GENIUS FORUMS

I was previously wrong, this is the quote of the decade:

raise people from the dead using dna replication abstracted from light beams near the omega point[...]

Who needs TV...

Dan I think I'm dying.

No,... I know that I am dying.

Goodbye cruel world. I was once a handsome man who pleasured many women, but now I am just wormfood, just dust in the wind.

I think I have cancer.

Dan Rowden wrote:I was previously wrong, this is the quote of the decade:

raise people from the dead using dna replication abstracted from light beams near the omega point[...]

Who needs TV...

Prince is referring to theories of physicists like Frank Tipler and David Deutsch. And really, if one considers the timeless totality, nothing ever dies or is born. Therefore there's no reason to think any sequence, including DNA, including the sequence of events one calls "my life" would be a one-time-only affair. This logic was why Nietzsche proposed the eternal recurrence as a possible cure to abysmal thoughts.

Which of course all would suck for Prince. When he's raised from the dead his DNA and replicated quantum scattering (I made that one up) might cause him to develop the same amount of pathos, all over again. So it's better to learn how to affirm all of it now.

Kelly wrote:I dunno about that. To me it's not about "redefining and changing," or "challenging any assumed demarcations," or other forms of academic wanking. It's telling the truth. Just finding out what's really the case.

But when someone suggests your telling of truth sounds like poetic introverted wanking, you seem puzzled? Fact is that you cannot expect to make big statements about how physical or real an experience is for you without walking into one or two fallacies. A cancer patient will in the same vein not be able to assert his psychological suffering as a fact. Some laugh and walk away from it with a spring in their step.

Kelly wrote:The physical transformation of his [Hakuin's] students, from healthy, plump-cheeked, sleek-skinned, handsome humans, into withered, haggard, wiry, hawk-like disciples was something he was very proud of. It showed their commitment. And he mentioned that the small temple at Shoinji had a graveyard, which had claimed quite a few students.

This is not so different from the Christian pathos; the suffering saint as symbol of consciousness, the divine movement descending through the price of tears and blood. For some this road might be the only way to experience some widening of awareness as they would have no chance by living some cleaner, healthier life. The weakness of the common mind requires toughening of the body and its surrounding, where most of their consciousness is focused on. As to sharpen the nerve ends, to challenge the rusty seat.

But the danger to the whole self-deprecating monk style lies in a whole different corner: one can become attached to the form, the exceptional condition, the heightened state of pain and discomfort as a lull, to for ever dwell in citing scripture and lower level insights.

It's no surprise the graveyard would fill up with the students though. And I doubt sages were ever forged in this fire. My view is that it fueled a larger story that would end up being more significant in terms of accomplishment and wisdom than all the sufferers in that monastery combined.

Kelly Jones wrote:The animal is - by definition - not intellectual. It's not rational. Thus, what reason do you have for regarding the expression of primitive drives, as rational, when they're just chemical drives for the purpose of manipulating an irrational creature to procreate?

No, it's not what we'd call rational in the normal sense. But insofar as it sets up the foundation for more complex forms of thought to take place, informing those thoughts and affecting them (which arguably they do all the time), they should be given the proper respect.

On a different note, the whole idea of "manipulating an irrational creature to procreate" is at least partially spawned by so many guys who look at women as just sex objects and don't consider the person.

But if you feel happy on expressing aggression and lust, you haven't relieved the problem, just submitted to what the chemicals are 'designed' to make you submit to.

There isn't anything existing that I don't understand in the philosophical world, so now to me there is only a "problem" if I'm not happy about something. But I am happy about this, and so it's the opposite of a problem.

To what extent are you actually engaging in psychological scrutiny about why you find it pleasing to hate Reality (which is the drive underlying both aggression and lust)?

Eh, truth is a very obvious and mundane thing. It's also something that's realized in concert with being 100% an animal. I'm sure it's possible for a person to THINK they are beyond aggression and lust, especially if they're in the right environment, but every last human specimen on the planet will act like an animal to the day they die. That's not a bad word by the way: animal.

Yes, logical consciousness is a valuable thing, but it really amazes me that someone like David, for instance, can keep talking about it so much. To me it seems obvious that he is fulfilling his natural need to express aggression by co-running the forum and assuming the position of teacher. And there is nothing wrong with that. I value wisdom and respect him for it.

