Zodiacally Speaking
November 17, 2011
Do you follow your horoscope?
Hi Laurie
Congrats on the 250th post – I have enjoyed reading them all.
I’m with Sandi when it comes to horoscopes, they are so generalised, and we are all so complex, that any one can apply to any person.
In terms of influence on our lives, it seems to me that for most people culture leads the billing, usually followed by genetics, then our own hero’s journey, and way down the list, if it exists at all, would be any influence of the zodiac.
It seems to me, that the more time people spend engaged in their own hero’s journey, the more influence it, and their own contemplation of it, have upon themselves.
So don’t expect many replies from me in the coming weeks.
Arohanui
Ted
Ted Howard NZ's Blog 
With all of these things, it depends how willing you are to deeply step into the sentiment of the view, all schools have their wisdom! (as well as their foibles)
The best synthesis of this kind of ancient mythic knowledge of the inner/outer cosmos and the more recent studies of genetics, chemistry, and quantum physics, that I am aware of, is called ‘Human Design’, originated by a Canadian guy RaUruHu who discovered and developed the system while in Ibiza.
To me it shows promise of being a literal blueprint mapping of the individuals main journey and trigger points, as related to the chemical composition of the form and its alignment with the whole it is involved with. If you like, the short-hand map of what in principle you’re here in life to experience/do, if you’re willing to learn how to read it.
It is far from generalizing, like your fuzzy mainstream horoscopes, he calls it “the science of differentiation”, and it is highly specifying.
I thought I’d leave a mention here while on the subject as some involved in their “Hero’s Quest” might find it interesting and valuable to explore.
~ Sean
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Hi Sean,
I checked out Ra Uru Hu both at http://www.gurusfeet.com/guru/ra-uru-hu and here http://humandesignamerica.com/
Not sure quite where the guy is coming from, and I suspect he is in the same mold as L Ron Hubbard – who developed a very complex system (scientology) quite intentionally to make a lot of money (which he did). Along the way, he did help many of his believers, in a sense, by giving them the confidence to pursue their dreams; which doesn’t detract from the fact the vast bulk of what he taught was pure unadulterated fantasy – designed to separate the gullible from their money.
I am a firm believer in the power of the subconscious mind, and in what many term the “mystic experience” and the explanatory framework I use to interpret that experience is one derived from science, not from folk traditions.
I acknowledge that there is a lot of wisdom contained in many folk traditions, at many levels; and there are also a great many inaccurate assumptions and statements. Most folk traditions work quite well at the surface level, yet when pushed hard, most collapse into chaos quite quickly, and rapidly become a liability to the practitioners who are pushing the boundaries.
While I use the scientific method, and logic where-ever possible, I also use and trust my intuition.
Thus while I am firmly in the scientific tradition; I am rejected by the vast bulk of the “scientific establishment” as being far too “far out”.
So no – I don’t give any credibility to Ra Uru Hu.
Choose your own path my young friend.
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thanks Ted,
“Choose your own path my young friend.”
Yes, I do, more than you may presently acknowledge ; )
Ra and his unique spume is very much in my telescope rather than my inner sanctum, in other words, I have no special affinity or association, nor have I spent a single penny, and in fact, if you do a little digging, much more than ‘the gist of it’ you can get for absolutely free…
After exposing myself to the system, its premise and compositional elements, much like one might a game, or a new language, and giving it more than say a cursory glance and judging it by reflex as meaningless, like all unfamiliar languages are at first, then, out of actual experience and not any past-based-reaction to interpretive systems in general, which to me all systems are, regardless of the name or face on the tin, however trusted or odd, I enjoyed many new clicks of insight and development in my endless moment, it proved like any other so called “science”, even the one with an ology invovled, useful for certain things and not for others.
Sure, I recognize, no system is the be all and end all, just another interesting lexicon and lens to look through, another tasty informational meal in all eternity, more Lego to play with, no big deal! Like your own, like my own, like styles of music, a bell tower chiming clock punctuating the now with its suggestion of number, tastes of wine, computer code, chemical research, cosmology, interpretations of god, a blabbering poet, a barking dog, the blade of grass, this is the realm of people and things getting on with all manner of stuff…
I enjoy all the views available here and the beings who share them, I give them all, as much as I can, when I feel open and good within myself, a chance to inspire and titillate, their dues for having existed and having the courage to share their magic (or madness) into the earthly maelstrom, for making their mark, and do my best to comprehend ‘the heart of their matter’, for what any of it was worth? maybe in the end nothing, that is what my path is for…
Savor it all and adhere to none of it!
Ahhhh…
I of course respect and enjoy very much your ability to stand firm to your approach and premise, and having the good fortune of knowing you would expect nothing less, as I do Ra for his diligent librarian like technological twenty five year intense experiment into mystical insight and its global expression in our age, as I do Hubbard for getting some initially good ideas and methods, then exposing in typical earthly drama the potential tyrannical madness of setting yourself up as ‘ivory tower authority’ behind a web of indoctrination’s and complicated conceptual inventions, as I recognize at the core of myself the same insistent seed drive of approach to come what may “follow my own” : )
The blessing and the curse of being increasingly ‘awake’ compared to most ‘others’.
takes one to know one x
Hopefully we can learn from one and other, and reduce the potential for unnecessary collateral casualties!
~ Sean
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Hi Ted
For the record, this is what I have personally ‘heard’ from my interaction with human design and its ‘people’ over the past couple of years…
(Note: there is by no means any affiliation here, I’m not selling, nor am I asking for belief, simply stating what is fact for me after interacting with the material, also, I work with many many other equally interesting and workable modalities, so there no exclusivity either, its all ‘different kinds of fruit tree’ to me)
– Trust the intelligence of your body
– Your mind is not nor ever will be authority
– Only being makes choices, that means you, essentially
– Choose only from your true inner authority following your inner strategy
– Don’t believe it as dogma, experiment with it and prove it out to yourself either way
– Love yourself as yourself
– Be yourself
– Learn to take in information, physical, emotional, and intellectual as yourself, so it is perfectly assimilated for you and so rendered usable to you, without conflict (rather than say following a conformist regime which puts everyone in the same box at the same time and in the same way each day)
– Take the homogeneous human collective with a pinch of salt and a touch of irony and help whoever is responsive and interested be more of who they truly are, as they’re ready for it
– Most of what is going on is ‘weather’, let it pass through or learn to use it for what it is, directly as it is, though know you need not follow any of it
– You cannot think your way through this, but you can still think
– Thought/mind is always external authority only, never inner authority
– Judgement is best used regarding the creation of systems and things of collective value to us rather than say to persuade, change, or legislate people
– Everyone is uniquely different, with an equal depth of profound and personal mythology
– Relax and enjoy the movie!
