The necessity of thought.

[Apech]

35 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

Are thoughts necessary?  I think (well, of course) it's a little like...  OK, here's an example.  Our county is reopening pedicure salons tomorrow which have been closed under quarantine orders since mid-March.  Some of my female friends rejoiced -- it is absolutely necessary for them to get a pedicure ASAP they say, they'll be at the doors of the salons first thing in the morning, can't wait!! 

 

Well, I've never had a pedicure in my life, I believe my toenails look perfectly fine in their natural state and I don't feel it's absolutely necessary to do anything to them "professionally."  But those women have been using nail polish and what-not on them for decades, so now their natural state is scary to look at (due to decades of no breathing and breeding the resulting fungi).  So, they need professional pedicure because they've been using professional pedicure.

 

I think it's like that with thinking too.       

 

But don't you think there's more to thoughts and ideas than just habitual preferences?

[ilumairen]

16 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

But don't you think there's more to thoughts and ideas than just habitual preferences?

A question which arose in relation to your question: Where would humanity be, and how would we be living, if it weren’t for thought, the sharing of thoughts, and the building upon thoughts of others?

 

There is so much in my everyday life which I have the luxury of not needing to think about, solely because others thought through things I can now take for granted.. 

[zerostao]

52 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

 

i think you get my general point.

 

an occasional video on a spoiler box isn't a problem

 

but I still prefer written conversation because I'm getting a bit senile

 

I'm taking that as permission. His voice comes from the age of the guru,  Alan  Watts, on thinking or not

Spoiler

 

Allan is tricky, he hid the one I was going to post and left me a shorter one to share. Saying, if any bums care to listen to more that he says about thinking, not thinking, he can be found. He enjoys talking about this type stuff. 

Ya'll probably already covered over thinking. Allan reminds us to try and avoid that, for sure.

[Nungali]

20 hours ago, steve said:

I agree with Bindi, it’s not about hiding, more about consideration for others. Some people can be quite sensitive to bright, flashing lights. I’m one of them. I think it would be an act of compassion.

 

... woops , nearly  did it without the box ....

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Nungali]

Animal thoughts , are they like ours ? 

 

   Sometimes I wonder what they are thinking ; a group of cows staring at a spectacular sunrise ;  the calf that got born in my back yard, at  night , during a spectacular lightening storm (what a transition from the womb to THAT environment ) ... and then, a clear dawn .   A friend's dog that she bought around,  looking at a fish tank for the first time , he sat there and tilted his head this way and that, got around the back and all sides, got front legs up on my table and looked in the top , did it all again .... 'why is that cube of water just sitting there ... its got fish in it !  ???  '

 

Spoiler

 

 

[zerostao]

24 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

... woops , nearly  did it without the box ....

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

You boxer, you

[silent thunder]

*off topic thought*

 

I come from a looooong line of boxers, out of Norway.

 

onions...

potatoes...

 

we boxed a lot!

[Taomeow]

10 hours ago, Apech said:

 

But don't you think there's more to thoughts and ideas than just habitual preferences?

 

What I meant wasn't exactly about habitual preferences, more about necessities as a vicious circle -- once you decide something is necessary and engage in it, this engagement may change you in a way that might make it necessary to keep on keeping on.  People understand this kind of relationship with addictive substances better than with the rest of what we do just because we somehow wound up dependent on doing that, but actually it's a much broader category, and I suspect thinking (a particular kind of thinking in any event --see some distinctions below) may fall into that category.

 

I used to read a lot of books on cognitive neuroscience, and what I've been able to discern (corroborated by various other sources too) is a distinct pattern of two types of thinking happening in the human brain -- yes, at some fundamental levels, only two.  One of which, let's call it the functional thinking mode, is normal, and the other, let's call it the defensive thinking mode, is not. 

 

The functional mode has a distinct pathway along which a thought is formed: it originates in the body, whether from an internal stimulus or an external one interacting with the body, goes via the nerves into the spinal cord, thence the brain stem, the lower brain, the midbrain and finally the neocortex, activating everything in its path.  When it reaches the neocortex, two things can happen. 

