What is the Best Way to Live?

[Shaden]

How do you define right and wrong in your life? How do you know which beliefs are correct and which are incorrect? How do you know objectively what the best thing to do in your life is? How do you know what the best workout is? The best career? The best spiritual and moral beliefs? The best way of thinking? The best way to communicate with other people? Essentially these are all part of the same question that we all ask ourselves at some point – what is the best way I could live?

Some people meet this question head on – other’s shrink from it. For those who try to answer it, what happens is that they often get a big mess. Not because they’re answering the wrong question – but because they go about answering it the wrong way. They might buy a couple of books or spend a few weeks thinking about it. They intellectualise. They ponder. They try and consider all the alternatives and from this figure out what they should do. Should I be Roman Catholic or Buddhist? Should I go running or get some weights? Should I start a blog or become a journalist? Should I develop my proficiency with HTML or learn how to write?

What these people often discover though is that they get stuck. There are just too many alternatives to consider. There are too many career choices, too many exercise plans, too many belief systems, too many skills to develop. To actually stand a chance of choosing the best; they have to consider all the alternatives. And of course this isn’t an easy task to undertake because the alternatives are nearly limitless in their scope. Try listing all the careers that you can think of – once you’ve done that, objectively consider each of them and logically show to yourself which is the best for you. Logically prove to yourself that running is better then weight-lifting, that journalism is better then dentistry, that Buddhism is a better choice then Scientology. You will fail miserably. Either you’ll fall into the trap of over-intellectualising, where you spend your time trying desperately to find an answer and never coming close, or you’ll list what society has conditioned into you as a natural reflex.

The alternative to the objective method of answering the question is the subjective method; you go with your gut-feeling, your intuition. You look at the alternatives available to you and choose the one that looks the best from the outset. So if you think running would be a good idea – you do it. If you think vegetarianism would be a good idea – you do it. You don’t think about the logistics and technicalities attached to the situation – you do what feels right. The problem with this method though is that few people are at the level of thinking where they can go through this procedure effectively. They’ll list what they’ve previously been conditioned to believe, so if they’re parents and friends insist that vegetarianism is a stupid idea they’ll avoid it. They then become a product, not of their own choices, but of the various influences that they have been introduced to throughout their life.

The subjective method and the objective method are both problematic models to answer this question under – you’ll either end up as another conditioned peon of society or as a tortured philosopher with an endless mission for proof. So how can we answer this question? How can we find out what is true for us? We can’t answer it objectively and we can’t answer it subjectively. What options do we have?

The answer is the third alternative – the evolutionary answer. This is a mixture of the objective model and the subjective model. This basically means that you find something that both subjectively and objectively makes sense to you. You pick a diet that you objectively think will improve your health and which you subjectively feel good about. You go running because intuitively it feels like a good idea and you know it will make you fitter. You begin to take some writing course because you know, deep down, that is the career you want to chase and you know that going to those courses will help you to improve your skill. You mix the two approaches together.

And you don’t stay in a fixed position. You evolve. This is one problem with the previous two models – you try and find the best option from the outset and live that one all your life. Humans are developing creatures though – there are no continuous principles in your life. There are no constants that you consistently abide by. Instead you enter into different situations and circumstances throughout your life. You change all the time. And trying to pin this change down just undermines your very nature as the human being that you are.

With the evolutionary model the concept is simple – you choose something, try it and then go and explore for an alternative which you might consider to be better. You try the alternative and if your expectations are proven correct you implement it into your life and dump the old choice – if not, you dump the alternative and stick with the old choice.

