Are all the contents of awareness intentional?

[z00se]

 

Right. But I am not only my intentions. I am mind. Intentions don't make sense without context. Context is not something that drives intent, it illumines it. So if I shine a light on a car, I don't determine which turn the car will take next. I just make the car visible, I make it possible to apprehend the car, to see it, to recognize it as such, etc... that's what context does. It illumines. Based on one's prior intentions and beliefs (also intentional, but ossified), some of these illuminations can seem to guide choices. For example, if you illumine a hole in the ground, I will walk around it instead of fall into it. Does this mean context has chosen my action for me? Many people would think yes. I don't. Have all options been squashed? Is it even possible? I can walk around. I can look into the hole, get a rope and rappel into it if it's deep. If it's shallow I can step into it or get a shovel and toss some earth into it. I can walk backward instead of around. And if I am a mage, I can levitate over the hole (mages have more options!). If context could destroy options-perception, it would become the guiding force. But it can't.

 

And the more options the person can perceive, the freer the person feels. Ultimately we are all infinitely free. But if people feel no options, they feel trapped. I would even say, if spirituality doesn't endow one with a sense of more options, it's a waste of time. This is why dogma is so antithetic to real spirituality. Dogma closes off options by disallowing questioning and by suggesting that only one path is to be followed.

 

So with your definition of context here (where did you get this from by the way?) the context is what is guiding you if you have no intent. Of course if you have intent to die you walk into the hole if you have intent to keep going forward you walk around it and if you have intent to turn you just turn a different way. If you have no intent well whatever happpens happens, until the next piece of context and god makes the next choice for you. After all the context was also supplied by god. There are no options, it just happens. If you start having options then that means you are analizing the options and not only using intent. With intent i just intend and the direction changes towards it's happening.

 

The person only feels freer when looking at themselves in a god-awareness moment but when they are just being in that moment they don't feel freer they just ARE free.

 

Spirituality brings to light more options but doesn't indicate you should take any of those options, only the one that god leads you to do. I don't think this dogma you speak about is bad, it is just the fact that you are drawn naturally to that one path. It doesn't disallow questioning of different options but later you realise that any questioning or deciding is fruitful and a waste of time because the best one is already known!

 

Interesting topic!

[goldisheavy]

This is not my understanding. This is similar to saying even the act of intent is a powerful act of the analytical mind. The Analytical mind decides to stop thinking and decides it want's to stop thinking and stop being in control so 'gives up' control to intent.

 

Me confused.

 

Intent then focuses and points your energy or awareness in a certain direction which then decides it doesn't want to be in control any more and then 'gives up' and then 'you' are not in control anymore only your environment, everything around you and everything in the universe then guides you, or god.

 

Willing surrender. Think what that means, especially the first word in that phrase.

 

So along this thought you would have to say all contents of awareness as in your topic are also analytical. Because you don't even need the analytical -> intent -> god path you can go straight from analytical -> god. So when the analytical mind decides it wants to go with god it does.

 

What do you mean by analytical? I've never heard "analytical" used like that. I can't respond because I don't understand what you're trying to say here to me.

 

I don't agree. They are layers on top of each other and the top layers can only 'give up' their control to allow the deeper layers to reveal themselves.

 

So each layer has to willingly defer to a deeper layer. At each step there is an element of willingness, allowing. This deepening happens in an atmosphere of allowing, cognizant permissiveness, relaxation.

 

It is not within intent's capacity to have complete god awareness,

 

What is "complete god awareness"? It probably doesn't exist as such. I bet if you define what it means, it will be easy to see that it's just your imagination.

 

just like it is not in the analytical minds capacity to have intentional awareness.

 

Analysis is always intentional. It's always purposeful and never aimless. At the very least each instance of analysis has some object that's being analyzed. That's intentional.

 

Of course likewise the complete god awareness has no capacity to choose the best option for our life as does the analytical mind.

 

With the god awareness you give what others around you want and take what is offered your way, there is no deciding based on the direction of your intent. Your awareness is just given to you, it just IS.

 

If my awareness is given to me, then what am I prior to that gift? What am I without awareness?

 

So if you're using intent all the contents of awareness are intentional but if you give up any intent then how could the contents of your awareness be intentional... intent has already left the building!

 

Because to relax intent, or as you say, to give it up, one can't just give it up once and forget about it. It's an ongoing state that has to be maintained continuously. You have to be a willing participant in each moment of such surrender. It's not something that's automatic. If at some point you suspend your willingness, participation stops, and the entire exercise stops.

[goldisheavy]

So with your definition of context here (where did you get this from by the way?) the context is what is guiding you if you have no intent. Of course if you have intent to die you walk into the hole if you have intent to keep going forward you walk around it and if you have intent to turn you just turn a different way. If you have no intent well whatever happpens happens, until the next piece of context and god makes the next choice for you. After all the context was also supplied by god.

