WINNERS AND LOSERS, Is there a better way?

[TargeT]

Posted by Craig (here)
For all the talk of there must be pain to experience growth, or you must go through negativity before progressing forward etc, does it actually ever end? I appear to be coming to my own internal realisation that in this incarnation it can never end, we for a better term are currently experiencing hell at various levels some worse than others, is it a karmic payback for past indiscretions? It appears to be reaching a summit, but I feel like the mountain climber that breaches to top only to discover a bigger mountain just beyond we are still have much further to go.

Negative, positive, hell, pain... what are all of those really?

They seem like emotion influenced terms for different inputs, or specifically inputs that we do not, or were trained to not, prefer.

There are so many constructs that we have willingly taken up and often tenaciously cling to; but they aren't real... they are just ideas on top of reality, a sort of mental filter.

Posted by Craig (here)
Positive mind and thought is all good etc or if you currently experiencing difficulty then progression must be made but it reminds me of the carrot and the donkey, we will never break through to some magical mystic version of heaven but yet be driven by the idea that we must experience what we experience now to entitle us to some spiritual growth...

I don't think I have the ability to explain this well, everything you said in here sounds like what I was eluding to above... the donkey follows the carrot because it wants the carrot, what if you ignore the carrot?

Posted by Craig (here)
Ernie above expressed better than i could but yes I think we are trapped in something that i can't explain.

And yet again, life goes on so i need to go back to the charade so i can clothe and feed my family whilst i am lucky enough to be able to do so.

Your perception is yours; it also can be shifted by you should you choose to do so.

I do not feel trapped in a charade, I see opportunities for growth and experience; I see challenges to preconceived notions I had and the joy of experiencing what I've blocked myself from in the past... but we all have differen't perspectives and circumstances.. which type would you rather be in?

[Craig]

I think I see what you are saying TargeT but do the opportunities ever eventuate? Or how does ignoring the carrot change your worldview? Is it best to a well fed unhappy cog in the machine (albeit only temporarily) or a happy homeless hungry hobo?

Also the more you concentrate on trying to control your thoughts\feelings towards the positive the more negativity and pain you see in the world? I don't feel i actively go looking for it but it is there standing out in front including posts here on the forum?

I'm just going through guilt one gets when they believe they are being treated unfairly in the scheme of things only to realise there are people closer to you who are truly experiencing monumental hardships so it feeds on itself until I just feel like ****e

[DeDukshyn]

Posted by Craig (here)
I think I see what you are saying TargeT but do the opportunities ever eventuate? Or how does ignoring the carrot change your worldview? ...

If I may interject .. .when you are chasing the carrot, almost all you can see is the carrot. Your emotions are banking on getting the carrot, or fearful of not getting the carrot, and so you move in that direction, whilst blind to the real world around you.

When you ignore the carrot, you finally have the freedom to see and experience the real world. It looks much different than what you imagine it is, for imagining it is the only thing you can really do while following the carrot, with the help of vague input from the odd media "headline" that you may see in your periphery, while focusing on that carrot ... Let's not be fooled, alternative media is still media, fear porn is fear porn, and fear is highly addictive, the source and intention matters not, how you react to it does.

[TargeT]

Nailed it D.

It's a very widely applicable metaphor.... hell you have to sit down and make sure you ACTUALLY want the carrot in the first place, or if you're just following social conditioning (chances are often pretty good it's the latter).

It's difficult to see the constructs when you are in them and cling to them for identity (aka ego... the I, ME etc..).

[Ernie Nemeth]

Animals fear for their lives too, and for the lives of their loved ones. And the weak ones get picked off, that is how the stock remains strong.

Humans had the capacity to change their environment, to make it more safe by killing predators, and making weapons, building walls, and studying the natural world. Yes, their weak survived. And that weakness was mixed in the stock and caused more weakness. Humanity is a sick species, with many dead end stock still with us today, mixing with the strong.

Was it kind of us to let the weak survive to mating age? Does it serve our species?

You can take humanity out of the natural world, isolate him from danger, and find means to make the sick well, or expend resources on keeping the sick alive, but you cannot take the natural out of humanity. Allowing the weak to survive also means that the strong have less resources for themselves since the weak need more than the average. This is true of the poor as well.

The weak and the poor are the unnatural element added to our natural lives. In order for them to survive the rest of us have agreed to work harder and to do with less. The reason we cannot move forward as a species is because we have imposed a heavy burden on ourselves without addressing the burden head on. If we want to protect the weak and the poor, it has to be entrenched in our constitutions and be a force we happily work towards with established protocols. It cannot be left to the kindness of strangers and their penchant for charity.

Also, since the economic pressure to earn money is impossible to ignore, the poorest regions on earth are where all the reproduction is happening. So the ones with the least economic opportunity are the ones having the most children, who will not be able to find a job and will become merely a burden on their countries.

These are some of the negative aspects of our economic systems that do not account for the natural order and impose unnatural suffering on the weakest amongst us. So when it is said that we have this system because it protects the weakest amongst us, what we are really saying is that we can keep our loved ones safe because we have the economic might to do so. Africa has no such largess, for example, and their weakest and their loved ones do die - by the thousands every night.

[DeDukshyn]

Posted by Ernie Nemeth (here)
Animals fear for their lives too, and for the lives of their loved ones. And the weak ones get picked off, that is how the stock remains strong.
...

I like the perspective Ernie - it is true that fear in the animal kingdom makes animals more likely to be predated. There's good videos of animals getting predated, but then not succumbing to their fear and then "miraculously" getting away, after initially succumbing to their fear and getting caught.

Fear, or lack a thereof definitely has a massive influence on outcomes in the animal world, far outside of abilities.

Honey badger tangles with six lions and walks away ...

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NvlalDNxccw

The most terrifying thing about Canada geese is their fearlessness ...

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8kGNzwciH0M

There is a distinction here though between animals and humans when it comes to fear. Animals only ever fear when they are in immediate danger, to protect their bodies from immediate harm. Their "ego" is in their bodies, in their rightful place. Humans have acquired something like a disease that somehow has allowed the ego's protective mechanism into their minds. Our powerful memories and active imaginations likely have some role in that, but much of it is programming. Because of this, we are constantly in a state of fear, often disguised as practicality and encoded into our cultures.

We imagine fearful things all around us, even when they aren't happening, we remember and drag with us the things that caused us fear in out past, and then project those to imagine fearful outcomes of the future - this isn't natural - this makes us weak, and as we all know, manipulable. I believe that if we fixed this problem of excessive fear in our minds (collectively), we would relax into a more natural way of existing and dying. We wouldn't have 10 billion statutes and rules governing everything in our lives, we wouldn't have a massive pharmaceutical addiction, we wouldn't fear death, we wouldn't need to rely so heavily on "money", etc. Overall we would be a much stronger and more competent species. If we get to this state (or when), we would, I believe" quite happily live in balance with "mother nature", and not seek to fight her constantly.