(I hear mathematicians spitting coffee all over their monitors...)
That's a question for melo the masseur, too. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
But mine are doing fine.
I'm glad your chakras are doing well. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
From our old friend.
The idea of chakras as understood in Eastern philosophy does not exist in medical science. In Eastern thought, the chakras are thought to be levels of consciousness, and states of the soul, and 'proving' the existence of chakras is asking to 'prove' the existence of a soul. A mystic deals with these occult concepts on the occult plane, as a model for their own internal experience, and when talking about 'energy centres', they are generally talking about subtle, spiritual forces, which work on the psyche and spirit, not about physical, electrical, or magnetic fields.
The primary importance and level of existence of chakras is therefore posited to be in the psyche. However, there are those who believe that chakras have a physical manifestation as well. Although there is no evidence that Indian mystics made this association themselves, it is noted by many that there is a marked similarity between the positions and roles described for chakras, and the positions and roles of the glands in the endocrine system, and also by the positions of the nerve ganglia (also known as "plexuses") along the spinal column, opening the possibility that two vastly different systems of conceptualization have been brought to bear to systemize insights about the same phenomenon. By some, chakras are thought of as having their physical manifestation in the body as these glands, and their subjective manifestation as the associated psychological and spiritual experiences.
Indeed, the various hormones secreted by these glands do have a dramatic effect on human psychology, and an imbalance in one can cause a psychological or physical imbalance in a person. Whether these changes in body state have a bearing on spiritual matters is a subject of dissent even among the Indian theorists, and the different systems of conceptualization, Indian and Western, make only a partial convergence in this case.
Perhaps the most psychologically dramatic and potent secretion of these glands is the psychedelic drug DMT (which is thought to be synthesized by the pineal gland, corresponding to the brow chakra).
(btw, I couldn't work out the answer to your life and death Go question.) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
You are sentient because of a process - a self-organizing process. When that process dies, because you die, so does sentience. It is unique and individual, confined to one continguous mass of neural connections, and is not transferable - to heaven, to hell, or to any other creature. You can't be me, I'm taken
I see it more like a computer, there is hard- and the software and a programmer - but who is the programmer?
This is a topic refered to in Jyana Yoga, the intellectual yoga which has one of the main questions - WHO AM I? WHO or WHAT IS THINKING THIS? etc.
I certainly agree with sven that the self (the conscious "I" that controls and makes constant decisions) ceases to be at death--and this makes it very unhappy. I think aspects of our current civilisation promote and seek to expand the "I" (the selfish ego?), and I don't think this is a healthy road as this "I", of all things, is the one that is doomed to die.
It thinks of itself as a homunculus, but it isn't that, it is a rapidly connecting something something bicyle cycle home home... Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
How can something that has ceased to be, be unhappy? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
It's PNing of the highest order... You can't be me, I'm taken
Through complexity it comes to see connections in a past-present-future tense system (Fran's left brain model), and so it realises that it will, necessarily cease to exist: die. After death, it won't be there to worry, of course. The dead are calm. Those left behind are the bereaved. But as it lives, this selfish-ego is at times overwhelmed with the idea of not existing anymore at some time in the future. The more society promotes this selfish-ego, the more this unhappiness is spread about.
(Connections here to the potential extinction of humans--the horror!) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
However, conscious life may actually have no end as we are not there to be aware of the end of awareness in the first place...
Like going to sleep but without the dream--or the waking up? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
However, conscious life may actually have no end as we are not there to be aware of the end of awareness in the first place... Like going to sleep but without the dream--or the waking up?
Like going to sleep but without the dream--or the waking up?
I don't think consciousness ends at death, but I think "self" consciousness ends at death...
The question then is: what is this consciousness that isn't the self, and who cares about it? Which I would take as a comment by the self about its own extinction. Yet there is a long historical cataloge of humans experiencing states which are, it seems, real but impossible to vocalise in prose.
And From vegetativeness I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearance through death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;
After that, soaring higher than angels -
What you cannot imagine,
I shall be that.
