Thanks Joshs.
Nietzsche’s use of the term ‘power’ appears to have been frequently misunderstood in a negative sense. I like your description of it, by the way - ‘a creative moving into the unknown’. In my view, will to power or self-overcoming is the underlying motivation sought here - what I tend to refer to as potentiality: the capacity to develop, achieve or succeed. This is what drives Being, and at a much more fundamental or primordial level than physical survival.

Is there any example where that greater cause isn't aimed at making others survive better? — leo

What do you think it means to ‘survive better’?

To live is not only to survive, yet it seems that you equate the two, as if there were nothing else to the act of living except not dying.

When you think about it, a human being in complete isolation is unable to survive - it cannot fend for itself, and is possibly the most fragile organism on the planet.

Yet if human beings are also the most highly evolved and complex organisms, then surely our purpose cannot be simply to survive? There must be a more essential aim to life than survival.

The human organism was never designed to survive on its own. It has instead evolved to make maximum utility of awareness/interaction/relationship with everything in the universe - including itself, its history and its future - as a fundamental requirement of its survival, let alone its ability to achieve anything beyond that.

Just because you can make associations between success, achievement or development and the notion of ‘survival’, doesn’t mean it must be our fundamental motivation.

Love is seen as that powerful and mysterious thing, but don't people fall in love simply when they see in the other someone who could 'complete' them, when they subconsciously evaluate that the other has abilities or characteristics that would be a good complementary fit to survive better together, or characteristics that would make their children good at surviving?

As to the people who feel unconditional love for all other humans, don't they feel that way simply because they have realized that if we all cared for each other and helped each other we would survive better than if we fought against each other? That fighting violence with violence only creates more violence, and caring for others unconditionally is the only way to make it disappear. — leo

I used to see feelings and imagination as proof that we are more than physical beings, than biological machines, but if all our feelings are geared towards survival then what evidence is there of the 'beyond'? — leo

It seems there is a tendency to reach the point of recognising feelings and imagination as ‘proof’ of motivation beyond biology, and then find ourselves circling back through logic and science to survival in our search for concrete ‘evidence’. It is how we process and make sense of feelings in a scientific world that lead us into this vicious cycle. For anything to exist, there must be ‘objective’ evidence of that existence - something in the physical world that points to it. When we search for evidence of feelings, we find thought processes, articulated ‘reasons’ and physiological responses, and then we look for the source of those, and find ourselves back at survival instincts. So feelings then become these thought processes, reasons and physiological responses, much like energy becomes electricity or heat or movement. Deep down we understand that they’re not the same, but in order to talk about it in a rational way, we end up discussing the material level as the base level, forgetting that there is a metaphysical level of experience that is closer to reality than physiological sense data, rational thought and language.

So when I mention ‘love’, you cycle back to survival instinct as the source of that love. And so every other feeling you may experience inevitably cycles back to our drive to survive.

If, perhaps, we reject physical survival as our overarching motivation and explore the possible existence of an underlying metaphysical drive that keeps returning us to the physical realm as a focus, how would we describe it? What if beyond physical survival was a much stronger metaphysical fear of insubstantiality?

Some people also risk or sacrifice their own survival for what they describe as a ‘greater cause’ or ‘something larger than themselves’. Some people argue for multiculturalism based on reasoning such as ‘diversity makes the species stronger’, but deep down they want multiculturalism because it ‘feels right’ or because the alternative seems destructive, hateful or even fearful. Some people decide to share their life or dedicate it to others, not for procreative or even pragmatic reasons, but for ‘love’ or something similarly metaphysical.

I wonder if the reason of ‘survival’ that we give for our actions is the real motivation, or simply the reason we’ve found fits best, given what we currently understand about ourselves? But do we actually understand ourselves that well, or are we trying to simplify or paint as ‘obvious’ what is a much more complex thought process across several levels of consciousness?

I think there is something ‘beyond survival’ that motivates us in many situations, especially once we have reached an awareness beyond the mere physicality of our existence. I also think many of the actions we believe to be motivated by our drive to survive may actually be motivated by something more complex than evolutionary instinct.

Human beings are feeling, sensing, remembering and evaluating beings who also have the capacity to experience existence well beyond their own physicality in time and space. When we bring this awareness of the infinite and eternal to bear on how we interact with our environment, we can achieve more than simply survival.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not going to argue for religion here. But if we’re going to try and keep this a purely ‘rational’ discussion, then I predict we won’t get far beyond survival...

My own answer would be yes, but then I must admit that I struggle to imagine being so fixed on wanting to be such a narrowly definitive person that: a) I would know if it would ever be possible for me to become that person and b) such certain ‘knowledge’ would cause me to view living a life not becoming that person as without worth.

You may find that your attempts to define and then label my philosophical approach will prove frustrating for you. I am not a student of philosophy in the university-educated sense, so I have not been forced to state my position at any point in relation to certain traditions and theories. I’ve found your name-dropping interesting to read up on, but I’m not going to try and substantiate my own thoughts on the subject by attributing them to a credible name or theory - it only leads to misleading assumptions in forum discussions, in my experience. You can give it a go for your own understanding, but it’s liable to change tomorrow as new experiences come to light for me - just thought I’d warn you...

As far as the relation between bodily feedback and the awareness of affect, the argument of manuy in contemporary cog sci emotion theory would be that while our conscious experience of affectivty, mood ,emotion is the result of a complex integrative process involving situational interpretation, memory, langauge and bodily feedback
, if one removes the somatic feedback the experience of affect is severely attenuated. — Joshs

My point is that we shouldn’t rely on what feedback we can measure or define as the only contributions that feeling brings to awareness. There is experientially more to somatic feedback than what can be substantiated by data or precise, rational language. Subjective experience contains a pre-linguistic, pre-cognitive element that regularly falls off the radar in rational discussions of emotion and feeling, for obvious reasons. That doesn’t make it irrelevant - just easy to ignore or dismiss. And then our expression of ‘felt’ awareness becomes limited, a la David Eggers’ ‘The Circle’ (the novel, not the movie).

I feel afraid one minute. The next I say that I am examining the fear itself as fear and this is the essence of human self-knowing. But animals not only feel afraid, they can also be aware of the feeling of fear in itself . One can artificially induce symptoms that mimic fear with an adrenaline shot, an an animal will interpret the bodily sensations as fear. — Joshs

An animal doesn’t so much interpret the bodily sensations as fear - I think it simply makes no mental distinction between the feeling of fear and its bodily sensations in response. That’s not to say it doesn’t make choices regarding its behaviour.

