LastThursday

There is no determinism either. We would need free will in order to be free to interpret what will be determined. If you follow me. Determinism cannot be absolute, because there's too much to be determined. We really do need a permanent thread for these free will questions.

OMFG

Just keep calm and carry on. You already know that 90% of posts are irrelevent to you, and 90% of you won't be here in a few months. Why take it personally? Keep up the good work @Leo Gura and mods.

I like a good thought experiment. There's a number of questions raised on the forum which are actually thought experiments. Most of them come in the form of "Why can't I do/become X?". Top of the pile is "How do I become enlightened?". Really most of these questions are hypotheses. The questioner has forgotten to actually run the thought experiment themselves. Instead they're asking everyone else to run it for them. This is not necessarily laziness, just inexperience at working through the consequences of a hypothesis. For kicks I'll run through an example and the reasoning as I go. "Why can't I time travel?" To start with, always always start with empirical evidence. Yes, I know it's a thought experiment, but most thought experiments are based on the real world. So these two further questions should immediately come to mind: Have I ever time travelled? Do I know of anyone else who has time travelled? Normally this should be enough to squash the hypothesis. It's the law of large numbers. If someone "out there" had actually time travelled, the media would be all over it. But in this case Andrew Carlssin comes to mind, so there's plausible grounds, even if very very slim. Next comes the mundane answer: You are actually time travelling into the future all the time There's always a mundane angle to a hypothesis, it shouldn't be dismissed as an uninteresting or unsatisfactory answer. Sometimes the mundane has a very deep truth to it. And often further questions come, which can help explore the original hypothesis: Why is there travel in only one direction? What does a "direction" mean anyway? Is it possible to change the rate of travel into the future? Does everyone travel at the same rate? Is the motion into the future fluid or jumpy? What about when I'm asleep? Does time stop? Next is the familiarity angle. This is kind of slippery to understand, but it goes like following. Say you were born into a race of beings with abilities and you could actually time travel whenever you wanted. Basically, you invert the hypothesis. What question would you be asking then? Maybe it would be: I've just realised I can do this thing and I call it "time travel", anyone else? How long is it possible to go without time travelling? A whole lifetime? I've never been stuck in a time loop. Why not? You then invert the hypothesis a second time: What haven't I realised yet about time travel? Am I actually time travelling without realising it? Do I actually have abilities that don't seem like abilities? Am I missing the blindingly obvious? Lastly there is the embodiment angle: Who or what is actually time travelling? This may seem obvious, but it's not. It can open up a whole can of worms: Is it your physical body? Is it your mind? Something else? Does the whole world change around you instead? If you time travel into a younger self, are you still you? Does you current mind replace the mind of the younger/older body you jump into? Does your physical body go with you? If so, what about physics? The movement of Earth and Sun through space? Do you actually jump into some other historical person's body? What controls the jump? Is there an incantation or special formula or special state of mind? And normally this is where the hypothesis blows up and you move on to the next one!

To labour the analogy. You could say that the left hand doesn't exist at all, but it's actually five fingers and a palm. Or you could equally say it's the end of a left arm. Or actually it's just one part of a body. It's all a matter of perspective. Each perspective is true with regards to its own definition. You current perspective (POV) is being actively defined by the "I" that thinks it exists. If the I were to redefine itself or disappear entirely, believe me, the perspective would change. It's impossible for your current "I" to appreciate this, because it's stuck in its own perspective.

Can the left hand feel what the right hand touches? If it could, would it still be a left hand? Can you feel with both hands at once? Are they still separate? Or are they both just parts of one body?