The brain has always been interpreted by the prevailing technology of the day, whether a telephone exchange earlier or a computer today. (or indeed the 'magic' that was the 'technology', before technology)
Look at anything that grows (including the brain) - it certainly unfolds in a predictable manner, but is there a little man guiding it? Look at a flock of birds whirling round and ask who is the leader? There is none, just as there is no little man.
I'm not against the use of the word soul to describe a particular conjoining of neurons, or any of the other words like chakras. But they are only inadequate words to describe complexity.
And of course one can change this complexity in the brain by manipulating your neural networks - by meditating, studying, experience, exercises etc etc.
Perhaps the most extreme example of this is the Skene monks of the Russian Orthodox church. They choose this incredible discipline in order to completely cleanse their minds of everything before. They live alone, far away from the monastery. for many years. They have a shelter and a well. That is all. They 'chain themsleves' to the forest to survive. It is the simplest life of all and filled with constant prayer - and I am mean constant.
At the end of this process - which is slowly disconnecting old neural connections (literally), and reconnecting simplicity - the monk is incredibly pure. These are often the monks (so I've been told) that go out into the world to minister to prostitutes, criminals and murderers. They are so pure that they are untouched by anything they see. You can't be me, I'm taken
Part of my work is translating complex ideas into visuals, and I find that rewarding because you cannot create the visual without understanding the concept. It motivates you to do the work of understanding, instead of being lazy. You can't be me, I'm taken
Now, now, you don't take Intelligent Design seriously, do you? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
homunculus |h??m? ng ky?l?s; h?-| noun ( pl. -li |-?l?|or -les |-?l?z|) a very small human or humanoid creature. * historical a supposed microscopic but fully formed human being from which a fetus was formerly believed to develop. ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin, diminutive of homo, homin- `man.'
your opinion brooks no rational argument...
yet....it seems dismissive.
are you so sure of your self-organising sentience, that you can afford to sound so absolutist?
reading your confident assumption, i am tempted to assert that 'donna know nosseeng' might be the prime requisite for enlightenment.
your brain denies your soul, but perhaps it just hasn't found the password.
for such a pooh-pooher, you sure have touched my soul with many of your brilliant comments these last few months!
oddly perhaps, but 'homunculus' seems to describe a little imaginary mannikin, purported to be a homeopathically tiny version of the final product, into which it supposedly swelled.
enchantingly medieval!
but what has it to do with humans being ensouled? ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Now if you said the soul was 'aspiration' or 'hope', I might agree on the definition, because those characteristics could be logically seen as related to the survival of life - which I argue is what underpins all our actions in some way.
If you said that 'soul' was 'self', as in self-aware, I would accept that too. What I don't accept is that anything called 'soul' is transferrable beyond the physical limits of a brain (human or otherwise).
And I can't see why a 'soul' is needed for enlightenment or anything else. The brain is a fantastic thing that functions on a myriad levels.
Your use of the 'password' analogy is revealing - it shows you still believe that there is someone controlling everything - the homonculus. YOU control everything. ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
You're thinking of the soul as a thing, then, as opposed to consciousness...which is not a thing, but a process?
I don't think I've quite got your meaning.
(I don't see how you can categorically state that processes of 'understanding'--sentience?--are held within the body...Jung's collective unconscious...
A friend of mine, a pure scientific rationalist, came to the conclusion that we do have a "race memory": he said we had two basic fears: of volcanos and of ice, coz those have always been the two that have wiped us out. I'm digressing wildly.
But Ikernov Nussink.
So, you state categorically that 'consciousness' is the "I", a process created by complexity of a system, and disappears at the death of the complex system...?
(I'm thinking of, was it das monde?, who wrote about the consciousness of the planet.)
