Sam Hunter's exploratory thread regarding the validity of fantastical projections

[Chester]

Hi, I unfortunately totally derailed a thread and had to start this so that my posts can be moved here.

Apologies... I got excited by posts of others and have some thoughts I wanted to share based on those posts.

[Dreamtimer]

It was appreciated. Are you still blogging?

If you believe you're Jesus, and you're a narcissist, you won't care about hurting someone vulnerable.

If you do care then you'd probably be very careful who and how you tell.

I've come across a couple instances of someone claiming to be or know the reincarnated messiah. And I'm not even looking.

I believe there is an individuated aspect of you that continues. It makes sense that the all-that-is would want to keep each thread of the tapestry going.

[Chester]

It was appreciated. Are you still blogging?

Hi - I removed my blog post of the allegorical story in hopes that others involved in what that story was based upon would see I am honoring requests made by a few of them. Sadly, my own request has not been but that doesn't surprise me. Anyways, I will be coming up with a series of blog posts soon as long as I get a green light from one important participant in the story.

[lcam88]

I'll follow Sam. Link?

EDIT

Never-mind, sometimes I am blind.

[Dreamtimer]

lcam88, It's in Sam's signature line. Merlyn again.

Sam, I read the story. Thanks for writing it. Stay up on the high ground. I hope the person gives you the green light.

[Chester]

I was conversing with a friend and we touched on those who appear to believe deeply in their stories -

[1:24:25 PM] Sam Hunter: and understand almost everyone I know from these forums fits somewhere in that place - and the difference NOW between me and them and you and them is... we are aware of the possibility it may really be self-created woo woo.

[1:24:44 PM] Sam Hunter: its not that we haven't had our own share of truly anomalous experiences
[1:24:58 PM] Sam Hunter: the difference is our interpretations and conclusions

[1:25:01 PM] Anonymous Conversant: yes

[1:25:32 PM] Sam Hunter: especially with regards to suggesting paradigms to be true for a group of others or all others simply based on our own experiences and our interpretations of those experiences
[1:26:30 PM] Sam Hunter: the leap people seem to take reveals an underlying... view or set of views that are no different than what are found in religions and things like Scientology or "Ascended master" Theosophy and New Age think as examples

[1:26:41 PM] Anonymous Conversant: I believe that life is like a lens - when you focus on something you will draw in that to which you set your focus on - interpretation of that is another story

[1:26:49 PM] Sam Hunter: YES!!
[1:27:22 PM] Sam Hunter: what we seem to give attention to reacts with the essence of the collective combined with the essence of our own individuated being

[1:27:35 PM] Anonymous Conversant: yes

[1:27:49 PM] Sam Hunter: thus anyone’s interpretations of any of these things must include a degree of subjectivity

[1:28:04 PM] Anonymous Conversant: totally

[1:28:39 PM] Sam Hunter: thus to impose the paradigms the at-least-partially-subjectively derived perceptions may suggest to them is to usurp another's free will and exploration of wonderment.
[1:29:36 PM] Sam Hunter: so it is so, so, so important as to how we share our experiences and how we then express the conclusions or opinions we draw from them
[1:29:49 PM] Sam Hunter: the way we word it is usually where the imposition can come in
[1:30:12 PM] Sam Hunter: words can imply subtly that what we are saying better be accepted by others or these others are dummies. The vulnerable feel that pressure though likely they do not usually recognize this consciously.

[1:30:23 PM] Anonymous Conversant: right

[1:30:53 PM] Sam Hunter: this is what almost everyone does (and I myself have done but now have identified and made a conscious effort to avoid doing this and still I see sometimes I do it!)

[1:31:07 PM] Anonymous Conversant: yes

[Chester]

If it is true the observer plays a roll in how the observed manifests, then it is likely (to me at least) that if we have a deep desire to be important, we will manifest the very dreams, visions, synchronicities and eventually simple imaginings which we then may erroneously interpret in ways that feed that need to feel we are important.

This suggests an artificial creation of self importance which likely then suppresses one's real importance which is likely found in the fact that each of us are part of the whole (my own view, my own opinion) and thus inherently important. In addition, each of us appears unique (again my opinion only) and thus if each of us is unique and each of us are intrinsic to the makeup of the whole, how important we are is only a debate held by one's ego and the ego is restricted all and only to the mind of one lifetime or at best one's individuated essence if such a thing continues. If this is the case... then I can definitely agree that there is indeed a purpose to life - that being one and only one thing which applies universally - and that purpose is...

to live!

hahaha see how I ended this with an imposition of my view as an example?

Yet this is my view but I apply this view as true today, true only to myself and maybe I will change my mind tomorrow.

The obvious conundrum is - no one knows! Unless perhaps someone knows this. Didn't Socrates beat me to that one? Is that my ego wondering? yep

[Chester]

I find myself living on a planet.

I notice there are over 7 billion folks like me also living here.

I discovered via my experience that many folks effect the reality experience of many other folks and I term this dynamic - entanglement.

We do not just effect each other through what we do, we also effect each other through what we write and speak. Yes, our words effect each other.

In a particular instance of this type of experience one could look at someone's words and make a reasonable case that those words started a problem. It seems my response to a few posts in another thread has either started a problem or at least thrown additional gas on the fire. The honest truth is that I read one post and responded to that post not having read any other post in that thread.

Then I read a few other posts and responded to those as well despite never having read the thread title and thus never even considering that the thread may have a focus which my posts didn't align with. I apologized for that thread derailing and asked posts be moved to this thread. I was informed there would be issues with that action which appeared (to me) would make things worse. It was also pointed out to me that threads naturally drift as conversations develop.

Yet I awake this morning to alerts of controversy and realize I played a role.

So I ask a question now.

Do we, on a planet of 7 billion people, sit back and keep our thoughts to ourselves when we feel the words of others could play into a dynamic many have come to experience and thus determine could be harmful to others? Do we keep our own mouths shut? Or... better asked, am I expected to keep my mouth shut? Or refrain from writing my own words which might make enough sense to others that perhaps one who might fall down the rabbit hole might instead sidestep that rabbit hole?

A forum seems to me to be a place where we can discuss matters. If someone declares the Earth is flat and I have not just an opinion, but evidence that it is round - just because my view might be perceived by the flat Earthers as some sort of attack... does that make it so? Why can my thoughts (backed by experience which is a form of testimony) be blocked or rejected or attacked and that be right yet what I was perceived to have done is wrong?

Why can it not be seen as possibly a more accurate truth that may lead to the actual truth if only a fair exchange of ideas can be had civilly on a medium which at least in part is meant for this very function?

I just don't get it. I can handle healthy exchange. Come on over to my thread and let's discuss reincarnation. What you might find is that I happen to be wide open to the possibility and actually like the concept and hope that we all may have the opportunities life beyond the death of the body provide no matter how that manifests.

At the same time, just because something like reincarnation may exits does not now solve the mystery of who is the real Mary Queen of Scotts. Yet also I find it difficult to choose who is the real Mary Queen of Scotts as there are thousands of folks who claim to be. What makes far more sense is the possibility that folks have discovered an affinity with the stories and legends surrounding Mary Queen of Scotts which have excited the archetypes that reside in the deeper aspects of their consciousness. Through this dynamic, they create the visions, dreams, synchronicities and imaginings which they then interpret as validations of their theory. This also provides ordinary people (like most of us... certainly like myself) to role play in a way that assist them in feeling important, special, a "world changer" just waiting to be rediscovered and recognized.

I say all the above because this is precisely what I experienced and which fortunately emerged from with the healthier (for all) view I expressed in the last paragraph.

[Chester]

Another thought... what if there were challenges to Corey far sooner than the ones he finally received? What if three years ago on Avalon his posts, which hinted at what he would become, were challenged? I could ask this about others too who made their presence known and then later emerged as distractions disguised as alt media stars and who we can look back on in hindsight and see - wow... look at the monster they have become?

Perhaps we may have spent our time focused on folks (and the information they provide) like this excellent interview (http://jandeane81.com/threads/8167-The-One-Truth-Forum-interviews-Gary-Heseltine) brought to us by this very forum.

I can speak for myself... there is a part of me (a dark aspect of my being in this one life) that is attracted to calling out what I think is actions which I have come to believe may be harmful to others (as well as the one generating these actions). And this usually flares up drama. Yes... drama.

Yet, it is my understanding that the difference between a child and an adult is measured by how one handles matters such as discussions where two or more folks have divergent views. This is all I hope to achieve here on the forums I read, belong to and post.... healthy discussions that, at the end of the lovely day, help us see better what may be not just our own truth - but THE truth.

[lcam88]

It would seem you are gifted Sam. You polarize people in your "entangling" effect. A term "charisma" is thrown around when such gifted individuals stimulate positive responses.

Indeed there is a very fine balance required; you must send a message that has enough energy to be received, [ir]rationalized and provoke some "meaningful" response.

If you find you are getting negative responses perhaps one option is to ponder whether your message helps build the little fire a group is huddled about, or whether it appears to extinguish those flames, perhaps provoking a response with protective meanings.

People are idiots. Sometimes it is difficult to see or understand new things and so, maybe, its better to just let them keep looking at what they think they see. But, I'm not charismatic, you see.

[Chester]

It would seem you are gifted Sam. You polarize people in your "entangling" effect. A term "charisma" is thrown around when such gifted individuals stimulate positive responses.

Indeed there is a very fine balance required; you must send a message that has enough energy to be received, [ir]rationalized and provoke some "meaningful" response.

If you find you are getting negative responses perhaps one option is to ponder whether your message helps build the little fire a group is huddled about, or whether it appears to extinguish those flames, perhaps provoking a response with protective meanings.

People are idiots. Sometimes it is difficult to see or understand new things and so, maybe, its better to just let them keep looking at what they think they see. But, I'm not charismatic, you see.

I received both responses. Behind the scenes my posts were appreciated. I just happen to have motivations and abilities to post what sometimes might be taken controversially by a single individual and/or a small group.

I ask this - is it the one who might polarize the one who claims the Earth is indeed actually flat and makes videos about this and writes blogs and sells books all about this or is it the ones who challenge these claims? Or... is it both?

Should we all stop "talking"? (posting?) If you do, guess what then you are labeled as - "passive aggressive."

See how it goes? This is life. People speak and then people respond. Even ignoring the conversation is a statement.

[Dreamtimer]

lcam88, you may not be charismatic but you are funny. People could be smarter if they were raised better.

Sometimes I do just let people see what they want. And then I watch circumstances teach them a lesson (or try).

When they refuse to learn then they really are stupid.

Emotions can also make people stupid. Egos are easily bruised and people don't want to be wrong.

The ego is part of survival and motivation. We need to be raised so that we control it rather than the reverse.

Part of our general stupidity is our emotional immaturity. We can't listen and work together because we need to be 'right'.

[Chester]

Let's go further Icam88...

Let's discuss the possibility I raised regarding the feeding of the archetypes and how the waking state individuated egoic mind interacts with the dynamic of the whole being to bring forth via interactive relationship the "individuated being" seems to have with what appears to the waking state individuated egoic mind to be an external reality whereby that reality is excited and thus returns reflections that so many folks interpret these reflections as validations of the theory of their individuated egoic mind.

Its my opinion that if folks can recognize this dynamic and this reaction, some who are so emotionally attached to their theories may instead become less attached and that would result in a better understanding of how the reality works and a better understanding of who and what we actually are and what we can actually do at the level of the individuated being.

I will again speak from experience - I can now talk freely and without polarity to others who believe they are the reincarnation of Horus as I now have a deeper understanding (of course this is all and only my theory though Jung and others who have garnered respect from an informed community) of how another can actually come to that belief. Yet simultaneously I can also be prepared to take a different route if that individual goes to the next level where followers become enchanted and then the next thing you know, there's a major distraction machine... call it ScamTV selling false hope.

[Dreamtimer]

Snake oil salesmen would always find someone willing to buy their wares. Towns and folk would warn each other and maybe he wouldn't be allowed in town to take advantage of people. They weren't stupid. Just lacking in experience and knowledge. A good salesman can close the deal. The buyer may never be able to know all the facts.

Communities would have wise men/women and leaders to help protect them.

I'm the modern world we have to be our own wise ones, our own keepers. And we can help each other with relationships of trust. The ego is always there ready to take attention and call the shots.

[ERK]

My ego gets caught up engaging in the tales~ period. I have gone against my personal word of not feeding the monster. Ok, time to take my own advice. It's all ego.

[lcam88]

The ego is part of survival and motivation. We need to be raised so that we control it rather than the reverse.

Part of our general stupidity is our emotional immaturity. We can't listen and work together because we need to be 'right'.

I will take being funny as a complement. Thanks.

Maybe there is a bit more to emotional maturity than a common view might suggest, being "right" has strong survival value. The ego issue certainly adds to the subject-matter of emotional maturity, that is to say.


Communities would have wise men/women and leaders to help protect them.

Unless they hold their "wise men/women" back from such a role. Queue Sam's predicament.


Let's go further Icam88...

Let's discuss the possibility I raised regarding the feeding of the archetypes and how the waking state individuated egoic mind interacts with the dynamic of the whole being to bring forth via interactive relationship the "individuated being" seems to have with what appears to the waking state individuated egoic mind to be an external reality whereby that reality is excited and thus returns reflections that so many folks interpret these reflections as validations of the theory of their individuated egoic mind.

You lost me. I only understand my big words. :)

By whole being, do you mean the community, or something more (like the spirit) of a single individual?

What is an "Individuated being"?

Do you mean simply to say that feeding archetypes inflates the ego resulting in further personal emotional vestment to fantasy. The externalization of excitement in turn [hopefully] generates excitement in others so that when excitement is shared, a sense of auto-validation of the vestments and fantasy is created... ...and cause the fantasy to be accepted as more than just real... ...the inflated ego is further inflated. That then we further feed the archetypes?

Sounds like Wall Street.



Its my opinion that if folks can recognize this dynamic and this reaction, some who are so emotionally attached to their theories may instead become less attached and that would result in a better understanding of how the reality works and a better understanding of who and what we actually are and what we can actually do at the level of the individuated being.


:) an idealist.

If only.

