Thoughts are like soldiers

Hi BlueRay,

I think it was Carl Jung that said ‘Individuation enables unity…’ (or something similar.) And I have always understood this to mean that when we fully accept and acknowledge our own subjectivity (that there is no ‘One Truth...’) and upon doing so we therefore, in turn, then naturally appreciate and respect the subjectivity of others too, we become closer to everyone (humanity) as a result. I.e. upon Individuation, transcendence is inevitable.

AngelDust said:

I think it was Carl Jung that said ‘Individuation enables unity…’ (or something similar.) And I have always understood this to mean that when we fully accept and acknowledge our own subjectivity (that there is no ‘One Truth...’) and upon doing so we therefore, in turn, then naturally appreciate and respect the subjectivity of others too, we become closer to everyone (humanity) as a result. I.e. upon Individuation, transcendence is inevitable.

Yes.  I like this, and believe it.  There is no 'one truth'.  You could almost say that there are no truths at all, only perceptions.  What's true for one person isn't true for another, for any number of reasons.  I stick by the idea that we are all composed of so many things: our genes, our background and upbringing, our experiences in and of the world.  And these are all variables.  No two people will respond in the same way to anything.  There are so many other factors to account for, too: individual neurology (whether typical or diverse) to name an obvious one.  Conditioning.  Trauma.  Some will be raised in difficult circumstances and experience abuse and trauma, yet come through it, survive, flourish.  Others may buckle and break down, never to recover.

I believe it and hold to it.  Yet I realise it's something I still need to learn, too.  I struggle with being challenged, as we all do.  I'm not so robust in my thoughts and views that a challenge won't faze me, and send me into retreat and despair.  Completely undermine me.  So - as, again, many of us do - I become defensive, hide away, lick my wounds.  Try to heal again by cutting myself off.  It's something I've always done, since I was a very young child.  From very early on, the world seemed a confusing (at best) and hostile (at worst) place.  Everything - other people, institutions, even my own emotions - seemed designed to attack me, cheat me, catch me out, put me down.  Such challenges can almost feel like the world is being pulled out from under me; that the very basis of my entire existence is nothing but dust and ashes.  It's hardly surprising that depression has dogged me for much of my life.  My experiences - at school and elsewhere - led me to believe that everyone else was right, and I was wrong (often, these people were right, of course - I acknowledge that).  Even now, when I find myself in a position of being challenged, I tend to buckle under and give ground to the other person.  I can't rise to it.  I suppose it's why I'm now pretty much a hermit, shutting myself off in my comfort zone, communicating in the only way I really can - through writing.  In this position, I have time to marshal my thoughts.  To consider a response that doesn't leave me looking like a babbling idiot - which is how I would be out there, amongst other people.  I may come across as confident and in command of my thoughts here - but out there, I feel like a drowning wretch, tossed by the tides against the rocks.  I'm a nothing man.  A cipher.  In the words of Ralph Ellison's protagonist in his great novel Invisible Man, 'I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind.  I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.'   

In good part, I struggle to hold my own because of a lack of education.  Or, shall we say, a lack of the knowledge that most people use to back up their position.  I can't come up with theories, facts, figures, events.  I don't have it.  All I really have is intuition, feelings, impulses that are the very essence of me.  The vital, core thing.  The 'humanity' element, if you like, which connects me to my fellow beings - even though, in many senses, I feel 'apart' from them, and always have done.  In some ways, I think this is all that's needed.  And no matter how much that's attacked, it will never be destroyed.  Unless I destroy it myself.

