LastThursday

Self awareness doesn't require consciousness. A computer can easily monitor itself and its own systems, maybe CPU temperature and how much RAM is being used: it is already self aware. Self Awareness != Consciousness

Like everything else in life, there's a sliding scale. Some friends are very casual, some deep, some in the middle. The level of friendship can't be forced, just go with the flow. But the general rule is, the more you see a person the closer you'll end up.

I've been denied more times than I've had hot dinners. Some tips when queing: Don't be too loud. Don't be too animated. If you're with a large (>4) group of men, split up and queue at different times. Don't talk to bouncers. Don't make too much eye contact with bouncers. Bouncers will never change their minds, go somewhere else if denied. Adhere to any dress code, especially shoes and/or don't wear jeans (depends on the place though). Make sure you have ID on you if necessary. If you look very young, grow a beard.

I'd like to comment further but...

Yeah, I was trying to be gentle. It's perspectives all the way down.

I've been working on mind control. Control of my own mind. Really it's more about modulation of consciousness (without drugs, because illegality scares me). I've been working on two fronts, the waking dream and the sleeping dream. With respect to the sleeping dream I've already commented about that in a previous post. But quickly: more outdoor, friendly dream characters, for everything to function properly and less frustration. I'm mostly doing this because I have very good dream recall, and I think that it may also have positive side effects on the waking dream in the longer run. My dreams have slowly been improving. With respect to the waking dream, I've also talked about that too previously. I have had various success at changing my vision with more saturated colours and with heightened sense of smell, other modalities less so. What I want to do really is see how far this can be pushed, and ask what can be changed and what can't? Does this form of control extend to anything more than just playing around with my senses, or can it extend to more abstract things out there in the world? I'm suprised that scientists are not flumoxed by sleeping dreams. Yes yes it's all spurious brain activity. But that explains precisely nothing. How is it a world can be conjured from absolutely nothing but electrical activity? If you're a materialist what and where is the interface between the world of qualia and that of matter? I often talk to my subconscious. Not that I believe in any such nonsense, but that is beside the point. Whatever it is I'm talking to can affect things I don't normally seem to have control over, I'm a pragmatist above being a disbeliever. I address my subconsious as "Unconscious". I then talk to various "parts" of my psyche with permission from Unconscious. Mostly this circumvents my rational analytical mind, which often gets in the way with these sorts of interactions. Some of these affectations come from my NLP training or at least the way I was taught it. There, my subconscious was very a much an entity beavering away out of sight, or so I was told, it was the puppetmaster. I saw first hand that a lot of the NLP techniques actually had a profound effect on me, so my pragmatic self jumped at opportunity to use this way of communicating with myself as a tool. Observation of the client is a very important aspect of NLP to "calibrate" that your interventions are having an effect. This is a bit of a black art rather than a science, but changes in skin tone (flushing), or eye movements, or barely perceptible facial movements give the game away. Fundamentally, unless you're very practised at hiding tells, you're constantly communicating non-verbally. One type of communication is akin to hypnic jerks, which are seemling involuntary muscle contractions. These tend to happen more when in a trance and if a person displays these they can be a very useful way to directly communicate with the client's subconscious. I never did have these hypnic jerks myself when doing my NLP training. But I learned to have them eventually. I would often have hypnic jerks while falling asleep. They were as annoying as fuck. I would just about be getting to sleep and then be rudely woken up by my stomach muscles contracting (for example). One lunch time at work, I decided to have a quick nap in my car. Because I was sat upright, I kept dozing and my hypnic jerks would kick in and wake me up again. I had the sudden inspiration to use my NLP techniques and ask my "Unconscious" yes and no type questions. To my utter amazement it responded by jerking. I haven't looked back since. Nowadays, I can ask my subconsious direct closed questions and it will respond with various different muscle jerks. Generally, right hand or foot for yes, left for no, both for don't know. This is exactly how I've been able to change my dreams. The sensation really is like I'm not consciously directing these kinds of movement, I don't feel ownership. Often there is a long delay before my subsconscious answers me. I've got so good at it, that I can actually nominate any part of my body to tag it with some sort of answer. Does my subconsious lie to me? I suspect it does yes. I also have to treat it simplistically, complex questions or requests can confuse things. It's like talking to an intelligent child. I've decided to try and go esoteric and have recently been playing with the idea of trying to manifest paranormal powers. So far without much success. I've asked Unconscious if it can do any of the following: remote viewing, clairvoyance, telepathy, flying, materialisation, time travel. It's a big no to all except flying and materialisation. No matter how many times I've asked the answers have been consistent. Materialisation interests me very much, and would be very very cool if it were possible, but no luck so far. My subconscious says it is fearful about demonstrating materialisation, but seems adamant that it's possible. I haven't got to the root cause of that fear, but perhaps I'm scared of insanity or the consquences of such a thing, if it were possible. Suffice to say, if it happens, I would be very hard pressed to keep it secret. Anyway, this is all great fun.