 

God doesn't exist as something separate which makes transactions with me in this way. God doesn't send me emails. God doesn't ship things to me. I don't relate to God as one being to another. What you seem to call God I call myself. It's just a deeper aspect of my own being.

 

There are no options, it just happens. If you start having options then that means you are analizing the options and not only using intent. With intent i just intend and the direction changes towards it's happening.

 

I disagree. When I simply open my eyes, I immediately am aware of space in front of me. Without analyzing, without thinking about it, I instantly intuit that I can move through this space in front of me in any number of ways. So I am aware of open optionality without any special deliberate effort on my part.

 

If I engage in a deliberate effort, I can deepen my awareness. So instead of 3 options, I might see 10, or 100, or eventually an infinitude of options. But even without any deliberate effort whatsoever I constantly am aware of options. I am constantly aware that whatever I did, whatever I thought, however I moved, I could have thought something else, I could have moved in a different way.

 

The person only feels freer when looking at themselves in a god-awareness moment but when they are just being in that moment they don't feel freer they just ARE free.

 

We are free already. But we don't feel it. We feel as if we are trapped, even though right now we are free.

 

Spirituality brings to light more options but doesn't indicate you should take any of those options,

 

I agree.

 

only the one that god leads you to do.

 

I disagree. I am not lead by anything. I don't defer to anything. Nor should spiritual people feel like they are led by something outside themselves. That's what crazy people do. Crazy people hear voices telling them to do things. That isn't healthy.

 

Two drivers driving the same car. It's bound to crash.

 

I don't think this dogma you speak about is bad, it is just the fact that you are drawn naturally to that one path. It doesn't disallow questioning of different options but later you realise that any questioning or deciding is fruitful and a waste of time because the best one is already known!

 

Interesting topic!

 

Best one? Things are best only relative to some purpose. For example, if you want to drive a nail, then scissors are not the best, but a hammer is. If you want to cut paper, then the opposite is true, the scissors are the best, but a hammer isn't. Something can be the best and the worst simultaneously. If I have a paper that needs cut and a nail that needs to be hammered laying on my table, next to a pair of scissors and a hammer, then the scissors are simultaneously best and worst, and the hammer is also best and worst simultaneously.

Edited April 22, 2012 by goldisheavy

[z00se]

Perhaps my language is not so specific, but i lack the knowledge of spirtuality specific words because i haven't read alot of spirtuality texts and as soon as i start seeing words like dhama etc i just switch off. I know some basic chinese words but thats all. I mainly like reading laymans personal experiences... so bear with me just try to understand me.

 

Me confused.

 

 

 

Willing surrender. Think what that means, especially the first word in that phrase.

 

Yes that definition will do.

 

What do you mean by analytical? I've never heard "analytical" used like that. I can't respond because I don't understand what you're trying to say here to me.

 

Ok comparing mind. Measuring, comparing, deciding according to some criteria

 

So each layer has to willingly defer to a deeper layer. At each step there is an element of willingness, allowing. This deepening happens in an atmosphere of allowing, cognizant permissiveness, relaxation.

 

 

 

What is "complete god awareness"? It probably doesn't exist as such. I bet if you define what it means, it will be easy to see that it's just your imagination.

 

 

Complete god awareness = at one with the tao, I'd like you to show me 'easily' it's my imagination

 

 

Analysis is always intentional. It's always purposeful and never aimless. At the very least each instance of analysis has some object that's being analyzed. That's intentional.

 

Analysis always has purpose but is not always useful. What people call the 'monkey mind' is not useful. Re-analysing stuff you have already analysed, getting stuck in a loop, is not useful. Analysing stuff you're not even aware you're analysing, etc, etc.

 

If my awareness is given to me, then what am I prior to that gift? What am I without awareness?

 

Dead?

 

Because to relax intent, or as you say, to give it up, one can't just give it up once and forget about it. It's an ongoing state that has to be maintained continuously. You have to be a willing participant in each moment of such surrender. It's not something that's automatic. If at some point you suspend your willingness, participation stops, and the entire exercise stops.

 

At the beginning you are right. After you give up for a while and become good at it, you give up before you even start. Then later you don't even bother starting. It takes effort to 'do'. Far more than it takes to surrender. This is not saying you lay in bed all day but you don't bother fighting the flow, you just do what you do but don't think or try to do anything different, it is just being done infront of your eyes... well... infront of your awareness!

My experience is not like you say. After getting deeper into the state there was no need for an intent to relax, i was already relaxed, i only used my intent to 'do'. Its silly to use intent to not-do why do you need intent for that? Just use intent for what you want to 'do'. The not 'do' ing or relaxed, or given up state is the idling state. Then you shift into gear with you're intent to whatever direction you want.

