Arrogance and Temerity

Jack’s post on the Arrogance of SETI has me pondering my own way of limiting what I am willing to know.  Looking at our Technological Model of knowledge, as we have been doing, we can see how we tailor our knowledge in an attempt to fulfill the needs of the self, and that this causes us to only acknowledge the reality of what makes the self comfortable.  An example might be Behaviorism which (I have been told) tries to set up a model of the human, composed entirely of “measurable” tendencies.  I guess wherever there is arrogance there is probably a lurking fear of the unknown.  My own limitation?  I avoid any visions, plans, or hopes, for which I cannot see their path to fulfillment.  My fear of idle daydreams seems justified by the Noble Eightfold Path, where speech is supported by vision and intention and leads to action.  But I wonder if I misuse this desire for coherence and integration to justify turning my back on a greater sphere beyond my familiar “reality”.  How can I allow myself to dream, without it just being the self’s make believe evasion of the chance to be present in a greater realm?  –Michael

About Michael Gray

I first started studying TSK in the mid 1980's and have since attended a number of retreats and workshops at the Nyingma Institute, in both TSK and Buddhist themes. I participated in the life-changing Human Development Training Program in 1991, and upon returning to Albuquerque co-founded an organization, Friends in Time (with a friend who has Lou Gehrig's Disease), which continues to serve people with similiar disabilities. I contributed an essay to "A New Way of Being"--the last one in the book--in which I describe how learning to honor who I have been has broadened and deepened my openness to present experience. I live in New Mexico with my wife and two sons.
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3 Responses to Arrogance and Temerity

  1. tinac says:

    Hey Michael…I am in Cazadero California right now at the TSK retreat and it is lovely here. The retreat is in it’s second day and has been very intense. Wish you were with us…much love, Tina

  2. michaelg says:

    Hi Tina, It’s nice to hear a voice from time and space during this vacation from TSK. I’ve been reading Knowledge of Time and Space on my own for the past month or two. This morning I read a passage that presents second-level Space as “projecting” the ordinary space/appearance pair. This use of the image of “projecting” reminded me of how the self is also presented as “projecting”–projecting attributes like substance and linear time onto a realm that doesn’t really possess them. I had the thought that perhaps the self, busy in its self-serving projections of what it thinks it wants, might be reassured by the thought that another, more allowing kind of projection is going on. And that a more open kind of freedom–even for the self as it is–might be available by acknowledging that we don’t have to work so hard at inventing our imagined reality, because another reality is already being imagined for us.

    I like the way you relate our dreams to our attempts to realize them. I’ve been thinking that either can be a starting point, just as the third component of the Eightfold path can be a starting point: i.e., we can integrate both our dreams and our actions through meditation, no matter how disturbed both may be. Hope you’re enjoying your summer. — Michael

  3. tinac says:

    Hey Michael, I think I can dream all I want but I have to take action to make those dreams come true. When my life stops working, or if I want something to change, I have to do something different. I can get stuck in that which is comfortable, even if it is not good for me. Fear can keep me in a reality that does not encourage me towards reaching my potential. When I make a decision to change my life for the better it means that I become co~creater with the Universe. I don’t know what I can or cannot do until I attempt it, and even many of the things that seem to limit me at present are only temporary. Planning everything out limits the outcome and robs me of the spontaneity of life.

    So…be the dreamer of your dream…but dance it into reality…

    Much love, Tina…

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