When I say I lack education, I mean formal education.  I went to university, yes.  And that was where I got my true education.  Not in what I learned about my subject, but in what I learned about myself (though literature and philosophy were certainly useful enablers there - more so than many other subjects I might have taken).  University opened up my mind in a way nothing else had ever done.  And in that sense, it got to the core of me.  It refined the essence, and threw off the things that had been covering it and hiding it.  Before uni, my closest 'friend' had been my older brother, and my belief system was largely shaped by those around me at the time: family, people at work, etc.  I tended to accept what I was told, or what I heard, and use it as the basis for my own 'opinions' - which were really nothing more than petty prejudices and ill-informed nonsense.  Without being overtly homophobic or sexist, I nevertheless held onto a predominantly '70s, culturally-conditioned mindset that saw homosexuality as something to laugh at or be suspicious of - even think of as vaguely perverse.  And although I never regarded women as inferiors, and actually preferred being with them and working with them, I still held onto archaic views about them and their place in the world.  University refined all of that out of me.  By the time I left, I was a vocal advocate of gay rights and women's rights.  Human rights.  I was a staunch defender of all minorities: the poor, the homeless, the dispossessed.  Animals, too.  I got involved in the animal rights and environmental movements.  I went on demos, sat in fox holes, denounced exploitation in all of its forms.  These things, as I've said, were always there inside me.  University gave me the confidence to bring them out.  All of this endures with me to this day.  It will always be there.  It always was.  Hardly surprising, therefore, that it served to distance me from my former 'closest friend'.  My brother is still the person he was.  The things that once bound us together - the common beliefs - soon pulled us apart.  We are no longer close in any sense.  The only thing we share is our blood.  He doesn't understand me, and doesn't seem to want to any longer.  In good part, his wife has abetted this.  He has gained strength from her approval of him as he is.  She shares his beliefs.  She not only disdains mine, but is hostile to them.  I have to accept them for the people they are - as I try to embrace all of humanity.  If they could only accept me for the person I am in return.  Which they don't seem able to.  And so... we are apart, and - since the settling of my dear mother's affairs after her passing - we no longer have contact.  They see things in black and white only.  I can't hold to that.  I can only see a spectrum of colour.  I see the grey areas, too.  Out of self-preservation, if nothing else, I need to keep that view.  The day I lose it is the day that I myself will be lost.  And there will no longer be any point in going on.

But I'm imperfect.  I hold much store by the old saying There's so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best - let the one not find fault with the other.  But I realise I do not always keep to that principle.  I look around the world and see what others do to one another.  The greed, the bullying, the fighting.  Power-brokers treating human life with indifference; treating innocent people as nothing other than pawns in their game - things expendable in the pursuit of their own aims.  Yet these are humans, too - presumably with thoughts, feelings, emotions.  People who also care about things, in their own ways.  I used to ally myself only with those who seemed to think as I did - politically, socially, spiritually - but have now wearied of that, with all the partisan hatreds and divisive talk.  The bunker mentality which seems to pervade all human discourse.  It's so destructive - if not to people, then to one's own psychology.  I have to be independent.  I've never been a joiner in any sense, anyway - so it isn't difficult for me.

Perhaps, then, it's understandable why I react in the way I do whenever I come up against something that goes against everything I believe.  My world-view, and my beliefs and ideals - my love, if you like - are what keep me in the world.  If all of this is challenged, then it feels as if I no longer exist.  I need to look beyond this, though.  I need to transcend it.  I don't mean that in the sense of being morally or intellectually superior.  I mean in being receptive to it, acknowledging it, learning what I can from it, taking any sustenance from it that I can.  Seeing where there might actually be wisdom in it - something that I can add to whatever store of wisdom I myself possess.  See it as a form of energy and strength - not as something that weakens and enervates.

This is reason enough to go on with life - in my darkest moments, I have to keep telling myself that.  Not always looking for truths and answers, because there are so many, and not all of them will be congenial or compatible.  But seeking transcendence.  An inner truth.  The truth of my being.  A truth that embraces all, in spite of differences.

Forgive me... I have taken up too much space.  I hope some of what I've said makes sense.  It may be fraught with contradictions.  But I accept that, too.  As Walt Whitman said: Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then - I contradict myself.  I am large.  I contain multitudes.   I'm not as large as Walt in any sense of the word.  But I think I contain multitudes.  I try, anyway...

