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  • #148687
    Federico
    Participant

    A profound realisation to mark my latest birthday. It seems to me that with each passing day I know less. As I age I get dumber. I don’t mean that I understand more of how much there is to be learned. No, I mean that I’m actually losing knowledge with each passing minute. In short, I’m more stupid than I was yesterday, and the process is continuing steadily. At some point in the future, should I live long enough, I will be a complete vegetable.

    The smartest I ever was would certainly have been at the moment of birth. From the first breath the process of unlearning began to unfold. Maybe this is true for everyone else too but of course, I don’t know. If I knew that at some point in the past then it’s one of those things I’ve since unlearned. I can remember that joy of having the certainty of knowledge about things, many things, of knowing what was right and what was wrong, the blacks and whites of truth and untruth, the place in the world occupied by science, religion, art and culture. Now it seems I just have ‘stuff’ in my head; numbers, dates, faces, names, memories, thoughts, desires, fears but knowledge? I don’t feel like there’s much I actually know.

    Everything I thought I knew has been passed down to me from sources of information I no longer trust. Even my five senses filter and skewer the reality of how I experience being alive, and they’ve been doing that to me since I was born, if ‘I’ actually exist and am alive that is. So what’s left? Don’t ask me. If I don’t know the answer today I’m pretty sure I won’t have it tomorrow.

    Maybe there’s a point we reach when the process is reversed? Perhaps it’s possible to actually know stuff as you get older. Does anyone know?

    #148699
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Federico:

    My experience with knowing may have a similarity to yours. Let me know if it does:

    I too no longer trust the sources of information in my past. The most influential and abundant source of information for me was my mother, and I no longer trust, thankfully, her to be a source of accurate information. One piece of information, of knowing, she taught me was that I am worthless. Therefore, thankfully, I no longer believe it to be accurate information.

    Another source of information for me is marketing/ social conventions. For example, the information I learned is that financial wealth brings happiness-forever-after and financial worth equals human worth. Again, thankfully, I no longer believe it to be accurate information.

    Evaluating old information/ knowing and unlearning what is incorrect is necessary to learning and knowing what is accurate. In other words: peeling off what is untrue makes it possible for us to see what is true.

    anita

    #149153
    Federico
    Participant

    Anita, thanks for your response. The life experiences you’ve had that you have described to me do not chime with mine at all. I have no issues (I’m aware of) with my mother or father regarding trust, and I don’t believe I ever thought money and ‘stuff’ brings happiness. I distrust my own instincts, and my own senses. I have come to have an understanding of the world that makes it clear to me that everything at all times is purely subjective. So, yes, in that respect I would not trust the views of family members, but I see no malice or deliberate attempts to misinform, only an honest ignorance. No one has ever called me worthless. But old certainties have disappeared and I find the result of this to be inertia and a certain resignation to just having to go through the motions of existence. I can’t be certain of anything so feel I can do nothing. I have been down too many blind alleys regarding spirituality, faith, ‘gut feelings’, following passions, blah blah and now my brain is tired of trying to find meaning and never succeeding. It’s been a relief these past few weeks to simply exist, to walk, watch tv, eat junk, go to work, go to sleep, and basically disengage from trying to find anything deeper. Sad in a way, but my life is not so bad.

    #149165
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Federico:

    By knowing less and less, or knowing nothing (in the title of your thread), you definitely didn’t mean what I expressed in my first post to you.

    I think that a key sentence to what you mean is in your post today: “I have been down too many blind alleys regarding spirituality, faith, ‘gut feelings’, following passions, blah blah blah and now my brain is tired of trying to find meaning and never succeeding.”-

    I think that you suffer from overload, excess amount of information of the subjective kind: spirituality, faith, gut feelings, passions, the items you mentioned in the sentence I quoted.

    You wrote: “everything at all times is purely subjective”- the items you mentioned are subjective, spirituality for one: is there a god, reincarnation, heaven, paradise earth and so on- some believe others don’t. But there are items that are objective: planet earth, the oceans, the trees, nature, life and death.

    In your original post you wrote: “Maybe there’s a point we reach when the process is reversed? Perhaps it’s possible to actually know stuff as you get older. Does anyone know?”-

    When you suffer an overload, an excess of subjective information and your brain is tired and rejects it all, it may be the time to apply the concept of a “beginner’s mind”- the brain of the baby or young child, seeing things as if for the first time. Look at things from the beginning, before the excess started accumulating. A Beginner’s Mind is the way to “actually know stuff as you get older.”

    anita

     

    #149369
    Federico
    Participant

    Thanks Anita. I agree that I have suffered from an overload of information. I am guilty of overthinking. In the past couple of weeks I have made a conscious effort to step away from searching and striving for any answers. That’s what’s lead me to post my original thoughts in the first place – a realisation that I just don’t know anything and an acknowledgement that it’s entirely possible I never will. I suppose I’m hoping that getting back to appreciating a more superficially based life will grant me some peace and serenity. I suspect if it does, it would merely be a short term solution.

    I’m nowhere near that point yet though. Your examples of things we have objective truth for, the earth, oceans, trees etc, do not stand up to logical scrutiny for me. All material is made up of atoms, atoms which are essentially empty space. Physicists and chemists tell us this is so. What we perceive as a solid piece of wood, or a block of stone, is nothing of the sort. It’s an expression of energy vibrating at a particular frequency. Any object we understand to exist may not even be there unless it’s being observed. Then again, I’m lead to believe scientists when they tell me this. And thus we go full circle. No one can tell me anything that makes sense. Each day my understanding of the world diminishes rather than grows. What’s real? Nothing.

    Regarding spirituality and reigion. I’m afraid I’m unable to shake off a severe Catholic upbringing. I thought I could but when it came to the crunch I couldn’t. I took a Reiki course because I wanted to develop myself as a Reiki practioner (because I was attracted to the idea of tuning into some kind of good spiritual energy) but was brought down by comments from well-meaning Christians who expressed concern over me dabbling with ‘dark forces’. I don’t quite know why I place stock on what they think, but clearly I do. After I rejected my Catholic upbringing, and a period of agnosticism, I became a Christian for many years. That eventually waned but obviously elements of all that still linger. There have been lots of examples in recent times of me wandering down dead ends to find some deeper meaning to life. ‘Follow your bliss’, ‘ask the universe’, ‘listen to your gut’, all of these things have resulted in zero. I’m unable to truly open my mind for fear of something I can’t even identify. It’s not that I’ve had bad experiences, it’s more that I’ve felt absolutely nothing. It’s like I’m a cardboard cut-out in this world that revolves without me.

    So, for the time being, I feel I need to accept not knowing anything. I want to go back to a childlike understanding of things. Your advice to cultivate a ‘Beginner’s Mind’ is sound and that’s what I will try to do (but not try too hard less I overthink things again!). Thank you for taking the time.

    #149375
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Federico:

    You are welcome.

    1. You wrote: “Any object we understand to exist may not even be there unless it’s being observed”- you are familiar with the question: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

    My answer: no it does not make a sound because it takes two for the sound to take place: one to cause it and the other to perceive it (see, hear and/or feel the vibration). But the tree exists regardless, and it fell, regardless of anyone having perceived it, or not.

    2. You wrote: “All material is made up of atoms, atoms which are essentially empty space.” – correct. We didn’t know it but science investigated and proved it, and now we know. Just like people didn’t know the earth was round and now we know. Science makes it possible for us to know more and more.

    When observing and learning about life and the world, I am at peace with the following truth: I cannot know everything, it is impossible for me to know everything, not even close. There is very little of all that is that is possible for me to know. I am okay with that. And here is the key: the “little” that is possible for me to know is a whole lot, enough to keep me occupied for the rest of my life.

    3. You wrote: “I’m afraid I’m unable to shake off a severe Catholic upbringing… me wandering down dead ends to find some deeper meaning to life… I’m unable to truly open my mind for fear of something I can’t even identify… It’s like I’m a cardboard cut-out in this world that revolves without me.”-

    This is a powerful share. I wonder what about your Catholic upbringing was “severe”- what fear did it stimulate in you, what distress..?

    The feeling of disconnect, isolation, separation from “this world” is the reason for your over-thinking and searching for other world, for the world in-between-the atoms, outside what we are able to perceive with our five senses, isn’t it?

    Can you identify the origin of that disconnect, aloneness/ loneliness: in your childhood perhaps?

    anita

    2.

    #150376
    Federico
    Participant

    Anita, regarding the tree in the forest. I would argue that not only does the tree not fall, there is no forest, unless it too is being observed. How do you know the tree exists? How do you know the forest exists? Does ‘stuff’ only come into existence when it is necessary for it to do so, a bit like the images in a virtual reality computer game? And what do we mean by ‘come into existence’ anyway? There’s no need to render anything to us unless it’s being observed.

    How do you know the Earth is round? According to what scientists tell us, it is. But is it also possible it’s flat, or without form or shape? Is it possible that it’s not at all what we think it is? Round when being observed from space perhaps, but merely some sort of energy field vibrating in some dimension or other at other times. I don’t know.

    The point for me is that I have a total crisis of confidence about believing anything any more. I don’t even trust my own gut feelings.

    As for Catholicism. It imprinted feelings of guilt on me. Intellectually I have shrugged them off, as they are entirely irrational, but of course it doesn’t work like that. My subconscious irrationally behaving mind still pulls the strings of my behaviour to a large degree. Cultural indoctrination is a very powerful tool not easily overridden.

    #150382
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Federico:

    In your original post you wrote: “The smartest I ever was would certainly have been at the moment of birth. From the first breath the process of unlearning began to unfold”-

    This statement cannot possibly be true. When you were born you knew nothing. Then you learned, a whole lot: neuropathways forming in your brain as you learned many, many thousands of new things every month, language and relating to people, and so much more.

    Problem is, a  lot of what you learned was not true,  but you learned it nonetheless.

    To improve one’s life it is important to unlearn the untrue things we learned and learn what is true.

    There are forests and there are trees. I am observing them as I type this (I live in a forest area). If you trusted me, you would believe that forests and trees exist; you would take my word for it. I suppose you have to trust a source of information in order to trust the information.

    Maybe the crisis you have is a crisis of trust.

    anita

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