Hum, did Descartes learn of Hinduism? I think a few of the past philosophers did. Our existence ending when the dreamer awakes is Hindu. Then the dreamer goes back to sleep what we know as life begins all over again.

The question is what is the truest state of being 'awake'? — Jack Cummins

I don't think there is such a thing but I am not sure of anything. I think we have different awarenesses but one would not be truer than another? And the experience we think we are having may not be true at all. Oh dear, how do we know the experience we are having is true? We may think we are loved and discover we are not loved, or think we are hated and we are not hated. The whole racist thing is people thinking something is true and there may be little truth to what one thinks. A con person is good at making us believe something that is not true or our inability to trust others could be internal. How do we know? When we are asleep we think the dream is true and when cross over who knows what that is like?

I have read what makes life on earth different is we can process the things we think about faster in 3-dimensional reality.

It seems to me that the question of an afterlife is a curious one because, on the one hand, if I do continue to live after I die, then by definition I will know it, whereas, on the other hand, if I do not continue to live after I die, then by definition I will not know it. So, essentially, I can only know the former, but not the latter, state-of-affairs, after I die. — charles ferraro

Someone who communicates with those who have crossed over said they do not know they are dead. When we are dreaming we do not know we are asleep. It is really great when we have a bad dream and wake up realizing it was only a dream.

I have a friend who lives his life as he does because of a couple of times of dying. He died in medical settings and the medical team was able to get his heart pumping again, not uncommon today. He is convinced of the importance of living a good life because our experience after death depends on where our head is at when we die. Death being sort of like being stuck in time. His stories of death are like others. There is at least one book on this subject.

There were two TV shows done by two different men who claim they communicate with the dead. I think they are very convincing that do in fact communicate with the dead, and that death is not the end. Here is a Youtube of John Edwards who communicates with the dead, and in this video about 1/3 through he speaks of the pandemic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e45ZGABCa0k

Journalling is a great practice. I find the thinking process very different when writing. When I was going through a hard time, I wrote a lot and it was the most helpful thing I could have done.

☆Happy 2021☆

I'm trying to get my place as empty as possible.
— Caldwell
Oh yeah, same here. :sweat: — 180 Proof

Alright, alright, I will organize at least one area of my apartment today. I have to admit it is pleasant when things are organized. I might begin with filling a box of stuff I can get rid of. You know all those CD's I never listen to, the catalogs I keep, thinking I will order something, stuff for children that they have outgrown.

:lol: I think only a philosophical person would consider all the different ways to look at something. I mean this as a compliment.

When I do workshops for healthy living, we have people make action plans. An action plan has to state what a person will do, when (what days and time of day), and how much (15 minutes, or 15 reps, or 15 laps, or 15 pounds)? We strongly suggest doing the planned activity no more than 3 days a week. So if you were to tidy your room, which days would do that and what time of the day? How much time would you spend on it? If you made a more precise plan it could become a habit. Such as making the bed when we first get up or brushing our teeth can be habits.

But honestly, I have never developed up the habit of being well organized, but I have made progress and that makes life so much easier. However, the piles of books I use for reference scream I might do better if I set a day for putting them away. My desk area gets totally out of control as I starting stacking books on top of books until can't find a book because I have such a mess. :roll:

Life is full of coincidences that can make us wonder.

I believe I have entered spaces and felt an energy. This is most likely for me if the space was used for praying or seances or other spiritual things are done.

Looking for information I found this..

Birds, it turns out, are emissaries of the dead. According to Engler, "They will do something unusual to get your attention." — Lizzy Acker

A few years ago when a friend died, a bird did not move when I walked past. That concerned me so I bent down to pick up the bird. I would have taken it to a vet if it had a problem. Finally, almost touched the bird before flew away. I thought that was odd and went on my way. I went into my apartment building and got on the elevator. The door closed and the lights flashed and the elevator would not move. I was afraid of being trapped in the elevator and just before I tried to get out, everything returned to normal. In many years of using that elevator that never happened before or since.

Another time that stands out for me is a friend lost a husband, and the words red and bucket came to my mind. At the same time, I thought I had received a message for her but I couldn't believe that until she confirmed the words red and bucket have meaning. I was compelled to message her those words and she asked me why I did that. I told her I didn't know why I was compelled to write those words and was hoping she would tell the meaning. As it turned out there was a red bucket used as a wastebasket in her husband's bedroom.

Another time when a woman who had just lost her children in a house fire got in my car, and I was compelled to say something that came from a Ninja Turtle show, and she told me her son said that often.

I could go on. It seems like I have gotten messages from the other side but I could be wrong? However, a message from my dead mother warning me of a difficult time that would come out okay, proved extremely helpful to me.

And on this subject, there are people who can hold something that belongs to another person and come to know things about this person. I have to add that, because you mentioned objects can hold energy that is a form of information.

If we live without being alienated form each other, we start to see the universality of being alive and of being human in relation to other forms of life much more clearly than a person can today in a big house surrounded by material objects that are nonliving. — Garth

the animating force has to be present for life — Jack Cummins

It is hard to imagine my computer, books, desk, chair, etc. as animated. Effectively we are living in a dead world when we are separate from nature. I have a very uneasy feeling about this and wonder about the psychological and social impact.
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I want to provide a better explanation of the change in bureaucratic order that has been adopted by all institutions including schools and hospitals and others. This change in bureaucratic order profoundly changed the focus of an education.

Here is why our reality today is nothing like the time of our forefathers. I am copying from a college text Public Administration and Public Affairs by Nicholas Henry. In reading this one might give some thought to Eisenhower's warning to not be too reliant on the experts. We might also consider if the arguing between the left and right makes sense when the common issue is a lack of personal control.

We have been suggesting in the preceding paragraphs that bureaucracy grows in large part because technology requires expertise, and bureaucrats are the political actors who have been saddled with the responsibility of interpreting and translating complex technology and social problems into policy. By adopting this explanation of the reison d' etre of the bureaucratic phenomenon as our primary thesis, we have posited a fundamental tension between bureaucracy and democracy. On the one hand are the bureaucrats-as-experts, the specialists with knowledge about particular professions and technics. On the other hand are "the people", those who represent what are considered human values. To carry Thithis dichotomy even further, we have the "computers"- the "technocrats" - squaring off against "humanity". This dichotomization, which obviously is grossly overdrawn, is nonetheless of the root tension between "the bureaucrats" and "the people". — Nicholas Henry

With regard to the influence of education here, that is why I think that it is important to have public educators going out and contesting falsehoods in the public discourse, making sure there is an argument about them and they don't just go unchallenged, even as dangerously close to authoritarianism as that might veer, because freethought is by its very anti-authoritarian nature paradoxically vulnerable to small pockets of epistemic authority arising out of the power vacuum, and if that instability goes completely unchecked, it can easily threaten to destroy the freethinking discourse entirely and collapse it into a new, epistemically authoritarian regime; a religion in effect, even if not in name.

In the absence of good education of the general populace, all manner of little "cults", for lack of a better word, easily spring up. By that I mean small groups of kooks and cranks and quacks each with their own strange dogmas, their own quirky views on what they find to be profound hidden truths that they think everyone else is either just too stupid to wise up to, or else are being actively suppressed by those who want to hide those truths from the public.

Like all these conspiracy theorists.

Meanwhile, those with greater knowledge see those supposed truths for the falsehoods that they are, and can show them to be such, if only the others could be engaged in a legitimately rational discourse. But instead, these groups use irrational means of persuasion to to ensnare others who do not know better into their little cults; and left unchecked, these can easily become actual full-blown religions, their quirky little forms of ignorance becoming widespread, socially-acceptable ignorance, that can appropriate the veneer of epistemic authority and force their ignorance on others under the guise of knowledge.

Checking the spread of such ignorance by challenging it in the public discourse is the role of the public educator. The need for that role would be lessened if more people would actively seek out education, but not everyone will seek out their own education and so some people will continue to spread ignorance – and even those who do seek out their own education may still accidentally spread ignorance – and in that event, there need to be public educators to stand against that.

But that then veers awfully close to proposing effectively another "religion" to counter the growth of others.

I think there is perhaps an irresolvable paradox here, in that a public discourse abhors a power vacuum and so the only way to keep religions, institutions claiming epistemic authority, at bay, is in effect to have one strong enough to do so already in place. But I think there is still hope for freedom of thought, in that not all religions are equally authoritarian: even within religions as more normally and narrowly characterized, some have their dogma handed down through strict decisions and hierarchies, while others more democratically decide what they as a community believe. I think that the best that we can hope for, something that we have perhaps come remarkably close to realizing in the educational systems of some contemporary societies, is a "religion", or rather an academic system, that enshrines the principles of freethought, and is structured in a way consistent with those principles.

What semblance of that we may have once had in America sure seems to be failing nowadays, at least. — Pfhorrest

I can not praise what you said enough, but I add very valuable information to what you said.

We adopted the Prussian military-bureaucratic order because it is so much more efficient than the bureaucratic order we had and the public services we have today would not be possible without this change. Although what we call the German model is very powerful and efficient, there is a problem with it. Sara H. Fahey quoted the poet and seer India to raise awareness of the problem at the 1917 National Education Association Conference.

"Whatever their efficiency, such great organizations are so impersonal that they bear down on the individual lives of the people like a hydraulic press whose action is completely impersonal and therefore completely effective in crushing out individual power and power."

You can conclude from that in 1917 the US government was not organize

Apart from formal education I would say that families are the beginning of the process of learning to think, rather than just being told what to think. My parents used to talk to me a lot and encourage me to think freely. When I was at school I was aware that had discussed so much that others had not been encouraged to think about.It is surprising that my parents never thought through their religious beliefs fully, as I have done, and chose to cling on to their original beliefs. — Jack Cummins

We can not rely on parents to teach children how to think because of the fast thinking and slow thinking factor. Slow thinking requires learned thinking skills. We can pick up those skills from our parents if our parents have them, the chances a good that the parents do not have those skills, and go through reacting instead of thinking. That is why it is important for public education to teach the thinking skills and this would be learning math and how to diagram a sentence. I regret I did not understand this when I was young because it is harder to learn such things in our later years. Our brains don't accumulate new information as well. On the other hand, we are more apt to grasp the meaning and see the bigger picture in our later years. Our heads are so full we can easily have great awareness of meanings as thoughts come together, but learning math or a foreign language is very challenging.

Many of us grow up right-brain thinkers and have undeveloped left-brain skills.
I want to add a question, neglecting right brain activity with too much focus on left-brain activity might be harmful to humans?

At the same time, I also understand that this is a complicated discussion because we've already developed systems that are biased/polarised in one way or another and galvanised them with values and significance which we are compelled to uphold (fight for). It's why we must consider the positives of attachments even when, in essence, by definition, it is the antithesis to the meaning of freedom. — BrianW

Your comment makes me think of things someone I love gave me versus something I bought for myself. If it came from someone I love, and it is damaged, broken, or stolen that is far more disturbing to me than if I bought that thing for myself. The value of the thing is the value of my relationship, and if it came from my dead mother or father, it has greater value because she will be giving me any more things.

Then there are the old books I continually refer to. Loosing some of them would a tragedy to me, but loosing books that can be replaced is just an annoyance. My life is really built around those old books and spreading that past, they are part of identity unlike the books that can be replaced. I think there is a bit of crazy in there?

Jack Cummins
696 — Jack Cummins

About the paradox of wanting to be alone and wanting to be with others. I think it would be much harder for me to be in a situation like yours, than getting through this pandemic alone because I must, absolutely must, have that alone time to be on the forum. If I do live with others, it is tolerable if I am the head of the house, and intolerable if I am not. I have slept in places for the homeless and 3 days is my limit. By the 3rd day, I have to get away because the feeling to get away is so strong! But if it is my home, I can share it with many people as long as I have private space. I can cook and clean for everyone if it is my home that I am sharing. :roll: Now that is crazy. There is something about the position I am in, concerning the relationship to others, that is going on here?