AngelDust said:

I think it was Carl Jung that said ‘Individuation enables unity…’ (or something similar.) And I have always understood this to mean that when we fully accept and acknowledge our own subjectivity (that there is no ‘One Truth...’) and upon doing so we therefore, in turn, then naturally appreciate and respect the subjectivity of others too, we become closer to everyone (humanity) as a result. I.e. upon Individuation, transcendence is inevitable.

Yes.  I like this, and believe it.  There is no 'one truth'.  You could almost say that there are no truths at all, only perceptions.  What's true for one person isn't true for another, for any number of reasons.  I stick by the idea that we are all composed of so many things: our genes, our background and upbringing, our experiences in and of the world.  And these are all variables.  No two people will respond in the same way to anything.  There are so many other factors to account for, too: individual neurology (whether typical or diverse) to name an obvious one.  Conditioning.  Trauma.  Some will be raised in difficult circumstances and experience abuse and trauma, yet come through it, survive, flourish.  Others may buckle and break down, never to recover.

I believe it and hold to it.  Yet I realise it's something I still need to learn, too.  I struggle with being challenged, as we all do.  I'm not so robust in my thoughts and views that a challenge won't faze me, and send me into retreat and despair.  Completely undermine me.  So - as, again, many of us do - I become defensive, hide away, lick my wounds.  Try to heal again by cutting myself off.  It's something I've always done, since I was a very young child.  From very early on, the world seemed a confusing (at best) and hostile (at worst) place.  Everything - other people, institutions, even my own emotions - seemed designed to attack me, cheat me, catch me out, put me down.  Such challenges can almost feel like the world is being pulled out from under me; that the very basis of my entire existence is nothing but dust and ashes.  It's hardly surprising that depression has dogged me for much of my life.  My experiences - at school and elsewhere - led me to believe that everyone else was right, and I was wrong (often, these people were right, of course - I acknowledge that).  Even now, when I find myself in a position of being challenged, I tend to buckle under and give ground to the other person.  I can't rise to it.  I suppose it's why I'm now pretty much a hermit, shutting myself off in my comfort zone, communicating in the only way I really can - through writing.  In this position, I have time to marshal my thoughts.  To consider a response that doesn't leave me looking like a babbling idiot - which is how I would be out there, amongst other people.  I may come across as confident and in command of my thoughts here - but out there, I feel like a drowning wretch, tossed by the tides against the rocks.  I'm a nothing man.  A cipher.  In the words of Ralph Ellison's protagonist in his great novel Invisible Man, 'I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind.  I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.'   

In good part, I struggle to hold my own because of a lack of education.  Or, shall we say, a lack of the knowledge that most people use to back up their position.  I can't come up with theories, facts, figures, events.  I don't have it.  All I really have is intuition, feelings, impulses that are the very essence of me.  The vital, core thing.  The 'humanity' element, if you like, which connects me to my fellow beings - even though, in many senses, I feel 'apart' from them, and always have done.  In some ways, I think this is all that's needed.  And no matter how much that's attacked, it will never be destroyed.  Unless I destroy it myself.

