LastThursday

Do you meditate at all? I find the two activities for me are quite similar. But I suppose I've practised quieting my monkey mind for many years now. I just keep bringing my mind back to what the body is doing and my breathing. The one thing I find tough is when fatigue sets in and my mind screams at me to stop! My solution to that is to look up at the sky (don't trip), for some reason it lessens the feelings. I think if you get to that stage I think you'll find it's quite hard to be bored. Yes that's ideal if possible. But you can learn a lot just by being attentive. Notice your pace, how heavy and flat your feet fall, how you hold your head, how you swing and position your arms, what tension you hold in your body, how you pronate you feet, how you breathe - long and deep or short and shallow, how the breath co-ordinates with the rhythm of your legs.

@Judy2 do you feel running is an enjoyable activity, or is it just a means to an end? Do you want to do it for its own sake? Funnily enough I wrote about running in my journal a while ago I think the point I was trying to make in that journal entry, is to be present and attentive to your own body when you run. As @Rigel says, there's a million things you can adjust and improve each time you run. Learn to see it as a process of mastery, rather than just an activity you have to get through.

@Someone here it's funny, from a young age all I've wanted is "peace", exactly that place of silence and acceptance you talk about. In my case it's like a setpoint I'm always trying to return to, and the world just keeps pulling me away from it. I'm not working at the moment precisely because I want peace, I have to fight and sacrifice for it. But I've come to the conclusion that peace and not peace are just two sides of the same coin. I've learned and confronted and matured by engaging with the movie of life, even if I always felt an underlying discomfort with it. Some of my best experiences have been when I haven't been at peace. Most of that distraction has been caused by people, they are a both a blessing and a curse. Have I reconciled the two? To a large degree I have, I often feel at peace even when engaged in the movie of life; things flow and are a lot more easy than they used to be because of it. The icing on the cake would be to proactively and peacefully engage with the chaos of living, but I'm not there yet, peace still wins out.

I've been journalling on here now for well over five years. It was a long while before I actually wrote those first words. I had recurring thoughts about wanting to write but never took the plunge. One point of procrastination was that I really didn't know what to write about, in retrospect that reticence was ridiculous. I'm really not one much for perusing my old outpourings, in that respect I'm not nostalgic, even if I am in other aspects. There is a bit of me that likes to keep moving forward and not get stuck on revising old stuff. I'm the same with books very rarely reading them more than once (except LOTR). To some degree I'm the same with old friends and acquaintances, even if I sometimes think about them and miss them. I also rarely get attached to objects, unless it's something that connects me to a time or place or people, my tastes are very specific. I think deep down that revisiting old stuff can be a bit melancholy, not only can you not re-experience the entire thing in its totality, but in fact you realise how much is lost to memory. But boy, my outpouring in 2021 was prolific. I actually had a lot to say, and just sharing my thoughts on everything the passed through the conveyor belt of my mind was cathartic. It also allowed my ADHD prone attention to actually pay attention and build something coherent from my thoughts, that alone has been tremendously useful. It has also been an outlet for a part of myself that I normally keep very private. Most people are not polymathic in the way they express and think about things, and so it has been difficult for me to also express that side of myself. And also, the introverted part of myself has felt a bit cringe in explaining to others what's taking my interest, so I generally don't. But, to be a fully rounded human all parts need to be expressed for their own sakes. I've also very much enjoyed other people's journals on here. There's such a variety of views and experiences, and it feels good to know that everyone has their own struggles (schadenfreude much), as well as I do; there's a kind of silent cameraderie in that. It's all valid, the good, the bad, the ugly. I've tried to be as open as I can possibly be on a public forum. I'm basically anonymous which helps. Yeah, if anyone tried hard enough they could probably find me on the internet, but hey ho. Naturally, there is some stuff I've veered away from on here, stuff that is just too cringe and is a bad look, I'm only human - don't worry I haven't murdered anyone lol. I do notice that I've slowed down a lot on the journalling here. I could probably have kept up the same pace as 2021, but whatever it was that needed to get out, I've kind of nearly exhausted. Plus, I tend to very much go through phases: I used to run regularly, I used to play keyboard regularly, I used to go clubbing regularly etc. etc. Old things give way to new things. Sometimes old things just go; be conscious and savour every experience as it happens.

Yes. Good summary. For example doctors learn the body system so thoroughly they know how to intervene in its workings and push it this way or that. Or you go to a therapist who does exactly the same thing for the mind. I realise I strayed into woo territory, but I don't dismiss such things out of hand. The placebo effect is a scientifically studied phenomenon, so much so that it is used in drug trials: it is just pure suggestion, so it shouldn't be undersestimated. As for law of attraction related activities that's less clear to me, but I still don't dismiss it. I was more suggesting a mechanism than outright saying "it works" or that there is a strong effect. I would say the effects of rituals, LoA etc, are subtle and they're not going to break the laws of physics or biology. But if there is an effect, it would be because it shifts probabilities around; reality has a kind of "looseness" about its workings at some level, and it's possible to play with that. Imagination does however affect reality more directly, through your body. You imagine doing an activity and then your body does it. I've never heard or seen anyone explain how this connection between imagination and the body works in a satisfactory way. I'm just proposing that magic/ritual is imagination affecting things other than the body - it's not so much of a stretch. The effect is just a lot weaker and fickle.