Interestingly, a human will often interpret these same bodily sensations as anything BUT fear in the moment: anger, excitement, anxiety, arousal, nervous energy, adrenalin, even illness or a combination. We generally have a more complex ability to intervene and rationalise between bodily sensations and how we consciously respond to them than most animals - including how we interpret these sensations, our awareness of options and factors in how we evaluate them. But our focus on this level of thought process reduces ‘feeling’ to our interpretation of bodily sensations, ignoring a more ‘primitive’ process whereby the bodily sensations are themselves an unconscious response in the physiological system to a broader feeling of fear itself.

In most cases, we make a distinction between bodily sensations and the feeling of fear in itself only by denying that feeling of fear - by interpreting the bodily sensations as something other than fear. I think humans have a tendency to either:
- oppress or deny ‘feeling’ as a valid response to the world (rationalising our physical or mental responses to various defined ‘emotions’); or
- deny any distinction or intervention between feeling, bodily sensation and conscious response (calling it ‘instinctive’ behaviour).
Both allow for self-deception and create a limited awareness of the universe.

In order to make a true distinction in our awareness of feeling, we need to understand ‘feeling’ as more than just bodily sensations or emotions that lend themselves to rational thought and language. We need to learn to retain conscious control of our body while enabling ourselves to simply ‘feel’ the universe beyond our physical senses, thoughts or memories - to recognise sensations or experiences outside of these other three forms of interaction. Only then can we become aware of feeling in itself.

It comes down to a question of what awareness means, and what purpose its serves in the first place.
Philosophical Pragmatism tells us that awareness is a relation, an activity, a transformation , a way of interacting with the world to effect a change.It is not a passive looking .So if a single act of awareness takes us from here to there, then a second act, rather than going deeper within the first act, is a further accomplishment of resituating our meaningful relations with the world. So what the metaphysical thinking of self-awareness would consider a bring oneself closer to oneself is in fact a moving further away from ones prior self in each subsequent act of reflection. In a way one could argue that it is animals which are more self-aware than us humans if the measure of self-knowledge is the preserving of a static sense of self. It is we who transform our sense of ourselves more continuously, and do this in an accelerative manner over the course of human history. Awareness is adaptive not to the extent that it reifies a particular sense of self, but by virtue of its reconstituting what it refers back to. Adaptive self-awareness endlessly multiplies and invents new versions of self. — Joshs

This makes a lot of sense to me, in some respects. I think ‘preserving a static sense of self’ is a step backwards, though. It’s not more self-aware, but less. Awareness is a continual process of relation, interaction and transformation between an ever-changing sense of self in an ever-changing sense of the universe. I think the more aware we become, both of ourselves and the universe, the less static everything appears...

Ok. Some markings are from a language. Granted. You say that the text provides information. Sure. You say that the intent of the author may be lost forever, sure... maybe. I can go with that. I would grant that the author had intent.

So what?

It does not follow from this that the text is still meaningful. — creativesoul

I would suggest that the text is meaningful if a correlation can be made between subjective human experiences through their interaction with the text.

But it is the individual who is actually experiencing the stress, harm, and negative experiences. To broaden awareness is again more coping strategies and values to motivate to keep going, and does not really resolve the issue as much as show yet another example of how buying into the values of the group, enculturation, etc. is used to help people keep going. It also doesn't really solve the fact that we are aware of disliking tasks related to the very mechanism for survival. — schopenhauer1

You’re assuming that individual survival is the main aim here, not to mention an individual life free of stress, harm and negative experience.

Of course, you are still faced with the meaning of your own words in this thread persisting through time as well... Outright denial doesn't make any sense at all in light of that. — creativesoul

I’m under no illusion that there is ‘the meaning’ of my words that persists through time. Whenever I interact with the words I wrote, there is meaning in that interaction, and a sense of continuity between that meaning and the ‘original meaning’ when I wrote it, seen as a relationship. When you interact with the same words, there is potentially a different meaning as a different relationship, and I can only approach your meaning by interacting with the way you then express your relationship with the words, within the context of what I understand about the English language, about this thread discussion and what little I understand about you - just as you can better approach the ‘original meaning’ by interacting with the context of the English language, etc and what you understand about me (eg. what else I have written in this thread).

The words persist through time (also debatable as a digital entity), but meaning is found in each interaction with those words. If you talk about persistence of meaning, then you run into assumptions that this meaning exists as an entity instead of a dynamic relationship. I get that you understand what you mean, but it’s not always coming across as clearly as it appears in your mind. I don’t expect anyone to understand what I’m talking about just because I wrote it down.

I’m not sure that a state of equilibrium in a dynamical system is ever a given, though. I would have thought that survival depends on sustaining a certain level of inequilibrium in dynamical systems. It is this necessary inequilibrium that motivates us both towards and away from social structures. Independence, autonomy and absolute celebrity are myths - to pursue them as a system goal is to pursue non-survival, as self-destructive as accepting absolute dependence, oppression and hatred.

Our capacity to choose other than the program used by the system to make sure survival takes place, for me, comes down to a broader awareness of ‘the system’ that must survive, and our ability to adjust our awareness of who or what is included in ‘the system’ from moment to moment.

When we narrow or limit our focus, certain actions appear stressful, harmful or negative to the system. When we broaden our awareness of ‘the system’ to include loved ones, community, nation, humanity or life as a whole, then the value of these actions becomes more apparent.

I’m not looking for an answer here. It’s more an alternative way of exploring the concept of self-reflection and self motivation...by looking at awareness of self as a variable factor.

Just thinking out loud on the subject...

I think a similar thought process happens when we decide to stop ourselves from performing a task that we would like to do. Like eating a second or third piece of that cake. Just as there are tasks we agree to keep doing that we don’t like, so there are tasks we refrain from doing that we would normally enjoy.

There seems to be a deeper complexity to our decision making that doesn’t appear to occur in most other animals - although I wouldn’t go so far as to draw a definitive line between humans and all animals on this complexity. There are certainly enough primitive traces of this kind of decision making in various animals to suggest that the distinction may be a greater capacity to develop awareness of additional dimensions of experience, rather than a unique ‘gift’ attributed solely to humans.

My dog derives a certain amount of reward from barking at anyone who walks past our house. She weighs that against the response she receives from her pack leader (ie. owner), and decides to sit beside me instead - and whine. She doesn’t use the words ‘I like’ or ‘I dislike’, of course, but she nevertheless appears to be communicating a level of discomfort associated with her choice of action. Has she ‘bought in’ to a set of values at some primitive level?

