Daoism as a Practical Philosophy

[Cloudwalking Owl]

6 hours ago, Rara said:

 

May I ask, whay science can "disprove", so that I can contextualise?

 

Well, to cite a historical example, there used to be two competing hypotheses about combustion. The one based on "phlogiston" and the other on "oxygen". The theory was that there was this "thing" called "phlogiston" that existed in various substances. When it left the substance, it gave off light and heat (ie: fire.) There was another hypothesis that said that instead there was an element, oxygen, that combined with other elements. This process was the basis of fire. 

According to the phlogiston hypothesis any time something burned, the ashes should weigh less than the original item---because all the phlogiston had been removed. According to the oxygen hypothesis, the results of combustion should weigh more, because the oxygen had been added. The phlogiston idea seemed to make sense according to people's ordinary experience----wood ashes weigh less than wood. But there are types of materials---metals for example---that actually weigh more as ashes after they've burned. Moreover, if you collect and factor in the weight of the fly ash, CO2, etc, from burning wood, the ashes and smoke weigh more than the original wood.

It isn't the case that the oxygen hypothesis was proved by these experiments---there might be a further refinement waiting in the wings---but the phlogiston hypothesis was accepted as proven to be false. 

[Cloudwalking Owl]

6 hours ago, Rara said:

 

Ok - explain as in, what the hell is it? Mechanics of the brain, fine. The CNS, fine. Heart beat and blood flow, fine. What keeps us ticking as machines is all very well explained, and bravo to those that spent hours upon hours researching, practicing and developing the world as well as the human body to what we have today.

OK. Let's look at one thing you alluded to:  consciousness. 

There was a type of truly horrible epilepsy that was very rare, but enormously debilitating. It was found out that you could cure it by cutting a specific set of nerves in the brain that shared information between the two sides. When this happened, some very remarkable things were discovered. 

One example was that the different eyes of the patients were attached to different parts of the brain, each of which specialized in different activities. If you separated the visual field of the patients (by putting a sheet of cardboard in between the eyes) you could show each eye a picture of different picture. If you asked the person what they were looking at, they would verbally describe the object that one eye was seeing. But if asked them to write down what they saw, their hand would write down the words describing what the other eye had seen. 

The implication is that the experience of a unitary consciousness that we "feel" is an artificial construct that unifies a whole lot of different mental and physical experiences. If it were something that is intrinsically unitary, how could a simple surgical procedure cut it in half? 

 

&&&&

As an aside, learning about this phenomenon influenced my Daoist practice.

While studying my poster from the White Cloud Temple, I noticed that my particular copy has the eyes depicted as one being the sun and the other the moon. I wondered if this was a suggestion that human eyes govern different aspects of experience. This led me to wonder if it would be possible to "split" my experience of living into two different aspects---right eye dominant and left eye dominant. Using the practice of "holding onto the One", I spent a lot of time in life working at trying experience the world with different eyes being dominant and then trying to see if I could "balance" them.  

 

There is something called "neuro-plasticity", which says that the brain has the ability to rewire itself in order to "work around" specific problems. It's like the way the World Wide Web can work around breaks in the network by re-routing email. This means that through undertaking specific practices---like always being conscious of which eye is dominant at any given moment---you can actually change the way your brain operates. This is how I understand the ancient technique of "holding onto the One". 

 

As I see it, the Daoist is like the old man that Confucius met on the banks of the raging torrent. The torrent is life---which includes everything, even science---and the Daoist learns to navigate it by taking advantage of every current that can carry him where he wants to go. I think it's a dead end to reject the wisdom of our age in favour of something from long ago. If they are both wisdoms, then they are brothers and sisters. 

[liminal_luke]

I´ve had many experiences of energy or qi, however you want to say it.  Generally speaking, these experiences are quite pleasurable. They are also fascinating.  How delightful that my body is capable of such varied sensation!  Other people more expert than I might be able to interpret my qi experiences according to some system of understanding.  Maybe these feelings I feel in my body mean something in terms of my health or level of spiritual development.  For the most part, I´m happy to leave these intellectual ideas about energy alone and simply be with my body as I find it.

