LastThursday

@mandyjw It's communicable, just not transferrable. You'd have to communicate to "go eat your own ice cream cone" to get close enough. Even then it's not verifiable that you're sharing a similar experience. Most probably not. Of course, that realisation is just guesswork on Leo's part. It's a little bit of "no one will ever understand me" type of melodramatic talk you get sometimes. Naturally he can share them if he wants, there's nothing to stop him. Who cares about being understood? You won't know if someone understands you or not, especially with an audience of millions. You just have to communicate and hope for the best, it's the best that can be done.

Welcome. Age is no excuse for not interacting with us younguns. Just get stuck in.

Inside all of us sits the kernel of our own actualisation. Like the egg and sperm that made you and me, that potential inside us is the entire thing. Feeding and nurturing that potential and giving it the right environment leads every time to an actualised human being. It's never too late, whether you're 20 or 80. It's a long and winding path, but that's the joy if it. At some point it becomes self-sustaining. Instead of passively depending on environment and circumstance to actualise, you gain enough experience and insight to organise your environment and circumstance actively and a virtuous cycle is set up. It's a cumulative process of ever increasing awareness and experience. At the start of the process there are many low hanging fruit. You start by learning that your mind and body are intricately connected. You have to treat the body well and not let it languish or innocently poison it. The body is the vehicle for your self-actualisation. If the body suffers, the mind suffers in synchrony and it works in both directions. It is easy to fix these problems but it requires ongoing commitment. That commitment gets easier over time, until it becomes who you are. Next you realise that you are incarnated as a human being. That human as a whole needs feeding, it needs love and attention from others, novelty and purpose and belonging to a tribe and identity. Without those things it's hard to actualise any further. Some of these things are pitifully lacking in our Western system or at least are not freely obtained. They are hard to put in place if any of the pieces are missing, but they are necessary. We know that by helping others we help ourselves, that reciprocity underpins our humanity. Along the path we learn that we are creative creatures and that improvisation and living by our wits feeds our sense of excitement and feeling alive. We don't do this naturally as adults. We are fearful of making fools of ourselves and of not being good enough or being ostracised. We realise that to actualise we have to combat our deepest fears head on. We have so many of them embedded in our behaviours and the way we think. The irony being that if we unleash our creativity and improvisation abilities our fears disappear. We don't need to be heroes or fearless warriors, just aware enough to know that our fears are mostly are mirage. Talking of heroes and fearless warriors, once we have enough provisions for the journey we can take our stories and uses them as a base for actualisation. The stories we tell ourselves are incredibly powerful. They are the operating system of human beings. When you change the stories you change your very core being. We use that creativity and improvisation to muster up a grand opera for our lives. It drives us, orients us and gives us context and purpose. Without a good story we are left languishing and directionless - that is not actualisation. We go further and become aware that everything that drives us to actualise is constructed in our minds. And that we are free to construct and deconstruct anything we like to serve our purposes. The mere fact of this makes us realise that "we" are really outside of the constructs, we can choose to see reality at any level of detail we care to. And we can play with reality itself. We a free in a deep and fundamental sense. And we begin to redefine what being human is. Maybe, finally, we get that we're totally interconnected with everything. Everything is affected by everything else at every level; and that we are playing a game when we isolate a thing from everything else. We cannot say we are just human any more, in a real sense we are everything all the time. It's all one grand flow. We are not observers of reality, we are reality.

It gets catchier each time:

Made me think of the reason why I came across Leo at all. I used to be on the Glitch In The Matrix Reddit site all the time. The stories on there can be truly weird, so many good ones. One day some user posted a video about weirdness about not existing at all and Leo's head appeared for the first time. I made a post in my journal of some of my glitches: My feeling on it, is that we all want normality and continuity, so that's all we are "tuned in" to. We see only what we want to see. The minor weird stuff gets ignored, because it doesn't fit our expectations of normality. Occasionally major weird stuff happens, but we still scrabble to "make sense" out of it and normalise it - and very rarely we can't make head nor tails of it.

Ever find yourself in a conversation where you've already reached the punchline? Yet, the person insists on rambling to the conclusion anyway? You wait impatiently. This is something I've experienced most of my life. I'm used to it. For me I don't think it stems from having a quick mind per se, sometimes my mind is quite slow and deliberate. But it definitely stems from paying attention and from absorbing a huge array of information. In one of my previous jobs, at one point my immediate manager became very annoyed with me because I was pre-empting him so often - by already having finished a task he was going to assign me. I thought it was amusing. I was simply good at paying attention to "what was in the air" at any particular time. Even in my current job, I have meetings lasting hours, where I got the gist in the first few minutes - some people just need to talk it out (sigh). I think I mostly stopped watching Leo's videos for that same fact. I started to know what was coming and I didn't need to suffer two hours of talking head to be told what I already knew. Naturally, I may be missing the odd nugget here and there, but I find I pick up those things somewhere else eventually anyway. But it's nothing to do with Leo, and all to do with me. I'm a fast learner and I have good recall. And so it is with spirituality and understanding myself. I understand myself well. I get the main thrust of spirituality. I get it. All that's happening now is a layering up of information in the hope that some spiritual magic will happen. I think, like money and happiness, words and explanation will only get me so far in this work. I'm not sure what's left, I could navel gaze forever and not get anywhere different. That's not to say I've reached the pinnacle of my spiritual journey, just that all the foundations have been laid and actually erecting the building itself is a completely different animal. I'm not sure how to do that, for once I haven't got to the punchline already.

There's different types of masculine leaders: The guy who makes decisions The guy that gets stuff done Physically strong/threatening guy The ideas guy The guy that knows what to do in all situations The guy with vision and purpose The guy who can talk to anyone The guy with charm and charisma The guy with brains The guy with balls Maybe even a mix of the above.

"Everything is God." - God.

Agreed. Mind is the same stuff as your hand. There's no difference.

