LastThursday

She makes me laugh so much: And sort of related. Maybe I'll try this myself some day?:

@Myioko find a sledgehammer somewhere inside your glass box, take a big swing at the glass and smash it into tiny tiny fragments, then take a deep gulp of fresh air. Find those small opportunities, at first, to express what you feel to other people, be creative.

NLP aims to collapse dualities in most of its techniques for lasting change. It does this by anchoring two different "states" (aka a duality) and then triggering both anchors simultaneously. This has the effect of reframing the previous duality into a new unity - the two previously distinct states become one state which is different in character (hopefully more positive). It strikes me that a lot of spirituality is also about collapsing dualities together. Both things are agents of change.

I went for another one of my famous (in my circles) urban hikes yesterday. I do this mostly as an escape, but also to get to know a place better. Also, I like the warm satisfaction of having completed a mission. This time it was about eight miles from Uxbridge to Heathrow, those places probably won't mean much to you except maybe for you international flyers. London is big and there's lots to explore. I usually like some reason to walk from point A to point B, maybe it's just to continue from where I left off last time (Uxbridge), or maybe have points of interest (Heathrow and planes coming and going) along the way. But the main reason is exploratory, to "feel out" different areas and how they segue into each other. There's also a sense of just being with your own senses which eventually brings you into a meditative state. The route itself was mostly uninteresting unfortunately, busy main roads and mile upon mile of suburban housing - but it didn't matter so much. Each area does have its own character, and it's possible to imagine how a place was countryside not so long ago, with bits of greenery, woods, commons, golf courses and parks hinting at how things used to be. The highlight of the hike was spotting two buzzards slowly drifting low overhead, whilst I was traversing a high street. This was an impossible sight. Buzzards are rare even in deep countryside and are mostly seen flying high over farmer's fields - and never over a city. But they must have strayed from outside of London. The route I walked mostly skirted near the west side of the greater London boundary and beyond would have been fields and reservoirs. The synchrony with the huge and noisy metal birds at the end of the route wasn't lost on me - they also coming and going from outside of London. I felt I could have walked further, I normally like to do ten miles or so and the day was blazing sunshine. But I'd reached my intended destination and I could feel my body wanting to rest a while and I was hungry, so I gave it up when I reached the tube station on the perimeter of the airport. Pushing further would have spoiled the experience in some way. I do hike with other people sometimes, but I find the experience completely different. The silences have to be filled and there's a more urgent intent and tempo to the walk, as if the destination is the prize and glory is simply completing the hike. Certainly sharing the walk with someone is more like an adventure and if you've done the route before you can be a sort of tour guide pointing things out along the way. Also, the time seems to go quicker. Neither mode is good or bad. If I'm feeling meditative or contemplative, then I go alone, for energy and adventure I go with someone else.

More @LastThursday poetry (don't roll your eyes): Come as you are, I don't expect no heirs or graces, just contorted faces, not complacency, some insatiable screams and shouts. Come as you are, I expect close up faces, lips in embraces, nothing fancy, a flat table with ice cream and dinner places. Came as you were, I didn't expect nothing racy, but woman were we crazy, like ecstasies, not embarrassing, just sated dreams and mouths.

I'm trying not be sucked in the vortex. What vortex you ask? This one right here, the journal. I have my reasons - which I may journal about... So. Yes. Anyway. Cold showers. I have taken to taking cold showers every morning in the dark. I've found that taking a cold shower - despite how initially nasty it is - gives me a slight high. Straight after I wake up I often feel slightly euphoric, and having a cold shower seems to intensity that sensation. Why dark? Well because bright light seems to wake me up too much and kills that euphoria. I'm sure Wim Hof could explain why to me. The only drawback is that I don't shave. A long time ago I started shaving in the shower without a mirror, just in case I ever go blind, and it also saves time and faff. Standing in a cold shower and shaving is nearly impossible, plus a warm face is preferable for shaving. It's a phase.