 

The experience of qi certainly isn´t nonsense.  It´s part of my life and of great interest to me.  No further justification seems necessary.

Edited October 22, 2019 by liminal_luke

[dwai]

20 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

I´ve had many experiences of energy or qi, however you want to say it.  Generally speaking, these experiences are quite pleasurable. They are also fascinating.  How delightful that my body is capable of such varied sensation!  Other people more expert than I might be able to interpret my qi experiences according to some system of understanding.  Maybe these feelings I feel in my body mean something in terms of my health or level of spiritual development.  For the most part, I´m happy to leave these intellectual ideas about energy alone and simply be with my body as I find it.

 

The experience of qi certainly isn´t nonsense.  It´s part of my life and of great interest to me.  No further justification seems necessary.

Well said! I've dealt with many skeptics over the years. Typically the people who can't feel energy/qi are folks who are very stubborn by nature (something about their causal body being very constricted). There are many such worthies, who spend 20-30 years doing Taijiquan and don't accept the idea of Qi, and so on. 

 

I can't possibly articulate this better than Mark Rasmus does in this video --

 

 

[liminal_luke]

19 minutes ago, dwai said:

 

I can't possibly articulate this better than Mark Rasmus does in this video --

 

 

 

Fascinating video with many actionable tips for practice -- thanks!

[Cloudwalking Owl]

44 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

I´ve had many experiences of energy or qi, however you want to say it.  Generally speaking, these experiences are quite pleasurable. They are also fascinating.  How delightful that my body is capable of such varied sensation!  Other people more expert than I might be able to interpret my qi experiences according to some system of understanding.  Maybe these feelings I feel in my body mean something in terms of my health or level of spiritual development.  For the most part, I´m happy to leave these intellectual ideas about energy alone and simply be with my body as I find it.

 

The experience of qi certainly isn´t nonsense.  It´s part of my life and of great interest to me.  No further justification seems necessary.

I'm afraid you are misunderstanding the question. Saying that it is "pleasurable" doesn't share enough information to let anyone know what you are talking about. Let me help you by asking the following questions:
 

1. Was the qi localized in one part of your body? Several? Did it move?
2. What were it's properties? Did if feel hot? Cold? Did it tingle? Itch?
3. How long did the event take between beginning and end?
4. Did it happen spontaneously? Did you do something to initiate it?

These are just random questions. Any sort of objective description of the experience would help immensely in understanding what you are talking about.

 

[Rara]

1 hour ago, Cloudwalking Owl said:

I think it's a dead end to reject the wisdom of our age in favour of something from long ago. If they are both wisdoms, then they are brothers and sisters. 

 

I single this out completely because yes, Daoism doesn't.

 

Your other two posts, ok. Again, this merely describes the function, and whatever tests are done, results recorded and so forth. You don't need Daoism for any of that though

[Cloudwalking Owl]

1 minute ago, Rara said:

 

 

 

Your other two posts, ok. Again, this merely describes the function, and whatever tests are done, results recorded and so forth. You don't need Daoism for any of that though

Good for you! 

[liminal_luke]

6 minutes ago, Cloudwalking Owl said:

I'm afraid you are misunderstanding the question. Saying that it is "pleasurable" doesn't share enough information to let anyone know what you are talking about. Let me help you by asking the following questions:
 

1. Was the qi localized in one part of your body? Several? Did it move?
2. What were it's properties? Did if feel hot? Cold? Did it tingle? Itch?
3. How long did the event take between beginning and end?
4. Did it happen spontaneously? Did you do something to initiate it?

These are just random questions. Any sort of objective description of the experience would help immensely in understanding what you are talking about.

