Being invited off of the “Illusion and Reality” thread, I felt it best to respond on a new thread because the questions being conidered I believe to be important in a religious context. From the other thread:
Scyth
No I meant it as I wrote it. If we are a hopeless slaves to desires that ultimately destroy any hope of enlightenment, it still leaves the question open as how to respond in accordance with our situation.
We can indulge in the joy of complaints for example. This is the realm of certain artists who vent their frustrations through complaints in the form of their art. This brings prestige and a form of kinship with people having similar complaints.
A person can rationalize that being a hopeless slave to their lower selves its best just to enjoy it and take advantage of others also stuck in the mud.
Another may feel that even though their position is hopeless, why intensify another’s suffering through taking advantage. Another may just try to suppress these desires within themselves.
There are other possibilities but you get the picture. A person can sense their helplessness in the face of their own hypocrisy and take a definite attitude towards it.
This isn’t a struggle with anyone else but I believe it to be a struggle with ourselves. If this is true, how can we learn to discriminate the real from the unreal within ourselves while leaving everyone else out of the picture?
There are no objective transcendental glasses. That’s La La Land. Taking off all foggy glasses and preconceptions is what invites transcendence. What good is the occasional transcendent experience when it quickly dissolves into some sort of rationalization? It just turns everything in circles. From this perspective how can suppressing desires be beneficial? To the contrary, it is necessary to experience them for what they are, as learned qualities unnatural to our being. Trying to suppress them just leaves them in control in another form. The trick is to accept them in perspective and this perspective is created through the conscious awareness of them. Consider the Spanish Inquisition for example. Christianity degenerated into Christendom and followers of this branch of Christendom committed exactly opposite of the intent of the teaching. All this because of suppression and the refusal and inability to admit their nature and to “know thyself.”.
This is why I believe “attitude” is an important first step. If our attitude invites escapism, it can only lead to the pleasures of escapism. If our attitude invites the expression of the joys of our own suffering ego, then this is what a person will get. However, it is through these means and others that our personal slavery is perpetuated. So IMO in order for a person to achieve inner freedom it requires the ability to experience them for what they are or in Christian terms: to carry ones cross and to stay “present”, with attention, during the happening. It is only through this welcomed experience of impartial reality, threatening to our self image, that IMO the desired genuine change becomes possible.