Mason Riggle

Have you ever noticed that it takes exactly 0 effort to ‘be you’? Although you may feel like you have to try extremely hard to ‘be yourself’, you can notice, intellectually, that you don’t actually try at all. ‘Being yourself’ is just something you are naturally doing, without any ‘effort’, like ‘growing your hair’. Perhaps a more accurate way to put it is.. ‘you are happening’ without any effort, just the same way ‘your hair is growing’ without any effort. Notice that, even if you tried either to ’be yourself’ or ‘not be yourself’.. those would be the same thing because they would both be ‘what you are doing’… in other words.. being yourself. If you try this for yourself, you may discover that you actually can not ‘not be you’. As long as you exist, which you do.. you exist without any effort whatsoever.

@Serotoninluv Exactly..

@Serotoninluv yes, I see your point, which is why I elected to answer questions about Obama and Biden the best I could.. from certain perspectives, they are valid questions. What IS Obama's role in all of this? What is the Biden's role in all of this? These questions should not overshadow more serious questions, however. In your example, If the person in the audience had asked, 'what about how caterpillars turn into butterflies? What's up with that?', you can see how taking this question seriously might only serve to distract from the questions at hand, rather than bring any clarity.

Oops.. yes, Serotoninluv, you are correct here.. The Obama question was NOT the 'what-about-ism'.. it was the previous exchange: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Me: Why was Rudy Giuliani, a private personal Attorney involved? Bodigger: Why was Hunter involved with Joe in foreign affairs?

@Bodigger yes, this was obvious.. this was the 'whataboutism'. It's perfectly valid to ask what the Bidens are up to. It's 'whataboutism' to ask this question as a method of avoiding the topic at hand. This thread is about Trump's Impeachment, not Biden's corruption, which may or may not be be a valid separate discussion. "Were Trumps actions Impeachable?" is a completely separate question from 'Were Trumps actions justified?" We have to follow the rule of law, if our goal is to promote the rule of law.

@Bodigger you see.. asking about Biden's son is not a response to the question of why private Attorney was involved by the Sitting US President with Official Government business. To answer your question, as I don't know the exact reason.. I might assume it's because the Biden's are among a slew of typical greedy politicians who attempted to enrich themselves.. basically the same reason Trump acts shady.. he is. Is it really so hard for you to conceive that both the Bidens and Trumps are corrupt, and that Trump's corruption is happening on a VASTLY greater scale than Bidens because of the powerful position he is currently in, and therefore demands VASTLY greater scrutiny, and this in NOT to say that the Bidens do not deserve any scrutiny at all??

@Bodigger Maybe Obama isn't a partisan hack who feels the need to defend people simply for the reason that they were part of his Administration or political party? Maybe Obama's a Warren guy.. or a Sanders guy, and sees no pragmatic use in defending the Bidens?

@Bodigger It's possible... what exactly was Biden up to again? Remind me.

This is exactly the reason Trump's words are so damning. If Biden were a "regular citizen", do you think Trump would have singled him out in his call to the Ukrainian President? Where are all the other "regular citizens" Trump is asking about as "part of an ongoing effort to weed out or bring light upon large scale corruption." Why just Biden? Do you think Biden is the ringleader of Ukrainian Energy corruption? Are the Biden's the only corrupt people in Ukraine? What a coincidence that the guy who happens to be running against you for President is the same guy you decide to name, by name, as the place to start in your investigation into wide scale corruption which everyone knows exists and is rampant. Are you kidding me? If the current front runner to be the Democratic nominee to run against Trump in the next election isn't a 'threat to Trumps re-election chances' (AT ALL)... then I'm not even sure we're speaking the same language.

@samedm9 I disagree with so much of what you said. Why was Rudy Giuliani, a private personal Attorney involved? No explanation for this yet. Why was the actual transcript of the call 'locked down'? Why didn't Trump use the Official Government agencies at his disposal to root out the corruption? Also, nobody has said Biden is above the law or not worth looking into. There are just proper ways to do it. You can't root out lawlessnes with more lawlessness.

One thing I've noticed is that it takes exactly 0 effort by me, to 'be me'.

I'm not trying to be intentionally obtuse here, but I find this all rather silly, from a rational/logical/materialist perspective, since this is the paradigm in which this conversation is occurring.. (trying to make sense of senselessness) The 'coin flip' technique.. as it's referred to here, contains the notion that there is a 'you' who is 'flipping the coin'. There is the notion of a 'doer'. There is also the notion that there are 'choices'. As Serotoninluv pointed out (tongue in cheek or not), 'you' are never in a position to know why you 'chose to flip a coin' vs. say 'rolling some dice'.. What one begins to realize, is that notions of 'choice' fall outside the 'rational/logical/materialist' paradigm. From a 'rational/logical/materialist' paradigm, where there is a 'you' who is 'doing' the coin flipping as opposed to a more 'holistic' paradigm where there exists a 'you who flips coins sometimes', notions of 'choice' are nonsense/irrational/illogical.

