“One idea we all share is the narrow view that ideas are not alive in any way we like to define such things. We believe ideas are our tools, not our masters. That is exactly what the Shape Shifters have programmed us to believe. While we know that the ideas in our head control our behavior, we have an idea that we can choose any path we like, so we are blind to the fact we are little more than milk cows for our non-corporeal overlords. Everything we humans do is in the service of creating a better environment for ideas to reproduce. We create more babies so there are more brains to fill with ideas. We write books, make movies, build schools, and expand the Internet, all to help the reproduction of ideas.”
Category Archives: Philosophy
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
One measure of a book (for me) is how many passages get highlighted [after the jump]. What ideas will I want to find again? A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle had some on nearly every page. For example:
“Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind. You take the thinker to be who you are. … Your thinking, the content of your mind, is of course conditioned by the past: your upbringing, culture, family background, and so on.”
Everything in the book made perfect sense to me. I’m trying to incorporate man of his ideas into my life.
“…when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form –or a species– will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.” – pg 20
“A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.” – pg 21
“We are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of ideologies and believe system. … At the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought.” – pg 21
“What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the space in which the thought–or the emotion or sense perception–happens.” – pg 22
“Thoughts consist of the same energy vibrating at a higher frequency than matter, which is why they cannot be seen or touched.” – pg 146
“You look at the present through the eyes of the emotional past within you. In other words, what you see and experience is not in the event or situation but in you.” – pg 173
“Being present is always infinitely more powerful than anything one could say or do.” – pg 176
“…heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness.” – pg 23
“Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, bercome hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is.” – pg 25
“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp.” – pg 27
“Most of the time it is not you who speaks when you say or think “I” but some aspect o fthat mental construct, the egoic self.” – pg 30
“…the shift in identity from being the content of their mind to being the awareness in the background.” – pg 30
“The egoic mind is completely conditioned by the past.” – pg 34
“The unconscious compulsion to enhance one’s identity through association with an object is built into the very structure of the egoic mind.” – pg 35
“Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one.” – pg 37
“Being must be felt. It can’t be thought.” – pg 40
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.” – pg 41
“The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious.” – pg 42
“The ego doesn’t mind what it identifies with as long as it has an identity.” – pg 44
“…making yourself right and other wrong is one of the principal egoic mind patterns.” – pg 44
“The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison.” – pg 45
“How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Just be aware of your attachment to things.” – pg 45
“Wanting keeps the ego alive more than having” – pg 46
“The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks. … When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. … If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking.” – pg 55
“The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.” – pg 57
“Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield.” – pg 57
“Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind. You take the thinker to be who you are. … Your thinking, the content of your mind, is of course conditioned by the past: your upbringing, culture, family background, and so on.” – pg 59
“In most cases, when you say “I,” it is the ego speaking, not you. It consists of thought and emotion, of a bundle of memories you identify with as “me and my story,” of habitual roles you play without knowing it, of collective identifications such as nationality, religion, race social class, or political allegiance. It also contains personal indentifications, not only with possessions, but also with opinions, external appearance, long-standing resentments, or concepts of yourself as better than or not as good as others, as a success or failure.” – pg 60
“Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.” – pg 61
“Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity.” – pg 62
“The ego’s greatest enemy of all is the present moment, which is to say, life itself.” – pg 63″The ego’s greatest enemy of all is the present moment, which is to say, life itself.” – pg 63
“Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. … The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. … Every time it is recognized, it is weakened.” – pg 64
“When you complain, by implication you are right and the person or situation you complain about or react against is wrong. There nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. For you to be right, you need someone else to be wrong. You need to make other wrong in order to get a stronger sense of who you are.” – pg 67
“Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation. Only through awareness –not through thinking– can you differentiate between fact and opinion.” – pg 68
“The (church’s) Truth was considered more important than human life. And what was the Truth? A story you had to believe in; which means, a bundle of thoughts. … Thought can at best point to the truth, but it never IS the truth.” – pg 70
“The particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in you. … Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.” – pg 74
“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists. … There is a deep interrelatedness between your state of consciousness and external reality.” – pgs 75-76
“All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it.” – pg 78
“Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am.” – pg 78
“The only thing that ultimately matters: Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times?” – pg 79
“Whatever behavior the ego manifests, the hidden motivating force is always the same: the need to stand out, be special, be in control; the need for power, for attention, for more. … The ego always wants something from other people or situations.” – pg 80
“The ego thrives on others’ attention, which is after all a form of psychic energy.” – pg 85
“Can you cease looking to thought for an identity? … When you play roles, you are unconscious.” – pg 90
“Don’t say, “I’m unhappy.” Unhappiness has nothing to do with who you are.” – pg 95
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” – pg 96
“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” – pg 99
