Learning How To Be Free: An Invitation, from a painter Options

[painter]

NOTE: The original Topic Title of this thread was "Learning How To Read . . ." but I've changed it in hopes that we can begin to escape the literal associations of the word "read". If "free" suffers the same fate, I may change the Title yet again.

I've been thinking about this for a long time. Months.

Over the course of being a member of this forum, especially in the context of "Alternative Theories," I've occasionally mentioned the necessity of "knowing how to read." Of course what I mean by this isn't directly related to knowing how to read the words you see before you here. All of us know how to do that more or less. If you're not familiar with my having said anything about this, I point you specifically to this post on my pinned and closed 'esoteric' thread here: http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum//index....t&p=7894218

A few members of this forum have asked me to say more about what I mean by this "learning how to read" business and it is this that I've been contemplating for a long time now. Having given it some serious consideration I've decided to post and pin this thread here as an open "invitation."

First I am inviting you to engage with me and one another in some discussion here about this topic. However, I am very aware that discussion of this topic is by necessity limited so long as it remains nothing more than discussion. To go further requires something more of us: Specifically a willingness to engage in exercises and experiments which can begin to move us beyond mere discussion into the realm of actual experience and knowledge based upon that experience.

This invitation, therefore, is offered as a starting point in the hope that some of you may wish to go further and take all this to another level. All I will say about that at this point is that the possibility exists, although necessarily limited by this forum/text medium within which we correspond. For this purpose I'm in the process of establishing another forum, participation in which will be by invitation only and will require that users not be anonymous and have a genuine interest in coming to a more direct understanding through observation.

So, I will leave this as it is. Feel free to ask whatever questions you wish and we'll see how this goes.

[painter]

Thanks, bill. That's correct, I'm not talking about reading in the ordinary sense or not only in the ordinary sense. I don't know if you've looked at the "esoteric" thread linked above. Although it has been left incomplete, in it I've attempted to point toward something and perhaps arouse some curiosity.

I appreciate your mention of my "considerable intellect," education (or the lack thereof), semantics and the relationship between language and culture. All these things are relevant to some extent but what I'm getting at is that regardless of how "smart" we are or think we are, how "educated" we are or are not, there is another level of intelligence and education that, for the most part, neither our language or our culture has touched or awakened in us. It isn't that what I'm getting at is "more complex than basic decoding of symbols." it is actually something quite simple: We do not really know ourselves from the inside out. We've not even been taught that such a thing is possible. And for this reason, no matter how much we know or think we know or how many years of schooling we've had, we're all ignorant, all "asleep" in relation to this other level or quality of intelligence that may be possible for us.

In the West, so called "education" relies primarily on the formation of the ability to recall certain pieces of information and the ability to put those pieces of information together in a way that our culture and society finds "useful." All this comes from outside and is inscribed upon the more or less "blank slate" that we are when we are born into this world. There is nothing wrong with this in and of itself. Human society has its needs.

The problem is this so called "education" is both fragmented and incomplete. It produces what I call "educated idiots." That is, people who know or think they know a great deal but who do not know themselves from direct observation and, therefore, do not know how they know and do not know the limits of their so called "knowledge." Such people may make good sheep or good robots for maintaining, implementing, propagating and perpetuating a culture or so called "civilization," but, as such, they are less than fully human. The full potential of the human being is neither developed or actualized in us because it is neither needed nor wanted. To the extent that any lip-service is even given to the possibility, it is usually presented in the context of some rather narrowly defined, limited and often perverted sense of "excellence." Society makes roll-models of geniuses who dazzle us with their ingenuity or creativity or physical ability while everywhere they forget their umbrellas, can not sustain meaningful relationships and/or are addicted to behaviors, thoughts and feelings they can scarcely acknowledge, let alone control. I don't mean to single out any one group or class of people. All of us are unique specimens and yet all of us are in the same boat. We're all "neurotic" in the sense of fragmented, divided against ourselves and one another, living lives that are largely fictions, mostly cut off from and unaware of the possibility of connecting with something deeper, a form of intelligence within ourselves that doesn't come from "out there," can not be found "out there."

