Something political season on DaoBums has reaffirmed for me

[Ell]

It's something that I know, and then forget, know, and then forget....

 

And that's that, no matter the path you follow, you have to be a human being first. And understand what I mean: I'm not saying "have to" in the sense of me giving out my own advice on right living; I'm saying "have to" as in we have no other choice, much as we spiritual people may sometimes fight it. We are here in the world. One can read the bible, or the Tao Te Ching, until they're blue in the face, and they will still want to have sex with those they find to be attractive, and still do damn near anything to eat when they get hungry. 

 

This community is filled with people who have made great strides in their personal and spiritual developments, but it is no refuge from people definitively shaped by their environments, the opinions of their parents, the biases they've come to own (and I shouldn't have expected it to be....nor should I be disappointed that it is). I include myself in all of this, by the way.

 

The only counterargument that I see is to talk of some type of transcendence. But I'm starting to believe that transcending is even more fleeting than I ever believed it to be before. That's not to say it's not worth striving for, but instead to say that the vast, vast majority of people who taste it....just end up back here....back here in the world. 

 

 

[dawei]

The only counterargument that I see is to talk of some type of transcendence. But I'm starting to believe that transcending is even more fleeting than I ever believed it to be before. That's not to say it's not worth striving for, but instead to say that the vast, vast majority of people who taste it....just end up back here....back here in the world. 

 

Two thoughts on this:

1. What is the transcendence based on ?  Is it personal effort on practices and methods alone ?  Even with a teacher, there is really no real certainty that the path is to transcendence.    One's path is likely more destiny than otherwise.  I've thought more and more about this over the years so you have had it arise in my mind again.

 

2. The last part, 'back here in the world' reminds me of the Zen story of Mountains are Mountains, then no longer Mountains, then Mountains again.  

[mvingon]

Dawei, re. 1, de? Hsin? Neither? Both?

 

2. Finger/moon? Journey/destination? Vehicle/destiny?

[TheWhiteRabbit]

It is hard to not see how the many different things tend to come together and create vast complex ecosystems of interaction.

 

I have some interesting insights.  Lets say Eli, you for example become something big.  Lets use string theory for this.

Lets say the normal person only has access to just a few dimensions of understanding with of course the same amount of bias.

On the other hand you, Eli, have at least ten more dimensions of understanding each with more complexity than average because to use these requires some serious skills.  You have in a sense become x10 larger in a sense and through those connections if maintained (this is an example where things are simplified) you are also those connections by extension.  Either way, you must come up with a way to maintain those connections or devolve.  In a sense navigating life has become much like moving very large vehicles.  If you operate a semi, the space shuttle or any large vehicle, pre-planning takes place.  You have to look ahead and plan for any obstacles.  What I have not said is that it requires setting your self up for success.  For a spiritual person, I inqure, does not being very spiritual require setting ones self up for success?

 

When I think of the rudimentary aspects of bias, I am reminded that often especially in recent years the gratification given to people has often been limbic.  Limbic system gratification means that most things were not challenged the way they were normally.  The Limbic system is responsive to instant gratification.  This is the brain center dealt with when it comes to addiction.  No judgement and environments free of criticism abounded.  Challenges were lacking.  Could we say that not wanting our world view challenged is a Limbic system issue?

 

Often enough I have seen specific simple terms were an antagonistic factor for many reactions to parts of the political race.  Listen carefully.  People were talking about how they felt.  Did we see anyone talking about how they knew that a candidates plan was going to set many things up for success over the next decade?  Did we see people saying... ____ is evil?  Yes.  There is no mistake.  Could we learn a lot about this from any point of perspective we analyze it from? Yes.

 

Additionally, we could also ask, how did people respond to candidates in the past elections since 1980?  Are there differences?  If there are, what are they?  Whys can only be answered when we consider peoples sources of propaganda conditioning and the methods used from areas of:  Schools, Media, Popular television programming, Means of interactions as they changed over time.  Peer pressure is also a vital factor as in the recent election people rebelled against certain pressures. 

 

If you could boil down the circumstances of the election into a decoction it would be precisely fear.  Because people fear having their freedoms and rights taken away even if these are founded on fact or not.  Treating America like cattle and making the laws or yoke upon them heavier by instituting more laws that supposedly less burden all the cattle... Does this sound like a sound and fair means of running a country to you?  Yet, that is exactly what happened and I do not think people realized why this created that fear because it is difficult for people to comprehend how things that are supposed to be good and help people actually ended up hurting or alarming them.  Could people who are too passionate about their bias possibly see?  As we saw much through the political race it was all about how it felt and Limbic responses.  So, naturally planning and setting down an important strategy would naturally be seen as evil, right? 

[Stosh]

One has to see the flaws in their own attitudes , from a position of objectivity , and be , not only ready to make some changes in their head , but modify their behavior in a way which manifests the validity of the changes.

Ideas are fleeting , compared to habit ,  ,and dubious , compared to empirical conclusion endorsed by our socialization. 

It takes time to entrench . And its possible that these hurdles are great enough to point people to hope for miracles overnight. We have the additional difficulty due to the circumstance of being ensconced in a lifestyle ,  embedded in a culture ,which is responsible for the very attitudes we already have , So recidivism is common. 

