What is Your Reason for Doing It?

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?

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

Leyia –

I answered a question that I was asked, like I am doing now. You can view what I posted as an unknown or possibility. Or you can conclude it is either being true or false.

I am not concerned about proof. It’s why I neither request it or provide it. The responsibility of proofing something lies with the person who requests it. Whether you see me as being irresponsible or responsible doesn’t alter who or what I am.

Leyia –

Finally, you can choose to think, know, or believe whatever you want. That’s your responsibility, not mine.

You did not realize though that they deem you responsible to suspend their disbelief, in other words, to qualify via scientific evidence that they would not waste their time in being self-educated? You must take the risks and do their thinking for them. You must do their investigations for them, them’s modern ways. :wink:

Curious, why did you leave out the law of manifestation? I’ve always considered them completely separate for attraction draws what exists and manifestation creates what doesn’t.

WendyDarling –

Did I leave it out or is it contained within the understanding of the 7 laws I provided?

Your question helped me see something I hadn’t previously considered. If the past, present, and future are all one, then what we perceive as “manifestation” might be our awareness of something we were previously unaware of. In other words, everything already exists, we simply are unaware of it. Another mind boggling thing to investigate, that I hadn’t planned on.

That’s actually a pretty arrogant attitude. It assumes that you have the true correct knowledge and understanding.

Perhaps the person asking is more educated and/or self-educated than you. Perhaps the asking indicates open-mindedness or a desire to have a discussion on a discussion forum.

Or perhaps the person really is ignorant but wants to benefit from your superior knowledge and understanding, and by asking hopes to avoid unnecessary errors.

eaglerising

► Everything known was once unknown.

► Everything there is still to know already exists, it is just undiscovered, un-evolved an un-configured.

► Everything can be expressed as information.

► Discovery is just the unknown configured into formation.

► Inception is formation.

► Unknown in-formation is known.

This also means for false information.

I agree with WendyDarling here - I will put it another way >> A responsible person asks questions of the person who makes a/the claim/s. When the “asker” suspends their belief → they have already exercised their side of the deal responsibly – equality comes about when you(the “askee”) exercise the other side of the equation of responsiblity - which would be to answer responsibly from your own head/heart → possibly leading to a satisfactorily responsible answer. It seems at the moment you are passing snippets of information on rather than thinking up an answer of your own.

► Everything known was once unknown - this is also a possible answer to the mirror suggestion ie. unknown/known but that would depend upon what mirror each given entity is standing in front of.

I was taught in another thread of a principle about “essential” that I can now apply to information - there is only one mirror of truth the further you get away from it the less truthful the mirrors in the hall of mirrors become.

The seeker of truth does not always attract the “logic of the truth”. The seeker of truth sometimes attracts “willing for belief” instead. A limitation of the seekers mind.

:-k

eaglerising

I don’t see how one could ever prove to someone else what it is that he/she has experienced.
Carl Jung said that truth is based on the concert of many voices but I don’t necessarily even agree with that. Look at Nazi Germany and propaganda.
All one could do is to share that personal experience.
The only thing, to me perhaps, which is not proof so much but closer to proof is the way in which one lives one’s life according to or as a result of that experience. If another sees that, they may at least accept the other’s experience as being valid.

No, the inability to prove your experience doesn’t make it invalid. The experience is valid “to you”. I don’t think that there is absolute truth but there is subjective truth. We have to remember this when one tells us of their experience. Of course, some things are simply absurd, like someone telling us that they looked into the night sky and saw a witch flying on a broom. lol

True. There was a time when I thought that reincarnation might have been a possibility based on the cycles of nature but that alone doesn’t cut it.
But still, R may still be a possibility.

I don’t follow this. Can you explain what you mean here?

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… a logical … rational … hypothesis … been around in one form or another for a long time. Either all is in the grey matter between our ears or this same gray matter has a conduit … with very sophisticated security clearances … to the “cloud”.

thoughtsofamisfit.weebly.com/our … hadow.html

Eaglerising wrote

Therein lies the stumbling block for most. To get past this and be “brutally honest” (HA, those two words much maligned by many) requires one to step up to the edge of the abyss and look in, something as yet, I have not had the courage to do. So, I am riddled with false impressions and vivid allusions of who I am, incapable of the lofty ability to see unadulterated reason, even though I will proclaim I can.

Psychological Firewalls??

Wash dishes! :evilfun: