There are various means or “spectacles” for promoting insight, inspiration, break-throughs in awareness or enlightenment, what have you found in the past has helped you progress the most?
For myself I found that it is a state of mind that has helped me most. Once I began to listen to stories or read texts as though I was having the experience myself, rather like we automatically do as children, I realised that the wealth of impressions made upon me grew. I learnt gradually to use this method on any text, traveling on that road, climbing that hill, confronting that problem, considering that idea, being attacked by that enemy, loving that girl, and generally traveling with the story or text, wherever it took me.
Of course the second stage is to step off that carousel and consider the implications for myself, my inner world and my dealings with the outer world. This was aided by meditation, which I started in 2009 and helped me find the meditative and mindful composure during the day, and helps me “switch off” and reconfigure a little each day.
Thirdly, the practice of contemplation, using any text in any tradition helps a comparative study of traditions, assimilating the good into my own brand of Christianity, which may not be orthodox or conventional but has an attraction to people who have been put off by the church.
Your method adds to facts and actual events images from your imagination that are not warranted.
Whilst these ‘stories’ might add colour and texture, that will help you remember, inevitably it will only result in an accretion of detail that was not present in the original account leading you with a false and self satisfying impression of the event.
This is obviously all part and parcel of how we regularly approach fiction.
For me that is how books have the most potential for enjoyment, and can leave me more deeply involved that a spoken account as you might have from an audio-book, or a radio play. Least satisfying is the TV and Film in this way , where all the work of imagination is done for you.
When it comes to matters of fact - it is a wholly inappropriate way to seek ‘enlightenment’.
For philosophy and matters of fact, there is only one valid method. You need to put yourself in a place of complete skepticism, even pretend ignorance as if what you are being told is utterly incredulous. This provides you the fuel to ask the questions you need to ask to uncover if what you are being told has validity, and veracity. Without asking these questions you cannot seriously allow things into your understanding, unless you want to live a dream-life full of fantasy and disinformation.
It seems your “spectacles” are rose-tinted, mine are analytical.
The difference between us is that I have experience that there is always a story being told, and that we do not have “pure” fact. Every source of fact has a story attached to it and I can learn as much from the story as from the fact. Each experiment is tainted by the experimenter, even if he takes it into account, because we very often look in a particular direction, with a certain intention. Now this isn’t a bad thing, we just have to be aware that we do it.
However, mindfulness in meditation and mindset is the method of distinction and the second stage of my method. Mindfulness asks what is, now, and what have I assumed or where is my mind leading me astray. It is the analytical aspect and is quite effective.
Rather than skepticism I would apply what is called “the four-sides model” (also known as communication square or four-ears model) which is a communication model by Friedemann Schulz von Thun and probably popular with me because I communicate with human beings a lot. According to this model every message has four facets which are fact, self-revealing, relationship, and appeal. I think this is true of any information I receive, although not the same emphasis might be put on each. It is one reason why I like to have some biografical information about the source - including the people I read.
No that is absolutely NOT the difference between us.
The difference is that I think the ~“story” is accretion upon the facts, and that means that no fact is not tainted with another’s interpretation and world view: nothing is objective.
You think you can see “truth” hidden behind the stories behind the world. You also think me too stupid or lacking inexperience to be able to access these ‘truths’.
I am happy to know that the Universe is far larger than your ‘truths’ can stand. The idea that one small person calling himself Saint Bob has access to the hidden truths of the Universe is not credible.
The real difference is that we both see the world, facts and fiction; objects and relations.
But I know that they are constructions of my interpretation limited by my experience and susceptible to falsity: you on the other hand think he can see though the bare facts to construct a world of his own making he thinks is more real than just his imagination.
Reading Wm. Blake “woke me from my dogmatic slumber.” As did much reading of Eastern “religious” philosophies. and, of course, Dostoyevsky. These writings shook my conservative religious beliefs and demanded that I consider other possibilities. Reading, then, was my first step toward enlightenment–a step that has never been exhausted; it has, rather, been added to by prayer and meditation. The shock of understanding is merely the first step toward personal enlightenment. It is from reading and hearing. The final phase of enlightenment is to live what you have learned.
Bob, I do not think that that is contemplation but more like meditation. You read and then you think and then you stop thinking and see what comes of it. Meditation is good because what it can do is to bring us a step further and deeper in our thinking, allow us to see and to know ourselves in a way we hadn’t before…and to gain more intuitive or factual knowledge which can add to one’s enlightenment. That is enlightenment. Contemplation is more the losing of your self, deliberately, simply being in the present moment. Though in essence that is more gaining than losing one’s self. That too can lead to enlightenment but perhaps we don’t get the sense or experience of it in that moment.
I may be wrong but I kind of think that using ONLY a specific method or “spectacles” or one or two, for gaining insight, inspiration etcetera might close off the mind for accessing these things. We never know that what we are doing and when we are doing it might just bring these things to us. I don’t think that there is anything in the universe that cannot. If we keep an open mind, listen, watch and pay attention so that everything can make an impression on our minds, or at least those things which speak to the unconscious, I think that it would be more open to gathering in everything necessary to bear such fruit.
So I suppose I would say that i use a reflecting telescope.
I can’t say I meditate much. I read to agree or disagree and fill my books with underlinings and marginalia. I’m a rather pedestrian reader;but I absorb a lot. Years later on rereading books,I find hidden treasures of insights.
Some may go the other way and look through a microscope instead. Nietzche for one, did an about face about enlightenment with adopting "gegenaufklarung",
A stance against the very clarity which had become more confusing then clear to some. A romantic notion to be sure, but it wasn’t a romantic rebellion on his part, the romantics acted out of an instinctual reaction, it was based on a realisation of some sort.
That would also be a very good thing, especially for philosophers and scientists those who are seeking truth and not simply to be right. Gee, that was quite the ridiculous statement, wasn’t it? As if the above alone must look for clarity.
That cannot be an easy thing - standing up against what we somehow know…being able to have two separate and distinctive thoughts going on in our head at the same time. I’m right and I’m wrong. Freddie must have exhausted himself.
Yes, you may be right, but I have been influenced by the “lectio divina” which has four separate steps: read, meditate, pray and contemplate. Reading in this spirit the “Christ-mind” is what I apply (or the Buddha-mind or whatever ideal we choose), and meditation wipes the slate clean. Praying has been more of a mantra to me than speaking to a cosmic power, using the key words of the text, those things which have stuck even through meditation. Then contemplation is the view of the world in which full of the spirit we call “God”, recognising that the way things are are the way they have to be.
I agree, the openness of the mind is supported by mindfulness, in meditation and in deportment, but my version of the lectio divina, whereby the word “divine” has a very broad meaning, also adds the aspect of devotion - which is what I find useful in my day-to-day tasks. Compassion and mindfulness are a good combination for people working in caritative jobs.
meditation
Deep Contact with very different minds and Cultures - including animals
undoing the splits in myself - can be caused by guilt or shame, or all sorts of common sense, religious, secular moral and ‘logical’ ideas about why one should jail one part of oneself with Another as guard
Full on expression towards unity of self
Exploring processes of experiencing the World that are different from the one I grew up in - anything from alternative therapies to religious rituals to various types of improv work in theater, art, dance, etc.
I have a way of “focusing” on my experiences that helps me in philosophy. Does that count as meditation? Is it a “spectacle” leading me to enlightenment?
That sounds familiar, I have experimented along those lines as well, although my theatre, art and dance were a long time ago and I’ve aged terribly since
I have retained the expressionist heart though and it seems to be what sometimes gets in the way of my being a boss, but it also provides a lot of personal warmth. But I’ve also found that the depth of my contact was too deep for some of my friends, who just weren’t up to that kind of intensity. Sounds like a complicated personality
The other part regarding the “splits” is a hurdle we all have to overcome - probably culturally conditioned. I found that the animals tend to mirror what we have inside of us somehow and they react sharply to weakness - which is something that shows us the clear border between man and animal. I had wonderful contacts to dogs, and spent hours wandering throughout the countryside when I should have been at school - in company of a hairy friend.
To some degree the ability to concentrate and remain focused may be because of a kind of “natural aptitude” to meditation of some sort. You’d have to look at the way you chill out and how aware you are when you do mundane things. It may give you some indication.
