So was I, and it was kind of a let down to read all the way through it and not find any revelations of earth shattering consequence. But, on the other hand, how many of us forget to think in the ways that are beneficial and get stuck in the ways of thinking that may be more harmful, in the long run, than good?

there is no good and evil, only smart and dumb (or wise and foolish).

That is easy to say until you personally experience evil .

Only nine?

Who said your thoughts were harmful?

And, how can anyone control that which are your "own and created by (you) an no other"...???

What evil have you personally experienced? And how does that evil manifest itself.

I guess that one can only type so much while on acid......

There have been a few incidents . The most discomforting was being robbed at gun point .

Hey Brolly. Think you for the article and the ideas. I didn't find any of them offensive and they were all positive in thought. Nothing wrong with that at all. We could all use all the good ideas we can focus on daily.

I always find putting them right in front of your face is the most effective:

Over the years Ive learned dozens of little tricks and insights for making life more fulfilling. Theyve added up to a significant improvement in the ease and quality of my day-to-day life. But the major breakthroughs have come from a handful of insights that completely rocked my world and redefined reality forever.

The world now seems to be a completely different one than the one I lived in about ten years ago, when I started looking into the mechanics of quality of life. It wasnt the world (and its people) that changed really, it was how I thought of it.

Maybe youve had some of the same insights. Or maybe youre about to.

1. You are not your mind.

The first time I heard somebody say that, I didnt like the sound of it one bit. What else could I be? I had taken for granted that the mental chatter in my head was the central me that all the experiences in my life were happening to.

I see quite clearly now that life is nothing but passing experiences, and my thoughts are just one more category of things I experience. Thoughts are no more fundamental than smells, sights and sounds. Like any experience, they arise in my awareness, they have a certain texture, and then they give way to something else.

If you can observe your thoughts just like you can observe other objects, whos doing the observing? Dont answer too quickly. This question, and its unspeakable answer, are at the center of all the great religions and spiritual traditions.

2. Life unfolds only in moments.

Of course! I once called this the most important thing I ever learned. Nobody has ever experienced anything that wasnt part of a single moment unfolding. That means lifes only challenge is dealing with the single moment you are having right now. Before I recognized this, I was constantly trying to solve my entire life battling problems that werent actually happening. Anyone can summon the resolve to deal with a single, present moment, as long as they are truly aware that its their only point of contact with life, and therefore there is nothing else one can do that can possibly be useful. Nobody can deal with the past or future, because, both only exist as thoughts, in the present. But we can kill ourselves trying.

3. Quality of life is determined by how you deal with your moments, not which moments happen and which dont.

I now consider this truth to be Happiness 101, but its amazing how tempting it still is to grasp at control of every circumstance to try to make sure I get exactly what I want. To encounter an undesirable situation and work with it willingly is the mark of a wise and happy person. Imagine getting a flat tire, falling ill at a bad time, or knocking something over and breaking it and suffering nothing from it. There is nothing to fear if you agree with yourself to deal willingly with adversity whenever it does show up. That is how to make life better. The typical, low-leverage method is to hope that you eventually accumulate power over your circumstances so that you can get what you want more often. Theres an excellent line in a Modest Mouse song, celebrating this side-effect of wisdom: As life gets longer, awful feels softer.

4. Most of life is imaginary.

Human beings have a habit of compulsive thinking that is so pervasive that we lose sight of the fact that we are nearly always thinking. Most of what we interact with is not the world itself, but our beliefs about it, our expectations of it, and our personal interests in it. We have a very difficult time observing something without confusing it with the thoughts we have about it, and so the bulk of what we experience in life is imaginary things . As Mark Twain said: Ive been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. The best treatment Ive found? Cultivating mindfulness .

5. Human beings have evolved to suffer, and we are better at suffering than anything else.

Yikes. It doesnt sound like a very liberating discovery. I used to believe that if I was suffering it meant that there was something wrong with me that I was doing life wrong. Suffering is completely human and completely normal, and there is a very good reason for its existence. Lifes persistent background hum of this isnt quite okay, I need to improve this, coupled with occasional intense flashes of horror and adrenaline are what kept human beings alive for millions of years. This urge to change or escape the present moment drives nearly all of our behavior. Its a simple and ruthless survival mechanism which works exceedingly well for keeping us alive, but it has a horrific side effect: human beings suffer greatly by their very nature. This, for me, redefined every one of lifes problems as some tendril of the human condition. As grim as it sounds, this insight is liberating because it means: 1) that suffering does not necessarily mean my life is going wrong, 2) that the ball is always in my court , so the degree to which I suffer is ultimately up to me, and 3) that all problems have the same cause and the same solution.

6. Emotions exist to make us biased.

This discovery was a complete 180 from my old understanding of emotions. I used to think my emotions were reliable indicators of the state of my life of whether Im on the right track or not. Your passing emotional states cant be trusted for measuring your self-worth or your position in life, but they are great at teaching you what it is you cant let go of. The trouble is that emotions make us both more biased and more forceful at the same time. Another survival mechanism with nasty side-effects.

7. All people operate from the same two motivations: to fulfill their desires and to escape their suffering.

Learning this allowed me to finally make sense of how people can hurt each other so badly. The best explanation I had before this was that some people are just bad . What a cop-out. No matter what kind of behavior other people exhibit, they are acting in the most effective way they are capable of (at that moment) to fulfill a desire or to relieve their suffering. These are motives we can all understand; we only vary in method, and the methods each of us has at our disposal depend on our upbringing and our experiences in life, as well as our state of consciousness. Some methods are skillful and helpful to others, others are unskillful and destructive, and almost all destructive behavior is unconscious. So there is no good and evil , only smart and dumb (or wise and foolish). Understanding this completely shook my long-held notions of morality and justice .

