I walk alone

I try and practice what I preach, knowing the most effect is in applying the principles to my most subtle of thoughts.

But I find myself pushing people away. Is that love? Is that forgiveness? It may be, I try and be honourable in as much as I do. I've had people push me away, over misunderstandings, but it's the scenarios where I step away that have me wondering.

I always have my reasons, but how much is maya?

Yoga

I've just written a post that asked a question about methods.

Advanced Yoga Practices is my best answer. there is alot of fluff in the lessons, but there are diamonds in the rough! Pranayama (breathing) and meditation, years of practice to be getting on with.

Scripture

debating a Christian, trying to convince him he's seeing what he wants to see in the scripture, and how unethical substitutional atonement is, any god requiring a sacrifice before forgiving is not "practicing what they preach", we're instructed to turn the other cheek, but god will leave people in hell for an eternity?

it's weird, he's quite a fundamentalist but believes in reincarnation?! One lifetime as a Christian is enough to save from the aforementioned eternity. I thought getting a Christian to believe in many lives would be the start of free thought.

He believes in a character, a being. Elvis was a character, and a being, so Jesus was just another person on earth. I believe in characters, characters that "spoke for god", that walked on water, that meditated on water, that tamed wild animals, could be in two places at once. I just take all of them with a pinch of salt.

We should be discussing methods, I'm sure we all understand the right stuff to be doing, "be nice", forgive, love. That's the easy part, but how?

He'd bring up his magical character when asked, I think. I'd say "by training my attention span" through simple daily meditation, all else follows from that. I think.

He's a nice guy, he tolerates my occasional abusive tone and raised voice, I don't go gentle, "sharpen your axe!!" is about the worse of my ad hominem, reffering to sharpening his mind with meditation before he, for instance, watches "end times" shrilling on YouTube.   A lumberjack that never sharpens his axe doesn't chop down many trees.

I could be wrong. but I enjoy the debate.

Bad thoughts hurt the thinker most

No proof, but this just feels true.

All we see is ourself

Talking in extremes, imagine the situation. One man expects great evil of another, how much love could be perceived from where hate is expected?

All we see is our own perception. 2 layers, our brain makes our perception, or what we imagine becomes true. That is too say... all we see is our own perception because we literally can't see past our perception, because our perception is 'created in the brain' (our vision system for instance, start by looking for straight lines etc and builds our 'view' from there) but a large part of seeing is driven by our pervious learning, we see a chair or a dog because we expect too, we see a religion as being universally evil because when we 'look', we find all the evidence to support our opinion.

So perception is one part guesswork, one part learning what to expect too see in the future, and basing more guesswork on those learnings... our perception informs our estimations of the world, and estimations inform our future perceptions, all of which comes from inside us.

All we see is our perception.

You Never Really Know

Nothing in your mind and thoughts can ever be completely trusted.

Scope:
You 'know' the world is atoms and particles of real stuff? as opposed to perhaps a dream?
More precisely, it has been shown that every sense we have has been fooled into revealing glimpses of their inner workings. Blind spots in our vision, optical illusions, binaural beats and proprioceptive oddities, everything we experience is unique because very few people's 'falsehoods' will ever be the same, everybody's viewpoint is unique, all communication is 'skewed' to a degree by minor misunderstandings, thought is needed to understand what the other person _means_, they may be saying one thing, their mouths could be getting it wrong, we've all done it, or they may just been plain wording themselves badly, we've all done that too.

Implications:
Love, your reasons for any other action may be false.
Forgive, your reasons for any other action may be false.

Desires

Discussing recently the meaning of 'cognitive dissonance', and it was suggested that it meant doing something even though you know you should do something else, I wasn't quite sure, but Wikipedia agrees.

My long term goals of spending less on drugs and fast food, are being forgotten 'in the moment' and I'm doing everything I shouldn't. Grrrr!!!