Lost in Translation

OMG my scrying ain't working! I sit there, staring at the crystal, and all I get is sleepy. I need to mix things up. Perhaps a good dose of full sunlight rock scrying is what I need. Moonlight crystal scrying is going nowhere...

And now we have twitter and the ubiquitous "comment section" of most blogs.

A Guide to Basic Differences Between Left and Right Tue, Jan 17, 2017 Dennis Prager Source of Human Rights Left: government Right: the Creator Human Nature Left: basically good (Therefore, society is primarily responsible for evil.) Right: not basically good (Therefore, the individual is primarily responsible for evil.) Economic Goal Left: equality Right: prosperity Primary Role of the State Left: increase and protect equality Right: increase and protect liberty Government Left: as large as possible Right: as small as possible Family Ideal Left: any loving unit of people Right: a married father and mother, and children Guiding Trinity Left: race, gender and class Right: liberty, In God We Trust and e pluribus unum Good and Evil Left: relative to individual and/or society Right: based on universal absolutes Humanity’s Primary Division(s) Left: rich and poor; strong and weak Right: good and evil Ideal Primary Identity of an American Left: world citizen Right: American citizen How to Make a Good Society Left: abolish inequality Right: develop each citizen’s moral character View of America Left: profoundly morally flawed; inferior to any number of European countries Right: greatest force for good among nations in world history Gender Left: a social construct Right: male and female Most Important Trait to Cultivate in a Child Left: self-esteem Right: self-control Worth of the Human Fetus Left: determined by the mother Right: determined by society rooted in Judeo-Christian values Primary Source of Crime Left: poverty, racism and other societal flaws Right: the criminal’s malfunctioning conscience Place of God and Religion in America Left: secular government and secular society Right: secular government and religious society American Exceptionalism Left: chauvinistic doctrine Right: historical reality Greatest Threat to the World Left: environmental catastrophe (currently global warming) Right: evil (currently radical Islamist violence) International Ideal Left: world governed by the United Nations, and no single country is dominant Right: world in which America is the single strongest entity Primary Reason for Lack of Peace in Middle East Left: Israeli settlements in the West Bank Right: Palestinian, Arab and Muslim denial of Jewish state’s right to exist Purpose of Art Left: challenge status quo and bourgeois sensibilities Right: produce works of beauty and profundity to elevate the individual and society Guns Left: ideally universally abolished, except for use by police, the armed forces and registered sportsmen Right: ideally widely owned by responsible individuals for self-protection and the protection of others Race Left: intrinsically significant Right: intrinsically insignificant Racial, Ethnic and Gender Diversity at Universities Left: most important Right: far less important than ideological diversity Black America’s Primary Problem Left: racism Right: lack of fathers Greatest Playwright Left: entirely subjective; there is no greatest playwright Right: Shakespeare War Left: not the answer Right: sometimes the only answer Hate Left: wrong, except when directed at the political Right: wrong, except when directed at evil Cultures Left: all equal Right: some are better than others America’s Founding Fathers Left: rich white male slave owners Right: great men who founded the greatest society Purpose of Judges Left: pursue social justice Right: pursue justice National Borders Left: a relic of the past Right: indispensable for national survival View of Illegal Immigrants Left: welcomed guests Right: illegal immigrants Nature Left: intrinsically valuable Right: made for man http://www.dennisprager.com/a-guide-to-basic-differences-between-left-and-right/

How does the ego being afraid of change cause a person to unknowingly seek spiritual growth? Is this the ego's way of attempting to achieve immortality via an afterlife?

Perhaps there is a miscommunication here. @dosa are you implying the death=reality? Are you further implying that dead is a forever darkness, an oblivion? If so then I can see your response to @lifeforce as making sense. But if you are not implying this, if you are not implying that there is no afterlife then I don't understand what you mean.

Left/Right differences in a nutshell...

The entirety of our knowledge comes in through our perceptions. The perception of a thing is not the thing itself. Can we know the truth? Is there a truth to be known? How would we know?

That interval is where silence resides. I agree completely.

How does one protect against psychic attacks? I find it useful to call upon sympathetic spirits such as Kuan Yin or Jesus. Surrounding myself with golden light and visualizing large steel doors slamming shut between me and the attacker seem to help. Sometimes when I'm asleep or just no paying attention some hook or barb will get through. It's annoying. What methods do other bums use to keep their space clear of such things?

Alice and Bob are the secret of Taiji? Someone should tell them.

I admire your energy. All you need is a soap box and you'll be rolling in style!

But if we remove time from the equation we can just as easily say we already have come back... ... and if we have already come back AND traveled to hell as a state of our journey then we can equally say that we will go to hell... ... or that we will go to heaven. These words - past, future, was, will-be, heaven, hell - become meaningless.

How so? How is it three vs two, or four, or seventy nine? Please explain further. I think I understand where you are going but would like more info from you before I comment.

I'm glad you mentioned this. From our human context (75 year life span, give or take) the notion of a million years is beyond our capacity to imagine. We simply can't imagine how long that is. And a billion years, or fifteen billion - well, that's just fantastical. I've heard people ask why there is death, or why - if we reincarnate - there is forgetting. I think the answer is self-evident: we can't comprehend the scope of eternity. If we were forced to maintain a single, contiguous consciousness for that amount of time it would drive us insane. So death and forgetting is a blessing.

I'm glad everyone is enjoying this topic, amazed actually, since the first time I started this theme it died on arrival. One thing I've noticed is the sheer volume of inputs. If there is a fundamental truth then perhaps it's simply obscured by the amount of noise being generated by us - by our thoughts - as part of the manifest world. Perhaps it is in true silence that the truth is revealed, and by true silence I mean death. What appears as nothing, or 'no thing' is the single underlying truth that girds all of reality in this plane of existence and beyond.

Forty-five seconds of my life that I can never get back... Seriously, what is the question? Atmospheric pressure at sea level is 14.7 pounds per square inch. By pressing a finger against the coin you can create a temporary area of low pressure. By quickly raising your finger the air pressure under the coin pushes it up. It's the same reason why glass or stone coasters raise up along with a glass of ice water on a hot day.

People love grass and hate weeds. Maintaining the garden is a constant struggle. I have learned to love weeds and hate grass. Maintaining my garden is effortless. Too bad my neighbors hate me...

You cheeky Cannibal, you!

I write computer software for a living. That feeling of holding too many things in mind at once is quite common. To me it feels like a juggler with many objects in the air or an entertainer balancing many plates on many sticks. Oftentimes I can feel my mind crashing down. When this happens I literally feel myself forgetting. It's a strange sensation. If we're talking about work then write stuff down. Keep a journal. You will forget things. You will forget important things. That's a fact. If we're talking about meditation or other practices then still keep a journal! Anything worth remembering is worth writing down. When you feel your mind getting too wound up then learn to take breaks. Walking meditation is excellent for those times and places where you can't sit and properly meditate (such as in school or at work). As far as meditation goes, learn to let the mind go. Let the thoughts go. Learn to just be in the moment. After your meditations you can write stuff down. For example, whether your mind continued racing, if your heart rate slowed, how you felt - was there any pain, etc. But don't think about the writing while you meditate. That's not going to help you at all.

Beautiful stuff.

I especially like this portion: The wording may sound down, but I see the message as quite uplifting. Oftentimes we struggle against what is out of a sense of needing to accomplish and end up falling short of our ambitions. This text reminds us that is simply the way and points out that we don't need to do that. In fact, by "block[ing] the senses" and "clos[ing] the mind" we actually gain a wealth of freedom since we remove ourselves from the frenetic desire to always do stuff.

Don't take this too seriously. I was paraphrasing the BBC television show 'Doctor Who.' That's a good show but I don't consider it cannon for how the universe really works.