tsuki

That is wise as fuck. Thank you for reminding me that.

Will you elaborate? In what sense love is care? Do you love somebody by making them a meal? Or worrying about them?

What I think is that you both need to learn what love is. It is not something that you see in the movies, or it is not something that you learn from your parents. You learn practical knowledge. Love is not practical. Love is not giving up meditation for the other person because she's unhappy. Love is not being truthful to your sister in front of your loved one. Love is not being worried for your loved one's addictions. Love is not care. Love is not a display of affection the the other person can understand. Love is not making the other person feel pleasant feelings. Love is not exclusive with fear, anger, anxiety and sadness. What your girlfriend is looking for is a sign that is categorized as 'normally' signifying love. In other words: she understands love the same way culture understands love. Love is not wanting to be with the other person. Its extents cannot be measured by making the other person quit things they 'love' in order to see whether you are more 'loved' than them. Measuring your worth against the other person's interests is fear confused for love. Most likely fear of loneliness. Love is not a feeling in the same dimension as fear, anger, joy, compassion, or sadness. Love is like beauty. When you experience something immensely beautiful, it disarms you. There is nothing to be done in order to improve something that is beautiful. Doing anything to the beautiful would damage it. Love can be beautiful, but doesn't have to be. Love does not always disarm you. Love is therefore a skill. The more skilled at love you are, the more you let the other person be, what they are. Love is making the other person beautiful by changing the lens through which you see them. Love is an internal movement of soul, rather than external display of affection. There is no way of measuring another person's love, nor there is a way to express your own. You can have sex hatefully and have a divorce lovingly. As for the difficulty of a relationship - there is no right person for you. You love a person by accepting who they are and letting them be. The more hurt you are, the more finely-tailored your loved one has to be in order for you to accept her. By accepting another person you heal your wounds, as you are repulsed by her flaws precisely because she reminds you of parts of yourself that you reject. By accepting her, you accept yourself. Love is a skill of letting be. There is no difference between loving another and loving yourself. When you love, there is no reason not be by yourself. You need another person to learn that.

Agree 100% I think that we all should say no to group thinking!

@Dino D Be sure to notify me. I could take them on here, but I can easily go for pages and I feel bad for derailing threads.

@Dino D post these questions in a separate thread. I would like to grapple with you over them, as they are my points of interest.

Funny how we judge that judgement is bad.

Hey, no need to get upset. I'm not saying that you are not smart. Nor am I saying that I'm smarter. It is not a dismissal of your view. I agree with it. It is the only consistent model - a model of no models. A paradox that directly expresses the nature of reality. I will even go as far as to say that it is poetic in a sense. It shows how falsity is present in any truth. Sorry for offending you.

This view is truthful in a sense that it says nothing. It cancels itself out without producing a conclusion. What I see it saying is that everything is true until it becomes false. That it is ok to make models as long as they work, but once they stop - you throw them away. Your statement is also a model that breaks down once you start to apply it to itself. Should I still be using it, or did it already wear out?

In my experience, so-called truth and false are a mere outcome of assuming a fixed perspective. The more I contemplate truth and false, the more I'm certain that there always exists a perspective from which mutually exclusive statements are indistinguishable. Any (geometric) point is in this sense infinite(ly small). Spatial perspective is a good metaphor for a logical perspective. Any angle you may assume in observing a physical apple will obstruct its other side. Saying that you see the truth of an apple is like saying that the other side is never experienced. Two people may see an apple from different angles and both claim that they see the truth which is obviously false. Still, they both always experience their own side of an apple and will never experience the other side that they don't see. Even if they move, they will see only the side that they see - the other will be obstructed. In this sense, they both see the truth of an apple and it is obviously true. So yes, two statements can be both exclusive and true at the same time. What prevents one from moving around an apple is the need for stability in life. Once you start to pick your assumptions apart - there is nothing to hold on to. Consistency of truth is an expression of Ego.

@Moreira

Yes and no. No in the sense that you don't get to stop seeing how utterly meaningless everything is. Yes in a sense that there is no other place than the Matrix to be, and any other thing to do. Liberation comes from detachment. It is not that you detach yourself to gain a calm perspective, but the Matrix becomes a game in a certain way. You do not win it by attaining goals, nor do you lose it by dying of starvation. When everything is truly meaningless, death is meaningless as well. It does not mean that life is somehow constantly depressing, or nihilistic. Watching this thing run itself is very captivating and very beautiful. However, it's an acquired taste. You will get used to it. What do you mean by that? You can't talk to people because you gag? You can't be nice to them because who cares? Get your ass back to your life and start playing your role, skeleton!

@Lucas Lousada Experience with my own awakenings tells me that you ask for the very thing that you "lost": meaning in life. Your realization that anything is truly and utterly meaningless is nothing else other than the death of self. This is not a trivial matter and please, do no treat it as such. Death reminds us that whatever we hold on to as dear is just that - holding on to. That whatever we may think we have control over may be taken away with no prior warning. Mourning is not re-living the past that had been lost in hope to prolong it. It is seeing that whatever is left may be taken away and is to be enjoyed while it lasts. The self is always up for death, so please - try to enjoy yourself while you can. As for the meaning of your life - treating yourself as a mean to an end begs the question: whose end is it? The gaping openness of this question is what you seek. Try to not look away with disgust. This is you after all. The you that you try to dress up with all of your meanings.

How is success not a form of gratification? One may try to quench his seeking by turning it towards a goal, but any goal is temporary and contextual. The only ever-present constant in life seems to be the very possibility of seeking. Why not to try to seek the source of seeking? What if it has no source and is simply present? Wouldn't it mean that there is no goal that satisfies it?

Hahaha, the only reason I would call someone sharp is to say that they are being a smartass ? I will watch the movie in the next few days and post back with more ideas.

