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The I Ching is really cool not because it's magic, but because it has all of these allusions to psychological drives, weird stuff about the nervous system, and ethical advice. I've found that asking a question and doing a reading online is a good way to start: 1: getting into a mindset of asking genuine questions that mean something to me. 2: begin exploring whatever I asked in the light of some sound advice, or a reference to something which is hard to discern and appreciate 3: putting in some effort, because it's easier to tie some individual significance to it I don't think there's anything supernatural in it but I definitely would have scoffed at the idea at some point.
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Dec 26, 2023 19:04
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AnimeIsTrash posted:men do alchemy which is real
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Dec 29, 2023 16:12
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e: joke was a little off-color for my tastes
nice obelisk idiot has issued a correction as of 20:20 on Dec 29, 2023 |
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Dec 29, 2023 19:58
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wait. is goku a witch?
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Jan 5, 2024 04:53
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While that's true, that fails to consider is that the mind is inherently capable of a great deal of non-conceptual understanding given appropriate stimuli. The most important parts of a human being are very simple, and a lot of hard to understand things are staring us in the face. Something like divination when used appropriately can bypass a lot of unhelpful cognitive processes, to get at say an emotional truth, or a different angle on a problem. So Imo when someone says that a tarot reading was eerily accurate they may sometimes be describing a genuine experience, just not caused by something outside of the mind.
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Jan 29, 2024 05:27
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Sherbert Hoover posted:would expect a country with this flag to be a little more chill
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Feb 16, 2024 12:57
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Sherbert Hoover posted:neoplatonists were extremely silly people and it's no surprise that their stagnation in minutiae was not as popular as believing there's a god who knows and loves you
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Mar 24, 2024 19:28
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In a Christian context, one might put it as setting aside prayer as a semi-hollow, monotonous action to see that it's the quality of prayer that matters. Surrendering your defenses in prayer is infinitely better than saying 500 Hail Marys every day for more selfish reasons. So re: stream entry, after a direct religious experience, the focus instead is on getting your heart straight, while performing rites or rituals or while doing whatever else is helpful to yourself and others. Paramemetic certainly knows this, but to clarify, it's ultimately not best put as saving yourself in Buddhism. The part of you that does that is enmeshed in the problem. Effort is needed, but it's more like how a good massage can be grueling, as some stuff doesn't want to relax.
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Mar 31, 2024 13:49
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from what I've read, it's beneficial for a stream enterer as well, as there are still many parts of the body-mind that are bound up. A strong desire for performing something genuinely can result in insight into that. Or even for an Arhat or an advanced Bodhisattva, as the cognitive obscurations are still there. A rite or ritual may help with that, by forming stronger connections between say compassion and wisdom during the experience. Kind of like a sensory integration exercise.
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Mar 31, 2024 15:30
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You might like this one LAB: I had an impulse to use an I Ching generator online in response to someone's flippant question, almost as a joke. I realized that it wasn't a pure intention, but I tried to sort of compartmentalize that, adopted an air of wanting to do it for good reasons, and did it anyways. I focused on the question intently. Clicked on the wrong button. Didn't think too much of it, focused again. Clicked the wrong button again. Then I remembered a puppetry scene from Jan Svankmajer's Faust, in which Faust believes that he dropped his blood-filled quill twice by coincidence. It's revealed to be an angel preventing him from signing the infernal contract. Maybe as a metaphor for his better self working against it. And I realized that what I was doing was maybe small, but was a genuine compromise of having a straightforward mind. Like it was... ISFET
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Apr 11, 2024 18:02
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I think that individual understandings may vary about that, necessarily. But I think that he had a strong sense that the pervasive and interpenetrating aspect of goodness (to maybe simplify: love) was the key. Beyond conceptualization, or definition into a concrete object or form. Like our experience of a massive fire or the sky or the depths of an ocean. The main thing that you do not want to ever do in Christianity is: blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. Slandering the Dharma is a big existential no-no in Buddhism as well, and it doesn't mean a text or a teaching of a Buddha per se. More like stamping on the root of life, or turning away from it. Maybe sometimes that's limiting it, squishing it down to our present view. I think that some people do that by thinking of the Christian God as only just a Sky Dad, which to me seems very "pagan". In the sense in which Christians use the term pejoratively, not like how it often really is. Like denying the Trinity by focusing on it incorrectly. So he might be mostly pushing against that current. nice obelisk idiot has issued a correction as of 20:50 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 20:47
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Azathoth posted:I would just like to point out that we don't really know what is meant by "blasphemy against the Spirit". It clearly doesn't mean denying that Jesus is the Messiah or any other claim, as the next line is "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven".
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Apr 12, 2024 21:16
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Azathoth posted:Oh you are absolutely fine. The reason that I wanted to bring that up is that particular passage has been used in a lot of lovely ways (like committing suicide is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit gives life, and so that is why someone who commits suicide is damned to conscious eternal torture spoilered for discussing self harm). I think that it's also tied to pride: like "this love comes from me and only me, I am the radiant source of light". Rather than something that's everywhere and in everything, and merely reflected in us and us in it. "Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire"
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Apr 12, 2024 22:08
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Jazerus posted:i don't think that jesus meant to die when and where he did at all. the word is incomplete for better or for worse there were and still are plenty of people who understand it extremely well. understand it like looking at their hand, and to them it is complete. I think that's partially why martyrdom was so important to the early church. If there's moral fearlessness in outward conduct, and you face your internal fear, frailty, vanity, etc in a painful death, there's not a patch of ground to stand on. Any hard-earned understanding is right there for you
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Apr 13, 2024 01:35
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you can say plan to have lunch next week, but you know that you're going to be murdered by the mafia at any point as well, because you've decided to tell the truth about something. so it's partially a product of language, as that's very different in significance than say he was planning to be the jewish political messiah and he was shocked that it didn't pan out
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Apr 13, 2024 02:03
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Thanks for sharing. That isn't far from stuff that I've seen expressed in people who have practiced other religions deeply. Hakuin's discipline Torei Enji viewed Buddhism as basically a technology, and beyond that, a symptom of a sickness. So animist views like in Shinto alone were totally adequate in the distant past, as people's lives were simple and harsh, and people could grasp things in that method. But it became something of a shadow of its former self as people became less connected to nature. Then later on there were currents like Confucianism, Vedic Brahmanism, Taoism etc that better allowed people to infer the truth in new, more complex contexts. But the main current of worldly life adapted to those too, and their radical power was to some degree left behind. And that's mirrored within Buddhism: practicing in the way outlined in the Agamas and in Theravada Buddhism was supposed to put one on the trajectory towards seeing the purpose behind all of it. Eventually the Lotus Sutra was like finally like okay, people are really screwing up, mask off. The core teaching is compassion. Words and religious texts are only provisional tricks (symbols), learning and growing must be assumed to be a continuous process that extends forever, everyone has something to teach us, even the worst people. And even that was corrupted into something that is largely compartmentalized and put on a shelf. It will ultimately die out without people to rekindle it and embody it. Despite the fact that there was an apparent supercession of views, he didn't think that it invalidated earlier ones. So in Torei's mind, a person who sees clearly, and really embodies the teachings of say Shinto is in a way better state than the vast, vast majority of Buddhists, even though the later derives from "higher" teachings. nice obelisk idiot has issued a correction as of 21:42 on Apr 13, 2024 |
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Apr 13, 2024 17:42
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That's interesting, is there anything that you'd recommend on the history of Mesopotamian religion? I'm pretty ignorant about it. But stuff like that has been on my mind quite a bit. IE gender division, practices that bridge dichotomies and how that can heal things, and how religion fulfills social and psychological needs in a society. I have read before that bigendered/androgynous gods becoming more fixed in binary gender was related to changing division of labor and social status, especially along gendered lines. And IMO that tracks. So religion became more about solidifying those divisions, instead of being a more universal experience that blended them. You can't get away from a god strongly associated with love or fertility for both sexes having a deeply feminine aspect, and so if you make them choose teams they're going towards woman. But otherwise a patriarchal society would usually say, hey, he's ours. This way of being is Guy Stuff. And maybe that increasing compartmentalization was part of the emergence of new religious ideas, because it left some of the deeper healing/cohesive parts of religion behind. nice obelisk idiot has issued a correction as of 17:02 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 16:48
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That's great stuff, thank you so much. I'll read it as soon as I have a chance. And once again, things that Paul fixates on that are particular to his context or neuroses, become universal Problems for 2 millennia 
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Apr 19, 2024 18:55
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agreed on that. He's not like the author of the Gospel of John where it's just straight from the tap. He's entangled with practical matters of holding a growing community together, with necessarily imperfect approaches and results.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:37
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Ohtori Akio posted:And immediately there fell from his head as it had been hair: and he received AIDS forthwith, and arose, and was probated.
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Apr 19, 2024 22:16
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Thanks again LAB, I don't have too many takeaways from the article, but it was a very good overview of the topic. I kind of get the impression that the conflict with the Cybele cult etc had an element of being a vanity of small differences thing, and that they were largely competing over the same demographics of people. And the former had been co-opted by the state to varying degrees and made less and universal, and that there was corruption in other ways, while Christianity was still new and energetic. Like the article says, the gender stuff was a disreputable aspect of that religious current to much of Greco-Roman society. I feel like a lot of early Christians wanted to paint Jesus' association with 'unsavory' aspects of society, like women who performed sex work, as only a pity thing, rather than that they were particularly amenable to understanding what he was saying about the world. Such as a better understanding of things like harmful attachment to wealth, family, and identity.
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Apr 20, 2024 21:16
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James VI and I was a huge queen and very insecure about it. typical e: Pigeon is beautiful nice obelisk idiot has issued a correction as of 16:58 on Apr 25, 2024 |
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Apr 25, 2024 16:52
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