8. Beliefs are nothing to be proud of.

Believing something is not an accomplishment. I grew up thinking that beliefs are something to be proud of, but theyre really nothing but opinions one refuses to reconsider. Beliefs are easy. The stronger your beliefs are, the less open you are to growth and wisdom, because strength of belief is only the intensity with which you resist questioning yourself. As soon as you are proud of a belief , as soon as you think it adds something to who you are, then youve made it a part of your ego. Listen to any die-hard conservative or liberal talk about their deepest beliefs and you are listening to somebody who will never hear what you say on any matter that matters to them unless you believe the same. It is gratifying to speak forcefully, it is gratifying to be agreed with, and this high is what the die-hards are chasing. Wherever there is a belief, there is a closed door. Take on the beliefs that stand up to your most honest, humble scrutiny, and never be afraid to lose them.

9. Objectivity is subjective.

Life is a subjective experience and that cannot be escaped. Every experience I have comes through my own, personal, unsharable viewpoint. There can be no peer reviews of my direct experience, no real corroboration. This has some major implications for how I live my life. The most immediate one is that I realize I must trust my own personal experience, because nobody else has this angle, and I only have this angle. Another is that I feel more wonder for the world around me, knowing that any objective understanding I claim to have of the world is built entirely from scratch, by me. What I do build depends on the books Ive read, the people Ive met, and the experiences Ive had. It means I will never see the world quite like anyone else, which means I will never live in quite the same world as anyone else and therefore I mustnt let outside observers be the authority on who I am or what life is really like for me. Subjectivity is primary experience it is real life , and objectivity is something each of us builds on top of it in our minds, privately, in order to explain it all. This truth has world-shattering implications for the roles of religion and science in the lives of those who grasp it.

I'll ponder a bit on number 9. If this is true, what does this mean for moral and ethical behaviour? If there is no other authority outside of me, then who is to say that my life is wrong or bad?

If your (not really sure, in the context of the article that I may use this wording) objective is society building, then this individual would be considered an anarchist, would they not?

Individual conscience must always dictate Steve. It may be wrong, but it comes from a person rather than a group of people (a group has no conscience).

It is 4:30 AM and I think my mind blew away a few hours ago, or perhaps I should say it blew up a few hours ago . You know, Brolly, there is a good saying.."It's all in the mind". Doesn't that sort of sum it up?

Steve, the only authority is inside you!

Our Existence on the world is .. You know, I really hate it when you take the time to compose a lengthy response and the computer just loses the whole thing....

What we perceive as reality is colored by our brains, filtered and influenced by our personal experience. Our brain does a lot of interpretation on things that most of us take for granted, and through those filters comes up with our own Reality. I would recommendThe Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, By Oliver Sacks, as a good place to start the exploration of this.

That was not nearly as well thought out..... But hey you get the jist.

Let's look at #9

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9. Objectivity is subjective.

Life is a subjective experience and that cannot be escaped. Every experience I have comes through my own, personal, unsharable viewpoint. There can be no peer reviews of my direct experience, no real corroboration. This has some major implications for how I live my life. The most immediate one is that I realize I must trust my own personal experience, because nobody else has this angle, and I only have this angle. Another is that I feel more wonder for the world around me, knowing that any objective understanding I claim to have of the world is built entirely from scratch, by me. What I do build depends on the books Ive read, the people Ive met, and the experiences Ive had. It means I will never see the world quite like anyone else, which means I will never live in quite the same world as anyone else and therefore I mustnt let outside observers be the authority on who I am or what life is really like for me. Subjectivity is primary experience it is real life , and objectivity is something each of us builds on top of it in our minds, privately, in order to explain it all. This truth has world-shattering implications for the roles of religion and science in the lives of those who grasp it.

______________________

Steve, you asked," If this is true, what does this mean for moral and ethical behaviour ?"

I think that when the author indicates," Every experience I have comes through my own, personal, unsharable viewpoint. There can be no peer reviews of my direct experience, no real corroboration " what he is saying is that no one has the ability to synthesize in the same way the thoughts that only he has with his own personal experience, which sounds like a reasonable stance. As far as trusting his own experience above others, I would say that that would be dependent upon just what the situation is that one is talking about.

Personally, I have found that there are certain commonalities of existence that defy the contention that all objectivity is subjective. I have never seen anyone fall up without aid, for instance. Granted, this is through my own filters, but I have never seen anyone defy certain rules of the physical world.

So, as far as the ethical and moral questions go, I believe that they are created by our interactions with others and the world. One cannot be totally separated from the other aspects of living, it just is not possible. As such, our moral and ethical standards will be a reflection of those around us, based on our interactions with others and the world. Therefore, I do not see this as a progenitor for anarchy, for we all are informed by the world that surrounds us and the societies that exist.

Good, bad, wrong and right are therefore conditional, not solely on ones personal point of view but on societies as well.

I have no problem with that.

I believe you are correct. Just look at the problems of trying to get eye witnesses to give the exact same story. They can't, because they were in different places, have different understandings and abilities to comprehend the actions that have taken place in front of them.

So yes, every experience I have will not be like anyone else's experience. With that I agree.

But I did go on to extrapolate the reading to a wider area, sometimes a dangerous thing to do, and consider how it might affect society if all acted on this understanding. So I thought I would ask the question.

It is an interesting thought game to compare this to Kantian imperatives.

Interesting Steve. I'll have to think about that one for a bit.

I'm speechless... but obviously I am not, since I just said I was speechless... or maybe it doesn't count if you type it?