Otis

That's a good point. Not only is certainty the opposite vector from growth, it's also the opposite vector from compassion. If I tell myself a story about who someone else is, or what they need, then I have placed my own concepts in the way of listening to them. I have reduced them to the simalucrum that I have constructed in my head. Compassion, IMO, is not doing the thing that I think is right, because the road to hell is said to be paved with those intentions. Compassion is a form of caring listening, in which my awareness, rather than my concepts, leads directly to my actions.

Hi Adeha, Great experience, and observation of what was happening inside you. I think that a good deal of the usefulness in massage and rolfing is precisely in forcing the muscles to relax. The pain comes in so intensely, that the only possible way (other than yelling 'stop!') is to surrender. Once resistance to the pain is given up, then the pain is transformed. And the tense muscles are no longer holding on.

I agree that living as if "my beliefs are all false" seems impossible; I certainly don't know how to do it. Because I do not know how to live without beliefs, my mantra is: believe as little as possible, and make sure that what I do believe makes as much sense as possible. Of course, that "as much sense as possible" is still dependent upon my viewpoint, which is why it is also still useful to remember that my beliefs really are "all false". I can never know what is "true" so why try to parse out how much truth is in them? I never have any real ground to stand on. It is not about rejecting my beliefs, thus far. It is about letting them be "my best theory yet" and no more.

Another great reason to put down stories: the energy of certainty moves in the opposite vector from that of growth. When I am certain, I make my known important. The more important my known is, the less willing I will be, to go into the unknown. Growth, of course, takes place in the unknown, because it's about moving into new territory. Belief stories are about making possibility smaller, not larger. For example, if I say that "my God is the true God", then inherent in that belief, I exclude all other possibility. If I tell stories about myself, then I exclude part of the texture and possibility that is me. If I create stories about who someone else is, then I exclude the parts of them which do not fit in my story. When I tell myself a story about an event that just happened, then I reshape my memory of that event into the form of my story. If I am certain, then having my stories torn apart is painful. How can I face new potential truths, if I have put my own emotional weight behind calling my own truths "Right"? Being certain just keeps me in the territory I already think I understand. It makes change frightening, and urges me to rationalize new evidence to fit old beliefs. It blinds me to new possibility, and sets me against those who espouse different points of view.

I, for one, won't be telling other people what they should do. However, when I look at "what I know", it seems to be most certain that it is all false. Every bit of it. Now some details may be more accurate to reality, and some metaphors may work 99.99999% of time, but there is no way for me to be sure which ones those are. That's part of the reason why I'm such a big fan of science, because it seems like one of the few generators of memes that actually have safeguards, to help soften the influence of bias. But the smaller the sample size, the less likely any meme is, to be accurate. How likely is it that the memes in my tiny little head are "right", and how would I ever know? When I really pursue the question "what is it possible for me to know?", I realize that there is no solid ground to stand on. Like in Stigweard's recent epistemology thread, the "island of the known" is really the "island of acceptable delusion". And where is the line of acceptable? Again, I cannot know. Provincial thinking can be a very dangerous thing; am I to assume that my delusions are acceptable, even though I know I must suffer from some provincialism? I cannot see any way of stepping beyond myself, to see the world from any point of view, other than my own. Even siddhis are not "beyond a viewpoint", they are merely esoteric or heightened senses. I don't know how to drop all my stories. What I can do now, though, is: doubt my stories in a strategic way. If the story makes me special, either as victim or hero, it is suspect. If the story brushes away another's viewpoint, or dismisses an unpleasant potential, then it is suspect. If the story puts someone else down, or exalts my opinions, or is accompanied by strong emotions or a tense body, it is suspect. If I find myself cheating in any way, in the process of saying "yes" or "no" to a belief, then it is suspect. Of course, even when a metaphor fits beautifully and elegantly, even when it seems to match all the data, even when there is an inner gong, whenever I think of it, it still is suspect! I may still be seeing a watering hole, when all that is there is just heat waves. All matter, we are told, is just an illusion of our senses responding to the flow of electrons, neutrons, and protons (which themselves are illusions, born from other causes). What else seems so certain, so real, so absolute, and yet, is nothing but an illusion? I cannot know. The more I think that I know, the more that I bind myself to my delusions. I don't know how to live without delusions, but I can do my best not to take any of them too seriously.

