*"Christianity: CBT Cult"*

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heretic! convert to the true faith of the Rutabaga Queen!

And I shall counteract your efforts to do so (not that I need to, much worse things have been said and tolerated about non-Christians). I don't agree with Ouinon on some things, but I'm not going to try to get her banned. I'm not a child, after all.



Yes, I agree that they're zesty and delicious.

What is the difference? If you claim it is subconscious and yet you have been able to become aware of it, then it is by definition no longer subconscious. I don't know if it's unusual to be very aware of one's thought processes, but I spend an awful lot of time alone, which gives me plenty of time to think about my thinking (metacognition).

That is why I don't like using the word "subconscious" to describe it. It seems either impossible or illogical. But it is only in the West that believe humans have language-based thoughts that we can not hear/be aware of. It is a Western construction.

Before doing the CBT course I would have laughed at anyone suggesting that I could access my language-based subconscious/unconscious thought except perhaps through psychoanalysis, indirectly through dreams etc. But they are only "unconscious"/subconscious thoughts to us in the West because we don't practice the kind of mental and physical exercises which make them visible.

... .... ... and, ... it now occurs to me, perhaps they are unconscious in the West because when Christianity decreed that thoughts be subject to the Ten Commandments, ( as actions were already), people suppressed knowledge of their non-volitional thoughts until they became very difficult to access, ( thus also more difficult to ignore/discount, as Buddhists do ). Another black mark against Christianity.

In the East they have known for thousands of years without pause that we can hear all our language-based thought with a little training through meditational practices. In the West the knowledge has come and gone in waves. It is here again, with the influence of Buddhism increasing in the last 40 years.

The non-judgemental attitude of Buddhism towards non-volitional thoughts, except that they are insignificant once actually become aware of them, makes it safe to bring them out into the open again?

Last edited by ouinon on 04 Jun 2008, 10:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting discussion.

Have any of you heard of Hesychasm? Link: Hesychasm
An Eastern Christian branch that really shows the link between Western Christianiaty and Eastern spiritual practices. Worth reading - I dream of being able to spend some time at Mt. Athos

FWIW I believe that the major religions generally grow out of smaller, esoteric beginnings. The teachings have more or less the same aim, but may appear different due to the time, place, culture and people. All too quickly, the original good idea is lost as times change and people cling to the rituals that made sense in another time and place. So the original spiritual way has to go underground and the Religion that is left above ground becomes a stale husk, probably oppressing the original practicers.

The interesting think that I think Ouinon is saying is about the development of our inner capabilitiies. I don't think that the potential of human beings has essentially changed much in at least 50,000 years. The people who painted the caves in Lasceaux were the same as us? This knowledge seems to ebb and flow through history.

The word Christianity covers a multitude of sins. Amidst the hundred of sects around these days, who are the real Christians anyway? For most of it's history, it seems to be more about controlling the behaviour of the masses than exploring any inner possibilities. Those monks on Mt Athos appear much closer to how the West views Eastern religions, yet they are also closer to the original Christians.

I'm uncomfortable with the word 'spiritual' as it implies something separate from 'normal life' or 'normal reality'. I think it's all just life as we're intended to live it, only we took a wrong turn some millenia ago and have been suffering ever since. And all the religions are running a scam leading us further astray, putting the problems into us then selling us the solutions. They define the God/Gods/Goddesses/Inner States of Being, causing us to feel the lack, then we have to go to them to get what they made us believe we're lacking in the first place. And if we don't find God/Goddess/Inner Peace then we can beat ourselves up for being inadequate.

I don't think the cave painters or maybe any human beings pre-agriculture had compartments of living, with one labelled 'spiritual' that only a few cared for. It was all just life, however, over the last 3,000 years we've become masters at avoiding death but at the cost of actually living.

Is there any after? What is self-realization?

Could I offer that our species of human beings (and many other creatures) most probably always had an inner world? It's how we *experience* it that is conditioned by our cultures. And this experiencing can change within one person through their life.

I think is in alignment with what you're saying? When I feel a sharp pain, for example, the true sensation is over in microseconds, to be replaced with the words "Oww. Hurts. Owww. Hurts.....". These triggered words then ripple around for a few seconds - or even longer for the Big Life Changing Events. So what can I feel if I have no words for that feeling?

Words are a human construct. The Universe, the thing out there of which we are a part has no words. How can we ever communicate something we have no words for without sounding insane?

Heh heh, I'll over-compensate for the absence of posts

CBT is a school of psycotherapy, yes? My limited knowledge is something along the lines of it being part of the 'behavioral' rather than 'Freudian' family. I could be wrong, but either way Freudian ideas have dominated modern ideas of the human psyche.

Only, Freud wasn't the first person to ponder our inner world. Maybe he was the first person in the west to suggest the 'unconscious', but other parts of the world have also long traditions of self-study. I believe the Sufi's, at least, had a very definite idea of the 'unconscious' many centuries before. They and many other Eastern schools were also practicing something vaguely similar to analysis and group analysis. My crackpot theory is that Freud only RE-discovered what had been forgotten in our backward corner of the globe.

So psychotherapy, including CBT could be seen as the latest link in a chain that goes back to the dawn of...well, human self-awareness, maybe. So naturally it will have many similarities. The exact practices and language will change to reflect the cultural of experience of our time and place.

Somewhere, somewhere in the shadowy halls of my memory, I recall someone has written a book about the Bible being some sort of document covering the time when humans became aware of inner voices. In the Old Testament, the voices are thought to be outside and called 'God'. By the New Testament, God isn't talking directly to us any more. The premise is that the original people were much less clear on 'inner and outer' than we are, that they felt themselves less separated from the world. Fast forward to modern times, this also reminds me of the how U.G. Krishnamurti says he experiences the world after his calamity.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the book/article....time for a Google.

Julian Jaynes "The Bicameral Mind" I posted a thread about it here three months ago

"Gods Once Spoke to Us: The Bicameral Mind" http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt58946.html

Wikipedia article on the writer at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

Thanks Ouinon. Yes, I remember seeing that thread now, registered an interest and just had it simmering in my unconscious until now. I may well order the book.