LastThursday

Because the ego is not God. It's only the ego that wants. And the ego's imagination is not God's imagination. Ego ≠ God.

Change the world or change yourself? I reckon we often feel completely helpless against what the world throws at us. There is a truth to this. Also, we have a desire to mould the world in our image and leave a lasting impression in it. I think the reason for this is that this gives our lives some meaning, otherwise we may as just well be rocks being battered by the ocean waves. Perhaps when we were hunter gatherers not so long ago, directly providing for ourselves and each other and using all our wits just to stay alive and being super connected to the land, all that was enough meaning. Our modern world is not enough and doesn't nourish our souls and often sucks them dry. But whatever the modern world of towns and cities doesn't give us, we still have our inner world as a source of nourishment. We hugely underestimate our potentials and our ability to sculpt ourselves. So why don't we engage with this potential and why are we so scared of changing ourselves? The largest thing holding us back is our attachment to our identities - we are scared of what will happen if we let go of who we are. We spend so much time and effort building ourselves up and positioning ourselves within our social web; we need love and recognition for our identities. Society expects us to do this and we don't know any better. All those millions of years of hunting and gathering and being part of nature has imbued us with super human abilities. We had to be able to remember a million facts and reason deeply about the natural world in order to survive. We had to tell each other stories to inform and entertain each other; we live and die by our stories. We lived in each others' faces, constantly and up close and personal and that was natural. We constantly moved and used and understood our bodies. All this innate ability makes for a potent brew. We don't engage with our potential because we stay ignorant, and we don't know what we don't know. We fear the unknown and rightly so, it threatens our survival or could take away our hard earned lifestyles. We are also keen on not expending any more energy than we need to, every animal is like this. Given the choice of doing something hard and energy intensive or doing nothing, we will often choose doing nothing. In the end doing nothing becomes ingrained. To change ourselves is to let go of our identities and to engage in a long hard slog of mastering our potentials into the large unknown. But the reward is that when we change ourselves, we also change our world.

@Thought Art is there room for intuition on your list?

Change is death too. For things to change new things must happen and old things must stop happening and die.

This is dodgy logic. Who is doing the supposing? Why aren't they included?

There's so much I could say about infinity and concepts and so on. Ok, how about seeing it the other way round: your body is in awareness? Awareness is like a fluid that can take any shape it likes. It can take the shape of sight and the shape of sound or the shape of feeling. You have an awareness of your eyes. You can look in the mirror and see them, or poke them with your finger, or just close your eyes. Your eyes only exist as an awareness of sight (mirror) and touch (finger). So it seems like you need an awareness of sight to know you have eyes! All you have is correlation. In other words every time you blink your vision changes at the same time. But the blinking and the vision are both just in awareness. You can't be certain that one is causing the other. In fact blinking is not causing vision. Hopefully you see the problem.

I have no answers. But I do have three interlocking observations: There's the whole idea of "perceptual bubble" and that there may be other perceptual bubbles out there, but this is pure inference. You could have ended up in a different reality where you are omniscient and experience everything at once, equally every time at once. But this is extrapolation from you current perspective. When you dig down deep, time and space are constructions anyway, so they're not inherent to reality. If neither are true, then what you are experiencing is already everywhere and everywhen: just a very particular form of it. In order to be in a perceptual bubble, someone has to be in it. There is a strong assumption of ownership here. Somehow there is this notion of a kernel that is separate from the perceptual bubble that is able to say "this bubble belongs to me". But that kernel is a construction too so it is not inherent to reality; and the idea of a perceptual bubble can't be sustained because there is no-one home to experience it.

It would seem like you would have to directly experience two direct experiences simultaneously to know the truth. Until that happens it is just a concept. In any case, if you were to experience someone else's direct experience, whose direct experience would it become? Yours or theirs or both?

If you experienced someone else's mind, would it be their mind or your mind or both?

Matrix, maternal and matter have the same word origins: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/matrix#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/matter#English

Ask yourself if you need eyes to see. How do you see in dreams when you eyes are closed in a darkened room?

