LastThursday

I thought I'd get the following explanation off my chest about Direct Experience (it should have one of those movie trailer voice overs). I've commented that DE is discontinuous, and that it's like a hall of mirrors or reflections or echoes. I'll try and unpack that a bit here. Imagine rolling a die. You might get the following sequence: 62361444253614526344462533552 That is a grossly simplified picture of reality. Each number represents a different possible conscious experience or quale. Looking at the sequence of numbers it's essentially random, with no pattern at all. At it's heart consciousness is chaotic and completely random. In such a world you would have a fleeting rush of jumbled experiences. You wouldn't be able to discern anything at all, because there's no pattern or structure. In a sense nothing exists. Ok, you improve the consciousness stream (CS) by installing a Pattern Recogniser (PR). This PR only does one thing to start with it recognises "444". Notice how in the sequence above the PR would notice two sets of "444". Imagine 444 represented a table. In the stream of consciousness represented by the sequence, a table would suddenly appear and then disappear twice. See how crucial the job of the PR is? It makes things come into existence. What? Yes. What makes things come into existence is the ability to recognise patterns, nothing more, nothing less. What makes a table exist is the PR, not the CS. The CS only triggers the PR randomly. But you definitely need the CS to experience anything at all. The CS without a PR is nothing at all, a PR without the CS is nothing at all. So ok. You can recognise and directly experience a table. But isn't its appearance completely random? Yes. But reality is not like that you say! Before I continue the above model represents two aspects of DE well, its discontinuous and spontaneous nature, and it's structured appearance. Let's now increase the complexity of the PR. Let "25" represent a cup. And then we go up one level and let the "444" followed by "25" be a cup on a table. Notice how the cup appears twice in the sequence, once on the table and once near the table. Ok let the PR increase in complexity to a very high level. All these randomly rushing qualia (CS) are corralled by the PR to represent the room you're sitting in with a glass on your wooden table. The CS is the fabric of reality (the hardware), the PR is the set of operating instructions (software). If something is not in the PR, then you will not recognise it at all: it won't exist. In a way the "444" sequence echoes or reflects throughout consciousness in time. The table keeps on coming back into direct experience, it exists. But it's appearance each time is a complete coincidence. However, it's bound to happen because the probability of rolling three fours in a row is high. In effect the PR takes a slice through CS as it changes. From the viewpoint of the CS the table comes into and out of existence in a random manner. From the viewpoint of the PR it only ever sees tables. The PR makes the coincidence happen. The PR structures DE. The PR is extremely intelligent and can program itself. It can increase its own complexity over time and learn to recognise more and more patterns in ever more complex configurations. The PR is existence itself. Reprogram the PR and the whole of existence changes: cue psychadelics. The only objection left is that the world seems to hang together and isn't completely random. Imagine rolling a 6 a hundred times. Impossible! But not in an infinite sequence. And that's the answer. We just so happen to be living in a part of the infinite sequence of consciousness where everything hangs together and the PR makes that happen.

The three horseman of the apocalypse. Ok, that's a bit overly dramatic. What am I talking about? Commenting on this forum. There are three reactions I get when offering my thoughts on a topic. They are: Interest: Somebody understands where I'm coming from or finds my advice or viewpoint useful. Misunderstanding: I am saying one thing, but it's completely misunderstood. Either I haven't explained myself well, or it just doesn't click at all for the other person. Tumbleweed: I am completely ignored. Maybe I've jumped in at the wrong point in a conversation. Or what I thought was an amazing insight, actually wasn't. Or what I'm saying is just too "out there" to engage with. Or even, the participants in the thread don't value my input in any way. Or they do value my input but just don't respond. I'm philosophical about all three horsemen. Nothing is lost. Everything I comment on deepens my own understanding. If it helps others do the same then great! It's not a popularity contest. Although I've had over 11,000 views on this journal, I'm flabbergasted. I'm so popular shower me with love love love darlings....