This dipping in and out of the different choices we have in our life is one of the best ways to grow. It balances out objectivity with subjectivity so that we actually find something that works for us and we don’t pin ourselves down with trying to find the best one available to us. Instead we simply choose where to start and grow from there. The start is always the most important part of anything. A business only comes into existence if it had a start. You only become healthier if you begin to exercise. You only become smarter when you start to read. From my own experience the evolutionary model is the best way to go about making decisions. It allows you to make a decision, but make it in a reasonable timeframe with a reasonable amount of sense. And also it strips you of attachment so instead of becoming overly preoccupied with any one stage of your growth you can see it as the unfolding experience of life. Even when things aren’t at their best – you take joy and satisfaction in the knowledge that you are consistently growing towards a better state.

Imagine if you were born into life with everything. You had a wonderful house, financial abundance, a great partner, kids, terrific friends, emotional control, physical fitness and a career that you loved. You had it all. What you don’t have in this situation however is experience. You haven’t earned these things realistically. And that takes away a lot of the excitement of life. You’ve reached a stage of perfection. There is nowhere else to grow – no improvements you could possibly foresee. Where is the life in that?

Life is meant to be a series of challenges. Life is meant to stretch you, take you beyond your limits and sometimes even break you. This is where we earn the right to lead a good life. When our first business fails, we earn the right to set up one that will be a success. When our first long-term relationship ends in tears, we earn the right to find our soul mate. When we humiliate ourselves publicly, we earn the right to be respected. All of the greatest successes of our life come from our greatest failures. The problem then of over-intellectualising is that it tries to skip a stage. By searching and trying to implement the perfect life from scratch we have no basis to found it on. There is no experience to help us when a problem occurs. The ideal life then becomes realistically impossible to achieve. We think we know what we want but we can’t see any way to get to that point. We haven’t run the gauntlet. All we’ve done is sat at home and thought our lives away. Our conclusion sits in our head, a glowing example of perfection and idealisation. Meanwhile our lives spiral out of control.

You might not know what you want at this present moment. But the solution to this isn’t to start trying to find an answer to the question “What is the best way I could live?” There is no answer to this question or at least, no objective answer. Instead there is a plethora of possible options that can never be objectively compared because there are too many of them. What there is however is the option to simply dive in and try to find an answer as you explore the question. As you gradually improve your experience of reality two things will happen.

The first of these is that you will find the answer to the original question. But the second of these and the most important is that you will start to develop the strength and the experience to make your answer a reality. You’ll have set up a business and failed. You’ll have tried a new diet and failed. You’ll be stronger, more confident, more committed, more self-disciplined. Your sense of capability will have expanded greatly. Not only will you be closer to the answer – because you were already moving towards it in the first place – but you’ll be in a position to be able to make the transition to this answer.

And yet something even stranger might happen. You’re answer might already be the life you are living. “What is the best way I could live?” – With exploration; with courage; for experience and texture, no matter how harsh or how sweet; without expectation; without attachment; constantly expanding; constantly growing.

Ultimately your answer might be different to mine. But you’ll never find your answer if you succumb to the objective or the subjective model of exploration. Instead you’ll pin yourself down into paralysis analysis or simply reiterate what you’ve been conditioned into. You need to evolve yourself before you answer the question. You need to make yourself stronger, more experienced, more capable. And maybe, when you finally realise what the answer to the question is – you’ll be in a position where the place you wish to be is already in sight, or you might even already be on the path of that life itself.

[Akashic_Librarian]

Very well thought out, very intelligent. Very well done!

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Shaden

The problem then of over-intellectualising is that it tries to skip a stage. By searching and trying to implement the perfect life from scratch we have no basis to found it on. There is no experience to help us when a problem occurs.

One thing you don't note is that "intellectualising" requires experience in the first place. You cannot think about something you have not experienced.

[Glass Joe]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

One thing you don't note is that "intellectualising" requires experience in the first place. You cannot think about something you have not experienced.

I think I understand the point you are trying to make, Michael. However, I think you and Shaden are using the word "experience" in different contexts.

When Shaden says:

Originally Posted by Shaden

There is no experience to help us when a problem occurs.

I think he means "experience" in the context of "How many years of job experience do you have?" or "How much have you actually experienced in that new foreign country before you pack everything up and move there?"

