(10-27-2013, 10:23 PM)Cynthia Wrote: Letting go of approval/disapproval is something I've been working on also since before I found LOO a couple months ago. I'd been approaching it from a zen perspective that approval and/or disapproval are attachments by the ego. And it's the ego and its attachments that prevent my becoming quiet (especially when meditating). So 'improvement' in this has come not so much from finding the antithesis of whatever sparked the assent/dissent and integrating the two, it has come more from being the Watcher and letting go of attachment to either the assent or dissent.
Comments:
(1) Attachments are somewhat incompatible with unconditional acceptance of the moment, the present. Attachments are often thought of to be related to physical attachments, but it is often the attachments to a particular configuration of reality (I want be a doctor or I've "failed") that is so much stronger for many people. I also call attachments to a particular configuration of reality "expectations."
(2) I believe, but am not sure, that balancing techniques are different from non-polarizing distortions and polarizing beliefs. Non polarizing distortions - free sexuality is wrong - this is neither positively or negatively polarizing, it just a culture distortion or judgment if it goes past a suggestion to a hard and fast rule about life - it is not just the thought but the emotional charge or attachment to the thought that matters - if I say its not very helpful for a friend to get yell and angry at his children without much emotional charge, that is not condemnation but more observation, vulcan style, but if I say it with even a hint of disapproval that is judgement/condemnation. Polarizing beliefs - might makes right -sts polarizing.
Your comment on invoking the antithesis I believe, but am not sure, has more efficacious use on polarizing beliefs rather than pure non-polarizing distortions (because for a large subset of non-polarizing beliefs, I believe it is harder to identify what the opposite might be - free sexuality's opposite - is that abstinence or very controlled sexuality to the style of arrange marriages and no premartial sex; is this antithesis study as useful as applying the antithesis of might makes right as in right is independent of might? However, I will say that this delineation is not always a hard a fast line, but there are not too many grey areas so I find the delineation useful.