Sam Harris "Waking Up" app

[Mason Riggle]

@Someone here weird, I know. 

It just seems to me, that by arguing that 'Sam Harris is [anything other than your own mind] is to operate from a paradigm that isn't 'Idealism'. 

Maybe that's me being pedantic. Maybe im all in your head. 

Edited July 17, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[Leo Gura]

Kastrup himself isn't awake, Lol.

It is not enough to argue for idealism. That is still not awakening.

[OneHandClap]

37 minutes ago, spinderella said:

You guys are all amazing, thanks for such a thoughtful discussion.  

I will definitely watch this immediately.  Thank you. 

I'm also a bit confused about the "conflating the wooden table with wood" comment, but I think this is kind of helping me understand.  I can grasp (well, as much as is possible) that consciousness is the only thing that exists.  I guess I don't really understand the basis on which Harris says that idealism is wrong?  I think he's saying that "we can't know if consciousness is the only thing that exists", and idealism is saying "yes we do know that consciousness is the only thing that exists."

But yeah I still don't understand the wooden table / wood comment.  Is it that to "conflate" means to combine two things into one, implying that there ARE two things?  So in order to conflate, you have to see them as separate in the first place?

Conflate means to, on a basic level, muddy two concepts to the point where they are useless as individual terms. If someone conflates happiness with success, they have entangled the two definitions to the point where we can't use them properly in a rational discussion. 

Bear in mind that at this point in your path (you are just getting into it, yes?) you do not have to take anything on belief alone. If you have not verified that consciousness is the only thing that exists (it is apparent with a little bit of contemplation, yes, but we have not been taught that in school and culture), then don't worry about believing it on faith right now.

What matters is your moment-to-moment investigation of what is always true for you. Stay with that. Don't worry about what any religion, teacher, doctrine, book, or video tells you. You are your own best detective in the matter of reality. If you can keep returning to stillness over... and over... and over... again, the words will fall away. The truth will be made evident on its own. 

Remember—the human brain is wired to try to understand reality in a neat, prepackaged way that it can use to help your body persist. Its only job is to keep you alive, not happy. 

Let the brain veg out for a while. Let it relax, unwind, get away from the searching. Then the whole notion of enlightenment will seem silly, because it will become clear that you have always been what you are, which is awake. Enlightenment is merely the recognition of this awakened nature. 

Edit: I am aware that my use of brain here is provisional. Yes, there is no such thing as a brain, it is a concept. We get that. I'm merely using this language since it will resonate with most of our materialist upbringings and preconceived frames of reality The map isn't the territory!

Edited July 17, 2021 by OneHandClap

[spinderella]

@OneHandClap Thank you!  Yes, I can see that my brain / mind / whatever really wants an answer, and yes I can let it chill out.  I think what I'm realizing is that I want to know the fundamental differences in materialism (from the perspective Sam Harris is teaching from) versus idealism.  There are plenty of videos on youtube about this.  I don't see if Leo has one, aside from the Quantum mechanics debunks Materialism.  Either way, my brain is in a knot and trying to "figure it out" never seems to be the answer, so yeah, I will chill for a bit and revisit  

[OneHandClap]

1 minute ago, spinderella said:

@OneHandClap Thank you!  Yes, I can see that my brain / mind / whatever really wants an answer, and yes I can let it chill out.  I think what I'm realizing is that I want to know the fundamental differences in materialism (from the perspective Sam Harris is teaching from) versus idealism.  There are plenty of videos on youtube about this.  I don't see if Leo has one, aside from the Quantum mechanics debunks Materialism.  Either way, my brain is in a knot and trying to "figure it out" never seems to be the answer, so yeah, I will chill for a bit and revisit  

That's a great start! The most crucial thing is that understanding—that the brain and egoic consciousness literally cannot grasp reality, because reality is concepts and language applied onto reality. It would be like a software program trying to understand the room the computer is located in. Different levels of existence, different frameworks for perception. Meditation is more or less just giving the mind a boring task to make it... eventually... realize that there the end of the rainbow is already there. There's no greater or better state than you're currently in. Believing otherwise is what runs the survival programming to convince you that your life is, in fact, in need of something new to make you happy. Spoiler: the happiness never left, and it's beneath all the noise

[The0Self]

Sam is literally still considering or perhaps even operating with the worldview of materialism. In my opinion we have little business learning anything awakening related from him. And that’s coming from someone who has a soft spot for him lol — he’s the one who got me to try meditation like 5 years ago which led to a transformation like I couldn’t have possibly imagined.

