"I am" my reason

[Spot]

Ah I see, and thank you :) I like yours too. Gets you thinking.

[alice144]

You are using the English language, the internet and a specific forum to state you are defined by yourself?

I make do with the tools I am given... Whether or not these things affect my expression is irrelevant as I could not have communicated my thoughts to you without them.

You have to use the English language, the internet, and this specific forum to refute me. So we're both equally handicapped, right up to the moment where we start tearing into one another.

[Blair]

I make do with the tools I am given...

Given by whom? your ancestors, mine or perhaps both.

and yet you insist you are defined by yourself. I take it you don't breath oxygen.

[alice144]

No, I'm a plant. :)

To be excessively clear, we are both equally handicapped by inanimates. I'm not interested in how my thoughts may or may not be shaped by language, that's outside the sphere of my original argument, although the meaning of words under the present day lexicon isn't entirely irrelevant insofar as applying definitions. I'm more interested in subject-object relations within the interpersonal sphere; how you and others understand me versus how I understand myself.

Given by whom? your ancestors, mine or perhaps both.

both is just fine.

[Blair]

To be excessively clear,

It's not possible to be 'excessively clear', it's either clear or unclear. Unless you are a woman, in which case you might be given to idiotic hyperbole like my neighbor who I recently heard say that the barbeque was "extremely, very very hot"

we are both equally handicapped by inanimates.

Are you sure about that, or are you just going along with your brainwashed idea that everyone is equal?

I'm not interested in how my thoughts may or may not be shaped by language, that's outside the sphere of my original argument,

So you are arguing that your thoughts are your own, and outside the realm of language, but you are putting them into language in order to be understood that your thoughts are not shaped or expressed in the form of language?

both is just fine.

That's very gracious of you to acknowledge.

[mental vagrant]

No, I'm a plant. :)

To be excessively clear, we are both equally handicapped by inanimates. I'm not interested in how my thoughts may or may not be shaped by language, that's outside the sphere of my original argument, although the meaning of words under the present day lexicon isn't entirely irrelevant insofar as applying definitions. I'm more interested in subject-object relations within the interpersonal sphere; how you and others understand me versus how I understand myself.

Given by whom? your ancestors, mine or perhaps both.

both is just fine.

No. Nothing you've ever thought is out of the language sphere as you were immersed in from conception, unless you were an accident, in such a case a little later.

[alice144]

Who says that I think in terms of language? I've always thought those passages in novels where the character's thoughts were italicized, and then something is written as if he were having those thoughts in his head were a bit contrived, anyhow. I'm fairly certain that my thought-process is primarily non-verbal. Perhaps this is only true for me, and not true for others, who do think in terms of sentences. But sentences suck. Language is so limiting. Better to think with pictures and symbols instead.

I'm not saying that being an native English speaker hasn't affected those mental symbols somewhat. Certainly it has, to a degree. But "immersion" is not a term I would use to describe my relationship with language. It's simply a tool to get things done, i.e. to take what I think, and let you know about it too.

[mental vagrant]

Who says that I think in terms of language? I've always thought those passages in novels where the character's thoughts were italicized, and then something is written as if he were having those thoughts in his head were a bit contrived, anyhow. I'm fairly certain that my thought-process is primarily non-verbal. Perhaps this is only true for me, and not true for others, who do think in terms of sentences. But sentences suck. Language is so limiting. Better to think with pictures and symbols instead.

I'm not saying that being an native English speaker hasn't affected those mental symbols somewhat. Certainly it has, to a degree. But "immersion" is not a term I would use to describe my relationship with language. It's simply a tool to get things done, i.e. to take what I think, and let you know about it too.

Language is abstraction; shared imagination. Whether pictorial or otherwise. Language is everything you've ever been exposed to. Upon conception, your parents likely began planning your life, this is an example of how you are not solely but largely a function of it.

I think you mean that you are intrapersonnaly intuitive. Language is the greatest tool we have, and it begins with fire and shan't end. Know what i mean?

[alice144]

That's such a broad definition of language. :) If we narrow "language" down to just what you are reading on your screen, and ignore other factors which might influence communication such as tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. my argument makes so much more sense.

Saying "a person is a sum of his or her experiences" seems to me an entirely different discussion than "my thoughts are influenced by the structure of the language which I speak". Related, but different.

No. Are you referencing something?

[mental vagrant]

That's such a broad definition of language. :) If we narrow "language" down to just what you are reading on your screen, and ignore other factors which might influence communication such as tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. my argument makes so much more sense.

Saying "a person is a sum of his or her experiences" seems to me an entirely different discussion than "my thoughts are influenced by the structure of the language which I speak". Related, but different.

No. Are you referencing something?

I don't reference anything. I speak only for myself, as far as it is possible. My point is this; all human progress is imaginary, it is memory. Imagination is language, and memory is a reciprocal of it. Your experiences were facilitated by language, as you understand them through it and they were caused by it. The world that has been created around us -> you -> you -> you..

[Dennis Mahar]

I love that contraction shan't.
I'd forgotten it.
Thankyou for giving it life.

[alice144]

deaf to nondualism! deaf to nondualism!

Some of the people who I talk to have very little imagination in their language. You can also speak almost entirely in terms of cliches and stock-phrases, as Mike Leigh so kindly demonstrated to us in his first feature film, Bleak Moments.

Making a statement such as "imagination is language" presupposes that your language is in fact meaningful, which in many cases, I posit, it is not. That's like, the language in a good novel, or on some of the posts on GF. That is unlike most of the meaningless drivel that comes out of my mouth on a day-to-day basis.

as you understand them through it and they were caused by it.

This is where you lose me. :/
I'm not sure that I understand everything through the lens of language. That seems to be really narrowing my possibilities for experience, doesn't it? What about this evening, when I was driving somewhere, and even though I didn't know where to go, intuition finally led me to chose a parking spot only a block away from my destination? What does that have to do with language? Even now describing it I'm having such a hard time finding more than a handful of words which are sort of synonyms with "intuition"; none of them are really helpful. I can close my eyes and remember how it looked and how it felt, but if I tell you about it, that's just not the same.

-> you -> you -> you..

me! me! me!

[Dennis Mahar]

We experience directly and then we language it.
We build a story out of it.
Then the story forms a set of rules to live by.
The rules break down and the story gets adjusted.
The past delivers the future.
Nothing happened.
Language happened.
Life gets explained away.
The thrill is gone.
Is that in line with your insight MV?

It's true I'm Australian in a language web.
Is it truthful. No.

[mental vagrant]

deaf to nondualism! deaf to nondualism!

Some of the people who I talk to have very little imagination in their language. You can also speak almost entirely in terms of cliches and stock-phrases, as Mike Leigh so kindly demonstrated to us in his first feature film, Bleak Moments.

Making a statement such as "imagination is language" presupposes that your language is in fact meaningful, which in many cases, I posit, it is not. That's like, the language in a good novel, or on some of the posts on GF. That is unlike most of the meaningless drivel that comes out of my mouth on a day-to-day basis.

as you understand them through it and they were caused by it.

This is where you lose me. :/
I'm not sure that I understand everything through the lens of language. That seems to be really narrowing my possibilities for experience, doesn't it? What about this evening, when I was driving somewhere, and even though I didn't know where to go, intuition finally led me to chose a parking spot only a block away from my destination? What does that have to do with language? Even now describing it I'm having such a hard time finding more than a handful of words which are sort of synonyms with "intuition"; none of them are really helpful. I can close my eyes and remember how it looked and how it felt, but if I tell you about it, that's just not the same.

-> you -> you -> you..

me! me! me!

I completely appreciate what you are saying about certain feelings being inexpressible through words. I'm perhaps not being clear enough. I'm thinking of the implications of ordered society on the mind; from city structure, nomenclature, schooling, etc. Everything is very connected to language because of human abilities. Especially storage and memory. We learn and grow as an individual and as a colony over millenia. This is what i mean by you are a function of language. It isn't everything, but it seems to be most of what we are.

[movingalways]

mv: Language is the greatest tool we have, and it begins with fire and shan't end. Know what i mean?

Thinking is the only tool we have while sentient. We do know our sentience ends. We do not know if our thinking ends when our sentience ends.

[movingalways]

alice: intuition finally led me to chose a parking spot only a block away from my destination? What does that have to do with language? Even now describing it I'm having such a hard time finding more than a handful of words which are sort of synonyms with "intuition"; none of them are really helpful. I can close my eyes and remember how it looked and how it felt, but if I tell you about it, that's just not the same.

This suggests that there is 'something' working behind the 'scenes' of your sentient awareness, does it not? And that whatever that something is, 'you' are present, albeit not consciously.

This something that is working behind the scenes cannot be known empirically; however, it can be languaged poetically or metaphorically in concert with reason. And this languaging of the invisible logical and metaphorical realm is where Meaning is known.

