LastThursday

I'd say it depends on what paradigm you want to choose. This stood out: Seen from this point of view unconsciousness is non-existence. My logical process would be something like this: How comes then things come in and out of consciousness? What "maintains" those things when they go out of conscious awareness? Maybe it's like a computer game where characters become live when they need to, but at other times go dormant as data on a harddrive. Maybe unconsciousness is like a dormant non-existent state in some sense. That begs the question, how is it those things that come back into consciousness change with the passing of time? And that opens up a whole can of worms, for example, is my mother today the same mother I saw yesterday? What does same even mean? Also if a thing "goes dormant" how comes it changes when you're not consciously aware of it? I would say there is also a problem with the scope of "unconsciousness". If unconsciousness is the sum of all things you're not conscious off, does that then include most of the universe, is it your unconscious any more? It's much easier to argue for possession of conscious experience, somehow its narrower and more well defined. I'd move the goalposts and say that there is conscious existence, and unconscious existence, and they're different in some way.

... the shed got painted. Now where was I? Oh yes, I was outing myself. Things in general continued this way. But some people noticed the way I was around others, and I was asked outright by my manager (of all people) if I was bi, I was probably about 30 at that time. That really took me aback at the time because it had never even occurred to me that that could be the case. I was so innocent about the whole thing that I wondered "what exactly made him think that about me?". I outright said no, but a seed of awareness had been sown. There were a few gay guys in one of the departments in the college I worked in, and because I flitted between departments (gathering software requirements) I would talk regularly with a lot of folks. I think my general demeanour and interaction with those guys must have been noticed. But, it was also well known that there was a woman in the finance department I crushed on badly. Hence 2 + 2 = bi. That characterisation bothered me for a long time. Firstly because I'd been so unconscious about "how I was" around certain people, some men in particular, and secondly about how I would be perceived by women. It broke through the bubble of my innocence. You see it's very hard to see yourself from a detached point of view, how you feel and behave is largely learnt and expressed unconsciously. It's like having a funny walk, you yourself don't think you walk strangely, but it's as clear as day to other people. That question about being bi, forced me into awareness and made me consciously try to pull back on any behaviours that made me seem "different". I felt a strong need to man up and conform - I just did not want the label no matter what - I'd already spent most of my life feeling different and didn't need any more of that thank you. It was a very difficult process to sort out for me and took many years of watching myself and being aware of my behaviours, especially around men. I mostly succeeded in being more masculine in my expression overall, but I can still slip at times especially with alcohol. Drink responsibly kids. For a long while also I've found myself cross-dressing, secretly trying on a girlfriends' clothing in their absence. Tights are thing for me for some reason. And if I could just shave my legs and present as a full on woman in public when I was in the mood I would. My face is too masculine for it though, although I'm a bit of twink physically. Women get to wear some cool shit! Is no fair. So. I know I'm attracted to women definitely. But am I attracted to men? This is a question I find super hard to answer with any certainty. I'm in general not attracted to men's bodies as I am to women's. I am more attracted to pretty looking men, for a flavour of that: Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, David Bowie, Johnny Depp etc. But I can also appreciate a good physique in a man, muscular but not overly so: Bruce Lee. But I'm not gushy about it like I would be with a woman like Zooey Deschanel or Nicole Kidman or Zhang Ziyi. Whether I've overly repressed my attraction to men or not I don't know at all, but I do know it's currently very asymmetric as compared to my attraction to women. Would I outright want to out myself as part of my process in the next month? My immediate gut reaction is no, but I may have to shed that in future and take the consequences. This is mostly in the name of authenticity and releasing that tension around suppressed expression. I do know that things are far more accepted now than they were, but it still isn't necessarily easy. My life is built around presenting as a het male, even if I go to that coffee shop just to see that guy. Shrug.