For me, I also find other outlets.

prince wrote:you still have that desire to propel your genes inside you, everyone does. You only exist at all because of sexual desire. As do I, as does anyone else reading this now.

I don't actually have a desire to propagate my genes. I never have. It's never been a goal or an interest. Interestingly, I wanted to check this absence of sexual drive to see if I were suppressing something, so I have consistently observed my thoughts and psychology in regard to the "bio-clock" for years, and thought deeply about the meaning of menopause, and examined my reactions to seeing young mothers and their babies, or young fathers with their babies, or young families with children. I deliberately started to spend time with my nieces and nephew last year, though now only as a tutor by email. There is no inclination in me to have children, in the slightest. It has always been like that, and, it has deepened. So that's an answer to your first "question".

Regarding the second "question", I don't exist now because of my own sexual desire, because if that were necessary, I would be literally feeding the weeds. But anyway, you seem to forget there is such a thing as reason-based choices.

It's not the time to contemplate and wonder, the human race must continue so that it can master the universe and develop technology to the point where they can literally raise people from the dead using dna replication abstracted from light beams near the omega point in the future of the universal expansion.

That is how you and I will exist forever, and indeed all people.

We have been living forever, forever, already.

.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:I wrote: I dunno about that. To me it's not about "redefining and changing," or "challenging any assumed demarcations," or other forms of academic wanking. It's telling the truth. Just finding out what's really the case.

Diebert: But when someone suggests your telling of truth sounds like poetic introverted wanking, you seem puzzled? Fact is that you cannot expect to make big statements about how physical or real an experience is for you without walking into one or two fallacies. A cancer patient will in the same vein not be able to assert his psychological suffering as a fact. Some laugh and walk away from it with a spring in their step.

They're not fallacies. That's just other people not understanding that all experiences are psychological. The fallacy here, is that most people deny they have an "I". They have no, or very little, self-awareness.

I wrote: The physical transformation of his [Hakuin's] students, from healthy, plump-cheeked, sleek-skinned, handsome humans, into withered, haggard, wiry, hawk-like disciples was something he was very proud of. It showed their commitment. And he mentioned that the small temple at Shoinji had a graveyard, which had claimed quite a few students.

Diebert: This is not so different from the Christian pathos; the suffering saint as symbol of consciousness, the divine movement descending through the price of tears and blood. For some this road might be the only way to experience some widening of awareness as they would have no chance by living some cleaner, healthier life. The weakness of the common mind requires toughening of the body and its surrounding, where most of their consciousness is focused on. As to sharpen the nerve ends, to challenge the rusty seat.

But the danger to the whole self-deprecating monk style lies in a whole different corner: one can become attached to the form, the exceptional condition, the heightened state of pain and discomfort as a lull, to for ever dwell in citing scripture and lower level insights.

Well, I don't want to get into the complexities of the matter, only to mention that challenging one's attachments, can't be anything but foolhardy if one doesn't have "kensho",the understanding of emptiness, and the key to non-attachment.

But obviously, Zen is practical. There is little point in understanding if one doesn't apply.

It's no surprise the graveyard would fill up with the students though. And I doubt sages were ever forged in this fire. My view is that it fueled a larger story that would end up being more significant in terms of accomplishment and wisdom than all the sufferers in that monastery combined.

I think that kind of fire is vital to wisdom. Without sacrifice, there is no growth. Without literally challenging egotism in one's everyday life, there is nothing that can be called a sage. Only a dabbler, one who keeps his understanding at a distance from his life.

.

Skip,

I'm not convinced that you have actually reasoned long enough about the fundamental nature of reality to be taken seriously. To me it appears you have latched on to the idea that the there is no ultimate purpose (a mere appearance) and made a hedonistic religion out of it. Also, I'm not sure whether you mostly reasoned your way to the idea that there is no ultimate purpose, or if it was a more intuitive process with very little logic involved. I know you don't have to convince me of anything; but perhaps you could clear this up a bit? Thanks.

skipair wrote:

Kelly Jones wrote:The animal is - by definition - not intellectual. It's not rational. Thus, what reason do you have for regarding the expression of primitive drives, as rational, when they're just chemical drives for the purpose of manipulating an irrational creature to procreate?

