transcendentalism?

[MiNdTrIp]

I can't exactly find out what it transcendentalism is.....can anyone help me out?

[xexon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism



x

[MiNdTrIp]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism



xI've read that already, but i'm still a little confused and was wondering if anyone can explain it to me in more detail. I'm looking for a deeper explanation. but thank you.

[xexon]

Consider it yoga for the mind. It doesn't require much wording beyond that.

The idea is to untie the knot which creates duality. Without duality, perception becomes absolute. It is a state to which the followers of transcendentalism aspire to.

The only way is can be accomplished is to leave the mind itself behind. This means also leaving the concept and disciplines of transcendentalism behind.

People are reluctant to leave the nipple that feeds them.




x

[MiNdTrIp]

Consider it yoga for the mind. It doesn't require much wording beyond that.

The idea is to untie the knot which creates duality. Without duality, perception becomes absolute. It is a state to which the followers of transcendentalism aspire to.

The only way is can be accomplished is to leave the mind itself behind. This means also leaving the concept and disciplines of transcendentalism behind.

People are reluctant to leave the nipple that feeds them.




xnow duality, do mean duality as in everything in the universe having a binary opposite such as body spirit or good and evil? or a different definition?

and second? this seems more like a thought or idea, but wikipedia makes it out to be a spirtual thing? is it?

[xexon]

To become human, your spirit takes on a mind and body. The software which powers this mind is duality. It weighs one thing against another and arrives at a decision based on the evidence it has before it.

The spirit itself is free of mind, therefore free of duality. The spirits sees that it is part of a whole and there is no point of weighing one thing against another.

In most people, they're pretty much asleep spiritually. The mind has a firm grip on their attention. Duality rules.

Transcendentalism is the process of waking the inner spirit enough to reap some of it's visionary qualities and apply them in regular life.



x

[MiNdTrIp]

oh, ok...now I understand. thank you for the help

[Chodpa]

yeah that was pretty cool writing. for ipso facto transcendentalism and how to apply it i would recommend perusal of dzokchen.

[ChiefCowpie]

transcendentalism is new age dentistry; visualizing the teeth are healthy. according to the theory, everyone will have perfect teeth in 2012

[soundsystem]

Transcendentalism as I understand it was a school of philosophical thought popular amongst 19th Century American thinkers like Emerson and Thoreau...

I'm not sure what xexon's vague 'spiritual' mumbo-jumbo has to do with it...

Where in that wikipedia article does it say anything about it being 'yoga for the mind', or 'the process of waking the inner spirit'?

[xexon]

The whole point is to go beyond what people saw as normal waking consciousness.

To do this, you have to let it go. To know without thinking is intuition. This begins a spiritual path in most people.

It goes beyond thinking.



x

[soundsystem]

What sort of knowledge can be gained without thinking? Surely any process ocurring within the mind is a kind of thinking?

[xexon]

It is a hard concept if one has never been there.

The mind is a thinking machine. But there is a conciousness behind that. One that sits apart from you and your idea of "self". Your identity is just a child of this higher consciousness.

It knows how the story ends, but it has given you the power to discover this for yourself. It created joy within it's ability to create. It does so by hiding parts of itself away from itself and then rediscovering it again and again.

To pierce this veil of forgetfullness, is to have an everwidening sphere of awareness that eventually engulfs the personal "I" altogether.

There is no more this and that. There is only a singular awareness, with no boundries.


x

[XBloodyNailPolishX]

Xexon, thanks so much for the explanations! I admit as well that Wikipedia isn't always clear....
thanks again!

[def zeppelin]

Just read Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. There are many ways to describe the same experience, Xexon just uses a more flowery way of talking about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_%28Emerson%29

You can download the eBook for free here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2945

What's amazing is how all cultures speak of the same experience, yet it is overlooked by many, especially those within the scientific community.

If you're really interested in spiritual writings, then I recommend reading, Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl.

http://www.amazon.com/Search-Ultimate-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/1567314791/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204083101&sr=8-1

""We psychiatrists are neither teachers nor preachers but have to learn from the man in the street, from his ... self-understanding, what being human is all about". Of all those who applied existentialism to psychotherapy and to the efforts of human beings to help themselves, perhaps none has done so with as much wisdom as Viktor Frankl.

Although I didn't connect with the first 50 or so pages of this book, after that I was challenged and inspired by Frankl. His concerns, the "existential vacuum", the depressing impact of an "indoctrination into reductionism", the irreducibility of our experience, "responsibility as the essence of existence", these are well worth being reminded of.

That a "machine model" or "rat model" is not the best way to view human beings, does it seem such a revelation? Frankl observed how some young people had begun to view their ideals and altruism as hangups, how they had been engaging in fruitless "hidden motive" games. He wondered if behavioral scientific therapeutic programs didn't fail to take into account the specialness of people to find meaning, to transcend and to detach themselves from their situations. He called for responsibility and a recognition that we all proceed into the unknowable.

Frankl's approach is quite different from that of Freud, Jung, Skinner or even Rogers (Frankl at least credits in this book Rogers with "de-ideologizing psychotherapy"). His work still lives on, as for example in the United States through the Franklian Psychology (Logotherapy/Existential Analysis)doctoral program offered through Graduate Theological Foundation. Frankl himself, as he makes clear in this book, suggested a concept of spirituality and religion that "goes far beyond the narrow concepts of God as they are promulgated by some representatives of denominational religion", one that encompassed even atheism.

It would seem unfortunate if Frankl and his existential analysis that assumed a "will to meaning" were forgotten. Existentialism remains one of the great reponses of Western civilization to the challenges of life and Viktor Frankl one of its best practical advocates. I realize I need to read more about Frankl, logotherapy and existential analysis in general. It may be the best expression of a sacred view of being human we have in the West."

[Okiefreak]

I've been talking up intuition for quite a while in various posts defining faith as "intuitive risk taking". Even crusty atheist Sam Harris acknowledges the importance of intuition in supporting scientific and other truths. Intuition is insight, based on sensed relationships that don't strictly qualify as logic or empirically verified knowledge. And I think it's a "right-brained" integrative process of seeing the forest in the midst of all the trees. That being said, however, I think we should acknowledge that intuition is less rigorous and less trustworthy than logic and evidentiary knowledge and shouldn't be used as a substitute for empirically grounded rational thought, as it often is.

[def zeppelin]

Some things just can't be proven empirically, not because it is untrue, but is due to the nature of its reality.

I don't think intuition exists in the brain.

What is truly human cannot be measured.

This is what Frankl meant when he said that modern day science de-humanizes man by turning him into mere parts of a machine, and in doing so, turns man into nothing-but a machine, nothing-but an object. It is human nature to label, and to turn everything into symbols, but it is important to realize that these symbols aren't what makes us human.

Facts can cloud your mind of the truth, because 'facts' only exist in our heads. It is human nature to give everything meaning - Intuition over-archs logic.

Ego Versus No Ego. Do we give ourselves identity, and label our essence, or do we just simply exist in our purist form that is unchained by human concepts?


"Let me suspend my thirst for knowledge." - Tin Pan Alley By Robert Plant.