On Aug 21, 12:32 pm, Executive Function
hotmail.com> wrote:> On 21 Aug, 00:10, Erwin Hessle
erwinhessle.com> wrote:
>
>
>>> On Aug 20, 3:09 pm, Executive Function
>
>>> If I were constantly to live in the
>>> now then I would have developed absolutely no ability to communicate
>>> nor make practical improvements to my life. I like my freedom too
>>> much to constantly *just* live in the now. There's a place in the now
>>> for consideration of narrower and more limited thoughts, such as
>>> planning for the future, and considering what can be learned from the
>>> past.
>
>> You are by no means unique in this respect, but probably the biggest
>> problem facing any student of this subject is a woeful failure to
>> understand the simplest elements of it, along with a corresponding
>> complete conviction that they do, confidently trotting out trite and
>> meaningless platitudes, which leads to stifling and blind restrictions
>> such as the one gripping you in the above paragraph.
>> When you "plan for the future", when you "consider what can be learned
>> from the past", when you "make practical improvements to [your] life",
>> all these things are happening in the now. It is perfectly possible to
>> do all these things while "living in the now". One can "live in the
>> now" just as easily by paying attention to what is happening inside
>> your head, right now, as one can by paying attention to what is
>> happening outside your head, right now, and to suggest otherwise
>> demonstrates that you don't understand what "living in the now" means,
>> although as I said you're in good company on that point, including the
>> individual you're responding to.
>
>> The important element is to pay attention to something real. The
>> pictures that your thoughts generate are not "real" in the sense that
>> they are representations of the world, not the world themselves, but
>> the thoughts themselves are real, and the process of having thoughts
>> is itself real. When you think, there is a real thought, whether or
>> not you believe there to be something real that is having that thought
>> or whether that thought is existing by itself. To imagine that one can
>> only "live in the now" whilst in some mystical non-thinking trance is
>> just that, an imagination, and a belief in it - in other words, a
>> failure to pay attention to what is real, and to instead pay attention
>> to what is unreal - will make it all but impossible for you to achieve
>> success in this subject.
>
>> You don't need to banish thoughts altogether - you only need to cease
>> believing in the reality of the world they create. "Living in the now"
>> is perfectly compatible with paying attention to a real thought about
>> the future, and it's perfectly compatible with acting on that thought.
>> It's only when you start mistaking the thought world - the imaginary
>> world - for the real world that you run into problems, because then
>> you're not paying attention to reality. It's initially a lot easier to
>> pay attention to reality while in a non-thinking state than it is
>> while in a thinking state, but that's only a question of practice.
>
>> Erwin Hessle, 8=3
>
> I know this Erwin. The above paragraph of mine was very badly
> written.
If you "know this", then the above paragraph of yours was not just
"very badly written", it was completely and utterly wrong, and totally
counter to what you now claim to have meant in almost every
conceivable way.
> I lose time sense and the ability to process thoughts when I have
> overload, so most of my experience of 'living in the now' comes from
> that. I don't know anyone who has cultivated thier awareness through
> practise to such an extent that they never forget thier thoughts are
> simply representations of the world.
Well, now you do.
> I suspect that such practises
> become part of an internal narrative over time, becoming part of the
> delusion that they're 'getting somewhere', and actually I wonder what
> the fuss is about?
This is possibly the largest part of your problem - you merely
"suspect", but you try to convince yourself that you *know*. This is
why you talk about someone "who has cultivated thier awareness through
practise to such an extent that they never forget thier thoughts are
simply representations of the world" as if it's some kind of weird and
lofty attainment, and try to project this incessant "internal
narrative" that you suffer from onto other people.
Being aware of - on a day-to-day basis - the unreality of your
thoughts is like learning that Santa Claus doesn't exist, or the tooth
fairy. Once the illusion has been completely dissipated, then it's
gone, permanently. Once you stop believing in the tooth fairy, you
don't need some kind of permanent effort or "internal narrative" to
prevent yourself from falling back into such a belief; it just never
occurs to you to believe in that silliness anymore.
Until you actually understand what is being discussed, it is fruitless
for you to question "what the fuss is about?" There is no fuss; if you
want to live your life being constantly misled by astonishingly
inaccurate delusions, then you go right on ahead and do so, it's no
skin off my nose. My comments are generally directed at those who are
interested in gaining some degree of expertise in this subject, and if
you're not in that category, then feel free to avoid dealing with
them. If you are in that category, then you need to pay attention and
realise how much crap you talk, instead of trying to defend your
silliness all the time.