No, it's not what we'd call rational in the normal sense. But insofar as it sets up the foundation for more complex forms of thought to take place, informing those thoughts and affecting them (which arguably they do all the time), they should be given the proper respect.

I think there is a difference between unconscious or subconscious biological processes, and the psychological mistakes that one can live without. The latter don't deserve any respect. If you disagree, give me a realistic example of how feeling angry is a necessary accompaniment to pure reason.

On a different note, the whole idea of "manipulating an irrational creature to procreate" is at least partially spawned by so many guys who look at women as just sex objects and don't consider the person.

But everything women do is related to sex, even grannies with their grandchildren obsessions are related to sex (i.e. gene preservation).

I wrote: But if you feel happy on expressing aggression and lust, you haven't relieved the problem, just submitted to what the chemicals are 'designed' to make you submit to.

Skipair: There isn't anything existing that I don't understand in the philosophical world, so now to me there is only a "problem" if I'm not happy about something. But I am happy about this, and so it's the opposite of a problem.

This is the philosophical world, and you clearly are having problems here. Earlier you said that "feeling good" was about the feeling of having biological needs met, and avoiding biochemical signals of pain. But expressing aggression and lust is not about meeting biological needs, because you would not die if you didn't express them. Therefore, when you talk of being "happy" when expressing those emotions, you are talking of satisfying a psychological need.

The problem of relying on happiness as a signal of solving problems, is that it isn't an absolute. It's relative to feeling sad. There is no way to tell if a problem is actually resolved rationally. Feeling satisfied is no indication that a problem is fully and properly resolved; it is based on a psychological need for a resolution, and is unrelated to the problem itself.

Kelly: To what extent are you actually engaging in psychological scrutiny about why you find it pleasing to hate Reality (which is the drive underlying both aggression and lust)?

Skipair: Eh, truth is a very obvious and mundane thing. It's also something that's realized in concert with being 100% an animal. I'm sure it's possible for a person to THINK they are beyond aggression and lust, especially if they're in the right environment, but every last human specimen on the planet will act like an animal to the day they die. That's not a bad word by the way: animal.

I don't think you really understand the power of the will to truth fully. If a person values truth above all else, and then experiences subliminal thoughts or other mental movements that on closer inspection show falsehoods, lack of clarity, irrational beliefs, and so forth, then they will drive forward their will to truth, in order to clear up the dissonance. That means, they will go further than deal with stuff they happen to experience: they will deliberately go fishing for "monsters in the soul", exposing themselves to challenges in order practise deepening their rational powers, and to strengthen their ability to transcend the animal.

Yes, logical consciousness is a valuable thing, but it really amazes me that someone like David, for instance, can keep talking about it so much. To me it seems obvious that he is fulfilling his natural need to express aggression by co-running the forum and assuming the position of teacher. And there is nothing wrong with that. I value wisdom and respect him for it.

For me, I also find other outlets.

I cannot speak for David, but my own expression of truth and interaction with others is actually an actualisation of what truth is. The idea of the Bodhisattva is not that they delay full enlightenment out of compassion for others, whom they wish to help, but rather that helping others is an actualisation of the truth of the Buddha, since the Buddha is not something intrinsically separate from anything.

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prince wrote:You only exist at all because of sexual desire.

Every living thing exists because of sex....flowers, trees. birds and the bees'....we only exist because our parents had sexual desire...or at least one of them did....(Replying to Kellys' sentence below this :)

Kelly Jones wrote:I don't actually have a desire to propagate my genes. I never have. It's never been a goal or an interest.

i never did consciously either...but i have 4 children (mother nature had other plans for me)
as much as i love my children and loved being their mother & being a mother...i never did what i wanted to do in life (academically).
i'm cramming now to make up for all the lost time by studying buddhsim/truth .
i regret bringing beautiful children into this fucked up world...

Nick Treklis wrote:I'm not convinced that you have actually reasoned long enough about the fundamental nature of reality to be taken seriously.

I don't take anyone seriously. Maybe casually.

