existence.

Talking Ass · Post by **Talking Ass** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 1:30 pm

Dennis, it would seem to me that if we could be said to claim anything, we choose our choices. However, since beings like us who think, plan, weigh and choose, do so within a preestablished framework (of such choosing) that we certainly have not created, one might say more accurately that we 'partake' of choices. In Jewish thought (I would assume this is extended to Christian thought) it is in this sense that man co-creates with God. If I conceive of and design and build a theatre and bring in players to act, and they do act, can they be said to be acting freely?No, but they have all sorts of interpretive choice, and that is what makes for dynamic theatre. Since in your manner of viewing there seems to be no notion of deity with 'whom' you interact in relationship, you would likely not be able to even conceive of freedom. It would seem that your world is utterly determined. Except you have an escape valve. And it is about that you wish to treat on.

mental vagrant · Post by **mental vagrant** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 1:42 pm

Talking Ass wrote:Dennis, i would seem to me that if we could be said to claim anything, we choose our choices. However, since beings like us who think, plan, weigh and choose, do so within a preestablished framework (of such choosing) that we certainly have not created, one might say more accurately that we 'partake' of choices. In Jewish thought (I would assume this is extended to Christian thought) it is in this sense that man co-creates with God. If I conceive of and design and build a theatre and bring in players to act, and they do act, can they be said to be acting freely?No, but they have all sorts of interpretive choice, and that is what makes for dynamic theatre. Since in your manner of viewing there seems to be no notion of deity with 'whom' you interact in relationship, you would likely not be able to even conceive of freedom. It would seem that your world is utterly determined. Except you have an escape valve. And it is about that you wish to treat on.

No deity -> omnideterminism is non sequitur. I'm unsure whether, we are seeing with the same shapes but speaking with different tongues. There might be 'random' elements, spurifying time space, but how does that negate determinism? Ultimately i propose that it's inconcievable to not understand the now as its only format. Problem is as a human i can only understand randomisim and infinity as concepts which are only usefull for excluding what i cannot comprehend.

I'm hoping you can build on this, i'm missing so much, no idea what.

GodsDaughter1 · Post by **GodsDaughter1** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 5:04 pm

Luke Space wrote:Hi, I'm 25 and my IQ is 118. I've been told that IQ does not change by much throughout a person's lifetime, but whether this is true or not, I remain hopeful that with the right training/lifestyle I will be able to raise it to genius level.

GodsDaughter says: First, you need to know what genius is and what it is not. Genius has nothing to do with education or how much knowledge you have, instead it is about ABILITY! An I.Q of 118 tells me you have ability, now you just need to develop that ability to genius achieve! Find out where you score highest on your test, say for example you scored 100% on spacial recognition, it would be ideal for you to work in an environment where spacial recognition is used, you'd be highly successful, this would be developing what you already have, but since you already scored 100% this would already make you 100% genius at spacial recognition!

To be blunt, I'm tired of living like a dumbass and not accomplishing anything of value. I'd like to change this. Not just simple changes here and there. That I can do. I'm talking about a full-blown transformation. Developing into a genius and becoming enlightened. Maybe then I'd be of some value to myself and others and create things I can be proud of.

GodsDaughter1 says: The full blown transformation happens over time, you must develop yourself first, the experience of developing yourself through time is your transformation. Development is a daily practice of your passion what-ever-it-be. Yes, you can transform your mind to genius achieve, what-ever-your-heart-desires! You literally hone your passion to perfection! You concentrate on your passion and then you develop it to genius level which is 100% perfection! Anyone can do it! Even a low I.Qer!

So I'd like to get a discussion started on the topic: can people change? Specifically, can someone go from being "not much" to being an enlightened genius? If it's possible, how? How much work would this require and how long would it take? In any case, I'm in it for the long haul. I'll die trying if I have to.

GodsDaughter says: It takes years of daily practice, the years depends on the genius within you!
We all have a genius within us, it's up to us to acknowlege it, accept it, and develop it.

By the way, I would think most people would want to accomplish such a goal yet most people probably aren't enlightened geniuses. Maybe most people just didn't/don't know how...

GodsDaughter says: Enlightened genius are people who can influence others for the good, to benefit them through teaching them their genius astute insight!

Also, are there any Internet resources that could help? I'd like to read anything which could potentially bring me closer to this goal.

GodsDaughter says: I can bring you closer to this goal, you only need to listen, hear the words that I speak!
Thanks!

Tomas · Post by **Tomas** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 6:47 pm

Wow, Donna.

Don't bogart that joint, my friend. Pass it over to me. Roll another one, just like the other one.

B.C. Bud...

Dennis Mahar · Post by **Dennis Mahar** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 7:33 pm

A chooser , as a thing existing in itself, cannot be found.
A choice, as a thing in itself, cannot be found.
A chooser depends on a choice.
A choice depends on a chooser.
If that were not the case, choices would be running about without the necessity of a chooser and choosers would be running about without the necessity of choosing.

Thinkers do not exist without thoughts. Thoughts do not exist without thinkers.
Feelings do not exist without feelers. Feelers do not exist without feelings.
Subjects do not exist without objects. Objects do not exist without subjects.

A thought cannot grasp itself and depends upon what is not itself for existence.
A choice cannot choose itself and depends on what is not itself for existence.

Whatsoever depends for existence lacks inherent existence. Is not autonomous.
Whatsoever lacks inherent existence is found to arise out of causes/conditions.

No one and no thing can be found running the show.

Talking Ass · Post by **Talking Ass** » Mon Dec 26, 2011 10:45 pm

MV, if I understand you: 'Now' indeed is the 'format' of 'the determined All' and an absolute determinism is hard to avoid intellectually, rationalistically. If one thinks, sees or feels differently, it is likely because of an inner sense of relatedness, that is to something like deity. I am not convinced these are completely 'rational' conversations, but rather that we use our conceptual self to express our subjective position. So, in my own way of conceiving myself, and in some way similarly to the Hugo Rahner quote I posted for Jufa, I sense myself to have relationship with an intelligence, a greater, enveloping being that I conceive, in many ways, as 'mercurial'. Sort of 'the god behind the god'.

How did I come to have this sense? I do not know.

And so, cultivating as it were that *relationship*, which is real to me, I see and I am seen. It may not be much considering infinity, considering determinism, considering the inconceivable, but this relationship seems to me to be the origin of "the seer's mind", which I think has links to something perhaps expressible as 'taoist': and by that I mean naturalistic, not the classical human projection. In this sense, 'the god behind the god' can be invoked, can be 'operated'. It is then 'intelligence behind intelligence', 'mystery behind mysteriousness', 'riddler behind riddle'. I don't believe it (life and being) can be explored or exponded 'rationalistically' but requires our whole instrument. Knowledge in this sense is not easily gained, and incarnation can be and is for the multitude a terrifying distraction. These distractions consume all the available energy of most persons, but some of us, for periods of time perhaps or perhaps for all of a life, delve into the mystery of things. And we usually uncover traces, or elements, that we attempt to conceptualize. For me, this is 'story', but story is not invalid per se, and it is not false. Poets say that poetry can tell us more about *truth* than those theological explications or rationalistic explanations that we try to rely on. It is perhaps a discomfiting fact that this is so.

mental vagrant · Post by **mental vagrant** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 1:47 am

Talking Ass wrote:MV, if I understand you: Now indeed is the format of 'the determined All'. If one thinks, sees or feels differently it is likely because of an inner sense of relatedness. I am not convinced these are completely 'rational' conversations, but rather that we use our conceptual self to express our subjective position. So, in my own way of conceiving myself, and in some way similarly to the Hugo Rahner quote I posted for Jufa, I sense myself to have relationship with an intelligence, a greater, enveloping being that I conceive, in many ways, as 'mercurial'. Sort of 'the god behind the god'.