 

 

Is it useful for other people to know about the specifics of my energetic experiences?  I´m not so sure.  Many of us tend towards excessive social comparison -- who has more money, better looks, more expertise, popularity...and on and on. I like to think of my embodied energetic experience as a small island relatively free of the modern scourges of competition and self-recrimination.  If my experiences of qi seem more dramatic and powerful than someone else´s does that mean I´m a more advanced qi-ster?  If your experiences seem more dramatic and powerful are you necessarily more advanced?  I don´t think so.  We are all so different and I have faith that qi is "intelligent" and that we each have the experience of qi we need in a given moment.  

 

But to answer your question...over the years I´ve had some qi experiences that seemed localized and others that seemed to effect my body globally, sometimes even the area around my body.  Many of these experiences have involved heat, cold not so much.  Some experiences were over in a flash, others lasted several hours.  Some were clearly the result of doing a certain practice or being in a certain circumstance, others came upon me seemingly out of the blue.

 

    

[Cloudwalking Owl]

25 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Is it useful for other people to know about the specifics of my energetic experiences?  I´m not so sure.  Many of us tend towards excessive social comparison -- who has more money, better looks, more expertise, popularity...and on and on. I like to think of my embodied energetic experience as a small island relatively free of the modern scourges of competition and self-recrimination.  If my experiences of qi seem more dramatic and powerful than someone else´s does that mean I´m a more advanced qi-ster?  If your experiences seem more dramatic and powerful are you necessarily more advanced?  I don´t think so.  We are all so different and I have faith that qi is "intelligent" and that we each have the experience of qi we need in a given moment.  

    

I'm afraid that I wasn't articulate enough in my explanation. There is an idea in one school of modern philosophy of learning to "deconstruct" the experience from the theoretical constructs that embed it in our worldview. Let me illustrate with an example. I once explained some recorded music that came from a Bulgarian monastery that had preserved some of the musical traditions of the ancient Greek Orthodox church as "making me feel like I was sitting at the feet of God". 

The important thing to realize is that this is a metaphor that intimates my own personal emotional response to the music, but it tells another person very little about the music itself. I'm not a musician, but if I were I might talk about the tone, time, key, etc---and compare the music to another style (ie: there were bits that sounded something like types of Arab music.) 

Someone could even go to the trouble of recording the music and playing the wave form on a computer. 

Frankly, bringing in concerns about not wanting to make comparisons looks like a "deflection". That is in a conversation where someone changes the subject because they don't want to answer a question for some reason. 

[dwai]

Here is an account of my ‘Qi’ (and other) experiences.  
 

http://www.medhajournal.com/sometimes-we-need-the-spiritual-milestones-and-the-signposts/

Edited October 22, 2019 by dwai

[liminal_luke]

4 minutes ago, Cloudwalking Owl said:

Frankly, bringing in concerns about not wanting to make comparisons looks like a "deflection". That is in a conversation where someone changes the subject because they don't want to answer a question for some reason. 

 

1 hour ago, Cloudwalking Owl said:

 

1. Was the qi localized in one part of your body? Several? Did it move?
2. What were it's properties? Did if feel hot? Cold? Did it tingle? Itch?
3. How long did the event take between beginning and end?
4. Did it happen spontaneously? Did you do something to initiate it?

 

39 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

But to answer your question...over the years I´ve had some qi experiences that seemed localized and others that seemed to effect my body globally, sometimes even the area around my body.  Many of these experiences have involved heat, cold not so much.  Some experiences were over in a flash, others lasted several hours.  Some were clearly the result of doing a certain practice or being in a certain circumstance, others came upon me seemingly out of the blue.

    

 

I find it odd that you say I´m deflecting from the topic and don´t want to answer your questions.  As you can read in the bottom quoted paragraph, I answered each of your four questions in the order given.  

[Cloudwalking Owl]

3 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

3 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

 

 

I find it odd that you say I´m deflecting from the topic and don´t want to answer your questions.  As you can read in the bottom quoted paragraph, I answered each of your four questions in the order given.  

