Are you scared of knowing too much?

[Curated_Thinking]

As the title to this posts asks, are you? I am. I'm scared that perhaps I or we as a species learns too much and the wonder of things is lost. It's like looking at the stars at night, I don't have wild thoughts about what they are. I did once for sure. The real question I guess is; If ignorance is bliss, then is knowledge at some point misery? And what is that misery? How good is all knowing? Maybe that's why the universe is infinite with infinite possibilities . So nothing can ever "know it all." Infinite breeds more of itself. Does the act of knowing, take away from the act of feeling? I'm scared that if I learn too much I may not care as much anymore for the thing I went through the hassle of learning about.

ADDITIONAL
Why do humans need so much help with eating and survival? Until humans no creature on Earth needed assistance with eating "properly" and living "healthily" and in balance (The question can and should be asked about what this balance is. Humans are an offspring of nature so isn't anything and everything we do natural?). But humanity has found that too many humans do not know how to eat properly despite the abundance of food mass produced, but problems with some having access to even that food. What piece or of pieces of knowledge skewed us so much from being able to survive alongside our environment better than we do now?

 

[Tomtegubbe]

I had a very profound vision just a little time ago where I got to meet the Maker. I pretty much got the answers I have been looking for. I greatly appreciate the opportunity, but I've also felt sad. The search for the cosmic truth has been a great driving force and now I realize how I've neglected the everyday life because of that. Getting things fixed in one's own life is so much more work than contemplating the nature of the world in your own mind.

So. I think seeking is a good thing, but getting a accustomed to the insights can be tough job. I think this is the reason why psychotherapy can be a tough job, even though most people find it helpful in the end.

To your additional question. One of the answers I got is that life is not supposed to be too easy. I believe RPG games reflect the nature of reality. With each step you and the humankind take, new challenges arise. Overcoming those challenges, preferably with other people, is what gives you the kick in life. The sad side of the game is that, you can mess it up. It's the necessary evil, but not intentional torture. I believe it's possible to spiritually come into contact with the source of all life and it will help you steer your boat in the flow.

 

[Jees]

Hi C_T,

People who believe firm that what they are is {their personality in the first place}, like a full blown fixation on their mental concepts, yes for those it can be an ardours discovery that what they believed in was just a veil, a veil designed for surviving purposes. Once that get's cracked then this former point of reference is like ... pooff.

This could lead to a personal crisis indeed. An aya group I attended in the past felt the need for integration practices outside the aya sessions they offered, exactly to cope with your concern.

A solution to this 'problem' is not a given, maybe it is not a problem to start with. Maybe more a case of learning to swim with your new acquired webbed feet? Beware the spiritual markets offering goods and services with heavyweight concepts for money, I'm sure there are very nice things out there, just as snake oil.

NDE's are usually happy stories, but it can turn out bad too. I saw a youtube of a nde who's life was miserable and depressed after his nde.

I was quite p*ssed for a long time after my mother-of-all-slaps having received information about myself/cosmos (existing wise) which I really didn't jive with. The only way to deal with it was to slowly gain a wider format in which the painful part was put in perspective, eventually putting the one-all-be-all received information itself out of it's dogma power-band.

Imho entheogenics and/or other life changing events work like leverages, no need to fear a good lever, just mind the way they are used, don't pook it in an eye by clumsiness.
Fear for a good lever is just that: fear.
There's no need to lever all and every day just because it can, there is an optimum point and chaos when crossed too far, but hey this is how we learn.

***

About proper food management:
nature doesn't care about dying/suffering at random, it doesn't care that a sheep eats the wrong bush and dies in agony. It's we humans that have become ethically repulsed by it and hating the associated pain. It's our goal to flee from natural suffering that brought us to be prudent and picky and that's making us look weak, which we actually are. We've come to great lengths to nurture and comfort ourselves in opposition to what natura at raw was offering us, the cold or heat, the enemies, the sicknesses, the pains.. Have we done a good job at this? That is debatable.

Truly, I feel for us, and I understand we're acting like hunted up weasels by forces that mainly are out there to threaten us. We are out of tune with nature for bloody righteous reasons and this is why religions are still powerful today, they offer a consolation.
That we cause suffer in trying to no-suffer, yeah that's a hard nut to crack.

