Tag: thought

Forgiveness

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We don’t have the power to forgive. But we can hope that those who have harmed us will feel shame and reform.

That outcome—their feeling shame and reforming—is far better than our forgiving them and  infinitely better than wishing harm on them, wishing for revenge.

Forgiveness should mean “forbear until those who have harmed us reform.”

When we have been harmed we have a choice between forbearance and revenge. If we choose revenge our minds will be clouded and we will bring more harm into the world. If we forbear, the harm that has been done will stop with us.

And if, as we forbear, we hope—indeed, pray—that those who have harmed us reform, we will feel little or no need to want revenge. The desire for revenge will be weak if it arises at all. For what could be better than the person who has harmed us reforming completely? That is, feeling shame, vowing never to repeat their harmful act, making amends for their harm.

What could be better than that?

We do not desire that the person who has harmed us feel shame to cause them pain, but only because shame is essential to reform, to making the vow to never repeat the harmful act against anyone. Shame cleanses the harm and ensures it will not recur.

When we have been harmed, there is nothing better to wish for.

And there is no need for public shame. All that is needed is real shame leading to the complete renunciation of harm.

This is how all of us—for all of us have been harmed—can reduce suffering in the world.

FIML and karma

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FIML illustrates karma in the sense that karma is an action that initiates a cycle of cause and effect.

For example, if you do not care about what your partner is saying, you will not understand how you are listening and thus you will not understand yourself. If you are not honest with your partner, similarly, you will not be able to perceive the depths of meaning in your own listening and speaking. Your not caring and/or not being honest are actions that will initiate a cycle of delusion, a cycle of less than optimal communication, less than optimal mutual understanding, and less than optimal self-understanding.

You harm yourself when do not care or are not honest. Of course, there are degrees of caring and honesty. But if partners do these actions well-enough, they will see for themselves that caring even more and being even more honest has very real and very important benefits for each of them.

If you care about what your partner is saying, you will come to understand how ideas, values, and meanings actually function in your mind during dynamic moments of communication. And this will save you from a great deal of delusive thinking and feeling. The same is true for being honest. If you are honest with your partner, you will help them free themselves from delusive thinking and feeling. They will see that you are being honest and respect you for that. In return they will be more honest with you.

And all of this will become clearer and clearer to both partners as they progress in FIML practice. These cycle of good karma—good cause and effect—will enrich and liberate both partners

In addition to the above, it is good to see that there are significant selfish reasons to be honest and to care about your partner.

Holocaust: The Ignored Reality

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by Timothy Snyder

Link

Well-worth reading.

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One way to comprehend the madness of the 20th century as described in Snyder’s essay is through semiotics as we define and use the term in FIML practice. In FIML practice the active, functional semiotics of the individual are constantly being questioned and resolved with the help of a partner. Without FIML, individual semiotics are never fully understood by the individual, who is consequently forced to adopt public semiotics to define their, now, entirely elusive “self.”

During the 2oth century, and still today, many people assert public meaning/semiotics in place of having authentic individual comprehension of themselves. The more assertive the person, the more their “meaning” seems to have meaning, or value. Others simply follow assertive people. Dictators and other maniacs described in Snyder’s essay are fundamentally asserting violent public “meaning,” rather than acquiring genuine individual meaning on their own.

This also goes a long way to explain why so much of the world today, as yesterday, willingly follows less violent psychopaths and/or shallow media personalities: their assertions of meaning are simply stronger than what the individual is capable of finding for themselves.

In contrast, individuals who practice FIML will notice that their need to take meaning from strong public-asserters decreases in proportion to their capacity to comprehend their own individual and much more authentic meaning.

On Solitude

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On one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rajagaha in the Bamboo Grove, the squirrels’ sanctuary. Now at that time a certain monk by the name of Elder[1] was one who lived alone and extolled the virtues of living alone. Alone he entered the village for alms, alone he returned, alone he sat withdrawn [in meditation], alone he did walking meditation.

Then a large number of monks went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As they were sitting there, they informed him: “Lord, there is a certain monk by the name of Elder who lives alone and extols the virtues of living alone.”

Then the Blessed One told a certain monk, “Come, monk. In my name, call the monk named Elder, saying, ‘The Teacher calls you, my friend.'”

“As you say, lord,” the monk answered and, having gone to Ven. Elder, on arrival he said, “The Teacher calls you, my friend.”

“As you say, my friend,” Ven. Elder replied. Then he went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there, the Blessed One said to him, “Is it true, Elder, that you live alone and extol the virtues of living alone?”

“Yes, lord.”

“But how do you live alone and extol the virtues of living alone?”

“Lord, alone I enter the village for alms, alone I return, alone I sit withdrawn [in meditation], alone I do walking meditation. That is how I live alone and extol the virtues of living alone.”

“There is that way of living alone, Elder. I don’t say that there isn’t. Still, listen well to how your living alone is perfected in its details, and pay close attention. I will speak.”

“As you say, lord,” Ven. Elder responded.

The Blessed One said: “And how is living alone perfected in its details? There is the case where whatever is past is abandoned, whatever is future is relinquished, and any passion & desire with regard to states of being attained in the present is well subdued.[2] That is how living alone is perfected in its details.”

That is what the Blessed One said. Having said it, the One Well-gone further said this:

“All-conquering, all-knowing, intelligent; with regard to all things, unadhering; all-abandoning, released in the ending of craving: him I call a man who lives alone.”
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translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Is God a Taoist?

