EsoQuest said:
Ruth said:
Are we all OPs until we chose not to be, or are there two distinct catagories (something akin to having two sexes in the one species as an illustration. i.e. a person can be either one or the other).
Answer: Yes, we are all OP's until we choose not to be, at least phenomenally...
Ruth, why didn't you put in the definition for "phenomenal":
Answers.com said:
phenomenal
adjective
Composed of or relating to things that occupy space and can be perceived by the senses: concrete, corporeal, material, objective, physical, sensible, substantial, tangible.
So what I meant was: we are all OP's until we choose not to be,
at least that is what outward (immediate) appreances would suggest. I was not referring to transitions from STS to STO, or from 3D to 4D. In the latter case, however, I suppose the analogy can apply in a far deeper sense than that of surface phenomena.
The point is that immediate outward and seemingly concrete appearances may be decieving. Outwardly, we start as OP's, and at some point in their lives some people feel a call to address issues within themselves that change how they relate to self and life in a radical manner. The potential, however, to hear that call is not immediately active in all people or all would undergo life transitions indicative of individuating, or at least move in that direction. Instead, there are those who
resist this kind of stimulus and even fight it.
This potential is beneath surface appearances. So your thing about abstract thinking as being pie in the sky is a limited definition that does not encompass what this means to an individuating person. Abstract thinking as I see it, penetrates
beneath the surface and goes deeper into the "literal" world than "literal thinking" can.
You also identify objectivity with literalism. The abstract can be just as objective and even testable as any theoretical physicist knows. On the other hand, abstract esoteric understanding is only testable through experience, and through observations of self and life. Yet not everyone can associate the abstract thought with what is observed in terms meaninful to them.
Objective to the Individual may not seem objective to the OP. These are two fundamentally different modes of approaching reality. And in my opinion it has really nothing to do with STS and STO, which is a completely different categorization. An Individual may easily be fully STS, and an OP may be STO in the strictest definition of thinking only of others in quite concrete, phenomenal and literal terms. An OP can be Mother Teresa spending their whole life for others.
I expressed my analogy in terms of caterpillars and butterflies because it indicates two different states of the same organism. It is my personal take on all of this that all caterpillars can, under the right conditions, become butterflies, but until those conditions are available they will resist doing so. The transformation from a phenomenal OP state to individuation is far more than just choosing to be STO.
Out of the population of phenomenal OP's, some therefore are moved to individuation and some are not. Those who are more than phenomenal are the OP's we are discussing in terms of lacking individualtion potential at this time
Often there are stages of crisis where the person's old world-view dissolves and until something new starts forming you are left with turmoil. Thus, I see the transition from OP to non-OP (for those with the potential to undergo that transition under current conditions) similar to shamanic death-rebirth experiences.
The only qualification I would like to add to that is that such changes do not have to be so dramatic in all cases, but can happen gradually over longer time periods, where the old self dissolves as the new self forms without a necessarily intense turbulence overwhelming the individual.
Ruth said:
It seems to me that it would take a great deal more than "chosing not to be" an OP in order to change into a non-OP. Providing a person knew what the differences were anyway, and even how to change (some of them may be listed above)... It might actually be quite difficult and not the whole point of the reason we are alive on this planet anyway...
You are disagreeing with me on a point I never made, because of the misunderstanding around the word "phenomenal". In fact, my analogy of caterpillar/butterfly is meant to convey that there is quite a bit involved in the OP/Individualization transition.
And what does knowing the difference have to do with anything? These changes happen in people no matter what their conceptual framework is. Knowlege helps them put the process in perspective, to transcend the turbulence of the transition, but it's not as if we have a menu to choose qualities we like and just implement them.
It certainly is not as if some OP's wake up one fine day saying: "Gee! I'm tired of being an OP! Time to start acting THIS way instead of THAT". What happens is that whether through events or spontaneously, one's original view of self and world begins to fall apart.
And the quest becomes a search to build ourselves and our view of the world anew. This is far more profound than can be expressed through a menu of behavioural differences between one the pre-transition state and the post-transition one (which has nothing to do with density transitions in any direct sense at least).
Ruth said:
Reading the above, I can see ONE way in which the expression "we are all OPs until we 'chose' not to be", makes sense. But we are all still only a form of 'compromised/restricted/lied to' human who are not performing to their potential. We are a form of restricted non-OPs, in the literal sense this does not make us OPs (genetically/psychically/energetically).
I think the problem is in the oversimplification of the word "choose". I do not think individuation corresponds to the Nike commercial "just do it!". This "choosing" is a long drawn out process. The old way/world does not make sense, begins to dissolve. What we took for granted before at a fundamental level, not just in sociopolitical terms (although including them), may seem insane even. Really, often this "choice" is already made in/for us, and then we have to either continue it consciously, or exist in a state where nothing fits, like a caterpillar that has dissolved in its cocoon, but can't come back together in transcendent reorganization.