Consolidation I've never openly talked about my sexuality with anyone. How is it I've gone 53 years without ever discussing this with anyone? To my mind there a several confounding reasons why I've never been open about it. The main one is that my internal world is sovereign to me and has absolutely nothing to do with other people. I don't want my inner world warped by other people's prejudices and labels or even advice. There's a strong sense of defiance and self-worth involved in that stance. My fear about being out is exactly that stigma this attached to being different - I have a strong need to fit in without having to defend myself constantly. Other reasons are that even if I were to be open about it I would still get "pigeonholed" into one category or another, and I would forever be pretzled into that shape. I would very strongly need to maintain my flavour of sexuality against that conformity. Thirdly, I don't have a strong mental model of what my sexuality is. It isn't something that I've thought about to any great depth. Its expression is fully in the realm of the non-verbal, in other words it is hard to think about. But here I am trying to do just that and hoping that some clarity about what I should do comes out of it - if anything. Most of my early years were spent around females. The prominent people in my life were my mother, my grandmother and my female teachers in school. My father whilst I looked up to him was only constantly present in my very early years, and was and still isn't very masculine in character - he wasn't my role model at all, not consciously. My default working mode was feminine in character. This sort of thing is fine young kids they're mostly not inherently strongly gendered in any case, other than that being enforced through clothing and stereotypes about what a boy and a girl are. I grew up in the 70's and 80's when gender conformity was a lot stronger and expected than it is today. And that is a salient point, that delineation into boy and girl is embedded into my psyche, and so was never a point of contention for me even into my 30's. However. Even into my late adulthood I was somewhat more unconsciously feminine in some of my character traits. When I was young, say five or so, I would often get confused as a girl by my mother's friends and she would often have to reiterate that I was a boy. I suspect my mother always wanted girls and wasn't much interested in boys, at least she had my sister! But I'm pretty sure this had a subtle effect on things in general, and others were picking up on that energy. And possibly that energy also ingrained itself into my young mind. One of my best friends at high school turned out to be gay. In many ways it was an odd friendship, totally non-sexual mind, but he really was a social butterfly and I was the straight man (in both senses!) being mostly very introverted and somewhat out-of-place mostly. But whatever, there was some underlying tacit knowledge there between around sexuality. At that point I don't ever remember being conscious of fancying blokes. I was (and still am) very much into girls, and was hung up on several of them at school, mostly just crushes. But there was an unspoken underlying current of enjoying faces in general, male or female. I've always been very curious about and attracted to faces, above all else. There is a very fine line between curiosity and attraction. I think my underlying feminine traits were often picked up on as an adult, and variously interpreted. At university my sister was convinced I was gay for while, but I just didn't know it. She "arranged" an encounter with kind of friend of a friend of the family. That was my one and only - so far - interaction with a man. But whatever at that particular point in time I was not into this guy in an particular, and there the matter rested any my sister gave up insisting. My half brother is gay and possibly this is where my sister got the notion from. He used to run a cabaret in a pub in London and do drag. My father and I would visit him at times doing his act, and I would get very noticeable attention from gay men, my father would "defend" me saying I wasn't gay. Hilarious. I suspect I just gave off feminine vibes at times. I laughed and smiled a lot, and flirted with anyone, very unmanly. Sheesh. I must do lunch and watch a friend paint his shed (my life has come to this). To be continued...

Do you think you could land a plane? This video made me think about all the sometimes impossible situations that life throws at you, and makes you realise that in the moment you will react very very differently to how you think you would. I once watched a person being run over and thrown up in the air like a ragdoll, what did I do? I froze like a rabbit in the headlights. The lesson is that it's ok to not know what to do sometimes, things can get beyond your control or abilities and you're not a worse person for it. The other lesson is that it is possible to cope in nearly impossible situations, humans are resilient. Could you land a plane? A jumbo? Absolutely no chance without help, and nearly no chance with help. A small plane, possibly, if you know the controls already:

