Thinking, Feeling And Paths To Wisdom
I once heard a psychiatrist, who was a baby boomer, tell me that when he was at the university there were people on acid running around claiming to have insights but being unable to articulate them.
I am not into drugs, but I have all sorts of insights. And I do know how to articulate them.
One claim by some followers of Eastern religion is that spiritual truth is “inexpressible.” I doubt that claim. I believe that anything is expressible, if you are good enough at expressing.
Having screwy brain chemistry or brain structure can actually help in that regard. Dostoyevsky, who was an epileptic, was able to express amazing insight and wisdom. One thing that may have helped is that in epilepsy there is heightened contact between the left brain and the right brain, allowing what is accessible through intuition to become expressed in reason and in speech. I know a poet who is an epileptic, and his work is amazingly profound. And there have been any number of people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, or who went insane, who have contributed everything from great philosophy (such as Nietzsche) to great inventions (such as Thomas Edison and John Nash) to great art and literature (such as many, many others).
I have been with a woman who was a brilliant visual artist who was expressing very profound themes in her art. I picked up on the idea behind her artwork and put it into writing. The result was a poetry book that has been well-received by many. The themes that she expressed in art, I expressed in word. And the outcome made me the talk of the town in the DC poetry scene.
Sometimes it is quite difficult to express ideas that are different from what one has been taught. One has to suspend judgment and reason and let the feeling or the intuition take over. Making sense – and reason – of it comes later. In the interim, you are confused, even possibly insane. In the end, you have said something meaningful.
Rationalism sees reason and scientific inquiry as path to wisdom, and romanticism sees feeling and intuition as path to wisdom. Both can be that; both can also go badly astray. But when you practice both thinking and feeling, you give each side the input from the other side. This creates a fuller picture and balances out the other side's capacity for wrongful activity. As such, it leads to wisdom faster – and with fewer errors - than through either thinking or feeling acting alone.
Combining the rational and the intuitive creates a fuller, more integrated, picture, and it does so faster than either modality acting alone. People should be taught both to think and to feel. And then they should be taught to synthesize both, creating a more complete understanding doing so faster than can be done either through feeling or through thinking by itself.
I am not into drugs, but I have all sorts of insights. And I do know how to articulate them.
One claim by some followers of Eastern religion is that spiritual truth is “inexpressible.” I doubt that claim. I believe that anything is expressible, if you are good enough at expressing.
Having screwy brain chemistry or brain structure can actually help in that regard. Dostoyevsky, who was an epileptic, was able to express amazing insight and wisdom. One thing that may have helped is that in epilepsy there is heightened contact between the left brain and the right brain, allowing what is accessible through intuition to become expressed in reason and in speech. I know a poet who is an epileptic, and his work is amazingly profound. And there have been any number of people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, or who went insane, who have contributed everything from great philosophy (such as Nietzsche) to great inventions (such as Thomas Edison and John Nash) to great art and literature (such as many, many others).
I have been with a woman who was a brilliant visual artist who was expressing very profound themes in her art. I picked up on the idea behind her artwork and put it into writing. The result was a poetry book that has been well-received by many. The themes that she expressed in art, I expressed in word. And the outcome made me the talk of the town in the DC poetry scene.
Sometimes it is quite difficult to express ideas that are different from what one has been taught. One has to suspend judgment and reason and let the feeling or the intuition take over. Making sense – and reason – of it comes later. In the interim, you are confused, even possibly insane. In the end, you have said something meaningful.
Rationalism sees reason and scientific inquiry as path to wisdom, and romanticism sees feeling and intuition as path to wisdom. Both can be that; both can also go badly astray. But when you practice both thinking and feeling, you give each side the input from the other side. This creates a fuller picture and balances out the other side's capacity for wrongful activity. As such, it leads to wisdom faster – and with fewer errors - than through either thinking or feeling acting alone.
Combining the rational and the intuitive creates a fuller, more integrated, picture, and it does so faster than either modality acting alone. People should be taught both to think and to feel. And then they should be taught to synthesize both, creating a more complete understanding doing so faster than can be done either through feeling or through thinking by itself.
Comments (60)
A bit cliche but: what is the sound of one hand clapping?
I think that anything which is expressed, is first thought, which says nothing of the ease or difficulty of expression (either verbal or non-verbal).
By juxtaposing reason and intuition, you are implicitly (perhaps unknowingly) referring to dual process theories of mind.
Cognisance (Smith & Kirby, 2000), learning (Sun, 2002), mental coding (Paivio, 2007), problem-solving (Evans, 1984), and creative thinking (Christoff, et al., 2009) involve combined (automatic and controlled) processing, being interactive automatic/parallel and controlled/serial tacit and declarative knowledge processing.
However, I don't understand how dual processing relates to insight and wisdom. Perhaps if you provided a definition of insight and wisdom?
I can relate to this, but I think perhaps the problem is more communication than expression. I believe that anything is expressible, but not everything can be communicated in plain words.
I think when we attempt to express ‘spiritual truth’, we fail to recognise or clarify that we are really expressing an experience of that truth, and not stating the truth itself. While we understand this to be the case when we use artistic expression, including poetry, drama and literature, when we use words to express ‘truth’ outside of these parameters, people find it easier to take the words as the ‘truth’ itself - and this can cause problems in understanding what is meant.
