Is it just me who is going through a lot of existential angst about idealism?

[Hedge90]

This may be relevant: The urban dictionary defines lawyerese as "the idea that lawyers frequently speak and write in such a way that is difficult, if not impossible, for laypeople to interpret".
Ash is a lawyer.

Well I am too. But in fact being a lawyer is actually about formulating your thoughts very precisely and accurately. It may be hard for laypeople to follow, but that's because actually you're not leaving anything up to interpretation.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Lou you're better off just ignoring this site.

It'll eventually fizzle out to nothing and that's better for one's own peace of mind

Oh my, I guess, being the mod obliged to follow it all daily, the peace of this mind is in serious jeopardy.

Lou seems inclined to take this approach ...

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

[AshvinP]

Honestly, even though at first idealism simply seemed like an interesting yet surprisingly logical ontology, the more I thought about it the more existential anxiety welled up in me. I'm at the point where I'd happily "convert" back to physicalism if I could still believe it to be true, which I cannot.
Do you experience any similar issues? If so, how do you cope?

Hedge, so your succinct query has generated the usual wall of words. Real question is, has it been helpful?

Some of it. I'm not hostile to Ashvin and his views, I just don't understand him very well. The way I see the problem is that he is promoting a type of thinking that is not nested in concepts that can be fully expressed in words. That's why he cannot give specific descriptions of the concepts whenever we ask him to. And I can appreciate that language is a limited vessel for communicating meaning, since it forces your thinking into a network of railways, from which it is very difficult to break away, especially due to the fact that most of the time we are not even aware of these restricting rails. But then it mostly comes down to whether you have the affinity to grasp intuitively what he's trying to say, and I mostly don't.

Hedge,

You are absolutely correct here, my fellow solicitor!

Some combination of the intellectual (mostly philosophical) concepts and the illustrative metaphorical reasoning, of the sort Cleric is always providing us, will likely be most helpful to people. But every individual is different - we are not homogeneous automata, and we need to resist the tendency to project our own intellectual and soul-experience onto everyone and everything else. What allows us to overcome these apparent divisions is, of course, inward logical reasoning. We all have the same intuitions, but there are many layers of our soul they must 'travel through' before docehering as thought-fragments of the intellect. That is why humility combined with an active effort towards Self-knowledge was prioritized at the inception of humanity's philosophical and spiritual thinking. It is why Socrates counseled, "the only true Wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

Turning our knowing activity inwards is how we come to reveal the higher-order forces which subconsciously steer our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and desires. The outer manifestations of the world, including our own thought-forms, are only shadows of these forces. They are reflections in the 'mirror' which is the inner world of experience and outer sense-world. Actually, the latter is like a double-reflection of the forces, so that's why we must use the inner world to make sense of the outer world. Modern thinking goes in the opposite direction. It is assumed the outer world is mostly fully understood, but it's not, and then abstractions from that reflection, i.e. abstractions from reflections of reflections, are built up with intellectual models to explain the inner world (or ignore it). If we want any chance of moving in the opposite direction, we must begin with observation of the inner world and its meaningful activity.

[lorenzop]

I think I’m beginning to grasp Cleric/Ashwin philosophy.
There is one reality, a spiritual world of ideas/sentiments/symbols such as Cosmic Mother, Father, the Fall/Redemption, etc. This reality is thinking, not fixed/inert.
We are of this world and everything we perceive is a thinking of this reality of ideas, including our morning oatmeal, trees and planet Saturn.
However we have fallen and suffer from ‘stinkin thinkin’ and we need to fix.
We know when we are fixed when every perception is a proper sentiment, and we shall be fully fixed when we can see the full history of Atlantis-clairvoyant.
My take is that this is the shiniest of the golden calves, the prodigal son hitting rock bottom-thinking one can fix and have it all. The separate self gets to live forever.

[AshvinP]

I think I’m beginning to grasp Cleric/Ashwin philosophy.
There is one reality, a spiritual world of ideas/sentiments/symbols such as Cosmic Mother, Father, the Fall/Redemption, etc. This reality is thinking, not fixed/inert.
We are of this world and everything we perceive is a thinking of this reality of ideas, including our morning oatmeal, trees and planet Saturn.
However we have fallen and suffer from ‘stinkin thinkin’ and we need to fix.
We know when we are fixed when every perception is a proper sentiment, and we shall be fully fixed when we can see the full history of Atlantis-clairvoyant.
My take is that this is the shiniest of the golden calves, the prodigal son hitting rock bottom-thinking one can fix and have it all. The separate self gets to live forever.

Lorenzo,

Can I ask a question - what exactly is your metaphysical position? Do you think we are all atomized egos, who came from mindless particles and look at mindless trees, and our inner life of thoughts, feelings, desires is basically a 'sentimental' illusion? Should our highest goal to become dead inside and accept our true nature as mechanized automota?

And most of all, why are you commenting on this forum if you don't understand BK's idealism, the concept of meaning, the value of logic or reason or observation of inner experience, or anything similar? You are a very peculiar character... I will give you that.

[Soul_of_Shu]

... The separate self gets to live forever.

Curious how there are such different takeaways, whereby it's not a 'separate self' that lives forever, but rather the 'individual', which when its original meaning is grasped is known as the 'not divisible' ... That being of ever-present Origin, and the eternal essence of all the Many selves, even as one given expression of it like Ashvin does eventually vanish into some novel rearrangement ... oh look, an apropos anagram!

[Lou Gold]

Lou you're better off just ignoring this site.

It'll eventually fizzle out to nothing and that's better for one's own peace of mind

Oh my, I guess, being the mod obliged to follow it all daily, the peace of this mind is in serious jeopardy.

Lou seems inclined to take this approach ...

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

Exactly Dana. Thank you for noticing what I see.

In this sense, I find Rumi's poem very aligned with the great poem of Thich Nhat Hanh and I view the adversarial ones as choosing to bypass compassion in favor of agenda. Viva diversity, there's a season....

[Lou Gold]

... The separate self gets to live forever.

Curious how there are such different takeaways, whereby it's not a 'separate self' that lives forever, but rather the 'individual', which when its original meaning is grasped is known as the 'not divisible' ... That being of ever-present Origin, and the eternal essence of all the Many selves, even as one given expression of it like Ashvin does eventually vanish into some novel rearrangement ... oh look, an apropos anagram!

Dana, I think that McGilchrist offered an appropriate insight that the end-points of a line meet at their end.

For an anagram (sort of and in English), one might contemplate EVIL<>LIVE.

[mikekatz]

Hi Ashvin
Thanks for the response.

However, when you write the bold, I think you have implicitly slipped in a dualism which divides thinking from perception. You ascribed the duality-status to the thought-forms instead of to your own mode of perceiving them.

I don't understand what you are saying. I'm saying that there is an apparent duality of the One World, to use your phrase, and that apparent duality is precisely the division between experience and what experience perceives. Most of the time we live in that duality. The minute you have perception of anything, you have duality: the perceiver and the perceived. Dead thoughts, living thoughts, whatever the difference is to you, are still thoughts perceived by a perceiver, and therefore dualism is there. Horizontal, vertical, are still perceptions perceived by a perceiver, and so dualism is there.

You say:

That being said, the only reason I still write essays and what not is because I can sense concretely the shift in my thinking when I reason deeply through the outer and inner forms.

Why is your "sensing concretely the shift in my thinking when I reason deeply through the outer and inner forms" also not slipping into dualism? You are saying that there is a You sensing something outside you, namely "thinking...deeply through the outer and inner forms".

We can only talk by being dual, you and I alike. The only way to not be dual is not to talk. Instead, we have to find our way, so to speak, back to pure consciousness (One World), in which everything has its being, and in which there is neither subject, object, space, or time.

[AshvinP]

Hi Ashvin
Thanks for the response.

However, when you write the bold, I think you have implicitly slipped in a dualism which divides thinking from perception. You ascribed the duality-status to the thought-forms instead of to your own mode of perceiving them.

I don't understand what you are saying. I'm saying that there is an apparent duality of the One World, to use your phrase, and that apparent duality is precisely the division between experience and what experience perceives. Most of the time we live in that duality. The minute you have perception of anything, you have duality: the perceiver and the perceived. Dead thoughts, living thoughts, whatever the difference is to you, are still thoughts perceived by a perceiver, and therefore dualism is there. Horizontal, vertical, are still perceptions perceived by a perceiver, and so dualism is there.

You say:

That being said, the only reason I still write essays and what not is because I can sense concretely the shift in my thinking when I reason deeply through the outer and inner forms.

Why is your "sensing concretely the shift in my thinking when I reason deeply through the outer and inner forms" also not slipping into dualism? You are saying that there is a You sensing something outside you, namely "thinking...deeply through the outer and inner forms".

We can only talk by being dual, you and I alike. The only way to not be dual is not to talk. Instead, we have to find our way, so to speak, back to pure consciousness (One World), in which everything has its being, and in which there is neither subject, object, space, or time.

Mike,

It gets confusing when we say "there is duality". In fact, I think we both agree there is no duality, only One World. I would go further to say, there is polarity of Spirit-Matter which expresses itself in changing ways throughout humanity's evolution. Our modern age is beset by the hard dualism, the complete breaking of the polar essence in two. It hasn't always been this way. Would you agree, for ex, that our ancestors 3500 years ago still experienced a more living connection between outer and inner experience, as reflected in their mythology?

If so, then I think it becomes evident we are dealing with localized limitations, not absolute properties of human cognition. In fact, is through our cognition the duality begins to manifest, imaged across cultures in the Fall. This makes clear there is an immanent connection between what manifests the duality and what can overcome it. When we lose our way down a trail in the forest, we don't teleport back to the Origin, but gradually trace our way back through the steps we have already taken. A similar principle applies here, except we are tracing back in full consciousness, whereas we initially treaded the path in a mostly instinctive manner. We are not circling back to exact same spot but ascending.