@samedm9 two things. "if Biden was not running and was instead a regular citizen at the time. There’s zero problem here." Biden IS running. So there IS a problem. I'm sure the Biden's are not the only corrupt people in the world or in Ukraine. Why single them out? 2. Why did the president involve his PERSONAL Attorney in Official Government Business if it wasn't for 'personal' reasons? Why not use the agencies at his disposal? And still unanswered- Why was the transcript of the (perfect, beautiful) call moved to a super secure server meant for the highest security information like covert operations?

@Bodigger there was no 'rule' change. There was a change to the form, as the [Trump Appointed] ICIG explained. It doesn't make sense to ask if something that never happened seems fishy.

There are glaring questions that we should all be asking, which I have yet to hear satisfactory answers to: Why did the President of the US involve his PERSONAL attorney in an official state business capacity if that was indeed what he was doing? Why was the actual verbatim record of the phone conversation moved to a server normally reserved for the highest level security information such as covert operations, if indeed the phone call was 'innocent', and 'perfect'? Why didn't the President use the agencies at his disposal such as the FBI or CIA to investigate possible corruption if this was indeed his concern? It was these actions, along with the contents of the phone call, which prompted the Whistleblower. It was the release of the phone transcript BY THE WHITE HOUSE which prompted the Impeachment Inquiry, not soley the Whistleblower complaint.

@samedm9 which rule was changed? "Although the form requests information about whether the Complainant possesses first-hand knowledge about the matter about which he or she is lodging the complaint, there is no such requirement set forth in the statute." - ICIG ( the inspector general of the intelligence community) "In fact," the ICIG's statement continues, "by law the Complainant...need not possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern. The ICIG cannot add conditions to the filing of an urgent concern that do not exist in law."

@samedm9 says "you can’t claim to understand the true motivation of the mentioning of Biden in the call, without being very closely tied to the president." And then immediately claims to understand the true motivation of the mentioning of Biden in the cal without being very closely tied to the president... "Asking Ukraine to investigate corruption around the Bidens is not for electoral power (as one may interpret)."

It might help if you were to view the stages along the spiral as different, but no better or worse. As Leo explained it in a video in a similar manner: There is nothing 'wrong' with second graders because they are in second grade and not in 5th grade. 2nd grade isn't a 'lower' stage in the sense that it's worse than 5th grade.. it's perfectly fine to be in 2nd grade, and wouldn't make sense to 'look down on' 2nd graders for not being in 5th grade yet. Be careful not to be judgmental of any stage.

I would say that 'ego' is the notion that there is a separate 'you', which exists separate from everything it itself considers 'not me'... personality is the particular fashion in which this notion manifests and the characteristics of the manifestation. For example.. if trees could suddenly think, the way you and I can.. it might come under the spell of imagining that there is a specific part of itself called 'I' which is responsible for doing all of the things trees do.. this 'thought' would in actuality just be another thing that the whole tree is doing... like growing leaves or bark.. this is ego.. The quality and characteristics of all of the thoughts being produced by the tree in general would be it's 'personality'.

@Synchronicity Ethan, nice to meet me, as you. "I am not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it, I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities, I am not trying to prove it. I am just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. So then, let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say “Well that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it's gonna be." And you would dig that and would come out of that and you would say “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”. Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further- and further-out gambles what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have. Of playing that you weren't God, because the whole nature of the godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he is not. So in this idea then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality, not God in a politically kingly sense, but god in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you are all that, only you are pretending you are not." from The Dream of Life, by Alan Watts.

@zeroISinfinity yes, but this seems confused in the video.. he discusses 'other people's perceptions' (asking others about the existence of pink elephants and using the consensus of their perceptions to evaluate the validity of our own, as if there is a 'their perception' vs. 'our own' perception).. he's still creating this duality with his words.

@Farnaby yes, and why discuss the validity of the 'perception of others' if there are no 'others'.. just like there's no room.. if my perception of all you reading this were removed, what of all of you?

@Farnaby Push a mug across your desk.. did it physically move? How else did that happen, if not with your mind?

Vampire Weekend - This Life Baby, I know death probably hasn't happened yet 'Cause I don't remember living life before this And darling, our disease is the same one as the trees Unaware that they've been living in a forest You've been cheating on, cheating on me I've been cheating on, cheating on you You've been cheating on me But I've been cheating through this life And all its suffering Oh Christ, am I good for nothing? This life and all its suffering