Maybe people require pain for such a recognition of the dynamic. Seriously, the problem is much more widespread than this online forum. I'm not sure if people simply don't think, or if they are performing as in accordance to some predefined set of rules and routines.



I will again speak from experience - I can now talk freely and without polarity to others who believe they are the reincarnation of Horus as I now have a deeper understanding (of course this is all and only my theory though Jung and others who have garnered respect from an informed community) of how another can actually come to that belief. Yet simultaneously I can also be prepared to take a different route if that individual goes to the next level where followers become enchanted and then the next thing you know, there's a major distraction machine... call it ScamTV selling false hope.

Reincarnation of Horus? WTF man. Are you making this up?

Here is a song that popped into my head upon reading this Horus thing:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7VwNDbfAhI

[ERK]

LOL, I believe Sam did once really believe he was the reincarnation of Horus. LOL, I do chuckle at these notions. How many people have been the reincarnation of Cleopatra? King Tut? List goes on. Edited to add: I think it's great Sam can look at this all now with objectivity and detachment. I think the longer one keeps working on themselves they can relax the ego portion a bit and take a good hard look and have a laugh at it too.

"Everyone seems to want to be the reincarnation of a heroic and noble soul, a Mary Queen of Scots, a Charlemagne, or a Chief Geronimo! No one seems to come up with stories of reincarnation as a lowly **** boy, a medieval whore, or an Adolf Hitler?"

"Stories of reincarnation and past lives offer an abundance of hope with an absence of evidence. Feelings and anecdotes of unexplained coincidences are not evidence [8]. I understand the hope and desire for having more than one chance to live a life. But hope and wishful-thinking is not proof. Not close. As a former yoga monk turned skeptic, I confess I used to believe in reincarnation– in that past life."

http://skepticmeditations.com/tag/reincarnation/

[lcam88]

A vague memory, and I can't even say it was me, is of a world illuminated by red light and hot, in the memory, it seemed artificially 2D, almost like an old nintendo game. Very big sun and a fish-eye wide angle view all around as viewed from atop a rock or small ledge... A glimpse only. I recalled this about a year ago or so, and that is why I'm on this fascination now about Proto-Saturn.

I have a few prenatal memories, pleasant ones, and then my first memory is at about 2 years old. I can never tell whether remembrances of experiences of other individuals in a different time are memories or imagination.

Many things can be revealed in memories/thoughts or imagination but that does not mean those revelations or memories necessarily require being treated egocentrically much less as a possession. That type of impulse can dilute the experience IMO.

And indeed, it seems that claiming possession of thoughts or ideas, even memories of this life seem equally nonsensical.

[Chester]

I like to use the analogy of the iceberg

We have seen pictures of icebergs where the small portion above the water is actually a small percentage of the overall iceberg.

I see the individuated me much like an iceberg. I relate my conscious, waking state "me" to the part of the iceberg that is above the surface. I relate my sub conscious (still an individuated aspect of "me") to the part of the iceberg below the surface of the water. We know from understanding physics (mass and gravity) that the submerged portion of the iceberg has a far greater impact on the actions of the whole iceberg than the tiny portion seen above the surface of the water.

The human ego of the waking state aspect of one's overall consciousness seems to (in most cases) express in a way that it could be determined by most observes suggests that ego has a vastly inflated view of "itself" in relation to its entire individuated being.

Why I keep emphasizing individuated is that just as the part of the iceberg which is below the surface is immersed in the commonly experienced sea, so is ones individuated consciousness immersed in the common sea of all consciousness. And that seam between the two is in a constant and fluid state of change. There's no hard seam... it is molecule by molecule changing states from ice to water and thus from being directly connected to the iceberg to state change where it becomes unconnected. In addition, it is possible some of the iceberg above the water melts back into this same sea or before a part of it that has melted evaporates where eventually it is rained back down upon Earth and may be rained on land and on and on and on does the metaphor carry us - surely this can be "seen" with the mind's eye?

So a case can be made via the metaphor that water is water and all expressions of water (such as ice) is still water, yet I could point to different expressions of ice and name each one and now we have individual solidified expressions of all and only... water.

This metaphor, for me, is an example of how the All that Is reveals itself via metaphor that is reflected on many levels. I see the theoretical archetypes as working symbiotically with "individual expressions" (like me or you as we manifest through a physical body) as well as the "me or you" that many of us hope is, desire is something that remains individuated beyond the death of the physical body (and thus also may have existed before that body came into form).

My opinion - The "soul' is a theoretical construct of our hopes, dreams and desires. Am I saying the soul is not real? What is real?

In http://skepticmeditations.com/2015/03/26/unusual-experiences-of-mindfulness/ posted by ERK is found this quote:


In Kornfield’s dissertation, he was not as concerned with low-level “unusual” or positive effects of mindfulness practice. He emphasized that the greatest results were due to classical Buddhism itself, that mindfulness transforms the meditator to see through the illusion of the ego-self and to recognize the impermanence of an illusory world.

So from the point of view of "The Absolute" all is illusion. Yet how much illusion is it when we drop that heavy brick on our bare toe?

Thus my view is that it is -

BOTH! Real and illusion.

Thus I am Horus (and I will reveal the evidence!) and my view that I am Horus is all and only egoic driven illusion which, because of my ability to create, I brought forth "real" evidence that supports my lovely theory.

This last point can be summarized by the following and I state this as a TRUTH (though it is at best only my opinion).


We actually do create our reality yet also, we create our illusions. Via our seamless connection to all reality, we generate the reflections from this strange dream machine which often we interpret in ways we then validate what we wish to be true... but that this doesn't actually make these things true."

[ERK]

Seems that meditators, mystics, and people of faith advocate shutting “off” your brain so you can experience the holy spirit or altered states of consciousness. The intuition is worshipped and intellect is ridiculed. Why? Ego, or thinking for yourself, is considered dangerous to faith. It very well may be dangerous to faith, when your spiritual teacher, prophet, or guru is supposed to have all the answers. So, to follow one’s own reasoning and feelings, warn the gurus, leads you astray “off the path”. Of course, the gurus have a vested interest in you not thinking for yourself.


more here: http://skepticmeditations.com/2014/04/02/21-great-reasons-to-think-and-be-a-skeptic/




We think of ourselves as savvy, informed individuals who approach the world with discerning eyes. But the truth is that we’re often remarkably gullible when it comes to pseudoscience and quackery. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it is surprisingly easy to tell quackery apart from real science.


http://skepticmeditations.com/2014/06/08/how-to-quack-proof-yourself-against-pseudoscience/

[Dreamtimer]

I don't see this life in this body as the full story of my or anyone's existence. It's the state we're in now. We're in a different state when we're not in a body. It's all forms of energy. We have a kind of consciousness that can house itself in a body or exist without it.

I don't fuss over reconciling, say, numbers of souls and numbers of bodies. Souls are outside of time and could be from anywhere in the galaxy or universe.

My reincarnation story is boring and mundane. No one here's talking about it. Perhaps that's why we don't hear about the average/normal reincarnation stories. They're not exciting.

[Chester]

Snake oil salesmen would always find someone willing to buy their wares. Towns and folk would warn each other and maybe he wouldn't be allowed in town to take advantage of people. They weren't stupid. Just lacking in experience and knowledge. A good salesman can close the deal. The buyer may never be able to know all the facts.

Communities would have wise men/women and leaders to help protect them.

I'm the modern world we have to be our own wise ones, our own keepers. And we can help each other with relationships of trust. The ego is always there ready to take attention and call the shots.

Great post and points - yet still... if we did not have these salesmen, perhaps the world would be experienced in better ways by us all. By saying that, I call upon all snake oil sellers to stop it.

[Chester]

http://skepticmeditations.com/2014/06/08/how-to-quack-proof-yourself-against-pseudoscience/


from this link -

Six Red Flags Of Pseudoscience Claims

1. Claims of Secret Knowledge – The so-called esoteric “sciences” like yoga, pranayama, or energy healing are almost always claims of secret knowledge available to the specially initiated. Typically, this secret knowledge is given to you through spiritual rites, mystical experience, or religious indoctrination. Real science is not secret.

2. “It’s All A Big Conspiracy” – The claim is that the scientific community, Big Pharma, Big Government, Big Corporations, and Big Religions are hiding the real truth from us. Vast conspiracies, encompassing doctors, scientists, and public health officials exist only in the minds of quacks. The people who make these conspiracy claims apparently have access to some “secret knowledge” kept from the rest of us.

3. False Flattery – Being “special”, chosen, or initiated into secret knowledge makes us feel, well…special, chosen, and “above” anyone else who is not. The exclusivity of many religious beliefs, gurus, and spiritual teachings apparently give us access to esoteric knowledge. To the initiated, to the graduates of esoterica, it’s flattering to think you may know more than others or are specially chosen.

4. Toxins Are The New Evil – Juice cleanses, detox diets, and colonics are purges. The pseudoscientific belief is we are surrounded by poisons that get into our systems. Trouble is toxins are invisible and all around us, like demons. Nevertheless, pseudoscience claims that toxins are released into our environment and our body by “evil” corporations, drug companies, or inorganic foods. But the real science says the chemicals responsible for most diseases are nicotine, alcohol, and opiates.

5. “Brilliant Heretic” as the Source of Information – Believers argue that science is transformed by brilliant heretics whose fabulous theories are initially rejected, but ultimately accepted as the new orthodoxy. Mystical revelations or pseudoscientific ideas dreamt up by mavericks are not “science” nor are they reliable sources of information. Revolutionary scientific ideas are not dreamed up; they are the inevitable result of massive, collaborative data collection, that gets tested over and over in labs to be either proven false and then discarded, or to be replicated and found true as a practical theory.

6. Using Esoteric Scientific Theories – Quacks love to dazzle followers with sciency language. They invoke esoteric scientific theories, like Quantum mechanics or atomic particles, for example. But these are incredibly difficult scientific disciplines, heavy on advanced math. If you don’t have a degree in either one, you aren’t qualified to pontificate on them.

When we don’t know to look for these six flags we easily fall prey to pseudoscience and sciency-sounding esoteric products or claims. Quack claims come at us daily, from many people and from many sources.

Interesting that this (to me) is hard core skepticism - I am not a subscriber to hard core yet what I have found healthy is to make sure when I project opinions, I don't present them as truth. When someone projects woo - woo (even if it may be actually true!) as truth, this seems to always lead to divison.

Omni's great three words - "Beliefs divide us." My opinion is that this is too often true.

[Chester]

Incredibly (yet my theory is that this is exactly how the dream machine works), I made this post just a few hours ago in this thread (http://jandeane81.com/threads/8142-We-are-A-I?p=841940699&viewfull=1#post841940699) and specifically stated -

These mystery traditions are often referred to as the perennial philosophy.

I just now went to my e-mail and BAM there's a new e-mail from Tim Freke.

I open the e-mail and there is a video being promoted.

I begin to listen and at 3:30 ish in Tim mentions a book he read years ago entitled, "The Perennial Philosophy" (http://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Philosophy-Interpretation-Great-Mystics/dp/0061724947/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1447361543&sr=8-3&keywords=huxley) by Aldus Huxley.

This is an example of how "the reality mechanism" seems to work with regards to that which is of most importance to me and that which I might (in the moment) have great enthusiasm for. Again just my opinion... this is the heart of how synchronicity works.

When younger, I interpreted these experiences as the universe "telling me something." Boy did that make me special.

Now I simply see it as the way the illusory external reality expresses itself to my illusory egoic "self." Lot's of fun yet not to be taken too seriously.

4WaRwVKwX7A

[Chester]

I don't see this life in this body as the full story of my or anyone's existence. It's the state we're in now. We're in a different state when we're not in a body. It's all forms of energy. We have a kind of consciousness that can house itself in a body or exist without it.

I don't fuss over reconciling, say, numbers of souls and numbers of bodies. Souls are outside of time and could be from anywhere in the galaxy or universe.

My reincarnation story is boring and mundane. No one here's talking about it. Perhaps that's why we don't hear about the average/normal reincarnation stories. They're not exciting.

I don't like to either. In fact, I e-mailed Tim that he inspired me to take his idea of paralogical perception and expand that to a term I created called, "Trilogical perception" which implies the leaving of space for the potential of the individuated being surviving beyond the body yet still not the All that Is.

[Chester]

Wanna be Horus? Just call him up...

LN9XAAndIxE

and a good one to end on

YsgSlvjOZ4k

[bsbray]

Six Red Flags Of Pseudoscience Claims

1. Claims of Secret Knowledge – The so-called esoteric “sciences” like yoga, pranayama, or energy healing are almost always claims of secret knowledge available to the specially initiated. Typically, this secret knowledge is given to you through spiritual rites, mystical experience, or religious indoctrination. Real science is not secret.

2. “It’s All A Big Conspiracy” – The claim is that the scientific community, Big Pharma, Big Government, Big Corporations, and Big Religions are hiding the real truth from us. Vast conspiracies, encompassing doctors, scientists, and public health officials exist only in the minds of quacks. The people who make these conspiracy claims apparently have access to some “secret knowledge” kept from the rest of us.

3. False Flattery – Being “special”, chosen, or initiated into secret knowledge makes us feel, well…special, chosen, and “above” anyone else who is not. The exclusivity of many religious beliefs, gurus, and spiritual teachings apparently give us access to esoteric knowledge. To the initiated, to the graduates of esoterica, it’s flattering to think you may know more than others or are specially chosen.

4. Toxins Are The New Evil – Juice cleanses, detox diets, and colonics are purges. The pseudoscientific belief is we are surrounded by poisons that get into our systems. Trouble is toxins are invisible and all around us, like demons. Nevertheless, pseudoscience claims that toxins are released into our environment and our body by “evil” corporations, drug companies, or inorganic foods. But the real science says the chemicals responsible for most diseases are nicotine, alcohol, and opiates.

5. “Brilliant Heretic” as the Source of Information – Believers argue that science is transformed by brilliant heretics whose fabulous theories are initially rejected, but ultimately accepted as the new orthodoxy. Mystical revelations or pseudoscientific ideas dreamt up by mavericks are not “science” nor are they reliable sources of information. Revolutionary scientific ideas are not dreamed up; they are the inevitable result of massive, collaborative data collection, that gets tested over and over in labs to be either proven false and then discarded, or to be replicated and found true as a practical theory.