Agreed on balance. I find myself having a hard time trusting people who are too far in either direction. At least with men who are too yang, or women who are too yin, I just get a sense of understandable naivete, that they just haven't cultivated the other side. But a man who shows no yang, or a woman without yin, feels false, as if they have smothered a huge part of who they are. (Not to say that any of this is true, just my reactions). By far, I find myself drawn most to men and women who are powerful, but aware. Gentle, but firm. Self-assured, but with nothing to prove.

In fact, I think we do have 6.5 billion religions. I doubt any two people have exactly the same beliefs. In the absence of outside groups to compare with, humans become enamored with the differences between members of the same group. Splits must happen, because different interpretations are inevitable. So every tradition looks like a branching tree, with continual re-interpretations. So we might as well stop pretending to be purists, when there is no such real thing as pure tradition, to begin with. We might as well own up to having our own interpretations and beliefs, because it's true, anyway. We might as well call it following our own path, because that is what we already do, even when we pretend otherwise. We might as well own up to the responsibility of finding our own way, because that responsibility is ours, no matter what.

This sounds like an excellent meditation. Thank you for sharing it.

I think there are some great replies on this thread. Personally, I am a dancer, and tend to see things in dance metaphor. From that perspective, I have a hard time seeing how one can liberate, without physical cultivation. How can I be free, if my body is still a slave to my habits? As long as I experience my body as discrete parts, instead of as energy, then I am imprisoned by my own beliefs about my body. Even though I am a pacifist, I do still believe that engaging in some fighting play is useful, if not necessary. Mankind evolved during a time when violence and killing were an intrinsic part of life. I do not see these qualities of mankind as wrong, only as out-of-place with modern society. If I ignore these functions in myself, then they will remain strangers to me, and they will leak out in awkward ways, when crisis is upon me. But if I make friends with my violence, get to understand and appreciate my functions toward self-defense, then I will be able to stay centered and aware, rather than getting hijacked by my fight-or-flight response.

Great! Thanks, Cheya and Cat. This is what I'm trying to get at. When we "find the doorway", then pain is no longer suffering. Instead, it is something necessary, a sense, and IME, a pathway to self-healing. The most obvious example of this is a delicious stretch. In a delicious stretch, we sit right on the edge between pleasure and pain. If we find the doorway, then the more intense the stimulus (i.e. the pain), the more pleasurable the stretch. This, I think is the true function of pain: it is one half of the loop of self-healing. Pain calls my attention to the trauma, and my attention completes the loop. The result is: the pain is transformed into something more like pleasurable heat, and my body heals itself much much faster. If, however, I turn away from pain, if I tune out from it, or cover it up with pleasure, then I do not give my body what it wants, which is my attention. And so my body takes much longer to heal. Sometimes it does not heal at all. But if I bring loving, fearless attention to the trauma (whether physical or emotional), activate the injury through gentle practice and kind movement, and really attend to the sensations that arise, no matter how initially unpleasant, then I experience transformation and healing.

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I think that Genesis has some insight into pain: After Eve ate of the fruit of duality (i.e. knowledge of good and evil), then she was afflicted with "pain in child birth". It was dualism that led to her shame of nakedness, and to the suffering of pain. Once we decide that pain is something that we don't want, then we suffer. As consequence, we find addictions to cover it up. We bury ourselves in distractions like delusion, drugs, food, sex, adrenaline, and self-identity, all to distract from, and cover up pain. The reasons why these things are addicting is because the pain doesn't go away; it is only temporarily ameliorated by the activities which stimulate dopamine, serotonin, etc., which fade over time. So the activity must be kept up, or the pain returns. If we can accept pain, embrace it as a sense that is every bit as important and healthy as vision or hearing, then we don't need to cover it up with neurochemicals.