And when you say:

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

You cannot think about something you have not experienced.

I think you mean it more like "sensory experience" or "direct experience" rather than in the context Shaden uses, which is more like accumulated "life experience", "job experience", or some other skill-based experience you get over time.

Actually, as I was writing out this post, I found a wikipedia article on experience. Gotta love wikipedia!

Here's a quote from the article which makes the same distinction between types of experience I was trying to make, but I think wikipedia says it better:

The word "experience" may refer (somewhat ambiguously) both to mentally unprocessed immediately-perceived events as well as to the purported wisdom gained in subsequent reflection on those events or interpretation of them.

Great article BTW.

[Michael Chui]

In other words, the experience that Shaden is talking about is the experience of intellectualizing ("wisdom gained in subsequent reflection") prior experience?

[rondon]

<quote>All we’ve done is sat at home and thought our lives away.</quote>

Ha! I'm pretty guilty of this. I've been going over and over trying to find the "perfect" mission statement, and feeling bad when I don't find the Answer.

Thanks for the post, its a different angle on the Purpose topic. Found it useful.

[songwriter]

Well, that's the greatest question of them all...

Okey, let's say you choose a goal in life. Happiness, money, security, sex, etc.
Ok, what's the goal we have to choose?

Sometimes you have to forget happiness because you need money.
Sometimes you have to forget security because you want sex.
And so on.

Okey, you choose happiness.
Then live like this was the last day of your life... and you'll forget about money, security, but probably not about sex... but this doesn't work on the long run, you'll probably die young and leave and beautiful corpse, you know.

Ok, live happier or live longer?

I tend so much to choose happiness over money, and security over sex. But everyone has his ways... It's like Jung personalities, he said every kind of personality uses to think it's the best one... so...

[Glass Joe]

I don't want to hijack this thread, but this discussion on different types of "experience" seriously opened a floodgate of insights for me. But it didn't warrant starting a new thread, so I'm posting them here, and some of this post is also related to "accumulated experience" that Shaden talks about.

As a side note, I want to say that I pretty much gave up any and all posting on online forums a couple years ago, and haven't looked back, but for some reason I felt like joining this particular forum a month ago. And lately, this forum has been a wellspring of epiphanies and synchronicities for me.

Craziness.

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

In other words, the experience that Shaden is talking about is the experience of intellectualizing ("wisdom gained in subsequent reflection") prior experience?

(1) Yeah, that's actually pretty profound, now that I stop to think about it. There seems to be no escape from direct experience. If you have a direct experience of burning your hand on a hot stove, the act of stopping to think about and reflect on that prior experience is ALSO A DIRECT EXPERIENCE. Even more so, my writing this post and someone reading this post - abstractly thinking about my abstract thoughts about the direct experience of burning your hand on a hot stove - is ALSO A DIRECT EXPERIENCE. And so on, forever and ever...

(2) Is it possible to go beyond, or transcend, direct experience?

(3) I ask this because it seems to be possible to go beyond, or transcend, accumulated experience. Labels don't really matter, but some people can call this "Zen Mind". The "Flow" state. Unconscious Competence. Presence. Or whatever else. Picture a samurai warrior who can strike down an opponent without having to stop and think about his next move. If he stops to think, and weigh his options, he's already dead. His blade moves faster than his thoughts do. Or if you don't like the warrior analogy, think of it as "loving as if you've never been hurt before". Your mind isn't clogged up with thoughts of "Please don't hurt me!" and "I hope I don't get my heart broken this time!" . But ALSO, and more importantly, it isn't clogged up with thoughts of "I love you!" , or "You complete me!" either. The mind is empty of any leanings, whether positive or negative.

