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plant spirit rant

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I fucking hate not understanding how things work

Really? I fucking love it! :)

Because if I don't know how something works, then I can go try to figure it out. And if I do manage to find an answer, it's like scratching a mental itch. Very satisfying. I would never get to experience that "ah-ha!" moment if I already understood everything. Of course, to take enjoyment in the little understandings, I find that you pretty much have to let go of all the big questions like the meaning of life, but as Michael Valentine Smith said "I do not grok that these are questions", or as Frank Herbert put it "the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience". So I don't really separate it into "big" & "little" questions - learning how a refrigerator works might seem like a "little" understanding, but that process of learning, of being curious about things in the first place & being able to satisfy that curiosity & work something out... just my opinion, but I think it's a great way to spend your life, trying to figure out how the world works. Insofar as I believe life has meaning, that meaning is to live. You're never going to grasp it all anyway, so why not quit angsting about the ineffable stuff & take enjoyment in the things you can follow?

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Anodyne, Thats brilliantly said. I couldnt agree more. It's like hearing myself, if i actually could be bothered to type it all out.

Nice one =)

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Doing some gardening today, getting pricked by hidden spikes made me think of something.

If plants have spirits do you think cacti with spikes want to be eaten?

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Maybe they do and it's a screening process. It takes a certain degree of both dexterity and commitment to remove the influence of those spines. If a creature has the ingenuity to do this, perhaps they are also the kind of creature who would enjoy the results of this venture, covet the cactus in question and perpetuate its existence by propagation and dispersal to new areas for growth.

A creature who would be repelled by the spines would likely leave it alone in future. Maybe the cactus knows how to find its human underlings by presenting them with a puzzle and offering rewards for solving it.

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Enjoying the conversation, don't have much to say that has not been said, but enjoy reading it all the same.

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after reading your post Anodyne i experienced an "Ah ha!" moment :)

Thanks for reminding me of that.

I certainly loose sight of things in my angsty moments

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Maybe they do and it's a screening process. It takes a certain degree of both dexterity and commitment to remove the influence of those spines. If a creature has the ingenuity to do this, perhaps they are also the kind of creature who would enjoy the results of this venture, covet the cactus in question and perpetuate its existence by propagation and dispersal to new areas for growth.

A creature who would be repelled by the spines would likely leave it alone in future. Maybe the cactus knows how to find its human underlings by presenting them with a puzzle and offering rewards for solving it.

I guess peyote is less selective?

Or that the spiky cactus spirit and the snail spirit are best buddies.

edit: i was also thinking, so the spirit continues with the plant until after it's dead? All our notions of spirit that i've understood would talk about our spirit leaving our body upon death.

What's with plant spirits being tied to a molecule?

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Maybe they do and it's a screening process. It takes a certain degree of both dexterity and commitment to remove the influence of those spines. If a creature has the ingenuity to do this, perhaps they are also the kind of creature who would enjoy the results of this venture, covet the cactus in question and perpetuate its existence by propagation and dispersal to new areas for growth.

 

A creature who would be repelled by the spines would likely leave it alone in future. Maybe the cactus knows how to find its human underlings by presenting them with a puzzle and offering rewards for solving it.

like the tortoise has a shell and doesn't want to be eaten, but the badger will still do his best to get a tasty meal

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Reality is not real. Nor unreal. Science "proved" it. Science is nowadays what christianity was in the dark ages. what it says is the truth, and opponents are ridiculed.

The methods are different, but the way science presents itself is the same.

Have you seen atoms, molecules? No. How do you know they exist? the "Science" said so. during the dark ages, they would say - the "Book" said so. you see the logic?

my point is, don't believe anything the bipedal apes tell you (including me).

I don't care what the truth is. Try to make the best out of life and create the reality you want to believe is true.

You like molecules? great, think of it that way.

Spirits sound better? great.

In the end, it doesn't matter.

We will be gone in 50 years or so. all of us.

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real is just a word. a word that describes a concept. so reality is a concept & nothing more. Just like everything else we have assigned a series of vowels & consonants to & then attempt to discuss.

Nothing wrong with science as one in a collection of disciplines through which to attempt come to terms with existence. It's people that are dumb.

Just like there was nothing wrong with what Jesus had to say about 'reality.' It's human ignorance that makes Christianity (or any other religion) lame, just as it's human ignorance that can make science just as lame. The irony is that both these things are inspired by the desire to abolish human ignorance.

People tend to strongly identify with groups/ideas/movements & from that point on, the essential basis of those groups/ideas become secondary to the compulsive drive for people to perpetuate their ego's through that identification.

People will use all kinds of things to identify with & therefore strengthen their sense of self. Science just happens to be one of the latest things through which people do this on a mass scale.

A fundamentalist materialist scientist is likely to be almost as far from the mark as a fundamentalist religious nut. In large part those two extremes are very similar, it's only the content of their close mindedness that differs. When it comes down to it, neither of these pathological extremes has much to do with the original concepts that they are supposedly speaking in the name of, but rather point to that persons relationship with their own ego.

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Have you seen atoms, molecules?

 

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"What's with plant spirits being tied to a molecule?"

Whats with my spirit being ties to a molecule? Whats with the molecules i need to eat, shit and breathe to live?

Whats with all this sh!t? LOL

What's with mycelium being neurotransmitters and serotonin? whats with it's molecule being phosphorylated and my being methylated? whats with some others being hydroxyl and some brominated? etc. etc. etc

It's whacky right? =)

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i'm sure you didn't 'really' communicate with your deceased friend. But the fact is you aren't 'really' even who you think you are. Reality isn't linear, reality isn't even 'real'.

this 'self' we think we are is nothing but a amalgamation of thoughts, memories & emotions that have formed into a temporary psychological structure within an organism that is in fact entirely indistinct, except in a superficial sense, from the rest of the entirety of the multiverse.

If you had a meaningful 'communication' with your deceased friend & it was helpful for you then perhaps in some sense you did communicate with him, as the distinctions that give the impression that you are separate from him or anyone or anything else are entirely a product of thought forms that are nothing more than a high frequency holographic projection inside your mind. The fact is though too, that, along with the data from your senses that is decoded by your nervous system, everything you have ever experienced or thought about & in fact the entire universe, as far as you have experienced or thought about it is also a holographic projection inside your mind. This is science. Science tells us that the universe & 'reality' is probably a lot more complex & bazaar than science will ever have time or scope to fully quantify.

People are free to believe what ever they like about souls etc, but what we can say is that when your friend passed away, his temporary physical cohesion cycled back into the biosphere & apart from that temporary physical cohesion, all that really came to an end was his particular temporary amalgamation of thoughts, emotions & sensations that together formed his 'ego'

Perhaps when you were tripping balls you also temporarily transcended ego's illusion of separateness & were privvy to a 'reality' beyond our tiny little self absorbed ego, where 'communication' with the 'dead' was possible. So maybe you did communicate, but it doesn't mean it was actually him, but the fact is, he was never really actually him even in life, just as you are not actually you & i am not actually who i think i am either.

It's this concept of self that makes these things so confusing. death is an illusion, because the 'self' is an illusion. When there is no 'self' then there is literally no distinction between 'you' & the rest of the universe. All phenomena are part of one great, seemingly infinite fluctuation of form & emptiness

(to put it simply) & what we call 'death' is just another form of fluctuation & the end of a temporary, self reflective amalgamation of thought. It only hurts because our survival as an ape throughout our evolution has favored our being strongly identified with this temporary amalgamation of thought & emotion.

i log in just to give this man propz ^^

and also to say, that the concept of plant teachers has one that has had enduring influence on the way I choose to relate to life . this type of animism isn't as easy to discredit as people may think. it's important to remember that the west has no monopoly on understanding what it is to exist in the world. We've evolved to be attuned to the narrow spectrum of phenomena that's enabled us to pass on our genes, nothing else. we exist at a strange scale, largely ignorant of really small shit like atomic, subatomic and molecular phenomena, but incredibly small when considered within a context that includes other planets, stars & black holes. the capacity to perceive truth is not a biological necessity, and can indeed in many instances be a hindrance to human flourishing. and the difficulty of surmounting that old Kantian distinction between things as they are and things as they seem, the Platonic distinction between appearance and essence, subjects that know and act and objects that are known and acted upon, these aren't easy ones to get around for those that are born into Occidental culture. the technological capabilities that the west has used to increase interconnectedness is not to be sneezed at, but neither is the internal investigations undertaken and mapped by aboriginal cultures all over the world.

