Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Restrictions r over..constraints r over !!actions n thoughts r with minimal mismatch ....these r states attained wen we r stamped mad !!
वह जिससे साँस का रिश्ता बंधा हुआ था मेरा
दबा के दाँत तले साँस काट दी उसने
कटी पतंग का मांझा मुहल्ले भर में लुटा...
वह मेरे साथ ही था दूर तक मगर इक दिन
जो मुड के देखा तो वह दोस्त मेरे साथ न था
फटी हो जेब तो कुछ सिक्के खो भी जाते हैं"
दबा के दाँत तले साँस काट दी उसने
कटी पतंग का मांझा मुहल्ले भर में लुटा...
वह मेरे साथ ही था दूर तक मगर इक दिन
जो मुड के देखा तो वह दोस्त मेरे साथ न था
फटी हो जेब तो कुछ सिक्के खो भी जाते हैं"
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Id, ego, and super-ego
Id, ego, and super-ego are the three parts of the "psychic apparatus" defined in Sigmund Freud'sstructural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described. According to this model, the uncoordinated instinctual trends are the "id"; the organized realistic part of the psyche is the "ego," and the critical and moralizing function the "super-ego."
Even though the model is "structural" and makes reference to an "apparatus", the id, ego, and super-ego are functions of the mind rather than parts of the brain and do not necessarily correspond one-to-one with actual somatic structures of the kind dealt with by neuroscience.
Id :
It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learnt from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of this is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We all approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.
Developmentally, the Id is anterior to the ego; i.e. the psychic apparatus begins, at birth, as an undifferentiated id, part of which then develops into a structured ego. Thus, the id:
| “ | contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, is laid down in the constitution -- above all, therefore, the instincts, which originate from the somatic organisation and which find a first psychical expression here (in the id) in forms unknown to us" EGO:
|
Tripartite (three-part) self
Children need to idealize and emotionally "sink into" and identify with the idealized competence of admired figures. They also need to have their self-worth reflected back ("mirrored") by empathic and caregiving others. These experiences allow them to thereby learn the self-soothing and other skills that are necessary for the development of a healthy (cohesive, vigorous) sense of self. For example, therapists become the idealized parent and through transference the patient begins to get the things he has missed. The patient also has the opportunity to reflect on how early the troubling relationship led to personality problems. Narcissism arises from poor attachment at an early age. Freud also believed that narcissism hides low self esteem, and that therapy will reparent them through transference and they begin to get the things they missed. Later, Kohut added the third major self-object theme (and he dropped the hyphen in self-object) of alter-ego/twinship, the theme of being part of a larger human identification with others.
Though dynamic theory tends to place emphasis on childhood development, Kohut believed that the need for such self-object relationships does not end at childhood but continues throughout all stages of a person's life.
Alpha Elements, Beta Elements, and Alpha Function
The mind grows through exposure to truth.” The foundation for both mental development and truth are, for Bion, emotional experience.
Alpha Elements, Beta Elements, and Alpha Function
The infant requires a mind to help it tolerate and organize experience. β elements, α elements and α function are elements . Bion does not consider β-elements, α- elements, nor α function to actually exist. The terms are instead tools for thinking about what is being observed. They are elements whose qualities remain unsaturated, meaning we cant know the full extent or scope of their meaning, so they are intended as tools for thought rather than real things to be accepted at face value
For Bion, thoughts exist prior to the development of an apparatus for thinking. The apparatus for thinking, the capacity to have thoughts “has to be called into existence to cope with thoughts”. Thoughts exist prior to their realization. Thinking, the capacity to think the thoughts which already exist, develops through another mind providing α-function .
To learn from experience alpha-function must operate on the awareness of the emotional experience; alpha–elements are produced from the impressions of the experience; these are thus made storable and available for dream thoughts and for unconscious waking thinking. . . . If there are only beta-elements, which cannot be made unconscious, there can be no repression, suppression, or learning. (Bion, 1962, p8)
α-function works upon β-elements. β-elements are undigested facts, impressions, and sensations, that cannot be mentalized. α-function digests β-elements, making them available for thought (1962, pp. 6-7).
Beta-elements are not amenable to use in dream thoughts but are suited for use in projective identification. They are influential in producing acting out. These are objects that can be evacuated or used for a kind of thinking that depends on manipulation of what are felt to be things in themselves as if to substitute such manipulations for words or ideas. . . . Alpha-function transforms sense impressions into alpha-elements which resemble, and may in fact be identical with, the visual images with which we are familiar in dreams, namely, the elements that Freud regards as yielding their latent content when the analyst has interpreted them. Failure of alpha-function means the patient cannot dream and therefore cannot sleep. As alpha-function makes the sense impressions of the emotional experience available for conscious and dream –thought the patient who cannot dream cannot go to sleep and cannot wake up.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Loneliness
Loneliness cannot be fought directly. This is one of the fundamentals: you cannot fight with loneliness directly, with the fear of isolation directly. The reason is that all these things do not exist; they are simply absences of something, just as darkness is the absence of light.
Now what do you do when you want the room not to be dark? You don't do anything directly with darkness -- or do you? You cannot push it out. So just bring in light and you will not find darkness at all, because it was the absence of light, simply the absence of light -- not something material, with its own being, not something that exists. But simply because light was not there, you got a false feeling of the existence of darkness.
You can go on fighting with this darkness your whole life and you will not succeed, but just a small candle is enough to dispel it. You have to work for the light because it is positive, existential; it exists on it own. And once light comes, anything that was its absence automatically disappears.
Loneliness is similar to darkness.
You don't know your aloneness. You have not experienced your aloneness and its beauty, its tremendous power, its strength.
Loneliness is absence.
Because you don't know your aloneness, there is fear. You feel lonely so you want to cling to something, to somebody, to some relationship, just to keep the illusion that you are not lonely. But you know you are -- hence the pain. On the one hand you are clinging to something which is not for real, which is just a temporary arrangement -- a relationship, a friendship.
And while you are in the relationship you can create a little illusion to forget your loneliness. But this is the problem: although you can forget for a moment your loneliness, just the next moment you suddenly become aware that the relationship or the friendship is nothing permanent. Yesterday you did not know this man or this woman, you were strangers. Today you are friends -- who knows about tomorrow? Tomorrow you may be strangers again -- hence the pain.
You pretend to feel good to yourself: how wonderful is the relationship, how wonderful is the man or the woman. But behind the illusion -- and the illusion is so thin that you can see behind it -- there is pain in the heart, because the heart knows perfectly well that tomorrow things may not be the same... and they are not the same.
Your whole life's experience supports that things go on changing. Nothing remains stable; you cannot cling to anything in a changing world. You wanted to make your friendship something permanent but your wanting is against the law of change, and that law is not going to make exceptions. It simply goes on doing its own thing. It will change -- everything.
Perhaps in the long run you will understand one day that it was good that it did not listen to you, that existence did not bother about you and just went on doing whatever it wanted to do... not according to your desire.
It may take a little time for you to understand. You want this friend to be your friend forever, but tomorrow she turns into an enemy. Or simply -- "You get lost!" and she is no longer with you. Somebody else fills the gap who is a far superior being. Then suddenly you realize it was good that the other one got lost; otherwise you would have been stuck with her. But still the lesson never goes so deep that you stop asking for permanence.
You will start asking for permanence with this girl or woman , with this man: now this should not change. You have not really learned the lesson that change is simply the very fabric of life. You have to understand it and go with it. Don't create illusions; they are not going to help. And everybody is creating illusions of different kinds.
Society has tried to make arrangements so you can forget loneliness. Arranged marriages are just an effort so that you know your wife is with you. All religions resist divorce for the simple reason that if divorce is allowed then the basic purpose marriage was invented for is destroyed. The basic purpose was to give you a companion, a lifelong companion.
But even though a wife will be with you or a husband will be with you for your whole life, that does not mean that love remains the same. In fact, rather than giving you a companion, they give you a burden to carry. You were lonely, already in trouble, and now you have to carry another person who is lonely. And in this life there is no hope, because once love disappears you both are lonely, and both have to tolerate each other. Now it is not a question of being enchanted by each other; at the most you can patiently tolerate each other. Your loneliness has not been changed by the social strategy of marriage.
It is difficult for an intelligent person not to doubt. You may have millions of people following a certain belief system, but still you cannot be certain that they are with you, that you are not lonely.
God was a device, but all devices have failed. It was a device... when nothing is there, at least God is with you. He is always everywhere with you. In the dark night of the soul, he is with you -- don't be worried.
It was good for a childish humanity to be deceived by this concept, but you cannot be deceived by this concept. This God who is always everywhere -- you don't see him, you can't talk to him, you can't touch him. You don't have any evidence for his existence -- except your desire that he should be there. But your desire is not a proof of anything.
God is only a desire of the childish mind.
Man has come of age, and God has become meaningless. The hypothesis has lost its grip.
What I am trying to say is that every effort that has been directed towards avoiding loneliness has failed, and will fail, because it is against the fundamentals of life. What is needed is not something in which you can forget your loneliness. What is needed is that you become aware of your aloneness, which is a reality. And it is so beautiful to experience it, to feel it, because it is your freedom from the crowd, from the other. It is your freedom from the fear of being lonely.
Just the word "lonely" immediately reminds you that it is like a wound: something is needed to fill it. There is a gap and it hurts: something needs to be filled in. The very word "aloneness" does not have the same sense of a wound, of a gap which has to be filled. Aloneness simply means completeness. You are whole; there is no need of anybody else to complete you.
So try to find your innermost center, where you are always alone, have always been alone. In life, in death -- wherever you are you will be alone. But it is so full -- it is not empty, it is so full and so complete and so overflowing with all the juices of life, with all the beauties and benedictions of existence, that once you have tasted aloneness the pain in the heart will disappear. Instead, a new rhythm of tremendous sweetness, peace, joy, bliss, will be there.
It does not mean that a man who is centered in his aloneness, complete in himself, cannot make friends -- in fact only he can make friends, because now it is no longer a need, it is just sharing. He has so much; he can share.
