Tomas wrote: "Alex is gaming you."
Allow me to rephrase that and to clarify. The Alexians
game the gamers. Very important point. The Alexians have a sort of Sixth Sense when it comes to high faluting spiritual chicanery, and when they notice it, they (l'il devils!) enjoy pointing it out. Now, you are not one, Tomas, with much pretension toward the 'spiritual' except insofar as you seem to have fallen in with the Tea Party mass-hysteria and are experiencing an internal
fReAk-oUt that you wound up with a Darkie in the White's House. Internalizing this unconscious terror of the Dark Man, but unable to clearly identify it, to process it and deal with it, you project this knotted complex
outward. It is a truly spectacular performance and a giant Game if ever there was one! You will take it to the extreme of visualizing (which is a form of invocation) a literal Armaggedon, Satanic Armies with Socialist Darkies at the lead, &cetera.
So, the Alexians
game the gamers. It is really quite simple though I admit a little annoying. But this goes further: you never contribute anything of substance to this forum or to its conversations. You are in very truth a sort of Troll. But you set yourself up to judge anyone and everyone and---in your latest Game---you wrote (of me!):
"Fictional Mistress go-between in fulfilling your every dream. Reality be damned", as if your whole presence has any relationship to this 'Reality' of which you speak. So again, the Alexians
game the gamers.
See, I find the 'truths' that come out of this sort of seeing as interesting---and revealing---as the important (if abstract) subjects of the conversations that take place here. I learn a great deal from the
games...
Have I succeeded in clarifying things for you?
David wrote: 1) "I notice that he sees right through you, Bob. Although, admittedly, that isn't a hard thing to do."
2) "It also should be emphasised that realizing that all things are empty and meaningless is merely the start of the journey to enlightenment, and not the end. It is the start to an ever-increasing fullness of knowing and living. Laird is at the disadvantage of trying to judge these matters from afar, unconscious of what these truths lead to."
3) "I find Alex's values and behaviour to be meaningless, and no doubt he finds the same with me. Meaning is in the eye of the beholder."
As to 1) allow me to say: I think one of the tricks we have to perform, a very important life skill, is in 'seeing through' which is really a branch of hermeneutics. Life is a game (if you will) of Interpretation. In many respects we are in a House of Mirrors, a strange sort of Magical Land the nature of which we do not understand, the subject of it, the victim of it. Some persons are simply not called to make any sort of analysis of the Nature of this Reality, and do little more than carry on here until death takes them out. Or, the rely on a prepackaged description of Reality, a prepackaged Ethic and all the rest. In one of the worst cases, I guess, they might become subjects of a Tyrannical State that will determine for them everything. Maybe in that circumstance the Questions that are delved into here would be illegal, and punishable by death? It is not impossible. So, with this, I suggest that there is a 'meaningfulness' in simply sticking with the Questions. Getting the Questions fully out in the open. You see, I have already (if you'll permit me to say) experienced my own 'profound revelation' in which I began to deal (am dealing...) with my Existential Position. The cosmos stood still for a moment, I saw into the Charade, and (feel that) I saw into the substructure. Such things, for me, will not ever be expressed except as Allusions, as hints, and (for me) it is all terribly ironical. Hilariously ironical! But I can't simply state exactly why! But try to understand, at least, that I operate in conformity with the Grand Design that has been revealed to me, just as I know everyone else does. In fact: We have no choice but to conduct ourselves in accord with a very basic and 'core' sense of how we understand this Cosmos is structured. What we do, say, think, feel, etcetera, stems directly from that.
As to regarding your activity as 'meaningless', I have to confess that I find this very surprising. True, you likely don't read my posts, but in no sense at all do I consider your grasp of things 'meaningless'. Nor your activities. I regard them as exceedingly meaningFUL. What I differ about is the Ethic that springs from them; the limiting and too-structured nature of your Axioms; a sort of rigidity and (quite often) humorlessness; and perhaps also taking everything about yourself and your Project...just a wee-bit too seriously. It is right at this point that you begin to coincide, in my lyrical and ironical mind, with Bison Bob and Darlin Dennis! (And I suppose we have to chuck in Ole Tomas of the Black Hill'a Dakota slappin Custer's handcuffs into his palm, waitin fer the bust to go down...waitin t'lock The Alexians up fer once an fer all!) A funny thing is how your recent return/arrival is like a God-send for Dennis who will now receive a substantial bolster for his little project. There is a point where things self-parody and one hardly has to do anything at all! Just sit back with a 'gin and tonic' (the cheaper the gin the better, eh Dennis?) and soak up all the delight...of 'spiritual gamery'.