I'm going to splurge out some thoughts this morning. I'll write till I run out of steam. Thinking about some of the posts on magick in the forum has made me realise that instead of consuming ideas about it or cogitating over it, that I should actually just do it. It's not something I've ever consistently dabbled in. So since I've got large expanses of free time on my hands, I'm going to spend the next month actually practising what I know. Typically, I'm attracted to Chaos Magick since that effectively involves a pick-and-mix approach to things which is me all over. My sole intention is to use it on myself (inwardly) rather than to affect people (outwardly) - self-change, but if this causes changes in my externality then so be it. I want to employ ritual, as well as more mental aspects, working with entities or whatever comes. However despite my general randomness in approach I need a mythic (metaphorical) approach to give things some structure and to bypass my doubting Thomas of a chattering mind. On my walk this morning I came up with several phases: Consolidation - reappraise myself, my past, my connections with people, my current circumstances, my history, the structure of my current psyche. Highlighting any emotional tensions, resentments, regrets. Thinking about what I want and what's needed in future. Death - letting go, severing and saying goodbye to those things that are holding me back, restricting me, not serving me well. Remove any psychic blockages, anything potentially being imposed (supernaturally) from others, mental obligations from others being imposed on me from afar, removing ill will past and present. Creating a circle of protection from any future incursions into my psyche. Creating a tabula rasa. Opening - probably the most vulnerable part of the process. Opening up my body's energy to the universe. Heightening my awareness. Being more receptive to my externalities. Being outward facing. Allowing myself flexibility, fluidity of thought, character and appearance. Being open to new experiences. Pushing myself out. Letting my latent talents, abilities and core character out and giving them all breathing room, acceptance, allowing. Rebirth - letting the new things bed in. Getting comfortable with any new changes. Taking stock of the process so far and if more needs to be done. The above stages are WIP and may change in order or character, don't know yet, I may have to just roll with it. I won't document my process as I do it, for fear of disrupting the work. But I may well document things afterwards if there's anything I think will be useful to others that I've learnt. Watch this space. I start tomorrow.

This piqued my curiosity. What is Artistry to you? What would the Artistry section be for, can you elaborate a bit on what you would want to see there?

It's interesting to me to see how to try and use metaphorical language effectively. I don't think this is particularly natural to most people me included, even though English is full of metaphorical phrases and sayings such as the goose that laid the golden egg. It's a little bit of a complex idea but I'll see if I can explain its usage. The first time I encountered this sort of thing was about twenty years ago when I did several NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) courses back-to-back. NLP is a hodge-podge of techniques garnered from different experts in the field of therapy around the 1970's. One of those experts was Milton Erickson who mostly used language and metaphor to hypnotise his patients into recovery. It's a bold claim that this is even possible, but Erickson was by all accounts very effective. The founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, essentially mimicked these experts in their mannerisms and use of language and found that they too could perform the same miracles with patients. They went on to deconstruct and turn their findings into a coherent picture. Erickson's shtick was to use stories about seemingly completely unrelated things as a vehicle for recovery. For example in one instance there was a patient, a florist, with a malignant growth who was in great pain (more here: https://www.ericksoninstitute.it/en/38/palliative-care/one-day-at-the-time/). He used a story about growing a tomato plant as a metaphor for their patient's real-world facial growth, to give them pain relief. There is the canonical series of books on his techniques: Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton Erickson (I and II) for more information. The main thrust of (Ericksonian) metaphorical usage is that it mimics something concrete or mundane and turns it into a story. The Hero's Journey is an archetypical metaphor which dresses up something mundane like "getting things done" as a mythic quest. The genius of this is that our brains latch on to stories a lot more easily than a series of instructions or a procedure, but we are also extremely good at interpreting metaphor and applying to ourselves. In some sense it flies under the radar of our normal day-to-day reasoning, and allows something to be absorbed with less friction than it would otherwise. The ancients used story telling as a vehicle for memorisation and transmission of culture, think of the Icelandic sagas or Greek epic poetry. I'm reading The Master and His Emmisary at the moment, in which Ian McGilchrist explains how the two halves of the brain actually work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvr_gubcWUk ). He argues that the left half of the brain deals with categorising and deconstructing the world, and the right half deals with the world in whole, its context, and it understands humour and indirectness - one half narrows in, the other expands out. Whilst story telling has procedural elements (left brain), it's the right brain that interprets its context and relationship to everything else, it's the right brain that understands metaphor. So in a strong sense Ericksonian hypnosis largely bypasses the left brain and targets the right. This way of transmitting information is extremely useful and effective. I'm reminded of Buddhist Koans which work in exactly that way, and politics runs largely on storytelling and "ideals" to excite the masses. Now, I don't go around hypnotising everyone with my language, that would be ridiculous. But it has made me much more aware of when others use metaphorical language and get confused by it. The confusion occurs because they take the metaphor for reality rather than a description of reality, they really become the hero on a quest. This forum of full of this sort of thing, this-is-that metaphorical equivalences, because essentially we're trying to describe something that isn't describable. We're describing right-brain holistic views with left-brain categorisation and metaphor is the bridge between the two. I've experimented with injecting more story based and somewhat poetic and metaphorical stuff on occasion here. I'm not sure it lands, and it's hit and miss as to whether what I want to get over is actually understood, but that is the case any way with normal prose. I'll persevere and experiment as it fits in with my theatricality, and its fun!

