goldisheavy

You may be right. I may be inviting the response I get by my tone and approach. Even then, why won't others do a better job where I presumably fail? I see lots of people trying to argue for God's existence, but it's mostly from the point of view of trying to prop up a conventional religious doctrine. I don't equate this with a sincere exploration of reality. All I see for the most part is people following two competing conventions: Abrahamic theological conventions or the secular physicalist ones. You might be right anyway because maybe all the people who agree or who don't strongly disagree with the essence of what I am trying to say (if not the way I am saying it) are simply timid. Perhaps they are timid not because they fear NSA or ISP employes poking where they don't belong or employers googling, but perhaps they are timid just because internally they don't feel strong enough conviction to enter the discussion or a philosophical argument. But then, can one be serious about exploring reality and still be timid? It seems to me that timidity and seriousness are not fully compatible qualities. But... yea I guess I don't really know. I'm just showing how I tend to think about this. I agree.

If Lucifer wants to rule in hell, the first thing Lucifer needs to do is to teach people to obey authority and pose himself as the authority. If people don't have a concept of authority, then Lucifer cannot rule anyone. The possibility of ruling arises only after the idea of authority is firmly established in people's minds. So Lucifer would need to brainwash everyone to believe in authority first. Second, Lucifer would pose itself as an authority, preferably as a religious prophet and get people to worship either him directly, or to worship God through the perverted lens of his rebellious and false teachings. So if Lucifer is real, then the chances of some no-name critic being Lucifer are practically zero. If Lucifer is real he is going to be Mohammed, Jesus and other authorities. If Lucifer taught people to question authority, then no one would follow Lucifer since no one would view Lucifer as an authority.

You might be right. I accept this possibility. Still, why aren't our membership rolls on thetaobums and similar forums exploding? It's not like our convention will viciously punish anyone participating on such forums and you never have to reveal your real name, so employers googling for your name will not find anything unconventional that's linked to you, right? Another example. I go to a fully anonymous forum where people have no reason to hide their true thoughts. I make a statement rejecting physicalism. 95 out of 100 people argue against me. It's not even close to a 50/50 opinion split. Of course some people might be worried that while employers cannot use google to link unconventional thoughts back to the person's identity, ISPs and the NSA can. But then I consider how many people easily and blissfully give up their information to Facebook, so worries about ISPs and NSA thought-policing must not be very prevalent in the population. Thus I conclude that while people have this or that weird experience, serious seekers are very few indeed, even now. I also believe that the times for spiritual seeking are actually better than before. The environment is less oppressive while science itself is no longer as grossly physicalist as it used to be in the recent past.

Shoot this down: 1. Awareness is intentional and infinitely contextual. 2. Concrete objects that appear to the conscious aspect of awareness are only meaningful within a context. Nothing concrete is inherently meaningful. 3. Brain is one such concrete object. 4. Because of 2, brain is not inherently meaningful and instead it relies on a specific state of awareness for its own meaning to be what it is (like any other concrete object). 5. Implication of 4 is that the brain is imaginary and subjective. 6. Imaginary cannot be a source of real. Various sundry concrete objects and other specifics occurring within awareness are all imaginary (or visionary, if you prefer) insofar they all depend on the state of mind to be just so in order to be perceived. Awareness as a general fact that one or other kind of knowing is occurring at all times is self-evidently real. So the experience is real, but the suggestions inherent in the experience are imaginary, like in a movie (so an appearance that looks like a truck is not in fact a real truck, etc.).