I do wonder about my night dreams sometimes. I was generally under the assumption that some amount of processing was going on in dreams - the consequence being that dreams are a kind of reflection of waking life. But just sometimes dreams are so off-the-wall that I wonder if instead I'm actually a voyeur peering into a different world. To the dream: There's a big white-walled room. I intuitively know it's the meeting space of some hotel. As the voyeur I'm looking down disembodied from the ceiling like a three-quarter view, and a woman (possibly blonde) is dressed in a sparkly cocktail dress and open toed flat shoes with fluffy bits. There's a sensation of coldness and ice. In fact in place of a carpet the whole floor is strewn with crushed ice cubes. She starts to crunch tentatively across the ice. As she gains her confidence I can see that she's actually quite drunk and is swaying as she walks across the room. The ice begins to slowly melt and turn to slush and she wades through it. Somehow, I know that she needs to drive home from whatever partying she's been up to. And, it turns out she's a truck driver! I desperately want to tell her that it's a very bad idea, but I have no way of getting her attention. WTF? I can't relate this to anything in my life. Maybe I've had the privilege of peering into another reality? Nice.

Take my hand, in white, take flight, we'll go together, flowing to the four corners, breathing forever. I'll be your moonlit path, through the dark, until the morning sparks, then we'll shine bright, forever. Take my hand, in white, come fly with me.

Compression. When you have a bad time, you notice more things. The passing of time is relative to the number of things or events you notice.

By being strategic. Sit down, breathe, and start thinking about what the most important thing to fix is, right now. Maybe it's money, maybe it's looks, maybe it's sex, maybe it's connection. Choose one of those things to work on first. Being strategic includes these things: 1. Coming up with new ideas. 2. Commitment. 3. Taking action. 4. Doing some unpleasant, boring or repetitive tasks. Be prepared for those. 5. Regular review and introspection to make sure you're getting closer to your goals. It will take a different mindset from the one you're used to. But I can sense that you have a strong desire for positive change.

I'm interested in not being deluded - which is a form of truth.

It's normal to question yourself when you start being successful. Because it's a new situation, it can feel fake or even overwhelming. I would say if possible just slow down your orders, but don't totally stop. Creativity has its ups and downs, that's normal. Creativity needs to be fed from various sources, find those sources as part of the process. Give yourself space to do some of those old things you used to do, go consume, recharge your creativity and then go back to it. Don't worry about age, unless you're on death's door, it doesn't matter at all.

House prices are a real problem. I'm in the UK in the South East of England. Over the road is a three bedroom house with garden, which is selling for around £600k (~700k euro). I rent, next door the one bedroom flat/apartment is going for £200k (no outdoor area). I didn't realise things are getting expensive in Spain too. It seems to be for several reasons here in the UK. Land is incredibly expensive, because there is limited land to build on. The cost of labour and raw materials is also expensive. If you could buy some land you could probably build a three bedroom maybe for £300k. Also there is the British dream of home ownership, everyone wants their own home. I think for example in Germany it's a lot more common to rent. So there's a cultural element to it. But this creates a pressure on the housing market. There is also population pressure, the density of people in the UK is relatively high compared to other European countries. This creates demand outstripping supply. Lastly, reading between the lines, it seems like the house building industry here likes higher prices because it makes for higher profits. So it artificially creates a supply problem which keeps the prices high. It works because of the London effect, where wages are quite a lot higher than the rest of the country - and those workers are able to afford the artificially inflated prices (and commute from the South East into work), which keeps the market buoyant. Also the government doesn't really seem to want to address the root cause of the problem by making more land available. There's a lot of talk about building affordable homes, but no real action. Saying that, house building has increased a lot in the last ten years here. I see building going on everywhere, but all at highly inflated prices that us normal people can't afford.

Truth is only available via psychedelics? Really? Which, of course, is another story, told by you, what a good imagination you have.

Says who? Where did you get this idea come from? What use is this idea? Ok. But we're not living in chaos. Stuff exists and persists. God doesn't change its mind on a whim, there's orderliness to everything. Someone's OCD doesn't disappear because God gets up one day and decides it to be gone. The OCD goes because you and the world evolves and changes in an orderly way. God is like a river: you are like a pebble in the river, thinking its the river. The river's imagination is not the pebble's imagination.

I would argue about your use of the word: clearly. Anyway, it's clearer now. And yet here is confusion: Localised imagination is being used here as a proxy to what is meant by God's (metaphysical) imagination. Your point @DrugsBunny is can metaphysical (God's) imagination even be called imagination? Yes, but not in any way in the same sense as localised imagination. Metaphysical (God's) imagination, would have to be of a special kind, not one that involves thought or desire or potentiality. It's more one that is spontaneously creative with aspects of both novelty and consistency and persistence. This kind of imagination unfolds rather than being planned: rather like zooming into a fractal pattern. There is consistency in the "look and feel" of the fractal as you zoom in, but it's constantly changing. Yes, God could stop your OCD but s/he's not going to. It's not the way God works.