[z00se]

God doesn't exist as something separate which makes transactions with me in this way. God doesn't send me emails. God doesn't ship things to me. I don't relate to God as one being to another. What you seem to call God I call myself. It's just a deeper aspect of my own being.

 

I think where you disagree with me is that your understanding of what i am calling god is the same thing you say is within you. I'm not christian or anything but i just am in the habit of saying god now so others around me can understand if i start saying tao or whatever i get weird looks. God, tao, higher self etc etc it's all the same thing and 'IT' is in everyone and everything.

 

The 'best' is automatically determined without you having to think about it. You don't need to think it's the best for this or that instance, that is a waste of time. The best for whatever you are doing at the time, or the best for whatever will happen in the future. It may not appear to be the best at the time but the one that you are drawn to, even though you think the hammer is a better choice to bang in a nail with, if you see your hand reaching out for some scissors and only get it in .5cm into the wood, that is the best way if your wife comes in 5 minutes later telling you don't nail into that wood they want it! This higher self, god tao or whatever works in unforseeable ways and is all mighty in that everything contains it, so i think it is better to just have faith and believe in your instincts.

 

I didn't used to think that way but it was only after i started watching over a period of time had i not done what i felt was right and did what i thought was right everything would have been alot worse, things became better in every way that i desired, automatically, without deciding what i wanted and finding the best choice for the outcome i wanted.

[goldisheavy]

Ok comparing mind. Measuring, comparing, deciding according to some criteria

 

This function of the mind is effortless. For example, when you see a chair next to a table, without straining yourself, without deliberating, you can instantly recognize that the chair is smaller than the table, and that it is below the table. This happens as a moment of instant recognition, and yet it involves comparing and measuring.

 

Complete god awareness = at one with the tao, I'd like you to show me 'easily' it's my imagination

 

To be at one with the Tao is not a good definition, because Tao is something mysterious to begin with. The spoken Tao is not the real Tao, etc. When I asked for a definition, I asked for something that's relatively easily understood. I didn't ask for what is essentially a non-definition.

 

Still, even working with your non-definition of god awareness, I would say that all awareness is god awareness because at no time are you something distinct or separate from Tao. Tao (the way) embraces all things. Tao is the working out of all things in life and in the universe. Deluded awareness is god awareness in this sense. Wise, expanded awareness is also god awareness. God isn't limited to be only this way or only that way. The word God, outside of its crazy burdens from the Abrahamic traditions, refers to something limitless and beyond concrete knowing too.

 

Analysis always has purpose but is not always useful. What people call the 'monkey mind' is not useful. Re-analysing stuff you have already analysed, getting stuck in a loop, is not useful. Analysing stuff you're not even aware you're analysing, etc, etc.

 

I disagree. Analyzing something over and over again helps to gain confidence if the outcome of your analysis contradicts habitual way of thinking for you. So, for example, if you habitually think that all things are discrete separate self-existing entities, but your analysis tells you otherwise, then by performing this analysis over and over (each time in a slightly different and fresh way), you gain confidence that indeed your initial impression of things was wrong. This later presents an opening for intent. It later allows you to produce intentions that would be nonsensical from the point of view of your old mindset.

 

 

Dead?

 

How can the dead be given anything? You need to be alive to receive a gift.

 

At the beginning you are right. After you give up for a while and become good at it, you give up before you even start. Then later you don't even bother starting. It takes effort to 'do'.

 

Correct. That's habituation. As you habituate a new pattern of behavior into your mind, it takes less and less effort and also less and less conscious awareness to do. You fall asleep into a new pattern.

 

Still, all habituated patterns can be reversed. A habituation is an expression of intent, because you have to agree to live with that habituation at each moment. If you don't consent, you can begin contradicting, changing, reshaping or dissolving that habituation. So this kind of absentminded careless aloofness can be broken. It's not permanent. It continues only with your ongoing consent. Well, that's been my experience.

 

Far more than it takes to surrender. This is not saying you lay in bed all day but you don't bother fighting the flow,

 

Intentionality doesn't involve fighting unless you specifically intend to fight. Fighting is a feature of certain beliefs, not a feature of intent itself. You can for example be intentionally peaceful and intentionally inclined to peace.

 

So if you intend to survive, but you were brought up to believe that the universe is a hostile place, then the intent to survive can lead toward fighting. That's not a necessary feature of intent itself. I believe intent is yi in Chinese (correct me if I am wrong), and I don't think it involves fighting all the time.

 

you just do what you do but don't think or try to do anything different, it is just being done infront of your eyes... well... infront of your awareness!

My experience is not like you say. After getting deeper into the state there was no need for an intent to relax, i was already relaxed, i only used my intent to 'do'. Its silly to use intent to not-do why do you need intent for that?