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That is a good question, although it is as if we are living in space capsules during this year of social isolation, with need or unmet needs. My imagined fantasy of a space capsule with all my needs met would be the chance for freedom to pursue the writing and artistic life. But I would probably still want to meet others. Nevertheless, I would prefer the space bubble to a really stressful social situation.
2 minutes ago
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Options — Jack Cummins

I would have no desire to live with no chance of experiencing life on this planet and the humanity that goes with it and you are making me ponder this as I have not done before. As I think on it, I want to run without caution into life and experience life as it is as totally and completely as I can. But also before this moment and my contrary thinking, I would chose isolation to think and write. Relating the space capsule to how we are living now, makes me so aware of how much I desire to mingle with people. I love my isolation to think and write, but it has no meaning without other people and life itself. I just have no motivation without life and people stimulating me to think and do.

The focus of education needs to be how to think, not what to think.

The some of the Greek philosophers were fanatical about education being how we experience life and about education for practical use being fine of slaves and people who must work for a living, but totally unfit for the upper class and rulers.

Even if we follow the path of self realisation and self-analysis, I think that attachments are still likely to play a large part. I do believe that we can work on particular areas which we can work on, but not all the areas at once. Meditation has an a central role but do not necessarily have to aim to become sages. Of course, if becoming one occurs in the process it may be the best possibility, but if we were to seek that goal it might become a hollow attachment ideal in itself. — Jack Cummins

Suppose we lived in space capsule where all our needs to sustain our body were met. How long would a person want to live in that situation knowing it would never change? Do we really want life without attachments?

I am glad if you are able to clarify your thoughts through discussions on threads because that should be the purpose of philosophy. It may involve hard questions. Attachment is a monster and I am sure that there are even some dragons to come yet. — Jack Cummins

The Bible speaks of the beast and we can turn to Roman history and US history to understand that beast as reliance on military might to acquire essential economic resources and markets. The economy depends on the military and the military consumes more and more of the economy, forcing everyone to labor for the beast.

Rather than think in terms of this or that, we might want to think of terms of this and that. We are not logic and emotion but logic and emotion are two parts of the same thing. Life consumes and that is the reality of the beast. The beast is just much large when it is the size of Rome or the US or China. When we kill an animal it is natural to feel bad about killing, so primitive man gave thanks to the animal for giving its life so the hunter and the village may live. It is all yin and yang, a give and take, it is life.

The extreme American neofascist corporate oligarchic movement — hypericin

What if you're on the Left and see the above as a conspiracy that is already realized and ongoing. — deletedusercb

Well, knowing the history of Germany would help immensely, but I have already set myself up to be the target of emotional people, and I don't think I should I go any further before I know if people are going to throw stones or think about what I am saying and ask questions. Just consider this, the Bush family was very proud of leading the New World Order and they were well connected with Germany at the time of WWII. Eisenhower's term for that is Military Industrial Complex and Prussia gave us the model for this. The US adopted the German model of bureaucracy that shifts power to centralized government and the US adopted the German model of education that compliments the bureaucratic order.

It is probably true that declining quality of education increased the vulnerability of the population to conspiracies. A true conspiracy theory can only be believed when there are massive gaps in the believer's model of the world. I would contend that the balkanization of the media, taken to the extreme on social media, is a far more salient factor. — hypericin

Do you remember when journalism was consider essential to defending our democracy? Our local newspaper was named Register Guard and journalist took pride in keeping us well informed and in avoiding bias. Education promoted this understanding of journalism and democracy before our consumer economy took over and the only value we share is the value of money. That is, since Thomas Jefferson education was about making liberty possible and manifesting a strong and united republic based on democratic principles. That ended in 1958 with the National Defense Education Act and specialization for a high tech society with unknown values.

I believe Eisenhower was a man of integrity but he had a military education, not a liberal education and there were some things he just didn't understand, like what liberal education has to do with being independent thinkers and manifesting a culture for democracy that is cooperative and progressive because it comes out of enlightenment thinking. He asked congress for the education act and it had a time limit of 4 years! Some may say changing the purpose of education is just conspiracy theory, but the National Defense Education Act changes in education did not end in 4 years, but instead the federal government has taken more and more control of public education.

At the same time, Eisenhower, changed the relationship with government and research, and he the relationship of government and the media. This opened the door for Reagan's administration to use government funded research to uncover welfare fraud and scapegoat the poor for our bad economy when the oil embargo had us in a serious recession. Using the media to scapegoat the poor as Germany scapegoated the Jews, Reagan was able to slash domestic spending and pour money into military spending, and companies like Cheney's Halliburton were born to exploit the government for personal wealth.

What is the best way to cover this up? Declare such talk is conspiracy theory and add to it totally ridiculous and unfounded conspiracy statements. And people educated to depend on authority since 1958, and prepared for "group-think" rather than independent thinking, will follow the most popular belief and will not both to look for facts. We don't even know where to begin looking for facts and the University of Oregon removed the books of governments from the shelves, so we can not open a book and find these facts. The U of O had a space problem and turned to technology to resolve it microfilming the books and not realizing the importance of being able to read books not knowing what is in them.

Now I don't know if what I said is right or left. I just know what I discovered in a college library and the consequence of what Eisenhower did and for 20 years people respond to this information emotionally, without checking facts.

The role of education was to make our democratic republic strong and united and to manifest the hopes of the Enlightenment of improving life on earth. Without that education, it all falls apart, and the good intentions of those who believe a military-industrial complex and leaving moral training to the church is best, have destroyed the education and culture we did have. Without that education, we do not have the culture and we are not united and we are not strong. Is that a truthful statement or conspiracy theory?