Friendship can be of two types. One is a friendship in which you are a beggar -- you need something from the other to help your loneliness -- and the other is also a beggar; he wants the same from you. And naturally two beggars cannot help each other. Soon they will see that their begging from a beggar has doubled or multiplied the need. Instead of one beggar, now there are two. And if, unfortunately, they have children, then there are a whole company of beggars who are asking -- and nobody has anything to give.
So everybody is frustrated and angry, and everybody feels he is being cheated, deceived. And in fact nobody is cheating and nobody is deceiving, because what have you got?
The other kind of friendship, the other kind of love, has a totally different quality. It is not of need, it is out of having so much that you want to share. A new kind of joy has come into your being -- that of sharing, which you were not ever aware of before. You have always been begging.
When you share, there is no question of clinging. You flow with existence, you flow with life's change, because it doesn't matter with whom you share. It can be the same person tomorrow -- the same person for your whole life -- or it can be different persons. It is not a contract, it is not a marriage; it is simply out of your fullness that you want to give. So whosoever happens to be near you, you give it. And giving is such a joy.
Begging is such a misery. Even if you get something through begging, you will remain miserable. It hurts. It hurts your pride, it hurts your integrity. But sharing makes you more centered, more integrated, more proud, but not more egoistic -- more proud that existence has been compassionate to you. It is not ego; it is a totally different phenomenon... a recognition that existence has allowed you something for which millions of people are trying, but at the wrong door. You happen to be at the right door.
You are proud of your blissfulness and all that existence has given to you. Fear disappears, darkness disappears, the pain disappears, the desire for the other disappears.
You can love a person, and if the person loves somebody else there will not be any jealousy, because you loved out of so much joy. It was not a clinging. You were not holding the other person in prison. You were not worried that the other person may slip out of your hands, that somebody else may start having a love affair...
When you are sharing your joy, you don't create a prison for anybody. You simply give. You don't even expect gratitude or thankfulness because you are not giving to get anything, not even gratitude. You are giving because you are so full you have to give.
So if anybody is thankful, you are thankful to the person who has accepted your love, who has accepted your gift. He has unburdened you, he allowed you to shower on him. And the more you share, the more you give, the more you have. So it does not make you a miser, it does not create a new fear that "I may lose it." In fact the more you lose it, the more fresh waters are flowing in from springs you have not been aware of before.
So I will not tell you to do anything about your loneliness.
Look for your aloneness.
Forget loneliness, forget darkness, forget pain. These are just the absence of aloneness. The experience of aloneness will dispel them instantly. And the method is the same: just watch your mind, be aware. Become more and more conscious, so finally you are only conscious of yourself. That is the point where you become aware of aloneness.
You will be surprised that different religions have given different names to the ultimate state of realization. The three religions born outside of India don't have any name for it because they never went far in the search for oneself. They remained childish, immature, clinging to a God, clinging to prayer, clinging to a savior. You can see what I mean: they are always dependent -- somebody else is to save them. They are not mature. Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- they are not mature at all and perhaps that is the reason they have influenced the greatest majority in the world, because most of the people in the world are immature. They have a certain affinity.
But the three religions in India have three names for this ultimate state. And I remembered this because of the word aloneness. Jainism has chosen kaivalya, aloneness, as the ultimate state of being. Just as Buddhism chose nirvana, no-selfness, and Hinduism chose moksha, freedom, Jainism chose absolute aloneness. All three words are beautiful. They are three different aspects of the same reality. You can call it liberation, freedom; you can call it aloneness; you can call it selflessness, nothingness -- just different indicators towards that ultimate experience for which no name is sufficient.
But always look to see if anything that you are facing as a problem is a negative thing or a positive thing. If it is a negative thing then don't fight with it; don't bother about it at all. Just look for the positive of it, and you will be at the right door.
Most of the people in the world miss because they start fighting directly with the negative door.
There is no door; there is only darkness, there is only absence. And the more they fight, the more they find failure, the more they become dejected, pessimistic ... and ultimately they start finding that life has no meaning, that it is simply torture. But their mistake is they entered from the wrong door.
So before you face a problem, just look at the problem: is it an absence of something? And all your problems are the absence of something. And once you have found what they are the absence of, then go after the positive. And the moment you find the positive, the light -- the darkness is finished.
Now what do you do when you want the room not to be dark? You don't do anything directly with darkness -- or do you? You cannot push it out. So just bring in light and you will not find darkness at all, because it was the absence of light, simply the absence of light -- not something material, with its own being, not something that exists. But simply because light was not there, you got a false feeling of the existence of darkness.
You can go on fighting with this darkness your whole life and you will not succeed, but just a small candle is enough to dispel it. You have to work for the light because it is positive, existential; it exists on it own. And once light comes, anything that was its absence automatically disappears.
Loneliness is similar to darkness.
You don't know your aloneness. You have not experienced your aloneness and its beauty, its tremendous power, its strength.
Loneliness is absence.
