LastThursday

Sometimes change takes us seemingly out of nowhere. Really all that time it was lying dormant in the background. Then one day we become aware of it. We shrug it off innocently. But we find it doesn't go away. Whatever it is is a deep part of us we've not attended to. It becomes apparent the change is going to be seismic, and we ain't ready for it. We need to keep stable and stay accepted. Yet there it is, growing stronger every day. We can try and outrun the change. Keep busy, keep distracted, stay where we are and pretend it's not there. We dabble, we start to accept we could change, it's scary and uncertain. Something suddenly clicks or snaps. It's not in our control anymore and the old way no longer suffices. What seemed genuine before is now fake and we're starting to live a lie. There's no going around it. We have to become it. There's no other way to be true to ourselves.

It feels great when you can just talk about the things that interest you. In my experience no-one ever has the same mix of interests as you, you vibe about different things with different people. But I get your predicament, none of my friends would understand half the things I'm interested in - it's partially why I'm on this forum, it's my outlet for that side of me. The answer really is to see more people rather than shrinking back and isolating yourself. Are you in a situation where you can do that? How would you do that?

Go meta. Understand the paradox. There's more to life than logic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox

Is it ethical to interact with people by their worth or particular attributes? It seem like our attributes define us: tall or short, blue eyed or brown eyed, masculine or feminine, rich or poor. It would seem that the attributes are instrinsic to our very being, you can't change your eye colour for example. Some attributes are variable, like our employment or maybe hair colour. People are useful because they are able to do certain things that you can't. For example, a builder can fix your roof. A builder has a certain worth, and we pay that builder what her/his skills are worth to us. We don't actually care about who the builder is as a person. In effect we simplify the person down to their worth to us in the moment. This happens constantly in out interactions with others. We notice a set of attributes a person has, and then extract their worth to us. In the case of a builder, we do it the other way around: we want a set of particular attributes and seek out people who have those. To a degree we have to simplify the complexity of dealing with people. We just don't have the time to interact deeply with every single person we could meet. Instead we look at their attributes, apply a rough and ready formula and pigeonhole them. One of those pigeonholes is "what is this person worth to me and how useful are they?". Worth is multifaceted. But it can be distilled down to a few areas. First, can a person provide for a need that I have? Secondly, how useful could the person be in future? Third, are they part of my tribe or do they share my values? Most of us would disagree that we only choose to interact with people who are worthy in some way. It seems dehumanising to collapse a person's entire existing down to a few attributes we deem to be important - and indeed it is. This is what allows all the -isms to exist. We conveniently sweep under the carpet that we are dealing with complex emotional beings with needs and wants and concerns of their own - and we choose to just focus on a few aspects that either attract or repel us. We do the same thing to ourselves. We simplify our very selves by attaching a set of seemingly immutable attributes. Then we rate how worthy or useful we are according to those attributes. We are not capable of being loved if we are "ugly" or play sports because we are "clumsy". We are attracted or repelled by our own abritrarily given attributes. We hang ourselves by our own petard. But there is a better way. It should be obvious. We are not our attributes. We are not our worth. We are whatever that thing is that is reading this now: an infinite field of awareness, with infinite possibility - and so are others, treat them like such.

Some questions and thoughts that came up: If "you" is just a complex construction in consciousness, then that construction could either be redefined or disappear altogether - where does that leave "other"? "You" are different from "others". You seem to inhabit a different relationship to your body that others do. You are dragged around by your body, and you are aware of it intimately. You're aware of others' bodies but in a very different way. "You" are the same as "others". Not only do you have a body, but appear to have the same concerns, ways of behaving and so forth. You identifty others as being in some way the same as you (human). So there is a strong inference that others too must be experiencing something similar to what you're experiencing. The inference could be false however (i.e. philosophical zombie). Can "other" include animals or inanimate things? Is a jellyfish conscious in any sense? If other can only include humans what specifically is special about humans that allows them to be put into the category of "other"? Is it the case that if it looks like a human and behaves like one, it's a human? Or is there some God given quality that only a human posseses? If others are conscious, and you could flip into their consciousness and POV, what would you become? Would you just be a voyeur without control, or would you be some hybrid of you and them? Conversly if another person flipped into your consciousness, how would you perceive that? Can multiple people merge consciousnesses?

Another idea that came back to me: atom of meaning. Quick synopsis: An atom of meaning is the sensation attached to an object (or an object-like thing). Say for example you inherited a ring from your mother. The ring may have sentimental and/or nostalgic value. That value is the atom of meaning attached to the ring. It's an "atom" because it's an indivisble whole. No other ring or object has this same meaning. The meaning attached to this ring is also not deconstructable. This is exactly the same concept as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) being used mostly in the art world. All atoms of meaning are unique and bound uniquely to their objects: they are non-transferrable. Even if the object changes over its lifetime, the atom of meaning may change along with it; an object slowly accumulates greater emotional significance for example. So two rings may look alike and be made from identical materials, but only one of them has an atom of meaning attached: the ring from your mother.

