How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Jamesh
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Jamesh »

Reading this forum nowadays is frustrating. I’m not seeing anything in what anyone has written that would tickle an on-topic response from me. Either the subject and/or participants are no longer novel, thus boring, or the responses are too esoteric for the casual bystander/simple man I primarily now am. Nothing is motivating me to put in any effort to understand the precise points being made.


Alex Wrote: [Interesting that this 'strong ego' approach sets its goals on almost exactly those of the 'egoless'. The question seems to be how one relates to the 'ego' and employs it. This implies a 'superego' which observes and directs]

Yep, there is the Ego program’s AI, The Watcher, which can “CRUDulate” the ego’s value/action sub-routines. CRUD being IT speak for Create, Read, Update and Delete. The sum of the routines is the ego’s content and the sub-rountine interrelationship configuration is the ego’s form.

[I don't know what you assholes achieve either with your egofullness or egolessness but in my case my major goal of 2013 is that of controlling my erections! You have no idea how embarrassing it is for me---giving a talk for example in a crowded auditorium---to have my physical, ego-structure so overtly assert itself against my very own controlling superego]

You’ve always been a cock-up, Alex. Your verbal Xzibit ego is standing up to defend itself - to alleviate symptoms you could listen to Dennis and break some self reflecting mirrors.
SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

"In any case: irreconcilability. Now what?"

We all write the best book ever made..or do something useful with our minds. Why not?
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Cahoot
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Cahoot »

Talking Ass wrote:I don't consider 'enlightenment' a valid category. Formlessness, emptiness, and other such doggerel terms appear to me in their effects destructive. I believe in human knowledge. I believe in conscious federations of intelligent beings who act in the world(s). I don't believe in dissolution of the self but fortification of the self. I believe that the Ass is the most neglected, abused and misunderstood creature in God's creation (though you must admit the Cuttlefish is often tremendously misinterpreted). While I am opposed to men worshipping animals and other forms of idolatry I think I should get a little more respect around here and even some financial consideration. I want someone to help me set up a YouTube channel to carry my healing mission to the world. I want a chance to demonstrate my karaoke talent in the bar/pub of your choice. I want to build an even stronger ego. I want a Tahitian hottie for as a sex-kitten. I will join your Power-Group if some or all of these conditions can be met.
Consider the words of the Ass, for only a fool or a nutcase seeks the abyss before his time. As an intellectual exercise one may crave the moment to moment realization of emptiness, one may think in theory that awakening is to truly be left with only nothing rather than anything that counts for something in this world. But that is just a mind game, and in truth, if you are fortunate you may be left with something to cling to. A person, a job, good works, something, and then you will cling to that and be glad for it. Yes, emptiness is the true nature of reality. Who you think you are, your intellectual dexterity, cannot face that and survive without something to hold onto. Renunciation of all that ever was is not a choice, it is something to hold off as long as possible for it marks the end of what was, and all that you thought was real. Girlfriends … Figi … parents … plans for the group … all of that gone. No one chooses that. Not really, though it does happen to us all, sooner or later. Glimpses are enough to make distraction the imperative … movies, web surfing, drink, pot, bulletin boards, and so on.
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

True Cahoot and at first it is denied, dreadful and depressing, but forgetting past or future is where real acceptance comes in.

Enlightened view or emptiness view= awareness,attention, wakefulness without attachment or preconceived notions, "the fruit not the flower"

So then you are there...

That it? What now? There is being, there is non being, there is experience of the mind, it is absolute, it never ends... the only option is acceptance.
My emotion toward the reality of my own existence/non-existence is: empty, unnameable.

Empty appearances of the mind, I would use the word illusion in comparison to what people thought it was, but where do you think you are headed in this?

And for taking action.... why not? What are you doing better that you can't do at the same time while retaining non-attachment?
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Dennis Mahar »

For fuck's sake Cahoot,
only a week ago you told how you gave up Wisdom
and all sorts of dogshit reality opened up as a nightmare.

Why on earth would one consider the words of the ass?
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Cahoot
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Cahoot »

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:True Cahoot and at first it is denied, dreadful and depressing, but forgetting past or future is where real acceptance comes in.

Enlightened view or emptiness view= awareness,attention, wakefulness without attachment or preconceived notions, "the fruit not the flower"

So then you are there...

That it? What now? There is being, there is non being, there is experience of the mind, it is absolute, it never ends... the only option is acceptance.
My emotion toward the reality of my own existence/non-existence is: empty, unnameable.

Empty appearances of the mind, I would use the word illusion in comparison to what people thought it was, but where do you think you are headed in this?

And for taking action.... why not? What are you doing better that you can't do at the same time while retaining non-attachment?
Those we know of, East and West and in between, ancient and modern, Buddha and Jesus and so on, became teachers. Consciously, deliberately, purposely. All that varies is the venue.

So, be a teacher. The determination of the worth of that is out of your hands.
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Cahoot
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Cahoot »

Dennis Mahar wrote:For fuck's sake Cahoot,
only a week ago you told how you gave up Wisdom
and all sorts of dogshit reality opened up as a nightmare.

Why on earth would one consider the words of the ass?
Interesting. Just today I was telling someone close to me that I used to think words should stand alone. Truth should stand alone.

But right or wrong, that is not the way of the world.

The way of the world … the source is the primary consideration, not the content. Quite often, money and/or fame of the source determine the worth of the content.

You always seem tuned in to what you have no rational way of knowing, Dennis. Either you're a good listener or there's something else going on. Probably a bit of both.
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Teaching people to unlearn is like trying to speak to Alex.

Plus, like you say, it feels so unreal, useless, whether it is on the internet or not, it is so unreal, then again, this was your point. What did you do?
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Cahoot
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Cahoot »

I became Nobody.
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Talking Ass
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Talking Ass »

I still think John's question is a good one, but I also know there is no way to bridge the differences that separate some from others. Jamesh have you even engaged in 'conversation' with Dennis? I don't imagine you have. But when you do, and when you *feel* just what sort of entity/personality/complex is on the other end, you may conclude as I have concluded that there is no good reason to build a bridge to that. Here, the fact of irreconcilability comes in to play.

Now I know, as you have stated, that what you seek is higher entertainment value in the dances performed here. You are also, and by your own admission, in a sort of philosophical/existential impass and I think this may mean that 'we' cannot base very much on your passing moods as you assess content: because these questions are very important questions; ideas have ramifications; they make andthey break us; they guide us along and into various places as we move through time and space.

I suggest, for the four thousandth and first time, that 'we' consider the very core basis of the philosophy of the self-disappeared and philosophies of meaninglessness, and philosophical formulations that conduce to the dissection of or the dissolution of self all under the banner of Supreme Knowledge and High Attainment. The reason why such conversations lead to a morass---and they will always, on any forum, here or in any other world lead to the same place, and in a sort of Eternal Recurrance there will be John and Dennis and another cast of players who will be insisting, with a startling, focused will, on the 'truth' of their declamations, and they too will attract, like moths to a flame, certain disembodied cyberspirits, certain fractions of persons, certain lopsided, tendentious personalities who will perform the same skits time and time again, all leading to the End of the Possibility of Conversation!

It might become like Samuel Beckett's plays! A diminishing theatre of the absurd!

And that is why---now don't ask questions, don't wonder 'why?', just trust me---all of us must study this scene from Wim Wender's 'Paris, Texas' written by Sam Shepard (and then part two). On a metaphysical level, symbolically you may imagine it as up in the sky over a sprawling desert where 'Beckett' and 'Shepard' are no longer terrestrial playwrights but are Angelic Beings with power over the destiny of man! Again, do not ask questions: watch, absorb. When our paths cross again in about 500 centuries we will talk about it. I guarantee you your perspective will have changed!
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"If you turn the light off in there will you be able to see me?"
fiat mihi
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Talking Ass
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Talking Ass »

It Has Been wrote:Trying to unlearn an Ass only makes the Ass angry and you a Foo!©
"You will all be extradited to the Land of No-Return!".

