LastThursday

Guillermo why don't you do something with your talents instead of wasting time doing not much at all? I've had that sort of sentiment directed at me from various different sources over time. I get jarred by it, both because what I choose to do is my choice, but also because some - irritating - part of my agrees with the sentiment. I'm predisposed to both agree and disagree at the same time. It's like informing a pretty woman that they are wasting their time by not being on a catwalk. What dawned on me eventually, is that this sort of thing is coming from a place of love. Most people close to you genuinely want to see you succeed, especially if you have the talents to do so. They want to live vicariously through you. This seems to be why talent is so prized in our society, especially if that talent is god given. There's a realisation that talent doesn't come for free, and that it's not bestowed on the great majority of people. I had an odd phase some time ago where I had a hankering to become an actor. To a degree I'm a show off, or an exhibitionist, I like some attention sometimes. It seemed like a good fit. I took some preliminary acting courses, just to test the waters. At that basic level it's all exercises to build trust and to expose your inner self, and to be childlike again to some extent. I very much enjoyed the experience. My teacher had even starred in The Matrix films (the irony isn't lost on me). When I told people about my new direction in life, they were excited for me. I liked the attention. But as it was it fizzled out, I'm not sorry in any way, I learnt valuable skills along the way. I see some talent on this forum, both spiritually, intellectually and in writing ability. Yes, I'm pointing at YOU. And I just feel like that irritating guy. So, why don't you do something big with that talent you have there? Stop wasting time, make it pay and propel you forward. If you become famous, I can name drop you, and you can keep me on your Christmas card list. Of course, I promise to do the same.

Even these are dubious. Aren't they nouns? Nouns and verbs just carve out reality in different ways. Neither are true.

Questioning humour isn't funny. Laughter is a signal to say everything is ok, once danger has passed. I'm not sure humour is just laughter though.

Take a yoga mat.

Amongst some of my friends it's well known how much I despise wage slavery. Since I've been working at home in the pandemic, with one friend in particular we joke to each other by asking "have you started work today yet?" Often I reply no. Some days I actually do no work at all. He is similar, but he has a young daughter and a house to maintain, so he has his own distractions. It's my own form of private protest. I see very much like this: it was not my choice to be born into this society. Naturally, I acquiesce to the extent I'm prepared to. I work as a wage slave because I have no other choice. The flipside is that I live a comfortable life as a result. There are pros and cons and nuance to everything in life. Really, what I'm a slave to is my own fear of living a shitty life, or worse, death. A mediocre life is better than a crappy life. Business is about maximising profit. You push some capital out up front, in the hope that you get the capital back and more. It's a form of gambling or at least risk taking. It feeds into our innate greed and need for more and more stuff, especially money. It is not money per se at the root of all evil, but our greediness. For example, no business would ever cap it's own growth and profits, it seems insane to do that. If the business starts employing more people, then those people are surviving from that greed. What's so bad about that? It's not possible to escape the system. Starting your own business, is just more of the same, you now become a slave to your clients. Maybe you can be conscious and cap your business's growth? You make enough money to give you a comfortable life and no more. Alternatively, you somehow try and escape having to work whatsoever, you live on government handouts. I know deep down I'm doing the wrong type of work. My lack of motivation speaks volumes. The inertia that used to keep me going - my love of computing - no longer does that. My focus is moving to other things, it wants to move to other things. I feel that intensely. But in order to jump the ship of wage slavery I will simultaneously have to do something I have no mastery at and decrease my standard of living. My core being is like nope. The temptation to simply quit working for a while is high and possible for me to do. But, it's no fix for the situation, not really. Previous times I've been in the position of freefall with no income, it was anxiety inducing. If I'm going to do it again, I need a very clearly defined plan of escape. I'm not fighting the system, I'm fighting myself.

A jolly tune - well I like it: Flow, my tears, fall from your springs! Exiled for ever, let me mourn Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings There let me live forlorn Down vain lights, shine you no more No nights are dark enough for those That in despair their last fortunes deplore Light doth but shame disclose Never may my woes be relieved Since pity is fled And tears and sighs and groans my weary days, my weary days Of all joys have deprived From the highest spire of contentment My fortune is thrown And fear and grief and pain for my deserts, for my deserts Are my hopes, since hope is gone Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell Learn to contemn light Happy, happy they that in hell Feel not the world's despite Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell Learn to contemn light Happy, happy they that in hell Feel not the world's despite

You are all of them. Wherever you look in the universe, you are there.

