LastThursday

The clue must be in the fact that human language uses sound. I mean we could have communicated in any number of ways: sign language, making marks in the dirt, bioluminescense, animal bones etc. What makes sound so good? 1. You don't need direct line of sight. You can communicate even if you can't see your audience. 2. You can keep your hands and body free for other things. 3. You can communicate at distance. We are used to living in noisy city environments, but in quieter times sounds would have carried a good distance. 4. You can produce sounds spontaneously anywhere you like. You don't need to manipulate physical objects to communicate. 5. It's energetically cheap to produce. Producing sound takes very little energy. Even a few watts of sound is very loud. 6. It's very easy to modulate sound with vocal chords and mouth so that communication can be broken down into distinct units. These units can then be strung together combinatorially to produce an infinite number of messages. 7. It's very likely that we already produced basic sounds for other reasons (scare off animals or alarm calls or frighten the competition). So evolution co-opted it for communication. 8. We're very weedy apes physically, so we go around in packs for protection. But that requires us to maintain interpersonal relationships, and for that we need to communicate well. We are also very intelligent animals which also more than makes up for our physical shortcomings. So the language we produce has to be very complex to keep up with our intelligence.

A quick overview of the science of consciousness: Or is that the consciousness of science? I shouldn't enjoy my own jokes.

Be less, be more, accept or shift perspective? It would seem that spirituality as practiced by some is all about reduction. It's all about letting go of everything. The ego needs to be killed and removed. The chatting mind needs to be shut off so that we can experience serenity. We need to remove distraction and be still. Standard reality needs to be shunned to make space for a mind altered higher version, so that we can be God. We need to realise that we are bathing in nothingness and that we came from nothing. Enlightenment is just perfect reductionism. There is the opposing side which wants more. It wants to be more conscious, more skilled and more aware and more nuanced. It has to attain nirvana and enlightenment. It has to work for everything in order to get closer to that magical spiritual state. The person you are now will never be enough because you need to be more in all areas of being and knowledge. The more knowledge and insight you accumulate the higher up and further on you are on the path to salvation. More is more. Then there is the middle way. There is only ever this. No matter what you do or try or how hard things get, or how conscious you become, it's still this. There's no escape from it. That is, except to just accept this. Acceptance is the way through the quagmire of judgement and evaluations and storymaking, the antidote to drama. And if you feel acceptance is disingenous, then simply accept that too. Nothing can penetrate the shield of acceptance. The Fourth Way. The fourth way is not a way at all, but a deceptive shapeshifter. We simply allow experience to buffet us around and we constantly shift perspective to keep ourselves upright. We forget about being a someone at all (and expand our identity to everything) and simply become a container for experience. The appearances are the puppetmaster and there's nothing else to do or anywhere to go to. We feel happy and we feel sad and we strive, but are pointedly aware that nothing is going on at all, there is no motion. If we died or disappeared in the next second, it wouldn't matter. If we gave up trying, we simply shapeshift and let it all just be. The Fourth Way is just being whatever arises. Is there another way? Yes. It is not have a way or method. Don't spiritually tangle yourself up just so that you can untangle yourself later. Just live. You cannot force the exacting details of the future but it will come before you know it. You cannot know what you will become, but it will come. You can only be what you are in this moment, nothing more and nothing less. Should you try and change yourself and your life? Yes. But only if you want it in the moment. Should you try and get back to that enlightened state you were in yesterday - permanently? Yes, if you wish to. Should life be dramatic and exhausting and of low consciousness? Yes why not? All options are possible. Don't deny any of them. Your future self does not care about you now.

The YT algorithm is trying to talk to me, but I'm not buying it: Hang on... who am I?

Understanding consciousness is a slippery activity. Imagine your hand is the entirety of consciousness. How then is the hand able to grasp itself? Understanding yourself is a slippery activity. Imagine you're an automaton that has been programmed to have a sense of self. Is the self in control or does the automaton just carry on regardless? Does the self really initiate the activity of trying to understand the consciousness which it perceives to belong to it? Is the automaton destined to deconstruct itself so much that it destroys its own existence? If consciousness is not a story or an event or exists in time then why does it seemingly constantly change? If consciousness is itself producing a story out of its own awareness then isn't the automaton programming itself? And if so, then why does consciousness again want to de-program itself? If consciousness already knows itself absolutely and is absolutely self aware then why all the drama? Why such contrivance? And then why even ask about the contrivance of itself? What the hell is going on here? Why keep picking at the scab only to know you're going to bleed to death?