I think our greater potential awareness of dimensions of experience includes an awareness of continuity of the ‘self’ through time or space. So we may stop ourselves from eating another piece of cake - despite the knowledge that we would immediately enjoy it - because we are aware of longer term effects of this action (and subsequent similar actions) on our sense of self (weight gain, body image, health, longevity, etc) into the future. The awareness of abundance of choice in available food requires us to make more complex decisions based on a broader awareness of self continuing through time than perhaps another human being who experiences no such abundance on a daily basis.

The broader our awareness of choice, the broader our awareness should become of self - including the implications each choice we make has on a future self, or a more interconnected or more diverse self - and vice versa. But this awareness of both choice availability and self, including the impact of related decisions on the self, are complex potential that may or may not be developed, and also appear to fluctuate in their impact on our consciousness at any one time.

So when we choose to perform a task even if we don’t like it, what is our awareness of alternative choices, and how do we currently see each of these choices impacting on a present/future, autonomous/interconnected or individual/diverse awareness of self? And when someone complains about a task they don’t like, yet choose to perform, what are they saying about the broadness of their current awareness of self? How conscious are they currently of the complexity and dimensions of their experience? How deeply are they thinking about it?

In the language of mathematics the meaning does persist through time. If all trace of it was lost it could still be rediscovered, and in this line of thinking propositional logic could still be rediscovered too. — I like sushi

Yes, but would it look the same? Would it be a rediscovery, or something else? And if an ‘ancient artifact’ containing our current mathematical language were to be found thousands of years later, how would we then reconnect the two?

What would we have to lose to ensure that ‘all trace of it was lost’? What is it that ‘persists’?

I have a feeling that if everyone were highly developed along those lines, the economy would be a lot smaller. — petrichor

Not such a bad thing, if you ask me.

So, your problem is not with International Women’s Day in general, but with the political message of a specific, local event. Thank you for clarifying your point. Let’s try not to over-generalise and further sabotage or draw attention away from addressing more important issues such as the global shift towards gender equality and ending discrimination and violence against women, then, shall we?

And I do think that economic well-being comes before ideas about self awareness, growth and meaningfulness. — Brett

And what if ideas about self awareness, growth and meaningfulness would ultimately provide the solution to economic well-being?

Just a thought.

If you dedicate a day to telling half the population that they're being exploited and abused by the other half and thus should strike in order to "stop the patriarchal, capitalist and predatory system" then it is likely that this message might persist into at least some of the other days of the year, no?

To reiterate my point. The situation in Europe (where I live) regarding women's rights, whilst not being perfect, is not at crisis point either. Call it divide and rule or call it a smokescreen, International Women's Day, as it is celebrated here, is a convenient distraction from more pressing issues. — Txastopher

Where is the source of your quote? The message I got was a reminder that there are still many instances of exploitation and oppression against women occurring around the world, despite my own situation being pretty good. We need to continue to support these women and draw attention to their situation, as well as celebrating the various inroads we have made towards equality so far...

Human society has gone through some dramatic changes and more is on the immediate horizon. In the Western world women are doing pretty great - if anything they are their own worst enemies in that society.

It’s really hard to see what is happening though as we’re in the midst of the changes and I guess we’ll just have to leave it up to the historians of the future to sort out what has happened and is happening now in regards to how the social rights of women have altered and how birth control has effected women’s positioning (preference and otherwise) in the greater picture.

The biggest difference is the problem of monetizing jobs women generally prefer. Nursing is not really an industry that can be scaled up and/or expanded. A software engineer can provide millions of people whilst a nurse provides a handful. The simple truth is the issue of commercial value not being easily balanced against human value. I hope this will be more seriously addressed in the immediate future rather than posturing about trivial issues that are a symptom of this greater underlying problem. — I like sushi

Wow. I’ll admit, I honestly thought this kind of conversation was behind us, but clearly I was wrong. And then I realised that I work in an industry that has no gender pay gap - because it was traditionally an industry ‘preferred’ by women, although my role (being relatively new) has been about 50/50. I have been privileged in that respect, but it also renders me ignorant of the scope of resentment towards women’s demand for equal rights in the workforce - and the fundamental misunderstanding of what that means.

It has nothing to with a nurse being paid the same as a software engineer - it’s about women being paid the same rate as a software engineer...for doing the same job as a software engineer.

I'm referring to this type of activity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Strike_2018 — Txastopher

So am I - do you really view this activity as ‘pitting women against men’? A single day of non-violent action to draw attention to a number of ongoing issues and the scope of their continuing impact on society? Really?

If you're suggesting that I don't consider that women have a collective grievance, then you're wrong.
Nevertheless, I question the relative of importance of male discrimination against women in the developed world when compared to other issues. — Txastopher

If there can be International Grandparents Day, for instance, then I would argue that ‘relative importance’ of a day acknowledging the significance of women’s contribution to society despite discrimination by that society (not specifically by males, in my opinion) is warranted, without overstating the situation.

For this reason, I suggest that since pitting men and women against each other may have a political benefit for particular groups, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that these groups would promote such a state of affairs. International Women's Day being but one way of furthering this objective. — Txastopher

What particular groups? I may not have seen every promotion of International Women’s Day, but I haven’t really noticed a lot of ‘pitting men and women against each other’ - except to hear grumbles from certain people (and the media using conflict as click bait) who might interpret a celebration of women as denigration of men by default. I would hope that a man’s sense of identity and pride is not so connected to patriarchal default that he feels threatened by women uniting in a show of strength and dignity. If that’s the case, then clearly there is still work to be done...

I think we can agree that meaning of the same marks, signs, and symbols changes through time and different use. The scare-quotes are no longer necessary. The meaning of a text is determined by the users of the language. That meaning can persist through time even if there are more than one(accepted in practice) use for the marks, even if the marks are correlated to different things than the original users. The original meaning, however, could not persist if no one correlated the marks to the same things at all. The same holds good of all common use. — creativesoul

Clearly the scare-quotes are necessary, as you continue to assert that meaning can persist through time, when I’ve already explained why it doesn’t. There is a difference between continuity of meaning and persistent meaning - the original meaning does not persist, it cannot persist because of the nature of meaning. Once the text is created, all we have are relationships between the text within context (including the author’s subjective experience) and ourselves within context. When we talk about meaning persisting, we mistakenly assume that we can extract the original meaning of some texts but not others, when the best we can do is approach it by understanding (often by imagining) the context of the author’s experience.

This is what happens when you make a statement or assertion in this forum, too. The original meaning of your statement exists only in your subjective relationship with what you wrote. You cannot assume that it persists anywhere else, let alone that anyone reading it would understand your meaning as ‘the meaning’ simply because the markings you’ve used to communicate it are regularly in use today. So when they query what you wrote, you can’t just refer back to what you wrote as if ‘the meaning’ is inherent in the markings themselves. You need to give more information about the subjective experience behind what you wrote. You need to offer more context. Otherwise they attribute their own meaning to what you wrote, or dismiss it as nonsense.