There's confusion all round here. For a start what is "you" referring to here? I can sit here and imagine sitting on a beach drinking a mojito; when I stop imagining it goes away. But I can't sit here and imagine a solid gold bar into existence. But the phrase gets applied to all aspects of reality. So the "you" being referred to is not the conventional you in terms of hard cold existence. If I get hit by car, there's no way I'm imagining the bodily damage and hospitalisation that follows: it exists. However, it's clear that you can be mistaken about reality. Maybe you think that shadow in an alleyway is a knife-wielding murderer, but it's just the shadow of a cat. Or you look at an optical illusion and see things that are not actually there. So there is a sense in which a lot of reality is just imagination, whether consciously or unconsciously maintained. There's a lot of "filling in" of reality usually where information is lacking or ambiguous. There is an assumption that imagination is a process "you" can control. This is where the word is misleading. When you tell someone "you're just imagining your OCD", this implies it's possible to actually stop imagining that second and the person is just "too attached". This is disingenuous. The word imagination shouldn't be used in these contexts. So which you and what type of imagination is the phrase referring to? The whole phrase is too confusing and open to abuse. You can call existence itself imagination, but that doesn't add anything new, because "you" are not in control of it.

One way is to set up new better habits which crowd out the old worse habits. You only have so much time in a day to do things. As an example maybe you start going to the gym twice a week. Those times you are at the gym, you might have been gaming or drinking or whatever. At the start you may have to force yourself into new habits, but it gets easier with time. You want to set up a virtuous cycle. Each new healthy habit, makes you feel better which makes it easier to take up more new habits. Habits always fulfil some sort of need, just going cold turkey doesn't take away the need - which is why you relapse. Setting up new habits can fulfil your needs in a better way.

There really is no right way to be. There's an unlimited number of things we can focus on, hedonism and pleasure are only a tiny part. Or we could just not focus on anything in particular. As long as you're living all this just keeps on coming - doesn't matter what you do.

Being on this forum? Actually it's that first sip of beer after a long hike in the countryside, it's better than an orgasm.

Dear Diary, Today I'm mostly sneezing. It's not often I'm ill. In all the time this pandemic has been raging I've not felt ill once. Now two years on SARS-CoV-2 has finally struck and it's using my body for its own survival agenda. Being ill is a very good way to bring you into the present moment. The body screams at you to pay attention to it and to do that you must drop everything else. The thinking faculties slow down, become foggy and eventually stop. Normal routines become interrupted because moving from A to B becomes exhausting. You are transported into a semi-dream like state of constant unpleasantness: enough with the sneezing already! The body is often likened to a machine or a robot controlled as it is by a plethora of hormones and chemicals, topped off by that fat bulbous energy consuming amorphous mass between your ears. Your sense of being in control of yourself is shown to be a sham when you are ill. No, the body is the Lord and Master, you are just the serf tilling the fields with your petty thoughts and grand plans. To call the body a machine is disingenuous, it's more intelligent and devious than you. Covid really is a marvel. Its only plan is to reproduce and it achieves it extremely well. I wish I was that single-minded and successful. The flipside is that Covid really only cares about itself, it's happy to kill for the sake of it's own survival. In its wake governments lock up its citizens in terror and upset the normal world order, in its wake your body goes into full overdrive and incapacitates you for your own good. If you're going to be as successful as Covid then you must take your body with you on the journey. All those fears and insecurities, depressions and inadequacies are mediated through the body, not the mind, and often no amount of ruminating will make a jot of difference. Instead you have to learn to coax and negotiate with, and regulate the body, treat it well, understand its inscrutable workings both physical and emotional. Only then will the mind get its way and the body obediently follow. I'm not there yet.

You help at whatever level you're able and willing to. There isn't some minimum level of help you should be giving. My way of helping @kag101 is to show that the option of walking away is ok. There's no need to try and be a hero.

In many cases that is enough. It's always a judgement call whether to help someone or not. Even if you are well meaning and want to help someone, you may find that you're out of your depth - which is why professionals exist. The person may or may not be ready to receive help. Often people who need help look for it from the wrong people. I can't speak for @kag101, but it seems clear that s/he is not in a position to be able to help and so should be kind to her/himself and cut contact.

That is super clear. So it's just a matter of when you cut off contact. Now or in five years or longer.

An informative overview of the mindset of Russia and Putin: