Intuition and the Wordless Nerve

[Kunga]

Oy......now you're demanding him to "Stop fighting".....and trying to guilt him by suggesting he confess his sins....

Is that where "gelt" came from ?
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=jewish+c ... 9,r:9,s:67

[Dennis Mahar]

No.

[Alex Jacob]

Sin, guilt, "gelt": I think it was a bit of a joke...

[Dennis Mahar]

Whatever Kunga meant (I don't bother with links).
My words were twisted by her.
I said nothing about sin.
Moving past that irrelevancy.

I said there is a case.
We are in the same boat.

Why fight?

Now the last point of agreement by the look of it was,

You like story. GF likes the algebra.
You then proceeded to say the algebras were a ( insert any particular and general pejorative term in this space from the thesaurus).

And that is your campaign to assign pejorative terms?

Is that it?
A story involving pejorative terms that stands in the place of the necessity of an argument which refutes the algebras in one fell swoop?

[Dennis Mahar]

I want to represent an argument here that gets overlooked.
See how I go.

A distinction is made between,
the mind that conceives of an 'I'.
And the 'I' that a mind conceives of.

it follows that 'I' depends on a conceiving mind.

not denying 'I'.
looking at how it exists.

now, what is noticed about an 'I' is, it is separated out from it's environment.
automatically 'other' appears.

a gap in reality has opened up for an 'I' to make an appearance and 'other' to make an appearance.
purely by imputation, by conceptual designation, by a mind conceiving it.

The problem is not the appearance of an 'I'.
The problem is a belief that the 'I' exists intrinsically.

When the 'I' is believed in, 'other' is believed in.

'I' now has a Story.
It's story is 'how to deal with or cope with other'.
I and its story is campaigning in its environment.
It's campaign is to get pleasure and avoid pain.

The funny thing is 'I' isn't doing anything. It's imagining it is.
The Grand Poobah is doing it all.

[guest_of_logic]

Hello GF. I deliberately haven't been posting for a while, but I feel that I have some things that I need to say in this thread, so I'm going to break with habit and pop my head up for a bit.

I address this post to you, Dennis, and in it I try to bridge your position with that which Alex has been communicating to you over the past - well, however long you and Alex have been communicating for. Rather than try to "interpret" him, I'll simply state what I see Alex saying as though I were saying it myself, and let you decide how much is simply a rewording/interpretation of things that he has said, and how much I've added of my own thinking. Likewise, where I've misinterpreted your thinking, please correct me.

Dennis, your big "thing" is that everything is "empty and meaningless", and that, in contrast, Alex is all about "Story". The first thing to say about this is that there is a sense in which your statement is true, or at least *might be* or *could be seen as* true. What I mean is that we could (and I'm not saying we ought to - more on this later) view reality as a blank canvas onto which we overlay our personal and communal meanings. Because this seems to be closest to the way in which you view reality, let's go with it for now.

The second thing to say about the "empty and meaningless" versus "Story" dichotomy is that it's hard to imagine, as a human being, how one could live *without* meaning, even if, as we have decided for the sake of argument, that meaning is personally or communally imposed upon an objectively meaningless reality. I can't imagine how a person could make any decision at all without some sense of meaning, whether that be the simple meaning in the desiring of a person or object, the more complex meaning of a system of moral values, or the meaning of and in some other higher spirituality. You have demonstrated that you have an implicit system of meaning by the stories you have shared of your interactions with various people in your everyday life. At the very least, being of comfort to other people seems to hold meaning for you.

So, we can find some agreement between these two perspectives that you seem to find so utterly opposed to one another: we can reconcile an "empty and meaningless" reality with "Story" by suggesting that Story is unavoidably overlaid by individuals and groups upon an otherwise meaningless reality.

The question then is: if the imposition of meaning is unavoidable, but if at the same time I get to choose which meaning I impose, then which meaning will I impose? And how will I decide which meaning to impose? This is the point at which your choices begin to look peculiar. You seem to have chosen your meaning to be emptiness and meaninglessness. It's kind of odd to say, but that's what it amounts to: you have peremptorily swept aside all of those systems of meaning which individuals and groups have historically laboured thoughtfully, often through hard-won experience, to construct, and by which you might inform your own system of meaning, merely because they, in your view, are not "self-established".