However, even though your mind is "empty", you still get all the "goodies" of the accumulated experience, but are left with very little, if any, of the "drag" or friction. To transcend, means to also include. (credit: Ken Wilber) You go from unconscious incompetence, then through the growth process, and on to unconscious competence. It's like riding a bicycle or touch typing. Once you get to the point of unconscious competence in riding a bike or touch typing or even speaking English, you are neither thinking about the process positively or negatively.

It's probably obvious by now that I love quotes. But here's a quote that I think summarizes this:

The highest technique is to have no technique. My technique is a result of your technique; my movement is a result of your movement.
-- Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee basically got to the point where he didn't even need to think about techniques any more. But he wasn't jumping around and flailing his arms like an idiot though... like some noob... like a beginner with absolutely no knowledge of any techniques at all. He just got to a point where he didn't need to even think about techniques any more. His mind was clear.

(4) Sooooooo... along the same lines of thinking above about moving beyond "accumulated" experience, I wonder if it's possible to move beyond the "direct" kind of experience too.

(5) In Jed McKenna's two books, Jed makes the distinction between "self-development" and enlightenment. He says that these two "share a cab" for a while, but they eventually have to part ways. On one side of the cab, you have anything and everything you can lump under the banner of "personal development". However, enlightenment or "waking up" has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with personal development. If anything, "waking up" is more like personal destruction.

I still need to think about this some more, but I'm wondering if the process of "transcending direct experience" is more like (a) another level of personal development, or (b) the first step of personal destruction.

(6) This reminds of reading somewhere about the goal "to die before you die". Is it possible to die subjectively without dying objectively? Is it possible to kill your subjective mind without having to put a bullet in your objective brain? Would anyone even want to do that??? In Jed's books, he says that most people wouldn't want it, much less want to even *think* about it.

(7) This is tough stuff to think about out. And I'm beginning to understand why. It's a little easier to see how life can be much better when living in "Zen mind" or "Flow" state, but it's difficult to picture what it would be like to live with "no mind" and "no self". It's like being an employer and then asking your employee (your mind) to draw you up a detailed cost/benefit report on all the reasons why that employee should be fired. It's like asking your employee to evaluate and justify it's own usefulness to you. Your employee, not wanting to lose its job, will find as many stall tactics and avoidance behaviors as possible. To you, the employer, it looks like progress is being made, but to the employee, it knows that all this so-called "progress" is really just a huge waste of time.

The ego has no trouble pretending to gain enlightenment.
-- Deepak Chopra

(8) One more distinction about the employer/employee relationship. Picture the employer not being able to speak English, or for that matter, not even being able see either objective reality or subjective reality. The "English language", "Objective Reality", and "Subjective Reality" are ALL MENTAL CONSTRUCTS that the employee developed to communicate with the employer. So the employer is forced to take the employee's word for it.

(9) If you had a rootkit laying around somewhere in your head, how could you ever be aware of it? Because if you ever made an "API call" to check for the existence of a rootkit, the rootkit would just return a result saying that everything was A-OK.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

I don't want to hijack this thread, but this discussion on different types of "experience" seriously opened a floodgate of insights for me. But it didn't warrant starting a new thread, so I'm posting them here, and some of this post is also related to "accumulated experience" that Shaden talks about.

Well, threads are hardly in limited supply. If you feel you should branch it, feel free to copy any posts over as you like, etc., etc. Or if Shaden doesn't like the fork.

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

There seems to be no escape from direct experience.

Right. And eventually, it becomes mind-blowing and maddening to exhaustively consider it all, considering everything is necessarily "meta". One of the reasons the mind is so labyrinthic is precisely because it's self-reflective. To cite Heisenberg, the act of measuring changes what is being measured: you're necessarily always wrong.

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

Is it possible to go beyond, or transcend, direct experience?

Perhaps. I can't claim to have done so, but I haven't given the idea much thought. It demands a much more rigorous definition of "experience" than that which has been provided here. And without such limits, experience easily slips into self-reflection; that is to say: imagine two walls, upon which hang two mirrors. Look into one mirror.

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

To transcend, means to also include.