Pull the ripcord. You don't own a perspective.

Life would be boring without problems.

Become an artist or photographer or public speaker or entertainer.

Has a pulse (JOKE). I'm attracted by energy. Although it's really hard to put into words. It's not necessarily extroversion or sexual energy, although that can help. Just that there's a kind of flow and joy at being alive. I very rarely come across women who have it, most women are nice, but bore me stiff once I get to know them. Hang on... am I gay...? Nah. Men are even more boring.

I parsed this as: Our right for the ideal partner is in our willingness to not have a partner. How wrong I was! You're totally right that all relationships take constant work, it's a dynamic enterprise. There is an assumption here that "high value" is an absolute measure, which of course it isn't. It's always "high value" relative to your own personal values, some of which will be reasonable and some unreasonable. It's a lottery as to whether your specific set of values fits a large enough pool of people that you'll come across "high value" partners. Flexibility on your "high value" (which is what your advocating) helps increase the size of the pool. Happy days. But each one of your "high value" indicators has differing amounts of flexibility: personally I would be fairly inflexible on cleanliness, but flexible on height. In reality you'll only bend on your values just so far. I feel you should also think deeply about being equally as happy without a partner. This makes you fearless, because the fear of loss or rejection is nearly taken away and more importantly the neediness disappears. This allows the real you to shine through and projects self sufficiency.

Personally I don't get that vibe from here. I do get the vibe that most people on here are trying to be logical to defend their beliefs. Most beliefs are based in emotion rather than logic though. If you wanted to use words in a less analytical way I would say being more right brained, you know: poetry, stories and song lyrics. Analogy, simile and metaphor could also be used a lot more to explain things.

I would counter by saying that most people are not logical in any formal sense. We run on emotions mostly. Instead, the problem with understanding (Leo) comes purely down to lack of experience and knowledge. We just don't have a context for what is being explained, so we have to make do the best we can. We fill in the gaps by responding emotionally, broadly either negatively or positively. The only thing that needs to be overcome is our belief that we're logical, we're not, we're emotional. Logic is only used in a cursory way to legitimise our emotions and make them acceptable to others.

This is the most important thing to focus on. It's not about pushing yourself to be one way or another, but about expanding yourself so that you can choose to be one way or another whenever it suits you. Really it should be about removing your own limits and barriers, and experiencing the full range of what you're capable of. The way to stop this from happening is to have integrity. Always have in mind why you're choosing to be one way or another, work from your highest ideals and what feels right to you.

