Joseph Maynor

I would be a little bit leery of the understanding is a skill mentality.

It's more of a realization than a framework. It's something I share from my own experience, but it may not land with others.

It's pretty simple. It gets into what I call creator recontextualization. The finite (the practical) is the canvas of creation in space and time. You're not just a passenger sitting back and observing, that's a limiting belief. You can open to realizing you're an artist in reality shaping form and content. This gets deep, but this is a good starting point.

I call bridging this gap conscious creation. Awareness of consciously creating. This links enlightenment with the practical.

I watched it. I'll watch the first 2 again. I see reason as more of a middle ground between sense experience and intuition. This is Spinoza's epistemology. Reason can correct for but not necessarily replace sense experience, and intuition can correct for but not necessarily replace reason.

Here's an honest question I have. Who is a rationalist?

Wait until you get bored with life and you just need a change to feel excited and inspired again. This is more of a middle-aged problem.

Truth is a link to the Self, a spiritual foundation.

No, I'm enjoying the exchange. So you're linking understanding to skill in doing something.

This is a good once a week thing to create.

Understood. But what is the activity that we're competing in?

I see. So for you truth is what can be demonstrated to others (or to a reasonable person) for verification.

I worry about the groupthink aspect to objectivity sometimes. We're looking to confirm with others. But direct experience can be true and subjective as well.

The problem here is it ties true to the social or to the imaginary reasonable person (third person).

I guess it kinda depends on what we're calling free will.

One question is who is the judger?

I feel like we have limited free will.

It depends on how we parse you, but yes on some level.

An epistemological question that I see underlying the theme of this question is: How do we know when our imagination has gotten ahead of us? This is a key question in epistemology. What are the boundaries of the imagination vs. direct experience?

Got it. So you feel like you're reporting reality, not engaging in philosophy per se.