[alice144]

I'm perhaps not being clear enough.

Well, the people I spend time gravitate towards a more concrete expression. So I'm having a little bit of trouble particularly with the way you use words, because I feel like you are more abstract thinker. Also, I'm being kind of argumentative.

I wonder if our differing attitudes towards language stem from from an "against" versus "within" attitude towards society. A lot of my energies over the years have gone into fighting "bad external influences", or in maintaining my independence, while you seem more at peace with those around you. I'll agree that most arguments are really stupid -- held. Still, I can't accept a philosophy where all of us are really one when many of the people I live and work with see life as a zero-sum game.

Then the story forms a set of rules to live by.
The rules break down and the story gets adjusted.

I've always felt that most of us always realized that these stories were inadequate. I think we hold onto the the (better) internal inner structure despite of the external structure. So, "the point" is the internal experience, and not whatever we said about it.

This something that is working behind the scenes cannot be known empirically; however, it can be languaged poetically or metaphorically in concert with reason. And this languaging of the invisible logical and metaphorical realm is where Meaning is known.

My argument is that I cannot describe this part of myself. It's unreachable. All descriptions are fundamentally inadequate. My presence there, is not languaged, because my identity is not languaged. Language is just something I have learned, because it's useful to me. Language is my right hand. Metaphor is a more direct way to reach the subconscious because it appeals to emotions or symbols, which seem to exist in the subconsicous. However, emotions, symbols /= language. See even the words emotions/symbols are fundamentally inadequate, because what are emotions/symbols after all? I know what I experience, but I can't describe it. I can, however, manipulate our shared language with reasonable skill, much like working a math problem, or fixing the wires on the back of my family's stereo.

[mental vagrant]

I'm perhaps not being clear enough.

Well, the people I spend time gravitate towards a more concrete expression. So I'm having a little bit of trouble particularly with the way you use words, because I feel like you are more abstract thinker. Also, I'm being kind of argumentative.

I wonder if our differing attitudes towards language stem from from an "against" versus "within" attitude towards society. A lot of my energies over the years have gone into fighting "bad external influences", or in maintaining my independence, while you seem more at peace with those around you. I'll agree that most arguments are really stupid -- held. Still, I can't accept a philosophy where all of us are really one when many of the people I live and work with see life as a zero-sum game.

Then the story forms a set of rules to live by.
The rules break down and the story gets adjusted.

I've always felt that most of us always realized that these stories were inadequate. I think we hold onto the the (better) internal inner structure despite of the external structure. So, "the point" is the internal experience, and not whatever we said about it.

This something that is working behind the scenes cannot be known empirically; however, it can be languaged poetically or metaphorically in concert with reason. And this languaging of the invisible logical and metaphorical realm is where Meaning is known.

My argument is that I cannot describe this part of myself. It's unreachable. All descriptions are fundamentally inadequate. My presence there, is not languaged, because my identity is not languaged. Language is just something I have learned, because it's useful to me. Language is my right hand. Metaphor is a more direct way to reach the subconscious because it appeals to emotions or symbols, which seem to exist in the subconsicous. However, emotions, symbols /= language. See even the words emotions/symbols are fundamentally inadequate, because what are emotions/symbols after all? I know what I experience, but I can't describe it. I can, however, manipulate our shared language with reasonable skill, much like working a math problem, or fixing the wires on the back of my family's stereo.

Everything you've written here is symbolic. Language is a big equation and relates to nature more closely than we think, i think.

[cousinbasil]

My argument is that I cannot describe this part of myself. It's unreachable. All descriptions are fundamentally inadequate. My presence there, is not languaged, because my identity is not languaged. Language is just something I have learned, because it's useful to me. Language is my right hand. Metaphor is a more direct way to reach the subconscious because it appeals to emotions or symbols, which seem to exist in the subconscious.

But you are describing very well, in that you are pointing to something within yourself which I have long recognized in myself.

The building blocks of thought appear to be ideas that are in some sense more primal than language. I often think Jung's archetypes are these building blocks, though not specifically the ones he described. I tend to agree with the classic Jungian view that these archetypes are unlimited in number.

In other words, alice, your presence that is not languaged is that which your languaged self is built upon.

I say these building blocks are in some sense more primal in that they can exist without words, but words could not exist without them. Words come into play when more than one mind is involved. But art often evokes these archetypes in entirely nonverbal ways. But words can cause one to be conscious of this or that archetype or combination of archetypes. The combination may be common, in which case the combination might have it own name or word associated with it.

