I love using the term “dangerous thoughts”. It encapsulates precisely what I feel the need to describe. A dangerous thought is a destructive thought that is tempting, but ultimately not true.
For example, racism. Imagine if you grow up, and know a lot of black criminals. A dangerous thought would be to think that black people are criminals. From your perspective, it seems true - your experience has led you to believe it. In reality, the thought is very destructive, and is ultimately not true. Crime doesn’t originate from skin color, it originates from social conditions (and some other things probably).
Racism is an easy example though. There are much more clever dangerous thoughts though.
What about intention manifestation? I believe that intention manifestation is a dangerous thought. This is why:
Intention manifestation says that: “You get what you think about, in accordance to the law of attraction. If you aren’t getting what you want, then you need to change your thoughts. If you’ve changed your thoughts, and you STILL aren’t getting what you want, then really you haven’t changed your thoughts… you are canceling yourself out with other thoughts.”
Why is this dangerous? Well, first - it’s tempting. We would all love to think that we can wish and get whatever we want. It’s a really nice idea! I want a genie too! All I have to do is think the right thoughts (and listen to my emotions), and I’ll get what I want! Hurray!
But there’s a much larger reason for why this thought is dangerous. Any failure is a failure of the believer - never a failure of the theory. Now, forget that we’re talking about intention manifestation for a second. Imagine we are talking about some random theory about reality. And imagine that this random theory states at the end, “If you observe this theory to be untrue, then this theory states that it is a result of you not believing entirely in this theory.”
If the theory is, in reality, untrue - how could you prove it? What if my theory was, “Trees have learned to speak English. If you cannot hear a tree speak English, it’s because you don’t believe they can, and trees can also read minds and become offended by people like you, so they refuse to talk to you.”
Now, of course trees can not speak English, nor are they capable of such highly accurate telepathy :-P. But how can you disprove such a theory? Any attempt to disprove it will result in “well, of course you never hear the trees - they won’t allow disbelievers to hear them. You just proved the theory is true!”
You can see how ridiculous this is. And hopefully you can also see why I label this sort of thinking as “dangerous”. You can easily get caught in a loop - forcing yourself to believe something in order to test the theory.
I propose a new thought-suggestion:
Thought Suggestion 132: I will not attempt to test theories that require belief in the theory in order to be tested. It is the fault of the theory for not providing a way for healthy thinkers to verify the theory without mandating a belief system.
You’ll notice that a lot of religion gets cut deep with this suggestion as well. “If you observe Christianity to be untrue, then really you’re just being fooled by the Devil, and you must believe even more in Christianity in order to overcome the Devil.”
Ouch :-P.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
As none of us apparently is a god around here, none of us knows the absolute truth.
Because of this, one with most power should and will define the truth.
Examples: Crusades, Bloshevik revolution, Holocaust and excommunications during middle ages.
Power of course is relative variable.
December 11th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
I have a strong feeling your unsuccessful attemps in the lotto scheme influenced this post
as for the religion thing, I strongly agree. Religion is a creation of Man. It is our own personal, and in most cases, VERY different perspective of who and what God is.
I have come to a point in my life where I still believe in God, but I do not believe in Religion. As a consequence my mother, who is christian, fears for my soul :p
I got a Q for you though on your Thought Thoery.
Did the thoery of Psionics and OBE’s not lead you to first Believe they existed before you can open the path to be able to do it?
December 12th, 2007 at 12:43 am
I haven’t posted for a while… but I think maybe I will.
I think that last bit depends alot on what bit of Christianity you choose to believe. I mean, I know it is different for everyone. But, I think I still more or less believe it on most of its more fundamental levels. Even if it is just some sort of comfort object. I mean… without God, all there is is Chemistry and Physics… they are more or less predetermined. Therefore, there is no free will, no choice. Everything is planned out already. With God you get some sort of… sentient knowledge… in the universe. Something has free will, and by extension, we may also have free will. Belief just gives you something to hold onto. Maybe it is misguided and wrong, but its something to cling to. And sometimes you need that.
But fuck if I know…
December 12th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Nezz: “Did the thoery of Psionics and OBE’s not lead you to first Believe they existed before you can open the path to be able to do it?”
It helps to believe in psi and the stuff you are about to learn about when most people around you say it false. But, if through your own observation and experimentation proves that you are right, then having belief in what your are doing is pretty much irrelevant.
Sean:
I used telepathy on my tree and it says your tree is a self-absorbed pig XD
December 12th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
*Chuckles* Religion as a creation of man, indeed. I suggest you read “The Book of Splendours” by Eliphas Levi before making such an audacious claim. Yes, the acts of Man and his thoughts and beliefs are of Man. However, there is truth in the universe. Religion is founded upon this truth, and seeks to utilize it for the benefit of humanity. In a way, science is merely another religion with different iconography.
In any case, Sean, I’m sorry to see you in this rut that is so -easy- to fall into. You taught me telepathy, and for that I’m grateful. You started me down the path, but now we have diverged into completely different directions.
