LastThursday

@bmcnicho ok. What are my motivations for arguing against an "unconscious" being valid? 1. I like to be contrary. 2. I like to win an argument. 3. I enjoy being direct and abrasive. 4. Maybe I can express a different point of view and shift someone's perception in the process. 5. Maybe I'm like a dog with a bone and need someone to validate my ideas and pat me on the head. 6. Maybe I'm an unconscious idiot arguing about something I know nothing about. So, I've suddenly become conscious of my motivations - that according to you (not just you) were previously below the surface in my unconscious - my "darker motivations". So I continue in my therapy and unpack each of the points 1 to 6 above - dredging up ever more unconscious flotsam and jetsam - and connecting it to things in my childhood and trauma and learned behaviours. But notice how ALL of the above is just an instance of the following: In other words concepts and imagination. An interpretation of something you have no access to (because it doesn't exist). A story made up for the occasion. What happens when we drop the idea of an "unconscious"? Nothing changes, except to realise that we are REALLY good at making up stories about ourselves and to hide the fact that it's confabulation, we attribute it to something established and scientific: The Unconscious. Don't get me wrong, the conscious stories we have about ourselves are extremely powerful and changing them is just as powerful. That is better therapy. My opinion is that the story of the "unconscious" tries to solve a scientific problem of cause and effect. That anything which is discontinuous in direct conscious experience must have a smooth chain of cause and effect outside of the conscious experience - that things don't just happen "for no reason" or "come out of nowhere". But my direct experience is telling me otherwise.

Nice. But how do you know that? Or did somebody tell you that? Direct or indirect, symbolically or not, it can only be in your consciousness. It's nowhere else. Because there is nothing outside of your conciousness. And what would that content be exactly? If you can't 'know' it in consciousness, then what use is it? You have to be really really aware of stories told to you that start like this: "This thing exists. BUT. It cannot be known". Yeah right move along. Sorry I'm not picking on you in particular. Why invoke the idea of an unconscious at all? What about Occam's razor? What can't be explained without reference to an "unconscious"? Why diminish the power of consciousness and make it secondary to some unfathomable black box of whirring stuff?

@arlin The unconscious only exists in your conscious experience. If the unconscious really exists outside of conscious experience, then where is its boundary? In other words, where does it reside? The brain? The body? The whole universe? How can you know for sure?

If you really examine it deeply, no one person has any dominance over you. Hierarchies are based on dominance: "I have more strength (or whatever) than you, so you will submit to my will". You are your worst own enemy. The only reason your take hierarchies seriously, is because you don't have the cojones to go out of your comfort zone and potentially risk your own survival. If you did, you'd think hierarchies were ridiculous; and you'd truly be free. That said, hierarchies have their uses. Why do something yourself, when your leader can do it for you? Now THAT is survival in action.

@Psyche_92 are you yourself beautiful?

Love is killed by intellect.

Now you're getting it!

Imagine you are god and you live in a nothingness. Nothingness. No light or dark. No change. No yesterday or tomorrow. No forward or backwards, up or down. No distance or thought or anything in fact. Nothing. You're bored. "I know! I'll create a something". So you divide your nothing into two. This nothing and that nothing. You live in your two nothings for a while, but it's unsatisfactory. Both nothings are the same. The only crumb of enjoyment is that you "know" there are two nothings. "By golly! I've got it. I'll have a million nothings!" And so you hop from one nothing to the other, experience a hundred nothings at once, a nothing inside another nothing, and have a good old time. Then you're bored again. "Sheesh. What to do do? How will I ever get something from nothing? Hmm..." God smacks his* forehead. "Duh!" "INFINITE nothings! Now THAT, is something." * Disclaimer. God has no gender.

The present moment IS change. It never stops. Change is not about duration at all. Change is primary, time is secondary (inferred or constructed). @Preetom has the answer: memory. The present moment IS memory. Without it you wouldn't exist; no continuity, no recognition, no nothing. The present moment is woven from Change, Memory and a myriad other sensations. But they are not discreet in themselves, they are all ONE and the same flow of the present moment. We just like to play games and divide up the present moment into discreet 'things'.

Syntax have does who when order understand and so who? Grammar.

