UCWG 034: Why Should Anyone Give a Damn About Spiritual Enlightenment?
Uncomfortable Conversations with Gregory
English - July 07, 2017 21:45 - 2 hours - 118 MB - ★★★★★ - 39 ratingsPhilosophy Society & Culture Health & Fitness dialogue introspection lifecoaching philosophy Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Alexander, a young man struggling to express himself fully after reading Gregory’s book (Travel As Transformation), returns to Uncomfortable Conversations With Gregory after his appearance in UCWG 006: Does Knowledge Without Power Lead to Idle Suffering? to carry the dialogue on from their first conversation about being bold enough to pursue the interests of great intellect. The conversation this time around gets much more personal to both Gregory and Alexander’s unique perspectives on themselves and interaction with the people of the world, eventually coming to a head for the purpose of meditation and enlightenment.
The world is composed of only two things: experiences you are prepared to handle and experiences you are not prepared to handle. When an event that is outside your unconscious expectations comes into your life, you shift your conscious attention toward it so that you can figure it out and learn how to apply it in your life. This necessarily slows down your thought processes, however.
Whenever two people communicate, they have to be able to fit their thoughts into a structure that will make sense in the internal model of the one they are talking to. No communication is ever perfect. There is always information lost. There is always imperfect representation. Communication only needs to be good enough to be functional, so that two separate entities can come together in pursuit of a common, conscious goal.
All people rely on narrative structures to layer cognitive categories to filter the information that drives their lives. We all tell stories to explain or to justify who we think we are and what we think we are pursuing. Our conscious cognitive structures give justification for our unconscious wants, and this grows only more complex as we evolve out of childhood. This is why is so important to question every thought and value in our minds as our lives grow more mature and complex.
Regardless of the specific complexities within a person’s mind, everyone bridges the gap through the use of language. Language forces us to meet somewhere in the middle of our unique subjective worlds and share, for a time, an understanding of how things are. To improve our communication, we need to be able to reach into our subconscious assumptions and processes about other people. We all operate from flawed axioms about how human beings are supposed to work, and this prevents us from seeing things clearly and really connecting with others.
Alexander describes his conception of enlightenment as the pulling apart of the layers of the conceptual mind, the personal identity someone has of themselves. The enlightened mind is more easily able to address each layer of itself without harmfully tying them all together into conflicted states that do not serve the goals of the individual. The enlightened person has a greater perspective on why he perceives things the way he does and wants what he wants. The quality of enlightenment means the difference between a fulfilled life and a life of constant suffering, regardless of the activities a person pursues.
Meditation is supposed to give a person the perspective of enlightenment, yet most meditators limit its effect to highly specific practices. The effects of meditation can and should be brought into regular active life, to the point where times set aside for meditation are no longer required. The goal is to become aware of your mind in everything you do, not just when you’ve decided it’s time to engage in spiritual practice. Meditation in a controlled setting does not prepare you for your mind’s interaction with the real, chaotic world. It creates addiction and dependence.
If you don’t think you have an ego anymore, you are more subject to the delusions of the ego. This is a state of spiritual pride: to delude yourself into thinking you are immune to delusion. A crazy person doesn’t know they are crazy. The devil tricks the world into thinking he no longer exists so that he has greater manipulative power over it. He who says he is enlightened has just revealed himself not to be so.
The goal of enlightenment is not to acquire any specific piece of knowledge or physical skill. Enlightenment is disentangling yourself from whatever arbitrary narratives and cognitive structures determine how your mind processes information. The enlightened man can adapt to new circumstances without a prior structure by simply coming into them from neutral conditions and building a new structure from the ground up. In any moment, he can reset himself to the present and act as though he knew nothing before.
People come into conflict when they use terms in a categorical way that conflicts with other commonly held categories. Being transgender or homosexual rises out of a set of conditional qualities, and instead becomes an identity and a sociological concept. If everyone were able to just own the desires and apparent qualities that apply to them, these group identity clashes would never happen. Being precise with our language enables us to root out the cause of our deepest psychological misunderstandings and social problems.
Know what you want, and know how your mind works. If you knew nothing but those two things with certainty, you would live a very satisfied life.
Things mentioned:
UCWG 006: Does Knowledge without Power Lead to Idle Suffering? Matching Intellect with Boldness of Action -
Gregory’s book, Travel As Transformation: http://amzn.to/2fDzgkM
UCWG 031: Do You Dare To Follow Your Hero’s Journey to Find Self-Actualization? Life Purpose As The Highest Priority With Leo Gura of Actualized.org -
Actualized.org by Leo Gura:
UCWG 001: How Many Dicks Would You Have to Suck to Know You Weren’t Gay? The Practical Limits of Exploration –
https://gregorydiehl.net/ucwg-001-many-dicks-suck-know-werent-gay-practical-limits-exploration/
E-Prime:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (linguistic relativity):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
Andrew Galambos, Jay Snelson, and the V-50 Lectures:
https://youtu.be/Whx4QA3tGCo?list=PL2902B51D3386B77C
http://www.volitionalscience.org/