I like that.

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

But here's a quote that I think summarizes this:

I think there's a better quote, but I'm disinclined to go hunting for it tonight. To summarize it for others (skip down a bit if you know it already), the essential idea is this:

In learning, there are three stages.

1) Ignorance, wherein you do not know what you are doing. You flail around, and perhaps you do well, and perhaps you do not. It is uncontrolled and foolish.
2) Sophistication, wherein you have learned rules, boundaries, theories, and so forth, but become trapped by this knowledge. In this case, you are controlled, but ultimately ineffective, crippled by an excess of reflection.
3) Artlessness, wherein you have internalized the rules to a point where you are capable of breaking them based on when they apply to the situation. Having achieved control, you now achieve effectiveness.

There are three stellar examples of this, though if you think for just a moment, you will come up with another dozen. Consider breakdancing. In the beginning, you're an imbecile, trying moves that you can't do, but every now and then, moving to the music, you do something really cool. Then, you practice and practice and learn specific moves, and maybe you tie them together. But you can't use this to real music, because it doesn't flow. At a certain point, you achieve rhythm, and the music guides you in how you dance as you like.

The second example is playing musical instruments. Banging on the keyboard is ignorant, uncontrolled, and melody comes accidentally. Then you're taught theory, shown pieces, and you practice. But you can only play pieces that you've memorized, and while that's well and good, you're not quite there yet. The last stage is the mastery of improv, where you can come up with melody on the spot. Check out Jennifer Lin at TED.

The third example is fencing. The overwhelming majority of martial arts are unarmed kids punching the air, popularized by Karate Kid. Fencers, on the other hand, tend to be more effective at transcending the sophistication of the punching bag and moving to real combat. I still whisper to myself the names of the manuevers I make, when I remember them... extend, lunge, disengage, double lunge. But the speed and ferocity with which two people clash, parrying and riposting, is nigh artistic.

===Explanation over===

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

Sooooooo... along the same lines of thinking above about moving beyond "accumulated" experience, I wonder if it's possible to move beyond the "direct" kind of experience too.

It sounds completely sensible from my theoretic standpoint. What you seem to be describing is well-documented by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as flow, and I think you're already familiar with the term.

The problem with using the word "experience" here, however, is that you're not talking about the passive reception of the world. Flow, on the other hand, necessarily breaks down the barrier between passivity and activity: just like the Shaolin "Sticky Hands" technique, to receive is to give, or like Lao-Tzu said, non-action is action.

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

If anything, "waking up" is more like personal destruction.

I still need to think about this some more, but I'm wondering if the process of "transcending direct experience" is more like (a) another level of personal development, or (b) the first step of personal destruction.

Both, I'd say. Flow is definitely not the point at which enlightenment and personal development split apart. FWIW, Steve's idea of PD does not seem to be the sort that McKenna describes. I have not read McKenna, however, so I can't speak to that.

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

This reminds of reading somewhere about the goal "to die before you die". Is it possible to die subjectively without dying objectively?

This concept is actually pretty common in religious thought, and is a huge reason why people think religion is all about explaining death. Because one of the biggest advantages of believing in after-death is you understand that death is not an ending, however they interpret that.

The level of metaphor you think "subjective death" is at depends very strongly on how you define "life" and "death". I'll invite you to do that before I offer mine.

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

It's like being an employer and then asking your employee (your mind) to draw you up a detailed cost/benefit report on all the reasons why that employee should be fired.

While this analogy is certainly interesting, I shy away from it because it introduces an unnecessary dichotomy between you and your mind.

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

If you had a rootkit laying around somewhere in your head, how could you ever be aware of it? Because if you ever made an "API call" to check for the existence of a rootkit, the rootkit would just return a result saying that everything was A-OK.

See Godel's Incompleteness Theorem for more mind-warping thought. The essential insight it shows is that you can never understand something completely without stepping outside of it. Take this up ad infinitum and eventually you reach the Universe, which we define to be all of existence, and thus impossible to completely understand.

