LastThursday

Your level of anxiety is perfectly natural, although it may feel unpleasant. As an example, I grew up in rough part of inner London, where the likelihood of confrontation was quite high. Where I went to school the fear of mugging or being held at knife point was also quite high, often by people I went to school with! Knives and air-rifles would covertly be carried on school grounds. There were often stories of murders locally and people openly using drugs or having sex in the local housing estates. Being a defenceless skinny teenager in those circumstances, the only thing you can do is be hyper-vigilant and learn to keep out of certain areas and away from certain people. The consequence is you have a constant level of anxiety and thoughts of confrontation and playing out scenarios go around in your head all the time. So the anxiety servers a purpose, it's to keep you safe. Social media exacerbates the situation, because it makes it harder to avoid people. And you feel you're constantly being 'watched'. I only mentioned self defence because it will empower you in a physical confrontation and give you mental confidence that you can take care of yourself. This may reduce the anxiety. I'd also advocate starting a regular meditation or mindfulness habit, it will give you a 'space' away from the anxious thoughts.

No. But you can try and bypass the mind. So you could also say: there is awareness because there is something. The mind baulks at circularity, but there's truth in the circularity. A circularity points at one thing: inconsistency. This is otherwise known as illusion. Whenever you have a self referential system, that is also illusion. This is because a self referential system has no foundation or ground. That is why Perception a.k.a. Reality is an illusion. Basically, if you say that 'I am aware that I am aware', then it is an illusion.

@WindInTheLeaf there is something because there is awareness. The alternative question is: why is there awareness?

@kindayellow So the logical/rational part of you is functioning well. What about the light breathing, pressure building in the chest part of you? How is it helping you to survive in a confrontation? Have you ever had a real fight? Have you thought of taking up self defense classes or a martial art?

@CreamCat I also do this compulsively. At work when I send emails and even on this forum. I'll keep re-reading what I've posted over and over. The following thoughts have gone through my mind: Am I autistic? Do I have OCD? Am I a perfectionist? Something else...? I think the reason I do it is because I'm trying to capture the moment. It's the same reason young kids like repetition. There's a bit of us that wishes we could stay in the moment forever: to savour the exquisite wording we've just posted. In other words I get a kick out of it, and I like to repeat that kick over and over again. So.... fuck it! It's fun, for me at least. EDIT That must be at least ten times now

@kindayellow what's the worst thing that could happen in a confrontation?

Rather than living life in the illusion, you can live live with the illusion. You can choose to drop the illusion when it suits you. Say you are angry with a friend because of something bad they said to you yesterday. If you drop the illusion, there was no yesterday, it's just a construction of the mind. This means that what the friend said is also a construction in your mind: and you are angry at this construction! Once you realise how ridiculous this is, you will drop your anger, because it serves no purpose. Another example. Say you are going to go on a skydive tomorrow. You are nervous as hell, what happens if the parachute doesn't open, or you have a heart attack, or you throw up? You feel bad, right now. But tomorrow is just an illusion in your mind and so are the nervous thoughts. You are feeling bad about something that isn't happening. That is also ridiculous. Forget about tomorrow, it will happen soon enough, in its own way, independent of your thoughts about it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't plan. Everyday life is predictable to a certain extent, and you can guide things to happen your way. But ruminating over things in the past and the future is largely a pointless activity and a waste of emotional energy. I hope you can see from the above, that you will actually be liberated. Don't be trapped in the past and the future.

Change is constant. Change doesn't happen in time, time happens in change - it is neither quick nor slow, just constant. There is never a stopping of change. There is nothing to catch. Change doesn't live in space, space lives in change. Change is everywhere and always with no gaps. Change is the empty space - or the empty space is change.

That is essentially correct. We don't perceive movement, we perceive change. Change is like heat or smell or colour. We have to mentally fill in or construct the movement. This effect is used in TV and film, to create the illusion of movement. The individual frames of a film are static and unchanging, but the rapid changes cause the illusion of movement. We then mentally construct a timeline to fit all the movements logically together. We create a narrative. Ever see it in a film where they compress a stretch of several days into about twenty seconds? It's a good trick. This works because you mentally 'fill in' and stretch out the time to make it fit several days. This is exactly what you do in everyday life. If you observe carefully, there is no movement and there is no past.

