Friday, October 22, 2010

4Ceibas: Value Uncut

You mention recognizing filters and then doing the work needed to remove them. This is to assume that you feel removing your filters are a good thing in the first place. In terms of applying a fresh outlook to situations I agree. I fear we may get into trouble if we begin completely abandoning our filters which may in fact assist us in seeing things perceptively.

I noticed that you mentioned shields but didn’t say much more than that.. Is the shield you are talking about the complete rejection of things we are not ready to accept so we ward them off for fear of what they may reveal?

This could take form via the subconscious, or it could be something even more on the surface of the conscious mind. Now shields don’t necessarily have to be a bad thing and also can arise out of wisdom. For instance I used to enjoy horror movies but then as I began to practice meditation realized that it may be better for my overall psyche to give myself only nourishing food and to limit the intake of violent imagery so I stopped watching this sort of material in an effort to protect myself from the blood and murder rife in the horror films, even if the adrenaline rush, and macabre still could be deemed as entertaining. Once again I wonder if this falls into the realm more of a shield or a filter. I can’t say for sure about your feelings about the shield because you didn’t really expand on that aspect of your thought process regarding values.

Let me move on to the idea of tools which in some ways I think can fall into an overlap of the previous too. That is I guess what I am talking about with the idea that I can’t say that filters may necessarily seen as something that may wish to entirely eliminate from our ability to take in new experience.

As a tool you mentioned qualities such as empathy and compassion. This brings to mind the teachings I received based on the work of Ernest Holmes (author of Science of Mind). He talks about the qualities of Christ as he calls it. It is important to recognize that he does couch his language in the framework of Christianity although many of his concepts seem to entirely transcend typical Christian thought. Although I hesitate to even say that much because my personal experience in the various types of Christianity is somewhat limited.

***This is some rough cut ramblings from a conversation a few months back, I wrote a bit more and may add a second post but I owed 4ceibas some thought spillage for way too long***