I thought I would try and explain my mythology of existence. The narrative of a mythology is a useful device for both giving meaning and for understanding and which orient you in a particular way. Without these you are ignorant (literally: have no knowledge) and existence is incomprehensible (Latin: not perceived). What follows is my mythology which I have variously hinted at here and there on the forum. There are several basic players in my mythology. These are Time,, the Changing Aspect, the Unchanging Aspect, Distinctions, Unity and Narrative. They all interact with each other in various ways, no one is more primary than the other. I use the words God, universe, reality, experience, existence, everything, awareness and consciousness interchangeably below. Time Time doesn’t exist. It’s clear that once a thing has happened and is over, there’s no going back to it. There isn’t a chance to re-experience a past event in its fullness as if it were the present moment. We have memories, but these are not the same as the original event in quality. Equally with future events, we are yet to experience them in their fullness, even if they are likely to pass. With introspection it becomes clear that events in time only occur in our imaginations, time is just imagination. We experience time, but only by constructing it in our heads. The Changing Aspect Existence cannot keep still. Everywhere we care to look things come and things go. Even in the insubstantial world of thought and emotion there is constant flux if observed for any length of time. Why does this happen? Why isn’t everything static and unchanging for eternity? The reason is because the whole of existence has to be created from nothingness. If time existed then there only has to be one starting point or moment of conception, which sets in motion everything else. Conversely, if time does not exist then everything is collapsed into a single moment. No sooner has a universe been created from nothingness than it disappears back into nothingness. Each moment of creation is unique in quality. This is the source of the instability of existence, whatever process creates existence is free to do it as it wishes every moment. Put simply existence is being born and dies every moment. This process of birth and death of existence is instantaneous (because there is no time). Existence is in a superposition of both birth and death; our experience is both dead and alive. This is right, no sooner has something happened, than it has slipped into memory as if it had never existed. The Unchanging Aspect Despite all the change it is noteworthy that we experience a sense of continuity. Each moment of existence seems to be based on the previous one. We say that existence unfolds moment-by-moment. How can continuity be experienced in a universe that dies and is reborn constantly? By itself it cannot, this process is without a memory. Each new universe does not have to be related to the previous one. We can see that this is not the case. Each new moment is similar to the one that has gone before. There is a kind of “stickiness” to reality. This is the Unchanging Aspect. Like the Changing Aspect the Unchanging Aspect is fundamental to the process of creation. Whatever creates the universe likes to do it in a similar way each time. Without a brake on the process of creation of that happens each moment, eternity would happen in an instant. The Unchanging Aspect works in opposition to change to act as that brake and so that it unfolds at a finite pace. The interplay between the two forces of change and stillness is what creates our experience of steady change. From this balance we a free to construct time in our minds. The stillness within existence also gives us our memories. It makes previous incarnations of the universe stick around so that we can relive (in a reduced form) past events. It also confers our sense of continuity of both ourselves and existence itself. Yes we are created and destroyed every moment, but the Unchanging Aspect ensures that we don’t disappear forever. The Unchanging Aspect is also what creates order from the chaos of creation. It gives us meaning and narrative from an otherwise completely arbitrary existence. It is the thread of existence. Distinctions What does it mean for something to exist? On the face of it the thing is there, it is, we are aware of it. We could leave it at that and agree that awareness alone is enough to confer existence to phenomena in experience. This is true. But existence is also distinction. When we’re aware of the table we are sat at, it is distinct from all the other things around it. In some way the table is contrasted with everything else around it. Another way to look at it is to see the table has a boundary. There is a separation between table and not-table, with a kind of imaginary thin line or boundary separating the two. This idea of a boundary is important, because it demarcates where one thing ends and another begins. If you are God and begin with a blank canvas (nothingness), it has no boundaries contained within it at all. Nothing exists in nothingness (!) precisely because nothing is to be distinguished, because there are no boundaries drawn around anything. It is a moot point whether nothingness exists or not. Nothingness is always in superposition with somethingness because of the Changing Aspect and the non-existence of time. It exists because it is something. Fundamentally, there cannot be non-existence, existence doesn’t have an opposite. Sure, a particular phenomenon within experience can stop or disappear – and so it stops existing. But taken as a whole existence does not have an opposite. What is a distinction really? It is a manifestation of the Unchanging Aspect. It is a sensation or meaning or awareness that sticks around. So the table keeps on being the table. The nature of a distinction is that it stays around long enough to be useful. But because of the Changing Aspect, the distinctions themselves change over each iteration of the universe. The boundary making up a distinction envelops nothingness. Everything that can exist is brought about from nothingness by its distinctiveness. Existence is nothing but distinctions around nothingness. Qualia and the phenomena of consciousness is all about distinction. Sound is distinct from sight, red distinct from green, leaves distinct from stones. It is not incorrect to say that we are experiencing nothingness; both in the sense that something is being created from nothing constantly (and both are in superposition), but also because distinctions are drawn in nothingness. It is the Unchanging Aspect that draws the distinctions, the Changing Aspect which destroys them; but behind both there is nothingness. Distinctions and boundaries may confer existence to things, but there are no gaps between them. Fundamentally, a boundary demarcates a thing, and everything that is not that thing, it’s a binary choice. There’s nothing that’s half a thing or half existing. That’s not to say that boundaries don’t overlap, is a hand an arm for example? Language itself is digital and so it naturally also creates boundaries: a big flat stone can be a table for your coffee; the table is brought into existence through language demarcating it. Unity Hopefully I’ve made it clear that nothingness and existence are one and the same thing. Also, that both the Changing and Unchanging Aspects are universal to existence/experience. And, that the Unchanging Aspect drives distinctions which create existence itself. Indeed the constancy of change is also a product of the Unchanging Aspect. There is a unity in all the base phenomena of the universe of experience. Everything that can exist: the world, the body, thought, the self, the observer of all those things, is a function of the same process. That process is the ever present creation of something from nothing. Everything is both nothing and something. Everything is one. Narrative The finite pace of experience, allows for another constancy which is the stringing together of many changes into a cohesive story line. This is what gives meaning to existence. Meaning is simultaneously the recognition of the constancy of experience, and also the ability to see and then explain change happening around us. It is only through narrative that we can tell a consistent story of what is happening to us. It ties together ragbag assortment of experience and memories into a cohesive whole. It makes the world a place that can be known and understood. God plays a game of creation and then tries to explain to itself (through thought and words and narrative) why it is happening. This is exactly what I’m doing here. There is no difference between me and the engine of creation, I am synonymous with it. We all are.

