Are preferences natural and thus in accordance with Tao?

[cheya]

Are preferences natural and thus in accordance with the Tao?

 

Thinking about this reminds me of Chapters One and Twelve of the TTC. Chapter one: on viewing with desire (see the manifestation) or without desire (see the formless source). If we are looking at the world with the five senses, preoccupied with the Tao's manifestation, desire and preferences tend to arise, guided and informed by our external lives.

 

When we are without desire, in touch with the formless source, feeling with our inner chi, it seems preferences are less likely to arise. The more one can flow with the Tao, the more what looks like choices and preferences will simply be expressions of the flow of the Tao.

[Stigweard]

here is a view to explore.

 

the absolute source of pure intention and complete inclusion is non-human and transpersonal (Tao).

 

and yet through complete inclusion, Tao is also expressed as human.

 

in a relative sense, human is inherently limited from expressing truly inclusive acts.

 

how could a limited human form express the unlimited?

 

I agree completely. It's like, out of the infinite spectrum of cosmic emanations, the human experience is a minuscule bandwidth. To become a "completed human" we must illuminate all the bands and filaments within the human range. But if we were to step outside that bandwidth then we would become, by necessity, not human any more.

 

The tantalizing question there is: Do we have the capacity within this life to breach the boundaries of the human bandwidth of possibility?

 

i think the root imbalance in so-called immoral behavior is mostly environmental and has stunningly little to do with our consciously articulated conceptual viewpoints.

 

the "i" that thinks it is making rational decisions and controlling our behavior is often severely deluded about it's actual power to control anything whatsoever. in fact this could be the most primitive fear of "i", just how absurdly little control it has to stop us from carrying out a destiny, the characteristics of which are already rather frightenly in full motion regardless of our conceptual preferences.

 

the sense of "i" is just one tiny stream in an extremely wide, complex parallel processor, co-arising along with all the variables of an internal environment (brain, cns, body, senses, etc) and an external environment (sights, sound, air quality, feng shui, etc) and ultimately extending outward into the entire manifest universe.

 

imo, immoral behavior is much much more a product of the health of this environment than the conceptual stories a co-arising self tells itself about why it is doing something. the sense of self doesn't even really know why it's doing anything anyway, it just tells stories often after the fact.

 

the idea that the primary causal factor in some human act of atrocity could be that this person's conscious mind latched on to a concept like "its all ok, preferences are natural" and used it to rationalize something has very little basis in reality imo.

 

it reminds me of this richard dawkins documentary where he is asking this priest why is it necessary to believe in god. the priest says, well without a belief in god and the guidelines of morality people would just rape and kill each other with abandon. dawkins responded, but i have no desire to rape and kill people! do you? is your belief that a god forbids these acts really the only reason you don't do these things?

 

the very compulsion to engage in attachment to justification for extreme behavior preceded the attachment and the behavior. the entire mess co-arose in an already pre-existing toxic environment. with or without the conceptual justifications, in a toxic environment imbalance manifests.

 

for me, i think it's from this understanding that a more driven sense of engaged unconditional love emerges. i am not separate from this world and there are innumerable beings suffering and more or less trapped in viscious cycles of imbalanced behavior inside toxic environements they have very little hope of pulling themselves out of on their own.

 

this is also the deeper meaning of "cultivation" to me. literally rearrange the structures of our environment as if we were gardening ourselves. i can't force a plant to grow, but i can create the proper conditions for a "happy accident". the most important conditions are nonconceptual: environmental, nutritious soil, sunlight, water, etc.

 

anyway, just another perspective. this is all so so conceptual, haha, i don't even see how it even matters very much. i would say eating healthy nutrition food and meditating daily has hundreds of times more impact on a persons behavior than whether they agree with me on any of this.

 

additionally, to argue directly against my own point briefly, if you are familiar with spiral dynamics, i actually think it may be possible that for humans developmentally operating below orange vmeme, they just may need and benefit from a set of decent commandments!

