Coincidence?

thanks, much needed

i am in control of my actions and with every action comes a reaction

so what makes me not god of my own reality?

 

where did you get that idea?

so does your reality exclude all other sentient creatures that operate completely out of your control?
or do you control their decisions too, in addition to your own?

 

hmmm i see where your coming from

but those seperate from me do not control me, and i choose whether or not or how much they affect me

 

yeah but they are a part of this reality just as much as you are, so it can't just be "your" reality, it must be "our" reality.

 

hmm i see

 

not true, whatever his reality is is totally esoteric and up to him. you've heard the phrase "perception is reality." the ability to perceive is all we have, and it happens to dictate our reality.

 

yeah I don't buy into that crap.

That may be true collectively, but if you are walking around as an ego-bound individual thinking that you are creating your whole reality, then you are disconnected from what is around you and are insane. Sensory-input perceptions are definatly not the extent of reality.

 

taking psychedelics illuminated to me how much control i reall have in life and how much other people have. If I wanted to live on the edge, I could act as if I am in control of all my actions, but in the end I have to consider all of the men who are trying to control this world who will try to snub me out if my actions start conflicting with their power. And the only way around this is to be able to snub them first, or avoid them, or befriend them in a certain way, but in the end, life is a big struggle to get one's will actualised, in the big scheme of things.

I dont really understand the whole 'every action has a consequence' concept.. i men, what is to say what the consequence is? every single infinitely small moment that follows an action, is in effect, a consequence of that action, as well as a consequence of all the actions before it, as well as a consequence of al the consequences that came from those actions as well as from your own action and any other actions which in themselves were inspired by your action or the consequences of the other actions... etc etc etc

as for karma... people are so short sighted when it comes to calculating that sort of thing... in a similar way to above, what makes your action a matter of your own karmic balance, when we consider that the reprocussions of karma can include the way people act in the future (eg you steal something and then someone nicks your wallet - karma). who is to say that your wallet gettin nicked is the payback of your karma, if it was realy the pickpocketer's choice, and to say that it wa spayback to your karma is like saying that the pickpocketer was guided into doing what they did as a matter of karmic balance. they were guided into stealing, which in turn should mean that they themselves will recieve bad karma, etc etc, shouldnt it? or if they were guided into it, doesnt that mean they cant really be responsible for the karmic weight of the action? it would seem that according to karma, some system is in place to ensure that bad things keep happening over and over in a big cycle, and your bad action is forcing someone else to do a bad action in order to balance your own karma, and thus get bad karma themselves.
what if, something you think is bad karma on your part, is actually just the universe getting back on someone else's karma?

 

well then you have to face the bad karma also. it does perpetuate itself. but we can never advance to a point without 'negative karma' without first experiencing it.

there can't exist a positive without a negative... there is always going to be life on all planes of existence, from the very lowest negative points, to the very highest positive points.

it is that person's karma to have to experience bad karma. we all must face it at one time or another.

it's exactly that kind of thing that makes me wonder how much free will we really have. if we are being guided to do things, then how can we really chose for ourselves, when the choice is already unconsciously made.

free will is the perfect illusion really.

and hooray for my first thread with 1000+ views

 

But see now what you're doing is you're nonchalantly dragging this debate into a physical realm which may or may not exist; a theoretical realm. You may believe in reincarnation, but I don't (as is commonly defined). And you have to understand that most people in this world do not believe in reincarnation.

Again, you're using the conclussion to your argument as one of the premises. You're saying "Karma is real, because when you do something bad, [karma is real] and therefore you will pay for it". This is fallacious reasoning. You are begging the question.

Well did you also know that reality is bound by the tooth fairy? It's true. The toothfairy is responsible for the following things:

-when you brush your teeth, the toothfairy makes them healthier

-when you don't brush your teeth, the toothfairy makes them less healthy

Whether or not you believe in the toothfairy is up to you, but I hope you do one day, because I would hate for you to lose all your teeth. My proof for the toothfairy's existence? Well, just stop brushing your teeth and see what happens!

C wut I did thar? That's what your reasoning is.

Will I be punished by the Karma Police for saying that?

 

We naturally look round in vain in the macrophysical world for proof of karmic and spiritual events, for the simple reason that we cannot imagine events that are related to such ideas and are capable of explanation. Their existence -- or atleast their possibility -- follows logically from the premise of statistical truth.