Because you don't know your aloneness, there is fear. You feel lonely so you want to cling to something, to somebody, to some relationship, just to keep the illusion that you are not lonely. But you know you are -- hence the pain. On the one hand you are clinging to something which is not for real, which is just a temporary arrangement -- a relationship, a friendship.
And while you are in the relationship you can create a little illusion to forget your loneliness. But this is the problem: although you can forget for a moment your loneliness, just the next moment you suddenly become aware that the relationship or the friendship is nothing permanent. Yesterday you did not know this man or this woman, you were strangers. Today you are friends -- who knows about tomorrow? Tomorrow you may be strangers again -- hence the pain.
You pretend to feel good to yourself: how wonderful is the relationship, how wonderful is the man or the woman. But behind the illusion -- and the illusion is so thin that you can see behind it -- there is pain in the heart, because the heart knows perfectly well that tomorrow things may not be the same... and they are not the same.
Your whole life's experience supports that things go on changing. Nothing remains stable; you cannot cling to anything in a changing world. You wanted to make your friendship something permanent but your wanting is against the law of change, and that law is not going to make exceptions. It simply goes on doing its own thing. It will change -- everything.
Perhaps in the long run you will understand one day that it was good that it did not listen to you, that existence did not bother about you and just went on doing whatever it wanted to do... not according to your desire.
It may take a little time for you to understand. You want this friend to be your friend forever, but tomorrow she turns into an enemy. Or simply -- "You get lost!" and she is no longer with you. Somebody else fills the gap who is a far superior being. Then suddenly you realize it was good that the other one got lost; otherwise you would have been stuck with her. But still the lesson never goes so deep that you stop asking for permanence.
You will start asking for permanence with this girl or woman , with this man: now this should not change. You have not really learned the lesson that change is simply the very fabric of life. You have to understand it and go with it. Don't create illusions; they are not going to help. And everybody is creating illusions of different kinds.
Society has tried to make arrangements so you can forget loneliness. Arranged marriages are just an effort so that you know your wife is with you. All religions resist divorce for the simple reason that if divorce is allowed then the basic purpose marriage was invented for is destroyed. The basic purpose was to give you a companion, a lifelong companion.
But even though a wife will be with you or a husband will be with you for your whole life, that does not mean that love remains the same. In fact, rather than giving you a companion, they give you a burden to carry. You were lonely, already in trouble, and now you have to carry another person who is lonely. And in this life there is no hope, because once love disappears you both are lonely, and both have to tolerate each other. Now it is not a question of being enchanted by each other; at the most you can patiently tolerate each other. Your loneliness has not been changed by the social strategy of marriage.
It is difficult for an intelligent person not to doubt. You may have millions of people following a certain belief system, but still you cannot be certain that they are with you, that you are not lonely.
God was a device, but all devices have failed. It was a device... when nothing is there, at least God is with you. He is always everywhere with you. In the dark night of the soul, he is with you -- don't be worried.
It was good for a childish humanity to be deceived by this concept, but you cannot be deceived by this concept. This God who is always everywhere -- you don't see him, you can't talk to him, you can't touch him. You don't have any evidence for his existence -- except your desire that he should be there. But your desire is not a proof of anything.
God is only a desire of the childish mind.
Man has come of age, and God has become meaningless. The hypothesis has lost its grip.
What I am trying to say is that every effort that has been directed towards avoiding loneliness has failed, and will fail, because it is against the fundamentals of life. What is needed is not something in which you can forget your loneliness. What is needed is that you become aware of your aloneness, which is a reality. And it is so beautiful to experience it, to feel it, because it is your freedom from the crowd, from the other. It is your freedom from the fear of being lonely.
Just the word "lonely" immediately reminds you that it is like a wound: something is needed to fill it. There is a gap and it hurts: something needs to be filled in. The very word "aloneness" does not have the same sense of a wound, of a gap which has to be filled. Aloneness simply means completeness. You are whole; there is no need of anybody else to complete you.
So try to find your innermost center, where you are always alone, have always been alone. In life, in death -- wherever you are you will be alone. But it is so full -- it is not empty, it is so full and so complete and so overflowing with all the juices of life, with all the beauties and benedictions of existence, that once you have tasted aloneness the pain in the heart will disappear. Instead, a new rhythm of tremendous sweetness, peace, joy, bliss, will be there.
It does not mean that a man who is centered in his aloneness, complete in himself, cannot make friends -- in fact only he can make friends, because now it is no longer a need, it is just sharing. He has so much; he can share.
Friendship can be of two types. One is a friendship in which you are a beggar -- you need something from the other to help your loneliness -- and the other is also a beggar; he wants the same from you. And naturally two beggars cannot help each other. Soon they will see that their begging from a beggar has doubled or multiplied the need. Instead of one beggar, now there are two. And if, unfortunately, they have children, then there are a whole company of beggars who are asking -- and nobody has anything to give.
So everybody is frustrated and angry, and everybody feels he is being cheated, deceived. And in fact nobody is cheating and nobody is deceiving, because what have you got?
The other kind of friendship, the other kind of love, has a totally different quality. It is not of need, it is out of having so much that you want to share. A new kind of joy has come into your being -- that of sharing, which you were not ever aware of before. You have always been begging.
When you share, there is no question of clinging. You flow with existence, you flow with life's change, because it doesn't matter with whom you share. It can be the same person tomorrow -- the same person for your whole life -- or it can be different persons. It is not a contract, it is not a marriage; it is simply out of your fullness that you want to give. So whosoever happens to be near you, you give it. And giving is such a joy.
Begging is such a misery. Even if you get something through begging, you will remain miserable. It hurts. It hurts your pride, it hurts your integrity. But sharing makes you more centered, more integrated, more proud, but not more egoistic -- more proud that existence has been compassionate to you. It is not ego; it is a totally different phenomenon... a recognition that existence has allowed you something for which millions of people are trying, but at the wrong door. You happen to be at the right door.
You are proud of your blissfulness and all that existence has given to you. Fear disappears, darkness disappears, the pain disappears, the desire for the other disappears.
You can love a person, and if the person loves somebody else there will not be any jealousy, because you loved out of so much joy. It was not a clinging. You were not holding the other person in prison. You were not worried that the other person may slip out of your hands, that somebody else may start having a love affair...
When you are sharing your joy, you don't create a prison for anybody. You simply give. You don't even expect gratitude or thankfulness because you are not giving to get anything, not even gratitude. You are giving because you are so full you have to give.
So if anybody is thankful, you are thankful to the person who has accepted your love, who has accepted your gift. He has unburdened you, he allowed you to shower on him. And the more you share, the more you give, the more you have. So it does not make you a miser, it does not create a new fear that "I may lose it." In fact the more you lose it, the more fresh waters are flowing in from springs you have not been aware of before.
So I will not tell you to do anything about your loneliness.
Look for your aloneness.
Forget loneliness, forget darkness, forget pain. These are just the absence of aloneness. The experience of aloneness will dispel them instantly. And the method is the same: just watch your mind, be aware. Become more and more conscious, so finally you are only conscious of yourself. That is the point where you become aware of aloneness.
You will be surprised that different religions have given different names to the ultimate state of realization. The three religions born outside of India don't have any name for it because they never went far in the search for oneself. They remained childish, immature, clinging to a God, clinging to prayer, clinging to a savior. You can see what I mean: they are always dependent -- somebody else is to save them. They are not mature. Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- they are not mature at all and perhaps that is the reason they have influenced the greatest majority in the world, because most of the people in the world are immature. They have a certain affinity.
But the three religions in India have three names for this ultimate state. And I remembered this because of the word aloneness. Jainism has chosen kaivalya, aloneness, as the ultimate state of being. Just as Buddhism chose nirvana, no-selfness, and Hinduism chose moksha, freedom, Jainism chose absolute aloneness. All three words are beautiful. They are three different aspects of the same reality. You can call it liberation, freedom; you can call it aloneness; you can call it selflessness, nothingness -- just different indicators towards that ultimate experience for which no name is sufficient.
But always look to see if anything that you are facing as a problem is a negative thing or a positive thing. If it is a negative thing then don't fight with it; don't bother about it at all. Just look for the positive of it, and you will be at the right door.
Most of the people in the world miss because they start fighting directly with the negative door.
There is no door; there is only darkness, there is only absence. And the more they fight, the more they find failure, the more they become dejected, pessimistic ... and ultimately they start finding that life has no meaning, that it is simply torture. But their mistake is they entered from the wrong door.
So before you face a problem, just look at the problem: is it an absence of something? And all your problems are the absence of something. And once you have found what they are the absence of, then go after the positive. And the moment you find the positive, the light -- the darkness is finished.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
The Practice of Consciousness
The practice of consciousness can be performed by making efforts to be aware of ourselves in any and all situations. If we set out conscientiously to be aware of ourselves continually throughout the day, we first discover that we cannot do it. We get distracted constantly and, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we spend our day more distracted than aware. This general distraction may be seen as a sort of pinpoint awareness; we are aware of one thing and then a different thing and so on, but rarely do we experience ourselves as existing simultaneously with the object of our attention. This realization of the difficulty in attaining any degree of increased awareness is a first fruit of efforts to increase consciousness.
So, in fact, the practice of awareness at once produces results. The chief difficulty, perhaps, is accepting what we observe and starting with that, not trying to force observations to fit pre-conceived ideas of what we might or should experience. It seems paradoxical, or even disheartening, to attain some result such as the observation 'my mind wanders' rather than something like 'I feel a peace pervading my being', but it is essential to build with clear, simple observations that suggest practical next steps rather than hope-filled dead-ends.
If we observe that our mind wanders and that this causes us to forget about trying to be aware of ourselves in our surroundings, we can make experiments specifically on this condition and see what diminishes it, and what aggravates it. Here too it is important to keep things simple and practical. We may find, for example, that we don't do well with the music blaring or the TV on, while we have better luck when walking down Main Street or weeding the garden. We may not do so well when lying in bed or drinking beer in the easy chair but better sitting in a hard chair or in an unaccustomed position. Or vice-versa. There is no end to the small experiments we can make and, in time, these experiments may produce a nucleus of tools we can use to keep our mind from wandering the way it did when we first set out to control awareness.