Found this interesting. Mother is a social construct?!

Reminder to self: evolutionary democracy. Quick embryonic sketch: You have a population of decisions/implementations/laws (the organism). Each region of a country has its own organism. Fit organisms spread from region to region because they work. Mutation is achieved by electronic means, essentially you and me posting new ideas and solutions to problems. A random mechanism (proper randomness) chooses from the pool of ideas and replaces or modifies an existing idea in a region. To spice it up further, regions are not rigidly defined areas like Wales or Scotland. Instead a region is a set of people who choose to take up an organism and are then bound by the rules and ideas of that organism for a certain period before they're allowed to switch to another organism. In practice that means that geographical proximity is important, as you want your neighbours to share the same ideals as you. There is no restriction to the number of organisms, the more the better. Since people are free to switch (maybe once a year), they will naturally plumb for the organism that suits them. If nobody ascribes to an organism, it dies. Ok, that's it.

How about ten posts a week? Now that would be fun. The forum quality would skyrocket. Things to do in three minutes while you wait: Make a cup of tea/coffee Complete a Rubiks Cube Masturbate (physically) Listen to your favourite song Meditate Count to 180 breathing deeply Quick game of blitz chess online Watch an Actualized clips video Text a friend for a beer and then actually go out for a beer Think about what you're going to write in your next comment

Avoid toxicity (aka suffering and pain). The real answer is to manipulate yourself - hack your own operating system. Girls may or may not be trying to manipulating you, either consciously or unconsciously. You should be like "who cares?". Raise your own consciousness.

Good, developing yourself is more important than finding the "one". Keep that focus. I do feel your pain, been there done that (many times). From my experience what keeps the pain going is how much thinking time and importance you attach to the girl. You do have a choice here, but you are fighting hormones so it's difficult. The infatuation stage is very natural, it's how we attach to someone and start a relationship, i.e. infatuation follows attraction. And we can get stuck there if the relationship doesn't progress and especially if you're left hanging. Infatuation also warps reality: she really isn't that wonderful, she's just a person like any other. Give yourself a deadline, a date in the calendar by which time you consciously choose to move on. There are always more girls to get to know.

For the record:

Is consciousness self evident? When I use the word "consciousness" what is really happening here? In fact what is the relation between a word and reality? A noun or abstract noun represents something in the real word. We could say a noun "represents", "stands for", "points to", "references" something that isn't language based. There are exceptions. The word "adjective" is a noun that just points to other words, but these are few. When we use the word "table" for example the word itself refers to an object with four legs and a flat surface to place things on. Unfortunately, I'm using words here to describe what words point to! Nevertheless, you and I agree well enough what "table" refers to so that it becomes useful to use the word in everyday speech. People appear to be autonomous (have their own minds) and seem to share this thing called reality. So if two people are sat at the same table, they can both agree that "table" refers to the object they are sat beside. Because both people are using the word "table" there is an implicit mutual assumption that they are both experiencing something similar. And even if we're not experiencing something similar, then it is good enough to navigate the world and communicate effectively with each other. If any misunderstanding arises (because they're not actually sharing the same experience), then this becomes apparent and one person can correct their words. In all this it should become obvious that if a person is autonomous and has experiences, then whatever that experience is is not directly available to us - otherwise we wouldn't need to use language. The only thing available to us is their communication of their ongoing experience. The communication can be verbal or non-verbal, but we are always once removed from another person's direct experience. Language is a type of shorthand. What a "table" means is a very much simplified version of someone's actual experience. A table isn't just a flat surface and four legs, it has colour, shape, texture, made of wood or plastic, height, size and so on. Again even the attributes of a table are simplifications of actual experience: the colour of a red table depends on it's materials, how it was painted and ambient lighting and on and on. We very easily get confused between the descriptions of language and actual first-hand experience. We see a "table" as a self-evident truth about the world. If someone were to question you and say "what do you mean by table?", you may well reply "don't be silly, it's a table, you know... table?". However the actual experience of what is referred to as "table" has infinite variations of space, size, lighting, context and other non-language elements. An object could even temporarily become a table if we decide to place our coffee on its flat surface. This really highlights the fact that "table" is simply pointing to something, what it points to can be temporarily redefined. If words are so loose and flexible, then what does the word "consciousness" refer to? Woah hang on, isn't consciousness an absolute experience being experienced by autonomous human beings? Isn't Mary or John over there conscious? Don't they know that they're conscious, and what "consciousness" refers to? Isn't it self evident both they and I are conscious? Even if we drop the act that others are conscious (because we can't know directly), surely we know that we are conscious? Of course! But we are conscious by definition. What I mean by this is that we agree that "consciousness" refers to something (because all nouns do this), but we are completely free to choose what it refers to, and we are free to redefine what it refers to at any moment. So consciousness isn't self evident. Until we learn the word "consciousness" we don't possess it. We don't experience a "table" until we learn the word.

