[MD] Metaphysics and the mystic.

[Carl Thames]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "118" <ununoctiums at gmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Metaphysics and the mystic.


> Hi Carl,
>
> This is fun, and I am sure it is all about MoQ :-).

Carl:
Honestly, I think this probably has more to do with MoQ than much of what 
goes on here.  Synchronicity is almost the definition of DQ, IMHO.  To 
explain, from my perspective, for a philosophy to be worthwhile it must be 
applicable.  i.e. it has to benefit those who practice it.  It either has to 
lead to a better life directly, or a better understanding of life.  I'm 
getting there with MoQ.  It's going slowly because I have had to get over my 
preoccupation with the idea that MoQ is so anthrocentric.  I finally started 
making progress on that one when I realized that ALL philosophy is 
anthrocentric.  After all, we're the ones doing it, right?

> On 2/7/12, Carl Thames <cthames at centurytel.net> wrote:
>>
>> Carl:
>> Well, last night the regular guest didn't show up for whatever reason on
>> Coast to Coast, so they called in a substitute.  Do you want to guess 
>> what
>> his topic was?  Yep.  Synchronicity.  Seriously.  I couldn't make that 
>> up.
>> He's written a book about it, and has a website.  (Did you do that, or 
>> did
>> I? :-)
>>
>> http://howsynchronicityworks.com/
>>
>> He talked a bit about co-creating our existence.
>
> Mark
> Ha ha!  Thanks for the link.  I don't think we discuss these things
> in complete isolation.  I do my best to not get too involved in the
> synchronicity stuff since it became disabling at one point  (I can't
> handle it).   I do not want to get distracted from a task at hand.
> Usually I just say (to whatever is listening): "Oh, yeah, thanks for
> the info, now leave me alone, I have work to do".  Don't want to enter
> into that world of schizophrenia for no reason (of course talking to
> myself is not a normal thing if done outloud, but I think we talk to
> ourselves silently more than we should).

Carl:
Just remember that talking to God is prayer, when God talks to you, that's 
schizophrenia! <G>  For some reason, it's never bothered me.  I don't know 
if I'm wired differently, (which I suspect) or if I've just had too many 
such episodes to let it bother me.  My sister is really into Near Death 
Experiences (NDE's) and she is convinced that I've had one.  I have no 
memory of one, although I do remember having a nde-like experience before. 
I was taking a nap in San Antonio, and I saw the ceiling open.  The ceiling 
I saw had the acoustic tiles, and one of the tiles lifted up, and a ladder 
came down.  To accompany that, there was a pearlesent light, only the shiney 
aspect was gold instead of pink, and two people came down the ladder.  I sat 
up in bed, and started to follow them up the ladder.  About half-way up, I 
asked if I would be able to come back.  One of the entities told me that I 
wouldn't.  At that point, I told them I couldn't go.  I had young children 
at the time, and they needed me to be here.  They said, "Okay" and went up 
into the ceiling and pulled up the ladder.  They replaced the tile, and I 
went back to the bed.  When I woke up later, I remember thinking we didn't 
even have that type of ceiling.  Ours was the usual drywall with the 
spackle-crap on it.  The only other memory I have of that episode was that 
it was the most vivid experience I've ever had.  It was too sharp and clear 
to be a dream.  Anyway, since then, I take the "Have you had an NDE" type 
quizzes and score very high on the "yep" scale.

Mark:
> Jung claimed a form of
> premonition concerning synchronicity.  This may be possible, but I am
> too dumb to be able to put everyting together to be a fortune teller.
> However, I do believe that some are able to do this, not in a logical
> way, but some other way.  However such a thing is somewhat
> inconsequential.  Of course then there are those who make claims that
> just do not reflect what they produce.  So, I do not hang my hat on
> this phenomenon.  In fact, it is not something that interests me.
> Nostradamus stuff is not my cup of tea.

Carl:
I've never had a verbal or otherwise obvious type of precognition.  What I 
get is a little different.  The best example is when I was in high school. 
I lived in a rural town in the middle of Missouri, and there was nothing to 
do.  What we did, someone would get a car, and we'd pool our money for gas 
and just ride around.  One day, I was riding around and just got a feeling 
that I didn't want to do it any more.  I didn't have anything else to do, no 
reason not to, I just didn't want to ride around any more.  I got out, and 
within 30 minutes they were in an accident and rolled the car three times. 
When something bad is coming, I am just somewhere else.  I don't even try to 
explain it.  I do give thanks, though.  Every day.  In my mind, the people 
making something out of Nostradamus is pulling most of it out of their 
nether regions.  It was so generic, with only a couple of exceptions, that 
you could make it mean anything.

>> Carl:
>> Considering that most people have no interest whatever in anything 
>> outside
>> their normal range of experience, I can agree with this.  In fact, from 
>> my
>> experience, most people refuse to even think about the possibility of
>> something other than what they expect happening.  I've mentioned before 
>> the
>> idea of normalcy bias.  It's alive and well, as far as I can tell.  Have 
>> you
>> ever asked someone to free-associate and have them sit and stare at you?
>> Either that, or they start and follow a linear, logical path along lines
>> they're familiar with.  I think my problem with that is that as a young
>> child, I moved around a lot.  (Fifteen different towns by the eighth 
>> grade.)
>> I never really got a chance to establish "normal" like other kids.  Each 
>> new
>> place had different people, different experiences, etc.  Maybe that's why 
>> I
>> had such a mundane experience with the halluciagens?  I dunno.  Like you
>> say, who needs them?  My problem isn't opening my mind, it's closing it
>> around a specific concept long enough to make it work for me. <G>

Mark:
> I love free association since I am pretty fast with it (I have been
> told).  I just leave my mind free and let it do the talking.  I think
> about other things while it is doing its thing.  It is said that it is
> an expression of the subconscious, so I am interested in consciously
> trapping the subconscious in sq so that I can talk about it.  Of
> course the sq is simply some wrapping put over the phenomenon to give
> it some vague dimensions.

Carl:
Have you ever tried automatic writing?  You just hold your pen over a piece 
of paper and start writing.  You let your mind go and see what you come up 
with.  I've never done it, but I've heard about a lot of people who have. 
Some get interesting results.  That could be a way of trapping that 
subconscious stuff you're interested in.

Mark:
> We seem to have something in common in that I moved around a lot as a
> child.  My father was in Oil (as opposed to the military which was the
> case with many of my temporary American friends).  Every two to three
> years we moved from one continent to another, from one language to
> another.  As a kid it was easy to pick up the native languages, and my
> father is Dutch so I learned all those swear words :-).  I did not
> learn how to make lasting friends however, so I decided to bring my
> children up in the same place, So.Cal (although they were both born in
> Hawaii).  I think the travel gave me a freer perspective than I would
> have had otherwise, since I not only have some idea how people in
> other countries think, but I have also thought that way.  I remember
> living in Argentina in high school and being somewhat anti-American.
> When I moved here to go to college, all that changed of course,
> especially when I became an American citizen, GBA.

Carl:
Mine was an iron worker, and built bridges, dams, missile silos, etc. 
Obviously, we went to the job, so we moved a lot.  I don't know that we 
actually needed to move that much, but we did anyway.  I've been in every 
state west of the Mississippi, but I've been east two times, once for two 
weeks in D.C. while in the military, and once to Louisville, KY overnight. 
Other than that, I've been west.

> Mark
> Yes, I agree.  We are taught to "rationalize" everything, which only
> makes things worse.  The more one tries to "fix" something by thinking
> about it in depth the worse it seem to become, until Boom!  If I feel
> blue, the last thing I am going to do is wonder why I am feeling blue
> (the same can be said for happy).  The negative emotional can be
> locked in by the mental, the positive emotional can be destroyed by
> the mental, imo.  My strategy is to look at something like conceptual
> fear as a wind that is blowing through me.  I am a tree, my leaves
> will rustle and branches bend, but that is part of being a tree.  The
> wind always stops on its own.

I just finished a book titled, "Drinking the Dragon." I don't remember the 
author, and I've loaned the book, but it dealt with dealing with adversity. 
In the west, we're taught that we're supposed to go out and slay whatever 
dragons we encounter.  This book encouraged people to meet the problem head 
on, take it in, and make it work for us.  It reminded me a lot of Jung's 
shadow work.  Letting it flow through is a good approach too.

>> Carl:
>> Someone once said that once you become real, you cannot become unreal 
>> again.
>> I agree with your idea of treating reality with respect, either ours or
>> someone else's.  If you want to make someone really angry, challenge 
>> their
>> reality.  It's sad, but I've experienced it too often to deny it.  It's 
>> part
>> of the reason I look for philosophical discussions.  A lot of the time 
>> the
>> topics are those I've already thought about, but there is new stuff too,
>> which keeps it interesting.
>
> Mark:
> I suppose we are all defensive with our realities since if we don't
> know what is going on then it is a sad state of affairs.  This seems
> to be what is known as the ego.  What seems to be the case in any
> philosphical discussion is that old concepts are presented in the new
> vernacular.  I think this is part of our creativeness.  The best part
> of philosophizing is sharing with like-minded individuals.  I do not
> see myself as some "conversion expert".  I'll leave that to the folk
> that walk around with the book.

Carl:
Me too. <G>  The defensiveness is a fear of the unknown.  Most people will 
put up with a lot of discomfort before they're willing to change.  At least 
it's discomfort they're familiar with.  Thinking about it, a friend told me 
of a quotation that applies here:  "Until the pain of staying the same 
overcomes the fear of change, people will not move."  I didn't write down 
the author, but I think it was the woman who wrote the book I just 
mentioned.  I like talking to like-minded people.  I also like talking to 
people who disagree with me, as long as they do it logically.  There's 
always the chance that I could learn something. <G>

>> Carl:
>> I think that choice process are largely DQ.  So many choices in fact, 
>> that
>> life becomes fairly unpredictable.  I was having a bit of a problem with
>> your concept of morality, until I realized that you're speaking in very
>> general terms.  i.e. we make the choices that don't include killing off a
>> lot of people, generally for the improvement of the species, etc.  My
>> concept is a personal one, normally based in spirituality.  Equally 
>> valid,
>> but different.

Mark:
> I think that is a good way in which to understand DQ (without defining
> it :-)).  I suppose that what I mean by morality is personal
> responsibility.  I will try to keep it simple by using that term
> instead.  As seen from some broad conceptual frame, Morality can
> become a tool of the dominating.  As I see it we each have the ability
> of choice, that is a basic aspect of morality.  In this way I try to
> stay away from the dictates of better or worse.  At each moment we all
> know what is better.  When we try to encapsulate it into some dictum,
> it gets real messy.  This notion of moral superiority creates nothing
> but havoc.  The idea of relative morality allows every one to do
> whatever "on moral grounds", which means that morality is whatever you
> want it to be.  Anything can be justified on "Moral Grounds", and this
> points to something besides Morality.

Carl:
Agreed.  The people who can justify anything on moral grounds have broght us 
the inquisition, the crusades, most of the wars, and more misery than any 
people deserve.  One of my favorites was "conversion by the sword."  What 
kind of mind thinks that up?  "Better to lose the life than the soul" kind 
of thinking.  Scary stuff.

>> Carl:
>> Entropy, or the conservation of energy?  I haven't really decided yet. 
>> We
>> want the most return for our investment, either in money, time, or 
>> energy.
>> We want to follow the path of least resistence.

> Mark
> I am not sure about the biggest bang for our buck.  This is indeed
> forward looking, but much of what I do on a daily basis is more about
> habit.  I suppose habit is the path of least resistance, until it runs
> up against the unmovable object.  I do not like the way that some
> reporters tend to put things in terms of economics.  Economics is a
> result, not a driving force in my opinion.  We can certainly explain
> things in economic terms, but that does not mean that such description
> turns around and directs our actions.

Carl:
Economics are the effect, but economic policy is the cause in most cases. 
It's like social policy.  I remember reading in a business class a long time 
ago, "The difference between theory and practice is that practice also 
considers theory."  Unfortunately, too many are willing to implement their 
theory without considering practice.  People like to talk in economic terms 
because they think that more people will understand them.  Very sq, IMHO, 
but then again, most people are pretty limited in their concepts of such 
things.