To me it appears you have latched on to the idea that the there is no ultimate purpose (a mere appearance) and made a hedonistic religion out of it. Also, I'm not sure whether you mostly reasoned your way to the idea that there is no ultimate purpose, or if it was a more intuitive process with very little logic involved.

I think it was first logical and then intuitive.

Kelly Jones wrote:But expressing aggression and lust is not about meeting biological needs, because you would not die if you didn't express them. Therefore, when you talk of being "happy" when expressing those emotions, you are talking of satisfying a psychological need.

As I see it, aggression and the will to power is not exactly a psychological need, it is our condition and life-force, and we would certainly die without it.

The problem of relying on happiness as a signal of solving problems, is that it isn't an absolute. It's relative to feeling sad. There is no way to tell if a problem is actually resolved rationally.

As I said before, I don't have any philosophical problems. Any "problems" I run into are the practical, worldly kind. And they fall under two categories:

1) I can do something about it. Do that.
2) I can't do anything about it. Move on.

Then the problem is solved and I am pleased.

skipair wrote:I don't take anyone seriously. Maybe casually.

And here I thought you were a risk taker....

skipair wrote:I think it was first logical and then intuitive.

What did your intuition reveal about reality that logic couldn't?

skipair wrote:I wrote: But expressing aggression and lust is not about meeting biological needs, because you would not die if you didn't express them. Therefore, when you talk of being "happy" when expressing those emotions, you are talking of satisfying a psychological need.

Skip: As I see it, aggression and the will to power is not exactly a psychological need, it is our condition and life-force, and we would certainly die without it.

Well, I don't agree in the way you put it. But let's explore something for a moment. Take the biological need to eat. One soon learns by experience that not eating will lead to greatly diminished consciousness and the inability to function. So one eats in order to be functional, if functional is what one wishes to be. There is a valuing of consciousness and functionality, and a disvaluing of dysfunctionality. So, if I really stretched what you are saying, I could describe the disvaluing of dysfunctionality to be aggression against dysfunctionality. Yet if I compare your story of feeling aggression when hanging around some boys looking for a fight, calling it aggression seems a huge exaggeration, as I cannot identify any of those feelings in my choices to remain functional.

If I'm a bit ill, or a bit stodgy from not exercising, I don't experience emotional weakness. Nor do I feel happy or pleased when I'm well, or well-exercised --- or if I do, I know that it's an egotistical reaction to physical sensations. There's probably a very, very slight diminishment of consciousness, but it doesn't seem right to call that "losing power". The way you describe the matter sounds very much emotional, rather than a purely mechanical sort of thing.

For me, I recognise that "problems" can't be solved. There are always more problems, and more solutions, and the process whereby one becomes the other is made of such a seamless transition, as to indicate to me that there is only the Infinite always at work. So being pleased or upset makes absolutely no sense to me.

There's a story of a Zen priest who was travelling on foot with some students. They were set upon by a mob of rogues, who beat the priest until he was unconscious. When he awoke, his earnest and worried students stood gazing at him, concerned that he had been brain-damaged. They asked him, "Who are we?" He replied, "The same ones who beat me."

.

Is that a true story? Surely the rogues beat up on the students too. Why did they single out the priest, was he a child molester?

prince wrote:Is that a true story? Surely the rogues beat up on the students too. Why did they single out the priest, was he a child molester?

what the story is pointing to is the point.... :)

Nick Treklis wrote:And here I thought you were a risk taker....

I bet on myself so this to me makes sense. But to most would this not be the riskiest thing one can do?

What did your intuition reveal about reality that logic couldn't?

Maybe a more intimate acceptance of that logic.

Kelly Jones wrote:There is a valuing of consciousness and functionality, and a disvaluing of dysfunctionality.

Why do you think that is?

So, if I really stretched what you are saying, I could describe the disvaluing of dysfunctionality to be aggression against dysfunctionality. Yet if I compare your story of feeling aggression when hanging around some boys looking for a fight, calling it aggression seems a huge exaggeration, as I cannot identify any of those feelings in my choices to remain functional.

Values are aggressive in nature. They are a fight against the world. A physical fight would certainly be a primitive expression of that, and surely not all aggression feels exactly the same, or is equally intense, but it still makes sense to connect them.

What is keeping you alive?