 

An interesting perspective.

 

To paraphrase, you are saying that we are the products of our environment and that our behavior, whether virtuous or immoral, is predominantly dependent on our environmental factors and that our internal mindset and belief structures have a negligible influence on behavior.

 

This model assumes that we could take a serial killer and rapist from the Bronx and put him on Mount Hua and he would become a saint. And conversely we could take a saint from Mount Hua and put him in the Bronx and he would become a serial killer and a rapist.

 

I am confident an empirical study would reveal that this would not happen.

 

Therefore I could likewise say that the idea that the primary causal factor in some human act of atrocity could be that this person lived in a degraded environment like a slum and used it to rationalize something has very little basis in reality imo.

 

 

I recall a prominent design engineer quoting: "We create our built environment, and our built environment creates us."

 

My view is that there is a direct symbiotic relationship between our belief structures and our built environments. The designs and structures we see are an outward expression of the established cultural view, and such external structures serve to reinforce and perpetuate said cultural view.

 

But in terms of the chicken or the egg, the first cause that creates a "toxic environment" is our internally held views and beliefs. Once created the toxic environment mirrors back to reinforce the propagating belief structures and the cycle continues.

 

So I say, yes, environmental factors have significant and proven effects on human behavior, i.e. the preferences we make, but I still maintain that the deeply held conceptual beliefs we have of ourselves and the world is the fundamental platform from which our choices arise.

 

[z00se]

There are some preferences that are natural. Like a baby reaching out to suckle on a nipple rather than a bedsheet or something. It's instinct. Tension arises in the body because it is hungery then the person reaches for food. We prefer to eat food over wood.

 

So yes preferences are in accordance with the tao. (I purposesly don't say natural because i think just because something is natural doesn't mean it is in accordance with the tao)

 

Some preferences are not in accordance with the tao within one's self. Like when you do chose something which fights with the tao. Which makes life more difficult. When your ego's preference disregards the natural flow of things and does what it wants despite it being in a different direction that the tao is taking you.

 

I think the key is that if you need to consider or think about your choice and preferences it is not in accordance with the tao. If your hand reaches out for it without any thought or consideration it is part of the tao. The divine has caused your action/choice/preference and not your ego.

 

But i think ego's are natural too. So Everything is natural whether if it is in accordance with the tao or not.

 

 

I think analizing the topic in too much detail distracts from it's simplicity and causes confusion when there is a simple answer.

[sean]

To paraphrase, you are saying that we are the products of our environment and that our behavior, whether virtuous or immoral, is predominantly dependent on our environmental factors and that our internal mindset and belief structures have a negligible influence on behavior.

by environment i meant not just external environment but also gross internal environment, e.g., connectomes, brain chemistry, energetic structures/health, etc.

 

"mindset and belief structures", i think that is a bit deeper (grosser) than what i meant, i would say that these do have an impact.

 

what i see as more negligible are people's conscious reports on what they claim to believe about the world.

 

i think a far better indicator of someone's health is to look at their environment and particularly the impact they have on their environment, e.g., their body, their home, their relationships.

 

This model assumes that we could take a serial killer and rapist from the Bronx and put him on Mount Hua and he would become a saint. And conversely we could take a saint from Mount Hua and put him in the Bronx and he would become a serial killer and a rapist.

 

I am confident an empirical study would reveal that this would not happen.

yeah, i think i mostly agree with you here.

 

but take a more average scenario. take a boy that is raised in a crime-ridden slum, fed terrible nutrition developmentally, inundated with corrupt institutions, repeatedly let down by parents, authority figures, physically abused and exposed to regular trauma, sudden violence, etc. he did not create the environment he was born into it. and this is going to have an enormous impact on the range of beneficial perspectives that spontaneously arise in his awareness.

 

telling him that it's his beliefs that are creating his reality, that he consider his internal orientation to preferences, or something abstract, i think that is really low-leverage. higher leverage, imo, is to get him out of that neighborhood, better apartment, job at a cool video store, membership to a boxing gym with grounded instructors that have a bit of wisdom, etc. "god can only appear to a starving man as bread".

