goldisheavy

Marble, you're pretty awesome, you know that? Idiot. You've gained my respect when you said that and you touched something deep within me, something very true. It's too bad I can't be sure if you're totally honest or if you're just posturing to make a point.

Yes, exactly. It's just as I've explained. Take heart though, because you're only an extremist to the extent you continue to insist on an extreme and absolutist solution. You're not permanently branded an extremist from now and until eternity (certainly not by me, that's for sure). But as long as you maintain an extreme and an intolerant view, you are an extremist. You're unwilling to tolerate even the slightest insult and you advocate and support a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to insults.

Yes, intolerance of insults manifests in many ways. For some it means you feel obliged to respond tit for tat. For others it means brutal and suffocating forum "moderation" (more like censorship in some cases, think e-sangha here). For yet others it means all of the above. For many people intolerance of insult is not just a personal preference, it's seen as a duty prescribed in the holy law. Such people make intolerance their highest and most divine "virtue." Tolerating an occasional insult and forgiveness go hand in hand. If you can't tolerate an affront to your person, the likelihood of you forgiving it or overlooking it is low. At the same time, if you understand nothing is absolutely perfect and that good enough is good enough, and you receive a rare insult and overlook it, you're not the kind of person who's going to clamor for bans or for an insult-free environment. You will be the kind of person who will promote allowing people emotional room to breathe a little, to not be so guarded and formal with what we say. I can tolerate an occasional insult or two. Of course I don't want to listen to someone whose posts are 100% or even 50% insults and otherwise are light on content. When someone heats up from time to time, I don't run to the moderator and I don't start cracking my moral whip. I forgive and move on. I believe I am in the right here and I believe I set an example worthy of emulation. And if you agree, then loosen up on the bans and please loosen up on the extremism. I am specifically not saying it's OK to just start insulting everyone for fun and without limit, which I think is how some people erroneously continue to take what I am saying. I am not asking anyone to be or do something I already am not or don't do times ten. Now, the reason I make this issue personal is so that people have a real target for their, in my opinion, bullshit extremism. For once I let you strike straight at my heart instead of abstractly into thin air. I will champion non-absolutism. I will take your attacks on tolerance personally. This way you will know the truth and you won't be deluded. Otherwise you may talk weakly into thin air, and receive random half-assed replies and pass up on learning something. This way I've actually engaged you. I gave you traction. I let you feel what it's like to actually have a worthy opponent instead of talking to the choir like you always tend to do. Good thing. I hope everyone enjoyed it. By the way, this is tiring and I can't always do it. We must take turns. So this will be $200 dollars for this post. Where do I send the bill? Wait a second... wait a second... keep your money! I am only kidding!

I see it very similarly to you. I think our god-spirit and our body are always aligned whether we like it or not. The "problem" is that our god-spirit accepts anything unto itself. So it can accept contradicting and painful beliefs, which can manifest in a painful body. God-spirit is just fine with pain, it's equally as capable and as "happy" to manifest misery as it is to manifest bliss, well-being and contentment. So the alignment between the god-spirit and the body is always there, as I see it, but we tend to fill our god-spirit with junky beliefs on purpose or through neglect and then we expect fantastic results.

I agree, but don't forget the flip side of the coin. Failure to tolerate a rare and occasional insult from a stranger on the internet is also a cowardly thing to do, considering the stranger can't get close and back up the insult with a fist in your face to make it really stick. So when insults over the internet mean so very little, trying to argue for a complete abandonment of them is not only extremism and intolerance, it's sheer cowardice and egoism (leggo my eggo). Yes, love is the treasure. Extremism harms love. It's exactly love that compels me to protest extreme ideologies and policies.