It's an ongoing battle of mine to reduce all tension and anxiety in my life. Part of this is to do with physical tension. Where to start? My observations are that I have tension: Around my neck area In my jaws Around my face More on the right side of my body: shoulder, arm, leg. I'm also prone to getting headaches and that would tally with the tension in the neck and face areas. I also know that another source of headaches is prolonged pressure on my back, mostly from sitting for long periods. I've also observed that I'm more likely to have a headache if I sleep too little or for too long. I do also suffer from mild lower back pain on occasion and this is almost certainly from prolonged sitting and stiff posture, i.e. tension on the whole back. And sometimes I will wake up with back pain. I would like to eliminate the headaches and back pain. But I would also like to have a more fluid walking style and relaxed posture. Some of the causes of tension might be: Embodied low level anxiety Prolonged computer work Overcompensating for bad posture I've made a solid effort to install a habit of releasing tension in my body regularly, but it feels like the effects are only temporary. How do I fix this tension permanently? Maybe some history will be helpful. I was first made aware that I'd developed bad posture in my early teens. One striking photo showed me with a pronounced hunched standing posture. At the time I was addicted to my computer (still am) and my parents blamed my posture on that. I would sit for hours on end in front of my computer. Looking back on it I'm not so sure. I remember distinctly the point where I became quite insular. This was after some trouble with some rough local kids where the police got involved. Without being particularly conscious of it, I think I decided to withdraw socially at that point. I was also bullied at school, despite it being low-level. My parents were also arguing a lot, and my dad largely absent. Several physical changes happened around then. My eyesight became rapidly worse. I had increased sweating especially in the hands and feet. My posture worsened. My sense of smell worsened and my nose became blocked. I had a lot of tension around my stomach. It could have been just bodily changes associated with puberty. But really I think I embodied the social withdrawal and anxiety. I literally didn't want to see the world, and I wanted to curl up and hide or at least protect myself by always being in a tense "fight or flight" mode. I think I also embodied a lot of my mum's anxiety as a kind of mirroring. I believe that the increased sweating was a manifestation of this. And it would be very effective at stopping me from being more social: shaking hands and intimacy were out. I made a concerted effort to improve my posture when I went to university, and my new found social confidence helped a great deal, as well as a conscious effort to stand straight. This has largely worked: my massage therapist said I had quite good posture recently. But years of forcing myself to improve my posture I think has created lasting tension around my back and shoulders and a stiff walking gait. I also think computer work and using a mouse has increased the tension around my shoulders and right side of my body. The tension in my face and jaws is more intriguing. I've always been quite prone to smiling even as a small kid, which I think mostly is an appeasement signal rather than a friendliness signal. So it's a manifestation of social anxiety. Whilst smiling has it's place, it's not a particularly masculine trait. So it's useful to be able to turn this off when necessary. The tension in the jaws is definitely an ingrained defence mechanism and probably the main source of my headaches. So much for causes. Solutions? Not many as yet: Continue the habit of noticing and releasing tension, hoping it has a long term effect. Maybe some form of hypnosis or CBT or talking therapy for lingering anxiety (although I'm reluctant to get back into this) . Iontophoresis machine for sweaty hands - which I use, but this is not a cure Change diet and intake - I've already largely cut out caffeine, as I'm pretty intolerant. I've stopped smoking a few years now. Improve movement and decrease sedentary lifestyle - I walk and play sports regularly, but my work is very sedentary Any ideas welcome.

This moment always happened. Past tense. It's just pure imagination. Conventionally though, yes, it's happening.

I think we're all looking to be validated by the people around us. It gives us self esteem and we feel included as part of the group. Human beings need this like they need air to breath. Ego trap or not, it's normal and natural to think like this. It takes a lot of work on yourself to overcome this natural need to be validated. It can be done, it should be done. Awareness will get you there. In the end, it's a matter of learning to love yourself thoroughly and trusting yourself that you can deal with whatever the world throws at you - and live happily. It's all inner work. You can then be with people on your terms not theirs. The only limiting belief is that you won't ever change or you can't change. You can.

