As a child I often felt the need to lie, to others and to myself, when I felt challenged and overstrained by an upcoming situation, where I was afraid of a possible "negative" conequence. This malapdative behaviour entailed just more so-called negativity in my life and hindered me "developing". It took me quite some years to understand this phenomenom and set ultimate truth as only option, till yesterday.

Yesterday I lied. In the moment I told the untruth, it hit me like a thunderstrike and since then, it sits heavy on my mind. With this behaviour I not only treat the other person respectless, I also question my own credibility and produce anything but ultimate truth in highest resolution. I mean yes, it is still ultimate truth, because it is all there is, but this is far off the claim how I(ego) want to reproduce myself.

I am meeting the involved person next week again and, though I am unconditionally valueable and loveable, I want clarify and stand by my action. To me, it feels like the only way to face, accept and integrate what happend.

I am still like "wow", because I am really suprised how intense and heavy i(t) feel(s).

tseuq

[Edit: It is not about a moral dogma but of my own experience, of feeling challenged in a situation and behaving/responding with an intention of avoidance instead of what is or rather was.]

I know that feeling, when we fail to live up to our standards.

Actually I am having (I think) similar troubles in my life, in this time. I have this ideal picture of my self, but I am not quite there. Like every picture of the mind, it is not what is really going on/just thought. For example I sometimes fail to distance myself from behaviour that I dont necessarily want to indulge in, but as soon as a friend asks me I say yes. There is a dissociation between the reality of my thoughts, and how „reality“ is unfolding. The pain and heaviness that follows such actions imo is because of lack of acceptance that we are not really in control of what is happening.

Imo we shouldnt blame ourselves too hard, because in every moment we do our best, there really is not guilt, because ultimately we are not in control(me thinks) we cannot force/think our self into acting from the ultimate truth/our true self/the atman at every moment.
It is a slow process, or a dignity or ḱind of grace. Of course we can practice being more in the moment, getting to know the big void that our thoughts hide so well, but at least for me when I get out of the practice, I still tend to lose my self in the (false)truth of my thoughts.

De-programming of automated patterns, good luck and congratulations!

As a process of adaption, we create concepts about ourself, the others and our surrounding. From these oberservations/experiences we form underlying assuptions, which control our behaviour (actions/thoughts). When you imagine a tree, our oberservable behaviour and conscious thoughts are like the leaves and branches of the tree, the underlying assumptions are the roots. What and how you operate is modulated by these "buried" assumptions. In the end, we set conditions for ourself, f.e. "I am only valueable and loveable when I am like this or that." The first experience with the concept of being conditionally loveable do we learn in our childhood, when f.e the parents tell us:"You are only a lovely child when you are like this". When we grow older the mechanism stays the same but the content changes, f.e. only when I am smart, sexy, rich, what ever am I "right". The motivation behind all of this is fear, to be isolated or excluded from the social group which meant death some "ages" ago.

You can dig and ask yourself why does it seem important for you to always be ready when someone asks you for help, regardless of your own condition. The fear to be... what ever .. which has the consequence of...?



Self-criticizm vs self-devaluation (Thread: you don't need forgiveness)


It is (we are) all about this! Meta-programming / mind-hacking is one of my greatest hobbies and our underlying mechanisms are pretty "simple", ultimately they base all in the same root.

Love, tseuq

100% agree.I think we have a very similar practice.
I like you tseuq

I have to disagree, as I see this type of thinking used too often to justify systemic oppression, racism, and inequality because "everyone is just trying their best, right?" I know that probably wasn't what you intended to communicate, but what we think and say have implications that can't necessarily be ignored. It may seem like a harmless way of thinking, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all.

We are absolutely in control, even if we lie to ourselves on a regular basis, telling ourselves that we are simply slaves to our physical body and its processes despite the fact that we have the power to change not only our actions but our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Scientists at Harvard have recently shown that meditation can change the connective structure of the brain, which upends the idea that body controls mind but not the other way around.

http://news.harvard.edu/...weeks-to-a-better-brain/

https://www.washingtonpo.../?utm_term=.6267624a341d

The idea that we aren't in control of our actions is a very dangerous idea, and one for which a great deal of compelling counter-evidence is available.

1 & 2 do go along in my perspective, full commitment, full responsibility and love is the root.



What I say is, that it are the underlying assuptions/conepts about oneself, the others and the world, which modulates our behaviour and not really our "conscious" thoughts, which are more a result of these underlying concepts.