And so, cultivating as it were that relationship, I see and I am seen. It may not be much considering infinity, considering determinism, considering the inconceivable, but this relationship seems to me to be the origin of "the seer's mind", which I think has links to something perhaps expressible as 'taoist': and by that I mean naturalistic, not the classical human projection. In this sense, 'the god behind the god' can be invoked, can be 'operated'. It is then 'intelligence behind intelligence', 'mystery behind mysteriousness', 'riddler behind riddle'. I don't believe it (life and being) can be explored or exponded 'rationalistically' but requires our whole instrument. Knowledge in this sense is not easily gained, and incarnation can be and ia for the multitude a terrifying distraction

Nor am i nor should any other; moderately rational at best. Read me as i'm written.

You speak my tongue now i tell you. You like to fornicate black holes etc. We have this in common, i'm not of the local doctrine, my medicine is gathered from the forests; nanoscopic to intergalactic (so i tell myself). I'd think rationality involves emotion inseparably.

Pam Seeback · Post by **Pam Seeback** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:29 am

TA: I don't believe it (life and being) can be explored or exponded 'rationalistically' but requires our whole instrument. Knowledge in this sense is not easily gained, and incarnation can be and ia for the multitude a terrifying distraction

TA, one can explore their life rationally, but this exploration hits the ceiling of sentient intellectualism and can go no further. Rational thought arises from our foundational reality when it is needed, but rational thought is not the nature of our foundational reality. To me, it is a no-brainer to realize that for most of our waking day, we are not in reasoning mode. Rather, that we are alone with the silence of our transcendent unconsciousness. Which means that if one has not developed a thinking relationship with their transcendent consciousness, that they will suffer their wandering sentient desires [the cause of incarnation].

How much reasoning does a man actually do in a day that is directly related to his physical [natural] survival? Very little. Which means, that for the rest of the day he is mentally occupied with...what? Finding things to reason.

I agree that one needs to use their whole [thinking] instrument to 'know thyself' beyond their desires for the mental realm, the emotional realm and the animal realm. Such knowledge requires opening oneself up to a whole new subjective-objective language of desire - that of identification with myths and metaphors that are related only to the desire for transcendence. I do believe that the spiritual giants, those who desired one thing and one thing only, that is, complete transcendence of their humanism, spoke this language as genius' - men such as Jesus Christ, Lao Tzu and Gautama the Buddha. To my knowledge, none of these three men expounded reason as the way of transcending the realm of birth and death, of sentient incarnation - as a way to be purged of one's identification with their human personality, yes, but not as THE way to enlightenment.

Pam Seeback · Post by **Pam Seeback** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:32 am

I'd think rationality involves emotion inseparably.

Indeed. Sentience dictates a feeling awareness.

Dennis Mahar · Post by **Dennis Mahar** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:12 am

Story gives 'God' thingness.
A separate entity with characteristics, properties, functions.

Admit it.
You don't know.
Making shit up.
looking for a parent.
Cry baby.

Dennis Mahar · Post by **Dennis Mahar** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 7:12 am

To me, it is a no-brainer to realize that for most of our waking day, we are not in reasoning mode.

Not entirely truthful.

We can distinguish:
On the field.
In the grandstand.

Being on the field with our tentative conceptual package playing out, our winning formula.
noticing it breaking down.

Retreating to the grandstand for a bit of reflection.
Back to the drawing board.
Rejigging the approach.

Back on the field,
facing the pitchers with the curve balls,
struck out again.
or stranded on 3rd or 4th.

Back in the stand for a bit of reflection,
run some theory past the coach,

Face up with another winning formula,
looking for a homer.
the breakthru'.

mental vagrant · Post by **mental vagrant** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:00 am

Dennis Mahar wrote:Story gives 'God' thingness.
A separate entity with characteristics, properties, functions.

Admit it.
You don't know.
Making shit up.
looking for a parent.
Cry baby.

<><><>?

Pam Seeback · Post by **Pam Seeback** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:41 am

Story gives 'God' thingness.
A separate entity with characteristics, properties, functions.

