Carl-Richard

Crying in meditation is the best thing you can ever do.

Ah, I already made my point though. We'll try to get this moderation issue straight among the mod team.

Now I have to reveal the point I was building up to ? People generally don't care about the definitions of words and whether they make sense or not. They just use words to talk and relate to others (pragmatics), and like you said, social cohesion is a big aspect of this. I know about a few definitions, but the biological essentialist definition makes the most sense to me. That doesn't mean I will speak to a transwoman and call them a man.

I'm just asking for definitions

Do you have a definition of woman?

Ait, so 3 people mentioned the biological essentialist definition of woman. Anybody got a different definition?

Huh?

12 posts in, still nobody has defined what a woman is ?

Discussions involve thinking, and people who're better at thinking generally do it better Wisdom and emotional intelligence are probably better predictors though.

@Tyler Robinson Yes, I do believe that more people became spiritually mature when more people were seriously studying the teachings of the Vedas, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad etc. and it held center stage in the collective consciousness. Everything you know about nonduality today has been known for thousands of years, arguably for all of human history.

Note: this is not a developmental model, nor is it about determining which framework is better or worse. What does it do? It shows how these different metaphysical frameworks differ in terms of the trade-off between comprehensiveness and specificity, which realms they're mainly operating under (hyper-dimensional vs. three-dimensional reality), and which explanatory constraints they're operating under (mysticism vs. naturalism vs. myth). Explaining the different explanatory constraints Mysticism - deals with methods, metaphors, anecdotes and stories that aim to facilitate the direct phenomenological experience of God/reality, and these explanations of reality are seen as a means rather than an end. There are no general guidelines for these types of explanations, only that they aim to encapsulate the nature of God. Naturalism - deals with analytic philosophy, the scientific method and scientific theories. The goal is to explain a phenomena by reducing it to some other known phenomena that is compatible with the naturalistic paradigm, e.g. explaining rivers by referring to the structural-functional properties of water. The general guidelines for a naturalistic metaphysics is coherence, internal logical consistency, conceptual parsimony, empirical adequacy, and explanatory power. Myth - deals with metaphors, anecdotes and stories in order to explain the nature of reality. For example, God created Eve from one of Adam's ribs, which explains the origin of man vs. woman. The general guidelines are specific to each tradition. General -> specific, and hyper-dimensional vs. 3D human realm The first distinction is a hierarchical one: the closer something is to the top, the more general, comprehensive, holistic, all-encompassing, and big-picture it is, and conversely, the closer something is to the bottom, the more specific and concrete it is. There is an inherent trade-off between these levels, meaning you can only have so much of one or the other, but the different levels also don't have to necessarily contradict each other (although sometimes they do): For instance, the statement or metaphor "you are imagining everything" of psychedelic mysticism is able to encompass the experiences you encounter in the hyper-dimensional realm ("my couch just talked to me") as well as those in the 3D human realm ("my friend just talked to me"), but it seems to lack more specific explanatory power for the 3D realm. The same applies to nondual mysticism: "there is no separation" doesn't really explain the apparent illusion of separation (or at least the particularities of it, e.g. "why am I able to pick up a cat and not a car?"). On the other hand, the naturalistic frameworks are tied to conventional scientific investigation and analytical standards of reasoning, and these are more able to account for specific things in the 3D realm, like the weight of cats vs. cars, technological innovation and subsequent questions like "is AI sentient?" But these again lose some comprehensiveness, in that some things are either hard or impossible to explain: One such example is the "Hard problem of consciousness", which has remained unsolved under physicalism (but is solved in analytic idealism, but conversely, it faces the "Decombination problem" which is solved under physicalism). However, analytic idealism seems to have a plausible solution for the Decombination problem (i.e. "dissociation"), but the research around that is still in its infancy. Mysticism has none of these problems, because again, it simply relies on metaphors, anecdotes and fuzzy concepts, not analytic philosophy and science. Specific -> Pseudo-specific On a less important note, with respect to the two "Myth" frameworks on the bottom, I denoted the tendency towards "pseudo-specific" in the sense that they're both less specific and incredibly specific compared to the naturalistic frameworks. For example, while physicalism can point to things like particles, forces and phase states to explain things like rain and fire, an animist explanation would for example be a "rain spirit" or "fire spirit" for each phenomena. Merely denoting these phenomena as "spirit" doesn't tell you much about their specific properties compared to say their chemical structure, but each explanation is in another sense incredibly specific to the phenomena. Why did I make this? Because I often see what I consider a harmful tendency towards "naive skepticism", i.e. to dismiss or deny especially analytically rigorous styles of investigation (philosophy & science). I think carefully spelling out these different levels of investigation and seeing the pros and cons in a visual way can help with that. The most important point in this respect is the naturalism vs. mysticism distinction, and that in any sort of inquiry, be it spiritual, self-help or intellectual, one should acknowledge the constraints of each framework and avoid blindly choosing one over the other.