Ha! Us short men must use our wits. Stick together my brothers, fight the good fight! 🤣

I'm reminded of Prince. Wear heels. Wear a hat. I guarantee both will attract attention. If you really want to pull, go around with a small happy dog.

I really enjoyed both interviews @Vido @Davino @Natasha Tori Maru, it's always good to put a face to a name. We could learn a shit ton just by listening to each other. GIVE US MORE. Second that! But it would definitely need some structure to stop chaos (@Vido).

Short poetry: I couldn't love myself So I looked somewhere else But it wasn't good enough Never quite right However hard I looked Despair was easier Self-love is harder I am whole

I have to lean into my God given intelligence instead of trying to hide behind it. What I mean by that is that I've used my intelligence at times as a kind of shield or weapon against the nasty old world. It keeps throwing difficult things my way and I've never been the brutish or dogged kind of person, instead I improvise and parry with my brain. It requires a sharpness of observation, mental rehearsal and a great deal of experimentation. This journal is a microcosm of the way I deal with the world. Experimentation makes me chaotic at times, as this journal shows; there's a constant kind of probing of the world around me to see what happens when I poke it. I do have a strong academic kind of intelligence born out of necessity with fitting into society and school and university and work - but I've also always had an inherent joy of symbolism and its magic for its own sake, the culmination of which is the life-giving ability to survive by manipulating symbols as my job: information technology. However, I also have a strong intuitive intelligence which is not based in symbology. My academic brain doesn't find it particularly easy to categorise that intuition. I have a strong affinity for music, for art, for theatre, and for all those non-verbal forms of intelligence. When I sit at the piano and noodle, I employ both types of intelligence, I learn the symbolic musical score and learn pieces that way, but I also improvise and create intuitively. It's the same with writing, I adore the letters and shapes of words and how they fit together (the how), but also my intuition largely guides what I write. I know intimately how a large part of the world around me works. I'm largely silent about this with others because despite that understanding being largely academic, the real-time expression of that knowing is intuitive and doesn't need words to explain it. This is especially so with the understanding of human nature I have, but I've got to admit unlike the understanding of a machine such as a computer which is finite, humans are anything but - they are an endless form of learning that I'm still embodying, I even don't fully understand myself yet. Reality is absolutely insane. My intelligence both the symbolic and flowing strands gives me a lot of frustration and I sometimes feel like it's always ready to explode, there's a lot of inherent inner tension to it. I feel an impulse to constantly raise my intelligence to push it as far as it can go, it has a natural momentum to it and very regularly surprises me, especially the intuitive aspects of it. Other people have muscles, determination, hard work, self-worth, conformity to rely on, my identity is my intelligence, intelligence is my identity. I both fit into this world and don't fit into this world, intelligence is a double-edged sword. Society is hungry for it, and yet the masses care more about those other things: using intelligence rather than embodying intelligence. But my intelligence isn't mine. I am honestly humble. I was just lucky to have had some iota of it when I was born into this world, and my intelligence has been its own springboard - I don't lord it over others and I try and give mine freely if I can. There are greater intelligences than mine, different intelligences, beautiful intelligences, intelligences I hardly recognise, a whole community of them. And of some of those, mine is pallid next to them.

There is a kind of platonic absolute truth, but there is also empirical absolute truth. The platonic kind is a truth that stands no matter what you believe to be true. It's a kind of faith based truth. It's absolute because it is always in play. May be to some the existence of God is an absolute truth. The empirical kind is a truth that requires knowledge or perception. For example I know I'm conscious. What makes empirical truth absolute is a temporal component: the knowledge I have of the truth never changes over time, I am always conscious and by extension I always will be. I find neither satisfactory, and so find the idea of "absolute" truth suspect. Both types require some sort of faith.