 

What I am trying to convey to people is that intent is deeper than just the conscious portion. Consciously trying to accomplish something is not all that intent is. That's only the tip of intent. Again, only in my experience. When I try to follow where my intent comes from, I find surprises. I find things I thought were against my intent turn out to be things I wanted on some level of my being. So I realized my intent is complex. It's not something simple that just guides my body here and there.

 

Just use intent for what you want to 'do'. The not 'do' ing or relaxed, or given up state is the idling state. Then you shift into gear with you're intent to whatever direction you want.

 

I think you give good practical advice! But nothing in your practical advice contradicts the way I understand intent. You believe some things become unintentional with time, like say a constantly relaxed attitude that's become habitual. And I am saying that's how we lose touch with things. That's how we forget that the universe "out there" is ultimately our own intent playing itself out. We put it on autopilot, habituated it, and forgot about it. Now the universe runs seemingly on its own and we don't realize it's not on its own. It's us.

[goldisheavy]

The 'best' is automatically determined without you having to think about it. You don't need to think it's the best for this or that instance, that is a waste of time.

 

That's an important option to keep in mind. If you don't enjoy the process of choice, you can always know that the best is selected automatically. However, if you do enjoy it, then that is the best too! They are all the best. Evaluating, making careful decisions -- this is the best. Acting on a whim, relying on a gut feeling -- this is also the best. They are different kinds of best. If you get tired of the first best, you can switch to the second best. If you get tired of the second best, you switch to the first. It's always best though. All meat is best here.

 

The best for whatever you are doing at the time, or the best for whatever will happen in the future. It may not appear to be the best at the time but the one that you are drawn to, even though you think the hammer is a better choice to bang in a nail with, if you see your hand reaching out for some scissors and only get it in .5cm into the wood, that is the best way if your wife comes in 5 minutes later telling you don't nail into that wood they want it! This higher self, god tao or whatever works in unforseeable ways and is all mighty in that everything contains it, so i think it is better to just have faith and believe in your instincts.

 

I agree but with a small distinction. God can work in unforeseeable ways. That's one way for it to work. It doesn't have to always work that way. It's wrong to say that if something has been foreseen, it's not godly, but if it's mysterious then and only then it's godly. Sometimes God works in foreseeable ways, for example, when you're an electrical engineer designing a circuit. Sometimes God works in unforeseeable ways. And sometimes both simultaneously. Sometimes you can foresee things in ways that make no sense to others. So it's foreseeable to you but not to others. Or vice versa. All is open. If you can imagine something, anything, there is a place somewhere where it's happening, no matter how crazy it is.

 

I didn't used to think that way but it was only after i started watching over a period of time had i not done what i felt was right and did what i thought was right everything would have been alot worse, things became better in every way that i desired, automatically, without deciding what i wanted and finding the best choice for the outcome i wanted.

 

From a practical point of view, this way of living is very valuable and I think people should try it. But it's one of many valuable ways, not the only one. And it doesn't contradict anything I am saying about intent. Intent is not effort. It is direction. This direction doesn't have to involve a headache or a huge amount of deliberation. If you allow things to spontaneously manifest, they automatically manifest according to your intent. Your intent, in other words, is not something you have to strain over. It's automatic to begin with.

[Lucky7Strikes]

Intent, on the whole, doesn't arise or cease. Rather intent changes its character. People naively split up or delineate these changes into separate individual intentions. If we then analyze these fragments of intent, of course they appear to arise and to cease. It's only natural. But if you heal the delineations, the fact that intent is there and changes is still real.

 

In other words, experience is always selective. At any one time you experience a fraction of all possible experience. There is no way to experience everything that could be experienced at once. This lively flowing selectivity of experience is a reflection of intent.

I guess the intentions on the surface are all choices, since they are bound by the conditions from which you choose from. You can't simply choose to fly the next moment, or become a millionaire, or grow another pair of arms. But at its depth, what you are saying is more keen to creativity, since you are saying at depths there really is an unlimited variety of choices. In such a case you are not choosing, but creating the next whatever conditions you choose.

 

But even that, creativity seems limited too by the conditions that give rise to the next moment. For instance, you may be aware that you have this limitless potential breaming within you, yet will not be able to imagine a new color, or create complex music, because they are learned responses and extensions of previous knowledge.

 

Conditioning is never able to fully guide intent. There is always at least a tiny fragment of intent that's liberated from all conditions. When one's mind is ossified by habitual beliefs, then it seems like there is very little power left over to intent. Some people even think there is no power at all that's left over. They think all the power of change resides in the patterns themselves, and none of that power is available to one's person.