 

Either the body has already reacted, whereupon the functional thought, having informed the neocortex of the reaction that has taken place, terminates there, the excitation along its path quiets down and there's no long-term trace left.  The thought hasn't changed the physiology of the organism it has visited -- rather, it adjusted it to the moment and reverted to homeostasis once the moment has passed. 

 

Or, if the body needs the brain to decide what to do before reacting, the thought, having reached the neocortex, gives it the input from all the lower regions it has passed, gets its instructions and turns around to retrace that path -- from the neocortex via midbrain (which contributes emotions) to the lower brain and the brain stem (which adjust the basic functions of aliveness like the heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, thermoregulation, etc.) and through the innervating "tree" back to the body, which now acts as instructed by that returning thought, based on the consensus reached along its path by all parties to the decision.  Once the body has acted on that decision, again, all traces of the thought having been there and having caused temporary changes to the functioning of the whole disappear and the organism reverts to its default state.  The situation has been resolved, everything is ready for the next change in reality itself, the reality as experienced by the body.  Which will be handled in a similar manner by the next thought that will be in accordance with the new situation. 

 

That's how animals think; that's how we used to think too, and have been trying to relearn to think by all kinds of "esoteric" methods (even though we don't know that it is that natural functional-thinking mode that we're really after, rather than the non-thinking we mistakenly think we're after). 

 

The second, defensive thinking mode, which constitutes the bulk of what is going on in the neocortex of a modern human (regardless of whether the thoughts in his head are smart or stupid), is anatomically and physiologically different.  This one is the target of all our practices and their bane.  It's not "trying to dam a river with water" that's going on there.  The river is the first, functional thinking mode.  The defensive thinking unfolding in the neocortex, beginning and ending in the neocortex and leaving "grooves" of either persistent self-excitation or persistent damping-down of the signal from the lower regions, actually changes the anatomy of one's brain toward self-perpetuating activity or suppression of activity which is severed from all input of the type I described for the functional thinking mode.  So it's not the river, that neocortical thinking, it's debris from countless shipwrecks floating on top of the river.  Back and forth and back again, getting stuck, colliding, busy sorting it out between themselves and unaware of the river.  They form loops, traps of sorts, where more garbage gets stuck and piles up.  Antonio Damasio called them the as-if loops -- because their activity which begins and ends in the neocortex imitates the reality loops between the body and the brain -- imitates emotions where there's no real ones (the real ones originate in the body and get processed in the midbrain, remember?), imitates subjective health perceptions or unhealth disasters where there's no real ones (the real ones would be mediated by the lower brain and the brain stem, remember?), creates a world of unreality in the upper brain hopelessly severed from the reality of the lower brain regions and the body.  

 

THAT kind of thinking is what must stop in order to regain our humanity, but that's a pipe dream for most which even more people don't even know they ought to start dreaming.  And without regaining our humanity there's no "more advanced" anything I don't think.   You don't get a spiritual Ph.D. as a reward for flunking spiritual kindergarten.  And that's where we're at right now if you ask a cat who has been relearning the way she thinks with a whiskers' breadth of success, no more.        

Edited August 31, 2020 by Taomeow

[johndoe2012]

There are two types of thoughts: "bla bla" automatic thoughts that cause suffering, and planning / calculating etc thoughts that do not cause suffering.

 

The first type is the one to eliminate, eliminating the second makes you non-functional.

 

 

 

[zerostao]

Spoiler

 

 

[manitou]

18 hours ago, Nungali said:

Animal thoughts , are they like ours ? 

 

   Sometimes I wonder what they are thinking ; a group of cows staring at a spectacular sunrise ;  the calf that got born in my back yard, at  night , during a spectacular lightening storm (what a transition from the womb to THAT environment ) ... and then, a clear dawn .   A friend's dog that she bought around,  looking at a fish tank for the first time , he sat there and tilted his head this way and that, got around the back and all sides, got front legs up on my table and looked in the top , did it all again .... 'why is that cube of water just sitting there ... its got fish in it !  ???  '

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

In what language would they think about the fish tank?