6. Using Esoteric Scientific Theories – Quacks love to dazzle followers with sciency language. They invoke esoteric scientific theories, like Quantum mechanics or atomic particles, for example. But these are incredibly difficult scientific disciplines, heavy on advanced math. If you don’t have a degree in either one, you aren’t qualified to pontificate on them.


I agree with your description of this, Sam, that it's "hard core skepticism." It seems really more of a reaction of the academic/industrial establishment towards a very real social shift that they won't be able to stop. There is a lot of woo-woo stuff out there, but I think the most harmful of all of the woo-woo stuff by far is coming from so-called experts, especially the medical experts that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year with prescription medicine, chemo/radiation therapy and other "treatment." And even though this happens in the US it is not accepted practice in many other nations, and the US is far from #1 in health care by just about any bracket we could find. Always following the line set aside for us by authorities is at least as dangerous as stepping out on a limb with someone else's nonsense.

I actually strongly disagree with every single sentiment expressed in the above list of points with the exception of #3, with a caveat. We are all special, and valuable simply for being unique human beings. Esoteric knowledge doesn't make anyone any more valuable than anyone else in the grand scheme of things, but what do scientists have to do with esotericism? By point #6 above, whoever wrote this article should take their own advice and not "pontificate" upon things in which they are not qualified. In fact I wonder how they are qualifying themselves to even write this article in the first place. Ultimately we get back to having to be accepted by academic authorities, like a modern day priestly class, to have our thoughts approved for public consumption. Not to mention it's no secret that the typical technically-minded person does not also have a forte in liberal arts type subjects (the whole left brain/right brain split), let alone anything more esoteric than that.

[Chester]

I am unsure which is worse, dogmatism or hard core skepticism... wait, perhaps they can be seen as one and the same.

[ERK]

The above was written bu this man:

Atheist Ex-Monk
window-light-659525_1280
CC0 1.0
For 14 years, I was a monk. After leaving my religious profession, I stopped believing in supernatural entities. I felt alone as an atheist, ex-monk in a world of believers.

That is, until I joined The Clergy Project.

The Clergy Project is a network of 6491 current and former religious clergy that do not hold supernatural beliefs. In a private online community The Clergy Project members may safely discuss being a clergy person who has rejected the supernatural, the family stresses related to their rejecting the supernatural, and the unique challenges of leaving their religious career.

Roughly 95% of The Clergy Project members are currently within or formerly from Christian denominations2: Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and so on. I’m one of the exceptions being formerly from an Eastern-Hindu Swami Order. The Clergy Project featured a story about me on their public website.

Below is an edited version of my story that originally appeared on The Clergy Project

I was known at the time as Brahmachari Scott. For 14 years, I was ordained a monk of Self-Realization Fellowship Monastic Order, a religious organization founded in the U.S. in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda, the acclaimed Yogi who wrote Autobiography of a Yogi and was the first Indian-Swami to permanently make his home in the West.

Mom raised me Roman Catholic. I attended weekly Catechism classes and Sunday masses. By age 16, I rejected church doctrine–my questions were terminated with the same refrain, “you just have to have faith”. I stopped believing and attending church, and became indifferent towards organized religion. What I had been taught to believe about the supernatural as a Catholic‒-about God, Jesus, and the saints‒-only slept for a few years. Later on my beliefs would be dramatically reawakened when I discovered Eastern religion and meditation.

Autobiography-of-a-YogiAt age 19, in college and at a party, a buddy’s Uncle introduced me to a book: Autobiography of a Yogi. The Autobiography captivated me. I devoted myself as a student, meditated twice daily, and regularly attended Self-Realization Fellowship temple services. The endless spiritual answers, meditation experiences, and like-minded religious friends were comforting.

I quit college, sold my small business, and left home for good without telling family. I was going to live as a renunciant at the Hidden Valley Ashram Center near San Diego.

Monastery routine consisted of meditation, classes, recreation, 9-to-5 jobs: ministering to a worldwide religious congregation at the Self-Realization Fellowship churches, temples, meditation centers and groups, and spiritual retreats. Each monk received $40 per month cash allowance, room and board, paid medical care, and all-you-could-eat lacto-ovo-vegetarian buffet.

To say that I renounced my quest for truth by leaving the Self-Realization Order would be incorrect. Ironically, reliable “realization” came as I questioned and thought deeply about what I was taught by religious tradition and spiritual authorities.

CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Transitioning from the monastery and back into the world took years. Day-by-day, I met new people, challenged old ideas, built a career, and went back to university to complete bachelors and masters degrees.

Only family and close friends knew that I was an ordained monk in a Hindu-Swami Order. While I read an article in Scientific American magazine I admitted to myself “I’m atheist”–a skeptic of supernatural entities. Then I began to come out to others that my 14 years as a meditating monk lead me to atheism and skepticism.

Beliefs in supernatural entities adds layers of complexity that aren’t necessary. The world makes more sense as it is without postulating that there’s some divine being who is somehow in charge of things.

I’ve never regretted leaving the monastery, nor looked back after renouncing religious life. Down-to-earth, practical pursuits are enough to fill me with wonder: things such as cycling on backcountry roads, engaging in discourse on ethics or business, or volunteering to help community or hanging out with family and friends.

[lcam88]

I don't see this life in this body as the full story of my or anyone's existence. It's the state we're in now. We're in a different state when we're not in a body. It's all forms of energy. We have a kind of consciousness that can house itself in a body or exist without it.

I bolded the undeniable truth. I'm not sure about any of the rest anymore. Maybe the body is actually a crutch and consciousness is consciousness regardless.


Seems that meditators, mystics, and people of faith advocate shutting “off” your brain so you can experience the holy spirit or altered states of consciousness. The intuition is worshipped and intellect is ridiculed. Why? Ego, or thinking for yourself, is considered dangerous to faith.

Interesting observations and good questions here. In fact no one answer fits everyone; people share experiences that they found meaningful.

In a certain way, I'm advocating that faith in general is dangerous. Insofar as you entertain theories, fine, but if you start ignoring evidence in light of the beautiful theory in mind, then there is but little difference between the two.


The good news is that it is surprisingly easy to tell quackery apart from real science.

That is true, you look at the evidence and ask questions. Science these days has become orthodox science or protestant science, that is to say, faith based science. It seems there are only a select few who are willing to stay pure to the scientific method. So real science is actually quite a rare bird.

It has been three days now that I'm examining the Electric model to see how and where the science fails. And indeed it may just be the real thing, actually based on good observation and reasoning.. I have yet to find evidence that contradicts or that is ill founded by evidence of some kind.

Yes there is quite a bit of theorising and quite large speculations on the table with the Proto-saturn idea, but as yet, I cannot say it is impossible or even improbable. Part of the problem is that modern scientific knowledge is too mathematical and too complex to really understand without being an expert who believes in the math. That is where the Electric model appears so plausible, it is based on simple principles that are easy to understand. Math is a tool used to describe, model and even predict observations; it is not a source of truth in and of itself. To base a theory on math, therefore, is obviously an ill conceived idea. You describe a theory with math and then, with a model, you can make predictions that can be tested or verified.

That is unless you choose to ignore belief and theory all together and just know with your thinking mind.

–––

Oh Sam, I do like your reasoning and the way you express yourself. However, I feel inclined to add a few comments that may take the tone of a retort. In spite of its tone, please consider this to be an actual real point and a real question.

Insofar as you say


Yet simultaneously I can also be prepared to take a different route if that individual goes to the next level where followers become enchanted and then the next thing you know, there's a major distraction machine... call it ScamTV selling false hope.

The protection of followers from scam aspect is clearly a call from the Ego. Perhaps a defensive one based on your values and the "Golden rule", how you would like to be protected from a scam not completely obvious to you. It is a new and different angle of the ego that the you have identified in a ScamTV feed that has been creating an apparent following based on blind faith.

And as I declare above that your values and intellectual discourse, are admirable to me, I find myself naturally positioning myself in alignment with the ideas you are sharing, my ego at work.

But you must also know that for someone vibrating with the ideas you are attacking, that same egoistic propensity to defend likeness and the investments made are going to surface.

Pardon me for vulgar or harsh word that follow:

Examining the situation from as distant a position from the ego as possible, an analogy: If I held my sphincter tight for a whole day, and then excreted the entire holding of my bowels in the middle of a conference room floor at a venue you and I hypothetically attend, and you happen to step on the pile, it would not be your first impulse to go and tweet about how smelly a certain spec you may find on your shoe happens to be. It would be appalling that you even had to witness the event.

The main differences here on TOT is that you happened across a mind dump of some creative and even talented forum member. While the mess in the middle of the floor is likely to get lots of attention and may even become topic for the next half hour or even the rest of the day, it all begs to wonder why so much attention is given to something so crappy. If you indeed recognize the low levels of value both from the ego and mind excrement on screen, it too would beg to wonder why your acute and well refined attention is due to the subject matter?

One possible answer indeed is that you are being a crank. You are tearing down the walls of fantasy entertainment that someone with nothing to do has bought a ticket into. I may be wrong, of course. Hell, I certainly would disagree with that and I may even think your actions noble.

Strictly speaking something like:



In Kornfield’s dissertation, he was not as concerned with low-level “unusual” or positive effects of mindfulness practice. He emphasized that the greatest results were due to classical Buddhism itself, that mindfulness transforms the meditator to see through the illusion of the ego-self and to recognize the impermanence of an illusory world.

So from the point of view of "The Absolute" all is illusion. Yet how much illusion is it when we drop that heavy brick on our bare toe?

Thus my view is that it is -

BOTH! Real and illusion.

Thus I am Horus (and I will reveal the evidence!) and my view that I am Horus is all and only egoic driven illusion which, because of my ability to create, I brought forth "real" evidence that supports my lovely theory.

This last point can be summarized by the following and I state this as a TRUTH (though it is at best only my opinion).

We actually do create our reality yet also, we create our illusions. Via our seamless connection to all reality, we generate the reflections from this strange dream machine which often we interpret in ways we then validate what we wish to be true... but that this doesn't actually make these things true."


A well refined and tuned position you present as argument for your position. Something that aspires to the pleasant acceptance for individuals who seek zen type of synchronistic coexistence with ideals of some guru preaching. Perhaps. Perhaps others are in awe of your creative intellect to inflect on the meaning of spirit, life and mind.

But it may also appears you are taking an absolutely abstract idealism, conflating it with ego and putting it out there as some cornerstone of validity and truth to then support absurdity. Absurdity insofar as my analogy with the feces in the middle of the conference room.

You do realise your actions create your reality too, just as ego, thought and even the mere focus of your attention. Not just your imagination. That is all very real (just as it is imaginary).

So I'll say again:


If you find you are getting negative responses perhaps one option is to ponder whether your message helps build the little fire a group is huddled about, or whether it appears to extinguish those flames, perhaps provoking a response with protective meanings.

Me, I value individualism over collectivism. I don't care to be part of the herd; I think the herd mentality is quite retarded. That, perhaps, is why I am not charismatic. And it (as well as my ego) is also the basis from where my curiosity about this volition to protect the herd that you are exhibiting may come from.

So What real value is there in this investment to you?

PS: You know you can't be a reincarnate of Horus. An immortal doesn't die; you would have to be Horus himself in all his splendor and as large as life.

[Greenbarry]

As a former yoga monk turned skeptic, I confess
I used to believe in reincarnation– in that past life."url]http://skepticmeditations.com/tag/reincarnation/[/url]
Love It!

[Chester]

I can only respond, Icam88, is that any reader can perceive whatever they desire from my words.

I say this because in one part of your last post (addressing a comment of my own) you seem to have not read what I wrote at all whatsoever as the very point you were making (as if I was missing something) was the very point I made. I find when this happens, there is something deeper in the mix. perhaps in this case there is... or perhaps not.

A reader of my posts can even conclude things that I had not intended. They also can interpret those words in ways that had little or no connection to the communication I meant to convey. Such is the shortcomings of the written word and perhaps even words delivered in any fashion. I hope you enjoy your interpretations, I did.

Now over to "Horus" (a mythical figure).

Let me make this very clear. On or about 2002 I ran across the story of Horus for the first time. I immediately found affinities with the story. I also recognized some uncanny synchronicities. In time I found many more incredibly improbable synchronicities. I also discovered a deep affinity to the underlying archetype(s) I perceived were represented by the story.

In late 2011 I had was in a heightened state of awareness where I concluded I must be the reincarnation of Horus. I was not only completely convinced, I felt that this information was important for National (US) and World security. It was so important that I requested a meeting with a friend of mine so that I could reveal my theory about myself and all the evidences as to why. This friend is a DOD contractor and has been involved in many sensitive areas and of course has friends in all the lovely alphabet agencies. I felt it wise I go to him about this first.

All of the above is 100% true.

Interestingly I soon after experienced a psychosis which landed me in Santo Tomas psychiatric ward (Ciudad de Panama, Panama) on the 8th of January 2012. I was released 8 days later.

Now - not only do I no longer subscribe to this idea, I believe I have discovered the components that made up the idea in the first place and have some interesting theories (related to quantum theory) as to how these components arose in my life. Also through deep introspection I also discovered what I believe now is the "why" these things arose in my life.

My personality makeup also facilitated this experience and I will name a few of these traits.
I am prone to narcissism.
I have a savior complex
I have the makeup of a megalomaniac.

Unlike just about every other poster you will find on these internet forums, on their blogs or on their websites who make extraordinary claims, I have now gone the next step in identifying the likely reasons why I once held these extraordinary views. The reasons I share them is all and only because I believe it might be helpful for others this phenomena be discussed. If someone's interest here is to attack (and some perceive my challenge of others "beliefs" as attacks), then consider my own story above and consider if any reader of this post happens to have similar fantastical thoughts, the reasons for those thoughts may not be based in the truth of them... they may be based on factors they can only discover if they (with courage) explore deep within their own psyche.

For those who have never experienced anomalous events that are so fantastical their rational mind has a hard time believing it... then it is possible the readers mind won't open to any of this much less explore the what and the why.

