So, I've talked about consciousness and awareness. Is introspection something different? — T Clark
Isn't the essence of self-awareness an ability to see things we have not been taught to see? Maybe I don't mean "self-awareness." Maybe I mean "enlightenment." Otherwise, how do we get beyond our personal and cultural illusions? — T Clark
I'm standing in a dark room. In front of me, maybe on a stage, is a cloud that fills the whole front of the room. — T Clark
She told me she had just realized she is one of those people who have no mind's eye. It is very difficult for her to see images of even things and people she knows very well. — T Clark
Well, it is odd. Actually, it's terrible, horrifying. Of course there were feelings, I was just not aware of them. Did you ever go to the bathroom in a public toilet and have trouble peeing because others were around? Imagine if you felt that same panic every time you were with other people and might have to provide an appropriate emotional response. — T Clark
I come back to what I asked before - isn't it possible, even if only for Buddha, to go beyond that cultural conceptual structure. — T Clark
This understanding is explicit in Indian traditions as they have a long history of renunciation. Those who dwell 'in the forest' are understood to be outside social structures; this is what 'the forest' represents in that cultural context. — Wayfarer
This is why, for instance, there are teachings in Buddhist meditation on 'bare awareness', through which the student is trained to simply notice the habitual reactions and thought-formations that arise more or less automatically in the mind. That act of noticing is 'seeing how things truly are', which is the basic practice of liberating insight, insofar as to directly how reactive emotions occur is to lessen their hold. — Wayfarer
But the point I want to make is that we're not socially conditioned all the way down; we're the artefacts of something more than simply human culture. — Wayfarer
Alternatively, human nature is fundamentally a social construct and so humanity is quite concerned with "taming the beast within". It wants to put a distance between its cultural self and its biological roots. — apokrisis
CARL JUNG'S relationship with Sigmund Freud was probably doomed from the start. They met in Vienna on March 3, 1907, after having corresponded for a year. Freud sought a gentile to champion his ''Jewish science.'' Jung yearned for an influential father figure; Freud anointed Jung ''his scientific 'son and heir.' '' In 1910, according to Jung's ''Memories, Dreams, Reflections,'' Freud made a request: ''Promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. . . . We must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark.'' Against what, asked Jung. ''Against the black tide of mud . . . of occultism.''
Alternatively, human nature is fundamentally a social construct and so humanity is quite concerned with "taming the beast within". It wants to put a distance between its cultural self and its biological roots.
So philosophy - east or west - makes sense in this context. It is the next step in breeding a detachment from "the beast within". It makes us more social in being more rational and less emotionally driven. — apokrisis
Letting go of "yourself" and "the world" is only a cultural injunction to transcend whatever biology that society wishes didn't dominate your thinking so much. And once you have been trained to let go like that, you can start to fully participate in a calm, rational, linguistic culture where all actions become pro-socially reasonable.
So it is just another cultural game - and one actually designed to strengthen culture's hold on your thought patterns. — apokrisis
It's about transcending the conceptual construct of self. — praxis
Are you aware of your experience, or experiencing being aware? Does it make a difference? If not, then I would say that it would be simpler to say that you are aware of being aware. — Harry Hindu
Likewise, I believe that there was of course motion in dream images. Yet on closer examination, I realised that there is only a swirling sense of flow or zoom. The image itself was a static single frame with a sense of motion added. — apokrisis
Language is required in order for us to become aware of some things. So, placing all awareness as prior to language is a mistake for it renders you unable to take proper account of the things which only language facilitates our awareness of — creativesoul
If I'm not mistaken, human nature according to the Eastern social construct doesn't contain a "beast within." Rather, the true nature of sentient beings is that of emptiness, according to Eastern philosophy, and it is social constructs like the concept of self that obscure this nature. — praxis
Transcendence, which may or may not be achieved via a religious practice, isn't about transcending biology. It's about transcending the conceptual construct of self. — praxis
Do you have any literature for this claim? — JupiterJess
That wasn't my question. I wanted to know the difference between experiencing awareness and being aware of your experience.In my experience, being aware is not the same thing as being aware of being aware. — T Clark
Language is required in order for us to become aware of some things. So, placing all awareness as prior to language is a mistake for it renders you unable to take proper account of the things which only language facilitates our awareness of
— creativesoul
I respectfully, and completely, disagree — Aurora
It's about transcending the conceptual construct of self.
— praxis
What does that even mean - thinking that you are more than what you are - a delusion of grandeur? — Harry Hindu
That's what science has always sought to do - looking for the limit conditions (what you call unusual circumstances) of theories. Seeing farther than Newton's theory of gravity involved the limit case of non-euclidean geometry and so on.we have to take a methodological breakaway to unusual circumstances of our being to study its structures comprehensively; — fdrake
What it seems like you're saying is that we need to think like lower animals which have no concept of their own death, or their future. How is thinking like lower animals transcendent?Granted the language is a bit grandiose, but what it signifies is merely a subduing of the neural activity associated with the self-concept, or rather a particular brain state where a sense of self has diminished or is altogether absent.
It seems the negative side of developing a self-concept, and other concepts such as life, death, the future, etc., is that it tends to breed existential anxiety. Subduing the sense of self tends to relieve this anxiety, and may also facilitate other beneficial psychological and social developments. — praxis
I’d like to talk about the experience of awareness. What it feels like from the inside. In particular what it feels like to become aware. — T Clark
What does it feel like to become aware? — T Clark
The mode of engagement with an object characterised by intellectual variation of its sensible properties does not derive necessary sensible properties of the appropriate kind as the necessity is of a justificatory rather than perceptual character. It is imposed rather than implicated in the perceptual object. — fdrake
That all depends upon what one is becoming aware of, doesn't it? — creativesoul
What does it feel like to become aware?
— T Clark
That all depends upon what one is becoming aware of, doesn't it? — creativesoul
In my experience, the process of becoming aware and what it feels like to be aware are similar for all kinds of awareness. For me, that's the point of this whole thread. — T Clark
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