 

Let's look at a relatively very hardened experience, mine. I am surrounded by desks, chairs, cups, books, walls, Earth, sky, clocks, streets, and all these things seem very very stable. Let's say they are stable to the point of being locked down. Is there any freedom left for me? Is everything I do determined by my conditioning (internal and external)? To me the clear and obvious answer is: no. I still have the tippy tip of intent left loose. So while I can't readily levitate a house, that isn't a readily or obviously available choice for me, I can still make choices. For example, I can choose the topic of my thinking. I can think about what game to play next. Or I can think about wisdom. And I can think about how to feed myself. To me, these are free choices.

 

People will argue that even these choices are conditioned, but I will disagree. There is nothing in my environment that makes me this way, but my mentality that supports certain ways of thinking is intentional itself. So for example, spirituality can be seen as an escape from the suffering of the world. But there are many approaches to suffering. One approach is to tighten your belt, buckle up, strap yourself in, and dig in. Work more, harder, ingratiate yourself more strategically, build more and more social networks, look for more and more money, etc. That's a valid response to a challenge. Many people choose this response. Another response is to turn away from the game. That's one of the spiritual responses. That's renunciation. There is nothing in the challenge of life that inherently forces one toward renunciation. One can equally as well choose to face the challenge in a totally different way.

 

If everything is predetermined, we'd react to everything instantly. Why then are there situations that demand lengthy thinking and/or consultation with friends? A car engine doesn't stop once in a while to determine whether it should spin another cycle. If there is fuel, air and spark, it spins. It's a simple relationship. Do people's lives resemble this? In my experience, no. People are nothing like this. Sometimes people get stomped. They stop. They don't know what to do next.

So the apparent experience of choice, is its own proof of existence. I see, I can accept that.

 

Finally if you look at the whole of intent, including the submerged aspect of it at the deep end, the aspect that holds the cities and stars together, the mystical aspect, the totality, is what we're seeing the only thing that can be seen? Is our past the only past? In the blink of an eye, intent can change your history and past. It can make it appear as if you never lived this life as you thought you did... perhaps you are a 30 year old person called Flugin on a planet Scoromax, and your past is a long and storied past. This change can happen in the blink of an eye. To know this for sure, or to have a good intuition about how this can happen, you need to have some mystical experience (lucid dreaming and dream awareness help). So if your conditioning is your past, and if your past determines the future, then how is it we can change our past? How is it that (to make this accessible) in dreams an entire array of different pasts can spontaneously emerge? Many people dream they are a character with a certain kind of past, and your dream past can be long and storied and it can have nothing to do with this life on Earth. Your dream environment can also have its own past.

I have had those dreams but they were never entirely separate from the inner habits and conditions from the waking states. I wake up to realize that certain elements in the dreams, no matter how strange it was while I was dreaming, actually are inspired by thoughts or experiences I had the previous day. I have never been lucid enough to remember within the dream that the contents are related to my day's activities. But yes, I have had dreams where I am convinced that the life I have within it is real, that I am a different character.

 

Again, you are really talking about our abilities to imagine. Maybe the fact that we can imagine is itself a good evidence against this idea that we are merely the outpouring of conditions.

 

I own conditions. I don't externalize them.

You "own" them? I think that's extreme. You can't readily change your environment so easily as if you owned them or go from one environment to the next when they are completely different. There's always a relationship from one condition to the the next. You can become more knowledgeable of your environment and navigate within it with more ease and options, but I think it's up to question whether you are changing your conditions actively, or becoming more knowledgeable of your conditions. This bring up the distinction of the internal and the external.

 

Furthermore, if we are to say there are individuals with intentions, and their own perceptions and contexts, the consequence is that there in fact is the divide between the internal being and the external world/other people. Since there is this divide, intentions must be compromised and are not whole, i.e. individual intentions will clash (as is apparent in many daily cases). The relationship between you and other people is imo what a condition is. And you can't own the conditions involving these other intentions, but rather have to adjust yourself accordingly. And adjusting is not owning. Forget holding the stars in alignment but just making someone in front of you do something or understanding something you are trying to communicate is itself a challenge to one's intent.

 

This doesn't follow for me. How can intent appear from an intent-less state? It would make intent unintentional. Seems absurd, doesn't it? If intent appears without a cause, that ruins all logic. If logic is ruined, then we can say anything we enjoy saying about intent, all arguments stop, there is nothing to talk about. If intent appears from an external cause, then we need to look at internal/external divide. As you are well aware, such divides don't last under examination. And finally we have to confront experience. This is required to be honest. Here I am. I am sitting and typing. I can type anything I want. I don't feel anything external telling me what to type. But the internal structures that guide my typing are themselves intentional. I don't feel them as if they were impositions. I don't feel pressure or a force that pressures me to type this against all resistance. And I am aware of alternatives. If I only ever needed to do what was dictated by some past, how would awareness of alternatives be useful? It would be useless. It would serve no purpose. What's the point of being aware of alternatives, if I am destined to only pick one narrow choice each time? That seems strange, right? This way of thinking would have an unexplained and crazy experiential element left-over, with no place to go or call home, post-analysis.