An expression of spiritual truth is always subjective. This doesn’t mean that it is ‘my truth’ as opposed to ‘your truth’, but that it is my expression of my subjective experience of a spiritual truth. I don’t believe you can plainly state a ‘spiritual truth’ with words that can be understood objectively. But I think you can express this spiritual truth in such a way that enables many people to ‘feel’ a connection with your personal experience of this truth. That doesn’t mean the words you use are an accurate or objective expression of the ‘truth’ itself.
I think we experience truth as a combination of thought and feeling. I agree that we should be taught to both think and feel in equal measure, and to synthesise both approaches in order to understand and communicate truth as a complete experience.
@Galuchat - I disagree that everything that is expressed is first ‘thought’. We are more than capable of expressing ‘feeling’ that has not first been translated into thought. I see this every day in emails and posts fired off in haste.
"Feeling" is an awful word because it is used in so many different ways. I have been working on an informal domain ontology of the human mind for the past seven years, and decided to completely avoid using "feeling" for just that reason (preferring to use less equivocal words instead).
However, even emotion (passion) requires cognisance of the circumstances of an object of concern (cf., Theory of Constructed Emotion, Barrett, 2016).
The word "feeling" is used five times in the OP (not including the title) as a synonym of "intuition", or as an antonym of "thinking". Intuition and cogitation (thinking) being types of mental processing, as opposed to types of mental condition (e.g., consciousness, affect, mood, emotion, temperament, motivation, etc.).
By the way, nice point in your first paragraph about communication.
Well said.
Silence. :clap:
I agree that ‘feeling’ is often misunderstood - it may very well appear synonymous with ‘intuition’, but this term has its own connotations as being (as you say) a mental process. And I don’t see it as necessarily opposite to thinking any more than religion is opposite to science - although it can certainly seem that way. It’s not an ideal term, but I don’t think there is an ideal term, so at this point I hope you don’t mind if I continue to use it (although I’m open to alternatives).
I don’t think ‘feeling’ is the same as emotion, either - I agree that we’ve already begun to apply thinking when we name, define or articulate ‘how we feel’ or determine its source, direction or ‘object of concern’. When I talk about ‘feeling’ in this context, I’m referring to something more basic than that.
I think ‘feeling’ refers to a deeper response to the universe that appears to come from ‘every fibre of our being’. It’s not a mental process, but neither is it a mental condition - I’d say it’s more metaphysical, but that description isn’t always well received. In the same way that cogitation informs ‘how we feel’ or how we respond to the universe through emotion (as described above), so ‘feeling’ can inform our mental processes alongside traditional/physical sense data (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste), logic/reason and memory. This can lead us to intuition, including sixth sense or ‘gut instinct’ experiences that we may learn to trust in particular circumstances, but I think that ‘feeling’ can and does occur - and also influences our actions - independent of thinking.
We’ve learned to distrust ‘feeling’, as a rule, because of its ability to bypass our mental processes. Like we do with most things in the world that resist definition/confinement/control/manipulation, we tend to deny its existence, legitimacy or benefit - because to acknowledge it would be to admit that we don’t have the universe under control.
We recognise intuition to a certain extent, and we recognise emotion, but the underlying element of our subjective experience that informs both is tricky to pin down. We can’t locate it in the mind or in any particular organ of the body. It is ‘felt’ deep in our core, tingling in our extremities and also in the air around us and between us. It occurs in the present moment, hits us without warning and leaves no physical trace of evidence except a vague sense of its interaction with our mental processes. This makes it easy enough to dismiss or explain away after the moment has passed. But in the moment it is as real and influential as any other part of our experience.
I think if we learn to recognise, legitimise and incorporate ‘feeling’ as a way of interacting with the universe alongside traditional/physical sense data, logic/reason and memory, we may find our ‘thinking’ will start to more closely match our experience in the world.
Exactly this. Thanks for such clear, concise and beautiful writing.
Who are 'the wise' ?
The only value of feeling is to what extent it motivates rational thought.
What say you?
There is some good sense here; an ability to connect words and experience with self and others.
It is not an easy task to accurately describe feelings. Often words come out my mouth and I wonder where they came from ! It wasn't at all what I meant to say, or even what I was thinking...
What is a 'spiritual truth' ?
I agree about the importance of understanding all human capacitites. How to carefully think, feel and describe so as to improve communication and action.
I am not sure that a combination is 'faster than either modality acting alone'.
Why would you think that- or what is your source for that belief ?
Easy for you to say, and maybe you're right. :chin: But many of us simply don't have such accomplished powers of expression. As an autist, I feel this especially. There are ways of expressing things that you do without thinking, that I am completely unable to do. It's not that I need training or instruction, it's that I actually lack the spark that could be fanned into a flame. Not everyone is autistic, of course, but many of us share shortcomings in our means and ways of expression. In practice, I think there are many things that many people are unable to adequately express.
And then there is the intended meaning of "inexpressible truth" that you mention. I think there are such truths. Truths that can be learned and understood, but not expressed in words. For these things, words are insufficient. Perhaps because their understanding, if one can reach it, is visceral (yes, not a great word, but I couldn't think of a better one) more than intellectual? Perhaps the matter concerns something that must be experienced personally before it can be understood? Maybe it's like me trying to appreciate what it's like to grow a baby, and give birth to it? I dare to guess that this might be something that cannot be adequately expressed using only words?
Good question. Can one who is not wise recognize the wise? Do those who are not wise, out of their ignorance, only imagine what it is to be wise?
