LastThursday

For the love of God don't submit. Stand firm!

No. It's completely normal for your thoughts to wander. By narrating your actions you're doing a form of meditation. You're constantly bringing back your attention to the present moment and to what your body is doing. This builds up awareness and allows you to have more conscious control over your body and actions. A lot of mental health problems can be caused by negative and intrusive thoughts. That's why meditation is often given as a way to help with this. But. Narration is just words. Words can never fully describe what is going on and they may end up being a distraction. It's a distraction because you're programming yourself to place importance on the narration and the words. This is the wrong emphasis. You should be placing importance on what is actually happening. Your body is a very intelligent machine and most of the time it doesn't need a lot of conscious guidance - let it spontaneously do its thing. You should also practise not narrating and totally switching off that inner voice. You'll be surprised that it's possible to live like that, and be totally conscious.

Not at all, it seems pretty relevant to the thread. I suppose I was thinking about the result (quantity) rather than the cause (motivation) behind "reading the signs". But your point is excellent. Is there an underlying motivation for why the OP is seeing these numbers? Maybe the meaning behind seeing the Angel numbers, is precisely to uncover that motivation if it's not immediately obvious.

Reflection. Anything I think about others I try and reflect back to myself. E.g. why is that guy such an asshole? Am I an asshole sometimes? Do other people exist? Do I exist? That guy is so stupid. Am I stupid? Is it ok to obsess over someone? Would I like to be obsessed about? And on and on. If done properly, it's very effective for self learning and practising non-judgement. Inverse. E.g. was the universe created? Maybe it wasn't created. Am I the only one in existence? Maybe I'm not the only one in existence. Is God a separate entity? Maybe God is not separate. Does God exist? What if God didn't exist. What is existence? What isn't existence? What is everything? What isn't everything? Do explanations get at truth, or not? Boundary removal. E.g. am I a distinct entity? Or am I part of everything else: the food I eat, the air I breathe, the skin cells I shed? Are humans special? Or are they just another animal? Am I separate from God, or the same as God? Is a colour a different thing from a sound? Or are they the same is some way? Are two people interacting, two entities or one system? Does what I do affect everything else? Are my thoughts mine or just part of this? Is my sense of self separate from my perceptions?

@Judy2 do you think instead of a fine line, there's just a sliding scale? Some folks don't pay any attention at all, some find meaning in everything, most are in the middle somewhere. I find myself constantly looking at car number plates. My brain just loves symbols and my attention gets sucked in. Sometimes absentmindedly, connections and things are triggered, and a whole train of thought comes out of it. I have to try and pull my attention away mostly and pay attention to other things. Everything in moderation. I know well enough that car number plates are randomly assigned. The symbols themselves are meaningless: except for the things they trigger within me, that's what I should be paying attention to.

For that 80's vibe

Same thing as people's opinions and advices. So it evens out. Ignore or don't ignore, same effect. Sane result. Indeed. To be clear, the OP is free to take my advice/opinion or not. I wasn't trying to be dismissive. I agree that the universe is constantly trying to speak to us, but it's not the happenings or appearances themselves which are important. It's how we interpret those things which is important. Numbers/numerology is far more abstract and ambiguous than other "signs" we could pay attention to. There are other things to focus on that give much clearer signs. @Agrande is seemingly stuck in limbo, where they see some meaning in the numbers, but don't know what the meaning is. We can't help, because our meaning in not @Agrande's meaning. The only sensible solution is to ignore the numbers, to get out of the bind.

Agreed. But you might need a map to find the territory or to navigate around it.

There is a lot of talk on here about the map not being the territory. But what is a map exactly? How does a map relate to stories, hallucinations and imagination? Let me know your thoughts.

It's instructive to look at the situation in Northern Ireland. There they have power sharing between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The power sharing is fairly unstable and there's a lot of bickering, but it's way better than the alternative was (killings, violence, bombings, terrorism). I remember the regular bombings on the UK mainland clearly. In fact there were no litter bins in major train stations for years, and even now there are clear plastic litter bags at stations. I suspect that a one-state solution for Israel/Palestine would also need this kind of power sharing for it to be viable. Otherwise the interests of the Palestinian people would still be suppressed in favour of Israeli ideals (as they are in fact now). A two-state solution would at least give the Palestinian people autonomy. However, in that there would be a very persistent and long lasting tension between a Palestinian state and Israeli state, which could destabilise the whole region - although that's no different to now - just look at India and Pakistan for reference. Or maybe the solution is to have a no-go zone like in Cyprus or the two Koreas. Also, I think that any Palestinian state would need to have contiguous land for it to work properly, at the moment Gaza and the West Bank are separated. Otherwise you would constantly have the presence of Israel interposed physically. But there are many countries with exclaves, Spain or the UK for example.

The only not-this is nothing. What is nothing? Not-this. So this and nothing are a mutually exclusive duality. But that's a duality! Yes and...?

Ignore them. Numbers only have as much meaning as you want them to have.

