Mason Riggle

free or slave? Can you do other than what you want, or are you limited to doing what you want?

The Universe is slave to how it desires to be.

@SQAAD are you not already infinite? Or are you not referring to your higher self? Who became infinite? Your ego? I became Infinite = I no longer existed. Your ego dissolved.. that's all that happened. The self 'disappeared'.

@SQAAD this would be tantamount to not being able to distinguish anything from anything else.. you may have glimpsed the infinite nature of yourself, but you can't 'be infinite', because that would be what its like to 'not be' like anything.

"Everything will be okay in the end.. if everything is not okay, don't worry, that means it's not the end."

@Inliytened1 non-existence can never 'be'.

Infinity/Nothing is Limitless.. In order for Nothingness/Infinitude to seem like Somethingness requires limits. If Infinity tried to describe itself to itself (to 'know' something about itself) how would it do it without duality(limits.. this, not that)? You can't have just the inside of a cup with no outside.. 'Just the inside of a cup' doesn't 'mean' anything without any outside. Duality is 'imaginary limitations'. We know the outside of the cup and inside of a cup are only 'a difference we imagine'.. there is just the whole cup. Limitation is a feature of 'this reality', not a bug.. it's what makes the whole experience so rich.

@Waken ? One literally can not interfere with how reality is occurring. Any attempt to change how things are happening is just more 'how things are happening'. ?

Reality is always exactly how it seems, until it seems otherwise, in which case, it's still exactly how it seems.

It's not leaking and it's not a theory. It can be directly noticed that I am myself without trying to be. How hard do you think a tree has to try to grow its leaves? How much effort are trees exerting? Some or none? Could a tree 'stop trying to be a tree'? No, because it's not trying to be one to begin with. I challenge you to try not to be yourself right now.. You can't. Anything you do is 'being yourself'.. you're literally always 'being yourself' without ever trying to. Trying not to be like yourself is exactly the same thing as trying to be like yourself. If you are trying to be how you are being, you should be able to stop trying, but you can't... how would you stop trying? By trying to? Trying/Not Trying is an illusion. There is only being.

@Giulio Bevilacqua for me, I like to recognize that everything I do is effortless. I'm always 'being me' and I never have to try to do that. How hard are you trying to 'be yourself' right now? Not at all.. you just 'are being yourself'. In fact, you can't 'not be yourself', because any 'effort' to 'not be yourself' is just more 'you effortlessly being yourself'. How hard are you trying to grow your hair right now? Not at all, yet you are growing your hair. How hard are you trying to read this sentence? Not at all.. yet you are reading this sentence. Being you is already effortless. You suffer because you want to know how to put effort into doing what you are already always doing effortlessly. How do I be myself without trying? Well, you already are. What you are asking is, 'how can I effortlessly grow my hair, without trying to effortlessly grow it?', but you've got it all wrong. You're already effortlessly growing your hair.. there's nothing more for you to do. You are already doing it, and you never have to try.

Except that I don't agree with the seatbelt mandate. I don't think is perfectly okay. I think seatbelts are a great idea and save lives. I wear mine. I got the vaccine. I have to have it for my job (which is not a problem.. if they want me to wear a chicken suit to work, I'll wear one.. my employer is not the government, which is where the difference lies). I still don't agree with a Federal Vaccine Mandate. (however, I'm not convinced that 'coercion' equals 'mandate'.. when I see the govt. going door to door forcing people to get vaccinated, then I'll have a problem to deal with, until then, coercion doesn't bother me.. I'm not a slippery sloper). My point was, there is always going to be a certain level of collateral damage that we accept in exchange for a certain level of autonomy. I still think this is a marketing problem. The harder the govt. (or anyone really) tries to sell these vaccines to the public, the more they will get the feeling they are being hornswoggled by a snake oil salesman (whether they are or aren't). They should release a 'homeopathic' version of the vaccine.. and keep it a secret that it's the exact same thing as the real vaccine.. call it something stupid like 'natu-cure' and sell it over the counter as an 'natural Covid immunity booster' in the 'herbal remedies' section and get Dr. Oz to do half hour infomercials for it on late night TV. You'd have a 98% vaccination rate in no time..

@Carl-Richard at least you admit that what humans 'should do' is relative.

