sirguessalot

this thread seems kinda hard to derail, given all the options i dont mind throwing words into a well like this here together and am deeply appreciating them for the moments they represent trusting them for what they seem and seem not to be trusting our chaordic nature i am also riding a busy wave and have to fast from posting for awhile but i am enjoying reading ... and will be back take another stabbatitall good to read you here TGN

truly sorry scout for you, your friend and her sister and all im not much help with transportation or benefits but here is a FAQ page on coma communication which often deals with folks anywhere in the gamut remote states in prayer Todd

holy kiss yalls i wanna start by telling you how much i enjoy reading how you are coming to be with all this hypertext anotherdan you are certainly teaching me certain things..and thanks for such a wide open opening a few things... to be clear... i'm no expert on nothing... but if i may offer a confession... i find it darn near impossible to speak simply enough to the dominant dawkins memes except in codes other than the ones they already accept...like most memes whenever i try...the meme feeds back in ways such as... - a deer in the headlights - a poke in the eye - or white noise :huh: i dunno from The Emptiness of Theology... it seems to seem to my my that dawkin's chief perspectives provide good true and beautiful examples of a 4th grader who thinks heez a 3rd grader who picks on 2nd graders for acting like 1st graders <_< and well.. perhaps worse is how he doesnt seem to believe in 5th graders ... let alone high school or even worse ...halloween ...or good ole saint nick seems heez believed heez been in 3rd grade for quite some time for his age now ...when 5th grade is already shining from around the bend i honestly wonder if he'll ever believe in 5th graders or if he'll keep mistaking them for 1st and 2nd grader graders its like he's partially tone-deaf, lacks melody, is highly specialized, and is in serious need of a translator after having gone deep into foreign territory i can only hope he at least adjusts something vital during his remaining days on earth such as where he seems to overcompensate to avoid such things as all this obvious emptiness while also overlooking and/or ignoring certain wide fields of elephants of data and experience aside from all that... i think and feel and believe that vast portions of what he says and writes are quite true and right :mellow:

to add...and this may sting a bit i have to agree that Dot has barely scratched the surface ...though even a scratch can be a lot but i have to disagree that the road ends with merely rational logic ...although it certainly moves through rational logic it seems that the God questions have already been answered so long ago that we think that they have not been answered yet ...or go even further to say that they cannot be answered now..or any time soon saints, sages, and other wise fools (such as abraham) have long ago answered the old questions although new questions sure do keep coming to restate what ive been restating here for years now...life is a journey of leaping from faith to faith to faith and that space between rungs is always a challenge...and may even stop us cold for long periods of time very very very basically, we move through the spectrum kinda like this... - "God" is a magic wishgranter (self-centered) - "God" is a shared myth (culture-centered) - "God" is a rational logic (human-centered) - "God" is a lover of all (life-centered) - "God" is none of the above (spirit-centered) - "God" is all of the above (non-dual) - "God" is none of the above...again (mystery) how we interpret our experience of the imperfection of life how we interpret our experience of the suffering of life how we interpret the characters of scriptures how we interpret art and literature is going to change with each movement each movement is described as a new, necessary and profound inner humiliation and each movement is best if it carries forward vital lessons of previous rungs of course, this very simple map does not take into account the very unique ways we make this journey where there are also radical horizontal differences possible at each step for what its worth...if yer standing on the ledge of a pot that is leaking its time to shatter the pottery and return to the potter's house knowing those shards are always useful for new pottery

thanks Roy...and wishing you peacefulness as it relates to this thread, here is page on my recently updated website that i designed with our 4 basic perspectives in mind its not a perfect or complete representation of them, but it may help see how these perspectives fit together

seems strange responding over a year later...but here it goes almost as if in response to Chas's questions (truly sorry for the vast delay), i have recently reconstructed my website again to version +ODD.3 or so and though my work doesnt suit everyone's tastes...i invite yalls to take a peek and perhaps even be inspired to offer brief or detailed comments i am gathering them as part of an ongoing experience/experiment of this work with grace and space... +ODD

yeah...even though it was worth writing...i deleted what i wrote cuz i'm not sure it was worth reading thanks for mentioning it here it is again... .... to add...with that 5th perspective, i find that paradoxes and opposing polarities of parts and wholes are no longer confounding, but actually useful and helpful as the very coordinates and contours for navigating the radical complexity of all this. and so rather than merely reduce everything down to some overly simple perspective, we can find a simple way that handles this complexity as it is. and by "simple way"...i suppose i mean language. but not some new rigid narrow language-set (such as we experience with TWI and ilk) ...but new ways of speaking about the ways we use language.. even when speaking to ourselves (thinking) ...where this redundancy (language about language) is a reverberating affair that provides a much clearer echo of what is trying to be meant …or some such things