Just to add to what @Emerald said and for parity, it happens the other way too. Although I haven't been in such a potentially dangerous situation. I've been in a situation where a woman was being overtly persistent with me. I didn't find her attractive at all, but she was also a friend and someone I enjoyed meeting up with. I found it basically impossible to outright say: no I'm not interested. The best I could do was to continue to be polite and not to encourage her. I think in the end another female friend told her to "cool it" and she stopped. I've also been in a nightclub situation where everyone was a bit drunk. This was on a trip abroad where everyone was acquainted with each other, but didn't really know each other that well. One particular woman mistook my friendliness for something more and went to kiss me. I was taken aback and pulled away. Before that moment I had no idea and I certainly wasn't interested in her. She was apologetic the day after, but still was confused about my reaction. I had to bullshit her and say that I was just in a grumpy mood that night. I've even been a situation where I've engaged someone physically, mostly kissing. But the day after, I had a rethink and politely told her that I didn't think it was a good idea to carry on. We shared friends in common, and I thought things could end up being awkward. She had the wherewithal not to pursue things further. I've also been in many situations where I've been unconsciously and naturally flirtatious, even with women I didn't find that interesting. And definitely, my behaviour could have been mistaken for sexual interest. Should I behave differently, because other people can't read my intentions well? I think the last point is very important. In my experience a lot of women will want to be friendly and approachable and maybe even a bit flirtatious, it's very easy for a man to read too much into it and get carried away.

@BornToBoil de nada hombre, it was a pleasure.

Bias and guesswork. The fact is nobody knows what is was actually like to live 2000 years ago anywhere (barring reincarnation and remembering it which I wouldn't rule out completely). That is exactly true. What does constructive mean anyway? That's the problem with words full stop. Every word is defined in terms of every other word. It's one big relative network. No word is pinned to anything absolute, not even the word absolute. I'm fairly ambivalent about anything covertly filmed in the street and touted as entertainment. These are real people often being deceived and filmed without consent. If it's a street magician, then perhaps, the intent is transparent. I'm just not so sure about it. If entertainment is the goal then there are better ways to be entertained. I suppose it's just my personal preference.

Drawing nuanced arbitrary distinctions is relativity in action. Even outside of philosophy or spirituality you can't get away from relativity. Whenever someone who supposedly embodies higher consciousness says something absolute like for example: "I decree that the deception of theft is worse than the deception of impersonation", you should immediately question that absolute decree, by saying "WTF?". Relying on relativity to make everyone higher consciousness is like expecting water to spontaneously go uphill. Spiritually, the only way to advance is to find the absolute, that is to get away from relativity. So employing activities that will increase the chances of finding the absolute, is one way society could advance. Anyway the word "advance" is a very loaded and ambiguous word, it's not at all obvious what it should mean. Again, to advance is relative.

I apologise to @Preety_India for sabotaging a thread made in good humour. @BornToBoil the problem with your reasoning is, who gets to decide what degree of dishonesty is acceptible? Who sets up these "degrees"? You? Society? If you wanted to perpetuate deception, the first thing you would say is "my deception wasn't as bad as his deception" or "my deception doesn't hurt anyone". You're right even a judge is not immune from deception. Even a judge is a hypochrite.

@BornToBoil A dishonest man is telling another dishonest man not to be dishonest. Need I say more?

@BornToBoil here's my chain of reasoning that made me post my comment: This is entertainment. The entertainment is based on deception. You are a voyeur that's in on the deception. You are complicit in the deception and you get a kick out of it - that's the entertainment value of it. Within the first few seconds you already know that some people will con the deceiver. You get a kick out of being outraged when someone steals the money. You are playing at being morally superior, you would never do that eh? When the deceiver (blind man) catches out the thief you get another kick out of it, justice has been served. More entertainment. But actually, the thief himself was deceived, the person playing the blind man was being deceitful, and you yourself were complicit in all of it. All for your own entertainment. I'm just as bad for pointing it all out and trying to make you feel bad.

The bottom line is if someone outright says "no" and you ignore that, then you are being disrespectful. Personally? Move on immediately. Life's too short. But. Not everyone knows how to say "no", and most people are not sure either way. Honestly? You have to use your judgement wisely. You should keep things playful and light until you're sure. If you start getting good signals then push ahead aiming to "close", don't dilly dally.

What about free will?

A man pretending to be blind telling off someone for not being honest. That's hilarious! Tell me honestly, did it make you feel good the guy was caught out?