[ZzzleepingBear]

27 minutes ago, spinderella said:

You guys are all amazing, thanks for such a thoughtful discussion.  

I will definitely watch this immediately.  Thank you. 

I'm also a bit confused about the "conflating the wooden table with wood" comment, but I think this is kind of helping me understand.  I can grasp (well, as much as is possible) that consciousness is the only thing that exists.  I guess I don't really understand the basis on which Harris says that idealism is wrong?  I think he's saying that "we can't know if consciousness is the only thing that exists", and idealism is saying "yes we do know that consciousness is the only thing that exists."

But yeah I still don't understand the wooden table / wood comment.  Is it that to "conflate" means to combine two things into one, implying that there ARE two things?  So in order to conflate, you have to see them as separate in the first place?

You're welcome!

About the conflating of the wooden table. Yes you got that right, it implies atleast the two things being mentioned. So having a discussion about what fundamentally makes a wooden table being a wooden table in the end of the day can from there on. Be turned into this endless arbitrary loop by stressing one of those point back and forth, by just one persons decisiveness from following along with one of those points as the crucial ground for what is most important in there.

Yes, I share your precise view of Harris here. He is seemingly keen on discussing consciousness up to a certain point. And from there on, he switch to the brain and makes some claims about the brain having a key role or the main role of conciousness. He can maintain his doubt and mental position as long as pleases, merely by switching the discussion point between conciousness and the brain when he feel pressured. But he also makes weak point himself from doing so, and may even get to be percieved as this deep sceptical thinker by alot of viewers by not fully follow through in the main topic of consciousness as he embarked on.

Hope that makes some more sense for you.

 

[ZzzleepingBear]

1 hour ago, OneHandClap said:

Conflate means to, on a basic level, muddy two concepts to the point where they are useless as individual terms. If someone conflates happiness with success, they have entangled the two definitions to the point where we can't use them properly in a rational discussion.

That is beautifully put i must say! Like swimming in murky waters.

[OneHandClap]

4 minutes ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

That is beautifully put i must say! Like swimming in murky waters.

Thanks! It definitely is a divergence from the standard, dictionary use of the term, but I think in this context it's helpful to let us separate the various concepts that we all hold, yet refer to with the same words. Dunno if you're familiar with Wittgenstein, but his famous "Beetles in a box" piece is exactly why it's so hard to communicate between individual beings. We use the same words but mean radically different things. America to one person is not America to another. Same with God, love, truth, trust, faith, death, war, money. 

[ZzzleepingBear]

50 minutes ago, OneHandClap said:

Thanks! It definitely is a divergence from the standard, dictionary use of the term, but I think in this context it's helpful to let us separate the various concepts that we all hold, yet refer to with the same words. Dunno if you're familiar with Wittgenstein, but his famous "Beetles in a box" piece is exactly why it's so hard to communicate between individual beings. We use the same words but mean radically different things. America to one person is not America to another. Same with God, love, truth, trust, faith, death, war, money. 

You're welcome! Yeah I had to look up the definition after reading your take on it, just to be sure myself. But as you said, context does play a big role here, and your definition could not make it any more clear here, once again well put!

I'm not familiar with Wittgenstein, but I will definitely look into that "Beetles in a box". The thought of "do we mean the same thing here, or even close" That is with me quite often, so to that thought I am greatful. Since miscommunication isn't exactly unheard of, haha. Thanks once again for the recommendation, I will look into it. Seems like it could be some good stuff!

[SOUL]

It is a common self justifying exercise for one to insist on projecting their own experience onto others. Through the perception of 'oneness' and the 'absolute' there is tendency to view it as universally 'true', that it's the only 'truth'.

Is it not fulfilling to experience well being in your own perception of 'what is' that one has to tell others that your own view is the 'truth' for everyone? If they don't mirror the same your experience it's 'false' and they are delusional.

Genuine liberation frees one from the desire, need or even the habit of 'truthifying' one's own experience and 'falsifying' another's experience. No matter how 'deep' one thinks they view from all of the perception is in our imagination.

Being awareness doesn't require validation to be as it is.

