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Originally Posted by Sam988  Could you explain your concept of a stillworker a bit further? |
I generally think that the various kinds of flow worker are not character types, but families of character types. So I'll give not one, but two concepts: one is easy to grasp: the ascetic who seeks to transcend all that is, regarding all things as illusions and all desires as traps. No goal is worth achieving, instead one denies both being and becoming.
The other example is someone who follows the Daoist precept of wuwei, which offers what a form of engaging with the world whilst renouncing grand goals of bettering the world or one's place in the world, but intead seeks a path of subtlety and the small scale. There are some famous Daoist proverbs along the lines of how the greatest accomplished has also the least pomp and celebrity.
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Originally Posted by Sam988 I dont hold the idea that opposite flows cancel each other. The idea i hold is that someone who isnt polarized gets more confused about which actions to take or about what drives one to the person's goal.
If one polarizes, he's sure of what he wants and why he wants it, doesnt have to figure it everytime one wants something (free of the confusion that a non-polarized person will often have) |
By talking of flows cancelling each other out, I don't literally mean the actions or intentions undo each other, but instead the flows undermine each other, and so depress awareness. Certainly, there is this danger, and maybe this is fireworkers syndrome.
A fireworker who prospers would one pursues goals that allow this form of interference to be minimised or sidestep, and perhaps even find synergies between the two (to go back to the electrical analogy, note that it is more efficient to distribute electrical power using AC than DC).
I think that the pursuit of truth provides an example of a goal that does not nicely fit either of the inflow or outflow headings. To seek to acquire knowledge is to have an inflow goal, to seek to increase the sum of human knowledge an outfolow goal, but for scholars, either goal might lead to much the same activity. It seems to me that the community of truthseekers will include both light- and dark- workers, might it also be a group that includes fireworkers?
The key question to ask, when claiming to have identified a new sort of flow worker, isn't whether one can imagine someone to be consituted in such a way, but whether or not such a constitution is a bridge of wonder leading to high awareness, as Steve has argued the light/dark-worker paths are, once their respective syndromes are handled.