Learning is like looking at the lake and seeing the shimmering reflection of the sun in the water - maybe it causes you to look up? Maybe when you look up you are so enthralled by the Sun that you miss the Moon. If I was in a dream, I would have fun and see what was possible.

Materialism is an emergent property of consciousness. The only small quibble is that "consciousness" is in the same category as "electron": a thought form that neatly explains the phenomena of experience. You could say consciousness is everything or God but that just shifs the blame on to the word "everything" or "God". The elephant in the room is that consciousness is inexplicable: it cannot be described in its fullness. Materialism is at least explicable and suprisingly useful. If consciousness cannot be communicated then how do we then agree between ourselves that consciousness is the bedrock of the world? Or do we take a leap of faith?

Now make huge progress without pickup. To paraphrase @aurum change up your strategy: level up.

Comparison requires a scale. The scale can be absolute or relative (scientifically speaking), the only difference being is if you anchor the scale at a point or not. The scale is one dimensional. In other words a scale is an ordered set of distinct values or numbers. The orderliness of a one-dimensional scale gives you two things. The first is from any point on the scale you can go in any of two directions. The second is that you can measure the distance between two points. Ok, so enough of that Euclid's Elements style of explanation, what use is this? English has a number of relative comparative terms: better, worse, best, worst, more, less, fewer, most, least, fewest. And you can sort of indicate the size of the comparison by combining these words: most worst and so on, or using the "much" adjective. When using these terms English implies that there is a one-dimensional scale behind the scenes. For example when I say "Fridays are much better than Mondays", implictly I might be using a "happiness" scale, and comparatively on this scale Friday makes me more happy than Monday. We can see how the implict scale is not stated in the statement. If I said "Fridays make me happier than Mondays", then the scale is being stated. Even though the happiness scale has no units, we do intuitively know that there are distinct levels of happiness and that these levels are ordered in some way relative to each other. What happens when we apply these comparative words to people's attributes? We say something like: "Women prefer taller men". The word taller being the comparative word here. The scale here is given by the word "prefer", i.e. there is a preference scale that women in general have. So, given two men a woman (in general) would give preference to the taller of the two. We're playing word games here, because the preference scale is really quite abstract and non-specific. Preference is not an absolute scale that all women posses. No, instead each woman may base her preference on a further set of factors: attractiveness, agreeableness, confidence and so on. Indeed each woman may well place a different emphasis on any number of factors to come up with a "preference". To say "Women prefer taller men" completely warps reality. It says that only height matters, it says that only comparative height matters, it says all women only care about height, and it says nothing about what prefer actually refers to. Do the women prefer for sex, or marriage, or having fun or friendship or what? These are dangerous types of statement, precisely because they simplify reality so much as to be non-representative. They are actually false. Comparative statements imply a one-dimensional scale, but almost nothing about human beings can be measured this way. Every way you can categorise a human has a multiple set of dimensions or no dimensions at all. For example take hair colour. I make a bold statement: "I prefer redheads". But hair colour is not one dimensional. There is no scale for hair colour, there is just some arbitrary zone for "redhead" based on personal judgements. Equally for skin colour and tone: what is black? It's not one dimensional. By one measure we all have melanin in our skin, we're all black or more accurately shades of brown. Even for more definite human attributes such as height or weight, these are just arbitrary things to focus on. There's nothing special about being 5'7" or being taller than the average male or just being taller. There's a million other (probably more useful) attributes that could be focused on. So why are comparitive judgements so rife? Because being "better" socially confers advantages: more access to resources and more love (note the comparatives I've used here - apply the same arguments to the words "resources" and "love"). And being "worse" has the opposite effect and no-one deserves that. Comparative judgement is completely a mental construct designed to control people, like that other ubiquitous one-dimensional scale: money. Be aware of when you use it against people and stop bloody doing it.

@cookiemonster I like this. I've had too many instances where I've wished for something and it became reality. It's good to have a model for it, even if just to clearly see what might be going on and get a handle on it. I should journal about it, but I'm going to put my own thoughts about manifestation here instead. Don't take this to be either for or against your ideas, they're just my own ideas: Reality is a leaky abstraction. It seems like reality is a solid thing with rigid rules with no room for magick and manifestation at all. A pendulum swings dependably because the falling weight imparts energy to the clock's system. But quantum physics is pure probability, there is hardly any certainty at all for very small particles of matter. When you drive a car for example, you're mostly unaware of the machinery that makes it work, you simply press the pedals, change gear and swing the steering wheel around. This is reality, you're mostly unaware of the machinery of reality. It's worth being aware that belief is also part of reality. Sometimes your car breaks down and you become very aware of its innards, and that the abstraction of "car" has many layers to it. Sometimes the mechanics of the car intrude into reality: the lower level abstraction leaks into the higher level abstraction. So the everyday notion of reality - all the normal stuff that happens - is just one layer of abstraction. But stuff leaks: light behaves weirdly in certain situations, static electricity deflects water and so on. So scientists build up elaborate models and stories to explain the leaky abstractions. But scientists are only interested in certain aspects of reality and manifestation isn't one of them. To understand manifestation you have to look at the source of reality and belief. Firstly, belief is part of reality, it's not separate from it. So the source of belief is the same source as for reality. Seen this way it doesn't seem unusual that belief is linked or correlated with reality because they both came from exactly the same source. It's like twins having the same tastes, it's not that twin A is in telepathic communication with twin B, it's that they both have the same parents and upbringing. Belief and reality are siblings. Reality leaks abstractions constantly. I'd go so far as to say that reality probably has an infinite level of abstractions. Another phrase for leaky abstractions is: weird shit happens. Reality seems mostly normal because we're only ever looking for or expecting normal things (pressing pedals and changing gears). But as soon as we really pay closer attention we realise that weird shit happens all the time and that strangely it's linked to what's going on inside our heads. The real question is, is are we in control and can we learn to control it? Or is it up to source what happens and we're helpless automatons?

Exactly @Gianna. One is just a number, and it's too easy to get lost in numbers and feel cut off. Nonduality and complete connection is everything. You are everything, everything is you. There's nothing more wonderful.

Duality is disconnection and separation, deep down we want to reconnect and become non-dual again. Knowing that you're alone and wanting to connect to others are both working towards the same thing. You can have both.

Nope. What does booty mean? It used to mean loot, now it also means backside. Words change. Even the way words are said change - just listen to American English and British English, they used to be the same at one point. Language is constantly changing. If words had fixed meaning we would all be speaking the same language. Words are spiritual only if you think they are. We don't, Jacques Derrida did. It just so happens to be useful for understanding language. My religion is irrelevant to the discussion. My question is, what is really your intention behind watching Leo's content? Is it just to criticise and look for holes in his explanations? Or is it to open your mind?

We all appreciate a good looking male who owns their masculinity (men and women included). What do we enjoy about men? What characteristics turn you on? What should men project to entice women?

There is nothing to do except grieve for the loss. It will take some time so be patient and gentle with yourself. After that, at some point, you will realise that you don't need validation from anyone to be great. Validation is just love by another name, and fundamentally love only comes from one place: you.

If you have already achieved everything desired of you by society, what's left to do? Society's excitement if you will, is lowest common denominator glory. Get a partner, get married, buy property, have children. With the currency of all that being work for as much money and time and prestige as you can muster in a lifetime. It's seems obvious that a Western meritocracy earns its living by comparing ourselves to each other. You do well by simply being better. It's a blantantly obvious way of being no? What about those folks that aren't better, what to do about those people? Ignore them, put them down and make sure they're not included: segregate them out of your social circle. So much for Stage Orange capitalism and betterism. The neurotitism of Western society is that you have to have or obtain certain few certain attributes to be considered worthy of being included and recognised. If you want to see the origin of this idiotic notion look no further than the ancient Greek aesthetic: Where else does the idea of muscular Alpha males stem from? It's an inescapable Western paradigm. The only thing that's changed in over 2000 years is that they preferred curly hair on their heads rather than baldness. Obvioulsy, I find myself ascribing to this ancient idotic aesthetic. If I could click my fingers and become any one of those ancient statues and flex those biceps I would in an instant. That's how inculcated I am in so called modern culture. What's left to do? Everything. Eschew those pesky Greeks, rid myself of everything that makes you want to conform. Even being "yourself" is old hat. What's left is just understanding deeply what the fuck is going on. Why am I "I"? What is an "I"? What in the hell happened between being a bewildered babe and a bewildered middle-aged man? I could probably spend another lifetime dissecting it all to no avail. This seems like real modernity 2021. No. I've already achieved everything wanted of me by society. It's time to say "fuck you" to society, it has nothing more to offer me. Instead I chose to go my own way and to own my very beingness. To be just to be and not be neurotic about it: to just be a non-muscular God.

48. Do you actually have a point?