So, do you think that the idea of renunciation is not about following a set pathway, but more of a mindset, in which one feels free from the binding of the concerns of day to day existence?
3 minutes ago
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Options — Jack Cummins

I don't know what I think until I participate in one of your threads. This time I mentioned being happy now that I am past my years as wife and mother and having to work for a living. Had I never been a mother and never held a job, would my life have been more joyful? I think that is highly possible. My marriage was terrible and a lot of heartache has come out of that. I am not sure I would repeat it.

There are wonderful benefits to working, but I found low-income employment miserable because with autocratic industry the conditions of jobs can be intolerable! My life could have had been better had I been better prepared and made better decisions. That is not equal to renunciation. It is knowing what we want and how to get it. I knew what I wanted but not how to get it and made bad choices, the failures of my marriage are now impacting my great-grandchildren and I have deep regrets. To be happy I avoid thinking about my family and engaging with most of them. I guess I would do it all over again, but I would do it differently. Today women have more opportunities, and I hope we work through some human problems and that everyone will do better.

↪Janus

According to Buddhist thinking it is fine to be attached ("find refuge") in the Sangha (the community of the faithful), the Four Noble Truths and the Dharma ("Way") because they are believed to lead away from attachment to transient, earthly things and lead towards the changeless. — Janus


Khaled....Really? When was this said. I don’t read much about Buddhism in particular but more about Zen and other offshoots. I doubt the words used were “attached” though — khaled

What Janus said makes perfect sense to me. It is also very Christian to be devoted to God and heaven and renounce this mortal world. If we cling to a heavenly fantasy we are saved and immortal. I am pagan. I love life in this three-dimensional reality. However, I have to admit this is easier now that I am adjusted to being divorced and my children are grown, and I don't need to work for a living. That is I am past many worldly concerns and live in peace in my own imagined reality of mother earth and what humans can do to make life better.

Yes, what kind of thread have I created? Your post is very interesting. Perhaps it is my 'monster,' and it arose from my subconscious on Christmas eve, and was unleashed on the forum for everyone to consider. I think it probably stems from the conflicts which I have going around in my subconscious, encompassing Catholic guilt and disillusionment.

I am really interested in paganism and I would imagine that that it is certainly about celebrating of pleasure rather than repression. I have read a bit but not much but know that the early albums by The Waterboys, who are one of my favourite artists embrace it in their music.

But I would imagine that the pagan solstice celebrations are extremely different from the ones in Christian based consumer culture. When I was at school and in my original church background I always found a clash between the supposed Christian basis of it in the birth of Christ and the commercial celebration. I do believe Chistmas was originally a pagan custom, which the Christians redesigned to fit into their perspective and system of rituals. — Jack Cummins

:grin: From time to time your childhood brainwashing seems to come to your consciousness as unquestioned truth but in general you have done a heroic job of getting past that problem. :clap:

I would not give too much honor to pagans either. But I have a love for our mother earth. That of course is an emotional thing, not exactly a thinking thing, but it can include knowing we can destroy environments, and when we do that can damage our own survival, but we can also create healthy environments. A lack of technology is not the answer. Low tech people are very destructive and deforesting their area is a huge problem. So is polluting the available water a huge problem! Often people had to move because their way of life was not sustainable, so after consuming resources in one area they moved to the next. When only a few people do this, there is a chance of the environment recovering. When there is a large population, we have to make better decisions.

With technology, we have done amazing things! A huge area in China has been restored after it had been destroyed hundreds of years ago. Everyone had just assumed the destroyed area was always like that, but science discovered it was fertile and had once been abundant with life, and with that knowledge they restored this Garden of Eden. We have brought rivers and areas of the ocean back to life. We have good reason for being hopeful of making most of our planet a Garden of Eden, but to do this we need to get past the notion that a god controls things. We need to spread technology not religion!

Do you know of the Peace Core? It was created during past President Kenndy's administration and is about sending US volunteers around the world to teach better farming and better sanitation and better health. Better birth control must go with this because we must be real about living on a finite planet. Just feeding people without population control, makes the problems much worse, leading to the wars and refugees we have today. We need secular thinking for peace because it is wrong to feed people and give them religion and think a god will take care of them. God did not build Noah's ark nor does He save people from terrible things. A moral is a matter of cause and effect. What happens is a consequence of what we do and we need truth to do the right thing.

Back to your question, I love our mother earth, and I love our technology, and I love education for liberty and democracy and while Buddism has wisdom I could not be one because I want to be part of life and I want to be part of making life better for everyone in a very pragmatic way. The Peace Core is a pragmatic way to make life better.

I claim morality is essential to our liberty and democracy. If this is true, why do we need a false god and a false belief that is divisive? You have stated there are other ways to seek truth besides relying on the Bible.

Getting lost in the maze is going to Hades to seek meaning. Facts without meaning have little value. We should not go to Hades without the help of the gods and that would make your first statement correct. However, for me those gods are concepts, and learning of them is like learning of virtues.

I believe cultures must prepare the young for adulthood and this is done with education. Right now we have amoral education for technology and left moral training to the church. That is very problematic! That justifies your fear that things can go very wrong and they are going very wrong, but this does not mean we need religion. We need a culture that raises moral awareness and prepares the young to be adults, not leaving them immature and lost as education for technology is doing. We had education for good moral judgment, until the 1958 Nation Defense Education Act and leaving moral training to the church.

Christianity is not going to away that easily. Look at what the Jews endured during the holocaust and they became even stronger in the defense of their religion and their identity as Jews, an identity that would be unknown if they did not make a issue of it. These religions would not exist if the humans didn't make them exist. No god has spoken to us lately. Although humans think they can know the word of God and His will and believe they are God's favorite people and that what they want is what God wants them to have, even if they must kill for it, which is totally contrary to commandment to not kill.

God's truth is true for everyone, no matter what religion they are. That is science and the democratic way of determining the best reasoning.

I do believe in the importance of enjoying ourselves and being one's best. I don't believe that life is meant to be miserable.