What is art? What is an appearance? What is beauty? Consider the following appearance: In the first few seconds of looking you will have made a judgement about what you're seeing. A quick assessment I might have made includes: It's a woman combing her hair It's a Japanese woman. She's most probably wearing a kimono and there are Kanji characters, she has far eastern facial features Is that what I'm actually seeing? Is that what I'm directly experiencing? Or am I making an interpretation? Good question. What else am I seeing? The most plain thing is, is that if it is a woman, then it is not a lifelike reproduction like a photograph. It is a stylised representation of a woman. In turn that means it is most probably an artwork. In fact the artwork is almost cartoon like. The outlines of the woman's face and kimono have thin black edging and large areas of plain colouring. There is no attempt at portraying shadows and the image has no depth in that respect. For example her skin is a completely uniform colour. Her kimono is very textured with the flower designs and what looks like a dense leafy pattern. This gives the kimono a sense of contour which gives the body of the woman a sense of 3d shape in space. The flat pale colour of her skin accentuates her facial features and contrasts starkly with her black hair and dark kimono. Her red belt or tie and red lips contrast starkly in colour with her kimono and black hair. Notice how much there is to see. The more you look, the more you see. The image is not just one complete whole: a Japanese woman combing her hair, but there are many layers to it and sub-structure. The artist has made deliberate choices in order to portray the woman in a kind of minimalist style - with just enough detail to bring her to life. One very overlooked fact with picture art is that universally it is in a rectangular frame. The image is conventional in this respect. It is part of a tradition. See how much interpretation there is going on here? There is not a single thing that hasn't been judged and assessed. Is it really possible to get a raw and unadulterated experience from an appearance? No. For an appearance to make any sense at all, it needs to be understood within some sort of context. It also needs to be literally constructed from our previous experiences and memories. There is no "direct experience" without some form of interpretation. Every single direct experience has personal bias - there is no purity to it. "Direct" is a misnomer. Is the artwork above beautiful? I think so yes. Her face is symmetrical, her skin unblemished, her hair long and feminine. The artist (Hashiguchi Goyo) has skillfully given the woman a standing gait, her back slightly arched backwards, and she looks pensive, the combing action looks automatic - she's done it many times before, the lips are painted for a reason, there's a sexual frisson there. And that's where the artist has excelled, he's given her a story. The beauty lies within your intepretation of appearances. If you pay enough attention there is beauty in all appearances and the world around you.

Is there any meaning to a game of chess or a game of football? Yes. And no. We want meaning to save us and it does. But we're still the ones making up the rules of the game. Should we give up playing our own game? Yes, and no.

I use this journal mostly to talk to myself. It's really quite odd. If you have kept up with my posts, then you might think you have a picture of me and my life. But strangely, my inner mental life bears absolutely no resemblance to my journal in any way. I do not sit here thinking in essays to myself day to day. When I write, it's composed there and then, spontaneously; it doesn't come preformed from a mental script. In that sense my journal doesn't capture me at all. So what am I doing with the journal? Well, I have the pleasure of a nearly infinite amount of context. You only see the chair, I see the whole room. The posts are simply me shifting furniture around, so that the layout is more pleasing or workable. In terms of style, I could write like this: "Well, LastThursday didn't you have a good time yesterday. Yes LastThursday I did, it was fun wasn't it. Yes it was wasn't it?" But that would be insanity. So instead I choose to write as if I'm talking to someone in a kind of one sided conversational style - sorry I mean monologue, that's the word. Naturally, if it has the side effect of making you more aware or it's helpful or even if it just gives you entertainment, then I'm more than happy about that. And, I'm also very open to suggestions here about my "mental furniture". So what is my inner mental life like? Well it's part spiritual cliche: Thoughts, sensations and emotions arise or appear from nowhere. It's constant but not a torrent. I only verbalise mentally when I'm working through difficult problems, mostly computer programming (it's my job). Or sometimes when going through scenarios in my head, but that's rare. Or reading. I don't hold on to thoughts too much any more - even the emotionally charged ones - I just let them pass. When I'm not talking to myself (most of the time), I still think. I still have emotional reactions good and bad, thoughts still come and go. Thoughts about the past and future come up often, but I don't indulge too much. If I do indulge I do it for sentimental reasons or to try and get some resolution or for planning purposes. If it doesn't work, I let it go and move on. My emotions are very much on an even keel most of the time. I very very rarely get overwhelmed by them. Because of this looseness of thinking, I find the journal useful for capturing thoughts and ideas which I would probably just forget. Having some sort of self feedback is useful for me. However, I realised a while ago that holding on to thoughts too tightly was causing my depression and giving me a lot of pain. When I finally became aware of this, I worked very very hard to learn to just let thoughts pass, even if they kept coming back. Nowadays I'm calm and composed, and there's a kind of mental quietude which I never had before - it's glorious. If you were to meet me in person. I would be nothing like you imagine I am. I'd probably appear to be far more normal and down to earth. Which is the authentic me?