Hi Manitou, I think we are all talking about the last type of magic you mention (the one Castaneda talked about), although I wouldn't quite describe it the same way. Intent proceeds without a break. I don't think it can be turned on or off. Intent is more like a river, it changes course but it's always in effect, always ongoing. So when we say "set the intent" we don't mean turn it on and set it on a specific goal. I think we mean "change course from how it used to be before." Once the course has been changed, one maintains course. Maintaining course is effortless (that's the not-doing part). Changing course is also effortless if the person is ready to live the life of a mage (sorcerer, witch, bruja, whatever you want to call it). Otherwise changing course requires effort. This means inner effort and sometimes it also means external effort in the form of a proper ritual.

Ahh! This is a new concept for me. Meow!

People have trouble believing in magic because a belief in magic is just one belief of many. Beliefs exist in networks. If we want to discuss the entire network of beliefs that a person holds we could call it a mindset. Some of these beliefs can be articulated and the person is aware that one indeed believes such and such. Some beliefs are silent, tacit and implicit, those are the beliefs that are difficult to articulate and difficult to be aware of. So when we present a belief in magic as a possibility, in order for this belief to be accepted it has to cohere well (mix well, cooperate well, work well, non-contradict) with all or most of the other beliefs. So, for example, if the person strongly believes in physicalism, then a belief in magic will directly contradict that. When I say "strongly believes" I don't mean the person stands on street corners and yells out about physicalism. Often the belief in physicalism is an implicit one, it's a deep one and not many people can even articulate it fully and clearly when asked. And that's only just one example of a contradiction. There are many ways how a belief in magic can be a contradictory belief for many people. When it comes to people, each person has a slightly different degree of tolerance for mind compartmentalization. Now compartmentalization is a big word, but it means something simple. A person with compartmentalized mind is someone whose mindset is split into sections and beliefs must only cohere within each section, but the sections themselves are allowed to contradict each other. Most people have some degree of compartmentalization. Some people have highly compartmentalized minds. We can tell this is the case when people profess seemingly contradictory beliefs without too much discomfort. Such people are usually dumb. They rate lower on the IQ scale. The reason they can tolerate a high degree of compartmentalization is because they don't bother to investigate, to introspect, to compare and to align their beliefs, to see how they all fit together, whether any of them make any sense or not, etc. An intelligent person is more likely to check one's own beliefs for consistency (coherency) and for soundness against experience. So there are essentially two factors that can lead the person to accept a belief in magic: 1. The person's other beliefs are aligned and non-contradicting toward the belief in magic. 2. The person's mind is highly compartmentalized and the person doesn't much care about the quality of the beliefs they accept. This kind of person is tolerant to holding all kinds of contradictory beliefs and is often confused for that reason. As you can see, it's not all gravy. So when you present your belief in magic to someone, if that someone accepts your belief for reason #2, that's a tragedy. They're accepting the belief out of sickness of mind, basically. This is of course all my opinion, it goes without saying. So in my opinion, only #1 is a legitimate reason to accept a belief in magic. In my opinion a belief in magic can be a very reasonable and logically sound belief. I believe in magic and I also think I am a very reasonable person. My mindset is low on compartmentalization, or so I think (everyone is welcome to disagree and argue with me about it). So my belief in magic is a legitimate one and not an unhealthy one. So if you want others to accept a belief in magic in a healthy way, you have to ask what are some other beliefs that a person holds that contradict the belief in magic. Then you can try to either use reason to argue against those contradicting beliefs (this is what I often do), or you can invite the person to an experience where the experience itself will challenge the belief that contradicts the idea of magic (this is hard to do online and it's hard to do without the person having a huge amount of trust in you to follow you into an unfamiliar experience on your suggestion). I believe I've now provided an exhaustive answer to your question. That's going to cost you $100 dollars. Where do I send the bill? Just kidding!! I'm only kidding in this paragraph people.

Wait a second. You think this discussion is wonderful but you don't know what the topic of discussion is?