How does this relate to the ancient text? Well, an ancient text, like all texts, does not stand alone - it exists in context. So it is only potentially meaningless if we are ignorant of context - of the relationships it has with anything and everything we experience and interact with today - not just the language. As long as we can relate to the context surrounding a text, we can begin to approach the original meaning, to imagine it and strive to understand it - although only the author could ever really ‘know’ it. This is not necessarily because it is ancient and the original users of the language are all dead. It’s difficult to assume the original meaning even of a modern text, if we cannot relate to its context.

If, for the universe or anything to exist, there couldn’t be total ‘nothingness’, what if the ‘something’ that did exist was simply potentiality?
Just a thought - carry on...

There is often an assumption that there is only the meaning of this ancient text, as if a single meaning was somehow inherent in the text itself. But meaning exists in a relationship between observed text and observer/user. It is not inherent in the text, but neither is it separable from either text or observer.

So, if a text is considered ‘meaningful’, are we saying that the text contains meaning, or that there is a meaningful relationship between the ancient text and any modern user? Conversely, if a text is considered to have no meaning, are we saying that it is meaningless, or that there is no meaningful relationship established between the text and the modern user?

For meaning to ‘persist through time’, there must be a sense of continuity perceived in this particular relationship between texts and users through time. Take the word ‘love’ for instance. While there is a sense of continuity between this text and the same word (using the same symbols) written in English for the last five hundred years, the claim that a similar continuity exists between users (readers and writers) of the word ‘love’ over that same five hundred years is much less certain.

Meaning is a fluid process of seeking continuity in a relationship between various interactions of users and texts. Statements of meaning in a dictionary attempt to ‘shore up’ this sense of continuity from the side of the text, but language and textual meaning does not so much ‘persist’ through time as much as it flows - changing and fluctuating in small, complex ways with each interaction between texts and users. This is why dictionaries need to be regularly updated, and why we cannot even conclude that the meaning of the ancient text ‘persisted’ (without change) throughout the time period during its use.

So, is a newly discovered and completely unfamiliar ancient text still meaningful?

Well, it doesn’t have inherent meaning that persists through time, if that’s what you mean by ‘still’. The original meaning of the text exists only in the moment the chisel was put to stone, so to speak. That meaning may have been intended for a particular audience and in response to a particular experience or interaction, all of which may not be apparent in the text or its context (where it was found, etc). Nor can we be certain that the meaning intended was effectively communicated to any user at all. Incidentally, we can find various ways in which modern users can interact with the text in a meaningful way, but this is not ‘the meaning’ you’re looking for, is it?

If our intention is to approach the original intended meaning of the text, then we need to concentrate not just on our interaction with the symbols (whether or not these symbols are still in use), but with the original users of those symbols - to share in the human experience that motivated that particular use of that particular combination of symbols in the context of the user’s particular sum of human experiences up to that point. This is not a purely logical process, nor is it ever going to be conclusive. We can really only imagine the original meaning from our position, and to share our various perspectives on it, towards further developing the complex web of continuity in relationships between texts and users throughout time.

How do we decide we don’t like a task, though? It seems a rather simplified description of how one would feel about performing a task at any one moment, let alone when explored as an ongoing relationship with that task.

For most animals, their response to a task appears as a two dimensional relationship: they are aware of a stimulus, and they respond according to a current position in spacetime. They may develop awareness of the relationship that stimulus has to other stimuli in spacetime, as well as awareness of the position in spacetime which responds.

Humans have developed this awareness to the point where we have complex and multi-dimensional relationships with our relationships in time and space, and developed language to communicate abstractly. So when I say that I don’t like a task, I am often asked to specify what it is that I don’t like about that task, and how that relates to the current sense of I that doesn’t like it.

A plumber might say, ‘I don’t like the smell I experience when I’m hosing out the inside of a septic tank.’ Who would? But he might like many of the other aspects of his job - whether it’s being able to maintain clean equipment, providing a quality service to customers, a sense of pride in having a unique skill set that contributes to the community and puts food on the table. It’s the weight he personally places on each of these ‘feelings’ towards his job and surrounding that particular task that may outweigh what he dislikes about it. He’s not fooling himself - he’s made choices in life (based on sense, feeling and reasoning) that have led him here, and while he’s aware of choices that may lead him away from a specific task he doesn’t like, he’s not willing to give up what he does like (and if you’re wondering where this example came from, watch the Australian mockumentary film ‘Kenny’ with Shane Jacobson).

I don’t think it’s ever as simple as bypassing a dislike by ‘fooling ourselves’ into doing it anyway. I think we make decisions in life conscious of the complex interconnectedness of those decisions with other aspects of our life. What we articulate as our reasoning often barely scratches the surface of what went on in our minds to reach that point. And a large proportion of it was based not on reasoning but on ‘feeling’, which doesn’t always translate into words.

Good point - it is education that enables us to do that, eventually.

I think @petrichor’s criticism of the education system is a narrow view of the effect of the system, but it only goes to show how that effect can indeed psychologically cripple, preventing people from seeing their own unlimited potential.

I don’t agree that the aim of schools is to normalise or standardise to serve economic growth. I think there is pressure on schools to turn out whatever society sees as a ‘full functioning, rational member of society’ at the time - which leads to curriculum and management systems designed to normalise and standardise results.

I agree with you that actual education is highly effective in enabling us to express ourselves and to act reasonably - but this process is frequently crippled by the curriculum and management systems that should be supporting and facilitiating that education.

I had an excellent education, but it was the passion for learning that my parents instilled in me from an early age that enabled me to unlearn and eventually move beyond harmful, limiting doctrine and submissive, ignorant habits that the school system taught alongside the curriculum. I now work within the system (in my own small way) to change the way we support and facilitate education.

Some of us have taken over 20 years out of the school system to reach this point, having finally unlearned the system that probably did psychologically cripple us for a time, where we can begin to express ourselves.

The education system can certainly set us on a path, but it’s not the only influence on our lives. We can turn out okay despite the system, which may be why we contribute to these discussion about changing the system...

So as long as we don't lose hope we should be fine. Yes, I know how hard that might be.
— hachit

It seems that is our first hurdle. A psychological disposition to give up when odds are low. It turns out that giving up is a bad idea when what you are giving up is everything. — TogetherTurtle

Hope is mistakenly viewed as something to lose, in the past or in the present, when it’s really a matter of being aware of the potential of where we can go, despite where we are currently or where we were before.