I held the Moon in my hands, her once subtle illumination extinguished. I did not understand how this could be. Hadn't I wanted to cherish her beauty and hold her tightly, so dear to me as the thought was? She, the Moon, weighed heavily in my hands, cupped. I slowly opened my hands and watched intently hoping for a sign of redemption, there was none, she had disappeared. In a melancholic panic I searched hill and valley for her until the dawn drew closer and brighter. And in my tiredness I slept by the river; a full day passed, waking only in the darkest part of night. And there! In the water reflected shone a silvery light I knew well. I cupped my hands once again and drank the cool water and at once looked up, whilst she looked down at me.

You don't fight it, you get away from it, and go find people that don't do those things to you. On the flip-side nobody ever died from humiliation or embarrassment. They are just sensations in your body that if not given too much attention will go away naturally. If you don't tie these emotions to your identity then you are invulnerable. Philosophically, people who purposefully embarrass or humiliate others ultimately suffer themselves - not in a Karmic way - but because to carry out an act you have to embody it first.

My alter ego

@Ulax someone's anxieties are specific to them, but in my case it was about control and trust in myself. My anxieties were around being in situations with people and feeling a sense that things could get out of control, and that I wouldn't be able to cope with it. This would also make me hesitant to enter into certain new situations. In a word "fear". Fear of embarrassment, fear of violence, fear of humiliation etc. I'd constantly ruminate about upcoming things that I was anxious about. I would endlessly mentally rehearse situations to make sure I had all angles covered and how I would "control" the situation. I'm not exactly sure how I started to overcome anxiety, but it probably started with a kind of meditation. I had incessant inner dialogue as I've just got that sort of mind. It was a kind of experiment where I thought "I'm going to stop that voice in my head", and so I started to practise constantly at it and it literally took me years to master it. Another strong revelation was that the future couldn't ever hurt me now. In a real sense I realised that I was always safe in the moment. At some point I started to leave my future self to worry about what to do - he could deal with it! That separation along with a silent mind, really helped me stop ruminating and reduced my anxiety tremendously. The last thing was learning how not to hesitate before entering a potentially difficult situation. The bottom line with taking any action is a binary choice: either you do it, or you don't. Any emotion you attach to a choice is completely arbitrary and invented by you, including anxiety. My last revelation was that choice and emotion have nothing to do with each other, the choice itself is neutral. That sort of thinking really allows you freedom to not hesitate if you don't have to, you choose, yes or no, and take the consequences either way - letting your future self take care of it. It's about trust in your abilities, you are a lot stronger and capable than you could possibly imagine. Once I had trust in myself, I had control, and no anxiety.

I found that eliminating rumination and hesitation are key to overcoming anxiety. Anxiety can be debilitating @Rishabh R

@AtmanIsBrahman you're correct in so far that it is a category error to count consciousnesses, like it's a thing. There is neither two consciousness nor one. The correct view however you stated: But still, be careful with words like "imagining" and "it", because they also don't apply to consciousness, although I get it, it's hard not to use words like that. If consciousness describes everything, then in fact it is everything and so it is unable to define itself, because any definition would be a simplification of itself, which can't happen by definition. The only way something can define itself is via recursion, so it is either a fractal or something like a quine from computer coding.

@eos_nyxia craving, desire, want, need, are the supporting structures of the temple, and need regular upkeep and devotion. Just notice to start with, nothing more. It's funny because I suspect I'm in the opposite camp where I actively want to be seen. It's neither here nor there though, I just see it as a natural disposition rather than an imposition as such. Freedom of choice is the way to happiness. It's like how an opera singer with a large dynamic range allows them to sing more songs and be more versatile. Being able to be seen, even if it wouldn't come naturally, would allow you greater dynamic range and choice. And, it wouldn't be a constant "on" switch in any case, sometimes you're unseen, sometimes you're seen. Likewise in my case, being comfortable with not being seen, would improve things for me too and make me less neurotic 🤪

Entirely my take on it too. Solipsism is entirely like the "this statement is false" paradox. The solution is to take the 'I' out of solipsism, but then it becomes something else: a self-defining field of consciousness entirely without ground.

You've got to love that tasty non-dual cheese. I slept, I breathed heavily into a brown paper bag. And, I've still got my wonky humour at least, I didn't lose that. What will happen, will happen organically and without too much forcing (keep breathing). Whether I chose to stay on this forum or not is irrelevant to the great scheme of things. It will stop when it stops. All of life is ephemeral and grabbing on to things too tightly is a recipe for suffering. Constantly having to letting go of potential and people is also a recipe for suffering. Being alive is both - suck it up Guillermo. Carry on...