@Carl-Richard you are missing the point of the analogy. So many people here acting as if their own selfish concerns are objective concerns.. humans shouldn't suffer, etc.. but this isn't objectively true. This is like saying we mustn't let lions eat because Gazelle's shouldn't suffer.. We've got to stop the Lions, you see. Saying people 'should get vaccinated' to stop a deadly pandemic, is like saying, the Gazelle should outrun the Lion.. but should it?? Only if you're a Gazelle. Don't you see how selfish the Gazelle is being? From a higher perspective, there isn't any outcome that 'should' happen over any other. The sentence 'Humans shouldn't suffer and die' is completely subjective.

@Carl-Richard my perspective is similar to that of a Starfish.. I don't care if the Lion eats the Gazelle, or if the Gazelle escapes the Lion. Lions eating Gazelles is great from the perspective of a Lion, not so great from the Gazelle's point of view... Doesn't matter which one happens to the Starfish. Should the Gazelle escape the Lion? Of course the Gazelle selfishly thinks so, but reality is indifferent to which one happens. There's nothing that objectively 'should' happen, and nothing I objectively 'should' do.

@Carl-Richard I edited my comment for Clarity.. Viruses and Humans are at war.. and I'm not on either team.

@Carl-Richard are you talking about Humans or Covid? We should mandate Earth gets itself a Human Vaccine... they're spreading like wildfire... and have become hyper-lethal.

@Daniel347 Healthy skepticism is a good thing. Leo will even tell you, and often does, not to believe him. Logic is a language game.. and language is a map, not the territory. To 'know' the territory, is to be the territory.. we make maps and pretend they are the territory... with language and logic..

More than 38,000 people die every year in crashes on U.S. roadways. ... An additional 4.4 million are injured seriously enough to require medical attention. Road crashes are the leading cause of death in the U.S. for people aged 1-54. Why are we not mandating a 15 MPH speed limit!! We could be eliminating soooooo much suffering.. but the fact is.. we don't really care about human death and suffering as much as we pretend too.. To be able to travel in comfort, and get where we need to go quickly, is apparently worth 38,000 human lives/year... but I'm not sure we're ready to have that conversation here.

duality...

@spinderella "If there is no self, why do I think there is?" the very framing of this question is part of the reason.. Try this next time.. 'If there is no self, why does 'thinking there is a self' happen?', and the answer won't seem quite so mysterious... 'If there's no self, why does 'hair growing' happen?'.. well, there doesn't seem to be any contradiction there.

@Consept I'm glad you think it's fine:) All reasoning is egocentric. The key is to expand the ego to include everything. It's all me.

@spinderella language is inherently dualistic. I am watcher. We are mind. This 'separation' doesn't exist, of course. What is mistaken to be 'the thinker of thoughts' is just more thought occurring. What is mistaken to be 'the doer of what is being done' is just more 'what is happening'. Of course it's human organisms that are 'perceiving thought'.. 'thinking' is occurring.. it's just that there is no 'separate you' hiding inside an organism somewhere 'doing it', the same way there is no 'you' inside you somewhere 'growing your hair'.. 'Growing hair' is happening as part of a larger process call an organism, and it's happening automatically..

@Consept I didn't say it was either or.. humans are animals, of course, and so I include them in my circle of compassion.. I just don't put them at the top of any pedestals. (and I actually see human overpopulation as a bit of a problem, and I don't necessarily think it's a great idea, from a Darwinian evolutionary perspective, to make great efforts to protect the weakest members of a species, ensuring that traits almost guaranteed to be detrimental to the survival (thrival) of the species get passed down to future generations).. I mean.. look around you at the mess humans have created for themselves, and life on Earth in general.. do you think we got here by knowing what the fuck we're doing? "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