I’d be very interested and am open to anything you may be exploring that can compliment, top, or transcend these kinds of benefits, gains, and insights…
Best Wishes
~ Sean
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Hi Sean
Most of that stuff I largely agree with, and seems common to many contemplative traditions.
A few caveats:
“Trust the intelligence of your body” particularly in familiar situations. The less familiar the situations, the more likely it is to lead you into trouble – this occurs at all levels of abstraction.
“Your mind is not nor ever will be authority”, in what sense authority. As in ruler of all the body – agreed. As in advisor and judge, particularly in areas of novelty, it certainly has a distinct role in authorship.
Then mostly OK at east at surface level until:
“You cannot think your way through this, but you can still think” – which is, in a sense, self limiting nonsense. At a sufficiently high level of abstraction, one can think through anything. Certainly, one cannot “think through” the detail of everyday life, it is just too massively overwhelming, so one must learn to trust the intuitive and chemical level systems of the body.
Then “Thought/mind is always external authority only, never inner authority” – seems to be a piece of external authority that in my understanding is not simply false, it is a tool of direct external control in and of itself. The internal intuitive systems are extremely powerful, and extremely reliable in familiar situations, and can be quite unreliable in unfamiliar situations (subject to a variety of category errors, for a variety of reasons). For a person to assume full authorship (authority – same root) for their own actions, then they must learn how the two major systems of mind work together, and when to trust which – and there are no absolutes in such a balancing act – each of us must develop our own personal sense of balance.
With those caveats – yes – good advice, and nothing original at all.
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Hi Sean
The evidence is overwhelming, beyond all reasonable doubt, that time and place of birth has almost no correlation to any aspect of later life.
Seeing someone, anyone, claiming different, sets off my “scam” sensors loud and clear.
And I get that many people believe such things, and in believing, see evidence for. The thing that most people don’t get, is that we are all bombarded with so much more information that our conscious minds cannot possibly comprehend anything but a very small fraction of it. Our brains have a small region called the RAS (Reticular Activating System) that, amongst other things, seems to bring our attention towards what we expect to see. Thus, as a matter of personal experience, most of us do experience seeing what systems like this predict. One of the simplest tests is to reprogram the RAS to look for the inverse of what is claimed, and if that shows up with equal frequency, then what we are experiencing is probably a RAS artifact, rather than an attribute of reality outside us.
As to you choosing your own path, I have no doubt that your are doing so at some levels. Of those at bootcamp I think you were pushing the boundaries at least as much as anyone else.
I think you are as awake as any I have met.
And one of the things that keeps on hitting me over the head is the depth of our ignorance.
The more I know, the more I know I don’t know.
That just keeps on keeping on.
I am now confident, that if I lived another billion years, I would be no less ignorant than I was aware of when we did bootcamp (my awareness of my own ignorance has increased that much in the that short span of years – and I have learned so much in that time also).
And there are whole classes of approaches that have been invalidated (beyond reasonable doubt) in that process.
In my respect for you, if you wanted to list out what you consider the best points of the approach of Ra, I will look at them, and evaluate. And without something extremely interesting, I simply have too much on which is too important to spend much time with stuff I am way over 90% confident is demonstrably false, but demonstrable only to those who are willing to step way outside the paradigm.
Many paradigms are internally consistent, mostly because of the way they alter the classification systems of the mind, rather than via any correlation with any sort of “objective” reality.
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Objective reality?
Can you define what that is?
And also why that is be the assumed basis of authority for an exploration into what is reality? It seems in your own approach, though I may be wrong, an exclusive authority? Though you do mention intuition as a guide, it seems you assign that only an objective reference also, like some ticking clock of mechanisms with past causes you can examine, a collision of various and multitudinous forces set in motion long before us, and beyond any likelihood of comprehension, ever, by a human being, leaving us in the sorry ‘human’ state of perpetual ignorance, certainly humbling, though not very inspiring or that useful as a premise, which I feel is equally essential. Again, this is only my interpretation of the language you’re using, and as you point out; I may be so ignorant I do not even realize my own total ignorance : )
My personal sense is that intuition is non-localized, and non-physical, it is a definitive and ultimately 100% accurate measure in its purest condition because it is not a thing, and so has a ‘handle’ on all thingy-ness simultaneously, and whats-more, cannot be confused by thing-ness, ever, anything that can be is not intuition, in my own definition. I have nothing but my own experience to prove this out to anyone else, maybe experiments can be devised to finally self-reveal such a fact, Rupert Sheldrake seems to have a good view and active involvement in part of that territoty which shows promise of resolving and consolidating into a more elegant model a lot of the madness of scientific complexity rife on the planet, potentially, if anyone will take the time to listen and assimilate to such views.
As for what you mention regarding RAS, I’m aware of that labelled process and its perceptual/belief phenomenon in our lives, and agree, almost everything we consider ‘personally meaningful or relevant’ falls into the category of our own expectation and individual conditioning, which to me poses no problem or argument, nor conflict in my sphere regarding the use of a lexicon of any basis, so long as it can reside without conflict in the individuals universe and prove practical and beneficial to them. These words for instance are equally nonsensical, as is the periodic table, the human genome, unless we’re operating from the premise which formed those notions in the first place and its incentives and motives.
In reference to Ra’s HumanDesign system, it is as I already mentioned, to me, just another lexicon and language to play with, not an authority or almanac of some sort, but a lens, potentially an art-form, which appears based on the wide range of people involved, from genetic scientists to business people, mystics, school children, artsists, parents, teachers, etc… all who to me appear very lucid, relaxed, and into the play of exploration, as an experiment, to have at least some significant basis in ‘reality’. Or are they ALL just involved in a mass hallucination by a clever communicator dealing with what are essential scared and vulnerable sheeple? If that is the case, then are we any different in our own mode of beliefs and reasons for having them!? Probably not. So it becomes about which hallucination serves you as a being and the actual reality that is best, until eventually there is no hallucination, probably, and the variance between human and universe is collapsed, non-existent. Or am I revealing my naivety and total ignorance once again?
