Posts by Introspection

7

Good or Evil, where do you draw the line?

by JH in

jw
friends

without the bible, is it possible to define good from evil?

what may be good for one person may be considered evil for another.. is good judgement good enough to differentiate good from evil?

for example fornication is considered evil in the bible, while it may feel good for the people involved.

Introspection

I'm reading some reviews for it Nathan, it sounds kind of interesting.

I certainly don't think that one would abandon their responsibility as an individual when coming from a selfless perspective, and the interest of the individual would certainly be included as part of a nested heirarchy - otherwise you're just going to another extreme. Of course, there is the difference between self interest and a self perspective, and even those who only have their interest in mind would do well for themselves to open their view so they can see how those interests might be served. Anyways, I would be interested in hearing what you and others have to say about it, I'd imagine atleast a few others have read it and it might have been discussed to some extent on the board in a previous thread.

25

Intelligence

by asleif_dufansdottir in

ok, i'm not trying to fan any flames, (don't beat me simon!

) but the anthropologist will explode if she doesn't get to say something.

"race" - we are all homo sapiens sapiens.

Introspection

What's more interesting to me is the fact that people will use that intelligence to fool themselves - just look at all those funky religions with smart people in it. It seems to me being honest with yourself is even more important.

7

Good or Evil, where do you draw the line?

by JH in

jw
friends

without the bible, is it possible to define good from evil?

what may be good for one person may be considered evil for another.. is good judgement good enough to differentiate good from evil?

for example fornication is considered evil in the bible, while it may feel good for the people involved.

Introspection

I think you pretty much answered your question there already, the "you" is the line that is drawn, and it's not so important what you base yourself on as it is that you base it on something.

What is meaningful to me is the degree to which others are included, otherwise you just have your own standard going. It really goes right back to the simple idea behind the golden rule, love your neighbor as yourself. You don't have to be intentionally evil in some way, all you have to do is sleep walk through life and all kinds of crap will happen simply because you don't pay attention. Frankly, when one's thinking is self centered they just don't see everything else, and they fail to see how everything is interdependent, including what would be considered the 'me'.

20

price for truth

by peacefulpete in

what would you be willing to pay for the answers to all your questions about life, death, religion, etc.?

and please noone say the clich`e , "noone really knows what is true".

this is a philosophical question.

Introspection

I wouldn't say it's a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, but I guess if I had to put it in one sentence it would be that it's a matter of seeing things in a larger context beyond even the questions we ask - including the ones I posed. There's just this sense of seeing it rather than only a conceptual understanding, realizing that even this thought is just another thought in this "Introspection's" head.

22

What have you read that helped you?

by yesidid in

jw
friends

my journey out began with this and other ''eyeopening" internet sites [thank you simon].

i have since read ray franz's two books and greg stafford's "dissertations".

although i am very grateful to have found out that my years of questions had a solid base and i now see the wts for what it is, i have decided i need more positives in my life.

Introspection

He always would use the illustration that the Truth Book, other than the bible, .....and Tao's little red book had the highest publishing numbers.

Umm.. Do you mean Mao's little red book? The word tao means way, Mao is Mao Tsetung, that former leader of communist China.

22

What have you read that helped you?

by yesidid in

jw
friends

my journey out began with this and other ''eyeopening" internet sites [thank you simon].

i have since read ray franz's two books and greg stafford's "dissertations".

although i am very grateful to have found out that my years of questions had a solid base and i now see the wts for what it is, i have decided i need more positives in my life.

Introspection

The word on the street is that Stephen Mitchell does not know the Chinese language, and funny enough various little blurbs about the guy that's appeared recently has even credited him as the author. Evidently he pulled together his version from several translations of others, I don't know if you'd call that a paraphrase or just a big jumble. Chinese is my first language and I don't recall seeing anything in Mitchell's version that resembles the original text. Incidentally, Thomas Merton said something about the Tao Teh Ching having similarities with the gospel - I can't remember what was said exactly but since he's like a Christian guy that might be a selling point for Christians. Of course, the one way to see if you like it is to read some of it.

You can find many sites if you do a search on Google or something, but here is one that lets you do side by side comparisons of different translations by use of frames.

http://www.edepot.com/taoblank.html

22

Lilith ?!

by Vivamus in

jw
friends

did you ever heard of lilith?

not as an extension of adam, but the creation was dual, man and woman were one, almost a bisexual being.

but then adam *sigh, typically men* tried to dominate her, and she said in modern english "f*ck off, i'm leaving you", bravo lilith!

Introspection

I think when and if I write my book Enlightenment Is Not Sexy it will shed some light on this subject. There's a reason why we talk about the non-dual and such. But those are cool stories.

20

price for truth

by peacefulpete in

what would you be willing to pay for the answers to all your questions about life, death, religion, etc.?

and please noone say the clich`e , "noone really knows what is true".

this is a philosophical question.

Introspection

Pete, if I may I would point out that from where I stand, what you are describing is thought analysis. To me there is a significant difference between thought analysis and self analysis, because if nothing else I think we can agree that the self includes all the thoughts. Yet we can see that thoughts are relative in nature and are therefore dependent on other thoughts, which calls into question the whole process of using thought to analyze thought. I think if we want to know the truth a good place to start inquiring is the self. Who or what am I? Am I just a collection of thoughts that just pursues each other in so much tail chasing, or is there anything that can be called a self? After all if thoughts are subject to change then how can we determine anything as true? If we can recognize that anything that comes and goes is not the truth - even the thoughts we have about the truth - then I think we will be closer to finding what's really true.

9

The Celestine Prophecy.... by James Redfield your views?

by anti-absolutist in

jw
friends

i am just about to start the last chapter of this book, and i thought i would ask the question, then see the responses after i have finished it.. who has read it?

(without giving away too much to those who may still read it).

brad (p.s.

Introspection

I would go a little bit farther than Farkel's message in that it isn't even important that it's the same old story, it's just the fact that it IS a story.

I read this years ago when I first left, and of course it was fun and exciting - and now I see it more as a spiritual candy of sorts. The thing is, making it into a story just dramatizes it, and when you do that you end up getting caught up with the drama rather than the valuable things it has to convey. It's sort of like the milk and solid food thing. I don't say this to put it down or anything, as I said it was fun to read for me at the time - but I just have to call it like I see it.

Spiritual truths are simpler than the stories we hear about it, and getting some good feelings about those stories doesn't mean you get the truths, in fact in most cases it would appear it's missed because it's just so much fun to feel good. People will use meditation in this way. The problem is when you just want to feel better, whether you realize it or not, then you don't see through the things which cause you to suffer in the first place (or the fact that you are just doing it to feel better) - it's a bandaid in that case. In short, the form of presentation is what probably appeals to most about the Celestine Prophecy, but of course getting hung up on the form would be missing the point. When you're ready for an insight, you'll be able to see it in the most mundane places, like some clown's message on the internet.

20

price for truth

by peacefulpete in

what would you be willing to pay for the answers to all your questions about life, death, religion, etc.?

and please noone say the clich`e , "noone really knows what is true".

this is a philosophical question.

Introspection

What you are asking is what would you give for some specific information, answers to certain questions - which is not quite the same as what you would give for the truth. The only price you have to pay for the truth is all of your illusions, then all that would be left is the truth.

Incidentally, it's probably not wise for some people to possess certain knowledge, for example it is rather dangerous to give a child with a bad attitude a loaded machine gun and instruct them in how to use it or something like that. Even if a person doesn't hurt others or themselves, it may be hard for them to handle certain knowledge psychologically speaking, we see an example of this in how people have a hard time with finding out the witnesses weren't the truth. For people to handle answers of this order they'd have to give up the illusions about themselves first, otherwise all you're doing is plugging in one piece of information into a schema that is largely messed up and untruthful, and it's more likely to cause harm or atleast mental suffering for that individual. In fact, this is why it is rather unskillful to knock down certain points in the witness belief system from a psychological point of view, because all that does is throw them into confusion. Of course, I can see that in some cases there may be no other alternative, but aside from correct information there is also the truth that there is more going on in the world than the information processes that goes on in your mind. If we really want the truth, then we would want to be truthful and honest about everything - otherwise we just want to be satisfied with certain bits of information, which will mean nothing if the rest of our thinking is ultimately not truthful, since we will try to fit it in there to make sense of it all.