This is wrong. I said that if awareness has a source that's fundamentally outside of awareness, such as fundamentally unaware matter interactions, then that must be taken on blind faith. Not only can you not be aware of the source as a source in that case, but you cannot be aware of the source as anything at all, neither as anything specific nor as anything general, nothing at all. So the right way to summarize one thing I said is to say that "You have only shown that if that were true, we would not be aware of this source, period. as a source." Second thing I said was this. If something beyond awareness is creating awareness, then the relationships occurring within awareness become immune to reason, since the factors giving rise to those relationships are fundamentally beyond analysis. So the implication of an unaware substance causing awareness is arbitrariness of meaning, meaninglessness, nihilism, etc. At any point I can start talking nonsense and if you ask me why, I could just say, "whatever fundamentally unaware matter interaction that is causing my awareness is causing this sort of talk." The implication then is that gibberish talk is caused in the exact same way as non-gibberish talk, and non-gibberish only sounds intelligent either purely coincidentally or for reasons fundamentally beyond understanding. When you play the devil's advocate in this discussion, yes, that's what you have to be doing because that's the position you're trying to explore. It doesn't mean you're assuming this in your private day to day life. I don't assume it for myself. I am exploring various lines of reasoning for you. It's not necessary for you to talk like this when you know I just entertain this or that assumption in order to explore it. Possibilities: 1. Matter is self-aware. 2. Matter is not self-aware but generates awareness. I was simply saying that in case 1 we don't need the word "matter." We can just rename it. Words have meanings and it's possible to change the meaning of the word "matter" so profoundly that it no longer resembles its original materialistic meaning. At that point it's more honest to discard the word. That's how the word "ether" got discarded in physics. Not true. There are infinite unknown factors influencing our experience, but these unknown factors are not fundamentally and permanently unknown. These factors are merely deeply submerged well below the conscious level. It's a shame you missed this nuance upon your first reading. I talked about it. I told you there are two kinds of unknowns. One kind I respect and one I don't. 1. Unknown that can potentially be known. -- respect 2. Unknown that is fundamentally unknown and can never under any circumstances be known -- no respect This is only partially true because while it is a preference, it's a conventional one. So it's not just me alone taking this pragmatic strategy, it's all the respected thinkers of this world. Still, it is a two-fold preference: mine and conventional. If this two-fold preference is not convincing for you, then nothing is. No one can ever convince you of anything. If we discard the principle of seeking out more and more modest explanations, then we discard all of logic. Because if complex explanations are just as good as simpler ones, then I can get space aliens, pink elephants and magical faeries involved in explaining why and how I am typing this post. We reject all of those not because they are proven to be impossible, but because they complicate the story unnecessarily. You don't in fact know anything like that. If you assume there is something fundamentally beyond knowing, then it's your blind faith at work. You certainly have no evidence for it. You can't say that you not knowing everything is proof that there is something fundamentally unknowable as that would be an argument from ignorance and is not acceptable in formal reasoning on this planet. On the contrary. All my life I've experienced this or that knowns. I've also experienced unknowns becoming known and knowns reverting back to an unknown state. What I've never experienced though and what I have not the slightest shred of evidence for (by definition!) is something that's fundamentally unknowable, something unknowable even in principle. I mean, if you could give me some evidence for something that's unknowable even in principle, I'll gladly accept it. Until then why don't you admit you take such things on blind faith. My argument is that we should believe and act as if awareness has no source outside of itself. If awareness does have a source outside itself, that source is utterly irrelevant, inscrutable, has no logical connection to any contents of awareness (or if it does, it renders all the contents meaningless and beyond reason) and changes nothing whatsoever from a hands-on point of view.

Hi Seth, I appreciate your kind words, but people should remember that I am just a regular person without any kind of magical understanding of the Buddhist doctrine. Everything I say should be questioned and nothing I say should be taken on faith. My level of practice is not anything special. I function best in the role of a friend or a fellow conversationalist. If someone starts to think I am anything beyond a fellow conversationalist, that's equivalent to swallowing a bucketful of poison. I don't know everything there is to know. I get puzzled or mystified from time to time. So while I appreciate your kindness I think you're exaggerating and embellishing.

