What is the Force

Lykeios wrote: I'm not saying we shouldn't ever talk about it or be "anti-intellectual" about it.

I'm just saying we ask this question SO MUCH. *shrug*

Maybe I'm just wrong and shouldn't have asked the question. That's always a probability.

You're definitly not in the wrong. I'd rather people be able to ask questions, and ask why we ask questions, then give answers and fight anything that counteracts them.

Lykeios wrote: I'm not saying we shouldn't ever talk about it or be "anti-intellectual" about it.

I'm just saying we ask this question SO MUCH. *shrug*

Maybe I'm just wrong and shouldn't have asked the question. That's always a probability.

Oh, no, not at all. My comment was more about what Brenna expressed in response, that this was all due to us being too intellectual, implying that we might do well casting that aside, as if the opposite were not the case. As I said earlier , your question is actually quite profound and can be interpreted in several ways. If anything, it should give us all a worthwhile pause.

Gisteron wrote:

Lykeios wrote: I'm not saying we shouldn't ever talk about it or be "anti-intellectual" about it.

I'm just saying we ask this question SO MUCH. *shrug*

Maybe I'm just wrong and shouldn't have asked the question. That's always a probability.

Oh, no, not at all. My comment was more about what Brenna expressed in response, that this was all due to us being too intellectual, implying that we might do well casting that aside, as if the opposite were not the case. As I said earlier , your question is actually quite profound and can be interpreted in several ways. If anything, it should give us all a worthwhile pause.

Ahh, got it! Also, thank you for the kind welcome, I forgot to say that previously. It is good to see you’re still around!

I try to ask questions that provoke further discussion, perhaps from another angle. The OP’s question is definitely a good one and it is good to ponder such things and discuss them. I just get curious why we ask such questions so often. :laugh:

Also, yes, I can relate to getting ahead of oneself. Haha. As you apparently recall so readily!

Sorry for the delayed response...you know...life happens!

How does one draw the line? Muslim nations are infamous for marrying off girls (as in prepubescent children) to much older men, and if I must be tolerant, I have to accept that is OK because it is their culture and I have to respect that. As belief invariably spills over in to all aspects of life (politics, ethics, etc.) wouldn’t it at least be easier if we leveled the field by applying standard, predictable rules (i.e. science) for analyzing and discussing these big questions that impact our lives? I of course understand that our particular experience of reality is always going to be unique, but if we are able to at least talk to each other in the same language, with the same rules, would be not be able to better get along and move forward to greater understanding?

YUP! Who sets the standard? You? Who is to say what is right and what is wrong? Kyrin? Rules? Should the US dictate ethics? Should France or Germany dictate morals? I don't disagree with your statement about these young children, but how do we fix it without conflict? Communications, negotiations, and discussions, become nothing more than a war of words when two peoples don't start from the same viewpoint. I do not respect the marrying off of young children, I do not tolerate it either, but I am not negotiating a One World Ethical Standard. People with much higher degrees and intellect have been trying to do that for decades, and where has that lead? We must be realistic about the ability of humans to communicate effectively...they can't. No matter how hard we try.

My point is as I said... it would be nice if we could have a level playing ground, but we are human...and we can't agree on anything. How do we get to a point were we can all discuss things and come to agreements? I have lived too many years listening to the same rhetoric about peace and coming to a common ground to know it is impossible. An Egyptian President came to an understanding with Israel and was assassinated for it. We keep trying to negotiate and communicate, and I hope we never stop trying to find this common ground, but in the end, the world will never agree to a single "code of life".

I hope the world can prove me wrong. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! Prove Me Wrong!

Gisteron wrote: that this was all due to us being too intellectual, implying that we might do well casting that aside, as if the opposite were not the case.

I don't recall implying that we should cast the intellectual aside

I said the intellectualizing is an easier place to start for most, and also where we are programmed to start (but for me personally, not the place to end) . Possibly easier too because of the potential to seek and find evidence, but I think thats a conversation for another thread.

I did say that we need to move beyond the intellectualizing because no "answer" is sufficient if you are seeking to "experience" the force, in the same way that knowing what dopamine, adrenaline and norepinephrine do to the brain VS actually falling in love yourself.

But I would no sooner say "throw out the intellectual understanding" of something than I would say "throw out the emotional or experiential understanding." Because they are part of a whole understanding.

One or the other on their own may be perfectly acceptable depending on your intentions, but (again only in my personal experience) alone they might be an incomplete experience.

Its like theoretically understanding the chemical composition of paint and the specific techniques required to use the paint in order to create art. In and of itself its a perfectly acceptable and impressive pursuit.

But you could also use that to pick up a paint brush and experience painting for yourself.

Muslim nations are infamous for marrying off girls (as in prepubescent children) to much older men, and if I must be tolerant, I have to accept that is OK because it is their culture and I have to respect that.

That's called bigotry. Your own country doesn't even have minimum legal age of marriage in many states, and those that do only adopted it as late as THIS YEAR 2019!

I know muslims and the only ones who were forced into marriage are blokes, who were quite happy being gay or a bachelor, and not so happy to have to marry the girl no-one wanted the normal way. It is prohibited in islam for people to consume the marriage (sexually and by living under the same roof) until they have reached maturity. Married in name only, while in the 'west' we have our record-braking yet-to-find-a-stable-partner 24 year-old grandmothers.

ren wrote:

Muslim nations are infamous for marrying off girls (as in prepubescent children) to much older men, and if I must be tolerant, I have to accept that is OK because it is their culture and I have to respect that.

That's called bigotry.

I agree, insisting that anyone should tolerate such barbarism or that those who dare oppose it are doing something wrong is rather quite bigoted.

Your own country doesn't even have minimum legal age of marriage in many states, and those that do only adopted it as late as THIS YEAR 2019!

Sounds like you have a problem with it, too. Good.

I know muslims and the only ones who were forced into marriage are blokes, who were quite happy being gay or a bachelor, and not so happy to have to marry the girl no-one wanted the normal way.

Despicable, isn't it? And that's just the ones you know, who live in liberal democracies, and still do such things despite the social stigma and legal disposition against forced marriages. Imagine what horrors might be going on in lands of open unapologetic theocracy that retard progress in the name of ancient dogma that is rather quite fine with the subjugation of all and the suppression of women in particular. I dread to think that there are actual people out there that still have to live like this.

It is prohibited in islam for people to consume the marriage (sexually and by living under the same roof) until they have reached maturity.

At the ripe old age of... nine years? Twelve? Well I'm glad there are some standards. After all, we wouldn't want them to consume marriage right after it was made official at age three or so.

Married in name only, while in the 'west' we have our record-braking yet-to-find-a-stable-partner 24 year-old grandmothers.

Assuming that this is a commonplace enough occurence that you could name as many as two if challenged to do so, those are indeed tragedies. Tragedies we actually got to know about because in the 'west' it's noteworthy still.

ren wrote:

Muslim nations are infamous for marrying off girls (as in prepubescent children) to much older men, and if I must be tolerant, I have to accept that is OK because it is their culture and I have to respect that.

That's called bigotry. Your own country doesn't even have minimum legal age of marriage in many states, and those that do only adopted it as late as THIS YEAR 2019!

I know muslims and the only ones who were forced into marriage are blokes, who were quite happy being gay or a bachelor, and not so happy to have to marry the girl no-one wanted the normal way. It is prohibited in islam for people to consume the marriage (sexually and by living under the same roof) until they have reached maturity. Married in name only, while in the 'west' we have our record-braking yet-to-find-a-stable-partner 24 year-old grandmothers.

It's not bigotry if it's verifiable fact... Also, it's not like anyone was saying we should exterminate Muslims or subjugate them in some way. Also also, no, you're wrong about many states having no minimum legal age for marriage. You're just...so wrong. It's so incorrect to say that it sounds like propaganda.

Anyway, we're getting drastically off topic here, so I'm going to drop it.

Brenna wrote: I said the intellectualizing is an easier place to start for most, and also where we are programmed to start (but for me personally, not the place to end) . Possibly easier too because of the potential to seek and find evidence, but I think thats a conversation for another thread.

Hehe well it is a thread about what is the Force, so going from that angle I was looking at Hath Yoga on wikipedia, hatha could be said to mean 'force'... Patanjali's Hatha Yoga describes yoga as being; yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ


Swami's and Taimni's seem to gloss over that citta is more the emotive side of the mind then the intellectual side, and that vrittis is disturbances or discursive thoughts in particular rather then forms per se.

I like Bryant's the most except where it says the word 'active'.... I think discursive is more accurate on its own and that efforts of inactive thought are tools to reach discursive thought such that the state he refers as the goal is active cursive thought, in that non-dual awareness rather then a non-dual nothingness. Such that the "the power of pure consciousness settles in its own pure nature". Being that cursive is flowing and running, rather then sitting and feeling. But I guess it depends where ones focus is, and I think that makes a good definition of distinguishing the inner and outer being where that focus is to the Force, its immanence as an internal experience of flows, or its existence as activity in the external environment... and of course the mixing of both if possible but the later to me implies cognition and active thought else it would not function effectively in the environment.

So intellectualizing seems ok to me, so long as its effective to what it purports to represent.... which sort of provides a framework for whether something is on or off topic But topics mean different things to different people, so we end up wondering perhaps how something relates to the Jedi path which of course again is personal to a large extent. Perhaps if people were more willing to deliberately make efforts to link their comments into how it relates to their Jedi path then it might make the whole thing flow more interestingly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatha_yoga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citta

Are you advocating that The Force is just a form of Yoga? The Buddhists believe that there is no corporeal, that everything is imagination dreamed up by us to pretend we are real. So by definition are you suggesting The Force is something that is just in our minds?