Judging the world is easy. But you ought to be as white as the driven snow yourself before doing it.

Self sabotage. Anyone? Why do we do it? I do fear myself, mostly. I fear what I'm capable of. Fear of breaking myself. Fear of real freedom. Fear of losing me. Fear of disidentification. Fear itself. Self sabotage. Why do we do it? Are we deserving enough? Do we have a right to have what we really want? Do we have any right to be what we want? Self worth. Self esteem. Lack thereof. Self sabotage. Pretend, why not? Pretend we're moving. Pretend we're progressing. Pretend we're growing, and developing. Pretend we are doing enough. Pretend we are pretending. Self sabotage. Cowardly ignorance. Closemindedness. Naivety. Stupidity. Self serving agendas. Narcissism. Isolationism. Sluggishness and sloth. No vision. No curiosity. No plan. Self sabotage.

I'm not enlightened. No really. This journal entry will be long. I'm not sure if airing my dirty linen in public is really that useful, but it's going to be no worse than what I've posted previously. I'm hoping for some sort of insight or catharsis by getting it "down on paper". It's 6:38 am here. The reason being is that I woke from an odd dream. Sometimes dreams get under you skin and unsettle you in ways that make it hard to get to sleep again. This post is really about shadows. For every day that passes the likelihood of accumulating negative circumstances increases. If you have the basics of survival covered: food, shelter, money; then really nearly all other negativity is down to people. People are a pain the arse. Usually the pain they manisfest in your life is mostly caused by their selfish behaviour. This is behaviour that they exhibit which lacks empathy towards you in some way. This can either be through ignorance and lack of awareness, or it can be on purpose. Either way the result is similar. People are selfish and it's a fact of life. You are selfish too. Exposing the selfishness of others is a double-edged sword. For every selfish act that someone else has done that's affected you, you have probably done some selfish act that has affected more people in turn (with or without your knowledge). And it can be beneficial for healing purposes to acknowledge one's own selfishness also when doing shadow work. I won't be doing that in this post however, because that's probably for another time. What I recount below may seem onesided and that in itself is selfish, but hey this is my journal. The dream then. I'm being driven around in a transit van. The driver is my sister. In real life she doesn't know how to drive. We are in some sort of parking lot or whatever, there's loads of gravel on the ground. My sister is doing doughnuts in the van and sliding it about the place on the gravel. At first it's kind of fun, I'm sat in the back of the van. But the van actually belongs to me, and eventually I get concerned that she's going to crash into something. I tell her to be more careful and lay off the tricks - she ignores me. Inevitably she prangs the van into a post, and I get out to inspect the damage and get angry. She still doesn't really acknowledge me and just wants to carry on messing about. I tell her that I'm off to catch a train home and go off in a huff. I wait for the train for a while, but it doesn't arrive. Eventually my sister turns up at the station with my mother, probably with the hope of placating me. I ignore them and give up on the train, I ask my sister where the van is and go try to finding it again. I'm then suddenly in a situation where I'm physically grabbing my sister and causing her pain. I explain to her bluntly that the pain she is feeling, is exactly the same pain that she is causing me by her ignorant behaviour - I have the strong sense that this is the only way to get through to her and I'm angry. The dream ends by me finding the van and again sitting on the back seat. Several shifty looking men then start looking into the van probably with a view to stealing it, they don't spot me sitting in the back. One of them says it's not worth it (i.e. not cost effective), and they walk away. I get jittery and decide to lock the van using my key fob, which of course attracts the attention of the group of men. Suddenly one of the men gets inside with malicious intent, and I consider using my keys to thrust into his neck for my own defence. I can see the situation worsening, but thankfully I wake up. Some of the