Ruth said:
Nathan said:
Ruth said:
Abstract thinking can be mechanincal and should therefore within their ability (anybody's ability). What true OPs are missing out on are their 3 upper chakras.
This is precisely why I suspect OPs are incapable of abstract thinking. In my experience, abstract thinking is clearly not within everyone's ability.
Neither is competing in the Olympics. I'm not sure why abstract thinking (abstract: existing only in the mind; not concrete) necessarily needs the 3 upper chakras to happen any more than anything else.
It can't be THAT simple. Even abstract thinking can be mechanical which (imo) is the REAL difference between an OP and a non-OP. Its difficult to measure mechanicalism though. As difficult as it is to 'see' if those three other chakras are functioning or even there in potential.
It is NOT that simple. The very idea of the activation of the 3 upper centers as simple is to me a conclusion resulting from phenomenal assessment, or how things seem to be on the surface. How do you conclude that this activation is something simple? It certainly involves quite a bit more than a few "switches" thrown, if that's what you are implying.
I looked up the dictionary definition of "abstract", and it seems you have been quite selective regarding what you posted there. There are many definitions of the word, from "theoretical", "not concrete", "difficult to understand" to the following meanings:
1.Thought of or stated without reference to a specific instance: abstract words like truth and justice.
2.Impersonal, as in attitude or views.
3.Having an intellectual and affective artistic content that depends solely on intrinsic form rather than on narrative content or pictorial representation: abstract painting and sculpture,
The first series of definitions in quotes can be "mechanical". Abstract theory can be subject to rigid rules of logic. However, meanings such as "truth" and "justice" are not mechanical, although there are those who resist their inherent abstract nature by claiming them to have a relative nature. In that sense, the same abstract term can have relative mechanical meanings, but that undermines the abstract nature of such words, that go beyond dictionary definitions.
So sensory or highly defined data regarding the upper three centers defies the real complexity of what is going on. It may be valid, but it is not enough. First of all, no activation is precisely like any other. Second, such an activation is a prolonged process that involves changes physically and psychically, related to changes in how the person relates to the environment, and how the environment relates to the person.
Regarding "mechanical" thinking, I think this also needs to be understood. Granted, dictionary definitions can in themselves post limits on a word's potential meaning, but at least they provide some kind of reference so we know what we are saying when we express a word.
1. Of or relating to machines or tools: mechanical skill.
2. Operated or produced by a mechanism or machine: a mechanical toy dog.
3. Of, relating to, or governed by mechanics.
4.
Performed or performing in an impersonal or machinelike manner; automatic: a droning, mechanical delivery of the speech.
5.
Relating to, produced by, or dominated by physical forces: the mechanical aspect of trumpet playing.
6.
Philosophy Interpreting and explaining the phenomena of the universe by referring to causally determined material forces; mechanistic.
7. Of or relating to manual labor, its tools, and its skills.
The definitions in bold are the most relevant to this discussion. If OP's initially represent a transition between 2D and 3D then we can interpret mechanical as "dominated by physical/organic forces". In other words, they perfectly fit the bio-organic human model proposed by modern science. We all do in fact, but those who are moving to individuation are the ones questioning that model in terms other than doctrinal. They are also part of the organic model, and its mechanisms, but they become ever more conscious that there is more to it than that.
This awareness that there is more to them and life than the bio-organic model can explain is the result of upper center activation. OP's may also be convinced that there is more, but they will explain that "more" in terms of a story-line of sorts relating in some manner to immediate bio-organic experience
even if the story describes the transcendence of biology.
They have "afterlife" views involving souped up versions of this life, views of divinity involving souped up versions of bio-territoriality and the pecking order. Sometimes these views are very benign involving a cosmic maternity instinct and divine nurturing, a sense of giving of self for group, a sense of group harmony and support and of environmental support and caring for the nest (even if the definition of the nest may go toward a more humanly complex version involving society as a whole), all of which are observed to a simpler degree in the animal kingdom.
The thing is that in mechanicalness there is always direct causal determination, even if this is quite complex as in a cybernetic organism, which is what the bio-organic model says we are. In higher degrees of organization that transcend the mechanical, causal determination is hidden in non-linearity (although even this can be considered to be a higher form of the mechanical). To truly transcend the mechanical, a system needs to become causally indeterminate in terms of defineable forces.
Causality for the human organism does not disappear in this case of mechanical transcendence. What is over-ridden is all causality that does not directly relate to the essential core nature underlying the existence of a person, which for lack of a better word is the nature of the soul. So when the soul becomes the determining source of an individual, all other causalities become indeterminate and open ended in relation to it (at least to a much greater degree than before), and the person becomes a true individual. This is the dynamic the OP cannot understand, in my opinion.
...I'm sorry, trying to conjure up images of "insatiable empaths", I can't help but find it funny. 
