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Then one day the man who's job it is to watch the weather gathers everyone at the meeting place in the center of the island and says, "Ummm...I don't know how to put this, but all my calculations suggest that in the future there are going to be more frequent and more powerful hurricanes during hurricane season then we have ever experienced before." The people hear him and they discuss some possible things that can be done. But the people are not overly concerned, after all, life is good so they go back to their homes and continue to live the good life.
But then the next hurricane season comes and, sure enough, they endure hurricanes the like of which they have never seen before and the damage is extensive. So once again they meet in the center of the island and they decide they have two choices. Leave the island or stay. They decide for various reasons that they do not wish to leave. It is their home. Life is good here.
So now they decide they must make the island able to withstand any hurricane that comes. Let us imagine they have the ability to do this, but it will take much sacrifice and many years to complete. In the meantime they must make a few preparations and precautions which will lessen the damage until the final work can be completed.
The reason I dwell so much upon this concept of perception and illusion is because I am convinced that this is the long term solution.
In the meantime your approach can help lessen the damage.
I am working on an essay that is intended to show that we can work as a team. I am convinced that one day you and I will see a full working solution which even if we cannot live long enough to carry out we can pass it down to the next generation.
the essay began as a response to your post above. It was not intended to be an essay. It will take some days to finish but in the meantime i don't want you to think that i am ignoring you or not wishing to talk to you if i am not posting on this sight for a few days.
I was worried that I might lose my connection to the internet and lose what i had written so i cut and pasted it to my text document program. what follows is the start of the thread of the reply I was making. The essay will be forthcoming.
I read these words you write, these stumbling blocks and my mind construes them. My mind then constructs an image. This image is sometimes visual, sometimes conceptual, sometimes it is something I cannot explain. I then write some words, some stumbling blocks --- No! some stepping stones --- to convey the image my mind has created. You read these words. You reply. We repeat. This is "good".
"From my viewpoint of what bad is, precisely, you claim that I think everything is cut in half as a bad thing and a good thing as if I have two bins? The Sun goes in the bad or good bin? Gravity goes in the bad or good bin? You think I am guilty, such a bad thinker, of such thoughts?" You base your poor estimate (bad estimate) of my thinking on which things I've written, or said, or supposedly thought? What did I write where my writing confesses this bad thinking, according to you?
What you wrote that portrayed “bad thinking” according to me was this:
I know only one thing for sure, and the one thing I know for sure us proven to be absolutely true, each time I try to disprove it, so as far as I can know, this is the one absolute truth, and all other perceptions, of truth, or of anything, are subject to this one truth.
Perception exists.
That can then be perceived as life exists.
I can perceive that life exists.
Now, from this perception, it is my judgement, good or bad, that life is good, and it is self-evidently good, it is, life is, the reason for living. Life is good.
I have a problem. I meet a lot of people at work, at play. They talk as though they know exactly what is right or wrong, exactly what is good or evil. They express this with words very similar to yours. Yet when I press them to explain I discover that by "good" they only mean avoiding or ending pain and that by "bad" they mean avoiding or ending pleasure: specifically their pain, their pleasure. Their world is cut in half. Most people in positions of power whereby they can bring about the suffering or death of others with impunity live in such a world. They are not the majority, but there are an awful lot of them. This is not the problem I have. My problem, after having read what you wrote, is that I made the mistake of lumping you together with them. I made the mistake of assuming that you are the same as they are: self righteous. You use the terms good and bad and all their synonyms way too much for my liking, but nowhere do you use them self righteously. I looked everywhere. I apologize.
Yes, we are at the fence again. I am walking upon it. You are on what I call the sad side. I have been there. I still often fall to that side. The other side I call the bliss side. Occasionally I fall to that side. But the bliss side is very unfamiliar to me. It sometimes frightens me. Why? Because I don't exist on the bliss side. The self that is Mike does not exist on the bliss side. So why should I call it the bliss side? Because I know a few people who always fall to that side. They are wise. They are kind, honest, loving and compassionate also.
Let me try once again to explain the illusion.
Happy Easter, Joe.
Last edited on Sun Mar 31st, 2013 11:25 am by