[mental vagrant]

My argument is that I cannot describe this part of myself. It's unreachable. All descriptions are fundamentally inadequate. My presence there, is not languaged, because my identity is not languaged. Language is just something I have learned, because it's useful to me. Language is my right hand. Metaphor is a more direct way to reach the subconscious because it appeals to emotions or symbols, which seem to exist in the subconscious.

But you are describing very well, in that you are pointing to something within yourself which I have long recognized in myself.

The building blocks of thought appear to be ideas that are in some sense more primal than language. I often think Jung's archetypes are these building blocks, though not specifically the ones he described. I tend to agree with the classic Jungian view that these archetypes are unlimited in number.

In other words, alice, your presence that is not languaged is that which your languaged self is built upon.

I say these building blocks are in some sense more primal in that they can exist without words, but words could not exist without them. Words come into play when more than one mind is involved. But art often evokes these archetypes in entirely nonverbal ways. But words can cause one to be conscious of this or that archetype or combination of archetypes. The combination may be common, in which case the combination might have it own name or word associated with it.

INTUITION

Yes, this is exactly what i'm thinking, the language of nature converted to culture.

[Dennis Mahar]

alice,

So, "the point" is the internal experience, and not whatever we said about it.

I find, in my experience.
As I directly experience.
The 'event' that just happened.
drew a response from me before language arrived to interpret it.
The response is either a yes or no.

whatever just happened gets yessed or noed.
when your carpark spot appeared you experienced a massive yes correct?

language kicks in later and appears to amount to a list of justifiers as to the why of the yes or no. the reasons.

sometimes I'm standing in my no,
and, in a conversation, someone else can be trying to persuade me out of my no.
I might get swayed a bit and wobble about because the persuader is clever.
rarely do I move away from my no.
I have done and got lost and it hurt.
No means No these days.

Yes means Yes.

When you say,

Still, I can't accept a philosophy where all of us are really one when many of the people I live and work with see life as a zero-sum game.

my direct experience of you is you are standing in a no.
I can't accept a philosophy where all of us are really one
An inquiry is an examination,
using logic,
regarding assertions that amount to yesses and no's.

In your experience of directly experiencing before language kicks in to justify.
Is my assertion feasible to you Alice,
that a Yes or No is always/already there as a response.

When you say 'internal experience'
Is that the yes or no experience?

When you stand in your No,
in this:

I can't accept a philosophy where all of us are really one

And I say I have a direct experience of that being the case.
I have to find language and logic to change your No or deal with your No.
In order to have you recognise and directly experience the direct experience I experienced.
It's very difficult, because,
If you haven't directly experienced the taste of an orange,
how can I give you orange with languaging about orange.

I can enrol your reasoning faculty.
On the topic 'all is one'.
I say:
all phenomena is not self-established.
each phenomena is not the same ( a cow is not a horse).
logically,
I can say,
phenomena is not the same and not different,
logically,
I can say,
All is one.
My direct experience on that is Yes.
It is clear.
I am correctly and successfully oriented in existence.
My yes is clear. My no is clear.
I have certainty.
I have peace.

Enquiring into your joyful experience of carpark.

It's not enough to explain away the event as intuition or serendipity or such like.

If you were walking down that street, you wouldn't have even noticed 'carpark'.
'Carpark' depended on you having a car.
'Carpark' depended on the necessity of you putting the car somewhere in order to proceed on the next step of your project where car was unnecessary.
'Carpark' had everything to do with an ambition you had.
Yes response to 'Carpark' is actually realised ambition.

It's because all those things exist relationally.
The assertion:
dependant origination is logical.

[movingalways]

Alice: Well, the people I spend time gravitate towards a more concrete expression. So I'm having a little bit of trouble particularly with the way you use words, because I feel like you are more abstract thinker. Also, I'm being kind of argumentative.

I love argumentative! All expansion stems from the willingness to assert one's view. Not on another, but as one's individual truth. An impersonal approach rather than a personal one.

You say you are a concrete thinker and I would agree. I also agree that I am an abstract thinker. For me, being an abstract thinker allows me to interpret my unconditioned awareness, opening up my inner world to me, providing me with the wisdom that brings peace of mind and peace of heart.