I'm not contesting that. I'm saying that despite the blessings of the enlightened saints and sages that created the world's religions, pre-modern society did not abolish slavery. The Age of Enlightenment is considered to be the spiritual Dark Ages, but despite that, we abolished slavery.

Meaning and Being Authenticity and Honesty Vitality and Resilience

A revolution of spiritual awakening or a revolution of values?

No shit

True. I just gave some reasons for why I think it's particularly easy to stack tolerance with weed, and the relative lack of negative side effects is one factor.

Wilber made that distinction. How would you explain what lead to the abolition of slavery?

True. Values influence thinking and behavior, and they can tell you which metaphysical frameworks certain types of people are attracted to, but it doesn't tell you as much about what the specific frameworks are saying and how they differ from each other. Metaphysics is about what reality is at a fundamental level. It's not equal to "consciousness" (whichever definition you want to use). For example, you can have a metaphysics which outright denies the existence of phenomenal consciousness as an ontological category (e.g. eliminative materialism and illusionism). When you talk about "raising consciousness", you're probably talking about expanding one's circle of concern. Such a definition of consciousness could include all types of vertical development (both personal and transpersonal), but it's a rather amorphous concept. Wilber studied many developmental stage theories outside of SD, and he only encountered Graves later in his work. You can take a look at Robert Kegan's six evolutionary balances and the correlates to similar theories to get an idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan#the_evolving_self

Growing up = biopsychosocial growth (personal; cognitive-emotional + sociocultural). Waking up = spiritual growth (transpersonal). The distinction was made because of the observation that spirituality has existed since the dawn of mankind in all kinds of "backwards" cultures (purple, red, blue etc.) and also to make sense of the countless of contemporary guru scandals. It counters the New Age myth that we can solve all global issues by simply preaching the gospel of transpersonal states of consciousness.

If you substitute the specific-comprehensive spectrum for the simplistic-complex spectrum in SD, then the organization of naturalism above myth correlates with Orange over Blue-Purple, but mysticism does not correlate with Green and up (only very weakly). To think that mysticism is a sign of SD maturity would be to conflate what Wilber calls "growing up" and "waking up". For instance, mysticism has existed along slavery.

@StarStruck It's a categorization/typology, not a developmental stage theory. It deals with metaphysical frameworks, not vMEMEs ("value systems"). It focuses on how reality is explained (philosophy), not how people think or behave (psychology). The hierarchical organization is a continuum of specificity-comprehensiveness, not simplicity-complexity.

It will ease the withdrawals for sure, but you'll still feel it, especially at the point where you jump off. Even if you jump off at 0.05g instead of 0.25g, the jumping off part will still be the toughest. Weed is actually one of the trickiest drugs to quit, because you can just keep stacking more and more tolerance forever, and when you finally decide to quit, you're at the pharmacological equivalent of a cliff. I think it's a combination of the fact that it stays active in the body for so long (i.e. your body doesn't just have to adapt to the high itself but also the "after-high") and that you can be relatively functional while on it (so you can smoke massive amounts all day, every day).

People do not experience. Experience experiences. Experience is not something you have or anybody else has. Experience just is

What is a woman?

What you're looking for is the distinction between meaning and being. You have to act a certain way in order to not cease to exist, and to maximize the meaningfulness of those actions is what concepts like health and morality (the good") is about. How to properly align your actions with "the good" is what meaning is about. The other side of the coin is being, which is the ground of all experience and all action. Without being, you cannot initiate any actions or experience the fruits of your actions. Being actualizes the potential of meaning in your life (and vice versa: without meaning, you cannot undertake the proper actions in order to facilitate being, e.g. meditation).