[OneHandClap]

27 minutes ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

You're welcome! Yeah I had to look up the definition after reading your take on it, just to be sure myself. But as you said, context does play a big role here, and your definition could not make it any more clear here, once again well put!

I'm not familiar with Wittgenstein, but I will definitely look into that "Beetles in a box". The thought of "do we mean the same thing here, or even close" That is with me quite often, so to that thought I am greatful. Since miscommunication isn't exactly unheard of, haha. Thanks once again for the recommendation, I will look into it. Seems like it could be some good stuff!

Oh, anytime. It's a great logical thought experiment for communication in general. Wittgenstein was of the view that we as a culture play "language games" to learn how to communicate. For example, if your mother says "Pick up the red block," and you pick up the green one, she'll probably laugh, shake her head, and tell you no. If you pick up the red one, though, she'll clap and make you feel good. So in that way, we learn what objects are called and how we refer to aspects of our world. Explains a lot about why people get hung up on words

[ZzzleepingBear]

1 hour ago, OneHandClap said:

Oh, anytime. It's a great logical thought experiment for communication in general. Wittgenstein was of the view that we as a culture play "language games" to learn how to communicate. For example, if your mother says "Pick up the red block," and you pick up the green one, she'll probably laugh, shake her head, and tell you no. If you pick up the red one, though, she'll clap and make you feel good. So in that way, we learn what objects are called and how we refer to aspects of our world. Explains a lot about why people get hung up on words

"Language games" that's a home run alright! Maybe you already agree with this, but I'd say that your red/green block example sounds more like a practical aspect of how language are ingrained in us as a tool to distinguish our being from objects etc. But when it comes to emotions and feelings. That is where the game begin so to speak. However, that emotional/feeling entanglement with language might just be an inevitable consequence of the learning itself, who is to say really. :-p

[OneHandClap]

11 minutes ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

"Language games" that's a home run alright! Maybe you already agree with this, but I'd say that your red/green block example sounds more like a practical aspect of how language are ingrained in us as a tool to distinguish our being from objects etc. But when it comes to emotions and feelings. That is where the game begin so to speak. However, that emotional/feeling entanglement with language might just be an inevitable consequence of the learning itself, who is to say really. :-p

Yes, pretty much. The beetle in the box example is to demonstrate that we all have our own private definitions for internal states, which makes it hard to talk about. If I say "I feel bad," what does that really mean? Art in all forms is our attempt to communicate what it's like to "be us," since people can't really grasp your internal state through language. So when we learn words as kids, we are already placed in boxes that limit what we can share and how we can share it. There's nothing wrong with this limitation, of course, unless it comes to communicating complicated ideas that language can't really hint at. Which is where we begin to form beliefs and assumptions that go beyond the barriers of said language!

[RickyFitts]

8 hours ago, spinderella said:

You guys are all amazing, thanks for such a thoughtful discussion.  

Likewise, thank you for your thoughtful contributions and for starting the conversation in the first place 

[Bodhitree]

Have spent some time with the app, it’s not at all bad as a basic guided platform to get into mindfulness meditation. But there’s limited content if you dont get the premium subscription. It is a subscription of 99 dollars a year, which I find expensive and a big commitment for such a service. 

Personally for all my meditating I use the Plum Village app, from Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition, which provides a ton of free content and allows you to make a donation if you feel like giving. It’s Buddhist of course. 

So I guess it depends how much you are into Sam Harris and his particular approach. 

[RickyFitts]

Here's an interesting discussion between Harris and Adyashanti that came up in my Youtube recommendations (edit: apologies for the imperfect sound quality), very interesting that he's interacting with the likes of Adya and Rupert Spira - regardless of what you think of his perspective, it's great that he's helping to bring this into the mainstream:

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by RickyFitts

[Bodhitree]

The other thing about the app which I don’t think has been mentioned yet is that it contains a whole series of different teachings ranging from Richard Lang of the Headless Way, The Stoic Path by William B Irvine, The Spectrum of Awareness by Diana Winston, and Consolations by David Whyte. This is all tucked away under a menu item called Practice and then you have to scroll a list where initially only Sam Harris content is visible.

There is also a whole series of talks with various Buddhist and self-development teachers. It’s largely all locked away behind a subscriber barrier. There is quite a lot of content there.

Edited July 19, 2021 by Bodhitree