LastThursday

You could just as well say you incarnated as everything. It's a matter of framing. If you take the literal sense of the word as being "in the flesh", then you have to ask the question, why have you incarnated as an entity that only believes their flesh is what they are?

Depends on the situation. But whatever the situation you're just exchanging information through chit-chat and getting those small dopamine hits. If you're looking to pull, then both parties need to exchange just enough information to say "yes" or "no", and then escalate the situation quickly, if it's all systems go. A lot of that exchange is non-verbal, so self-confidence, energy, interest, laughter, touch, smell and a million other non-verbal things come into the mix, some of which you can control and improve on, some of which you have no control over.

Truth requires some amount of persistence of some aspect of experience. Persistence is just a kind of memory. A truth which is always persisting is an absolute truth, by some measure of "always". A lot of what can be understood in experience are constructions (or interpretations) in experience: chairs, people, sky, air, food, self. The constructions are a kind of truth by virtue of the fact that they are a kind of memory. I understand a chair, and chairs exist, because the chair construction persists as a form of memory, and that construction is applied whenever something in raw experience matches the "template". Constructions are fluid and so don't persist absolutely: chairs are not absolute truth. Constructions given to you by other people, are not absolute truth either. To get at a different truth then, you have to deal with the non-constructed parts of experience. One such thing is that experience exists all the time, it's hard to deny that something is there, something is happening; it is an absolute truth. I would say it is potentially impossible to know if you're dealing with a construction or not, maybe everything in experience is a construction, it's hard to tell. Is the colour red a construction or not? Certainly the word "red" definitely is, but is the direct experience of it a construction, where does red start and end in experience? What about, nearly red? Anything that delineates reality, is almost certainly a construction of some type. But isn't reality just distinctions?

That is also an identity. I have nothing against people using their brains and having their own concepts, I applaud it, we need more of it. What irks me is people who don't bother to explain what their new concepts are, and then use obscure word salad to make it sound fancy or mysterious or intellectual. It's a lot more overt in America than in the UK for sure. We're hugely more tolerant of diversity here, however, there is a strong underlying tension against that diversity in many places, especially outside of major cities. Brits are obsessed with "migrants" and always have been, but we do live on an island. We are even wary of Europeans, hence the whole debacle with Brexit. I'm sure they're either confused or just roll their eyes at us or just shrug their shoulders and just carry on without us. Race is strongly tied to Western imperialism. Imperialism requires a strong sense of identity so that you can justify subjugating anyone you come across who you want power over. The Nazis misappropriated Darwin's theory of evolution to "prove" their theories about race - and ever since race has been talked about in the same breath as genetics. People are still confused. But I'll say it again for effect: race has nothing to do with genetics.

Racism has absolutely nothing to do with genetics. But it is all to do with identity. And, identity is purely an artificial construction, whether consciously done or not.

Mary Mary you're so lairy How do you think I know? With gold bling and tatoo-ing You pretty maid, it shows...

I've just gone out and touched grass myself. I think I was being more casual in my wording, maybe embarrassment was closer to what I was awkwardly referring to 😳. I was trying to get at why shame (clinical definition) arises in the first place. One of the sources could be by repeated social embarrassment - and by extension humilitation - by parents or people in authority. Neglect being another for example. So it starts off externally (behaviour based), and over time gets internalised, and then finally becomes identity. What do you reckon? I would agree 100%, a lot of cognitive disonance, avoidant behaviour, social anxiety, and self-sabotaging stem from it, I would say. And I can definitely see it in myself too, although awareness is curative supposedly or its a start in "fixing" myself.

@Cred no problems I understand where you're coming from. Even most normies love repetitiveness and routine. I think by "loosening" I really meant the choice to take on new patterns if desired, or basically just having a choice at all. The way I see it self-development is all about giving you choice about new patterns of behaviour - but not excluding the patterns you already had. Given a choice of two competing patterns you will take the more beneficial one. Although if @SmartMonkey means something else by "loosening patterns", then it would be good to hear it.

I don't think I've talked about mastery in depth too much before. Specifically the way I approach certain activities. May as well get straight into it, and you'll get what I mean by the end. Driving Most people experience driving a car as a utilitarian activity, purely to get from A to B. Off the bat if I'm driving by myself, I will always listen to music on my iPod with in ear wired headphones (give me a break I know what cassettes are and how to use them). I generally can't stand listening to the radio, and personally prefer silence with a passenger, but I won't tell them that. This is contrary to when I run, when I never listen to music. I like driving on the whole. I tend to gamify the activity if I can. For example can I drive without using the brakes? On roads I know well, I'll practise getting the perfect speed and gear change. There's a particular stretch I know with a long straight up a middling hill, then a short straight down after the brow, and a sharp bend at the bottom, that can only be done at 50 mph max. So 60 until about 20 metres shy of the brow and coast off the accelerator. That sort of thing. How smoothly can I clutch and change gears? Can I anticipate traffic and keep distance so I don't brake at all if I need to slow down? Can I beat the Google Maps estimated time? All while listening to "Weird Fishes". Running I've talked about running before on here. But again I like to compete against myself and gamify it. Can I run that bit further than last time? What is the perfect pace to start and then ramp up to (6 minute kilometres for half marathon). If I stop for a rest, what is an optimal amount of time? How can I move so my running feels smooth? How can I run so I don't feel pain in my joints? How can overcome fatigue? Playing Piano I've played most of my life, but never had formal lessons. I'm a middling piano player, which given the amount of time I've been doing it, is not great. However, I never really tire of playing the same things, because I hear and feel the improvement in playing over time. I like to practise passages over and over until I get the rhythm and mechanics of it as perfect as I can. It's such a pleasure finally being able to play a piece after earning it. And there's always more discovery to be made in how to play. I generally play classical because it suits my logical brain, but throw in ragtime occasionally. Writing I really like trying to get a good rhythm in my prose, and to make the reading flow. I have a decent vocabulary but I abhor jargon, and so, much prefer every day language for getting things over. I'm a stickler for spelling and grammar, but my London English does influence how I write. Many many times if you see "Edited" in my posts it'll me correcting my spelling! I'd say my writing is a bit more flowery than the way I normally speak, and there's a part of me I can express in writing better than I can with speech, I'm a slow-ish thinker. I'm always looking to find the best construction to convey my ideas, like, I like the rhythm and aliteration of "best construction to convey". I'm naturally a short sentence writer, and I've been trying to get longer, so it feels less staccato. I've also being trying to practise writing in a more casual way. But I will fit my writing to the occasion. There's constant improvement. Badminton This is the only sport I've really done long term. I'm not a Badminton bro, so I don't play in leagues and so on. Badminton's an interesting case, because (like running) I enjoyed it at school. But back in the day in a inner London comprehensive, you were never pushed if you had aptitude, it all had to be self-driven and as a teenager that wasn't going to happen for me. So when I took up again about six or seven years ago, I realised how much I had to learn. But I get so much out of running about like a loon for a couple of hours each week - aside from the exercise. I do like to pretend to be quite casual about it, and because of that I tend to get teamed up with all sorts of levels in class. The competitive types hate that, but I know that proper mastery comes from exposing yourself to all types of situation, and Badminton is no different. It takes control to play against someone with less skill than you (and be humble) and then to crank it up on the next game against someone with more skill. Often when driving to Badminton class, I do visualisation exercises, and have a word with my "unconscious mind" to play well, find good placement, play well with a partner etc. Visualising and priming are important for mastery. Hiking Probably the only activity were I don't gamify, try to master, or anything else. Except for emptying my mind when I feel like it, or else very light almost dreamlike thinking. If anything I'm trying to master being present, being aware of my surroundings, discovering new places along the way. For me it's meditation. The thing that ties all these activities together is flow, smoothness, improvement, competing against myself, and gamification. And what really ties them together is a love of mastery for its own sake.

@theleelajoker yeah no pressue, I'm just spitballing too. I notice a new thing and I've got to wonder, why's that? And if throwing around ideas helps the OP in any way, then all the better.

That is all of self-development in four words. Seems like you're on the right track. There's no end to the process of loosening patterns.

Would you say the internalised self-narrative is the identity itself or would it just be the result of a more abstract lingering emotional trauma? The narrative gets generated as a way to materialise the trauma into a more adult and relatable form? I do think there is a component of self-blame and shame - I think that's why I mentioned low self worth. Shame would be a signal to others that you know you did wrong, yes, but also somehow related to our hierarchical social brains, in that you're volunteering to be lower in the pecking order - hence the low self worth. Maybe being lower worth means that sabotaging yourself is a more justified activity? I don't know it still doesn't seem like a fair explanation for self-sabotage. Tricky. I do think children up to a certain age, don't easily separate their identities from their parents' identities. In many ways they are their parents, it could be too much of stretch to attribute to much self-consciousness to the process. I mean, this would explain why traumatised people repeat the trauma as adults, because they never fully separated their identities from their abusers? I think there can be a large moralising and judging component to any internal narrative going on related to trauma, which is "taken on" from others around you, especially from the important people around you. I suppose one physical aspect of moralising is punishment, and this is enacted by the traumatised individual? I'm not sure about the release of tension concept, surely self-injury is more tension inducing? But self injury can be very visible to others, although I'm not sure what this would signal to them.

@Oeaohoo the response from ChatGPT you gave is interesting. It does seem like the two poles have something in common though. In some way they both want the best outcome for you, one protects, and the other wants connection? All identities at some level in that case want what's best for you, in their own particular way. It's just that in your case they're not playing along, you get so far, then reject the situation. Would you agree? That would seem to be my experience, and I've often come across this in people. How does the self-sabotage arise from this kind of message? I can understand that it would make it hard to allow others to express their love for you, but it only seems like self-sabotage if there are other competing needs there too which are being suppressed. What about more direct self-sabotage like self-injury that would seem related?

What do you think broke in your case? No need to respond if you don't want to go into it. Do you think having an identity around trauma means that anything that challenges that identity is rejected in order to protect it? Maybe there are multiple identities and some are stronger than others, a "Desire" identity and a "Resenment" identity.

It's uncanny how trauma often converts into self-sabotage. I do wonder why that is. What do you think? My reasoning is that it's connected to low self worth, and that attacking yourself is often the only form of control available.