#peter ralston

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Photo, "Sea Glass" by Peter Ralston.] :: [Heather Cox Richardson]

* * * *

Saviours of God by Nikos Kazantzakis Prologue

WE COME from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of ephemeral life is immortality! In the temporary living organism these two streams collide: (a) the ascent toward composition, toward life, toward immortality; (b) the descent toward decomposition, toward matter, toward death … It is our duty, therefore, to grasp that vision which can embrace and harmonise these two enormous, timeless, and indestructible forces, and with this vision to modulate our thinking and our action.

[casadabiqueira]

Azimuth

Peter Ralston

[maaarine]

The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness (Peter Ralston, 2010)

“In our awareness, we make an important distinction between what is “me” and what is “not-me.”

Within the “me” distinction, we observe an endless stream of mental content that is exclusive to our particular self —

our memories, perceptions, fantasies, thoughts, character traits, emotions, sensations, and our very sense of awareness.

All this activity is held together, given continuity, and made usable in large measure through the ongoing stories we tell ourselves — in which each of us is the central character. (…)

The original function of mind is to do a job, the essence of which is to keep you alive and successfully being you. 

Toward this end, it creates your story lines and maintains the continuity of your character and identity.

It works pretty well, doesn’t it? You don’t get your self mixed up with any other self.

Of course, the mind must also protect, maintain, and perpetuate itself — if it gets lost or damaged, it can’t do its job. (…)

This is all well and good, but for reasons we’ll look into later, it seems that the conceptual activity that is created to serve the self has become the self.

We become attached to our beliefs, to our roles and traits, and also to the strategies needed for maintaining all this.

We rarely acknowledge that all our mental, emotional, and perceptual activities are processes, and that they’re there to serve a specific purpose.

We’re so busy identifying with mind’s conceptual mechanisms that we lose touch with what’s real. It is not hard to see, then, how self becomes confused with the mind.

Inevitably, the presence of mental activity is identified within one’s awareness as the self.”

[storiologia]

Andrew Wyeth with his painting “Battleground”. Photo by Peter Ralston, 1981.

[maaarine]

MBTI & Ideas

The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness (Peter Ralston, 2010)

“In our daily experience, probably the most palpable evidence of our drive to self-persist can be found in the “meaning” we perceive in everything.

Our survival-needs demand that the world we perceive be divided into positive and negative, and so every object, person, circumstance, or idea will automatically include a charge of some kind.

Of course, we make many other distinctions as well, but one of the first assessments we make is whether something is threatening or benign.

After that, it’s about determining the specific risk or value the thing has to our particular self, and what we should do about it.

Our desire to “know” in this way is not a matter of human curiosity, but rather it stems from our need to evaluate everything in terms of its relationship to us.

This concern arises so incessantly from our survival drive that if it weren’t so automatic it would probably be overwhelming. 

Whatever we perceive—internally, like thoughts and feelings, or objectively, like objects and actions—

this drive fluidly relates each perception to ourselves and quickly provides us with an array of sophisticated meaning and its appropriate charge. (…)

The “feeling charge” that we experience serves solely to direct the self to adopt an appropriate relationship to whatever is perceived.

It’s a beautifully efficient mechanism for survival, but it cannot provide an experience of what’s simply true or real in itself.

Meaning exists to serve the needs of the self.”

[maaarine]

The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness (Peter Ralston, 2010)

“Remember that guy in school who really seemed to understand the math or physics when you didn’t? Aggravating, wasn’t it?

He seemed to be able to do so much more with the subject than anyone else.

The whole class worked hard memorizing formulas, but it was obviously easy for that one guy. Why is that?

Probably he understood the actual principles that founded the subject.

He experienced the “reality” of the subject — even though the subject matter might have existed primarily in the domain of abstraction. (…)

Whether it concerns your self, your world, or whether it concerns your self, your world, or any aspect therein, an insight is when you “experientially” become conscious of what’s true about something.

This is what makes life joyful, happy, and fulfilled. The thrill is not so much about what happens to be there; it’s that you happen to be there.

It could be about anything: how something really works, what something actually is — anything about life that was unseen, unknown, or unnoticed that becomes clearly understood.

The depth and quality of insights can vary greatly, but each will have some things in common:

An insight is “true,” or it is not really an insight.

An insight is not simply an opinion or a guess.

An insight is an authentic experience.

An insight is beyond any belief — it is instead something personally encountered and understood.

An insight is self-validating, since the truth or validity of the realization lies inherent in the thing realized.

An insight is authentic, and a person who has one will speak with authority since no guesswork is involved. With insight, a clear and personal grasping of the subject matter is the authority.”

[maaarine]

The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness (Peter Ralston, 2010)

“If manipulating our beliefs is this powerful—if we can alter our sense of self in the world simply by switching to a different set of beliefs—imagine how powerful it might be to get free of our beliefs entirely.

It never occurs to us that this is possible.

In the desperate scramble to feel better about ourselves, it’s easy to forget that whether we act from a belief that we’re worthless or important, neither viewpoint is the truth—it’s a belief. (…)

Here’s an analogy that’s useful for approaching this belief business: if all you’ve ever done with your car is put gas in it and drive around,

it would mean a huge shift in both focus and effort if you decided to start learning how cars work.

Each of these activities concerns a car, but understanding the mechanics involved is very different from using one for transportation.

Being driven by your beliefs is a very different matter than consciously understanding how it is your beliefs are created and what purpose they serve. (…)

Once we truly experience the nature of beliefs, we can decide to keep those that we consider empowering or otherwise useful, or take steps to detach ourselves from all of them if we choose. 

And while “detachment” from something can sound cold or emotionless, it also aptly describes an experience of freedom, of unencumbrance, and that is what I mean here. 

I’m talking about opening up to the possibility of experiencing what’s true rather than believing whatever comes to mind based on the same old presumptions.

Shifting from belief to experience is like the difference between, say, trying to eat the picture on the menu rather than the food itself. 

Or the difference between memorizing some knowledge instead of grasping the truth of what’s being said.”

[maaarine]

MBTI & Ideas

The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness (Peter Ralston, 2010)

“Patterns emerge in our behavior because our behavior is a reaction to circumstances that we consistently view from a set of personal and cultural assumptions.

Given that these assumptions and beliefs are conceptual to begin with, such an interaction with circumstances primarily takes place between a conceptual self and the perceived circumstances.

This creates a nonrandom expectation of personal behavior and so is called a character trait.

After awhile, we could say that an individual’s personality is reproducing itself by interacting from this set view, and creating more of the same patterns.

For example, if a central aspect of my self is that I am a stupid person, this “stupid person” will be the one who interacts with circumstances.

Since I think I’m stupid, I am likely to view life as difficult and a bit beyond me, while others seem privy to more knowledge and ability than I possess.

These two elements, my self-view and my perception of life, will continually interact—a “stupid person” will relate to “difficult circumstances.” (…)

My self-concepts and life perceptions will be self-fulfilling.

This means that over time the patterns that are discerned to be characteristic of my self will be more and more about how these conceptually produced patterns (and their foundation beliefs and assumptions) interact with my perceived environment.

Do you see the loop here?

In simple terms, I’m saying that certain concepts are adopted as oneself, and these concepts determine the behavior that will be taken.

As patterns emerge — which is likely, since the same set of assumptions and beliefs will continue to produce the same interpretations, reactions, and outcomes — these are identified as traits.”