@molosku You're welcome. I really enjoyed what you wrote. That meme at the end was brilliant!

@MarkusSweden Your response with love is predicated on your liking. So is their response with slaughter. The moment you start to fear the unknown is the moment you created a threat. The moment you start to defend yourself from a threat is the moment you created an enemy. You can love an enemy and you can fight an enemy. They are both a form of defense in hope to conquer him. The enemy is an enemy, as long as you don't walk him back to the unknown.

Well, the problem with your reasoning is solved by applying the "correct" theory for your domain.There is a theory for flipping a coin, which is a discrete occurrence and there is a theory for continuous processes. If you want to calculate a probability that a given device fails during a period of one year - it is not the same as flipping a coin each microsecond for a year and seeing if it lands tails at any given moment. If you would apply the correct theory however, there is no possibility to calculate probability of your existence, as you are not expressible in the language of mathematics. Even if you had a perfect mathematical theory of human being, interpreting yourself in terms of it to produce a numerical description is a creative task that introduces errors with unknown bounds. Not to mention that once you describe what you are, you are free to disregard this description and behave in exactly the opposite manner My point is that probability of your existence is simply that: unknown. By assuming anything about it, you change what you are - your existence. You can say that it is impossible for you to exist and you would be right, as you are a unique human being - unlike any other. You can say that it is normal for you to exist and you would be right, as you are a human being and we have 7 billions of them. Existence with any of the above assumptions would be correct and you are both a miracle and a totally mundane occurrence. I will even risk to say that you treat yourself as both, depending on your mood. Any mundane statement produces a whole, complete, perspective or a worldview. They are thankfully, temporal.

Sins, wrongs, goods and miracles - these are all expressions of "morality" as a mental framework through which one understands the occurring circumstances. What this mode of being tries to achieve is to impose an order for all possible situations that a person may end up finding himself in. When a given situation is known to be worse than another situation, it is easy to tell what the course of action should be. In short - morality is an attempt to create rules that would allow for automatic solving of life. A direction through which one would elevate his existence. The problem with morality is that it is impossible to create an absolute system that would not break itself in trying to maintain its operation. For example: It is bad to kill, unless there is a war. It is bad to rape, unless inmates in prison rape each other. Then it is called justice. It is bad to imprison an unwilling person, unless the person broke the laws. etc. The other problem is that morality is relative and mostly unconscious. Once a person tries to take responsibility for his own morality, a question arises: Which morality is correct? In other words: What are the rules for establishing rules? There are none, as this is a problem of infinite regress. Each moral statement is a double-edged sword. It tries to fix a problem by introducing another problem. If a person enters a relationship and expects it to last for his whole life, he may establish the rule that "one shall never cheat on a partner". But then of course this is the very condition that ends a relationship! How do you expect to stop a relationship from falling apart by introducing a stopping condition? Wouldn't it make more sense to say I'm going to stick to this person no matter what? No! That's another moral statement that is dependent on the other person not leaving you. There is no possibility to produce a moral statement that does not introduce possibility for suffering! The very reason to produce one is to prevent it, and yet - by creating it you prime yourself for it! The other example is touching a child, or more generally - problem of suffering. Morality tries to prevent suffering by introducing rules, and yet - suffering is the main driving force of change. To molest a child in order for it to grow is a disgusting idea, and yet - not as long as few hundred years ago, we did it. We made little girls marry grown men and we were absolutely sure that we did it for their own good! How are we sure that the current state of affairs is absolutely correct, when we were proven wrong so many times before? Is it simply because we believe that there is progress through time? That we've learned from our mistakes? Don't even get me started on that idea. The third problem is a psychological one. By claiming full responsibility for an outcome, you belittle involvement of independent factors. By saying that you caused an event, you try to elevate yourself by saying that you were in control over what happened. This is Ego talking, trying to keep the driver's seat. How many children raised by alcoholics sweared not to EVER drink only to cave in and beat their wife during an alcohol-induced rage? By claiming responsibility they uphold the illusion that they have control over their life - the control that made them drink in the first place. Morality is no escape from the cycle. It is not its cause either. Morality is just a funny idea that you tell yourself so that you can sleep better.

@Scarecrow What I would suggest is to recognize the importance of both. I see them as periods of doing the work and appreciating the work already done. There is no point in working if you don't enjoy its fruits. You won't have the fruits if you don't do the work. What difference does the length of the cycle make? To achieve harmony you need both, regardless of whether it takes a minute, a day, a week or a month.

@Shin Responsibility is a double-edged sword. When you take responsibility for your actions you belittle involvement of other people and claim that you run things. You don't. Any suffering can be traced back to Ego that tried to fix things by responsibly managing the world. As for my own struggle - I will think about the wording and post it soon.

@Leo Gura Isn't it the perspective that "all perspectives are partial"?

Yes, this game of communication is relative and agreement on meaning can be achieved in many dimensions. When one states that two objects A and B are in relation R, the other may try to understand how objects A and B are such that relation R occurs, or may understand how relation R is such that it links A and B. You can change the game by moving the pieces according to rules, but you can also change the rules so that the game is different without moving the pieces. What I claim is that the two are identical, or equivalent, in the game of communication. By the mere act of seeing your coherence in my words that were previously "unknown" you expand your notion of truth. It is not the same truth as mine, but they overlap in a sense. We are playing two separate games, but the rules and positions of pieces are "understood". This first-hand experience of "understanding" of things is nothing else than "lack of surprise" so that Ego is calm. There is no tension between us. In this sense there is one ego that encompasses both of us and we may defend our understanding once a third party challenges it. This is nothing else than culture, or society. Once you say that truth is absolutely relative, you are simultaneously saying that relativity is the absolute truth.