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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 18, 2017 at 12:04am

Emotions, whether you like them or not, are just what they happen to be. They don't really come in "positive" or "negative" flavors -- just "liked" or "disliked" -- with no more choice of whether to 'have' one than you'd have of not thinking of a hippopotamus (if you tried really hard not to). They're not 'you', not not 'you', but just there.

You may want to look carefully at whatever emotion is hanging around, see whether you really look as good in it as you'd thought -- and certainly you don't want to use an emotion as your excuse for doing anything you'd be sorry about later.

But as guides for what to do next, in typical circumstances, emotions work as well as anything else we've got. When you don't feel like walking off a building, it really may not be a good idea. Even reflexes are usually right: If you've put your finger on something hot, and there's no good reason for leaving it there, taking it off is likely the best available move. Or thinking: If some plan looks like a really bad idea, that's your clue right there!

That is, most nearly always there's no good reason for people to override their built-in mechanisms; you'd need to be one hell of an engineer to design anything that worked half as well...

Rather than prescribe some new decision-making policy -- A good Buddhist would just say to look closely at whatever's directly observable: what you're thinking about it, how that feels, whether it's really so. What comes next ought to follow naturally.

_The Sound of Silence_ by Ajahn Sumedho looks like a good place to start...

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 18, 2017 at 12:28am

Although somewhat long, this web page samples how Maurice Nicoll used "negative emotion" in his writings:

http://www.huttoncommentaries.com/article.php?a_id=36 (some Friends might be interested)

I don't look for any universal agreement on how words are used.  Some might say "loyalty" is an emotion, not something I'd say.  "How it really is" depends on one's habits of thought (the robotic machinery I'm talking about). 

Anyway, I've decided Maurice (a relative newcomer to my library) is pretty cool, and am now hailing "Russian Mystics" for their contributions more:

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2017/08/consciousness.html  (for example -- Quaker journal entry)

That's just me though, not suggesting my fave flaves need be everyone's cup o tea, quite the contrary.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 18, 2017 at 1:05am

Well, if you've already picked the model of self you're going to assume, I would still say "Don't assume any model; observe!" -- but I wouldn't expect to change your mind!

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 18, 2017 at 1:21am

I tend to flit from writer to writer, teacher to teacher, like a bee. 

Five models in five days would be my idea of a fun time... like a tourist.

Sounds superficial I'm sure. 

I like this book, Maps of the Mind.  Could use a lot more in that genre:

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3627018W/Maps_of_the_mind

You've likely seen it, big time reader that ye be as well.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 18, 2017 at 9:33am

Well, they'll tell you you're a this, or a that, a beast or a robot or a war between Good and Evil, an uppity slave or the master of your life -- and since it's all about you, in theory, it could get fascinating. Diagnosed at last!

I'd say you're another of God's baby kids, thumping around in Daddy's shoes now & then... but anyone I'd trust says "Take your own look!"

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 18, 2017 at 10:15am

I take my own inward and outward looks, as an observer, and also wonder about the difference, twixt inward and outward.

One of my favorite teachers was Ludwig Wittgenstein, to the point of a college thesis and, these days, proud custodianship of over forty books by and about (mostly about the guy and his philosophy -- he was pretty spare in his output, one of those "make every word count" types).

I bring up LW because, unlike most philosophers, he encourages questioning the authority of private introspection (inward looking) as a principal source for meanings of words such as "think", "pain", "understanding" and whatever else we've inherited in the way of tools for sharing about "privately inward" matters (like a private garden, one per Friend).

Rather, understanding of English or other human tongue stems from an outward process of education and enculturation which we'd best investigate by attending to others as seriously as to ourselves. The relationship space among humans, the mall, is where alternative ways of "telling it" get tested and adopted and if one looks only inward for what "thinking" means (one example), many boats will be missed.

The "inward light" is mostly still innocent of our millennia of sense-making as humans on Planet Earth (Buddhist 'uncarved block' metaphor). Or maybe: "that still small voice doesn't speak your native language nor any language one might think in" -- all that noisy chatter, if that's what you hear, is something else.

It's in reading those delightful Victorian novels by omniscient narrators, deep in the heads of every character, giving their players' thinking down to nuance and veiled allusion, that we really get to know "thinking", in the British theatrical sense (from which many soap operas derive).  Not every culture has that, praise Allah.  One needs a lot of brainwashing (programming), and lots of bandwidth, not to mention devoted fans, to stage a comedy of manners full of fluttering hearts and flights of fancy (like a midsummer daydream).

That being said, I would echo the call to cultivate one's neuroplasticity ("stay open-minded") in the process of making of a wise guinea pig of him or her, it or them.

"Be a willing guinea pig unto thy sense of a deeper teacher" might be the religious text of a spiritually close neighbor whom I sync with, even though I'm actually not a big believer in neurons as "originators of thoughts" any more than are radio wires, of radio programs ("brain-transceiver model" some call that one or "brain as tuning device").

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 18, 2017 at 2:46pm

To the extent that human thinking&behavior makes coherent sense, ie that what people think, feel and do is explainable in terms of desires and intentions, we're going to approximate a mechanical model. To the extent that it's random, we escape the mechanical models but end up looking like twitching lumps. Tis a no-win trade-off. "Life's a pudding full of plums; why not take it/as it comes?"

The neurons make a perfectly good 'psychological' model, ie an explanation of the outwardly-observable stuff.

Any connection between those neurons and the 'phenomenological' aspect of consciousness, ie the ongoing fact that observation is happening

is simple Mystery: 'Heer therr bee Dragons!'

"God does it" is the only explanation of that part that makes any sense to me.

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Permalink Reply by Keith Saylor on 8th mo. 18, 2017 at 6:52pm

I am immanent Presence and immanent Presence is in me. I do not think about it and draw outward constructs to contain it ... I live the Life itself in itself in all things.

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 19, 2017 at 1:40pm

Enlightenment:  sufficiently satisfied with one's own [ suffering ] (having it be OK) to have room to concern oneself with the [ suffering ] of others (compassion).

[ suffering ] == [ spiritual journey ]  (feel free to swap one for the other).

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