It makes no difference. Just pick a number. It's just a matter of taste. Why did Chinese pick 10,000 to mean "countless"? It's arbitrary. They could have gone with 40,000, but 10 is probably more poetic and more beautiful. That's all there is to it. It's his experience. In my experience Gurdjieffs proportion is way too optimistic. I think it has to do with the fact that Gurdjieff hung out with many like-minded people so he developed a perception that there are relatively many people who question reality seriously. If you hang out with a bunch of salarymen all your life, then that number might be much lower. Then we have to consider whether the estimator is optimistic or pessimistic as a rule. Sure, I understand that. I bet if you talked to Gurdjieff in person, he'd answer you in a way that makes more sense to you. Personally I have different ways of speaking. I have a less accurate way and a more accurate way. I don't bother with a more accurate way unless the person I am talking to is special. The more accurate way to talk is much more time consuming, since it lies outside the habit. Now imagine if teaching becomes a routine, it's easy to slip into the "I'm talking in rough terms" mode instead of "I am talking very precisely" mode. If someone teaches 4 hours every day 365 days a year, there is almost no chance for that person to be precise all that time. There must be a considerable amount of caricaturization, fuzzy approximations, rough language, metaphors, allegories and all manner of non-literal language, embellishment, humor, etc. If people only ever said things they truly knew, we would have never developed a physicalist culture or religions. Think about it. So in our realm even the best person is talking smack most of the time. That's not something bad. It's natural. It's what's convenient and fun. It's what rolls off the tongue without thinking. No use in fighting it. Just understand it for what it is and when you need precision, just ask for it. After you ask for it, assume the precision is gone after 5 minutes and assume you'll need to ask for it again if you want it again. To think and speak precisely is to think and speak unconventionally. To think and speak unconventionally means to think and speak in ways that are contrary to habit. It's taxing, even if it's more correct. Our convention is built on top of bullshit and needs a good amount of that bullshit to be the way it is. I think it's helpful to remind all of us how much we don't really know. But there is no point in getting miffed at our deeply engrained habits. That's just a waste of energy. At least if you think those habits can be transformed, you should have some kind of workable plan and avoid getting annoyed. 0.4 is an arbitrary number. It just represents a personal (Gurdjieff's) impression of the situation. It's good to be reminded.