For me, I recognise that "problems" can't be solved. There are always more problems, and more solutions, and the process whereby one becomes the other is made of such a seamless transition, as to indicate to me that there is only the Infinite always at work. So being pleased or upset makes absolutely no sense to me.

"The process whereby one becomes the other" is not to be taken too literally. Neither is "the Infinite always at work". They refer to the logical realm, and they have vast implications for one's paradigm and how one lives out their life. But the world is still exactly the same. And it is real. It is having effects on you and you it.

I was very clear to say I only have problems in the practical, worldly sense. And in that sense, problems are real and there are also real solutions that make those problems go away. Being "upset" and "pleased" is part of that process, but one certainly doesn't have to be ridiculous about it.

There's a story of a Zen priest who was travelling on foot with some students. They were set upon by a mob of rogues, who beat the priest until he was unconscious. When he awoke, his earnest and worried students stood gazing at him, concerned that he had been brain-damaged. They asked him, "Who are we?" He replied, "The same ones who beat me."

I'm not good with allegory and metaphor. Does this mean that everything is one? Zen can be so cute. :)

Kelly Jones wrote:That's just other people not understanding that all experiences are psychological

But if they are, that would include the experience of a "battle for enlightenment". Which you claim is "totally physical". Which you also describe as being "psychological". Do you really think this is helping to clarify?

This is why I wrote about challenging all "demarcations between the psychological and physical".Which to you sounds like academic wanking. Or did the sentence just contain too many c's? But it's more straight to the matter than telling a psychological experience is totally physical but psychological at the same time.

Well, I don't want to get into the complexities of the matter, only to mention that challenging one's attachments, can't be anything but foolhardy if one doesn't have "kensho",the understanding of emptiness, and the key to non-attachment.

Please do get into the complexities! Unless they are unnecessary to make your point. In that case you might want to consider their relevance for a spiritual, to-the-point life as well.

It doesn't make sense to claim one has to first have kensho before challenging attachments. The whole monkey business in the monasteries was about the dirty ground work for those people already fixed in their errors, like rusty nails stuck deeply into stone. As project I doubt its wisdom, looking at the distortions those practices leave in their wake, the hostility to life, the inbred cultures that arise often from these traditions. In my view it wasn't worth it. Genius rises despite all this, outside the structures.

I think that kind of fire is vital to wisdom. Without sacrifice, there is no growth. Without literally challenging egotism in one's everyday life...

But Kelly, the above is so ... mainstream! Everyone I know would agree about growth and sacrifices, hard work, risk taking and fighting egotism to become a more harmless being.

Tell me something more shocking, more bloody!

skipair wrote:I wrote: There is a valuing of consciousness and functionality, and a disvaluing of dysfunctionality.

skipair: Why do you think that is?

Why means that you are asking for causes. I can only speak for myself about the causes for me valuing being functional: for example, because there are certain goals I can meet better by being functional, and because I wish to go on to meet those goals if I can. And I don't see why I can't go on to meet those goals.

Kelly: So, if I really stretched what you are saying, I could describe the disvaluing of dysfunctionality to be aggression against dysfunctionality. Yet if I compare your story of feeling aggression when hanging around some boys looking for a fight, calling it aggression seems a huge exaggeration, as I cannot identify any of those feelings in my choices to remain functional.

skipair: Values are aggressive in nature. They are a fight against the world. A physical fight would certainly be a primitive expression of that, and surely not all aggression feels exactly the same, or is equally intense, but it still makes sense to connect them.

Your two first sentences reveal why there is a philosophical issue with your idea. Values are inseparable from the world. If values are based on such an insight, then there is no fighting. Fighting oneself is delusion.

What is keeping you alive?

Causes.

Kelly: For me, I recognise that "problems" can't be solved. There are always more problems, and more solutions, and the process whereby one becomes the other is made of such a seamless transition, as to indicate to me that there is only the Infinite always at work. So being pleased or upset makes absolutely no sense to me.

Skipair: "The process whereby one becomes the other" is not to be taken too literally. Neither is "the Infinite always at work". They refer to the logical realm, and they have vast implications for one's paradigm and how one lives out their life. But the world is still exactly the same. And it is real. It is having effects on you and you it.