Dennis, every time you think you are giving 'God' or 'you' or 'it' thingness. A challenge: say something to me that is not projecting 'thingness.'

Admit it.
You don't know.
Making shit up.
looking for a parent.
Cry baby.

Of course I don't know - for anyone but me. Just as no one knows - for anyone but themselves. The man who denies his subjectivity is a deluded man.

As for looking for a parent, no, I am simply acknowledging that no man is the creator of his own consciousness, his awareness or his thoughts. It is to That energy of creation - whatever That is, that I seek conscious union.

As for being a cry baby, well, it simply ain't so. I weep inwardly sometimes for the cruelty of man, but to me, that's not being a cry baby, that's just being real.

mental vagrant · Post by **mental vagrant** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:48 am

There is obviously soo much potential within the contributors here, shame it is mostly wasted defending 'ego' (literal). Can imagine real enlightnment in a scenario where we could cherish one anothers.

Pam Seeback · Post by **Pam Seeback** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:56 am

Dennis Mahar wrote:
To me, it is a no-brainer to realize that for most of our waking day, we are not in reasoning mode.
Not entirely truthful.

We can distinguish:
On the field.
In the grandstand.

Being on the field with our tentative conceptual package playing out, our winning formula.
noticing it breaking down.

Retreating to the grandstand for a bit of reflection.
Back to the drawing board.
Rejigging the approach.

Back on the field,
facing the pitchers with the curve balls,
struck out again.
or stranded on 3rd or 4th.

Back in the stand for a bit of reflection,
run some theory past the coach,

Face up with another winning formula,
looking for a homer.
the breakthru'.

Dennis, you identify with many metaphors in your posts as you are doing above. How is this different than identifying with a metaphor for That which gave you life?

Pam Seeback · Post by **Pam Seeback** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 11:00 am

mental vagrant wrote:There is obviously soo much potential within the contributors here, shame it is mostly wasted defending 'ego' (literal). Can imagine real enlightnment in a scenario where we could cherish one anothers.

MV, if you haven't noticed, concepts such as "cherishing" are not popular concepts here at GF. "Cherishing" is considered a feminine trait, ergo, one to be eliminated from one's consciousness. It is not, by the way, a philosophy to which I subscribe. Cherishing one another, yes!

Dennis Mahar · Post by **Dennis Mahar** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 11:28 am

Let's 'grow' out of our nappies and set aside our honey-encrusted dummies.
Let's quit looking for a parent.
Let's be manly and suck it up manfully.

To thingify no-thing is pointless.

To thingify thingness is the task.

What is found is that thingness depends for existence.
Is causes/conditions
pieces parts.

Form is empty,
Empty is form.

Dennis Mahar · Post by **Dennis Mahar** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 11:31 am

Dennis, you identify with many metaphors in your posts as you are doing above. How is this different than identifying with a metaphor for That which gave you life?

I'm just telling you there what human being does.
It's a rational explanation of human being.

Talking Ass · Post by **Talking Ass** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 12:11 pm

Well, let's not get too lovey-dovey now...

I AM an ego and egolessness is simply not a goal of mine.

Naturally, I resist the reductive, psychologizing manouvre: to reduce a notion of a divine intelligence (and yes, you have to be quick and agile with your metaphors!) to merely a projection of parent. In order to say this, it might not be recognized, there is needed a Freud to have seen it like that. (And to see Freud means to see (and hopefully to understand) context and the contextual). Though to a certain, perhaps even to a great extent it may, of course, be true. We have to deal with the Parent thing...

But, in order to understand ourselves as 'products of the West', and by that I mean Mediterranean beings: that amalgam of ideas, that phenomenal melding of visions and understandings that is the long and painstaking communication between Rome, Greece, Judea and Alexandria, we cannot simply wipe it all off the board (unless you are a willful, uneduated, Australian hick and if so, well, I guess you can do any goddammed thing you want...)

;-) [sheepish, impish, complicit, grin].

