This is my sharing of my philosphy...it is not scientific, it cannot be proven, it is just...simply... a personal philosphy formulated through my inner/personnal expereinces...

It seems to me that acceptance is of the mind and compassion is of the heart and they are one thing in reflection, and once this is understood then there is unity within the flow of the heart and mind, and all that we perceive and experience can be brought to oneness through the heart. Our mind has to accept what it perceives and in accepting it there is no more thought applied to it, there are no more questions and this calms the mind allowing for the matters of the heart to be perceived and experienced, with the mind no longer adding thoughts to that which is perceived one can enter into the state of the calm observer and feel what they perceive, this unites the thought to its impulse and allows for expansion through understanding. This understanding is not of the minds analytical processes, but an awareness that what is, simply is what it is, and it must be that which it is…the intellect stops interpreting through a questioning mind and it can comprehend or be consciously aware of the experience, and this opens the heart to be the vessel of compassion. So through understanding that life simply is what it is, what is experienced is accepted allowing for matters of the heart to be expressed, and this is as intuition, a knowing through acceptance…intuition is not of the mind yet it is through the mind that it must be perceived, intuition can be compared to the breath and the minds expression can be compared to the word…so, when the mind is calmed through acceptance, the heart opens to receive intuitions, and this is expressed as compassion, and this is done knowingly…the mind is the vehicle that creates the form/word in which intuition/breath can be expressed through the word…bringing it to conscious light/life/expression.

The breath and the word are but one aspect within the reflection/expression of itself. The egos’ intellectual processes must be developed, then calmed… so it can perceive and express the divine breath that it IS, so through acceptance we calm the questioning mind, through compassion we intuitively know, and the heart beats into creative expression, allowing the mind to express that which IS…and into conscious being…The ego is this potential vessel of expression, and once in expression the ego becomes as the sage. The ego is the vision of the I/eye, the ego is the mirror of ONE within the infinite reflection of its very vision…and the vision expands through being as the vision, or that which can observe…the vision... envisions…

From my understanding…the ego is the culmination and triumph of spirit…the very I/eye within the I/eye of itself…the ego is the vision that must awaken, the ego is the conscious expression of consciousness…or that, which can perceive that is perceives…awakening the dream to the dreamer…the ego is not a separate thing, it is the culmination of all…the divine expression…the blueprint in manifestation.

So are you saying the ego is a good thing, as opposed to eastern/mystical traditions that would recommend getting rid of the ego?

yes...the ego can't be 'killed' off...if there were no egos what would percieve, expereince and intepret the intangable? what would/could demonstrate consciousness if the ego is killed off? if there is no ego to express consciousness...then all would remain unconscious...unexpressed...and silent...but this is just my understanding...

sorry, my use of sexist language in my post above was unintentional. Wherever I said 'his' I meant 'his/her' or maybe even 'his/her/its'.

in retrospect, I could have just substituted 'their' for 'his' and avoided the sexist's problem altogether.

The ego...how I percieve it...is a vessel of expression...the ego expands through understanding his sense of self...it is always as an ego as long as it is within a body/form...the egos ability to percieve and to understand expands, or what others call enlightened...without form nothing can be expressed...and how confining or defining a form is...determines what it holds and expresses....there are many levels of self percieving self...but it is through a self (form) that expression can occur...how something is percieved is how it is expressed...

Thanks Dianah for the clarification. I have had some recent thoughts on similar matters myself. I should get those thoughts together and post them here.

I would enjoy reading them and sharing more of our philosphies as well...

I like Aristotle's Golden Mean: The greatest good is that which lies between two extremes. A theological version: Sin is any good thing carried too far. One can be so heavenly minded that one is no earthly good.

BTW, one way to be original is to forget where one got the idea.

Rev. LGKing.

I forgot to mention: For details as to my personal philoosophy, feel free to visit my URL http://www.flfcanada.com
Thank You, lgking.

Just to correct the continuing garbage on this site.

I deleted none of those posts and I never do that - I am not a manager there. The person who deleted those posts was a manager and has been demoted because of it.

It is not Aristotle who developed the Golden Mean - it was Pythagoras who learned it from the Druids and Great Pyramid. I will be discussing this on the X Zone early Friday morning.