Ever since Saturday I've been feeling kind of tired. I went out Saturday with friends about an hour and half away to meet at a country pub, we ate, drank, went for walk - all very pleasant. How many of those of you outside the UK get to stroll by someone's house in a little village that was built in 1637 and talk to the owner about its history? We're spoilt so many ways in this country. But come Sunday I felt sleepy the whole day. And that tiredness hasn't left me, I want to return to my sprightly self. That phrase has been niggling away at me. I have a love hate relationship with this forum. Yes, part of it is to do with the idiocy of the way the forum is, the people in it, but also that the forum is insignificant in the same way that a cafe down the road is insignificant - and yet I seem to keep returning to it. It gets under my skin that I choose to get embroiled in its stupidity, I AM above it, both in maturity and common sense. It is not the place for me and I get no substance from it any more. I suspect I'm probably one of the oldest guys here too - I really do have a different perspective from everyone here. The main thrust of why I do so is that I know that I need to keep introspecting, something within me compels me to do it. It is a way of forcing my hand. But when I do so it sucks the little life I do have out of me. It's like holding up a mirror and seeing my reality for what it is and I don't like it. I don't like it because I have no answer for how to change the bad bits. At 53 years I've run out of steam, I've done so many things in my life that the excitement and freshness got drained out me. I remember that optimistic, excitable, energetic and flirtatious youth I was. I was immature yes, but I was also more vibrant and full of life. Earlier this week, I was minding my own business, but found myself idly curious about a police-woman walking on the other side of the street. She was older, tanned and chiselled in her features, very serious. But we made eye contact and for an instant I could see her soften, nearly smile, before she realised what was happening, and carried on looking away seriously again. THAT. That is the real me. That I miss. I used to flirt with anyone who'd care to pay attention to me. I wasn't trying to pull - although sometimes I was - more like I was saying "this is me, let's play". A friend of mine calls me "The Wolf" and for good reason, he remembers who I was before. Maybe I was a wolf, I like to roam the outdoors, I like the chase! I read the signs of things that go on around me, my tiredness is just that, both a literal and figurative one. It would be nice to sleep and start dreaming a different dream from this one. Don't worry I'm not suicidal, I've been through all that and out of the other side. No, there is no easy escape, instead I must go through it. Other people depend on my presence, my dad, my sister, my nephews and nieces, my friends; and I decided a long time ago that I couldn't do it to them. In fact I couldn't bear it going wrong either, I don't need that hell. I find it useful to get out my thoughts in this journal. I could just as well make a private one for my eyes only. But I always was a bit of an exhibitionist by nature, it all fits together with those other things I mentioned above. I really don't care if no one responds to what I write, it's enough that others see it. My energy, the good, the bad, and the ugly is held up for scrutiny, and disseminated for others to make what they will of it. It's not all bad. The large tract of introspection and self-scrutiny I've gone through has sharpened my wits, made me see far more clearly, and made me a lot wiser than I once was, even in the short time I've pissed around on this forum. I'm less of a try-hard than I used to be, I do actually flow in life and my interactions with people day-to-day, something that I've always sought after, mostly overcoming the autistic hurdles I was born with. In fact I just don't care if I'm awkward, absent-minded, or that my "mask" drops at times. Social interaction for me - as much as I've always loved it - has always been hard work. Only now at 53 can I say that I've nearly cracked it FFS. I need more. Yet another phase in my life. I want it to start now. But I'm a bumbling idiot who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. I feel like I've hibernated for long enough now, and I'm desperate to stretch and wake up. I don't know what that looks like, and perhaps it isn't going to be handed to me on a platter either. But I know one thing, I need to have a word with that younger me, mug him, and steal back that flirtatious, playful energy I once had. Cheers to that!

Thanks @Yimpa I will repeat the mantra regularly.

In no particular order the highlights are: Sweet, innocent, gut wrenching, Protracted loveless friendship, Potential wife, asymmetric, shrug, Slow motion car crash, Self absorbed, brief, immature. I have to laugh. I always wondered why I stayed single...