I don’t claim that anything you believe or do is wrong or what I do is right, but please meditate a little and think about it. I do not see belief in God as a reflective loop, or religious beliefs, rather I see God at the very core and foundation of the universe, and Christ as another facet of that foundation.
In this regard, a reading that should be interesting: “The Nature of Order: The Luminous Ground” by Christopher Alexander.
Learn a little about Kabbalah, which is the foundation and living spirit of Judaism and Christianity, and so horribly misinterpreted.
Learn a little about Hermeticism and it’s study of the Great Mystery.
This universe is a very -vast- place. There are layers to manifestation that can be peeled back to reveal the intricacy and wonder of creation. Proof of the divine. From Tzimtzum to now, Providence has been at work.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Antisankari - You don’t believe in an absolute truth? So if I’m powerful, I can declare that 2+2=5, and all of the sudden it is true? Or would I still be a liar, albeit a powerful one?
Nezz - No. Belief is not a requirement for psionics or OBEs. In fact, many people have psychic experiences that don’t believe in them, including OBEs. They usually rationalize it differently - but they still have the experience. Belief is not a prerequisite for experience.
war1205 - Quantum physics has taught us that the world is NOT deterministic. What you’re talking about is the pre-quantum-physics mindset - aka, Newtonian.
NeoPsychic - lol.
ancheron - Rejecting Christianity does not imply rejection of the idea of God. Nowhere in my post do I attack the idea of God - I simply attack the part of Christianity that is unhealthy thinking. Nowhere did I state that ALL of Christianity is bad, or incorrect. I simply stated that some reasoning present in the Christian mindset is unhealthy.
I defer to Thomas Jefferson:
“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”
December 12th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
“Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” - Thomas H. Huxley
December 12th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Sean -
“Antisankari - You don’t believe in an absolute truth? So if I’m powerful, I can declare that 2+2=5, and all of the sudden it is true? Or would I still be a liar, albeit a powerful one?”
We are forced to accept our current paradigm anyway.
In school, if your answers did not conform with your teacher, you didn’t pass the exam. Ultimately you couldn’t pass your grade, and so on.
So we are forced to accept math as truth anyway. Talk about power?
Lets make a nice example.
Lets assume that you are almost all powerful. You can do whatever you want and there is no way anyone can do shit about it.
You start walking down the road. Every time you meed someone, you will ask them if they agree with your opinions. If they say they do, you will go on. If they don’t, you kill them right there.
I assume now for the sake of this example that the dead have no opinions (or if they do, they are considered irreleveant).
You keep doing this infinitely. From your point of view, everybody you know and meet agrees with you. If they dont agree with you, they are dead. If they do, they live.
Now the people you dont know, dont really matter, since its all about your point of view. From your point of view, everybody in the world agrees with you. There are only 2 kinds of people now. Dead and likeminded.
What you are preaching might not be “the truth” for the dead, but the living are accepting it, as there is no other way. Its either/or. believe and live or defy and die.
Your word is now the truth for all living people of the world. Is it really the truth?
Whos to say?
December 13th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
I think that Sean is not talking at all about TRUTH!
What Sean says boils down to the following: BE critical and do not make yourself responsible if you cannot find the truth in a more or less widely acknowledged hypothesis or theory, as that’s not your fault, but the theories. (Ok, it’s not that good formulated)
To come back to the “truth”
For example: Climate change - its now acknowledged that’s fundamentally men-made. But there are still scientists who preach to contrary. (~ http://meteo.lcd.lu)
Our responsibility is not to find the truth, but to be looking for it. We have not the means to find the truth.(as Antisankari points out above)
What we need to do is to try to find sth. which might possibly be true, we need to revise our opinions constantly, and we have to life according to them.
Human existence makes sense only if there is progress, social progress, technological progress etc. (Read: Goethe’s Faust)
As I’m taking philosophy, let’s talk about it.
The theory of cognition.
Well, there exist many, I’ll talk about one.
*Rationalism:
There are several systems, Descartes’ being the best known:
first principal: Cogito ergo sum. I think, so necessarily I exist (as a thinking being)
second principal: God exists.
conclusion: God acts as a guarantor for all evident convictions, evident being sth. which is clear (antonym: obscure) and distinct.
Now, when I write this in such a compressed way, this is obviously doubtful. Descartes has proven his point of view and if you don’t act as Sean asks you to in his initial post, you might be tempted to believe this. However, we have fundamentally become sceptical, which is a good thing. So we realise, that there are mistakes in Descartes system. And we realise that it does not lead to the ultimate truth we have been looking for.
When we start to develop “psychic” abilities, we had, however, to cease our scepticism to allow their development, because we thought they were not possible. And it this situation we are tempted to believe many sorts of things and we easily become an victim of mundane theories, which truth cannot be found by us, because we do not believe in it strong enough. Such reasoning must be avoided. That’s what Seans.
WOW - what a long post. I hope it’s readable. I’d really need an edit button, so I could correct it later, because the structure of the post really does not help the understanding of my message. I hope you get through and note that I’m not a native English speaker.