Well, yes. I wouldn't say "equate" exactly, but insults are how you convey the disrespect in an honest way. It's up to each person to remember the difference. Conventionally we address the person. The addressed person should know that in reality one's person can't really be addressed at all on an ultimate level. Also the person gets disrespected because the person has a free will. While free will is conditioned and isn't absolute, nonetheless it's there. And to the extent it's there, some amount of disrespect is fairly earned for holding harmful beliefs and expressing bad opinions. This is then further adjusted and moderated for the fact that we're all fallible and may be mistaken. But it never goes to 0. 0 is extremism. 0 is a lie. 0 is false. Advocating anything in totality and in the extreme is almost always wrong and almost always results in an intolerant society that's conditioned to always expect perfection and that's always ever disappointed and angry when it fails to find that perfection it's bred to expect. Once again, I am generally against insults. The difference as I understand it is that you want to take a hard line against insults and I take a "soft" line if you will. That's the only difference. I am against absolutism. I am against saying that insults are absolutely unequivocally bad and wrong in every case. I maintain that the overuse of insults is what's bad. When I ask people to be slightly more accepting toward an occasional personal insult or two, I am asking people to be more tolerant. When you ask all of us to cooperate in creating a dishonest and coddled environment, you're promoting, consenting to, and condoning intolerance. And all that because I am basically saying a post history that's 95% content and 5% insult is OK and yet you say, nothing less than 100% content and 0% insult is OK. You're a greedy and intolerant person if you can't forgive and let go of the 5%. You seek perfection from humanity in a way that's unnatural and unDaoist. There is no perfection like that anywhere and seeking it dogmatically and inflexibly is exactly what Confucious attempted to do, and that's exactly what Zhuangzi criticized.

It's worse than that. You must have notions to have any kind of experience. This is absolutely false. If any of these famous masters showed up on this forum, signed up and started posting, you can bet your right hand that you'd describe all of them as having notions. No doubt about it. If so, why then do you think some of these folks had no notions? It's thanks to you buying into the myth and suspending your critical thinking. If you read the Pali Canon seriously, for example, you can see Buddha having countless notions post-enlightenment. You can even see how Buddha screwed up a few times and did something bad or intolerant. It doesn't mean we should discard everything he said. It just means we should keep our head where it belongs -- on our shoulders. Or as the Zen masters like to say, don't put another head on top of your head. Drop the double standard and the bias.

Everything you say makes perfect sense to me and nothing you said above contradicts anything I am saying. I think the difference here is that you and I have different ideas about what is mind. You might think that the mind is something locked away privately in your skull. I don't think that way at all. By believing in the Taoist deity, you've magically empowered the deity to be what it is. Secondly, your belief in that deity does not contradict your other beliefs -- this means it's a coherent and effective belief for you (and likely for many others as well). And it all worked nicely. So you tend to ascribe the results to the specifics of your practice, such as the specific deity, the specific ritual and so on. I ascribe the result to something less specific, to your intent and to the general principles of manifestation (intent, coherent state of mind and possibly some other principle I am forgetting). So in my way of thinking, someone can get the same result as you from an Egyptian deity. Or you can even get the same result from a completely fictional deity that's been properly empowered. So a Chaos magician can empower Mickey Mouse as a deity and get the same results if the empowerment is good enough. This in no way means that the Taoist deities (or vajrayana deities, or Egyptian, etc.) have no value. They do. The value they have is that they have the weight of tradition behind them, which makes them more believable and more acceptable for many people. And this is important. When something is more believable than something else, we can say it is more coherent with your mentality. And like I said, coherency is critical for magic. So if Taoist deities sound most plausible and most interesting to you, they will be the most powerful and the most effective deities for you and there is no practical reason to change anything for you. Key word "practical." If you're not content with something that just works, if you want to know how it all works under the hood in a more general and more universal sense, there is a good reason to keep investigating. Happy rituals!

Very interesting video More_Pie_Guy, thank you for posting it. So finally one analyst admits that it's not the quantity of the GDP but the quality that matters. I wish this was a more common knowledge, but unfortunately most people still don't get it and still continue to peddle GDP as a valuable indicator when it isn't in fact.

Key word "technically." Give me one other religion whose main inspiration is a pedophile warlord? Go ahead, I'll wait.