(My personal experience is that part of my "I" used to be a chinese town planner back in the seventeenth or eighteenth century...big towns, no cars, elegant structures but nothing showy. Bloody drugs mate, rot yer brain...) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
as for being damned if you don't believe...superstitious poppycock.
you're right about the password analogy, it does sound like i'm trying to get behind a firewall, and need big daddy's permission.
i meant it in a slightly different way.
watching a child teach itself to drag its body to the vertical position and learn to hold their balance is amazing.
the patience and willpower are awesome, and eventually, gradually, balance becomes second nature -until you get old and wobbly again.
forgetting yer password!
damn i used the analogy again...
i hope i didn't sound polemic, i intuit our pov's are neither exclusive, nor do they cancel each other out.
seemingly antagonistic perhaps, they are in reality complementary.
i heard when humans die, they suddenly become a few grams lighter.
not that i need physical proof, mind...
i love subjects like this.
mind over natter....
i suspect the soul will ever resist definition, will never cease to change, and will delight eternally in hiding in plain sight.
attempting to describe the ineffable is the source of all poetry.
if i was in control, i would not have to wait for anything, ever! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Then how are we supposed to carry out a conversation on it? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
what would you like it to mean?
my guess is that every human would have a slightly or greatly differing opinion about that definition.
personally i'm working on the difference between 'spirit' and 'soul', and it's been years....aeons maybe...
i find 'spirit' to be more about the aspirational and devotional, e stretching for expression and refinement, 'soul' more about the unconscious, fertile, magmatic substructures of personality, and the emotional gestalt we discover sharing numinous experience.
if having a discussion about these things were only permitted to those who agree on definitions, we risk postulating prejudice instead of encouraging expression.
trying to define things is more fun than not, but these ideas are written in water, not stone.
suppose....lovely word
suppose |s??p?z| verb 1 [with clause ] assume that something is the case on the basis of evidence or probability but without proof or certain knowledge : I suppose I got there about half past eleven. * used to make a reluctant or hesitant admission : I'm quite a good actress, I suppose. * used to introduce a hypothesis and trace or ask about what follows from it : suppose he had been murdered--what then? * [in imperative ] used to introduce a suggestion : suppose we leave this to the police. * (of a theory or argument) assume or require that something is the case as a precondition : the procedure supposes that a will has already been proved | [ trans. ] the theory supposes a predisposition to interpret utterances. * [ trans. ] believe to exist or to possess a specified characteristic : he supposed the girl to be about twelve [as adj. ] ( supposed) often |s??p?zid| | people admire their supposed industriousness. 2 ( be supposed to do something) be required to do something because of the position one is in or an agreement one has made : I'm supposed to be meeting someone at the airport. * [with negative ] be forbidden to do something : I shouldn't have been in the kitchen--I'm not supposed to go in there. PHRASES I suppose so used to express hesitant or reluctant agreement. DERIVATIVES supposable adjective ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French supposer, from Latin supponere (from sub- `from below' + ponere `to place' ), but influenced by Latin suppositus `set under' and Old French poser `to place.'
being able to control-click on a word and look it up in a dictionary in the blink of a dialup eye is like a new toy, sorry! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
What am I supposed to suppose is real? You just give me a word with no meanings attached. What do you mean by "suppose the soul is real"? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
perhaps it's like trying to describe the taste of a banana...yellow?
as you seem interested enough to reply, try skipping the first sentence and going to the second one.
If the soul existed and could be a value-addition to an onsouled life, couòd you care?
*or maybe your life is complete without 'going there', and you possibly think anyone who enjoys soul communion is merely deluded...
maybe there is a surrender needed to understand.
how about this?
critical thinking is crucial in life, all would agree hopefully.
are there times when excessive critical thinking might be an impediment to experience? has this ever been true for you?
perhaps you fell in love with someone your reasonable side urged you to avoid, for example.
or you made an apparently prudent decision, that later you regretted, realising it was fear, not wisdom that drove your choice.
perhaps 'soul' is like phlogiston or ether, handy terminologies till better ones, with more enquiry, arrive and take their place. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
When you say "soul" do you mean this?
The soul ... is a self-aware ethereal substance particular to a unique living being. ... the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sentience. In distinction to spirit which may or may not be eternal, souls are usually ... considered to be immortal and to pre-exist their incarnation in flesh.
[I find] 'soul' more about the unconscious, fertile, magmatic substructures of personality, and the emotional gestalt we discover sharing numinous experience
it wouldn't seem like you do. So does 'soul' already have a meaning? I have to admit I have no idea what you mean by "the emotional gestalt we discover sharing numinous experience", among other things because I don't think I have had numinous experiences as in
that which is wholly other. The numinous is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that leads in different cases to belief in deities, the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent.
because he evinces signs of humour, playfulness and compassion, i suspect he does.
but what do i know, i only play guru on the internet... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
you do manage to extract elliptical ones!
bell that cat ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Damn! I've been outed! Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
It is a black furry animal.
