Relax

Only your own thoughts can hurt you.

 

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

I'm THINKING about HURTING some PEOPLE!

 

So what of reality? Can your neighbor not harm you? Can the cosmos not harm you?

 

I get the picture of someone laying on the street beaten, bloody, and bruised, and someone (probably thedope, or someone very much like him) walking up to them and saying, "Don't go blaming the culprit, dude. Your own thoughts did this to you, and you should cut it out for your own sake."

But seriously, I think that what thedope means is that your perception of the incident will determine whether you were hurt or not. But then I think he's drawing a distinction between being hurt and being injured. So, I don't know. You'll have to ask him if he returns.

 

Hmm well this would make sense in a fashion, man. If you choose to let something become a problem then it will. Not what I was thinking at all but you may be correct.

 

I read a book once which offered this premise: "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists." What do you make of it?

Myself, the word "threatened" encompasses too broad a range of effects to be applied in anything like a concise manner.

 

Hmm well I think that it would depend on the context of what was written in said book. The only thing that is real is what is percieved in a given moment. Therefore nothing can be threatened because it is all perception. Once we percieve of something it comes into being if only for a split second, so if we don't acknowledge that it is "percieved" it does not exist. Not sure if that makes any sense, man.

 

Yes, it makes sense. Each moment is over almost as soon as it began. But then if the next moment is a continuation of the previous moment, and the moment after that moment is a continuation of that moment--like say, if you sprain your ankle--then we have a string of moments that create the extension of the first moment. In that case, I am injured, and in my book, I am hurting.

I'm not sure if that made sense, but I am too lazy to correct it if it didn't.

 

In a strange way it does make sense. Then again it also fits in with my conscious reality theory, so I may be a bit biased in my acceptance of the thought.

 

It seems that the statement "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists" could be pointing to the fact that, since we can be harmed, then we are not real.

I get the feeling that it is beyond the perspective of 3-dimensional beings such as ourselves. But it's hard to stop conjecturing.

 

Hummm. The word nothing is concise unless you think nothing is something. What is real is what is so. What is so is secure in it's so-ness. I make of it the end of terror specifically and undue suspicion in general.

It is so that our bodies can suffer injury, we cannot meaningfully suppress this fact. We can rest assured this fact cannot be threatened. Another fact is that no matter what entourage of defensive maneuvers you develop the body is still susceptible to injury and in all probability will in fact suffer injury at some point. How does the ubiquitous fact of potential and potent injury threaten reality? How does one hundred percent mortality, threaten reality?

 

Quite possibly, but at the same time part of us would seem to be real by such a definition. The consciousness cannot be hurt, harmed, injured, threatened, which ever you wish to call it. So is that all we truly are? Consciousness?

 

thedope,

Yes, we're talking about bodies, which can be threatened. You are correct in thinking that the destruction of a body does not threaten reality.

 

In reality I trust.

 

Yes but what is reality?

 

thedope,

I trust that, in reality, my sprained ankle will cause me to suffer.

 

Indy,

Reality is, perhaps, that which remains after all the suffering and dying.

 

Perhaps reality is what is cognizant.

 

You could say all that we are arises with conception.

 

shared being