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Very often. I spent long periods of time in reflection. That is how I have been able to get to know myself and transform into who I want to become.
What do you make out of it?
For the most part, I get very good insight into really reflecting on who I am and what I have experienced. I reflect on what I read and learn. I try to give myself the time to really understand, because that is the best way to integrate it into my daily life. I find that reflection leads to great insight, but then you need to put it into practice, otherwise it is lost.
What puts you into that mood?
Anything! Time alone, a song, a need to make personal space, a beautiful scene, an interesting thought...
Are you bothered by it?
Not at all, I love it! I think we need to think about what we have learned and done in order to understand what we can learn and do going forward.
While I definitely agree that putting your insights into practice is very important, I'm always thinking that even pure thoughts can twist behavior unconsciously and because of that I don't think it gets "lost", don't you think?
Seems like we could have interesting talks every 5 minutes considering what puts you into the mood :D
Thank you very much for the comment, it was a pleasure to read!
Being honest with yourself is key to real transformation. The human mind can twist anything into exactly what you want to hear. Part of reflection, is learning to be as objective as possible. Watching your emotions go by, while at the same time being aware that the response may not be accurate. Writing is good for this, so you can go back and check on what you wrote, looking for places where you changed "reality" to fit your needs. Changing is not always bad, since you can use this skill to transform negatives into positives, but it needs to be done with full awareness. Your power of transformation comes in conscious choice. Does that make sense?
More than just mere "make sense" :)
It is funny that when you find some old writing of yours the first question that comes to mind is "Did I really wrote that?". I always have that when reading my old notebooks. Seems like another proof for how everything is changing constantly.
I always think about it when reading about communism and fascism - both are great examples of how people can twist reality to fit their needs. The scale of the phenomenon - terrifying, but the lack of awareness, even scarier. Plus, the cause of it all was, is and it seems, will dwell in us.
So true! On one hand, the human's ability to modify the past to fit what they want to see in the future is a skill. Think about childbirth. If women remembered how painful it is, we would never have a second child. It is our ability to focus on just some aspects of the past, while leaving behind or rewriting parts of it, that ensures the survival of the species.
The same goes for convincing ourselves that what we are doing is correct, especially when we are being told what to do by a leader we admire. Just look at the famous Milgram Experiment. It was only when they began to doubt the authority of the professor in charge of the experiment that they started to doubt the ethics of what they were doing. Frightening when we think of how easily we give up our own power of reflection to follow orders.
I wonder, if you would perceive something that you are doing as "not correct",
would you do it?
for how long can you deny yourself?
how long it would take for you to make it "correct"?
When it comes to the leadership I think it is exactly an answer to those questions - leader makes it "correct" for you, so you are not denying yourself, therefore you do it.
When leader is losing our trust "correct" breaks down to the point of opposition - otherwise you would have to start denying yourself.
I will be perfectly honest with you: if it is something that in my mind is absolutely "not correct", then I would not do it. If it is something where it feels "not correct", but there is a figure of authority that I trust telling me to do it, I would do it, but only after speaking about it. I would want to understand why they think it is correct, and only if I trust the answer, will I do it. If I discover going forward that for me it is "not correct", then I would stop.
Since reading Milgram's Experiment, I have become much more aware of just how much we do even though we know it is not correct. For example, I am house sitting right now, and the family does not recycle the way I do. The first day, I put everything in the bin like they do. But by the second day, I was aware that for me that is not correct, so I created my own containers and will carry it by myself outside of the house because recycling is important.
I think most of us do many more things than we think are "not correct" because general society does it that way or a person of authority says to do it.
It's a joke, but you could pour out all their garbage and segregate it in your way :D
I wonder what they would think about it...
Also, you could look at both, society and person of authority, as if it they were leaders, so the previous steps would apply.
Of course more questions arise from that, for example to what degree they imposing instead of leading, what leading means etc.
I hope you get the gist of what I'm trying to say :)
Chew on my thoughts or get rid of them by doing physical stuff.
What puts you into that mood?
Other thinkers, mostly. Law of attraction:-D - or: conflicts with others I haven't quite solved or made sense of them. But the latter I am getting better at and decided on speak to people, spending time together instead of thinking about them. If they let me.
Are you bothered by it?
Not at all. I actually like it too much!
But: if it eats too much of my time, I get a feeling of missing something. Then I notice that I dwelled too long onto my thinking processes and get a guilty feeling. From which I know it's past indoctrination as to do something more useful instead being with my thoughts somewhere in the clouds. Other than the guilt the saying is true, though. It's about finding middle ground. Not to think too much but to think deep enough to get insights which I can use for my daily practice - so called life.
