LastThursday

One priority would be to minimise your own suffering and the suffering of others.

I think it's telling that laws prohibit relationships with a minor (as they should), but there aren't laws against age gaps. In other words societies in general don't have a problem with two consenting adults getting it on. Really it boils down to social prejudice. It's also a kind of sliding scale. The difference in maturity between a 31 and 21 year old, is not the same as between a 51 and 41 year old. I do wonder if it is just about maturity and/or control though. Are older people hooking up with younger people shunned because they're less fertile in some sense? Does biology come into it? Or is there more of an ickiness because that 21 year old was a child only a few years ago? Or is the mentality that you should stick to your age cohort because that's where you're most compatible in terms of life experience? Oh yeah, and do women have a bigger problem with age gaps than men do?

Yesterday on my walk around town and as I was on the leg back home, I could see walking towards me a woman in her thirties. She was staring wistfully into the shops that lined the street with a half smile on her lips. I was wondering what was on her mind when I suddenly realised what it was. She had been staring at the wedding dress in a small boutique shop I've passed a million times. It's not often you get an insight into what strangers are thinking. I wondered if the woman had been married before or even if she was about to. I did half think that I should ask her the question as I passed her: "Hey do you want to get married?" and see what her response was. I had also stared into the shop wistfully at times. It catches my eye every time without fail. I don't know if it's the prominent white classic wedding dress that's always fronted and proudly displayed in the window, surrounded my her entourage of lesser wedding dresses. Or is is the dinky size of the shop, like a little mysterious shop of curiosity; one in which if you ever entered you might be enchanted and never leave. Or is it just the name of the shop which my super-logical mind gets its knickers in a twist about every time: Isabella Grace. Is that two first names? Two last names? The founder's name? Or just a perfect name for someone about to get married? When they get married will they become a more ordinary Bella Jones? The shop brings out the schoolkid in me. I had always expected that I would get married, most probably in my twenties. And if you can believe it I always wanted a lavish affair with lots of guests and all that traditional Western wedding stuff; most of all I wanted a bride in a beautiful dress. It would be a symbol that I'd arrived as a man and everyone could see it and acknowledge it and congratulate me - us. Marriage was the done thing, and the thing to do, a symbolic rite of passage, things that grown ups do. All my friends managed it and I was invited to every one of their weddings. Hindu weddings. Muslim/Chinese hybrid weddings. Weddings in country houses. A wedding in a farm house. I had fun at those events and I always wished my friends good luck and was happy for them. But each was a reminder that it might be me one day, but not today. I was even booked to attend two weddings on the same day once. That's not untypical of my luck. I chose by precedence, but secretly I'd wished I'd gone to the other one. My ex got married in Vegas: I was not invited. This is despite us supposedly having been on "friendly terms" and having known each other for twenty years or so at that point. She was never one for awkwardness however, it's sort of fair enough, kind of. The irony being that she'd also been at nearly all those other weddings with me. The other thing that always occurs to me is: I want to be the one in the wedding dress. Could I just walk into that shop and ask to try it on, just the once? To be honest I'm not sure what has happened to me in the last five years or so. Whatever feminine part of my make up that was submerged for fifty years or so has bobbed up to the surface and it won't go away. I do a lot of work on myself perhaps. This journal is really about shadow work dressed up as observation and I've done a lot throwing light on that shadow. I've never strongly vibed with being a man for various known and unknown reasons, which leaves the question: what do I vibe with? It has certainly been hugely easier to present and behave like a man but it's somewhat of an awkward or lacklustre mask at times. I just don't care about huntin' shootin' and fishin' if you get my drift. I seem to vibe with feminity a great deal. I both enjoy the appearance of women - like most hetero men do - but I also like the company of women. At school I was always more comfortable talking to and being around girls, when I could manage it - boys were coarse and unpleasant. This changed as an adult and I became equally comfortable with both. I got shoehorned into maleness and adapted, and mostly became amnesic about my feminity or more precisely my lack of strong embodied masculinity. I kind of learned to be male. What may have happened in the last few years is that I've dug around into my shadow, stopped being amnesic, and allowed myself latitude to experiment with what does vibe with me. More than anything I seem to yearn to embody that feminity to really understand it in all its glory, rather than being a passive observer of it. I want to somehow and temporarily switch off that maleness in me and let her take over me. To put on her clothes and mannerisms and to be her for while and to let her sink into my bones. What does all this mean? I haven't the faintest clue. I don't know where it's all headed and I also don't seem to care much particularly. All I know is if I could shape-shift for a while and be a woman, then I would. I don't want to kill the man I am, but I do want to let the woman I am have breath.

This is a juicy one. Some ideas off the top of my head: All the stuff we put importance on in our lives is completely made up fairy tales. Reality is completely mysterious and no one knows what it really is or where it came from. That person you think you are is an artificial construct (@VeganAwake will rejoice) and can be deconstructed and changed. Your friend X is an artificial construct inside your head. All social rules and etiquette are a sham. You are not special, but you are unique. There is no right way to live life, sitting on your couch in your underwear until you die is just as valid as being president of some country. What happened yesterday, what will happen tomorrow are just figments of your imagination, they don't exist.

By actually doing. Full immersion. Embodiment. Being non-judgemental. The opposite of those things kills creativity. We have the inherent ability to always be creative, but it has to be allowed out. State is also important. Being tired or preoccupied or distracted is also going to kill creativity, there needs to be a certain state of alertness and easy focus. Also, for some people it's easier to be creative if you're in a group of like-minded people, you can share and it may give you motivation to be creative.

There's plenty of great (non AI) channels on YouTube. I made a whole list on my Journal a while back, go look! Sorry for my indiscriminate spamming, I'm a YouTube whore.

@Joseph Maynor that was a good video. It's been a while and I only watched it once, but from memory my main take away was that sameness and difference is really a matter of perspective taking. You choose consciously or otherwise what is the same and what is different, there's no inherent nature to it. Yes insofar as my argument goes. But not all argumentation is directly about equivalences either - philosophical or scientific arguments might be. You could just be saying "hey I believe this" and that's it - effectively you're arguing an absolute position and won't be swayed - i.e. a non-scientific kind of argument. But. Language is full of equivalences and it's nearly impossible to get away from them. Just pay attention to how equivalences are used, the words to look out for are: is, is like, a type of, the same as, similar to, leads to, causes, understands. Most constructions of the form A verb B . And then their inverses: is not like, not the same as etc. etc.

I don't think arguments are on face value necessarily about sameness or difference. The framing of the argument matters. For example you ask if "Is Trump like Hitler?", the framing naturally sets up an adversarial argument and so you naturally look for differences and similarities in order to sort out the truth of it. Argumentation is mostly about getting at some sort of truth, either real or perceived. Or, it's about expounding your own version of truth. If your truth is that Jesus saves then there is no sameness or difference being discussed, you argue from that position of absoluteness. Other types of argumentation just go through a chain of reasoning, where one thing leads to another. I like to call each link in the chain "an equivalence". An equivalence can be something like, God is love, or love is freedom and so on. Or it can be more cause and effect: if you push that domino, the rest will fall - but this is just another kind of equivalence. Ultimately, an equivalence is just a similarity in disguise; if God is love then you're really saying God and love are similar. Of course you can always put a not in front of the equivalence and turn it into a difference.

I agree that a shift in state is required, otherwise we're just looking at a sober state. The point of having props is precisely to induce that shift in state primarily through ritual and belief. Then having a margin of interpretation so that the less conscious stuff can be exposed. Channelling is different because you have to work harder to shift state, unless you're accomplished at it. It's also different because whatever is being channelled is taken to be somewhat verbatim. But I don't see any issue at all with interpreting whatever is being channelled, in any case the meaning of a channelling is always dependent on the listener. There is, just phone me up and I'll describe to you plenty outside of your conscious awareness. Channelling is the same process, except you're using some mechanism that's normally not very well exposed. In other words we channel all the time, but mostly it's swamped and masked by "ordinary" awareness.

It's an old one and a technical one, but this one always stuck with me. Mainly because it didn't click straight away, but when it did, I understood:

I don't think channelling is much different from forms of divination, such as I Ching or Tarot or automatic writing or dowsing. The "props" in those other cases acts as a way round the conscious mind's interference, to get at something outside of every-day consciousness. I just see channelling as a direct method without using props. The real question is what is outside of normal conscious awareness if anything and can it be accessed? Plenty I'd say and yes. Can someone be delusional and just have a very active imagination? Sure. Can people be deluded into thinking the channeler is for real when in fact they're a charlatan? Sure. But it's like that with anything.