First, some evolution is a fact that's not subject to reasonable doubt. Namely the shifts. For example, bird beaks get longer and shorter with the environmental changes. That's not disputed. People get gradually taller and shorter, that too is not disputed. The onset of puberty shifts from culture to culture and from time to time. Again, not disputed. Bacterial colonies evolve almost overnight, again, not disputed. So much of the evolution is simply a fact, imo. Second, yes, some of the transitional forms are hard to find. Does that disprove evolution? I don't think it necessarily does. Of course the presence of the transitional forms doesn't necessarily prove evolution either. So what does this mean? I think it means that if people want to think evolution is true, it's a reasonable way to think, but not exclusively so. But if you want to think it's false, you can only deny macroevolution and not micro. Microevolution is a fact that can simply be observed. It's not even a theory. So when you're denying something, you must always be careful to single out macro and leave micro alone, or else you sound like a looney. Third, even if every creature spontaneously appeared, it does not whatsoever imply the existence of the creator. That's a HUGE leap of logic right there! For example, rain spontaneously appears from time to time. Does it mean the rain god is sending down rain? No it does not. Just because something happens spontaneously or exceedingly rarely proves nothing, and certainly it proves nothing about God. Fourth, even if you assume the existence of the creator, for fuck's sake it's not Allah! Allah is the name from Islam, and Islam is a heinous doctrine that got started by a pedophiliac warlord called "Mohammed." Islamic doctrine is the worst religious doctrine there is.

I did have such a chance. I studied many things. In order to avoid the long list, let's limit it to one important thing that is sufficient: I've studied lucid dreaming by dreaming lucidly. I'm a very proficient lucid dreamer and have been since childhood, although later on I learned how to get more control over lucid dreaming and how to depend less on luck and chance. And as for being a student, I am a student of all things. I never stop learning.

Science is less dogmatic than creationism. But science is not entirely free of dogma. So while the creationists' fear of the scientific authority is mostly delusional, it's not 100% delusional. There is a small grain of truth to what they fear in the form of the scientific authority. After all, it's humans that form both systems of thought. So just how dissimilar can the scientific community and the creationist community be? Of course they are not the same, but nor is the dissimilarity extreme.

Sorry Taomeow, but suggestion in order to be effective must absolutely be harmonized with everything. In particular it must be harmonized with the pre-existing beliefs. You believe the moon position is important? Then if I am going to suggest something to you I will need to take that into account. And so on. Suggestions work in the presence of coherent (cooperative) mind. Suggestions fizzle in an uncooperative or contradicting mind. Suggestions, real magical ones, are not at all arbitrary. They are as sophisticated and as context-sensitive as the approach you talk about. I've even mentioned this before. I mentioned the coherence of mind as a necessary condition. Let's not ignore this bit of information please The power of suggestion is huge and there are tricks on how to lower the bar on just what sort of suggestion will be acceptable, but even with all the tricks in place, the suggestions can't be completely arbitrary (at least, not right away... you can potentially work yourself up to that level with practice, but it may take many lifetimes).

Steve, does this work both ways? In other words: 1. Disputing Lucy is not sufficient to establish that there is a break in evolution. 2. Positing Lucy is not sufficient to establish that there is a continuity of evolution. In other words, are we applying the same standard of rigor going both ways? Or are we kind of biased here? By the way, I completely believe in evolution (only partially thanks to the evolutionary biologists though).

Civil discourse is dishonest discourse. It's too heavy on pretense and formalism. This is why our society is in such deep shit right now. We can't really be honest with each other anymore. Wrong. You've already insulted me numerous times. You just don't get it. You called me "disingenuous" which is a polite way of saying "you lied." That's an insult. Further, you presented my nuanced argument against extremism as a simplistic "let's all be dicks to each other" argument. That insults my intelligence. This is exactly why I said there is no clear line between criticism and insult. You think you're just politely and constructively criticizing me and I am thinking you're insulting me here. Of course I think your use of insults is a judicious and reasonable one, so I am more than glad to hear you out, just as is, uncensored and uncut. That's an understatement. I maintain that the overuse of insults is unskillful. Of course I disagree. I oppose all dogmatic rules. I oppose polarization of insults. If you say "personal insults are always bad" then how is that not a dogma? Now you are the one who is misrepresenting here and not me. Why? Because look how you've butchered my side of the argument. Look at your B2. Your B2 is 50% insult. Writing comments that are half insult and half content is not something I support. Furthermore, how often does B2 appear? If the person is generally polite but then one day says something like B2, that's OK in my view. Why? Because I am not dogmatic. Because I am willing to take things in context. So overall you can see the person doesn't rely on insults as the main vehicle for delivery, and then an occasional insult is OK. I think you have a serious problem Steve. You think you're the champion of tolerance, but actually you are promoting intolerance here. Are you aware of it? You know in Russian there is a parable about the princess on the pea. It's very apropos. Let me briefly tell you about it. It's basically a story about a spoiled princess who was used to everything being perfect. So when a pea got caught under her mattress she woke up with a bruised back. So why is this significant? It's significant because you're advocating a very coddled environment. What will be the result of that? The result, if you succeed, will be that everyone will become more sensitized. Thus what used to not be insulting in a slightly rougher environment will become insulting in a more coddled environment. So you're not actually getting rid of insults that way, you're simply lowering the bar for what is considered an insult. The more coddled and protected the environment, the lower the bar goes. Not only does this fail to actually get rid of the phenomenon of insult, but it makes it that much easier for people to feel insulted. I'm not even going to mention what happens to the flow of information in such an environment. Suffice it to say, if you take your dislike of insults and fashion it into an extremist and dogmatic doctrine, the results will be very negative not only for you personally, but for the whole of humanity. OK, so when I call you an extremist, I am correct. Steve, your view is harmful. It's not beneficial. What do you think I have been doing all this time? I am not paranoid. I completely believe you and take you at your word right now. You should try to understand where I am coming from. I see the conditions in your psyche just right for the sneaky "snake in the grass" behavior. Why? Because you prefer an excessively whitewashed environment. This means you sometimes have trouble expressing certain things to others, just like you have trouble hearing certain things (it goes both ways). This means there will likely be times when you feel offended or insulted, but instead of exchanging energy directly, honestly, you're going to (thanks to your preference of least resistance) go behind someone's back and complain in secret. It doesn't mean you do that. I completely trust that as of yet you don't do that. But at the same time, the conditions are perfect in your psyche for you to start behaving in that way if not now, then perhaps soon. Because you're demonstrating an intolerance of insult here. Instead of arguing for moderating insults you are arguing for complete cessation of insults. That's exactly what intolerance look like. The law and order people turn out to be the most intolerant ones. Why? Why do you think that is? It's obvious in retrospect, right? They can't tolerate even the slightest affront, that's why they are so heavy on punishment. It goes hand in hand. At the same time, those same people, thanks to that self-same intolerance of affront will not punish you in your face, but they'll more often than not go behind your back. You might want to look up "right-wing authoritarianism" on google for an enlightening discussion on this topic. By the way, this posts costs $50 dollars. Where do I send the bill, Steve? Just kidding!