You think people can be taught to feel? To think, yes, there are definitely ways in which we can improve our thinking, and many of them can be taught. But teaching someone to feel? How would/could that work? :chin:
Is that an example of wisdom ? When you have more questions than answers ?
When you can say 'I do not know' but still be willing to broaden perspective...and change if necessary.
Interesting to consider how we imagine 'the wise' to be. To look.
What image comes to mind ? Don't think about it too hard.
How programmed are we...
The term skeptic comes from the Greek meaning inquiry and doubt. Eventually doubt came to overshadow inquiry, to the extent that it was doubted that inquiry was of much use. But such a conclusion is antithetical to Socratic inquiry. It assumes an answer, leaves off questioning, and instead sets about making arguments to prove the validity of radical doubt.
One problem when answers take precedence over questions is that we do not ask whether the question it answers was a good question.
In the Apology Socrates claims that human wisdom is worthless. One way in which this is true is that knowing you do not know does not allow you to do the kinds of things that those who do know something can do with their knowledge. As with his daimon who warns him what not to do but never advises him as to what he should do, there is no certainty as to what is the best course of action, the best way to live. It is the question of what is best that leads. And in the absence of knowledge of what is best perhaps human wisdom has something to do with knowing how best to proceed knowing that one does not know what is best.
They came from a tradition of communicating by talking.
Talking came about via the evolutionary development of humans, and their culture/s.
We can theoretically trace our shared origin with chimpanzees, and if you think about how they seem to communicate, they use body language in conjunction with verbal expressing...we could add in other things like scent etc.
So out present use of words emerged from that state.
We can also go further back in history and think about what we and the chimps evolved from; some kind of vole/mouse type species...and look at how they communicate..similarly they make vocal sounds, like squeaks, also body language etc...so we can maybe trace language back to the first cells, and how they came about, which science doesn't have much idea about.
If the origins of the first cells were supernatural, then you can maybe trace back words and language right back to whatever supernatural forces may be; God, or whatever you might believe in..
So I think words are not quite as straightforward as some people think they are, and from what I have argued there does seem to be the potential at least, to be able to express spiritual stuff with words, if words are rooted in the spiritual/supernatural.
As for teaching people how to feel, and think; by doing that you would be trying to separate those two things, and then to get people to think and feel at the same time, rejoin what you might have separated....
If not then the term 'spiritual truths; seems like a bit of a tautological statement...or something.
Ah, the sound of a rhetorical question. It's a good example of a loaded question or a riddle which stumps some people and gets them to think. The wise ones don't get stuck there forever, but learn to solve it and move on.
I would describe pure ‘spiritual truth’ as an element of knowledge, understanding or wisdom that we recognise as universal or eternal. It is true (consistent) regardless of who experiences it, where, when or how they experience it and under what circumstances.
This truth does not directly translate to anything other than experience, however. Despite countless attempts to substantiate or declare universal or eternal truths, we have yet to succeed at this in any language.
Take the statement ‘all men are created equal’, for instance. There is an experience of spiritual or eternal ‘truth’ underlying this statement, and yet the statement itself is flawed as an objective expression of that truth. We can attempt to reword it in a way that might be seen as more inclusive or sensitive to alternative experiences or points of view, but at the end of the day, the words only point to a subjective experience of spiritual truth - they cannot become that truth objectively, no matter what words we may use.
This doesn’t sit well with some people. Does this mean we should dismiss the statement as false, or accept it as ‘basically true’? How do we acknowledge that a statement is objectively flawed, and yet points to a ‘truth’ subjectively experienced by the authors/signatories that we also recognise to be true? How can we know something we cannot accurately state as fact? And how do we reliably share this knowledge with others if we can’t rely on the words?
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I think everyone can feel already - it’s more a matter of learning to notice ‘feeling’ as part of our overall experience, to pay attention to it, and give it a seat at the table, so to speak. We need to learn not to be afraid of feeling, not to dismiss or restrict its influence on our thinking (and remember I’m not talking about emotion - which is feeling influenced by thought), but instead to value the unique contribution that ‘feeling’ can bring to our understanding of the universe.
Quoting TheMadFool
This is a common misconception, especially for those who have given reason/logic a privileged position. I don’t think feeling is a ‘reaction’ we can’t control or wilfully direct, but a valuable, informative response to the universe, much like traditional/physical sense data. I think when we try to oppress feeling by subordinating it to ‘rational thinking’, it finds an outlet of expression through irrational emotion. ‘See - I told you it can’t be trusted!’
Empathy tasks. You know, like, imagine how you would feel if that were you?
it's a question with no actual answer...a hand can't clap at all on its own, so the sound of something which is impossible doesn't exist, and by getting people's minds to contemplate something which doesn't exist gets them to contemplate nothingness...which leads to the death of some parts of the mind, in my opinion....the reaction of someone's mind to part of its own death may lead someone to think they are having a spiritual experience....there is much death in Buddhism I think, and I speak of it as someone who was sort of interested in it, still am a little....I read a Glimpse of Nothingness twice...there sometimes is the illusion of peace in mind death, but it will only be temporary......
I do wonder about the wisdom that might come from spiritual death experiences...this all sounds very negative, and I don't think Buddhism is all negative; I like the concept of mindfulness for example...there is life in that.
Like a rhetorical question. Rhetorical questions get people to think. Getting people to think can lead to wisdom. You're not supposed to answer it in the usual way. You're supposed to analyse and solve.
