If you believe Don Juan, in Carlo’s Castaneda’s books about the way of the nagual, you’ll not doubt be familiar with the concept of “petty demons.” And they’re not all bad, as oftentimes in spiritual pursuits, it’s the “petty demons” that offer much truth about ourselves.
Reader Bruce is one of mine. And he (more or less constantly) reminds me that Elaine and I could be hanging out in Ecuador, with a higher standard of living than what we enjoy in East Texas, should we elect the “exit” from the great ‘Merican Ponzi.
As is evident, I have no intention of fleeing America, although we do have second thoughts about this ‘Merica –place which has materialized – a kind of caricature of a Constitutional democratic republic – which presents itself daily as though suffering from some degenerative disease.
As such, each of us gets to watch reruns of House and then get up every morning with our diagnostician’s hat on, pick up the morning news, and try to get at the root causes of that which ails us.
To my way of thinking, that’s as it should be. My life has purpose, meaning, and so the Great Wheels of Progress turn.
But now and then extremely cogent and challenging emails float up from Ecuador which do provoke thought.
Like this one:
Subject Line: no, not tough questions, tough answers
George,
To put it bluntly, the part of you asking the question is not the part that can understand the answers.
In Western cultures, the onus is put upon a person (expert) to supposedly come up with the answers. In eastern schools of thought, the onus is on the questioner to understand the answer given. The true teacher is one who does not supply answers to someone who cannot understand. And one who does not give an answer if he does not know.
Tough questions, damn straight. And if you get any particularly keen insights that explain how this all works, send you answers of no more than 2,000 words, plus 25-cents in coin and two box tops to Crazy George at UrbanSurvival.com
This is the reason why when chela’s (defin. 2—g) would enter the ashram of a master they would be given months or years of mundane duties to in order to get their mind into a place where they were teachable. Here is the principle they are working with. This is so prevalent in western culture.
Noise Level
The other problem is terminology. In your WUJO post you are using lots of technical/computer technology. Much of this terminology did not exist 20 years ago, so there was no way to express these ideas in the english language, nor could we really even consider them as possibilities for describing reality until they came into the language. Ingo Swann, who developed the methods for teaching remote viewing, said that it was not possible to understand the principles and teach this until the word and concept of transducer came into the english language. It is also why, in his writings, Ingo would go to dictionaries and get ancient/original definitions of words and define them in his writings before using them. Its called creating a foundation upon which the information comes to rest so that it actually has value. Adapting the new information of a teaching to your paradigm will not give you what you are seeking. Its like building a dwelling on the ruins of an old without clearing the ground.
Now the problem with the language and terminology you are using today is that once the terms get into common parlance, there are multiple definitions, especially on the personal level. They cannot be used for teaching because they usually mean different things to different people, so you get different understandings when attempting to communicate this. This is why the Hindus will say that the true teaching cannot be transmitted verbally. At least not in any Hindu dialect, and there are over a hundred of them.
The best example of this is I have found is the use of the term “perpetual motion machine.” I have discovered that people who have this word/concept in their vocabulary are totally incapable of understanding the concept of zero point energy. And I have found this in at least 50 people, including my own sons. They simply have no space in their paradigm in which to hold the information necessary for understanding the concept, thus there is no possibility it can become part of their reality. Because as we were all taught, perpetual motion is not possible. You see, I don’t need perpetual motion, if it simply lasts past the end of my life its good enough for me.
You will see it when you believe it.
Now there are languages that can transmit these nuances, and sanskrit is one of them. Westerners have difficulty with Hindu Theology in translation, because we only have the word god, and in Hinduism there are thousands of names and terms for god or diety, each defining an aspect of something that cannot be communicated, but is a concept that must be built definition by definition. But it takes years and years to master sanskrit to this level, probably just to reduce the noise level illustrated in the video. The Kahuna’s were also able to transmit this teaching, by using compound word combinations that in some cases got quite long. They had it easier, because there was not nearly as much noise in their culture.
This is also why when Hubbard developed Dianetics and Scientology he developed an entirely new set of terminology to communicate what he was teaching. He coined the word thetan to replace the word soul, which has about a thousand different meanings in the culture. If one does not use his definition of the word theta when reading his works, there is no possibility of understanding what he is communicating. The same with the rest of his terminology.
What most people don’t know is that Hubbard developed his teachings with a partner. They reached an impasse, so they drew straws. The other guy lost, and jumped off of Hoover Dam, killing himself. He was immediately reborn, hubbard found him again years later, used Dianetics auditing to recover his memories of information intentionally gathered in the between life state, and used that knowledge to develop scientology. These were really tough people with a mission, not the pansy-assed folks we find in western culture today. A second major advance was made when an older scientologist who had been audited to clear died, and as a young man showed up at his old auditor’s house and she recognized him. He also had intact memories of his between life experiences.
Here, in four parts, is one of the most comprehensive descriptions of the reality we live in I have found in over thirty years of study. It builds a comprehensive system of terminology in volume one and goes on from there. It is a very tough read. I have read volume 3 at least 6 times, and still I do not retain it all.
I probably spent six months in reading and study to come to an understanding of what Hubbard was trying to communicate. He spoke a wisdom that benefitted me greatly, that I have never heard from any other source. He said that people failed to learn something for only one reason. They came to a term or word that they did not understand, and instead of stopping and defining that term to a point of understanding, they continued to study. So when mis-definition occurs, learning stops. This is a universal truth for humanity.
So George, I can communicate the information you are looking for in 500 words or less. Question is, are you able to really hear the answers? Or are you just having too much fun wallowing in the game of humanity to be bothered? Here’s a clue. Scientology is based on game theory. And a game is based on desire.
The State of mind
Intentionality is everything.
Everything that is impermanent is unreal.
Desire itself is unlimited, like a fire, nothing is too large for it to consume and still seek more.
“lead us from untruth to truth,
from darkness into light,
from death to immortality.”
This is true prayer—the seeker’s admission of his sense of limitedness and his heartfelt cry for assistance in transcendence. It is not a prayer for the things of the world. It is not a prayer for food, shelter, health, partnership, riches, success, fame, glory or even for heaven. One who recites these three mantras has realized that such things are full of holes, soaked in pain and, even in abundance, will forever leave him wanting. It is in this full understanding that one turns to this prayer. The essence of each of these three mantras is the same: “O, Guru, help me free myself from my sundry misunderstandings regarding myself, the universe and God and bless me with true knowledge.”
When you really get this, life as you know it will slowly wind down to a shadow of what is today.
In the meantime, if you want to master your reality, vote early, vote long, and vote hard. How’s that working for you?
In Ecuador. -B
As always, my petty demon (really, searching brother) has made many fine points, but we are on different paths. Mine looks at things in a vastly different way – and with solid basis.
While it is true that much of the terminology we use to communicate ideas, seems not to have existed 20-years ago, it was only non-apparent to the casual observer. In other words, a few really grokked the emergent paradigm, but they didn’t speak of it to simple “plug & play ‘Mericans.
The path I’m presently on departs from the traditional path in many ways because it is based on ever-increasing study of a particular kind of mathematics.
That, my PD, is where Truth is more likely to be found. Math works, logically, provably, repeatedly, and so forth. Even interdenominationally which to me is key.
The particular study of math I would point you to is called “complexity theory” and I’ve muddled my way through both Taleb’s The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: “On Robustness and Fragility” as well as his more recent Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.
But Taleb’s books leave me (and others I know) questing for a little more of a meal for the mathematically inclined soul.
A Wall St. (real-deal manages big money) fellow and I were recently discussing this point and he allowed as how Taleb doesn’t go far enough in that the Swans aren’t just black. They come in a million shades of speckled. Worse, some days certain speckles grab our attention (like the charade of the government shutdown/freebie vacation for some thousands of workers) and other days it will be something else.
We know there are plenty of speckles out there which fade in and out of our purview, like the global coastal event, impacts of Planet X, and Comet Ison breaking apart only to pummel Earth to bits while the PTB live in their hidey-holes.
As luck would have it, Complexity Theory is an emergent part of mathematics wherein we can being to ask some of these questions. But it requires thinking in new ways.
What can be solved in simple polynomial time? What about questions that can be solved in exponential polynomial time? Or, solved in bounded time at all, or is there even an answer to be found in unbounded/unlimited time?
All of this has been made necessary by the development of really advanced software programs. We’ve been around some of those for a good long while. While rudimentary, my present continued involvement with the www.nostracodeus.com project is predicated on the usefulness of developing a good machine to just go out and “eat web pages” and then export gobs of language in this way, or that, so we can get (hopefully) some better sense of “Where are those speckles popping up and who’s benefitting or driving their appearance?”