Certainly. Good job. This just means either I failed to communicate effectively or you failed to understand me. My post was precisely about insults and not about criticism. Usually insults occur at the same time as does the criticism, and that's not a coincidence. Insults can be both necessary and helpful. Notice I am not saying "Insults are always necessary and always helpful." Notice that I am saying "can be"? On the contrary. My experience is vastly more thorough than most other peoples because I've lived in two different societies so I have a better perspective than someone who's only ever lived in just one, which is most people. That's just when it comes to worldly experience. So when I am telling you that there was a kid who used to beat me for a year and then when I beat the kid back, we became friends the next day, I am not lying. You can trust me on that. It's not even irrational either. Perhaps you can't comprehend this, but when I hit the kid back, I earned his respect and we had no problems whatsoever later on. Does this mean everyone I fought became my friend? No, it doesn't. I fought lots of times growing up, including fighting with my friends plenty. I've never stopping being a friend just because someone punched me in the face either. And all this I am talking about physical fighting, which is more severe and more "in your face" so to speak, than insults on the internet, which are much more ethereal and abstract. I have tolerance but I expect my friends to have it too. If what you're saying was true, we'd have WW3 already. Obviously you are exaggerating. Of course there is always a freak case here and there that gets into the media about someone getting violent in response to some online quarrel. Those cases get into the media precisely on the account of their freakish nature. Steve, when did I say that insults are altogether healthy? If you eat a plateful of salt, is that healthy? But if you put a sprinkle of salt on a plateful of potatoes is that healthy? Obviously there is a difference. If you read my argument as saying, let's just insult the hell out of each other, then you're doing everyone a disservice. I am arguing against the extremism here. I am arguing against absolutism. I agree that insults are something that easily becomes bad, but at the same time, I don't agree that insults are absolutely and unequivocally bad, which is what I think your position is. I am willing to moderate myself but I am not willing to censor myself. In other words, I can cut down the salt, but don't ask me to become salt-free -- it ain't happening. You'll always be getting some degree of salt and pepper from me (and from everyone else too, whether you like it or not, and from the world and even from your own body as well). Good, so there is some hope that you're not an extremist. That's an extremist position. I think a small amount of insults are acceptable on this forum. Do you see the difference here? I am not saying, "Yo, let's all start being absolute dicks to each other." That's not whatsoever what I am arguing. I am simply saying "Loosen up and don't jump to conclusions so quickly." If someone gets a little hot, that's OK! It happens sometimes. Learn to be more tolerant. Instead you're learning to be more controlling and more demanding of your environment. You want this forum to be a perfect environment and you're not happy with anything less than perfect. If we equate this forum to potatoes then you want them salt-free. That's too extreme.

It's not beyond your grasp. By this time I am pretty sure you have the required mental faculty to grasp what I am saying. Let's not play the "I am too dumb to get this" card please. I respect your choice on this matter though. So if you don't like the idea, that's fine. Just please don't say you're not mentally equipped to understand what I am saying, because that's not something I can believe. Now, you know about the context, surely. When you reflect back on your context, how did it get to be the way it is? Right... Other cognitions. It points to an unbrokenness of mind. It does not point to God because God has a number of requirements over and above an unbroken mind. This is especially true of the Abrahamic God which is not a philosophically modest concept (and this makes it easy to disprove too). Of course it's also possible to have such a modest definition of God that it's essentially identically defined to the mindstream. That's fine too, but then, why should this modest kind of God bother you?

Suggestion is exactly what magic is. Suggestion can be arbitrarily deep. There is no limit for it. It can also be arbitrarily stable and it can last an arbitrarily long period of time. There is nothing in the mind that inherently limits the power of suggestion. Suggestion is practically limitless. You are swimming in it. You are breathing it. Your body itself is a suggestion. This planet is another suggestion. Suggestions work because everything is a suggestion.

Forget looking for teachers. Just be patient. In your state you are vulnerable to brainwashing and exploitation. Try to occupy yourself with some work. Open your windows. Go for two daily walks or more. Do some exercise. Work on something, anything (you pick what it is, and you don't even have to be paid, you can just carve some statues, or paint, whatever, just work). If the work is physical, it may even be better. See some friends. Go see some movies. Relax. Just mix it up a bit and be patient. Everything passes just like Twinner said. Meditation is not necessarily a cure-all. Sometimes you have to pass through a difficult period no matter what you do. Are you aware that many students of Buddha's committed suicide due to depression? After this happened Buddha changed his preachings slightly to focus less on the rotting corpse meditation. So what does this tell you? Use your own head! Sometimes there is no magic fix. Just be patient and live as best you can. Sometimes even the best teacher will simply drive you to an early death. Humans are fallible. No exceptions.