If an intention is truly spontaneous and free to choose from options, then it isn't conditioned by the intentions beforehand. There must be some complete blank state from which the choice is made, which is, as you say, illogical. In fact, that intentions must arise from a cause is what I am trying to say. But when intentions come from a cause, it is conditioned by the multitudes of causes beforehand and so on. This is how we have continuing preferences, have goals, the urge to do something. We must live by some sort of pattern/habit if intentions comes from causes.

 

I'm not sure the examination of your experience of writing necessarily shows that intentions are free. If indeed there is no such thing as free will, and you are simply the conditions being acted out, whether one feels there is pressure to do something or not is irrelevant because that in itself is the arising element. But, as you say, if you are honest about the apparent experience, you are right that it always seems like there are alternatives to choose from. Logically, there really isn't a problem with the earlier statement that we are simply the causes and conditions playing itself out. But experientially, at least those who haven't completely bought in and transformed the style of life to the previous belief, it is not easily acceptable. It feels contrary to our daily interactions where we have choices.

 

Right. But I am not only my intentions. I am mind. Intentions don't make sense without context. Context is not something that drives intent, it illumines it. So if I shine a light on a car, I don't determine which turn the car will take next. I just make the car visible, I make it possible to apprehend the car, to see it, to recognize it as such, etc... that's what context does. It illumines. Based on one's prior intentions and beliefs (also intentional, but ossified), some of these illuminations can seem to guide choices. For example, if you illumine a hole in the ground, I will walk around it instead of fall into it. Does this mean context has chosen my action for me? Many people would think yes. I don't. Have all options been squashed? Is it even possible? I can walk around. I can look into the hole, get a rope and rappel into it if it's deep. If it's shallow I can step into it or get a shovel and toss some earth into it. I can walk backward instead of around. And if I am a mage, I can levitate over the hole (mages have more options!). If context could destroy options-perception, it would become the guiding force. But it can't.

 

And the more options the person can perceive, the freer the person feels. Ultimately we are all infinitely free. But if people feel no options, they feel trapped. I would even say, if spirituality doesn't endow one with a sense of more options, it's a waste of time. This is why dogma is so antithetic to real spirituality. Dogma closes off options by disallowing questioning and by suggesting that only one path is to be followed.

That's really interesting. The mind as a mix of being and knowledge. This reminds me of the duality of heart-mind, how the intentions reside or is symbolized by the heart center and the knowledge/wisdom by the upper dan tien in energy practices. But intentions rely more than the contextual knowledge of things, it is heavily engrossed in habit...and knowledge/context doesn't necessarily drive intentions either...hmm..actually I'm not so sure at this point. There seems to be a direct relationship between context/knowledge, intentions, and experience/manifestation.

 

Anyways, this is all I have for now, I'll try to contemplate a bit more on the trio.

[goldisheavy]

I guess the intentions on the surface are all choices, since they are bound by the conditions from which you choose from. You can't simply choose to fly the next moment,

 

There are two types of "can." Can I ever? Or can I conveniently and readily now? The answer to the latter question is "no". But the answer to the former question is "yes."

 

To give you an example of this, suppose you didn't train much, can you then lift a 60kg weight over your head with one hand? Probably not right away. Probably not readily or conveniently. Not by tomorrow morning. But you can ever? Yes, you can. Eventually you can.

 

So what I am saying is that eventually, if you want, you can lift a house off its foundation and float it around the city just by intending it so. So ultimately intent is free.

 

or become a millionaire, or grow another pair of arms.

 

You can do this. There are beings who can do this. There are realms of existence where such transformations are commonplace.

 

But at its depth, what you are saying is more keen to creativity, since you are saying at depths there really is an unlimited variety of choices. In such a case you are not choosing, but creating the next whatever conditions you choose.

 

But even that, creativity seems limited too by the conditions that give rise to the next moment.

 

This way of thinking postulates that the present is fully arisen from the past. I reject that. Buddha has rejected such way of thinking as well. So has Nagarjuna. The past doesn't fully determine the present and the future.

 

Check this: http://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/Investigation_of_Time

 

Ignore Tsongkapa commentary. Tsongkapa is an idiot who tends to cloud the issues more than clarify. Nagarjuna is perfectly clear by himself.

 

What happens in the present is a mix of the past plus intent in the now. That's a crude way of saying it and is not 100% correct either, because you can (learn how to) change your past from the present too.

