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Daniel Mackler - Essays For The Enlightenment Seeker (pg. 12)
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| Spam |
| quote: | Originally posted by PivotTechno
Lol, well you guys had better get yourselves on over to Vancouver's Lower East Side and start spreadin' the good word to all the addicts that all they have to do is take the actions necessary to improve themselves!
Halle-ing-lujah! |
Different causes, and therefore different cures, for different addictions.
It's obviously going to be tougher to overcome a physical addiction that's permanently damaged your brain compared to overcoming an addiction to TV. Some of those addicts were probably just curious about what the drugs did, and got hooked. How do you isolate the childhood trauma, place the blame, and overcome an addiction like that? |
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| Theresa |
| quote: | Originally posted by PivotTechno
Lol, well you guys had better get yourselves on over to Vancouver's Lower East Side and start spreadin' the good word to all the addicts that all they have to do is take the actions necessary to improve themselves!
Halle-ing-lujah! |
You are truly beyond thick. Have you seriously not comprehended any of the conversation we have been having surrounding this?!
Stop making bull statements and think for a minute and come up with something logical to say or just STFU. |
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| PivotTechno |
Angry, even!
| quote: | Originally posted by Theresa
You are truly beyond thick. Have you seriously not comprehended any of the conversation we have been having surrounding this?! |
Right back at'cha!
| quote: | Originally posted by Spam
It's obviously going to be tougher to overcome a physical addiction that's permanently damaged your brain compared to overcoming an addiction to TV. |
L-O-L
Certainly explains why we've gone from 3 or 4 channels to 500+ in the past 50 years. |
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| Spam |
| quote: | Originally posted by PivotTechno
Certainly explains why we've gone from 3 or 4 channels to 500+ in the past 50 years. |
Funny thing about addictions.
Some people don't WANT to be cured. |
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| PivotTechno |
You can't be cured of an addiction you're blissfully unaware of.
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| Spam |
Say nothing and post a funny picture.
Thank you for conceding the point. |
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| PivotTechno |
Ah, well as mentioned in passing somewhere earlier in this thread, addiction is addiction is addiction, with the only difference between these various addictions is the degree of social acceptability. Mate states so himself in the vid posted back on page two. You can argue otherwise, but you'll be incorrect.
| quote: | Originally posted by Spam
Some of those addicts were probably just curious about what the drugs did, and got hooked. |
Yeah man...I'd just come home from putting in my volunteer time at the community garden and was about to pick up the kids from daycare, when the thought suddenly entered my mind, "I wonder what it would be like to try some nice, clean horse?" went straight downhill from there, let me tell you!
Glad you thought the picture was funny. Ima go STFU now. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by PivotTechno
Lol, well you guys had better get yourselves on over to Vancouver's Lower East Side and start spreadin' the good word to all the addicts that all they have to do is take the actions necessary to improve themselves!
Halle-ing-lujah! |
Shouldn't you be there telling them that the solution to their problem is finding out exactly when their childhood spirit was disrespected? |
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| PivotTechno |
RTFM
Regardless of the words Mackler uses (and if you don't have any tangible translation for "spirit of a child", you've most likely forgotten what it's like to be one), both him and Mate point to childhood abuse as the root cause of addiction. So yes, suggesting to an addict (whether of heroin or TV) that they sort out when that abuse/trauma took place (as the majority of people suppress those memories as a defense mechanism against the pain they cause), then processing the emotions that come up as a result is part of the healing process.
Just how many times does this have to be repeated, exactly? |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by PivotTechno
Just how many times does this have to be repeated, exactly? |
You can repeat it as many times as you want, but it won't suddenly lose its flaws.
There is no "tangible" definition for "the spirit of a child" because you must first enter into a massive debate about what exactly the a "spirit" is, and I assure you there's no nice and clean end to that debate. Then when you've come up with your subjective, ideological and controversial definition of a child's spirit you can start figuring out what exactly constitutes "disrespect" thereof, and indeed what constitutes respect in the first place. And while you're at it, you should probably figure out exactly where we place the end of childhood, the point of transition between being a child and being an adult, and then come to a nice and clean conclusion about the transitive and temporal state of childhood in the first place.
Basically, it looks very much to me as though you've got an incredibly malleable non-definition forming the bedrock of his entire theory which can conveniently encompass just about anything to justify just about anything, the kind of self-affirming begging of the question that forms the basis of many a cult, and yet because he tells you it's "simple" you don't even think about it. That's the route to enlightenment, I suppose. |
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| PivotTechno |
And therin lies the problem. Much easier to debate concepts until your bones are brittle and nothing's been accomplished, than to work toward grasping them on a level that goes deeper than what you can view with even the most powerful atomic microscope.
And yes, you're right - the mind does love to complicate things to the point of throwing walls up around the truth. Great example is Vipassana meditation, which I mentioned earlier. The basis for this particular kind of meditation is to do away with preferences - non-duality, all things being equal, however you wish to phrase it. And yet time and time again, I've watched students go up before the course teacher and exclaim, "This morning my meditation was so good! I was so happy and blissful, and then when I sat this afternoon, I had a horrible meditation, so much pain and discomfort." Even though it's gently drilled into their heads over and over that regardless of pain or bliss there is no good or bad meditation, that it simply is, the concept is too simple for their cluttered and complicated minds to grasp and they will continue to protest to the contrary until they are blue in the face.
So yes, some things just are that simple, and both Mate and Mackler have come to the same conclusion about the abuse/addiction connection through years of careful observation of others as well as deep, honest introspection into their own condition. Can you say you have the same under your belt to back up your own conclusions, or are you just speaking off the top of your head, time and time again? |
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| Arbiter |
| There is a difference between a simple explanation and an explanation so vague as to be devoid of any meaning. |
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