HSPs, Resolutions, Plans... and Letting Go

Alethia wrote:Here is a little experiement for you rombomb...sit quitely, close your eyes and breath in and out deeply. If thoughts come into your mind, just let them go..and focus on your breath. As you sit there in stillness eventually your mind will empty in that stillness and your focus will be on your breath.

aka meditation.

Alethia wrote:
After you sit in this space for around twenty minutes or as long as it takes to still your mind. What is left for you to connect with in that space.?

What does "connect with in that space" mean?

Alethia wrote:
The thoughts have stopped, the mind is still...if you were to carry this over into waking life and speak....what speaks then?

What does "carry this over into waking life" mean?

no thoughts....empty mind...what connects to the world around you then..meaning out of meditation back into the waking world..

If your mind is empty,,,some liken it to just space...nothing else..so if this occurs what do you have left to connect too...no thoughts, no conditioned responses...what speaks from that space..

rombomb wrote:But all of one's feelings arise from one's ideas. So what you said there means that a person is unable (so far) to reason away an idea.

How many ideas do you believed are housed by the conscious Ego, and how many conflicting ideas do you believe are held by the unconscious? How many ideas from the unconscious are making us sad? How many of them are learned? How many are programmed by nature? Do other animal mothers mourn their children, or just humans? Does animal culture put these ideas in their heads?

You are under the impression the Ego's ratiocination reigns supreme. Reasoning away feelings and telling yourself not to feel them because they are irrational serves only to have them fester in the unconscious and develop into a sickness.

rombomb wrote:Why is it disturbing?

Because I'm getting the impression you haven't experienced such feelings consciously. Which implies your unconscious is a ticking time bomb and you are blind to the way emotion affects you, as it is only doing so unconsciously.

rombomb wrote:What about things like this?

Every time someone sees an image of his mother, who died 3 years ago, he cries.

Every time someone hears a certain song, he gets anxiety really bad.

Are these examples of attachment and needing to "let go"?

The mother is an example of attachment. Anxiety example doesn't sound like it's directly related to attachment unless something dear to him was lost and he associates the incident with that particular song.

Alethia wrote:no thoughts....empty mind...what connects to the world around you then..meaning out of meditation back into the waking world..

If your mind is empty,,,some liken it to just space...nothing else..so if this occurs what do you have left to connect too...no thoughts, no conditioned responses...what speaks from that space..

I think you're referring to one's subconscious (aka unconscious). Right?

Do you think its impossible for a person to know what is in his subconscious? In other words, do you think its impossible for a person to discover one of his subconscious ideas?

rombomb wrote:Do you think its impossible for a person to know what is in his subconscious? In other words, do you think its impossible for a person to discover one of his subconscious ideas?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion

[I]ntrospection does not provide a direct pipeline to nonconscious mental processes. Instead, it is best thought of as a process whereby people use the contents of consciousness to construct a personal narrative that may or may not correspond to their nonconscious states.

We may at best manage to make inferences about our unconscious ideas. Don't overestimate your control. You (the Ego) are only a fraction of the Self.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:But all of one's feelings arise from one's ideas. So what you said there means that a person is unable (so far) to reason away an idea.

How many ideas do you believed are housed by the conscious Ego, and how many conflicting ideas do you believe are held by the unconscious?

Most of one's thinking is subconscious.

And most of his ideas, exist subconsciously.

Dreamspace wrote:
How many ideas from the unconscious are making us sad? How many of them are learned? How many are programmed by nature?

Few ideas are programmed by nature. And even those are changeable.

Dreamspace wrote:
Do other animal mothers mourn their children, or just humans? Does animal culture put these ideas in their heads?

I don't see the significance of that.

Dreamspace wrote:
You are under the impression the Ego's ratiocination reigns supreme.

What do you mean by "supreme"?

Dreamspace wrote:
Reasoning away feelings and telling yourself not to feel them

No, that is horrible. That is another way of saying that burying one's problems is good. Its not. It can lead to disaster.