It depends on the climate where you live and the type of property you're in. Here in the UK winters are chilly (and other times of year), so having windows open is not always an option. There are also a huge number of old properties (Victorian or Edwardian) and those are more prone to rising damp. Obviously there are building solutions such a damp proof course, but that's mega expensive. Otherwise having decent heating helps keep walls dry, but older properties are often high ceilinged and without central heating. So options are limited and having a dehumidifier might be the only way. If you're in a modern home it shouldn't be a problem.

@ShugendoRa practice pleasing yourself in preference to other people. After all, you're a person too. Are you allowed to please yourself?

It's kind of funny to analyse something so mundane, but I like it. For me there's two aspects to cleaning: decluttering and health. I'd say that most cleaning is visual. I had an ex who was highly visual and literally wanted her home to look like a show home. Once a week she (and I) would spend hours reversing the visual carnage of the week before. If you enjoy minimalism then decluttering should be a quick and painless process. The more stuff you have, the greater the likelihood of mess. But you can't get away from water stains and dust. I think people have different tolerances for that and you can immediately tell upon entering someone's home where they lay on the scale. Stains and dust by themselves are not particularly bad for health unless you have allergies. The health aspect is fairly obvious, especially around food. Food gets mouldy, and spores are generally bad for health over time. This is especially so for damp areas, so "cleaning" also involves aeration, dehumidifying and keeping surfaces free of mould. But the food problem is solved: get a dishwasher. The same applies to clothes, most people wouldn't dream of washing their clothes by hand - although I remember my mum doing exactly this in the seventies in Spain. Food also invites little critters such as mice or cockcroaches into the home, and they carry their own diseases and are generally unpleasant to interact with. Basically, avoid all those scenarios by washing used kitchenware daily or you're really asking for trouble - it's a fact of life. Also you probably want to avoid bacterial buildup in the toilet (restroom/bathroom whatever your preference). The health aspect is interesting, as it's all in the head. You can't see viruses and bacteria. You body can also tolerate bacteria and viruses are lot better than you think. So it's possible to get carried away and be a bit OCD with cleaning - you should resist as much as possible. Life is too short to spend it cleaning. Saying that, life could be short if you don't clean at all.

I didn't walk today. I try and get out before midday most days and get at least half an hour of full daylight: mostly to keep my body clock in trim. Today I took a drive. I don't drive with any particular route in mind. Over time this has allowed me to explore most of the country roads in my area so I know where I'm going well enough. This is a good metaphor for doing anything with mastery. You have to know your material thoroughly so that you can be free and spontaneous. On the bend of a steep forested road coming out of a village was a hand painted sign pointing to nowhere. It said "FRITH". Frith is an Old English word for: peace; protection; safety, security. Maybe I should visit on foot?