I wonder if ‘spiritual’ might be an unnecessary qualifier - perhaps the question is: are there other types of truths that are not spiritual? Mathematical truth? Do they fit the description of spiritual truth?
the question of the hand clapping doesn't have an answer, so isn't really a rhetorical question imo.
The question is a k?an, and it, I think is asked in order for the person asked to attain a new state of being...not just to get people to think;.
Well, that was my own take on it. What it has in common with rhetorical questions is that you're not supposed to answer it in the usual way. I would ask it to trigger critical thinking. I wouldn't be asking it in the usual way. I would be asking it to give an opportunity to identify a problem with the question itself or to come up with a creative answer which fits.
Interesting. Mathematical truth is defined to be true, so it's true by definition. A lesser form of truth, I believe. :chin: But that doesn't invalidate your question. Truths that are factual might be independent of spiritual truth. ... But how to verify facts to that degree of certainty? I'm not sure. :chin:
well the question asks what is the sound of x clapping(which involves two hands). The x they ask the question of is 'one hand'...the concept of clapping is invoked which uses both sides of the body, and presumably both sides of the brain are involved.
Trying to contemplate one hand doing this creates a split in the imagination process....a sort of split between left and right...this leads to the mind dying a bit......the mind will try to heal any split that has happened, using any resources at its disposal...which might involve memories and feelings that might have been laying dormant in the person.........it all might lead the person to think something positive has happened, but actually they have died a little.
It would be a loaded question, like I mentioned earlier. It would contain a controversial assumption, namely that one hand clapping can make a sound. This is controversial, because it is typically understood that clapping requires two hands. And if that is so, then the question implies a contradiction.
That's a better analysis than yours, because it is less rambling and more logical, and it only says what needs to be said. None of this "dying mind" stuff or stuff about memories and feelings and whatnot.
That’s an odd description. You don’t think that neural tissue actually becomes necrotic, I trust. From what I understand the DMN (default mode network) becomes temporarily deactivated. This deactivation can be “presented” to the zen master in, I imagine, a variety of ways.
Can you answer why questions like the clapping hand are asked within Buddhism?
No, not really, because I don't know enough about that. But I could make a roughly informed guess of the kind of explanation that would be given.
no the brain won't actually die as such...this deactivation; has this been measure in fMRI studies?
If part of the brain de-active when presented with questions like this, then how do they reactive?
I'm guessing this is what deactivation means, and the brain/mind, I might guess, reactivated by pouring in maybe old memories from the still active parts of the mind...if that is so, that is not what memories are for, usually, so maybe those memories, as they are used as a healing tool/material, are lost to the person's mind.
Maybe a bad analogy, but imagine a sail from a ship becoming torn and ragged, so the sailor takes some cloth from a less vital sail, and turns it into thread, which he uses to stitch the torn sail together with again. The cannibalised sail cloth is lost forever for its original purpose.
With the healing of a torn mind, using memories and associated feelings, maybe these memories and feelings, that were dormant, in the process of healing become accessible to the Zen practitioner...and creature the illusion of becoming more aware, and experience a change of mental state...also unusual thoughts might come from the process and access to forgotten memories..
Issues may come up in what we might call a ‘spiritual state of mind’ or whatever, and they may need to be dealt with in order to move forward, probably best by a professional, but it is very much beside the point. The point is simply to experience the Eastern concept of “emptiness.”
My source for that belief is simply that, if you have use of two modalities rather than one, you get to the point faster and fuller than if you have use only of one modality.
Emptiness is quite often experienced by people; people who live in isolation, like the character in Castaway.
My guess is the eastern concept of emptiness is the filling of the void that one has created, the feeling of thoughts and memories that pour in to fill the emptiness.
This is just an idea I had yesterday, but it seems to make sense.
edit: this bit from Shakespeare came to mind:
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead."
The mind will always try to heal, to fill the breach, and if necessary the breach will be filled with the dead...old memories, feelings that have died in the assault...fill the emptiness, and hold back the enemy of the void.
I would guess and from what I have read, that the default mode network is part of the process of conceptualisation....so focusing on a question like the hand clapping one, gets the default mode network to conceptualise nothingness.....in trying to do this task, which is impossible, all activity is shut down, and all memories, thoughts and other processes in this network are lost, perhaps permanently.
As the person is still inactive, and meditating, then the default mode network must try to fire up again and keep working...but it can't do this on its own, like turning on a switch, it must call upon other parts of the system, and refill the void with information, and processes, like memories.
I'm not sure whether drawing in information from other parts of the mind means that information is lost, permanently or just temporarily....it all sounds quite unpleasant...and back up my intuitive feelings about such koans, that I've had for a while.
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
OK. Here's to fast and free-flowing modalities to help me get to 'the point', whatever that is.
Trouble is I got a headache :sad:
Asking a good question - or asking a question in a good way...that would seem to be the aim of a quality OP. But sometimes we just got to start with what we've got. A question. And answers can provide a way forward.
Why would saying 'I know I don't know' not allow me to do the 'kinds of things that those who do know something can do with their knowledge' ?
Forgive my denseness but I really do have a headache.
About Socrates: what form did his 'daimon' take ? In addition to his reasoning and questioning he also had access to some 'spirit' ? Did his daimon appear out of thin air, or did he summon it ?
Was he 'wise' to listen to it ?
There is no certainty either way, is there ?
"Perhaps human wisdom has something to do with knowing how best to proceed knowing that one does not know what is best."