Dreamspace wrote:
because they are irrational serves only to have them fester in the unconscious and develop into a sickness.

Right, as I explained above.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:Why is it disturbing?

Because I'm getting the impression you haven't experienced such feelings consciously. Which implies your unconscious is a ticking time bomb and you are blind to the way emotion affects you, as it is only doing so unconsciously.

You're assuming that I don't know how to "tap into" my subconscious. Is that right? You're mistaken.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:What about things like this?

Every time someone sees an image of his mother, who died 3 years ago, he cries.

Every time someone hears a certain song, he gets anxiety really bad.

Are these examples of attachment and needing to "let go"?

The mother is an example of attachment. Anxiety example doesn't sound like it's directly related to attachment unless something dear to him was lost and he associates the incident with that particular song.

Both of the examples I provided are real. They happened to my friend and to my mom. In both cases, I started to talk to them about the mind/brain relationship. And I asked them questions that revealed that they felt guilty for something. And then I continued asking them questions until they answered in a such a way that was clear to me that they understood that they were not guilty.

In both cases, they stopped feeling guilty after our discussion. Note that in each case, I only had one discussion with them.

And by "stopped feeling guilty", I mean that the song and the image of the mother no longer invoked the emotion that it once did. My friend now listens to that song with enjoyment, as he did before the event that he used to feel guilty about. And my mother now thinks about her mother with joy, instead of guilt (she had blamed herself for the few months of suffering that her mother went through before her death). Seeing a picture of her mother brings smiles, rather than crying.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:Do you think its impossible for a person to know what is in his subconscious? In other words, do you think its impossible for a person to discover one of his subconscious ideas?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion

In the first sentence of that article it says "a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states".

I don't believe I (nor anyone else) has direct insight into his mind. What did I say that led you to that idea?

Dreamspace wrote:

[I]ntrospection does not provide a direct pipeline to nonconscious mental processes. Instead, it is best thought of as a process whereby people use the contents of consciousness to construct a personal narrative that may or may not correspond to their nonconscious states.

We may at best manage to make inferences about our unconscious ideas.

By "inferences" I assume you mean conjectural/fallible knowledge. Right?

Dreamspace wrote:
Don't overestimate your control. You (the Ego) are only a fraction of the Self.

What is the point of estimating one's control over his subconscious?

rombomb wrote:Few ideas are programmed by nature. And even those are changeable.

You overestimate the Ego. We can recondition ourselves, but our control over the unconscious is indirect and limited.

rombomb wrote:I don't see the significance of that.

If you can't make the connection to see the point of it, this is a severe problem. It's a lack of Ne. But system which could empower you to fight against your nature is apparently dehumanizing if it isn't Ayn Rand, David Deutsche or Karl Popper. If you can't overcome an aspect of your nature which resides under the domain of conscious control… I don't feel very convinced you could ever have much control over the unconscious.

Dreamspace wrote:What do you mean by "supreme"?

It would appear you believe logical reasoning will overcome all other forces of the psyche virtually uncontested so long as reason bothers to make the effort to combat them.

rombomb wrote:Right, as I explained above.

Why would you cut a sentiment in half and address it as though it was two separate ideas? Why not leave it intact and simply say, "I concur; it's burying the problem."

rombomb wrote:You're assuming that I don't know how to "tap into" my subconscious. Is that right? You're mistaken.

No, I'm assuming you've very little conscious insight into your own emotion. And seeing how a direct tap into the unconscious is impossible, it is most likely you're more clueless about the contents of your unconscious than you realize.

rombomb wrote:And by "stopped feeling guilty", I mean that the song and the image of the mother no longer invoked the emotion that it once did. My friend now listens to that song with enjoyment, as he did before the event that he used to feel guilty about. And my mother now thinks about her mother with joy, instead of guilt (she had blamed herself for the few months of suffering that her mother went through before her death). Seeing a picture of her mother brings smiles, rather than crying.