I think human beings on the whole are capable of surviving almost anything as a species, because we can develop awareness of potential in each of our interactions with the universe, as well as awareness of time and existence both within and beyond our own physical sense of it. These abilities, when used, enable us to adapt to any conditions and be resourceful, but also enable us to anticipate complex problems and create effective solutions or preventative measures.

The trick is to develop a way to interact with the future as potential, not as actual. As you say,

Fear is a motivator but it is a detriment when conducting conversations that require rational thought. — TogetherTurtle

But purely rational thought requires us to solve problems outside of our participation in spacetime. To do that, the problem needs to be presented in all its complexity as an actuality. Which means that, as @mejonat suggests, we cannot logically anticipate and prepare for every potentiality.

So when we look at the broad potentiality of the future of our planet or our existence, I think perhaps we might benefit from facing our fear rather than blocking it out. I don’t mean we should focus in detail on all the ways we ‘might’ contribute to Armageddon. The fear we experience about our future is not about specific disasters - I think it’s a general fear of the unlimited potentiality facing humanity. We are certainly more than capable of making more mess, but I think we are also capable of ultimately perpetuating a sustainable environment for life in general. We just can’t work out what that looks like rationally yet, because we have to formulate a path to a future actuality based on a past actuality, and we keep running out of time to do this before our awareness of the current situation changes and we have to ‘re-calculate the route’ at both ends. A grand plan sounds comforting, but with this many variables, the moment you write it down it becomes obsolete.

Maybe rational thought needs to loosen its grip on the reins a bit. The pure rationality of science has a patchy track record at best when it comes to anticipating and preventing disaster (or predicting the weather). Maybe it’s a matter of exploring the future as a ‘fuzzy’ potentiality, and then ‘feeling’ our way forward - with the courage to continually seek both a broader potential in our interactions with the universe and a scope of time and existence beyond our physical sense of it. Maybe it’s a matter of getting over this fear of uncertainty that limits our perspective of the universe to the bounds of rational thought.

Of course, we could always just wait until there is an actual disaster to deal with...it seems to have worked for us so far (at considerable cost, mind you)...

I see passionate teachers everyday who feel like they’re fighting the system to teach effectively and do the best by their students, as well as teachers who are simply going through the motions and working the system to benefit themselves.

If we continue to see education only in terms of ROI or turning out whatever it means to be a ‘good citizen’ or a ‘full functioning, rational member of society’, then I think the education system will continue to fall short of whatever benchmarks we set.

Education doesn’t just happen when you put a knowledgeable person in the room with an ignorant one. But in my experience, it does occur naturally when you put a passionate teacher together with a willing student. Ideally, this is where the focus of education needs to be: to create environments for passionate teachers to interact with willing students. Everything else should simply support and facilitate this interaction, and if the system environment is preventing this interaction from occurring, then frankly it isn’t fair to blame the teachers or the students.

We struggle to attract and retain passionate teachers when the environment prioritises administrative hoop-jumping and data entry over facilitating quality interaction with students. We struggle to attract and retain willing students when the environment prioritises bums on seats or fees paid over facilitating quality interaction with teachers.

Yet we publicly applaud students on their numerical ranking and natural ability - disregarding effort, enthusiasm and willingness to learn, let alone acknowledging the relationship with their teachers. And we publicly applaud teachers on...nothing, really. The public assessment of education’s value doesn’t even understand what education is.

Quality education is not purely about numbers or results - it’s about balancing the numbers in order to maximise the quality of relationships between teacher and student. Because that’s where teaching and learning happens, and where education is most effective and most valuable.

That means there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and the best balance will be different from one year to the next, from one school to the next, one classroom or teacher to the next and even from one student to the next. Diversity of offerings and flexibility, balanced with quality controls and accountability that prioritise the web of student-teacher relationships, are the mark of a quality education system. Everything else reflects the pressure society puts on itself.

Which type of model of god doesn’t have the god having his/her own needs? — wax

A model that is not understood as a separate entity, let alone as a ‘person’ (or three persons).

If a conscious entity doesn't have any needs, then why would they do anything? — wax

Because they’re aware that they can, and because they feel connected to others - not a completely separate entity.

So would you say that the dictionary example of 'a belief in the basic goodness of human nature' is a 'spiritual truth' ?
Given the other side of the goodness coin, I would argue that an experiencer of any 'spiritual truth' would need to accept that it might be perceived as morally wrong or not true from another perspective.
I think the 'feeling of goodness' is vague because it is a sense not a fact. It is not black or white. Or an absolute spiritual truth. It is qualitative not quantitative. — Amity

No - I would say that this is not a ‘spiritual truth’, but an expression of personal belief and judgement, as stated. A spiritual truth is not an opinion based on personal experience. As you said, ‘goodness’ is qualitative, not quantitative.

I think perhaps you misunderstood me - I disagree with your direct association of spiritual truth with ‘goodness’. While I agree that there is a positive feeling associated with spiritual truth in the moment we experience it, this is certainly not an indication that what evidence lingers from that experience should be upheld as ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’ in its own right.

The following statements have come from a ‘spiritual awakening’ website, and I will say that I do recognise the experience of ‘truth’ that each one points to:

We are all connected
Life is change
There is more to life than what we can perceive
Pain and joy are equally part of this world

But that doesn’t make any of them ‘spiritual truths’ as stated, regardless of what that website claims. I think as one who experiences spiritual truth in these statements, I need to also recognise that your personal experience of each word will be different to mine, so this ‘truth’ won’t necessarily be clear to you from this statement. That doesn’t mean you are ignorant or that my experience of ‘spiritual truth’ is wrong, only that the statement is imperfect as a communication of spiritual truth, and we will not understand each other’s perspective through these words alone.

I don't think it possible to get beyond context. As you say, others experience the world differently and at different times according to culture, identity and changes. I doubt there is a single spiritual truth which you can reach. However, googling the term 'spiritual truth' you will find those that can list umpteen. — Amity

When we say ‘reach’, do we mean ‘know’ or ‘approach’? Reach to grasp or reach to examine? I think we can experience ‘spiritual truth’ from our position in space time - we can approach it without grasping it - but we cannot ‘know’ it in the sense that we can state it as a fact, demonstrate it as a competency or possess it as a power. I see it a bit like pulling back the curtain of context to glimpse the truth behind it. We still need to operate within context, but that shouldn’t block our awareness of ‘truth’ beyond that context, or our examination of it.