One difference between my own story and those who simply have their own imagination and perhaps similar "looks" to someone who may have lived before (in the case of identifying "who someone was in a past life), my strange connections were primarily based on facts which aligned all too closely with the key elements of the story of the mythical figure, Horus. I had a doctor of mathematics analyze the odds and though he never believed me, he did state that the odds of the factual matching were quite eyebrow raising.

Fortunately now, I see it all in a different light. And I no longer believe I am the reincarnation of anyone. One reason why is that I still do not have a solid hold on which "I" that I am which in turn might be an "I" that reincarnates fully in tact. My views about all this go deeper than simple individuation. My recommendation to folks (not that it matters) is... consider who "I" is. Consider the possibility of a paradox and even... a triadox (did I make a new word?)

[lcam88]

I can only respond, Icam88, is that any reader can perceive whatever they desire from my words.

I say this because in one part of your last post (addressing a comment of my own) you seem to have not read what I wrote at all whatsoever as the very point you were making (as if I was missing something) was the very point I made. I find when this happens, there is something deeper in the mix. perhaps in this case there is... or perhaps not.

:)


A reader of my posts can even conclude things that I had not intended. They also can interpret those words in ways that had little or no connection to the communication I meant to convey. Such is the shortcomings of the written word and perhaps even words delivered in any fashion. I hope you enjoy your interpretations, I did.


I'm glad you enjoyed it too.

I think you are gleaning to a reason why some people react strangely to some of your posts that I hadn't considered.



Now over to "Horus" (a mythical figure).

Let me make this very clear. On or about 2002 I ran across the story of Horus for the first time. I immediately found affinities with the story. I also recognized some uncanny synchronicities. In time I found many more incredibly improbable synchronicities. I also discovered a deep affinity to the underlying archetype(s) I perceived were represented by the story.

In late 2011 I had was in a heightened state of awareness where I concluded I must be the reincarnation of Horus. I was not only completely convinced, I felt that this information was important for National (US) and World security. It was so important that I requested a meeting with a friend of mine so that I could reveal my theory about myself and all the evidences as to why. This friend is a DOD contractor and has been involved in many sensitive areas and of course has friends in all the lovely alphabet agencies. I felt it wise I go to him about this first.

All of the above is 100% true.

Interestingly I soon after experienced a psychosis which landed me in Santo Tomas psychiatric ward (Ciudad de Panama, Panama) on the 8th of January 2012. I was released 8 days later.

Now - not only do I no longer subscribe to this idea, I believe I have discovered the components that made up the idea in the first place and have some interesting theories (related to quantum theory) as to how these components arose in my life. Also through deep introspection I also discovered what I believe now is the "why" these things arose in my life.

My personality makeup also facilitated this experience and I will name a few of these traits.
I am prone to narcissism.
I have a savior complex
I have the makeup of a megalomaniac.

Unlike just about every other poster you will find on these internet forums, on their blogs or on their websites who make extraordinary claims, I have now gone the next step in identifying the likely reasons why I once held these extraordinary views. The reasons I share them is all and only because I believe it might be helpful for others this phenomena be discussed. If someone's interest here is to attack (and some perceive my challenge of others "beliefs" as attacks), then consider my own story above and consider if any reader of this post happens to have similar fantastical thoughts, the reasons for those thoughts may not be based in the truth of them... they may be based on factors they can only discover if they (with courage) explore deep within their own psyche.

For those who have never experienced anomalous events that are so fantastical their rational mind has a hard time believing it... then it is possible the readers mind won't open to any of this much less explore the what and the why.

One difference between my own story and those who simply have their own imagination and perhaps similar "looks" to someone who may have lived before (in the case of identifying "who someone was in a past life), my strange connections were primarily based on facts which aligned all too closely with the key elements of the story of the mythical figure, Horus. I had a doctor of mathematics analyze the odds and though he never believed me, he did state that the odds of the factual matching were quite eyebrow raising.

Fortunately now, I see it all in a different light. And I no longer believe I am the reincarnation of anyone. One reason why is that I still do not have a solid hold on which "I" that I am which in turn might be an "I" that reincarnates fully in tact. My views about all this go deeper than simple individuation. My recommendation to folks (not that it matters) is... consider who "I" is. Consider the possibility of a paradox and even... a triadox (did I make a new word?)

+1 to Sam.

I had never imagined there was a plot-line worth writing a bestseller...

And I apologize sincerely to you if the laughs you had with my posting came at too high a price.

I think everyone has a bit of narcissism, savior complex and megalomaniac in them.

As last words, if they are worth anything at this point, 4 or 5 years ago I tried hunting deer. They are very delicate, fleeting and graceful animals that are amazingly quick on their feet. Newbies normally acquire a high power rifle and work from there. I when hunting for them with bow and arrow. I had to learn their behaviors and conquer the elements of their habitat before I could even dream of downing one. You must resist the insects and wait in silence for them to come to you, often within 30 yards of distance, to then have a chance with a bow and arrow... Wild cow are much easier. :/

Analogously, I sometimes wonder if lurking in forums is better than posting in them.

Hats off to you Sam.

[pointessa]

Sam, I think what you are doing here is very important. How many times do we dismiss someone that makes bizarre claims when it is determined that they are psychologically off balance, or what our culture says is off balance ? It's so easy to say someone is bipolar or schizoid and dismiss their experience. So I find this very interesting that you are looking further.

The truth is, where would we be without the brilliant, off balance discoveries that came from people that have been considered mentally ill to some degree or other? How many artists are considered eccentric or insane? I am also one that has been blessed/cursed with the mind of extremes and mad intensities. It makes it very hard to live in this culture and to walk among those that live in an orderly and confined world of established thinking patterns.

I salute you for what you are doing.

[Chester]

It all started when I was six years old. I posted about this anomalous experience here –

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?44353-My-possible-abduction-experience

Start half way down at – “I had recently turned 6 years old.”

In 2002 I read Secret Teachings of All Ages. It is in this book I finally read about the Osirian myth. Osiris was the father of Horus. Isis was the mother of Horus and the wife of Osiris. When I read about Horus I was “intrigued.” In 1986 I had been in a battle with an archontic force where I ended up losing all sight in my left eye. I thought the similarity between how Horus lost his left eye (in battle with the evil Set) and how I had lost mine as interesting.

As time went on, my savior complex progressed. I also became familiar with the mystical metaphor of the living, dying, resurrecting God-Man and saw this relating closely to my father who had died in 1979 via “suicide” (or so they say). Recall Set was the brother of Osiris and was Horus’ uncle. I had always suspected “Uncle Sam” (the US Gov) may have played a role in my father’s demise and found it interesting that Set was Horus’ uncle.

In time, I learned that Horus as well was one of these special living-dying-resurrecting “god-men” and this will be expanded upon further down in this post.

By the time 2010 had rolled around, I decided to see what else Horus and I might have in common. I looked for the most important things. Did Horus have any children? As it turns out, yes he did… Horus had four sons and no daughters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_sons_of_Horus

I had also fathered four sons and no daughters.

One day soon after I thought about my mother’s name which was Mary. In fact, my mother was the 12th Mary in an unbroken lineage of Marys (none the Queen of Scotts). Mary again represents the Virgin Mother Mary and of course we know of her connection to another well known living-dying-resurrecting “god-man.” And though I had considered the possibility several times that I was the reincarnation of Jesus, I also knew there were far too many others who thought the same. In fact, I was once in a facility where the unit I was in housed 45 people, three of which thought they were Jesus (and that didn’t include me!)

Then one day I recalled what my mother had been called her whole life which was not Mary. It was Sissy. And all her family and close friends just called her Sis. So one day I thought that if someone asked my mom who she was, she would reply, “I am Sis.” Drop the “am” and we get Isis!

Now back to my father. In the myth, Osisris was known as “the Green Man.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris

Osiris was known as “the god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead, but more appropriately as the god of transition, resurrection, and regeneration.”

Just Now – this is an uncanny insert which explains how incredible my experience is when it comes to synchronicity… seconds after I copied that one quote from the Osiris link, my “work companion” suddenly messaged the following – I literally mean within 20 seconds or less.

[9:14:44 AM] Batman: been nice knowing you
[9:14:47 AM] Batman: Im dead
[9:14:55 AM] Sam Hunter: what?
[9:15:20 AM] Batman: Judy [his wife] gets up and comes and says Happy Anniversery
[9:15:28 AM] Sam Hunter: “the god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead, but more appropriately as the god of transition, resurrection, and regeneration.”
[9:15:29 AM] Batman: I totally forgot
[9:15:40 AM] Sam Hunter: I just typed that
[9:15:51 AM] Sam Hunter: seconds before you said "I'm dead"
[9:16:00 AM] Batman: wow

Why I threw this in is that this is an example of the primary principle I have used to “draw all these conclusions” about why I am Horus. Even now that i view this phenomena in a completely different way (which i will explain in another post), I get Horus synchronicities left and right.

Now back to the reasons. As I mentioned earlier, Osiris was known as The Green Man. Well, when my father was discovered dead I was called to the scene. But I was not allowed to see my father. The police would not let me in his office apartment. As time went on and based on my theory as to my father having led a “double life,” I had not been totally convinced my Dad was actually dead. I thought it was possible he may have faked his death. So years after (sometime in the late 80s), I asked the family attorney who was the man who found my father dead to describe what he saw. He reluctantly complied. He said, “When I found your father, I knew he had been dead for days because he was all green.”

In late 2011 I had ran across information that the archons can take on the shape of amoebas. If you read my experience when I was six years old, this concept suggested to me that what happened to me when six was "archontic." Then I looked up the Archons in Wikipedia. There I found the following in this link -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon_%28Gnosticism%29

There I saw this -


The Ophites accepted the existence of these seven archons (Origen, Contra Celsum, vi. 31; a nearly identical list is given in On the Origin of the World):

and the seventh said this -



Horaios

The Moon.
Feminine name: Wealth.
Prophets: Michaiah, Nahum.
From Jaroah? or "light"? or Horus?



There were other less significant synchronicities to the story but when we look at the primary factors of the Horus myth and actual facts of my own life, I make odds high that if anyone on Earth today might be Horus reincarnated, it would likely be me.

Or…. could this all be something else?

I will explore this something else in a future post.

[Chester]

Ohhh and to add an important part of the story. I did not just fantasize this. I took it seriously. I was so convinced and took it so seriously that in December of 2011 while I was living in Panama City, Panama, I set up an appointment with a good friend who also happens to be a "defense contractor" and I am not talking some low level contractor. I won't elaborate further as to his credentials and responsibilities. I will say that he has direct contacts with folks "on the other side" (as he phrased it) - meaning folks in official capacities with various intelligence agencies.

I met with him and his younger brother (also my friend) and someone he brought to the meeting I had never met before. I shared all the synchronicities as well as shared about the heightened level of psi activity I had been experiencing. The "friend" asked me many questions one of which was, "what do you know about enfolded space-time."

Why I went to my friend and not to anyone else was that I believed this was important for not just US but world security and only should high level officials in governments and intelligence agencies have awareness of who I was and perhaps they might find need to utilize my talents.

I have e-mail documentation about this meeting and I also would pass any polygraph easily as it all actually happened exactly as I stated.

There is only one way I can talk about this now... and that is that I have developed a completely different view as to what was behind all the phenomena. As mentioned above, I will explain this in another post and do so soon.

[Joanna]

Sam, there's another aspect to all this, of people identifying themselves with 'gods'. You know I come from the view that they are beings/people/star people (not just 'archetypes', although am also of the view that what we call human psychological archetypes are in some sense formed out of the influence of their energies)...and that those beings are not bound by linear time, and some of them are right here right now, willing to interact with us, when we are in resonance with them, vibrationally speaking - which is what synchronicity is...a vibrational resonance that causes like energies to converge...and resonating with something/someone has a magnetic pull on subtle (and physical) energies. We are all living, breathing magnets, attracting what we focus on when we have an emotional 'charge' connected with it. Some are doing it more consciously and more coherently, some more unconsciously, and in more fragmentary ways....

At the ego level, yes there are folk going through egocentric experiences. That may not all be based in megalomaniac or messianic complexes. I've observed that when people are in the early stages of connecting with higher dimensional beings, and haven't yet developed a 'steady centre' (are still working through ego layers, including the far less obvious ones) that connection can feel overwhelming, an epiphany of higher truth, higher reality. Because those higher/faster frequency beings are more in their truth than beings focused into 3D ego-identification/illusional 'realities'. And at those moments, people can mis-identify themselves as those beings, because unveiled truth, to those fresh from the realm of illusions, feels like coming Home to oneself..and folk get excited, take the ball and run with it...'I feel Home...this is Truth...this is my Truth...I am this being'....and so on.....
Do you feel what I mean?

The other thing is that the myths are not literal, they are metaphors, so to equate details of your life literally with those mythic details could lead you (or anyone) astray.
Horus and Set throwing their semen at each other across the Nile, for instance, (that is some mental image, lol) didn't mean they were standing there 'seed slinging'....it's about control of DNA...between those who would free/uplift it, and those who would lock it down and overpower it...
Set tearing out Horus's left eye: in the myths, Horus's left eye was the Moon and his right eye was the Sun. What is the Eye of the Sun, or the Eye of the Moon, Sam, for beings who travel through the solar and lunar portals, among others? In my view, this was about Set destroying a higher dimensional galactic portal (vortexing through a higher dimension of the Moon, the 'left eye'). You would know, in the stories, Thoth magically 'made Horus a new eye' to replace the lost one...meaning he created a new lunar portal....

Just some thoughts...

[Chester]

Hi Joanna,

I read the first part of your post carefully and realized I wanted to write my comments that spontaneously arise. The first comment I have is that all you are proposing may very well be based in truth and even be a very detailed set of truths. It was a wonderful post to read. I would like to comment between some sections of your post, but don't have the patience for all those starting and ending quote commands, I will just put my comments in italics and blue -

Joanna wrote -

Sam, there's another aspect to all this, of people identifying themselves with 'gods'. You know I come from the view that they are beings/people/star people (not just 'archetypes', although am also of the view that what we call human psychological archetypes are in some sense formed out of the influence of their energies)...and that those beings are not bound by linear time, and some of them are right here right now, willing to interact with us, when we are in resonance with them, vibrationally speaking - which is what synchronicity is...a vibrational resonance that causes like energies to converge...and resonating with something/someone has a magnetic pull on subtle (and physical) energies.