That's good to hear and interesting anecdotal evidence, but not every case has such a simple resolution. The same only works for me in more simple instances.

rombomb wrote:
By "inferences" I assume you mean conjectural/fallible knowledge. Right?

Do you have to translate everything to a preexisting system of knowledge in your mind? Can you not submit to the context provided rather than suck the whole thing into another framework, like critical rationalism? Do you have to give the word 'inference' an esoteric tint the author had not intended?

rombomb wrote:What is the point of estimating one's control over his subconscious?

You've pushed almost everything except logic out of your conscious. The more you suppress intuition and feeling, the less you attempt to give them equal importance, the less free will you are going to have. It's as though you've given all but logic over to the unconscious.

Rombomb, you are brilliant, but your mind and world view limit you. As each individual's limits them. We are limited evolutionarily. Here is a guess... there are many realities that exist that cannot be proven or disproven because human beings are physically unable to percieve them in any way.
Flawed examples include the strings of string theory. How does a human disprove this theory. Many experimental scientists would like to know.
And I call it flawed because we DO have some limited perception of this reality.
What about my "guess" in the purest form? that realities exist that cannot be proven or disproven. Would you say that such realities cannot exist if we cannot percieve them? That is the limitation of the human animal, earthling, evolved in this environment in order to survive.

As a result of my knowledge of my limitations, I cannot ascribe to Popperism, or any other "ism" that is an artifact of the human mind. I may be mistaken, but you sound "close-minded". Here we have my subjective feeling, I admit. This feeling arose from reading the words, and I paraphrase... Popperism is truth (to you) because you have no critisim of it (and I read that as no way to falsify it). By your own words you say that you cannot know the truth and yet you seem to assert forcefully that this set of ideas and theories espoused by Popper is "the truth". This seems a contritiction in terms.

Here is an outlandish theory. The being who lives and evolved on the surface of the sun, whose physical synapses evolved using another atomic base, whose senses and perceptions are so different from earthling's that we have no knowledge of one another... that being can argue against Popperism.

BlueTopaz wrote:Rombomb, you are brilliant, but your mind and world view limit you.

[…]

I may be mistaken, but you sound "close-minded".

I agree on both counts. I think much of it is not a natural ceiling, but rather self-imposed limitations holding him back.

BlueTopaz wrote:

Who created this .img file, BlueTopaz ? It's remarkably close to no distortion.

I've had many exchanges with those similar to Rombomb at INTJf, and when the opportunity comes up via a discussion on color I use the work of Dr. Beau Lotto, Neuroscientist, Illusionist, to 'bomb' their preconceptions:

Dr Beau Lotto for the BBC wrote:It shows that, in spite of our
strongest instincts, colour
is a purely subjective experience,

governed by the context
in which we see it.

Redness is not a
product of the world.

It doesn't exist unless
we're there to make it.

Blueness is not a part of the world,
wavelengths are not colour.

All they are is little packets
of energy called photons,
they are not colour.

We take that and we make
perceptions of them, and those
perceptions guide our behaviour.

Illusions fool us
because, try as we might,

we cannot overcome our experience
of how we think the world works.

It's these experiences we
store in our heads that really
determines what we see.

What do you all think of this statement ?

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:Few ideas are programmed by nature. And even those are changeable.

You overestimate the Ego.

Why do you think I overestimate it?

Dreamspace wrote:
We can recondition ourselves, but our control over the unconscious is indirect

Right, because we can't know for sure whether we're right about an idea we have about our subconscious. All our ideas are conjectural.

Is that what you mean by indirect? If not, then what do you mean?

Dreamspace wrote:
and limited.

Right, because we can't physically "see" our ideas in our minds. We can only guess at them. Actually even if we could see them, that is still indirect, and impossible to know infallibly.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:I don't see the significance of that.