But remember: Talking Ass offers a return ticket Home.
fiat mihi
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Talking Ass wrote: I don't at all mind being the focus of a reverse-analysis and yet I do think you should fill out a little more what you mean. For example you seem to agree that 'we are all healing', or that 'healing' is possible, and in that you seem to assent to at least some aspect of my assessments.
This has never been something I've put out there. Actually I'd oppose it as nonsense in relation to any "path of enlightenment". One could just as well promote sickness and make a good case. Bottom line is that there's no absolute measurement of "health" apart from the poor "functionality principle" which means that only that what lives long enough to look back would start imagining causes to attribute to his imagined "win". Health thus becomes the ability and courage to reflect at best.
But can you please speak a little more about this 'spiritualist cult', and 'spiritualist women' and 'spirit life'? Do you mean by 'spiritualist cult' the forum I participated in where Castaneda was deconstructed, critiqued? But who were the 'spiritualist women' and what is 'spirit life'?
The word "spiritualism" relates as well to spiritism which is somewhat of an inside joke. You wrote often how you grew up "around" them and so you must have formed quite early in life your feelings regarding them. What might be of interest here is the way you misquoted me twice on the same word in the same paragraph. As it happens I actually wrote "spirit women" which can mean several things all at once. It's perhaps too good to undo that magic with boring explanations. Please figure out why you misread it twice and you might take a right turn.
Last edited by Diebert van Rhijn on Tue Jan 22, 2013 2:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
Pam Seeback
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Pam Seeback »

Dennis: rainbow disappears,
'tasting sky'
The stronger is one's awareness of the two becoming one, the stronger is one's awareness of their reason d'etre.
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Pam Seeback »

Alex: "If you turn the light off in there will you be able to see me?"
See above wisdom in response to Dennis' wisdom.
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Talking Ass
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Talking Ass »

Moving Always: I do not mean to say that Dennis is not speaking, on some level, about a kind of knowledge. Sir Diebert (or Divert?) mentioned his 'very first post', and here it is:
  • This conceit which understands how to belittle every truth, in order to turn back into itself and gloat over its own understanding, which knows how to dissolve every thought and always find the same barren Ego instead of any content—this is a satisfaction which we must leave to itself, for it flees ...
It is not that there is 'nothing' there, it is that the style of communication lacks tangible relationship to 'things of this world'. But in fact your style of writing is on a similar frequency: disembodied abstractions. You go on and you have gone on for years in the same style. But I am not the ultimate arbiter of how to communicate or what to communicate, yet I am of the opinion, and I express it because I am possessed by the Devil, that our preaching and convincing needs to come down 'into the body' of the life we live, and when that is done it 'becomes real'.

What you are not considering---but anyone who has 'talked' to Dennis, and given up, knows this---is a sense of deep anger that is communicated through his positions. Maybe 'anger' is not the word. Hmmm. Might be contempt? Getting even with the mean old world? Getting even with those who carry Sense and Meaning he doesn't agree with or that has harmed him? The priests of his youth? Who can really say? Surely we are all settling accounts as we formulate our ideas and theories? I don't have a problem with that at all. It is my personal belief that it is much more effective, and considerable, if it comes out of its hidden cavern and appears on the field. For those who love abstracted speech that is one of the dangers: it is all subtle and hidden, not up-front and direct. But the bottom line is, I don't want to have to waste time working my way through convoluted expression that, with a clear will, can be expressed simply and directly in common speech.

Geddit? ;-)

In short, I just don't buy it. I don't want to buy the product. I don't want it sitting there on my counter. I don't want to have to think about it, care for it. I simply toss it in the trash. Ye there is some speech that even if I don't like how it is expressed I find some content there. And if I don't like the content or find it lacking---I rewrite it! But, if you or anyone else (Diebert, Liberty Sea, Jamesh) can resurrect it out of the trash heap, can give it a name and a face: Bravo! Translate it for me into the kind of prose required for clear communication on a forum such as this. As it is presented, by and large, it is doggerel. And everyone reading here knows this.
fiat mihi
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Talking Ass »

Diebert wrote:This has never been something I've put out there. Actually I'd oppose it as nonsense in relation to any "path of enlightenment". One could just as well promote sickness and make a good case. Bottom line is that there's no absolute measurement of "health" apart from the poor "functionality principle" which means that only that what lives long enough to look back would start imagining causes to attribute to his imagined "win". Health thus becomes the ability and courage to reflect at best.
This is perhaps true but you latched onto it in a previous post of mine. But no matter. As you know I totally reject any phrase or definition that includes the word 'enlightenment' so in that sense we are in an impasse. I do accept the term 'path' though. So, we arrive at something like this: a 'path of enlightenment', and this forum is evidence of it, is in itself the sickness, is in itself the thing that is requires a cure.