" We aren’t better because we want to be. Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because all the do gooders in the world whether they’re doing good for others or doing it for themselves are troublemakers. On the basis of ‘kindly let me help you or you’ll drown’, said the Monkey putting the fish safely up a tree. We white anglo saxon protestants; British, German, American. We have been on a rampage for the past hundred or more years to improve the world. We have given the benefits of our culture, our religion, our technology to everybody except perhaps the Australian aborigines. And we have insisted that they receive the benefits of our culture even our political styles our democracy you better be dead Democratic I will shoot you. And having conferred these blessings all over the place we wonder why everybody hates us. Because sometimes doing good to others and even doing go to oneself is amazingly destructive. Because it’s full of conceit. How do you know what’s good for other people? How do you know what’s good for you? If you say you want to improve. Then you want to know what’s good for you. But obviously you don’t because if you did you would be improved. So we don’t know. It’s like the problem of geneticists, which they face today. I went to a meeting of geneticists not so long ago where they gathered in a group of philosophers and theologians and said Now look here we need help. We now are on the verge of figuring out how to bring in any kind of human character. We would want to have. We give you saints, philosophers, scientists, great politicians, anything you want, just tell us what kind of human beings ought we to breed. So I said, ‘How will those of us who are genetically unregenerated make up our minds what genetically generated people might be.?’ Because I’m afraid very much that our selection of virtues may not work. It may be like for example this new kind of high-yield grain which is made and which is becoming ecologically destructive. When we interfere with the processes of nature and breed efficient plants and efficient animals there’s always some way in which we have to pay for it. And I can well see that a eugenically-produced human beings might be dreadful. We could have a plague of virtuous people. Do you realize that? Any animal considered in itself is virtuous it does its thing but in crowds they’re awful. Like a cross crowd of ants, or locusts on the rampage, they’re all perfectly good animals. But it’s just too much I could imagine a perfectly pestiferous mass of a million signs. So I said to these people, ‘Look, if there’s anything you can do, just be sure that a vast variety of human beings is maintained.’ Don’t please bring us down to a few excellent types excellent for what we never know how circumstances are going to change. And how. Our need. For different kinds of people changes. At one time we may need very individualistic and aggressive people, at another time we may need very co-operative team working people. At another time we may need people who are full of interest in dexterous manipulation of the external world, at another time we may need people who explore into their own psychology and are introspective. There is no knowing but the mall varieties and the mosque ills we have obviously the better. So you see here again the problem comes out in genetics we do not really know how to interfere with the way the world is. The way the world actually is is an enormously complex interrelated organism. The same problem arises in medicine, because the body is a very complexly interrelated organism. And if you look at the body in a superficial way you may see there’s something wrong with it, here’s chicken pox. And the spots that it should come all out all over the place well you might say well spots of that cut them off. So you kill the bug. But then you find you’ve got real problems. Because you have to introduce some bugs to kill the bug, it’s like bringing rabbits into Australia. And that starts going all over the place and getting out of hand. And then you think well now wait a minute, it wasn’t the bugs in the blood there are bugs all over the place. What was wrong with this person that his blood system suddenly became vulnerable to those particular bugs his resistance was in doubt? Therefore what you should have given was not an antibiotic but vitamins. OK so we’re going to build up his resistance but resistance to what. You may build up resistance to this and this and this class of bugs, but then there’s another one that loves that situation it comes right in. See we always look at the human being medically, in bits and pieces, because we have heart specialists, lung specialists, bones specialists, nerve specialists, and so on. And they each see the human being from their point of view there are a few generalists but they realise that human bodies. Complicated that no one mind can understand it. And furthermore, supposing we do succeed in healing all these people of that diseases. What do we then do about the population problem. I mean we’ve stopped cholera, the black bubonic plague, we’re getting the better of tuberculosis, we may fix cancer and heart disease. Then what will people die of? Well they’ll just go on living. On the enormous quantities of others. Then we have to fix this birthing. Pills for everybody. Then we find one of the effects the side effects of those pills. What are the psychological effects upon men and women of not breeding of children in the usual way? We don’t know. And what seems a good thing today or yesterday like D.D.T. turns out tomorrow to been a disaster. What seemed in the moral and spiritual sphere, to like great virtues in times past are easily seen today as hideous evils, let’s take for example the Inquisition, in its own day among Catholics the Holy Inquisition was regarded. As we’d today regard the practice of psychiatry. You, you see, you feel that in curing the person of cancer almost anything is justified. The most complex operations, the most weird surgery people suspended for days and days on end on the end of tubes with X. ray penetration burning. Or people undergoing shock treatment, people locked in the colorless monotonous corridors of mental institution. In all good faith, they knew that witchcraft and heresy were terrible things. Often plagues imperiling people souls forever and ever. So any means we’re justified. To cure people of heresy. We don’t change. We’re doing the same thing today. But under different names. We can look back at those people and see how evil that was but we can’t see it in ourselves. So therefore, beware of virtue. " - Alan Watts