If you want the best view, sit on the fence. Honestly the world isn't black and white. If you hold a strong belief in something, you can bet it will be wrong, every time. There's always something that doesn't fit into your worldview.

@Athemnajar The first thing to question yourself is: what is it about procrastination that upsets you? Is it the cognitive dissonance of wanting to do something, but not actually doing it? Is it something else? Get to the root of this issue first. The next thing to do is realise that you have many people inside you fighting for attention. See here for an idea about that: quitting smoking . This is a recipe for avoiding addiction. Third is to set up some away and toward motivations in your life. These need to be exciting/scary enough that you'll actually do them. At the moment for you, porn is more exciting than everything else. Put in place things that excite you more than porn. You will definitely have to work harder to achieve this - but if it motivates you enough, you'll do it. The subtlety to this wok is knowing yourself well enough to know what will motivate you. What do you find really exciting or really scary?

Learning a skill is mostly not a binary thing. At any moment in time I can play the piano: I extend my fingers and press the keys. The skill is always just 'there'. So how much time does it take to learn to play the piano? None at all. You and I can both do it, right now. So what about playing the piano well ? That is entirely a conceptual exercise. What does 'well' actually mean? Maybe I play classical 'well', and you play jazz 'well', they're different skills. So the only way to know you've mastered a skill is to compare to someone else. What is actually doing the comparing? It's all in your head, or even worse, someone else is telling you how good you are and you conceptually believe them. Where does the struggle in learning come from then? It's simple, it's a mismatch between the skill you have right now and the skill you think (conceptual) you ought to have. You get frustrated because you can't roll your R's in the back of your throat, the frustration doesn't come from the action, it comes from the mismatch. But the struggle doesn't last, and there will be a moment when you stop struggling, and all that struggle you had is just 'in your head', and becomes your conceptual 'past'. It's a headfuck thinking this way, but you can get used to it. One day I'll be enlightened, and all the struggle I had to get there, will be a figment of my imagination. So why spoil it now by struggling? It's fruitless. Just enjoy the ride now it, and soon enough it will be then.

@Jack River no way, leave that to their shrink or guru. But even that person has moments of relief. The fear comes, the fear goes. Given enough consciousness we can drop the struggle - we are made new with every second that passes - tick tock. What is a thought? We recognise a thought because it's fragmentary, it doesn't obey the rules of the rest of reality. If it wasn't fragmentary, we wouldn't recognise it as a thought: it would be reality. Because we are addicted to our concepts of time. In reality, learning a skill or becoming liberated takes no time at all. We just pretend we struggled 'all that time' to learn a thing, but hey here it is, and there's no struggle, you just 'do it'.

The river of time is actually no such thing. The notion of an extended, ordered time is entirely concept. What we experience is an ever present now, which sits entirely outside of time; all we are aware of is change. Any memories or thoughts of things having happened or things that may happen, is just constructed from thought fragments and chains of causation (belief). All those thoughts and memories are contained in the now. If you push the idea to the limit, then reality did not evolve and progress through time to this present moment. This present moment just 'is', there is no prior cause, no 'why' or 'how'. There's nothing outside of the present moment. If anything, it's the other way around: time is a fragment of the Self - quite literally a figment of its imagination.

Magic, yes. But if you want the real nitty gritty, 'it' is none of those words you've used. Or any of the words I've just used.

The only thing that is fairly certain is that we observe the world changing (although I would even argue against that). But as soon as we start thinking about how it changed, we are in fantasy land. The fantasy is what sustains time. But. The actual thoughts about these past events are themselves not fantasy, it's just their content. I only mention thoughts, because most memories of the past, are actually thoughts about thoughts about thoughts of something you believed happened.

@stevegan928 no no no. Most humans care about not being unhappy - there's a difference - humans are innately happy, that is the natural state. That's the motivation for self development: to uncover all the bullshit in our lives and to recover our natural state. Ultimately that natural state is itself: Truth. In other words, to stop all suffering we need to recover our real selves. But most people don't even realise they need to do this and they go around like headless chickens all their lives and live with constant suffering.