I met up with friends this weekend and ended up having discussions about respective mother-in-laws. One set of married friends has been trying to improve the relationship between the husband and his mother-in-law with some success, but there is still tension there. The husband just can't get really get over her behaviour and he's just never going to like his mother-in-law. I suspect the mother-in-law in this case is both jealous and used to getting her own way with her daughter, and her daughter is never going to push back very much. With the other married couple, it's a very similar situation. Except in this case the wife is very direct and no nonsense, and this creates a lot of friction with her mother-in-law. Again, her mother-in-law is used to getting her own way and has been quite mean towards her at times, with her husband being in a difficult position in the middle of it all. I was impartial, as I'm not married. My only advice was to remind both couples that they're in their forties and capable of running their own lives without input from their parents, and also the fact they were married and committed to each other meant they should be singing from the same hymn sheet. Most of us have the same problem with our parents continuing to treat us like children into adulthood, and we in turn revert to being children around them. Often, we find it very difficult to confront them and do things our own way, or explain to them that we don't wish to do things their way. This is especially acute if we're still living with them. Confrontation with parents can lead to feelings of rejection on their part with the associated tension and emotions that that brings. But. We should create firm boundaries with our parents and reassure them that we're not doing things out of spite, but because we're independent adults. Each generation has its own view of the world and ways of behaving and we should be cognisant of that too. --- I also got into a discussion about my level of boredom and frustration with my job. I said to my friend R that my overwhelming feeling was that I just wanted to quit my job. I wasn't really looking for validation but just a different view on things. I knew that that idea would make him feel uncomfortable in a sense. He said that I shouldn't quit, as I'm in quite a good position - I'm effectively my own boss and have a lot of knowledge of the their systems - and instead I should just make myself more mobile and work from different countries. He does know me fairly well and so yes, the idea of working from a beach cafe on my laptop sounds great in theory, or working from a different country each month sounds great. I have enough of a safety net that I could keep myself afloat for about two years without a job; quitting isn't such a scary proposition. I do feel strongly that despite my cushy number, the work is as dull as dishwater. I'm just not excited by it in any way, and then again I've never really been that excited by any of my jobs. My career in IT is lucrative, but underwhelming. Essentially, I need to change careers and really I need to work for myself on things that excite me. My love affair with STEM subjects has ended and my interests have shifted. I spend a lot of time on this site, not because I'm addicted but really because I'm shifting myself into a different direction, and trying to work things out. But my interests are scatter brained and settling on one particular thing I find impossible. It has to happen organically and that takes a lot of time. I also feel I need to get my level of confidence in myself and my self esteem up enough so that I can work for myself. I need to just let go of my career and do something completely different. Quitting my job has to be a first step, but I also need to have a firm plan before doing it. The previous times I've been in the same position without a job have been time wasting and stressful. I should do it better this time.

@Zedman is this moment ever the same as that moment? If this life is identical in everyway to your last life, then aren't they the same life? If you hold two mirrors together are there an infinitely reflecting number of mirrors or just two mirrors? If two things are the same, can they be also be different?

I refer you to my answer here:

What is reality? For starters it's not the word "reality". And therein lies the problem of explaining reality at all. What is the stronger truth? Words and explanation or the sensation of love? Is the "sensation of love" even a proxy for what is being actually experienced? Language is a finite algebra for a boundless experience. Silence is more descriptive of "reality" than words could ever be. Still, even in the silence words infect our perception filling the world with things and happenings. Try and throw away those things and happenings and what is left?

I thought I'd talk about my favourite subject: myself. Actually, I seldom talk about myself other than as "filler" for small talk. I don't particularly care about this, I have no strong need to divulge what's going on inside my head IRL. Even in this journal I do this mostly out of interest rather than need, and I definitely don't divulge everything. I learned a very long time ago that people genuinely don't care about your innermost needs and desires and mental drama. People just care about their own mental drama above all else and relate everything in the world to that. Giving it more than two seconds thought, how else could it be? Although, I do think this gets amplified by our very individualised Western culture. We only pay lip service to actually caring about what others are experiencing. In fact when someone is really on the edge and needs proper attention (I've been there), friends and family are utterly clueless. None of us have been socialised well enough to be able to deal with intensity of emotion or difficult needs. This is because someone in a vulnerable state pulls us out of our individualism, and we're immediately out of our comfort zone. There's a question on the forum asking why people are just not interested in investigating consciousness and reality. My immediate feeling was that it was like asking people to understand how computers work (computers being a good proxy for consciousness because they're ubiquitous and inscrutable). People take computers for granted (as they do reality), because they're always relating the world to their own mental space. Most people are highly interested in survival, mating, food and the soap opera of their ragbag collective. Asking people to understand how computers or even worse how consciousness works, is like trying to force first contact with an alien: it's terrifying and to be avoided. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it doesn't even cross most people's mind that the question can be asked in the first place! What does all this say about how people function? First and foremost you can't blame people for being disinterested in you or the big questions in life. Mostly, they're just firefighting and trying to stay alive and to have some semblance of positivity, if not happiness. None of us have been explicitly taught how to comfort and genuinely help someone in need - and how those skills are beneficial to us, and no-one has been taught that understanding reality can change our lives for the better. And, none of us have been taught that collectivism is necessary to balance out individualism and make us all a bit more human.

Is ignorance bliss or is ignorance suffering? Yesterday I was crossing a road on my daily walk. The road is a small junction onto a busy road and it's slightly uphill. There's always a car waiting to pull out of the junction, so people tend to cross behind the waiting car. If you drive a manual, then you know you have to keep good clutch control to stop the car rolling back down the hill before pulling away. Inevitably, there is a small amount of roll backwards. Enough roll to make contact with any pedestrians crossing immediately behind you. This in fact happened, and the pedestrian was slightly taken aback and glared at the driver in disgust. Who's at fault here? I'd say the pedestrian. His own ignorance caused him suffering, both in terms of being angry, but also the potential for being physically harmed. I'd like to think he's no longer ignorant. On the surface it seems that ignorance is a good strategy for living life. You only worry about the things happening in your immediate environment, and everything else is irrelevant or for somebody else to deal with. It allows you to be carefree and not be burdened worrying about things over which you have little control. We are all ignorant to greater or lesser degrees: we can't know everything. What about the things you ignore over which you do have control? The problem with ignorance is that you don't know what you don't know. It's possible there are many things you could do to reduce your suffering (e.g. keeping more space when cross behind cars), but you're unaware of them until something happens that brings them to your attention. This is how we all mature (by becoming less ignorant), we simply learn the hard way through experience and often by suffering. But the process of becoming less ignorant doesn't have to be completely passive. We can actively choose to reduce our ignorance, so that we can pre-empt and avoid future suffering. The main way to do this is through learning. I don't particularly mean formal learning such as a course in mathematics, but more informal curiosity driven learning. For example asking: why do cars roll backwards? And then doing a quick investigation. I would say that most people are not actively reducing their ignorance in this way. It all seems so frivolous and pointless. However, over time all these tiny reductions in ignorance amount to a big reduction in ignorance and potential suffering. The tiny learnings about how the world works often synergise with each other, and you end up with a deep understanding of things. This then affords you the ability to be strategic and actively avoid future suffering: you get X-ray vision and begin to see things others can't. To really deeply self-actualise you should actively and continuously choose to reduce your ignorance as much as possible. Ignorance is not bliss.

Desire is endless, but suffering doesn't have to be. Either a desire materialises or it doesn't. Say I suddenly have a thought that I want to own an expensive wristwatch. When should I start suffering? One second afterwards, one day, one week, one month or one year? Either I start catering to my desire at some point by saving up for the wristwatch - in which case why suffer - or I don't - in which case my desire won't materialise - so again why suffer? In short: If you never make any plans to service your desires, then they will never materialise, in which case suffering is pointless. In fact materialising some desires could actually make you suffer. Maybe I'm constantly worried about having my expensive wristwatch stolen or damaged.

As long as you've got the basics sorted out: food, water, shelter and some human contact. After that, happiness comes from inside of you not outside of you. But it can take a lot of work to realise that. Forget fatherhood if it's not for you, find happiness in other ways, the children you won't have will thank you.

@happyhappy mathematics is just symbolism and rules. A symbol is just something that stands in for something else. Numerology is bunk, because a number like 108 can symbolise anything you like and so it has no predictive power or meaning. Except for the fine structure constant though, that may explain the universe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant

@Barbara ah well, a man can ask.

@Barbara I gotta say I love your hair. Are you a mermaid?