Mark:
> A number of years ago I had a hip replaced.  What this meant was that
> I lived in a hospital for about a week so that I could get a constant
> infusion of antibiotics just to be on the safe side.  It was an
> adventure and I met lots of interesting characters since my room mate
> was always changing.  One such character was in for some spinal injury
> that he confessed was self inflicted.  He would brag to me on how he
> had beat the system and had been on continual disability through his
> clever destruction of his body.  This kind of world was so dissociated
> from my views that it was hard for me to enter into it to understand
> it.  I think a lot of his driving energy was the result of fear or
> lack of confidence, something that I am familiar with from my past.
> In today's economy even the temporary request for assistance can be
> disabling.  Of course I am all for families getting support to feed
> their children.  Children should not unduly suffer for adult mistakes.
> However I know some friends who don't want to get a job because they
> will "lose their welfare".  I can imagine that it is a hard thing to
> get out of the certainty of some support without a lot of stressful
> determination.  So I commend you on your effort, and support you all
> the way.

Carl:
Thanks.  It's work that I've wanted to do for a long time, and when Voc 
Rehab offered to pay for it, I jumped. <G>  The idea of purposely damaging 
your body is inconceivable to me.  I mean like sturctural stuff.  (I smoke, 
so I know it's possible to do stupid things to ourselves.)  I went through 
the angst of losing the sure thing, but I gotta go for it.  Too many people 
need help to sit back and do nothing.

>> Mark:
>>>I could never be a guru of any kind.  Not that I am drawing
>>> a personal relationship, but I believe that many of the great thinkers
>>> thought as much.  Notice that Buddha, Socrates, Christ, and others
>>> (that we will never know about) never wrote anything down.  For to
>>> write things down makes one a beaurocrat of some kind dispensing rules
>>> for existence.
>>
>> Carl:
>> I have avoided being seen as a guru for most of my life.  I want to help
>> people become their own guru.  The situation is that most people are told
>> they don't have the ability to do that.  Usually, it's by some early
>> religious training, where the person doing the teaching has a vested
>> interest in keeping people dependent on them.  I rejected that pretty 
>> early.
>> Now, I have people looking to me for guidance, and I refuse.  I point 
>> them
>> in the direction they can take to get their own answers, but I don't 
>> provide
>> those answers.

Mark:
> Yes, what makes me the most free is to unconditionally help others.  I
> am not some altruistic person, I just want to be free.  If I do not
> need much, and know that helping others does not result in negative
> pay back (usually), then I do not have to worry about what I do.  If I
> did worry, I would have to continually justify what I am doing all the
> time.  Helping others does not require justification in my opinion.
> In fact the less others know that I am helping the better and the more
> free I am.  The wind helps the sailboat move, and asks for nothing in
> return.

Carl:
Keeping in mind that no good deed goes unpunished, I try hard not to think 
about results.  I do what I can, and let the results take care of 
themselves.  I've been doing shamanic counseling for a while now, and one of 
the things that this course has done is help me get more professional 
distance on what I'm doing.  One of the biggest things you learn is that you 
can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.  That was a hard lesson 
for me. I do take the shamanic approach though.  The belief is that we're 
all connected, so whatever you do for someone else, you also do for 
yourself.  That attitiude does make it really uncomfortable to watch the 
saber-rattling at Iran that's going on right now.  I've met Iranians that I 
thought were good, decent people.  Their leadership is whacked, but then 
again....

>> Carl:
>> I think you are referring to Jung's Collective Consciousness.  I totally
>> agree, and have tapped into that on occasion.  At first, when it 
>> happened, I
>> thought of it as clairesentience, because I would just "know" the answer 
>> to
>> the question, then I realized I was tapping into something other than 
>> normal
>> reality.
>
> Mark:
> Yes perhaps I am.  I think we become aware of some structure which we
> are fitting into, when I think of the Collective Consciousness.  I
> feel more secure in my own home than somebody else's.  The collective
> consciousness is kind of the human home, if you will.  If we accept
> such structure then things become more secure.

Carl:
Yup.  I think we could extend it to the pack mentality as well.  We are 
comfortable being around beings like ourselves.  We also pick up on the 
subtle vibrations from others.  Some call it empathy, which I seem to have a 
lot of, and others call it telepathy, which I don't seem to have much of at 
all.  I don't even worry about it.  If I get information, I sit and think 
about how to use it, and then proceed.  I came to the realization some time 
ago that a big part of being wise is doing wise things.  What's kind of 
weird is that I prefer being by myself most of the time.  If I do meet 
people, it's one-on-one or a very small group.  I don't do crowds at all. 
Too much frenetic energy involved.  When I get into a crowd, I just want to 
be somewhere else, really badly.

