Freedomain Radio

The meaning of mystic that I hold would not at all include avoiding knowledge but . . . I don't know about valuing the unknown over the certain. I think I find - and you must, as well, I imagine - that questions without answers are the ones that most engage the inquiring mind.

Testudines:

Well, lowkey, that seems like pretty good potential productiveness.

I would also identify myself as a mystic, Stef, and I'd like to give you a call when you get back from Murka. I totally agree with and love so much of what you say and how you say it, but hey, you could benefit with a more open window on the military - I'll let lowkey handle that side - and the mystic, which isn't so bad "once you get used to it, heh heh." I don't want to change your mind about so much, maybe just add another facet.

Or, I could be in for a repenting of my mystic ways. But either way, you should understand mysticism more, through interviewing me and similar others.

Thanks for your support.   I wonder how many "mystics" there are on the boards who simply choose to hide it because of reaction they fear they will get.

Testudines:

 I think I find - and you must, as well, I imagine - that questions without answers are the ones that most engage the inquiring mind.

I am about to leave on my trip so we'll have to continue this later on. But I would say, atleast for myself, that I still have ways to go to fully understanding and intergrating the answers I already have. So the questions without answers are the least of my worries and have little to do with my happiness, at least at the moment. 

What has been your experience with mysticism in regards to your happiness and self-knowledge?

Take care - be back after the weekend. 

RickyCisco:

I don't think I quite understand. So to remain a mystic one must avoid knowledge? Does the mystic value the unknown / unknowable over truth and certainty? 

I would suggest that knowledge should be embraced.  The good, the bad and the ugly.

Most of the time your actions should be dictated by rationality and thats when you need a fully developed aware mind.  Then there are those times when you should follow your heart and those are the times I feel the "mysticism" comes into play.

Hi lowkey,

Well, I am used to posting on a site (Astral travel type - plus!) where closet rationalists would tend to hide, so now being on a site that has the mystics hiding would seem only fair, I suppose. Scary - mystic trolls lurking behind their masks of rationality!

But I do admit that there is a bad mysitcism, which is used by Manny and The Manipulators for fogging up the injustices and abuses they commit. To me, it's like "God." The God I revere and well, worship (gulp) is not some bearded sky tyrant or Levantine undead figure, and from no pulpit does He pound. And I do not like the layers of people who all want to broker my relationship with the Divine. But I get lumped in with these offensive groups and leaders, just the same.

lowkey:

 

Most of the time your actions should be dictated by rationality and thats when you need a fully developed aware mind.  Then there are those times when you should follow your heart and those are the times I feel the "mysticism" comes into play.

At the end of the day, do not both paths lead to thought patterns running through your brain?  How can you possibly distinguish between "separate" functions that happen in the same organ through the same chemical-electric processes?

And as a small side note, in Japanese, there is one concept that represents both English concepts of "mind" and "heart."  This indicates that there is symantic tomfoolery going on when one separates the two, as it is not necessary to do so.

 Ricky -

I too have a ways to go to understand and integrate many answers, and that is keeping me very busy, especially since joining the boards and podcasts and everything at FDR, and that, as I told them at the mystic site I used to frequent, has indeed become my priority.

The connection you mention between happiness and rationality and mysticism is another really good starting point, too. The right reasoning and the right mysticism should both bring happiness, I believe.

Rationality can be rather suspect, or what conclusions rationality has wrongly arrived at, let's say. René DesCartes - Mr. "I think therefore I am" - reasoned that animals did not feel pain like us, by what process of thought I don't know. For example. I imagine the cold, rational scientists over how many decades carefully measuring the results of their experiments while a background of animal screams and shrieks continues on and on. Rationality as well as mysticism can be pictured in an unfavourable light.

Testudines:

Hi lowkey,

Well, I am used to posting on a site (Astral travel type - plus!) where closet rationalists would tend to hide, so now being on a site that has the mystics hiding would seem only fair, I suppose. Scary - mystic trolls lurking behind their masks of rationality!

 

But I do admit that there is a bad mysitcism, which is used by Manny and The Manipulators for fogging up the injustices and abuses they commit. To me, it's like "God." The God I revere and well, worship (gulp) is not some bearded sky tyrant or Levantine undead figure, and from no pulpit does He pound. And I do not like the layers of people who all want to broker my relationship with the Divine. But I get lumped in with these offensive groups and leaders, just the same.

Manny and the Manipulators....I like that.  

You're right and I think we can all agree that religion (whether you believe or not) has been used to justify many evils throughout history.  I tend to wonder if it's not more of an effect of the statist nature of any community organizing behind any idea rather than a fault of the faith itself.  

It's amazing how many people who complain about how they have been singled out by prejiduce are ready to commit the same offense as soon as they are part of the majority of a community.   I wonder about the herd mentality that is so deeply ingrained in people that makes this such a common event.  Is it simply that we are all inherently insecure and constantly looking for external validation of our ideas & lives?

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others. - Marcus Arelius

Paul C.:

lowkey:

 

Most of the time your actions should be dictated by rationality and thats when you need a fully developed aware mind.  Then there are those times when you should follow your heart and those are the times I feel the "mysticism" comes into play.

At the end of the day, do not both paths lead to thought patterns running through your brain?  How can you possibly distinguish between "separate" functions that happen in the same organ through the same chemical-electric processes?

And as a small side note, in Japanese, there is one concept that represents both English concepts of "mind" and "heart."  This indicates that there is symantic tomfoolery going on when one separates the two, as it is not necessary to do so.

At an electro-chemical level I'm not sure there is a difference.   The difference is in what tools you use to come to the conclusion.

For example, if one were to witness a stranger falling through the ice and used pure rationality to decide whether or not to risk their own life to save them....well I think most people would decided that their own life was too valuable to risk.

On the other hand, when we use our heart in addition to rationality, we realize that the appropriate thing to do is to try and help even at the risk of our own life.

(Note:  I'm not contending that you have to be religious to have compassion but rather simply that the act of risking your own life to save a stranger is not a purely rational event.)

So going against your 'heart' would not be rational?