Here's the thing for me: "Manipulating someone for your own selfish purpose" (and you know you are doing this) is pretty rare. Not to beat the theatrical metaphor to death here but, if I play a character who is "the bad guy" I can't approach it as though he realizes he is just doing something horrendous because he can. He has to have a motivation and that motivation is always fear. The character fears something or someone and thus incites fear in others causing other characters and hopefully the audience into believing he is evil. It is very one dimensional to think of someone "being evil". Thats all I wanted to say. Talk amongst y'selves. ;)

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"All the world's a Stage and all the men and women merely players, They have their exits and their entrances and ONE man in his time plays many parts, his acts beings Heaven ages"---Shakespeare

I like the king analogy Claudio. Pink Floyd had a line from "wish you were here" that matches your statement:

"...Did they get you to trade
your heros for ghosts?
hot ashes for trees?
hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in a war
For a lead role in a cage?"

I believe fear plays a part in every line...

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Most people are mostly good most of the time. - the Deefburger assumption of marginal probable personal state.

Claudio,

An evil being can have good quality of intent, but it is not his usual approach.

Examining our intent without judgment (good or bad, right or wrong) gives us an opportunity to learn who we are. What kind of people we are, how big our ego is, no more, no less. This exercise should be repeated time and again, even ten times are not good enough. It should be a daily habit, even better, an hourly routine, to check our intent as often as we can. After a while it can become our second nature, i.e. whatever we do, we automatically check our intent and register its quality. The same way we can pay attention to our emotions. We have to be open and honest with ourselves, since a hidden truth behind our intents and emotions can hurt our ego more often than not.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

I am a Pink Floyd fan, too! I believe Cole is as well, and at least one other member of these boards, I can't think who now.

I am a Pink Floyd fan too, but I rarely know I'm listening to them until like half way through the song.

And thanks Claudio for your last comment. I must say that that is where I am coming from totally if I understand you properly.
This has been a great thread for me, I must say.

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"All the world's a Stage and all the men and women merely players, They have their exits and their entrances and ONE man in his time plays many parts, his acts beings Heaven ages"---Shakespeare

Hi Lena:

I think we just differ in the definition of quality of intent. When I say good quality of intent I am not saying it is a "good" intent or "egoless" intent, even though it is still possible for an evil being to produce good results. We've seen in it in the movies, that some evil people appear to be very good. What is important is in the inside (said Jack the ripper :). When I am saying an evil being can have good quality of intent I mean that it can produce a low entropy action through control to produce effective results (specially when the target has considerable fear). A typical example of these are some black magic practitioners. When I say good quality of intent I mean an effective noiseless controlled action. A good quality of intent can be used for good or bad. I know the "quality" applied here is not the same as the QoC. I am talking about the quality behind the scenes of producing an action through intent.



I don't know how can you effectively examine without judging, but I think you meant judging others. Judging is not bad if you are egoless or you do it without ego involved. Constantly judging others to measure yourself (compare or compete) is counterproductive IMO and a constant ego invitation.



What you said is a great suggestion. I do this constantly. Actually it never crossed my mind trying to stop doing this. I examined myself a lot more than I examine others. The examining of others is mainly observation and trying to find best ways to help.

Later,

Clau

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"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

From p. 157 of the version available on Google: "Science and religion, each in their own way, preach the gospel of hope and promise deliverance to the Promised Land of good and plenty.
However, as a general rule, neither provides a significant boost to the inner quality of an individual's life. The quality of your consciousness must grow as an independently evolving entity in the shadow of both.
Consciousness quality is a personal achievement that can only be developed by an individual - it is not a group endeavor. It has absolutely nothing to do with creed, dogma, or belief. An individual's quality cannot be increased one single iota by any belief, or by accumulating information about anything, or by doing good deeds that are not properly motivated, or by talking to others or reading books."

And from the last paragraph on p. 235 (also of the version available on Google): "Just as evolving non-living, non-growing entities naturally move toward higher entropy, consciousness naturally moves toward lower entropy. Dimness gradually gives way to brightness as entropy is lowered. The quality of consciousness also increases as entropy is decreased - we call this growth of quality, spiritual growth." Nice continuation of the actor/character analogy, btw, DB.

I think we are on the same page here. Whatever we do, if we have somebody's interest as a priority, we are experiencing a good quality of intent, i.e. we supposed to be as selfless as we can be.
Of course it is not an easy task examining without judging, and I judge myself and others as well. I can say that I am getting better, because I am learning how to be free of this quality. I totally agree that our ego is striving to compete and compare all the time, and each time it can provide as many reasons as possible why we have to do so. Also I think that it is almost impossible to meet egoless people in our everyday life. We are, at least a majority of us, here to learn how to get rid of our ego. If we get lucky to see an egoless person, we will notice him or her instantaneously. Tom is egoless, I can say it for sure. You can see and, what is more important, you can feel it right away. I would say that for me this is not so much examining myself or others. It is not a mental exercise. When I do something for somebody, and it can be anything, I notice very briefly what I have done and what was my intent behind it. That is it. After that my notice goes in a 'storage' area somewhere. It does take two of three seconds of my attention, but I am aware that each time after that something has been changed in me.

Sorry, this is a long post.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Good post Lena.

I also tend to forget what I don't consider important and also what is not productive (negative). I think I am not the only one ;).

Claudio

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"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Forgetting things that we don't consider important is both a blessing and a curse. Suppose you have a traumatic experience burning yourself on a stove. Do you want to forget that it happened, so you can do it again the next hour? No, you want to remember and not do it again.

Mindfulness means thinking with your whole brain, using all of your faculties, and assisting your memory if it needs it. Personally I use mnemonics (learning techniques that aid memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic). I find them very helpful, because I am visual and find that a picture, even in my mind's eye, is worth more than a few thousand words.

I make mental notes, and I write things down, because I am learning a lot at a very fast pace and want to keep track of it all.

At the same time, I am having the time of my life, and documenting it in pictures so I can look back when I'm old and remember what a fantastic life it was!