Thus, I must reject the notion that “…Much of this terminology did not exist 20 years ago, so there was no way to express these ideas in the english…” and point out that it has existed since at least he 1960’s when a decent-sized sampling of kids were shoved into the SMSG Math program.
Thus, the terms like vesicas, unions, joins, intersections, and so forth – which underpin the slow-motion, underlying changes in how we approach problems [thus think] have been around half a century or longer.
But you’re right, in a sense: These expressions are not English, they are in the Universal Language. Math.
As became apparent, while I was reading Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die, there is a fundamental change in how Life’s to be approached unfolding out there. New level to the game. Hmmm…how to play it?
If at all, of course. So I respect the choice to chill out in the splendor of Ecuador…I really to get that.
But for me, it’s more important to see what’s going on as part of the continuous and progressive dispensation of knowledge that moves us to the higher Self within. As with our classical battles between Good and Evil, there’s good and bad to be culled from the digital stream we’ve evolved.
But I hold that only the dispassionate study of complexity, algorithmic thinking, and reappraisal of how we have our hands on the throttle of government, environment, food…hell, you name it…anything touched by computation, will reveal the underlying design patterns which we can then seize, mold, and direct wisely in the direction of a better future.
You might be able to do that in Ecuador (thanks to the ‘net). But when a man walks off the field of battle – which is really a field of learning – and packs up his kit, I’d offer that there may be something missing from his grab and go kit.
Which is why I’m not down there with you.
You may see the battle very clearly from higher ground. And yet, down here, the debate over whether we can find solutions in exponential polynomial time (which could then be reduced to more simple polynomial time/algorithmic solutions), or whether there are no solutions, or only solutions in unbounded time, is very much alive.
You just have to be willing to look in new places and carefully inspect assertions and assumptions which can lead one astray.
Thinking is – despite all our self-delusions attached – merely another computational problem.
If the problems of modern live are solvable, then they would like be solved in the areas of highest complexity first, especially (it seems to me) if they belong to complexity class P.
If there turns out to be no solution to modern woes, then the outcome is likely to reach out and touch the hinterlands of Ecuador, as well.
Let me leave you with this thought: Is is possible that the gulf (looking at old ways, versus looking at complexity and asking fundament math questions) could be the main distinction between the “old ways” people and the “next ways” people?
I suspect it is.
Although I bet there’s an existentialist or two who would argue that I’m just holding on to the complexity I have worked through an understanding of, and am merely deluding myself. But I don’t think so.
While ‘Merican education has failed in many ways, there is a more subtle change afoot – a change in how we look at ALL problems in life. We’re evolving a higher-level view that doesn’t just gobble up “religious dogma” of the past as the answer. We are instead beginning to nibble at the Biggies: Is this problem solvable? Can is be broken into discretes to process separately to achieve a bigger whole? And so on.
I don’t think Albert Einstein ever said this, but I sure wish he had:
“The answer to ALL is not in religion books. Some of it is in the math books.”
That’s why you need to feed both sides of your brain, too.
Fomenko Books
I don’t know if you have a set of the four history rewritten books by Anatoly Fomenko on your shelf, but long-time friend JB Slear of www.fortwealth.com who has read the first four now sent me this:
History: Fiction or Science?
I just roughed up Amazon.com for selling only 4 of the 7 books in the series …. After some digging, the customer service rep. told me there is 150 requests (plus 1 more) for the rest of the books …. They’re going to contact me in a few days to tell me what they’re going to do about this …..
Yes, it sure would be interesting to pick up and read the rest of his books. Not that I have time for any more reading, but this is an interesting line of inquiry we’ve covered before. You can nibble on his assertions over at this Scribd link.
Prepping: Medicine Man?