And I can be quite open that the energetic influences (perhaps "beings"?) I am referring to as "archetypes" may very well be as you described above. I actually would prefer this to be true above just about every other explanation I have considered with regards to all of my anomalous experiences within form.

We are all living, breathing magnets, attracting what we focus on when we have an emotional 'charge' connected with it.

Based on my experiences, what you suggest above seems very likely true. I have discovered to simplify interpretation of my experiences when I look at the experiences I attract and decide if they are fear based or love based. I found that the fear based experiences greatly decrease in direct proportion to my conscious and sub conscious (difficult to know for sure) sense of "who I am" in the most metaphysical sense... where that "who I am" (when I come to really apprehend the answer to this question), I am left with a deep and profound feeling of peaceful security. That feeling, when I am connected to it, attracts experiences that are expressions of love, both in receiving lovingly meaningful moments as well as opportunities arise where I can give love and meaning to others. When I forget who I am I notice I experience things which are unpleasant and generate fear. I sense that comes from being fearful from losing sight as to who I am and thus I am simply attracting the reflections of my own rising fears.

Some are doing it more consciously and more coherently, some more unconsciously, and in more fragmentary ways....

I was of the latter group most of my life and am just now starting to bridge that gap to the deeper regions of my subconscious. This has taken a great deal of self honesty to accomplish and I am certain I have much further to go.

At the ego level, yes there are folk going through egocentric experiences. That may not all be based in megalomaniac or messianic complexes.

Yes indeed... and yes also that it may not contain megalomaniacal and/or messianic roots... I had hoped I conveyed that my conclusions were all and only for myself and that these conclusions may change. Thanks for these last few sentences so I can again make this very clear to folks like perhaps DF.

I've observed that when people are in the early stages of connecting with higher dimensional beings, and haven't yet developed a 'steady centre' (are still working through ego layers, including the far less obvious ones) that connection can feel overwhelming, an epiphany of higher truth, higher reality. Because those higher/faster frequency beings are more in their truth than beings focused into 3D ego-identification/illusional 'realities'. And at those moments, people can mis-identify themselves as those beings, because unveiled truth, to those fresh from the realm of illusions, feels like coming Home to oneself..and folk get excited, take the ball and run with it...'I feel Home...this is Truth...this is my Truth...I am this being'....and so on.....

Fascinating. I wish I could know if these experiences were actually co-created by beings as you describe. I am quite open to everything. I also do not have a dark view that any type of "external" influence is automatically evil as some do.

Do you feel what I mean?

Yes indeed.

The other thing is that the myths are not literal, they are metaphors, so to equate details of your life literally with those mythic details could lead you (or anyone) astray.

Ahhh ok, I am glad you pointed this out just in case any reader may have drawn the conclusion I see these metaphors in any way literally. I always look deep within them. As an example - the blinding of the left eye for me is a metaphor of a blocking of the lunar path and the path of the divine feminine principle yet that he retains his right eye suggests a "marriage" of sorts to the solar path of the right hand. This feeds right into the living-dying resurrecting son of the sun god type paradigm.

But when the facts of a myth line up with facts of one's life as had mine in this case... if one takes things as far as I once did, one then might become convinced they are the reincarnation of a famous being that actually lived and they might convince themselves that the myths were based on truths of this being's life and thus they may also be special like this myth being was. That was what happened with me which I now no longer believe. Fortunately for others!

Horus and Set throwing their semen at each other across the Nile, for instance, (that is some mental image, lol) didn't mean they were standing there 'seed slinging'....it's about control of DNA...between those who would free/uplift it, and those who would lock it down and overpower it...

Set tearing out Horus's left eye: in the myths, Horus's left eye was the Moon and his right eye was the Sun. What is the Eye of the Sun, or the Eye of the Moon, Sam, for beings who travel through the solar and lunar portals, among others? In my view, this was about Set destroying a higher dimensional galactic portal (vortexing through a higher dimension of the Moon, the 'left eye'). You would know, in the stories, Thoth magically 'made Horus a new eye' to replace the lost one...meaning he created a new lunar portal....

Fascinating! I got goose bumps. What I had imagined years after losing the sight in my left eye was that I "greatly enhanced the sight of my third eye." Why I concluded that is that only after the left eye went blind did I start to have these amazing synchronicities and begin to experience all sorts of psi talents... specifically bona fide telepathy, precognition and mentalism and an unusual thing I do with a deck of divination cards where I can have a conversation with myself or another, flip cards and the cards reflect the essences of the conversation at the exact point in the conversation when i flip the card. My sons have done this with me so many times they are no longer amazed. It simply seems we create that energy field where everything with shared meaning comes together synchronistically. It is the most wonderful type of experience and I call it "being in the magical state."

Just some thoughts...

Thank You... wonderful thoughts. I am feeling that perhaps I am too hard on myself maybe... concluding megalomania and messianic complex roots. Maybe the reactions I had are natural when one is born into a world where no one they encounter along the way is able to assist with the understanding of these types of experiences. This is why I joined these forums hoping to find folks who might offer potential explanations I have yet to come upon on my own or others from before.

[Chester]

I wonder sometimes... at the deepest level of one's individuated being... do we at least play the role of co-creator in our experiences?

I have taken this possibility as an operating assumption (for myself at least) and it has benefited me in so doing.

[ERK]

I wonder sometimes... at the deepest level of one's individuated being... do we at least play the role of co-creator in our experiences?

I have taken this possibility as an operating assumption (for myself at least) and it has benefited me in so doing.


Yes, I believe we do. This is what my explorations into consciousness have shown me.

[modwiz]

I wonder sometimes... at the deepest level of one's individuated being... do we at least play the role of co-creator in our experiences?

I have taken this possibility as an operating assumption (for myself at least) and it has benefited me in so doing.

I understand that we do co-create our reality. There is resistance from people who prefer playing victim. Whatever floats ones boat, I guess. People believe what makes them feel comfortable and/or empowered. Gathering sympathy is a way of life for many.

[Joanna]

Sam, I really enjoyed your responses/reflections, thank you. Aaand...now that you're concluding that you're being too hard on yourself, and as doing that can only come from fear not love, what then is the underlying fear that the being 'too hard' comes from?

You wrote: I wish I could know if these experiences were actually co-created by beings as you describe. I am quite open to everything. I also do not have a dark view that any type of "external" influence is automatically evil as some do.

As to co-creating with other beings, I can only speak from my own experience, which is that if we're 'creating' (emitting & magnetizing) from ego which is attached to separation and survival (fears), then we will connect with beings that are within those energies, or which feed upon them. Like attracts like. Those beings/entities can easily pass themselves off as 'light' to people who want them to be light, but who have yet to fully clear their decks subconsciously, or quieten their ego drive...
But that doesn't mean there aren't true beings of light, of high and pure love in subtler dimensions, journeying around/with us...in silent communion and cooperation....
How do we expect to ever be able to connect with such beings, or tell the difference between what is of pure intent and what is not, if we've filled our head with stories, 'information' and 'beliefs', and I don't just mean taking mythic metaphors literally, from the ancient world, but 'new myths' poured into the alternate communities, let alone how would we tell if those beings are other incarnations of our own soul?

For me, getting to the point where I was ready to drop everything I thought I knew, just be still, and listen to my soul, to 'higher self', is a bit parallel to you, Sam, in that it was precipitated by the crisis of going blind, very fast and painfully, from an 'inherited genetic condition' 5-6 years ago. I also found that my inner eye, telepathy etc started opening up again much more, but more than that, I began to see through my heart....and everything I saw looked different. In mundane 3D ways, once I could drive again after about 8 months, the things that my 'seeing' was drawn to had changed. I saw grass by the side of the roads, that was like blades of soft shining emeralds, with dandelions in it that looked like the sun was contained in beautiful cups of petals. I drove past caryards, and saw light shining across the bonnets of cars like rainbows. Yeah, okay, this sounds pretty corny...but what had happened was I centered my whole way of seeing and feeling in gratitude, and deep deep joy for just BEing....and the fragmentary way I'd been 'co-creating' became apparent - just an illusion, like a child's game of make believe...but which had built a big clutter of debris. So I focused on releasing all the stuff, healing, and knowing the love in my soul, its purity, and its passion for Life, every living thing.
Then there was certain moment, when higher frequency beings could fly and step through my 3D perception. I looked up in the sky and saw ships like diamonds and spheres of white and golden light. Then an eagle of pure white light flying around the full moon, changing its form into dove, then ibis...in case a reminder was needed about portals, and love, and truth....
It happened, and is still happening, because I approached those beings from my heart, met them in my inner heart (so what then, is 'external'?) in the way I would any other relationship or close friendship - without conditions, expectations, wants, needs, fears or glorification, without stories or beliefs, so I could listen inside to my higher self, and remember 'who I am'....and just connect with others in any dimension as being to being, soul to soul, for the sheer beauty of it, just for joy....

Of course, to someone else's view all of this could just seem like fantastical claims, delusions, and photos that have been photoshopped....

So that brings me to, we're all learning, growing, making wise or less wise decisions along the way, learning from those decisions at our own pace: the Being you are right here and now, the core that you intuit, whether you call it heart, soul or essence, enjoy feeling it in peace, trust and happiness, give yourself that gift....and if anything you form an attachment to along the way, if you find that energy is taking you out of your core you, where the 'magic happens', just bless it and let it go....and compassion yourself too, right? :)

[lcam88]

An article I came across reminded me of Sam mostly because it has become apparent to me that he is on a quest to shine his light what is non-sense and what is not.

People find meaning in many things, synchronicities, coincidences and perhaps merely because someone credible says so; I'm no exception of course.

There is an article in the The Washington Post about people to accept nonsense as deep (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/01/the-kinds-of-people-who-confuse-total-nonsense-for-something-really-deep/). :)

The thesis boils down to the following quote:


The precise reasons that people see profundity in vague buzzwords or syntactic but completely random sentences are unknown. Some people might not realize the reason they don't understand something is simply because there is nothing to understand. Or they might just approach things they hear and read less skeptically.

There are also a few characteristics that seem to correlate with those who are more prone to pseudo-profound language. Specifically, the researchers tested willingness to accept pseudo profound statements along with a host of other personality characteristics. As they describe:

"Those more receptive to bull**** are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions [beliefs in things for which there is no empirical evidence (i.e. that prayers have the ability to heal)] and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine."

"I would say that a lot of people are just far too open to everything," said Pennycook. "They aren't skeptical or critical enough of what they hear and read."

Is the quest for spirituality, as one understands it as becoming the nature of harmonious flow, transcending the ego, or overcoming day to day materialistic views partially responsible for being more accepting of non-sense?

[Dreamtimer]

Peoples' experiences are real. They just can't be proven. On C2C Michio Kaki was confirming that science can 'prove' lucid dreaming. Now that it's measurable by science, it's considered 'real' and 'proven'.

It's really not a good idea to dismiss things as nonsense just because we haven't learned to make scientific sense of it.

People have known lucid dreaming is real for millennia.

Critical thinking goes beyond science and empirical evidence. Experience matters. We need to be able to talk about the reality of things beyond the bounds of science and religion.

IMO

[lcam88]

Dreamtimer:

Your position seems to be that as long as meaning can be found at an individual level then there is real meaning, regardless of the origin of a possibly meaningless message. Does that mean that a charitable act made by an individual motivated by selfishness is indeed charitable? Is that an unfair analogy? Is there a better analogy?

Having the benefit of some metric by which measurements of meaningfulness found by individuals can take any number of forms, scientific, religious or perhaps even parts of both, for example, a metric could be the number of prayers made per hour in reference to certain uttered phrases... <shrug/>

The article I quote above measures response by asking participants in the study to indicate a number 1 to 5 regarding how meaningful texts they are presented with happens to be [to them].

My question I'm posing above has more to do with identifying possible common factors that cause otherwise intelligent individuals to accept noise (nonsense) as something meaningful.

The reason this topic is of enough interest to me to post is simply because accepting nonsense as having meaning, even if such meaning is ambiguous or confusing, is the equivalent of accepting cognitive dissonance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance), into ones mind, especially when they deny their authority to specifically decide for themselves (even erroneously) in regards to aspects of the topic(s).

Sam?

[Dreamtimer]

I failed to address the meaningless message. I suppose if someone finds meaning in nonsense and acts on it then there's meaning or at least significance which is directly tied to their action.

I witness cognitive dissonance w/my family on a regular basis. They believe conflicting things. They contradict themselves. They believe they're right simply when they're in a group of people who share their opinions. They confuse skepticism with cynicism and bias. They don't share the traits listed in the article. They'll accept pseudo-profound stuff if it comes from their political team.

I've witnessed charitable contributions made for selfish reasons. I watched someone nearly give away the farm because of the ego stroking he got every time he made one. The people who seek out rich donors are quite often very vulture-like.
If the money actually makes it to the people it's meant for and actually helps them then there's real meaning.

It's not merely a lack of reflection or critical thinking that leads people to believe nonsense. It can be emotions. My brother, for example, is atheist, very biased and highly cynical. He'll come right out and say, "I don't have time to think. I don't have time to listen." But he'll judge. He'll be highly cynical without having the facts. He'll blame the opposing team for the failings of his own.

He's a salesman and he's very good at what he does. He understands the power of persuasion. Yet he's blind to his own cognitive dissonance. Emotions combined with overconfidence.

If people give up their own responsibility to think for themselves then it seems inevitable they're gonna get caught up in confusion and end up misled.

I'm pretty convinced that our society is becoming structured more and more in ways that dissuade us from thinking for ourselves.

[Joanna]

lcam, isn't the acceptance of cognitive dissonance a normalized mode of social/cultural/psychological state of being in human civilizations? Not only the acceptance of it, but the entrainment of it at a subconscious conditioned level, by was of what is termed 'compartmentalization'. 'Unity consciousness' is basically the dissolution of compartmentalization in the psyche so that judgements, ideological positions and actions based on the premise of 'us and them' (whatever us and them is considered to be in various scenarios) become irrevelevant - and undesired.