longest shadows are cast by family members. There are often strong emotions associated with family and this can make it nearly impossible to resolve long standing problems. I learned recently (within the past ten or so years), that sometimes the best strategy is avoidance. This has meant that slowly over time I have distanced myself from my family and some friends too. When I was young and mostly before teenagehood, I was very close to my sister. We are only 18 months apart in age and we had similar temperaments and the same upbringing. To a large degree being the older brother I was responsible for her, so already the relationship was unequal. Being the 80's we played outside for most of the day, every day. We were inseperable and it didn't cause me any great problems. Occasionally I resented having to play protector, but not often. However, when my father left my mother I was then a teenager and my sister nearly was. With hindsight the event was traumatic for all involved, but it wasn't a surprise to me at the time. But, my sister was very affected by this and this is were the rot set in. She turned against my mother, perhaps she even blamed her, I don't really know. She was always that bit closer to my father than I was. We would regularly visit my father who had decided to move about 200 miles away with his new girlfriend (she had her own two kids). And we went on holiday together one time, Mallorca I think it was. My sister was at the age of being into boys and she had her first holiday romance. Teenage hormones and attachment as they are, I think my sister was devasted when she had to go back home. This I believe tipped her over the edge, and from that point on until now her behaviour has been erratic. She soon moved out of home and spent a lot of time with a bunch of older men. She couldn't really engage with anything: she was interested in fashion and clothes making, and nearly enrolled for a course in college, but pulled out at the last minute. She held down a few temp jobs, but then gave up trying to work altogether and just relied on boyfriends to maintain her. I went to university and she decided that she wanted the same, but she wasn't prepared to do the work and take the courses. Instead she just decided to gatecrash and sleep on my friends' floors. I resented her for her behaviour and "invading" my private space. Eventually after a few decades of this sort of being "lost", she met someone and settled down and had kids. I am pretty close to her kids and would often visit, and really also to try and rekindle that closeness that we had as kids ourselves. But her instability hadn't really gone away, and after a good ten years or so, she fell out of love with her boyfriend. She met an American bloke online as part of her blog and she fell in love. In all reality he was never going to move to the UK, and she ended up moving over to America without her children. She was in the middle of a university degree when she did this, she had one year to go to finish it, which of course she didn't. At that point I decided that I'd had enough and completely shunned her (and to this day). Now I suppose I could be seen as reactionary or judgemental (or even selfish), but I had always been there for her when she needed support and shelter. I had always encouraged her to try and stand on her own to feet and to improve herself. And she had for all intents and purposes "used me" many many times, but I had compassion. But she had repeated exactly the same trauma my dad had inflicted and that was too much for me. Avoidance can be a good strategy were emotions are involved and the situation is impossible to solve any other way. I can't talk to my sister, because she's not interested in what I have to say (the parallel with the dream is obvious), she just does what she wants to do and fuck everyone else. It's a way of being that suits her own ends. However avoidance doesn't erase memories and it doesn't remove suffering, it just lessens it. So, what to do? How do I resolve this shadow with my sister? Do I forgive her yet one more time? Do I just say fuck it, she's not someone I want to associate with? Or do I pretend, and do inner work to heal the pain? Do I just call her, confront the thing and have it out with her? Do I just wait a few decades until she comes around and takes some responsibility for her actions? Am I actually being selfish myself and causing further pain? It's 8:01 am.