Our experience, knowledge and understanding of pain is not the same. You have given a narrow definition. It is deeper and more complex than that.
I agree that change and pain are a part of life. However, to avoid pain is not to avoid living.
How could it be ? — Amity

I don’t agree that my ‘definition’ is as narrow as it seems. Simplified, yes. But I believe that it describes an experience of pain at the deepest level, and that the complexity comes from how we respond to this fundamental experience at various levels of awareness and thought processing. It isn’t easy to unpack experiences of pain in this way, but in my experience it’s worth it.

We’re taught as children to perceive an experience of pain as a warning to avoid something or a reminder that we can’t or shouldn’t - so we develop strategies to steer clear of experiences of pain, because we perceive that pain has no place in a life well-lived. When we cannot avoid pain, we work to distract ourselves from it or block our awareness of it - instead of experiencing it and striving to understand it as a signal for change. All of this leads to blocked roads and ‘no-go zones’ as we develop awareness of the universe, and with that, wisdom.

Wisdom - the love of which seems central to philosophy - from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wisdom/

Interesting summary. Two quotes resonate with my understanding of ‘wisdom’ (keeping in mind that ‘God’ for me represents something very different from Descartes’, and that I don’t subscribe to his evaluation of ‘most important’):

Descartes wrote, “It is really only God alone who has Perfect Wisdom, that is to say, who has a complete knowledge of the truth of all things; but it may be said that men have more wisdom or less according as they have more or less knowledge of the most important truths” (Principles, 204).

Nozick provides a very illuminating start:
“Wisdom is not just one type of knowledge, but diverse. What a wise person needs to know and understand constitutes a varied list: the most important goals and values of life – the ultimate goal, if there is one; what means will reach these goals without too great a cost; what kinds of dangers threaten the achieving of these goals; how to recognize and avoid or minimize these dangers; what different types of human beings are like in their actions and motives (as this presents dangers or opportunities); what is not possible or feasible to achieve (or avoid); how to tell what is appropriate when; knowing when certain goals are sufficiently achieved; what limitations are unavoidable and how to accept them; how to improve oneself and one's relationships with others or society; knowing what the true and unapparent value of various things is; when to take a long-term view; knowing the variety and obduracy of facts, institutions, and human nature; understanding what one's real motives are; how to cope and deal with the major tragedies and dilemmas of life, and with the major good things too.” (1989, 269)

No a lack or loss isn't a void. It is like a car that has run out of fuel. There is no void, just the inability to function as a vehicle. Maybe a Buddhist would say then this is the time to get out and walk..and not be attached to the car.?

can one define 'void' without referencing it to things, things with definitions that aren't based upon any definition of a void?

Can you say for example what the void created by the absence of a football is without referring to the concept of a football? — wax

‘Void’ was your word, not mine. But I think it is common to experience a void, without being able to determine for certain what it is one specifically lacks. So let’s say that you experience lack or loss as a car that has run out of fuel. It appears as if you are saying that what you lack is vital to your ability to function. But I’m saying that the experience of lack itself is vital to your ability to function. How can you be certain that what you say you lack is actually causing your experience of lack?

I tend to picture one of those old fashioned puzzles, where you move tiles around inside a square to unscramble an image. In order for the puzzle to operate, one of the squares must be empty, otherwise the pieces can’t move. It doesn’t matter which one is empty - it is the void that enables the puzzle to function. This is what it means to be a dissipative structure, a living being.

I read in the Arthur Janov books that in children, if their need for love goes unfulfilled then that need actually does die, and with it the cognitive processes associated with that need...much about Janovs ideas and therapies is a puzzle to me, in that I'm fairly sure that the therapy doesn't actually work; not completely sure, but \that is the way I tend to look at it, these days, but some of his ideas make sense.

To have a need implies that there is something important that could be included in your life...and the lack of whatever it causes some level of pain to the person. Oh well Janov says that as children we just give up hope of that need being filled, and the mind shuts down on that need. The need is then no longer felt, and neither is the associated pain, lost as well is the cognitive processes that gave rise to this need, which is the ability to receive and give love.

If this happens it could be interpreted as 'acceptance' that there is this lack, but really it is just a kind of death.....ironically, in Janov's theory, this need is then buried in the subconscious, and has to be filled symbolically...eg the need for love gets turned into the need for chocolate..and can be temporarily met symbolically by eating chocolate...I say ironically as maybe Buddhists would say this need for chocolate was an attachment..? — wax

I can’t say I agree with your interpretation - mainly because I see pain and loss as two different experiences. You’re assuming (or perhaps Janov is) that there exists a need for love that must be fulfilled or else it ‘shuts down’. You then go on to talk about loss of the ability to receive and give love - ‘the cognitive processes that gave rise to this need’.

So we are born with the capacity to give and receive love (whatever we understand ‘love’ to be). When we fail to receive love as a child, we supposedly ‘give up’ on the entire cognitive process - only it doesn’t die, but is buried in the subconscious, and the victim seeks fulfilment ‘symbolically’, by chocolate, for instance. So they take away the chocolate in therapy, causing the patient to experience the pain of loss all over again, and then they guide them towards the recognition that what they were missing was not chocolate after all, but love... I think there are a lot of assumptions in these methods, although I think I understand why the therapy was successful for some, a matter of pretence for others and an opportunity to form a cult for a handful of practitioners...

I would argue that the patient never lost the capacity to give and receive love. When we cannot avoid an experience of pain, we seek to block our awareness of it - with painkillers or drugs, for instance. When we cannot avoid an experience of lack or loss, however, we seek to fill the void with a suitable or proximate alternative - based on what we recognise to be missing, what we are ‘informed’ is missing, or what we observe to be present in ‘more complete’ human beings. None of these methods are particularly successful in the long term, though, and open victims up to further abuse and mistreatment disguised as ‘help’ (this is the foundation of the advertising industry).

I think the idea behind Janov’s therapy is that we need to stop trying to avoid pain or loss, but to acknowledge our experience of it and strive to understand it. This is not the same as accepting it. As I mentioned to @Amity, it’s important to recognise that only you can understand your own experience of pain or loss, and only you can reliably determine how these experiences came about without objective, physical evidence. The therapy is supposed to facilitate this understanding and ‘assist’ the patient in navigating their thinking process - informed by their own experiences of feeling, sensing, reasoning and remembering - but this opens them up to being told what they’re thinking, or having their experiences translated by ‘therapists’ with ulterior motives.

Anyway, I still find value in what Janov wrote, that I read 30years ago...and it still makes sense, and the only reason I can see that the therapy might not work is that the mind just, in most cases, won't accept the feeling of that much pain; not without a bloody good reason, and he always said that drug addicts once they go without their drug, have much quicker access to their buried pain than most people, and go through the therapy much quicker.......but who knows...where is the revolution he promissed? — wax

Well...it was damaged by one of the largest malpractice suits ever, and Janov lost all credibility with the more recent claim that he could ‘cure homosexuality’...