 

OK. Fair enough. I'm trying to balance a great may spinning plates right now. But I'm not trying to get into a competition, I'm trying to explain a subtle concept. And I can only do that if you are willing to engage in the conversation. And to do that you need to be specific.

But having said that, I'd like a description of a specific example, not a generalized statement about various experiences. Could you describe one specific example in greater detail? 

Perhaps I could give you an example of what I am looking for. 

As part of my training in a Temple I was taught a technique of how to redirect force through my body. We had to go through a process of progressively loosening-up our bodies through various exercises that loosened up the cartilage in our chests. Once that had gone to the point where we had gone through the stage where our chests make really loud cracking and crunching sounds for a while, and then went away, we were "ready". At that point we were taught to stand and another student would hit us as hard as they could in our chests. When we were able to follow our instructions, we could feel the impact as a "wave" (please note the scare quotes are describing more of a metaphor than an actual visible wave---but I suspect that it might be more than a metaphor), then the force travelled to our spines and flowed through it into our hips and then through our legs and into the floor beneathe us. 

When this happened, we suffered no injuries. If we weren't able to do this, we suffered from very painful bruises that took a long time to heal. 

That's the sort of description I'm looking for. 

[ilumairen]

 

7 minutes ago, Cloudwalking Owl said:

Frankly, bringing in concerns about not wanting to make comparisons looks like a "deflection". That is in a conversation where someone changes the subject because they don't want to answer a question for some reason. 

 

Let me say, what I've found most consistent regarding liminal_luke is his sincerity. 

 

And in my own experience what he highlights has merit. To illustrate this, I have "energetic indicators" when certain dynamics are playing out - which would mean absolutely nothing to anyone else. And are therefore generally pointless for me to discuss with just about anyone.

 

Then there are the more general experiences which I have seen others mention, although oftentimes I question the narrative which has arisen from (and to explain) experience. And like Luke, generally prefer to "leave them be."

 

IMO he's being sincere and practical, although I can understand why it could be perceived as "deflection" by an individual who didn't know him better. 

[Cloudwalking Owl]

18 minutes ago, dwai said:

Here is an account of my ‘Qi’ (and other) experiences.  
 

http://www.medhajournal.com/sometimes-we-need-the-spiritual-milestones-and-the-signposts/

OK. That's getting closer to what I'm getting at. But as I said before, I wish you'd have used your own words instead of just pointing to someone else. In a court trial this is called "hearsay evidence" and is usually inadmissible simply because the lawyers can't ask the person recounting the experience any questions that might clarify ambiguity or misleading language. 

 

Have you ever heard of the experience called "disassociation"? It's a situation where one part of person's being (probably the brain) takes over and does things that the conscious mind doesn't want to do. Sometimes it manifests itself in multiple personality disorder, where someone creates totally discrete personalities that take over from one another. But more commonly, it's just a question of the body moving and leaving the consciousness as a bystander. 

Disassociation is hard to explain if someone believes in the existence of a discrete, unitary thing known as the "soul", but it makes sense if you see a human being as a collection of different subprocesses that work together through a unitary "operating system" (for want of a better term) that generally co-ordinates some (but not by any means all) of the different functions that keep a human being going. 

In addition to disassociation (I suspect the two might be related), human beings have the ability to create visions, manipulate their dreams, etc. This process might be of great value in teaching traditions, but it doesn't help to understand things if you put them on a pedestal and don't look at them dispassionately.  

[liminal_luke]

7 minutes ago, ilumairen said:

 

Then there are the more general experiences which I have seen others mention, although oftentimes I question the narrative which has arisen from (and to explain) experience. And like Luke, generally prefer to "leave them be."

