Are you navigating and stearing yourself to your own future out of the infinate possabilities yet? or are you still being lead? lead by your surroundings in what you might call the present, but ultimately when you look again, is always the past... lead by the TV, lead by the priest, lead by your "friends" and "family", lead by your possessions, lead by your experiences... wouldn't you prefer to have some choice over the matter? see the many strands growing into the future from where you are, jutting out new branches with every quantum nuance, to collapse only on the best one? ? or would you prefer to be lead by the threads that tell you the world is going to end and we're all going to die and that it's inevitable, and so you choose that allowing yourself to believe it, and so that's the future you collapse on, and just as its happening, you turn around look behind you and point ahead telling everyone "look, it was inevitable", just because you let it be inevitable by choosing to believe it, and so collapse onto that strand of the many possible futures... no, i wouldnt choose that one either, i'll choose something different, i'll choose to keep living now, keep changing my futures as i navigate to better and brighter ones, branches that grow wider, stronger and full of more vitality, branches that grow on for longer...
Like many, I'm an in betweeny. You can't expect yourself to not be influenced on even a minute level by friends, family, experience, fancy packaging, material goods, other, etc. in some way. It is a nice ideal, maybe you yourself are even there, a truly free bird. Even if you make a truly conscience decision to live in this world, that big pattern matching machine that sits on top of your neck might just be fooling you, it never ends. The day you stop being vigilant is the day the world you reach for disappears. Not trying to be a downer here, just saying keep your head up!
+ rep for the great post. Digit, your post seemed like an informercial trying to get me to attend classes to learn how to become a real estate agent and, "Take control of my own life and financial security". I don't mean that disrespectfuly just the first thing that came to mind. But I am positive it is impossible to live life without being influenced by your surrounding environment. Our minds and souls (if you believe in them) are nothing more than processing units that act on our past perceptions of experiences with a good bit of how and why were perceive those experiences depending solely on the genetic fabric of your being. Regardless, even if it were possible to navigate through life unabstructed by your environment, I think I would prefer to be led by the forces that be. Navigation is hard work, something I'm very fond of. I figure that the force of life in my society will drag me along and put me in the situations that I will then act on and consequently wait to be led again to my next destination.
my head has never been so sore from being slapped so hard ever before. i'm even slightly compelled to hit you up with some negative rep!!! but wont. ok, lemme put it another way to yas. http://forum.grasscity.com/real-lif...-didnt-happen-me-brialliant-stoners-01-a.html in this thread, carl sagan talks about appreciating the aspects of his creator self and his observer self. if you've convinced yourself you can only be influenced by your surroundings and cannot influence them, then you have switched off your creative (creator) aspect, and are not even half the person you could and should and would be, if you switch that back on. to think that we're only comprised of our experiences completely ignores that pieces of us that are often termed genuis, insanity, creativity, originality, eccentricness, spontinaity, etc etc etc.
everything and everyone you come in contact with leaves some sort of influence. in the end though, it's up to you how and to what extent it does so. don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people out there that will tell you how it should influence you (government, school, relatives). only the sheep will listen though.
My apologies Digit I had no intention of offending you. It was just the way that I read your first paragraph of your first post. I'm guessing from your neg rep commment that you took my post to be an ad hominem and I did not mean it to be so. I did this same thing not too long ago with my advising professor in a lab that I "work" at. I told her that the article she gave me to read, espcecially the Method's section, sounded like a Radio Shak ad (it was full of the most intricate (sp?) details about the machines, cages, and ect. she used in her experiement). She was offended by that as well. My communication skills must suck big hairy infected mokey balls. To your response, yes we act on the things in our environment, we'd have to since everything acts on us we too must act on everything. But that doesn't change the "fact", IMHO, that our reactions are based on our perception of our experiences interacting with the environment. As we interact these perceptions and experiences can change but I don't think that anything reall has any choice in the matter.
i wasnt offended, just upset to see you prevent yourself like that. heres an excerthingymie from presumedly a being that exists consciously in more dimensions than we: sent to me via that good good friend and fellow cannabis activist who goes by the name "Peace Plant" on the net. i draw your attentions specifically to the bit about overcoming the illusion of being bumped about by fate and it's corresponding part about accepting your "divine birthright".
Oohhh so the slap was from yourself, as in you hit your head because of my shallow post. Haha that makes significantly more sense. The neg rep part threw me off. I'm torturing myself by writing a paper at the moment so I will respond to the email later once I have read it.
I am influenced by my friends, not so much my family, but more my friends and peers. I am influenced willfully though. I accept and enjoy the affect and influence that they have on me. Also, I validate and process how they affect me, so in the end, the choice is mine. Its like writing music, selling the album, but still retaining creative control. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good analogy. Over the past 2 years or so, since I started smoking, I've been working on myself. I've completely reconstructed my personality, and its still in the works. I've still got a while to go, but I feel that Marijuana has helped me find my core, and attain control over it, and put pieces (my traits) around it. This way, I have turned into the person I am, and will be through my own agenda, but also through the influence of others.
i am being... or i have been? so often we build our futures in the present (when else can you?) by using the past as if it is the future. IT IS NOT! leave the pas tin the past, stop treating it like it is the present, once you do this you will see the truth behind phrases like "a little bit of history repeating" and concepts like cyclic time loops which suggest things like predestination and linear time experience that we cannot change. the truth behind it is that we made it happen like that! derail a few nuero pathways that tell you to tell yourself these things and you will be taking those first steps into an existence of infinate possabilities, where you realise that all those limitations were of your own creating, and can all be left in the past.