All Posts Tagged ‘psychology’

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The Controller of Thought

November 29, 2019
12 comments

[This post is very similar to a recent post, but reiterating some things is necessary (for it to possibly “sink in”); there are also some new twists.

This will end my posts now for a while (as i had scheduled them); i will take a break (after my recent heart attack) and will not be posting for a while. My cardiologist said that my heart sustained minimal damage, which is good. He said, “Let this be a warning sign.” Warning sign! I was living like a monk and doing everything right! Hopefully, the medication that they are giving me will help keep the bad things from progressing… even though i am no huge fan of Big Pharma.]

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Is there a separate controller of thought? Or is such a “separate controller” a product (an extension) of thought itself? Despite what we were taught, it really is the latter. Thought/thinking is a field or sequence of reactions. Positing that a separate controller exists just extends one’s (learned) attachment for some dominating factor, imagined powerful center, or “internal boss.” A very orderly mind can function quite nicely, thank you, without believing in some fictitious (imagined) boss as its “center.”

When someone states “I meditate for 20 minutes a day,” it implies, for one thing, that meditation is something that one can “decide” to do, and it additionally implies that there is a separate “controller” or “regulator,” a dominating entity that makes decisions controlling the thought process.
However, the real facts may be that all thoughts are totally conditioned reactions (i.e., symbolic responses to stimuli) and that positing a real “center” or “controller” directly contributes to crude, limited fields of separation. For example, there is the supposed separation between the controller and his or her thoughts. But the inner “controller” is an extension or protrusion of thought and is not at all separate from what thought is. (As we’ve said before, when one speaks to others, one must occasionally use the words “I” or “me,” even though such usage is rather primitive and involves a rather barbaric language system.) However, often thinking (or projecting) a central “I” internally tends to give one a fragmentary, separative view towards others, toward other life forms, and it even creates internal separation/conflict: “me” and the separate thoughts that “I” manipulate. This internal separation then (obviously) extends outwardly into the world. “I” am separate from their suffering… or nature is separate from “me.” The aforementioned sentence is an example of a very primitive, distorted, mindset; such mindsets are, unfortunately, very common, hence all of the indifference and lack of love existing in the world.

True meditation does not occur as a result of some thought process. All thought processes are secondhand (conditioned) reactions (i.e., aftereffects) and a mere secondhand reaction (or set of reactions) can never decide to be what is whole and beyond reaction. Meditation is a thing that occurs uninvited when the mind is not foolishly trying to make it happen. Realizing that one is not something separate from a series of thoughts (as those thoughts are taking place) involves wisdom that allows true meditation to take place. And, as we’ve written before, one cannot merely “know” that one is meditating; it is beyond the field of the known.

The beauty of meditation is that its wholeness and purity may allow the mind to see and exist beyond limitation. That limitlessness is of the eternal, beyond distortion.

Ant on Wild Celery Plant … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019
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Human Motives

November 15, 2019
8 comments

Much of what we do involves motive. Our reactions, throughout the day, largely emanate from motives. Oftentimes these motives are learned (i.e., absorbed) habitual responses, and the end-products (that they unfold into) usually are rather mundane and ordinary. The ramifications of this tend to be conformity, sameness, and a lack of real perception and real creativity.

Such sameness and conformity may not at all be beneficial for life as a whole. Superficial motives often keep one in stagnation, while imitating others. Such habitual motives are a form of inaction and are a wastage of energy. Beliefs stem from motives, and beliefs (with their separative groups) tend to cause division in the world.

The innocent/wise mind, throughout the day, can often look without mere motive. Such looking, such perception, is uncontaminated, whole, and pristine. Seeing beyond the ordinary, it flowers in insights and depth not merely dependent upon direction. Mere motive always has a direction. Such direction corrupts. Only what is beyond direction and motive can, perhaps, commune with the timeless, the immeasurable whole.

Hover Fly on Eastern Daisy Wildflower … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019
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To Exist as Nothing Psychologically

November 1, 2019
3 comments

To exist as nothing, psychologically, is not an unfavorable, weak state. Going beyond everything that you have been and believe in — instantly, without motive — is one of the most positive things, for it is of innocence, wholeness (beyond fragmentary reactions), and freedom. In fact, always continuing as mere reaction (from the old memory bank of stale ideas and images) is the continuation of sorrow. Sorrow must inevitably occur when mental things are second-hand and are constituted of mere reactions. Of course, thought/thinking must frequently manifest for one to do certain necessary things proficiently, with care. However, remaining in (and “as”) thought/thinking habitually, when such thinking is unnecessary, is sorrow and over-reacting. (It’s like endlessly clinging to a stream of shadows when — with deeper awareness — such shadows can be seen to be superficial and often rather insignificant.)