"Body vs. (monkey) mind" paradigm, two dimensions of the same plane. In my experience "I" am in control (of absolutely nothing ) of my body and my mind, maybe we are both and none of it.

tseuq

I think that that is partially true, but our conscious mind still has the ability to independently influence those underlying, more primitive systems. For example, we have the ability to control our emotions and those who lack this ability or have not fully developed it are often seen as childish or immature (ie. having a temper tantrum or being unable to stop oneself from getting emotional about a topic or event). I think one of the great benefits of regular meditation and occasional psychedelics (especially together!) is how they help one cultivate emotional control and become more aware of the heuristics we unknowingly employ on a daily basis and alter our thought patterns. To say that we aren't truly in control of our thoughts is to argue against free will (whatever the hell that is) and err into the realm of predeterminism.

That being said, I do agree with the sentiment you and woogyboogy were sharing, predeterminism aside.

Yes, to a certain level, like the "body".



Do you consciously choose which thought you want to experience now/next? Then your focus of attention (which only exists in the now) would be bond to this process and you would not be able to navigate in this 3d-reality.

I experience my upcoming thoughts as the result of my (perception + physical condition + ... + ) underlying assumptions/concepts. What I maybe "consciously" decide, is how to cope with the upcoming thoughts, but this process is also based on and limited to my previously learned coping mechanisms. These coping mechanisms can be mind and/or body based and their function is to maintain the existence of my organism as long as possible.

Ultimately, considering my "whole experience" so far, I am the ever present silence/awareness and the phantom of free will is an illusion, like this all.

What is the importance of the question "free will - yes/no?" Who/What wants to know and why?

tseuq

You can redefine it so that it fits your ideology, but it's just tip-toeing around the argument without actually presenting counter-evidence.



Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence isn't particularly relevant in this discussion, as everyone can define how they experience cognition differently, especially to fit their worldview. That being said, I personally experience my thoughts as arising independently as you describe when I am relaxed and unfocused, however if I choose to I can decide which thought arises next and even whether to have a thought which I can "feel" beginning to form in the first place. This is all a part of being in control of not only your actions as an individual but in control of and accountable for your beliefs and thoughts. You can train your mind to do many fantastic things, the least of which is training it to produce certain thoughts rather than others. To believe otherwise is to indulge in a victim's mentality, should your thoughts lead to negative actions or consequences.

As a someone who's been through America's abhorrent mental health industry and come out the other side able to put my life back together, I really have a problem with a lot of the people who blame their depression or anxiety on the belief that you've outlined in this thread. It just creates a positive feedback loop of learned helplessness where "this is just the way I am." I know that wasn't your intention behind your or woogyboogy's comments, but it is an implication/potential consequence which deserves discussion.

I was (am) acutally agreeing to your statement (#6) about the reciprocal influence of mind and body.


Again, I don't see any disagreements in my previous posts.



I see from where your "frustration" comes and that you had and probably still have to deal with people who "hide" themselves behind their (self-programmed) conditioning. It is ok, to play the vicitim of my past and make it my present or to take the steering wheel and promote myself to be captain of my own ship. It/me/you/we is/are all same in value but different in its panorama.

To me, it (that my self-programmed assumptions/concepts about myself/others/surrounding modulate how I operate in the now) is not an implication of stagnation in helplessness, rather it explains why I, retrospectively evaluated, behave(d) like this. I operate in the now, based on my believes and yes, with my "rational" mind, I can determine the underlying assupmtions and concepts (which I had previously learned/adapted - from my birth till now), evaluate them [are they still functional: -> 1) Rational: Does this assumption and its deduction make any sense(is logical)? and 2) Hedonism: Does this assumption and its deduction enrich my life in a for me "positive" way)] and if necessary change (re-scripting the content of these assumptions) them.

The topic of "free will - meta life" seems to be more appropriate in the spirituality section.

tseuq

I apologize, tseuq. I misinterpreted your comment as claiming that any aspect of mind affected/modulated/caused by conscious direction is somehow technically the "body" in order to escape the conclusion that conscious thought can direct and influence subconscious or unconscious thought. Text can be a tricky medium sometimes. That being said, I wonder to what degree this discussion is muddled by using the term 'thought' to refer to subconscious processes, when a thought is typically intuitively thought of as inherently conscious, by definition.

In any case, I agree that such discussions of free will are better suited for the spirituality section. While I disagree that it is ok to play the victim (that only hurts you and society in the long run), you put the point I was trying to make more eloquently than I was able to, that people hide themselves behind their self-programmed conditioning, whether or not they even realize it.