To: Joseph Silent who wrote (157088 ) 4/25/2020 5:41:32 PM From: sense Read Replies (1) | Respond to I'll be brutal and short. It has nothing to do with thinking or the products of thinking. It has to do with not thinking, so your mind can rest and make space for you to actually see ... And that's totally wrong... for the same reason that you deciding to call something a fruit... doesn't make it a fruit. What you are addressing, incorrectly, is not different than what we were discussing here as a requirement for excellence in performance... which requires physical learning leading to physical memory... that enables you in disconnecting physical performance from conscious control, to let things happen without thinking, as thinking imposes an obstacle to physical performance... What you are considering... is that parallel relating to observation, which is also not best enabled by thinking... but often also requires removing those filters that thinking imposes, just to be able to see what you are looking at without the errors in interpretation that errors in thinking might impose... When there is a conflict between what is observed and what is allowed to be accepted ? We're back to that question, "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes"... and as it turns out, not believing your eyes is a very common answer in response to that socially driven filter. This relates to fake news... being accepted ? To the reluctance to admit seeing a UFO ? And to Trump and coronavirus... where some claim the only acceptable solution will be that one obtained through the existing bureaucracy and its intact filters... so, removing filters to see what they will not... is a heresy. The word "child-like" reappears... because children see things through eyes without filters... having not yet learned how to build the filters they will in time... That there is value in an unfiltered view... isn't proper advocacy for adopting a parallel lack of judgement ? Sometimes that disconnect from reason means only that the children can't make proper sense of what they see... lacking the proper understanding required to make sense of it ? So I'm not disagreeing with you at all about observation... being obstructed by thinking... but most particularly being obstructed by adopting errors in thinking that result in generating improper filters. But, extending that to "It has nothing to do with thinking or the products of thinking"... is also clear error. We're considering the relationship between observation and thinking... and thinking being an obstacle to observation, but also the fact of thinking (without error) still being required to make proper sense of what you observe... after you've observed it. An "unfiltered" observation... isn't "truth" in itself ? It may simply induce making new errors in interpretation. Your "aha" moment wasn't about observation ? It was about processing what you had observed... while thinking about it after having seen it ? Using "clear-eyed" observations to help build new rule sets that help you to rectify prior errors in understanding... reformulating your perception of the relationships between things... is the point ? Thinking can easily obstruct observation... which doesn't mean observation without consideration of the meaning of what you observe... has any unique value at all ? Thomas Edison's method for inducing that ability to see in his mind's eye without the limits imposed by errors in thinking... depended on being semi-conscious... detaching conscious control from imposing filters. He would sit in a chair, holding a ball in his hand... and deliberately relax while focusing on his problem... and allow himself to drift off... at the point of total relaxation, dropping the ball... startling himself awake... but awaking with the solution to the problem in mind... He practiced at it... And that's like other things related to conscious control: of observation, of performance, or of thinking, or the surrender of conscious control in those things. There is good ability to control thinking within limits by practicing the proper use of proper filters... [reason and logic are valuable if not infallible filters that require practice to use skillfully, scientists, doctors and lawyers practice particular ways of thinking, for purpose, etc.]... and there is good ability to surrender that conscious control with practice... enabling the withholding of the imposition of filters... limiting the application of filters in observation ? As Edison perhaps showed... there is even potential utility in practice that applies only when you aren't conscious ? Science... is an odd fit here... because the method of science is one that is more rigorous in imposing limits on the nature of the observations that are allowed as admissible. Science looks at the world through a straw... seeking to remove the noise imposed by filters by narrowing the view enough to exclude the noise. Still, if you don't reconnect what you observe without filters to put it back into a rational conscious construct... with the filters in your ideas being modified by fitting them to the requirement of observation... then the value of observation is wasted... and the world remains filled with magic and mystery... and thus largely dominated by celebrating errors in thinking. .
