I think I’ve said enough on this thread, now. I’m always happy to talk about my life, thoughts and feelings, as long as I’m treated with respect.
I will not, however, spend any more time repeating myself.
A fine end.
All I can advise then is that you spend more time thinking about the things you repeat to yourself. As long as you are content to fall back on the things you just know about yourself, the less time you will spend thinking about the things that I think I know about you.
That, above all else, it is in sustaining what comforts and consoles you psychologically that keeps you on the path.
So, in that regard, you either will have that “dramatic/traumatic” experience that upends the basket you’ve put all of your “spiritual” eggs in or you won’t.
A part of me hopes you do, a part of me hopes you don’t.
But I do suspect you are closer to grasping what is actually at stake one way or the other.
Intuition … judgement based on accumulated experience.
It can’t be verbalized. It can’t be reduced to a set of statements.
Yep, that’s the beauty of it. As long as you are able to justify what you say and do as a “gut feeling” nothing that anyone else says can touch it. It’s all in your head.
Only here’s the thing…
Unless this intuitive Real Me Self becomes a part of you at the point of conception, or is a manifestation of a mysterious “spiritual” essence that transcends even nature itself – a biological imperative? – each of us can have accumulated experiences that are very, very, very different from others. The part I then root in dasein.
The part I explore in depth in my signature threads. The part that, in my view, those who embrace an Intuitive Spirit Self or a Christian Self or a Buddhist Self steer clear of with all their might.
Why? Again: the stakes that are involved on both sides of the grave for each and every mere mortal.
Intuition has a feedback loop.
The world keeps telling you if your intuition is working or not. If your intuition fails, it gets altered for the next time.
Therefore, intuition improves.
Okay, cite some examples of this from your own life. And, in regard to the discussion Maia and I were having above pertaining to the morality of abortion, how would any “improvement” on her part not be but the embodiment of a particular political prejudice rooted subjectively – and, historically/culturally, intersubjectively – in dasein.
Yeah, if you are a doctor performing abortions, the more of them you do, the more it becomes a kind of intuitive learning process. You do improve because there is a part of you that acquires skills embedded in performing repeated operations. And this improvement can be measured in the results.
But the morality of abortion? As I pointed out to Maia, there are women who, intuitively, based on their experiences come to believe that abortion is moral. While others, based on their own very different experiences, come to believe intuitively it is immoral.
Then the part that truly baffles me. The part where, for Maia, who calls herself a Pagan, nature and the Goddess really don’t play a big part in this at all.
And the part where different Pagans, on their own “private and personal” path with nature, can come to completely conflicting moral convictions about abortion. How, in a Pagan community, that would be dealt with.
Why would people still have intuition if it served no useful purpose for survival? If it didn’t give an evolutionary advantage, then surely it would have been abandoned/replaced long ago?
Is logical reasoning the replacement?
Reason and intuition both seem to be in use.
Again, all I can come back to is this: unbelievable.
Who is arguing that intuition serves no useful purpose for survival?
What does that point have to do with mine?
Why or when use intuition instead of reason?
Lack of time to reason it out.
The problem is too complex. Can’t get a handle on it.
The problem contains logical inconsistencies or contradictions.
Couldn’t agree more.
Then all the points I raise.
Last word
Well, at least until Ichthus77 returns. [-o<
Note to Ichthus77:
It was something I said, right? Another fulminating fanatic God World objectivist bites the dust.
Not to worry though. As notches go, you weren’t even in the top ten. 
Last word
I had accidentally deleted my detailed near-complete reply to 2, early last week [sob], so I’ll have to recompile it from memory, and then send.
As for promising a reply to 1. on the 4th, I was obviously over-reaching on that intention… what I think I can do, isn’t always the case later that day.
My value judgements are derived from the situation in the here and now, not from the political/historical past of bias or regret, of which I don’t harbour either.
Knowing myself very well, I can say that even if I had had different experiences in life, I wouldn’t change my outlook to a more biased one… the experiences I have had so far haven’t made me any less of an objective person thus far.
I’d have to be an entirely different person, to embrace an entirely different viewpoint and outlook.
I guess I am a great believer in the ‘first do no harm’ mantra, both physically and mentally, and that then sets a precedent for all else to operate from… that doesn’t mean that I will entertain anybody’s crap, if the conscientious atmosphere set is not appreciated. Deontologically similar to Kant’s I guess, but without a list of rules.
Simple! I am not a reactionist… in a world of reactionaries, do we really need one more, or another judgementalist or bore?
If I can’t deflect others’ unnecessary irkings with humour, then that situation is moot by default, and I cease responding to that person on that/those specific matter/s… I am not obligated to respond.
I think it better to be an arhat, than an annoying a’hole… for me at least.
That’s right. You would not be here arguing a different viewpoint. Another person would be here instead.
My sister used to declare, that she wished we had different parents… because they were strict, but then I said that it wouldn’t be us being born, it would be completely different children from a completely different genetic combination of chromosomes. She stopped saying it, after that. 
I didn’t find our parents overly-strict at all, because I wasn’t wayward… like my siblings were, and tried to get away with it. I was cheeky though, but my mother said that was preferable to their misbehaviour.
It’s surely the most futile thing imaginable, to speculate what might have been, had things been different. When I was little I used to think that the universe had been so unfair to me, and I wished very hard I was someone else.
But what actually happened is that I became someone who’s happy with who I am. And now I wouldn’t change anything at all.
And, yes, I know I said I wouldn’t comment on this thread again. But since it’s already been derailed beyond hope, perhaps it doesn’t much matter.
_
You have summed my sister up, in one… she spent all her decades wishing for a different life, that she’s only just now started living and enjoying her life in very recent years. Her company is more enjoyable to be in, now.
Moving forward with life, regardless of our gripes with it and ourselves, seems to be a key to happiness… or stay stagnated in a state of self-pity and sorrow.
Did you choose to seek happiness, so cease wishing? or did the situation just naturally progress, and change, over time?
Welcome back to the thread [big smily face]. I found Icthus quite the character… especially after adopting Meno-speak, but not being able to understand it/him.
It was boarding school that knocked any remaining self-pity out of me, from the age of 11, though by that time I had already started to realise that life is what you choose to make it. One can be happy or sad simply by an act of will, and, as it turned out, this is actually very easy, taking pleasure in the things that you have, including, of course, the people around you.