And the Mayan saying you posited would be Do not put the self in front of the SELF

is usually Do not pur yourself in front of your Self.

However, you can use 'the in place of your and vary this for more depth of possibilities.

If I am not mistaken the Golden Mean was known in China too at those times.
It is true Pythagoras was actively using the Golden Mean concept, but it is difficult to say who first introduced it to Greek people. It is hard definitely to say who: Solon or people from Delphi or Homer.
There are no clear historic documents uncovering the mysteries of the Great Pyramids and Druids related data. All theories are based on suppositions. One cannot definitely state something without having definite evidences. I just want to say that all this is a matter of debate.

As Robert forgot to answer on my questions I want to repeat them again:

Does your family have any connection with Sir Robert Bruce Cotton?

What I am most interested is Cotton Library. (Star Chamber)

Have not your Father kept some specific old hand written book-diary ever?

Cotton was a friend of Sir Francis.

The following Site contains some very interesting comments about Aristotle by Mike Bellah http://www.bestyears.com/aristotlemean.html

When faced with the challenge posed by pessimism versus opitimism, MB writes: "Aristotle’s solution is a golden mean--not naively optimistic, but realistically so, expecting life to be hard but still believing in the ultimate triumphs of good, still passionate about our beliefs and values.

altruism and practicality

Aristotle chided those who let the hurtful experiences of life make them too fearful of personal loss and thus too self-protective and "expedient." The hope and passion of youth, on the other hand, make us benevolent, willing to risk personal loss for others. Aristotle’s golden mean would bring together both positions, practicality and benevolence, a midlifer who helps others while taking care of his or her own needs too."

While I certainly believe in giving credit where credit is due, but does it really matter who gets credit for a good idea. Do we not all, like Newton admitted, stand on the shoulders of giants.

BTW, the ancients were not all that concerned about copyrights. This is why there is so much discussion as to who wrote what books--many of the 66 are just letters and/or small documents--in the Bible.

First of all - thanks Trip (and Rick a little).

I really would just like to have all my posts removed and I voted for my being banned totally for that reason - and I believe it is impossible for this site to have reasonable dialogue as long as people are free to use Unknown and play games with it as well as allowing certain mentally dysfunctional people who can post totally weird things they are not even expected to study or back up with any modicum of merit or argument.

In Dan's case he is allowed to ridicule and ask questions while never addressing the data provided - why would I continue to endure such totally biased garbage? I have laid out the way the paradigm uses these techniques from many authors. He keeps saying the same thing over and over about peer review. Clearly I am against the control exhibted by such methods of shelving what works or stopping free and open discourse about facts. I have provided lots of references and he says he won't even read them - so be it. Dan is not totally nuts and he is entitled to his opinion - if others wish to live in that Denial that even Thomas Kuhn and all the others I have quoted note, causes man to have to wait for the tuth to get approval - so be it.

But Enki is deranged and absolutely fabricates things that come from who knows where. I provide another example from this day's messages here. And I have not gone through all the messages to see if anyone determined who posted the outright lie about Fortune Cookie Philosophy and me deleting posts of others while suggesting I am a Nazi of the censorchip and Kristallnacht approach. I suspect that was the unknown who acted like Enki's mother before reading the volumes of personal postings I have made and asked me to get personal.

Enki thinks that English people have middle names (and sometimes they do) which make a part of their heritage evident. He dredges up a question about a man named Cotton who was a friend of Bacon (a gay spy and ogre who Enki loves). He asks over and over about some diary he thinks my father might have. WHAT is this? NUTS?!! - Quoting Enki - and note I am not using my old nick nor am I logging in.

If I am not mistaken the Golden Mean was known in China too at those times.
It is true Pythagoras was actively using the Golden Mean concept, but it is difficult to say who first introduced it to Greek people. It is hard definitely to say who: Solon or people from Delphi or Homer.
There are no clear historic documents uncovering the mysteries of the Great Pyramids and Druids related data. All theories are based on suppositions. One cannot definitely state something without having definite evidences. I just want to say that all this is a matter of debate.

As Robert forgot to answer on my questions I want to repeat them again:

Does your family have any connection with Sir Robert Bruce Cotton?

What I am most interested is Cotton Library. (Star Chamber)

Have not your Father kept some specific old hand written book-diary ever?