 

[Seeingisbelieving]

Imagine growing up with set up institutions that taught us these truths and allowed us to deeply experience them. These "truths" are the filling for most religious texts. I personally prefer that I spent my early life learning about various religions before actually having a mystical experience. It allowed me to shed all preconceived belief systems and form my own after ingesting and digesting all the various information that other people have led me to believe.

The one thing that I have learned from psychedelics is that I do not not know shit and the truths that I learned yesterday could easily be something else entirely. Pretending like I know some special secret that everybody doesn't already instinctually know is naive. I think a place where humanity is failing is the act of actually coming together and sorting out major problems that people face today but the majority chooses to hide from and ignore these major problems that cause suffering and pain because if the problems aren't affecting them why should they help others?

I know it sounds like a bunch of hippie crap but the one truth that never fades is that we are all connected in a way through consciousness. This is why I believe that psychedelics could truly change the world. If more people had access to substances in safe settings this could catalyze a change in the hearts and minds of many who could now see others problems as their own and maybe see other perspectives for fixing large problems.

I recently read the book The Rose of Paracelcus and I highly recommend everyone who has ever taken a psychedelic substance to do the same. You will understand what I mean.

 

[mad_banshee]

Past the insight of really seeing that you are just a temporary and insignificant spirit entity...if that doesn't scare you then no. The other portion of tripping and seeing stunning visuals isn't scary to me. Many times I thought I used way too much and therefore surely dead, sometimes caring about that and other times a bit worried.:x I used to have a lot of preflight jitters, but now before I go I take time to ceremoniously relax to be ready to give in to it with total submission.

 

[Curated_Thinking]

Great insights.
I especially dug what was said about psychedelics changing the world if people had reliable and steady access. The world would for sure slow down, we wouldn't be in such a rush. The idea of progress would change.

There's some questions I think about and I shudder at the thought of their answers. Real existential stuff.

 

[Poemander]

If the only true knowledge is in knowing you know nothing and the lips of wisdom are closed except to the ears of understanding, then the lips of wisdom would teach you that truly know nothing.

Too much knowledge or just enough?

 

[Ramma]

for me it was scary the feeling that I may never find someone I could conversate and connect with that would understand. But, the truth is, connecting with people, particularly through insightful conversation, isnt the end all to life, as most deaf and mute people may know. Moreover, conversation and socializing is stressful if viewed correctly.

 

[bismillah]

I've thought about this a lot. The feeling that as we grow older, nothing seems to be as wonderful and mysterious as it used to be, because we have all these big-headed "reasons" for why things are the way they are. We don't bother to imagine what lies beyond because we already think we know where it all ends. I also thought about how this applies to us as a species... with all this science, people have no more wonder for the world around them.
Funny, because logically we should embrace our progress. Yet, here we are, both feeling sentimental over the loss of our innocent cluelessness.

Rare is the person who admits that they know nothing, and even rarer the person who can find joy in that fact!

 

[Jees]

...I also thought about how this applies to us as a species... with all this science, people have no more wonder for the world around them...

Yes that is what happens when sentences begin like "We now know that...".
That's why I don't favour how the popular professor Brian Cox comes across with 'certainties' like that easily, I notice more humbleness in the way Roger Penrose weight his words while he adds tons of wonder and amazement beyond belief.

...feeling sentimental over the loss of our innocent cluelessness.

I see that, but it is also a vulnerability filled in fastly by dogma and religion, it's a double sided sword.

Rare is the person who admits that they know nothing, and even rarer the person who can find joy in that fact!

Magnificent :thumb_up:

 

[Elrik]

I don't think there is one pattern that fits everyone. Some people are just fine retaining the wonder without digging to find the causes, conditions, and mechanisms the world works on. Other people can't be happy that way beyond a certain age.
I'm the type that encounters nothing but trouble by coasting along, believing the dream. All the real pain of my life came from not understanding myself and the world.
Whats important to understand is that the scientific materialist 'real world' mindset can, itself, become a dream. Often a dystopian one. People get themselves jaded and cold, thinking they've figured it all out. That's why I'm a soulflyer. I can learn and learn, understanding the world better to satisfy the need for logic and order and then, once in a while, blast myself out of the atomic cannon to revive the wonderful and mysterious while learning what really is at my core. It's not easy but, for me, it's better than the alternatives.