As to the rather elegant description you offered about how an 'ego' constructs a world of meaning on the basis of 'egotistical' attachment, and how by looking at it (all), it can be seen as absurd, is wonderful and very useful stuff. But this does not go far enough, in my view. If I stormed into your house right now and declared This House Is Mine! would you just shrug your shoulders, grab a few things, get on your bike and ride away? I doubt it. You would call the police or otherwise defend yourself. It is not enough to see that we incarnated beings have interests in this realm, it is a question of purifying our relationship to our being here. There are indeed things to defend, there most certainly are! and the question is in defining (soberly) just what they are. A vision of valuelessness, or the senselessness of attachment, is not enough, indeed it can be destructive. It is a question (as you carry it out) of redefinition. Assigning new value-systems.
And in this I am with you 100%.
As to 2). Please note how your phrasing in rhetoric-laden. You assume that you have the Correct Vision that enables
YOU to see the result of that vision as well as its (naturally arising) 'Enlightenment'. The assumption is foregone, for you. With this, you reveal yourself (like Bob?) as
One Who Knows. You possess and can of course Dole Out the Truth. But what if---just
What If!---in some senses or even all senses Laird is ahead of you? Wouldn't that be the damndest thing?
Note the
Image Managment Games...and then ask this very important question.
Please don't take this to mean that I will not get down on my many knees (I had to count, I think there are 10 altogether!)(sockless!) and Kiss your Feet, you most Holy of men!
Enlightenment: such a difficult thing to
define...
This is also where Alex
games the gamers! and he has so much side-splitting fun doing it!
Darlin Dennis wrote: 1) "The thing you bank on (the meaning component) is never there as permanent condition that you can put in the bank. Realising all that leaves one free 'to dance, frolic, caper'. I say you can put all your dollars on QRS contributed to Alex's understanding coupled with all the reading he's done before. I say the QRS conversation helped all Alex's prior study to 'coagulate'."
2) "I'm trying to engage Alex to have him openly declare his true position in relation to the QRS conversation."
3) "He thinks he's in command which mitigates his aloofness, his sneering. He thinks he can't be caught. Catch me if you can, you can't catch me. I'm controlling stuff 'round here, is his way."
As to 3) I wish to say (again, in the spirit of
gaming the gamers): The game that you have played and continue to play is one of an Upstart. You felt very free to 'go after' The Alexians because you sensed that, in lieu of the Forum's declaration of values, that 'they' were fair game. My perception was you used this game as a way to ingratiate yourself with those, like David, who are forced to support 'you' insofar as you toe the party line (so to speak). In respect to you, I have been and still am 'in command' yet still I wish you to note the language you employ. One senses, quite clearly, that
you desire to be 'in command' and indeed this desire is what one notes about you. You will stop at nothing, it would seem. Teaming up with Tomas, teaming up with Bob, and now with David? Tsk tsk tsk. It ain't pretty, Darlin Dennis, it ain't pretty! It is the principal thing, in fact. This is again where The Alexians
game the gamers. As long as there is this sort of flagrant Ego playing games of spiritual one-upmanship, there The Alexians sally forth! blazons cracking in the wind! the rhetorical engines burning a fuel of humorousness!
As to 2), please permit this small comment: I have been 'declaring' my 'true position' in regard to the QRS conversation since Day One. In your case, it simply goes over your head, if you even read at all. One notices, one suggests, that, for you, this has only a small part to do with, say, 'truth' or integrity and clarity and cogency of idea expressed, but much more about the usurpation by an upstart of a conversation. And again: The Alexians
game the gamers simply by noting this.
Finally, I am quite indebted (and have always stated this) to what David and Kevin and Dan have done. They have done and I suppose continue to do some very notable and fine work if only in having created a space for such conversations, for having definined the Questions that, for them, have the most value. We define our values, we organize them and our ideas, and we go into the world seeking to influence it, to convert it, to evangelize it! I hope you will understand that my contempt for
you is not at all the same as my differing with QRS on certain (important) poinst, but not at all with the project of
defining the important questions. You are a sort of 'rat' who piggy-backs onto the work of others even as you insinuate yourself more and more.
Can you distinguish the difference? Or are you, as I say, really and genuinely
that stupid? ;-)
[And 'stupid' is not the word, really, the word is
Willful. Will, ego, self: these are very important, nay essential things. It is really that we have to 'purify' and cleanse them...make them shine!]