We, unfortunately, were miseducated to associate internal emptiness with internal poverty. Pure, uncontaminated, psychological emptiness is the most positive action, for it is of a pristine, orderly wholeness; merely being the reaction of thinking, however, is essentially inaction… dullness. Unfabricated emptiness is of a wholeness that is beyond mere sequential reaction in (and “as”) time; in that is vast energy, real freedom.

Monarch Madness … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019
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Einstein, Spacetime, and the Fallacious Belief in a Central Ego…

August 30, 2019
18 comments

 

 

Hermann Minkowski and Albert Einstein taught us about how space and time are not two entirely different things but are, together, one.  However, most people just do not get what that means, psychologically and fundamentally, including a lot of supposedly smart scientists.  Years ago, when i was much younger, i used to hang around the quantum physicist Professor David Bohm, whom Einstein fondly called his “spiritual son.”  Bohm was a famous scientist in his own right and when we discussed things, i was already well aware of the implications of spacetime and what that meant psychologically and on a larger scale.

Space and time are not two separate entities; together they are one.  If you look at nature and people merely with psychological separation, with psychological space, as most people do, that very separation helps to support and produce an abstracted, psychological “I” or “me.”  If you perceived without such (learned) separation, the “I” or “me” need not exist (which would be fundamentally way more accurate).  If you say, “I will be trying to be ‘good’ so that I can eventually get to heaven,” you are supposing that you are something separate from time (in time)… rather than the actuality of being what time is.   Your brain consists of matter (which often functions to react as thoughts), and matter is space, spacetime.   Of course, we have to use time (in the physical world) to get to work on time or to be at a specified meeting on time.  To use time to get somewhere psychologically or spiritually, however, is largely fallacious.   Wishing to advance over time spiritually presupposes that you are “in time” and are not what “time is.”  Mentally manufacturing a separation between you and time (except for certain time-oriented physical things, like the ones mentioned… and for using our crude, unfortunate language system) is often a process of wasting energy and is inviting great deception.  Both the aforementioned psychological space separation and the psychological time separation are illusory; together, both help to create the fallacious and selfishly separate ego.  (One cannot be in communion with the timeless if one is a series of fragments of time that erroneously presuppose that they are “in time” advancing spiritually.)

Eternal and orderly phenomena can exist (in humans) without the ego (i.e., without any psychological center).  As we have often suggested, the central ego is essentially fallacious and illusory.  Habitually looking from (and “as”) it is an illusion; it is a fallacy that most people habitually cling to.  Like a man who thinks that he sees vast water in a desert — you know that age-old mirage — and insists on fishing in it non-stop, stay completely with the ego if you wish.

When discussing things in public with people, we can still politely use the word “I,” while (all the while) being fully aware of its fallacious and deceiving attributes; it is one of the misfortunes of living in a society with a barbaric system of language.  Professor Bohm diligently worked on helping develop a more accurate and scientifically evolved system of language, which he called the Rheomode.  Later in life, Bohm learned of the Native American Blackfoot language, and also of other members of this Native American language family, all of which are very strongly verb-based and do not divide the world into solid categories (i.e., nouns) but, instead, describe in terms of processes and related movements.   Link to short Professor David Bohm Video.

 

 

Green Treehopper … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019

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Our Neural Networks and the fallacious “I”…

August 23, 2019
18 comments

 

 

Our neural networks — much like a computer — are hardwired and conditioned to accept and fully believe in a central (free-will oriented) regulatory  agent whom we call “I.”  This “I” to each of us, seems very concrete, dependable (i.e., always there to control), and stable.  We never deeply question whether such a “center” really exists in the first place.  I maintain that there is no legitimate “I,” which, of course, seems contradictory, (due to the crude structure and barbaric evolutionary phase of our current language system).  