As for pathological nutriment, our capacity for technology puts us in a very precarious situation of a constantly changing diet. When a species' diet abruptly changes it causes sickness, starvation, and ultimately either adaptation or extinction. This is the natural order. No other species is 'smart' enough to do this to themselves by a matter of will.
Humans are using technology to place our diet in a constant state of change. Consider, for most human populations when was the last time our diet was truly stable over 10 generations? Unless you're tribal the answer is probably either quite many hundreds or quite many thousands of years. We have placed ourselves in a loop in the sickness and starvation stage of the progression, with extinction the only end point that can get us out. This is unwise.

 

[Curated_Thinking]

If the only true knowledge is in knowing you know nothing and the lips of wisdom are closed except to the ears of understanding, then the lips of wisdom would teach you that truly know nothing.

Too much knowledge or just enough?

Do you think that with free will comes ignorance? If you have conscious thought then you have free will. It doesn't seem to me that in nature, other animals don't have the same hang ups about life as we humans do. It doesn't seem like a wolf doesn't enjoy being a wolf. A whale seems to love and live only to be a whale. Animals big and small operate on and live through instinct. They pass on key information in their way. What is dangerous and what is not. They mesh perfectly together with nature. What is it that with everything we're capable of, we humans trash nature and manipulate its routines. We do it to fit ourselves better, but it makes things worse for everything else, which in turns makes things worse for us. Did we fall out of wack with nature when we started operating and living on thought instead of instinct. What may have been a peaceful existence is now a stress. Like everything else we'd know instinctually what to do when X happens. Now simple things require time for processing.

When you ask "too much knowledge or just enough?" I question what came before knowledge and how did we or does anything operate without it. How did we survive all this time to be what we are today, what anything is today. Can't call it ignorance, has to be instinct.

I've thought about this a lot. The feeling that as we grow older, nothing seems to be as wonderful and mysterious as it used to be, because we have all these big-headed "reasons" for why things are the way they are. We don't bother to imagine what lies beyond because we already think we know where it all ends. I also thought about how this applies to us as a species... with all this science, people have no more wonder for the world around them. Funny, because logically we should embrace our progress. Yet, here we are, both feeling sentimental over the loss of our innocent cluelessness.

That's why I'm glad to be thinking about wonders now. For too many people anything existential being considered only happens when old age is a factor. I don't want to get to a point where I'm set in my ways about how and what things are. I don't want to be rigid.

Rare is the person who admits that they know nothing, and even rarer the person who can find joy in that fact!

There is a comfort in simple acceptance. Who cares why or where the rain comes from, just enjoy that it happens because we need it. Who cares why or what the sun is, enjoy it because we need it. Love and enjoy that this all just works.
One could raise the question though. How much do you have to learn in order to prevent the extinction of yourself and millions of other species? Is it worth not having that joy? I think you'd have to have every low self importance to be able to answer no to that question. Not in a bad way, but to not think of extinction in a macro way. Does anything other than humans worry about the demise of their kind? We take ourselves very seriously, and I wonder if nature's take on us is as serious. What's there to lose?

for me it was scary the feeling that I may never find someone I could converse and connect with that would understand. But, the truth is, connecting with people, particularly through insightful conversation, isn't the end all to life, as most deaf and mute people may know. Moreover, conversation and socializing is stressful if viewed correctly.

I've never had that feeling of dreading not have people to talk to. Mine was more like, "people would think I'm nuts if we talked long enough." I was just explaining to my mother about I have no desire to talk with people about things I don't care about or have some immediate need. I don't have to explain to introverts how horrible small talk is. Like seeing distant family. I don't want to be rude so I'll play along with this shallow "catching up" that we do, but I don't care how you've been. I just hope you were alright. To what you said about connecting with people. Once you find someone that's on the same page as you, you'll find your way of connecting.

Whats important to understand is that the scientific materialist 'real world' mindset can, itself, become a dream. Often a dystopian one. People get themselves jaded and cold, thinking they've figured it all out. That's why I'm a soulflyer. I can learn and learn, understanding the world better to satisfy the need for logic and order and then, once in a while, blast myself out of the atomic cannon to revive the wonderful and mysterious while learning what really is at my core. It's not easy but, for me, it's better than the alternatives.

You maintain your balance of things. This world we created for ourselves requires order and logic to navigate. And understanding of ones self. Too much of that then and you need to let loose mentally. It sounds like warfare. A General's job is to use order, precision, understanding, and tactics to create unimaginable chaos. It's choreographed chaos. Another example is to think about how perfect everything had to be and work together in filming the beach scene of Saving Private Ryan. Need great financing and planning to portray that madness.

