What is Your Reason for Doing It?

I ask this question because your reason or motive for doing anything is the key or determining factor in obtaining or achieving what you desire. It defines everything associated with your objective, as well as what will hinder or prevent you from achieving your objective. Understanding this principle is different from believing or disbelieving it.

Whether you realize it or not, life is governed by immutable laws. You are either in accord with them or opposing them. Life is more enjoyable and rewarding when you are in harmony with them. On the other hand, the more you oppose them, the more pain, conflict, and sorrow you experience. Consequently, your reason or motive for doing anything defines the quality of your life. Believing or disbelieving are not involved when you experience this reality because you will understand it.

I want to get beyond thought. :slight_smile:

Initially, my wife dragged me into her farming enterprise … farming is bloody hard work but it has it’s rewards … nature and animals have a lot to teach us,

Upon seeing there is interest in this post, I decided to add the following to it.
Determining the reason for doing anything requires you to be brutally honest with yourself. I say that because we have a propensity to rationalize and justify our actions or what we do. It also requires comparing your reason against you “values” and “ethics” to see if your reason is in accord with them.

Determining why you do something is NOT easy. More often than not you see how you have fooled yourself, justified your actions, or discover something you don’t like about yourself. So, why bother doing it? It helps you to better understand your motives, values, and behavior. All of which allows you understand yourself and improve the quality of your life.

Your OP is profoundly significant for 7 billion plus people living on the planet today.

What choices do I have? Realistically!

Choices.jpg

Off grid homesteading in a remote isolated place in China. I made my choices and as you can see from the picture I shared in my previous post … I’m happy.

Frank Sinatra … My Way

youtube.com/watch?v=6E2hYDIFDIU

What are life’s immutable laws as opposed to your own? I think authenticity goes a long way in supporting motivations.

Admirably profound. Although I am wondering to where such a question leads.

There are basically two kinds of "why are you"s, and often three. There is the conscious rationale, often merely an unconscious ploy and there is the subconscious drive. It’s great when the two of those get together, but trying to determine if that is truly happening within oneself is usually an unsurmountable task.

I find that most people, and too often myself included, have much too much division and scattering of incentives and drives, after all, the “Me Generation” is still underfoot tugging at every thread of want, desire, threat, and hope.

I like to think that I am following my rationale as much as possible, although I am well aware of my frailties. That rationale, after a great deal of philosophizing and stragizing has become what I now call MIJOT; “Maximize the Integral of Joy Over Time”.

That is to say that considering all that my little brain can handle at any one moment, my incentive is to arrange for as much upcoming joy for the longest period of time as possible, requiring both survival and wisdom of heart. Balancing both incentives of survival and joy into an anentropic harmony can be very tricky. But to not try is to die. So what else is there to do.

As I was reminded of very recently:

James S Saint – You post confirms what I said in mine:

More often than not, doing the right thing can be very difficult such as standing up for your values regardless of the consequences. Furthermore, we don’t want to do what we need to do to achieve our objective. Instead, we want a quick fix or a shortcut because we don’t understand that resistance develops potential, just as resistance develops muscle in the body.

Can you state some of them?

WindyDarling –

An immutable law is “absolute” for it cannot be broken, altered, or changed. The first three laws define the parameters of the expression “free will.”

Law Measurable Time and Space
Law of Attraction
Law of Birth and Rebirth (reincarnation)

The fourth law is pivotal for it balances the effects of free-will upon your predisposition.

The Law Everything is Mutual – Nothing in life is singular, everything exists because of its relationship to something else.

The last three laws apply to the expression of your predisposition.

The Law of Action and Reaction – Also known as the Law of Cause-and-Effect.
The Law Everything Serves a Purpose – This law allows you to see labels such as “chance”, “accident” and “coincidence” are illusions created by thought.
The Law As above, So Below/As Below, So Above – This law means the physical world is a mirror of the non-physical and vice versa.

Fascinating.

But could you elaborate on each rather than merely name, such as “Law of Attraction” … meaning what exactly?

  1. Law of Measurable Time and Space - meaning what?
  2. Law of Attraction - meaning what?
  3. Law of Birth and Rebirth - details?
  4. Law of Mutual dependency - explained.
  5. Law of Causation - explained
  6. Law of Purpose - now that one needs some substantial support. :sunglasses:
  7. Law of Above and Below - also in serious need of support.

I ask myself this question all of the time, since I presume that my conscious mind is more or less a rationalizing machine rather than some neutral seeker of truth.

I wonder why I hold the beliefs I hold. How much of them are driven by the desire for “truth” and how much by psychological necessity?

As an example, I don’t believe in hard determinism. I used to, but my life was absolute hell when I did. So I changed my views, but I still didn’t know how I could not believe in hard determinism given the information I had.

So I changed the information. I just said "well, there is no evidence that there is any “The Beginning” or that there will be any “The End”. I created a metaphysics in which causation happens in the timeless dimension of now. Thus, whatever aspect of me is not caught up in the world of form/time is free.

I don’t know that I even believe what I just wrote, but I act as if I do, because I act as if I have free will. Over time this has led into a conflict between how much emphasis I should put on theoretical truth versus pragmatic utility. Nietzsche often talked about how we need lies and illusions in order to exist. Maybe it’s just a matter of picking the most useful illusions. Maybe that is more important to my well being than seeking objective (or theoretical) “truth”.

I don’t know. Sometimes when I smoke weed I am able to see not just what I’m doing but am also able to feel why I’m doing it. Often times I realize that I’m doing what I’m doing because it feels safe and secure, or because it makes me feel good about myself, or because it’s just habit. I’ll notice that my “beliefs” have no real solid foundation, that I believe what I believe mostly because that’s what my culture believes. An example is anything scientific. I don’t have a sufficient enough understanding about science to be able to read the literature on the earth being around and confirm it. I believe it is round because my culture says so. Now it may very well be true that the earth is round, but the point is that my motive for believing it is round is based not on my own knowledge, but on seemingly blind faith in whatever most scientists happen to think.

James S Sint –

I could, but I won’t for several reasons. There is plenty of information about them. In fact, several books have been written about the Law of Attraction. I am not going to elaborate because it’s your responsibility to educate yourself on what you want to know.

When I want to know what a man is thinking when he is writing a post, I ask the man. That is how I educate myself. When he can’t explain himself, I just take it that he didn’t really know what he meant.

Your comments suggests you have made considerable progress … Along The Way

Drinking from the “Fountain of Spirit” can make one’s life bitter for a very long time.

How so?

Purgation and catharsis … gold is purified with fire.

… and not your own … rather the community of souls whose burden you carry … your spirit family. Knowing the members of your spirit family is irrelevant … and would likely only serve to impede your progress.

Your spirit family long enjoyed the sweet taste from the “Fountain of Pleasure” usually empowered by money … and as a necessary consequence disdained the Fountain of Spirit.

The weight of the burden you carry … the bitterness in your life … is mathematically related to the number of souls in your spirit family.

James S Saint –

No, you are seeking information rather than understanding. Information can be transferred from one person to another, understanding cannot. It is gained through experience. Thought seeks information. It is unaware of what seeks understanding because it lies beyond thought’s reach. Thought doesn’t realize it cannot understand anything. What thought calls “understanding” is really knowledge. Understanding is the negation of knowledge. Therefore, neither I nor anyone else can provide you with understanding.

A responsible person educates him or herself and doesn’t ask another to do it.

I would say that a responsible person doesn’t present something as an immutable law, which is merely a presumption, without any scientific foundation. (What is your reason for doing it?)

There is no “Law” of attraction. All there is, is a pseudoscientific belief, that each thought or emotion produces a vibe, which attracts similar thoughts and emotions. It is merely a presumption of some new age “philosophers” (or lifestyle-consultants) and certainly no “absolute”, which cannot be changed or broken, but merely an attempt to make the “victims” responsible for all bad things which happen to them.

If I don’t see them, then they don’t see me.
Every infant child knows this.
It’s just something we forget as we grow older.

But then again every infant child knows that if it screams, people gonna scream back at it.
Well, that’s different then.

Hmm, actually, not really. The child thinks - “I need something.”, and Wham! , the wish gets fulfilled, most of the time.
So there might actually be something to this law of attraction.
…If the world is like your mother.

At least for some of the ‘laws’, one can say that they can be derived from life-experience. But these :

Hardly an immutable law. There is no evidence for it (or any afterlife).

“Above” is fairly inaccessible to scrutiny. How do people know so much about it?

Phyllo –

If proof to you is what you have personally experienced, how do you prove to someone what you have experienced which they haven’t? Does the inability to prove what you experience make it invalid?

You are correct in the fact there is no physical evidence proving reincarnation. Likewise, there is no evidence proving reincarnation doesn’t exist. Therefore, it’s a possibility.

If reincarnation doesn’t exist, how to you explain evolution?

Phyllo –

I don’t understand your question. If room A and B mirror each other, doesn’t everything you know about room A apply to room B and vice versa?

One does not need personal experience to believe that something is adequately proven. I have not personally died, yet I believe that others have and that I will.

It makes it less likely than something which has been proven. And perhaps it’s very unlikely.

Evolution does not rely on reincarnation. Why would it?

You live in room A so you know something about it. How do you know that room B mirrors room A if you have not been in room B and examined it in the same detail that you examined room A? How did you get knowledge of the interior of room B?