Cotton was a friend of Sir Francis.


And if he would read my book Diverse Druids he would learn that he is wrong and I do know enough to say not only does Pythagoras exist before Aristotle and his Golden Section and Mean that is central to Masonry comes from and was in the Pyramid that Druids or their kind built - and I prove it in a later book I will be discussing on X Zone this week. I show the nature of the destruction of their knowledge and the remnants that can be put back together from various (thousands) of sources now becoming more and more obvious.

ouch
that's a stinging indictment of us boys, Dianah. I'll try to avoid sparring with my partners on your threads from now on

Ok, the thoughts I was having about the self/Self that I mentioned above are as follows, in a nutshell:

Eastern philosophy, with it's emphasis on subjectivity and first-person perspective, is seriously flawed because it overemphasizes passive perception and subjectivity over action. Namely, eastern philosophy focuses on the triad of 1) observer, 2) observing (or the act or process of observing), and 3) the observed; this is all wrong. Perception guides action; that's all it's really good for. In place of the previous triad, we substitute 1) Source, 2) Perceptual 'guiding' field, and 3) Action. 'Source' is our center of being, a source of energy/will that needs to be released and expressed through 'Action'. The 'Perceptual guiding field' is the intermediary between Source and Action, and is that which serves to guide the form and realization of our Action. The flow is from Source to Action. The 'Perceptual guiding field' guides the flow of energy/will from Source to realization in Action. You can call Source the Self if you wish; it's just semantics. Nonetheless, you should be able to see the fundamental difference between my triad and eastern philosophy's triad. The triad of Eastern philosopher stops short; it stops at the level of perception and does not consider perception to be merely a guiding field for Action.

Now, why do I think/know that Eastern philosophy, with it's emphasis on subjectivity and passive perception, is seriously flawed; Because look how ineffectual their eastern subjectivist worldview/philosophy was. Why is it that all these advanced technologies existed in China and other eastern countries millenia ago, yet they never developed anything like a unified Science which the West did? Why is it that the East had all these advanced technologies, yet stagnated for thousands of years? Precisely because their philosophy over-emphasized subjectivism and passive perception and downplayed the role of Action.

And that is the primary danger inherent in Eastern philosophy; it harbors the danger of stealing away your will and motivation because it overemphasizes passive perception. And so perhaps Buddha wasn't so wise after all. He had some good ideas, but never saw through passive perception to the importance of Action and the use of perception as simply a guiding field for guiding Action from the Source.

So what am I saying, practically speaking? Look at your perceptual field, and try to regard it as simply a 'guiding field' for Action; for the guiding of Action from the Source. If you don't see any difference, well I don't know what else to say or how else to describe it. But hopefully some of you will see what I'm saying. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.

And next time you run into a 'guru' of Eastern philosophy, be glad you're not in their position. They have succumbed to passive perception; they have not the will to express themselves through action.

And to the Eastern philosophy 'gurus', keep your distance lest you get run over!

Unknown, I agree: Read Matt. 10:34-36. It is the nature of political and social institutions it seems to be the tools of the controllers who take over and try to use them for those own and selfish purposes. I read somewhere that it was the Mandarins--the overwhelming bureaucrats, of China, which held the Chinese people back from making hardly any social and economic progress, the kind which would have threatened their position and power.

But does this mean that this is inevitable; that all we can do if sit back and let it happen?

In creative hands , information can lead to knowledge, and then to wisdom. But then it needs to lead to action. A wise man once said: All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860


"All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don't discover why. Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others." - Danny Thomas


"The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of the truth -- that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one." --- H.L. Mencken


"The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage." –Hazel Henderson.


“Rather than telling others that they should live up to American Principles, we should live up to them ourself.” – Gary Hart, author of The Fourth Power and former Presidential candidate.


Einstein said: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."


"The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning." – Eugene Wigner


"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions are generated." - Bertrand Russell

It would not be the first time that incorrect usage becomes correct due to popularity. In the 1980s the word "access" became a verb in that way. I prefer to remain somewhat behind the bleeding edge.

Dictionary.com notes a usage problem with their:

"adj. The possessive form of they.

Used as a modifier before a noun: their accomplishments; their home town.
Usage Problem. His, her, or its: “It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex” (Virginia Woolf). ..."

The issue is probably still open, even though a majority might by now use the technically incorrect form. I prefer the older, more literate usage in writing. It probably should not be regarded as sexist to use the generic form of he and his.

I use 'their,they,etc...' all the time, to avoid gender assignment, although I've always felt a little uneasy about it. What other choices to do we have to avoid gender assignment? Can we just say 'it'?

If you have a group of people of mixed genders and you want to refer to a single one of them, then the terms "he" or "his" are gender neutral and correct in that context. This used to be taught in English 101. For example, suppose you are writing a user's guide to a software application, and you want to refer to the user who can be any gender:

"The user should first log in by typing in his user ID."

That sentence is correct.

"The user should first log in by typing in their user ID."

While this may now be technically correct due to past popular incorrect usage, it seems to me to indicate a lack of clear thinking on the part of the writer due to the sentence's confusion of number ("the user," which is singular, versus the adjective "their," which is plural).

Maybe we need an English or American grammar board.

why don't we use 'her' as a gender-neutral term? It seems that the rule of 'his' being gender neutral is just as artifical as the rule of 'their' being singular

It's not really arbitrary, because, as my feminist friend points out, we inherit our language from a sexist past. Unlike some languages, like Latin, there is no neuter gender in English, so we have to make due with the (possibly unfair) convention. Perhaps you could embark on a campaign to right that perceived wrong. "Each audience member received her free program upon entering the theater." Some authors now alternate his with her in cases of gender neutrality. I find the practice particularly annoying.

yes, annoying for sure. we should make up a new word

We have "it" for non-persons. We could personalize it with a prefix that combines the best of both genders, h for his, and sh for she: shhit. "Each member got shhits due."

I would rather you all get back to the original topic. I am more interested in enlilghtenment than your bantering back & forth. Start your own thread!

Here are some of my thoughts:
Everything in the Universe is interconnected. Each thought, action and event in the universe is connected, and influences effects each other. Each thought and action causes reactions and outcomes.

Everything in the Universe is energy, incl. "God." We see differences because each object has a different wave length and density. Each influences the other , "touches or drifts by " efffecting the othres' energy flow. Thoughts, as part of this body of energy, works with Universal energy and interact with it.

Thoughts are like a magnet, they attract similar thoughts and stimuli. Thinking one thought invites into one's mind more like thoughts and ideas. These thoughts tend to attract circumstances that are in accordance with them.

Positive enery is what I believe is God/God's love or light/good & loving thoughts & deeds. They all contribute to the Universal flow of Energy. We are all part of that Universal Energy, even the lowly rock.

thanks for bringing us back to topic, nosilla.

for me, g-d is the total, universal and all-encompassing oneness in which all that is lives and moves and has its being.

i now call myself a unitheist--similar to panentheism. in my humble opinion, g-d is the 'what' in things, the 'where' in space, the 'when' in time, the 'who' in humanity, the 'why' of it all, and the 'how' to put it all together.

g-d dwells in every cell of mine, as goodness, order and design...inspiring me to find divine perfection--physically, mentally and spiritually. for a detailed discussion on unitheism, you are welcome to visit http://www.flfcanada.com

BTW, when the name changed to brainmeta, I had a few problems getting in using my old login name lgking, and this is why I changed it. I registered as lgking, April 25, 2004. There are lot of things I don't quite know how to manage yet. For example, can one change ones login name without re-registering?

Because I write from a broad philosophical and theological perspective I thought I would add the adjective Rev. Since it means 'respected one', perhaps we should all use it. It is not meant to make people feel uncomfortable. Feel free to ask the tough questions. In addition to theology I have done some serious study in philosophy, psychology and in economics. I like the definition of an educated person as one who knows where to look it up, or who to ask, and is not afraid to do so.

Respecting all forms of sighted faith--and even lack of it--I do not claim that I have a hot-line to any kind of god, and I take an analytical and critical approach to the Bible. I am not a fan of blind faith. For me, the Bible is not the inerrant word of an infallible and personal god called God. This is why I prefer to use the Orthodox Jewish method of writing the divine name, G-d. By leaving out the 'o' is my way of allowing for the mystery in all things.