Just to finish off this end, with yet another feast of words, to me, just like you say picking a birth date as a starting point for analysis is futile and meaningless, then it is equally arbitrary to pick ANY point in reality, which is infinitely dynamic, as a starting point for analysis. There is in my mind no difference in ‘relevance and sanity’ between picking out some more or less arbitrary aspect of perception in every day life, whether with physical senses or machines, and based on sceintific or colloquial dogma, and starting from there as an assumption and working outwards to macrocosm, or into microcosm, and thinking we understand something of any importance to life, and can bring something valuable into the world, than there is picking a date to begin an anlysis…
Unless that point is perfectly accurate maybe?
So in a way I thoroughly agree with you : ) On all points, just maybe not on the position of expectation you’re taking as an approach, and I have no valid tangible expression for that, only an intuitive sense, and probably, though it is a guess not intuition, you feel the same way about my approach and basis? Which is what makes this so interesting, for me anyway, maybe for no one else!
~ Sean
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Hi Sean
Lots in here.
Objective reality – a very slippery notion.
It seems that our experience of being is something that is non-material, yet related to material; in a very similar fashion to the way a piece of software is not the computer, but is executed on the computer, and cannot be said to have any existence apart from the computer. Thus, all that we experience has this “non material” aspect to it.
And it seems that much of what we experience relates to matter and energy that is not immediately us, and is around us. (It seems that the story of how we emerged from this other material is a long one, involving big bang, condensations, exploding stars, planet formation, planetary collisions, replicating molecules, cell formation, evolution by natural selection over some 3 billion years – a very long and very fascinating story).
So objective reality is this class of stuff that seems to exist outside of our minds, though it seems that our only experience of such stuff is through the perceptual systems of our bodies, which are then mediated by the categorising systems of our minds, and then appear as “actors” in our experience.
So there is no simple and clear cut line – this is objective reality, that isn’t, though many simplisticly believe such to be the case. It seems that the reality is a far more complex and tightly interconnected suite of sets of related entities.
Authority is another very slippery notion.
As mentioned earlier, it is of the same root as author.
Author is about the creative agency.
So what is the creative agency?
It seems to me that there are many levels of creative agency at work.
There is whatever it was that led to the big bang, some 14 billion years ago. We have no information as to what that was, and the mathematics that seems to best describe what has happened since, also seem to imply that there is no logical way to access any information from before that explosion.
The processes that seems to have started with that expansion of super hot pre-material “stuff” seems to have gone through many stages of cooling, condensation, phase change, leading to other series of events, like condensation into hydrogen and helium, then collection into suns, then synthesis of heavier elements within those suns, then release of some of that that heavier elemental stuff in explosions of those first and second generation suns, leading to the formation of second and third generation suns with planets around them, and the evolution of life on the third rock from this particular sun.
So I acknowledge that the many levels of patterns and “laws” that allowed all this to happen are part of the process that led to the formation of me, and are, in that sense, part of me, and something else seems to be present as well, so I acknowledge joint authorship in this sense.
It seems to me important here to take time out to look at how we establish knowledge.
It seems to me, from my investigations into the subject, that we establish knowledge through an iterative process of assumption and testing. We find some relationship that seems to work, we test to see where it works, and how reliably it works, and then we trust it within that “domain of usefulness”.
It seems that as we grow for an initial state of total ignorance, into a state of slightly less ignorance, yet far more profound awareness of our ignorance, things change in what is at first glance a weird way, yet on closer inspection is the logically required sequencing of events.
When very young and very ignorant, we make very simple distinctions (binaries) like right/wrong, good/bad, true/false, light/dark, hot/cold, wet/dry, etc. As we gain in experience, most of us get to see that most of those distinctions were overly simplified categories, and that reality is in most cases composed of an infinite variety of infinite spectra, and simply cutting those infinite spectra into two opposing poles is a very poor approximation (however necessary it is as a developmental phase).
So the notion of “truth” that we start out with as children, must, by necessity, if we are to grow in awareness, give way to something with much less certainty, where truth gives way to something more like “usually useful within this specific set of circumstances”.
Intuition
Intuition is a very interesting topic.
It seems clear to me that human intuition is for the most part derived from the way in which our brains store and retrieve information, and is also partially informed by the structure of the neural networks that do the primary pattern recognition for our sensory systems. The neural net systems are fairly well understood by established science, and are shared with most other advance animals on this planet.
What is, as yet, very poorly understood by most scientists in the field, is the role of “holographic” association – the storage and retrieval of information as interference patterns, rather than as sequential data with a one to one correspondence with input data.
Holographic storage is diffuse, with every storage point containing a very little information about the entire image. The recall mechanism for holographic storage provides an instantaneous associative function.
It seems to me that human intuition is driven by a process analogous to, how holograms are formed and recalled.
This process gives the illusion of non-locality, because it is, by definition, connected to everything we have experienced; yet it is actually local, because it is actually working only on our experience; and it is only through that experience that it is connected to everything else.
It is definitely not 100% accurate, and in most normal situations it is extremely accurate indeed – way over 99.9%. However, the less data it has, the greater the probability that it, or one of the intermediate neural network categorising systems, will mis-classify something as something else.
Thus, while entirely appropriate to rely on intuition 100% in normal situations, it is very dangerous indeed to rely on it completely when dealing with the truly novel.
I am afraid that Shelldrake’s ideas have quite clearly been falsified. He simply does not want to understand the actual mechanisms at work. He is a prime example of the old adage “never let the facts stand in the way of a good story”.
Your use of the term “madness of scientific complexity” is interesting, as it seems to demonstrate a bias against science, and against understanding complexity.
There seems to be at least two major categories at play here.
One category is the use by those who have power of a scientific jargon to try and justify their power and privilege. This is not science, it is simply power at play. Do not allow it to influence your feelings about science in any way. Power uses anything and everything as tools in power plays – science is no more immune from this than religion or any other aspect of culture or technology.
The other aspect is actually one of science/reality/understanding. As already stated earlier, intuition is reliable only in situations with which it is familiar. Therefore, scientists (who are heavily reliant on intuition, even if they are ignorant of that reliance) must immerse themselves in a particular set of situations they are studying until they become familiar, and their intuition works well for them – then, and only then, are they able to do great science.
