Metamorphoses of the Spirit: Transfiguring our Thinking (Part II)

[Eugene I]

So tell me honestly - who of the kids are really living entirely in their imaginations?

Both. I'm advocating a balanced approach between these two extremes. These kid's playground structures are important tools for kids to learn and develop, but they are nothing more than fabricated sandcastles, and when the kids start valuing them and clinging to them too much, and fighting with each others about whose castle is the best and destroying other kids castles, such game does more harm than good. That's why I say that a balanced integration of Western and Eastern spiritual paradigms would be more beneficial.

"Then, one day, Siddhartha heard an old musician on a passing boat, speaking to his pupil:
- If you tighten the string too much, it will snap, and if you leave it too slack, it won’t play.
Suddenly, Siddhartha realized that these simple words held the great truth, and that in all these years he had been following the wrong path.
The Middle Way was the great truth Siddhartha had found, the path he would teach to the world."

And even though the Buddha himself was advocating the Middle way, IMO his "string tension" position was still "too slack" and would better to be retuned, while the Western position is typically "too much tension" and too much clinging to their "castle", and we can't help seeing this psychological tension and neurosis (also affecting people's behavior) in many followers of Western religions and philosophies (just look at the Israeli-Palestinian war which essentially has religious roots).

[AshvinP]

So tell me honestly - who of the kids are really living entirely in their imaginations?

Both. I'm advocating a balanced approach between these two extremes. These kid's playground structures are important tools for kids to learn and develop, but they are nothing more than fabricated sandcastles, and when the kids start valuing them and clinging to them too much, and fighting with each others about whose castle is the best and destroying other kids castles, such game does more harm than good. That's why I say that a balanced integration of Western and Eastern spiritual paradigms would be more beneficial.

"Then, one day, Siddhartha heard an old musician on a passing boat, speaking to his pupil:
- If you tighten the string too much, it will snap, and if you leave it too slack, it won’t play.
Suddenly, Siddhartha realized that these simple words held the great truth, and that in all these years he had been following the wrong path.
The Middle Way was the great truth Siddhartha had found, the path he would teach to the world."

And even though the Buddha himself was advocating the Middle way, IMO his "string tension" position was still "too slack" and would better to be retuned, while the Western position is typically "too much tension" and too much clinging to their "castle", and we can't help seeing this psychological tension and neurosis (also affecting people's behavior) in many followers of Western religions and philosophies (just look at the Israeli-Palestinian war which essentially has religious roots).

It's not at all clear what you mean by "integration of Western and Eastern". Based on your previous posts, it sounds like you want to keep all specific spiritual paradigms in the realm of "fabricated sandcastles", which is another way of saying keep them in the realm of total fiction which we can "take or leave" at our own pleasure. That is not an integration of the West into East, it is the complete negation of the Western paradigm. Do you see why?

Beyond that, your criticism remains at the most general level and is like a crash course on logical fallacies. How can anyone reasonably respond to non-sequiturs like "look at the Israeli-Palestinian war"?

[Eugene I]

It's not at all clear what you mean by "integration of Western and Eastern". Based on your previous posts, it sounds like you want to keep all specific spiritual paradigms in the realm of "fabricated sandcastles", which is another way of saying keep them in the realm of total fiction which we can "take or leave" at our own pleasure. That is not an integration of the West into East, it is the complete negation of the Western paradigm. Do you see why?

Not at "own pleasure", but at Consciousness own innate freedom and discretion, so when at a certain stage of the metamorphic process when conscious beings become mature and responsible enough, they can exercise their fundamental freedom and choose and use the sandcastles that work better for them rather than clinging to them and being imprisoned by them.

So yes, it is a negation of the absolutistic old Western paradigm where people become prisoners of their own fabricated religious or philosophical paradigms, but it is a gate to a renewed Western-Eastern blend approach where we humans, in cooperation with the Divine, can become the co-architects of progressively developing and adapting paradigms. In the absolutistic traditional Western view the Divine is a dictating entity who creates rigid structures for us to live in, religions to believe in and telos to follow, with the polarized scenario of the only choice to either comply with and follow the God-designed telos or to "rebel" and fall to the "Devil's side". In the adapting paradigm we are co-creators of the paradigms and structures and co-learners with the Divine, we both create structures and paradigms by trial and error, learn from them and adopt to the more beneficial and more functional ones leaving behind the older ones that do not work for us anymore. This process often involves wrong choices and detrimental paradigms that eventually entail in suffering and destroy themselves with souls leaving them (which is what we are seeing in the example of the dying materialistic paradigm). This is the price to pay for freedom but also a natural way for Consciousness to learn and evolve by trial-and-error.

[AshvinP]

It's not at all clear what you mean by "integration of Western and Eastern". Based on your previous posts, it sounds like you want to keep all specific spiritual paradigms in the realm of "fabricated sandcastles", which is another way of saying keep them in the realm of total fiction which we can "take or leave" at our own pleasure. That is not an integration of the West into East, it is the complete negation of the Western paradigm. Do you see why?

Not at "own pleasure", but at Consciousness own innate freedom and discretion, so when at a certain stage of the metamorphic process when conscious beings become mature and responsible enough, they can exercise their fundamental freedom and choose and use the sandcastles that work better for them rather than clinging to them and being imprisoned by them.

So yes, it is a negation of the absolutistic old Western paradigm where people become prisoners of their own fabricated religious or philosophical paradigms, but it is a gate to a renewed Western-Eastern blend approach where we humans, in cooperation with the Divine, can become the architects of progressively developing and adapting paradigms. In the absolutistic traditional Western view the Divine is a dictating entity who creates rigid structures for us to live in and telos to follow, with the polarized scenario of the only choice to either comply with and follow the God-designed telos or to "rebel" and fall to the "Devil's side". In the adapting paradigm we are co-creators of the structures and co-learners with the Divine, we both create structures and paradigms by trial and error, learn from them and adopt to the more beneficial and more functional ones leaving behind the older ones that do not work for us anymore. This process often involves wrong choices and detrimental paradigms that eventually entail in suffering and destroy themselves with souls leaving them (which is what we are seeing in the example of the dying materialistic paradigm). This is the price to pay for freedom but also a natural way for Consciousness to learn and grow by trial-and-error.

For you, the "certain stage of metamorphic process" will never arrive, not even when the world is at brink of nihilistic destruction. It will always remain at a distance so no real spiritual maturity or responsibility is required of us. We see this attitude of "freedom" as freedom from responsibility across modern cultures, especially in the West. It is a freedom to get whatever we want out of Reality, to build and play with our own isolated sandcastles, instead of wanting what we get from Reality. The latter is the true freedom spoken of in Western spiritual paradigm. What you think of as "old Western paradigm" is a caricature with little connection to the deepest traditions which can actually be explored. The traditions commented on by all the 20th century thinkers I have referenced in these essays, thereby making it very easy for anyone with serious interest to explore them further. None of them are mentioned in your "critiques" except for Heidegger, who you claimed supported your position. And your mention of him prompted me to start writing more essays specifically exploring his views on Thinking, yet I see you have declined to comment any further on his thought. To be fair, Part I has barely scratched the surface, but it should be clear by now his "Being of beings" was not at all what you imagined it to be. There is really no point for me to respond further to your caricatures of "absolutistic" Western thought until you take a more serious look at it.

[Eugene I]

For you, the "certain stage of metamorphic process" will never arrive, not even when the world is at brink of nihilistic destruction. It will always remain at a distance so no real spiritual maturity or responsibility is required of us. We see this attitude of "freedom" as freedom from responsibility across modern cultures, especially in the West. It is a freedom to get whatever we want out of Reality, to build and play with our own isolated sandcastles, instead of wanting what we get from Reality. The latter is the true freedom spoken of in Western spiritual paradigm. What you think of as "old Western paradigm" is a caricature with little connection to the deepest traditions which can actually be explored. The traditions commented on by all the 20th century thinkers I have referenced in these essays, thereby making it very easy for anyone with serious interest to explore them further. None of them are mentioned in your "critiques" except for Heidegger, who you claimed supported your position. And your mention of him prompted me to start writing more essays specifically exploring his views on Thinking, yet I see you have declined to comment any further on his thought. To be fair, Part I has barely scratched the surface, but it should be clear by now his "Being of beings" was not at all what you imagined it to be. There is really no point for me to respond further to your caricatures of "absolutistic" Western thought until you take a more serious look at it.

I said that it should be a freedom with responsibility, not freedom without responsibility. The human society is very non-uniform in terms of the spiritual development, with many already reaching that stage of metamorphic process where they are mature enough to do responsible spiritual choices, but with the majority are still at the stage where they can not, and for the latter adhering to certain fixed rules/castles/structures is still a better choice, I agree with that.

Ironically, if you remember, a while ago we were discussing a similar situation regarding whether the masks should be mandated, where you were arguing for the opposite position to your current one - that people are responsible enough to decide for themselves whether they should wear masks or not, while I was saying that the majority are still not responsible enough and will exercise their freedom to do "whatever they want" in an immature way and will not wear masks, and that is why they should be mandated So in reality, the humanity is in a transitional stage where some people are mature enough and adhering to fixed/dictating rules/structures become impeding for them, yet, many others still not mature enough and still in need for more rigid rules/structures. This is not to say that those people are inferior in any way, every stage of development is valuable, and conscious beings can not skip ahead of the grades, they have to learn all the lessons they need at every stage .

[AshvinP]

For you, the "certain stage of metamorphic process" will never arrive, not even when the world is at brink of nihilistic destruction. It will always remain at a distance so no real spiritual maturity or responsibility is required of us. We see this attitude of "freedom" as freedom from responsibility across modern cultures, especially in the West. It is a freedom to get whatever we want out of Reality, to build and play with our own isolated sandcastles, instead of wanting what we get from Reality. The latter is the true freedom spoken of in Western spiritual paradigm. What you think of as "old Western paradigm" is a caricature with little connection to the deepest traditions which can actually be explored. The traditions commented on by all the 20th century thinkers I have referenced in these essays, thereby making it very easy for anyone with serious interest to explore them further. None of them are mentioned in your "critiques" except for Heidegger, who you claimed supported your position. And your mention of him prompted me to start writing more essays specifically exploring his views on Thinking, yet I see you have declined to comment any further on his thought. To be fair, Part I has barely scratched the surface, but it should be clear by now his "Being of beings" was not at all what you imagined it to be. There is really no point for me to respond further to your caricatures of "absolutistic" Western thought until you take a more serious look at it.

I said that it should be a freedom with responsibility, not freedom without responsibility. The human society is very non-uniform in terms of the spiritual development, with many already reaching that stage of metamorphic process where they are mature enough to do responsible spiritual choices, but with the majority are still at the stage where they can not, and for the latter adhering to certain fixed rules/castles/structures is still a better choice, I agree with that.

Ironically, if you remember, a while ago we were discussing a similar situation regarding whether the masks should be mandated, where you were arguing for the opposite position to your current one - that people are responsible enough to decide for themselves whether they should wear masks or not, while I was saying that the majority are still not responsible enough and will exercise their freedom to do "whatever they want" in an immature way and will not wear masks, and that is why they should be mandated So in reality, the humanity is in a transitional stage where some people are mature enough and adhering to fixed/dictating rules/structures become impeding for them, yet, many others still not mature enough and still in need for more rigid rules/structures. This is not to say that those people are inferior in any way, every stage of development is valuable, and conscious beings can not skip ahead of the grades, they have to learn all the lessons they need at every stage .

Eugene... I thought my pointing out of the Israeli-Palestine non-sequitur would have slowed you down a bit, but it only increased your non-sequitur momentum

I am not talking about political and civil freedom, rather spiritual freedom. Your view wants to maintain "freedom" to explore spiritual paradigms indefinitely without the responsibility of taking any more seriously than others. That is the "Earth is a sandbox for us all to construct our own sandcastles indefinitely" view. The point at which we must commit to any given sandcastle(s) is indefinitely postponed precisely to avoid such responsibility. What I am pointing to is the spiritual freedom realized when we align our willing, feeling and thinking with the way Reality actually presents to us through intuition, imagination, and reason (collectively "Thinking"). I am not claiming I have figured out exactly how it presents and the metamorphic view asserts it is ever-evolving, but I am claiming that, until we acknowledge there is a Reality which can be discerned by Thinking, we will continue descending into the depths of our collective nihilism.

[Eugene I]

I am not talking about political and civil freedom, rather spiritual freedom. Your view wants to maintain "freedom" to explore spiritual paradigms indefinitely without the responsibility of taking any more seriously than others. That is the "Earth is a sandbox for us all to construct our own sandcastles indefinitely" view. The point at which we must commit to any given sandcastle(s) is indefinitely postponed precisely to avoid such responsibility. What I am pointing to is the spiritual freedom realized when we align our willing, feeling and thinking with the way Reality actually presents to us through intuition, imagination, and reason (collectively "Thinking"). I am not claiming I have figured out exactly how it presents and the metamorphic view asserts it is ever-evolving, but I am claiming that, until we acknowledge there is a Reality which can be discerned by Thinking, we will continue descending into the depths of our collective nihilism.

So, a few comments on that:
- The way Reality presents itself to us is a consciructed structure, a "sandcastle" fabricated by Divine, and as many NDE experiencers suggest, by the Divine with our cooperation while we were in a discarnate form. So this "presented" reality is a sandcastle that we co-created with the Divine for the purpose to be our training and development platform. We chose to incarnate into it to get the learnings, and by doing that we willingly became constrained and entangled with these structures. As such, there is definitely a value in learning and studying the deeper-levels of this structure by through intuition, imagination, and reason, no question about that.
- On the other hand, these structures are not deterministically condition our consciousness, they only provide certain cognitive/behavioral mechanisms as a framework of our consciousness functioning. Consciousness still has fundamental degrees of freedom to develop within the given constraints, with a large variety of possible developmental paths and states.
- I never said that any sandcastles need to be postponed, on the opposite, I said that they need to be built and explored, learnt from, and each of these castles can be "provisionally" taken more seriously than others. But it is when we cling to them too much and start claiming that they are "superior" or "ultimately true" when it becomes problematic. When we choose our professions, we take them seriously and learn from them, but we rarely claim that our professions are "superior" to others. Professions are the way to develop and live, likewise spiritual paradigms and philosophies are the ways to develop and live. There are certainly professions inefficient and even detrimental to the progressive development, likewise there are philosophies and spiritual paradigms less efficient and even detrimental, no question about that.

So, the point is, the process of development and change/adaption of paradigms is a co-creative never ending process, that goes along with the metamorphic process of consciousness development, and that involves both serious focusing at each stage and moving to the more advanced stages and paradigms when the right time comes for it. The latter requires letting go of the older paradigms and modifying or rebuilding them to match mode developed stages of the metamorphic process without clinging to them by claiming them "superior" or "absolute". If we agree that we collectively are evolving through the metamorphic co-development process (together with the Divine), and yet claim that a certain paradigm is the "absolutely true" or "ultimately superior", we are shooting ourselves into the foot and obstructing the very metamorphic process that we are trying to follow.

[AshvinP]

Ok well I can't say I followed much of that, and there appears to be many assumptions placed in your comment which are derived from outside of any human experience. But lets take the core argument that we should not "cling to them too much". Who clings more? The person who states their conclusions about the spiritual realm without any argument, as you have done above, or the people who writes mutiple essays detailing their arguments in support of their spiritual conclusions and responding to counter-argumrnts which may be raised? Who is blindly clinging to one view without consideration of others?

[Eugene I]

Ashvin, it's again all about finding the Middle Way and the right balance between the extremes of too much clinging and not being serious at all. Similarly, there is and integration and middle way between to much absolutism of the Western approach and too much relativism of the Eastern one.

“Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency” — Aristotle

[Cleric K]

That's why I say that a balanced integration of Western and Eastern spiritual paradigms would be more beneficial.

Eugene, what would you take from Western spiritual life? In other words, what in your view is the fruit of the West that has the proper place in evolution? But I'm not asking in some general terms like "The East is Yin, the West is Yang, and they must be balanced". I'm asking about concrete things. Because this is what our times demand - problems can no longer be solved by wishy-washy and general wise words. We need knowledge that can be turned into practical methods for work.