But perhaps it is not a wandering mind we face when trying to increase our awareness but something else, say strong dissatisfaction with our life, our job, our mate. These too are practical, useful observations. As in the example of a wandering mind, creative experimentation can lead to a collection of practical techniques to help in profiting by this. But first, the feeling itself must be addressed. It hardly serves our goal to become more aware if we simply find ways to suppress feelings which appear to be obstacles. It is necessary to evaluate the feeling, to pursue it with the awareness of ourselves pursuing it. That awareness of ourselves keeps this pursuit from becoming just another distraction and even makes it a part of our general effort to increase awareness. That is, there is no restriction as to what we may try to include in the range of our awareness: feelings, thoughts, muscular tensions, sunlight, wind, a ticking clock, are all fair game.
If, for example, our attempts to increase awareness seem to suffer due to an unpleasant situation existing with our spouse, we can examine our feelings about this, ask ourselves what is the difficulty, why is this difficult, always trying to recognize clear, simple answers that imply obvious next questions and ultimately suggest concrete actions. But we must observe ourselves while we do this, we ourselves must be another object of our awareness, so we watch our thoughts and feelings interacting, perhaps feeding each other to become more and more angry or more and more sad. The simple act of continued awareness can do much toward clarifying turbulent waters and lead to practical decisions on how to deal with the conditions that seem to prohibit awareness. And, most important, we begin to see ourselves as something quite different from what we had imagined ourselves to be.
Consider what an exact knowledge of psychology might lend to such self-examinations.
It is as a result of such efforts that we may begin to recognize some of the obstacles to consciousness pointed out in the psychological ideas of the fourth way. At some point, we begin to connect the strange-sounding set of ideas to our personal experience, and it helps us immeasurably to be able to organize our perceptions by these ideas. We begin to realize that people have been here before, have known where we are and how to grow from this point. In addition, we begin to acquire a common language in which we can discuss this inner world with others in a similar situation.
While the practice of consciousness is a personal pursuit it should not be an isolating one. On the contrary, the increase of personal awareness of ourselves in our surroundings increasingly comes to include others—the friends, relatives, acquaintances, and strangers we are with in moments of greater awareness. And, if we are lucky enough to have friends engaged in the same pursuit of greater awareness, the sharing of observations can become an invaluable source of new ideas for experiments, and such gatherings in themselves are supportive environments to practice awareness.
Finally, the pursuit of personal consciousness leads us out of ourselves and through the back door, so to speak, through ourselves and out into life. Now we can give our friends and our world the attention they deserve—but only after having mastered our own attention to some extent. If the mind does not wander, how much better we attend to another's words and their meaning. If the turbulent emotions of intimate contact clarify to a purity of thinking and feeling, so much finer is a moment with a loved one. If the noise of preconceptions stills, so much richer is the acquaintance with a stranger. In this way, awareness itself becomes an encouragement to us to find ways to increase it.
So, in fact, the practice of awareness at once produces results. The chief difficulty, perhaps, is accepting what we observe and starting with that, not trying to force observations to fit pre-conceived ideas of what we might or should experience. It seems paradoxical, or even disheartening, to attain some result such as the observation 'my mind wanders' rather than something like 'I feel a peace pervading my being', but it is essential to build with clear, simple observations that suggest practical next steps rather than hope-filled dead-ends.
If we observe that our mind wanders and that this causes us to forget about trying to be aware of ourselves in our surroundings, we can make experiments specifically on this condition and see what diminishes it, and what aggravates it. Here too it is important to keep things simple and practical. We may find, for example, that we don't do well with the music blaring or the TV on, while we have better luck when walking down Main Street or weeding the garden. We may not do so well when lying in bed or drinking beer in the easy chair but better sitting in a hard chair or in an unaccustomed position. Or vice-versa. There is no end to the small experiments we can make and, in time, these experiments may produce a nucleus of tools we can use to keep our mind from wandering the way it did when we first set out to control awareness.
But perhaps it is not a wandering mind we face when trying to increase our awareness but something else, say strong dissatisfaction with our life, our job, our mate. These too are practical, useful observations. As in the example of a wandering mind, creative experimentation can lead to a collection of practical techniques to help in profiting by this. But first, the feeling itself must be addressed. It hardly serves our goal to become more aware if we simply find ways to suppress feelings which appear to be obstacles. It is necessary to evaluate the feeling, to pursue it with the awareness of ourselves pursuing it. That awareness of ourselves keeps this pursuit from becoming just another distraction and even makes it a part of our general effort to increase awareness. That is, there is no restriction as to what we may try to include in the range of our awareness: feelings, thoughts, muscular tensions, sunlight, wind, a ticking clock, are all fair game.
If, for example, our attempts to increase awareness seem to suffer due to an unpleasant situation existing with our spouse, we can examine our feelings about this, ask ourselves what is the difficulty, why is this difficult, always trying to recognize clear, simple answers that imply obvious next questions and ultimately suggest concrete actions. But we must observe ourselves while we do this, we ourselves must be another object of our awareness, so we watch our thoughts and feelings interacting, perhaps feeding each other to become more and more angry or more and more sad. The simple act of continued awareness can do much toward clarifying turbulent waters and lead to practical decisions on how to deal with the conditions that seem to prohibit awareness. And, most important, we begin to see ourselves as something quite different from what we had imagined ourselves to be.
