Being Yourself

a good response :-)

I can see where this would cause problems for people of a particular philosophical persuasion (I'll probably argue with it if I don't agree, but that doesn't mean I can't see what you are talking about in relation to the grammar).

Hopefully this makes some sense, I'm not sure how well articulated it'll be but I've pushed past those kinds of doubts before to make a couple of hundred posts here so what the hell...



When I've considered things like consciousness, the nature of self, when I've extrapolated from certain realisations or an awareness in meditation maybe, I've sensed this type of perspective to be so on the money as to be astounding but as a topic of discussion and talk, still very "insane"!

I was also thinking about how best to explain a non dualistic perspective to someone of a different frame of mind and it made me think of "thinking but no thinker". I was wondering to myself, what jumps or shifts in perspective are required and you do see quite starkly, the little packages words are sorted in, with the various associations, sister words (like thinking with thinker) and rules for conventional use. I was wondering whether this phrase^^ is really like a snapshot/freeze-frame in an attempt to break the associative binds language places on us (like the paradoxical koans Zen uses), but is in fact not the true reflection of that which underlies the speakers/writers intentions. So I know words are accepted as being problematic, particularly in every day usage, but I guess I myself forget that even a very specific, well intentioned sentence, with a lot of thought behind it to convey a mystical perspective, is still very limiting.

So I remember someone saying on this site before (Asherman?), it's tempting, when pushing past the static, dualistic organising frame of mind that sculps the world, to reduce it to a process, the ONE as I believe the Hindu's sometimes talk of it (particularly so for discussion maybe?) but ultimately there is nothing? Hope that's right or makes some sense. Like for instance when we've all been captivated by something, whether a scene or some music, whatever. I think there are numerous levels of abstraction we place on that experience to convey it to someone else BUT ALSO therefore, numerous levels we can strip away. Using language to convey that experience we say I was listening to such and such and it was amazing etc, going another step further we say that in that moment I was listening there was just the music because we want to eliminate the separateness between ourselves and the music (because that was the inspiring part of the experience!) BUT ultimately, was there even listening or the music if there was no listener to listen?? So this is the crux of the associative nature of words, the links between them which language cannot escape from.

I've acknowledged a lot of the above in my own mind already and on this site on numerous occasion as well, I didn't write the above to propose some startling revelation (obviously) in and of itself but rather with the idea that, when describing a perspective of this nature to someone unfamiliar, some of the phrases used are done so in an effort to provide some kind of intermediary point where contrasting perspectives can meet but at which, neither perspective is really that comfortable because even this phrase I keep mentioning, doesn't in itself, represent the inspiration for the speaker/perspective in the 1st place.

So maybe to appreciate an olive branch, which can, as a pointer in these cases, be really helpful, you have to have some appreciation of the intentions behind it and try to realise what they think they're saying actually represents? Just some thoughts anyway, I've been thinking a lot for some time about how best contrasting people and ideas should meet.

Vikorr, the perspective I've been trying to share is either grasped or it is not, sort like getting the point of a joke. Ashers, Fresco, Asherman, Coluber, Cryacuz seem to get it.

Vikorr, the perspective I've been trying to share is either grasped or it is not, sort like getting the point of a joke. Ashers, Fresco, Asherman, Coluber, Cryacuz seem to get it. There are some A2Kers who are VERY bright but do not get it. What they lack is not intelligence or sophistication; it's more like a lack of the requisite "sense of humor."

So you are telling a joke that very few people get?

The funny thing is (no pun intended), a lot of stuff you say (not all), I can see how one would arrive at that conclusion, but I just don't agree with it. It is I guess, as you say, like a particular sense of humour.

Vikorr, I'm sure that you know I was using "joke" as a metaphor. And I listed a good number of A2Kers who "get it." I don't want to sound arrogant but there is no way one can understand it without agreeing with it. To "get it" is to share it.
But you do get the perspectivistic nature of this orientation, something LIKE a "sense of humor"--but not at all funny, or intended as humor.
Good night.

Yes, I understood it was a metaphor.

You listed only 5 people.

You are entitled to your opinion.

"Only" FIVE people? On this subject that's a social movement, if you ask me.

Was there EVER any doubt about both of our rights to our opinions?

"Only" FIVE people? On this subject that's a social movement, if you ask me.

Was there EVER any doubt about both of our rights to our opinions?

This part JL



It appears to me to propose your theory as not a theory, but fact, if only one has the capacity to 'understand it'. Yet it can only be opinion.

About my 'only five' comment...you said a "good many", and I was surprised that you consider 5 'a good many'. Then again, now that I think about it - In the right circumstances, perhaps it is (I'm sure at some stage, Abraham must have converted only 5 people...and look what happened after that).

You're right--and that one step toward "getting it"--it's not a theory; it's a perspective and it is, according to the literature, an esoteric one. That's why I'm surprised to see AT LEAST five who "appreciate" it.

Now let's change the subject. I'm getting snotty and that's not my pleasure. I enjoy socializing with my many A2K friends (including you) and making the attempt--for the sake of my aging brain--to articulate ideas that are difficult if not actually ineffable.

Youve not been yourself lately :wink:

The phrase "be yourself" is certainly vacuous out of context for the reasons JLN has put....and even if a reader does not understand the nonduality issue they only need to consider, say, psychoanalytic concepts of "personality" (with its references to "primal structures" such as "id" ) to realise the arbitrary directions in which analysis of the question might go.

The only tangible answer is that within some particular communication context the phrase means something like "say or do what you want without trying to imitate or placate others". Unfortunately this may not be sound advice since successful communication is to some extent derivative or convergent by definition. In other words, all such contexts imply assigned roles to participants such that the "self" is never free from its social roots. The concept of "self" is contingent on the concept of "other".