I'm sorry, but both are to be taken utterly literally. Hopefully, you will come to recognise the world you live in, which is seamless, and where everything is you. All the emotions of antagonism and desire which you are currently experiencing, are built upon the delusion that you are indeed intrinsically separate (the "ego").

Skipair: I was very clear to say I only have problems in the practical, worldly sense. And in that sense, problems are real and there are also real solutions that make those problems go away. Being "upset" and "pleased" is part of that process, but one certainly doesn't have to be ridiculous about it.

Even the subtlest of feelings of being upset or pleased about conquering an obstacle like a problem indicate delusion. Problems are real, and there are real solutions to problems, but the dynamic of their seamless nature, and the dynamic of their undeniable causal connectedness to everything else, reveals that they aren't intrinsic "somethings". Thus, there are no events to leap up and down about, even in a very subtle sense....

There's a story of a Zen priest who was travelling on foot with some students. They were set upon by a mob of rogues, who beat the priest until he was unconscious. When he awoke, his earnest and worried students stood gazing at him, concerned that he had been brain-damaged. They asked him, "Who are we?" He replied, "The same ones who beat me."

skipair: I'm not good with allegory and metaphor. Does this mean that everything is one? Zen can be so cute. :)

It's a realistic example of a man who understood in a very deep way that God was everpresent; that there is only God.

.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Kelly: That's just other people not understanding that all experiences are psychological

Diebert: But if they are, that would include the experience of a "battle for enlightenment". Which you claim is "totally physical". Which you also describe as being "psychological". Do you really think this is helping to clarify?

The full sentence, which I'll include here again, helped to clarify what was meant by psychological:

"The fallacy here, is that most people deny they have an "I". They have no, or very little, self-awareness."

That is also the grounding-point of what "facts" are, or what "totally physical" is: one's own consciousness. I was simply trying to draw you away from the commonplace delusion of objective reality, by moving all physicality into the psychological realms, and thereby to the inward-drawn focus.

This is why I wrote about challenging all "demarcations between the psychological and physical".Which to you sounds like academic wanking. Or did the sentence just contain too many c's? But it's more straight to the matter than telling a psychological experience is totally physical but psychological at the same time.

Wasn't your larger point that descriptions of psychological battle are romantic, over-dramatic, and exaggerated? And that the cancer sufferer's battle was "fact" whereas the psychological battle was not as real? Though you gave a context of this perception being "my audience" (e.g. Carmel et al.), it seemed to me that you felt inclined to share it. I was responding to that misperception, that lack of "I".

I wasn't equating physicality and psychology, but trying, though I could have been clearer, to explain that what people regard, from the delusional perspective of the objectively real world, to be less real (i.e. psychology), is actually more real and more physical than their delusion of "fact", because it draws one closer to the inward-drawn focus, and to the idea, and therefore to truth.

Kelly: Well, I don't want to get into the complexities of the matter, only to mention that challenging one's attachments, can't be anything but foolhardy if one doesn't have "kensho",the understanding of emptiness, and the key to non-attachment.

Diebert: Please do get into the complexities! Unless they are unnecessary to make your point. In that case you might want to consider their relevance for a spiritual, to-the-point life as well.

It doesn't make sense to claim one has to first have kensho before challenging attachments. The whole monkey business in the monasteries was about the dirty ground work for those people already fixed in their errors, like rusty nails stuck deeply into stone. As project I doubt its wisdom, looking at the distortions those practices leave in their wake, the hostility to life, the inbred cultures that arise often from these traditions. In my view it wasn't worth it. Genius rises despite all this, outside the structures.

Oh well, all right. But it's not really that complex. At the beginning, one focusses on truth (via thinking and reason) which naturally pushes aside distractions. I wouldn't call that challenging attachments, but just pushing oneself single-mindedly. When one has achieved kensho, only then can one see perfectly how to proceed without error. At that point the drive to be immersed in the truth, and be efficient in how one abandons egotistical movements of the mind, is expressed as abandoning attachment. In other words, the "dirty ground work" was the foolhardy push to abandon attachments without kensho coming first.

Kelly: I think that kind of fire is vital to wisdom. Without sacrifice, there is no growth. Without literally challenging egotism in one's everyday life...