Nice thread. She accepts that I'm a different person on different days. She just enjoys my presence rather than needing something from me. She doesn't need me to be fixed or saved and vice versa. We can talk or be silent with each other without feeling neurotic about it. We let each other know what's on our mind and accept each other's way of seeing things. We're actually interested in each other.

The last week I thought I would bring myself back down to earth. The blasted cold I had helped ground me in my body and in reality - thanks cold. I always pride myself on my ability to not get ill. Once a year? I'll take that! I do so hate being ill with a passion. And so it is. Not working and having large tracts of "me" time continually pulls me into my a set point. I read a lot, watch stuff on YouTube, watch occasional series on streaming, go for walks, play my keyboard, meet friends for lunch, constantly learn new stuff etc. etc. And I'm prone to fantasising plenty. Ultimately though, I just want a calm peace whilst the swell around me churns away. I know the precious peace is not going to last. Life ebbs and flows and catches you up in its shenanigans. For example my landlady is selling my flat, so I have to find a new one really. I can't afford to indefinitely not work, so I have to find a job really. My dad has been moved to a hospice and his cancer continues unabated, so I have to say my goodbyes really. I have nearly finished my app I'm coding, so I have to get it published really. All the time people around churn away and ask me all those questions: how's your dad, how's your job hunting, hows your flat moving, have you found a girlfriend yet, have you XYZ? I know that really they're just saying: Guillermo we love you and want the best for you. But can' they see I'm a nearly 54 year old man who knows their own mind, has always done things in their own way and time, and that the worst possible way of interacting with me is to keep reminding me of things I should be doing? Don't these people know me at all!? Even my sister who knows my core being better than anyone needles me. Why! Arghhh. And even my own dying father doesn't get that I just want him to say "Son, how are you? I'm just calling to say hi." instead of "Son why aren't you doing what I want you to do?". Of all the people he knows me the least. I take a breath and try and carry on with things stoically, but reality keeps knocking on my door. But the worst person for it, and really the one who knows me most intimately is: myself. He's a right pain the ass with his idealistic notions of this and that and the way things should be, the fantasies he wishes were true, but whose reality probability either won't ever happen or if they did wouldn't really be what he wanted. Can I really make a life sitting by the beach sipping coffee and beer all day? No. Will that great romance really last for ever in a state of perpetual bliss? No. Is the perfect person for me full of beauty and intelligence and life really out there? No. Is the idea of working for myself on some grand project going to give me momentum and zest for life? No. Instead, I'm just a big bag full of cats constantly fighting each other. I progress in fits and starts with long periods of stasis and inaction. And even writing this is a vain attempt at trying to understand that bag of cats, and it's a miracle anything happens at all. That smart alec me tries to be constantly high-falutin and insightful and solution oriented. The pragmatic wistful me says fuck off I like my peace and quiet, I've had enough of that obligation crap for one lifetime thank you. So what to do? Nothing. Carry on as you were. Guillermo you're your own worst enemy. I'll restart my magical workings, engage with it fully, see what happens.

@Yeah Yeah I see it as knowing what the structure of consciousness is. Solipsism says that there is just one special viewpoint and no others. If that structure is true then if death erases that viewpoint then poof! everything in existence is gone. The more commonly understood structure is that consciousness is spread out amongst different people, probably animals too, and each is a different viewpoint on the same thing. When one individual dies then their viewpoint goes with it, but consciousness in general continues. But, maybe consciousness is actually everywhere and just concentrates in certain places to a higher degree. If someone dies then perhaps consciousness can no longer be concentrated in that place and it dissipates elsewhere. This is a more fluid kind of structure. I quite like yet another view in that you have the mother consciousness and she has the capacity to hive off baby consciousnesses, like a fractal or a hologram. I quite like this because then consciousness gives rise to matter and matter can give rise to consciousness. In this view I see matter effectively being the same thing as consciousness: matter is the content consciousness the container. In short no one knows the structure of consciousness.