thanks everyone for the comments hi Bramble... well, i used "going mad" quite loosely, and wasnt meant as part of the content of my post... i just want to clarify that i dont necessarily equate "going mad" with chaos ... nor 'going sane' with order or peace ...i do look forward to what you may have to write after you've thought about how things might fit into those perspectives .... Dooj...yeah. and i suspect it also works going the other way, too ... where the more familiar we are with the big picture, the more we can locate and arrange those subsets in relationship to other subsets. Holons and Holarchies are interesting words how we can see where every whole is also a part of a greater whole, and every part is also a whole with many parts. ... Cman...hmm

taking a wee break from other roller coasters of this life...as the world is going mad...and i feel the need to vent a bit so here is an offering to the gsc...a rant in my own words...in hope of helping make some sense of our modern clashes of perspectives feel free to comment and/or inquire ... A PRIMER... it has long ago been discovered, that as humans, we already always have 4 basic perspectives ...for bible fans...perhaps see Ezekial chapter one and the expression of the 4 beasts of the Book of Revelation...for visions of the perennial conglomeration of our human spiritual animal natures ...these notions and philosopies and discoveries are old, but also have many expressions in modern times 1st person = I AM = interior individual perspective (beauty, meaning, identity, psychology, etc...)...subjective 2nd person = WE ARE = interior collective perspective (culture, shared meaning, shared identities, goodness, etc...)...inter-subjective 3rd person = IT IS (he is, she is) = exterior individual perspective (physics, truth, behavior, doing, objects, things, stuff, etc...) .... objective 4th person = THESE ARE = exterior collective perspectives (truths, systems, theories, etc...)...inter-objective 5th person = an integral view of the above conglomeration of perspectives...a view that is sound and whole ... an aperspectival integrity ... "Ezekial's view"... "the thumb of the hand" ... EXAMPLES... many of our arguments and disagreements these days are due to how we tend to favor sub-sections of the above range of perspectives (and often times we favor even smaller subsections of those primary subsections...such as how we can prefer a very limited version of a 2nd person perspective...such as cultic fundamentalism) if asked what causes crime, for example.... - a conservative might reduce it to individual views and behaviors (1st and 3rd) ... "the guy just dont wanna work" ... "criminal acts cause crime" etc... - a liberal might reduce it to collective views and behaviors (2nd and 3rd) ... "crime is only caused by culture and systems" both views are valid but too partial ... and tend to bug the crap out of the other side if asked what causes something to happen, for example... - a skeptic might reduce it to exterior forces (3rd and 4th)... "physical objects and systems are what cause reality" - a new-ager might reduce it to interior forces (1st and 2nd)..."i create my own reality with my mind...and our culture can change reality with our emotions" both views are valid but too partial ... and tend to bug the crap out of the other side partial views offer pieces of the puzzle but unless the pieces are viewed as a whole partial views cause more confusion and trouble than they solve and we get stuck in battles of good versus true versus beautiful attached to mere fragments of the full range of human perspectives ... simple misunderstandings, mostly ... though often also deadly ... SUGGESTIONS... note that all of these perspectives are different views of the same reality ... views that are already always with us NOT something we have to get...but a group of ordinary inherent human perspectives we must simply stop avoiding, loathing, fearing, hating, fragmenting, etc... i suggest finding out which ones we favor (and relax our death grip on it a bit for awhile) and find out which ones we avoid...and mostly practice leaning into the one we avoid yep...do not be as darkness and seek only light but be light and seek what hides in darkness cuz we cant go around the darkness just as we cant skip winter the only way through ...is through ... one of the most direct ways to find this out is to pay closer attention to the words we use ...the limits of our language habits (inner, outer, individual and collective) limit our access to understanding yep...we can all use new tongues for these angles another direct way is to pay attention to how our body and heart and mind reacts to such notions ...cuz yes, feelings and thoughts and bodily tensions are all connected and related and tell us very very much maybe pick a situation or question (business, politics, faith, family, health, etc...) and hold up your hand and slowly count them off on your fingers starting with one...and play at feeling and thinking through what its like to take each perspective (at least 1-4) of the same situation i dare ya ;) ... space and grace +ODD

oh my its one of those things where i'm not saying that i know what the truth is and where the truth is and all that... ...its just that i am quite certain that its just not that ...which is enough for now just sayin...

