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#30190 04/05/09 06:39 PM
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coberst Offline OP
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Can we change attitude?

Solitude is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required—“solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support from a friend”.

Our way of thinking about life and ourselves is so habitual that it takes time and effort to change attitudes—people find it difficult to make changes in attitude but solitude and perhaps changes in environment facilitate changes in attitude because habit is fortified by external environment—religion is well aware of these facts—only through experience of change in environment can one know if such change will facilitate change in attitude—“one needs not just solitude but one needs to be able to sink roots into some replenishing philosophy also”.

Solitude is not to subject oneself to sensor deprivation, which can lead to hallucinations. One needs the stimulation of the senses and the intellect.

Imagination—solitude can facilitate the growth of imagination—imagination has given humans flexibility but has robbed her of contentment—our non-human ancestors are governed by pre-programmed patterns-- these preprogrammed patterns have inhibited growth when the environment changes—humans are governed primarily by learning and transmission of culture from generation to generation and is thus more able to adapt—“for humans so little is predetermined by nature and so much is dependent upon learning”—happiness, the contentment with the status quo is only a fleeting feeling—“divine discontent” is the gift of our nature that brings moments of ecstasy and a life time of discontent—the present is such a fleeting part of our reality that we are almost always in the past or the future.

I think that a regular dose of solitude is very important for everyone, young and old. Does that make sense to you? I think that each individual needs to make radical adjustments in their attitude toward learning when school dazes are over. Solitude might be helpful in facilitating such adjustments.

This stuff comes from reading “Solitude: A Return to the Self” by Anthony Storr. Most of this is snatches of text that is sometimes a paraphrase and sometimes a quotation

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Attitude constantly changes with the changes in belief and opinion. Becoming the witness to those changes in attitude created by belief and opinion gives one a greater sense of Self. As the greater sense of Self is realized everything about ones thoughts feelings and activity changes and evolves. When one become less reactive one becomes more intelligent and aware of reality.

Simply changing the attitude while holding onto self limiting beliefs only creates tension within the body making ones self ill. It's like saying to yourself, "I will act pleasant in and amongst the diversity of self defeating action that continually invades my privacy and personal belief."

Going inward into the solitude of meditation should immerse the self in the presence of Being that is in all things. This is what bathes the intellect in objectivity and expanded awareness. If one does this with the recognition of what is Solitude it can be brought outward into activity.

Some use solitude as an escape. Like a mini vacation the mind seeks to elude the trials and tribulations of daily stress. But then everyone sees the world differently thru their internal programs of habit and belief. Conditioning of belief lures the awareness into thoughts that define what we experience in life. If one can un-do the conditioning, objectivity expands itself into daily activity and into every thought feeling and action.


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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I would say that in my life I have made several attitude changes.

My most dramatic attitude change was made when I went to army boot camp and my civilian attitude was changed into a military attitude. The primary purpose of boot camp, in my judgment, was to make this very dramatic attitude change. This required eight weeks of intensive 24/7 effort by a cadre of military officers and enlisted men.

My next big attitude change came with marriage and parenthood.

Wiki informs me that Jung’s definition of attitude is “readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way”. He thought that attitude often displayed itself in a dual manner: consciousness/unconsciousness, extraversion/introversion, thinking/feeling, rational/irrational, and individual/social.

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Originally Posted By: coberst
I would say that in my life I have made several attitude changes.

My most dramatic attitude change was made when I went to army boot camp and my civilian attitude was changed into a military attitude. The primary purpose of boot camp, in my judgment, was to make this very dramatic attitude change. This required eight weeks of intensive 24/7 effort by a cadre of military officers and enlisted men.

My next big attitude change came with marriage and parenthood.

Wiki informs me that Jung’s definition of attitude is “readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way”. He thought that attitude often displayed itself in a dual manner: consciousness/unconsciousness, extraversion/introversion, thinking/feeling, rational/irrational, and individual/social.
What you are referring to is conditioning, which doesn't take anything from the psyche, nor does it add anything to it. The psyche still remains the psyche.


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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“Man cannot evolve beyond his character”—Ernest Becker

Becker makes the point that the humanization process is one wherein the individual exchanges the natural organismic propensity for a mysterious symbolic dictation. The child in its very essential formative age is faced with denying that which ‘comes naturally’ for what are symbolic dictates that are far beyond its ability for comprehension. The child’s formation of character is dictated by its need to be somebody in the symbolic world.

The child continual loses battles that s/he cannot comprehend. John Dewey learned long ago that “the child continually loses battles he does not understand…we earn our early self-esteem not actively but in large part passively, by having our action blocked and re-oriented to the parents pleasure.”

In the very essential formative years the child develops character traits that in many cases remain with that individual for the rest of their life.

What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.

Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.” “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.” “Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.” “Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.”

Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”

If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior. If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.

When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”. The son cannot change the attitude directly but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified. We can modify intuition only through habit directed by our will.

“Were it not for the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as character would exist. There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated acts. Character is the interpenetrating of habits. If each habit in an insulated compartment and operated without affecting or being affected by others, character would not exist. That is conduct would lack unity being only juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations. But since environments overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote from one another contain like elements, a continuous modification of habits by one another is constantly going on.”