If you can't make the connection to see the point of it, this is a severe problem. It's a lack of Ne.

Whats your explanation that its a severe problem?

Dreamspace wrote:
But system which could empower you to fight

Why do you use metaphors of violence in a subject about discovering one's subconscious ideas?

Dreamspace wrote:
against your nature

Why do you think that discovering one's subconscious ideas is "against one's nature"?

Dreamspace wrote:
is apparently dehumanizing if it isn't Ayn Rand, David Deutsche or Karl Popper.

I think you've assumed that my ideas on how the mind/body and conscious/subconscious relationships originated with Rand/Deutsch/Popper. They didn't. I created them myself before learning of those people. I helped me friend and my mom stop feeling guilty (and solved some of my own psychology problems) before learning about them and their ideas.

Dreamspace wrote:
If you can't overcome an aspect of your nature which resides under the domain of conscious control… I don't feel very convinced you could ever have much control over the unconscious.

I don't know what you're saying there. Could you rephrase?

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:What do you mean by "supreme"?

It would appear you believe logical reasoning will overcome all other forces of the psyche virtually uncontested so long as reason bothers to make the effort to combat them.

Nope. A lot of knowledge is required. Attempting to reason does not automatically make that knowledge known.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:Right, as I explained above.

Why would you cut a sentiment in half and address it as though it was two separate ideas? Why not leave it intact and simply say, "I concur; it's burying the problem."

For clarity. It can't hurt. It can only help.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:You're assuming that I don't know how to "tap into" my subconscious. Is that right? You're mistaken.

No, I'm assuming you've very little conscious insight into your own emotion. And seeing how a direct tap into the unconscious is impossible, it is most likely you're more clueless about the contents of your unconscious than you realize.

You're mistaken.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:And by "stopped feeling guilty", I mean that the song and the image of the mother no longer invoked the emotion that it once did. My friend now listens to that song with enjoyment, as he did before the event that he used to feel guilty about. And my mother now thinks about her mother with joy, instead of guilt (she had blamed herself for the few months of suffering that her mother went through before her death). Seeing a picture of her mother brings smiles, rather than crying.

That's good to hear and interesting anecdotal evidence, but not every case has such a simple resolution. The same only works for me in more simple instances.

Why do you think it was simple? My friend had his anxiety problem when hearing that song for 15 years, my mom for 3 years. Whats simple about that? If it was simple, they would have fixed it long before they came to me for help.

Are you saying that some cases are impossible to be "fixed"?

BlueTopaz wrote:Rombomb, you are brilliant, but your mind and world view limit you. As each individual's limits them. We are limited evolutionarily.

Here is a guess... there are many realities that exist that cannot be proven or disproven because human beings are physically unable to percieve them in any way.

Right. But even if we could perceive them, our perceptions are fallible too.

BlueTopaz wrote:
Flawed examples include the strings of string theory. How does a human disprove this theory.

With refutations (with or without physical evidence), but only fallibly. The "proof" can be "disproved" later.

BlueTopaz wrote:
Many experimental scientists would like to know.
And I call it flawed because we DO have some limited perception of this reality.

It may or may not be flawed. Someone in the future might find a flaw and explain it (either with or without physical evidence).

BlueTopaz wrote:
What about my "guess" in the purest form? that realities exist that cannot be proven or disproven. Would you say that such realities cannot exist if we cannot percieve them?

Nope, I'm with you.

BlueTopaz wrote:
That is the limitation of the human animal, earthling, evolved in this environment in order to survive.

As a result of my knowledge of my limitations, I cannot ascribe to Popperism, or any other "ism" that is an artifact of the human mind.

So don't. In general, people should do only what they are fully persuaded of.

But, when you see a flaw in an idea of mine, do you address it by trying to explain your flaw (to yourself at least)? Or do you say, ah I'm probably wrong about the flaw I see, so I'll just forget this flaw that I see.