I wonder if our differing attitudes towards language stem from from an "against" versus "within" attitude towards society. A lot of my energies over the years have gone into fighting "bad external influences", or in maintaining my independence, while you seem more at peace with those around you.

Your insight seems a sound one. I am 60 years old and expended very little energy fighting "bad external energies" in those 60 years. I value independence highly, both from a worldly perspective and as the only way a person can hope to go "within", not as an attitude towards society, but as an attitude against society. Allow me to clarify - not against the souls who attach themselves to the idea of society, but to the concept itself.

I will agree that most arguments are really stupid -- held. Still, I can't accept a philosophy where all of us are really one when many of the people I live and work with see life as a zero-sum game.

And you are wise to hold this view when looking at people from the viewpoint of being social beings. At the source of everything of your sentient intellectual interpretation, however, do you not encounter the silence of One, of A = A? I understand that you cannot enter this world, no one can, but can you not see that at the root of everyone's struggle to assert their ego of physical and psychological survival, there is a realm that both gives rise to these struggles and yet, remains untouched of these struggles?

Discovering this realm does indeed nullify one's hard won independence of ego assertion, but it does not nullify the truth of one's individual "Godness." Being-at-one with "God" while one is sentient does not mean one becomes a mushy soup of lovey-dovey nothingness, being-at-one with "God" means that one rests in their knowledge of One and is moved of that knowledge in the world. One is awake to the truth that to "God", the Maker of all forms, no form is unequal to another form. Not higher, not lower, not bigger, not smaller, etc. Knowing this, one is awake to the nature of their nonhuman consciousness, A = A. And being awake to A = A, they walk unaffected by the thoughts of others who believe that A = B, B = C, etc. Being unaffected by prejudice, they are able to awaken others with the wisdom of why being prejudiced is not about going against the morals of society, but rather, to be prejudiced is to go against the very core of their being, their infinite nature.

I welcome your arguments to everything I have said above. :-)

[alice144]

Oh, I can't argue with your own personal direct experience.

I don't know if I'm as immediately judgmental as you claim, Dennis. Often I don't know how I feel about things. My "yeses" are more like, "I thinks" or "probablies" or "most likelies" or "the pieces of the puzzle fit together seeming to show an image that looks something like this..." But then, of course, I don't in fact say this to myself. It's more a feeling-color-tone. I only bother to language my thoughts if there is someone else there who needs access to my thinking process.

By the way, it wasn't a carpark, it was more to do with finding where I was going without decent driving directions. :)

Everything is of the same substance /= all things are logically connected.

my direct experience of you is you are standing in a no.

Some words, I think can more directly relate to mental symbols, while others are less useful. "Yes" and "no" are two of the more useful ones although perhaps quite ambiguous as well.

And being awake to A = A, they walk unaffected by the thoughts of others who believe that A = B, B = C, etc.

That sounds nice. I definitely agree that our world would be more peaceful if people were more attuned to their own (real) needs.

[alice144]

In other words, alice, your presence that is not languaged is that which your languaged self is built upon.

Yes, but how much of our "selves" is truly languaged? Judging from the difficultly I exhibit in converting thoughts in feelings into a form that others might understand, I would guess not very much at all. Perhaps even none of it.

But words can cause one to be conscious of this or that archetype or combination of archetypes.

Yes, sometimes words can refer directly to one of your "archetypes", but when you take that word in itself, out of context, its meaning is ambiguous. Generally I find that for what I think/feel/experience it's difficult to find an expression which will be suitably precise. Or at least I used to; I've become more resigned in my old age. :(

but words could not exist without them.

I've always felt that words had more to do with maintaining a certain level of intimacy (or, usually, distance) between two people. They're not really so useful for communicating, especially if you're trying to be subtle. The "archetypes" are the experience, the words are about interpersonal exchange, which is essentially meaningless.

[Dennis Mahar]

I don't know if I'm as immediately judgmental as you claim, Dennis. Often I don't know how I feel about things. My "yeses" are more like, "I thinks" or "probablies" or "most likelies" or "the pieces of the puzzle fit together seeming to show an image that looks something like this..." But then, of course, I don't in fact say this to myself. It's more a feeling-color-tone. I only bother to language my thoughts if there is someone else there who needs access to my thinking process.

Well yes,
my direct experience has maybe's too.
If a person comes along for engaging and they look like a Yes,
engaging continues,
it's as if they're undergoing rehearsal for a Yes status,
if they make it to Yes,
wariness drops off and trust moves in,
for the time being,
they usually stuff up and lose status.