> It's certainly helpful to recall that reality is not the imaginary
> construct our brains have concocted - periodically and when we can,
> but if we cannot hold onto that perception given the linear nature of
> the conscious rational mind, and that's just the reality, then surely
> it is of more consequence what you actually do to capitalise on the
> perception when it comes around?
See? There you go with those suspicions of yours again. You can't
sensibly sit around and pontificate upon what is "surely...of more
consequence" until you understand what you're talking about.
Let me put it to you again simply. If you believe in the reality of
the thought world, then what you "perceive" is *imaginary*. It is just
foolish for you to start talking about "capitalising on the
perception" when the issue at hand is whether you perceive what's out
there or whether you perceive a load of misleading bullshit in your
mind. It is the very perception that is the question, here. Is
responding appropriately to a misleading illusion of no consequential
difference to responding appropriately to reality? No, there is a very
significant difference.
It is not simply a question of whether you recognise an illusion for
an illusion, and apply that label to it; it's a question of being able
to distinguish *how* the thought world is unreal on a day-to-day
basis. The thought world is materially different to the real one, and
if you don't perceive the unreality of thoughts then you will not be
able to detect where the two are differing, and the result will be
that you will make horrible decisions on the basis of faulty data, and
the imaginary world will diverge even more starkly from the real one.
Next time you take a flight on an airplane, you want to hope that your
pilots do not share your views about what is "surely of more
consequence". There are incidents on record where crashes have
occurred because the fuel gauges indicated full tanks when they were
really almost empty, and a quick visual inspection of the tanks -
which was omitted - would have very quickly brought to light the fact
that what they actually had there was faulty fuel gauges. It only
takes one such incident to convince you - if you survive - once and
for all that whether or not you believe in certain "representations"
is indeed very much "of consequence", and such a person will not in
future need telling twice the importance of being able to determine
whether certain "representations" are accurate. A complete disbelief
in the accuracy of cheap fuel gauges is not some impossibly lofty
mystical attainment, and a complete disbelief in the reality of the
thought world isn't, either, for the exact same reason.
When I say that "the thought world is unreal", it is not the mere
*fact* that it is unreal which is important; it is the fact that the
information those representations convey to you is often *wrong*. And
not "wrong" is some abstract, philosophical "what is 'reality'
anyway?" sense, but "wrong" in a very immediate, practical and
sometimes life-threatening sense. Believing in the reality of the
thought world is not a mere question of semantics; it's equivalent to
trusting your life to a notoriously error-prone gauge, and then
pretending to be surprised when it breaks. If you want to attempt to
reduce this to a question of believing that one is "getting
somewhere", then that's your affair, but don't come crying to me when
it brings you grief.
> What most people regard as the reality outside of our heads is just a
> sensory delusion actually. I'm not saying that the outside world
> doesn't exist or is unreal, but on a sensory level we build up an
> approximate representation of the world and store it in our brains.
> We infer reality through logical deduction, in a transitory manner,
> while desperately avoiding what this demonstrates about identity.
You're getting confused about the terminology, here. You're taking one
valid concept, but discussing a completely different one as if they
were the same thing. The "approximate representation of the world"
being discussed here is not the one where the mind represents tables
as being solid when in "reality" they are comprised almost entirely of
space, or the one which represents oranges as actually being orange
instead of being conscious that the perception colour is merely a
result of light interacting with the visual sensory equipment and is
not inherent to the object itself; the "approximate representation"
under discussion is the one that tells you - to take a random example
- that the universe is constructed in such a way that responding to
one "illusion" is no different to responding to any other "illusion",
so it is of "no consequence" whether or not you take the time to learn
how to actually find out what's happening before you respond to it.
You are correct that it is of no consequence at all *to me* whether or
not you do this, but if you persist in defending these silly views of
yours then you'd better not be expecting any sympathy from me when
things don't turn out the way you wanted them to because of your own
insistence that the world works in the way that you imagine it to,
instead of in the way that it actually does.
Once more, there is a very big and very practical difference between
paying attention to what is actually there - regardless of how "real"
that may or may not be, and regardless of how far you want to go into
epistemological philosophical discussions about what the nature of the
world outside your head actually might be - and paying attention to a
complete and fanciful fabrication, especially if you proudly buy into
the latter as your own super-special "personal reality tunnel".
Erwin Hessle, 8=3