Hope you are have a good Christmas. I am busy reading and writing but having an enjoyable time. I am also being DJ with my mum, giving her an assortment of music.

Let's hope that 2021 brings more enjoyable times for everyone! — Jack Cummins

I would be happier at the moment if we were celebrating the winter solstice that pagans everywhere once celebrated. Calling the winter solstice "Christmas" is like pouring lemon juice into a wound, as it screams a terrible history of extermination that continues to plague us as a terrible prejudice against "those people" and denies the value of other human beings or that they even existed.

Hard times? In the past people starved to death, especially in the winter and a God didn't send birds to feed them. I live in a country where few children starve to death because of what science has done for us. whoops, I am ranting aren't I. What a topic "Is attachment a problem and should it be seen as one"? lf I knew how to use social media I would use it to call a demonstration at our public broadcasting station demanding they use a warning when broadcasting a biased religious program, announcing it is prejudice and may be offensive. The God of Abraham religions are an attachment I wish we would give up. I celebrate with the pagan tree and the pagan understanding of the solstice and so thankful our children are not starving and dying in winter as they once did when the church was the only source of knowledge.

noun: relativism

the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute. — Oxford Languages

Thous shall not eat thy neighbor is a culturally taboo demonstrating relativism. There are cultures that embrace cannibalism. However, when we drink the wine and eat the wafer blessed by a priest we are drinking the blood and eating the body of Jesus Christ. I know in our culture today that is totally repugnant, but in the beginning of Christianity when it was a secret organization, there was concern about them having cannibalistic rituals and what else could drinking the wine and eating the bread be, but symbolically eating Jesus's body and drinking his blood? And it makes sense to do this to become one with Jesus by consuming him.

Of course we have lost the history of this ritual and the reasoning for it, but how could that reasoning be missed. Jesus became the bread and wine, following the Egyptian tradition of Isis being the bread and water. I love etymology, the study of the origin of words and meaning.

At least 5 Biblical stories are translations of Sumerian stories and I feel confident that the Sumerian stories are records of fact, but when the stories are told and retold for many generations, the facts get forgotten. The original story of Adam and Eve, tells of an Eden and a flood that destroyed a goddesses plants and she got so mad so cursed the river to die, and in reality a great and long drought followed the flood, and the river almost died- dried up. The the climate returned to normal and people returned to the valley (meaning of Adam) and the lady who makes live, was one of the goddesses in the story whose name means healing the rib. We can see how our understanding of this story could be based in fact and how much its meaning changed over many generations. The goddess decided to let the river live and man the first man and woman to help the river stay in its banks. Perhaps we would have a better relationship with our planet if we believed we were created to take care of the planet.

Your thread includes an interest in science and religion. Geologist believe they have found the 4 rivers of Eden and they found evidence of a flood in the region of these rivers, in a region that is Iran today. And etymology gives us more clues about stories that appear to be changed by the Hebrews, rewriting them to fit their notion of one God. These people may have come been followers of Amenhotep who fled when their holy city was destroyed and we know, under the leadership of Abraham they returned to their home land, but not before searching the Sumerian archives. Ur being a Sumerian city that had died but left left archives and other remains. So what are we to believe? I think we differ on what is the most believable to us. Religious folks like those who want to believe in Atlantis or that aliens are responsible for our progress, all see the facts differently, each thrilled to have proof of what they want to believe.

Right on our public broadcasting channel is presenting Christianity as one and only true religion and announces the Bible is the greatest book ever written. :rage: I wonder how many ancient books have these people made to make such a claim? I think such shows should come with a warning that they are religiously prejudiced and could be offensive to some viewers.

There was a time when I thought it good to have no attachments and to let go of my ego, and I like what Chattering Monkey said "almost every top player cares very much about their performance".

I will stick with Greek philosophy and the good of being the very best we can be. I think it is wrong to not enjoy the game of life for as long as we can. Sure it hurts when we loose something we value but so what, we can grieve and move on. Perhaps if we live in a very poor country it makes sense be happy with nothing but in a country with plenty it doesn't make as much sense. If we learn to enjoy life, there is a good chance we will enjoy the next one, if our attachments do cause us to reincarnate, and really what is so bad with that?

I live as though reincarnation is a possibility and like the idea that this might pay off in the future. But having life and not using it? Really isn't that a bit pointless?

I rarely join a thread that is more than 3 pages, and unless I am having a one on one discussion as you and I, and Metaphysician Undercover and myself have had, I do not continue with a thread. Like if I am posting and no one is replying, I am gone because it seems pointless to post if I don't get feedback.

There are different things going on here. If there are already many post, I am not going to read through all of them. The discussions move far from their original topic or maybe someone already said what I think is important or made an argument that proves my thought wrong. It is like coming into the classroom at the end of the period.

There is the fast and slow thinking, and also, our minds are fickle! We can tire of a subject quickly or get distracted by another one. Most people would rather have a fresh piece of bread than a stale one.

Then there is, do we feel ignored or valued? I am gone if I am ignored.

I think many new starts may be better than one long thread. So many topics come up and I would make different threads for each one, to keep things organized, but I get overwhelmed when I attempt too much thinking, so I have not started new ones. Slow thinking demands so much of us and it is the most rewarding. I live for those moments when what someone said seems to turn a light on in my head, causing a whole new understanding and this happens for me in your threads, many times. That can be the value of being in a long thread, but people will drop out and many will not join a long and established thread and there is that concern for organization. When thoughts wonder all over the place it is kind of like Frosty Snowman melting and time to build a new one.

An on topic comment would be, not all cultures lead to scientific and technological advancement. I think the gods of Athens were essential to their reputation of being a race of geniuses. Democracy is an imitation of the gods. Having one God is an intellectual dead end. Learning what to think, rather than how to think, is a dead end.