Yes, I think pain is among the most mysterious functions, not only in how it works, but why it's there at all. Precisely because pain seems so obvious. We all know that "pain is something to be avoided". But I think that "obvious knowledge" is exactly backwards. The very urgency of pain suggests that our body is trying to direct our attention toward the pain, not away from it. It is (perhaps) only our limited perspective that insists on distracting ourselves, on numbing the sensation. Just about every other function in the human body is seen as default useful, and the problems only begin when they get out of whack. But pain is (usually) seen as default wrong. What other sense do we try to escape from? That's a big puzzle, right there, and solving it, I think, can be the source of a great deal of liberation.

Most of my reads are recommendations, some from here. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Taoism: Brandon Toropov and Chad Hansen 365 Tao: Deng Ming-Dao Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Steve Hagen The Spell of the Sensuous: David Abram I'm sure I'll pick up a few more, based on this thread.

Well, of course, that's a great deal of the appeal of partner dancing! Lower the shields and mingle essences!

Good point, Manitou. Parents will tell children: "you're not the center of the universe". And from the parent's perspective, this is obviously so. Of course, from the child's perspective, it is equally obvious that they ARE the center of the universe. No bit of the universe is real to them, unless it is in the child's immediate experience. Since both perspectives are true, I think we need to be able to embrace the paradox. If we fool ourselves into "objectivity", if we fake being separate from our own concern (because we think we should not be the universe's center), then we will just build a wall between ourselves and immediate experience. We set ourselves back from our own process of living, and become detached. So IMO we need to live as the universe, not as something apart from it. Likewise, if we forget that every other person is also at the center of their universe, then we make ourselves important, at the expense of the rest of the world. If we remain in "not knowing" then we can approach every person (and indeed, every situation) with curiosity, humility and a sense of adventure, without ever being detached from the flow of life.

Nice! That's definitely how I experience my own drive. The projects that have been the most personal for me, are ones I made little or no money on, but are the ones that I had the greatest say in, and the most opportunity to grow.

Darwin was one of a handful of geniuses in the 19th and early 20th centuries who really helped shift the West in a more Taoist way of thought, even though he would never have thought of it that way. Einstein's Relativity gives the new paradigm its name, because he showed that there was no such thing as a special place in the universe, that no point of view was absolute. Nietzsche explored what meaning was like, free of the crutch of a God. Godel showed that our mathematics was still a reflection of human thinking, and thus limited. The early quantum physicists showed that reality was utterly different than our senses suggest. And Darwin put us in our place in the animal kingdom, showing that we have not only rodents in our lineage, but also fish, protozoan, plant, and bacteria. I think Dawkins is Darwin's true successor, as he has revealed that unwittingly, we have been the transport system for DNA (rather than them serving us), and now, the transport system for ideas and technology. In each successive revelation, the special place that man wants to create for himself, in which he is the center of the universe, is just shown to be so much wishful thinking. We are a process, an ecosystem, a step along the way, a replicator, a speck. Humbling our need to be special, IMO, is the first step toward discovering what greatness we actually already have.

No doubt. Even the way the hunter in the video put himself into the mind of his prey; that's some Sherlock Holmes stuff right there.

Absolutely! The shortest path is to fall in love with the activity. Because then it's not just repetition, it's fun. It's not just practice, it's GOOD practice.

Excellent! If you ask a Xtian why we have to kneel before God, I think he will tell you: without humbling ourselves, we are lost. And I agree. That's part of the reason why I love science and nature documentaries. They are always so humbling, because they help illustrate the sheer "intelligence" that exists in the world, outside of our heads. They help show how unspecial any one organism is, any one species, any one planet. They put us in our place. We don't need God to humble us. We just need to be willing to be in awe of the universe itself.

I love how Modern Man's image of evolution shows us becoming more physically superior to our ancestors, when the opposite is clearly true. Very few civilized men have the capacity to survive without technology, but our ancestors had to be superior runners, swimmers, rock and tree climbers, true super men compared to us.

Shi sells shi shells by the shi shore.

I slander, you slander, we all slander the Icelander.

Actually, my earlier post was flippant and ill-conceived. I didn't mean to challenge Simple Jack (although I do think he's a bit over-certain about absolute matters). I was kind of making a joke, but it doesn't really make sense when I look back at it.