Our desires are often as problematic as our aversions - we just don't want to let go of the ego identity we have constructed. 

 

 

I told a man a fact once, and he doubted it. And I told him my opinion about it , so he rejected me. He feels safer that way I guess.

Edited January 23, 2017 by Stosh

[Geof Nanto]

To my mind this thread should be in general discussion as it's about our engagement with practice and life in general. It also ties in with CT's OP here about the nature of enlightenment: http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/43082-have-u-a-moment-then-please-read-this/

[Geof Nanto]

I’ve certainly experienced real change in my life. Sure, it’s been slow with many ups and downs. The big change is that now most everything in my life feels deeply meaningful, significant. And my life certainly wasn’t always that way. I could say, in retrospect, up until a few decades ago my life was characterised by meaninglessness, although I certainly wasn’t aware of it at the time. I did normal things, school, university, work etc etc. I felt I had great freedom because I could choose between many options. But I lived entirely within the spirit of the times (conditioned mind); I had no sense of inner connection to the extent of total unawareness of this lack. I was entirely without connection to the spirit of the depths; to the Dao.  

 

In retrospect, I can see how I needed the catastrophe of heroin addiction to shatter my arrogance and begin to allow greater realities into my life. The decades since have been an interesting journey with much learning. I’ve had many teachers but my most profound learning has come from working through emotional pain and very real suffering. 

 

There’s an image I like from Castaneda where Don Juan describes Carlos as someone with a great hole at the centre of his being so that the flow of Dao passes straight through him without touching him. That was me sure; a person with a great void at my core. My practice in all its manifestations – physical, energetic, emotional, and spiritual – has slowly filled much of that hole. Now, more often than not, I feel as if the events in my life are being blown along by Dao; my being immersed in the stream of life outside and beyond that of societal conditioning.  Hence, there’s an underlying sense of meaningfulness; of contentment and joy with everyday life.  

 

Yet, paradoxically, with that comes a great curtailment of freedom. Now most ‘normal’ activities feel without meaning for me.  I can only do certain things otherwise my life quickly loses its meaning and that’s a terrible feeling.  

[Geof Nanto]

Here’s how Carl Jung expresses much the same thing but with far more profound imagery and language skills than I’m able to convey. Of particular relevance to the OP is his final paragraph…….

 

The Desert

 

My soul leads me into the desert, into the desert of my own self. I did not think that my soul is a desert, a barren, hot desert, dusty and without drink. The journey leads through hot sand, slowly wading without a visible goal to hope for? How eerie is this wasteland. It seems to me that the way leads so far away from mankind. I take my way step by step, and do not know how long my journey will last.

 

Why is my self a desert? Have I lived too much outside of myself in men and events? Why did I avoid my self? Was I not dear to myself? But I have avoided the place of my soul. I was my thoughts, after I was no longer events and other men. But I was not my self, confronted with my thoughts. I should also rise up above my thoughts to my own self. My journey goes there, and that is why it leads away from men and events into solitude. Is it solitude, to be with oneself? Solitude is true only when the self is a desert. Should I also make a garden out of the desert? Should I people a desolate land? Should I open the airy magic garden of the wilderness? What leads me into the desert, and what am I to do there? Is it a deception that I can no longer trust my thoughts? Only life is true, and only life leads me into the desert, truly not my thinking, that would like to return to thoughts, to men and events, since it feels uncanny in the desert. My soul, what am I to do here? But my soul spoke to me and said, "Wait." I heard the cruel word. Torment belongs to the desert.

 

Through giving my soul all I could give, I came to the place of the soul and found that this place was a hot desert, desolate and unfruitful. No culture of the mind is enough to make a garden out of your soul. I had cultivated my spirit, the spirit of this time in me, but not that spirit of the depths that turns to the things of the soul, the world of the soul. The soul has its own peculiar world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely become his self, he who is neither in events, nor in men, nor in his thoughts. Through the turning of my desire from things and men, I turned my self away from things and men, but that is precisely how I became the secure prey of my thoughts, yes, I wholly became my thoughts.

 

I also had to detach myself from my thoughts through turning my desire away from them. And at once, I noticed that my self became a desert, where only the sun of unquiet desire burned. I was overwhelmed by the endless infertility of this desert. Even if something could have thrived there, the creative power of desire was still absent. Wherever the creative power of desire is, there springs the soil's own seed. But do not forget to wait. Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit.

 

Nobody can spare themselves the waiting and most will be unable to bear this torment, but will throw themselves with greed back at men, things, and thoughts, whose slaves they will become from then on. Since then it will have been clearly proved that this man is incapable of enduring beyond things, men, and thoughts, and they will hence become his master and he will become their fool, since he cannot be without them, not until even his soul has become a fruitful field. Also he whose soul is a garden, needs things, men, and thoughts, but he is their friend and not their slave and fool.

 

(From Carl Jung, The Red Book)

[dawei]

To my mind this thread should be in general discussion as it's about our engagement with practice and life in general. It also ties in with CT's OP here about the nature of enlightenment: http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/43082-have-u-a-moment-then-please-read-this/

 

I likely moved it along with many, quickly, based on the titles alone... and while I do agree with you, general has so many topics every day that this can easily disappear to page 2-10 within a week...   I think likely off-topic is best as that is where it was.