Masculinity/Feminity I think for most people talk about the division between masculinity and femininity (masc/fem for brevity from now on) is clear cut. The most stark indicator is sexual dimorphism, men are on average taller, more muscular, have deeper voices and women shorter, less muscular and have higher voices. Naturally there are a ton of other biological differences, such as potential baldness, breasts, shape of hairline, lack of facial or body hair and so on. However, by themselves biological characteristics don't define the entire spectrum of masculinity or feminity. Society on the whole uses biological masc/fem to anchor all the other aspects of masc/fem to. I think predominantly this is just a very handy heuristic to use to quickly work out what the most appropriate way to interact with someone is - an angry beefy man could potentially kill you. Next on the scale is behavioural masc/fem. Normally behaviour is expected to align with biological masc/fem. (Stereo) typical behaviour of men might be to be more serious, more prone to be and enjoy being physical, less talktative, more in thought than emotion, a greater focus on pragmatism and practical decision making and perhaps goal orientated, taking charge of situations and confrontation. (Stereo) typical behaviour of women might be to laugh and appease others more, have greater intonation in voice and a more emotional thinking and expression. Women would typically be less physical and less likely to want to directly confront others. Anyway, enough stereotyping. Next on the scale is societal masc/fem. This is essentially cultural, or more accurately there is a culture of masulinity and one of feminity. Female (western) culture allows women to have longer hair, to shave their legs and to have a bigger and more expressive wardrobe. Female culture expects women to wear perfume and often to use make up and clothing to accentuate their female characteristics and bodies. Clothes will on the whole be tighter and more revealing of skin than for men. Men will have looser clothing, and less aimed at bringing out the masculinity although trousers are universal for men. In terms of behaviour the ideal man is supposed to be muscular and square jawed and confident and direct in the way the carry themselves and interact with others. They are supposed to do things even if it might uncomfortable and be loud and brash and domineering in a group of other men. I could go on. Next is sexual orientation. The outward biological, behavioural and societal masc/fem is no indicator of the preference of the individual for the opposite masc/fem nor is it any indicator of how the individual perceives or feels themselves to be. All the above is a quick and dirty summary. In reality masc/fem is a whole constellation of traits, rules and behaviours whose complex mixture varies from one person to the next. To be bring the "essay" down to earth I'd like to talk about how I feel about masc/fem myself and my experiences. Personally I identify with feeling masculine, behaving in a masculine manner and mostly fitting into societal expectation of masculinity, as well as finding females attractive. However I have never identified strongly with masculine behaviour. Behaviour such as (sexual) bragging or egging each other on, taking physical risks or laddish talk or outwardly sexual behaviour towards females. Mostly I think this was a lack of role models and personally feeling uncomfortable or having a distate for such things when I was younger. I have always found some aspects of societal expectation ridiculous, such as women should clean and make food, men should fix things and mow the lawn. As a single man I do everything to the best of my ability: cooking, cleaning, fixing and everything else - if I become less single, I don't expect to stop cooking and cleaning; that would be an affront to my skills as a human being. I do think that I do identify with women more strongly in certain areas. I find women on the whole are easier to talk to about deep and meaningful subjects, men a more lighweight and jovial - which has its place. I find women also tend to be less harsh and less prone to being competitive (with men). Whilst I like to compete if there is a competition, I'm not naturally that way. I find the constant low level competitiveness between men grinding. I do like to listen and pay attention to others and to appease people in a difficult situation and these might be more feminine traits. I will also admit that some men are attractive but I don't find men universally interesting - nor do I want sexual physicality with a man (although I have experimented when younger). I don't find masculine or "hard" women particularly attractive. This is paradoxical because in order to find a "girly" woman attractive, you have to know what "girly" is. This goes back to a previous post where I discussed that we hold everyone's characters inside of us. This would include all examples of overtly masculine and overtly feminine people. In other words we have it in us to bring out a more masculine or more feminine character. The ideal would be to have a level balance of the two which would would help iron out the extremes of the two and provide a more expressive base for being. I guess I sit on the more masculine side, but I would be a lot more central than a lot of men I know.