To me this border is really hard to grasp - how much time spent on thinking allows going "deep enough", but at the same time not to move into illusion (dreamland is always tempting :] ).
I'm always a fan of balancing things, but I'm not sure about "middle ground" - it suggest the center point as the right one, while it may not be so :D
It is not possible to find a balance without a centre. I'll take a picture of a tightrope walker. If I swing too far to the left or right, I fall. Transferred to my life, that's my mid-point. When I leave it, I sleep too much, eat too little, ponder or exaggerate with egocentricity.
By the way, this lovely video made me looking up some facts and the question: Have you considered, for example, that you will never again be in the place where you were when you read the beginning of this sentence?
The gravitational force of the Shapley supercluster really gets you going. This is an accumulation of galaxies about 700 million light years away whose sheer size is beyond our imagination. Because of its size, it exerts an immense attraction on the Local Group, the clusters of galaxies to which the Milky Way and our planet also belong. In collaboration with the Sloan Great Wall, a cluster of other galaxies, the supercluster brings us to an incredible 630 kilometres per second. That's over 2 million kph.
What I'm saying is that the "center" is not necessary in the "middle" - for example you have "cultural center", not "cultural middle". The thing is, center is something that gives you reference, hence balance, while middle is just a point (you even said both of those, center=finding balance, mid-point).
Therefore you should be looking out for the center, not for the middle to find balance.
Although, center often happens to be somewhere around the middle, so I get the simplifications :)
Consider this: you not only can't be in a same place ever again, but also that place will change, since it will be changed by you "visiting" it. What's more you will never be able to repeat that as it happened - in a given time with the given past - no matter what you do that place, time and past will be affecting it. Even time travel can't do that (since you will know about the past, which will be still affecting you).
Infinite complexity of the world once again... :D
Just reading stuff about galaxies gives you this vibe of unreality. As I said, we talk about things like that and yet grass behind the window still looks the same :)
:) smarty pants, you. Of course you knew what I meant with middle ground. It's just a more lax expression. LOL!
yup. Grass and fence do not change in our eyes. Good that we cannot see the process, otherwise we would go insane.
Oh, I forgot to add something to your former answer. One can have a very deep insight within seconds. So, I would say that time is not so much relevant. Time consuming it gets when one is thinking "hard" instead of thinking "deep".
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.
Very often. I spent long periods of time in reflection. That is how I have been able to get to know myself and transform into who I want to become.
For the most part, I get very good insight into really reflecting on who I am and what I have experienced. I reflect on what I read and learn. I try to give myself the time to really understand, because that is the best way to integrate it into my daily life. I find that reflection leads to great insight, but then you need to put it into practice, otherwise it is lost.
Anything! Time alone, a song, a need to make personal space, a beautiful scene, an interesting thought...
Not at all, I love it! I think we need to think about what we have learned and done in order to understand what we can learn and do going forward.
While I definitely agree that putting your insights into practice is very important, I'm always thinking that even pure thoughts can twist behavior unconsciously and because of that I don't think it gets "lost", don't you think?
Seems like we could have interesting talks every 5 minutes considering what puts you into the mood :D
Thank you very much for the comment, it was a pleasure to read!
Being honest with yourself is key to real transformation. The human mind can twist anything into exactly what you want to hear. Part of reflection, is learning to be as objective as possible. Watching your emotions go by, while at the same time being aware that the response may not be accurate. Writing is good for this, so you can go back and check on what you wrote, looking for places where you changed "reality" to fit your needs. Changing is not always bad, since you can use this skill to transform negatives into positives, but it needs to be done with full awareness. Your power of transformation comes in conscious choice. Does that make sense?
More than just mere "make sense" :)
It is funny that when you find some old writing of yours the first question that comes to mind is "Did I really wrote that?". I always have that when reading my old notebooks. Seems like another proof for how everything is changing constantly.
I always think about it when reading about communism and fascism - both are great examples of how people can twist reality to fit their needs. The scale of the phenomenon - terrifying, but the lack of awareness, even scarier. Plus, the cause of it all was, is and it seems, will dwell in us.
So true! On one hand, the human's ability to modify the past to fit what they want to see in the future is a skill. Think about childbirth. If women remembered how painful it is, we would never have a second child. It is our ability to focus on just some aspects of the past, while leaving behind or rewriting parts of it, that ensures the survival of the species.
The same goes for convincing ourselves that what we are doing is correct, especially when we are being told what to do by a leader we admire. Just look at the famous Milgram Experiment. It was only when they began to doubt the authority of the professor in charge of the experiment that they started to doubt the ethics of what they were doing. Frightening when we think of how easily we give up our own power of reflection to follow orders.
