Dear Mair,
I guess I wanted to respond to this part.
There are alot people who live in the black and white world....it is easier!
However I do believe that the world is actually filled with gray!
Somewhere between black and white.
Living within the gray matter is much more difficult.
There can not be absolutes...sometimes yes sometimes no.....
I think living with shades is actually living more in reality than not...at a more evolved level....
does that make sense?
bizi

Dear Robert,

OK. I learned something tonight because I looked up Dr. Vaillant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eman_Vaillant
He publishes on adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism, personality disorder, and aging...

But the wikipedia site says that the article needs "clean up." Have you ever worked on a wikipedia article? I haven't. Too much brain fog.

mari

Dear Bizi,
You make a lot of sense. Sometimes I wish I could see the world in clear colors because then my life might be easier. I would get things done faster because I would put less thought into them, I'd make decisions more easily, and.....

But I end up embracing abiquity and even ambivalence because, well, that's how I see things. And it would be too hard to change a world view.

And if I need carity on an important issue, I can always ask one of those black and white thinking people for help!

Maybe we are both making sense?
Mari

yes we are making perfect sense this morning...which then makes it difficult to make decisions...this is where learning to answer the best way that we can based on the knowledge that we have at that moment...was the best decision...I may come upon other info later and change my mind which is totally acceptable...see the flux...
I think that the more flexible we are....the easier making decisions can be.

Bizi,
Yeah, I reserve the right to change my mind. It makes coming to a decision easier. I remind other people that things are usually not chiseled in marble for crying out loud. We can change/modify or forget about whatever we want.
mari

dear mari and bizi,

you all have a great dialogue going. thanks for the smile. i've made only a small emendation to a wiki article so far- on the ancient Hebrew word "selah"-but may venture there again sometime if the spirit calls. yes, lots of brain fog; but cutting through it is half the fun! sometimes...eek!... the other half comes from making fog. what is wrong with us, we ask? certainly one state of our existence is predominently dualistic; but not all are. if we were perfectly organized our capacities for love, reason, instinct, and imagination would flourish unhindered, would act in harmony. instead, small decisions acquire a life-or-death magnitude; they exploit our qualms with a serpent-like knowledge of our vulnerability. look how easily we fall back into this "dualism" while trying to escape it. bizi says "living with shades is more living in reality than not" but replaces the old dualism (black/white) with a new one (shaded/not shaded). our minds get really dug in at a basic level. i think several things can help out with this. i like examples from life best: the simplest fables, wisest proverbs, basic stories, folk tales. things that are proven through time to be universally true & form a basis in memory will be drawn upon instinctively in the proportion they are loved and embraced. i learn more from the fox, the chicken, and the farmer than i do from the latest craze in psychobabble or celebrities charming us with their reinventions of the wheel. in any event, mari, i think our goal is to become proficient decision-makers, not perfect ones. the promises we make, the expectations we have, all challenge us in the basic premises we hold about life: do we understand its simple rules? are we equipped to climb the mountain? if not, the "nearer your destination, the more you're slip-slidin' away" kind-of-thing takes control. we trip over the ambiguities until we learn their proper place in the scheme of things; it's all about mental organization to some degree & your friend who suggested the snapping-of-fingers was on to something (behavioral conditioning); and though that particular modus may not play to your hand, it's well within your power to discover one or several or many that do. we'll never understand everything, but we should never be timid about our desire to do so ("If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise" Blake, The Marraige of Heaven and Hell). living in dishonest times only makes the job harder. they say diogenes combed the streets of Athens looking for an honest man, and he probably still is. too many of us are too in love with our own fear to answer the door. not that we need to be purely honest 24/7. that would burn us out. just enough to light the wick, to let our friends know we're here.
excuse me for rambling. once i get started...well, i've got to learn more flexibility myself! thanks, all. will try to stop by again. robert. (bizi, i think i opened the chat room, but it seemed empty. is that unusual?)

Dear Robert,

Your post shows that you are thinking through lots of things. I think that it is beyond me to come up with an adequate response tonight. I do want you to know that I am reading.

I think that the chat room is often empty. I don't know why.
Maybe certain times of the day are better.
Mari

dear robert,
When ever I want to chat with someone I bump up or create a new thread saying "Chat?"
that way it is an open invitation...I also PM someone letting them know that i want to chat with them.
and yes it is frequently empty.
bizi

[ ("If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise" Blake, The Marraige of Heaven and Hell). living in dishonest times only makes the job harder. they say diogenes combed the streets of Athens looking for an honest man, and he probably still is. too many of us are too in love with our own fear to answer the door. not that we need to be purely honest 24/7. that would burn us out. just enough to light the wick, to let our friends know we're here.


who is blake that you mention?author of the book?
bizi

William Blake, author of The Marraige of Heaven and Hell. Within that work is a subsection called "The Proverbs of Hell". He lived 1757-1827.