When I say I lack education, I mean formal education.  I went to university, yes.  And that was where I got my true education.  Not in what I learned about my subject, but in what I learned about myself (though literature and philosophy were certainly useful enablers there - more so than many other subjects I might have taken).  University opened up my mind in a way nothing else had ever done.  And in that sense, it got to the core of me.  It refined the essence, and threw off the things that had been covering it and hiding it.  Before uni, my closest 'friend' had been my older brother, and my belief system was largely shaped by those around me at the time: family, people at work, etc.  I tended to accept what I was told, or what I heard, and use it as the basis for my own 'opinions' - which were really nothing more than petty prejudices and ill-informed nonsense.  Without being overtly homophobic or sexist, I nevertheless held onto a predominantly '70s, culturally-conditioned mindset that saw homosexuality as something to laugh at or be suspicious of - even think of as vaguely perverse.  And although I never regarded women as inferiors, and actually preferred being with them and working with them, I still held onto archaic views about them and their place in the world.  University refined all of that out of me.  By the time I left, I was a vocal advocate of gay rights and women's rights.  Human rights.  I was a staunch defender of all minorities: the poor, the homeless, the dispossessed.  Animals, too.  I got involved in the animal rights and environmental movements.  I went on demos, sat in fox holes, denounced exploitation in all of its forms.  These things, as I've said, were always there inside me.  University gave me the confidence to bring them out.  All of this endures with me to this day.  It will always be there.  It always was.  Hardly surprising, therefore, that it served to distance me from my former 'closest friend'.  My brother is still the person he was.  The things that once bound us together - the common beliefs - soon pulled us apart.  We are no longer close in any sense.  The only thing we share is our blood.  He doesn't understand me, and doesn't seem to want to any longer.  In good part, his wife has abetted this.  He has gained strength from her approval of him as he is.  She shares his beliefs.  She not only disdains mine, but is hostile to them.  I have to accept them for the people they are - as I try to embrace all of humanity.  If they could only accept me for the person I am in return.  Which they don't seem able to.  And so... we are apart, and - since the settling of my dear mother's affairs after her passing - we no longer have contact.  They see things in black and white only.  I can't hold to that.  I can only see a spectrum of colour.  I see the grey areas, too.  Out of self-preservation, if nothing else, I need to keep that view.  The day I lose it is the day that I myself will be lost.  And there will no longer be any point in going on.

But I'm imperfect.  I hold much store by the old saying There's so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best - let the one not find fault with the other.  But I realise I do not always keep to that principle.  I look around the world and see what others do to one another.  The greed, the bullying, the fighting.  Power-brokers treating human life with indifference; treating innocent people as nothing other than pawns in their game - things expendable in the pursuit of their own aims.  Yet these are humans, too - presumably with thoughts, feelings, emotions.  People who also care about things, in their own ways.  I used to ally myself only with those who seemed to think as I did - politically, socially, spiritually - but have now wearied of that, with all the partisan hatreds and divisive talk.  The bunker mentality which seems to pervade all human discourse.  It's so destructive - if not to people, then to one's own psychology.  I have to be independent.  I've never been a joiner in any sense, anyway - so it isn't difficult for me.

Perhaps, then, it's understandable why I react in the way I do whenever I come up against something that goes against everything I believe.  My world-view, and my beliefs and ideals - my love, if you like - are what keep me in the world.  If all of this is challenged, then it feels as if I no longer exist.  I need to look beyond this, though.  I need to transcend it.  I don't mean that in the sense of being morally or intellectually superior.  I mean in being receptive to it, acknowledging it, learning what I can from it, taking any sustenance from it that I can.  Seeing where there might actually be wisdom in it - something that I can add to whatever store of wisdom I myself possess.  See it as a form of energy and strength - not as something that weakens and enervates.

This is reason enough to go on with life - in my darkest moments, I have to keep telling myself that.  Not always looking for truths and answers, because there are so many, and not all of them will be congenial or compatible.  But seeking transcendence.  An inner truth.  The truth of my being.  A truth that embraces all, in spite of differences.

Forgive me... I have taken up too much space.  I hope some of what I've said makes sense.  It may be fraught with contradictions.  But I accept that, too.  As Walt Whitman said: Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then - I contradict myself.  I am large.  I contain multitudes.   I'm not as large as Walt in any sense of the word.  But I think I contain multitudes.  I try, anyway...

AngelDust Don’t worry, I’m always the last to get a joke! Lol! 

You may not read the works of Jesus but your long post to MartianTom  could have come straight from his mouth. 

Some people interpret Jesus and Moses etc at states of mind. There is much to learn from this understanding. Some see him as a prophet or an ordinary man with some wisdom or the son of god. Some understandings show that they, Jesus etc  are simply representations of the stars, the sun etc and show the order of how the universe works.  It doesn’t matter how the messenger is interpreted it is the message that counts and it’s the message that changed the history of man kind, forever. 

His message is the most practical and reliable way to reach 100% peace and happiness 100% of the time and to have anything and everything you want in this life. All self help books etc, all philosophies, psychological explanations etc all come from this and not one has exceeded the knowledge that the message provides. It is simply told in different ways now so more people can understand it. 