Thus there is a great deal of complexity in the depths of science, and it is not necessary for everyone to go to those depths of complexity.
Science (and intuition) can work at any level of abstraction.
It is possible to gain an understanding of any level of science, without the deeper ability to intuitively operate there, quite quickly. There is no substitute for doing the time, if you want to be able to operate at the deeper levels intuitively.
Many cultures have developed “shortcuts”, which work by analogy with the deeper levels in some circumstances; and frequently those “shortcuts” are very “domain specific” and do not translate well between domains, or operate at all reliably outside of a particular domain. Most often, the explanatory frameworks which have developed around those “shortcuts” (particular cultural mythologies) have little or no relationship to reality, and are in effect little more than cultural mnemonics (shortcuts for memory, to an operant shortcut context).
As to sheeple and shared hallucinations, I think there is a clear distinction.
I am fully aware that most of what I use as “operational truths” on a day to day basis are probably false in some particular, or in some wider context, or are just a useful approximation to something much deeper and more profound; and I work at being aware of that, and looking for indications of the next (more accurate) level of approximation, in all that I do and perceive. This, to me, is the basis of science. Not a set of truths, but a set of self refining approximations to truth – rarely, if ever, truth, but closer and closer to it, and more and more useful as a result.
Certainly, I acknowledge that all cultures essentially develop a working set of heuristics that generally, on average, over time, work in that particular cultural context. I acknowledge that most cultures carry within them levels of profound wisdom.
And at the same time, I try to disentangle that wisdom from the context of the culture, and translate it.
I do not believe very much at all of the culture of my parents, and almost nothing of the culture of my grandparents.
If I am that removed from culture, then how can I view anything that tries to preserve culture except as an act of violence against the individuals who, like myself, may emerge from their culture.
Everyone must start in a culture, of some sort, and I do not see any culture as being significantly more useful than any other, and the idea that culture itself ought to be preserved in some ways seems to be to be a form of imperialism, and violence against the individuals who might otherwise free themselves from culture.
I freed myself by studying the writings and works of thousands of individuals who have lived over the last few thousand years, but mostly by the work of scientists who have lived relatively recently, and have been sufficiently freed from the restraints of culture (mostly politics and religion) to be able to question and communicate (often across generations in the written word).
I agree with so much of your approach to life.
I love that you have freed yourself at so many different levels.
The five days of exploration we shared together are a powerful part of my life.
And there is a very old saying – nature to be commanded must first be obeyed.
Science, at its best service to humanity, teaches us which of the deep rules must be obeyed, and which are able to be bent at some level, and gives us some clues about the costs and benefits of choices we can make.
The scientific dogma that most students are forced to endure in school is so far from the science that I know and live, it is kinda like a charcoal sketch of a rainbow.
Science for me, is living the full infinite spectrum of colour, not simply the curvy shape.
Arohanui my friend
Great to have this exchange with you
Happy to continue if that is your wish.
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Hi Ted,
Just got your post on Objectivity in this thread, my overactive spam filter trashed it, so it has been retrieved and I just read through this morning, and felt inspired to reply…
You’re spot on in spotting my ‘in that particular moment of expression’ bias regarding science, I have developed somewhat more conceptual flex than I ever remember having in recent years, which allows me to rapidly explore many perspective in tandem, sequence, as inspired, logically, non-linearly and so on, its great fun and I spend many hours a day now involved with it, yet, one of the challenges with such flex or flux, and the rigor of my particular approach is the tendency to get tied up in the odd knot and bias, which never lasts long these days, especially with good allies to point things out.
Just to give you some background on what I’m up to, in summer 2008 I had a grand culmination of peaking after what I can only describe as many interspersed mystical experiences, during both waking and sleeping hours, I know its cliche, but it happened, pure perfect subjectivity and huge information/energy influx of some kind, incredible, scary, fun, ecstatic, and whats most interesting is it was just natural, it just happened, and I felt for many weeks I was plugged directly into the cosmos so to speak.
The irony is, regarding the slight bias, is I have an extremely scientific questioning mind/awareness, and so although I myself have had 100s if not 1000s of direct mystical experiences I’m the first one to question every one of them, in myself and others, which to me in the end is the only way such energies and information can be harnessed, used, and enjoyed here in the bandwidth of the physical senses, senses which I’m sure can increase to encompass these ESP realities given development and probably some training also. The crux of which, for me, is to release the mnemonic potentials of old texts to recover an advanced physical potential on the planet, which is in the end very tangible and scientific, once we’re interpreting correctly.
So I have to accept at least in some significant capacity I’m a bit of a mystic, its what best describes how I function much of the time, and as this capacity opened I spotted immediately the danger of categorization, especially my tendency to fall back into the developed lines and associations of my culture, forcing what is essentially an unfettered very real and natural gift into strict contexts, the four of which from my own perspective I explore as a quadrant of business, science, religion and culture/art, in order to more completely comprehend just what I’m involved with here in this life experience.
Part of me, the part that grew up in this body, through this mind, and in this era feels after stepping through and out, and gaining the capacity to see and think clearly beyond the mass hallucination I called culture, I assumed for a while, as a child was authority, was boss, that it is predominantly these days a religion of science and business, where the art is there as release only, to keep the most destructive and ill from going over the edge entirely, most ‘creative expression’ in this culture to me is of a very low emotional tone, its just pain basically, peoples pain bleeding out through speakers, papers and magazines, because they’re hit upon by massive psychic, chemical, and collective forces, constructed by science and business who are bound up in the old meme of focus, categorization, and control.
Of course, few of these expressions are the true quadrant, science, business, art and religion can be perfectly human being serving and inspiring contexts, they certainly can be, and in their purest essence are, until we try to use them for anything other than their purest direct discover and meaning, however tangible or intangible is its particular reference. I really like the quote you share, it sums it up perfectly, I totally agree from my own mix of inspired and bumbling moments, nature leads first, I follow, then I display/exercise what I comprehended and then nature once more leads, and the process goes on and on.
I have been involved for a number of years revealing the underbelly to myself and some others of what I was born into and lived through, the four quadrant dogma that has been distorted somewhat. On the upside of my culture, the beauty of focus, category and control, along with a true science, religion, art, and business is that it acts as a potentially valuable framework and lexicon for exercising our capacity as human beings, our intelligence and will, of making life a living art, a vibrant metaphor of intrinsic meaning, as well as freeing our ultimate benevolence to be operative in the world, which is there without effort when we’re nurtured and allowed to be as we truly are as beings.