Not true. It tells us that all the concrete objects of awareness are disqualified from being sources of awareness. I've explained why so, so I won't repeat anything. So your "argument" is that because we cannot know if matter is behind awareness or not, let's just assume that it is. That's not much of an argument. Like I pointed out, even if we go with this assumption, we discover that matter is logically disconnected from the contents of awareness. If matter is what generates awareness, then it's not matter that you're aware of, unless the matter is self-aware. If you claim that matter is self-aware, then we need to get rid of the word "matter" and just call it mind. I don't make an argument from ignorance. I know awareness exists. I proceed from this knowledge forward, building from one known to another. I start with awareness, then I discover the nature of the concrete objects of awareness, then I conclude that such objects cannot be the source of awareness. At no point do I venture into an unknown or take something on faith. My own awareness is self-evident to me so no faith is necessary there. My only act of faith is to assume that you are as real as I am. I have no proof of this. Other than that, I make no assumptions. It's not an assumption per se, it's what I refer to "this is what I am willing to consider." It's a pragmatic consideration. If something is fundamentally beyond knowing I 1) don't bother looking for it, 2) do not include it into my considerations and 3) do not base my life on it in any way and relate to it as irrelevant. There are some things which are unknown right now, but which can in principle become known. These kinds of unknown are very important for me. The unknowns that are potential knowns are included into my consideration. Unknowns that cannot ever become known are not included. I don't operate on blind faith and don't recommend it to others. No. My argument is this: 1. I know what concrete objects are like. 2. Because of 1, I know they can't be the source of awareness. 3. Case closed. It actually makes no difference what the source of awareness is as long as I understand that whatever appears to awareness is not the source of it. From then on I am free. If the source of awareness is flurobompax or fetrof-complex, who cares? Simply understanding what happens within awareness is enough to lead a good life and to properly react to every possible occurrence with wisdom and fearlessness. I disagree. Logicians routinely discard considerations which are irrelevant and which only bring needless complications without enhancing explanatory power. An example of this is when the physics scientific community discarded the notion of ether. After a number of experiments the physicists realized there was no way they could detect ether. Since they couldn't detect it, they omitted it as a notion from the field of physics. I am basically doing the same thing when I am omitting matter. Concrete objects are waves because no concrete object is self-apparent. Instead all concrete objects are only apparent to the extent they are supported by a larger context. In other words, concrete objects are always smaller than the whole "thing." Awareness cannot perceive its own source. Awareness can only perceive objects. Objects are always related to awareness in the manner of slaves to masters, or children to parents, etc... objects are always smaller and always dependent on external-to-object context existing within awareness to be what they are. Because awareness can only perceive 1) smaller "things" than itself and 2) things awareness itself needs to be in a certain specific state to perceive, awareness cannot perceive its source. The source of awareness could not be a result of the function of awareness. In other words, the effect of awareness cannot be its cause. Concrete objects are all, without exception, fundamentally, in principle, effects of awareness. So an example of this relationship is fire and smoke. The smoke is an effect of fire. The smoke cannot thus be the cause of fire. Being an effect is a subservient, weaker position. You don't really understand my usage. That analogy was to distinguish crucial from generative. I was pointing out how something can be crucial without being generative. Once you agree that something can be crucial and yet not generative, you need to prove that the brain is not merely crucial for the world-perception to be what it is, but that it is generative. You cannot infer the brain as a source at all. If you think you can, then go ahead and try to infer it. I'll be here laughing and watching you fail. Whatever you observed in the movie would not be indicative of the true nature of the movie projector. That was the whole point of my example there. You're praying for a lucky meaningless coincidence that the movie projector will miraculously project its own function onto the screen and not just the movies plugged into it. It's not going to happen. Lets say that in this movie, there were images of many movie theaters, and every time the light was traced back, and there was another movie projector. This would not tell us for certain that the movie we were watching was the result of a movie projector, but we would have a good reason to infer that perhaps our movie is indeed the projection of a movie projector. I fail to see it. Sounds like nonsense. I can't even understand what you're talking about at all. Tracing the light? Movie theaters? I have no idea what it all means. You're losing it. This is not a good analogy in some ways, since we have no rays of light to trace back, but there are pieces of evidence that point to the brain as being the source of consciousness, such as changes to consciousness corresponding to changes in the brain. Right, I knew you'd talk about that. This is why I differentiated crucial-to-meaning from generative. For us the brain needs to be the way it is for the world as we know it to make sense. That doesn't mean the brain actually generates awareness. If you still believe in generative ability of the brain, you pretty much have to assume that ability without any evidence. All the evidence you have is that the brain is crucial to the meaning of what it means to be a human being in this realm. There is an impossible to cross logical chasm between "crucial" and "generative." I've had many dreams where I was shot straight into the brain, in the dream. Instead of permanently dying I simply woke up to find myself safe in bed. The physicalist explanation to this is that the "real" brain is in bed, while the dream brain is "fake". When the fake brain is shot in the dream, the real one is fine. Of course I can extend this line of thinking further. I can say this brain that's involved in typing this post is a fake brain. If you shoot me, my body will collapse from your point of view, but from my point of view, I will wake up safe in bed again. It all makes sense because during dreams we don't know our dream brains are fake. We only realize that after the fact. Personally, I am not really predisposed to feel that consciousness, or awareness arises solely, or even necessarily at all from the brain. If I were to say that it arises from matter, I would give it a much less localized source, and I am not all that inclined to assume matter in the first place. I am just asking for a logically valid argument that supports this predisposition of mine, and apparently, yours. I want something that not only shows that something is possible, but that shows it is far and away the most likely explanation. If it can't be shown logically, I am fine with that, but we should not pretend that we have airtight arguments when we do not. My arguments are as air tight as any on this Earth when it comes to awareness. I don't say this kind of thing often.