We would have to assume that I am real so is my experience in flowing continuous time. But I am not so sure about other people whose experience is obviously different from mine and from one another therefore cannot be absolute or even just objective. — magritte

It depends on which side of the bathroom door are you? Inside or outside. :lol:

All cultures do not experience time the same. We can have serious communications with indigenous people when we assume their sense of time is the same as ours. This is explained by Hall in his book "Beyond Culture".

I found a link that gives an example of the culture/time problem that in effect does make time stand still.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1046/j.1038-5282.2003.02009.x

In India some may think it is rude to set a specific time for a meeting because that sets ourselves above all else, making gods of ourselves instead of seeing ourselves in the flow of something much greater than ourselves. We could agree to meet at 3:00 p.m. but we better add to that "God willing".

Time as we have created it with our 12 hour clocks is an abstract concept that we treat as tangible reality. It is now 7:50 a.m. where I sit but this moment in time may be different for you.

I think your explanation of the way I Ching works is reasonable. And now that you mention it, I don't think my copies of I Ching made it through the move? I may have to buy another. I also use virtue cards made a Bahia' woman and your explanation of why I Ching works, is perfect for why the virtue cards work. I have had many synchronicity experiences with both.

As for synchronicity being a part of our lives, my most memorable moment is when I walked into a secondhand book store looking for an old grade school textbook thinking it would immediately explain the set of American values every child was taught. :rofl: I found them but not that day and it was not as easy to find them as I expected. Instead, I found two books that set the course of my life. One is the "Anglo-German Problem" by Sarolea and the other was a copy of the 1917 "National Education Association Conference". The National Education Association was the result of needing to mobilize for the for the first world war and it explained the purpose of education and the need to adjust the purpose of education for war. there are many different explanations through many different speakers.

Since then I have added many more books to my collection. My books on the history of education are a fascinating way to study history. And as for me starting threads, yes, I started a few but they don't get attention. No one is prepared to discuss education and what it has to do with democracy. I bring up what I want to talk about in other threads, including yours. Everything I have said about morals and democracy in your threads is an expression of my sense of life purpose. When we have powerful synchronicity experiences seems as though our lives have divine purpose.

It is ,of course, difficult for thinkers to go beyond the head. Perhaps there are many energy centres for perception, including chakras, and the Chinese idea of meridian points. — Jack Cummins

I think you want to read "The Mayan Factor". It says things that are totally weird to our western thinking and it can be hard to get past that, especially when we are the only one we know who is interested in what Jose Arguelles is saying. But get this, the I Ching matrix fits perfectly in the center of the Mayan matrix and the meridian points are within the matrix.

Matrix | mathematics | Britannicawww.britannica.com › Science › Mathematics
Oct 29, 2020 — Matrix, a set of numbers arranged in rows and columns so as to form a rectangular array. The numbers are called the elements, or entries, of the matrix. Matrices have wide applications in engineering, physics, economics, and statistics as well as in various branches of mathematics. — Britannica

"The Mayan Factor" has both scientific and cultural significance. It can not be read and simply believed or not because it is culturally different and requires a person to be very open-minded. If a person is not open-minded, the book gets tossed in the fireplace and used for heat. Over the years I have read little parts of it again and again, and then I ignore it because the information is just too weird, but I have to keep returning to it and also the book "A Beginners Guild to Constructing the Universe" by Michael S. Schneider.

When I find people who might be interested in these books, I think we should avoid the distraction of politics and the craziness of what is going on now to see if we can have an understanding of cosmic forces which begins with math. The mystery of pi is mind-blowing. I don't know, are any of you on board with this? :rofl: So much of what we talk about seems relatively unimportant. I Ching includes a notion of heaven and earth blending and so does "The Mayan Factor".

Image result for heaven and earth blending I Ching
We speak of “moving heaven and Earth” as a metaphor in English for great effort towards a goal. According to Fu Xi's I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination method, we can metaphorically move heaven and Earth simply by changing our attitude, and in the process, pave the way for peace, success, and happiness. https://medium.com/@rascalvoyages/fu-xis-i-ching-on-how-to-move-heaven-and-earth-730848d14316#:~:text=We%20speak%20of%20%E2%80%9Cmoving%20heaven,peace%2C%20success%2C%20and%20happiness. — Rascal Voyages

I totally agree with you about labeling and the book "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. made the point by storytelling. This book is shocking to me because it makes us aware of how little we knew in 1980 about mental conditions and we were treating people with treatments that sometimes made things worse. That doesn't give me a lot of faith in what we think we know today, but I have faith that research will lead to better understanding and better treatments, and hopefully much better situations in our schools.

My great-grandson was put on mediation that turned him into a zombie and killed his interest in anything. Fortunately, that did not last too long. What we are doing in schools is insane! Does this fit in this thread? Men like Bill Gates are very influential in education and their expertise is not about being human or about culture and society. Their expertise is technology. We are preparing the young for a technological society, not a human society and this has encouraged dehumanizing education. Nature loves variety and perhaps we should too and for goodness sake encourage children to be active and physical because they will learn better if they are.

I think you totally get morals are about knowing the consequence of actions so I do not understand your argument? What you said is exactly why we should be aware that a moral is a matter of cause of effect, and no amount of prayers will change the consequence of a bad action. Going to war will have bad consequences and believing a god wants us to do that unless we have no alternative to fighting for our lives, is just wrong. It most certainly is wrong to invade and destroy a country and not feel responsible for the human suffering and destruction. Today we are becoming aware of the cost of our action in the US of slavery and destroying the Native American tribes and taking their land. We are gaining awareness of the need to care for our plant, but we are so far behind because of relying on the Bible for an understanding of morals, instead of accepting a moral is a matter of cause and effect.

The god of the Old Testament is definitely described as jealous on a number of occasions. That's why we wants Abraham's people, the Hebrews, to worship no other god than him. The point though, was the question of why they would portray God as having human characteristics like anger and jealousy which are not seen as really good traits. Is it the case that these were seen as good traits back then? More likely it is the case that they wanted to portray God in a way that would make people fear and obey Him.

