rein drop:
triple think:
Plant the Seed. Grow the Poet Tree.
your friendly neighborhood spiders, man
triplethink
I don't know... I'm trying to overcome this rationalist mindset right now. Can't say for sure if it's the right thing to do, but after getting a taste of what meditation can do (guessing that's the VOID for you), I'm hungry for more.
I'd like to take it slow... as fast as possible. Realized today that I put a little bit too much pressure on achieving expectations. Gotta drop those, take it moment by moment.
I enjoyed writing my rap verses earlier - I don't know what spurred me to do that. Maybe lack of sleep, maybe post-meditation afterglow. Apologies if it sounded snarky. Wasn't what I was going for.
Keep dropping nuggets in this thread if you see me going off the path. My 3rd-circuitry always can go for some 5th-circuitry advice.
Back to meditation - shooting for 8 hours today. We shall see.
There is no need to "to overcome a rationalist mindset". Rationality is one manner of thinking. If it is the only manner of thinking one has, particularly if there are severe limitations to the efficacy of one's 'rational faculties' then one is truly impoverished by these limitations. There are many ways to strengthen and extend or develop rational faculties and various modes of rationality can be very useful and beneficial faculties. There is nothing particularly wrong with rationality except when it the supposed 'rationality' is in fact quite poor and undeveloped. Quite often the greatest kinds of widespread harm or self harm are typically done by those who suppose a kind of thinking is rational when in fact the given thinking is not at all rational.
At the same time there are limitations to the applicability of rational kinds and types of thinking. There are many other ways to employ the mental qualities, faculties and capacities which are a typical of human beings.
There is great promise for human beings in the "Age of Reason", there are, no less so, great dangers in the "Age of Treason." The differences are important and involve the important and discernible distinctions between the development and perfection of qualities of and applications of reason, as opposed to remaining in relative ignorance and delusion about qualities and applications of reason.
Meditation is both attention to and attending to. Meditation is attention/attending to sense perception and sense abilities. Meditation is attention/attending to perception and perceptual abilities. Rationality is a part of the nature of perceptual and sensate or sensual being, beings and becoming. So too is irrationality. So too are outlooks, insights, internal knowledge, external knowledge, conformative knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and ultimately liberating types of knowing and understanding.
I don't take the view that any kind of knowing or understanding of any kinds of healthy and well developed functionality need to be sacrificed in order to become more aware or more knowledgeable or more free from ignorance or delusion. I take the view that this kind of thinking is simply irrational and false and can be seen to be obviously so quite easily.
For instance some people might say that 'enlightenment' will mean the end of 'emotions' or 'feelings' of one kind or another. I don't think so, I think how I view the nature of sensations or responses changes as I understand the nature of such faculties but I don't think such faculties go away or that it would be desireable that these faculties go away for some reason. I don't want to become a machine or a block of wood. If that is someone else's goal, that is fine, it isn't a goal for me.
What one comes to understand by developing the senses and the mind is that all views are limited in one way or another and that all views are confining and imprisoning in one way or another. The path to freedom is always expansive and not more confining. It is not about destroying what is necessary to be what we are, it is about setting what we are free. In order to be freer we need to become better informed and better disciplined, it is this greater knowledge and skillfulness that frees us, regardless of what kind of knowledge and skill it may be, meditation is no different.
Sometimes I rise to the height of rationality, other times I head out for some other mode or range of thought and thinking, it depends what serves. Investigation and experience are the teachers of us, the self taught percipient and sensing minds of the conscious universe. What works and what proves out in practice, to one end or another, is what wins out for this or that purpose. When we start in to something new it is best to do the learning about it up front. It is not good to just throw a kid with no experience or knowledge into the drivers seat of an eighteen wheeler and send them out on the freeway with no instruction or practical guidance. Everything skillful takes a lot of time and energy and rational attentiveness. I hope this is clear enough for you if you think about this for a while because you will find this to be so whether you wish this to be so or not.
Return to sense, to the senses, to sensibility. Enjoy what you can of it. Don't unnecessarily belabor it. It is the life and mind you have, be kind and walk towardsbeing at peace with it as you transform it.
Maybe this sounds too "advicey" but you said you were up for it so, here is some, straight up. It's your thread, after all.
For instance, one needs to accept stuff before one can let it go and let it be. I can cling to my asshole for a long time but eventually it is going to leave another shit smear on the highway of life. Just sayin'.
rationally yours
triplethink