I would have thought that Stage Orangists would have happily assessed themselves in the name of efficiency and progress. There would naturally be an impatience to be ahead of everyone else, and so would want to identify with higher stages especially Yellow. It's Stage Orange Dunning-Kruger effect. I guess in that sense Stage Orange wouldn't want to self assess, the reality of any result would pop their bubble.

I'm on a roll. And also I'm practising work avoidance. When I was about 10 or so, in school we used to watch a film. I think this was once a week and most probably a Wednesday. I used to look forward to it. Invariably it would be somewhat educational even if obliquely. But I was a nerd even then so that suited me down to the ground. The teacher would set up the projector (non digital don't be silly), thread through the film and us little kids would all sit on the floor in rows. I think the floors were clean by virtue of the fact that our bums were constantly cleaning them. One particular favourite of mine I found on good old YouTube recently. YouTube wont allow me to embed the video, but hey: https://youtu.be/U_ZHsk0-eF0 After the half hour of fun was over (and to be honest it also gave the teachers a break), we then had to write up a Film Review, which I despised. It's typical of teaching that every bit of fun is countered with an equal amount of torture. The Film Review consisted of a blank page of A4 save for the television shaped rectangle in the top half of the page. I would put the title in above the rectangle. Draw and colour in a scene from the film in the rectangle. And then, horror, scrawl a mini review of the film below. Typically the whole ordeal lasted longer than the film itself. Saying that, I did sort of enjoy the drawing side of it. I do get a small tinge of irony every time I knock out these journal posts and actually get a kick out of writing. The small me would have thought there was something very wrong with the big me. Now I no longer review films, but myself. Maybe I should draw a picture and colour it in...

More self development. Self Love For most of my teenage and adult life I didn't think much of myself. I was a happy kid and felt loved. But something broke as a teenager. In retrospect it was a confluence of factors, but I'm getting ahead of myself. There were/are two main strands to my self-dislike. One is how ordinary and unexceptional I am. Already you can see there's a back story to this. Logically, most of us are just "standard" and "average". On any single trait, there will always be a bell curve distribution of it, and most people will sit somewhere in the middle. The other strand is more important to me and that is I've always disliked my apathy which is mostly born out of fear. Over time I've learned to just live with these two things about myself and become frustrated and indifferent - I would never amount to much. This self-dislike has really sucked the energy and life out of aspirations I had when I was younger. Not that they were fully developed - I loved locomotive trains and wanted to be a train driver, not an aspiration I have now. The point was, I had aspirations. Even as a teenager I had a great hunger for knowledge and wanted to be an expert in some field or other, say maths or music. I really wanted to be famous and recognised, another aspiration. It's taken a lot of work to get where I am today, and I'm still not fully out of this funk. The principle problem with self-dislike is that it's a negative feedback loop. It's hard to love yourself when you dislike yourself so much. After a while it's not even obvious that you should love yourself, I mean what is it good for? Isn't it all a bit Pollyanna and life is hard and indifferent to you anyway? Along the way I've had glimpses when I could just be myself and let loose. Those were times that I was at ease with myself and not torturing myself with self hate. Eventually, the penny dropped. It was precisely those times I could get drunk, say and do outrageous things and have fun, that I actually loved myself! Those were the times I felt like my real self - in modern parlance: authentic. And I realised all I had to do was to translate that to every day life; it was actually possible to love myself and it felt good. That was a game changer. The thing is, is that self love is a positive feedback loop. Self love will always trump self hate, but it can be difficult to realise that you even need it. It's taken me more than a decade to become more authentic and to become cognizant of the many exceptional and unique attributes I have, things that I can love about myself. There's still work to do though. I'm very much still apathetic and disillusioned, but I've come to learn that that isn't to do with me per se, but it's more of my rejection of conventionality - having a mortgage and bringing up kids. And I never did regain my aspirations, my future vision is clouded over. If there is one aspiration I need to work on, it's to have aspirations at all; to bring back the excitement and possibility of life with the backdrop of being free and higher conscious, to learn to create meaning for myself and to follow through on my dreams.

Look at the glass. Close your eyes. Open your eyes again and the glass is still there. Pure coincidence. That's how direct experience works. It's like reflections in a hall of mirrors or echoes in a cave.

Think of the whole experience like a conversation. How much do you want to talk? Does he have to reply? Is he good at listening to what you're saying?

@Farnaby I do love a good agreement. Most of us are blind to our own essence, we behave out of pure conditioning, mindlessly and automatically and on occasion self-destructively. So sometimes we need something to hold on to, so that we can climb upwards. Masculine and feminine energies are useful grips.

I'll talk about personal development in this post. That is, development that is personal to me. Believe or not I class everything as personal development. This goes with my mantra that "nothing is lost", meaning that every single thing that happens to me, changes me, and can be used positively in future. By positive I mean in a way that benefits me, or makes me more aware and so on. One particular thing I'm always aiming for is flow. This is about living a frictionless experience. There are many ways that flow manifests, but I'll give you a few examples from my life: Being with friends. I like my interactions to be natural and not awkward. This is both verbally and physically. Mostly, this is about being "present", where my full attention is given to my friends and not fixated on my own stuff - my own stuff is in my time, for when I'm by myself. That isn't to say I don't talk about myself, I do, but I don't ruminate and "get lost" in my thoughts when I'm with others. I'm attentive at all times. Driving. This is mostly experience. My attention should be on the road and stuff that happens outside. However, there is also the skill of driving smoothly. Gear changes should be seamless, clutch and break work should be smooth and not overreactive. Positioning on bends should be good, and the right gear and speed anticipated ahead of time. Town driving should be courteous and aimed at keeping traffic flowing. Calmness should prevail at all times. Walking. I'm fully in the moment. Rumination should be absent, except if my thoughts organically drift about. I'm aware of the breeze, my footfall, how my clothes move on my body, the sky and clouds, trees and wildlife and other people. If the walk is long, there may be discomfort from fatigue, but I don't overly react to it. I notice that I feel different on every walk, sometimes distracted, sometimes detached, sometimes fully present. I don't force myself to feel any particular way, I just notice it and if necessary bring my attention back to what's going on around me every so often. Programming. The best is to get absorbed in the task at hand. Code, then test, code then test, in small increments. If the coding problem is very dense, I will step away from the machine and use pad and pen to sketch out a solution. It's about engaging the problem solving mind. I will often use repetitive music to distract me from the outside environment, so I can focus. It also gets me into a kind of trance, which allows me to narrow down my attention. I take regular breaks so that I'm allow myself to be distracted by other things. It's all about working out how to work efficiently and without friction or self sabotage. Meditation and self hypnosis. This is just good practice for stopping the mental chatter. This mental chatter can put your emotions through the ringer, all in rapid succession and constantly throughout the day, and will fatigue you a lot more quickly. Also the effects of meditation last beyond the session and eventually become permanent with practice. A mental and physical calmness ensues eventually, which is critical for any flow situation.

@SQAAD the answer is simple, but counterintuitive. On one level, there are two types of existence. There is direct perception and there are thoughts. If you are not directly perceiving the existence of something, then it exists only in your thoughts. What seems hard to realise is that direct perception is very choppy, it's not smooth; things appear and disappear all the time, it's completely normal. Only thoughts (including memories) fill in the gaps and make "existence" continuous. You can experience this process in action, when something you never knew existed comes into your direct experience. Notice how you create a mental backstory to explain the sudden appearance. On a higher level there is no difference between direct perception and thought. At this level everything is "existence".

You're already doing this. Your body is literally changing into someone else right now. The converse is also true. Your sense of self is very malleable. How about staying in the same body and changing yourself into someone else by clicking your fingers? This is definitely possible. It's called: acting. All right I concede it's not the answer you wanted.

Sharing is about becoming more whole. There is no higher goal. The only problem you're experiencing is your thoughts about insecurity and seeking validation and genuine connection. Disinterest is neither positive or negative just another form of sharing.

Being alive is an improvisation. This journal is pure improvisation. To be alive is to improvise. The aim of all this is is not to deconstruct. The aim is to be as together as possible. To take any thing that arises and to be at one with it. To take anything that arises and to be it. All we are is this.