In another thread, in passing, the topic of confessing our weak spots came up. Specifically @Zigzag Idiot said: "I feel the forum would be more balanced if we could all be a little more confessional of our weak spots. With hopefully a more mindful and spacious atmosphere developing. Where just the confession of a shortcoming is allowed to sit in quiet with some kind of subtle acknowledgements from others who are also doing the Work." I think it is really important to dwell on our weak spots and to be open and vulnerable to other people about them. And what better place than this forum to do that? In confessing our weaknesses there is strength. The idea here is simply to simply listen and contemplate, not to try and fix or help or argue or whatever. Feel free to do the same. So as a taster here goes: I have a bad habit of shutting people out of my life who have 'wronged' me in some way, rather than resolving the problem with them first. I have a strong tendency to hide from life, rather than being open to it and brave. I don't plan my future and sometimes to my own detriment. I would like to lead an amazing life, but I take no action towards it, then beat myself up for being miserable. I feel a huge amount of loneliness, despite the fact that I'm good with people, and could make friends easily if I applied myself I feel the need to show my cleverness so that I get approval and love from others I hold myself back from people to accommodate to them, rather than just being my authentic self I'm never satisfied with the way I am, and constantly need to question myself, which is emotionally draining Ok that's enough! Now your turn.

That's great! I'll pick up the baton and start a post to that effect.

Personally I don't think there are ANY Jesus's or Buddha's on this forum. But collectively, we can pull each other up by the spirtual bootstraps. That is spot on. Of course that's only half the story. The other half is how the person receiving the 'rightness' behaves in response, if they are triggered and show it, then they also also guilty of bad behaviour, or of some further 'inner work' that needs to be done. In my opinion variety and flexibility of behaviour is what we should all strive for - sometimes 'right', sometimes 'humble', sometimes 'rude', sometimes 'polite' and so on. Just like a diet, too much of one thing is bad for you in the long run. Many people (me included) are too narrow and set in their behaviours and this causes them many many problems in their lives. But flexibility of behaviour involves a lot of experimentation, fearlessness, self knowledge and high consciousness. All that work! Phew.

@OctagonOctopus no need to fear death, you have already died many times.

@Zigzag Idiot that's the idea. Except mis-matchers don't do it consciously - it's not a strategy they deploy, more of an impulse to be different all the time. My point is that, when you're interacting with a mis-matcher, it can seem like they're always disagreeing with you and trying to impose their 'right' views. But in actual fact they're just doing what comes naturally to them.

It's my projection, but It seems like your brother has become dependant on you for his own survival. But because you're not willing or can't provide enough to help him survive, he blames you. Now you've cut him off, he has become hostile or angry and is using his friends as a way to show you that, because he's unable to do it himself directly. His anger will subside in time, and the gossip will stop. Perhaps he will eventually learn to fend for himself, or find someone else to use as a crutch. But he's not your responsibility if you don't want him to be. My advice is to just tell the truth to counter the gossip and to wait it out.

Some people are natural mis-matchers. When they see or hear a thing, they naturally want to find ways in which they can be different from that, or see it from a different viewpoint than other people do. This is more of a cognitive style than a need to be Right per se. So look out for those types as well as the insecure ones. Maybe you're one yourself?

Engineering/Computer Science degree. Working for a small firm supporting a middle sized Estate Agents in the UK, and doing all their web development and support. I'd like to break out of programming for a living, I feel like sitting in front of a glowing rectangle eight hours a day is such a waste and probably really bad for my long term health. But in a roundabout way, I'm helping people find a home which is good, albeit with a view to fleecing them - London prices! But the money's too good and the stress is low and my commute is ten minutes. If I had the wherewithal and gumption to change things, I'd go work outdoors in a sunny climate, where people talk to each other, and live somewhere where the neighbours want to talk to you and fuck the money. But at 46, it's super hard to rock the the boat - although I don't have a wife and kids or even tied to my own home (yet). I still have a chance at having an amazing life, that's what I keep telling myself. The only thing getting in the way is me.

1. God is a figment of its imagination. 2. Big ball of yarn? Slices? Leo Slice. Last Thursday Slice. A Slice going through all of us. But avoid confusion, the slices are not sequential, sequential is meaningless outside of time. More like flowing to the nearest most similar slice? (Or Not) Dunno, just thought games. As you were.

Yes.

Are you feeling that way 24/7? Or just when you notice it? When are not feeling that way (why)?

I guess I go on this forum to contemplate. The ideas, questions and problems on this forum are better than my own imagination. And I'm addicted to contemplation!

I'm dying every second. I sometimes wish I could take it all back; that perfume, that innocence, that simplicity. And yet, here I am, reborn every second.

Great video, useful insights. Many of the things we need to do often come from 'outside ourselves', and there can be a lot of mental resistance to those tasks, leading to procrastination. For some people 'internally' generating actions or having some form of ownership over them is useful in overcoming procrastination. It's also helpful to go meta and realise that 'doing', 'taking action', 'procrastination', 'goals', 'schedules' etc. are all part of a paradigm. It's possible to shift out of that paradigm and realign with a different way of being.

@see_on_see The videos will still be relevant in a week, a month, a year, a decade, possibly even in a century. What's the rush? Be master of your own schedule, don't be a slave to someone else's.