I wonder, if you would perceive something that you are doing as "not correct",
would you do it?
for how long can you deny yourself?
how long it would take for you to make it "correct"?
When it comes to the leadership I think it is exactly an answer to those questions - leader makes it "correct" for you, so you are not denying yourself, therefore you do it.
When leader is losing our trust "correct" breaks down to the point of opposition - otherwise you would have to start denying yourself.
I will be perfectly honest with you: if it is something that in my mind is absolutely "not correct", then I would not do it. If it is something where it feels "not correct", but there is a figure of authority that I trust telling me to do it, I would do it, but only after speaking about it. I would want to understand why they think it is correct, and only if I trust the answer, will I do it. If I discover going forward that for me it is "not correct", then I would stop.
Since reading Milgram's Experiment, I have become much more aware of just how much we do even though we know it is not correct. For example, I am house sitting right now, and the family does not recycle the way I do. The first day, I put everything in the bin like they do. But by the second day, I was aware that for me that is not correct, so I created my own containers and will carry it by myself outside of the house because recycling is important.
I think most of us do many more things than we think are "not correct" because general society does it that way or a person of authority says to do it.
It's a joke, but you could pour out all their garbage and segregate it in your way :D
I wonder what they would think about it...
Also, you could look at both, society and person of authority, as if it they were leaders, so the previous steps would apply.
Of course more questions arise from that, for example to what degree they imposing instead of leading, what leading means etc.
I hope you get the gist of what I'm trying to say :)
I like being asked questions:)
Yes.
Chew on my thoughts or get rid of them by doing physical stuff.
Other thinkers, mostly. Law of attraction:-D - or: conflicts with others I haven't quite solved or made sense of them. But the latter I am getting better at and decided on speak to people, spending time together instead of thinking about them. If they let me.
Not at all. I actually like it too much!
But: if it eats too much of my time, I get a feeling of missing something. Then I notice that I dwelled too long onto my thinking processes and get a guilty feeling. From which I know it's past indoctrination as to do something more useful instead being with my thoughts somewhere in the clouds. Other than the guilt the saying is true, though. It's about finding middle ground. Not to think too much but to think deep enough to get insights which I can use for my daily practice - so called life.
THANX for the video! It's to the point!
To me this border is really hard to grasp - how much time spent on thinking allows going "deep enough", but at the same time not to move into illusion (dreamland is always tempting :] ).
I'm always a fan of balancing things, but I'm not sure about "middle ground" - it suggest the center point as the right one, while it may not be so :D
I'm glad you liked it. Good old Monty =3
It is not possible to find a balance without a centre. I'll take a picture of a tightrope walker. If I swing too far to the left or right, I fall. Transferred to my life, that's my mid-point. When I leave it, I sleep too much, eat too little, ponder or exaggerate with egocentricity.
By the way, this lovely video made me looking up some facts and the question: Have you considered, for example, that you will never again be in the place where you were when you read the beginning of this sentence?
The gravitational force of the Shapley supercluster really gets you going. This is an accumulation of galaxies about 700 million light years away whose sheer size is beyond our imagination. Because of its size, it exerts an immense attraction on the Local Group, the clusters of galaxies to which the Milky Way and our planet also belong. In collaboration with the Sloan Great Wall, a cluster of other galaxies, the supercluster brings us to an incredible 630 kilometres per second. That's over 2 million kph.
What I'm saying is that the "center" is not necessary in the "middle" - for example you have "cultural center", not "cultural middle". The thing is, center is something that gives you reference, hence balance, while middle is just a point (you even said both of those, center=finding balance, mid-point).
Therefore you should be looking out for the center, not for the middle to find balance.
Although, center often happens to be somewhere around the middle, so I get the simplifications :)
Consider this: you not only can't be in a same place ever again, but also that place will change, since it will be changed by you "visiting" it. What's more you will never be able to repeat that as it happened - in a given time with the given past - no matter what you do that place, time and past will be affecting it. Even time travel can't do that (since you will know about the past, which will be still affecting you).
Infinite complexity of the world once again... :D
Just reading stuff about galaxies gives you this vibe of unreality. As I said, we talk about things like that and yet grass behind the window still looks the same :)
:) smarty pants, you. Of course you knew what I meant with middle ground. It's just a more lax expression. LOL!
yup. Grass and fence do not change in our eyes. Good that we cannot see the process, otherwise we would go insane.
Oh, I forgot to add something to your former answer. One can have a very deep insight within seconds. So, I would say that time is not so much relevant. Time consuming it gets when one is thinking "hard" instead of thinking "deep".
Now I got to go and make the dishes:)
It's always a pleasure talking to you!
Same here, I just finished my dinner :)
Keep warm Erika!
PS - Maybe tell your son to clean up :P