 

 

I like the distinction ilumairen makes between experience and explanatory narratives.  Suppose I do some meditative movements and afterwards I have the subjective experience of warmth in my abdomen.  To me, this is inherently interesting.  If someone comes along and tells me this experience is "nonsense" I´m likely to feel disrespected.  It was a real experience, it happened to me.  I don´t care much whether anybody else finds it interesting or not, but I do and it certainly isn´t nonsense. 

 

Where things get tricky is when we try to fit experience into some sort of intellectual framework.  Maybe I believe that the heat I felt is a result of "energy" filling up my lower dan tien.  Maybe I think I´ve been possessed by alien hotties from another planet.  Perhaps it´s the spirit of God descending down on me from above, a reward for my good deeds in a past life.  Some of these theories may indeed be nonsense and, in any case, nobody is required to accept my philosophical framework as gospel.  

 

If you´re skeptical, Cloudwalking Owl, of some of the theoretical constructs people use to expain their subjective spiritual experiences, well, welcome to the club.  Me too.  But please don´t be disdainful of the experiences themselves.  People have engaged in a wide variety of spiritual practices and have had a wide variety of spiritual experience for a long, long time, probably from the get-go of our species.  Spiritual practice comes to us as naturally as our tendency to sing or to dance or to draw pictures of bison on the cave walls.  It´s part of what makes us human.   

 

 

[dwai]

27 minutes ago, Cloudwalking Owl said:

OK. That's getting closer to what I'm getting at. But as I said before, I wish you'd have used your own words instead of just pointing to someone else. In a court trial this is called "hearsay evidence" and is usually inadmissible simply because the lawyers can't ask the person recounting the experience any questions that might clarify ambiguity or misleading language. 

That is me...just seemed pointless to write something on this forum when i've written it down already on my website...

 

Quote

 

Have you ever heard of the experience called "disassociation"? It's a situation where one part of person's being (probably the brain) takes over and does things that the conscious mind doesn't want to do. Sometimes it manifests itself in multiple personality disorder, where someone creates totally discrete personalities that take over from one another. But more commonly, it's just a question of the body moving and leaving the consciousness as a bystander. 

Disassociation is hard to explain if someone believes in the existence of a discrete, unitary thing known as the "soul", but it makes sense if you see a human being as a collection of different subprocesses that work together through a unitary "operating system" (for want of a better term) that generally co-ordinates some (but not by any means all) of the different functions that keep a human being going. 

In addition to disassociation (I suspect the two might be related), human beings have the ability to create visions, manipulate their dreams, etc. This process might be of great value in teaching traditions, but it doesn't help to understand things if you put them on a pedestal and don't look at them dispassionately.  

It is easy to dismiss these things as "disassociation disorder", very convenient to do so. However, when you truly open up to existence beyond the limitations of our mind (not even getting to the physical body yet), the possibilities that seemed totally ludicrous previously, present themselves. 

 

There is an old saying that is apropos here -- "First learn to empty your cup" (then Truth will move in there). 

 

Edited October 22, 2019 by dwai

[Cloudwalking Owl]

5 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

 

If you´re skeptical, Cloudwalking Owl, of some of the theoretical constructs people use to expain their subjective spiritual experiences, well, welcome to the club.  Me too.  But please don´t be disdainful of the experiences themselves.  People have engaged in a wide variety of spiritual practices and have had a wide variety of spiritual experience for a long, long time, probably from the get-go of our species.  Spiritual practice comes to us as naturally as our tendency to sing or to dance or to draw pictures of bison on the cave walls.  It´s part of what makes us human.   

 

 

My concern is that people are, IMHO, far too easily satisfied with the ancient theoretical descriptions that they have been given about various experiences. When they were first formulated, they were the "cutting edge science" of their day. Now I think that they get in the way of people's progress in their internal practice. 
 

