Comments for @RealSteveHolmes - - 40 years of exploring ideas and now for 20 more

Comment on The ocean of grief by RealSteveHolmes

RealSteveHolmes — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:03:35 +0000

Indeed. I know that grief is not the only core stored emotion but I believe that whereas we welcome feelings that we deem “good” and therefore let them pass unhindered we shrink from emotions we deem “bas” and therefore block them.

The being absorbs so much shock, so young and then continues to do so, none of it healthily processed. Whereas all positive feelings are processed willingly and thus evaporate, no matter how much we addictively attempt to repeat them.

Comment on The ocean of grief by Vincent

Vincent — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:47:21 +0000

I agree with much of this. Not the idea that things happened before I was even born, unless you are referring to my life in the womb.

And then again, you have singled out grief, which is an emotion which takes time to deal with. I see every emotion as needing to be acknowledged and translated into some form of action when it appears, to avoid the negative effects you mention.

Indeed what you propose is the diametric opposite of NLP as I understand it. For it seems to me that NLP is telling your body what to do. Whereas what I should do is listen to my body’s wisdom.

Comment on I believe things because it pleases me to do so by Vincent

Vincent — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:05:57 +0000

ktln, I like very much what you have said on this, and would only add that intuition and the body’s truth can also be deceived. I have a sense that there is nothing infallible in nature!

Comment on Being real is very challenging – are you quite mad? by ktln

ktln — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:55:34 +0000

Yes. My father was a very nice, dutiful but elusive, highly intelligent man who chose to stay in his own head as much as possible, even though it was not always nice for him in there. He said once he preferred his dreams, and perhaps he could not help it. He had bi-polar disorder from the age of 17, and was often tired, so he avoided taking on the reality of other people as his way of coping. But when he was in the same room, he used to say things that would hit a bulls eye, and I used to wonder at it, that though he had been absent, and not been watching, he all the same, had seen, or at least, somehow seen what was needful to that moment. It was his tragedy, he needed so very much time NOT in the same room.

Comment on Being real is very challenging – are you quite mad? by RealSteveHolmes

RealSteveHolmes — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:19:11 +0000

As far as I am concerned we are all in the same room and we can decide whether to ignore that by staying in our own heads or to reach out towards other people and share with them.

Comment on Being real is very challenging – are you quite mad? by ktln

ktln — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:54:18 +0000

Beautifully written. I am largely on board with this. ‘Each to his own,’ is a saying that causes me to turn away. It’s like saying ‘lalalala, I’m not listening’, and it’s an invalidation of whatever you just said in articulation of a shared reality. Sometimes I don’t feel sympathy but I may feel empathy, sometimes I feel sympathy but not empathy. But no fashionably enlightened soul will admit to feeling sympathy these days it seems. It has to be empathy every time. But this is claimed so often, I feel sometimes it’s presumptious. Empathy is to feel something what another feels, not just know it. It is a physical response through emotion. The stigmata is one of the most extreme manifestations of empathy I can think of, illustrating that self preservation demands a degree of separation from trying to fully share another person’s experience. Separation, but not severance. People who claim the freedom as a right to do their ‘own thing’ don’t know what they are talking about. There is no action or inaction that does not have consequences for others, that, as you say, is an inescapable reality. I think we all wander off the path into our imaginative realities, no harm done, it nourishes and rests us, but the pathways of our individual adventures loop sooner or later back to the main pathway, some perhaps more circuitously than others.

Comment on I believe things because it pleases me to do so by ktln

ktln — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 12:02:49 +0000

Einstein famously said that Intuition was the highest intelligence, the rational mind it’s faithful servant. I think that the rational mind is actually, now and then, a traitor, will o’ the wisp and unfaithful servant, though it’s Intuition that in modernity, tends to get the bad rap for unreliability. I can think of enough times I’ve thought, uh oh, keep clear, then told myself I must be reasonable and sensible and play fair, and deal in facts, only to have to revert to my first split second judgement. I believe things that make sense to me and/or ‘ring true.’

This is all workable information and saves unnecessary reinventing of the wheel. If I find my intuition is in conflict with a piece of rationally sourced ‘evidence’ so that my mind can’t stop grinding and chewing at it, I am increasingly likely to allow my intuition to trump it, let the doctor sulk as he will should this involve a medical choice. Last year, I tested a choice for medication made rationally, against a choice for the same medicine made intuitively. Reason and the doctor said, take this drug. The Intuition said no, no, no! I went with the rational decision, for the sake of the experiment, and paid for it with an adverse reaction at the third dose. The side effects lingered for months.

This gave me a precedent for future decision making of this kind, which was worth my while for the long haul. Prescience of ‘truth’ is not omniscience, but the body has its own intelligence (I believe this by reason of study, observation, history and intuition, and, yes it does please me as well, but this is not my basis for belief) Therefore the body, well or ill, contains its own truth. If the mind will trust the body and the body will trust the mind, the whole will be greater than the sum. Something broken by trial can still contain more truth than something unbroken because untried.

Comment on We are drowning in lie, all of us, and it strangles the soul… by ktln

ktln — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:09:18 +0000

Thank you, Steve

Comment on We are drowning in lie, all of us, and it strangles the soul… by RealSteveHolmes

RealSteveHolmes — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:01:43 +0000

Welcome, KT-LN.

Comment on We are drowning in lie, all of us, and it strangles the soul… by ktln

ktln — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:05:13 +0000

Yes. Sometimes you see a mask slip, and see that the person is not aware it has slipped. I notice it, but how insincere the mask is, can be a complicated question. The best liars are those who believe their lies, which is to say, they are deluded, and delusion of the vanity fair variety is not without value for the frightened, as everyone is frightened sometime, a question being what most frightens you or me. It’s funny how some people are thin skinned and sensitive to others because of this, while some are even thinner skinned, yet insensitive to others, because their fear of being left out in the cold is so great, and they think only so many will be allowed into the warm. For some, ambiguity and uncertainty is like a mist that’s always there, they know the mist will clear in time, even if only intermittently, if they keep their nerve, waiting alone, leaning hard on their staff. Perhaps others sense it more as an abyss, too meaninglessly terrifying to look into it without dire cause, sufficient to the day and so forth.