Perhaps.
Thank you for taking the time to answer, so clearly.
It is useful to hear from different perspectives.
I get the sense of a spiritual truth as something that people might know as as a feeling of 'goodness'.
But it is all too vague to make much sense when it comes to 'wisdom'.
I think that what might be true in one context, might not hold true in another.
It might be wise for me to discontinue this discussion right now because I have a headache.
It might be wise for me to continue even though I have a headache.
It might not be true that I have a headache.
It might be the case that I am having a spiritual awakening.
Nobody said it would be painless. Thinking, emotion, all part of the ordinary world. Who needs transcendence ?
What I was trying to get at is that our answers should not preclude further inquiry.
Quoting Amity
Socrates often uses the example of the craftsmen, because they do know something. The saddle maker knows how to make saddles. Knowing that I do not know how to make saddles does not allow me to make saddles.
Quoting Amity
He did not summon his daimon. He was wise to the extent that it is wise to listen to the wise and as a divinity his daimon possessed divine wisdom.
OK, thanks. Understand your clarifications. Except about the divine aspect of his 'daimon'.
Where does it say it is divine ?
And if only felt as such, the perception could be wrong, no ?
It could be a sign of mental disturbance ? Auditory hallucinations?
Or more commonly, a sense of conscience ?
A gut feel that the consequences of a proposed action would be bad.
Or a quick fire judgement, based on experience.
That would explain why the daimon never gave advice as to what to do.
Isn't it easier to feel queasy or uneasy about doing something wrong than to get a direct positive message as to what action is best ?
The definition of the term places it in the realm of the divine, although there seems to be no consensus as to exactly where. For more see Liddell and Scott A Greek-English Lexicon: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2323243&redirect=true
Quoting Amity
I cannot recall anywhere where Socrates says it led him astray.
Quoting Amity
I don't know.
Quoting Amity
Socrates' daimon in Xenophon does give advice. What the significance is of this difference I do not know. Whether Socrates, or Plato, or Xenophon believed in such an entity or whether its use was rhetorical, I do not know.
Thanks for link. Most helpful. I was intrigued by one of the meanings: 'of the tutelary genius of individuals'.
And that brought me right back to Socrates, here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutelary_deity
" Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:
You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.[2]
2. Plato. Apology of Socrates. 40 b."
Fooloso4: I cannot recall anywhere where Socrates says it led him astray.
I meant the perception of having a daimon might be wrong. That is to say, why would it not be an inner voice from a more natural source. So, where did it lead him ? Apart from not to be a politician...which is something he might have felt very strongly about. Nothing to do with the divine.
Interesting that elsewhere the daimon does seem to give advice. And yes. We will never know.
Especially when dealing with fiction. And different contexts.
That is the beauty of trying to understand, I suppose.
The pain and the pleasure.
I understand basically what you mean by this ‘feeling of goodness’, but personally I am reluctant to use the word ‘goodness’ because it implies a dichotomy that promotes binary thinking and judgement (good/evil), which drastically limits our awareness of the universe.
When we experience ‘spiritual truth’ I think we do get a positive or ‘good’ feeling about an experience or situation as it occurs. The ‘vagueness’ comes from our preference for solid, objective evidence to back up or substantiate this feeling - we want to pinpoint it in space time so we can verify it with those around us, because it might just be that we’re going crazy.
It takes practice, effort and attention to learn to trust feeling - we need to test it in our experience without losing sight of its purest form, without allowing other thinking processes to oppress or illegitimise it as a source of wisdom. If I find that what is true in one context does not hold true in another, then I haven’t reached a spiritual truth - it’s probably still caught up in structures of language, culture, ideology, gender identity or other limiting experiences of the universe. I need to get beyond context. Only by listening, learning and imagining how others experience the universe, can I get a sense of what might be true in every experience.
Wisdom is not the same as knowledge, which is not the same as understanding. I don’t think we ever ‘know’ a spiritual truth. I use the terms ‘recognise’ or ‘approach’ because I think that’s all we can genuinely achieve in terms of spiritual truth. I think ‘wisdom’, therefore, is a relative term - we can gain wisdom as we learn to understand different subjective experiences that recognise or approach spiritual truth, but I don’t think there is an endpoint to wisdom, or any specific wisdom to attain.
As for your ‘headache’, in my experience, pain is just a signal that energy, effort and attention is required to adjust to change. Change is a necessary process of life - so to avoid pain is to avoid living.
When you lift heavy weights, the pain tells you that change is occurring and requiring attention in your muscles. If you avoid pain altogether, you’re not going to get stronger or fitter. You can get advice from ‘experts’ or from those who may have experienced a similar pain, but they can’t feel or ‘know’ exactly what you feel. Only you can decide if the pain you’re experiencing at the time is leading to strength or to irreparable damage.
I don’t see emptiness or void as the enemy. This is part of living - to experience lack or loss, not as a void that must be filled or as a question that must be answered, but as part of a process whereby we live in a state of perpetual inequilibrium or incompleteness. We cannot expect to fill this void in such a way that we no longer feel the emptiness, because to live is to experience lack.
Likewise we cannot expect to answer the question of one hand clapping in a such a way that we no longer feel like we don’t have the answer. The point is to experience the lack of an answer without the sense that we are suffering from that lack, or that we have lost a part of our mind (or that it has ‘died a little’).
