Top.Mail.Ru
? ?

Entries by tag: philosophy

Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat.

Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn’t there.

Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn’t there, and shouting “I found it!”

Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat while using a flashlight.
― Anonymous

To learn which questions are unanswerable,
and not to answer them:
This skill is most needful in times of
stress and darkness.


— Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”

 

"...growing up in church desensitizes you to logical inconsistencies, and that opens up large numbers of people to manipulation tactics employed by individuals and institutions keen on controlling groups of people for their own self-serving purposes."

 

—Neil Carter in How Faith Breaks Your Thinker 

APRIL 10, 2018

SOURCE: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2018/04/10/how-faith-breaks-your-thinker/

Excellent resource on logical inconsistencies:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

QotD: Ideas Don't Die

"You can kill a man,
but you can't kill an idea."

--Medgar Evers before his own assasination 

Back to Paper

What kind of luddite am I, stuck in an internet backwater, providing fodder for free. 

QotD: Your Path

 Your confusion is not pathology, it is path. It has something to show you that clarity could never reveal. The nature of chaos is wisdom, but you must provide a home for it to receive its mysteries.


Your feeling of disconnection is not neurotic, it is intelligent. It has something to show you that oneness could never reveal. If you will practice the yoga of non-abandonment and provide safe passage – it will disclose an unmet doorway.

Your loneliness, your shakiness, and your fear are not mistakes. They are not obstacles on your path. They *are* the path. The freedom you are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the unwanted, but only in the core of the love and information it carries.


There are surges of somatic activity that contain very important information for your journey. If you will offer safe passage for the unknown aliveness, you will meet the messengers of illumination. Nothing is missing, nothing is out of place, and nothing need be sent away.


Yes, you may burn until you are translucent, but it is by way of this burning that your wholeness will be revealed.


~ Matt Licata

I have often said "it's a free will universe" as a basis for extolling choice as a power, whether conscious or unconscious, for determining your experience. To "choice" I always connect the concept of responsibility. Responsibility always follows immediately upon choice. Those who tremble before this power of choice may even habitually refuse to make choices, unwilling to take on the responsibility that choice of necessity implies. This is a choice in itself, a pattern of omission and passivity with it's own distinct effects and power to manipulate. All this having been said, what if in fact it's not "a free will universe" after all? The concept of "predestination" also has a long history in philosophical and religious thought and stands as a counterpoint to "free will" with it's own ardent supporters. When I look at an average day, things happen and I respond. Needs arise and I must act. My breath and heartbeat and peristalsis are events occurring to me, gifts freely given from what great source I cannot truly fathom. I won't pretend to resolve here a millennia-long question. And in the face of it, perhaps, at the very least, we might choose with lighter hearts, and enjoy the uncertainty knowing that our every action is effected upon waves of permission from powers greater than our own.
--Gil Hedley, Integral Anatomy

QotD: Uncertain Fanatics

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

About Pirsig and his book: I was made to read this book at approximately age 18, when I first started working at the Nantahala Outdoor Center in North Carolina. I was quite moldable, impressionable, unformed at that age. Payson Kennedy was in charge of training and orienting all new staff, and reading this book was his one requirement. What it taught me was a lesson that took many years to sink in, that small details deserve our full attention, that doing your best it the only way to do anything right. Thank you Payson for requiring us to read this book, for it has helped form my perspective for over 30 years since then. I think it may be time to reread it.

This of course was all brought up because Pirsig has died at the age of 88. It's encouraging to note that his book was rejected by 121 publishing houses before someone decided to print it.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/24/525443040/-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-author-robert-m-pirsig-dies-at-88

The Five Sutras of the Aquarian Age

1. Recognize that the other person is you.

2. There is a way through every block.

3. When the time is on you, start, and the pressure will be off.

4. Understand through compassion or you will misunderstand the times.
5. Vibrate the Cosmos. The Cosmos shall clear the path.
--Yogi Bhajan

QotD: Not the Same River

No man ever steps in the same river twice,
for it is not the same river,
and he is not the same man.

-Heraclitus

Profile

moon
liveonearth
liveonearth

Latest Month

September 2024
S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Tags

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Comments

Powered by LiveJournal.com
Designed by chasethestars