How about that? ;-) Falling into a concept of 'enlightenment' is like falling into a trap. You may never get out of it and yet you'll fight to stay in it!

The thing about you sometimes Diebert is that you are a game-player. There are times when I see, though I don't want to see it, that you are not really serious. If 'enlightenment' is a real thing, for you, then come out and say that you are 'enlightened'. But if you cannot, you too must reject the term and everyone who waves it like an absurd and meaningless flag. Only the 'enlightened' can speak of 'enlightenment', right? But you are not 'enlightened' and we both know this. You would never make that claim. And you don't write, at all, from this perspective. So, the structure of your 'argument' above is rendered meaningless!

The way that this notion of 'enlightenment' functions in most here who use it...is like a fever on the brain. Or like a mechanism: some sort of a cutting hopper or farm implement. Anything that enters into it is treated in exactly the same way, mechanically. Reductively. Now, I know that if I did not include the following you would latch on to this statement:
  • "...functions in most here who use it...is like a fever on the brain. Or like a mechanism---some sort of a cutting hopper or farm implement"
...reverse it, and attempt to get it to stick to me. To ME, the Ass of Clarity! The Healing Ass! The Ass's Ass! This is a standard rhetorical ploy of yours, son!

But I choose to define a health...of approach to living life. A kind of sobriety perhaps. A kind of clarity? In most instances you, of all people, demonstrate it. I don't see you as terribly neurotic. You are in many ways the very Voice of Reasonability and you have NO RELATIONSHIP to 'Quinnism' but you operate as the Defender! It is sort of weird, dude.

I don't always accept your conclusions, generally speaking, but then you are not really about conclusions are you? And so when I talk about the 'unwell' I am not referring to you! And yet, once again, you interpose yourself. So curious!
fiat mihi
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Cahoot
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Cahoot »

"What you are not considering---but anyone who has 'talked' to Dennis, and given up, knows this---is a sense of deep anger that is communicated through his positions. Maybe 'anger' is not the word. Hmmm. Might be contempt? Getting even with the mean old world? Getting even with those who carry Sense and Meaning he doesn't agree with or that has harmed him? The priests of his youth? Who can really say? Surely we are all settling accounts as we formulate our ideas and theories? I don't have a problem with that at all. It is my personal belief that it is much more effective, and considerable, if it comes out of its hidden cavern and appears on the field. For those who love abstracted speech that is one of the dangers: it is all subtle and hidden, not up-front and direct. But the bottom line is, I don't want to have to waste time working my way through convoluted expression that, with a clear will, can be expressed simply and directly in common speech."

Entirely superficial and of no consequence to seeing - apprehending - knowing, and anyone concerned with truth soon gets past the need to have either their muzzles or egos stroked in conjunction with communication. Cutting through the crap of rococo indulgence rather than donning hip waders is a style shared by both Dennis and Hemingway, don't you know.

Good movie scenes, btw. After viewing, I ordered the flick from Netflix and look forward to the vicarious experience.
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Alex, it's just you going about with the perennial complaint of the 'lounge lizard'.
style over substance.
there's a crease in your crinoline petticoat dear.



Pam,
The stronger is one's awareness of the two becoming one, the stronger is one's awareness of their reason d'etre.
accessing 'that which'.

do you 'get' the profundity of that phrase 'that which'
how it opens up.
how it is a container for everything.

,
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Pam Seeback »

Alex: I simply toss it in the trash.
You don't get that you geddit. ;-)

However, you will get that you geddit when you write a story about the trash-tossing-I.
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Pam Seeback »

Dennis:
Pam,
Quote:
The stronger is one's awareness of the two becoming one, the stronger is one's awareness of their reason d'etre.

accessing 'that which'.

do you 'get' the profundity of that phrase 'that which'
how it opens up.
how it is a container for everything.
Everything in a container is a contradiction. So no, I do not 'get' 'that which.'
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Dennis Mahar »

there's nothing and then there's semantics.

certain turns of phrase can catch the listening of one and not the other.

'that which'
suggests the activity,
the imputer.
the meaning maker.

reason d'etre
the appropriation of a meaning for existence to contain or bring order
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Talking Ass
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Talking Ass »

If one recepticle is empty and another full, can the empty one impute fullness to the full? If you open up the full container but keep the empty one closed, does the imputed sense change? If there are two containers separated by either time or space does their mutual separation obviate the contradiction? Would the full container ever say 'It is empty & meaningless' about itself? Do either of the containers geddit?
fiat mihi
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Talking Ass wrote:..a 'path of enlightenment', and this forum is evidence of it, is in itself the sickness, is in itself the thing that is requires a cure. How about that? ;-) Falling into a concept of 'enlightenment' is like falling into a trap. You may never get out of it and yet you'll fight to stay in it!
Fair enough. Same goes for "healing" though.
Only the 'enlightened' can speak of 'enlightenment', right? But you are not 'enlightened' and we both know this. You would never make that claim. And you don't write, at all, from this perspective. So, the structure of your 'argument' above is rendered meaningless!
Well, I just referred to the objective of the forum as listed on top of every page in case one would forget: discussion of the ... path to enlightenment. I don't think that would be put there if only one or two could discuss it and everyone else should be listening because they don't know anything about any path.
  • "...functions in most here who use it...is like a fever on the brain. Or like a mechanism---some sort of a cutting hopper or farm implement"
...reverse it, and attempt to get it to stick to me. To ME, the Ass of Clarity! The Healing Ass! The Ass's Ass! This is a standard rhetorical ploy of yours, son!
That's true in a way but only because I believe you're talking a lot about yourself when you stick it all out. It's actually so extreme and weird I feel compelled to mirror stuff back just to see what it does. That's just me trying to find out how someone ticks. It's not even philosophy but curiosity. Of course I do use the opportunity to summarize some of my philosophical positions in the mean time: dual purpose!
You are in many ways the very Voice of Reasonability and you have NO RELATIONSHIP to 'Quinnism' but you operate as the Defender! It is sort of weird, dude.
I'm glad you see differences where others have claimed that I was too similar to be of interest. The weirdest thing is that you cannot see that I'm talking about exactly the same as David in many ways. Of course epistemologically one can never be certain but I have no difficulty understanding what he writes, why he would write that way and how carefully weighed and precise his words always are. Quite likely I did absorb even some of his style elements over the years because I recognized it as subtly elegant and not mechanical at all.
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Going to restate the point about how we waste our time on here a lot ^.

The only option, Alex, is acceptance of life, there is nothing "worthwhile" on GF or worthwhile anywhere to find.... each day wake up and be happy to be alive marveling at all the wonders, and let us forget our ambitions or wants, accepting the moment as it is.

I think you've already found that there is nothing worthwhile, hence the humor, I regard humor as full acceptance of any situation, seriousness doesn't lead anywhere good, so really the way you act is relatively wise. I always laugh at least a few times when I log on to GF.

Although what they were saying is true about emptiness and the end of conversation, there is nothing to talk about.

Cahoot

perfect description, you are me then, no person,
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Re: How to Build a Stronger Ego - Steve Pavlina

Post by Dennis Mahar »

If one recepticle is empty and another full, can the empty one impute fullness to the full? If you open up the full container but keep the empty one closed, does the imputed sense change? If there are two containers separated by either time or space does their mutual separation obviate the contradiction? Would the full container ever say 'It is empty & meaningless' about itself? Do either of the containers geddit?
Emptiness is qualititive.
your pesistence in misidentifying emptiness as quantitive is the root of your failure to comprehend.

phenomena is empty speaks to the nature of phenomena, it's quality.
it's quality is that it does not exist from it's own side.

it is rainbow.

you can't have an empty rainbow over here and a full rainbow over there.

a container isn't empty of a quantity,
it's empty of inherent existence.

I can't imagine David distinguishing a poem in relation to a quantity of goose bumps.
I can suggest he distinguishes a poem as empty, not of quantity, rather empty of existing from it's own side, it's quality.
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