The experimental method of inquiry aims at establishing regular events which can be repeated. Consequently, unique or rare events are ruled out of account. Moreover, the experiment imposes limiting conditions on nature, for its aim is to force her to give answers to questions devised by man. Every answer of nature is therefore more or less influenced by the kind of question asked, and the result is always a hybrid product. The so-called 'scientific view of the world' based on this can hardly be anything more than a psychologically biased partial view which misses out all those by no means unimportant aspects that cannot be grasped statistically.

 

couldnt it also mean that by not believing in coincidences.. he believes in fate? u kno like kung fu panda... = ) lol

 

Excellent, but you've just undermined your own point by constantly referring to karma as a statistical event. If it's just a statistical event, then all you're doing is plucking out a certain chunk of all interactions in the universe, ones that happen statistically, and saying "Look, see! There's Karma" while ignoring all the ones that don't fit your case. You have a point that science sometimes asks questions not open-mindedly enough, but you are taking it to the opposite fallacious extreme, you are saying ANY evidence for karma is PROOF for karma.

Karma is such a nebulous concept that can be proved with almost anything if you want, but not in any rigorous sense of "proof". That is what I object to and why I insist it be reneged to the realm of zeus-worship, at least until you can provide me with a better reason than "sometimes when people do bad things they regret it".

 

well there's really no way to prove it. you just need faith

 

What about "Law of attraction"? Can it explain karma a bit deeper than you think karma is. Karma is not only if you steal you will pay for that, but it is complete set of your feelings, emotions, attentions, thinking, reactions.... and all set of those things is determinig who you will attract to your life, what kind of people, what kind of situations and so on. If you are a "bad" man, your friends will most likely be "bad" people, if you go to rubbery, most likely you will attract police chase and so on and so on.
But beeing aware of every little thing from that set of atributes, beeing aware what are you attracting in your life, allows you to predict what way your life will go, and you start seeing signes around that you are attracting exactly what the result of whole set is, and you can call that coincidence, but I will still call it signes. There is no such thing as coincidence, everything is result of what you attracted to your life, and when something is obvious, followed by the feeling, I will call that the sign.

 

"Coincidences" have as much meaning as you give to them. Perhaps go further and see why the meaning is even there.

 

Faith goes anyway you want it to. Which means it's useless. It's just a fancy word for "justification to think and do whatever I want".

 

what a terrible picture...

 

having faith in karma is hardly having justification to do whatever i want.

sure you need to be careful where you place your faith, but it isn't always a bad thing.

faith in itself isn't a bad thing, neither is religion. it's humans that twist and pervert it until you get things like wars and death.

 

No you didn't understand my point. I didn't say having faith in X is justification to do whatever you want. I said having faith is justification to do whatever you want, because you can have faith in anything, there is no rule or method to determine what you will or will not have faith in. Therefore faith is simply another word for "permission to exercise my will". In this case, your faith in Karma gives you mental permission to speak about it as though it were fact.

See how it works? It's a process:

1. There is a concept which has no proof (and therefore is not a "fact"), Karma.

2. You believe in Karma despite lack of proof (this is where most people lose me)

3. You "have faith" in Karma

4. Because you "have faith" in Karma, you assimilate it into your worldview as a fact.

4. Karma is now a fact to you.

Look at 1 and 4. You went from something which is clearly not a fact, to having convinced yourself it's a fact mentally. This is what bothers me about faith. It's like you're tricking yourself? I don't get it.

You act like faith is something everyone has, and the choice is just where to put it. What you don't get is that you weren't born with faith. Faith is a mental process by which you take postulations and with alchemy transform them into axioms. "I think there might be karma . . . [process] . . . There is Karma".

I don't have faith in anything. I don't have faith. Why have faith? Aren't facts good enough? Can't you just look around and make decisions based on that? Works for 99.99999% of the rest of biological life . . . (and a whole lot of other humans as well!)

When faith and religion produce wars and death, that is not because they are "twisted". That's like saying when you murder someone with a hammer, you've "twisted" the hammer. No, you haven't. The tool has simply been used for another purpose, one that you happen to deem not good. But the tool is unchanged, and is the same tool when used to build a house or a church.