Scientific empiricism is just as potentially tyrannical as religious, political and other ideological frames of reference when applied as the adjudicator and assessor of people's lived experiences, and equally arbitrary, as there is so much in the subtler aspects of lived experience that cannot be quantified or qualified in material terms.
At the egoic level, people feel far more secure when they can fit their experiences into this box or that framework, define it, categorize it, 'get a handle on it' from a logical and/or psychospiritual reference point.

It's not personally where I find freedom or happiness, in the privileging of the mind's frameworks and analyses, nor in attaching emotional wants, hopes and needs to 'proofless' hypotheses, stories or claims circulating in mainstream and alternative communities. There is another way, and it requires very high self trust....

[lcam88]

lcam, isn't the acceptance of cognitive dissonance a normalized mode of social/cultural/psychological state of being in human civilizations? Not only the acceptance of it, but the entrainment of it at a subconscious conditioned level, by was of what is termed 'compartmentalization'. 'Unity consciousness' is basically the dissolution of compartmentalization in the psyche so that judgements, ideological positions and actions based on the premise of 'us and them' (whatever us and them is considered to be in various scenarios) become irrevelevant - and undesired.

I'm not familiar with the area of research that elaborates compartmentalization and unit consciousness. I had to read the above paragraph about 5 times to understand what you mean.

Very interesting thesis.

Yes, I would agree that it seems acceptance of cognitive dissonance is indeed a "normalized" mode. Even an orthodoxy of sorts. So the suggestion you are making is that people accept non-sense as having meaning because of behavior or a habit or as part of some type of training? Maybe even a type of subconscious collectivism?

This notion of "Unity Consciousness" that you suggest made me think of LSD. hahahaha Dr James Fadiman made comments regarding the substance and studies he made regarding a mapping of brain activity that suggest that the individualizing portions of the brain, portions that deal with the me, mine and I, where less active when under the effect of the psychedelic.



Scientific empiricism is just as potentially tyrannical as religious, political and other ideological frames of reference when applied as the adjudicator and assessor of people's lived experiences, and equally arbitrary, as there is so much in the subtler aspects of lived experience that cannot be quantified or qualified in material terms.
At the egoic level, people feel far more secure when they can fit their experiences into this box or that framework, define it, categorize it, 'get a handle on it' from a logical and/or psychospiritual reference point.

It's not personally where I find freedom or happiness, in the privileging of the mind's frameworks and analyses, nor in attaching emotional wants, hopes and needs to 'proofless' hypotheses, stories or claims circulating in mainstream and alternative communities. There is another way, and it requires very high self trust....

That is so true. I'm going to dwell on this "aha" moment you have given me.

[lcam88]

It's not merely a lack of reflection or critical thinking that leads people to believe nonsense. It can be emotions. My brother, for example, is atheist, very biased and highly cynical. He'll come right out and say, "I don't have time to think. I don't have time to listen." But he'll judge. He'll be highly cynical without having the facts. He'll blame the opposing team for the failings of his own.

He's a salesman and he's very good at what he does. He understands the power of persuasion. Yet he's blind to his own cognitive dissonance. Emotions combined with overconfidence

In a way, what you describe is a protection mechanism from cognitive dissonance.

If you understand cognitive dissonance to be the acceptance of contradictory informations, the "I don't have time" and "I don't have time to think" is the rejection of an idea being presented to him that he is distasteful to. Almost to the point where he is protecting something that he is unwilling to share.

Blaming the opposing team is an ego thing plain and simple. <shrug/> Rejection of noise or "non-sense" depends very much on what and how you interpret signals, not about being right or wrong, initially anyway.

But within his mind, he does reject, as I state his strategy to be above, to avoid dissonance.

I find this is something at play in my personal relationship even now, I am much more aware of how much I reject ideas I don't like from people close to me (my partner) and how that doesn't always work out. The problems caused has gotten me to listen more, at the cost of greater dissonance; the cool part is that sometimes I find that I "fix" ideas or preconceptions that I hold that I hadn't questioned before.

[Dreamtimer]

Good move on your part lcam88.

I would say that my brother's defending himself from having to do what you did, think and admit a mistake.

I had decades of my dad telling me, "You were right. We should've listened." My brother can't even get to that point.

[lcam88]

It is a good move, Dreamtimer, not necessarily only because I might be wrong, but because being wrong harmoniously is less costly than being in disharmony.

EDIT

The dynamic of my relationship with my partner has a lot do with why harmony is so important. Relationships where a definite family leader plays the dictator role, disharmony is handled in a different way, more forcefully mostly. A relationship where you strive for more equality requires that reason is mutually seen, it is greatly helped where similar values and culture are held.

It is a more difficult equilibrium to maintain in my experience, mainly because the blame game is such a favorite. My partner and I are from different cultures, we have some very different values and as a result things that are obvious to one is not necessarily obvious to the other, even plain rational sometimes, especially through the use of the infamous "invincible ignorance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invincible_ignorance_fallacy)" position.

Equality of leadership roles in a family requires harmony more than it requires being right [or wrong].

[Dreamtimer]

I need to get versed in fallacies so I can name them when they're thrown at me.

Maybe I'm being too simplistic. I think people are failing to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions. It's too much of a burden. They just point to leaders and authority.

I can't tell you how many times people get uncomfortable simply because I question or think critically. It's almost like I'm doing something wrong.

They don't want me to rock the boat or upset the apple cart or whatever.

[Joanna]

lcam said:

This notion of "Unity Consciousness" that you suggest made me think of LSD. hahahaha Dr James Fadiman made comments regarding the substance and studies he made regarding a mapping of brain activity that suggest that the individualizing portions of the brain, portions that deal with the me, mine and I, where less active when under the effect of the psychedelic.

I suppose what significance we assign such a finding might depend on whether we have the view that the brain and its chemical dynamics produce consciousness, or whether consciousness exists beyond the physical and expresses itself through the use of brain and body.
If it is the latter, then a drug's effect can be seen as mimicking an experience of unity/unified consciousness/feeling of oneness with all and non-separation - temporarily - but that is not the same as knowing yourself as unified consciousness expressing itself in the material level through chemical reactions, hormone messages, neurotransmitters, that can in fact be changed (or transformed) at will, without needing any external substance, and not dictated by the duration of a substance-effect. True unified consciousness can express itself through the 'polarizing' set-up of a dual hemisphere brain without identifying with that set-up.

Similarly, what you say about harmony and equilibrium in your relationship has to do with embracing a situation, or a person, within the outlook of a unified (very loving) consciousness, right? Feeling the peace and trust within that embrace, and choosing it continuously - until it 'settles in' - or you settle into it. :)

[lcam88]

I have become quite good at upsetting the apple cart around here; even this very thread earlier on, it seems. :) Maybe some good came of it, but maybe in hindsight it just doesn't actually matter. I don't even know what I wanted out of the whole thing.

Being versed in fallacies is only useful so you can know when your message is being stonewalled. Naming them as they are thrown at you would be argumentative, a waste of time, I think. And even if you could name it, and send a loud and clear message to try and fix an obvious problem, how much resistance against your help are you willing to face? Is there another way? Is it worth it?

Have you watched the movie "Revolver"? Very worth watching. The underlying message explains the Ego and what lengths people will go to protect their "investment" in a way I can only describe as unparalleled. If you understood "Natural Born Killers" to be a love story, you will certainly understand Revolver. I think it might shed some light on the following quote:


Maybe I'm being too simplistic. I think people are failing to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions. It's too much of a burden. They just point to leaders and authority.

I myself know that I am closed off to ideas that don't resonate with me...

Resonance is certainly a valid reason for explaining why some people are so open to non-sense type messages. Resonating with non-sense would be like requiring material to fill a "compartmentalized" comfort zone. Confusing the limits of that compartment with everything else [that is "real"] being the unexpected tragedy (greek sense of the word (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/greek-tragedy)).

Then the face-saving, or "failing to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions", requires an appeal to plausible deniability; to the generosity people have giving the benefit of the doubt as means of absolving responsibility. hahaha!?

And so the issue of cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization as Joanna describes are indeed factors that create and fuel "non-sense" type issues like: "What is real?"

[Dreamtimer]

lcam88, you're right about the waste of time and energy. It might still be fun to tally them up and then tell whomever that they've thrown five different fallacies at me and their position has no merit. But that may be fun only in my mind.

I do have grave concern over people accepting nonsense. I don't have to look any further than the Bush Administration. I had a friend who really wanted to move away during these years. I said to him, "Do you really want to leave the most powerful country in the world to be run by the crazy and foolish?"

Cognitive dissonance may be a necessity for someone like my brother who is so die-hard. He can't see the failings of his own team. If he could he'd have to recognize his own role in it.

[lcam88]

Cognitive dissonance may be a necessity for someone like my brother who is so die-hard.

He has his own views. His attitude, as I see it, is probably to protect his views from what otherwise would be dissonance if that protection where dropped.

+1 to concerns about accepting nonsense...


I suppose what significance we assign such a finding might depend on whether we have the view that the brain and its chemical dynamics produce consciousness, or whether consciousness exists beyond the physical and expresses itself through the use of brain and body.
Both


If it is the latter, then a drug's effect can be seen as mimicking an experience of unity/unified consciousness/feeling of oneness with all and non-separation - temporarily - but that is not the same as knowing yourself as unified consciousness expressing itself in the material level through chemical reactions, hormone messages, neurotransmitters, that can in fact be changed (or transformed) at will, without needing any external substance, and not dictated by the duration of a substance-effect.
Some people feel they need the crutch. It can be helpful.

I understand what you mean overall. Being aware of self (the ego aspects) often is so "loud" that we might not notice the unified consciousness influence. Being able to manipulate "them" at will might be like riding a bike, you need to learn how to do it. This unified consciousness idea that I am getting is very similar to Kundalini. Is that about right?

True unified consciousness can express itself through the 'polarizing' set-up of a dual hemisphere brain without identifying with that set-up.
Can you elaborate more?



Similarly, what you say about harmony and equilibrium in your relationship has to do with embracing a situation, or a person, within the outlook of a unified (very loving) consciousness, right? Feeling the peace and trust within that embrace, and choosing it continuously - until it 'settles in' - or you settle into it.

Yes. It is also a proactive measure I take as well; sometimes a situation is so predictable that I choose to do something I may find undesirable just to avoid that inevitable. I'm not bothered at all by making mistakes or being in err. Perhaps that is part of the peace and trust?

[lcam88]

Another study on non-sense or BS information receptivity (http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf).

I found it on zerohedge here (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-04/how-detect-bullshit).

I'll have to read it before I comment.

[Dreamtimer]

I don't think I knew there was a Society of Judgement and Decision Making.

It's funny to me to see things like 'pseudo profound bullshit' and 'bullshit receptivity' as defined terms in a scientific journal article.

[bsbray]

I looked over the paper about "bullshit receptivity" briefly. This is from the abstract:


Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous.

I think it sums up their own paper very nicely.

They use the following statement as an example of a random bullshit statement they created: "Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena." They said that some people tended to find this statement more profound than statements such as "A wet person does not fear the rain" and "Newborn babies require constant attention." I don't consider these last two statements particularly "profound" at all and I wonder how they are defining the term "profound" and how they have determined themselves to be experts on profundity or "deep meaning." Some things that are not and have never been hard sciences include philosophy, metaphysics and spirituality. Anyone sticking strictly to the scientific method (which was derived philosophically) would have to admit that the methods of science do not apply to "meaning" as humans find it. Not only is there nothing close to a scientific way of measuring or even properly defining the "meaning of life," there isn't even a scientific way to define what it means to be "good" or "bad" or "intelligent" or "stupid," or "profound" or "bullshit." These sorts of things ultimately have to be arbitrarily determined by humans who are simply imposing their own subjective meaning on something that can't be objectively defined or measured.

To use their own example, "Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena," it's not impossible or even difficult to derive meaning and even "profundity" out of this statement, making its use as an example of "bullshit" in their paper a perfect example of why their method is fundamentally flawed for even trying to scientifically measure subjective meaning. "Wholeness" is a synonym of "completeness," "totality," and "integrity." In the work of psychologists like Jung, the process of integrating the various aspects of the personality (conscious and unconscious) into a unified whole is how individuation is accomplished. When a person is wholly integrated, in a state of psychological wholeness in this way, they are free of neuroses. To no longer suffer from neuroses is to experience a quieting of the mind in that there is harmony between its various aspects.

And finally, also according to Jung (just to remain consistent here), what a person "sees" in the external world is often a reflection of their own inner processes. Therefore if a person is psychologically troubled then they will tend to see the world as basically troubled. If someone is at peace in their own mind then they are more likely to see the world as being basically at peace. If we interpret the "external reality" as being equivalent to "infinite phenomena" (and why would this be unreasonable?), then we have completed the final step in getting a profound meaning out of the sentence "Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena."

So this is a statement which the authors of the paper above have assumed makes no sense, and then use to collect data to prove that people find profundity in things that are complete nonsense, when I have just shown how a Jungian interpretation of the same sentence makes total sense and is profoundly in accord with his take on human psychology.


Jung was also aware of the concept of projection, and how people habitually shift their own faults onto the outside world due to their inability or unwillingness to face their own inner demons. With that in mind I return to the abstract of this paper as a perfect representation of what the authors themselves have created:


pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous.

[lcam88]

bsbray:

I enjoyed your analysis.

"Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena" vs "Wholeness stimulates infinite phenomena"

Which is more meaningful? Is there actually any meaning? Or is it actually more like art, meaning in the eye of the beholder?

Just because you are in intelligent human being able to find meaning in that around you doesn't mean that there was intrinsic meaning initially. Or maybe the meaning is within you?

So we turn to messages in general. A sender sends a message and a receiver receives it. If the sender doesn't have something authentic and genuine to send, meaning is then devoid in the message. This touches on an initial posting I had sent to Dreamtimer: If a charitable act is done for selfish reasons, is it actually charitable? The context.

I will say though, I really enjoyed your analysis. I like your rational, way of thinking; and indeed I'm inclined to agree with your assessments. and... I haven't yet read the article though.

[bsbray]

"Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena" vs "Wholeness stimulates infinite phenomena"

Which is more meaningful? Is there actually any meaning? Or is it actually more like art, meaning in the eye of the beholder?

Exactly, it's in the "eye of the beholder." But the new statement you created, I would have a harder time trying to get meaning out of that just because the word "stimulates" sounds about like the opposite of "quiets," so the Jungian interpretation as far as I understand it might not apply anymore. But it doesn't mean someone else can't find some meaning in it that would be just as valid.


Just because you are in intelligent human being able to find meaning in that around you doesn't mean that there was intrinsic meaning initially.

That's the problem. Nothing has "built-in" meaning. It takes a human being (or some other form of consciousness) to come along, experience something and then determine what it means. It's a totally subjective process and that's why it's not subject to empirical scrutiny, like the paper above tries to do. So in the case of synchronicities, which ties into a lot of what is on this thread, someone experiences some uncanny "coincidences" that relate in some way to what they've been thinking and feeling lately, and they attach a coherent meaning to these coincidences, and now you have synchronicities. Carl Jung was the first guy to really write about this phenomenon and he called synchronicity a "meaningful coincidence." And the person who experiences it is the one supplying the meaning.


If a charitable act is done for selfish reasons, is it actually charitable?

I think one person will probably say yes, it was, while another person will probably say no, it wasn't. Which one's right and which one's wrong? It's not something you can determine scientifically or even logically, without arbitrary standards along the way (ie, "it depends on the person's motivation," or on the other hand, "who cares what the person intended, look at the ultimate result"). Or it could be like "is the glass half empty or half full?" These kinds of questions remind me of coloring books. You can color in whatever you want here, depending on what you like.

I'm glad you could get something out of what I typed up above. I was wondering if I had not just posted a bunch of meaningless nonsense. :p

[lcam88]

hahahah :)

I always post a bunch of meaningless nonsense.

Seriously though, basically you remove the message sender from any onus; you take from it what is meaningful. I like that. Internalization of responsibility.

Do you view such a strategy as having or being of a distinct compartment (ref Joanna compartmentalization as a form of separation to prevent cognitive dissonance type issues)?

One of the reasons I had even posted the issue was in ref to cognitive dissonance. You are probably already familiar with the term but to clarify: it is basically a conflict between accepted informations or values within a person or mind. So compartmentalizing permits one to accept two views, even conflicting as they are meant within certain contexts. The strategy to not to confuse those contexts so that dissonance of this sort is minimized or even avoided. The breakdown of the clarity between these distinct contexts, may result in profound confusion as a mind discovers the dissonance aspects that render those informations unreliable.


That's the problem. Nothing has "built-in" meaning. It takes a human being (or some other form of consciousness) to come along, experience something and then determine what it means. It's a totally subjective process and that's why it's not subject to empirical scrutiny, like the paper above tries to do.

That is to presume consciousness is not present in everything around us. It may be that everything actually does have meaning, even "built in" meaning. It may be that our attempts to find meaning as you suggest are actually subversive of a possibility to simply recognize these built in meanings. Synchronicities are marvellously explained in this type paradigm as well. The issue then is to reject BS meanings meant as a type of temptation.


"who cares what the person intended, look at the ultimate result"

<sigh/>

Indeed but maybe the path taken is more important than the final destination? And maybe they are both important.

Yin and Yang.

ADDENDUM

I'm going to objectify my position a bit. I think I'm to on the wall and thus the conversation is losing a bit of meaning or direction.

Perhaps one of the biggest source of cognitive dissonance throughout history is a biblical one. Consider what the followers of Moses where asked to do when he returned from Sinai... They where asked to put their rational and values aside to trust the words of a messenger rather than decide for themselves. (ref Joseph P Ferrell about Yahwehism).

In this case, it is clear that your interpretation is correct; each of us needs to find meaning that is synchronous to our views and values. The messenger and credibility given thereabouts is secondary.

[bsbray]

Do you view such a strategy as having or being of a distinct compartment (ref Joanna compartmentalization as a form of separation to prevent cognitive dissonance type issues)?

I had never thought of that in those terms until I read Joanna's post, but I like it. I know it sounds new-agey but even theoretical physics is assuming on some level that everything in existence comes from the same source and so everything is related on some level. The old hippy way of putting it (or Hindu to take it back even further) is more dramatic, "all is one." So then if we apply that to the mind and the way people compartmentalize knowledge, I can see how it can be a defense mechanism of sorts to avoid really thinking about how everything fits together in the big picture, and what we are really doing here. Society as it exists today needs that compartmentalization to function. What the hippies were saying and doing was genuinely threatening that social order (not that they necessarily had anything better to replace it with -- "better" being another subjective judgement call) and I think that's why the response from the government ended up being as hostile and aggressive as it was.

There are still a lot of different ways people can look at reality at the same time that may even contradict each other, realizing that none of them are any more "true" or "false" than the others, they just have different uses. To use science as an example again, when people talk about electrical theory or chemistry, they're treated for practical purposes as two different subjects, but both depend on considering how protons and electrons push and pull each other around in different situations. Then you have pluralism in religion where people can acknowledge that any religion can be just as valid as the next, depending on what somebody can get out of it.

Sam posted some videos from Tim Freke too that I thought were excellent, talking about how this centuries-long debate between people as to whether reality was ultimately objective or subjective could be resolved if people could just agree that whatever reality "really is," it seems to have enough room for both views to be valid.

This is one of the videos Sam's posted before from Tim:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZmJUYIsp98



That is to presume consciousness is not present in everything around us. It may be that everything actually does have meaning, even "built in" meaning. It may be that our attempts to find meaning as you suggest are actually subversive of a possibility to simply recognize these built in meanings. Synchronicities are marvellously explained in this type paradigm as well. The issue then is to reject BS meanings meant as a type of temptation.

This would be the position of an objectivist, one side of this old argument that Tim Freke is talking about in the video above, that he's trying to reconcile with the opposing camp on this issue. It's also the view that scientists generally seem to take except that meaning itself still can't be scientifically measured or validated, without arbitrary standards (so instead of dealing with meaning they deal with physical measurements).

You would probably like the book Gödel, Escher, Bach by Doug Hofstadter too, if you haven't read it yet. In it he talks about how Whitehead and Norton spent years working on their Principia Mathematica to prove that mathematics wasn't an arbitrary human invention but had real "meaning" and was justified by nature itself. They were obviously strongly in the objectivist camp and were determined to prove themselves in this work. And then after it was published, it was only a few years later that Godel published his famous theorem, using all the proper rules of calculus, that made a statement basically equivalent to "this theorem is not a theorem." So is it a theorem or not? It's well-formed and doesn't violate any rules, and yet the "truth" that it mathematically points to, is a denial of its own validity.

Hofstadter compares Godel's theorem to this:

"The statement below is true.
The statement above is false."

If even calculus can create theorems that seem this nonsensical, when mathematics is the core of all of our science and is supposed to be no-nonsense, then how else are we ever going to be able to prove that there is a built-in meaning to reality, that makes any sense to us at all? It goes back to us only being able to get what we can out of it, and people are still not sure what exactly to make of Godel's discovery.

[bsbray]

I need to get versed in fallacies so I can name them when they're thrown at me.

In my experience it just makes people mad when you point out that what they're saying is literally illogical. :p

There was a forum I used to post on (ATS, run by a bunch of shills as far as I'm concerned, though I posted there for years anyway until they changed my email and password so I couldn't log in anymore), where I would literally have my posts moderated for quoting people's posts and then quoting from websites about logical fallacies, showing how what was being posted were fallacies. Once I even had a post of mine deleted for posting a dictionary definition of a word to show that what someone had said made no sense (probably something to do with 9/11, like the definition of the word "molten," as I think someone was arguing that a reference to molten steel in the official FEMA report, appendix C, didn't mean that steel was actually melted :fpalm: ). I guess the emotional part of the brain wants to believe what it wants to believe, and if logic gets in the way it just does what it does best: gets emotional.

[Chester]

Peoples' experiences are real. They just can't be proven. On C2C Michio Kaki was confirming that science can 'prove' lucid dreaming. Now that it's measurable by science, it's considered 'real' and 'proven'.

It's really not a good idea to dismiss things as nonsense just because we haven't learned to make scientific sense of it.

People have known lucid dreaming is real for millennia.

Critical thinking goes beyond science and empirical evidence. Experience matters. We need to be able to talk about the reality of things beyond the bounds of science and religion.

IMO

Thanks to my fours years of direct involvement via forums with the alternative community, I have developed a rather strict set of guidelines.

One of them is this... just because I have an other worldly, unprovable experience, the paradigms these experiences suggest do not necessarily have to exist for others. This is also why I never accept the paradigms suggested by the other worldly unprovable experiences of others as hard fact reality.

Some then contend that many folks sometimes share the same other worldly experiences and thus the paradigms those experiences suggest must be universally true for all. I see this type of thinking as fallacious.

I am able to hold these views because of the essential philosophy I hold about who/what I am which no one I am aware of in the contemporary English speaking world expresses better than Tim Freke. Who/what I am (for me) is minimally paradoxical. If this is true (and it is for me) then I do not exclude the possibility that a group of others can experience a shared other worldly reality (such as what they might experience in the astral). Yet also, it seems quite possible that another group of different folks could experience a completely different other worldly experience that suggests there to be a completely different paradigm than the one the former group's experiences might suggest.

One reason I have this view is because if I do not, I end up in endless arguments about what is true about the beyond. This seems totally senseless. Another reason I have this view is because in my personal world view is also my cosmology which is based on the view that "The BIG ME" created all which includes every one of us and myself. If I can do that then it seems certainly likely that I can also create subtle realms where different paradigms can simultaneously exist.

This view ensures I do not get caught up in senseless arguments about the purpose of the multi-verse and the meaning (purpose) of life beyond the obvious which is... to me... "I gave myself life for one reason and one reason only... and that is - to live."

There is one very important final reason I have this view... I do not have to be right as well as do you (for me) have to be wrong.

[lcam88]

...when mathematics is the core of all of our science and is supposed to be no-nonsense, then how else are we ever going to be able to prove that there is a built-in meaning to reality...

I'll have to watch the video and read the book later on. Subjectivity vs Objectivity seems like a nice way of describing this all.

The Electric Universe crowd really touch on the issue I quote above in a real way. Their idea is that Mathematics "describes" what is, whereas nature "defines" what is. To use the system of describing, you make your observations and then describe them. If you confuse what you are describing then you create a very logical "invincible ignorance fallecy". And in a way that Godel proof might best be described as such, I haven't looked at it enough to be certain.

The Electric Model guys sort of accuse the standard model guys of using Math to define their sciences, instead of using math to describe a science. Their position is that Math cannot be a source of truth in an of itself, and Godel proof is especially interesting conceptually to me for that reason.

Did you understand Joanna's compartmentalization analogy on an individual level or on a multi-person level? I understood it on the individual level...

[Chester]

Dreamtimer:

Your position seems to be that as long as meaning can be found at an individual level then there is real meaning, regardless of the origin of a possibly meaningless message. Does that mean that a charitable act made by an individual motivated by selfishness is indeed charitable? Is that an unfair analogy? Is there a better analogy?

Having the benefit of some metric by which measurements of meaningfulness found by individuals can take any number of forms, scientific, religious or perhaps even parts of both, for example, a metric could be the number of prayers made per hour in reference to certain uttered phrases... <shrug/>

The article I quote above measures response by asking participants in the study to indicate a number 1 to 5 regarding how meaningful texts they are presented with happens to be [to them].

My question I'm posing above has more to do with identifying possible common factors that cause otherwise intelligent individuals to accept noise (nonsense) as something meaningful.

The reason this topic is of enough interest to me to post is simply because accepting nonsense as having meaning, even if such meaning is ambiguous or confusing, is the equivalent of accepting cognitive dissonance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance), into ones mind, especially when they deny their authority to specifically decide for themselves (even erroneously) in regards to aspects of the topic(s).

Sam?

One of my other hard learned rules is...

"Don't objectify what is subjective."

In the example found in this blog post (http://merlynagain.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-most-charished-synchronicity.html), even though I shared the experience with my wife, she did not have the foundation of the experience as I did and so whereas I give this particular synchronicity experience a profundity rating of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, she only understood why it was so meaningful to me and because of what we mean to each other, she might rate this experience as a 6 or 7. The reader of the blog post might (depending on their own degree of long term experiences with the phenomena coupled with the degree to which they are able to see the odds against this experience happening (which includes the timing factor as well) rate this anywhere from a 2 or so up to a 8 or 9... but likely few if any would rate it a ten. The only reason I have not rated it higher is because of another rule I have which says I cannot exceed my scale. If I could, I would actually rate this one as "infinite."

[bsbray]

The Electric Model guys sort of accuse the standard model guys of using Math to define their sciences, instead of using math to describe a science. Their position is that Math cannot be a source of truth in an of itself, and Godel proof is especially interesting conceptually to me for that reason.

That's exactly what science is doing. You see this especially in modern theoretical physics when you have experiments like the one showing that quantum entanglement works at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light and maybe instantaneously. Nobody knows how the hell that happens so they go to making extremely complicated mathematical models assuming all of these non-physical dimensions just to make formulas that model what happens. But then there's more than one model that can explain it, and scientists aren't going to say that all of them are right. They're going to argue about "the" correct model. But then like you say, someone will then confuse all of this and start saying that the math itself has proved something.

I can take what Joanna is saying either on a personal or social level, since society is really just a bunch of individuals anyway. For me personally it makes total sense with how I try to approach anything, by comparing it to more or less everything else I can relate to it, so in that way I'm busting up the walls of the various compartments. But from what I was posting above I guess I was focusing on the social aspect as far as what the hippies were doing with their "peace and love" movement threatening the normal order of society. It does seem very typical of society today to segregate different kinds of knowledge in discrete little boxes and separate them all from each other.

[Chester]

In a way, what you describe is a protection mechanism from cognitive dissonance.

If you understand cognitive dissonance to be the acceptance of contradictory informations, the "I don't have time" and "I don't have time to think" is the rejection of an idea being presented to him that he is distasteful to. Almost to the point where he is protecting something that he is unwilling to share.