Of course religions tried to hijack the message and use it as a form of fear and punishment while selling  the ‘hope’ of something impossible to accomplish ~ how the hell they pulled that off for so long I don’t know!  But it was a great way to control people while amassing great wealth. They once owned more property than anybody else or any other organisation on the earth. So although they distorted the message, they still got rich, but where are they now? They’re not so rich now and powerful now and they’ve lost much of their control over people. They built their castles on sand so they were always going to crumble. 

You will hear the message of Jesus spoke in all and every type of counselling, therapy, self help stuff, in everything that tries to help people, you will always, without doubt find that it is based on the simple, clear unmistakable message of Jesus, whoever or whatever he was or wasn’t, that part isn’t important. 

It was the same for me. When I gave up searching, I found peace and as you said, everything is within us so that’s the only place to look anyway. 

I think you are probably right

No?!?!?

Haha, sorry I was feeling quite playful, and I personally found it funny to just say 'no' to your premise. I appreciate my warped humour may not be everyones' cup of tea though. 

Um...what to say... I have very much enjoyed and am really enjoying this thread immensely. However I do not personally believe Jesus exists or ever existed.  So I sadly feel I have nothing to now offer if this is the hard road down which this conversation is now heading. 

No?!?!?

It was the same for me. When I gave up searching, I found peace and as you said, everything is within us so that’s the only place to look anyway. 

Jesus was the greatest metaphysician there ever was

I thought I had better edit by adding the quote I was directly replying to as I am finding it a bit hard to keep up with the order of all the different replies...

No . 

Hi Martian Tom,

I do not think you have taken up too much space. And I like multitudes best  

I think (sadly) there are traces of self-admonishment in some of what you have written which has reminded me deeply that, I think what can often pain us the very most in this life, is perhaps not what others do or do not say or do to us or themselves, but what hurts us and ‘rocks us to our core’ is when we find we have lost (or not yet found) trust and faith in ourselves?

In this respect, I think that if we have faith in ourselves, if we are able to deeply trust our own self, our own judgements, the very ‘inner wisdom’ and ‘humanity core’ that you spoke of, then nothing anyone can ever be or think or say can ever really be in opposition to us, attack us or threaten us, as having trust in ourselves (paradoxically) enables us to be open to change and be challenged, and to not fear being changed by or challenging others too?

In this way I think it is important to be human, to be fallible, to be wrong, and that these things, (however unsettling they naturally are) are nothing to be deeply afraid of, but are perhaps blessings really, yes?  I think who we believe ourselves to be, and ‘this life,’ are all stories really. And parts of those stories are very much ‘just dust and ashes,’ (as you say) just as much as those stories also contain divinity, flames and passion too. And I think our lives must cycle through both these phases (these two ‘impostors just the same…’) constantly, eternally, otherwise I do not know how any of us, as individuals, could ever grow? In this respect, we are ALL, always, both angel and dust…

I expect to be thoroughly (clinically) depressed at times throughout my lifetime, as the alternative is too horrible for me; as it may mean I have accepted the unacceptable, I have grown numb, I have stopped growing. Depression can be a great reminder that things are not as they should be or need to be for us; a life changing insight wearing the heaviest of painful disguises perhaps?

I would not want anyone to think I am being flippant about depression because I know there is little soul destroying pain like it. But like so many people who have come to terms with suffering depression, I am often (but not always) able to see how it may be an ‘evolutionary process’ rather than solely a curse.

I personally think it is very much okay to ‘retreat to the cave’ (as you say) when feeling threatened, I see nothing wrong in this at all. I think maybe this could mean that what you need to overcome any perceived threat is already with you, a strength inside you waiting to be found or reclaimed, rather than something you need to leave the ‘cave’ to find?...

Growing up ND is usually a story of having many long years of having been told to not trust yourself, to not trust your own judgement, to not be yourself, and this is a very painful passage to travel through. Though I strongly believe that this same story is equally true for NTs too. Do we not all grow as children into what our parents, our environments and our childhoods shaped (or needed) us to be, to then spend our adulthoods finding out which of those bits were right and which were wrong?