Define black, define furry, define animal.
Does this process regress ad infinitum and take us to that diary you're about to write which I am looking forward to reading?
(Like Nomad, I will take my socks off first ;) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
If the word "soul" refers to something, what does it refer to? If it doesn't, what are we talking about?
If I ask you what a black furry animal is, you can produce one. You can, in fact, produce many different ones, which helps narrow down the essential features of "black furry animal". You can produce white furry animals, black naked animals, and black furry coats.
What is a soul? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
I don't know. I don't use the word. My guess is that it doesn't refer to a "thing", nor does it refer to "no thing". It exists in a language game called "spirituality", of which "religion" is a subset.
I don't think producing physical examples acts as a definition. You produce something, I say, "Well, I can see it, but what does the word mean? You point at the object and say, it means that. "But what are you pointing at?" I say. "This!" you say. But what is that thing you are pointing at? What are "black", "furry", "animal" etc? Words to be used in a language game. As is "soul".
The fun is to flip 'em around in the game and see what comes out. I suppose refusing to accept that a word has a meaning is to refuse to play that language game.
Elf. Pixie. Hey, my daughter used to be a pixie and is now an elf. (This happens to be true, but in which language game?)
So, the first thing to say might be "The soul is or is not a physical part of the human body." Then the discussion can be about those missing grams.
If it is not a part of the body, the conversation could be, "So, does the soul survive the death of the body?" etc.
(P.S. I felt the hexagrams 23 and 20 referenced ET. Indeed, without imagination what is a human? Snarfle grap urgh Wittgenstien moments...language used to point to events uncontainable by language...the quote about language being a finger and the object of language being....referent and reference and referee...enjoy yer lunch!) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
But I still say it is psychosomatic. Everyone can change - you just have to wire yourself up in a new way, and that takes time. You can't be me, I'm taken
Meaning it's all in the mind (but not in reality?)
The question is how far can you bend reality before it snaps back and says, "I am a wall, and you can't walk through me. Hey! Stop making a door!"
I am an ignoramus in all these matters, but as I get older and my body gets creakier I can rely less on natural bounce to move me through emptiness filled with assorted clusters--ouch! Who put that chair there?--and I do think that western/modern/shallow approaches to ourselves/bodies as they react to the universe--as they touch each other--and where is the dividing line? Anyway, I'm all for learning what works and using it. How it works is part of the fun, of course, but at the edges everything spins and combines and separates and....the permaculture principle: Life thrives at boundaries, at the edges. Also, for some reason, I connect this with Stephen J. Gould's example of measuring the coastline of Maine: it all depends on the measuring scale...
And now I must
Or, actually, Gould is talking about representation at different level and you're interpreting it as measuring, a la Mandelbrot. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
This makes facts a little slipperier than most people realise. But as long as we're all (more or less) in the same headspace, no major reality dislocations are likely.
Unfortunately, sooner or later someone comes along and spoils the neat picture.
The best way to avoid any danger of unwanted metaprogramming is to ignore them.
(Which I think links to Fran's point about right brain-left brain. The left brain uses langauge and linear models, and anything that can't be explained via language and linearity "makes no sense" = "is nonsense" to the left brain. The right brain experiences differently, and sees the limits of language...back to Wittgenstein's point: language has its limits as an experiential tool. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Was it Gould who talked about how gravity had no importance below a certain size, hence the structure of insects?
Maybe two things: One is how different features become emphasised at different scales, t'other is how at different scales different rules (systems) apply.
Durrr. Note to non existent self object: switch brain on. Where'd I put the switch? Zzzzzip!
Ah, there it is.
Gould didn't discover that, he just popularised it.
I hate to quote myself, but
Beginning with the 18th century naturalists a movement arose that sought to understand the "universal laws of form" in order to explain the observed forms of living organisms. Because of its association with Lamarckism, their ideas fell into disrepute until the early 20th century, when pioneers such as D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson revived them. The modern understanding is that there are indeed universal laws (arising from fundamental physics and chemistry) that govern growth and form in biological systems.