 

So a crude example is me deciding to pick up some paper off my desk. I put that paper there 2 months ago. That doesn't mean that 2 months ago, by putting the paper down, I have set in motion some fatalistic destiny where I will be destined to lift that paper in 2 month's time. Nor is it the case that the entirety of the world's conditions has forced me to act that way (Nagarjuna's logc -- if the past is sufficient to manifest the present and the future, why aren't they in the past? Why is there ongoing-ness? Ongoingness indicates some kind of insufficiency. If the past was fully sufficient, the entire timeline would sprout forth complete, from start to finish. It wouldn't need to slowly unravel ongoingly.

 

So the past conditions are important. But they, by themselves, are not enough to determine what happens next. I see the past as a kind of prejudice or propensity. If you've habituated yourself to act a certain way, chances are you'll keep repeating the pattern. But that isn't a guarantee. That's your propensity. This propensity is not in full control of you. It's like a magnet which exerts a pull on a piece of metal, but doesn't by itself determine where the metal will go. It simply adds the force of the magnetic pull to the totality of forces that will operate. When I say "force" here I mean it the way it's used in physics, and not a struggle on a personal level or something like that.

 

For instance, you may be aware that you have this limitless potential breaming within you, yet will not be able to imagine a new color, or create complex music, because they are learned responses and extensions of previous knowledge.

 

You can! But to do this isn't trivial. You have to open yourself up, move aside, or soften your conditioning, so significantly, it's like being insane. I've experienced such things. They don't happen often, and they seem crazy because they are not normal and they are inconceivable.

 

Generally we remix what was known before. But does that make it a hard law? If something has repeated itself 10,000 times, is that evidence that it repeats itself eternally?

 

Still, we like to play with qualities we have ready access to. But that doesn't mean those qualities are inspired by an external world. What if "external world" is internal to begin with? Then what? Where is your inspiration coming from then?

 

So normally people would think: "saw color red on a bus." "went to dream" "saw red shoes in a dream" "red in a dream inspired by red seen during the day."

 

It's obvious there are holes in this thinking. First the assumption is that the bus is real and the dream is unreal. The bus is external and the dream is internal. All these assumptions can be challenged and reversed.

 

We externalize our inner world so that we see ourselves as hollow, quality-less entities inhabiting a rich world full of qualities. The qualities get disowned. Inside you have nothing, because you gave it all up to the world, which you then severed in your mind from yourself by a delineation. In this state there is very little power still left over for you. Just enough power to reverse this condition, but not to do much else beyond following the rules of the external world.

 

So the apparent experience of choice, is its own proof of existence. I see, I can accept that.

 

 

I have had those dreams but they were never entirely separate from the inner habits and conditions from the waking states. I wake up to realize that certain elements in the dreams, no matter how strange it was while I was dreaming, actually are inspired by thoughts or experiences I had the previous day. I have never been lucid enough to remember within the dream that the contents are related to my day's activities. But yes, I have had dreams where I am convinced that the life I have within it is real, that I am a different character.

 

Again, you are really talking about our abilities to imagine. Maybe the fact that we can imagine is itself a good evidence against this idea that we are merely the outpouring of conditions.

 

 

You "own" them? I think that's extreme. You can't readily change your environment so easily as if you owned them or go from one environment to the next when they are completely different. There's always a relationship from one condition to the the next. You can become more knowledgeable of your environment and navigate within it with more ease and options, but I think it's up to question whether you are changing your conditions actively, or becoming more knowledgeable of your conditions. This bring up the distinction of the internal and the external.

 

Furthermore, if we are to say there are individuals with intentions, and their own perceptions and contexts, the consequence is that there in fact is the divide between the internal being and the external world/other people. Since there is this divide, intentions must be compromised and are not whole, i.e. individual intentions will clash (as is apparent in many daily cases).

 

The divide itself is intentional. Because of that, one can chose to stop dividing that way.

 

The relationship between you and other people is imo what a condition is. And you can't own the conditions involving these other intentions, but rather have to adjust yourself accordingly.

 

I can. But doing so deflates other people. If I want to see other people be powerful and capable of surprising me, I have to keep feeding them my power (by me continuing to believe in the independence of others, by honoring the separation and by taking all this seriously). If I lose faith in other people, they go away. You might think they only go away from my world, but how many worlds are there? Do you think we all live in one common world? That would require the world to exist independently of people and mind. Is that the case?

 

And adjusting is not owning. Forget holding the stars in alignment but just making someone in front of you do something or understanding something you are trying to communicate is itself a challenge to one's intent. If an intention is truly spontaneous and free to choose from options, then it isn't conditioned by the intentions beforehand.

 

Conditioned =/= determined.

 

There must be some complete blank state from which the choice is made, which is, as you say, illogical. In fact, that intentions must arise from a cause is what I am trying to say.

 

Intentions do not arise from a cause. Intent is not an effect of anything. Intent itself is the primal and total cause.