to add... Panentheism is a theology/philosophy that covers a lot of ground

hi Shifra yeah...i think i really get what yer saying about one-way fusions in relationships tho i dont think that is what the musicians/artist are trying to say at all 'comraderie' is a word the band used to (lightly) describe the reason for the song and they seem very much open to people finding their own meanings imho, the metaphors are quite rich and appropriate...offering many layers of meaning and interpretation especially as it pertains to the nature of the interior self, friendships and ego-trips and such but sadly...i think my days of trying to converse via message boards like this is coming to a close so plz forgive if i fade away from the thread in waves... +ODD

awesome, yes, the epitome of some universal ground of being there is indeed a need for midwifery at both ends of lifes' labyrinths like the old ways of having babies napping happily on the chests of ones who are aging and dying well ...surely the original two spiritual fields of play for us upright human monkey angel thingies ..."spiritual" perhaps, for being everyone's ultimate and unavoidable concern and for the unshakable not-dual groundedness we can find there ...for always being there... like a holy inner compass for when we get lost in and explore middle earth along the way ..."holy" perhaps, for keeping us in tune to a more whole frame for how we picture life remembering...we are reminded of what it was/will be like to leap through space from one crumbling position to a more mysterious one ...which then helps us make all those other little kinds of leaps we make in between

something for all yalls oldies to add to the mix....Flame Warriors just click on the Roster, or "begin"

wolf...what if God is aware of the present because the present is all that really exists? if all futures are possibilities that exist only in the present and because with God...ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE (and he has a very very very very very very good calculator) God always already sees ALL POSSIBLE FUTURES right now that is A LOT of futures at once the bigger potential and trajectories wont change much but the littler stuff and details can change a lot and part of that kind of perspective includes the capacity to see that ALL THINGS WORK OUT FOR GOOD always and forever not because God is in control of exactly what it will be but because God know that goodness is the ultimate nature of all creation and sees all possibilities this is both all powerful and all loving, imo

ha... heerz something that kinda fits quite well and makes things even messier for ya, Ham ...the Enneagram google it if interested... cuz there are enough variations on the theme that i wouldnt know which link to provide but the gist of it is about ... get this...9 manifestations of spirit, or God, or whatever the various patterns and thoughts around the enneagram go way way back and as a pattern, it pops up many histories and languages and cultures and schools of thought its like a pattern that has come through all stages of history being refined as it comes along so its got its ritual versions, cultic versions, contemplative versions, metaphysical versions, post-metaphysical, etc... ive even heard that guys like disney and the seinfeld creator and charles schultz and jim henson may have actually applied the enneagram in character creation but one of the schools i have come to appreciate greatly is the enneagram of personality types ...which is more or less a psychology based on choices we made as children and shows up as our motivation and in our reactions to stress as adults it is based on how there is an enneagram of voices with each of us how those 9 types also represent 9 basic points of the individual human self note: this is a horizontal circle of typology NOT a vertical scale the voice of oneness the voice of twoness the voice of threeness the voice of fourness the voice of fiveness the voice of sixness the voice of seveness the voice of eightness the voice of nineness and no one "enters" in the middle of the circle but we "enter" between two points, typically much closer to one than the other and our overall personality type is simply the first and always most developed of the 9 lines which makes it both our curse and our gift (if redeemed) and to make it even messier this means that each of the lines develops as all such lines do (along a spectrum...bla bla bla) but the good news for those freaks who are curious and crazy enough to wanna look into this kinda thing is that the uneven lines of this interdependent weave of lines actually can give us a detailed cartography of the self also highly important is that it also allows us to see the very important lines that are in the shadows and so along with all those other thousands of selves that we each have in us there are at least these 9 essential coordinating points to the mess and to make it messier (no...the mess never seems to end...which is simple)... ...if each of us has (at least) these 9 main lines of self awareness things get real interesting when we take 2nd person perspectives and look at the enneagram of cultural psychology every culture is simply made up of all us single enneagram units in it and so the chemistry and dynamics work accordingly and it gets interesting if 50% of a culture is a specific personality type where the rest of the 50% are split up between the rest suddenly things like wars and bad marriages are a lot more alike than they first appeared psychological gravity of the masses when people move like fields of grass in the wind as fields of interior waves

edited for having known better

to add something important to what i was writing earlier... as it pertains to the higher wider end of that 1st person perspective .... i do believe that when we read "love your neighbor as your self"....its NOT a figure of speech but a literal expression of that radical sense of Self that has NO small ego boundaries in other words...when we look into each other's eyes...we see that God is seeing God in a mirror ...and no, not merely "one in purpose" with God...but a felt and experienced sense of literal unity yep...imagine all those thousand thousand voices within every individual multiplied by every individual...and you are also this :mellow: i once watched an old rabbi demonstrate a heartfelt prayer this way by praying outloud while looking straight into the eyes of another person as if God was praying to God for a loved one who was ill .... (edited cuz i didnt know BB was mostly joking about her request: "OK, answer me this. If there are other me's, how do I find the one that isn't ..." which i think is a perfectly wonderful question)