What this possibly amounts to (please correct me if I'm wrong) is a refusal to even construct an explicit system of meaning for yourself. It's as though you're saying, "Because any system of meaning that I might adopt would be subjective, and not objectively true, then I refuse to even adopt one. If objective meaning is impossible, then I reject all meaning altogether!" Do you see how people might find this to be a less than sensible approach?

I would also suggest that there's a contradiction in your behaviour: if you truly believed that all was empty and meaningless, then there would be nothing to fight for, and yet you do fight - vigorously. You argue against "Story", and yet you function utterly according to your own "Story": that all is empty and meaningless, and that it's important to impose this belief on others.

Dennis, I anticipate that you might object of something that I wrote a few paragraphs back that there is no such thing as "meaning" in desire; that desire is merely a basic human emotion and that there's nothing more to it than that. Here, I think, is where an appreciation for poetry (and other art) is valuable: through poetry and art it's possible to realise how interwoven with meaning everything we think and do is; that everything we think and do is inescapably meaningful.

Until now, I have been granting that meaningfulness is wholly imposed upon an otherwise objectively meaningless reality, but I think that other (more preferable to me) views are possible. At the least, I think we can acknowledge that our personal and communal meanings influence the way we think and behave, which in turn affects the reality around us. At a superficial level, this is as simple as "My moral system helps to define how I behave in any given situation". Going further, and drawing on the affirmations of various spiritually developed persons throughout history, it's possible to suggest that our very thoughts and beliefs themselves affect reality and influence both who enters our sphere as well as our range of possible interactions in the world. Going even further, it's possible to speculate that meaning precedes reality in some way: that reality is or was formed according to the systems of meaning of higher levels of consciousness.

Given all of this, we can suggest a way to help narrow down the answer to the question of which personal meaning to adopt for ourselves through a further question: "What will be the effects of my system of meaning?" I'm curious to know how you'd answer this question yourself. What would you like the effects of your attempts to convince everyone that everything is empty and meaningless to be?

[Bob Michael]

The perfect man is pure spirit. (Lao Tzu)

The perfect man is pure spirit, pure love, and pure harmonius correspondence and flow. In all of life's many facets and circumstances. (Bob M.)

And with that I shall flow on out of here and continue working on my Ark.

Farewell and best wishes to all from the pesty, testy Captain!

The legend of Noah's Ark is a myth referring to esotericism. The building of the "Ark" is the "School," the preparation of men for initiation, for transition to a new life, for new birth. "Noah's Ark," which is saved from the Flood, is the inner circle of humanity.

The second meaning of the allegory refers to individual man. The flood is death, unavoidable, inexorable. But man can build within himself an "Ark" and assemble in it 'specimens' of everything that is valuable in him. In such a case these specimens will not perish. They will survive death and be born again. Just as mankind can be saved only through its connection with the inner circle, so an individual man can attain personal "salvation" only by means of a link with the inner circle in himself, that is, by connecting himself with the higher forms of consciousness. And this cannot be done without outside help, that is, without the help of the "inner circle."

(P. D. Ouspensky - 'A New Model of the Universe', pg. 52)
________________________________________

At times he (Osho in his last days) is as energetic and politically radical as he had been in his youth.....At other times he seemed close to despair. The best sannyasins could hope for was to survive clandestinely – as an underground resistance movement, as a heresy. For some kind of Nemesis, war, or plague or some still undreamt-of horror, was looming over society, and there was no longer any way to avert it. He spoke of a "Noah's Ark of Consciousness," something which could contain and protect a group of people who were sincerely concerned with meditation. For the only thing which stood a chance of turning the tide on earth was a large number of enlightened individuals, working in concert.

(From: 'Life of Osho' by Sam, pgs. 226-227)

[Dennis Mahar]

What a pleasure to have you there Laird.

The first thing we have to factor in is impermanence.

Many times I've campaigned an agenda (assigned meaning to persons or things) that lost their lustre and were replaced by meaning assigned elsewhere.
I had stories about persons or things that seemed vital to me, really, really significant.

I discovered impermanence.

Causes/conditions are such that flux is a permanent feature in the set-up.