My understanding of character and the quotations concerning the nature of character are taken from “Habits and Will” by John Dewey


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Originally Posted By: coberst

“Man cannot evolve beyond his character”—Ernest Becker

Becker makes the point that the humanization process is one wherein the individual exchanges the natural organismic propensity for a mysterious symbolic dictation. The child in its very essential formative age is faced with denying that which ‘comes naturally’ for what are symbolic dictates that are far beyond its ability for comprehension. The child’s formation of character is dictated by its need to be somebody in the symbolic world.

This need to create an ego of personality is taught to the child, because it (the child) is not recognized by the parent(s) as other than the meat-sack created after having sex. Parents don't recognize the soul in the child, only the surface projections of their physical union and what it produces. An adult can be just as enamored with a puppy from a litter of pups created by the union of two dogs. They will love and train them both whether child or dog, according to the beliefs of what they think the object can be trained with and deserves.

I'm not sure what you are inferring as natural organismic tendency. The natural tendency of any child is to express love. However the adults inadequate sense of unconditional giving and the need to take love because of low self esteem and a co-dependent nature created by being starved of love from their parents, creates a vicious cycle of personal beliefs in values based on actions rather than natural quality of being. Children are taught by their parents to value themselves and others according to belief and systems of relative measure. Love is valued for accomplishment and outward appearances. Parents love their children within boundaries of relative measure. They get love for performance, meaning they are trained from the beginning to be individual and make choices to take care of themselves. Proud parents revel in the values that emerge from the child that meet their values and expectations. They believe they own the child until they do not want to own it anymore. They confuse the innocence of children to ignorance, as they apply their own ignorance of who and what the child is to mold it to be what they want it to be.


Originally Posted By: coberst

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.

They become habit from repeated conditioning and choice. They do not control our will. Our will is what keeps them in place. Our ability to change our habits is determined by what we value and if we find something that has more value, it is by our will that we can change our habit.
Originally Posted By: coberst

“Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.”[/b] “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.”

You could say this, but then we need to return to what is natural to humans prior to conditioning of belief passed down from parental and societal influence. There is an intelligence within the human psyche which exists prior to human birth that is brought into the world that is ignored and replaced with habit of belief passed down from generations of delusion.


Originally Posted By: coberst

“Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.” “Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.”

Will stands with the psyche, which exists prior to any class of stimuli. The adjustment of will to the physical condition upon entering the body creates a distraction from what is real and normal as it invades the subtle senses. With the bombardment of dense stimulation of belief and limitation the will is blinded of its prior understanding, experience and sense of self.
Habit that is below direct consciousness or in this case ego, is Soul personality. That is tied to the Absolute One consciousness which gives birth to the Soul. It is imbued with everything that exists in the parent at its conception, similar to the human DNA naturally installed within every Human to contain everything that is necessary to be a human passed from parent to child.
Originally Posted By: coberst

Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”

If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior. If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.

If you go beyond the conditioning of definitions and the beliefs of mortality the inner Self can reveal itself to expose the illusions of behavior based on attitude. Then as you focus on the Self, the natural tendency to reveal more of what was natural to the Will at birth returns in what Eastern philosophy and Scripture calls "the innocence of a child", or that natural intuition and function of, human "being."
Originally Posted By: coberst

When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”. The son cannot change the attitude directly but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified. We can modify intuition only through habit directed by our will.

I think if the word intuition is used it must remain in context with the ability to understand and know truth absolute rather than changing beliefs and personal truths and opinion.
Conditioning and or manipulation of truth thru relative beliefs and personal opinions never really take individuality from the ego. If a Mother tells her child what she wants him/her to do there is always the quality of individuality that separates the child from the parent and that quality is interpretation based on feeling and cognitive awareness. No two people feel exactly the same thing or think exactly the same thing in any scenario.
Mechanically speaking, the precognitive functions of intuition which are buried under habit (ego) and the ability of each individual egoic personality to listen, hear, and comprehend what is being conveyed by another always filters relative reality thru the layers of thought, emotionally attached beliefs and ideas of free will as it functions in that particular moment.
You can't make someone feel something like love instantaneously. You might get someone to feel anger by pushing some buttons, but the mind follows its neural pathways thru conditioning of thought and free will to surmise what it will thru individual personality grown from the fertilizer of parental and societal programming. The developing child takes in what it can and uses what it will based on what it can remember of itself prior to birth. That underlying influence is what makes each birth unique and sets a direction for life.
Originally Posted By: coberst

“Were it not for the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as character would exist. There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated acts. Character is the interpenetrating of habits. If each habit in an insulated compartment and operated without affecting or being affected by others, character would not exist. That is conduct would lack unity being only juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations. But since environments overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote from one another contain like elements, a continuous modification of habits by one another is constantly going on.”

My understanding of character and the quotations concerning the nature of character are taken from “Habits and Will” by John Dewey

The nature of the soul prior to its birth does have a character. I have seen it, heard it, experienced it I and live with it. It is consistent, in that it supports constant expansion of conscious awareness above and beyond the conditioning of habit and belief that ties the human to the physical body in limitation and mortality.

My understanding doesn't come from a book. It's more of an underlying habit gained prior to conditioning, tho I have read many books that describe the nature of the soul and what it means to be human.


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!





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