I'm enlightened. No really. This business with enlightenment is just the embodiment of a paradoxical riddle. And, it's exactly the embodiment process that seems to be the problem. Most normal practices in every day life are about attainment. The word attain comes via Latin and French and basically means "to touch". We people are kind of obsessed with feeling and touch, it's the only way we know something to be true. You see, sight and sound are not nearly enough. The only way to find truth is to have an emotional reaction towards it. Without touching the truth we're not sure at all: we have to embody the truth; become the truth. But enlightenment is not really about anything at all. Seekers of enlightenment have already failed. They've failed because they're seeking to attain some truth and embody it emotionally. But how is it possible to attain something that doesn't exist? What? How can enlightenment be talked about so casually as if everyone knows what's being understood, it must be true? How can I sit here and write that enlightenment doesn't exist? What makes me so arrogant and sure? If enlightenment is about anything it is about being. Here's a thought experiment. Try and imagine what you will be like on 23 June 2037. How will you have changed, what life experiences will you have had, what will you look like, act like? Maybe you can make a good guess, maybe you just have a vague notion of what being older will be like. People of a certain age may even be able to recount exactly what it is like to be the age they are and how you might be that age one day. Does it seem like an impossible task, or even rather pointless? Why not just wait until 23 June 2037 and then write in your journal what it was like on the day? So. One day you may or may not be enlightened - there probably isn't even a date on it. But, when it "happens" you will most probably know. Until then there's nothing to seek or embody. All that can be done is to increase the odds in your favour that it will happen in your lifetime and follow the spiritual path. In all likelihood you will have many false starts and many jolts of new awareness to confuse you. But you will just have to apply Pascal's wager and hope for the best. That's all there is to it. The recognition of that vague hope is one step on the path to Truth.

More.

Coz me am sad middle age geezer, wid luv fa muzik and ve talent

Photography 2 What is a photograph? To most it's blindingly obvious. It an image or shot captured on a camera for later presentation. But really it's much more than that. The first thing is the idea that something is being captured or shot at. It really has the hunting and trapping instinct behind it. Photography has some of the hallmarks of this. For some photography there is a lot of elaborate setting up and waiting for the moment to arrive. For other types of photography you quickly point, shoot and bag the specimen, to consume it later. It's curious, the bow and arrow is replaced by the camera. What exactly is being "captured"? To cut the chase what's being captured is an interpretation of a moment in space and time. The pure light going in through the lens is stored and manipulated in countless ways until the result is nothing like the original. Photographs are not faithful reproductions: we don't have rectangular vision or view things in two dimensions. Photographs are composed, staged, framed, shot in black and white, lightened, blurred, colour corrected and digitally manipulated to create drama or intrigue. A single photograph may even be composed of many other photographs mashed together. A photograph is a good metaphor for how reality works. Ultimately what we perceive as reality is merely an interpretation according to our mood, circumstance, thoughts, age, and countless other factors. What we perceive is absolutely unique to us too. What's being captured is ourselves. What else is a photograph if it isn't a facsimile? It is a sensory poke in the eye. It's a bit like that song or perfume that reminds you of an old flame. The photograph can transport you back to another time and place and give you that disconcerting discontinuity, that you have changed so much and that a lot of time has passed. It can also convey a frozen story like a frame in a cartoon, all the elements then become a symbolic visual language. A photograph can also be like currency to be used in exchange for social media attention. In the end a phograph is never static or solid, it shifts and morphs with the viewer; just like the rest of reality.

