Can we take our thinking to a higher level?

[notmoses]

@asgoodasitgets

breaking the shackles that hold us back and releasing our full potential

Try the following:

Deikman, A.: Personal Freedom: On Finding Your Way to the Real World, New York: Bantam, 1976.

Deikman, A.: The Observing Self: Mysticism and Psychotherapy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1982.

Deikman, A.: The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.

Deikman, A.: Meditations on a Blue Vase (Collected Papers), Napa CA: Fearless Books, 2014.

Deikman, A.: Them and Us: Cult Thinking and the Terrorist Threat, Berkeley CA: Bay Tree, 2003.

Galanter, M.: Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion, New York: Guilford Press, 1989.

Kramer, J.: The Passionate Mind: A Manual for Living Creatively with One’s Self, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1974.

Kramer, J.; Alstad, D.: The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd., 1993.

Kramer, J.; Alstad, D.: The Passionate Mind Revisited: Expanding Personal and Social Awareness, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009.

Krishnamurti, J.: Education and the Significance of Life, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, (1953) 1975.

Krishnamurti, J.; Luytens, M.: The Krishnamurti Reader, New York: Penguin Arcana, (1954, 1963, 1964) 1970.

Krishnamurti, J.; Huxley, A.: The First & Last Freedom, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, (1954) 1975.

Krishnamurti, J.: As One Is: To Free the Mind from All Conditioning, Prescott AZ: Hohm Press, (1955) 2007.

Krishnamurti, J.; Rajagopal, D.: Commentaries on Life, 1st Series, Wheaton IL: Theosophical Publishing, (1956) 1973.

Krishnamurti, J.: Rajagopal, D.: Commentaries on Life, 2nd Series, Wheaton IL: Theosophical Publishing, (1956) 1976.

Krishnamurti, J.: Rajagopal, D.: Commentaries on Life, 3rd Series, Wheaton IL: Theosophical Publishing, (1956) 1967.

Langone, M., ed.: Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse, New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.

Singer, M. T.: Cults in Our Midst, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.

Tart, C. (ed.): Transpersonal Psychologies: Perspectives on the Mind from Seven Great Spiritual Traditions, San Francisco: Harper-Collins, 1975, 1992.

Tart, C.: Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential, New York: New Science Library, 1987.

Tart, C.: Living the Mindful Life: a handbook for living in the present moment, Boston: Shambala, 1994.

Watts, A.: The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for the Age of Anxiety, New York: Random House, 1951.

Watts, A.: Nature, Man and Woman, New York: Random House, 1958.

Watts, A.: The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are, New York: Random House, 1966.

Watts, A.: In My Own Way, New York: Pantheon, 1972.

Because a lot of this stuff is either what the human potential movement of the 1960s and '70s either came from or is adequately explained by. (I was myself a participant… as well as a recovering participant and professionally trained deprogramming facilitator for those who went over the edge with the stuff.)

[shutterbug]

@notmoses

And that understand is this: What is is. What is not isn’t.

Basically, there is no spoon to bend.

@notmoses

I think it is wishful thinking and an unfortunate misdirection of mental energy.

A person needs to have goals beyond themselves, to work for the betterment of their community if they are to improve the society they live in. Conversely, those who try to push people towards their vision of a particular utopia invariably create dystopias. A person has to be careful to dance between the goalposts.

My personal goal is to not be the person who complains about how bad things are, but the one who does what he can to leave things better than I found them at the end of the day.

Pixel.

[Resilient1]

@notmoses

as well as a recovering participant and professionally trained deprogramming facilitator for those who went over the edge with the stuff.)

those drug addled youth at the time were no closer to God than i am to finding enlightenment (although i do try) the whole peace movement was fuelled by the thought of a better tomorrow but without the knowledge to do it, it was more of a phase than a movement i think but you will know better than me. i can imagine a lot more people went over the edge than anything else, but that is not what i am talking about here.

we need to take the good from the bad and learn from these things so that they dont happen again, i am talking about society making a stand in order to change things,
i think we need to put family at the heart of the matter ‘not peace’ or ‘free love’ i think peace would hopefully come but you cant go jumping the gun like that, its great to support peace and love but you need to back it up with something more substantial.

@shutterbug

Basically, there is no spoon to bend.

exactly, you need to look beyond what is actually right in front of you in order to reach a higher understanding and realise that the spoon signifies ‘the self’ and it is ‘the self’ that bends not the spoon, but i am not talking about losing our mind i am talking about change,

the ‘self’ that bends simply means change, change in a good way not a bad way

[notmoses]

@asgoodasitgets

drug addled youth

@asgoodasitgets

peace movement

Not at all what I was talking about, though somewhat overlapping. The HPM is more the result of the failures of drugs and the peace movement to produce the desired results. Krishnamurti has been way down into the failures of the “reformers” since the early '50s that I know of. And he surely didn’t invent what he was aware of.

@asgoodasitgets

learn from these things so that they dont happen again

I agree in principle, but I have been on this planet just shy of seven decades, and it doesn’t look to me like any ladder of abstractions with more than six or seven steps on it is capable of being communicated to the purposefully stupidified who make up the electorates of most democracies. The “big topics” are just too complex and require too much dot-connecting. Humans may be smarter that baboons, but we’re not that much smarter.

@asgoodasitgets

put family at the heart of the matter

Give it a shot. See how it works. But if the family cannot connect the dots because no one in it can tell what is from what isn’t, how’s the “family” going to make any real difference?

[Resilient1]

@notmoses

The “big topics” are just too complex and require too much dot-connecting.

@notmoses

But if the family cannot connect the dots

you think we need to connect all the dots in order to figure everything out? what if i said that we dont need to connect all the dots, what if i said we can just leave it to a higher power to do all of that dot connecting, leave it in Gods hands and trust that he does the right thing.

[flybottle]

@notmoses

The thesis if many that I support is that we are born with the genetics to develop the capacities to see, hear and feel what is… but that those “codes” are overwritten by the approved process of (and schooling for) socialization.

(Moreover, that sz is – in some respects – the result of being so “overwritten” that so much of that innate capacity to see, hear and feel what is is lost that the person can no longer function adequately to take care of himself.)

I take, unsurprisingly maybe, almost an opposite position. What is is already a product of socialization, in my book. And here socialization starts at a very very basic level. We learn partially by instruction and training to grasp objects as infants - granted, this is grafted upon innate abilities such as that to share intentionality.

To treat what we perceive as this or that object as one, i.e. as a coherent and stable object etc., is a way of acting that is socially constituted. And hence to establish some common sense ontology in which everyday items like chairs and tables are singular stable objects is already a product of socialization. This kind of ontology is not a priori given, but handed over by means of practical engagement with the world - which is a social phenomenon.

On such an account, e.g. the fragmented perception of a table in terms of its legs and a surface, that for the sz patient seem disconnected and have to actively be reassambled to make sense once more, arises out of an impairment in such very basic practical, socially constituted, abilities to engage with the world.

It seems to me, that to push beyond such socially constituted ways of treating the world, to ditch the ontological categories that are handed over by means of socialization, would have it that such a sz with his fragmented experience is actually closer to perceiving what is (in the sense of being rid of all social influences), than the ordinary person who perceives a stable and coherent object.

[notmoses]

@asgoodasitgets

leave it in Gods hands and trust that he does the right thing

Like I said, see how depending on some external factor works when push comes to shove. Maybe it will for you. I don’t know.

[Resilient1]

@notmoses

Maybe it will for you.

i hope so,

its a good way to channel things anyway i think,

if we all said that then i reckon there would be less problems in the world today bc in todays world there is just so much going on in the world and with us that some times i guess the best response is ‘let him handle it’ and as the master of the universe and all things holy lol i think it would be ok to nominate him haha imo

[notmoses]

@flybottle

a sz with his fragmented experience is actually closer to perceiving what is (in the sense of being rid of all social influences), than the ordinary person who perceives a stable and coherent object

The literature since the turn of the previous century has floated this theme numerous times. Freud, Bleuler and Kraepelin all wrote about it. So did Jung and Adler. There IS something to be said for this set of concepts, as well as for the social contexts suggested here (e.g.: as excruciatingly described in the books listed below, btw).

I’m not sure you and I actually “disagree” all that much, save for defining what is – other than as it is understood in the mind – as any product of socialization. Of course what is in the mind is that. (How could it not be?) But outside the mind, what is =out there= may have no relationship whatsoever to what has been conditioned, socialized, habituated, normalized into the mind.

We are, in short, talking about the difference between what is perceived in or by the mind vs.the thing itself outside the mind.

(I used to prove this to myself daily when I stepped back from my mind’s appraisal according to belief that the MD across the table in the treatment team meeting gives a ■■■■ all about what I have to say about patient X if I come from any psychodynamic explanation he doesn’t understand or agree with).

Bateson, G., Jackson, D., Haley, J.; et al: Perceval’s Narrative: A Patient’s Account of his Psychosis, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961.

Esterson, A.: The Leaves of Spring: Schizophrenia, Family and Sacrifice, London: Tavistock, 1972.

Henry, J.: Pathways to Madness, New York: Random House, 1965.

Jackson, D. (ed.): The Etiology of Schizophrenia: Genetics / Physiology / Psychology / Sociology, London: Basic Books, 1960.

Jackson, D.: Myths of Madness: New Facts for Old Fallacies, New York: Macmillan & Co., 1964.

Laing, R. D.; Esterson, A.: Sanity, Madness and the Family, London: Tavistock, 1964.

Lidz, T.: The Origin and Treatment of Schizophrenic Disorders, New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Lidz, T.; Fleck, S., Cornelison, A.: Schizophrenia and the Family, 2nd Ed.; New York: International Universities Press, 1985.

Brown, N.: Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up’s Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents, 2nd. Ed., Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2008.

Gibson, L.: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2015

Golomb, E.: Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self, New York: William Morrow, 1992.

Payson, E.: The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with One-Way Relationships in Work, Love and Family, Royal Oak, MI: Julian Day, 2002.

[flybottle]

That’s a clear analysis there.

@notmoses

But outside the mind, what is =out there= may have no relationship whatsoever to what has been conditioned, socialized, habituated, normalized into the mind.

We are, in short, talking about the difference between what is perceived in or by the mind vs.the thing itself outside the mind.

I doubt we can say more about that than that there is some regularity in what exists independently of us (as opposed to me). Since for our traditional and somewhat stable ways of acting to be useful, and thus to survive cultural evolution, the thing itself cannot be radically instable and bouncing all over the place, so to speak.