Perhaps in this respect the only constant meaning I have found is the quest to find out who we are and attempt to accept what we have found? Even if, ultimately, those around us do not see, do not agree, do not accept or do not love us as a result? I think we (human beings) are always ultimately alone with ourselves and must face (and answer to) ourselves alone in this respect?

I found my own greatest movement from my most recent bout of depression came when I accepted there was no meaning, when I gave in from trying to find one, (I kind of gave in, gave myself to not having one, not gave up in trying to find one and I think, for me, therein lies all the difference?) And I decided instead to find out what life might be like to live with no reason. It is turning out to be far more interesting than I could have imagined. I think we can fight very hard ‘to know,’ but I have found it can be nicer still to not know, to not need to know, to have no answers,  because it leaves far more room to be pleasantly surprised.   

Not least of all I have learnt that not having yet found what you are seeking, or being deeply unhappy with what you have so far found, I have learnt are never good enough reasons to not be here. I do not know, I am only one small person and can only speak from my own experience, but I deeply suspect that the seeking (amongst all the painful dust and ashes, and the fire and divinity that every search must entail) but definitely not the finding, IS the reason?

Warm hugs for everyone.

Jesus was the greatest metaphysician there ever was so it is a bit difficult to talk about metaphysics without mentioning his name. I know many of the religions say their religion is based on the teachings of Jesus but they’re not, but because they say that (without actually teaching it) many people, who have had a negative experience with religion, also have a negative association with Jesus. He’s a fun guy to study though and there are many interpretations from him being a state of mind to him being an actual person and one of, if not, ‘the’ most influential person  the world has ever known, whatever form they know or understand him/it as. All interpretations are great and even though they are each very different they are all lead to the same thing that the message is about self empowerment, freedom, bliss, living the life of your dreams and that you hold all the power within you. Totally unlike many of the religions that teach that the power is outside of a person with some mystical god like figure but it’s easy to discover that those teachings were simply about power and control and gaining vast wealth and property for the Church. The actual teachings of Jesus are the most practical and complete guidance system for a free and happy life which to be honest, doesn’t require any other teachings at all, other than learning to read and write etc. But in terms of learning how to be the best you can be, how to have a great life and achieve all you want in life, there are no better teachers than the man or whatever he/it was, the teachings are the best.

I didn't wish to upset anyone's beliefs, and I know that bringing in mention of religious figures can be treading on difficult ground.  I'm a humanist.  But I respect, of course, people's own beliefs, whatever they are - unless they are designed to do harm, or be exclusionist or negatively-judgmental of non-followers.

Hi Martian Tom,

Thank you for persevering and posting again after your first attempt was lost yesterday. I am pondering the things you have said and would like to post a reply a little later when I have had a good think. I have been trying to keep up with the metaphysical conversation too but then when Jesus popped up, I quietly backed out of the room...

Yes, my love is transcendent love, I just didn’t know it, it’s the only love I’ve ever had. I can’t stop crying. When I was reading the article I almost threw up when I was reading the beginning bit. It was horrible, I was struggling to read it, talking about those conditions as if most people are like that. I’m heartbroken. I didn’t know so many people lived like that. But I got through it and when it started to talk about transcendent love, then yes, that is love. To me, that’s the only love there is. I did however, tell you all about the experience I had in Australia in 2016 where I witnessed this other kind of love. It happens between humans and I’d never seen it before. It was so tender and gentle, not like my love. My love is wonderful but I would never call it tender. It’s more scientific and exact but more than that, but not tender, not in the way I witnessed it between some friends that night. 