[Apech]

1 hour ago, manitou said:

 

 

In what language would they think about the fish tank?

 

 

Finnish?

[silent thunder]

1 hour ago, manitou said:

 

 

In what language would they think about the fish tank?

 

30 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

 

Finnish?

First in Russian... russion to get at it.

 

Then Finnish... when all gone.

[forestofclarity]

1 hour ago, manitou said:

 

 

In what language would they think about the fish tank?

 

Thought certainly isn't limited to language. For example, if some one says fish, a little image or several images of a fish pops into my head. For others, the word "fish" may appear. For others, there may be a mix, or some other method. 

 

 

[Taomeow]

14 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

 

First in Russian... russion to get at it.

 

Then Finnish... when all gone.

 

Yup, any fish scaled down to Finnish can confirm --  Russian all gone.  Since 1917.   

[Apech]

3 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

Yup, any fish scaled down to Finnish can confirm --  Russian all gone.  Since 1917.   

 

The Winter War?

[Nungali]

5 hours ago, manitou said:

 

 

In what language would they think about the fish tank?

 

Maybe no language . Maybe a series of images  of water and fish  that did not  correspond to his experience  with the tank  ( when he was sitting there looking at it )  maybe a series of images of other experiences like water refractions and reflections ( when he tried looking at it from both sides and the back )  a confirmation image from the top , (  that would have looked familiar , as he has looked in the river before and has  seen fish ) and some conclusion that it was a type of water with fish in it  but in an unrecognisable form .

 

Just taking a stab in the dark here .

 

or maybe they use English       ; 

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Apech said:

 

The Winter War?

 

Still gone, despite trying to undo what one woman did in 1917.  Alexandra Kollontai, the Russian mother of Finnish independence.

 

 

[manitou]

On 8/31/2020 at 2:54 PM, Nungali said:

 

Maybe no language . Maybe a series of images  of water and fish  that did not  correspond to his experience  with the tank  ( when he was sitting there looking at it )  maybe a series of images of other experiences like water refractions and reflections ( when he tried looking at it from both sides and the back )  a confirmation image from the top , (  that would have looked familiar , as he has looked in the river before and has  seen fish ) and some conclusion that it was a type of water with fish in it  but in an unrecognisable form .

 

Just taking a stab in the dark here .

 

or maybe they use English       ; 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

So you're saying they're triangulating little porkers?

[Bindi]

On 25/08/2020 at 11:31 PM, Apech said:

 

Maybe we could say that we encompass the conscious and the unconscious, it just being that certain activities are in the circle of our direct attention and others are not.  Perhaps 'unconscious' is a poor term for it - maybe superconscious - as in that part of us which is beyond the circle of our direct attention?  Ideas may inhabit this bigger space but communicate through dreams and so on.

 

 

I think we could encompass the conscious and the subconscious,, and the deeper mind layer that we call ‘spiritual’ (I definitely see three strata operating), it’s just that we generally don’t because we can’t. 
 

The way I see it currently, consciously working with the subconscious and rectifying its (YinYang) operation is the basis for initiating actual activity at the ‘spiritual’ level in an alchemical sense. 
 

Going from youwei to wuwei.
 

 

Edited September 29, 2020 by Bindi

[Nungali]

6 hours ago, manitou said:

 

 

So you're saying they're triangulating little porkers?

 

 

 

     

Spoiler

I

 

dont know what that  memes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bindi]

This seemed relevant to the value of thought:
 

“Throughout my many years of training, my teachers have always reminded me that, "The imagination leads the Mind, and the Mind leads the Qi.” - Jerry Alan Johnson

[manitou]

On 9/1/2020 at 9:50 PM, Nungali said:

 

 

 

     

  Hide contents

I

 

dont know what that  memes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the little porker.  No, I was referring of the ability of the finned ones to triangulate their position.  I was originally going to write little forker but I didn't want to offend you.