Every time I ran a Story, such is the nature of existence, it fell apart like a house of cards leaving me suffering.

I was shown how my grasping was empty(causes/conditions) and meaningless (ultimately, not reliable to grasp tightly).

That gave me detachment or a wisdom about the nature of relationship.
Also, whatever relationship with person or thing occuring became sweeter because it is known it wouldn't last.

So, logic got me access to a truth about Story.
It got rid of a lot of suffering.
It got detachment.

Freedom.

Can you confirm?

[Dennis Mahar]

Granted,
the sentence, it's empty and meaningless,
does look bleak and depressing written on a page.

As an actual experience,
as a place to come from,
it's an opening up,
sometimes it's called openness,
Zen calls it Beginner's Mind,
absence of meaning.

Today could be the last day,
live it.
spring in the step.

[guest_of_logic]

"Also, whatever relationship with person or thing occuring became sweeter because it is known it wouldn't last".

Permit me a wry chuckle, Dennis - can you see that what you refer to here is the very essence of meaning(FULness)? "The sweet fleetingness of relationships" - this is the substance out of which meaning is built; you don't even live by your own motto! For more evidence, reread this:

"Today could be the last day,
live it.
spring in the step."

This is totally a statement of meaningfulness - the meaningfulness of a day that could be the last day of your life; the sucking of the marrow out of that day. Perhaps the problem all along has been a disconnect between what you and Alex have each been defining as "meaning"(ful). It seems to me based on your response that your position is represented less by "everything is empty and meaningless" than by "everything changes". You really have to twist yourself to get "empty and meaningless" out of that, as you do here:

"I was shown how my grasping was empty(causes/conditions) and meaningless (ultimately, not reliable to grasp tightly)".

It's a stretch to go from "causes/conditions" to "empty" - causes and conditions are substantive, not empty - and from "not reliable to grasp tightly" to "meaningless" - it seems that a better word here (albeit one not totally supported by the sentence's structure) would be "impermanent".

You seem to recognise the nihilism of your motto when you grant that it appears "bleak and depressing", and given that by other things you say and do you don't seem to even believe it, I wonder whether you'd consider revising it to something more reflective of your actual position.

"Can you confirm?"

I can confirm that it sometimes helps to keep in mind that many things in life are fleeting; on the other hand I don't live my life with that thought constantly in mind. There's another saying that runs along the lines, "Some things never change". I think there's just as much truth in that one.

[Kunga]

Spirituality means Humility.
Don't have to apologise to any one here.

You went too far.
Even a little mad at times.

Go round to a synagogue or church or mentor and tell someone.
let the story untangle itself in the telling to a 3rd party.
There has to be a 3rd party who will listen without judgement.

Dennis....this is what I was referring to, it sounds like you want him to confess his sins by :

'Go round to a synagogue or church or mentor and tell someone....."

How do you explain what this means ?

[Kunga]

Whatever Kunga meant (I don't bother with links).
My words were twisted by her.
I said nothing about sin.
Moving past that irrelevancy.

If you're going to bother saying that I twisted your words, you should take the bother of showing where.
It is relevent to this discussion.
Don't try to cover up by claiming irrelevancy :)

[Tomas]

The perfect man is pure spirit. (Lao Tzu)

The perfect man is pure spirit, pure love, and pure harmonius correspondence and flow. In all of life's many facets and circumstances. (Bob M.)

And with that I shall flow on out of here and continue working on my Ark.

Farewell and best wishes to all from the pesty, testy Captain!

The legend of Noah's Ark is a myth referring to esotericism. The building of the "Ark" is the "School," the preparation of men for initiation, for transition to a new life, for new birth. "Noah's Ark," which is saved from the Flood, is the inner circle of humanity.

The second meaning of the allegory refers to individual man. The flood is death, unavoidable, inexorable. But man can build within himself an "Ark" and assemble in it 'specimens' of everything that is valuable in him. In such a case these specimens will not perish. They will survive death and be born again. Just as mankind can be saved only through its connection with the inner circle, so an individual man can attain personal "salvation" only by means of a link with the inner circle in himself, that is, by connecting himself with the higher forms of consciousness. And this cannot be done without outside help, that is, without the help of the "inner circle."

(P. D. Ouspensky - 'A New Model of the Universe', pg. 52)
________________________________________

At times he (Osho in his last days) is as energetic and politically radical as he had been in his youth.....At other times he seemed close to despair. The best sannyasins could hope for was to survive clandestinely – as an underground resistance movement, as a heresy. For some kind of Nemesis, war, or plague or some still undreamt-of horror, was looming over society, and there was no longer any way to avert it. He spoke of a "Noah's Ark of Consciousness," something which could contain and protect a group of people who were sincerely concerned with meditation. For the only thing which stood a chance of turning the tide on earth was a large number of enlightened individuals, working in concert.

(From: 'Life of Osho' by Sam, pgs. 226-227)

Geez, Bob. I was about to buy a ticket and board the Eastbound Amtrak train here in Minot, North Dakota and ride all the way out to Reading, Pennsylvania, then hunt down your address and sneak up under cover of the night with axe in hand and chop a chip of a sliver of that Ark.

Lo and behold you didn't pen a smidgen of that writing. Cheap writing (and thinking) you got going there, buster brown.

You and Alex have a penchant for copying other writer's thoughts and posting that crap here.

Thanks to Kunga for exposing the coyote stuff that Alex (or one of his sockpuppet's) copied and who 'slightly' altered.

[Kunga]

Tomas, I wasn't trying to "EXPOSE" him to anything. I loved that little story...and was curious if there was anything out there similar...I wanted to see a illustration....lol...cause when I pictured him with those lopsided eyes and his head tilted--trying to hold the eyes in...I found it so endearing....had I found an illustration, I was gonna post it.....I couldn't care less if he plagiarized the story. And I could care less about how many sockpuppets he has. Creative people break the rules. Sheeples follow them.

[Alex Jacob]

Coyote stories are mythological stories, part of indigenous culture. The coyote saga in N America shifts to the Rabbit saga (Tio Conejo) south of the border. The stories shift and morph and they are used to illustrate aspects of life that we can all relate to. 'Plagiarize' is the wrong word. I took that story out of And Coyote Makes the World which deals on the trickster, on Hermes, on all those who transgress boundaries. Anyway, can one really be bothered about plagiarism when The Dark Hordes clammor and Armegeddon is almost on top of us?

Tomas wrote: "Alex, I know I done been hard on you and for no good reason. I praise people, then condemn them, first appreciating then detesting. I have been acting quite.erratic lately. Possibly the 'lowest' point I have yet sunk is my team-up with Darlin Dennis to go after 'Brokie'. When human beings act like dogs, like vicious children, it is said that Jesus sheds a tear and the Enemy is given ammunition. Now that Obama (Anti-Christ with wicked wife and daughters) is ushering in the Final War, I don't want to give Satan no ammunition. Thank you for the PM you sent a while.back. I see.now that Brokie and cousinbasil are two, distinct persons. God, I'm glad to be done with THAT paranoia! You really help this forum to be a better place. Hello to that wAcKy bird Weisenheimer!"

Hi Tomas. Thank you. Your words mean a lot to me. Go easy on yourself and if you can try to contribute something useful to the forum.

The Alexians.

[Dennis Mahar]

'Go round to a synagogue or church or mentor and tell someone....."

How do you explain what this means ?

One can get so involved in a Story that the Story 'controls' oneself.
one can be 'in the head'.
The idea of a mentor, priest, rabbi, psychologist, going on a retreat, discerning friend,
who provides listening without judgement, refrains from giving advice,
who lets you speak without interruption for as long as it takes,
for the conceptual tangle to become unravelled in the mind which is the only place it exists and can be untangled from.
It's not confessing sin.
It's untangling the Story.

Stories can give the appearance that the situation is intrinsically real and the people and things involved in the situation are intrinsically real and can be brought under one's control.
Doesn't work like that.


There's the mind and the Story the mind runs with.

The 'I' and the 'I' in the story are found to be conceptually designated arisings that do not exist intrinsically, that go out from the mind and tend to run amok.

The story can take the mind in to very dark places of irritability, restlessness and discontent and have one completely lose the plot.

Debriefing is another word for it.

[Alex Jacob]

PS: I'm not sure you'll be able to board the Amtrack with a hatchet, Tomas. Why don't you buy one when you get out there?