For the past three years or so I’ve been intensely integrating that experience form 2008, and refining the capacity to see and utilize it, often from 10 or more hours per day straight, insight after insight, combining, deepening, exploding, dissolving, reassembling, every day, being obliterated and recombined anew, continuously, with quite frankly little guidance, support, in the physical sense, or the finances to elicit the resources and skills I feel I require to fully express what is to be expressed. So I got to ride with raw intuition as it came within myself for basically three years now, with only a very few minor deviations, those mainly being to try and fit into some semblance of “cultural meaning” for and with those people I share the planet with, and the immediate environment, which at times I can be in affinity with but often feel at total odds with, and like I must step away entirely. The energy is a good catalyst, in terms of initiating insights and realizations, so I try to use the best of it when and where I can.
So, on intuition; for me I don’t assign it exclusively the explanation of past impression and organisation of sensory experiences fluxing into cognition in the moment, I acknowledge and use that continuously but see that is only one side of the process, the one we most readily see, to draw a parallel; when I look out of these eyes, in the visual plane, I only see exactly half of every object in focus, sight so far for me, through the eyes, is exactly only half of the view-able world, yet the rest of it definitely exists when I shift my viewing perspective, I can see it…
This is all mystical insight is to me, the ability to turn the objectivity inwards into the “dream mind”, and examine without limitation the composition of mind, energy, thought, and even the cosmos itself, from within. On this note, I remember as a child being able to literally see things like star systems in my minds eye as I went to sleep, I knew space, universal space intuitively, and it seems in its entirety as a child, though with no ability to harness or express it in my locality, which is the purpose of an adult ideally, if we were able to without sabotage or inhibition complete that inner process the natural consequence would be the tangible expression of cosmos with lucidity in the localized environment.
The point is this, as a human being, innately, I as a child had an affinity with the-all, I saw this but would not call it ‘cosmic space’, yet, my culture did not acknowledge such things, if I had been born into a hunter gather tribe they’d accept it, or into an hindu/eastern household they’d probably get it, but I was not, I was born into a news-indoctrinated entertainment-obsessed money-hysterical machine-hungry population of children and adolescents acting as adults, the collective age of my culture is probably a fluctuating wave somewhere between 3 and 14, and has not got far beyond that as far as I can tell, regardless of their certificate age, whereas I myself went from late twenties to 14 or 15 billion years developed in one moment, yet, still had to acknowledge in the relative day to day environment the patterns of assumed authority based on age and status, while most about me are bound in that, I certainly respect it but cannot be bound or hemmed into it so much anymore.
Of course, we’re all linked into the full extent of universe, and continuously, none more or less so, only some more lucidly so, more accepting-ly so. For instance, I see people go from sage like wisdom, any person really, in a peak moment, then back into blithering emotional/mental nonsense, I watch this continuously around me, and of course in me, and I get to figuring out metaphors and ways of harnessing and directing that, because I feel unless I do, the potential for earthian life in the near-term is almost nil, I may be being overly dramatic and arrogant in the potential importance of my function and discovery, or those of people like me, and yet, I feel enough of a compelling hunch to keep defying that doubt and continue on.
I guess where I’m pointed and most interested is THROUGH the big bang, THROUGH the black hole, and what I see is basically a huge version of our conscious/subconscious interplay, which is held in play by a significant threshold which maintains the sense of separation. To use an analogy; in one side is a sun in the other side a black hole, and the transition between the two we call movement, life, energy, play, universe, which biologically is the corpus callosum I guess. I believe through the singularity is an equal inverse universe/reality to this one we predominantly operate in, the physical, the fact they’re kept at perfect odds to one and other allows the creative process at all levels to function, from galaxies down to trees, flowers and people, we reflect this primary setup thorughout ourselves, probably so much so we rarely notice it, like the old analogy of fish in water.
The art appears to be to have this “eternally at odds” predicament, without conflicts, which is the equivalent of having perfectly clear electrical terminals, which are simply opposite degrees of the same thing, not easy to explain, but to me a final kind of impossible to express answer, where the entire continuum becomes circular, self informing and continuous, as much as we can embrace, which of course includes all of the leaps and discoveries we’re making in life here. On this level, to me, every human being is operating this singularity from a fundamental level, if you like, as a god, or a pure intelligence, or cognition, somewhere in this we have to become perfectly aware of that fine degree to fully embrace and accept it, so it is no longer a theory but an experience as real as wiggling a toe or a finger, that kind of direct willing lucidity, where subtle acts/causes take physical effects and outcomes…
This is where my interests are, and like any scientist in the many fields of possible terms of expression, I make many discoveries and many mistakes, my hope is that the discoveries born from my absolute persistence to carry on regardless of the attitudes of ignorance and resistance around me, or despite my own ignorance and inner blindness, which looks to be no more than the combined electro-magnetic circuits of the collective human trance that I was in the habit of poking my metaphoric and rather sensitive little fingers into and getting hurt, blasted, and occasionally managing a magnificent discharge of discovery for myself and others, will pay off in the “discoveries outweighing the mistakes” direction, where we will achieve ‘lift off’ so to speak : )
Again, we’ll find out soon enough!
thanks again Ted, these spaces and exchanges are crucial in this kind of process and its ultimate outcome, it is rare to be able to really let loose and go into contents at this level without people either freaking out or blocking up, or trying to hem it into some creed or fixed context, so your ‘sounding board’ of awareness and extensive experience is once again very much appreciated!
~ Sean
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thanks Ted : )
Oh, ok, I didn’t realize originality was a prerequisite to discussion, only what works and helps one live a happy and successful life, in whatever realm one focuses/resides as an assemblage, which if it is correct is probably unlikely to NEED to change that much in principle, hence the same basic expressions throughout generations of beings. Thanks for your addendum though, as always, it has lead to some new leaping off points to explore and ultimately dissolve into a greater sense of infinitude…
I’m personally going for the body as “infinite mutative potential” stance in my personal game, whether it is or not, well I guess we’ll find out soon enough!
Happy Travelling!