And, when you see a flaw in an idea of yours, do you address it by trying to explain your flaw to yourself? Or do you say, ah I'm probably wrong about the flaw I see, so I'll just forget this flaw that I see.

BlueTopaz wrote:
I may be mistaken, but you sound "close-minded". Here we have my subjective feeling, I admit. This feeling arose from reading the words, and I paraphrase... Popperism is truth (to you) because you have no critisim of it (and I read that as no way to falsify it).

But, there is a way to falsify it. Find a flaw and explain it. And I'll consider your explanation.

Note that this has already been done with some things in Popper's philosophy, for example his idea known as verisimilitude.

BlueTopaz wrote:
By your own words you say that you cannot know the truth and yet you seem to assert forcefully that this set of ideas and theories espoused by Popper is "the truth". This seems a contritiction in terms.

Conjectural Truth, yes. Objective Truth, no.

Objective Truth is THE true. Like if there was a god, then god would know it.

Conjectural Truth is what we know of the Objective Truth. None of us can know which of our ideas are unflawed. Our unflawed ideas are the ones that *are* Objective Truth's, but we can't know which ones. That means that I should leave *all* my ideas on the table -- leave them all open for criticism. Don't shield any of them from criticism (internal or external).

Shielding an idea from criticism (and brainstorming in general) is being closed-minded about that idea.

Which idea(s) do you think I'm being closed-minded about? Or, if you don't agree with my definition of closed-minded, what do you think it means?

BlueTopaz wrote:
Here is an outlandish theory. The being who lives and evolved on the surface of the sun, whose physical synapses evolved using another atomic base, whose senses and perceptions are so different from earthling's that we have no knowledge of one another... that being can argue against Popperism.

I don't know what you mean there. All aliens have the same physical limitation we humans have.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:
By "inferences" I assume you mean conjectural/fallible knowledge. Right?

Do you have to translate everything to a preexisting system of knowledge in your mind? Can you not submit to the context provided rather than suck the whole thing into another framework, like critical rationalism? Do you have to give the word 'inference' an esoteric tint the author had not intended?

I've never used the word "inference" in my thinking ever. And the few times that I've read/heard someone else use it, I didn't think much about what their idea meant. And I've never looked up the word in the dictionary. In this context, yes I should ask you if we mean the same thing. Another way I could have done it is to use the dictionary. But, since you already showed that you understand my term of "conjectural/fallible knowledge", I thought it best to use that, instead of using the dictionary, since even using the dictionary can be more ambiguous than using a term that you and I already agreed on.

Dreamspace wrote:

rombomb wrote:What is the point of estimating one's control over his subconscious?

You've pushed almost everything except logic out of your conscious. The more you suppress intuition and feeling,

Why do you think I'm "suppressing" intuition and feeling? Please quote what I said that led you to that idea.

Dreamspace wrote:
the less you attempt to give them equal importance, the less free will you are going to have. It's as though you've given all but logic over to the unconscious.

Your subconscious does logic (aka reasoning) too. Are you saying that only the conscious does reasoning?

RBM wrote:
What do you all think of this statement ?

It means that even our perceptions are fallible.

And that our perceptions are theory-laden.

I know this may not be the right thread for this but it sure feels like it fits here right now.


Mel please move if you feel the need.

You are mena now in this moment...but hey now its me...so we can play this game too..you see?

rombomb wrote:

BlueTopaz wrote:
Here is an outlandish theory. The being who lives and evolved on the surface of the sun, whose physical synapses evolved using another atomic base, whose senses and perceptions are so different from earthling's that we have no knowledge of one another... that being can argue against Popperism.

I don't know what you mean there. All aliens have the same physical limitation we humans have.

How do you know that? How CAN you know that?
The fact that you "KNOW" things like "aliens have the same physical limitations" makes you closed-minded.

Playing games amidst the crew
speaking minds, speaking truth
in all your colours your speaking to you
cant you see thats what you do..
You think your talking to others games
but you continue to play in your name
getting caught up, whos listening to who
listen to yourselves trying to prove....

happy day all..:0

RBM, the image is something that I saw on the internet. I have no idea of its orginator.