reminds me, bramble... of how there was a movement in europe, starting about 1000 ad and lasting til about 1500, where many christians, jews, muslims and others collaborated to develop europe's first hospice system it seems that all religions can meet and find their common ground in the context of end-of-life care which is one end of where all religions seemed to have served in the first place ...sometimes languages just get in the way

hi penworks... welcome to the cafe :) and thanks for the feedback and no, i havent read that book...but i have studied a bit of some of the Buddhist schools of thought and i think i can imagine why you might have mentioned it given what you quoted of me in fact, as strange as it may sound...i'll go as far to say that some Buddhist thought helped me understand the Gospels even more deeply than Christian thought did...though much more has also happened to me since then i would also venture to say that most posters here are either a) mostly unfamiliar with Buddhism, and/or b) disapprove of it to various degrees ...ive never had (or seen) much happen by way of a threaded conversation around the topic anyway...i look forward to seeing you around Todd

i like how you put that the bounds of "ego," it seems, can be a rapidly moving boundary if asked...some might include their clothes some might include their family and their house and their real estate and their reputation some may include only their thoughts and feelings some go as far as to include the cosmos and everything some include nothing at all a recent popular cultural trend is trying to "kill the ego" ...yeah, right but i can no longer fault anyone for trying...cuz its actually a hallmark of a middle stage of ego-development everyone tries it ... if they make it that far ... its like how we begin life thinking the world is 100% real ...then, like many believe, and like scripture says, we find that our entire experience of the world is some sort of a vast illusion ...then, we find that the illusion is real...100% really an illusion...and a highly useful and navigable illusion...true lies as if we were right and wrong all along, every step of the way...but right and wrong for all the right and wrong reasons...which was perfect ... edited to add a link to cman's "Who are we?" thread

its ok, Krys...dont sweat it...i didnt get a chance to see it, anyway ... which makes it even easier to forgive, i suppose ...and i can imagine a number of ways how what i wrote can be misread

hey ham... here is an initial summation of my take on the "self" ... in a nutshell... our native ordinary perspectives go kinda like this... 1st person perspective (subjective "I, me, my") to a 2nd person perspective (inter-subjective "you, we, us") to a 3rd person perspective (objective "it, this, he, she, they") to a 4th person perspective (inter-objective its, which includes system theories and such) and so on note: there are 5th person perspectives and beyond and not only to each of these perspectives has the potential to develop along a spectrum of greater capacities, in both depth (vertical) and span (horizontal) but there are multiple inter-related lines in each perspective that have the potential to develop along a spectrum of capacities in other words...in the 1st person perspective alone, there are at least a dozen lines of development ALL moving semi-independantly through stage after stage after stage .... to focus on the 1st person perspective for a sec (which does NOT include behavior, btw...behavior is an "it") its much like a plant with a stem and many roots and many branches and many sub-branches....each of those components has a corresponding voice and while there are a thousand thousand voices within each of us there are a much smaller group of primary voices we can identify as well as some over arching voices of the self that govern them all the fields of fields of play are vast indeed ... but to go back to the basic 4 perspectives...what we tend to do is highly favor one of those perspectives over the others...as well as highly DISfavor one examples... - if i prefer the 3rd person perspective...i may have a greater knowledge of objective truth - if i prefer the 2nd person perspective...i may have a greater capacity to relate in community and find the common good - if i prefer the 1st person perspective...i may have a greater awareness of who i really am and what i mean and its not hard to see what life might be like for us if we compare the perspectives we favor and those we disfavor examples.... - if i prefer the 3rd but reject the 2nd...i may know alot, but i have no friends... - if i prefer the 2nd but reject the 1st....i may have a lot of friends, but i lack my own sense of meaning - if i prefer the 1st and reject the 2nd...i may have discovered my own meaning, but i do not share it ... also... in the fields of adult ego development (which are primarily interested in the 1st person perspective) we are naturally inclined to develop in a way where stage-growth happens when an object becomes subject example... when i realize that my body is an object, and i am experiencing it as a subject and then realize that my thoughts are objects, and i am experience them as a subject etc... and so the fields of adult ego development have not only identified about 7 stages, but have identified in-between stages as well as there is a specific kind of challenge at each stage ... enuff for now... i guess the epithet of "the ego-trip" is not a bad thing...as we are all on one, it seems

i'll just add that in my 5+ years of reading and contributing here ive never seen someone "contribute" the way Mr Moore has ...in quality or quantity the way he consistantly addresses and provokes posters directly is pretty much poison to any authentic dialogue and i will say openly that there is a good reason for banning posters from a message board community and it has little to nothing to do with cult-like behaviour its more like the equiv of someone coming into Cheers and pi$$ing on the bar while laughing about it, feigning ignorance