[Dennis Mahar]

Laird,
empty means causes/conditions.

You experience 'life' as changing situations involving people and things.
like a rolling river.
the situation arose out of causes/conditions beyond your control and is therefore empty.
any particular situation appears and disappears in the blink of an eye.
It's ultimately meaningless,
and you give it meaning.
much ado about nothing.
You will try to avoid unpleasantness and go for pleasure.
What was once pleasure turns often to unpleasantness.

it's empty and meaningless,
is a way of being,
that understands impermanence as the condition.
One isn't fussed particularly and one goes about one's business.
There's nothing to get.
there can be the getting of and going after money, there can be the getting of and going after sex, there can be the getting of and going after prestige in the social pecking order..
these gettings and going after's are ultimately meaningless.
have no intrinsic existence.
have no absolute existence.
shiny trinkets.

Whatever arises is conditional.
Including you.

[Dennis Mahar]

Possibly the 'lowest' point I have yet sunk is my team-up with Darlin Dennis to go after 'Brokie'.

You were presenting a case that looked like it had substance.
You were seeking clarification.
You had a case of similarities between bas and brokie that appeared to indicate they were one and the same.
You were bringing it to a head for resolution.
You weren't wrong.
You had a case.
It was interesting.

You win some, you lose some.
So what?

If it looks fishy,
Go fishin'.

You don't have to kowtow to anyone.
on to the next case.

[movingalways]

We may walk our path differently, Bob, but our goal is the same. Spirit touching spirit...:-)

May the love and the joy of the Lord be in your heart always, M/A. I'd ask you if you'd like to give me a hug for my 71st birthday which is today, but that's one of the many limitations of this sort of communication and why I must flow on and get to my business out in the real world. Enjoy your days!

Bob M.

I'm on the road, Bob, so a little late with my hug, but happy belated birthday! Joy and love of the Lord to you always as well!

[Dennis Mahar]

Laird,
rolling river as phenomenon,
can't be guaranteed to persist as Locke argued.
The best we can say is,
'for the time being'.

All situations are for the time being.

So,
as a 'who am I being' in a situation,
becomes the situation itself.

It's found that nobody or no thing satisfies.
Only truth satisfies.

It's interesting the word bridge you used Laird.

How I see you is,
An algebraic kind of guy with a fondness for strutting ego's and a desire to protect them.

[Dennis Mahar]

Kunga,
You say you don't give a fuck about aliases and multiple aliases.
I say you do.
I say you don't go to your workplace for instance, carrying aliases and multiple aliases with you.
Because it would be confusing.
The argument concerning aliases and multiple aliases is that.
Terms of endearment or otherwise might be put on you in the workplace, that doesn't count as confusion because there is a body present to connect them with.

[Bob Michael]

Anyway, can one really be bothered about plagiarism when The Dark Hordes clammor and Armegeddon is almost on top of us?

Here we're on the same page, Alex. The entire human species, save for a few, has degenerated to the point whereby it's become so dehumanized or plasticized that it no longer has any clue at all that it is in such a thoroughly deteriorated state of mind, body, and spirit. And it's too bad that you haven't got a grip on the nature of the solution to this ongoing tragic human dilemma, but instead continue to remain much a part of the problem. Extreme sensitivity, dead seriousness, and an extraordinarily keen awareness of what-is is what it takes to be a genuinely effective player in the solution, my friend. And to date no one in all of human history has been such a player. Including both Ouspensky and Osho. Though they were surely on to something, but like so many both before and after them they never managed to successfully pull it off. But someday soon.....

[Bob Michael]

Geez, Bob. I was about to buy a ticket and board the Eastbound Amtrak train here in Minot, North Dakota and ride all the way out to Reading, Pennsylvania, then hunt down your address and sneak up under cover of the night with axe in hand and chop a chip of a sliver of that Ark.

I'd hold off here if I were you Tomas. The Ark just might soon be headed in your direction, since this area of the country doesn't seem like it's a very good spot to be in when the grand-cleansing of the planet takes place.

[Bob Michael]

I'm on the road, Bob, so a little late with my hug, but happy belated birthday! Joy and love of the Lord to you always as well!

Thanks M/A and enjoy your travels!