Consider what an exact knowledge of psychology might lend to such self-examinations.
It is as a result of such efforts that we may begin to recognize some of the obstacles to consciousness pointed out in the psychological ideas of the fourth way. At some point, we begin to connect the strange-sounding set of ideas to our personal experience, and it helps us immeasurably to be able to organize our perceptions by these ideas. We begin to realize that people have been here before, have known where we are and how to grow from this point. In addition, we begin to acquire a common language in which we can discuss this inner world with others in a similar situation.
While the practice of consciousness is a personal pursuit it should not be an isolating one. On the contrary, the increase of personal awareness of ourselves in our surroundings increasingly comes to include others—the friends, relatives, acquaintances, and strangers we are with in moments of greater awareness. And, if we are lucky enough to have friends engaged in the same pursuit of greater awareness, the sharing of observations can become an invaluable source of new ideas for experiments, and such gatherings in themselves are supportive environments to practice awareness.
Finally, the pursuit of personal consciousness leads us out of ourselves and through the back door, so to speak, through ourselves and out into life. Now we can give our friends and our world the attention they deserve—but only after having mastered our own attention to some extent. If the mind does not wander, how much better we attend to another's words and their meaning. If the turbulent emotions of intimate contact clarify to a purity of thinking and feeling, so much finer is a moment with a loved one. If the noise of preconceptions stills, so much richer is the acquaintance with a stranger. In this way, awareness itself becomes an encouragement to us to find ways to increase it.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Two views : Scientific one
Argument of the day: On atheism
1.Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem: "Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrates that it is impossible for the Bible to be both true and complete."Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem applies to any consistent formal system which:Is sufficiently expressive that it can model ordinary arithmetic Has a decision procedure for determining whether a given string is an axiom within the formal system (i.e. is "recursive")Gödel showed that in any such system S, it is possible to formulate an expression which says "This statement is unprovable in S".If such a statement were provable in S, then S would be inconsistent. Hence any such system must either be incomplete or inconsistent. If a formal system is incomplete, then there exist statements within the system which can never be proven to be valid or invalid ('true' or 'false') within the system.Essentially, Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem revolves around getting formal systems to formulate a variation on the "Liar Paradox". The classic Liar Paradox sentence in ordinary English is "This sentence is false."Note that if a proposition is undecidable, the formal system cannot even deduce that it is undecidable. (This is Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem, which is rather tricky to prove.)The logic used in theological discussions is rarely well defined, so claims that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrates that it is impossible to prove (or disprove) the existence of God are worthless in isolation.One can trivially define a formal system in which it is possible to prove the existence of God, simply by having the existence of God stated as an axiom. (This is unlikely to be viewed by atheists as a convincing proof, however.)It may be possible to succeed in producing a formal system built on axioms that both atheists and theists agree with. It may then be possible to show that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem holds for that system. However, that would still not demonstrate that it is impossible to prove that God exists within the system. Furthermore, it certainly wouldn't tell us anything about whether it is possible to prove the existence of God generally.Note also that all of these hypothetical formal systems tell us nothing about the actual existence of God; the formal systems are just abstractions.Another frequent claim is that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrates that a religious text (the Bible, the Book of Mormon or whatever) cannot be both consistent and universally applicable. Religious texts are not formal systems, so such claims are nonsense.
2.Occam's Razor: wot is it actually?"People keep talking about Occam's Razor. What is it?"
William of Occam formulated a principle which has become known as Occam's Razor. In its original form, it said "Do not multiply entities unnecessarily." That is, if you can explain something without supposing the existence of some entity, then do so.Nowadays when people refer to Occam's Razor, they often express it more generally, for example as "Take the simplest solution".The relevance to atheism is that we can look at two possible explanations for what we see around us:There is an incredibly intricate and complex universe out there, which came into being as a result of natural processes. There is an incredibly intricate and complex universe out there, and there is also a God who created the universe. Clearly this God must be of non-zero complexity.Given that both explanations fit the facts, Occam's Razor might suggest that we should take the simpler of the two -- solution number one. Unfortunately, some argue that there is a third even more simple solution:There isn't an incredibly intricate and complex universe out there. We just imagine that there is.This third option leads us logically towards solipsism, which many people find unacceptable....
Thnx.
Have a Nice Day :)
Friday, August 10, 2007
Destiny… Defined in a NanosecondBy Dave Shields
It’s amazing to think back on key moments in our lives and consider how they altered our future. It’s enlightening when we can see those moments in the lives of others. Maybe that’s one of the things that rivets us to the Tour de France, and to sports in general.
Dave Zabriskie invested incredible preparation into Saturday’s stage one time trial. Anybody could plainly see that two seconds redefined his world. In less time than it takes to draw a full breath, he changed from another young hopeful into a name we’ll never forget. Would this moment have happened if Lance Armstrong’s foot had been more securely clipped to his pedal in the start house? If Zabriskie had fallen short by even a single second it would have still been a great performance, but not nearly as many people would have cared, and Dave wouldn’t have learned what it feels like to wear yellow.