@ZGROPIUS I don't have a direct answer in your case. But I have some experiences in rapid change. I have some ideas about magic also. The body, mind and environment form a dynamic system that likes to keep itself in equilibrium (which includes homeostasis). The equilibrium can maintain both positive and negative states, where a state is some part of the system: physiology or mental state. It can seem like a particular equilibrium is fixed or permanent, but this isn't the case. Even with a chronic condition, the symptoms (states) can come and go, this is an indicator that the system is in constant flux. All systems maintain equilibrium through feedback loops, if the system goes too far out of equilibrium then feedback loops push the system back into equilibrium. For example if your body gets low on energy then you will crave something to eat to restore that energy, the craving is a feedback loop. There are thousands of them in the body and mind, and even from and back to the environment. The mind/body/environment system can be pushed into a new equilibrium at any point, and this can happen suprisingly rapidly. This can be done by pushing it far enough away from its existing equilibrium that the existing feedback loops don't work to push it back. Because the system is dynamic it will generally settle back into a new equilibrium over time. All that is a long winded way of saying that if you mess with the mind/body/environment in the right way, you can experience rapid permanent change. I think some of the success of magic is down to suggestion, in other words hitting your mental feedback loops, so they stop keeping the system in equilibrium. I use "mental" here loosely, because suggestion goes deeper than just positive thinking, it can have strong unconscious and physical effects in the body if the suggestion is taken seriously. Having a Taoist Magician suggest things may help. I'm a pragmatist, the result is more important than the means, so I'm not against it, using suggestion can be very powerful. There is a more esoteric side to magic in that it may warp reality enough to change the world, and in your case, your somatic illness. It would do this because at its base level reality is fluid and largely undetermined, and magic shifts the probabilities towards what the magician desires. The rituals are designed so that there is the greatest level of effect achievable. In short we're doing magic all the time, but in a messy unconscious way, Taoist magicians are structured and focused about it. This also suggests that reality may attract towards outcomes, and work more like abstract thought, than a machine full of protons and light. TLDR the body/mind/environment is a system, magic shifts the system.

I was idly just wondering what spirituality is actually for, I mean that in terms of its application or usefulness. Does it have to be useful? Is it like maths which is either pure or applied? Is spirituality pursued? Is it a system with its own jargon and paradigms? Is spirituality just self-development in a different guise? Or is it just a bunch of reframings and recontextualisations on experience? Is it nonsensical, circular, self-referential reasoning and language disguised as profundity? Is it New Age wish fulfilment where crystals, vibrations, quantums and any other co-opted mystical language suffices? Is it just mysticism by another name, full of ineffable, barely explainable ideas and experiences? Is it pure metaphysics? Is it religion? A religion? Is it just an antidote for those that found STEM subjects hard? Take the above how you will. I'm not sure how I feel about spirituality at all. I'm not sure if it's something I practise, something I'm just interested in as an intellectual pursuit or just a way to pass the time; or if in fact I have no clue at all what it is. If there's no final end game with spirituality then what is it I'm doing with it? I find it ironic that I feel the same way about spirituality as the language used within it: everything is nothing, nothing is everything: spirituality is something, spirituality is not something at all. Huh.

It can, but only in retrospect. All this "stuff" happens and when you trace all the cause and effect threads, it leads back to something, and you create a story from that backtracking. Existentially, everything that ever happened no longer exists. All that exists of the past is what's in the present, including your memories. All that exists of the future is some idea in your imagination. A story is a sequence of events on a timeline. So where does that story exist? Where does the drama exist? There are two types of change in life, slow and fast. Sometimes things reach a critical point after which things change fast, and a new phase in life starts. I've found that being open and receptive and stable during these phase changes, is very helpful. But things will unravel in their own time, so patience is needed. You won't endure the tiredness forever, things are guaranteed to change for you.

You're recognising there that "a story" is not the fundamental ground of reality. A story is just a net cast over conscious experience. Existence or "it" doesn't work in stories at all, even if it can create them for itself. Existence is more like the rush of a great waterfall, different moment to moment (to use a story). Question is, can we live without creating stories or narrative or drama from our experiences? I don't know, but I don't see a fundamental limitation in getting rid of them. Or at least being more flexible and having more fluid stories. Recontextualisation as Leo says.

Giving myself advice here I would say: It's ok to have expectations, but you should also engender having a flexible attitude, shit happens. Inflexibility takes the joy out of life. The world is messy, don't force it into your mould, mould yourself to it, exactly as kids do.

Agreed. It's also "it" pretending to be you. But I don't think you're quite there yet (not that I am either):

ChatGPT says either Maqsum, Baladi, Malfuf or Saidi. I like that guy in the video, just wandering about the Giza plateau doing this and that. When I went to the pyramids I wish I'd had more time to wander about, I could have spent days just doing that. I think with the imaging of the huge structures under the pyramids, if there had been any more to it, then they'd still be talking about it now but they're not. To me it doesn't seem plausible as having any amount of voids under the weight of the pyramids is probably structurally unsound; you want solid bedrock all the way down. Saying that there's definitely a rabbit warren of tunnels throughout the plateau, some probably man-made most probably natural. I think if they begin to dig up the labyrinth it will turn out to be huge and probably one of the biggest constructions in Egypt. I need to go back there!

All experience good or bad is godly. But when I'm sick god can go do one.

My theory is that drama primarily comes out of emotion. Someone's actions trigger us emotionally for example, and then we justify and explain those emotions with a story and characters. And, people are addicted to stories, they can even believe them absolutely as if they're concrete fact. Some drama never de-escalates because of this. You do have to be careful though, in not creating drama from observing drama. Even if you're not part of a drama, it can still engage the emotions negatively, and you can create more stories for yourself from there. The ultimate escape route is complete indifference to drama. But to achieve that you really have to be honest and not pretend you don't have emotions. Listen to what they're telling you, absorb any learnings and then move on. Don't make a drama out of it.