Playing with Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

Communication is based on authentic experience. Without a real experience to get across, what are you going to do? Contrast that with everything else that passes for communication -- looking to produce an effect on conditions, which is in reality manipulating.

I do something (condition) to produce a result (effect). A very concrete example of manipulation: I speak eloquently about a cosmology that I hold (condition) so that you get impressed by how intelligent I am (effect). Don't limit the communication to the example/s given.

For communication to occur, I simply get across an experience of mine as it is, so that you listen to (experience) it. Listening, on the other hand, demands having an experience that's foreign to you, as it is not yours but another's.

Edited December 11, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Keep track of the purpose for the interaction during the whole process.

Edited December 11, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Don't blame your condition on newly invented causes. This is done to offload personal responsibility. The one experiencing your experience is you. Better not to wait around for someone else to resolve it for you.

There's a tendency of coming up with novel and fancy crises as of late. Many of them are not real but are narratives.

Edited March 10, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Are you your self?

[UnbornTao]

Is love a function of accepting what is?

When it comes to others, is it about accepting what they are wholesale?

[UnbornTao]

You say you are happy when things go your way. 

Is that happiness?

Can you be happy irrespective of circumstances, whether they go your way or not?

Edited December 13, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Social constructs 

Edited January 10, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Throughout our lives, we've been addicted to pleasure and distraction.

Being by yourself, free from distraction, throwing yourself into your experience, will lead to dramatic emotional reactions as every aspect of it gets confronted with such practice. 

As a culture, we tend to go the other direction; that of acquisition and distraction, adding to what's assumed to be there. But what is there? What is the nature of our condition? What do we live as and for?

Why this drive to avoid a deep confrontation with your experience? Why the resistance to meditating? Why do we find meditation difficult? Could it in some way boil down to not liking one's life?

You may be existentially lonely, discover hidden (ignored) pain, or something else entirely. Have a look.

Edited June 14, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Etymology of Cruel.

from Latin crudelis, from crudus:

1. marked by the primitive, gross, or elemental or by uncultivated simplicity or vulgarity
2. existing in a natural state and unaltered by cooking or processing
3. rough or inexpert in plan or execution
4. lacking a covering, glossing, or concealing element : OBVIOUS
5. tabulated without being broken down into classes
6. archaic : UNRIPE, IMMATURE

crude

noun

• a substance in its natural unprocessed state

---

Definitions number one, two and four are eye-opening, as well as the definition of crude.

Edited November 17, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Presuming that listening has occurred when it hasn't is a trap.

Edited March 10, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Your actions aren't caused by your way of being. Your way of being and your actions arise together. 

Edited December 19, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

"The masses have never thirsted after the truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."

— Gustave Le Bon

 

Quote

"It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living."

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

 

Edited May 12, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

What is shame?

[UnbornTao]

Experiment this year: live with no excuses or self-justification.

Edited March 1, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Whenever you are fully engaged in something, there's no resistance. This increases vitality.

[UnbornTao]

 

 

[UnbornTao]

While contemplating, answers are irrelevant; what we're after is insight.

People confuse similar expressions with shared experience – with the expression being sourced by the same experience or insight. However, parroting hearsay is in reality the popular approach.

I may share some profound axiom or truism such as "form is emptiness, emptiness is form", however, without the direct consciousness that sourced the creation of such communication in the first place, I might as well jerk off.

Are you communicating something real or passing down hearsay while trying to convince yourself of its validity? This is a subtle form of self-deception.

Make the work yours, that is, be the one in the driver's seat, generating insights independent of study, opinion and belief. This is the only way it's going to work.

Edited April 2, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

As a practice to start developing integrity, commit yourself to doing a relatively simple act habitually, something you'd ashamed not to do. For example, meditate everyday for 10 seconds.

With time, as you keep your word, your self-esteem is going to increase. As a result of you acting with integrity, your word will begin to have power, and you'll get to know yourself as a person that can be trusted. At that point, you'll have to be careful about what to commit yourself to, as whatever you give your word to, you are going to get it done.

Notice, too, the consequences of being out of integrity. You don't need to give your word; you can remain bound to your impulses, going after gratification and running away from pain and discomfort, although this will create a disempowering experience. Being out of integrity is "evidence" that you are someone that can't be trusted since everytime you give your word, you fail to be loyal to it, and you know it in your experience. Therefore, you don't trust yourself.

Whenever you give your word, even if casually, keep it. Otherwise, don't give it.

Edited March 20, 2024 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

A lot of intellectual content is likely conflated with genuine comprehension, especially when it comes to the nature of things themselves -- self, mind, emotions, existence, relationship, communication, perception -- whatever.

When you set aside the crap (everything that isn’t direct apprehension), what do you actually know -- within your experience or beyond it? What are you deeply conscious of -- truly and directly?

So, it is useful to be honest about that. 

Edited March 15 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Exchange with ChatGPT that I found interesting:

You

Tell me about Wittgenstein's work on certainty

ChatGPT

Ludwig Wittgenstein's work "On Certainty" is a significant philosophical text that explores the nature of knowledge and certainty. This work, composed in the last 18 months of his life, comprises a collection of notes edited by his students, G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Here are some key points from "On Certainty":

• Critique of Skepticism: Wittgenstein critiques the radical skepticism of philosophers like Descartes, who doubt everything, including the existence of the external world and the self. Wittgenstein argues that such doubt is not genuinely possible in practice, as our everyday actions show that we do not doubt these basic aspects of life.
• Framework Propositions: He introduces the concept of "framework propositions," which are basic beliefs or certainties that underlie all our knowledge and inquiries. These are not known through evidence but are a part of the framework through which we see and interpret the world.
• Role of Language: Wittgenstein emphasizes the role of language in forming our concepts of knowledge and certainty. He argues that what counts as evidence or justification is partly determined by the language games we participate in, and these games are grounded in our form of life.
• No Private Language: He continues his earlier idea from the "Philosophical Investigations" that there is no private language. Knowledge and certainty are embedded in communal practices and cannot be understood in isolation from these practices.
• Epistemology and Pragmatism: Wittgenstein's approach to knowledge in "On Certainty" is often seen as a form of epistemological pragmatism. He suggests that the justification for our beliefs ends not in absolute certainty but in the practical, unchallenged bedrock of our life experiences.
• Reaction Against Traditional Epistemology: Throughout "On Certainty," Wittgenstein reacts against the traditional epistemological quest for absolute, indubitable foundations for knowledge. He argues that such a quest is misguided and that our real-life practices of asserting, doubting, and justifying are sufficient for understanding knowledge.
• Limits of Doubt and Justification: Wittgenstein explores the idea that there are limits to meaningful doubt and justification. Some things are so fundamental to our conceptual scheme that they cannot be meaningfully doubted or need no justification.
• Contextual Nature of Knowledge: He highlights that what counts as knowledge or certainty is context-dependent and varies with different circumstances and language games.

"On Certainty" is a profound work that challenges and extends Wittgenstein's earlier ideas in the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and the "Philosophical Investigations." It offers a unique perspective on epistemology, emphasizing the practical, communal, and language-based aspects of knowledge and certainty.