[Shaden]

Interesting post Glass Joe, but I think I'm going to have to disagree with you here.

What you're talking about here is destroying the ego - removing it from your conscious mind so you have no "negative" or "positive" "leanings" within your daily life. It's a technique espoused very heavily by spiritual speakers such as Eckhart Tolle and the Buddhist religion as a whole. And to a certain degree it works. However, taking it too far destroys the experience of life itself. Why?

Because we percieve through our ego. The mind is the ego, and the mind is the perceptive tool we use to enjoy (or hate) our experiences of life. All five senses are processed through the ego. Even our spiritual beliefs are processed through the ego. And get this - everything you listed above is an egoic principle. It is a theory, not a given. There is no objective proof that shows meditation will give you enlightenment. There are certain individuals claiming that it does, but choosing to believe them is still an egoic process. Without the ego, you wouldn't percieve them, so you couldn't choose whether you should or shouldn't believe them.

The process I prefer, is emotional mastery - wrestling the ego under your control so you gain it's benefits, without suffering from it's drawbacks. The benefits of the ego are that you can percieve reality with your five senses and if you're psychically developed, your psychic senses (I unfortunately am not developed to this point ). The drawbacks are "mind chatter", attachment, emotional confusion, emotional pain and fear.

You can overcome these drawbacks if you are commited enough. I don't care how many spiritual teachers claim that the only way to be free of such egoic drawbacks is too completely destroy it. They may be completely wrong. The only way you can actually understand it for yourself is to "experience" it i.e. to make some practical application of the ideas into your own life. A practical application of the ideas of egoic control (and destruction), would be meditation, journalling, IM and other basic spiritual practises.

I don't agree with egoic destruction personally. Without the ego - what would we percieve the world with? The ego is there to serve it's purpose of allowing us to enjoy the surrounding universe we inhabit - it's a piece of a perfect puzzle. And sure it get's out of hand sometimes - that's it's nature. Carrying on the employment analogy - it's down to you to make sure you keep your ego under control. If your ego is becoming overly-destructive, you don't get rid of it entirely - you sack it and hire another one. That would be like building a new sense of character or changing your values so you believed in different things and acted in a different way. Without the ego, you don't get any results, or rather you don't percieve those results.

I see that as counter-logical and counter-intuitive, especially in the field of personal development. I think it's better to be your own boss, then to intentionally destroy the very business which your running.

[Liara Covert]

Consider the concept of harmonic wealth, or finding balance on multiple levels, from personal, professional, spiritual, emotional, intellectual or whatever levels contribute to your "best way to live." This is a question of affirmative realisations and taking actions that make this future vision so much a part of you that you're thinking, breathing, dreaming and living it as it materializes and becomes your reality.This isn't about struggling to obtain (which would be moving in the worng direction). This is about preparing your mind, body and soul for the life you already imagine and are readying yourself to receive

[Helena Handbasket]

Dogs live in the moment. They are intelligent creatures, meaning they are capable of learning from past experience, but they do not spend time worrying over the past or the future. They live in the moment with sincerity and lack of regret. I think people should live like that, too.

This doesn't mean I believe we should do whatever we please and give no regard to consequences or how we affect others. We are not dogs, so of course we have a responsibility that dogs do not have. But that's what makes it such a great challenge for us, and that's why I say: "Live like a dog!"

[Glass Joe]

Thanks for the detailed replies. I wasn't expecting to get any discussion going on this, so I figured my post was simply going to be seen as me just rambling. Where people could read it and think about it, but not necessarily feel compelled to comment on it either way. But now I probably would have used a different word other than "destruction". Or at least went into the idea more. Personally, I like the word "destruction", or better yet "deconstruction", but I can see how these words can have negative connotations attached to them.