~ Sean
A few further caveats…
— “Trust the intelligence of your body” particularly in familiar situations. The less familiar the situations, the more likely it is to lead you into trouble – this occurs at all levels of abstraction. —
Is it not the body that ‘tells you’ you’re in the unfamiliar situation, so in a sense, by default you’re trusting it anyway? Even if it is to as you seem to suggest mistrust it?
— Certainly, one cannot “think through” the detail of everyday life, it is just too massively overwhelming, so one must learn to trust the intuitive and chemical level systems of the body. —
Which is more or less what I said when I say “you cannot think your way through this but you can still think”, you just put the exact same statement it in different terms, right?
— For a person to assume full authorship (authority – same root) for their own actions, then they must learn how the two major systems of mind work together —
In my own modality, I prefer what reality is like when I LET ‘the two aspects of mind’ be together as one undivided isness, which they are anyway, this kind of fusion has happened many times, every day now, though once to such a degree I collapsed all sense of inner-duality for a period of weeks, literally, and existed in a totally lucid state, the sense of dual-ness built up again eventually, but none the less, a very pure experience for quite a while, a good taster of what unfettered whole-mindedness is like.
Do you have a method or approach for accomplishing what you state “one must learn”, as I said, I’m open to what works and improves ones success in this life, do share…
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Hi Sean
For me, at this point, I am interested in exploring new cultures only if it seems likely that they may significantly add to the options I have available.
Have spent quite a bit of time in that state also, though I am not sure I would call it lucid, and it certainly has an aspect of clarity to it, and it seems that some of that clarity is illusory in a sense – more experiential than objectively real. And it certainly is an interesting state, addictive almost.
The “one must learn” is in the sense of someone learning to ride a bicycle – one must learn balance between the opposing forces. Either that, or continually be falling over.
No real shortcut, other than trying and falling over a few times, and eventually one gets the idea.
The real kicker to this, is that it appears to be an infinitely recursive process. It doesn’t appear to be something someone does once, and then it is over.
It seems that it is something that one must do at each new level of awareness one encounters.
It now seems to me that the process is potentially infinite.
It seems that what is available for exploration at each level of awareness is potentially infinite.
Choice of path through this infinitude of infinitudes seems to be a personal thing.
To me, existence is an awareness of so many levels of relatedness, and also many layers of “skins” to separate inside from outside.
Skin serves a very useful purpose, allowing states within the skin to be significantly different from states outside. This can be true at any level of abstraction or analogy.
And every level is connected to the levels below it.
The most enlightened one can still be killed by a knife.
How one chooses where to direct attention and intention is the greatest of balancing acts – no magic bullets from me; just a lot of mistakes, a lot of trial and error.
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One more thing to think on.
“— Certainly, one cannot “think through” the detail of everyday life, it is just too massively overwhelming, so one must learn to trust the intuitive and chemical level systems of the body. —
Which is more or less what I said when I say “you cannot think your way through this but you can still think”, you just put the exact same statement it in different terms, right?”
Not quite.
It seems to me possible that one can “think your way through” anything, if you select an appropriate level of abstraction.
What you (or me or anyone else) cannot do, is consciously control all aspects of anything. In so far as we have control of anything (which is another discussion) then it seems that the vast bulk of our being must be left to the “subconscious processes”. In this respect, the game of golf seems to be a great model for life in general.
If a golfer tries to take conscious control of some aspect of one’s swing, then the results will get worse and worse. One has to trust the subconscious to do what it does, and pre accept whatever result comes out of the swing, if one is to excel. One teaches the body to swing by swinging, by practice, by trial and error, by training and more practice, by refinement of distinctions.
In the playing of the game, it is up to the conscious to select the objective, to make allowance for factors, and then to hold the desired image in mind, and get out of the way, and let the body do what it knows how to do. Any conscious interference in the process of swinging usually produces undesired results.
So it seems with anything in life.
We must immerse ourselves in our chosen fields, practice, practice, practice – evaluating each practice session, refining and updating techniques, refining distinctions,
So it depends entirely on what you meant, which is not at all clear from what you have written.
I get the intuitive feeling that you think that the conscious mind should give way to the subconscious in all situations, which to me is entirely inappropriate.
The conscious mind is like the board of directors of the shipping company that owns the ship that is our bodies. The board makes the big picture decisions, like we are going to sail from Auckland NZ to LA USA, and then it hands over control on a day to day basis to the ships captain, who progressively delegates authority and responsibility down the chains until all of the many tasks that must be coordinated for the ship to leave port, cross the ocean, and safely dock at the next port, are achieved.
A wise chairman of the board knows how to do all the tasks that need doing on the ship, and doesn’t try to do them, rather delegates; and yet knows that they need doing, and can ask appropriate questions if it seems they are not being done.
Most of the chairman’s time is spent at much higher levels, of determining why LA, and not San Fran, or Shanghai.
Does that make the distinction clearer?
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Yes, Much clearer, thanks!
I experience the parallel to your golfing metaphor continuously in the practice of music, so that analogy is loud and clear, resonant to my life experience.
The closest imaginal image I’ve got to describing this relationship between what you call conscious and subconscious, is of invisible-fingers in a still lake or deep pool…
The conscious mind (invisible fingers) is for a while thrashing and experimenting and dabbling about in the pool and getting various results, ripples and vibrations, and always the pool returns to equilibrium when the activity stops. The trick seems to be to gain cognition as the invisible fingers of your influence on the pool, initially by experimentation, then eventually by intelligent use of will. Then you can make the shapes and patterns you desire for as long as you desire, without conflicts… this is what I’d call fusion, where any separation or distinction ends, yet, definition still is.
– – – I get the intuitive feeling that you think that the conscious mind should give way to the subconscious in all situations, which to me is entirely inappropriate. – – –
On many occasions yes, but not all occasions. Here is an example… I discovered by letting go of all control over the form that my body could enter into a kind of TaiChi, it amazed me, I could direct and influence the general flow of it consciously but the moment I tried to think about it or control it, then it stopped or degraded in expression. This in no uncertain terms revealed to me the grace and elegance of letting life be, completely, I could not refute the multi-sensory and direct evidence of my choice in the living-moment to stop controlling consciously, and the result was totally unplanned and diverse movement ensued.
In this case the subconscious was informing the physical environment of the body and mind totally and with non or little resistance from the conscious aspect, and it is THE most energized and free I have ever felt, except maybe when I have experienced the same thing in a total stillness experience, where all mass and density of the body apparently is no more, no tension, no sensation, just empty lucid space, and yet still the capacity to think and be intelligible in language.