Big picture thinking allows you to connect lots of smaller things together. It's like zooming out on Google Earth. You get a real feel for how things interrelate and fit together, how Africa relates to Europe relates to Asia, oh and America North and South. You realise there's more water than land. It automatically recontextualises the finer detail. It's a very useful skill to be able to approach understanding from many different levels of zoom, especially in this day and age of narrow specialisation. What's the bigger picture of your university project?

Yes, you're the only point of view. But it only seems that way, because you imagine yourself to be watching it all. In fact, there's no one watching, it is all just pure awareness. By definition awareness is aware of something, the whole of consciousness/the universe is aware of itself. There are an infinite number of points of awareness.

Every story about reality is only partial, what isn't told is everything else.

@Roy Yes, it's like you were appreciating the artists before, but now your realise how deeply personal it all is. I really appreciate where you are now, I had a period of my life were music and art would make me emotional to the point of tears, often - and both how silly and liberated I felt.

Absolute love is just that, absolute. Whether you self-improve or not, it is still there. Self-improvement is a thought relative to who you are now.

All these different things feed into each other and affect each other: Stress Sleep Diet Exercise/fitness Mental clarity They are the actors in the movie of Preety. If you change one thing the others will also change in harmony. Some things you will have control over, some not, so you can only change the things you have control of. There's a lot of easy things you can do in all these areas, that will improve things fairly quickly. I'm no expert, but there are experts on this forum that can help in these areas. I know a fair amount about good sleep hygiene if you're interested (it's my favourite activity).

There's likely a strong influence from diet and fitness on your mental state. The good news is at least you're doing some exercise. I don't know how difficult it would be for you to improve your diet? Also, what are you sleep patterns like, do you get enough sleep?

What are you levels of exercise and fitness? And do you think you have a good diet?

You also have to master patience and mastery also doesn't have a finish line. Why would you be able to play a Bach fugue, solve differential equations, or be the world's greatest footballer right now? It takes a long time for your mind and body to learn the right movements, jargon and thought patterns to do anything. There's a reason it takes 10,000 hours to get good at something. Saying that. If you have previous mastery in lots of different areas, then learning new things can be very quick. It's a virtuous cycle. If you already know how to walk, then running is a lot easier to master.

Dreams have as much meaning as waking reality. The difference is they tend to be more metaphorical right brained than analytical left brained.

It depends on what you mean by effort. I think most people regard effort as an unpleasant activity, usually some sort of activity that you would rather not be doing if you had a choice. So you practise avoidance of effort and then hope for the best. This doesn't work. If you do nothing, nothing happens. If you do something, something happens. Sustained commitment is more important. Even low effort over a long period of time can bring results. The trick is to make the effort seem worthwhile. If you start seeing results from your effort, then this will sustain you. Or if your plan or vision is strong enough, then your efforts are for a good reason. Or you could just redefine what "effort" means to you. If you actually enjoy what you're doing, then it stops being effort and it becomes joy. Go find that thing.

Gamification happens with a lot of apps on mobile phones for example. It's where learning is either turned into a competition against others or yourself, or it's turned into an actual game. So this is more to do with mental learning. With physical pursuits such as basketball, you could shoot hoops from one spot over and over again (rote learning), or you could actually learn through playing the game with other people. Play is a lot more engaging, because there is a lot more going on (energy), but also because there's the flow of the whole situation (context). But the problem with play is that you may not encounter particular situations very often: say shooting a hoop from a particular position. So rote learning is needed to practice those rare situations. If you want to master a discipline either mental or physical, then you need a combination of the two, play and rote learning. In school however, you generally just get one or the other, not both.

The internal voice is a hallucination brought about when we learn to read as kids. We learn to read "out loud", but then later on we're encouraged to "read to ourselves" in silence and that's when it starts. I would say it isn't your ego. Your ego is much bigger than your internal voice. Your ego includes your sense of self and identity and all your behaviours good and bad. Your ego is mostly there to help you stay alive. So most of the things you do for survival is related to your ego. Ego is about separation and identity, and justifying all your actions in the name of those two things. I'd also say that your internal voice is not thought. It is one way of thinking, but there are other ways, such as visually or emotionally. I suspect for a lot of people their internal voice is a running commentary on everything they're experiencing, so they confuse "I" for this voice. But it's possible with training to stop the internal voice at will: it doesn't stop you having an ego though.