For example, two people can both say the exact same thing: "I want to destroy evil". But one person can be going about it by joining every possible good-intentioned activist organization under the sun. While another person can be "destroying evil" by simply sitting in quiet contemplation at his kitchen table. "Destruction" can occur out in the objective world, or it can occur purely in consciousness. (Actually, all of it is occurring purely in consciousness, but that's another thread. )

So if I say "destroy self" or "destroy mind" I don't mean it as some form of mental lobotomy or symbolic castration. That's regression. That's a step backward. I mean it as progression. I mean it as a step forward. To transcend, yet still include. So I guess my previous ramblings above were just me trying to figure out what the process involved to do that. And while trying to think about it, that's where I came up with the employer/employee and rootkit analogies. (Which I agree aren't totally adequate analogies, but I think are still somewhat useful, at least to me.)

I still want to post a more detailed reply to some of the great comments here, but I don't have a lot of time tonight, so I just wanted to try make that distinction about "destruction" first.

[Liara Covert]

Hi Glass Joe.

Your detailed discussion about progression and transcendance leads me to suggest the first complete translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead (2006). The author is Gyurme Dorje and edited by Graham Coleman with Thupten Jinpa. His Holiness the Dalai Lama contributed the introductory commentary.

[Glass Joe]

Liara: Thanks for the book recommendation. I've seen of "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" mentioned in various other books, but I don't remember reading it myself. I'll check it out though.

Shaden: I hear where you're coming from, and like you I've read some Buddhist books and Eckhart Tolle's "Power of Now" book too, so I think I understand what you're talking about here. However, I wasn't really talking about the "ego" per se, at least in the way it sounds like you are using the term.

I don't know if you like the idea of separating the mind into different parts - some people do, some don't - but rather than focusing on the area of emotions, I guess I was more interested in understanding the area of thoughts and perceptions. Not to get rid of thoughts and perceptions, but just see if it's possible to "step outside" of direct experience and look at direct experience objectively. I know that some people don't think it's even necessary to do this "stepping outside" or make all these splits of the mind, but at least for me, I think they're useful as temporary thought experiments.

[Glass Joe]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

Right. And eventually, it becomes mind-blowing and maddening to exhaustively consider it all, considering everything is necessarily "meta". One of the reasons the mind is so labyrinthic is precisely because it's self-reflective. To cite Heisenberg, the act of measuring changes what is being measured: you're necessarily always wrong.

Just a weird coincidence... when I read your comment, for some reason I saw it as Heidegger (who I already heard of, but not that familiar with), so I checked him out on wikipedia and found this:

Phenomenology

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

In learning, there are three stages.

1) Ignorance, wherein you do not know what you are doing. You flail around, and perhaps you do well, and perhaps you do not. It is uncontrolled and foolish.
2) Sophistication, wherein you have learned rules, boundaries, theories, and so forth, but become trapped by this knowledge. In this case, you are controlled, but ultimately ineffective, crippled by an excess of reflection.
3) Artlessness, wherein you have internalized the rules to a point where you are capable of breaking them based on when they apply to the situation. Having achieved control, you now achieve effectiveness.

Thanks for the more detailed description. I had a pretty good idea of this process so I didn't want to go into it too much above, but that additional way of looking at it helped clarify my own understanding. And "artlessness" is now one of my new favorite words.

Also... I was originally going to post more in response to your other comments, but yeah... like you said... the whole thing is pretty much like a two standing mirrors facing each other, and then staring into one of them.

[Liara Covert]

Hi Glass Joe.

Do let us know what you think of the recent Tibetan Book of the Dead. It took ten years to write this complete version.

The idea of being able to distinguish between when you perceive with and without the ego would seem useful. When it comes to spirituality, mystical and eastern meditative traditions, humans are often seen as imagining their own existence as separate from other living things. This sense of individual existence is a part which believes it is human, and believes it must struggle to exist, is ultimately unaware of its unconscious side. The ego is often associated with a sense of measurable time, and supposedly thinks as a way to assure its continued existence, rather than simply seeking to understand itself and the present.

