Demon Hunting: Specificity and Vagueness
A possibly helpful series of primers:
Gottlob Frege: Sense and Reference (Only if you still haven't seen it)
If you imagine your Apparatus as a prorgramming application ensemble as we were discussing previously, then you can better grasp the role of Sense and Reference in demon hunting. The more sense-centric your focus, the more you're going to focus on bettering the program itself without trying to end at a particular result. This is the more Yin exercise associated with Vagueness, and the demons become increasingly impotent before a sense-centric approach because you are pure of intention and without lust of result; you aren't even trying to destroy specific demons, rather they will only be destroyed by a focus on doing the right thing, regardless of what that means. If the demons want to stop you, the more vague you become, the more they will be forced to reveal themselves. Even if you are misguided at first, because you are vague and immaculate, the demons will have a difficult task in laying traps for you, and it will simply take longer for you to root them out. The weakness of the more sense-centric approach is a relative surrender to what comes and what is.
You don't have to be so vague; you can write a program to generate a more specific result or to solve a more pointed problem. In so doing, you can take the reigns when it comes to rooting out demons, but you are also exposing yourself and walking right into the areas where demons can set traps for you. When you come out into the open, the demons will directly try to deceive you into thinking that they are True Forms, and if they are pressed, they will try to convince you that real True Forms are False. Therefore, the reference-centric approach is fraught with greater risk, but if you know that you are more than a match for the demons you will be facing, it is the most direct approach. If the demons still have you cowed, rightfully or otherwise, or if you don't really know what you are up against, the reference-centric approach is better avoided, and instead you should focus more on bettering your overall seeker program.
My way of thinking may appear at first blush as if I am condemning taking on difficult challenges about which one does not know much yet. Mistakes do help one grow, and vagueness can be an avoidance of that. Whether that kind of risk taking is a good idea depends on the environment. If you have support system, then I think you are justified in experimenting with the most direct reference-centric approach to demon slaying that you can conceive of. For example, if you are playing a video game, and you just passed a save point, throwing yourself into risky maneuvers could be both enjoyable and edifying. When you're writing a computer program, you're more than welcome to write all of the specific functions that you please as long as you don't think they're going to crash your computer, delete valuable files, or otherwise wreak havoc. Most of the time, your IDE will point you right to your error and you'll learn something. These environments, that is, video games and computers, are like simulators. In a simulator, you are battling simulated demons. It's helpful to deliberately take risks in these environments to hone your skills and work out the kinks in your technique, just as you would in your Nai simulator. The further you stray from simulators, risks should be managed with an according care and attentiveness. In real life, if you screw up solving a problem in a very pointed way, you can cause doubt, misunderstandings, fights, wars, and sow real death and destruction. It's like the difference between misreading a quiz sample and misreading someone who is paying you to read them correctly. In the quiz, you are encouraged to guess and take risks. In real life, you are not, so whatever risks you take should be well in hand.
What does all of this mean for our seeker discourse? Well, you can see the relative merits of a more specific and more vague approach to the open table seeker conversations we'll inevitably be having. The more specific you become, the more you press and pressure any demons in the area of your specificity, or you will press any True Forms that are being inaccurately referenced into becoming more Negative Forms (though still True) because Truth does not like being referred to wrongly. On the plus side, in drawing out energy that is Negative, you will lower turn-around time in banishing it. That is a nontrivial benefit, because demons sow pain and discord by their very nature. The sooner you cleanse a system of demonic energy, the better for all. Unfortunately, if demons that are particularly duplicitous are pressed by you, they might attempt to fool you by not revealing themselves directly while they size up your blind spots and weak points and wait for the opportune time to strike. That is another danger in not knowing what you are up against; you can make subversive, unseen enemies through your actions. True Forms may engage in espionage, but obviously are not treacherous and vindictive because they are of the light. True Forms obey the Golden Rule (treat others how you would want to be treated), whereas False Forms do not.
Knowing this, what is the best stance from which to help others recognize and defeat their demons in open table discourse? Demons have detector fields that become increasingly sensitive the closer one gets to their nest, and if set off, the demons will spring their defense mechanism traps. The crux of the task is either sneaking past the demon before it can mount its defenses and inspiring the Chosen One proximal to the demon to snuff it out instantly, or being powerful enough that you can talk past the demon's storm without being so harsh that you inspire the Chosen One to protect the demon in their psychic crevices from where it will plot its revenge and without attempting to crush any True Forms in the fallout by accident. If you are not strong enough, then the demon's voice will win out. If you attempt to get the Chosen One to renounce a True Form, then one of two things will occur:
1) The current demon will use that against you because it will aid in its disguise.
2) The Chosen One may attempt to renounce the True Form you have asked them to because they are convinced by you in their state of weakness, but this in turn creates a new demon that you have convinced a potential hero to spawn. This possibility can become especially ugly if you failed to smite the old demon.
Either way, in terms of specificity and vagueness, there is always a sweet-spot that you want to find, if you can. If you are too vague, you will not have the daring to slip past the demon and it will persist. If you are too specific, you will alert the demon, which can be turned into an overall positive, but is also likely to cause upheaval and be a rougher experience than it could have been, and it can end up worse than when one began by spawning even more demons. The point is, you can't make a discrete choice between specificity and vagueness. Choosing is donning a particular robotic role instead of performing one's duty as a living hero. Choosing is apathy, weariness, and abdication. Instead, you must be mindful, as the Jedi would say. Besides the fact that it is somewhat automaton-like to choose between specificity or vagueness, in truth, it's not really possible. You are always at some point along a continuum, because nothing is perfectly vague/general or perfectly specific/pointed. Above and beyond context, sometimes people talk about "specific context", and "general context". There are really only degrees of specificity, and degrees of generality; you can almost always be more or less specific, or more or less general.
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