There are only two choices: Lose Self or Enhance Self

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

There are only these two choices, even if you just believe in fate. I believe in fate. When I consider freewill, fate is obvious to me. Cause and Effect with Effect being really just another cause. Free will is an illusion, but a completely convincing one. When freewill isn’t considered, the experience of choosing dominates. In this sense, I believe in both Fate and Free will. Contradictions be damned.

Now, all fate aside, what are the only choices that have any value or the most value? Lose Self or Enhance and Promote self. If you choose to lose self, you are committed to eventually dying. A slow suicide. Which is no different than actual suicide. Even if you live a long life with many adventures you will lose self. We lose memories of these adventures even while we are alive so we need new adventures, until our health goes.

Today there have been scientific suggestions that human beings may live forever, reverse aging, cure sickness and resulting death. I believe this one day will happen, but like personal assistant robots in every house, this will happen hundreds of years after it is suggested as possible. Buying into this idea is no different than listening to snake-oil salesmen talk of a fountain of youth in a bottle. Still, what other choice do we have but to listen and adopt every health tip out there? If you die trying, that had value. There is no point getting rich unless you use every cent towards increasing your health. Even Steve Jobs asked what the point of all his money was at the end. So this would mean using the money towards obtaining information, investing in the tech that will extend life.

For a lot of us, this doesn’t matter. We won’t be rich and the right technology won’t exist until after we are dead

So, as far as losing self goes, we can meditate. In my experience, I reached the first Jhana, which was a connection between my soul and the universal soul. It was the best feeling I’ve ever had. It was Joy. And it had a permanent relief about it. No other emotion or success on earth could match it. The only reason I came back from it, to my body, was because I looked for myself in it. No self is the ultimate reality.

I write this post to help others decide what to DO. Look at your pursuits in life. Are you helping others get rich off your work? Are you paying to be entertained? Well, unless you are looking to be influenced by the entertainment so you can get ideas on how to entertain others and get rich, this is a complete waste of time. It’s like sleeping with the enemy. Or trying to sell drugs, failing, then buying drugs from a competing drug dealer.

If this sounds hopeless, meditate, or commit your actions to your ideas of an afterlife. All other actions are empty. Stop wasting your time. You are worth it. You choose that you aren’t. And ignore that you made that choice, but it won’t feel good in the back of your mind.

Then again, no matter what, we will be dragged to heaven, kicking and screaming.

2

I can agree with a lot of that, but I have to object to meditation as being the path. In the West, meditation has a very active adversary - medically induced anxiety.

When stress is created in an individual by the use of toxins and/or germs, the neurological system simply cannot focus or concentrate sufficiently to enter into a meditative state. It is like having bad computer memory chips and yet trying to get all of the software to just ignore it.

So can you suggest anything other than meditation as a means to such mental clarity?

3

Concept = Our self will die. Earth and self are not heaven. When our self dies, we are dragged to heaven kicking and screaming.

It seems that in fact a different view is more suggestive - that we are in fact “dragged down to Earth” from heaven. Once a world is generated, a self is generated and consciousness seems to be magnetically attracted to its opposite, and thus contained within.

However, I counter this with another view - That we did not exist in heaven prior to birth, and that our birth was formed as a means for the soul to mature in order to ultimately end up in heaven. But if this view is true, it leaves some gaping possibilities. Why would a God need to create millions of similar entities? This implies solipism is true, and I am the only real person, and God picked me out of the crop, so to speak. Otherwise it implies “paradox-solipism”, which means every lifeform is sentient, yet are in parallel, non-accessable timelines, and therefore will never experience the validity of the other’s sentience. They will never experience other selves because heaven is eternal. And this theory also implies that a large volume of sentients in heaven is somehow better than just one sentient in heaven - a paradox, if you also believe in a divine logical benevolent entity controlling the factory.

As far as “freewill” goes it is a false concept so I suggest stop using it in your words as a mental crutch. Output of the human organism can be simultaneously affected by both conscious and unconscious processes. However, the cultural phenomenon of freewill is based on the observers observed dance of thought, and its unison and harmony between action and the dance of thought. In order to understand why freewill is illusory, it helps to understand the conditions of which the illusion does not occur. If an organism has control type thought patterns which do not appear to reflect the organisms output, experience of paralysis occurs and the illusion of free will is lost. If an organism does not learn teachings promoting free will, and if an organism is not sufficiently complex enough to have dancing thoughts, goal oriented thoughts, and or thoughts which argue with themselves, it will not experience the illusion of free will.

4

i have heard “Heaven” is the place we are all in, and we are sleeping dreaming of this reality until we cross that great divide.

5

i heard that dreaming is better, more fun and more divine than real life, so your theory is invalid.

6

‘Loose self or enhance self’ is a sentiment which comes before, ‘who gives a damn’. These things are worries when we are in some kind of emotional turmoil ~ which of course we all are at many points in our lives. If there is no fear, there is no need for sentiment relating to loss/potential loss.

So ‘enhance self’ is perhaps the process of removing the causes and situations of fear, or otherwise the aspects of ‘loose self’. ‘Normality’ is assumed when you get to a point/place that is out of reach of such things. Though actually to much removal only enhances fear-potential.

Something of a balance?

Oh, about causality; there exists quantum fluidity + infinity + observers… We are observers and observing makes effect/s, and if we only look at one set of things e.g. The physicality of reality, we will only see what that [physicality] is doing. But physical things like brains and televisions have other qualities/qualia to, and an idea in the mind can be painted in the world, so changing the world of an interpretive observer etc.
We [the consciousness] are also the thing the brain uses to centralize and calibrate the presented world. There must be functionality of the subjective in that, such to make decisions and calibrating between parties, and we experience that subjectivity. So although a great many decisions are made by the brain aside from its conscious function, the subjective can ultimately take itself out of a situation.

Its a process involving many parties including the subjective, even our internal thoughts are a dialogue. I think that the subjective itself can be utilized by the brain aside from its conscious function, taken over and made to run from the lion the consciousness doesn’t understand e.g. in its infancy.

So it seems to me that all the factors of all the parties are interchangeable. …which sounds about right for what are essentially a mass of energy transferals or more specifically, observers + values of + rate change in those values = events.

_