3WD and others,
This is one of the best posts I have read. Real quality, IMHO. You said:
"The MoQ, or any philosophy for that matter, first and foremost appeals to
our thinking (intellectual) skills in an effort to modify them such that our
behavioral and perception skills can change in such a way as to better
attune us to reality."
This is really a fine statement of the relationship of a metaphysics and
"working on oneself".
I believe you have made a real contribution to taking the MOQ out of the
debating arena and into the real world of 'attending' to reality.
As I understand the mystics, they are claiming that reality is all about me,
not hard to find, but hidden from me by my 'self' created illusions, the
dream in which I live.
3WD "one of the key 'thinking' insights of the MoQ is that Dynamic Quality
is "direct everyday experience"...dynamic quality is part and parcel of
being. No dynamic quality, no being."
I am inclined to think that this is the essence of what Pirsig has to say.
The key issue in working on ourselves, then, becomes how to discriminate
what is, (dynamic quality), from what I fantasize is, but is my illusory
creation.
3WD "with the appropriate attitude, training, and practice it is possible to
'attend" to the dynamic at a much higher level than most of us normally do."
Yes, this is what I call praxis, or Wilber calls 'transformational
practice'.
3WD "And how do all these theories suggest this is done? By moving through,
or attaining, or evolving, or attending, to ever higher levels of static
quality."
Yes indeed. Each level attained both brings together into a new whole what
was separated in previous experience, while at the same time offering us new
insights into what is, that 'lure' us into a yet higher level which will
reconcile the newly emerging discrepancies of the new level, experienced as
incompleteness.
3WD "The path to dynamic quality is paved with static stones slowly laid one
in front of the other over the course of a lifetime."
Beautifully put.
I would want to add just one thing. The path you refer to can be seen as a
self-constructed path. This would be an error. The self, according to the
mystic, is the measure of our lostness. In that sense, anywhere the self
wants to take us is bound to be an illusion. The true path to the real is
found by disengaging from the fantasies the self has created, and attending
to what remains. It is thus a via negativa, an undoing of the self
constructed boundaries that define us and keep us from experiencing 'direct
everyday experience'.
So, while we might picture the path as an ascending path, one where each
level transcends but includes the previous one, the praxis is more of a
descending, an attending to ever more subtle illusions, which, when seen,
are discarded. A step towards what really is has then been made.
John B
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