Don up in Dallas offers this fine idea for updating your bug-out bag…
Morning, George! I was updating the contents of the BUGOUT Bags for my wife and daughter last evening to review with them the purpose of each item and how to use them and thought that a couple of items might be useful to pass along. I save old medicine bottles with the child proof cap for many uses, such as holding different sizes of hooks, or even a small fishing kit. In this case, each bag has at least two of these plastic bottles: one holds dryer lint soaked in paraffin (an amazing amount compressed into the bottle) and the other holds fritos (slightly broken to fill the bottle). To an outdoors person, it is probably obvious that these items are firestarters. With the addition of a few BIC lighters, and of course, a backup magnesium spark lighter, these tinder sources will enable the starting of a fire, even in a rain. The fritos have a large amount of burnable oil saturation and when mixed with the dryer lint with paraffin, and coupled with a few bits of magnesium, will respond quickly to a spark. I hope some of your readers will find this useful, so please pass along.
Keep up the good work, George…
Never thought of using Fritos as a fire-starter and now that you mention it, I don’t know how I missed that one. Oh, wait! I know why. Maybe it was because I failed at my attempt to use dill pickles as fire-starters…yeah, dat’s it.
Weird Car Buyer Snags
With my son’s purchase of a new car this week, I found out some really good stuff to know about the car-roping business from reader Roger…
George,
FYI…If your son buys the truck and finances it…
there is a clause in the finance contract, which says he can drive the truck out of state for a trip on vacation. But he cannot move out of state and continue to make payments. He’ll either have to refinance it in the new state or pay it off, other wise it’ll be repoed.
I had that experience with a brand new 1967
4-4-2 Oldsmobile Convertible in 1968. I was back up in Washington State in 1979 working at Tacoma Boat in Tacoma. One of the shoppers there decided he’d worked there long enough and was preparing to move back to New Orleans.
I explained to him about that little finance clause and he made a big issue of telling me and all the other engineers I did not know my a** from a hole in the ground. Well after I pushed him a bit more he called his finance company.
Much to his chagrin, he learned I was right. Took him three weeks to get his car financed in LA.
So just a small issue for your son to be aware of.
I doubt they have changed the law since then.
Cheers,
Roger in Tucson
My son’s not planning on moving anywhere, unless he makes a dumpster-load more dough, in which case, he’ll just write a check and pay off the ride. He could do that now, but he’s remembered Dad’s use Other People’s Money (OPM) lectures.
Healthcare Nightmares, Redux
This one from up in Indiana is not the only one of its kind we’ve seen:
G,
My husband and I currently have HIP (Healthy Indiana Plan) for insurance. Due to the changes of jobs (having to take paid part-time internship through a temp service to be able to get a better full-time job in January), we requested the one-time a year request to recalculate our insurance premiums. Currently, we pay $100 for he and I, which isn’t bad, but when income has been reduced to roughly 20K, it hurts alot. So, we requested the recalculation.
Now, according to HIP, if insurance is offered at place of employment, you have to take it. Seems the “temp” service offers insurance to the part-timers (unlike what we had mistakenly believed otherwise). The kicker? It cost more a week than he brought home for the bills and daily living (other than a planless cell phone and internet, we do not subscribe to anything else). Since he’d literally would have 0$ to put food on our table, he didn’t bother to look at it, so the HIP presumed he declined it. To be clear, my husband knew insurance was offered, but did not think it was for part-time employees, only for full-timers. Since having the recalculation done, my husband will now have NO insurance as of the first of November. Nada. Where is the common sense or justice in the thought process by the insurance company? My insurance dropped down to around $30, but I still have it. Not much comfort in that….
At this point, I am so very glad I took the time to restock as much as possible of nonfood items, and have canned and/or froze a large garden so we can eat. I pray daily my husband does not get ill for the next 3 months. Living on a knife edge, even temporarily, is awful.
This whole insurance business leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a truly soured stomach.
Malissa
Up until the National Healthcare Tax I didn’t appreciate Medicare, but wow! Am I sure glad to be old enough to sign up for that shortly. Hell, given the break on Social Security at 66, I can hardly wait to get old here, lately. Gives me something to look forward to for a while.
San Antonio Note
We mentioned t’other day about the open carry demonstration planned 10-2 tomorrow down in San Antonio. And in pops this note from the mojo hojo reminding us:
just goggle oct. 19 days in history. all kinds of sheet happens from stock mkt crashes, etc, etc
Other than tomorrow being Mother Teresa Day in Albania, there’s a lot of bad stuff that happened on October 19ths, but please, bad stuff happens every day. Just saying..
More tomorrow for Peoplenomics readers, otherwise, see yah Monday, same time, same website.
Writer when you break even…
George george@ure.net