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.

[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!"

[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***

[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!

[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.