But then with the New Testament and Christianity, God is portrayed as loving and caring, supremely good. I think that this demonstrates an evolution in the way that human beings view morality and ethics. At first it was thought that the way to make people behave is to threaten them with punishment, and strike fear into their hearts. Then it was learned that the better way is to forgive, love, and care for people. And we can see that they went from the ten commandments of "thou shalt not..." to the single golden rule of what to do, love your neighbour. I think it's far more effective to encourage cooperation and morality through kindness than it is to try and force morality through threats of punishment.

i really cannot see what you mean when you say morality is a matter of cause and effect.

This is an example of fate, determinism, which is not an example of believing in God, rather it's the contrary. A religious person cannot look at the effects of the actions of atheists as God's plan.

I really like your last sentence! :cheer: what a yummy thing to contemplate! What is the spirit of the Christian who ignores knowledge, and the spirit of the pagan who thinks that knowledge is vitally important? Also, what is the source of spirit? When I felt my mother had betrayed me by lying to me about Santa Claus, she lovingly explained Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas. The spirit of Christmas is clearly manifested by thoughts and actions.

Really, I think spirit is inherent within all living things as the source of living action, vitality. But it needs to be cultured, directed, otherwise it will go in any random way. I believe there are two features to guidance. One is to stop the inclination toward action, and this is will power. In conscious human actions It goes against the spirit, preventing rashness and ill-tempered actions, encouraging prudence. The other is knowledge and this allows that the spirit which has been brought under control through will power might be pointed in the right direction. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can not handle discussing too many different things at the same time. This thread is great, and another one for discussing the gods is very desirable but should perhaps wait. And what you said of spirit is very interesting as the book "Mayan Factor" jumps to mind. I would love to participate in a thread about spirit, and perhaps that needs to wait too? I want to do it all now, but maybe that is too much?

I am so bored with discussing the God of Abraham! And your account of Him switching from a fearsome, war god to a loving and forgiving god, is missing some very important information. That transition did not happen with the writing of the new testament. It happened with the improved ability to fill our stomachs. Never has this god been so good to us as He has been since the 20th century. Advancement in farming that has ended famine in most places and advances in medicine that means most children live to adulthood and our life expectancy has doubled, has nurtured the idea that God is more loving than jealous, fearsome, and punishing. Not that long ago, people were beating the devil out of their children. In my lifetime Satanism became very popular and witchcraft is still very popular. In adolescence, we are more attracted to these superstitions than when are more mature and have a better sense of personal power. That makes the increase in our life expectancy very much a part of focusing on a loving God instead of a fearsome one and Satan. Please, we must not forget history. The history of Christianity is a history of wars, superstition, and abuse.

It is amusing that you cannot see what you mean when you say morality is a matter of cause and effect when for me it is as obvious as night and day. How can that be? How can we both be so sure of what we know and disagree?

Everything must be pleasing to mother nature because when we go against her, things go wrong. This does not make the earth quake or volcanos spew smoke and lava, but if we pollute and land and water we harm life. If we cause the extermination of animal, insect, and plant species, we unset the balance of nature. We may be destroying our planet. Moral, this behavior needs to change.

We used to read moral stories to our children and then ask, what is the moral of that story. The moral of "The Little Red Hen" is if you want to share the bread, you should share the effort of growing, harvesting, milling, and then baking the bread. The moral of "The Little Engine that Could" is he made it over the mountain because he didn't give up. The moral of "The Fox and the Grapes" is he didn't get the grapes because he gave up. You that young woman down the street who has a baby and no one to support her is you need to take steps so this does not happen to you and the child. Can you think of one moral that does not have consequences?

Well, "plan" may not be the best word to use for armageddon but the Bible does tell us that terrible things will happen and Christians accept this without taking the responsibility for it. If this is not God's plan then what is a better word we can use? We are speaking of a god who could provide us a garden of Eden and who knows what we would be like if we felt safe and secure and loved along with everyone around us? We have a God who can make miracles happen and people who passionately pray for miracles while this God may or may not answer their prayers, a God who allowed the holocaust and famines and pestilence. How loving is that? We punish abusive parents and give this god a free pass to do or not do as He pleases. That is nuts. If God is not going to resolve problems for us, perhaps we should take that responsibility and question why would a god punish us for wanting the knowledge to do that?

What gods other than the God of Abraham got personally involved with our lives?

I probably summarised Hillman's argument very badly, especially as I don't have a copy of it to quote or refer to. What I probably failed to show was that he is talking about transformation on an inner level, not in terms of outer goals. James Hillman is influenced by Jung and wrote his books on archetypal psychology and is concerned more with the inner journey.

This is in contrast to the whole way in which I have seen recovery based mental health care which is structured around clear objective goals.
That is one of the difficulties I found with cognitive behavioral therapy, which is all about achieving clear goals and misses out the on what is going on with the unconscious.

When I was writing a paper on art therapy with suicidal clients my tutor spoke of enabling people to live without hope. Both the idea of setting clear objective goals or trying to live without hope both seem extremes. Probably the process of trying to sort out our lives is the most we can do. It is good that you found happiness even though you were grieving.

I liked your reference, about a week ago, to your real snakes, because sometimes there seem to be more snakes than ladders, but I do try to hold on to a sense of humour. That was especially important when working in mental health care. — Jack Cummins

I am so excited by what you have said and a book I was told about, that I don't know where to begin. The title of the book is "The Body Keeps the Score" ( subtitle, Brain mind and body in the healing of trauma). I think we have it all wrong to believe all our thinking goes on in our heads. We should understand our bodies as part of our brains, not separate from them.

Education in Athens was more physical and atoned to how what we see and hear affects us. It was also about building character. Technology and a trade is what slaves and the landless learned, and they were not exactly freemen because they had to toil for their survival. Education for the aristocrats was about our physical experience of life. Sort of like in French schools where lunch time is considered a class in how to live, with gourmet meals, served the children as they would be served in a fine restaurant and the teacher sitting with them to guide their social experience. Get the body in the right feeling and that will manifest in a good life. What we have been doing undermines a higher society and turns it into a grimy working-class society, where abuses of the working class taken for granted.