It is this possibility of discovering something from within ourselves that is my focus.

I mentioned some of this in the 'esoteric' thread but just to underscore it on a personal note, I was born and raised on a farm in Indiana and came of age in the 1950s/60s. By accepted standards I was not a particularly "good" student. Although I was the first person from my family to even get accepted into an "institution of higher learning," I soon dropped out. Up into my mid twenties, early thirties, I was incapable of writing a coherent sentence, much less connecting together a complex series of thoughts. I say this because I'm aware that my ability to write now often gives people a wrong impression -- that this is something I've always been able to do or is a result of being 'educated'. Not so. Not exactly. I was fortunate enough to have had a 'nontraditional' high school education and have continued my education on my own throughout my life. Much of this has been through my own curiosity, interest and inquiry. Then in about 1980, I began to come into contact with a few people who have significantly influenced and guided my own inner search. This has come in the form of introducing me to certain ideas as can be found in books but, more importantly, introducing me to the possibility of coming to know something from within myself, for myself. Influences in life can not be avoided. We're all influenced by the world around us. To pursue the kind of search I had embarked upon, it was necessary to come into contact with certain ideas to, in a sense, 'till the soil'. Guidance, then, became necessary to cultivate the seed and sprout and help clear away the competing weeds of distraction. But the real 'fruit' and 'harvest' of what I'm pointing toward has to come from within as a result of my own interest and willingness to engage. Nothing of this nature can be given to anyone from anyone -- which is as it should be. Although 'help' is needed, ultimately the responsibility lies with us. One can not free slaves who are satisfied with their slavery or, using another metaphor, free inmates who have grown accustomed to and comfortable in their prison. (Edit to add: especially if they are slaves or prisoners from birth -- as we all are -- perhaps knowing nothing of or only heard rumors of some mysterious thing called 'freedom'.) Perhaps we can sneak the tools in past the slave master or the guards but the slave or the prisoner has to free himself. He has to know that he is a slave and a prisoner and he has to want to escape. Only then will he make use of the tools provided.

[Christophera]

The full potential of the human being is neither developed or actualized in us because it is neither needed nor wanted.

I would have to say this is a sentence that has elements basic to the subject.

I percieve a fork in the road for humanity. It relates to humanities perceptions of need and want. Then a paradox is evident because it is quite possible to not know what is needed, and to also not want it if it is discovered.

Accordingly I would re state painters sentence, "The full potential of the human being is needed but is unknown so therefore unwanted."

Otherwise, I see an effort to describe what human sentience might be, or what exists in it's place in western society and the role that a formal education has taken in the most practical sense as an inadequate proxy for sentience.

Good item for discussion, but heavily rooted in psychology and philosophy, so a grounding, centralizing purpose congruent and on a similar fundamental level that keeps it focused on eventual function or relation to threatened dysfunction of soceity and development/recovery of true culture, would be a good beginning. And I suppose what you've done with this thread is potential way to institute that.

[lunk]

I would have to say this is a sentence that has elements basic to the subject.

I percieve a fork in the road for humanity. It relates to humanities perceptions of need and want. Then a paradox is evident because it is quite possible to not know what is needed, and to also not want it if it is discovered.

Accordingly I would re state painters sentence, "The full potential of the human being is needed but is unknown so therefore unwanted."

Otherwise, I see an effort to describe what human sentience might be, or what exists in it's place in western society and the role that a formal education has taken in the most practical sense as an inadequate proxy for sentience.

Good item for discussion, but heavily rooted in psychology and philosophy, so a grounding, centralizing purpose congruent and on a similar fundamental level that keeps it focused on eventual function or relation to threatened dysfunction of soceity and development/recovery of true culture, would be a good beginning. And I suppose what you've done with this thread is potential way to institute that.

I know,
it's just not fair.

imo, lunk