@Tony 845 Where does the Brain begin and end? Is the Cerebral Cortex, the mid-brain, the brain stem, the spinal chord, the nerves? Does/can the brain exist separately from the rest of the body? Is the brain really separate at all from the body? Is the brain clearly demarcated from the rest of the body? Where does the body begin and end? Is it really just the food we eat in different form? Does breathing not mix ourselves with our environment. Are our excretions part of our bodies? When we touch others, don't we mix our selves with them? Where did our bodies originate?

As per title. How do I make this paradox pop? By way of explanation the conundrum goes like this: I have come to realise that the sensation of there being a 'thing' or 'kernel' or 'nugget' or 'soul' or 'watcher' or whatever, is just a construct. 'The concious AI has realised it's just a program running in a computer' (for example - I don't actually believe that though). As such, this Construct knows it is made from a free floating sea of associations and memories and feelings and the rest. The Construct keeps itself going, by continuously reinforcing the belief that it exists, rather like a perpetual motion machine. But this Construct also believes 'reality' doesn't need the Construct to carry on: reality doesn't need to be 'watched' to exist. Now the Construct knows that it's fake, but one thing it really can't deny, is that 'reality' is actually happening. And that if it ultimately snuffs itself out, it thinks reality will carry on regardless - it is not scared (very much). But where/what/how exactly will reality be, if it's not being 'watched'? In other words, is it actually possible to remove the Construct without also snuffing out reality? Or does the Construct just morph itself into something else - something like reality 'watching' itself? Does the Construct die or does it re-contextualize? Which is it?

Thanks all. I've exhausted myself on this topic. Time for a mushroom tea and a darkened room...

Thank you @Mu_ for your video. That's the realisation. The Construct is aware of the Construct. It has literally pulled itself up by its own bootstraps. It has conjured itself up from nothing. The Construct is aware of its own awareness. The awareness is an awareness of something however. Aside from the vagaries of language use, awareness is something that 'cuts' or 'divides' or 'separates', because otherwise everything would be the same and awareness would cease. If the awareness were dropped into an infinity of nothing it would not exist. And yet despite that, here is reality and there surely is awareness. If I kill the Construct, does awareness also die? Is the Construct awareness itself? Is awareness all there is?

@Serotoninluv I couldn't agree more. Indeed language itself is a big barrier to understanding this stuff. There is also a strong tendency to get caught up in words and definitions of words and arguing about the use of words themselves and not actually getting to the meat of the spiritual practice. Even in the sentence I've just written, I've left out information: 'strong tendency' by whom and where and when? There's no other way around this on a forum, but direct experience is key.

@Emerald why does it matter to you? I used to do Tai-Chi for years, and after the initial excitement, I used to wonder to myself why do I do this? I'm just doing the same mindless moves over and over again, week in week out: sensei please just give me something else! Eventually it clicked. It wasn't really about the moves, it was the practice that was important. It was the energy, the poise, the focussed attention, the clear mind, and the graceful execution. That's why it mattered to me.

I did go through a solipsistic phase, but I didn't bother others about it; being asked if you really exist generally doesn't go down well. Eventually though, I realised I wasn't being radical enough, so I dropped the solipsism. Different compared to what? Ok, I realise my error, there is nothing to compare it to. Contemplating enlightenment is kind of a thankless task. I just have to concentrate on the path instead and I will get 'there'. One day I will be enlightened (or not) and that is that. Indeed, what objects? They are as much part of the Construct as the Construct itself. Is a chair four legs a seat and a back? Or is it a chair? Or is the chair just an invention? Is the Construct a sensation of existence + an observer. Or is it Reality? I have no idea - yet.

No Instead I questioned my existence, and 'I' started to act strange. That's the point. But you've lost the nuance of what I'm getting at - see next. Yeah exactly. But even worse. How can reality be any different? But I guess it can! I'm standing on the edge looking over, but I don't know how to jump or even if jumping makes any sense. Yes and it was hairy and stunk bad.