I found this paragraph tickled my philosophical bone. The core of the problem that you point out is really the question about what existence actually is. Is existence what Leo calls "direct experience" and nothing more than that? Or is existence an imagined continuity whereby the world carries on with or without your observation of it? Can both be possibly true at the same time? Direct experience is exactly what it says on the tin. Only things which are directly experienced can be said to be absolutely true, everything else is just good guesswork. So why is it then that when you directly re-experience that football hurtling towards you, it is in the place you expect it to be? Why is the world is consistent and hangs together following certain trajectories and laws? Unity. Everything is entangled with everything else. Above all the world seeks to be as highly correlated with itself as possible. The world in one sense is perfection, which means that there are no glitches or gaps, it's like the water in a river filling all the available space. When you stop observing, the whole of existence conspires to conserve the existence of what you just observed, so that it doesn't just disappear into nothingness. It's like a kind of hologram, everything is encoded everywhere into the surface of the glass plate of idealism. The sofa you're sitting is on is spread throughout the whole of existence: existence has a memory of its own. The existence of the sofa is intertwined with the existence of everything else, this is what creates persistence and consistency. That's because everything is a unity and there are no boundaries separating one thing from anything else. Peace and love ?

I thought I would revisit the subject of tension in the body. This interests me because I think a lot of the anxiety and uneasiness I feel in my life are directly connected with sensations in my body. If I can crack the nut of releasing bodily tension then I think that will make for a more relaxed and fulfilled life. There's two sides I want to explore: why do I have tension and how do I get rid of it? The tension I do have is mostly from the shoulders and above, specifically the shoulders, neck and jaw area. This pattern of tension has certainly changed over time. In my teenage years I remember distinctly having a lot of tension around my stomach. This is interesting because I think that stomach tension came very much as a response to low level bullying at school: it was a defence mechanism, fight or flight. Growing up in the neighbourhood that I did, I was exposed to potential aggression from a young age from other kids. I suspect my body learned to be constantly on guard, which created the tension in the first place. So, there is a strong connection between the anxiety I've felt most of my life and the learned tension in my body. Remove the tension, remove the anxiety; well that's my theory. It is totally possible to have anxiety without any bodily tension per se. For example anxiety for me manifests as sort of butterflies around my chest area - probably the effects of adrenaline - it's definitely not positive! But it is almost always accompanied by tension around the shoulders and jaw. I also think that the tension throughout the day contributes to fatigue and regular headaches, although I'm very good at sleeping to counteract it (!). My mother was also quite an anxious person around people (because of her deafness and inability to speak English), and that's rubbed off on to me from a young age. It has taken me a huge amount of time and experience to unlearn most of that anxious behaviour around people, and it's still not fully conquered. I've been using self-hypnotism as a way to truly and completely relax my body. It has also allowed me to become a lot more aware of exactly where the tension sits in my body; and I've built up that awareness throughout the day to continually relieve the tension. But it's no solution as yet, I'm really hoping that sheer determination and practise will release the tension permanently. I have noticed an improvement since I started the hypnotism, but it's slow going. I could go conventional and try to get to the root causes of the tension (which I touched on above), but I feel that's a rats nest of entangled memories and emotions that I have no way to untangle by myself. And to go through therapy and have to relive all that negativity I see as utterly pointless. --- On a tangentially related subject I have been dabbling in dream control. I think a lot of my anxiety spills over into my dreams in the form of unpleasant or frustrating situations I dream about. Some examples are: stairs that stop at walls, my feet being on fire, flooded toilet areas, being naked in public, not being able to find clothing, aloof dream characters, light switches not working and on and on. I have been having words with my subconscious right before sleep so that I don't have so much of this unpleasantness. I specifically talk to that part of my subconscious that deals with dreams. Over time I've built up the ability to communicate with my subconscious via bodily signals: I ask it a question and it responds yes/no/maybe often by bodily "jerks" maybe in the fingers or foot or whatever. How I built up that ability is interesting and I'll post about it some time. It seems to be working (to my surprise). My dreams have been less frustrating and characters in my dreams have been far more approachable and willing to interact with me. But there's still some work to do there. I do think that dreams are partly an emotional outlet for things that don't get resolved whilst awake. But I also think that a lot of the worries and concerns of waking life get encoded into emotions and situations in dreams - if not directly translated. I'm hitting the tension and anxiety from all angles and I hope that will resolve it once and for all.

