There have been 57 hits. Is no one interested in answering the question? Or making a comment?
It generally leads to you wanting to bring the attention to yourself...., your beliefs, your biography etc. etc.
Your quote regarding Agape is not a word one would normally use to describe willpower but rather a condition of mind or state of being that is without conditions or conditioning. Willpower applied to the conditioned mind is inclusive of attachments, beliefs, opinions and conditioning.
Baumeister is a psychologist...
The word "psychology" is the combination of two terms - study (ology) and soul (psyche), or mind. The derivation of the word from Latin gives it this clear and obvious meaning:
The study of the soul or mind.
This meaning has been altered over the years until today, this is not what the word means at all. The subject of psychology, as studied in colleges and universities, currently has very little to do with the mind, and absolutely nothing to do with the soul or spirit.
It is important to understand that words and ideas are supposed to refer to something. "The large tree in the front yard" refers to an actual thing that can be seen, touched and experienced. "The man walking his little dog last night at sunset" refers to an actual event that can be seen, observed and experienced. The realm of mind is an actual realm that can be experienced, and at one time there were words that accurately referred to this realm.
Let's see what a few dictionaries have to say and how a word could alter and lose its true and actual meaning.
"Psyche" is defined as:
1. The spirit or soul.
2. The human mind.
3. In psychoanalysis, the mind functioning as the center of thought, emotion, and behavior.
And defining "soul", we have:
1. the spiritual or immortal elements in a person.
2. a person's mental or moral or emotional nature.
Most of us would agree we have a "psyche" per the above definitions in the sense of mind, thought, and emotions. Most would also agree they have a "soul" per the second definition above relating to man's mental, moral or emotional nature. We might all have different notions about what these ultimately are, but few could sanely disagree they exist.
The derivation of "psyche" comes from Latin and the Greek psukhe - breath, life, soul. To get a better "feel" for this term try to think of it as the invisible animating principle or entity that occupies, interacts with and directs the physical body.
The following is from Wiki:
The word psychology literally means, "study of the soul" psukhe;, meaning "breath", "spirit", or "soul"; and -logos, translated as "study of" or "research"[10]).[11] The Latin word psychologia was first used by the Croatian humanist and Latinist Marko Marulic; in his book, Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae in the late 15th century or early 16th century.[12] The earliest known reference to the word psychology in English was by Steven Blankaart in 1694 in The Physical Dictionary which refers to "Anatomy, which treats of the Body, and Psychology, which treats of the Soul10. ^ Psychology
11. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary. (2001). "Psychology".
^ "Classics in the History of Psychology – Marko Marulic – 12. The Author of the Term "Psychology"". Psychclassics.yorku.ca. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
13. ^ (Steven Blankaart, p. 13) as quoted in "psychology n." A Dictionary of Psychology. Edited by Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press 2009. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. oxfordreference.com
Because some areas of psychology rely on research methods such as surveys and questionnaires, critics have asserted that psychology is not an objective science. Other concepts that psychologists are interested in, such as personality, thinking, and emotion, cannot be directly measured[70] and are often inferred from subjective self-reports, which may be problematic.70. ^ Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 9.
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Getting back to your quote, and the claim that willpower furthers your rediscovery of Agape.
1. One cannot will away conditioning. Self hypnosis (positive affirmations) does not remove stress or belief, it can only add an idea conjured from the existing foundation of belief.
Nothing changes until the subjective and objective mind can experience something superior to the stress or beliefs within the psychological profile of personal opinion and belief (which is constantly changing).
2. The conditioned mind steps outward from belief and experience. If one believes love looks a certain way, then his will is powered by that belief, not necessarily a universal and objective platform encompassing a unity of all beliefs. Personal opinions about ones self and reality are going to be the foundation of outward projections in thought and action.
3. The soul cannot be measured. It cannot be contained. And there is no general blueprint or standard for what is called humanity. These words are descriptive to a point and because humanity is continually redefining itself, to say the study of the human soul can be scientifically quantified is going to be subjective.
The soul is beyond all boundaries of subjectivity and the power of will as a subject cannot be standardized, predicted, or qualified other than thru the subjective mind of one who is bound by beliefs and conditioning. To diagnose the soul and prescribe a cure to a condition is outside of the rationale of science. It is more akin to witchcraft, illusion and dementia.
It would be more likely that a relationship to the ineffable soul could be experienced, rather than the soul itself.
All experiences are but reflections of conditioning and identification with reality thru psychological reference points gathered from the personal value systems which are attached to the past. To say one can experience the soul in the present moment without having any conditioning based on personal beliefs would be a stretch of the mind. How would one decide for themselves that they do not in fact carry any influences of past experiences and beliefs regarding who and what they are in relationship to the soul?
You can say to yourself, " I choose to be without influence of my past" but that does not make it so.
Since every individual has a relationship with destiny (due to personal preconceptions of future idealism), it is only the religious who continually attempt to define the principles of God and to define what the relationship to God is from the platform of the human soul.
The religious do this strictly to protect their beliefs and to justify their lives due to the fear of having an end to their lives without some standard to measure that one's life has being successful or not, or that it can qualified as
good or
bad. Which is why so much focus is given to the rewards of good behavior in some kind of afterlife.
In that respect the preacher attempts to corral as many as he can that will corroborate the terms of reality to help substantiate his own beliefs, so as to give meaning to the personal choices one makes. The numbers give one satisfaction that ones thinking is sound.
However that didn't necessarily work when the numbers insisted that the world was flat, did it.
The idea of creating the perfect life is subjective and generally spurred by fear of failure, and ones own self judgments. The need to be able to substantiate ones will and its power comes from the idea that one is without some symbiotic resonance to the inner force that leads one thru life to their destiny, because of the belief in being victim to a power greater than their own choice and outside of themselves.
Once one realizes that there is nothing other than that which is the result of ones choices, focusing on improving the power of choice is going to be a moot point if nothing within the psychological profile of belief has changed.
It becomes tantamount to straining while taking a crap, rather than simply relaxing and letting what happens naturally just happen.
If one does not become more conscious, then subjecting the unconscious (ignorant) mind with all of its habits to be more forceful when making unconscious (ignorant) choices, only results in similar action and results.
Hitler is a great example of willpower. His mind was saturated with his own projections of reality, and he was capable of influencing others to a point. That point led to war and genocide. Teaching just anyone to forcefully project their ideals is going to be subject to ones state of mind and their relationship with self and humanity.
It's like the parent telling the son to man up! The child does not live the parents beliefs, and if they are lucky, they won't adopt them and live their life for their parents.
You Reverend, have a relationship with yourself and the ideal you wish everyone to see. So did the Church and it had its definitions of good and God, same as you.
That is what you bring to this form and to every other thread I have read.
Probably why few respond after reading your posts, and why those who do respond fall away and discontinue their dialogue with you. You don't bring anything other than your belief of reality to your threads, and tho you say you want to dialogue, what you really mean is you want to talk about yourself.
You should really get honest and just start a thread that is titled, "ME" with the following subtitle..
"Lets talk about me!"
