Are these the rules by which you pilot an automobile to a specific destination?

Sometimes. I gather information and then I go. But if I see a traffic starting to build or things don't look right I might spontaneously decide to move in a different direction. Meanwhile, I am sometimes amazed how some drivers will stay the course no matter what is happening around them. Gut feel has been very useful in my life. Sometimes, it is all one has.

Rich

When you gather information, are you sorting it in some manner into different categories such as correct information and incorrect information?

When you say, "things don't look right," how do you make this determination if you cannot, as you claim, make a judgement between true and false?

As far as "gut feel" goes, I've read Gavin de Becker, so you don't need to sell me on the validity of instinct or intuition. I've experienced it as well. However, saying that one has "a gut feeling" about something is just a figure of speech, a cliche, even. Data interpreted in the brain is the responsible party, whether conscious or subconscious.

Hey Rich,

I think that Alan Watts would agree with you that 'decision-making' is a kind/of spontaneity, even when you believe yourself to be thinking things out in an organized fashion before deciding. Our mind is drawn like a magnet to the strongest stimulation.

If you are deciding what to have for supper and someone stabs you with a knife, you immediately forget supper. So it is with most all of life.

TT Man,

We only think that we are in charge of outcomes. We may hope. We may intend. But this mental life where we live is far too complex for us to control. So rules are like favorite toys.

Subjectivity9

No, because I have no idea what is correct and incorrect. I attribute this to a life time worth of experience in dealing with people.

Everyone has their biases and their beliefs

I have no idea what is correct and incorrect.

Maybe. I don't think so.

This is what I call filtering information to achieve a specific goal and conclusion.

Scientists are different in that they don't realize that they are doing it.

TT Man,

We only think that we are in charge of outcomes. We may hope. We may intend. But this mental life where we live is far too complex for us to control.

So rules are like favorite toys.

I agree. We collect information and then POP! we make a decision whether to go this way or that. In Western Philosophy it is called Free Will. In Chinese metaphysics it is called the Zhi (Will).

But you have no idea if by saying this you are correct or incorrect. Or are you saying that your inability to determine what is correct or incorrect has come about as a result of a lifetime of dealing with people? Your syntax has confused me.

Does this include you?

If so, how do you reconcile this statement with your previous statement where you said that you have no idea what is correct and incorrect? By saying "Everyone has their biases and their beliefs," are you not asserting that this is your belief, formed by your own observations of people?

Is a belief, much like faith, not related to the principles of correctness and incorrectness in order to make it, well, something worth believing or having faith in?

Perhaps you are excluding yourself from your own observations? If so, why?

If I am to take what you seem to be saying at face value, I'm left with the conclusion that you have no idea whatsoever why you believe what you believe at any given moment regardless of your position in time and space as either the observer or the observed. In short, you seem to be living in a permanent state of tabula rasa, a continually self-erasing blackboard, in essence.

One wonders how you would dance the Samba or Salsa (which you've noted elsewhere that you personally enjoy) if you did not believe there was a correct and incorrect way of going about doing things.

There is a correct way of doing the Samba, is there not?

Yes, obviously you must infuse the dance with a certain passion, or feeling, but if you do not follow certain correct patterns, aren't you just gyrating spastically in a random fashion?

And what of Tai Chi, which you have said that you teach. If you have no idea of what is correct and incorrect,

what are you teaching your students?

The old masters admonish that you risk damaging yourself if the movements are performed incorrectly.

If I happened to be one of your students and I asked you how the Tai Chi movement entitled "Repulse the Monkey" was performed would you tell me to just do it however I felt like doing it?

So in other words, you think that what I said might be incorrect, that is, the opposite of correct.

How is this different (other than perhaps semantically) than when I asked you, "when you gather information, are you sorting it in some manner into different categories such as correct information and incorrect information?"

or in other words that you are running your incoming data though some sort of filter so it will match a preconceived notion. Is that it?

If so, that's odd, because that's what some people seem to be accusing science of doing. How puzzling. Again, it seems to indicate a belief that one group is correct, while the other is incorrect.

So are you a Determinist, an Indeterminist, or just a garden variety Fatalist?

You can't possibly agree. That would indicate a judgement of correctness, the opposite of incorrectness.

Also, I can't see anything in Subjectivity9's post that corresponds with your reference to either free will or Zhi.

I cannot be pinned myself down to any "ism" whatsoever.

"I Am Spirit,"

or said slightly differently, "I Am Self."

I am no long trapped within concepts. Mind uses its concepts as a way to control. Spirit doesn't play the game called control.

Rich,

Okay, I first thought that by Zhi you meant Chi, but that didn't jive with my ideas about Free Will.

Next I Googled 'Zhi,meaning' and got answers like Zhi means: abides or influences on multiple levels, or to know, intelligence, will, intention, emotion, even to set in order. This didn't surprise me because I am familiar with the Chinese way of making words so multi-purposed. But,

Here I am back wondering what your idea of Zhi's meaning is. Details please.

Even collecting the information is like a pop. Pop, I collect this piece of information. Pop, I add this piece of information. Pop, I correspond these two with each other in this particular way. It's like a light show, all smoke and mirrors, with thoughts popping all over the place. We are just along for the ride. If there is "Will" involved, it certainly doesn't appear to be mine.

Subjectivity9

Are these the rules by which you pilot an automobile to a specific destination?

It is called "the mystery ride". A mystery even to the driver.

It is called "the mystery ride". A mystery even to the driver.

Hey GoshisDead,

I am sure that you believe that you are not enlightened, at least as you presently define enlightenment.

Saying that you hope that humility is a prerequisite to enlightenment is the same as saying that you hope most men are disallowed from being IN enlightenment.

This figurative journey of yours, I believe, is seeing the jiva as a fix-it-up project. We all believe this at some point.

There are no rules. And there are no correct ways. There are no right or wrong ways.

I imagine it would be called "a harrowing ride" to a passenger.

This seems like an excellent strategy for absolving oneself of responsibility for one's actions.

I may have to try this sometime at work when my boss tries to tell me I screwed something up, or better yet when I am driving, drunk of course, backwards down a one-way street in a residential area and firing my .357 magnum randomly out the window.

My concern though is that I would be marginalizing myself somehow by adopting this philosophy. Thoughts?