The basic scaling law here is that the surface to volume ratio is inversely proportional to the linear dimension. If you're really small, surface effects dominate: surface tension is actually stronger than gravity, or pressure. This is why insects can walk on water. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
I thought they hadn't found any underlying law(s), laws I mean that dealt with the super-micro (quantum) and the super-macro (relativity)? We understand certain processes, but I don't think we understand exactly how a cuckoo upon breaching its shell will immediately kick any other baby birds out of the nest(did you see the film of this? I think it was on one of Bill Oddie's nature watch shows.) We call it "instinct", but I don't think...well, I don't know how science explains the process of knowing something so complex and so variable...what are the instructions in the D.N.A. for kicking live chicks out of a nest?
Yadda. Sommat along those lines.
(I think in terms of the measurement and understanding...a foetus cannot concieve of the world beyond the womb. Humans cannot conceive of...whatever is beyond their current measuring devices. Yet the baby in the womb responds to and is aware of "something" beyond the womb--e.g. music, its mother's hearbeat etc. I'm trying to get at something like that, I think. The western science descriptive model as a tool, a measuring device...) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Fancy a game of Go? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Could you expand on that? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
It probably isn't correct to think of DNA as containing instructions - you have to see the DNA in the context of the environment it finds itself in and in the context of the development process. Cuckoo DNA, when it is decoded by the egg cell in the context of a cuckoo egg and an acceptable environment, produces over time a small bird that pushes other small birds out of nests.
I see these variations as being one potential source for so-called genetic memory. You can't be me, I'm taken
I think a more likely and simpler explanation for such things as imprinting ("just-born duck thinks any moving object is mother, and thus thinks wayward football is parent" type of thing), is that for entirely physiological reasons, the chick is sensitized.
The sensitization could be (and I am only guessing by way of example) a flood of internally generated endorphins combined with some vision/motion phenomenon that is hardwired, not by learning over time, but almost instantly in the way that crack or meth can change behaviour very fast.
The 'flood of endorphins' is not some 'genetic memory', it is simply a function of the system that has been 'described' somwhere in the 800 bible's worth of DNA.
I throw in the bible reference to further confuse the homonculii ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
In humans - very much so.
Sven suggests this is an automated process based at its lowest level on amoeba-like attract/repel etc. forces. Did I undestand that right, sven? All complexity is built as these small parts aggregate. This suggests that me typing this and you typing that are to be understood as physically determined processes.
As I understand it, though, the idea of the meta-programmer introduces some extra space between input and output (action-reaction). A contemplative area where choices can be made. The speiciesists among us (not you) see a division between us humans and every other living thing.
I think any drawing of this line is impossible (levels, degrees etc.)
So...contemplation and choice. I know that's an unfinished thought.
Their structure is determined during development by an interplay of the decoding and transcription process of DNA with the foetal environment
And an interplay between the foetus and the external world, and all those levels of action-contemplation-reaction...a pure mechanical process has no space for contemplation (chance?)...which (to go back to the subject of the diary) is the element science has to avoid--controlled experiments--trying to nail the moment and see finally everything that is happening, and what is proposed as an alternative view, where Chance is a key and un-removable attribute to the system. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
This suggests that me typing this and you typing that are to be understood as physically determined processes.
As I understand it, though, the idea of the meta-programmer introduces some extra space between input and output (action-reaction).
When I said "foetal environment" I meant the inclusion of the outside world.
Chance is part of the physical world, so it's constantly an influence.
So thoughts are physically determined? (I mean, if you think you have a choice, then that thought is also phsyically determined etc. ad infinitum back to the...well...whatever was the first step in the physical process...linearity all the way...so "Chance" is another word for "We haven't described--perhaps we can't describe--the whole system, but in it's possible in principle.)
No-one said the processing of input had to be simple or immediate.
It's the processing that is the issue, I think. Because each process, when examined becomes a simpler process until you have simple input-output. Or, and careful with the coffee folks--
Our brain is a physical thing. Thoughts are physical processes. So how does quantum behaviour translate in the human brain? And where lieth the necessity there?