Photography 1 I dabble in lots of different things, some for interest, some for pure pleasure, some for talent. I would say that photography is sort of in the talent category. I've come to realise I have an eye for composition, but my passion for it is non-existent. That may seem odd, but passion isn't necessary in all activites. Mostly I take photographs on holidays. A good friend P. is very much into it and quite competitive to boot. I knew this and a good long time ago on one particular break away I challenged him (like the devil I am). He would use his fancy camera, I would use my little point and shoot. The only concession was that I could tart my pictures up with Photoshop, he couldn't. The rest of the group then blindly judged the shots at the end of the holiday. Of course, I won. Getting feedback from the group on what was good and bad proved invaluable. And we've carried on the tradition of having a competition each holiday and we've both improved over time. I talk about it mainly because you should always have backup plans in life. Plan B and Plan C. They might not seem particularly serious or that interesting but they should still be worth considering. Could I be a professional photographer? Yes I think so. Should I be? In an emergency yes. So P. and I took some shots outside Heathrow airport. Here's a very small selection:

I think I've always been contrary. My mum's instinctual reaction to everything is: "No". My dad's instinctual reaction is: "I know better than you". Just mix together and shake. I suppose I do at least realise I'm like this and this keeps me on the level, and I usually know when I need to concede. One great benefit of being a contrarian is it has allowed me to get a handle on this business of going meta. By going meta I mean seeing a thing from a larger or different perspective. Most people are surprisingly bad at it, this way of thinking is completely alien to them. It's instructive to list some of the ways of going meta, so that you can see how the process works. The names and descriptions are my own (what else?). Reflection The way this works is to apply the observation in reverse. Say you perceive that you're a people pleaser, but you're unhappy because you have to deprecate yourself in order to please others. Applying reflection you would offer: why not please yourself, are you not deserving of it too? Say you are having a problem with a bullying manager at work. With reflection you would ask: have you ever bullied anybody? Or: does you manager also get bullied? It's also useful for shifting perspective from outside to inside. For example, you experience that you are a victim of circumstance and you can't make friends, this makes you depressed. With reflection you would ask: what is this depression like, what are the characteristics of it? You are shifting the focus of attention from external causes to internal causes. Expansion This is seeing the bigger picture. You are unhappy because you are not having fun and meeting new people. With expansion you would ask: what could you do that would allow you to meet more people? Or, how could you have fun without meeting new people? Even better: what do you think you are learning about yourself? Another. Your parent has always been a very negative person and it gets you down. You might ask: what in their past has caused them to be like this? Is there a reason you hadn't considered for their negativity? You are running a business with a partner, except things have turned sour between you. He has all your stock worth thousands on his premises abroad - he won't give you access. With expansion you would ask: are you prepared to give up on your stock to make a clean break? Contraction This is narrowing things down so that they're more manageable. You are running a business, but all your stock has been stolen, Covid is killing your orders, and you've recently being diagnosed with cancer. With contraction you would ask: which thing is the most important to concentrate on first? You have to study for an exam, but there are too many things to cover in too little time. With contraction you would ask: which topics are essential to know? Lateral This taking a different angle or perspective on something. The local traffic in your neighbourhood is high and slow moving and causing increased rates of breathing problems. One lateral solution might be to increase traffic flow, so cars spend less time in your neighbourhood. You could close off side roads or move pedestrian crossings or relocate shops that cause traffic to back up. You are having trouble meditating and just can't seem to make time for it. You could see if you could meditate differently, maybe on your commute to work, or by taking a walk during lunch times. Or even asking if there are more effective ways than meditation (although that could be Expansion). You are trying to learn a new language, but finding it difficult to remember words. You might try: find words which are similar to English and have similar meanings. Or try and listen to music in the target language. Or even full immersion by living in the country for six months.

