How Do We Know We´re Lying to Ourselves? Do We Seek The Truth, and Integrity, and the Kingdom of Heaven?

George Braucht So how does one know when one is lying to oneself??? Reply 3d John Alan Shope George Braucht good question. My guess is that most of us do not know, unless or until we experience some type of painful wake up event. Your thoughts? Reply 2d George Braucht Yeah, it's deep, literally, into The Great Spirit, Soul, or whatever one's faith tradition calls God. This is the visceral or semi-conscious part of the "mind" that operates 24/7/365 from (pre-?)birth onward. The challenge is that we often learn to ignore this ever-present part of us, especially in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic) cultures in which we are taught to favor thinking or cognitive processes that only abstract or deconstruct "reality" with little or no regard for the liminal space that is most informative and profound. It's not merely "feelings" or "emotions" that we learn from socially-derived participatory thought but the unverbalizable sense of the divine that connects us to Everything (God). In fact, instead of being open to new or "different" ideas, many people now have their views consistently mirrored by the logarithms that select for us the similar views we're most exposed to via you-instant-tick-twit-face that further propel us into consensus "we're right, they're wrong!" thought wile distancing us from the reflective, natural and spontaneous proprioception that is the evolutionary basis of consciousness. Yes, painful wake up events can jar us there and the trick is to stay there to explore the non-verbal meaning of the experience. Of course that's just my opinion - i could be wrong. Reply 2dEdited John Alan Shope George Braucht you covered a lot of ground. Our brains are deep and complicated. Yes, our current digital culture repeatedly reaffirms and reinforces our delusions...and that may indeed sabotage our collective evolution. This may be why we have not been in contact with aliens. No life form can survive long enough to escape their own solar system 🙂 Reply 1d Holly Hope George Braucht how does one know whether they are psychotic or neurotic? Reply 5h George Braucht Technically, those require a professional diagnosis in the countries that use those terms/concepts. Practically speaking, it's the felt sense of the degree of congruence or incongruence between one's inner consciousness (mind, spirit or Self) and how our social connections view us = their feedback. Many cultures do not define those as illnesses or problems to be corrected. For example, Indigenous people value the Two-Spirited and prosocial shaman have likely existed thousands of years or since we started living in groups. Reply 4h Mark Rego Monteiro George Braucht I´m interested in the train of thought you guys played with here. You followed JAS´s comment on a "painful wake up event" along what can be classified as the corporate-consumer culture and polarized positions, before adding the bit about self-perception and social reflection for patho-psychological diagnoses. "how does one know one is lying to oneself?" was your original question, that you also added your comment about "WEIRD" lol, deconstructing, and pose a common failure to comprehensively go beyond "reality" to feelings and prevailing social constructions to sufficient divine perception. I guess I´m intrigued by the meaning of "lying to oneself", since I ultimately dedicated myself to seeking the truth, and my place in it. I´m also reminded of three of the Buddha´s key misdirections, or desire-related attachments: ignorance, greed, and hatred. "Lying" sounds like informal terminology, implying informed intent, when I´m struck more by the uninformed nature of how people fall into what seem more like delusions. People are misguided, along with being misdirected. They are widely misinformed. Thus, my experience was largely one of being, at worst, uninformed, or inadequately informed as I got oriented to education and grabbed a hold of that in high school. In the meantime, I remained open to the realm of religion although I had been raised an atheist humanist. I thus delved into skimming a chapter on Taoism to get a jump start on spirituality. I also soon wrote a letter of social criticism to the high school paper questioning Reagan era anti-Sandinista Nicaragua guerrilla terrorism by the CIA. What I´ve noticed is that my systematic truth and integrity seeking has identified the key relevance of complexity theory, mentioned by Fritjof Capra most centrally, and embedded in what gained some popularity as "Chaos Theory." Based on that, I wouldn´t go with "a painful wake-up event." That is a good hypothesis, but adjusted for complexity issues, I´d identify the need for things that reflect Piaget´s "schema," people need to develop, or have some sense of constructive and pro-active operative frameworks that make sense of things. They can be led into the deeper delusions of MAGA mindsets easily in the face of pain. I´m grateful that my dad brought up psychology with me, as much as some socialism and Marx. And the term "multinationals." The natural world sparked me with jolts of awakening experiences. I also enjoyed dipping into some Alan Watts and others in college as I wrestled with seeking a major that ended up in Biological Anthropology as I surveyed from behavioral psychology to religious ritual. Pop music, like Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin, and David Byrne´s Talking Head stuff included powerful images, like "Shock the Monkey," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Girlfriend is Better." Sting and The Police´s "Driven to Tears" and the like no less. Come to think of it, Byrne wrote "Once in a Lifetime" about a corporate-consumer awakening to some kind of sense of flow. I recall Wang Chung´s "Tall Trees (in a Blue Sky)" embodying the ecological sensibility. Thomas Dolby´s "She Blinded Me With Science" also reverberated some insight. The actual truth required me to seek and practice spiritual and related options. Working for environmental protection out of college for a summer highlighted protest type activity for regulatory legislation. I then taught in rural Kenya, getting some simpler societal farm exposure, and the like. As I started to explore work in a big city upon returning, I left a corporate job by getting a job in social services. As I started earning, I recognized green product stores, and researched green businesses. That and holistic classes and martial arts. We can seek truth, or as Jesus put it, "the Kingdom of Heaven." Seek it first, he said, that rang in my head despite an atheist humanist upbringing. In relation to others, I see the importance of "building bridges." By raising the profile of sustainable and spiritual lifestyle frameworks, the role of informative attraction can operate instead of merely rather dumb pain. Given the pivotal nature of economic activity, I have come to understand my spiritual practice as linked to economic lifestyle orientations. Buddhist Right Livelihood, etc covers that. Whoa, that was a doozy of a reflection.... Thanks for the chance to get into that a little bit.....