“Doing is never enough if you neglect Being.” – pg 103
“You are most powerful, most effective, when you are completely yourself. But don’t try to be yourself. That’s another role.” – pg 108
“Assumptions (are) unexamined thoughts that are confused with reality.” – pg 114
“You don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.” – pg 115
“Before you were the thoughts, emotions, and reactions; now you are the awareness, the conscious Presence that witnesses those states. … To become free of the ego, be aware of your thoughts and emotions — as they happen.” – pg 117
“Your entire personal history, which is ultimately no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, (is) of secondary importance.” – pg 117
“Each person is so identified with the thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts harden into mental positions which are invested with a sense of self. Identity and thought merge.” – pg 121
“When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality.” – pg 122
“When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality.” – pg 122
“Strictly speaking, you don’t think: Thinking happens to you. Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.” – pg 129
“Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought as if it were a reality.” – pg 134
“The ego is the voice in (your) head which pretends to be you.” – pg 134
“Thoughts consist of the same energy vibrating at a higher frequency than matter, which is why they cannot be seen or touched.” – pg 146
“You look at the present through the eyes of the emotional past within you. In other words, what you see and experience is not in the event or situation but in you.” – pg 173
“Being present is always infinitely more powerful than anything one could say or do.” – pg 176
“Who you are requires no belief. In fact, every belief is an obstacle.” – pg 189
“Most people define themselves through the content of their lives. Whatever you perceive, experience, do, think or feel is content. When you think or say, “my life,” you are not referring to the life that you ARE but the life that you HAVE, or seem to have. You are referring to content –your age, health, relationships, finances, work and living situation, as well as your mental-emotional state.” – pg 193
“Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.” – pg 200
“It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment.” – pg 201
“The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of ego.” – pg 201
“Instead of adding time to yourself, remove time. The elimination of time from your consciousness is the elimination of ego. It is the only true spiritual practice.” – pg 207
“For the ego to survive, it must make time –past and future– more important than the present moment.” – pg 207
“You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do.” – pg 211
“People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness.” – pg 213
“Become conscious of being conscious. Say or think “I Am” and add nothing to it.” – pg 236
“Breathing isn’t really something that you do but something that you witness as it happens. … Whenever you are conscious of the breth, you are absolutely present. Conscious breathing stops your mind.” – pg 245-246
“Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation.” – pg 255
“To be still is to be conscious without thought. … When you are still, you are who you were before you temporarily assumed this physical and mental form called a person.” – pg 256
“Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. … Instead of being lost in our thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it.” – pg 259
“Presence: consciousness without thought” – pg 259
“The separation of thinking and awareness happens through the negation of time. When you negate time, you negate the ego.” – pg 265
“You cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.” – pg 270
“Your entire life journey ultimately consists of the step you are taking at this moment. This doesn’t mean you don’t know where you are going; it just means this step is primary, the destination secondary. And what you encounter at your destination once you get there depends on the quality of this one step. What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.” – pg 271
“Thinking cuts reality up into lifeless fragments.” – pg 276
“You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.” – pg 293
Scott Adams: Immortality
“…we’re a simulated (programmed) world left behind by advanced humanoids that shed their bodies billions of years ago. Our simulated world is the closest they could come to immortality. They were romantics, much like ourselves, and couldn’t stand the thought of being separated from their loved ones for eternity. So in our programmed little world, when we feel a special connection to another, it’s because we knew that person when we were real, and the program allows us to feel it again as if new. Thus, when you meet your soul mate, it is a reunion of sorts. And it will happen over and over, in each subsequent life the program provides for you.”
Scott Adams concludes an interesting post on stress with this lovely take on reality.
Terry Heaton on being sixty-four
“I have made many discoveries in this life of mine, but the most significant occurred 12 years ago, when I realized I was an asshole. We’re all assholes, really. It’s just that some of us know it, and those who do are in for a much easier ride.”
— Terry Heaton
God for a Day
For most of us (well, actually, for all of us) God is a mystery. Whatever God is, I’m confident she has a fine sense of humor and might be doing something like this.
Once she knocked out the Heaven and Earth stuff and had a few people running around it occurred to her to put them in charge of the Universe. But she knew a committee was the wrong way to go. They’d come up with those soon enough.
So she decided to rotate the job. Every day, someone new becomes God, with full powers. They can create sunsets or erupting volcanoes or whatever pops into their temporarily divine heads.
And to keep things interesting, there would be no rhyme or reason to selection. Totally random.
Even if the world’s great religions figured this out, they kept it to themselves. You can’t build a functioning religion when there’s a new deity every day. Just keeping up with the artwork would be a nightmare.
Each new god could tell his friends the exciting news if they chose but, being omniscient they could see that could turn out badly. Some couldn’t resist, however.
You’d think after all this time (and all those god’s) the world would be in pretty good shape. But each new god could –and often did– fuck up the good work of previous gods.
So. If today is your day, what will you do?
Buddha’s Brain
Amazon: “Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius, a neuropsychologist and a neurologist and both practicing Buddhists, show us just how the brain programs us to experience the world a certain way by combining information from the external world with information held in neural pathways within the brain. These pathways operate in the background of our awareness, influencing our conscious mental activity.”
This book was a bit of a struggle for me so the following notes are intended for my own reference and make little sense outside the context of the book.