A large part of learning anything is pure repetition, especially so with physical activities. So it comes down to how that repetition is presented to you. Probably the best way (for retention) is through play and engaging curiosity. I think that's why there's so much gamification of learning nowadays. It's self-directed rote learning. The problem with the way most rote learning is presented, is that it lacks context and a certain energy. Context gives you lots of hooks to tie together bits of information, making the process more memorable. The energy is how much effort is put into making rote learning engaging, this is the problem gamification tries to solve. A lot of school teaching neither has enough context, play or energy. No wonder you hate it.

Communicating the incommunicable. I don't normally let what happens on the main forum influence what I write about here (because I don't like repeating myself). Normally, it's the other way around if at all. By way of example I'm going to recount something that I'm feeling today. There's a distinct difference in the way I feel nowadays to how I felt a few years back. Back then I felt stressed and depressed in general. That depression had a tangible increase in a sensation that I now seldom feel. We all having an underlying "mood" so to speak, during different periods of our lives. It's often connected to our circumstances and environments, the people and drama, but it's a felt sensation rather than thought. In terms of this particular mood, I had felt it at least since my teenage years. But I was completely unaware of it until I became depressed. It was that mood that made me mentally unstable and miserable. I had been anxious and felt off most of my adult life until then, but it was normality for me. To describe the sensation is like comparing the difference between Summer and Winter. In fact Winter used to increase my sadness. Winter here (UK) is cold and desaturated and claustrophobic and isolating. I used a S.A.D. light for a number of years to counteract it - and it helped. It's hard to know whether the mood I felt was like the Winter weather or was triggered by the weather, strange isn't it? I just felt in myself, desaturated, disassociated and an inner coldness and negativity that was hard to shake off. Two things helped flip me into my current sunnier mood. One was that my circumstances changed, some of the people and events that had triggered and prolonged my depression went away. The other is that I started to take St John's Wort regularly, knowing it was a mood lifter. Slowly slowly I began to feel different. It was like the colour and warmth was being turned up inside me. After a year of taking the wort, I decided to wean myself off it. It's non-addictive from my experience, but I was apprehensive about returning to my former depressed self. I had a few false starts, and went back on it after a month break here and there, because I could feel myself slipping back. But eventually I won out. My new mood was installed and permanent. Very rarely do I slip back nowadays, it's especially if I'm tired when I wake up, or there's a certain chill in the air, or especially dark days outside. But I'm acutely aware of it now, I know it will pass and any negativity I feel in the moment I just recognise for what it is and let it go. Ideally, I have a nap and all is right again. I don't need St John's Wort or a bright light in Winter. So what is the feeling? It's incommunicable in itself, to be honest I can't even describe it to myself very well, it's simply an all-pervading sensation that doesn't easily shift. Scientifically, it's probably related to decreased Seretonin levels, so doing things to increase that probably helps. I suspect I've trained my body to have a new set-point in my Serotonin production and I feel all the more sunnier for it. May it long continue.

As someone who used to suffer from this, I feel genuinely happy that you have some peace and harmony. Just letting your ego and body do its thing in the moment is key. The mind is there to pull you in a certain direction, not to micromanage and be fearful.

You don't make a joke funnier by analyzing it. Instead of analysis and judgement you're looking for better communication. There's absolutely nothing wrong with questioning things in a relationship though, it's healthy, but the only reason to question things should be to improve things for both of you. Let the relationship flow and let your roles within it naturally change over time, don't force it.

And likewise, you are being a little uncharitable and naive. "Truth" is a word no? It is all language and words. Using words to tell me otherwise just doesn't wash. Whatever precipices are being scaled (nice metaphor) it has nothing to do with the word "truth". Truth is just a convenient label to slap on an experience, so you can communicate some aspect of it to someone else. Exactly it. Which is why there shouldn't be pessimism about communicating profound experiences. This is my entire point. You have to assume there's even a remote possibility of a shared experience (prior to separation as you say) otherwise you wouldn't bother to communicate at all. Leo needn't be so dramatic and pessimistic about it: By doing so, he is artificically separating himself out from the rest of humanity.