[Mike 5]

Originally Posted by harmonygirl Maybe free will is a necessary illusion. Wouldn't we all go squirrely if we truly believed that there was no real choice? I don't know if I believe that order and chaos are distinct. To me, the Mandelbrot set (sp?) unified the chaos of nature. Sorry I missed this discussion.

EXACTLY!

And welcome - nice name by the way, Harmonygirl.

This is EXACTLY the view used in the Human Design System where No Choice is fundamental - the mechanics of consciousness in material form. And this is an experimental process within a specific framework, there are now perhaps half a million people across the planet experimenting with the "No Choice" as a lifestyle, including myself, as an empirical experiment.

It is a very subtle path to even THINK we have no choice. And that was something missing in the social froth of everybody talking at once - the clearest ideas remain here as people have time to post them properly.

But there are so many advantages and dangers of the No Choice idea - and I use this phrase as it is clearer than Not Free Will. To have WILL and it is not FREE is exactly the essence here, and I did not sense much grasped at the linguistic level of what we were chatting about, although I had technical problems and so on.

The opposite of Free Will is "MY" will is NOT mine at all. So WHOSE will is it? The danger is obvious - hitler, manchurian candidates, etc. I have spent 16 years training in increasingly advanced forms of hypnosis, following a very bad experience for me in 1989, I wanted to find out what Tony Robbins had done to cause me such a terrible reaction. In those moments, of course, when hypnotism goes wrong, sleepwalking takes over.

The LOGICAL conclusion from Harmonygirl's post - is that we are all sleepwalking.

The awareness of this sleepwalking, - I am using my own way to describe this - I believe corresponds to the concept of spiritual awakening sought in Human Design. This is neither enlightenment nor endarkenment, which form particularly extreme forms of awakening. Awakening is a term for watching your life happen as if it is a movie, enjoying the best times as "I", and accepting the suffering as just how it all works, breathing out and in.

So what I am saying is that many many many people HAVE gone gerbil to realise they have no choice.

I remain in love with dialectics. I have my cake and I eat it. I have two hands, and in one I think this and in the other I think the opposite. A magical wave of all intermediate possibilities naturally is there too, and I find this a most wonderful solution to many many questions. Dialectics is really something becuase it is beyond words and concepts in that way - it is Free Will AND/JUXTAPOSED/STIRRING like a flowing thing of different rainbow ideas/AND No Choice.

Or am I already a squirrel?

[Mike 5]

Originally Posted by harmonygirl To me, the Mandelbrot set unified the chaos of nature. Sorry I missed this discussion.

I sense the kind of thinking I like, and I would give it about 2 weeks before you and I are throwing dishes at each other about details of basically similar ideas

Would you be willing to start a new thread to explain your specific ideas on this separate topic - I'd appreciate if you could let me know.

You have only posted 2 posts at this time so I will start by seeing the other one, and look forward to fractal (Mandelbrot) and dialectic ideas (unification of chaos of nature) or other ideas from you.

[harmonygirl]

I think that in trying to follow free will or determined existence we fall in to that old trap of dualistic thinking. I think that trying to live one way or the other (while an interesting experiment-please keep me posted) doesn't allow us to realise that existence may consist of both, short-term free will and long-term determinism. Maybe this all hinges on what you regard reality to be (are we all just a spot on someone else's thumbnail?) and on your beliefs in reincarnation.

[Guille]

Originally Posted by harmonygirl I think that in trying to follow free will or determined existence we fall in to that old trap of dualistic thinking. I think that trying to live one way or the other (while an interesting experiment-please keep me posted) doesn't allow us to realise that existence may consist of both, short-term free will and long-term determinism. Maybe this all hinges on what you regard reality to be (are we all just a spot on someone else's thumbnail?) and on your beliefs in reincarnation.

Someone else that disagrees with Hegel! At last! God, I thought I was alone.

Do you agree that "dualism doesn't impply opposition", and/or that the distinction between "unity and mutiplicity" is not the same as "nothing and everything"?

[harmonygirl]

I hadn't thought about duality NOT implying opposition. I think that the nature of separation (or otherness) often leads to opposition. Duality in particular, typically divides environment into things characterised by diametrically opposed features. Perhaps it's possible to achieve harmony in separateness, but I think in that case, being separate has to be a function of appreciation of unity and subsequent choice to be separate.

[Guille]

Originally Posted by harmonygirl I hadn't thought about duality NOT implying opposition. I think that the nature of separation (or otherness) often leads to opposition. Duality in particular, typically divides environment into things characterised by diametrically opposed features. Perhaps it's possible to achieve harmony in separateness, but I think in that case, being separate has to be a function of appreciation of unity and subsequent choice to be separate.