First of all, think of every kind of concrete object you've ever experienced in your life, such as for example, pieces of lint, paper clips, sheets of paper, forks, socks, bottles, chewing gum, candy wrappers, tires, seat cushions, ground beef, bacon strips, chicken liver, and of course brains of various kinds, including human. All the concrete objects have something in common. What is that? They are all meaningless in and of themselves. The meaning of all the concrete objects is derived from the informational context surrounding the object. So for example, a fork doesn't work well to cut sheets of steel. Why not? Because an object that cuts sheets of steel well is something like a pair of heavy duty sheers or some such. A fork is meant for eating. At the same time, you wouldn't want to eat baked potatoes with heavy duty sheers. So things have meanings, but all the meanings are external to the things themselves. So in other words, forks don't jump up and proclaim, "I am a fork!" We understand forks to be forks in comparison with all other kinds of possible utensils, functions and so on. A fork doesn't have its own "forkness" magically encoded into some kind of internal fork essence. What makes a fork be a fork is not in the fork itself. What this means is that all concrete objects have meaning only within a functioning awareness. It is precisely the function of awareness to maintain a living informational context. This context is a state of mind. It's not a substance of any kind. A substance is something that's posited to be the way it is regardless of mind state. Of course there is nothing like that. So without awareness, there is no talk of concrete objects. There is no way to consider concrete objects without living awareness. And all the concrete objects you've ever had the fortune or misfortune of considering were seemingly fragmentary aspects of your own awareness. An example of this would be like an ocean and its waves. The waves arise out of the ocean. If the ocean is very calm, there are no waves. If the ocean is disturbed, waves appear. But waves cannot produce the ocean because the ocean is more fundamental than the waves for one. The waves are expressions of the ocean. The waves are seemingly fragmentary aspects of the ocean. The waves are perturbations of the ocean. Without the ocean to be perturbed all talk of waves would be senseless. Of course the ocean is not a perfect example and is not to be taken literally. The problem with the ocean example is that there are things outside the ocean (like the wind above its surface that helps to agitate the waves) and awareness is not like that. Now the brain is like anything that appears within awareness. It's a fragmentary and temporary function of the state of awareness. By temporary I mean you don't experience brains more than a small amount of time. If you work in a biology lab, you may handle some brain tissue from time to time. If you don't work in a related field, you may go most of your life not seeing any brain tissue. In fact you may live out your entire life without actually seeing any real brain tissue, but just seeing it on TV and reading about it. When I say it's fragmentary I mean that every time you observe the brain you also observe other things. For example, if the brain is in a jar of formaldehyde then you observe the jar and probably the sticker on it. If the brain is in your hands, you observe your hands. If the brain is in a warm room, you observe the warmth of the room. If it's in the cold room, you observe the cold of the room. Like vast majority of concrete objects the brain appears in some context, never alone, never floating in the void, always surrounded by other shit that gives it meaning. Just consider this sentence for example. You can't reasonably say that the preceding sentence arose from the word "consider." All the words in the sentence need to be where they are in order for: 1) the sentence to make the sense that it does and 2) in order for the individual words to retain the meaning that they do. If I start to use a word in a new way it will acquire a new meaning. It makes no sense to elevate any word above any other word. The brain is in that same position too. The only reason we elevate the brain is due to sentimentality, prejudice, beliefs, habits, but for no truly logical reason. The brain contributes as much meaning to the universe as does a shoe or any other concrete object. A brain is like a word in a large sentence. We need the word to be there for the sentence to make sense, and if we drop the word, the sentence stops being what it was with the word in it. The sentence might become senseless even. Imagine we drop the word "consider" from the first sentence in this paragraph. We get: "Just consider this sentence for example." What does this mean? It's a borderline meaningless expression in the English language. Or what if I drop another word, "Just consider this sentence for example." Now it's complete gibberish. Can we now conclude the meaning of the sentence issues forth from the word "example"? Of course not. This demonstrates that just because something can be crucial to the total meaning, it doesn't mean the total meaning is generated within that crucial something. So the brain as a concrete object can be crucial to our universe of meaning, but it doesn't mean the brain is the seat of all meaning simply because it's crucial to our peculiar and strange way of making sense of appearances. It's only logical no one seemingly fragmentary perturbation of the state of awareness is the source of awareness. A gust of wind is not the source of the wind. A wave is not the source of the ocean. The smoke is not the source of fire. The only reason to think otherwise is pure prejudice. Now, let's assume "concrete objects" existed prior to awareness. Let's ignore the fact that we need a functioning awareness to even consider this possibility in the first place. Since these assumed concrete objects exist prior to functioning awareness, we know nothing of them. These objects then bounce around and interact with one another and awareness appears. When this happens, there is no reason to believe that the contents of this awareness will be related in any obvious way to the objects that are causing it. So for example, a movie projector looks nothing like the movies it projects. If you watch 1 million movies you cannot assume anything about the shape of the projector. No amount of movie watching gives you additional information about the projector. The projector may be digital. It may be analogue. It may be 35mm film, or 40mm. It may have any kind of light source. The projector may not even exist external to the movie screen. It could be built into the screen. In other words, watching movies tells you nothing about the projector. Nothing at all. If you believe in the projector that's projecting the movie, you have to take it on blind faith unless you built the projector yourself, etc. But basically if you knew nothing whatsoever about the projection technology, and if all you did was watch movies, then no matter how clever you were, you couldn't figure out a damn thing about the projector. Similarly, perhaps the block of matter interacting and giving rise to awareness is the size of a galaxy. An entire galaxy-size machine is required to generate awareness of one person. In that awareness people seem to have brains which look nothing whatsoever like the galaxy-sized machine that's producing awareness. So in other words, the state of awareness would have no direct relation to the concrete objects producing it if awareness was truly a product. And finally, if awareness is produced by fundamentally unaware objects of some sort, there is nothing we can do to discover these objects. All we can discover is whatever appears within the state of awareness and not whatever is external to it. So stating that something produces awareness because you don't know or remember your birth or pre-birth experience is argument from ignorance. If we allow that external-to-awareness realities produce awareness then what we are doing is dismantling all grounds for reasoning. It would imply that all meanings depend on something that's fundamentally and in principle unknowable (beyond even the potential of knowing).