I heard a handclap. In that moment I had crossed some unforeseen threshold. The handclap momentarily reverberated not in my ears but everywhere. It had not really been my ears at all that had heard the sound I soon realised. Something else reverberated along with the handclap. That something was familiar but had now become indistinct and spread out and less important. I sat suddenly in a daze. It was like I had crossed into a dream. It was the same world as before, but it felt as if it were new. I had fallen out of the black hole, gone in the wrong direction through its event horizon. I was no longer a slave to the gravitational pull of that old reality. Presently, I came to the momentous discovery that it had been the hands in front of me that had clapped. They had moved not through will, but of their own accord. I couldn't find the reason why they had clapped, it was lost to time. It seemed as I looked around, everything had its own will and way. This body I had dragged and cajoled like a dead weight, no longer heeded to any control. Escaping that gravitational pull had made everything lighter. The body moved of its own accord with its own unfathomable will. I was surprised but then that surprise itself reverberated everywhere - it too had a will of its own. I was nowehere to be found. The new dream had overtaken me.

There's a tendency to want to rationalise why the rejection happened and to over think it. No amount of thinking will undo the rejection or the pain you feel, thinking about it should be avoided if you can. Just feel into the pain and let it run its course, it will naturally subside in time don't rush it.

I'm constantly restless. This is something I seems to share with my dad and sister. When I was young I was physically restless, and at times could be very excitable, a trait I shared with my sister (my dad has never been very physical). With my sister I think that restlessness caused her to approach life in a very haphazard way, and she never really learned to stand on her own two feet. With my dad all that restless energy was always driven into working, he's a workaholic and always has been and shows no sign of retiring any time soon. With me, the restlessness is mostly mental, but there is a kind of feeling of constriction (which feels like lack of freedom) because I'm not generally allowed to be physical. Yes, I walk and play sports and at those times I feel some sense of relief. But that restless energy is always nagging at me. That restlessness for me, mentally, affects my focus. More rightly it means I'm extremely distractable. I have to succumb to the distraction or I just lose focus and energy on whatever I'm currently doing. The only thing that can override that tendency to distraction is if I have a problem to solve or a clear goal in mind. I know the merits of commitment and stamina, but only certain kinds of activity engage me enough to commit and not be distracted. It's like a balance, the energy has to be heavy enough that it overcomes the pull of distraction. I suspect it's something genetic, I can see the similarity of behaviours in my family. I'm sure it would have a big fat label stuck on it if I were to have it investigated, but what use are labels for something I already have a handle on? The reason I'm talking about it at all, is that it's problematic at times. Working from home requires me to be autonomous (which I like), but I've found that I'm way too easily distracted (a lot on this site!). When I was working in the office, I was confined to my desk, and people are looking over my shoulder constantly, mindlessly surfing was mostly out. But, because I'm free to service my restlessness now, I feel a thousand times better. I no longer get headaches or backaches or fatigue (physical manisfestations of stresss). But my productivity at work is suffering massively. That causes me a certain amount of anxiety, but so far I've been able to service the needs of my client without too much complaint from them. I completely realise that a game is being played here, both with myself and with my work. In a sense that tension is putting some drama - albeit negative - into an otherwise dull existence. In all, I need to lean into what I've been given. That restless energy I've used to my advantage, by learning a shit-ton of stuff in my life, which has had positive effects on me. I continue to be driven to learn and expand my consciousness. But I need to readjust the balance in my life: more physicality, more experimentation, less rigid working practices. I need to be free to engage my restlessness full on and be true to myself.