As for pathological nutriment, our capacity for technology puts us in a very precarious situation of a constantly changing diet. When a species' diet abruptly changes it causes sickness, starvation, and ultimately either adaptation or extinction. This is the natural order. No other species is 'smart' enough to do this to themselves by a matter of will.
Humans are using technology to place our diet in a constant state of change. Consider, for most human populations when was the last time our diet was truly stable over 10 generations? Unless you're tribal the answer is probably either quite many hundreds or quite many thousands of years. We have placed ourselves in a loop in the sickness and starvation stage of the progression, with extinction the only end point that can get us out. This is unwise.

I raise the same question. So much knowledge, yet we can't navigate the world and be as stable as a wolf, deer, eagle, reptile, or fish. They as we know do not have the same knowledge as we do or the same capacity for our knowledge. But they do have instinct that that's countess creatures alive for countless eons. We think we know what we want for ourselves, but we only seem to be making the world around us worse. You'd think we'd want a better world. What did we find imperfect about nature one day?

 

[Poemander]

It can't be known that which you seek. You are just going to loop your mind into a never ending cycle of judgement. It never ends. It persists until you decide it is enough and do something, only them will you find your answer. It requires a surrender of something in return. The human race is mesmerized with it's accomplishments at the current moment. We always think we know so much and later come to find out we know nothing.

 

[Grey Fox]

This is a very old question. And still a good one.


Ecclesiastes 1:18

18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.


Ecclesiastes 3:18-22

18 I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

22 Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?


Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

12 I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.

13 And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

 

[GoneWiththeWind]

I don't think that having a lot of scientific knowledge would somehow make existence meaningless. All science does is allow us to make predictions, it doesn't make or take away from meaning. I think the heart of reality is just pure unlimited infinite potential. We are just exploring a small sliver of some limited iteration. We are the environment, we are each other, it's all the same thing. I don't think objective meaning exists and even if it does it's completely inconsequential to a human.

You can live your whole life believing everything "wrong" and it wouldn't actually matter. Even if there is a god and he casts judgement on you, you could simply decide not to care, or learn to enjoy whatever punishment you're given. Our perspective is fluid so we have no limitations. So whatever happens, or whatever information we're given, the magic can never be taken away. But that's just my opinion today.

 

[RMQualtrough]

Absolutely. When overusing I started to feel dissociated from every day life and it occurred to me that IF the drug revelations are true maybe I don't WANT to know. Like if everything IS one maybe I don't want to know that. In fact even now I'd say I don't want to know that for sure. I want to live a human life not dissociated Oneness oddity day to day.

 

[Curated_Thinking]

It can't be known that which you seek. You are just going to loop your mind into a never ending cycle of judgement. It never ends. It persists until you decide it is enough and do something, only them will you find your answer. It requires a surrender of something in return. The human race is mesmerized with its accomplishments at the current moment. We always think we know so much and later come to find out we know nothing.

I'm listening to Graham Hancock's 'Fingerprint of the Gods' and that blows my mind. We think of our current civilization as the most advanced and intelligent, but there's overwhelming evidence that those before us were just as smart, maybe smarter. How intelligent is it to have created weapons with the destructive potential to wipe out life on this planet? Part of the U.S. war plans involve nuking the same spot multiple times. Someone ok'd that. And with those old civilizations we can't even figure out how they built everything they built. Our hubris also causes us to devalue what it is they were capable of. This line in Jurassic Park as a kid was for the thinking adults, but it really stood out later. “YOUR SCIENTISTS WERE SO PREOCCUPIED WITH WHETHER OR NOT THEY COULD THAT THEY DIDN’T STOP TO THINK IF THEY SHOULD.”
We for sure don't do that last bit. And if we do, someone's financial interests overrides any thought of should we.

Absolutely. When overusing I started to feel dissociated from every day life and it occurred to me that IF the drug revelations are true maybe I don't WANT to know. Like if everything IS one maybe I don't want to know that. In fact even now I'd say I don't want to know that for sure. I want to live a human life not dissociated Oneness oddity day to day.

That's interesting compared to so many who always say we shouldn't have such attachments to this world or things because it's all temporary and we're temporary. Even if that's the case why shouldn't or can't we enjoy this world/universe and what it and we have to offer or create? I agree with those somewhat but not to the point of not enjoying life.