Emptiness is quite often experienced by people; people who live in isolation, like the character in Castaway.

My guess is the eastern concept of emptiness is the filling of the void that one has created, the feeling of thoughts and memories that pour in to fill the emptiness. — wax

I don’t see emptiness or void as the enemy. This is part of living - to experience lack or loss, not as a void that must be filled or as a question that must be answered, but as part of a process whereby we live in a state of perpetual inequilibrium or incompleteness. We cannot expect to fill this void in such a way that we no longer feel the emptiness, because to live is to experience lack.

Likewise we cannot expect to answer the question of one hand clapping in a such a way that we no longer feel like we don’t have the answer. The point is to experience the lack of an answer without the sense that we are suffering from that lack, or that we have lost a part of our mind (or that it has ‘died a little’).

So the character in Castaway had to come to terms with experiences of lack or loss, to recognise that he is, essentially (when everything else is taken away), a fragile, incomplete and temporary process of life in which nothing is his to own or keep - but that’s not a bad thing. When he recognises that this experience of void does not lead to death or suffering but to an uncluttered perspective of living, then he can embrace opportunities to live more fully through his interaction with others.

I get the sense of a spiritual truth as something that people might know as as a feeling of 'goodness'.
But it is all too vague to make much sense when it comes to 'wisdom'.
I think that what might be true in one context, might not hold true in another.

It might be wise for me to discontinue this discussion right now because I have a headache.
It might be wise for me to continue even though I have a headache.
It might not be true that I have a headache.
It might be the case that I am having a spiritual awakening.
Nobody said it would be painless. Thinking, emotion, all part of the ordinary world. Who needs transcendence ? — Amity

I understand basically what you mean by this ‘feeling of goodness’, but personally I am reluctant to use the word ‘goodness’ because it implies a dichotomy that promotes binary thinking and judgement (good/evil), which drastically limits our awareness of the universe.

When we experience ‘spiritual truth’ I think we do get a positive or ‘good’ feeling about an experience or situation as it occurs. The ‘vagueness’ comes from our preference for solid, objective evidence to back up or substantiate this feeling - we want to pinpoint it in space time so we can verify it with those around us, because it might just be that we’re going crazy.

It takes practice, effort and attention to learn to trust feeling - we need to test it in our experience without losing sight of its purest form, without allowing other thinking processes to oppress or illegitimise it as a source of wisdom. If I find that what is true in one context does not hold true in another, then I haven’t reached a spiritual truth - it’s probably still caught up in structures of language, culture, ideology, gender identity or other limiting experiences of the universe. I need to get beyond context. Only by listening, learning and imagining how others experience the universe, can I get a sense of what might be true in every experience.

Wisdom is not the same as knowledge, which is not the same as understanding. I don’t think we ever ‘know’ a spiritual truth. I use the terms ‘recognise’ or ‘approach’ because I think that’s all we can genuinely achieve in terms of spiritual truth. I think ‘wisdom’, therefore, is a relative term - we can gain wisdom as we learn to understand different subjective experiences that recognise or approach spiritual truth, but I don’t think there is an endpoint to wisdom, or any specific wisdom to attain.

As for your ‘headache’, in my experience, pain is just a signal that energy, effort and attention is required to adjust to change. Change is a necessary process of life - so to avoid pain is to avoid living.
When you lift heavy weights, the pain tells you that change is occurring and requiring attention in your muscles. If you avoid pain altogether, you’re not going to get stronger or fitter. You can get advice from ‘experts’ or from those who may have experienced a similar pain, but they can’t feel or ‘know’ exactly what you feel. Only you can decide if the pain you’re experiencing at the time is leading to strength or to irreparable damage.

also, the term 'spiritual truths'....are there any spiritual untruths?
If not then the term 'spiritual truths; seems like a bit of a tautological statement...or something. — wax

I wonder if ‘spiritual’ might be an unnecessary qualifier - perhaps the question is: are there other types of truths that are not spiritual? Mathematical truth? Do they fit the description of spiritual truth?

What is a 'spiritual truth' ? — Amity

I would describe pure ‘spiritual truth’ as an element of knowledge, understanding or wisdom that we recognise as universal or eternal. It is true (consistent) regardless of who experiences it, where, when or how they experience it and under what circumstances.

This truth does not directly translate to anything other than experience, however. Despite countless attempts to substantiate or declare universal or eternal truths, we have yet to succeed at this in any language.

Take the statement ‘all men are created equal’, for instance. There is an experience of spiritual or eternal ‘truth’ underlying this statement, and yet the statement itself is flawed as an objective expression of that truth. We can attempt to reword it in a way that might be seen as more inclusive or sensitive to alternative experiences or points of view, but at the end of the day, the words only point to a subjective experience of spiritual truth - they cannot become that truth objectively, no matter what words we may use.

This doesn’t sit well with some people. Does this mean we should dismiss the statement as false, or accept it as ‘basically true’? How do we acknowledge that a statement is objectively flawed, and yet points to a ‘truth’ subjectively experienced by the authors/signatories that we also recognise to be true? How can we know something we cannot accurately state as fact? And how do we reliably share this knowledge with others if we can’t rely on the words?

You think people can be taught to feel? To think, yes, there are definitely ways in which we can improve our thinking, and many of them can be taught. But teaching someone to feel? How would/could that work? :chin: — Pattern-chaser

I think everyone can feel already - it’s more a matter of learning to notice ‘feeling’ as part of our overall experience, to pay attention to it, and give it a seat at the table, so to speak. We need to learn not to be afraid of feeling, not to dismiss or restrict its influence on our thinking (and remember I’m not talking about emotion - which is feeling influenced by thought), but instead to value the unique contribution that ‘feeling’ can bring to our understanding of the universe.

Well the problem is feeling is a reaction and plus can't be wilfully directed. In other words it's something we can't control. Additionally feelings are reactions to both external and internal states. The reasonableness and ergo worth of these feelings can only be adjudged through rational thinking.

The only value of feeling is to what extent it motivates rational thought. — TheMadFool

This is a common misconception, especially for those who have given reason/logic a privileged position. I don’t think feeling is a ‘reaction’ we can’t control or wilfully direct, but a valuable, informative response to the universe, much like traditional/physical sense data. I think when we try to oppress feeling by subordinating it to ‘rational thinking’, it finds an outlet of expression through irrational emotion. ‘See - I told you it can’t be trusted!’