Some loose thoughts I had while reading your post: If there is some perception that has no bearing on our survival, then evolutionary processes would not favour being able to perceive it either way - it's a 50-50 chance. So we may have perceptions not directly related to survival - and spiritually related perceptions maybe one thing. Evolution doesn't progress, it has no end goal. Natively, that is correct. But there is an argument to say that any human invention is also a product of evolution/nature. Enhancement through technology does allow us to perceive more of reality. And it's done by using a transformation process: infra-red light is converted to light we can see, and so on. You could extend the argument further and ask if there are perceptions yet to be discovered through this enhancement (expansion) process. There's always variability in populations of any species, so it's quite possible some can perceive what others can't: for example see tetrachromacy. Note also, that this is an assumption based on form, so does it necessarily hold that if we have similar brains and bodies we must be perceiving similar things? If perception is relative to itself, then we could all be experiencing very different realities.

Running through the tall yellow grass Ghosts of past whisper and glisten in the dew Listen! Can you hear it? Walking beyond on the wooded path Miracles of present grip and sway gently in the breeze Stop! Can you feel it? Over hill running over stream over and over Futures rush through and fizzle in the noon Go! Are you not it?

Maybe communion with someone is spiritual in itself, the divided wants to become unified, two become one? The reward is unadulterated bliss and sticky mess.

It's a measurement problem. The interplay of chemicals is so intricate, that it's extremely difficult to work it all out in real time. If I was God and I had to solve the problem, I'd have chemical gradients in three axes to provide a 3D grid of different chemical concentrations in the early stages of cells division. Each level of concentration then switches on and off different parts of the DNA machinery in each cell, which then makes different cells. You can get at least one axis from where the sperm enters the egg. Alternatively if you have say 8 cells in a ball, then each pair could easily form a different axis of chemical concentration. I dunno just vibing here.

Except death isn't random, that's why they evolve. Imagine it like quality control in peanut factory, what would you do? You take out all the bad, rotten, shrivelled and mishapen peanuts. And you're left with the best ones. Nature does exactly the same thing, it is more likely to kill off peanuts that don't do as well in their environment. It's completly logical and simple.

Don't believe for a minute you don't rely on models though. Here's a thread about maps (aka models), the conclusion is drifting towards something you wouldn't like: In particular read this response:

The image you gave is misleading. For a start every time round the cycle things change, it's not static. Something becomes a peanut and then the peanut becomes something else. Next there are many peanut cycles, each one different. And lastly, this cycle is intermeshed with every other cycle (ecosystem), and with the cycles of Earth itself: water, atmospheric, ocean currents, Earth wobble and on and on. And even solar cycles have an effect. Science says all those things and more.

That's true. I'd say an abstract or mental map is a very different thing from any other type of map - even language. Your example of navigating a building is interesting. Even when you're actually in the building and trying to navigate it, you're still using an abstract mental map to do it. I think most would call this "direct experience" instead, but there is a sense in which we're still using mental maps even when directly experiencing (anything) - and we can't actually get away from this. Although @Vibroverse thinks/knows it's possible to do so. You've touched on something important, in that a map isn't meant to explain everything. Is a map always a simplification of what it represents? Is a map always a particular point of view? This is just fate or determinism by another name, personally I don't believe in determinism. But it's very possible there is a guiding force pushing us in certain directions - which is nearly like determinism. The guiding force is still "us" but one that we're not much conscious of.

Being able to do this is a superpower that is critical if you're into self-help or spirituality. Confusion normally creates negative feelings; to be able to just sit in confusion and not strongly emotionally react is a great skill to have.

Yes same stuff. As the wikipedia article says: thought form or imaginary friend. But my take is that it is possible for the tulpa/thought form to posses your body - and this is both easier to do and to maintain. But maybe at that point it becomes less of a tulpa and more of something else? I mean, doesn't a good actor become "possesed" by the character they've studied and mentally built up? Is acting dangerous? Agreed, as can anything spiritual or that plays with the mind. But I would say it is not dangerous in general for most people. Naturally, you could argue there are levels of tulpa creation. If you want to create a malevolent demon tulpa, then yeah ok, potential danger. It's probably good to realise at some point on the path, that there is no ground, because everything is relative to everything else. But it should be eased into. If you are prone to believing any stray thought as reality, then maybe steer clear of this sort of thing.

I'm not a tulpamancer as such. But I have dabbled. There is a fair amount of mental effort involved. I've found that it's much easier to just embody your tulpa and be them. All this talk of it being a dangerous activity is rubbish. Just go ahead and do it. Having imaginary people in your life is not dangerous.

No no no. That's what "happened" means. It happened. It's just that the past is qualitatively differerent from the now.

Is there any room for "direct experience" in that case? Or is all of experience "indirect" i.e. a map of some sort? Is there a concrete end point to the map of a map of map? Yes? How is language understood at all? Does it use another language - a mental mapping language? Or is there some non-language that language is understood by? Sorry lots of questions marks.