The self is like someone running behind a parade that is already well under way, continually calling out: “See what I created!” (pg 212)
In the brain, every manifestation of self is impermanent. The self is continually constructed, deconstructed, and constructed again. (pg 212)
We experience “now” not as a thin sliver of time in which each snapshot of experience appears sharply and ends abruptly, but as a moving interval roughly 1-3 seconds long that blurs and fades at each end. (pg 213)
At any moment, the parts of the self that are present depend on many factors, including genetic heritage, personal history, temperament, and situations. In particular, self depends on a lot of feeling tone of experience. When the feeling tone is neutral, the self tends to fade into the background. But as soon as something distinctly pleasant or unpleasant appears, the self quickly mobilizes. The self organizes around strong desires. Which comes first: Do “I” form a desire? Or does desire from and “I?” (pg 213)
The self has no inherent, unconditional, absolute existence apart from the network of causes it arises from, in, and as. (pg 213)
The self is truly a fictional character. (pg 214)
The One True Faith. Mine.
I’ve always wondered how deeply religious people could be so certain their “faith” was the real deal and everyone else’s was bogus. Brian Hines wonders, too:
“People will reject unsubstantiated claims in holy books… except the book they believe in. People will reject miracle stories… except miracles related by their own faith. People will reject the divinity of living prophets or messengers of God… except the person they accept as a genuine spiritual teacher.
Every religious believer, aside from the few who are genuinely open-minded, considers that he or she has found the One True Faith among the 4,199 or so false faiths. Yet how is this possible, logically or realistically?
It’s like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon, where all the children are above average.
There are good reasons for belonging to a religious, spiritual, or mystical group. But having a lock on cosmic truth isn’t one of them. Nobody knows what lies at the heart of reality, or even if there is such a thing: a heart, a core, a central truth.
So the only honest attitude is “I don’t know.” Along with, “You don’t know either.” This leaves us all on the same unknowing level.”
Headphones (2010)
When I began working at KBOA in 1972, they were using the same basic style of headphones that they had been using for 20 years. WWII era Bakelite’s designed for durability, rather than fidelity or comfort.
When they became available (a couple of years later?) I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD 414’s. As I recall, I paid about $60 for them, out of my own pocket. A lot of money in those days (I was making about $14K when I left KBOA in 1984).
But they were wonderful. Light, soft foam ear pieces… and they sounded GREAT. The music sounded great and I sounded great. I looked forward to putting those headphones on.
In the nearly 40 years since, I have purchased a lot of what I considered to be the “tools of my trade.” Microhones; my first computer; digital audio recorders; laser printer; CD drive; video cameras; laptops; and –most recently– the iPad.
I have always looked on these purchases as investments. Not in my company, rather in me. I could have waited until the company thought it made sense to purchase these tools but I was impatient. And I was right. The things I learned (still learning) usually improved my skills and enhanced my value.
Most of my co-workers throughout the years took a different view. If the company wanted them to have and use the latest tools, the company should pay for them. Can’t argue with that.
But I’ve always thought of these purchases as the “carpenter’s tools.” A carpenter friend once explained to me that master carpenters would not think of using someone else’s tools. They took pride in the things they built and insisted on having and using their own tools, that went with them from job to job.
And, if you have a good accountant, you can take the expense as a deduction. Happy Tax Day.
Scott Adams: Religion as road maps
“Religions are like different maps whose routes all lead to the collective good of society. Some maps take their followers over rugged terrain. Other maps have easier paths. Some of the travelers of each route will be assigned the job of being the protectors and interpreters of the map. They will teach the young to respect it and be suspicious of other maps.
“Okay,” I said, “but who made the maps in the first place?”
“The maps were made by the people who went first and didn’t die. The maps that survive are the ones that work,” he said.
At last, he had presented a target for me to attack. “Are you saying that all the religions work? What about all the people who have been killed in religious wars?”
“You can’t judge the value of a thing by looking only at costs. In many countries, more people die from hospital errors than religious wars, but no one accuses hospitals of being evil. Religious people are happier, they live longer, have fewer accidents, and stay out of trouble compared to nonreligious people. From society’s viewpoint, religion works.”
— From God’s Debris by Scott Adams
Religion and ego
Brian Hines finds it strange “that religiosity is so often associated with humility, selflessness, and lack of ego. Actually, the religious impulse is highly egotistical.”
How would religious belief be affected if it was known that our sensations of being connected with, of under the care of, a higher power were entirely contained within our own personal mind/brain?
The mystical and spiritual experiences would feel the same. But no longer would we believe that we were contacting a transcendent divinity. We couldn’t claim a special relationship with some supernatural being, because that “higher power” would be us.
An expanded us, to be sure. An us that encompassed normally untapped areas of the mind/brain. An us that wasn’t as split, searching, anxious, uncertain, and self-doubting as we are now.
This would eliminate a lot of unnecessary religious egotism. No one would be a member of a chosen people, or a special beloved of God. We’d all just be human beings, having human experiences, making the best use possible of our human psyches.
I’m grateful we live in a country where it’s still okay wonder and write about such things. And yet, any candidate fo higher office who dared make such a connection between religion and ego would be toast.