(cue a hundred AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!s)
But seriously, either we--our thoughts, our identity, etc--are part of the physical manifestation of the universe and are therefore quantum at heart like all other physical systems, or, well, I feel those edges overlapping... Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
My suggestion for a definition of the soul: Those statements that cannot be proven true or false within the (formal?) system of our thought. Why not? As good as any I have heard.
And there's also that tiny problem left over from quantum mechanics about whether or not perception changes the workings and outcome of an experiment.
So at this point assuming that thinking is physical is a supposition that can't be proved or disproved.
In metaprogramming terms you're chunking information more or less in behavioural terms, and - as long as you don't get impatient - that's all you need to do. There is no complete functional disassembly of minds, souls, thoughts or even brains to refer to, so it's impossible to state categorically that X, Y or Z are the cause of any inner experience. You can't even do this with drugs. Just because the effects of LSD or ayahuasca are fairly reliable, doesn't mean anyone really knows what they change, or how.
All you can do is give the black box a prod every now and then, try to learn from what it does, and look at other people's incomplete ideas about how to make changes, and the kinds of changes that can be made.
I take this to be basic linearity: input (before) output(after and as a result of.) B follows A in time and is caused (at least partly) by A, and before A was something else all the way back into the mists.
"Chance" means (on this scenario, I think) side hits from other ABC causal (linear) events.
Put the whole lot together and you have chaos, but only because we can't put ourselves in the position to follow each line.
If I have understood the intro. to the I-Ching (me and understand=big IF), the (ancient?) chinese attitude didn't hold to this model. It didn't follow past to present to future, but rather saw present spreading out in all directions.
I'm assuming that what we have discovered so far of what we call the quantum world does not follow the ABC model of reality.
If our brains are quantum in their centres (inside the inside the inside etc.) then they, too, cease to be simply ABC boxes.
Which is why I would enjoy reading a diary by Migeru on anything quantum-related. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Did you read this?
What's difficult about Quantum Mechanics is that it is contextual, non-counterfactual and nonlocal.
Our brain is a physical thing. Thoughts are physical processes. So how does quantum behaviour translate in the human brain?
I saw something faintly suggestive somewhere recently that indicated it might possibly be possible for QM to have some influence, but neurons are pretty big things.
I'll point out, for the general edification of those reading rather than for your benefit, that classical computation considers a very small class of devices that don't seem to be anything like the brain. And we don't really understand the details of those devices anyway.
T'was in fact Penfold. Here he is.
You know, I suppose I have broken the golden rule:
"Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent."
Really, I wanted to clear my head of some heaviness, the I Ching did the job (as melo said, the sound of something elegant being hit lightly), and I thought it was humorous that the I Ching brought up 20 - "It does not further one to go anywhere," which my brain translated as DO NOTHING, THERE'S NO POINT AT THE MOMENT, but I had a moving fifth line, did I not mention this?
...which I also found humorous...I know I know, it's just rorschach. Anyway, the moving line created Hexagram 23 which was all about how benevolent rulers should behave.
There's a reference to your key point in the judgement.
And I'm hoping that reading a bunch of non-science types bandy words about wildly hasn't made you despair.
Regarding Jerome, for yes I read him (as head of ET) straight into Hexagram 20, "Contemplation / View"...
I thought this was humorous as I thought it (rorschach rorschach!) summed up the current attitude in re: (yes, you guessed) the structure of ET as it stands. But I was doing this in real time, so then I read.
And because I was questioning this (questioning the judgement--I suppose the answer to my unanswered question "Whither ET?" which may be my own personal question, but I think others ask the same thing...
(And I thought it was humorous that the I Ching symbol up top looks a bit like a starfish...)
So anyway, I added my snarky comments re: "But we don't believe in rulers, do we?" etc. to counter the supposed truths being listed by the I Ching in its role as Oracle.
So here's me fessing up to you senor in the hope of cheering you up or letting you give me up as a lost cause. And hmmm. What can I give you? Something powerful.
But also something funky.
Something tasty.
Something beautiful
Ach, laddie, I must dash! May all your pleasures be very pleasurable!
To all of yez, of course! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
maybe you don't...
hmm ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