The ability to use language does not make one's ideas more true than any others. Keep seeking the truth... you may find it to the benefit of all.

Let us dance the dance of life
in circles.
I'll escape the circle now
I cannot impress so impressively.

Wait for me Alethia!!

the point in this is the point of a game
the game of life where we use our brain
our mind, our beleifs, our conditioned self
no one needs proving, no one needs help
It just what is, its all out there
banging,proving, I dont care..
Trapped in the game of life you are
get outside or play your guitar..
find a spot under a tree
sing to yourself
sit on santas knee...

Look with wonder like the eyes of a child
into your selves, and see how wild
how wild it is watching you's
being trapped in the illusion of your own inner muse...




Ok next whos on second or third?

BlueTopaz wrote:The ability to use language does not make one's ideas more true than any others. Keep seeking the truth... you may find it to the benefit of all.

Let us dance the dance of life
in circles.
I'll escape the circle now
I cannot impress so impressively.

Wait for me Alethia!!

Miss Mo its you... oh come on board, lets get some flow into this hoard..
hoard of intellectual minds..we can do this without being unkind..
lets dance in this thread and get them moving
these young little professors who simply need some ballooning....weeeeeeeeeeeeee

who is on first. not second. What is on second. And I don't know is on third

After reading all of today's posts in here, all I can say is But that is better than this:

My signature lines fit somehow!

Yes.
Kindness... so powerful. Softness... so welcome.
Feelings, feelings, feelings
Such brilliant minds... must be very young,
It is for youth to light the fire beneath us all
Remember the dance across the fire of life?
It is said to bring fertility to all
and to the earth.
I need to remember my love, thank you my dearest Alethia.

BlueTopaz wrote:

rombomb wrote:

BlueTopaz wrote:
Here is an outlandish theory. The being who lives and evolved on the surface of the sun, whose physical synapses evolved using another atomic base, whose senses and perceptions are so different from earthling's that we have no knowledge of one another... that being can argue against Popperism.

I don't know what you mean there. All aliens have the same physical limitation we humans have.

How do you know that?

I learned it from the book _The Beginning of Infinity_ by David Deutsch.

In other words, David Deutsch guessed the theory (which includes its implications). The theory went through lots of self-criticism and external criticism, then published, then criticized more. And so far the theory has survived the criticism.

BlueTopaz wrote:
How CAN you know that?

Somebody guessed it. I read their theory and was persuaded by it. I found flaws, and posted my criticism and I was refuted each time. This is the same as everyone else who read that book and that was persuaded by it and continued on to post his criticism and get refuted.

BlueTopaz wrote:
The fact that you "KNOW" things like "aliens have the same physical limitations"

You've assumed that I'm talking about Objective Knowledge. I'm not. I'm talking about Conjectural Knowledge.

In general, if I say "know", that means conjectural knowledge. If I say "objective knowledge", then that means objective knowledge. Sometimes I use the word "conjectural" if, for example, the main point is conjectural knowledge.

Its a common misunderstanding.

BlueTopaz wrote:
makes you closed-minded.

I don't understand why you think this means I'm closed-minded.

What do you mean by closed-minded?

I think it means shielding an idea of mine from criticism (and brainstorming). I don't think I did that. Do you think I did? Or do you have a different idea about what closed-minded means?

frmthhrt wrote:not Einstein.

Einstein read a copy of Popper's first book and wrote to say that it was very good, and he just needed to fix some details in the physics.

Popper was only a high school teacher at the time, they met a few times later when Popper was an international figure and Popper spent some time trying to convert Einstein from his view on determinism. Popper was in favor of non-determinism.

It was never a matter of labels, they just rejected the views of the positivists and the logical empiricists and they both also did not agree with the orthodox, Bohr or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory.