LastThursday

You're right, consciousness can do what it likes.

There is no unconscious. Consciousness itself is infinite. It reminds me of the old maps that say here be dragons: here be unconsciousness.

I'm not and I feel like a King. But don't let me put you off.

@soos_mite_ah it seems like you already know the sources that trigger your negativity. Plan out your sleep as well as your eating and be strict about it - when it's necessary.

What do you mean by exist? What does it take for something to exist? Why are moments finite?

@ExistentialMuse I'm sorry you feel the way you do. I'll just pick up on the use of the word illusion here: It's easy to get tripped up with this and confuse illusion for not existing or not being real. I can state for a certainty that others exist and are real, and you should think of them and interact with them with that in mind. Illusion is just a pointer. It says that the everyday notion of "others" is not what you thought it was. That's not so strange. When we look inside a car, we see an engine made of zillions of parts and oil and wires and so on. Normally, we just drive and press the brakes and the gas pedal and look out of the windows. A car in a sense is an illusion, because it normally hides all the complexity away from you. Once you look inside a car, you can't undo what you've seen, but you still drive the car and believe the illusion. Nothing changes except your knowledge.

The creator is the same as the subject like two sides of the same coin or like one's a chicken and the other's an egg.

My dreams are going in the right direction, I had an outdoor dream where I wanted to go swimming at the beach. It looked a bit precarious in that the beach was made up of largish rounded boulders. Also, I didn't have appropriate swim wear and no sunspray. If I remember a dream, I've got into the habit of mentally overlaying a big green tick or a big red cross over the things I like and don't like - hopefully Unconscious will get the message eventually. Anyhooo.... I'm going to talk about that which can't be mentioned (it begins with S and ends with ISM and has a P in it). One of the most profound pieces of art I know of is this one: I've never thought much about it until recently. It always seemed to just be kind of a joke by Magritte. Obviously it's a pipe and obviously it's not a real pipe duh. But it does a good job at looking like a pipe doesn't it? Magritte breaks the fourth wall by explaining his trick. Notice how the pipe is a disembodied pipe with no context, it's pure pipe. So much for artists and their conjuring tricks. Let's go more abtract. What about the word "pipe"? Ok here's my version of Magritte's joke: the word "pipe" is not a pipe. This goes to show what a sham words are. I may as well have said "this statement is false". You see how subtle Magritte's joke is? Not only is the picture not a pipe, but neither are the words saying it's not a pipe! What about we snap a photo of a real pipe? Can we now say that that is a pipe? No of course not. Even a photo is just a representation of the world. A photo is just coloured paper or pinpricks of light on a screen, it has nothing to do with the objects it takes pictures of. Alright, how about we go out, buy a pipe and fill it with tobacco and smoke it? That surely must be a pipe, right? Yes. How about we make a pipe from thin papers stuck together and fill it with tobacco. Is that a pipe? No not really, it's a rollup. What's the difference? The problem here is that a "pipe" actually has a fair amount of leeway in the real world: different colours, shapes, sizes, styles, meterials, fashions and so on. So when we use the concept "pipe" or even paint a pipe like Magritte, we are somehow drawing on an idealised template for what a pipe should be (the disembodied pipe). Already you should be questioning reality. A "pipe" lives inside our heads and not out there in the real world. It's just that some objects out there coincidentally match with our mental templates and we happily tag those objects with names such as "pipe". Let's move on to people. (Sorry Leo my condolences) Imagine you were wearing a dumb VR headset that always just projected whatever was in front of it. It's so good at its job, that you have no trouble going about your business and doing all the normal thing you can do. But; the lawyers have got involved and every 15 minutes it must flash up the message "this is only a representation of reality we are not liable for any death or injury caused by using this product". The question now is, is what you're seeing through the VR headset reality or not reality? It's the same joke as Magritte's. How is it that we can understand the representations on the screens in the headset as reality? Are the people we see in the VR headset actual people or just representations of people? Or is it again just that we have a mental template for a person and that objects and things out there just so happen to match our templates? In a sense we simply take our idealised templates of pipes and people and project them onto we reality. We make the stuff of reality snap-to-fit our expectations. That's the deep message from Magritte's painting. Let's go one removed from people. What about consciousness? First things first: the word consciousness is not consciousness. Be that as it may, I'll carry on as if you understand what I mean by me using these letters: consciousness. If you do know what consciousness is, then you must be experiencing it right now because that's part of its definition (or mental template/concept) and if you're experiencing it then in a sense it must belong to you. I use "belong" in a fairly loose sense here, but because consciousness is a special concept it encompasses everything in your experience. Experiences belong to you, don't they? If all experiences are captured by consciousness then by extension consciousness must also belong to you. We can take the next logical step and say that if you're experiencing consciousness (or consciously experiencing) then surely all other objects out there that match your mental template for a "person" must also be experiencing consciousness. Surely, if even the logic is tenuous here, we can always confirm our suspicious and just ask the person "are you conscious, what are you experiencing?" and they will reply as if they're having experiences. Whoa hang on. I've already said that words are a sham and can't be trusted. Is there another way to see if someone is conscious? Maybe we just observe their behaviour over time and conclude that: yes, they behave like I would and so must also be conscious. But aren't words and behaviour only a representation of potential consciousness? We could just as well read a novel and conclude that Harry Potter is a conscious person. The only thing I can trust with absolute certainty to be conscious is me. Everything else in the world is just a representation like Magritte's picture - no matter how convincing. Consciousness is worse by virtue of the fact it's once removed; at least with people we can see them, touch them and smell them. With consciousness we can only get secondhand reports at best. It seems like there is one consciousness at least and all the other potential consciousnesses may or may not exist. What if we turn the flashlight of Magritte's insight back on ourselves? Is it possible that like some sick-twisted artist having a joke, that we too are just representations on a canvas - but without the convenient warning "ceci n'est pas une personne". In this paritcular case the canvas and the paint would be consciousness itself. There's no reason to treat ourselves any differently from other people: if they are simply mental constructs, then so must we be (and vice versa). In reality, there is a template of what a person is, and consciousness applies it to its experiences and makes it snap-to-fit. You are as much a mental construct as the pipe is in Magritte's painting. If you are in fact just such a construct (or concept or mental template), then any sense in which things belong to a "you" is also a construct. It follows that you cannot say that consciousness or its experiences belong to "you". Consciousness has no owner(s) and as a side effect it cannot be counted. For conciousness to be countable it would have to be put into a one-to-one correspondance with the natural numbers: 1,2,3,4 and so on. But since consciousness cannot be attached to anything, it isn't countable. Solipsism is fundamentally wrong if the self is a constructed entity, because there isn't one consciousness or even a you to experience it. Magritte refutes solipsism and refutes the self, that's why it's such a profound piece of art. Why can solipsism invoke fear? This is purely an emotional response to having our survival threatened. If there are indeed no others to fall back on, we are truly alone forever and extremely vulnerable. We are left to wander the wilderness by ourselves with only the jackals and cactuses to talk to. We have to survive by our own wits and possibly fall into madness and delusion without knowing that we are. Maybe we already are insane. We escape solipsism by escaping the self, we are not people, we are consciousness pretending to be people. That is even more scary because in that case we truly don't exist and all this is is is... what is it? (P.S. I couldn't resist: it's all a pipe dream).

Notes to self: Representation (this is not a pipe) Projection No self and construction of the self Counting perspectives and conciousness, the set of all things Survival and fear of being alone And tying it all together.

So you say. Consciousness however doesn't care about self. Self is an epiphenomenon if you like; you can have consciousness without a self.

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.