I agree. I was simplifying/caricaturing things. This scenario can be logically refuted since it leads to unacceptable and absurd consequences when followed up. What do you mean by "solid"?

OK, I think there are two different definitions of "object." One is to say that any experience is an object. In that case there is always some kind of experience. Another way is to talk about individually distinguishable objects, like grains of sand, pencils and pens, chairs and so on. The brain is an object like that. It's an object among objects when perceived. Or we can say objects with an obvious outline and abstract objects. Or concrete objects vs abstract ones. It's possible to have an experience without any concrete objects in it. So then you can imagine an awareness without concrete objects, but you cannot imagine concrete objects without awareness. Concretely apparent objects cannot give rise to awareness.

People take things literally all the time. I am certain Gurdjieff just meant to express how rare something was and didn't mean for people to take the number as a mathematically correct truth. As for the rarity, Gurdjieff was talking about his life experience.

Do you know what an object is?

It's hard to imagine unless you've had a mystical experience of the same. But a simple explanation is this. If you know what the presence of objects is like, you must know what their absence is like as well.

That's ralis' line. You're not allowed to use it.

Negative and positive, yin and yang, empty and full, it all has value.

Interesting. I wish people like Red Pine would translate more obscure works and not just the famous ones. Daoist cannon, from what I've read about it, is huge. Why do people only translate Daodejing? Why not translate say 50-100 different works? Currently I think we have something like ten-ish works translated. I mean, just look at the bottom of this page, what do we have translated from it? Something like 4 books or so? It seems like the only way to read it all is to learn Chinese.

fiveelementtao, simplicity rules, Wow, you people are great. Hehe.. So I was assuming Tara is from the indigenous Bon tradition of Tibet, but I am pretty sure I am wrong and you are right about the origin of Tara. So Tara and other deities were mixed with Buddhism while Buddhism was still in India, and then the already-mixed Buddhism came into Tibet? Is that the right order of events? It's an interesting topic. I'm a bit sorry for hijacking this thread to talk about Tara's origins. The mantra above is very nice, and youtube has many cool mantras on it for those who want to find such things.

Are you afraid of criticism? You shouldn't be. I suggest that you welcome criticism. The quality of criticism is impossible to control and some of it will be closer to mindless shouting while some of it will be cogently presented in a way that may prompt further healthy contemplation on your part. Why not share whatever you think is worth sharing, and then let the world do its best toward you, whatever that is? I think you may find it's actually not as bad as you imagine.

Buddhism was imported into Tibet from India. Tibetans loved their pre-Buddhist deities. So instead of throwing the deities out they Buddhisized all of them.

You always use only the one true mind, but it gets obscured by beliefs. The brain is a hard one to overcome. Say you're dreaming and in your dream you have a dream body. Which brain is dreaming? If the dream brain, then how do you remember your dreams upon waking? If the waking brain is dreaming your dreams, does that means there is another brain elsewhere that's dreaming this life? If not, why the asymmetry? Investigate. As for the third eye, it's just a way to see visions. Do you want to see visions? First think whether or not seeing visions will improve the quality of your life. If you are convinced your life is lacking without the visions, then you can "open" it, but don't be in a hurry. To open it you have to understand how you see. What sees in the dream?

I agree. Thank you for bringing it up.

Mind is the fact of knowing. There is no way to think and not know that you're thinking. People tend to associate the mind with a thing, like say, the brain, or the body, and they tend to locate the mind in the world as if it were a thing among things. Sometimes people completely reify the mind and claim that the mind is not just associated with a thing, but that it is a thing in its own right. Believing that the mind is a thing is a limiting belief. (ex: the mind is the brain) Believing that the mind is associated with any one thing is a limiting belief. (ex: the mind is associated with the brain) Failing to recognize the mind at all is also limiting, because if you ignore the fact of intentional knowing, you'll never be the master of knowing. You can't master that which you ignore. Hence mindfulness. So for example, people pay attention to world appearances such as cars, tables, bodies, the sky and so on. They don't ignore these. Because of that, people acquire a limited amount of mastery related to the limited amount of non-ignoring that people engage in. That's why people know how to build cars, and when the pipes get clogged, people know how to unclog them, but only in a mechanical and non-magical manner which is always consistent with the suggestions inherent in worldly appearances. This is why a car mechanic cannot wave a feather to fix the car. But people pay attention in a limited way because people are lead astray by the suggestions inherent in appearances. So by paying attention to worldly appearances in a worldly manner people somewhat ignore their own minds. By viewing their own minds through the lens of 10,000 misconceptions regarding their own minds people somewhat ignore the truth of their own minds. So worldly paying attention is a kind of ignorance. When you pay attention to the truth of your own mind you have a heavenly attention instead of a worldly one. Heavenly attention is also a kind of ignorance because it somewhat ignores the suggestions inherent in appearances. Heavenly attention grants one power over the process of knowing, and thus, over all appearances, but this power is limited because it doesn't include all the modalities of worldly ignorance into its sphere. You can pick and choose your own limitations. So in a sense you're not limited because limitations are intentional and temporary.