It's Saturday and I have an idle hour or two before going up to London. I'm lifting a friend up to London to meet another friend to do some night photography. I'm sure I could have worded that better, anwyay. We'll take in the sights of central London starting with the Millenium Bridge with St Paul's cathedral in the background. Then we'll probably go Tower Bridge at some point on our meander. I'm not looking forward to freezing my bits off though, but the reward of restaurant food at the end will make up for it. Here's a shot of the cathedral I took a few months ago from the window of a restaurant. --- I've also been working on writing a book. I'm sort of cheating because I've just dumped this journal into Word. I have 220 pages and 125,000 words. Sheesh! I think it might actually take me the rest of the year to organise all that to make it coherent, rewrite parts, add parts and on and on. It was never my intention to use this journal in that way, but hey c'est la vie. As an aide to encourage myself to publish the book at the end of it, I investigated how much it would cost to have a three or four actual books professionally done. Yikes! Nearly £2000 just for proofreading and grammar alone. The printing itself was more like £400. Anyway, I'll cross that bridge when and if I come to it. The idea of having my book in a bookstore fills me with joy and pride. --- Other than that I've been playing a huge amount of chess. I've played over 1000 games of blitz in the last few months (too much time on my hands). Annoyingly I know I've improved immensely, and yet my rating has yo-yoed like Bitcoin. What happens is that the playing style of some opponents really screws me up and I lose to lower rated players. But what I have on my side is speed and the ability to pluck off weak pieces. But my checkmating skills (and recognising impending checkmate) is abysmal - the only way to solve that is to do lots of puzzles. Anyway, I feel myself improving slowly slowly and I like that feeling. Ciao!

@MovForward some steps you can try when thinking about responding (especially in writing): Do I genuinely care enough to respond? (if not then don't respond) Does responding add something new and positive? (if not then don't respond) Am I very clear about what I want to say? (if not then don't respond until you are clear) Keep the response short enough get your point over. Keep conversation going by asking open questions, prompting for answers, showing interest and so on. If you're being accused, then challenge the accuser's reasoning against you. (if you're feeling too emotional then cool down before responding, or sleep on it). I've found that most times if you're being accused the other person is using faulty logic.

@spinderella your situation is interesting because your goal to make profit seems clear cut. Also, you have actively chosen to put yourself into the position you're in by purchasing the property. So it comes down to a matter of when and not if you're going to make a profit. I think that is what is causing the ball of anxiety, a certain amount of impatience perhaps and that reality doesn't match up with what's in your head (at the moment). When you're in the business of making money you definitely have to take the rough with the smooth and also be strategic. I would be asking myself right now, what else can I do to make my goal come true? Up the rent? Sell off some of the units? Increase your advertising for new tenants? Live in one of the units yourself temporarily to cut costs? Move friends in etc. I would also choose a point upfront at which you can no longer sustain further losses and pull the plug at that point if necessary. -- In terms of pattern of behaviour, I've had friends who had strong goal-oriented mindsets and they were succesful on the whole (I'm envious). But there's a fine line between being impulsive and being goal oriented. I suspect you're not so impulsive, but you do like to shape your environment to be your way and you want it now. It's possible to be more flexible in how you respond to your desires, and sometimes just to "wait it out" to see if things change or if a better goal comes along or be strategic and research before committing to something new.

People will believe anything

@mememe no doubt. Although, correlation is not causation. I can open up my radio and poke around and affect what comes out of the loudspeaker, but no-one believes that the radio stations are stored in the radio.

I would see a metaphor as a short story using something concrete in the real world as a substitue for something complex or ineffable. Because of this metaphors are interchangeable. For example: "I can't solve this problem, I've hit a brick wall." The metaphor here is "hit a brick wall", because you are not literally hitting a brick wall. You could also say: "I can't solve this problem, I wish I could breeze through it." - you're not literally breezing through anything, in any sense. See how the metaphors can be interchanged? So some metaphors in regular use for memory is: Memories are contained or stored. Memories are processed. Memories are hidden from view. Memories are held down. Memories are immutable. If a memory isn't dealt with it will cause you harm. Negative memories get worse over time Some metaphors for mind: Mind is controlling Mind belongs to someone Mind is an independent entitity and acts independently Mind processes things None of the metaphors are literally true, they are just ways of understanding. You could argue that we can't get away from using metaphors to explain stuff and that would be right - explanation is always metaphor. So the question becomes which are the best metaphors to understand a thing? It's not that the "repressed memory" metaphor is wrong, it's just that there are better metaphors than can be used (in a therapeutic context).

To be honest I have no idea, except I know that personally I don't like thinking about stuff I can't deal with because it is emotionally overwhelming or conflicting. Again that is just a survival mechanism. It is not optimal for survival if you go around being paralysed by your emotions triggered by memories, so you deny them or at least skirt around them. I suppose that the denial could become a reflex action with enough practice, but it starts off as a conscious action. I'm not of the opinion that denial is bad, if you never experience a particular negative memory ever again then good: who needs therapy for that? I suppose my meta-point is that when it comes to mind and memory, we're working in the land of metaphors. So the question becomes, are these metaphors pragmatically useful? If not, or if there are better ones, then they should be replaced. The problem here is, is that it's known that the hippocampus is involved in making memories, but no one knows how they're stored. That being the case then you can't be certain about anything to do with memory, other than what we subjectively experience. It's even possible that memories are not stored in the brain at all, but the brain is somehow like a radio receiver for memories, and the hippocampus is just part of the circuitry of the receiver. Also memories don't come fully formed in one blob. They unfold over a short amount of time, that being the case there is room for a stimulus and response. In other words the body learns to associate the neutral memory which appears first, with a traumatic emotion which is triggered by it. You can see this for example when watching something unpleasant, it may be a novel experience, but you have an emotional reaction to it.

I'm not sure how you would know if a memory is permanently repressed? The only way to know you have a memory is to have the memory appear, until that happens you don't know if you have the memory or not. I have a million things I'm sure that I remembered a few a years ago, that haven't been remembered again since. But that's mostly because they were either unimportant, or are not relevant now. It's nothing to do with repression. Why is it that normal everyday memories (non-traumatic) can just be experienced, but traumatic memories must be "processed"? What exactly is this "processing" you are talking about? You use the word "surface" as well. This presupposes that there is somehow a pool of memories hidden from view waiting to burst out, and that the "mind" is the gatekeeper of that pool of memories. I'm not picking on you particularly. I just see that these metaphors of "repression" and "processing" and "hidden memories" are widespread. You probably won't like it, and think I'm dumb, but here are some different metaphors: The mind has limited bandwidth. In effect you can only deal with one memory at a time. Memories are not well defined. They are malleable. Every single time you recollect something it changes and becomes different. The memories which appear regularly are mostly those with the greatest importance to your survival, or have high emotional connection. Traumatic memories are just those with very high emotional content (or tension in the body). Memories are tagged with an "emotion" label on a sliding scale. Generally the higher the emotion the greater importance to survival. Memories can provoke a stimulus-response reaction, i.e. you have a memory and it immediately provokes an emotional reaction maybe a strong one. Memories can be untagged from their emotions (via therapy or of their own accord over time). There is no control over which memories appear, it's just those that are most important in the moment. What do you think?

I respect your point of view. Yeah exploring systems thinking is like explaining maths to most - boring and difficult and pointless. But for example Spiral Dynamics is systems thinking and there's a LOT of talk about that on the forum. People do care if they can see its worth.

I wouldn't bash the forum members too much. Systems thinking doesn't come naturally to 99% of people. Even thinking differently is very hard for most. It's not lack of care, it's lack of ability. There should be a lot more topics on systems thinking on the forum.

I think there is a lot of juice to be squeezed by thinking about the self this way. There is a lot of talk on here about how the self is an illusion or a construction. To say that anything is a "construction" is to think about it like a system. In other words a construction is made up of interacting parts. The idea of parts of the self can be most clearly experienced when you can't make a decision about something. For example say I can't decide whether going to university is beneficial or not. Maybe one part of me wants to experience the social life and loves learning. Maybe another part of me wants to just start earning money and getting experience in the real world and get a head start. Treating the self like a system of parts (sometimes conflicting with each other), can help resolve decision paralysis and other similar problems. The idea is to examine what each part wants and to come to some sort of common agreement or goal. This is a process of getting the parts to communicate better together. For example maybe you go to university, but take a year out in industry - both parts would be satisfied. What happens in reality is that the system of the self is built up haphazardly over time without any real planning. It's like building a house with non-standard parts and no blueprints: it's possible, but it can lead to a dysfunctional design. Anyway, I'm sure the are many more ideas from systems thinking that can be applied to the self.

I would reword that as: "I haven't found a way to remember stuff I can't remember". I think that gets to the core of the problem. How would you know if a memory is suppressed until your remember it again (in which case it's no longer suppressed)?