It's very tempting to come up with a personal philosophy with which to live life. I think we all do it to a greater or lesser degree. This is the set of beliefs and values we hold dear or as obvious. However, the fact that these can change over a lifetime is often overlooked. We can retrospectively look back at our younger selves and see that we were naive or uninformed or ignorant; and that we're in better shape now. We never question our current philosophy. It's a lot harder to recognise that our beliefs and values are completely fluid. It's very uncomfortable to simply drop a value (such as not eating animals) and substitute another (eating animals). Beliefs are no different. Could you just stop believing that we're living in a material world? The fact of the matter is that our personal philosophy grounds us and gives us a direction to aim for and comfort. Because we sink our energies and time into our personal philosophies we are very loathed to give them up; it feels like pulling out the rug from under our feet. This clinging on to our beliefs and values is what keeps us stuck in our development. Yet, there is the assumption that "developing" ourselves is not a value (it is); and that it's clear what development itself means. The lack of clarity on what "development" actually is should be a big red flag. Development can and is anything that changes your current philosophy into a supposedly better philosophy. But better is always relative in the least. Better is simply a judgement or belief and as such is part of our personal philosophy. There's circularity there. The escape valve might be to install a meta belief that our beliefs and values are a choice that we make. Inherently, they have no substance whatsoever. That can seem daunting, how are we supposed to live a good life if we have nothing to base it on? Because good is just another relative value again without substance. Really the escape valve is actually binary: either we have values and beliefs, or we give them up altogether; there is no middle ground. What is it like to give up on all belief and values? I don't know. But I can imagine it's a bit like believing in Santa Claus. Even though most of us have given up on Santa Claus we can still entertain the notion of a red clothed bearded old fellow. So instead of a belief in Santa Claus, there is something looser; we act "as if" Santa Claus existed. So how would this work in practice? Instead of believing that being vegetarian is good, we would believe as if being vegetarian is good, we act as if we know what "good" is. Notice the subtle shift, we are no longer certain of anything, but we can still work with it. From there we have complete freedom to choose what to believe and value, nothing has absolute worth any more than what we assign it. The shift is one of perspective not actuality. We still end up being vegetarian, but we are playing a role instead and choosing it: acting "as if". This means we can drop or pick up a belief or value consciously, for whatever reason we choose to. This gives us immense power to change ourselves and to stay fluid: we become Shapeshifters.

Are you in control of your thoughts? Or are your thoughts in control of you? Are you separate from your thoughts?

Coincidences, synchronocities are weird. They're a little bit like breathing. Breathing inhabits that space between unconscious and conscious. Normally breathing happens without any thought at all, but it can also be taken over and consciously controlled. A syncronicity can be easily explained as a sheer mathematical concidence: given enough random events something coincidental is bound to happen. However, in order to be noticed as a coincidence we have to become aware of it. Funny isn't it? Synchronicity also seems to inhabit the strange middle ground. It's like it wants to be explained away as mundane, but it still has significance of some sort. I went up to London today to go for a long hike with a photographer friend of mine. To do that I had to get across London on the tube (metro). As I got on the tube I noticed a young woman dressed in bright colours: a hot pink T-shirt saying something like "Rules are meant to be broken" and a red leather (effect) skirt with a yellow zip that went vertically up the front of it. I had three quick thoughts in this order: kinky; how convenient; too young for me. Ah... the vagaries of being older. Strangely her posture and demeanor didn't quite tally with the confidence her attire would imply. Anyway, on to the coincidence. On my way back about about eight hours later on the tube, the exact same woman gets back into my carriage and stands nearly opposite me. Bear in mind I had already been on the train for a good 15 stops or so. There must have been literally hundreds of trains and thousands of people pass through in that eight hour window. What are the chances? I personally think trains are a place of high strangeness for me.

Who's to say? Dolphins and birds seem to produce very complex sounds too. A lot of animals communicate chemically. Single celled organisms especially use chemical signalling (communication). Maybe all those "languages" are just as complex as human language if not more so? If you wanted to objectively answer it, you would have to remove the human centric bias first. Don't forget every type of animal is unique and no animal is biologically simple. Then there is the elephant in the room of consciousness. Does material reality exist or is it all just consciousness? Or is there some sort of interface between consciousness and biology? Maybe consciousness is infinitely intelligent, but the biological interface to it has to be complex enough to "tune into it". I don't know that's just wild speculation on my part. I don't buy that physics and chemistry alone can produce consciousness. The most likelihood is that there was a runaway evolutionary process between intelligence, tool use, and social organisation; all of which would have been strongly selected to increase survival. Complex language would have tied all those things together.