OK, when I was talking about the mirror, I asked not to take the comparison literally. The mind is like the mirror only in some ways but not in the others. For example, the mirror is usually considered to be a thing in its own right, but the mind I spoke of is not a thing among things. The mind is like the mirror in its effortless and purity aspects. The mirror doesn't struggle to reflect, and the mind doesn't struggle to cognize. That's the effortlessness aspect. The mirror can reflect dirt without getting dirty itself and the mind can cognize dirt without getting dirty itself also. That's the purity aspect. Because the mind is unique there is no example for it in the natural world that is 100% accurate. Thus, no example should be taken literally. If the mirror is facing away from us, it reflects nothing. The mind cannot face toward or away from anything and it cognizes one experience or another at all times. Mirrors don't have intentionality, minds do. Mirrors are dead and the minds are alive. And when it comes to saying things like "In seeing, just the seen" these kinds of expressions have a good side and a bad side. Just like the formulaic example of the mirror is not accurate 100%, neither is the formulaic saying "in seeing, just the seen." So the good, helpful side of saying "in seeing, just the seen" is that it gives you an idea not to construe whatever is suggested by appearances. So for example, when an ordinary person sees an appearance suggestive of wood, such being thinks, "Aha, I am looking at wood." Even if such thinking doesn't arise explicitly, there is an implicit belief that there is an actual substance of wood behind the appearance of wood. We can say upon seeing an appearance suggestive of wood, an ordinary being construes wood. Upon seeing an appearance suggestive of the sky, an ordinary being construes the sky. Upon seeing an appearance suggestive of distance, an ordinary being construes distance. Upon seeing an appearance suggestive of earth, an ordinary being construes earth. So ordinary beings are lead away by the suggestions inherent in all the appearances. So the positive quality of saying "in seeing just the seen" is that if you're seeing an appearance suggestive of a wooden table, you're not construing a wooden table. In other words, you don't reify the appearance. It also means you don't strain to see something other than whatever appears. So there is implied relaxation and effortlessness. So if you see a wooden table in front of you, you can relax with that vision without trying to see dependent arising there or any other thing or non-thing. In other words, you don't have to be mentally busy. It means whatever experiences appear to your conscious awareness, they are all effortless and relaxing appearances, like clouds passing effortlessly through the sky without leaving a trace. So for an example of how to see suggestive appearances without construing what they suggest, consider the following. When you go see the movies, and in the movies you see a wooden table take shape on the movie screen, it appears as though there is a table there made of wood, but you know there is actually nothing other than the movie screen and the projector generating an appearance suggestive of wood. So while you are watching the movies you are not led away by the suggestive appearances (unless you forget it's just a movie). Like all examples, again, this example is not to be taken literally. (So in the movies you're just a passive observer, while in life you're an active participant, etc.) But there is also a negative side to saying "in seeing, just the seen." The negative side is that it gives the person an impression that all meanings arise from their own side. So for example, if you're experience an appearance suggestive of a wooden table, even though you don't construe an actual wooden table, you may think the meaning of "tableness" comes directly from the seen independent of any other factors. In other words, why do tables look like tables? Why don't tables change shape arbitrarily when you look at them? So obviously it's somewhat deceitful to say "in seeing, just the seen." So then you may realize the meaning of a table has no meaning outside the meaning of a surface, and it has no meaning outside the idea that the surface of a table is usually flat, and tables make no sense without the corresponding meanings of up and down, nor do tables make any sense without the idea of object integrity, meaning, things don't pass through the surface of the table. And we generally understand tables are not the same as desks, and a kitchen counter while having a flat surface is not a table either. The ideas of up and down make no sense without the ideas of physical space. The idea of a table also makes no sense without the idea of convenience and the idea of convenience makes no sense without the idea of some being who is to benefit from convenience. So the contextuality of meaning stretches infinitely. Each known meaning is contextualized by all other known meanings, and all known meanings are also contextualized by currently unknown potential meanings. So contextualization is endless and without contextualization meanings would not mean anything. So the appearance suggestive of a wooden table is not meaningful from its own side. The meaning of wood is not itself replete with "woodness" and the meaning of a table is not itself replete with "tableness". The meaning of the table needs to involve the known and the unknown universes of meaning to really be what it is. Same goes for the meaning of wood. So from this point of view instead of saying "in seeing there is just the seen" it's more accurate to say "in seeing there is the whole known universe and the currently unknown universe of limitless potential." I've also explained the innerness of vision. Imagine a bunch of black dots randomly flying against white background. When the black dots are randomly positioned, they look only like a bunch of disparate dots. Now imagine those dots fly into the shape of a cat. Where is the cat? The cat is not in the dots. It's in your mind. If you didn't already know what cats look like it would be impossible for you to recognize the shape of a cat in the dots' arrangement. Then imagine the dots separate and fly around again. Again they look like dots. Now the dots fly into the shape of letters. What if you didn't know what letters looked like? Would such an appearance have any meaning to you? Of course not. So where are the letters? They are in your mind again. The letters are not in the dots. In fact, this computer screen works like that. It simply lights up various pixels and it looks as though things appear on the screen. In reality things appear in your mind and not "out there" on the screen. If you didn't already know what these things might be like, then the pixel lighting arrangements would mean nothing to you and wouldn't be recognizable as anything at all. That's the innerness of vision. So if you understand what I am pointing at, then you'll also understand when you're walking along a street and the street appears to you, it's not "out there". It's in your mind. You're walking in your own mind and seeing the street in your own mind. Apart from your own mind, there is no street to be seen and nowhere to walk.

I'm glad you enjoyed it InfinityTruth. Whatever I know is ultimately your birthright, because from your point of view I am a manifestation of your own mind. This is why I don't intend to keep any secrets from you. All my power is your power and I have a lot of power. Peace.