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Yep – close enough to identical with with my own experience, though I tend to use different languaging.
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– – – The most enlightened one can still be killed by a knife.
How one chooses where to direct attention and intention is the greatest of balancing acts – no magic bullets from me; just a lot of mistakes, a lot of trial and error. – – –
Pretty much the same experience here!
And as for the infinitely relating levels, and the infinite repetitiveness of process at each new juncture, it is readily apparent to me also, and falls into “the same but different” realm of perception that is inherent in all natural expressions I encounter, leaves, trees, planets, cells, people, galaxies, and so on, a constant if you like.
Ok, Thanks ted, for engaging the discussion! It has proved to be a highly valuable exchange of perspectives, I’m sure the ripples will continue for many days to come!
best wishes
~ Sean
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Yep – once again – same here.
Much enjoyed this – thanks Sean
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Hello Ted,
Just a brief update… Whatever process we just went through in this exchange has freed my mind from the popular dogma of not using mind, or avoiding thinking, something which resurfaces and I get hooked into from time to time. Mind and thinking has become as taboo as anything else in our Zeitgeist driven culture of “the latest and greatest”, and I’m now discovering, or maybe simply appreciating, once again the limitless capacity and potential of our minds and thinking as a highly useful and ‘life friendly’ tool!
Thanks Again : )
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Hi Sean
Thank you for trusting me enough to engage to the depth you have.
The outcome you have achieved is all that I had hoped for.
Safe Journey
Arohanui
Ted
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Hi Sean,
Better start again at top level.
Like you, I have had thousands of “mystic” experiences, and I have also studied and contemplated the mystic experiences of many others.
Where we appear to differ greatly is in our interpretation of those events, and the explanatory contexts we have created for them.
In no way do I deny the reality of your subjective experience. I strongly suspect that I share something very close to it.
What I am going to challenge is the structure of the explanatory context you have created around those experiences.
When one looks at the history of the development of ideas about thinking and consciousness then a few names stand out as innovators in particular traditions. For me, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Tielhard de Chardin, Nietzsche, Russell, Wittgenstein stand out particularly strongly, and in each case I can see clearly where they made assumptions based upon lack of knowledge, or inaccurate interpretations of data. So while I acknowledge the contributions of each (and many others), I can also see their errors.
What in fact seems now to clearly be the reality, is that what we subjectively experience as reality is not in fact reality, but is, rather, a predictive model of reality created within our brains and updated by information from our senses.
Thus, your experience, of being able to fly around and see beyond what the senses can see is simply explained. While your logic was great to a point, the error of logic you made was to assume that the experience you were having was given directly by some super-sense, and thus your ability to see the back of things indicated that you were outside the model.
Consider the possibility that you have sufficient information in your memory that your subconscious is able to construct an image for your awareness that will be a close enough approximation to withstand quite close scrutiny.
I too have “flown” around in my perceptual world, and “unhooked” my location in the model from its normal vantage point of behind my eyes.
I also developed to ability to similarly fly around abstract spaces. I found that, after much work programming computers to create 2D perspective drawings of 3D mathematical models, I could create such models in my head, directly from the equations, and “fly” around creating perspectives of my own choice (I would have had my first experience of doing that around mid 1974 – quite a while ago).
Once I started studying games theory, and multiple stable state equilibria (in the late 70s and early 80s) I found I could create complex multi dimensional topologies of domain-spaces in my head. I could get to 5 dimensions by using the 3 for space, plus colour and intensity. If I was working with more than 5 dimensions I would just collapse the extra ones, and display only the ones I was interested in.
One day I’d love to have a computer program do it for me, and maybe that is just about possible with today’s computers.
Anyway – back to topic.
It seems to me, that what is going on for us when we have these experiences, is that we have freed ourselves from being stuck in the perspective of looking through our eyes, but we have not escaped from our model.
It seems that we are, still, firmly within the model of “reality” created within our minds by our brains, informed by all of our experiences (including all implicit and un-examined cultural “truths” and “assumptions”). And here is where the distinction between waking a dreaming becomes seriously blurred. Without the immediate updates of information from the perspective of the eyes, to keep the model entrained with the real world, small discrepancies can easily create self reinforcing loops, and our models can diverge a long way from what is really out there (whatever that actually is – I make no claim of any sort of infallible knowledge of that – I’m fallible, like everyone else – I just have much more knowledge of the levels of systems at play creating that experience than most).
I do not pretend that I understand, in every detail, every process involved in my experience of being, and it does seem to me entirely probable that my experience of being is “simply” (in quotes because it is anything but simple, the numbers of entities involved is beyond human conscious comprehension, and the number of levels is getting close to the limits that consciousness can comprehend) the result of the processes of body and brain at work in interaction with all that body and brain are connected to in reality (whatever reality actually is, as distinct from the model of it that our brains create for us as our access to it).
The mystical experience is real enough, in the sense that we experience it, I have no doubt of that – far too many experiences – it is the interpretations I challenge. Ginger Campbell has a great podcast site http://www.brainsciencepodcast.com which I strongly recommend (I have listened to them all – good to do while mowing the lawns) and episode 78 on brain machine interface is fascinating in this context.
I agree that our culture is more bound in a sense than many older cultures, and there is another sense where that is the necessary outcome of simple first order approximations to understandings of deep and infinite and infinitely creative potentialities in which we seem to exist. It is a necessary path to deeper understanding, and like many paths, it has dangers.
I am not trying to restrict you in any sense, and I am committed to a context that maintains connection through the potentially infinite levels of paradigms of understanding that seem to be available to the persistent explorer.
It seems to me, that all the mathematics says that “through the big bang”, and “through the black hole”, are not available to us – they are necessarily purely speculative.
What is available though, seems to be quite large enough and interesting enough to keep anyone engaged for a few billion years (should we be fortunate enough to live that long).
I agree that it is very difficult to communicate between paradigms. I find the Mobius loop and the Klien bottle to be very interesting toys. I used to have the walls of my room papered with Escher prints (30+ years ago).
Like you, I enjoy these rare chances to attempt communication with another who is not limited in their explorations by cultural paradigms, and when one is so far from any sort of cultural norm, and one has extended language so far from common experience, communication can be extremely difficult.
