Fighters for the Spirit

[Federica]

So you don't need to provide quotes, and this has been a consistent theme of all my posts?

Are you taking substances?

You look very sick. I am used to you skirting the key points and rarely answering questions, but with this one I admit you have been able to surprise me. Be sure you are the only one freaking out in this strange way and reading this foolishness in my posts. Kaje for example wrote that he finds my approach interesting, if you remember (perhaps when you regather your spirits) and I am sure nobody else shares this thing you are throwing up now.

What are you trying to do, Ashvin?

Yes, I suppose that I must be in another dimension where your repeated statements that the introspective promptings are hammering people over the head with a language that "nobody understands", that they "repulse the mind", that they would "trigger a thousand times the same reaction", and are equivalent to "put the heroin-addict into a locked room and let them scream and shout and take a beating, and if they survive well good for them", actually exist. I mean, do I seriously need to produce these quotes for you to remember that you wrote them? You can't just erase history when it becomes inconvenient for your argument or you lack a response.

Let's remember, the reason you started this thread (or the second post of it) is because, "making myself understood in this intention has been a challenge". Therefore, you know that I am not the only one who has pushed back on it, so please don't pretend that pointing out the flaws in your imagined bridging approach is unique to me.

What I said that you quote now does not imply that "many" are stuck forever in their limited understanding. What is out of the question today can change tomorrow, obviously. That's the whole purpose. I never said or suggested that there are some for whom the experience of introspection is completely unavailable and out of the question. This is your distorting dream.

[AshvinP]

So you don't need to provide quotes, and this has been a consistent theme of all my posts?

Are you taking substances?

You look very sick. I am used to you skirting the key points and rarely answering questions, but with this one I admit you have been able to surprise me. Be sure you are the only one freaking out in this strange way and reading this foolishness in my posts. Kaje for example wrote that he finds my approach interesting, if you remember (perhaps when you regather your spirits) and I am sure nobody else shares this thing you are throwing up now.

What are you trying to do, Ashvin?

Yes, I suppose that I must be in another dimension where your repeated statements that the introspective promptings are hammering people over the head with a language that "nobody understands", that they "repulse the mind", that they would "trigger a thousand times the same reaction", and are equivalent to "put the heroin-addict into a locked room and let them scream and shout and take a beating, and if they survive well good for them", actually exist. I mean, do I seriously need to produce these quotes for you to remember that you wrote them? You can't just erase history when it becomes inconvenient for your argument or you lack a response.

Let's remember, the reason you started this thread (or the second post of it) is because, "making myself understood in this intention has been a challenge". Therefore, you know that I am not the only one who has pushed back on it, so please don't pretend that pointing out the flaws in your imagined bridging approach is unique to me.

What I said that you quote now does not imply that "many" are stuck forever in their limited understanding. What is out of the question today can change tomorrow, obviously. That's the whole purpose. I never said or suggested that there are some for whom the experience of introspection is completely unavailable and out of the question. This is your distorting dream.

So the question was, why is it considered "out of the question today"? The way this question is approached has great relevance for whether "tomorrow" will ever come.

And please don't respond by telling me that I also imagined this latest quote in a fever dream

[Federica]

Yes, I suppose that I must be in another dimension where your repeated statements that the introspective promptings are hammering people over the head with a language that "nobody understands", that they "repulse the mind", that they would "trigger a thousand times the same reaction", and are equivalent to "put the heroin-addict into a locked room and let them scream and shout and take a beating, and if they survive well good for them", actually exist. I mean, do I seriously need to produce these quotes for you to remember that you wrote them? You can't just erase history when it becomes inconvenient for your argument or you lack a response.

Let's remember, the reason you started this thread (or the second post of it) is because, "making myself understood in this intention has been a challenge". Therefore, you know that I am not the only one who has pushed back on it, so please don't pretend that pointing out the flaws in your imagined bridging approach is unique to me.

What I said that you quote now does not imply that "many" are stuck forever in their limited understanding. What is out of the question today can change tomorrow, obviously. That's the whole purpose. I never said or suggested that there are some for whom the experience of introspection is completely unavailable and out of the question. This is your distorting dream.

So the question was, why is it considered "out of the question today"? The way this question is approached has great relevance for whether "tomorrow" will ever come.

And please don't respond by telling me that I also imagined this latest quote in a fever dream

I don't know why, there is no universal answer. The reasons are different for different persons. But it's a fact: many today are not interested, or do not seize the importance and nature of the question, when presented with the phenomenological prompts. We have seen it clearly enough here, on Substack, FB, and a bunch of other platforms, and in real life conversations. I don't understand you Ashvin. Say directly what you want to know.

[AshvinP]

What I said that you quote now does not imply that "many" are stuck forever in their limited understanding. What is out of the question today can change tomorrow, obviously. That's the whole purpose. I never said or suggested that there are some for whom the experience of introspection is completely unavailable and out of the question. This is your distorting dream.

So the question was, why is it considered "out of the question today"? The way this question is approached has great relevance for whether "tomorrow" will ever come.

And please don't respond by telling me that I also imagined this latest quote in a fever dream

I don't know why, there is no universal answer. The reasons are different for different persons. But it's a fact: many today are not interested, or do not seize the importance and nature of the question, when presented with the phenomenological prompts. We have seen it clearly enough here, on Substack, FB, and a bunch of other platforms, and in real life conversations. I don't understand you Ashvin. Say directly what you want to know.

We have also seen the opposite - with all of us here. And it would be quite presumptuous for us to assume there aren't many others who get tremendous value from the phenomenological prompts, who we have not come into contact with for whatever reason. The point is that this way of answering the "why" is highly speculative and we can always find examples to support our view of what's going on, and we can always find exceptions to those examples, and exceptions to the exceptions, etc. These speculations cannot give us any further insight into why the promptings are out of the question today, or whether, in fact, they are out of the question today.

The "why" I am interested in are the archetypal inner dynamics, which we learn through spiritual science (introspection) and are not speculative. When we proceed along these lines in seeking the why, we also naturally come into contact with the potential resolution space. Because that is the fundamental question of this and many other threads, after all - in what ways can we contribute to bringing the promptings back into the question today, i.e., helping souls feel that their deeper nature has always been readily accessible, right behind their intellectual mask? What I directly want to know is whether you agree with Cleric and myself that "the only thing we can do is to depict the inner experiences as faithfully and precisely as possible", and whether you see that this is the only way to preserve the freedom of the seeking soul?

[AshvinP]

So the question was, why is it considered "out of the question today"? The way this question is approached has great relevance for whether "tomorrow" will ever come.

And please don't respond by telling me that I also imagined this latest quote in a fever dream

I don't know why, there is no universal answer. The reasons are different for different persons. But it's a fact: many today are not interested, or do not seize the importance and nature of the question, when presented with the phenomenological prompts. We have seen it clearly enough here, on Substack, FB, and a bunch of other platforms, and in real life conversations. I don't understand you Ashvin. Say directly what you want to know.

We have also seen the opposite - with all of us here. And it would be quite presumptuous for us to assume there aren't many others who get tremendous value from the phenomenological prompts, who we have not come into contact with for whatever reason. The point is that this way of answering the "why" is highly speculative and we can always find examples to support our view of what's going on, and we can always find exceptions to those examples, and exceptions to the exceptions, etc. These speculations cannot give us any further insight into why the promptings are out of the question today, or whether, in fact, they are out of the question today.

The "why" I am interested in are the archetypal inner dynamics, which we learn through spiritual science (introspection) and are not speculative. When we proceed along these lines in seeking the why, we also naturally come into contact with the potential resolution space. Because that is the fundamental question of this and many other threads, after all - in what ways can we contribute to bringing the promptings back into the question today, i.e., helping souls feel that their deeper nature has always been readily accessible, right behind their intellectual mask? What I directly want to know is whether you agree with Cleric and myself that "the only thing we can do is to depict the inner experiences as faithfully and precisely as possible", and whether you see that this is the only way to preserve the freedom of the seeking soul?

To elaborate some more on these archetypal inner dynamics referenced above, I will quote something I wrote to Guney previously:

"When we closely identify our personality with a certain opinion, for example, that the brain is the concrete 'material structure' and its obscure dynamics lead to what we experience as 'thoughts', we will feel concrete inner tension if our spiritual activity is led toward the phenomenological experience of being causally responsible for its flow of thoughts. That entire domain of meaningful experience will feel like a sharp thorn that threatens to tear a hole through our personality, to rip out the opinion that is woven into its fabric. All of this can be inwardly felt if we introspectively observe our life situation and its characteristic flow, which, of course, is experienced most lucidly in the flow of imaginative states. This is a sort of inner experience that we can directly observe. (it is likewise the case for the soul that identifies closely with the opinion that thoughts emerge from a mystical void, and we have seen on this forum concrete examples of how such an opinion steers the soul away from the experience of self-willed inner activity, such that phenomenological exercises and examples can hardly be comprehended anymore)."

This is the kind of answer to the question, "why is there so much resistance to phenomenological exercises today?", that we can explore without undue speculation, solely based on what we learn through our introspective practice (also supported by the deeper facts from spiritual scientific research). A key consideration here is that these inner constraints - opinions, beliefs, preferences, desires, etc. - are not something we are normally conscious of. They are tightly merged into the background of our perspective. We know that we have opinions, preferences, and so on, but we aren't clearly aware of our identification with them and how that steers our imaginative life in some directions and away from others. These are the 'soul rashes' that constantly itch the intellect, and the intellect continually capitulates to the itching and scratches out its conditioned thoughts.

Thus it is clear that there are not many options to loosen these constraints. Actually there can only be one option - to become more intuitively and imaginatively conscious of them. There are no clever intellectual tricks to loosen them while remaining in the dark about their existence, to suddenly start thinking through phenomenal reality without prejudices, assumptions, etc., yet without undergoing any self-conscious catharsis through the introspective promptings. We only begin to clearly perceive their influences once we have worked on resisting them and refining our first-person orientation within the experiential flow for some time. Until then, they act as a continual source of distraction and obstruction from the introspective cognitive path, in one form or another.

If there is genuine disagreement or uncertainty on this point, then it may be helpful to explore it further, openly and respectfully, dispassionately, and always through the lens of the verifiable inner dynamics. Even if we feel like we have heard it a million times before, it doesn't hurt to hear it again, from within our always integrating intuitive context. We never know beforehand when we may begin seeing these things from a new angle, with new intuitions of their significance.