Diebert: But Kelly, the above is so ... mainstream! Everyone I know would agree about growth and sacrifices, hard work, risk taking and fighting egotism to become a more harmless being.

Tell me something more shocking, more bloody!

Do you really need me to explain how egotism is not about the subterfuge of the "I" hiding its presence through submitting to the "We" of a larger group?

.

Kelly Jones wrote:I'm sorry, but both are to be taken utterly literally. Hopefully, you will come to recognise the world you live in, which is seamless, and where everything is you. All the emotions of antagonism and desire which you are currently experiencing, are built upon the delusion that you are indeed intrinsically separate (the "ego").

Kelly, I know this is what you've been told, but it is incorrect. Rather, it's correct only in a particular sense. Envy of your heroes will not make your vision of what you imagine enlightenment to be a personal reality. Nor will your pride or your propensity to WANT to suffer.

My aim in this discussion was to loosen your hold on the particular ways our QRS often explain these things. But like a religious person, arguing usually reminds them of all the reasons they do in fact have faith.

If you are serious you will reject Kierkegaard, Kevin, David, Haikuin and all the rest and only trust yourself. But you have to love yourself in order to do that. Good luck.

Your reply is an ad hominem, Skipair. You didn't refute my, or even offer an, argument in relation to the definition of egotism presented. Calling me envious and a copyist is extremely unfair: my understanding is my own, and please don't forget it.

I've considered for a while that you have never been in the human realms, but in the deva realms. But try to present some reasoning, if you can, and stop taking your casualness so seriously.

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skipair wrote:I bet on myself so this to me makes sense. But to most would this not be the riskiest thing one can do?

Yes I think so, but I was taking you at your word in assuming that you knew yourself well enough that the only way for you to take a risk now would be to bet on someone else. Or is it the other way around, and you only think you're living a risky life by engaging the world in the manner you do because you intuitively sense how unreliable the world is, but in actuality you just aren't risky or reckless enough to truly roll the dice on yourself?

skipair wrote:

What did your intuition reveal about reality that logic couldn't?

Maybe a more intimate acceptance of that logic.

Ok, so your intuition more or less just reaffirmed what logic had already revealed to you? I'm kind of confused because you said your understanding of reality was at first logical, then intuitive, which I interpreted as you using logic to uncover certain truths at first, then your intuition uncovered all the rest. So I'm just wondering what truths your intuition revealed that logic did not, if that's what you meant.

Nick Treklis wrote:Yes I think so, but I was taking you at your word in assuming that you knew yourself well enough that the only way for you to take a risk now would be to bet on someone else. Or is it the other way around, and you only think you're living a risky life by engaging the world in the manner you do because you intuitively sense how unreliable the world is, but in actuality you just aren't risky or reckless enough to truly roll the dice on yourself?

Yeah, I see it as too risky to bet on someone other than myself. And it doesn't seem risky to ME to do what I do, it just seems reasonable. I set major goals for myself, and I always achieve them.

I barely even know what we're talking about at this point. Something about dice and a board game named Risk, which is excellent, and which I think you can play online.

Anyway, if by your whole "have I 'truly' rolled the dice on myself" thing you mean do I really have full consciousness of logical reality, do I really understand the nature of women, have I really brought it to every nook and cranny of my life, etc., all I can tell you is that I put in an extraordinary amount of time and bloodshed into my quest, that I've never tried harder at anything in my entire life (though to be honest it was mostly smooth sailing until the end), and what I got out of it was something very obvious, all-inclusive, and made sense. In a very real sense it wasn't anything I didn't already know.

I'm not one to romanticize and sell it. I'm not even one to talk about it much, because what would you say? I appreciate our talks because I like you and I don't think there's really anything I know that you don't also know, and AS you know, that's about as rare as it gets. But I do get a little tired of all the prodding these days. This isn't about me anymore.

Ok, so your intuition more or less just reaffirmed what logic had already revealed to you?

Yes, this. The intuition was more of a jumping over logical steps that I'd already made, making the path brighter and allowing me to remember it. It gave nothing "extra" about reality other than how remembering the logic affects my life (which is a lot).

Putting it in words like this is gonna fuck with someone's head, though. The path to understanding has to be natural, not teacher manufactured or referenced.