Blaming the opposing team is an ego thing plain and simple. <shrug/> Rejection of noise or "non-sense" depends very much on what and how you interpret signals, not about being right or wrong, initially anyway.

But within his mind, he does reject, as I state his strategy to be above, to avoid dissonance.

I find this is something at play in my personal relationship even now, I am much more aware of how much I reject ideas I don't like from people close to me (my partner) and how that doesn't always work out. The problems caused has gotten me to listen more, at the cost of greater dissonance; the cool part is that sometimes I find that I "fix" ideas or preconceptions that I hold that I hadn't questioned before.

Few humans on Earth at this time are able to grasp the following.

Someone makes a point and that point appears to be true to those who have heard it as well as to the one who made the point. Then someone else makes a point which appears to contradict the first point yet... because of the context, this second point is also seen as true by others as well as the one who made the point.

So I ask, which of the two would be actually true? The answer is both... depending on the context.

Example - I find myself in a relationship and I think everything is fine. One day I come home and find that the one I was in relationship with stole my stuff, left a note that they did it and disappeared.

From one point of view, I may have been wronged.

Yet, when I find myself in these types of situations I always ask this - "What lesson at the level of my deepest self might I learn from this experience?" I ask this because I have the fundamental view that at the very least at a deeper level of my being, there are no coincidences and thus I seek to understand what about "me" (that deepest individuated expression of who I am) attracted this experience into my life. When I do this, I usually find one or more components of the foundation of my world view was the cause. I then seek to discover why I made the decision to incorporate that componet into my world view. I then ask if this component still serves me. If so, I retain it. If not, I eject it and this adjusts my world view.

Soooo back to the primary point. On one level "I" (Sam and his one life and the story of Sam's one life) was wronged. On another level, I played a direct role in creating this event in my life and from this perspective, no wrong was done.

Both are true for me. And each, when considered by the common human mind, seems to make the other impossible.

[Chester]

I need to get versed in fallacies so I can name them when they're thrown at me.

Maybe I'm being too simplistic. I think people are failing to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions. It's too much of a burden. They just point to leaders and authority.

I can't tell you how many times people get uncomfortable simply because I question or think critically. It's almost like I'm doing something wrong.

They don't want me to rock the boat or upset the apple cart or whatever.

In today's day and age, I have made an adjustment to my prior operational protocol.

I used to feel that I was fully responsible for all my thoughts. Yet now that I am aware of psychotronics, demons, archons, black magicians, etc. I realize that it may be possible that some of the thoughts that pop into my head may not be my own... that they may be created by or at least influenced by an external third party. Of course, I am coming from the point of view of "me" being Sam, this one life, this one lifetime experience.

So what I do now is I examine all my thoughts and determine if it is a thought I wish to take ownership of. Once I take ownership of a thought... until I might change my mind, I am now responsible for that thought.

This process has relieved me of the guilt I used to experience because of some of my thoughts.

In addition, I am fully responsible for all I speak/write and do.

[lcam88]

In the example found in this blog post, even though I shared the experience with my wife...

I liked your blog post; synchronicity at its finest. Once you know it, you can never stop noticing, always amazing indeed.

Indeed it would be curious to know just how much of our reality is coincidentally synchronous and where we may not know or perceive it.

I know that you where willing to find that out...

I generally dislike heuristics as a guide to life very much; I prefer to find myself wrong on an issue than be bound by heuristics to be right.


from what I was posting above I guess I was focusing on the social aspect

social compartmentalization is a bit harder for me to understand. I always end up with social segregations like white collar, blue collar, ethnic, religious and social dispositions of every kind. What makes these groups distinct, besides the obvious classes extends in a good part to values and information that they live by being conflicting or at least differing. It would be difficult to "transplant" an individual from one group into another without a certain amount of attrition.

I see compartmentalization on the individual level to be much more an issue of personal choice... At the social level it is much less so.

[Chester]

@Icam88

It is (now and finally) impossible for me to judge whether another's approach to life is good or bad, correct or incorrect, etc. It does appear to me that at your conscious, waking state of your being, you have built a world view that is firmly anchored by foundational components which have been determined by sincere efforts of reasoning. Most folks I know that seem to manifest this expression which suggests the likelihood of the conclusion I have drawn to be pretty spot on, I have found to be very well grounded. I am speaking generally. I have found them (again generally) to be quite reliable. I find them to be more dependable in general.

I, on the other hand, have experienced a world where magic manifests just as much as the likely results of cause an effect. I may be alone though I have read writings of others, heard the words of others and witnessed others who experience the magical and acknowledge that the magical is every bit as real as the mechanistic world. Living a magical life (as I now do) has opened me to amazing new levels of meaning, raised my enthusiasm for life and provided me the evidence I need for my mind to accept quantum possibilities. This "thing" I experience which is nothing short of a "magical life" is something I wish more folks could open to. Why? Because at the heart of the experience emerges a "knowing" (as in gnosis) of "who/what" we might be such that this knowing leads one to the understanding that to harm another is harming oneself. (This last part is a completely subjective opinion).

If I have profiled you incorrectly, I do apologize. What prompted me to write this post is your comment that used the word "heuristic."

What I have noticed is sometimes important to you is sources. I share this same view though I take my own experience as my number one source and why I do this is because I (Sam, this one life) am ultimately responsible for all my expressions. I find relying on third parties to be (sometimes) dangerous (for me).

Yet one thing I have also discovered which I have yet to discover expressed by any other being I have ever met is this: that just because my own experiences suggest there be a paradigm within which I am experiencing does not mean that a single other being is subject to this same paradigm. It is my opinion that the single biggest mistake most Earth humans make is that they believe the paradigms they experience beyond the dense physicality are universally true for all other beings (or at least all other Earth humans).

Now - back to sources... if you at all respect Carl Jung, here is something Jung had to say that illustrates my point -

I hope you will give this excerpt from Jung's Red Book a reasonably contemplative look... Sam

http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/2011/09/magic-is-way-of-living-carl-jung.html

[donk]

Hey Sam, watched your you tubes and read your blog...love what you're doing, you inspired me to start my own blog:

Suemebill.blogspot.com (http://suemebill.blogspot.com)

[lcam88]

Sam:

I'm more a dreamer than firmly anchored by fundamentals.

I have realized that the only way dreaming is going to do me any good is if I can base it on fundamentals as a way to make them part of my reality.

Indeed that is my approach, and as you may agree, there is no way to say it is good or bad. Even as a strategy because circumstances/synchronisity always brings its own wind into our lives. But for now I think the best way to build a dream in reality is to base it on what is absolute and true [to me].

If you understand that "whatever will be, will be", then suddenly the efforts made to try and mold and shape things around seem much more futile. That was when I started experimenting with intuitive guidance, synchronicities in a way. My efforts can then to be much more "aimed" than I may be able to aim them consciously.

I mentioned heuristics because you seem attached to rules. The problem with rules is that you then avoid thinking about what it is really about; sometimes rules don't fit.

I thought for some time yesterday about your 10 of 10 synhcronisity blog that you shared and I have a question to pose for anyone following here.

Sam associates/links his synchronisity experience through details of a movie. In our everyday life we compartmentalize and one such compartment is fact or fiction, Transcendence clearly falling into the latter. And even though your associations/links though the movie was only based on details, like the affection for sunflowers and the height difference you mentioned. Overall, how does breaking down compartmentalization insofar as to create synchronous links with works of Fiction create or permit a ficticious element into the coincidence you experience? Could this be an example of what Joanna meant by "unity consciousness"?

All of lifes problems are solved in movies, even at a metaphoric level... But does the ficticious nature of movies somehow taint the association?

I'll preempt my answer to the question above, I think its not a problem when your coincidences are wrapped in details or even fiction. However, I'm going to say that seeking out synchronisity in any form with the intention of "finding evidence" or "proving" that circumstances are something "more" is a road better passed up, it is a short circuit of sorts. Synchronicity doesn't require that you believe of theorise it's validity, it is something you simply know. To act on synchronisity to prove that you know is distinct from actually knowing. You know?


...that just because my own experiences suggest there be a paradigm within which I am experiencing does not mean that a single other being is subject to this same paradigm. It is my opinion that the single biggest mistake most Earth humans make is that they believe the paradigms they experience beyond the dense physicality are universally true for all other beings (or at least all other Earth humans).

YES!

We are all individuals, and the vector (direction and magnitude) of our current moment is a result of all our previous moments.

and no

There are many thing we all do that is part of solving problems that is shared by many. The ego for example.

I'll read your source, no promises, and thanks.

PS Thanks bsbray, for putting a nice knot on the "why do we believe bs, contemplation"

ADDENDUM regarding the Tim Freke video: Paralogical Perception, Tim Freke

I think I'd started watching the video and had given up. Continuation now. "Opposites coexist" seems about right.

I had to stop again, ohhhggggg, the speaker is just so mind numbingly boring, like being sentenced an hour of a semi-coherent rationalization in all the minutia. I'll then make up my mind about how I like the idea presented. With this video I can't even stay focused enough to dwell on the concepts the speaker is sharing.

I am not particularly fond of darwinism, the standard model, or atheism but the late Christopher Hitchens is by far more entertaining to listen to as his rationalization is not unfolded and reduced into the mash one would expect to find at the end of a child's feeding spoon.

[Chester]

If someone asked me what is my primary goal for taking time to share my thoughts I would answer as follows.

Though I see the world through two sets of eyes and hope that I can see them through a third set which would be a continuance of an individuation beyond the death of my physical body, through the second set of eyes, I desire to see a better world for all. Better would be subjective but note that my second set of eyes is "me" (Sam... this one life).

I also believe that Sam, this one life, has made discoveries which, if Sam is able to share them and share them in a way far more others react to positively to than negatively... where they are able to achieve that first set of eyes (as is done via various practices, one being Zen - "liberation enlightenment") then he will have raised the odds that a better world (again... his opinion as to what would be a better world) is achieved.

This is the whole purpose of all my posts now.

Sometimes I read responses to my posts which I am unable to respond to because I cannot see any discernible connection to anything I actually wrote (said). That may be due to a lack of clear articulation on my part. Another factor perhaps might be that the reader does not share any common space with my own world view (which by the way and as I have stated often is not fixed) which almost forces the reader to interpret limited to the extent of opennes their own world view provides.

What makes things even harder to respond to is when someone makes a statement framed as an absolute that applies to all.

For example, a comment regarding a video that "the speaker is just so mind numbingly boring"...

The way that statement is phrased does not include the fact that the writer found the talk given by the speaker to be boring. It is written in such a way that a third party reader could conclude the talk to be universally boring for all so why bother listening and thus why bother considering Tim's (not new by the way) idea of "paralogical perception" (it is just the label he came up with that may be new).

So a question I have asked myself -

If I write words that are serious and covering perhaps the most important subjects discussed in a publicly accessed forum, perhaps I should put a great deal of care into how I phrase things?

Just thoughts... shared.

[lcam88]

Nice posting Sam,

A message <deleted/>, a declaration that it appears to say that I don't actually read you postings and a defense of materials you found useful, the Tim Freke vid.

That sums up the ideas posted.

I thought it was pretty clear that my view on Tim was not really a broad "for all" statement (the verbatum was even rather conversational), rather my particular frustrated experience listening to the inarticulate monotone. In fact I can't imagine how someone could suggest that I was commenting on the content being delivered, rather, it seems clear to me I mostly about the delivery method. Maybe there where too many big word. <shrug/>

I will say, perhaps I do have some difficulty understanding some of the things you write. And while that is a possibility, I often find that I'm in general agreement with your views. They are moderate, down to earth, well thought out and for the most part well articulated, although maybe you were tired when you made the previous post.

EDIT

I think I completely misinterpreted the first two paragraphs of you prior posting. Pardon me. Cause for thought. I think I understand your posting better now. I certainly agree with the last part quoted below:


If I write words that are serious and covering perhaps the most important subjects discussed in a publicly accessed forum, perhaps I should put a great deal of care into how I phrase things?

Maybe it's time to take on a rule or two... :/ I'll sleep on it. Thanks you all for the extra time to come revisit this.

[Chester]

Hi Icam88. I read both the original post and the edit. I appreciated the original as there were honest feelings coming through. The second (the edit) is good too. Perhaps there's no "rightest" view of anything. Perhaps the things I call "lessons learned" and the silly rules I make for myself in relation to my thoughts, words and deeds are silly too. I am just living life like you are.

We are all just sharing opinions, yes?

One good thing about this thread is that I only see one former member in the list of those who have looked at this thread.

[bsbray]

I was riding into town tonight and can you guess what they brought up on the radio? That 'profound BS' paper. :fpalm:

[Dreamtimer]

Bsbray, are you BSing? Unbelievable.

[bsbray]

Nope, not today. :p

[lcam88]

Hi Icam88. I read both the original post and the edit. I appreciated the original as there were honest feelings coming through. The second (the edit) is good too. Perhaps there's no "rightest" view of anything. Perhaps the things I call "lessons learned" and the silly rules I make for myself in relation to my thoughts, words and deeds are silly too. I am just living life like you are.

We are all just sharing opinions, yes?

One good thing about this thread is that I only see one former member in the list of those who have looked at this thread.

Sam:

Thanks for the reply and the complement. Likewise, if I where to find your posts insincere they probably wouldn't be interesting to reply to.

There is that "margin of interpretation" perhaps as part of an introduction of "tone" that mostly absent from written materials. I think I introduced more into it than I later liked.

Rightness views, once you put aside posturing and inflection (like what we've had here with my change of tone) are subjective as in as per each individual, as you say.


Perhaps the things I call "lessons learned" and the silly rules I make for myself in relation to my thoughts, words and deeds are silly too.

And perhaps not. But is that suggestion you are making?

I will say that when you can find silliness in "handle-less baggage" that we tend to accumulate, we can be sure we have grown.

Only, opinions and views only, indeed.

bsbray:

Where any new idea worth considering brought up listening to that radio presentation? I really liked the way you resumed that issue.

[bsbray]

No, lcamm. It was one of those short soundbite-type comments made between songs being played, and the guy talking about it seemed to have taken its conclusions for granted already.