I should not---in this new chairscuro of 'loving kindness'---take another pot-shot at Ole Dennis but yet it is unavoidable: in order to understand who we are as occidental persons, and to understand even why we are engaged in this particular conversation (which arises from our context and cannot be separated from it!), we have to undertand what made us what we are; what are the building blocks with which we have constructed ourselves. This idea (I have been made to understand with a certain unstudied persistance) is untenable because it means:

'One' would have to be willing to 1) know oneself (not just to mouth the phrase), 2) not jettison irresponsibly the work of countless generations of men---people---who have given their lives to translating their vision into conceptual models that could be related, bequeathed, communicated (and thus live), 3) continue to work with the metaphors (pathways for defining 'truth'), but in a new way, with a renewed spirit.

That is what I meant when I spoke of trying to find a strong or semi-solid place within the self and from that position taking up the lenses of perception and conception of our language---but to throw away nothing!

I suggest *once again* that my beloved interlocutor (*kiss-kiss, hug-hug*) gives evidence of a sort of violence directed against a part of himself, something he seems to desire to eradicate and to replace with a layed-over perceptual system: Zennish pseudo-Buddhism. I suggest that this is an expression of a culture-wide nihilism and that its 'causes' can be discovered in a species of rebellion (and many good things do come out of rebellion when it wises-up).

I suggest again that it is nearly exactly the same manoeuvre that the QRS attempt, and I also suggest it is attempted because of a deep-seated ressentiment directed against the self. Because this is so, these unconscious motivators, it seems, never *serve* us and it seems they end up trying us in knots, knots we are forced usually later in life to untie, but as long as it all remains unconscious, progress is hampered).

To understand, in our own selves, the notion of 'God' (Father, director of the cosmos, originator of the universe of time-space-being), we have to have a dialogue with 'Judea' since, in very point of fact, these ideas, these metaphors, these allusions, have been built into us and weave in and out of all our cultural and social traditions. Even if we might want to erase them or to scratch them out, it simply does not happen like that. 'The world' (in that local sense), it seems, will not progress until it has come to terms with the meaning behind the meaning, 'the god behind the god' (I am borrowing my own terms!), and until we have really delved into the sense that we all carry, in one way or another, of being *originated*. You could indeed explore it through very basic (infantilistic) notions of Ma and Pa, since those are installed facts within the fibre of our being and are NEVER eradicated. Indeed, that is a part of it. But there are other dimensions too: a vision that arises in man whereby he *sees* into the very fabric of reality and perceives an awesome force toward which he has no choice but to turn. That experience can become an experience quite liberated of the terrible and terrifying HaShem (Jehovah) as is pictured in the OT.

But on another level, the New Vision, or the reVision, re-explains the Old Vision in a new light.

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependancy of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.

---Wallace Stevens, 'Sunday Morning'

Dennis Mahar · Post by **Dennis Mahar** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 1:08 pm

You DON"T know.

All you are saying is,
we have to delve into it.

have to come up with a story. must be a STORY!

There is one...Santa Claus.

Admit it.
You DON"T know.

The space where God (No thing) cries out for definition.
Get away from there.
Leave it alone.
All you can put there is bullshit.

Geddit?

Talking Ass · Post by **Talking Ass** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 1:43 pm

It is not possible to claim knowlwdge in the way you seem to assume I do and which you simultaneously resent. What I do say is that I feel strongly that it is imperative to keep channels open and to know the paths of language that one follows to arrive *in* the places they conduce to. I don't in that sense have a problem with your farse, really.

But even with that...you are wrong. What I know, I know. It is fundamental to myself, part and parcel. But it can only be communicated, or it is best communicated, with poetry. If I succeed on some level *communicating* with you, it is through a kind of *jolly terrorism*. You are already fundamentally fragmented it seems to me and desperately looking for a doctrine that might hold the parts together, fighting tooth and nail against anyone who expounds against your pet theories. The *arguments* I am presenting are ones that will not come to fruition in you for 10---even perhaps 20---years. I don't recommend getting rid of your nappies, but do learn to conceal them...

;-)

GENIUS FORUMS

Can people change?

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