 

So I say, yes, environmental factors have significant and proven effects on human behavior, i.e. the preferences we make, but I still maintain that the deeply held conceptual beliefs we have of ourselves and the world is the fundamental platform from which our choices arise.

this seems like an empowering view. i dig it.

 

sean

[Alfred E]

by environment i meant not just external environment but also gross internal environment, e.g., connectomes, brain chemistry, energetic structures/health, etc.

 

"mindset and belief structures", i think that is a bit deeper (grosser) than what i meant, i would say that these do have an impact.

 

what i see as more negligible are people's conscious reports on what they claim to believe about the world.

 

i think a far better indicator of someone's health is to look at their environment and particularly the impact they have on their environment, e.g., their body, their home, their relationships.

 

 

yeah, i think i mostly agree with you here.

 

but take a more average scenario. take a boy that is raised in a crime-ridden slum, fed terrible nutrition developmentally, inundated with corrupt institutions, repeatedly let down by parents, authority figures, physically abused and exposed to regular trauma, sudden violence, etc. he did not create the environment he was born into it. and this is going to have an enormous impact on the range of beneficial perspectives that spontaneously arise in his awareness.

 

telling him that it's his beliefs that are creating his reality, that he consider his internal orientation to preferences, or something abstract, i think that is really low-leverage. higher leverage, imo, is to get him out of that neighborhood, better apartment, job at a cool video store, membership to a boxing gym with grounded instructors that have a bit of wisdom, etc. "god can only appear to a starving man as bread".

 

 

this seems like an empowering view. i dig it.

 

sean

 

An interesting book on this topic is I'm Ok You're OK

Which actually appears, to me, to be reflecting the laws of physics Newton's 3rd Law through graphing the human personality with causes and effects such as you are describing.

When working in a mental hospital, we were introduced into the field, by a psycharitist, through a course on statistics.

Essentially a person was diagnosed through the percent of time spent on a particular action. EG: cleaning, smoking, walking in a particular pattern, etc.

Edited December 17, 2010 by Alfred E

[Spectrum]

"I think a far better indicator of someone's health is to look at their environment and particularly the impact they have on their environment, e.g., their body, their home, their relationships. "

Edited December 17, 2010 by Spectrum

[Otis]

If your hand reaches out for it without any thought or consideration it is part of the tao. The divine has caused your action/choice/preference and not your ego.

Is it that simple?

 

Isn't habit responsible for most of automatic behavior?

 

In my view, ego is basically another way of saying habit, (particularly the habits of consciousness). It is that automaticity of habit, having my life lived for me, being subject to having my buttons pushed, that I am trying to wake up from.

 

Yes to wu wei, of course, but I don't think all automaticity is indicative of wu wei.

[Marblehead]

Is it that simple?

 

Isn't habit responsible for most of automatic behavior?

 

In my view, ego is basically another way of saying habit, (particularly the habits of consciousness). It is that automaticity of habit, having my life lived for me, being subject to having my buttons pushed, that I am trying to wake up from.

 

Yes to wu wei, of course, but I don't think all automaticity is indicative of wu wei.

 

Interesting twist to the discussion, I think.

 

Yes, I believe that habits are formed as a result of repetitively selecting our preferred whatever over every other option.

 

And yes, habits become almost instinctual (automatic behavior).

 

And yes, habits are limiters in our life.

 

And no, habits are not part of what is referred to as a state of wu wei.

 

And I think that habits prevent true wei wu wei. (This is a tricky one. Hehehe.)

[Stigweard]

what i see as more negligible are people's conscious reports on what they claim to believe about the world.

Oh absolutely! Being a marketing man yourself you would know that the reason why people say they bought something can be light years away from the deeper impulse that motivated the purchase.