The spiritual goal of many traditions aims to dissolve or separate from the ego, allowing self-knowledge of ones own true nature to become experienced. This is known as Enlightenment, Nirvana, Presence, and the "Here and Now". Whether or not you're self-centred remains to be determined by yourself and others.

[Rocket Surgery]

To crush your enemies....

To see them driven before you....

And to hear the lamentations of the women!

AAAARRGGHH!

[Rocket Surgery]

Originally Posted by Helena Handbasket

...and that's why I say: "Live like a dog!"

Tried that once, but all I got was a fat lip when I tried to sniff some bodacious blonde butt.

~ RS

[Rocket Surgery]

The best way to live?

So far, I've come across nothing more profound than the Three Principles offered by the channeled spirit entity, Dr. Peebles, to wit:

1. Loving allowance for all things to be in their own time and place, starting for yourself.

2. Increased communication with all of life and with respect.

3. Self responsibility for your life as a creative adventure for it is through your choices and perceptions that you do indeed create your reality.

15 years ago, I had the privilege of experiencing a private channeling session with Dr. Peebles through one of his clearest channels ever, Thomas Jacobson, who has since retired. As a male, Thomas was able to channel the good doctor through his male vocal chords, and hence the voice one would hear was quite similar to how the man was said to have sounded during his last physical incarnation. It was such a treat to hear this 19th-century, old world orator with a slight Scottish accent fill the room with his presence, and the forthcoming wisdom was so profound, yet simple, that I likened it to what it must have been like for the people of Jesus' time to go and listen to him speak and tell his stories and parables.

If you haven't heard of this source of metaphysical and spiritual teachings, check out To Dance With Angels by Don and Linda Pendleton. You will not be disappointed.

~ RS

[judge45]

There is only today, nothing else is real or matters.

Treat it like it's the best day of your life and it will be.

HTH

Jeff

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Helena Handbasket

"Live like a dog!"

HH, I love that. Sometimes it's hard for me to not identify with the "me" who is thinking, and I've wished for a little reminder motto that really wakes me up to the moment. By golly, here it is, thanks to you. I just hope I can keep my tongue in my mouth.

[Dubay]

good read. Something I really needed to hear. Logical perfectionists like ourselves hate the idea that there isn't a single "best" way to do something and end up spending so much time trying to find "the best" way to live that we miss out on all of the best ways to live.

[eddytb]

...They’ll list what they’ve previously been conditioned to believe, so if they’re parents and friends insist that vegetarianism is a stupid idea they’ll avoid it. They then become a product, not of their own choices, but of the various influences that they have been introduced to throughout their life.

This is true of everything, not just your parents or primary relationships; you can try to select your influences, but these were predetermined by previous influences - you're opinions, your beliefs, the things you hold as 'right' and, by association, your choices, all stem from your perceptions.

You are a product of your own experience - though realising this will add a whole new dimension.

[Beingist]

Originally Posted by Helena Handbasket

"Live like a dog!"

WOOF!!

***pant***

[kobay]

Best way and happy way to live is to worship him and do our best to make the world a better place

[raykilleen]

Originally Posted by Shaden

How do you define right and wrong in your life? How do you know which beliefs are correct and which are incorrect? How do you know objectively what the best thing to do in your life is? How do you know what the best workout is? The best career? The best spiritual and moral beliefs? The best way of thinking? The best way to communicate with other people? Essentially these are all part of the same question that we all ask ourselves at some point – what is the best way I could live?

Trial and error is an effect scientific approach however a human existence is short lived on this planet therefore one may want to take advantage of human experiences prior to one’s existence until realizing there is absolutely no wrong/right, incorrect/correct, worst/best decision that can be made.

[Beingist]

Just keep breathing in, breathing out, eating food, drinking water, and eliminating your waste, and you'll live just fine.