Responding to John Woods who said:
-----excerpt from message
Because I am the prisoner of my paradigm and know it, it doesn't mean I
can escape any more than a real prisoner can will himself out of a real
prison. We cannot choose what paradigm we will believe. You cannot will
yourself to understand something differently from how you understand it
right now. But, in knowing this, your paradigm, your understanding of the
world right now, may suggest to you that you need to learn more about
something, you need to gather more information, get more experience, seek
insight. So, given this point of view, this understanding of what you
don't know, your natural behavior is to go gather more information, seek
new experience, learn more about yourself. You couldn't do otherwise.
------end of excerpt
I have been out of touch for a while, so I may be taking this out of
context, but was struck by the "limitations" expressed in the above
paragraph. I asked myself, do I want those limitations? My answer was no.
Each statement that you made seems inadequate to fit my experience. Is
there some common ground in any of this? Am I mis-representing your
opinions?
For example:
* I can and have escaped from paradigms I had which didn't serve me
just by realizing how they affected me (at a moment's notice)
* I have chosen what paradigm to believe and continued to stretch
my mental perspective to see the new view more clearly (on the spur
of the moment.
* I have not "willed" myself to understand something differently, but I
have cleared my mind of my current "reality" and...scrambled to
see the world in a different way, successfully, in the moment...sometimes
this happens when I dream, take a break, workout, or otherwise change
my concentration (I learned this in yoga workshop as I overcame "self-
imposed" limits about doing a backbend or headstand)
* At other times, I have been caught in my current paradigm and could
only do as you say...start learning to try to gain more experience which
might result in changes in the future. And then, I can only have patience
with myself.
I have had moments of dramatic change in perspective...Have you had
similar experiences? If so, how do they fit into your paradigm?
-- "Mulligan, Margie" <MMulligan@OS.Varian.COM>