My origin for this thread is the idea that everything made by thought is a kind of metaphor. That is, everything thought ushers into existence is like a symbol on a map rather than the actuality the symbol is pointing to. When thought joins these metaphors together, you have a story: the story of yourself, of the world, of others, of reality. The words I use (metaphor, story, symbol, pointer) are unimportant, what matters is that these thought-driven conceptual constructs are representations of actualities, they are not actual actualities.
Like the thread title suggests, what Iâd like to explore here together what may lie beyond the metaphors and stories.
Waow! This could be tricky - its not immediately obvious how we would go about doing that. (excellent!)
I suppose that we would be telling each other stories about whats beyond the stories (assuming we knew what was beyond) ? Am I right? or am I missing something?
Or is the only thing to realise that we must experience reality via our own conditioned projections?
Is this important to the discussion? Do we have to accept that the chair is fundamentally as we imagine it to be? Or can we just say that we agree about certain concepts, or that we share the same experiential interface with reality (ie primate interpretation of our primate sense perceptions)
Drilling down on the definitions!
Seems like the same type of trickiness as exploring the unknown. We can explore the known and the border between the known and unknown (to a certain extent). But we canât explore the unknown, by definition. We can speculate about it, infer it, hear-read about it. But to actually explore the unknown would be like pre-spacecraft humans exploring the dark side of the moon. They could infer itâs there, but couldnât directly observe it.
But what about experiencing the unknown. Is that possible?
I donât like this metaphor - its basically saying that the unknown is exactly like the known only we havenât seen it yet.
Actually its a very good metaphor for where weâre at. Our basis for speculation is always from the known
My experience of what I think/feel in this moment is dependent on the response/reaction of my knowledge, my practical and psychological content. That is, the experience is the experiencer. For the brain without psychological content, the experience is what the senses and the accompanying practical knowledge surmise, and though this varies from one brain to another, itâs closer to actuality than the brain that is still confused and conflicted by its psychological content.
So âexperiencing the unknownâ is what the sane brain does when itâs free of its self. But the self-centered brain is hopelessly confused and conflicted, no matter what itâs experiencing. For the self-centered brain, the unknown it needs to experience is itself, its own incoherence.
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Is this inevitable? Does âspeculating from the unknownâ make rational sense? What would it be?
Not to me right now.
This might not be the exciting philosophical woo woo that we were hoping for - but should be explored I reckon. (or considered silently for a bit - it might help)
The person who is free from psychological conditioning dwells in the psychological unknown?
I have no idea what you consider the âexciting philosophical woo woo that we were hoping forâ, so please give us an example of what you think we might be hoping for.
Considering the educated blim-blam you post, your erudite brain must have some idea of what philosophical woo-woo is.
You seem upset - I say that because people that lash out are usually upset about stuff.
The woo woo remark was meant as a joking jibe at rick (or the image I have of rick) and at myself (it was not meant as an attack upon you)
When I said your remark should be explored, I really meant it was of interest.
PS. I hope you will reconsider being less mean to people, our actions in the world do have consequences (in this instance for example, instead of looking at the concepts of âknownâ and âselfâ, we are faced with who we are in our relationships)
âUpsetâ? Sorry, no, just annoyed. âLash outâ is another exaggeration.
I hope you will reconsider being less mean to people, our actions in the world do have consequences (in this instance for example, instead of looking at the concepts of âknownâ and âselfâ, we are faced with who we are in our relationships)
Nothing wrong with facing âwho we are in our relationshipsâ. Maybe thatâs what matters most in a forum like this since we canât help but form images of each other, as you demonstrate by calling me âmeanâ.
Say we assume everything touched by thought is in the realm of metaphors and stories: ideas, images, symbols, theories. Beyond metaphors and stories would mean beyond, untouched by thought. What mental states are (largely) untouched by thought? Some possibilities:
Pure awareness, attention, presence
Intuition*, insight*
Flow*
Pure sensory perception
Meditation*
Deep sleep (is it a mental state?)
* Thought may be involved to a degree
Yes - thats why I suggested we do that, instead of ignoring your behaviour, or mirroring and escalating.
If the only effect of people acting like complete jerks was that everyone involved became more self aware - then acting like jerks world be a good thing.
Transcending belief, means not confusing experience (aka my reality, the known) with truth.
Say I have an experience. Is my experience a pointer to an object (subtle, gross) âoutsideâ itself?
Unfortunately we can only be sure that the experience is occuring (Solipsism)
But we cannot conclude that mind (or consciousness) is all that exists (hard Idealism cannot be demonstrated)
This seems to be a brick wall. (banging our head against it might not be useful)
If so, all that remains is our responsibility (or lack thereof) to our friends (ie. relationship to experience, action in the face of mystery aka morality, wellbeing etc) ??
I have an experience of time passing -
Q: does the image I have of time exist in my absence? (A: of course not)
Q: but does the image represent a thing outside my head? (A: for arguments sake, say time is the difference in fluidity of gravitational geometry - is that what the image in my head was pointing at?)
This is true for âacting like jerksâ, but if speaking directly or bluntly in this forum is, in your opinion, acting like a jerk, youâre exaggerating again.
OK - @Inquiry I shall try to do better next time - we all are trying to do our best Iâm sure.
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