[dwai]

8 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

I like the distinction ilumairen makes between experience and explanatory narratives.  Suppose I do some meditative movements and afterwards I have the subjective experience of warmth in my abdomen.  To me, this is inherently interesting.  If someone comes along and tells me this experience is "nonsense" I´m likely to feel disrespected.  It was a real experience, it happened to me.  I don´t care much whether anybody else finds it interesting or not, but I do and it certainly isn´t nonsense. 

 

Where things get tricky is when we try to fit experience into some sort of intellectual framework.  Maybe I believe that the heat I felt is a result of "energy" filling up my lower dan tien.  Maybe I think I´ve been possessed by alien hotties from another planet.  Perhaps it´s the spirit of God descending down on me from above, a reward for my good deeds in a past life.  Some of these theories may indeed be nonsense and, in any case, nobody is required to accept my philosophical framework as gospel.  

 

If you´re skeptical, Cloudwalking Owl, of some of the theoretical constructs people use to expain their subjective spiritual experiences, well, welcome to the club.  Me too.  But please don´t be disdainful of the experiences themselves.  People have engaged in a wide variety of spiritual practices and have had a wide variety of spiritual experience for a long, long time, probably from the get-go of our species.  Spiritual practice comes to us as naturally as our tendency to sing or to dance or to draw pictures of bison on the cave walls.  It´s part of what makes us human.   

 

 

The greatest fallacy of the type of skepticism being displayed is that they (skeptics) think that everything has to be objective in nature. However, by that very token, they fail to recognize that for every object, there has to be a subject. In esoteric systems such as neigong, tantra etc, the subject is of paramount importance. A blind subject cannot see. But to a subject with vision, the world is truly a spectacular smorgasbord of colors and light. 

[liminal_luke]

Has Dwai escaped from the insane asylum again?  He has one of the worst cases of dissociative disorder we´ve seen in a long, long time.  Going in and out of his body at random.  In and out of other people´s bodies.  It´s really too much!  All this talk of lucid dreams and visions, not to mention the unintelligilble gibberish about non-duality.  Nobody here has the faintest clue what he´s talking about, although he does claim to have a few friends on an obscure Daoist internet forum.  Sigh.

Edited October 22, 2019 by liminal_luke

[Cloudwalking Owl]

3 minutes ago, dwai said:

That is me...just seemed pointless to write something on this forum when i've written it down already on my website...

 

It is easy to dismiss these things as "disassociation disorder", very convenient to do so. However, when you truly open up to existence beyond the limitations of our mind (not even getting to the physical body yet), the possibilities that seemed totally ludicrous previously, present themselves.

 

Oh, good about these being your direct experiences. I've had many of the same ones plus others besides. 

Still, I was trying to find a specific example of Qi, not a generalized discussion of all spiritual experiences. It really helps to understand these things if people develop precise language to discuss the different elements. Of course, it doesn't help when different cultures each develop their own language and we try to communicate across cultures (eg: "qi"/"prana"/etc.) Each term has its own subtle emphasis and the way each gets translated into English also brings it's own baggage. That's why I try to get people to just describe their direct, personal experiences, with as little cultural overlay as possible. That allows people to start to communicate with a minimum of confusion. 

I'm not sure that I used the term "disassociation disorder", the "disorder" is your word, not mine. I'm certainly not trying to "dismiss" the experience. I'm trying to explain that a lot of problems come from the naive psychology that underlies most of our civilization. If we believe that we are a unitary consciousness, and instead what we are is something like a "hive mind" with different elements working together just like the different cells of our body work together, then it's not surprising that different parts of ourselves sometimes have "disagreements" with one another, or, that one part of our mind might want to tell another part something that it doesn't want to hear. 
 

 

[Cloudwalking Owl]

9 minutes ago, dwai said:

The greatest fallacy of the type of skepticism being displayed is that they (skeptics) think that everything has to be objective in nature. However, by that very token, they fail to recognize that for every object, there has to be a subject. In esoteric systems such as neigong, tantra etc, the subject is of paramount importance. A blind subject cannot see. But to a subject with vision, the world is truly a spectacular smorgasbord of colors and light. 