 

And I agree that environmental factors as you have explained have significant influence of character behavior. As you have said, things like sights, sound, air quality, feng shui, diet, exercise, drug use, etc (in other words things that we could call "environmental"), play a profound part. But even in these factors there are things we could deem discretionary and things that are mostly involuntary.

 

For example, in England and far northern countries the folks don't have much choice over the fact that the sun doesn't shine for 3 months of the year. This lack of light has been proven to create significant changes in behavior. There may be a few other environmental factors that we could call involuntary like the feng shui influences of our surrounding environment (though it could be said that we have choice over where we live), cosmic influences etc.

 

But the environmental influences that we do have direct choice over include things like diet, exercise, substance use, and the feng shui influences of how we order our living space. These discretionary environmental factors, I believe, are choices arising from our "mindset and belief structures". Yes they in themselves create environmental contributors to behavior, but again I suggest that these influences are simply reinforcing the deep underlying frame of reference that brought forward the choice to experience the particular environmental factor.

 

Let's look closer at the example you have given:

 

but take a more average scenario. take a boy that is raised in a crime-ridden slum, fed terrible nutrition developmentally, inundated with corrupt institutions, repeatedly let down by parents, authority figures, physically abused and exposed to regular trauma, sudden violence, etc. he did not create the environment he was born into it. and this is going to have an enormous impact on the range of beneficial perspectives that spontaneously arise in his awareness.

 

telling him that it's his beliefs that are creating his reality, that he consider his internal orientation to preferences, or something abstract, i think that is really low-leverage. higher leverage, imo, is to get him out of that neighborhood, better apartment, job at a cool video store, membership to a boxing gym with grounded instructors that have a bit of wisdom, etc. "god can only appear to a starving man as bread".

Firstly the discussion of whether or not beliefs create reality is not being talked about here. We are talking about the fundamental causes of behavior.

 

And yes absolutely there is significant environmental impacts going on here with little Johnny. But the question is, why can two people experience exactly the same environmental factors and come out displaying completely different behavioral traits?

 

If it was totally up to environmental factors then, once again, two people experiencing identical environmental conditions would display, within an acceptable range of difference, identical behavior patterns. But once again this is not the reality.

 

What creates our internal frame of reference, what I have previously referred to as our fixed conceptual descriptions, is how we choose to interpret these environmental factors, in other words how we choose to describe it to ourselves -- how we choose to "frame" these environmental conditions in "reference" to how we view ourselves and our world.

 

Now note that these descriptions are not necessarily our own. As we develop as a child we fairly much involuntarily adopt the descriptions of those closest to us -- parents, siblings, friends, authority figures etc. Popularly called social conditioning, these adopted and often imposed descriptions mesh together to eventually (usually by the age of early teens) solidify into the individual's world view.

 

It ends up being a feedback loop -- (of course taking into account the involuntary environmental influences) our frame of reference determines how we think and speak (i.e. the words we use), how we think and speak creates behavioral actions, and the often repetitive consequences of our behavioral actions reinforces our frame of reference. EG The belief "I'm a loser" creates not trying hard enough because of the belief that "I always lose so what's the point", which creates the consequence of losing, which serves to reinforce the originating belief of "I'm a loser" etc. etc.

 

And you are absolutely correct, it can be near impossible to help someone drag themselves out of such a self-imposed, self-destructive and very entrenched cycle. And you are also right, I believe, about your suggested course of action.

 

Recognizing that environmental factors do have a definite influence over one's behavior, then perhaps one of the absolute best things we could do to try and break the cycle is to identify the things that can be changed with relative ease like diet, exercise, living environment, etc. Removing these environmental "contaminants" could well provide the boost to both mental clarity and physical wellbeing so that the individual could get a better view of themselves to try and start making the internal mind-set changes that would lead to different choices/preferences and thus start creating different consequences.

 

But these internal fixations are not easily budged. After all it's taken a lifetime of incessant self-narration to form these belief systems, so just saying a few affirmations is not just going to "make it all better". It's about creating whole new patterns of behavior, habits, and self-description.