>> Carl:
>> I know exactly what you're taking about.  There was a French scientist, 
>> Dr.
>> Jacques Benveniste, that attempted to prove this.  "Nature" magazine went 
>> to
>> examine his findings.  The editor took "The Amazing Randi", a paranormal
>> debunker, with him to do that.  Since Randi exists to disprove, that's 
>> what
>> they did.

Mark:
> Yes, I know exactly of that incident.  I had many heated debates when
> that was happening (I was living in England at that time).  I remember
> the witch hunt and the retractions and all that.  My side of the
> argument was that science was so restrictive in what it deemed to be
> real that progress moves at a snail's pace.  At one point I was going
> to change my Ph.D research to Cold Fusion since that was happening at
> the time.  So I waited for a short while to see if anything was
> happening there.  I noticed that it was very difficult to do, so I
> stayed away from it.  What we know often restricts what we can know.
> If we see knowledge as a creation of ours rather than some boundary
> put on us, then we can build more easily.

Carl:
I was reading today, and stumbled across a thing about Heidegger.  He said, 
"The existential and ontological constitution of the totality of Dasein is 
grounded in temporality. Accordingly, a primordial mode of temporalizing of 
ecstatic temporality itself must make the ecstatic project of being in 
general possible. How is this mode of temporalizing of temporality to be 
interpreted? Is there a way leading from primordial time to the meaning of 
being? Does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?

(Dasein: The being for whom Being is a question is not a what, but a who. 
Heidegger calls this being Dasein (an ordinary German word literally meaning 
"being-there").

In this case time could be what we know, which would be a boundary of sorts. 
Do you see learning as a creative act?  I see it as a prelude to creativity. 
i.e. the function of school is to make you aware of what's already out 
there, so we can go beyond that.

Mark:
> Yeah, you got to love Randi.  Of course he was just a product of his
> time.  Everybody wants to show that Science is the way to go.
> However, such science comes from our imaginations.  So we are up
> against those who want to tame the imagination with strict rules.  I
> can see that we may have similar opinions on this.

Carl:
Yeah.  I think we do agree on a lot of this.  A lot of what we're dealing 
with in science is sandboxing.  People make some kind of advance, then go to 
great lengths to defend that against any encroachment.  I think it has 
something to do with grants, etc.  Who was it that said, "Science progresses 
one funeral at a time" ?  That's about how it goes.  As they old guard drops 
away, the new guys can take over.

Mark:
> Yes, we establish the normal by presenting the abnormal.  I will
> restrict my opinions of morality to the personal sort.  I think RMP
> uses the word as a rhetorical tool to provoke discussion.  I think he
> has done a good job for those who care about such things.

>> Carl:
>> Aaarrrggghh!  Again with the turtles!  I'm seeing turtles everywhere.  I
>> guess you knew that already, right?

Mark:
> These days it is more about spiders for me.  I have no idea what that
> means.  I get them on the radio, on TV, in articles I read on the
> internet, in songs (spiders from Mars just played today out of the
> blue).  Too many spiders why don't they just leave me alone.  So, I
> did fumigate the shed, so what!  It was a practice of high morality so
> that we did not get bit :-)!
>
> Before that it was snakes eating their own tails.  Snakes, snakes
> everywhere.  They seem to be gone now.  At least they are not
> presented on the radio, or popping up on the internet.  It was both
> the pictures and their use to describe something.  I was even writing
> about it!

Carl:
Uh, from a shamanic perspective, spiders and snakes speak to mental issues. 
Spiders more to our feeling of connectedness, and snakes a disease or 
discomfort.  The oroborus is an ancient symbol. You might do a search on it 
to get a more detailed description of what it's historically about. ;-)  Are 
you feeling somewhat disconnected right now?

Mark:
> I hope I did not start this for you, especially if you have arachnophobia 
> :-)

Carl:
Nope, I have a functional approach to spiders and snakes.  I tell them, as 
long as I don't see you I won't smack you.  They avoid me unless they're 
feeling particularly suicidal. <G>

Later,
Carl