I tried and failed miserably, to try to live by this conditional love, I just couldn’t do it. I wanted to die. I didn’t know the rules. It was such hard work that it left me suicidal, many times, to the point that suicide became my friend. It became my get out clause. I could go back to being one with my father again, if things got too much, I would simply hang myself and go back home. All my life I was told I was wrong, I don’t love everybody, that’s not right, you have to hate some people, such as pardophiles etc. I thought, my god, these are the very people who need even more love. I felt trapped in a world I didn’t understand. I just wanted to go back home but it didn’t feel right to leave this body, so I used the option of suicide to help me get through life. It kept me alive. Even as a kid I used to envy kids who took their own life. I couldn’t understand why my mum and the people round me thought that was a sad thing. I used to imagine how happy they would feel just before they left this world. They would have that moment of happiness at least, before they went back home. And one moment of pure happiness, is worth more than a lifetime of unhappiness. I used to envy them so much. I sometimes fantasize about being hit full on by a car. How good it would feel to have it smash against this physical frame and crumble and break it to the point I have to leave. I have to go back home now. But home, is here on this earth. I realised that the moment I realised I was autistic. I finally found my place on earth. I belonged here just as much as anybody else. I was autistic. I know it seems I’m a bit different to others, but I understand that now. Before my diagnosis I thought everyone loved in the way I did, but that they knew something else that I didn’t. They knew what to talk about to people, who to love and not love, I didn’t understand it and felt I had no place on this earth. But I know that I do now, even if I do value life and love and they value money and conditional love. At the end of the day, it’s all the same anyway, and just because other people can’t see that, it doesn’t mean I’m wrong and they’re right. They believe in conditional love (they know the rules for that) and I believe in unconditional love (I know the rules for that). People are happy in their way, dependent on things and circumstances and other people, I’m happy no matter where I am, what my situation is, who I’m with or who I’m not with. I’m afraid I can’t assign my happiness to any condition or person, it just is. So I don’t think it matters how each person finds love and happiness and maybe it’s not even that important to some people, I don’t know, I don’t know the full criteria or conditions so I don’t know how it works or what kind of joy and bliss it brings, or if it brings bliss at all. Maybe bliss is not important to you guys in the conditional camp? It’s vital to me in my life, otherwise it’s a sign I’m off track. 

I’ll read it now. 

What did you think of that article, by the way?  I think it describes very well your own ideas about what it means to love

Sure, lol, thank you for the conversation. I know I wear people out but this is the only way I know how to speak but I appreciate I wear people out or rather this kind of conversation wears people out. Thank you much appreciated. 

I looked up metaphysician, too - although I thought I understood what it meant because I studied a little metaphysical philosophy at uni.  That definition is the one I gave above.  That's why I don't understand how you don't know what transcendence means.  Your mention of the teachings of Jesus, too, makes me wonder how you've never come across the term 'transcendent love'.

I don't know if Jesus existed or not.  The only evidence we have to hold up of his existence is written in scriptures thousands of years old.  I believe there probably was a very special and remarkable man, who did many remarkable things.  I don't, though, believe he performed miracles, nor that he was the son of God.  I could be wrong.  But it's what I choose to believe, based on available evidence, and on what I perceive to be the primitive nature of beliefs and understanding at the time that Jesus is meant to have lived.  However, that's beside the point.  These teachings, as such, are tremendously powerful and influential.  I often think that it would be a great thing if more people who profess to be Christians also lived by them.  Unfortunately, human fallibility being what it is, not all of them do.  Christians have proven themselves to be just as adept at persecution and killing than any other member of humanity.  They corrupt his word.  But then, the words in the Bible - as in all literature - are open to multiple interpretations, and people will often interpret them in a way that best suits their own lives, beliefs and objectives.  This is, of course, very sad.

I won't go into the concepts of poverty and ill-health any more, because I don't think it's very fruitful.  We each believe what we believe on that matter.  There's only so many ways in which you can describe what a circle is... in the end, it will still be a circle.  I think I've told you about my travails at school, with a teacher who refused to accept that my way of writing the numeral '3' was the same as hers.  Mine had a round top, her's had a flat top.  It was still a 3.  But because mine had a slightly different shape to hers - even though the meaning was the same, and the figure was instantly recognisable to anyone - my 3 was wrong.  That screwed with my head then, and the legacy of it haunts me today.  So if there are two ways of boiling an egg, and both work, but my way is different to someone else's and they question me as to why I do it my way... I end up feeling like I'm doing it wrong, because my life - from that moment in school - has conditioned me that way.  The same, you could say, with neurodiverse and neurotypical ways of thinking.  Neither is innately right or wrong.  They are simply innately different.  I try hard to break myself out of the self-limiting straitjacket of those early days, but it doesn't always work.

I think, if you don't mind, I really need to rest it all there before I end up thinking that I really don't know what I'm thinking any more.  Such a crisis can, of course, lead to enlightenment.  It can also lead to confusion.  And I think I've reached my limits on that.

My definition of metaphysics is studying, from a scientific stance, how the world works. And not just studying it, applying the laws in your life. It’s the study of the universal power source that comes before (meta) the physical, the cause of all matter and circumstance. I don’t study the effects, the physical end goal, I study what causes that physical thing or circumstance, such as ill health, to come into physical reality. I take out the cause of a person’s problem, I don’t study the problem. What would be the point of that? 

I suppose it’s a bit like western doctors. If you go to a western doctor with heartburn, he’ll give you something so you don’t feel it. If you go to an Ayurvedic doctor (or practitioner like me) we look at why you have heart burn so you don’t need medicine. We discover why you have heart burn and change the cause so you no longer have it. A metaphysician will do that too. I still work and live by Ayurvedic principles but I work more from a metaphysical stand point because Metaohysics goes even deeper than my understanding of Ayurveda. I’ll be studying that for the rest of my life and still never know all of it, that’s one of the reasons I love studying it, I never run out of new things to learn about it. It goes back over 5000 years, there’s so much to learn right up to Ayurvedic astrology but Metaohysics is my language, so it seems. 

The reason I call myself a metaphysician is because in 2013 I heard that word for the first time and I was so intrigued with I looked it up. It sounded wonderful and even found a course you could do. I joined the course to find that these ‘meyaphysicians’ Thought just like me, it was wonderful if not a little boring but I stayed with the course, I felt I had been lead to it and then in the practitioners course, I learned lots of tools that I could use, as a metaphysical practitioner to help them in any area of their lives. I passed the course and all but I didn’t set myself up in practice because I just thought, who doesn’t know this? Who could I work with? 

I don’t know what I know from reading books, I haven’t read that many because I can’t read for long before the words and letters start dancing around, but I’ve never read anything by a metaphysician, such as Joel Goldsmith, that I didn’t agree with. It’s in perfect line with the teachings of Jesus, and Jesus is my greatest teacher. He’s a metaphysician, or was, so I figured that if I think like them, I must be a metaphysician too. 

I don’t regard things such as ill health or poverty as boundaries, they are simply the effect of a person’s thinking. They may cause the individual to have many limitations but that has nothing to do with me. Why would I need to transcend their limitations? 

By the way, I didn’t know it was possible to transcend, go beyond the boundaries of the normal, I thought the normal was simply the outpouring of the race consciousness, I didn’t think it was a real ‘thing’ that needed to be, or not, transcended? I don’t understand. 

But so much of what you've said, here and elsewhere, seems to be about going beyond the boundaries.  Or, at least, not accepting such things as boundaries.  So if you regard things like 'ill-health' and 'poverty' as boundaries to, say, understanding... then surely you're transcending the idea of these things. 

I, too, am very puzzled.  You must have another definition of 'metaphysician' to the one I've always understood - as in the post above.  When I talked about realists and nominalists in my other thread, I was speaking in terms of metaphysics as I thought you understood the term.  But you then said that you had never read any philosophy.  And now that you say that you aren't sure what 'transcendent' means... then I'm totally confused.  If someone says to me that he or she is a mechanical engineer, then I think I have a pretty good idea about what they understand and what they do.  I wouldn't expect them to say, for instance, 'I don't know what you mean by the terms torque, or induction, thermodynamics' and so on.

By the way, I didn’t know it was possible to transcend, go beyond the boundaries of the normal, I thought the normal was simply the outpouring of the race consciousness, I didn’t think it was a real ‘thing’ that needed to be, or not, transcended? I don’t understand. 

I've edited the post...