When one talks to people about there being no “I” they tend to feel rather apprehensive, threatened, and psychologically uncomfortable.  After all, to them, one is threatening the very core of their psychological framework.  Our physical body, the organism, perceives largely through the eyes.  The eye tends to be what focuses on and examines things.  A similitude exists in us (mentally) between the physical “eye” and our concept of the “I” of the mind.  We say that the “I” examines; we say that the “I” perceives; we say it was decided by “me.”  The brain’s associative patterns are, in pretty much everyone, deeply hardwired and conditioned to constantly be referring to and depending upon this “I.”  (The physiology of the brain is much like a walnut, and scientists have — repeatedly,  in different human individuals — surgically divided the two halves, producing two separate fields of consciousness in each skull, each permanently existing with no clue as to what the other half is thinking.) Our conditioning for so many mental things is deeply pre-programmed in us, and many factors, including physical health, past education, brain chemistry, and genetic influences, pretty much nullify any real “free-will” completely, whether we like it or not.  We must act — not react — carefully and diligently, and we cannot do that if we believe in a lot of crap that isn’t true.  In 1932, Albert Einstein told the Spinoza society:
“Human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free
but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions.”

What we are saying is that this “I,” in a tremendous way, is fallacious and unnecessary.  Clinging to it is like clinging to that childhood Raggy Ann Doll that was mentioned years ago in one of my earlier blogs… clinging to it as if it was real, alive, and a dependable pal.  We could live perfectly, compassionately, and timelessly without clinging to our fallacious “I”s.  Scientists, as was mentioned before in my blogging, have suggested that our universe likely operates in a totally different way than what we think is happening now… and they, the writer maintains, are correct.  It was, many years ago, when i understood the fictitiousness of the “I” and the foolhardiness of the concept of “free-will,” when real security, profundity, insight into eternity, and real order came… (and not before).

This life is relatively short — in the few years that we have to live — and if you don’t get it right, via understanding and insight, if you (instead) continue to cling to a lot of rotten, crude fallacies, then the consequences are eternal (and not nearly as sweet as they could be).   There is great beauty and timeless splendor in life if life is seen without much illusion.  

 

 

Neural Networks or maybe just Queen Anne’s Lace … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019

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on Experience

August 9, 2019
3 comments

 

 

Experience… what is it, and why do we exclusively depend upon it?  A lot of people say, “I’ve learned from experience”; or they say, “I will learn from my experiences.”  Many people go on expensive and lengthy vacations to far distant places to get “exotic experiences.”

Experiencing has its place.  However, it is very limited.  Many crave “new” experiences… but are such experiences — all based on patterns of recognition — really all that “new”?  I am suggesting that fundamentally, intrinsically, they are all very much the same and are not really so “new”; they all depend on — and add to — patterns within the field of the mundane known.  (That is why many of us retain a deep, inherent sadness, even though we travel to places that should seem new and exciting.  Merely existing as a brain that is based primarily on patterns and the recognition of patterns… is sorrow.  But that is what most of us were trained to exist as.)  Most of us were brainwashed to crave various “wonderful” experiences (i.e., more and more experiences)… through commercials, magazines, examples in books, and by what friends and relatives say and do.  (Experiences are never enough, though, because they are essentially limited.  But nobody tells you that.)

Evading experience (on the other hand) can be a very childish thing, wherein one endlessly sits cross-legged, for example, thinking that one is accomplishing something special.  (You know… all that phony so-called meditation stuff, which is really a glorified form of self-hypnosis.)

Is the experiencer all so separate from what the experience is?  If one examines intelligently, the answer is rather obvious: “No.”  We look with (and “as”) accumulated patterns and labels at things, pigeonhole them in the rather musty memory bank system and call the experience “new.”  To really see something new, perception itself must be dynamically new, fundamentally different, and not based on old, stale systems (and patterns) of observation.  Most people are incapable of that, and you don’t get it by sitting in a corner with your legs crossed.  Additionally, you don’t get it by reading traditional so-called “religious” books that have been severely distorted over time.  

There is a deep, orderly intelligence that is a true spiritual blossoming that is beyond the thoughts and fabrications of man… beyond all of the rituals, stone temples, and concocted patterns.  (Those fabrications are all old, and the timeless, miraculous new does not dwell as them.)  Deep intelligence is a dynamic harmony, a deep order that effortlessly flows between experiencing and going beyond experiencing.  (Constant experiencing and “accumulating” only builds up the illusion of the self.)  The “going beyond experiencing” factor (or dimension) is never planned or mentally arranged for.  Deep, spontaneous newness and dynamic creativity are never part of a plan or contrived methodology.

 

 

Wildflower Pods … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019