From a very young age I've been fascinated with symbols. My parents would buy a magazine of some sort and I would watch them reading it. I soon noticed the little company logos around adverts and I saw them everywhere. Of course I didn't know what they were, I just realised that the same logos would often pop up. But they stuck in my attention. My dad had one of those early Hewlett Packard calculators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-25 which I would often play with. I distinctly remember trying to work out what it all meant. I soon worked out the numbers and I remember asking my dad to explain what the other buttons did. He tried the best he could, but it was too incomprehensible to my four year old brain. But I was definitely hooked on that thing, the symbols were just too enticing. What the calculator taught me was that symbols could be manipulated and strung together in many different ways and that there was a pattern to it, even if I didn't understand what the patterns stood for. From there it was a natural progression to being inquisitive about letters and words. Again, my dad taught me (in Spanish) that each letter stood for a sound and that words were just the sounds put together. He often recalls how astonished he was that I learned to read so quickly. I remember trying to read out loud from a newspaper soon after he'd shown me what all those little symbols meant. Luckily Spanish is nearly phonetic and each letter is distinct and the same each time. From there I had a voracious appetite for reading everything. When I started school I could already read. When we all moved to England when I was six, I soon learnt to read and speak English in a matter of months. I just found it all so easy and fascinating. But the real breakthrough came one afternoon when we'd gone to visit my aunt and uncle's. It was the beginnings of the home computer era and they had one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81. I recollect having an intense fascination of it, the blocky graphics and the programs you could create with it. My uncle showed me a few programs he had written, where two little trains collided on the screen. I just had to have one! The programming symbols were mesmerising. Eventually my parents succumbed to my constant nagging and they bought me the computer for Christmas. I think I was nine or nearly ten years old. From then on, if I wasn't playing outside, I would spend every waking minute inside learning to program. I remember it was a struggle at first trying to understand it all, but I began to understand slowly. It was just like learning another language: a third language if you like, but it was much more a visual experience than auditory. Naturally I knew from then on I wanted to be a programmer and that's exactly what I do some forty years later. In terms of spirituality what has this love of symbols taught me? Mostly, that meaning is attached to the patterns of symbols, but the symbols themselves are completely arbitrary, that they have no inherent value in themselves. In other words all symbols written and spoken are just proxies for the actual thing; the symbols themselves shouldn't be confused for the things they represent - the map is not the territory. The extension to this idea is that rational thought is just the manipulation of mental symbols. The paradoxes and inconsistencies of thought are not real, they are just a consequence of having a finite set of symbols representing an infinite world. We shouldn't be fooled by symbols not matter how enticing they are.

Essay at 01:15. Ok this is difficult. Mostly because alcohol is not conducive to thinking and writing and my body thinks it should be asleeep. Nevertheless... Carrying on the thread of hypnotism and experimentation. I feel as though I may be permanently hypnotised. Or more accurately it seems I can get myself back into the state very quickly. I thought I would play around with it. I mentally created a set of knobs that I can crank up to see what I can effect/affect. One mental knob I tried was to increase colour saturation. You know, you go into Photoshop and increase saturation and all the colours looks outlandish and over the top. So on my usual daily walk I messed around with it. And basically it worked. I was kind of stunned. But pretty much the entire day colours have "popped out", it's a surreal sensation and as if I'm in a world I don't recognise. Everything seems like I'm in a painting. I'm not sure how long it will last, but I'm enjoying it. A few other knobs I've tried are the volume of my internal voice - which admitedly has been harder to tone down, but that's worked to a degree. Another it to increase my acuity to smells and another to sound. I can honestly say my smell sense has somewhat improved. What is going on here? Well, the hypnotism was pure language, i.e. not reality itself, and yet it has had a marked effect on me. How does that work? Is it that reality is indeed affected very easily by langauge? Does the pliability of reality undermine any sort of trust in it? I guess it must do - reality is not as static as it seems. I'm going to keep experimenting. And if you're British stop smirking about knobs.

I've been playing around with hypnosis videos on YT. I already had an inkling that I was suggestible after learning the basics of Ericksonian hypnosis back in the day. This was prompted by someone else on the forum posting a hypnosis video about having an orgasm and such like. I'm an inquisitive sort, so I couldn't help myself. Suffice to say I found it quite effective but it was definitely no type of orgasm I've ever had. The main feeling was of an intense all over body sensation. Anyway, it was a new experience and non-drug induced (aka cheap and probably harmless). The trick will be to anchor it and trigger it on demand (smiley face). One of the other videos in this particular series is an anaesthetic gas one. It's basically deep relaxation with a view to improving sleep. You imagine yourself lying down getting ready for some sort of medical procedure, put on a gas mask and after some suggestions from the hypnotist, away you go. The sensation this time was quite deep. I had nearly no intrusive thoughts or mental chatter, and my body was basically paralysed, but neither did it occur to me to move in any way. In this state which lasted probably 30-60 minutes I found myself trying to non-verbally examine all the sensations I was having. Obviously it's extremely hard to relay this in writing, but the most noticeable thing was that my awareness wasn't still and more importantly not under "my" control. It then occurred to me to try and pin-down once and for all where the sensation of "me" resides. So in this hypnotised state I tried to hunt it down. Every time I thought I had found "me" I examined where in my body or what that sensation really was. Each time it wasn't it, just a part of it. Finally it dawned on "me" to examine the thing that was doing the examining (I like meta). The conclusion was that awareness is constantly flicking from one sensation to another by its own accord and there's no way to control it. I mean "sensation" in its very broadest terms. The awareness was taking on different shapes so to speak. Sometimes it would take on the shape of "me" and I would snap back into existence. I do think if I carry on experimenting I could reach a point where the sensation of "me" could disappear entirely. That would definitely be something new in "my" field of experience. If I disappear, the awareness that's left will let you know.