 

If intent arises from causes, that means everything is locked down by fate. That means it makes no sense to practice anything, to think about anything, because everything is already determined beforehand. And some people believe that.

 

But when intentions come from a cause, it is conditioned by the multitudes of causes beforehand and so on. This is how we have continuing preferences, have goals, the urge to do something. We must live by some sort of pattern/habit if intentions comes from causes.

 

I'm not sure the examination of your experience of writing necessarily shows that intentions are free. If indeed there is no such thing as free will, and you are simply the conditions being acted out, whether one feels there is pressure to do something or not is irrelevant because that in itself is the arising element. But, as you say, if you are honest about the apparent experience, you are right that it always seems like there are alternatives to choose from. Logically, there really isn't a problem with the earlier statement that we are simply the causes and conditions playing itself out. But experientially, at least those who haven't completely bought in and transformed the style of life to the previous belief, it is not easily acceptable. It feels contrary to our daily interactions where we have choices.

 

 

That's really interesting. The mind as a mix of being and knowledge. This reminds me of the duality of heart-mind, how the intentions reside or is symbolized by the heart center and the knowledge/wisdom by the upper dan tien in energy practices. But intentions rely more than the contextual knowledge of things, it is heavily engrossed in habit...and knowledge/context doesn't necessarily drive intentions either...hmm..actually I'm not so sure at this point. There seems to be a direct relationship between context/knowledge, intentions, and experience/manifestation.

 

Anyways, this is all I have for now, I'll try to contemplate a bit more on the trio.

 

Think about this. Freedom is expressed through limitations. It's freedom to choose our own limitations. When you program a computer, you inject it with your chosen limitations. As a result, the computer can be endowed with an ability to play a game. This game is a set of limitations. Creativity consists of being able to erase these limitations only to replace them with a new set. Without limitations creativity would have no outlet.

 

Because intent is always a selection of an option, a directional quality, it's always limiting at the same time as it is limitless. So when I am going forward, I am not right at the moment also going backward. That's the limit. But I can turn left. That's freedom. But if I turn left, exercising freedom, I can't at that moment also turn right. Left is not right. Left is only left. That's limitation again. So freedom and limitation are friends. One is used to express another.

 

Thinking that freedom implies absence of limitations is crazy. It just means not understanding the role of limitations.

 

What sucks about limitations is when they get stuck. When you forget how to replace one limitation with another. That's what sucks.

 

So if computer didn't have RAM, which allowed you to erase programs and to write news ones in their place, if it only had ROM, it would be a much less useful and much less interesting computer. It would be a single-purpose device with closed horizons. A computer with RAM is a general purpose device with open horizons. Relatively. And what about mind?

 

So what makes RAM useful? The middle way. RAM is malleable, it's able to absorb change. If RAM was utter immune to change it would lose some of its utility. But at the same time, RAM is also able to maintain state. If RAM was utterly volatile, it wouldn't be able to maintain state, and again it would lose utility.

 

And the mind is like this too. The mind is between totally volatile and totally immune to change. It's even better than that. It's got areas of rapid change. Areas of long term storage. It's fully 100% reprogrammable. An area that was previously be used for long term storage can be made volatile for example. Etc. Computers are pathetic and limited things compared to mind.

Edited April 23, 2012 by goldisheavy

[JustARandomPanda]

But at its depth, what you are saying is more keen to creativity, since you are saying at depths there really is an unlimited variety of choices. In such a case you are not choosing, but creating the next whatever conditions you choose.

 

But even that, creativity seems limited too by the conditions that give rise to the next moment. For instance, you may be aware that you have this limitless potential breaming within you, yet will not be able to imagine a new color, or create complex music, because they are learned responses and extensions of previous knowledge.

This way of thinking postulates that the present is fully arisen from the past. I reject that. Buddha has rejected such way of thinking as well. So has Nagarjuna. The past doesn't fully determine the present and the future.

 

Check this: http://rywiki.tsadra...igation_of_Time

 

Ignore Tsongkapa commentary. Tsongkapa is an idiot who tends to cloud the issues more than clarify. Nagarjuna is perfectly clear by himself.

 

What happens in the present is a mix of the past plus intent in the now. That's a crude way of saying it and is not 100% correct either, because you can (learn how to) change your past from the present too.

 

 

GiH's last statement is getting close to what I've been wondering about lately.

[Lucky7Strikes]

GiH's last statement is getting close to what I've been wondering about lately.

thanks for bringing back this thread.

[Jeff]

thanks for bringing back this thread.

 

Yes. Thanks. I missed it the first time.

 

[julianlaboy]

Awwww, I missed all the good stuff here. I just wanted to say kudos for every commentary here. Nice stuff. One can see the quality of the people on this Forum.