So the character in Castaway had to come to terms with experiences of lack or loss, to recognise that he is, essentially (when everything else is taken away), a fragile, incomplete and temporary process of life in which nothing is his to own or keep - but that’s not a bad thing. When he recognises that this experience of void does not lead to death or suffering but to an uncluttered perspective of living, then he can embrace opportunities to live more fully through his interaction with others.
No a lack or loss isn't a void. It is like a car that has run out of fuel. There is no void, just the inability to function as a vehicle. Maybe a Buddhist would say then this is the time to get out and walk..and not be attached to the car.?
can one define 'void' without referencing it to things, things with definitions that aren't based upon any definition of a void?
Can you say for example what the void created by the absence of a football is without referring to the concept of a football?
I read in the Arthur Janov books that in children, if their need for love goes unfulfilled then that need actually does die, and with it the cognitive processes associated with that need...much about Janovs ideas and therapies is a puzzle to me, in that I'm fairly sure that the therapy doesn't actually work; not completely sure, but \that is the way I tend to look at it, these days, but some of his ideas make sense.
To have a need implies that there is something important that could be included in your life...and the lack of whatever it causes some level of pain to the person. Oh well Janov says that as children we just give up hope of that need being filled, and the mind shuts down on that need. The need is then no longer felt, and neither is the associated pain, lost as well is the cognitive processes that gave rise to this need, which is the ability to receive and give love.
If this happens it could be interpreted as 'acceptance' that there is this lack, but really it is just a kind of death.....ironically, in Janov's theory, this need is then buried in the subconscious, and has to be filled symbolically...eg the need for love gets turned into the need for chocolate..and can be temporarily met symbolically by eating chocolate...I say ironically as maybe Buddhists would say this need for chocolate was an attachment..?
Whereas Janov's therapy goes along similar lines in the idea of giving up this attachment, it is part of the therapeutic practice...so you give up chocolate for the therapy and the need for love that is buried in the subconscious is no longer met, and so the original need for love surfaces in the conscious as the feeling of pain. In his therapy the idea is to 'feel' this pain; make a real connection with it...I'm a little unclear after that...the old buried trauma is felt, and is then no longer buried...the connection is made that the love they needed at the time, they never got...they don't have to hide that from themselves any more, and the cognitive ability is not longer locked in the act of repression, and comes back to life.
I think Janov(he died a couple of years ago) might have said that accepting this loss without making a connection with the traumatic memories wouldn't be healthy....So the character on the desert island could no longer fulfil his buried needs symbolically with the example of chocolate, and would become increasingly in touch with is ancient pain...it was never an attachment to chocolate he had, but a need for love.....
Anyway, I still find value in what Janov wrote, that I read 30years ago...and it still makes sense, and the only reason I can see that the therapy might not work is that the mind just, in most cases, won't accept the feeling of that much pain; not without a bloody good reason, and he always said that drug addicts once they go without their drug, have much quicker access to their buried pain than most people, and go through the therapy much quicker.......but who knows...where is the revolution he promissed?
I agree the the word 'goodness' implies the opposite 'badness'.
Such black and white thinking is used in various political battles. You are either with us (good) or against us (bad). The basis for self righteousness and an unforgiving attitude to those with different values.
So, goodness is defined as:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/goodness
[b]the quality of being morally right and admirable:
I believe in the basic goodness of human nature.[/b]
Quoting Possibility
So would you say that the dictionary example of 'a belief in the basic goodness of human nature' is a 'spiritual truth' ?
Given the other side of the goodness coin, I would argue that an experiencer of any 'spiritual truth' would need to accept that it might be perceived as morally wrong or not true from another perspective.
I think the 'feeling of goodness' is vague because it is a sense not a fact. It is not black or white. Or an absolute spiritual truth. It is qualitative not quantitative.
Quoting Possibility
I don't think it possible to get beyond context. As you say, others experience the world differently and at different times according to culture, identity and changes. I doubt there is a single spiritual truth which you can reach. However, googling the term 'spiritual truth' you will find those that can list umpteen.
Quoting Possibility
Our experience, knowledge and understanding of pain is not the same. You have given a narrow definition. It is deeper and more complex than that.
I agree that change and pain are a part of life. However, to avoid pain is not to avoid living.
How could it be ?
Quoting Possibility
Wisdom - the love of which seems central to philosophy - from
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wisdom/
" What is wisdom? Philosophers, psychologists, spiritual leaders, poets, novelists, life coaches, and a variety of other important thinkers have tried to understand the concept of wisdom. This entry will provide a brief and general overview, and analysis of, several philosophical views on the topic of wisdom. It is not intended to capture the many interesting and important approaches to wisdom found in other fields of inquiry. Moreover, this entry will focus on several major ideas in the Western philosophical tradition. In particular, it will focus on five general approaches to understanding what it takes to be wise: (1) wisdom as epistemic humility, (2) wisdom as epistemic accuracy, (3) wisdom as knowledge, (4) a hybrid theory of wisdom, and (5) wisdom as rationality."
It comes from education in literature and the arts.
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
1.Can you teach people how to feel ? Not always. Most people already feel. Humans are sentient.
However, if they lack this, then sometimes action or therapy; early intervention is required.
Compare Extreme Physical v Psychological conditions.
In physical. Think paralysis. Rehabilitation of a healing brain.
In psychology. Think psychopathy. Rehabilitation of serial killers ? So, more about developing the right kind of feelings towards others ? Has that ever worked ?
From:
----------
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-empathic-brain/201307/inside-the-mind-psychopath-empathic-not-always
Much still needs to be understood about why and how individuals with psychopathy seem to have the potential to empathize sometimes but have this capacity switched off by default. For therapists, our finding suggests that the best approach may not be to teach them empathy - they already seem capable of empathy. Instead, therapies may need to learn to be empathic always.
How to do so is unclear, but it might be best to start such training early, before violence has become a way of life.
A recent study from the group of Essi Viding at the UCL in London has shown that a callous unemotional subgroup of kids with conduct disorder already seem to lack spontaneous empathy: they also activate their empathic brain less when simply watching others in pain. These kids are known to have a heightened risk of becoming psychopathic adults. Intervening early, in these children, to make empathy automatic, might be a promising approach.
For more information about the neural basis of empathy and psychopathy, have a look at the book The Empathic Brain.
---------- End of article excerpt.
2. Can you teach people how to have empathy? Yes.
There are different ways and not every way is the right way for everyone. You wouldn't necessarily want children to approach strangers in the street, as per strategy 3 in this article.
----------
From:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33287727
Open Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird and one line will jump out at you: "You never really understand another person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."...
...A good warm up is to do a quick assessment of your empathic abilities. Neuropsychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has devised a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes in which you are shown 36 pairs of eyes and have to choose one of four words that best describes what each person is feeling or thinking - for instance, jealous, arrogant, panicked or hateful.
The average score of around 26 suggests that the majority of people are surprisingly good - though far from perfect - at visually reading others' emotions.
Going a step further, there are three simple but powerful strategies for unleashing the empathic potential that is latent in our neural circuitry...
1.Make a habit of Listening
Let people have their say, hold back from interrupting and even reflect back what they've told you so they knew you were really listening. There's a term for doing this - "radical listening".
2. Develop an awareness of others who contribute to our lives but who may be hidden from us.
Bring in your sense of curiosity.
"Bertolt Brecht wrote a wonderful poem about this called A Worker Reads History, which begins: "Who built the seven gates of Thebes? / The books are filled with the names of kings / Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?" - from article
3. Become curious about strangers in the street
I used to regularly walk past a homeless man around the corner from where I live in Oxford and take virtually no notice of him. One day I stopped to speak to him.
It turned out his name was Alan Human and he had a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford. We subsequently developed a friendship based on our mutual interest in Aristotle's ethics and pepperoni pizza.
This encounter taught me that having conversations with strangers opens up our empathic minds. We can not only meet fascinating people but also challenge the assumptions and prejudices that we have about others based on their appearance, accents or backgrounds.
Empathy is the cornerstone of healthy human relationships.
As the psychologist and inventor of emotional intelligence Daniel Goleman puts it, without empathy a person is "emotionally tone deaf".
---------- End of article excerpt.
Yes, no technique is guaranteed to be successful. Any given technique will inevitably only work in some cases, not all.
The question and answers given make sense if you think about it in terms of how you can go about trying to change indifference and inspire feelings. That humans are sentient and that most people have feelings should be taken as given. Even psychopaths and people with Asperger's have feelings, despite common misconceptions. People in persistent vegetative states on the other hand...
But yeah, sure. I didn't read all of your reply, to be honest. I switched off because it was lengthy and it looks like we more or less agree.
Yes. I quoted too much from articles. Never mind, eh.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/empathy/
5.2 has interesting discussion re moral significance of empathy.
----------
...While some evidence for empathy as a “building block” of morality has come from an evolutionary perspective and ethology (DeWaal 2006 & 2009), to a large extent the contemporary philosophical debate about the moral significance of empathy —and whether or not we should conceive of morality in a sentimentalist or rationalist manner— has been driven by the results of empirical investigations into the causes of psychopathy and autism...
----------
‘Void’ was your word, not mine. But I think it is common to experience a void, without being able to determine for certain what it is one specifically lacks. So let’s say that you experience lack or loss as a car that has run out of fuel. It appears as if you are saying that what you lack is vital to your ability to function. But I’m saying that the experience of lack itself is vital to your ability to function. How can you be certain that what you say you lack is actually causing your experience of lack?
I tend to picture one of those old fashioned puzzles, where you move tiles around inside a square to unscramble an image. In order for the puzzle to operate, one of the squares must be empty, otherwise the pieces can’t move. It doesn’t matter which one is empty - it is the void that enables the puzzle to function. This is what it means to be a dissipative structure, a living being.
Quoting wax
I can’t say I agree with your interpretation - mainly because I see pain and loss as two different experiences. You’re assuming (or perhaps Janov is) that there exists a need for love that must be fulfilled or else it ‘shuts down’. You then go on to talk about loss of the ability to receive and give love - ‘the cognitive processes that gave rise to this need’.
So we are born with the capacity to give and receive love (whatever we understand ‘love’ to be). When we fail to receive love as a child, we supposedly ‘give up’ on the entire cognitive process - only it doesn’t die, but is buried in the subconscious, and the victim seeks fulfilment ‘symbolically’, by chocolate, for instance. So they take away the chocolate in therapy, causing the patient to experience the pain of loss all over again, and then they guide them towards the recognition that what they were missing was not chocolate after all, but love... I think there are a lot of assumptions in these methods, although I think I understand why the therapy was successful for some, a matter of pretence for others and an opportunity to form a cult for a handful of practitioners...
I would argue that the patient never lost the capacity to give and receive love. When we cannot avoid an experience of pain, we seek to block our awareness of it - with painkillers or drugs, for instance. When we cannot avoid an experience of lack or loss, however, we seek to fill the void with a suitable or proximate alternative - based on what we recognise to be missing, what we are ‘informed’ is missing, or what we observe to be present in ‘more complete’ human beings. None of these methods are particularly successful in the long term, though, and open victims up to further abuse and mistreatment disguised as ‘help’ (this is the foundation of the advertising industry).
I think the idea behind Janov’s therapy is that we need to stop trying to avoid pain or loss, but to acknowledge our experience of it and strive to understand it. This is not the same as accepting it. As I mentioned to @Amity, it’s important to recognise that only you can understand your own experience of pain or loss, and only you can reliably determine how these experiences came about without objective, physical evidence. The therapy is supposed to facilitate this understanding and ‘assist’ the patient in navigating their thinking process - informed by their own experiences of feeling, sensing, reasoning and remembering - but this opens them up to being told what they’re thinking, or having their experiences translated by ‘therapists’ with ulterior motives.
Quoting wax
Well...it was damaged by one of the largest malpractice suits ever, and Janov lost all credibility with the more recent claim that he could ‘cure homosexuality’...
Janov used to go on and on about curing impotence or something related... :D
When I say shut down on cognitive ability regarding love, I don't mean all ability, but the cognitive ability is damaged...it's a bit like the ability a ship might have to propel itself; it might have 10 engines that power it, and one is taken off line..
Although with cognitive ability there are more 'engines', but bit by bit the might shut down if they don't get the love and engineering maintenance from the ship's engineer....
You might have read Janov's term for these shut-down events;; he called them 'primal events' I think, and the point about his therapy was to get back to these primal events and face what was unfaceable at the time.....it was unfaceable at the time, I guess, as the person was still in the situation at the time that was causing the pain...to face hopelessness in the situation that is causing it, I think he said, would be psychologically, and neurologically dangerous, and so the shut-down process is, or would be, a very important mechanism......kind of like in my ship analogy, if you couldn't disconnect an engine from the system, it might cause the whole thing to shut down....not that I know much about ships...maybe the whole thing does break down with real ships...
From what Janov said, it does seem to follow that some kinds of homosexually can be...'addressed', if the homosexuality is part of the 'acting out' process to fulfil subconscious needs. But I don't think all homosexuality is the same, some is just the result of eg neurological development in the presence of the relevant hormones...there might be other reasons like genetic differences, eg chromosome differences..etc...so it was a dangerous and stupid claim for Janov to make...and he later said, in a book I read, that in the even of it being an acting out, it gave the person 'hope', and he said that seeking hope is a healthy activity.
No - I would say that this is not a ‘spiritual truth’, but an expression of personal belief and judgement, as stated. A spiritual truth is not an opinion based on personal experience. As you said, ‘goodness’ is qualitative, not quantitative.
I think perhaps you misunderstood me - I disagree with your direct association of spiritual truth with ‘goodness’. While I agree that there is a positive feeling associated with spiritual truth in the moment we experience it, this is certainly not an indication that what evidence lingers from that experience should be upheld as ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’ in its own right.
The following statements have come from a ‘spiritual awakening’ website, and I will say that I do recognise the experience of ‘truth’ that each one points to:
We are all connected
Life is change
There is more to life than what we can perceive
Pain and joy are equally part of this world
But that doesn’t make any of them ‘spiritual truths’ as stated, regardless of what that website claims. I think as one who experiences spiritual truth in these statements, I need to also recognise that your personal experience of each word will be different to mine, so this ‘truth’ won’t necessarily be clear to you from this statement. That doesn’t mean you are ignorant or that my experience of ‘spiritual truth’ is wrong, only that the statement is imperfect as a communication of spiritual truth, and we will not understand each other’s perspective through these words alone.
Quoting Amity
When we say ‘reach’, do we mean ‘know’ or ‘approach’? Reach to grasp or reach to examine? I think we can experience ‘spiritual truth’ from our position in space time - we can approach it without grasping it - but we cannot ‘know’ it in the sense that we can state it as a fact, demonstrate it as a competency or possess it as a power. I see it a bit like pulling back the curtain of context to glimpse the truth behind it. We still need to operate within context, but that shouldn’t block our awareness of ‘truth’ beyond that context, or our examination of it.
Quoting Amity
I don’t agree that my ‘definition’ is as narrow as it seems. Simplified, yes. But I believe that it describes an experience of pain at the deepest level, and that the complexity comes from how we respond to this fundamental experience at various levels of awareness and thought processing. It isn’t easy to unpack experiences of pain in this way, but in my experience it’s worth it.
We’re taught as children to perceive an experience of pain as a warning to avoid something or a reminder that we can’t or shouldn’t - so we develop strategies to steer clear of experiences of pain, because we perceive that pain has no place in a life well-lived. When we cannot avoid pain, we work to distract ourselves from it or block our awareness of it - instead of experiencing it and striving to understand it as a signal for change. All of this leads to blocked roads and ‘no-go zones’ as we develop awareness of the universe, and with that, wisdom.
Wisdom - the love of which seems central to philosophy - from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wisdom/
Interesting summary. Two quotes resonate with my understanding of ‘wisdom’ (keeping in mind that ‘God’ for me represents something very different from Descartes’, and that I don’t subscribe to his evaluation of ‘most important’):