Ah I see. It's only an observation but maybe you'll get more mileage out of self-expression than self-centredness? Perhaps one will come more naturally than the other to you, I don't know. Generally the way with less resistance is the right way in the moment. Although you are right to try new things out. I guess you're asking for an instruction manual on selfishness. I suspect you'll find people are reluctant to admit to being selfish and so won't be able to tell you how to do it more effectively. But once you do know, put the theory into practice, lots of practice.

This was an interesting talk: This is how talking without debating looks like. One of the ideas presented of the past informing the present, fits in with what I posted about with Matryoshka dolls. In a way the past is telescoped into the present, the layer of the present moment constantly being laid over the past. Although I disagree that there is some sort of "past" per se - it's not in the same form as the present moment, but it is still within consciousness. I'm more of the persuasion that the present moment is constantly being generated from nothingness in all its full glory (hence Last Thursdayism). Consciousness is that powerful, it doesn't need a back story. I also notice the Lyall Watson books in the background. I always wanted to read Heaven's Breath, I'll go hunt for it. One thing leads to another. What I don't get and really want to know is, how does a philosopher stay alive? And how can I do it too.

@Preety_India it's all me me me with you (joking). Notice how many 'I's you used in your reply though. It seems like you already know how to be self-centred at least - it's not like there are no thoughts about yourself, there are plenty. The next step is to be self-centred to your advantage, i.e. put those thoughts and dreams into action. Taking that action is the hard part of the puzzle. Maybe you find it easier to defer to other people's dreams and wants, than your own?

Survival itself is selfish even when you're being altruistic. The fact that you are surviving at all means that you are regularly being selfish, although you may not realise how. One way, is that you're using resources somebody else could have. What does better survival mean to you here?

@Preety_India sure no problem.

@Preety_India feel free to PM any time and I will try my best to offer you support. - Systemic Problems This post is a way to purge my annoyance, but also a case study to highlight how things go wrong if you don't think systemically. In my day-to-day job I produce a lot of reports our client. Effectively this is data analysis, but I'm no data analyst, I'm actually a software developer; when you work for a small company you end up wearing many hats. The system for requesting reports is for staff at my client's to contact me directly on my personal work email. This suits me on the whole, as adding any layers of formality and procedure doesn't make sense for a small company like ours. Formality and procedure is needed only when larger numbers of people are involved as a form of social cohesion and to stop chaos (tragedy of the commons). I was reproached - via email - by my client's top guy for sending out a report that he deemed I shouldn't have - data can be sensitive after all, even within a company. My initial reaction was to be infuriated, who likes to be told off eh? I've learned to hold off from responding to emails when in an emotional state though, so I slept on it. I tried to work out why I was infuriated. Was it just the knock to my ego and I was actually wrong and I should just suck it up? Was it that I felt I was being bullied in some way? Was the problem that I was unjustly blamed for a systemic issue? Yes, that was getting closer to the truth. My client's CEO suggested that report requests are vetted by him before I produce them (and as a way to assert his authority). The systemic problem here is that I'm getting requests directly from staff at all. All requests should be vetted even before they reach our company on the client's side. That way the onus isn't on an external company (ours) making decisions on their behalf. So my more mature response to the CEO will be to acquiesce to his demands (with the increased level of time and emails that entails), but also to suggest that he has a systemic problem and my solution for it - as a way to obliquely suggest I wasn't in the wrong, but he is. I will point blank to refuse to accept any wrongdoing on my part. He probably won't like it. And so it is with lots of similar situations where blame is being aportioned. A group of people get blamed for their lazyiness, for stealing jobs, for taking up resources, for not assimilating and on and on. Yet all these problems are systemic, there are nearly always larger forces at work: wars, poverty, migration, social organisation, inadequate infrastructure. Even on a smaller personal level, people are often blamed even when they acted as best they could - it's simply that they were constrained by whichever systems they had to operate in. If you are poor and need to steal food to survive, the individual can be blamed for stealing, or the system could be fixed so that poverty didn't arise in the first place. The next time you are blamed or looking for blame don't get emotional think instead: what in the system is causing this problem?

