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Freewill, To Believe or Not To Believe
I saw that both Carl and Brian noticed my use of the phrase “caved in” in expressing the fact that I was not convinced about the Behaviorist view. There is so much fantastic insight in all of the comments that have gone up from all of you, but I wanted first to use this phrase to express something that I have been thinking about in relation to our discussion.
I think the reason why a phrase like “caved in” comes into play in a discussion like this, is because the scientific, deterministic, materialistic paradigm is so dominant in our culture and much more dominant in our own minds than we may be aware of. William James separated people into the “tough-minded” and the “tender-minded.” The tough-minded were the scientifically inclined who believed in empirical facts and logic. The tender-minded were the romantically inclined who trusted in intuition and emotion. In reality we are all a bit of both.
What was so insightful about James’s conception was not the division itself, which is fairly common, but in his recognition that it is our tough or tender sensibility that leads us to believe one way or another. Most of us think that we are just looking at reality (be it facts and logic, or intuition and emotion) and that reality itself is leading us to our conclusions. But James was saying that a “tough-minded” person and a “tender-minded” person will look at the same reality and come to two completely different conclusions – because of their predispositions. That is why I am trying to leave so much room around the exploration of all these subtle ideas.
Science has a particular way of defining truth – one that we all take almost for granted. Scientifically truth is defined as that which explains present and future phenomenon using the least number of assumptions.
In regards to our discussion, Skinner was certainly tough-minded, and he looked at the facts from his experiments and realized that he could explain human behavior without needing the assumption of their being a mysterious “freewill” to guide it. So to Skinner the belief in “freewill” looked like some unnecessary superstition. To us, with our highly scientifically trained minds, this may seem obvious. In fact it can seem senseless to think that there would be another way to look and see truth. After all truth IS that which is able to explain and predict the best, isn’t it?
But here is the problem. From the stand point of science I agree that it is best to go with the theory that does not need that particular assumption – but, and here is the problem, the fact that you don’t need the assumption to explain reality doesn’t necessarily mean that the assumption is untrue – it only means that you don’t need it to explain reality.
One of the problems with science is that it tends to be blind to its own assumptions. Because it prides itself on not having assumptions, it has a difficult time recognizing its own biggest assumption – that having no assumptions brings you closer to reality. Who says?
Fundamentalist Christians believe that truth is that which is in agreement with the Bible. And you can see that for us who don’t see things this way that just sounds wrong. We all tend to be fundamentalists of one form or another, be it religious, scientific, romantic…whatever.
The Pragmatists created a different way of defining truth. Where science said what was true was whatever could explain reality with the least number of assumptions, Pragmatism said what was true was whatever idea led to the most good when put into action. Pragmatism attempts to add value to the nature of truth where the scientific definition of truth tends to be (and sometimes prides itself on being) valueless, i.e. objective. It has been argued that this is why science is responsible for some of our greatest achievements and at the same time some of our greatest catastrophes.
From a scientific perspective it could be argued that there is no “freewill” because there is no need to assume its existence to explain human behavior. What about from a Pragmatic point of view? As I had asked in my last post that would mean considering the question, “Is it better to believe in or not believe in freewill?”
Let’s imagine a Pragmatic experiment. Take300 people and from 100 of them, extract every possible present and future belief in freewill so that they truly saw themselves as a part of a fluid whole system without individual free agency. Then take 100 and inject them with a permanent sense of being an autonomous free agent. The last 100 people would be the control, and they wouldn’t know for sure one way or the other. Then watch them for a lifetime and see which leads to the best result. WDYT?
I am not saying that I don’t see the enormous explicative power of Skinner’s Operant Conditioning and Radical Behaviorism, in fact quite the opposite, the more I read the more amazed I am by its power to explain human behavior. I just don’t want to generalize that explicative power too broadly. I want to leave a lot of room for the fact that there is a lot we don’t know and we might want to keep the investigation as open as possible for as long as possible.
I also love what is coming together around some of your thoughts about freewill and creative systems. Many, like the contributions of Mary and Sandra are deeply compelling and I look forward to continue exploring this avenue of investigation with you.
Following on the experiment that compares the impact of believing in free will vs. not believing in freewill, let’s consider another possible experiment. Take a group of people who very much want to lose weight. Tell half of them that they just have to lift themselves up by their bootstraps and stop eating so much ice cream, sweets, and other high calorie foods. Encourage them, and tell them that they must pull together their courage, use the power of their free will, and do it.
Explain to the other half of the people that there are things they can do to their environment such as removing the ice cream and sweets from the cupboard, planning small high protein snacks between meals, using a recording sheet to write down the amounts and caloric values of what they eat every day, and arranging with a friend to check in on them and their calorie recordings every day. Also suggest that if they manage to stay below a particular average daily calorie intake for a week that they should arrange with their friend to have a lunch at their favorite place, including their favorite dessert. And continue that agreement indefinitely.
Does anyone doubt which of these people would likely lose most weight? (I can tell you that the research is clear on which approach is most effective.)
Notice that one group appealed to the assumption that they could simply choose, no matter what the conditions, to act in a way that was consistent with their intention. The other group followed the principle that there really are causes for their behavior and that if one did a good job managing those causes, there would be a predictable impact on their own behavior.
The difference between these approaches, in my view, is at the core of our discussion here. The recognition that our behavior is a function of an interdependent system of “variables” — not just what we think or want to impose on ourselves from “within” — is what the behavior scientist brings to the table. There ARE “causes and conditions” for our actions, as the Buddhists say. And it is in our best interests to understand and manage them to affect our own behavior.
The advantage of a scientific understanding of our own behavior is the same advantage as scientific understanding that leads to any other technology. In the end, Skinner was simply attempting to create an effective technology. At a personal level, my attraction to his work was not just that it was philosophically elegant. Far more important, it showed the way to improve education, therapy, management, environmental planning, and so many other human endeavors involving our own behavior. (Of course it also led to amazing tricks by dolphins, creativity in pigeons, and world class athletic performance, but that’s another story.)
If the Pragmatists were committed to doing the most good, then B.F. Skinner was a Pragmatist par excellence. His utopian novel, Walden II, which first repulsed and then enthralled me on second reading, was a story about improving the lives of people by applying the principles derived from a science of behavior in a free society. His lifelong passion for improving education began with observations of the mediocre lessons and results he observed in his daughter’s school. And his urgent pleas toward the end of his life for planning to improve the future, ending world hunger and war, and avoiding environmental disaster were built on solid behavior research about self-management and the variables we can manage now to affect our behavior in the future.
I would say, as a behavior scientist committed to human evolution myself, that the assumption of free will is dangerous compared with the assumption that we can understand and manage the variables that influence our own behavior. I have been involved, for example, in educational work that routinely advances students with learning disabilities at a rate of 2-3 grade levels per year in comparison with conventional educational methods that leave those students achieving less than one grade level per year. But the educational establishment, due to a whole host of assumptions about who we are and how we learn, has consistently rejected those methods. The impact on our society is obvious.
If we want a spiritual technology that can truly advance the evolution of individuals and of the whole, than there is great potential in the collective application of behavior science. As in other areas of life, where successful practices and methods have been discovered outside of behavior science, we can often trace their effectiveness to a set of underlying principles consistent with the findings of behavior science. So why not use what we know from behavior science to improve how we manage our own evolution? To ignore what we know about our own behavior from scientific investigation is, to me, equivalent to ignoring what we know about the biology of disease, the physics of electricity, or any other of the many areas where scientific understanding has led to amazing advances in human life.
Yes, we need to apply scientific discovery in ways that are in alignment with our higher values and understanding of our purpose here in the universe. But I would argue that it is truly dangerous not to do so, given the state of our world today. Spoken, I suppose, like a true student of B.F. Skinner.
Intuitively “One is whole ,whole is one”make sence.
How about apply same logic to free will.
“Freewill is a part of fluid whole system as objective experience and same time being autonomous free agent as subjective experience simultaneously.
and that solve other paradox”cause and effect of life exist simultaneously in the moment”.
Carl, I would certainly agree with the example you gave, although it doesn’t really get at the question I was raising. (In fact it is almost an example of the opposite. :)) Yes, I am sure the behaviorist dieter would get better results in dieting. My question is does that necessarily mean that we can generalize to not believing in freewill. What affects might that have in areas besides dieting? My suspicion is that in the Pragmatist experiment that I envisioned in my post that it would be those human beings who didn’t know for sure, one way or the other, that would live the most productive and deeply fulfilling lives. Why? Because they don’t know, they have to live with the tension of not knowing and that means they will keep reaching, searching, growing and expanding.
As human beings we want to be certain. We want to know that things are one way, but what if we found out that it was true. What if we found out absolutely definitively that there was no freewill, or absolutely definitively that there was. What would change, not just in dieting, but in ones fundamental relationship to life? I think “not knowing” is the secret to life. Sure, we still try to know, we still come to new conclusions and new discoveries, but we might always be wrong. We might always find that all the conclusions that we have drawn about the way the world is were made from a perspective that is akin to squinting through a straw. I am advocating open inquiry and deep investigation more than one side or the other.
Carl, I like your example of how to make people change their weight. But then it makes me ask: how did the heros in the history of humanity manage to do what they did? When I think it over again I think that we don’ t need any separation here. We can use all our knowledge of how to change our behavior, and still talk about “will”. Why even call it free? It is a word we made to suit some kind of definition for choosing…or calculating cost/benefits.
I still find it interesting to discover that “our will” is not so personal. It is more like something that is given us or acting through us, derived from the will to live, that is the main will of all life. What pull us in the wrong direction is some kind of relic from older times, that convinces us more than our new and better knowledge and it works through hormons, emotions, unconscious habits and so on. It is as if there is some kind of fight going on inside us to find out what the direction should be, not only for ourselves, but for humanity in the future.
And for the last thousands of years our evolution has been more through our thoughts than through our bodies, so therefore the “fight” inside us is often our conscious convictions fighting our convictions of the unconscious body. But also – because it all is happening so quickly those days – we are fighting our outdated cultural beliefs and habbits.
WDYT?
Mette,
I think you are right on. While I think we have a lot to learn and to integrate from what has been learned over thousands of years about expanding our awareness, I believe that fixed ideas about our special place in the universe — disconnected from the rest of it by a kind of god-like autonomy — is perhaps the biggest problem we face.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if we really believed that those whales, or those trees in the Amazon ARE us, and that just as we need to protect our fingers and head, we also need to protect those “body parts”? Or that those children lacking health care really ARE us? Or that by changing things in the “environment” in which we live, we would actually be changing OURSELVES because we are part of the same thing. But we really see ourselves as separate, I think. It is just deeply, deeply ingrained.
I like the idea that we are simply among the most conscious and aware nodes in this one big thing, with all its moving parts, capable perhaps of doing more and going farther, just as the first legs that sprouted from fish enabled them to climb up on shore.
The conscious mind is a persistently poised quantum coherent-decoherent system, forever propagating quantum coherent behavior, yet forever also decohering to classical behavior. Here mind is identical with quantum coherent immaterial possibilities, or with partially coherent quantum behavior, yet via decoherence, the quantum coherent mind has consequences that approach classical behavior so very closely that mind can have consequences that create actual physical events by the emergence of classicity. Thus immaterial mind has consequences for matter. Stuart Kauffman, paraphrased. Meaning unknown.
Brian, Wow! I think I want coherence, don’t I? Not sure.
Great discussion. I really key in, more than I did is days of yore, with Carl’s illumination of the key components of evolving our behaviors, and the failures of “will” to effect change. (Though I might express that some of our behaviors are very deep in the realities of being human and physical beings; depending on our state of evolution, there are some things we cannot yet change. We are what we are, with our capacities.)
What if we turn the experiment around and think about the “conditioned” behavior—the action and evolution that is arising as an individual—on the positive side. That it is the expression of what the universe is evolving at this moment, trying to create—because it seems that we are some forward growth trying to happen which also is arising interdependently from potentials; all the while we may have contradictory negative potentials. (We just are that.)
So perhaps it is not what we believe about free will, but what kind of native capacity we have to align ourselves with the best arising in us and curtail our engagement with the negative behaviors arising in us that pull us out of that alignment. Our ability to foster alignment may be a better predictor of success than what we believe about how free we are.
I think some people are very aligned with what they are “meant” to be (a flow of action and presence arising in the world as them), and it matters very little what they “believe” about their access to free will. For them it is only about engaging with their potential continuously.
Of course, that some part of the universe is able and interested in the discussion of free will means that some of us represent the potential for that exploration to take place. Success in the resolution of this endeavor, it seems, is not guaranteed of course.
To me this aligns with the great teachings, which are partly about becoming aligned with the possibility of positive creative potential; and at the same time teach us practices that help us entrain our behaviors and lives. Enrich the positive alignment and disarm the negative patterns. Boddhichitta is a classic practice that forces you to continually choose which parts of your potentials you will align with.
If you accept these teachings at face value, there seems some necessity to give some credence to a believe that we have some, however limited, ability to choose, or may be better said, express a choice, between one action and another. But that it belongs to anyone, or that it is “free” in any sense, or that it is more than a minute change of motion when the potentials of left and right are only a fraction of degrees apart—I am not sure that any of these attributes of the choosing can be supported.
Beautiful, Mary!
I think we often choose with great energy, awareness, and passion. Other times we choose while virtually asleep. I don’t think the issue is whether we choose, but what accounts for our choices. Behavior science would say a combination of genetic endowment plus environmental history. I think that just says we’re part of a time-space Whole and we have fibers deep into other parts of that Whole, at least metaphorically.
The insight that our evolution comes with choosing the best in us — awareness of what Andrew Cohen calls the Authentic Self and choice to behave as That — to me is at the heart of all of this. We learn to choose in that way because of our experience, discussions like this, our Teachers, so many other causes and conditions. But the fact is, we DO learn if we are fortunate or the recipients of what is called “grace” and of this precious human birth. Who knows why, but it is not of our own doing altogether. And then, as we become aware, we act more and more in alignment with That.
The core of the teachings that engage action (vs. those that recommend going completely within) always seems to be alignment with the Spirit, or The Tao, or The Heart, or The Authentic Self, etc. Expanded awareness in all directions, alignment with that creative impulse that comes from Inside All of It. I think if there is “freedom,” that is it. Freedom to BE who we truly are.
Yes, Carl, so much of it is not of our own doing—we have little possession of it.
Freedom from our “selves” to become our “Selves.”
Or maybe it is to become the One becoming.
I think Free will is the choice of action(submission,surrender) of objective view (I;m a part of fluid whole system) than subjective view.
Admit “the possibility of positive potential” come from only when I surrender the objective view, I’ am inside of the Universe.
which means also choose the objective view of change,unknown as the possibility of positive potential than the subjective view of “I know”.
Then Subjective view merge to objective view, I(subjective view)became autonomous free agent,and the Universe become “inside” us.
It seems no other way around.Simple to say Free will is “Freedom of choice””Choice of Freedom”.
just finished up a study group on steve mcintosh’s “integral consciousness and the future of evolution” this week, and so much of this conversation is resonating with the ideas in that book about the dialectic model — thesis/antithesis/synthesis as the the engine of evolution.
in the diet example, the behaviorist dieter will definitely be more successful. but where does the decision that losing weight is important come from in the first place? it’s in the culture, and therefore within us, but so is the idea that “i deserve a break today.” maybe the choosing faculty operates as the synthesizing factor between the desire to be slim and the desire for french fries.
and maybe as jeff brings out in his comment above, the pragmatic thing to do — best option for bringing more good into the world — isn’t choosing a side between free will and behavioralism, but bringing them together again at a higher level of inquiry and exploration …
I was looking back over this amazing conversation that has been coming through us and there was just one thing I wanted to mention about an earlier post that I think might relate here, too.
There is a sense that science is about “knowing” and that — as in the case of this free will vs. determinism discussion — the scientific mind is somehow fixed in knowing, or fixed in ideas. This bears a little further inspection, I think.
At the heart of science, especially the kind of “try things and measure what happens” inductive science that Skinner did, is a deep sense of NOT knowing but wanting to know. That is what is so cool about great scientists. Like cats, they always seem curious about what the next discovery might be. Always collecting examples and experiments to see what can be learned from them.
To me the discussion about free will vs. determinism isn’t about whether we KNOW everything that is causing our behavior at any moment. Rather, it’s about whether there ARE causes that can be uncovered over time, and whether we can continue to evolve based on a continued discovery of those causes, and the application of what we learn to our own behavior and evolution.
For me, that makes the scientific approach to our behavior very exciting and mysterious because it gives us a forward thrust into the unknown, and just says that as we discover more and more we can use what we learn to become and to learn more after that. And so on forever.
So I hope that people don’t think that a behavior science approach is sort of this smug know-it-all thing. (Some behavior scientists might be, but the enterprise itself certainly isn’t!)
I guess my “one thing” turned into a lot of words, but I hope it’s worth reading.
emperical
What if we started to question the whole idea that the objectification of reality is how we gain access to reality. The movement in consciousness to objectify our experience of thought and feeling is at the root of the whole modernist fascination with empiricism. What if we questioned that whole movement?
The great scientific project is to align the objects we create of our thoughts and feelings in a way that is consistent with the sensory observations we have of the world we find ourselves in.
But what if the act of creating an object out of a thought or feeling was already stepping away from reality? What if there is a whole other way to experience and engage with reality prior to, or parallel to, the continuous process of objectifying thought? And what if this mode of engagement, call it “not-knowing”, allowed us a deeper, more immediate access to reality that generates an experience of actually being ourSelves?
If this is the case, and there seems to be some evidence that it is, then Free Will is simply the ability to not engage with thought and feeling in a way that would separate us from ourSelves.
I think the most difficult thing for science to explain is the very fact of its own interest. What is it in us that can suspend our engagement with our thoughts and feelings about the world long enough to let in new possibilities? Whatever it is, isn’t that movement away from our thoughts and feelings an act of freedom?
Thank you Stuart for awesome impurely.
Then I have a question,our nature of curiosity”Want to know ” what kind of role to play” in it? or what is the significance of .
It seems the development,evolution won’t occur without both “Want know”and “Not know”.
Stuart, What if _____ ? Where _____ represents that which we do not objectify. Then you say, “If this ( _____ ) is the case, and there seems to be some evidence that it is…” Please share this evidence with us. Absense of evidence is evidence of absense.
For the evidence that it’s possible to experience reality beyond the movement of thought and feeling, I would point to the whole body of mystical literature which attempts to describe, using thoughts and feelings, what it’s like to experience reality beyond thought and feeling.
But I don’t think we need to use the mystical experience alone. The evidence is all around us. If we look at what goes on when we are interested in something, there’s an element of our experience that is ineffable, something outside thought and feeling. And if we look at the experience of creativity, whether in arts or sciences, or simply in living, it seems to point to a way of interacting with the world that is primarily beyond thought and feeling. We express our interest or creativity in words, ideas, emotion, and movement, but the authentic movement of interest or creativity itself seems to be prior to all of this, alive and full of potential even if we can’t put words to it.
The great creative masters in art, music, (and spirit) seemed to be able to be truly creative at will. That means they weren’t just applying a new trick again and again, it means they could do absolutely new stuff again and again simply because they wanted to. The behaviorist concept of generative creativity doesn’t seem to explain this fact in my opinion.
My point is that these moments of interest or creativity are not the objectification of our experience, they point to some other way of engaging with reality. It’s the difference between experiencing reality mediated through concepts and conventions and experiencing an unmediated reality. The former is attempting to look from the outside in. The later is attempting to look from the inside out. They are both valid ways of experiencing reality. We happen to be in a time that is more fascinated by our ability to objectify our experience because up until recently it’s proven to be a very productive way of engaging. But there have been times in history, like in ancient Greece or during the Renaissance, or when any of the traditional religions were born where a lot of new stuff happened in a very brief period of time. Not just new theories or new ways to objectify reality, but new ways to experience reality altogether.
I think we’re overdue for a new way to experience reality, one that re-instates the self-respect and dignity of humanity. This issue of free will seems to be important to that discovery.
I was curious to look online for the definition of free will:
Use free will in a Sentence
–noun 1. free and independent choice; voluntary decision: You took on the responsibility of your own free will.
2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.
Now I’m really fascinated by the online definition and what this conversation is conjuring up for all of us “inquiring minds”. I’m interested in simply teasing some things out and bringing a lot of space to the question as Jeff has introduced and others imply.
Whatever the first spark of life was that we all were there for, it seems that we didn’t already know what we were going to create. We had what seems to be some kind of pure impulse. There was an occurance or action that came from some kind of Kosmic Inspiration that could never have already known what was in store for the future. So, unlike the online definition above, I wonder about this Divine Inspiration that does go beyond thought and feeling, and does point to some kind of Mysterious Creativity that is inherent in who we ARE. And because of the evolutionary process and the complex organisms we’ve become, from the first profoundly simple spark, we have a lot more elements to navigate as humans. We’ve learned to identify things to be a certain way, and we’ve attached ourselves to those identifications, such as HAVING free will. But like others that point to panning the camera back far and wide, and allowing space to ask what the question actually is, helps me see I hardly know what I’m speaking about here! And yet there is a deep sense that I/we are not puppets on some Cosmic string either.
What is that sense in us that gives space for what we don’t and can’t already know, and continually reaches for that which we may never reach. Is it our Free Will? Is it a Divinely Inspired mechanism that is inherent in our existence. As we became individualized from being tribal members, did we then come up with the idea of free will? Or is this process already inherent in the First Cause, that we all agreed to? I’m just realizing I’m much more excited about the inquiry than even coming up with an answer!
There is a sense of the Divine Process emerging
Sorry my way of approach is not scientific,logical at all .Free will -“Intention in us to experience new way of reality,unmediated reality,look from the inside out ”
So we don’t need to believe in nor not believe in.Just pure intention of experience reality unmediated way and if we objectivfy,we define it as creative system.
Great Sandra!! Very inspiring. That wanting to know – curiosity – we can perhaps call divine… a kind of creative power.
I was discussing all this that we have talked about in this blog with a very scientific and not religious person, and I suddenly couldn’ t explain to him what was extraordinary here, or different from what brain-scientists are working on… can anyone point it out? Can we explain this without any religious terms, or do we have some kind of divine element here that is the point…?
Many great creative people through the ages, and even today, speak about their creativity as though they really did did not have that much to do with it other than being a sort of vehicle. The traditional idea of a “muse” or “inspiration” captures the idea that creativity comes through us, is not really done by us. Many consistently creative artists, writers, scientists, and musicians have written about how they put themselves into the conditions that they know tend to produce new ideas or new combinations of things — that is the extent to which they seem able to be creative “at will.” So I believe they know how to manage the external variables that then influence their creative behavior. But, as with the Big Bang, acts of creativity seem to be things that happen, not that we “do.” In that vein, and following on Mary’s earlier comment, it seems that a choice we have is to able to be sensitive to the creative potential that exists in a time and place and situation, to open ourselves to it and perhaps optimize conditions for it to happen, and then let it occur through us. Much like the process of collective Enlightened Communication that Andrew Cohen and his students have practiced and refined over the years. Something new emerges, “I” don’t “do” it.
I think that the creative potential (or call it the authentic self, or “flow”, or whatever) is being experienced all the time, by some people more than others. As Stuart points out, it is an unmediated experience. It feels that there is the creative potential that is expressing itself as us (and as everything) and we, as the experience, have also evolved a kind of mediating analytical awareness (and conditioned behaviors) with the original intention to learn to control the variables in life and keep us alive. (Having individuals stay alive being a valuable asset for the evolution of the universe.)
It seems that we all have times when our consciousness is focused on action through the mediating awareness (some of which we would call unconscious and some conscious), and we have other times when we are pure action and choice with less mediation happening between us and the arising potential. We all have both ways of being, even if we are not aware of them. I feel it is like a spectrum of possibility.
Maybe some people are more able to sit in alignment with that potential and experience the world coming into being with a simple engagement with it. They are the people who just seem to know what they are suppose to be doing and they are doing it. (I understand it better if I lose the duality and understand that they just are the potential, action and choice happening.)
The less aligned we know how to be, the more “mediated” our experience is, and therefore the more separate we are from everything, including the moment when things come into being. Eventually you are so separate that you—hmmm, trying to think what that experience becomes…
It seems artists, performers, atheletes, scientists, etc. are examples of people who have more moments when they can be more aligned arises in that to do what they do (move in a certain pattern, make a mark of a certain shape, craft a a song of a certain emotion) they have to be closer to the moment when things “happen”. To surf a wave, you are more successful the more you are completely synchronous in time with the wave as it moves. If your idea of the wave is too mediated with constructs in real time, you will not be in the right place at the right time.
So some activities encourage us to shift our awareness away from the conceptual because we have to deal with real things in real time. And if you practice a skill that reinforces that, you must get better and better at it and then you find there is a powerful stream to engage with. You are more yourself without mediation of mind and conditioning. Perhaps.
fluency
Fluency is a great word, but can you say more?
Mette, I was intrigued by your question of being able to have an explanation and dialogue that was not affiliated with religion or spiritual terminology . . . and I thought that this may point to our “conditioned” division of what is simply true of our spiritual & material nature . . . what is fascinating is that to speak in only scientific terms, we leave out the reality that we are spiritual beings, not just a “bag full of science projects”. So too, if we are only speaking in terms that relate to our existence within a religious or spiritual context, we leave out our natural scientific findings. Case in point: Fundamentalist Christians leave out our evolutionary process . . . so maybe we all have to come up with new language that captures the totality of who we are, but I think we’ll only be able to do that within the actual experience of our inherent and non-separate Self, which I think is called a “spiritual experience”! And unless I’m out of the loop, I don’t think a “spiritual experience” fits under a microscope too well. 🙂
The beauty about leaving space for not already knowing and being available to that which we cannot see, leaves room for the Mystery of our existence, our natural Self, to come through loud and clear, and then the sense of who we are and how we relate to our outer world, ideally changes from separation to unification . . . and then there is an important element of cultivating WHAT THAT IS that is probably another conversation!
spectrum to experience reality =spectrum of awareness of “Intention”
I read Jelly fish book for bedtime to son last night.
Jelly fish doesn’t have brain and heart.But I assume some really primitive way ,it aware of “Intention”,other wise how come so much variety of jelly fish.
I think awareness of “intention” is not limited by only mind,may be body,any sensory function,
I boldly say I think “Intention” itself is creativity and intention itself recognized by itself ,our case is us and intention(creativity) become reality(creation).
Whether or not a spiritual experience can fit under a microscope, it is very interesting to me that the man who originated a natural science of behavior (B.F. Skinner) described the self as a locus of events in terms that are identical, or at least quite comparable, to the descriptions of interdependent origination in Buddhism and other non-dual descriptions that claim that the self or ego as a separate entity is an illusion. Maybe by putting behavior and its causes under the microscope, Skinner was able to find what I would have to call a “spiritual” understanding of the self.
Sandra, My one-word posts (ie: empirical, fluency) are intended to concisely capture the content of the preceding post. Pardon my brevity.
I submit that there ARE spiritual mandates, tenets, laws that can be recognized universally and to dismiss them would amount to being an outlaw, spiritual or otherwise. Those who are spiritually aware and develop higher consciousness comport themselves and commit to a mindset of attempting to create a world better than the status quo.
Pertinent to Freewill and Determinism, Spiritual Consciousness predicates observing the tenets of Perennial Wisdom and the Golden Rule, determined through age-old adherence of their wisdom. Freewill is practiced perhaps as “amendments” to those precepts but undertaken with possible egoistic motives. That kind of freedom if undertaken with spiritual consciousness turn out to be in concord with values determined by collective universal practice. ??
To all:
Can I assume that most here will understand the term and concept of Perennial Wisdom?
(online Perennial Wisdom) for any needing info
Hello Shizuka, re: “I think awareness of “intention” is not limited by only mind,may be body,any sensory function,
I boldly say I think “Intention” itself is creativity and intention itself recognized by itself ,our case is us and intention(creativity) become reality(creation).”
I’d say that though conceiving and intending to put the idea into action it is still usually regarded as conceptual and remains in the mind, possibly the body, but until action is taken it is conceptual.
If that idea is acted upon, given tangibleness, that becomes creativity in action.
Re: the inspiration for creativity, innovation, discovery
I understand Einstein’s mother didn’t ask him what he learned in school that day but asked “Did you ask any good questions?” Well, he should have learned something if the teacher was at all able to answer.
From what I understand of the dynamic of creativity, there is a solid grounding of the subject, becoming thoroughly knowledgeable enough to punch holes in existing wisdom or to be inspired to iconoclasitcally dare to question what is currently accepted and then proceed to find rebuttals to status quo. There may be instances of absolute out-of-the-blue zaps of inspiration and ideas but that would be rare, IMO.
Just posting to say that I’ve recently discovered Skinner & have found myself enthralled by him. Carl, your first comment sums up exactly what I’ve taken away from reading him better than I ever could. Well done.
The debate of free will is still hot 🙂
Here is some of the new stuff:
က ဇ တင ပ တယ က paytyhar ခင ဗ …က န က ဒ င လ လည လ ပ ပ ပ ပ အ ခ န လည ဘမ ပ ပ ပ ..အခ က န တင ထ တ ၀င ဒ xp sp2 က က တ ထည ရလ ပ ခင ဗ ..ဒ က င အခ အ ခ လ က မတင သ ဘ တ ယ က ယ က ဖ ပ တ က စ င နတ ပ ..က န က က န ပ တ လည သ ပ န မလည လ ပ ၀င ဒ တင နည က တ င က နမင မ င ဘ လ က န သ ရတ ပ ..အ လ အတ က က ဇ ထပ တင ပ တယ က paytyhar