'because science' is not a sufficient reason for discrediting world views whose foundations are incomparable with ones own views. the only thing i can say for sure is that, well this is how life appears to me. but words are blunt objects. what really interests me is how it appears to other people . the more different, the better. i know what the scientific conception entails because i've been involved in utilizing its methodology in an academic context for going on 7 years. what i find really fascinating is for example the Australian indigenous beliefs that the world is sung into existence through the song of human consciousness. In western philosophy Bishop Berkely was the first to formulate the problem of whether matter produces consciousness, or whether consciousness is primary and its existence generates matter. this problem is yet to be solved in physics, and is known as the question of the 'observer effect'. Aboriginal narratives about what it is to exist in the world should not be accorded an inferior status of 'myths' or etc. we in occidental culture have our own that are just as entrenched, and as paradox notes the idea of a self is principle among these. people always speak from the depth of their own ignorance, and i'm drunk at the moment but the OP is a prime example. taking psychedelics is about dislodging certitude. it's not about receiving information from plant teachers. plant intelligence is completely alien to our own, and has nothing to do with knowledge. but plants are teachers. it's not about empowering yourself, it's about dismantling the sense of having a self. psychedelics show that a self isn't a necessary precondition to having experiences. if you take the right ones, you will have incredibly vivid experiences without needing to have a self. you may discover that the very notion of having a self is implicit in the system of exchange that are slowly extinguishing the life force of the planet. the self is a grammatical fiction inculcated by a society that wants you to sell the better part of your day, the better part of your life, and leave you burnt out and too frail to . . i dunno. it's not a good idea to post while drunk. but i do get the feels when i hear ignorance . 'plant teachers' aren't real. nothing is. "whenever its name has been anything but jest, philosophy has been haunted by the question: what if knowledge were a means to deepen unknowing?" .

etc etc

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um..OK

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anthropomorphism and the personification of objects, animals, plants, celestial bodies, is sometimes an extension of ego. Who are we to assume that anything else feels and perceives the same way we do? What is pain to a plant? Does plant divided into cuttings retain a collective consciousness? Does a rock have a consciousness, but merely at a time scale far beyond our perception?

While its arrogant to assume the lack of consciousness and perception of non-human things, it is perhaps equally arrogant to assume that non-human things have human-like consciousness or human-like perception. Our way of perceiving is not the only way. Our awareness is not the only kind of awareness.

As discussed by Bill Lipton, there is significant evidence that cells in the human body have a consciousness. They respond and react, even to the point where positive and negative thinking have an effect. Does this mean they each have their own little ego? Am i committing a kind of genocide every time I scratch my arm? This kind of thinking is the effect of anthropomorphism/personification, which is kind of counterproductive to any measurable answer.

Something doesnt have value simply because it reflects human qualities. We should not protect a species because its cute. The difference is in our attitudes. We fear and judge death as 'bad'. This creates a trauma associated with the passing. Could death be yet another aspect of this extraordinary reality experience that is as amazing as birth? Could we celebrate death as we celebreate birth? Could we celebrate all aspects of existence in this manner from the most mundane and familiar to the most amazing? Its all in the way its perceived and the attitudes towards what is being perceived.

An existence as wonderfully complex and bizarre as this deserves the utmost reverence for every aspect of it, every moment, every life, and every death.

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Hehhe, nice post Conv3rgence =)

hmm, convergence.... makes me think of my own perceived reality =)

Tuck ya thing in,, your wisdom is showing :wink:

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