"Feeling" is an awful word because it is used in so many different ways. I have been working on an informal domain ontology of the human mind for the past seven years, and decided to completely avoid using "feeling" for just that reason (preferring to use less equivocal words instead).

However, even emotion (passion) requires cognisance of the circumstances of an object of concern (cf., Theory of Constructed Emotion, Barrett, 2016).

The word "feeling" is used five times in the OP (not including the title) as a synonym of "intuition", or as an antonym of "thinking". Intuition and cogitation (thinking) being types of mental processing, as opposed to types of mental condition (e.g., consciousness, affect, mood, emotion, temperament, motivation, etc.). — Galuchat

I agree that ‘feeling’ is often misunderstood - it may very well appear synonymous with ‘intuition’, but this term has its own connotations as being (as you say) a mental process. And I don’t see it as necessarily opposite to thinking any more than religion is opposite to science - although it can certainly seem that way. It’s not an ideal term, but I don’t think there is an ideal term, so at this point I hope you don’t mind if I continue to use it (although I’m open to alternatives).

I don’t think ‘feeling’ is the same as emotion, either - I agree that we’ve already begun to apply thinking when we name, define or articulate ‘how we feel’ or determine its source, direction or ‘object of concern’. When I talk about ‘feeling’ in this context, I’m referring to something more basic than that.

I think ‘feeling’ refers to a deeper response to the universe that appears to come from ‘every fibre of our being’. It’s not a mental process, but neither is it a mental condition - I’d say it’s more metaphysical, but that description isn’t always well received. In the same way that cogitation informs ‘how we feel’ or how we respond to the universe through emotion (as described above), so ‘feeling’ can inform our mental processes alongside traditional/physical sense data (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste), logic/reason and memory. This can lead us to intuition, including sixth sense or ‘gut instinct’ experiences that we may learn to trust in particular circumstances, but I think that ‘feeling’ can and does occur - and also influences our actions - independent of thinking.

We’ve learned to distrust ‘feeling’, as a rule, because of its ability to bypass our mental processes. Like we do with most things in the world that resist definition/confinement/control/manipulation, we tend to deny its existence, legitimacy or benefit - because to acknowledge it would be to admit that we don’t have the universe under control.

We recognise intuition to a certain extent, and we recognise emotion, but the underlying element of our subjective experience that informs both is tricky to pin down. We can’t locate it in the mind or in any particular organ of the body. It is ‘felt’ deep in our core, tingling in our extremities and also in the air around us and between us. It occurs in the present moment, hits us without warning and leaves no physical trace of evidence except a vague sense of its interaction with our mental processes. This makes it easy enough to dismiss or explain away after the moment has passed. But in the moment it is as real and influential as any other part of our experience.

I think if we learn to recognise, legitimise and incorporate ‘feeling’ as a way of interacting with the universe alongside traditional/physical sense data, logic/reason and memory, we may find our ‘thinking’ will start to more closely match our experience in the world.

I think it might be a bit of both, and neither.

We talk about ‘purpose’ as if it’s an all-encompassing motivation that governs every thought, word and action. In that sense, one would likely disagree that ‘survival’ is our main purpose these days, yet it continues to be built into our structures - our survival instinct ‘kicks in’ when required, but we are also motivated sometimes to fight for the ‘survival’ of a culture, an ideology, a way of life, etc - and even to sacrifice our own survival to that ‘purpose’.

I don’t know that we have ‘removed’ survival as a purpose or instinct. Perhaps we have embedded it into the structures that protect us from feeling threatened, that make us believe we are no longer vulnerable? If one threatens those structures, we may be motivated to fight for their survival.

But ‘purpose’ attempts to connect everything that motivates and influences ‘me’, at different levels of awareness, together into a cohesive whole that I can then defer to whenever I’m overwhelmed by options.

Personally, I think it’s a way of making sense of life, of simplifying it.

One claim by some followers of Eastern religion is that spiritual truth is “inexpressible.” I doubt that claim. I believe that anything is expressible, if you are good enough at expressing. — Ilya B Shambat

I can relate to this, but I think perhaps the problem is more communication than expression. I believe that anything is expressible, but not everything can be communicated in plain words.

I think when we attempt to express ‘spiritual truth’, we fail to recognise or clarify that we are really expressing an experience of that truth, and not stating the truth itself. While we understand this to be the case when we use artistic expression, including poetry, drama and literature, when we use words to express ‘truth’ outside of these parameters, people find it easier to take the words as the ‘truth’ itself - and this can cause problems in understanding what is meant.

An expression of spiritual truth is always subjective. This doesn’t mean that it is ‘my truth’ as opposed to ‘your truth’, but that it is my expression of my subjective experience of a spiritual truth. I don’t believe you can plainly state a ‘spiritual truth’ with words that can be understood objectively. But I think you can express this spiritual truth in such a way that enables many people to ‘feel’ a connection with your personal experience of this truth. That doesn’t mean the words you use are an accurate or objective expression of the ‘truth’ itself.

I think we experience truth as a combination of thought and feeling. I agree that we should be taught to both think and feel in equal measure, and to synthesise both approaches in order to understand and communicate truth as a complete experience.


@Galuchat - I disagree that everything that is expressed is first ‘thought’. We are more than capable of expressing ‘feeling’ that has not first been translated into thought. I see this every day in emails and posts fired off in haste.

I think when we get a sense of just how much freedom we have as human beings, we also get a sense of the responsibility that comes with that. When we realise that we have the capacity to choose other than instinct and recognise the diversity of choice that this brings - with no definitive ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ - it can seem overwhelming to just pick one and then take responsibility for it. It’s much less stressful to follow instinct or logic or doctrine or rules or a schedule. That way, if someone takes exception to our words or actions, the choices we make in our life, we can protect ourselves behind instinct or logic or doctrine, or the rules or the schedule. Let them rail against logic, for instance - it’s stronger than I am.

I would argue that the freedom one feels when following a schedule is freedom from the responsibility of making choices. I realise that you have created that schedule yourself, but it’s still one step removed from yourself. The test will come when a commitment crops up that is more important to you than your schedule. Then your schedule may need to change.

At first you will probably make some small adjustments that enable you to keep the majority of your schedule intact. If that commitment is another human being, you may eventually find that you are either trying to change the person to fit your schedule, or that person is trying to change your schedule to fit them. At some point, you may need to remember that you are not defined by your schedule, and then to take back the responsibility for your choices. Depending how far down the track you’ve gone, this can be quite frightening.

Make a schedule if you choose, but be careful not to let it define you, or it will limit your self-awareness, and so limit your freedom to choose beyond that schedule. You may be surprised how easy this can happen. Always remember that you have chosen your schedule from a much wider range of choices available to you.