You are young and you are thinking and learning. I am rather excited by what you might achieve.

Oh yes, a sense of humor is essential! When we stop laughing we are in serious trouble. Perhaps a lack of laughter and being too serious is an indicator of being in Hades? How does the body feel in Hades? Is there a way to change how the body feels? If the body feels secure and hopeful, will the person's mind receive this information and feed back acknowledgment of well being?

I once read a fantastic book on the subject of suicide by James Hillman, called, Suicide and the Soul. Hillman speaks of the suicidal search as being one a wish to end the life one is living, and have a transformed life. He stresses that the art is for this not have to be in the concrete act of suicide itself, but the suicidal urge in itself as making way for transformation on some level in one's life. — Jack Cummins

Years ago I called professionals to ask if they were hiring. It was a requirement of getting an unemployment check to inquire about jobs. One of the professionals counseled people who are suicidal and I recoiled. I asked if that is not terribly depressing? In a very enthusiastic way, he said it was not.
He explained it was his job to help people discover what they wanted so much they were willing to die for it and then help them realize a better way to get what they want.

I never got what I wanted, but I learned to live without it, and after many years of grieving, I learn how to create a new life as Athena and how to be happy. :heart:

That ancient God is a bit weird, "jealous" for example, and angry such that He might smite you. In those times I think they were assigning to God human emotions, which it was later realized that a well-tempered person ought to control. This might be an indication of how human attitude toward different emotions evolves. Jealousy seemed like it might be considered a good trait back then, but now it is not considered to be a good emotion. In any case, human emotions were attributed to God. You might notice that Jesus rebelled against the misrepresentation of the relationship between people and God. In Christianity most the human characteristics of God are removed, except love, but we're still left with a weird relationship between Jesus and God. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think it was common for humanity to fear an angry god. It is not always the fault of humans if a god/goddess is angry but just the same we better do what we can to make the god/goddess happy because bad things happen when a god/goddess is upset. But I don't think jealousy was a common trait of gods and goddesses. Oh my goodness, the more I think on this the more interesting the subject becomes! I don't think Zeus was a jealous god but his wife Hera sure was! Another point of interest here is Hera did terrible things to female humans who Zeus was interested in, but she did not punish the whole of humanity.

Would you be interested in a more focused discussion of the gods and the evolution of this kind of thinking?

Being virtuous does require knowledge, this is not what is disputed by Plato. What is disputed is the idea that knowledge is sufficient for virtue. Knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient. We will sometimes go ahead and engage in activity which we know is wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

Totally agree. I very much like Confucius' explanation of this. A woman of the Bahia faith made virtue cards that explain each virtue and then the practice of the virtue. It is clear unless we practice a virtue until it is a habit, an automatic response, we do not have the advantage of that virtue.

However, knowing a virtue and having good moral judgment are two separate things. Socrates focused
on the expansion of our consciousness and here I can see where he may have a bone to pick with the sophist. Conscience meaning coming out of knowledge. If all we know is our own experience of life, we will be too narrow-minded to have good moral judgment. Our modern education is falling way short because education for technology dropped literacy. Just knowing how to read does not make a person literate. To be literate one must read the classics and learn about life through books, developing a broader consciousness. In short, a technological education is not enough for good moral judgment. And Athens shifted its education focus on being technologically correct, just as the US did and both did so a little less than 200 years after their beginning.

Since we very clearly can go ahead and act in ways that are illogical, doing something which we know is illogical (maybe buying a lottery ticket as a simple example), I think we might find that virtue is not based in logic. Plato introduced a tripartite person. To the body/mind division he added spirit or passion as a medium between the two. Spirit, or passion, is responsible for action, later becoming known as will, and in Plato's theory the spirit can ally with the mind, to ensure that we act rationally, but also the spirit might ally with the body which would influence us to act irrationally. So in the instances when we know the right thing but do the wrong thing, the spirit, which is the cause of action, is aligned with the body rather than the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I claim a moral is a matter of cause and effect and that makes good moral judgment a matter of logic. Here I will stress this is different from being virtuous. I know I should not eat the two cookies I just ate, but I do not have the strength of character to resist. So we have two things going. One is we must know burning fuels that put carbon in the air is causing a serious problem, before we have the logic to resolve the problem. Two, we must have the strength of character to make the sacrifice that must be made, or we will not do the logical thing and stop destroying our planet. However, as we gain more knowledge and suffer the consequences of our actions, that may strengthen our will to change our behavior. But if we think God is in control and what is happening is His plan, then this planet will loose most of the life on it. This is a decision to rely on the Bible, not science and it can be very pleasing because it means doing as one pleases until the very end. There is logic to relying on the Bible but some of us may think that is bad logic because it is based on ignorance- intentionally ignoring knowledge. But hey, the Bible sets us for this with the story of Adam and Eve being punished because they chose to have knowledge. As my X Christian friend warns, that knowledge might be from Satan.

I really like your last sentence! :cheer: what a yummy thing to contemplate! What is the spirit of the Christian who ignores knowledge, and the spirit of the pagan who thinks that knowledge is vitally important? Also, what is the source of spirit? When I felt my mother had betrayed me by lying to me about Santa Claus, she lovingly explained Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas. The spirit of Christmas is clearly manifested by thoughts and actions.

Morale is that high spirited feeling we have when we believe we are doing the right thing. The American spirit is that high morale, and a high mortality is essential to our liberty and democracy. So what would you say is the source of spirit?

I must have been rushing because I did not interpret you correctly. :yikes: My sincere apology. I know better than to post when I am rushed or when I am tired. But you know, sometimes we just want to leave the game when our Mom says it is time to come in. Then we get in trouble. It was my bad.