It is neccesary that if separateness impplies dissonance (opposition), then that separateness impplies harmony (agreeement). This is clear for when we give a property to something, then not only always we are impplying that it doesn't have the other distributive properties, that is, we are neglecting the rest of the colours if we say something has one colour, but also we are determining that all the other colours could be properties of this thing or of anything. The first view is hegelianism and the second is antihegelianism. The thing is that Hegel himself impplies antihegelianism, but it doesn't contain it. Therefore we can take the dualism of hegelianism-antihegelianism as not being dialectic. Anyway, a synthesis can never be something real, for it is only the combination of the two oppositions, not the mixture. And we knwo from chemistry that mixtures are new substances but combinations aren't.

[harmonygirl]

Okay, this reminds me of a Koan I once came across "Does a dog have Bhudda nature?". After much thought, I had to flip to the back of the book where it said "If you have answered yes or you have answered no, you have lost your own Bhudda nature". By defining, we limit (but only in our conception).
I like your light example. When you think about the fact that we only see colours that are not absorbed by materials and the materials actually contain every colour but the one that we see, it kind of messes with your mind!

[Mike 5]

Originally Posted by harmonygirl I think that in trying to follow free will or determined existence we fall in to that old trap of dualistic thinking. I think that trying to live one way or the other (while an interesting experiment-please keep me posted) doesn't allow us to realise that existence may consist of both, short-term free will and long-term determinism. Maybe this all hinges on what you regard reality to be (are we all just a spot on someone else's thumbnail?) and on your beliefs in reincarnation.

Well the chat on Free Will seems to have developed a life of its own!

I feel I have found a very interesting and powerful alternative to dualistic thinking. I also note the hatred of Hegel, Guille, but he failed to express himself at all consistently or well, and that to my mind is not a weakness but the courage to explore the exact terrain BEYOND singularity and duality.

Here is a new example - take the word love and some people say the duality is hate.

But truly indifference can also claim to be THE ultimate duality of love, for you can only hate someone you care about in some way, for not being or doing as you wanted, hate is a let down of expectation perhaps. In any case, look three things.

And now a fourth - MAGIC! Yes, many marriages transcend the first three to reach magic! Both love and hate are transcended and a blue flowing spark kind of flows and wiggles, and this is for now just a conceptual framework, so let's leave the topic of love, and notice the TETRAHEDRAL structure.

I am very much involved in the Tetrahedral structure, and wonder sometimes if I was rash to nail my identity to the concept Dialectics. However I have to communicate with many people and whilst Dialectics has a louche charm, like an ageing whore, Tetrahedral is really off most maps.

Beyond that I use a Hexagrammic form too. All in good time - but this is co-incidentally similar I think to the Chinese YiJing with 64 Hexagrams each of 6 binary lines.

I too DESPISE polarity thinking and yet have written a book on how to get beyond simplistic thinking into a more Dialectic form. I use this daily and it is wonderful, because once you have any idea, you spontaneously train another part of your mind to keep a footing in the contradiction(s) and then natural neo-cortex spillover generates many many many new insights by a process I call juxtaposition - the Bezier curve between the duality.

In short, Bezier curves are the magical flowing that is natural to our species and to nature itself.

Now I will see just how much this topic has flowed on - too many egos here? Or healthy enthusiasm and 2006-01-07 Free Will, YOU BET!

[Mike 5]

[quote=harmonygirl]I hadn't thought about duality NOT implying opposition. I think that the nature of separation (or otherness) often leads to opposition. Duality in particular, typically divides environment into things characterised by diametrically opposed features. [quote]

Mind Operating System (MOS) is duality. Comparison and contrast. How else can mind think.

Even the Amazon river or any oak tree uses only left/right branching structure too - and this may be because DNA has to build cell split by cell split by cell split.

Duality is therefore present in MIND and in NATURE. And yet the river is one thing and the tree is one thing?

By free will or by no choice, I have a neo-cortex with neural connections and the illusion of how things appear to me - that way reality seems to me to be beyond simple duality.

Duality is easier to explain and share, but thought is looser and more beautiful than words or any way we have yet found to share it?

[harmonygirl]

Okay, not to get too pedantic, but what is "right" or "left" or "tree" or "river"? Concepts and definitions that we (arbitrarily?) apply. Not only is thought looser and more beautiful, but emotions as well. I don't think that when we (emote?) we compare and contrast. The only piece of art that ever brought me to tears was not about other pieces I've experienced, it was only to do with the energy in that piece. Generally, I don't find duality or separation in emotion. In fact, now that I think about, I find unity in emotion.