@Preety_India light travels very fast, so there's no problem catching up . I can see you have a hunger and creativity for change. I'm happy to help you in any way I can to get there.

Telescoping aerials. Matryoshka dolls. Onions. The concept appears in many places. It occurs most commonly when a thing is added on to layer by layer. It's a very useful way to fill a space and grow. That idea of growth by accretion in layers is at the heart of Spiral Dynamics. The idea of spiritual growth is no different. The ego of course wants to advance and outgrow and supersede and be bigger than the other egos around it. It has an inbuilt notion of constantly throwing away the older stuff and believing it to be laughable and silly. In this way it can't point to other egos and say: "that's so yesterday and dumb, I'm so much better than that [love me for it]". That sort of advancement by constant rejection of the old, is completely hollow and unloving and unnatural. It's as if we open the Matryoshka doll and nothing is inside. The last Ox Herding Picuture, the tenth one, is devoid of ego. The person hasn't thrown all the spiritual layers away. She understands that she too once hadn't even realised there was an Ox and that that naive person still exists in her core. She can re-enter the marketplace with full understanding and compassion because she still has all her layers of spiritual growth intact. She can re-enter and work from any layer and engage others on the same level as them, fluently as a native. Real spirituality is not just about ascending and growing beyond others' capabilities. It's about being able to engage others fluently at whatever level they are and gently pulling them up if they're ready for it. A mother does not talk finances with her child, she talks teddy bears and picnics, and enjoys her child's excitement.

This stuff is not for the chattering mind. All this talk of distinctions is just to keep the mind distracted with a good story. This sums it up completely: You are diffusing your "mind" and "you" into reality itself. You are learning to be indistinct from reality/God.

Different music has different effects on me. This track always makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. There's always strange mix of emotions. It's hard to describe why it resonates so much with me. Maybe a deep part of my Shadow is that I don't feel at home. I'm constantly restless, feeling lost and disconnected. I'm in need of a place to call home; wherever I look it's not there. What does home even feel like? I'm forever waging war against the injustice of feeling like I abandoned myself long ago. Everything is impersonal and un-familiar. I'm propelled forward only by the changing of the days and the whims of sea of change around me. If not for that I would cease to be as I'm unable to find true North and impel myself that way. There is no ground or earth to root to and claim as mine - nothing that will guide me when I'm unsure, comfort me when I'm uneasy, or return to after a long time away.

It's tricky. What you call the "mind" is yet another set of distinctions; what are these distinctions created by? If the mind isn't created by distinctions, then it must be infinite oneness as you say. The mind is in fact seamless with reality as it is all infinite oneness. If we redefine reality to be this way, then reality is creating distinctions within itself automatically. This must be true for anything to exist at all. If there's nothing to be distinguished then nothing can exist. This is how reality bootstraps itself from nothing, all it needs is that single spark of distinction and the rest follows. Distinction is built into the fabric of reality. Distinction is reality. "You" are yet another set of distinctions - and you can already see where that leads. Reality does what reality does. God does what God does. In fact doing is overstating things because it implies separation: a doer doing something. More accurately reality exists or unfolds or arises or is. So joy, peace and satisfaction are just more distinctions. The distinctions are in constant flux. Joy comes and goes and so does everything else. The utility of spirituality is in recognising reality for what it is - and not seeing yourself and your mind as separate from it.

Everything is always changing, decaying, growing etc. But that change happens at a finite pace. We can count changes and get time as a result. For example we can observe a swinging pendulum and count off how many swings it makes, to get time elapsed. The rate of change is observable and real, the elapsed time is inferred - it's a construct. Once an event has happened it's no longer accessible and so it is doesn't exist. All that's left is an imprint of the event in the present moment. You can count the imprints, and infer some time passed, but that's all.