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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Apr 27, 2015 - 03:56am PT
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Wait for a bit or bite megabits
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Apr 27, 2015 - 04:04am PT
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//Scientism ~ the belief that the methods of measuring, or the categories and things described through measuring, form the only real and legitimate elements in any philosophical or other inquiry, and that science alone describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective, with a concomitant elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience.
//
While no one can argue the immanence of science and the importance of measuring in many aspects of our life, I am not alone in being unsatisfied with the definition above as it relates to consciousness. At the root of this issue are various views concerning how to approach the consciousness question, which perforce imply fundamental beliefs per what consciousness is. If not examined carefully and soberly, and without a sense of humor, said “views” can scuttle any meaningful investigation through stonewalling in principal, absurd simplification and non-sequiturs.
Per approaching consciousness, a fundamental and common pitfall, especially common in AI and computational model camps, is the failure to recognize that consciousness is qualitatively different that what scientists usually measure. Re - the direct, first person experience of hanging 2,500 up the Shield on El Capitan, in boardshorts, in a lightning storm, is a different “thing” than a milk shake or a cockroach. That’s not to say the qualitative differences preclude us from measuring consciousness in various ways, but when the singularity of “mind” is not acknowledged, that experience up on the shield can be so wildly mistaken to be the selfsame thing as cue ball or a Jujube, rendering howlers like: consciousness is what the brain does, ergo the brain is the self-same thing as the experience of hanging on the Captain. This “does” metaphor works well with purely physical things – a new dime shines, that’s what it does. But with consciousness being brain, we are in effect saying our Uncle is our Aunt, and this simply will not do for some of us. . . . .
This was the start of the thread !
And calling largo arrogant is a-kin to my saying KARMa . . . if you have been following along on other threads.
U
Point out a person who has climbed from before, well just say '86 for some point in time,
And you will be pointing out an
Arrogant son of a bitch,
That is just the means needed to climb back then!
There has been a constant mellowing, from my perspective ,since Harding passed,
and a new sort of arrogance that has come along,
"Why are you old?" They ask, "you never climbed or you'd be dead" they say,
In my minds eye I feel bad that I never bolted the crap outa' some piece of rock but my shoulders did not want the burden of committing to the up keep, and moving on, bolting is all good. The new normal is sad for some of us lippey gimpies to see, but means
We old YoYos can climb until real old ages . . .
Ninety may soon be the new sixty.(years young)
I want to thank every one who has ever bolted the good the bad and the ugly too.
Climb ,climb safe, Climb Down and Climb up,Climb forever, Climb for death, Climb for
LIFE
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Apr 27, 2015 - 01:26pm PT
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Healyje said " He's either not capable of communicating or not interested, but the fact there are Zen teachers and masters belies his incommunicado. What are they teaching? Open focus teachers and therapists? What are they teaching? It's a mystery (and the height of arrogance)."
I tried to explained what zen is about (on this thread). It is really simple; be aware by using meditation as a tool. And if you are fully aware you have a choice to cause less suffering with your actions. It was also taken up on the "meditation" thread.
But This thread is about debate; not what zen is or isn't, and Largo never mentions Zen in his initial post.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Apr 27, 2015 - 02:43pm PT
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the mind evolved the capacity to grok symbology (language) because it improved survivability. that talent has been recently repurposed to create the modern world.
bidness as usual, evolutionarily speaking.
So what!?
Evolution is only an instrumental cause. You can't make evolution out to be a final term; it isn't.
Evolution is the product of a vast, if not infinite, set of possibilities within a limiting structure and mind is ultimately the product of that same relationship.
Seems the substitution of evolution for deity and yet claiming atheism, strange...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 27, 2015 - 08:19pm PT
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Jgill: what is energy? (JL). . . . A good question, but unproductive. Better questions humans can come to grips with, How does it behave, What are its effects and measurable properties?
Mike said: Good lord, can you hear yourself? If you can’t say what a thing is, how is it that you can properly describe what IT does and how to measure it? How in the hell can you know what the heck you are talking about?
-
Perhaps there's a very good reason John and others dodge ever getting specific per WHAT they are measuring. I suspect when we get down far enough, "things" vanish into non-thing phenomenons that in and of themselves have no physical extent. There is, in fact, no "it" as our discursive minds tell us. The miracle is that on the macro level, we have bodies and minds and feelings and memories. But stop the train and as we find in the contemplative adventures, the "I" vanishes or we toggle into big I where there is no witness or things but only unbound witnessing.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 28, 2015 - 04:23am PT
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...only unbound witnessing... ...[group] introspection... Words. A little terse and bereft of meaning for a wordsmith, but hey, at least they're words. And meaning has no physical extent so it should be a snap to swing some into the midst of those great beginnings.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Apr 28, 2015 - 09:01am PT
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More words...
'The Seven Gurus'
(This is a fictional story about the various states of consciousness which we might find to some degree in the minds of humans. If you see some similarity to yourself or to someone you know, or are insulted by the insinuations or generalizations about the caricatures of the story, please bear in mind that it is only a fiction and reflection of ideas that have been composed by the writer, and is not a judgement about man, God, or the state of their being).
The first guru was named Phil and he was a staunchly religious man who loved god and believed god loved him. He hated all others and believed god wanted him to destroy them. He was happy in his hatred and it made him feel righteous, besides he cared not for any other jerks besides himself so, "praise God and praise me," he thought to himself. His pious zealotry was masqueraded by his knowing smile and he spoke not of his thoughts but only of the platitudes of his God and his religion. He was a very dangerous man.
The second guru was a voodoo witch doctor man who sat cross legged in the dirt and great puffs of smoke billowed from his pipe. His cloaked countenance was gathered on the ground about him. "I would easily pluck out the eye of anyone who dares to speak to me should I so chose," he thought to himself, pleased. His hate and his arrogance were more visceral than the first guru and he was no less dangerous.
The third guru was a techie nerd who was constantly texting or playing video games on an electronic device. He had long black hair tied into a pony tail and he wore large horn rimmed glasses. He never looked up and he scowled as he wiggled his foot while manipulating his device nonstop as he sat on his iThrone. He was in love with his activity and would not allow much to distract him from it.
The fourth guru was completely bald and wore a long yellow robe that hung to the floor that had an orange sash that wrapped all about to hold it together. He looked like a devout man, but he was a devotee to his own individual offshoot of devotion. He had a large tattoo of a green scimitar that went from his forehead, over top of his skull, and to the back of his neck like a Mohawk. He sat silently with his eyes closed and chanted, "BE," continuously.
The fifth guru was no longer employable. He was dirty, unshaven, and his clothes were torn and ragged. He had long red hair and a pale complexion with dark circles under his eyes and a faraway stare. His hunger was only second to his bewilderment at the suffering and chaos that surrounded his world and threatened to rob him of his very existence. He longed for a fix or the sweet release of death. He had been many things, a child, a son, a student, graduate, a lover, a husband, a father, a business man, and a criminal. But through it all he had never found fulfillment and he had become an addict, and addiction was now his love, his hate, and his religion all wrapped into one.
The sixth guru was quiet and reserved. He had with him only the clothes he wore and a suit case with his initials engraved on a metal tag which sat by his feet. He had been wealthy in life and love, and had seen the whole world, but he had lost all those dear to him through a series of terrible tragedies, and so he was resigned and reticent in his grief. He sat on a park bench and quietly read the paper a bit but mostly stared at the sky as he constantly relived the happier times in his past, the tender moments and celebrations with the people he had loved and held dear. As he turned the page the pigeons gathered near his feet and stared up at him in anticipation. Of course, he paid them no mind. He was in his own world now, isolated but content to dwell in a fantasy populated by the memory of those he had loved.
The seventh guru stood in a meadow of green grasses and gentle breezes where orange poppies grew and peacocks wandered in large flocks. He wore black pants and a paisley vest with a white shirt and a bolo tie. He had long grey hair which ran most of the way down his back and he wore spectacles with round rims on his tanned face. His long grey hair and beard blew about in the breeze but his dark brown eyes pierced the daylight where he saw through it to a world beyond his presence. In a transcendent vision he flew above great landscapes of the world, and then down through the many strata of stone, and into the fiery depths below earths mantle, and then finally he came to a place at the core where there floated a golden lake of shimmering light. It spoke to him of suffering and pain, and of loneliness and obliteration. It sang to him of love, of longing, of the secrets that are held in the heart, of the death of self, and of the continuous rebirth of ego. And there he floated for all of time at the core of the world on the shore of the shimmering golden lake. He felt as though he had always been there and he could never leave, and he also knew that he had never been there, that it was only a vision of a brief moment in his mind as he stood in the meadow, and he knew that it was a metaphor about how his life had brought him full circle. He knew that through experiencing the desolation of his own heart, only then would it be filled and emptied and continually refilled again until the day of his death, when all of his hopes and dreams, his loves and his longings, and his vision of what the world was and the world that might be would finally leave him. He knew that standing in the meadow of life and in the molten core of death were simultaneous and contradictory states of mind and he stayed there throughout the remainder of this story.
There is no conflict or battle between the sevens gurus. They are only caricatures of the authors mind. The preferred or not preferred guru are the readers choice. The reader might have a completely different guru in mind. The state of being in which we often find our egos being expressed is also a caricature or aspect of our state of mind. The recognition and acceptance of the fact that the experience of living is intrinsically dangerous and momentously fortuitous both at the same time are part of the riddle of of our existence. It is there where we hover, above oceans of terrible suffering and landscapes of undefinable and rapturous beauty, there where we briefly grasp at its irony, forgetting it as we are caught up in our daily trappings and experiences, and then rediscovering it again, at that last moment when we most need it or most disdain it. Might we find it again at the moment of our death? I can only guess.
-bushman
Apr 28, 2015
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Apr 28, 2015 - 09:32am PT
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Bushman:
I hesitate to write this during these times of what seems to be great turmoil and suffering in the world. A few words from my teacher.
• Describing experience just brings up more belief systems.
• We don’t need to stop telling stories. We just need to stop believing in them.
• Importance is always self-importance.
• The point of suffering is to motivate exploration.
• Every state of experience is a bardo state.
• Whatever phase you are in, you’re at the goal, which looks like this.
• There is no goal; this present moment is the goal, and you are already there.
We never do anything, really. Even when we think we are. If we look closely, there are forces of upwelling in consciousness which are doing the motivating. It’s an upwelling of energy. Everything is basically a done deal.
No one can be different unless circumstances evolve of one’s functional nature evolves—which is happening all the time. If one is exerting effort and struggling, it’s because the universe has created that entity at the point motivated to do those things. Hence, as my teacher says, “everyone is off the hook.” No one is doing anything. Experience is experiencing itself.
(Your post was interesting to read.)
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Apr 28, 2015 - 09:39am PT
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Point taken...I think.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Apr 28, 2015 - 10:12am PT
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^^^^^^^^^
Ha-ha.
(I wrote too much. I should have just left it at one.)
I like stories (who here doesn't?). Stories can be interesting and expressions of understanding that cannot be semantically defined or delimited. They couple meaning with emotion. In artful story, nothing moves forward except through conflict. I love a great conflict--and most of all the irony that can come with it. Irony is slippery and defies definition.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 28, 2015 - 07:05pm PT
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Perhaps there's a very good reason John and others dodge ever getting specific per WHAT they are measuring. I suspect when we get down far enough, "things" vanish into non-thing phenomenons that in and of themselves have no physical extent
I have not said you are absolutely wrong, only that you cannot be certain except perhaps if you mean no measurable extent.
But there will come a day when you make the leap of faith and declare that this "no physical extent" is the no-thing you experience - the open awareness field - in your meditative zombie state.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 28, 2015 - 07:38pm PT
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Two monks were arguing about a flag.
One said, "The flag is moving."
The other said, "The wind is moving."
The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by.
He told them, "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 29, 2015 - 01:53am PT
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Jan: I'm curious about your experience in the deprivation tanks. I've read that almost everyone begins "hallucinating" a few hours after being introduced to one. Of course one person's hallucination is another one's unconscious imagery. I'm wondering if you or anyone you knew ever got past the imagery, and if so what was the next stage? I already had a lot of experience with meditation at that point as well as a far amount of acid and (I suspect) that's why I didn't hallucinate at all or see any visual imagery other than the kinds of things you might normally 'see' when you close your eyes. I found I really liked the tanks and have spent entire days / nights in them. They tend to quickly bring you face-to-face with amplified physical / emotional distractions on one hand and frees you up from them quite quickly on the other. Very much a disembodied experience in many respects and in an odd resonating way.
Sort of like jumping out of a plane, I recommend everyone do it at least once.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 1, 2015 - 08:12pm PT
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your meditative zombie state.
Tell us about this state, Healyje.
We of course take it that you are making these evaluations based on .... your own experience. What else could it be?
This zombie silliness, along with other howlers you project onto others per your meditation experience (ascribing your experiences, or your speculations about other's experiences), is the best evidence that a teacher is indicated to sort you out on this material. Because whatever your thinking it is, zombie states or otherwise it ain't. It all ooze tumbling out of your own brainpan - We can easily see why.
JL
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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healeyje, thanks.
Now the question I have is did you mostly spend your time in those tanks with discursive thinking (you indicate that you at least did some of that) or just floating? If not discursive thinking, then something that sounds like Largo's no -thing state? What about falling asleep?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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I found I really liked the tanks and have spent entire days / nights in them. They tend to quickly bring you face-to-face with amplified physical / emotional distractions on one hand and frees you up from them quite quickly on the other.
I spent 90 days in solitary confinement in a naval brig for selling lsd on base. Better than an UHD. Not talking to anyone for 3mos pretty much set me for dealing with every crisis since..
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Not talking to anyone for 3mos pretty much set me for dealing with every crisis since..
Much respect, BB. I wish more people would recognize the value of not talking. Or writing.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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May 2, 2015 - 07:13am PT
Not talking to anyone for 3mos pretty much set me for dealing with every crisis since..
-BB
Much respect, BB. I wish more people would recognize the value of not talking. Or writing.
-MH2
Doesn't matter if this was directed at me or not...I've earned it. There's no denying I've stuck my foot in it on all fronts this weekend. At home and on this site.
Point taken...
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SuperTopo on the Web
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a) a no-thing which can be explored
Let us know!