 

And, to go on a Taoist promotion , this is the reason why I believe the Taoist arts of qigong, neidan, etc. are so profound and beneficial because there is the recognition that these internally fixated structures of conceptual belief are in fact energetic in nature.

 

In other words, the construct of these fixated descriptions are held within our energetic matrix manifesting as blockages and obstructions to our free-flowing life-force/qi and, because qigong, neidan etc work directly on liberating our full and free energy, then these arts are perhaps the most direct and fundamental thing we can engage in to transform our internal landscape, freeing our perceptual awareness and thuswise helping us to manifest the preferential choices that are effortlessly beneficial to our natural wholesomeness.

 

[whew! takes breath, finishes glass of wine and goes has dinner with lovely wife]

 

[sean]

But the question is, why can two people experience exactly the same environmental factors and come out displaying completely different behavioral traits?

well, there is also the internal environment that is inherited, e.g., genetics, prenatal imprints energetic structures, ancestral qi, etc.

 

and then zooming out a little further, my hunch is that if we were to conduct a study somehow, where we took a statistical sample of the behavior of the inhabitants of any city at the level of zoom where it can be said that, ok, all of these people in this community here have close to exactly the same circumstances, i personally think the results of that study would show a (potentially shocking) uniformity of mindsets, beliefs, behaviors.

 

imo it's just very rare that individuals behave with any significant level of distinction to their surroundings, and especially their peer groups.

 

i think this is even wired into our biology to some degree. humans are social creatures, we literally need relationships, to go against our tribe meant ostracization and near certain death at best.

 

one of my mentors says, "you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with".

 

more than often an entirely undistinguished average of these five people's beliefs, attitudes, interests, diet, weight, income, etc.

 

that is why this is so striking:

 

 

in context, it's a nearly incomprehensible statistical aberration.

 

i feel this is why many traditions strongly emphasize sangha, spiritual friends, taking refuge.

 

this is the reason why I believe the Taoist arts of qigong, neidan, etc. are so profound and beneficial because there is the recognition that these internally fixated structures of conceptual belief are in fact energetic in nature.

 

[...] these arts are perhaps the most direct and fundamental thing we can engage in to transform our internal landscape, freeing our perceptual awareness and thuswise helping us to manifest the preferential choices that are effortlessly beneficial to our natural wholesomeness.

yes.

 

and fwiw i've been personally burned at least a few times along the way by failing to recognize this. the importance of the sometimes difficult work to bring Clarity (which is always present, obvious, beneficial and requires nothing) into my actual structures, allowing full penetration into manifestation, my bones, my blood, my words, my actions, my choices.

 

[whew! takes breath, finishes glass of wine and goes has dinner with lovely wife]

hell yeah!

 

sean

[suninmyeyes]

Interesting twist to the discussion, I think.

 

Yes, I believe that habits are formed as a result of repetitively selecting our preferred whatever over every other option.

 

And yes, habits become almost instinctual (automatic behavior).

 

And yes, habits are limiters in our life.

 

And no, habits are not part of what is referred to as a state of wu wei.

 

And I think that habits prevent true wei wu wei. (This is a tricky one. Hehehe.)

How about wu wei being a habit of no habits?

[Otis]

Regarding the nature vs. nurture sub-topic: it is striking that siblings often have fundamental world-view and life strategies differences, even when essentially "raised the same". Even taking away gender differences, the second-born son may have a very different "environment" than the first-born, especially for the formative first years. With two children, there is a new concept of scarcity (mostly of the parents' attention) and competition. This suggests a very different set of strategies for getting each kid's needs met.

 

And, IME, many of those strategies learned in the first 5 years, become part of the (unconscious) world-view and reaction habits, for the rest of the person's life, if they don't wake up from them.

[Marblehead]

How about wu wei being a habit of no habits?

 

Hehehe. Well, that's one way of looking at it.