---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote:
noozguru, I read once that 1 ounce of alcohol kills 10,000 brain cells.
Forever! I figure I need all the ones I have left!
That is a myth.
On Friday, January 31, 2014 3:57 PM, Bhairitu <noozguru@...> wrote:
A lot of people drink occasionally for social reasons. It loosens the tongue
and in general can make folks a little more pleasant to be around (not counting
those whose over indulgence turns them in to belligerent and often violent ass
holes). However MADD did a good job of getting rid of the drinking social
scene and probably are partly responsible for the reclusive "online"
socializing we have in the Internet age.
On 01/31/2014 12:33 PM, TurquoiseB wrote:
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,
wrote:
>
> People drink to transcend self, to get away from the image of themselves. So
> in that sense, that activity is the same as transcending in TM. The small
> self is transcended when you pass out, the activity of drinking ceases.
I would say instead, whether it relates to whiskey, or drugs, or meditative
experience, that the "transcendence" is achieved long before the point of
passing out. All that is really necessary for many psychic wanderers in search
of the transcendental experience, is the *shift* of awareness from one
localized plane of awareness to another.
In Castanedan terms, one "shifts one's state of attention," allowing the self
access to other, congruent, states of attention. Alcohol can do this, drugs can
do this, mediation can do this, and even *intent* can do this. You just declare
internally that you're sick and tired of the same old same old way you've been
seeing things, and just shift to a new way of seeing things.
> If an automobile comes to rest and stops moving, does that make it more self
> sufficient? The whole idea of an automobile is self-sufficiency in motion.
And, according to some supposed sages, the whole idea of the "human being" is
that it is most "in touch" with the Tao or the flow of life when it is in
motion. Stasis inhibits this flow. Movement encourages it.
> This play on words has limits. Self-sufficiency on an individual level is
> defined as the condition or quality of being adequate or sufficient on the
> level of a person's essential being that distinguishes them from others.
Or even if it doesn't. I don't necessarily see "inability to perceive
otherness" as an indicator of self-sufficiency. I can envision people (to limit
things to MMY's 7 states) in CC being self-sufficient, or in GC being
self-sufficient, or in UC being self-sufficient. Theoretically, in this latter
SoC the perceiver no longer makes the distinction between "self" and "other,"
but that does not necessarily -- in my view, at least -- imply
self-sufficiency. Only self-sufficiency implies self-sufficiency, not the SoC
one brings to it.
> When talking about enlightenment, this is not what it means, though
> independence may be a by product of changes in experience. With the big E
> the sense of individuality is reduced or eliminated and the small self is
> replaced with the experience of continuity and intimacy of all things, a
> practical death of the ego-sense.
At times. And then, unless one's experience was sudden and from that point on
never-changing (unlike mine), things keep changing. Some days, no
individuality, no self. Other days, nothing but self. Still other days, no-self
congruent with self. So which of these is "highest," or "best?" My suspicion is
none of them.
> The small self may also be extinguished by being a drunk which often leads
> to death, but that is probably not such a cool experience, the part leading
> up to death, that is.
Better than dying of pancreatic cancer after a life of abstinence, given the
testimony of friends who have departed from this world using both of those
methods.
> Turq's comments about those uber expensive whiskeys reveals a caste system
> for drunkeness. The super rich drunk can afford to wall themselves away from
> the world, private and in posh style, maybe in a fifty room mansion, and
> pass out on only the finest rarest forms of alcohol, while the lowest caste
> drunk has to publicly pass out on the sidewalk, often in very unpleasant
> weather, using only the cheapest of wine. In a way the latter is in a better
> position spiritually if he does not die because he has nothing to lose,
> having lost all possessions, self respect, and care for what others think of
> him (or her). The super rich drunk has a lot more to lose.
My comment -- as I'm sure you understand -- was an attempt at humor, slightly
burdened with a dig at the TMO's notion of pricing for its products. Truly good
Scotch may in fact be worth more than the TMO's million dollar courses. :-)