One has to chunk things down, and then hope the other can expand them back out again on the other side, and it doesn’t always happen that way.
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these are great reminders Ted, thanks again , and also for giving a bit more depth and context regards your own ‘alternative viewing’ perspectives and developments through the years, everything at this level seems equally clarifying and perplexing, objective reality is at once definitive to the senses and equally questionable, which in my own process either breaks down into basic flux/infinite potential which makes possible new choice to originate something, or it restructures into yet another semblance of ‘creative order’ and ‘reality’, from which there is new potential to do something, it seems there is no limit to this dynamic…
I did notice at one stage, and you remind me of it, that ANY perception is happening in a larger domain that is just awareness, and may assemble much like the way a website caches many aspects and resources into one page view, though much more smoothly and apparently real. So these imaginative skills and ESP’s and whatever name we give the infinite modes of experiencing possible realities and what I might call as a being ‘gaming scenarios’, and our entering them, are really modes of the very same construct, the same kind of assumption that there is an out there out there to be explored and gradually revealed to a “someone in here”. In one particular startling moment I had the absolute sense for a few minutes that the entire world was inside of me, that I was literally walking inside my own imagination in lucid waking perception, it was as real as any other ‘real’, and of course triggered some questions about how and what I had been assuming as reality up to that moment.
Relative to this, which your process reminds me of greatly, I started to develop a mathematical/geometry/intuitive construct to aid the further ordering and integration of my thinking processes regards whatever this “being human” is, for this I used a deck of playing cards, it seemed to be what intuitively leaped out or was handy at the time, it has proven invaluable as a means of indexing my mind regards the dimensions of possible perception and interpretation, and also helps me think through and explore the ‘universal creative process’, what it has more or less allowed me to do is think in a four mode quadrant of thirteen levels, which is dynamically interchangeable throughout itself, and in which every perspective is integral to the other, a system I can apply to more or less anything, the plot of a book, a song, a perplexing problem, its a bit like musical scaling and ratios which is why I find it so appealing, and delivers meaningful shifts whenever I apply it, which is key, I have to exercise and apply it.
The ultimate goal of this is to share it, or the products of exploring these realms, their interrelationship, and prove some use value to myself and others, for it to be both engaging and have some quality of resonance and sustain which goes beyond the events and systems themselves as mere quantities. Relative to this I have the idea often of a more integrative or ‘holistic’ computer coding language, which might just achieve something like what you were aiming to simulate in external environments, and my hunches often seem to be in the direction of lo-tech, simple, and maximum leverage of innate human abilities in relation to the flow of life, not exactly sure where that’s all leading to as yet, though it seems a potential refreshing alternative to the mainstream momentum, which I believe is healthy for any culture : )
Again, many thanks, these exchanges are proving invaluable in helping sharpen, focus, and clarify these ‘inner tools’ innate to our being human!
~ Sean
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Hi Sean
For me, it works so long as I am completely clear of these simple distinctions:
1/ There does indeed seem to be an external reality, and I appear to be part of it;
2/ My perceptions seem to give me information from the past, to update the model of it that my subconscious brain seems to make for my conscious awareness, which model seems to be predictive in nature.
Thus, while it seems that there may in fact be an external reality out there, at the conscious level I have no direct access to that reality, all I have in the model of it that my brain produces, which may be a more or less accurate representation, depending on context.
I make no absolute claims as to what reality is, all my claims are of a probabilistic nature.
Consciousness is a primacy for awareness, and it seems that it is very much a secondary characteristic of reality, built upon many levels of highly evolved biological systems.
I agree with you that there does appear to be infinite capacity for creativity in the dynamics at play in both consciousness and reality, and I suspect we could spend many days just in exploring the conceptual levels of those dynamics, without getting deeply into the details.
I like the playing card analogy – I built a model of it like 4 13 story buildings next to each other, and sort of flew around them and examined it – could be useful. I used to make a bit of money playing blackjack, counting the cards and recalculating the probabilities. Won $25 one evening in 1974 with a 2c limit.
As to where to from here – it seems that more and more people are waking up to the fact that the systems are not working in the interests of all people, but are rather biased towards the interests of a very small subset.
There are some interesting dynamics out there, with the anonymous movement, and the occupy movement that seems to be its first generation child.
Then there are guys like John Fullerton, at the capital institute (http://capitalinstitute.org), who seems to be doing some serious questioning.
Then there are guys like Keen and his http://debunkingeconomics.com/lectures/
And the likes of ourselves.
I am very definitely in the non-violent camp, and producing outcomes that deliver wins to everyone (even the ones who are doing most of the winning now), and there are lots of other folks out there willing to meet force with force – that is one of the biggest dangers to us all.
I am looking for optimal blends of high and low tech that deliver for everyone, not simply the favoured few.
And such ideas are starting to become more mainstream.
Keep up the explorations.
Ted
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– – – Consciousness is a primacy for awarenes – – –
Yes, I can see how awareness is a subtle extension of sense, like a super-sensing, combined multiple senses echoing into or as awareness, close to our idea of omniscience but not quite it, still with a construct and edge, hmmm, interesting!
– – – Probability – – –
Aha, yes, I see by your approach this is inherent, and you’re very good at it, clearly, on 2c those are considerable returns : )
Your mentioning probability reminds me of a quote I heard once, something along the lines of “Most problems of a human being are due to mixing up the realms of the possible and the probable”. In fact, if we get our probabilities in sync with our possibilities then I see a definite freedom in that.
It seems I’m more operating in ‘the possibility’ department of the universe by nature, I’ve never been particularly practical or strategic, I find my cultural environment and its operating premise very difficult, it is more like I have this inspiration firing off all day and night, which is more theoretical and propositional, more artistic basically, which I see could be of value presented rightly to a more of a ‘in the flesh build and create it’ type, to engage and inspire the skills of others who maybe do not have such a free imagination. This has pretty much been my life’s core dilemma, finding the translating bridge from one set of capacities to another, between creative vision and substantial realization.
Probability, yes, I feel I need to go and study and understand that more fully, probably ready for it now, more so than back in the classroom days : ) Can you recommend any good sources/books etc? I’ve made bookmarks of the links to explore, the brain science looks particularly interesting!
Thanks once again Ted, I appreciate these new perspectives to “go at” : )
~ Sean
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