I got to sit down in the home where Zabriskie grew up the day after the biggest race of his life. His mother, Sheree Hamok, related talking to him by phone while he waited for his competiton to finish. “Did I do good?” he asked. “Yeah, you did real good, Dave.” She’d talked with her son as he waited near the finish line, worrying that Armstrong might relegate him to second place.
We all know what happened. The kid from Salt Lake City who grew up wanting to be a Super Hero had just turned himself into one. Through relentless effort he’d blurred the border between dream and reality. Even his widest grin couldn’t contain the joy, and aren’t we fortunate for it. I practically drowned in the emotion.
Two days after my visit to Zabriskie’s home I watched the Team Time Trial while doing an interview on KNBR in San Francisco, Dave’s current off-season home. His performance was clearly a big part of the reason CSC was surprising everybody on this stage. His team set the best times all the way along course, despite being a heavy underdog to Discovery.
Then, only 1200 meters from the finish line, another of those epic moments occurred; only this time it was the bad sort. Zabriskie slammed into the pavement. He skittered along the blacktop, still attached to his bicycle, narrowly avoided by his teammates. Could he yet comprehend that catastrophe had stolen his dream. The radio hosts, men who admitted having little interest in cycling when our interview began, were riveted. The race had delivered more than they ever expected.
Dave quickly got onto a new bicycle, but by now reality must have been hitting hard. I spoke to his mother not long after she heard from him. They were both devastated. She, because she wanted to hold her boy in her arms. He, because such incredible possibilities had disappeared so suddenly.
Zabriskie must have dreamed of winning the Tour de France from time to time, but his mom says his primary commitment has always been to supporting Ivan Basso, his team leader. Now, despite bruised ribs, a stitched elbow, several patches of road rash, and a tremendous mental jolt, Dave’s focus must turn entirely to that objective. He’s going to have to overcome a lot to accomplish it.
I, for one, will be watching closely. Given that Dave has a history of performing at every level, of reaching every objective, of overcoming every obstacle, I’m looking forward to a special performance. For those of you aren’t convinced yet, we’re all about to see how this kid responds to adversity. I think he’s about to prove that he’s the real deal. I can’t wait to tune in, and then hang on tight!
Dave Zabriskie invested incredible preparation into Saturday’s stage one time trial. Anybody could plainly see that two seconds redefined his world. In less time than it takes to draw a full breath, he changed from another young hopeful into a name we’ll never forget. Would this moment have happened if Lance Armstrong’s foot had been more securely clipped to his pedal in the start house? If Zabriskie had fallen short by even a single second it would have still been a great performance, but not nearly as many people would have cared, and Dave wouldn’t have learned what it feels like to wear yellow.
I got to sit down in the home where Zabriskie grew up the day after the biggest race of his life. His mother, Sheree Hamok, related talking to him by phone while he waited for his competiton to finish. “Did I do good?” he asked. “Yeah, you did real good, Dave.” She’d talked with her son as he waited near the finish line, worrying that Armstrong might relegate him to second place.
We all know what happened. The kid from Salt Lake City who grew up wanting to be a Super Hero had just turned himself into one. Through relentless effort he’d blurred the border between dream and reality. Even his widest grin couldn’t contain the joy, and aren’t we fortunate for it. I practically drowned in the emotion.
Two days after my visit to Zabriskie’s home I watched the Team Time Trial while doing an interview on KNBR in San Francisco, Dave’s current off-season home. His performance was clearly a big part of the reason CSC was surprising everybody on this stage. His team set the best times all the way along course, despite being a heavy underdog to Discovery.
Then, only 1200 meters from the finish line, another of those epic moments occurred; only this time it was the bad sort. Zabriskie slammed into the pavement. He skittered along the blacktop, still attached to his bicycle, narrowly avoided by his teammates. Could he yet comprehend that catastrophe had stolen his dream. The radio hosts, men who admitted having little interest in cycling when our interview began, were riveted. The race had delivered more than they ever expected.
Dave quickly got onto a new bicycle, but by now reality must have been hitting hard. I spoke to his mother not long after she heard from him. They were both devastated. She, because she wanted to hold her boy in her arms. He, because such incredible possibilities had disappeared so suddenly.
Zabriskie must have dreamed of winning the Tour de France from time to time, but his mom says his primary commitment has always been to supporting Ivan Basso, his team leader. Now, despite bruised ribs, a stitched elbow, several patches of road rash, and a tremendous mental jolt, Dave’s focus must turn entirely to that objective. He’s going to have to overcome a lot to accomplish it.
I, for one, will be watching closely. Given that Dave has a history of performing at every level, of reaching every objective, of overcoming every obstacle, I’m looking forward to a special performance. For those of you aren’t convinced yet, we’re all about to see how this kid responds to adversity. I think he’s about to prove that he’s the real deal. I can’t wait to tune in, and then hang on tight!
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