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Mortal:
And therefore, O God, I pray thee, if thou hast one ounce of mercy for this thy suffering creature, absolve me of having to have free will!

God:
You reject the greatest gift I have given thee?

Mortal:
How can you call that which was forced on me a gift? I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!

God:
Why would you wish not to have free will?

Mortal:
Because free will means moral responsibility, and moral responsibility is more than I can bear!

God:
Why do you find moral responsibility so unbearable?

Source

This piece is a bit long, but fun and worth reading.

POV HOBO (NSFW)

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This video is about homelessness in Denver. The voice-overs in the first few minutes of the vid are pretty bad, but the video on the whole is quite good. It’s about 39 minutes long.

Peace of mind

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In my relationship with my partner, my peace of mind is very much dependent on her wisdom. And the same is true for her with respect to me.

This is why it is of paramount importance that FIML partners be able to depend on each other to bring up contretemps the moment they occur.

A contretemps is defined in FIML practice as a misunderstanding or potential misunderstanding that arises during interpersonal communication. It is often characterized by an emotional jangle, a sudden feeling of being insulted, demeaned, threatened, lied to, etc.

FIML practice is designed to catch contretemps the moment they happen.

Contretemps tend to happen due to how we habitually listen to other people. When we are able to examine all contretemps that arise in our interactions with our partner, we will soon discover that they tend to be of a few general types. Once we see this and understand that they are arising in our own mind and were not the actual intentions of the speaker, they will begin to occur less often and eventually stop.

Deep peace of mind comes in FIML practice when you are certain that your partner is able to recognize jangles and contretemps the moment they happen and that they will bring them up immediately. This is the wisdom of my partner that I depend on.

Peace of mind is knowing that your partner is not thinking some weird stuff about you, and knowing that they know neither are you thinking some weird stuff about them.

You can assert that you don’t think weird things about each other, you can vow not to do it, you can feel that your partner is not doing it, you can trust them, but there is no substitute for knowing that your partner is not doing it and knowing that your partner has the means to deal with any weird thought, no matter how trivial, the moment it arises.

Why we use the term semiotics

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The reason we use the term semiotics on this site is when FIML partners do a FIML query, the data in their minds at the moment(s) in question is best described as raw semiotics. That is, it is the raw material that makes up the composite of consciousness at the moment(s) in question. This material, or data, can be sharply focused, vague, irrelevant to the subject at hand, emotional, associative, organized, disorganized, and so on. When partners get good at observing this data accurately and describing it to each other, they will find that much of it, if not all of it, is connected to a psycho-semiotic network that underlies awareness and gives rise to it. Understanding this network is extremely valuable and will provide partners with great insights into how and why they feel, think, and behave as they do. It is very difficult (and I think impossible) to understand this network through solitary pursuits only. The reason for this is a solitary mind will fool itself. In contrast, two minds working together will be able to observe this network with much greater accuracy. Language, semiotics, and emotion are fundamentally interpersonal operations, so it is reasonable to expect that deep comprehension of these operations will be best achieved through interpersonal activity. ABN

Error correction

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While reading David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity, I came across the following sentence:

What is needed is a system that takes for granted that errors will occur, but corrects them once they do—a case of ‘problems are inevitable, but they are soluble’ at the lowest level of information-processing emergence. (p. 141)

This statement comes from the chapter “The Jump to Universality,” in which Deutsch argues that “error correction is essential in processes of potentially unlimited length.”

Error correction is fundamental to FIML practice. In fact, the nuts-and-bolts of FIML practice could be described as being little more than a method for correcting errors “at the lowest level of information-processing” during interpersonal communication. This level is “the lowest” because FIML deals primarily with very short segments of speech/communication. In many posts, we have called these segments “psychological morphemes” or the “smallest speech/communication error” we can reliably identify and agree upon with our partner.

If you try to tackle bigger errors—though this can be done sometimes—you frequently run into the problem of your subject becoming too vague or ill-defined to be rationally discussable.

I haven’t read enough of Deutsch’s book to be sure of what he means by “universality,” but I do think (at this point) that FIML is universal in the sense that it will clear up interpersonal communication errors between any two qualified partners. “Qualified” here means that partners care about each other, want to optimize their relationship, and have enough time to do FIML practice.

We all demand that our computers be error-free, that buildings and bridges be constructed without error, that science work with error-free data as much as possible. But when it comes to communication with the person we care about most, do we even talk about wanting a method of error correction, let alone actually using one?

You can’t correct big errors if you have no method for correcting errors that occur “at the lowest level of information-processing,” to use Deutsch’s phrase. Once you can correct errors at this level, you will find that you and your partner are much better able to tackle bigger questions/errors/complexes. This happens because having the ability to reliably do small error-correcting gives you the capacity to discuss bigger issues without getting lost in a thicket of small mistakes.

Your ability to talk to each other becomes “universal” in the sense that you can tackle any subject together and are not tethered to static ideas and assumptions about what either of you really “means.” As mentioned many times on these pages, FIML does not tell you how to think or what to believe. In this sense, it is a universal system that allows you and your partner to explore existence in any way you choose.

To use Deutsch’s words again, “error correction is essential in processes of potentially unlimited length.” Your relationship with your partner can and should be a “processes of potentially unlimited” growth, and error correction is essential to that process.