No, I'm not saying I think much of anything at all. I'm trying to get people to tell me what they experienced---not what they think they experienced. Do you understand the difference? 

[Cloudwalking Owl]

I'm afraid that it is impossible to have a useful discussion on this topic. It's obvious to me that a lot of people here are very defensive about their experiences. It sounds like you've had a lot of bad experiences with people saying you are "crazy" or something. That's not what I was trying to say. I was trying to get you to explain clearly and precisely what your experiences are instead of immediately jumping to the assumption that an ancient spiritual theory "explained it all". Alas, I suspect you've had so many bad experiences that you are primed to be instantly combative.

 

I understand how that can happen. But I think it is a spiritual dead end. :-(

[dwai]

37 minutes ago, Cloudwalking Owl said:

Oh, good about these being your direct experiences. I've had many of the same ones plus others besides. 

 

Good for you  

Quote

Still, I was trying to find a specific example of Qi, not a generalized discussion of all spiritual experiences. It really helps to understand these things if people develop precise language to discuss the different elements. Of course, it doesn't help when different cultures each develop their own language and we try to communicate across cultures (eg: "qi"/"prana"/etc.) Each term has its own subtle emphasis and the way each gets translated into English also brings it's own baggage. That's why I try to get people to just describe their direct, personal experiences, with as little cultural overlay as possible. That allows people to start to communicate with a minimum of confusion. 

 

Qi can feel like many things. Electric, magnetic, hold, cold etc etc. They are all different ways in which the mind interprets Qi. 

It feels different internally vs externally. Internally, there is always however a feeling of flow/movement. Also, when we get to a certain point in our cultivation, the Qi starts filling up the inside, like air or other fluid filling a balloon.  At which point, externally, it feels like a field (i.e., the filling up internally generates a field externally). Like when you experience static electricity, or a magnetic field. It has a surface tension, like pushing against a balloon. That surface tension can be used to do various things such as transmit martial power, healing, etc etc.

 

Quote

I'm not sure that I used the term "disassociation disorder", the "disorder" is your word, not mine. I'm certainly not trying to "dismiss" the experience. I'm trying to explain that a lot of problems come from the naive psychology that underlies most of our civilization.

Okay, that makes sense. For the most part, I don't subscribe to "our civilization" being entirely mine. Mine is a world of Hindu, Daoist and Buddhist civilization, informed by those frameworks -- only happen to be a resident of the Western world  

Quote

If we believe that we are a unitary consciousness, and instead what we are is something like a "hive mind" with different elements working together just like the different cells of our body work together, then it's not surprising that different parts of ourselves sometimes have "disagreements" with one another, or, that one part of our mind might want to tell another part something that it doesn't want to hear. 

I don't quite see it that way. What we consider "mind" is essentially a conditioned layer of the one awareness. Like waves on an ocean. So when we consider ourselves to be the waves, there are 'differences' (some waves are big, some are small, some are powerful, some are weak) -- but when we consider ourselves to be water, there is no difference. By emptying ourselves of our conditioning, we are going back to being just water.

Edited October 22, 2019 by dwai

[liminal_luke]

1 minute ago, Cloudwalking Owl said:

I'm afraid that it is impossible to have a useful discussion on this topic. 

 

Can I suggest a change in strategy?  So far you´ve been asking people to give you examples of their experience according to parameters that you´ve set -- relatively objective, free from cultural overlays, etc.  Nobody has stepped up to the plate, at least not in the way you´d like.  Since people haven´t been playing along, why not simply make your point without their participation?  Then people could agree or disagree as they choose. 

 

So far I think you´ve said that taking on ancient spiritual beliefs about the meaning of our experiences is not always useful.  Do I understand you correctly?  This is an interesting idea and I´d be open to hearing more about it. Can you give examples from your experience of how these belief systems lead people astray?  How might people approach spiritual practice in a more productive way?