Always good to discover another teacher. This is a bookmark in case I ever forget myself:

You are neither dead or alive, awake or dreaming. There's nothing to fear. (Ego) death won't turn you into an uncaring sociopath or take you to another place. You will just be what you will be when and if it comes.

I don't often get to talk non-duality with my friends. They are distinctly "dual". Saying that, I don't feel pity for them or anything stupid like that. I don't feel as though my awareness is somehow "more" than theirs. So what's the difference? Why would I call myself any more non-dual than they are? I met someone recently however that I resonated deeply with. Let's call her S for anonymity's sake, although I did ask her permission to use her photo in this post (I made double sure it wasn't searchable on the big G) - I think it was some sort of company photo. She agreed with me that often a picture tells a lot more than sheer words and agreed to let me post it. Now I would say that despite her age, she is very "with it" and switched on. It's funny how these things happen sometimes, she was the friend of a work colleague and we got chatting in the pub after work. I think I was having one of my funny days of feeling very deep and meaningful and somehow we got on to the subject of spirituality. I think she kind of felt a relief that someone else was as interested in this stuff as she was. So we got talking. We've met a few more times since - totally platonic honest - waayyy too young for me! Anyway. We recently started chatting about if our own personal consciousness is the only one that exists. I told her that solipsism is kind of a dead end. She said that she felt that it was true but couldn't really explain it. She said she had no way of knowing if other people really are experiencing consciousness or not. I told her that consciousness doesn't belong to anyone and everyone is sharing the same consciousness experience. She told me that that was ridiculous, it was obvious that nothing was being "shared"; it was just her consciousness experiencing everything. I kind of laughed and assured her that I was actually conscious. She took the point, but still wasn't convinced. I tried to turn the tables on her and told her that if I wasn't conscious then by symmetry she can't be conscious either. She cleverly retorted by saying that it's possible that I don't actually exist so I can't be conscious. I kind of baulked at this but ran with it. S carried on by saying that: "Yes I can see you and hear you, but it's possible that this is all just me having a dream, and when I wake up you will just disappear". She was definitely on the right path! I had to wait until I was 47 to reach the same conclusions she had at 27. I guess she was just more spiritually tuned in than I ever was. But I still goaded her some more. So I said, "OK then maybe you're just a figment of my imagination and I'm also a figment of your imagination." She caught me out by saying "there is no MY, you don't exist, just the conscious dream does". So I said "Alright then. Wake up and make me disappear". And fuck me that's exactly what she did. So here I am and S made me disappear. Unfortunately, she also made herself disappear and all that's left is her picture above. Apparently she never existed and my memory of her is hazy now. Just before she woke up she said something very very odd which will never leave me: "I was never real, a computer created me". Now that certainly is creepy. S no longer exists. I miss her.

By comparing it to what reality isn't. What isn't reality?

Hello again journal blog diary mental jerk off thing, it's been a while. Impatience. What is it good for? I like to start off with a mental definition of a term before I start waffling on about it. Impatience is the state of heightened emotional tension due to the discrepancy between one's image of how reality should be compared to its actuality. Nice. Impatience is a future orientated emotion much like its cousin Anxiety or second cousin Perfectionism. It seems that there's a sliding scale of impatience roughly proportional to age. Although certain individuals break the rule and are impatient at all ages. Why is this? Why does age have a bearing on it? It's all to do with apparent passage of time. Older folks see time from a higher vantage point, they intrinsically know that if you wait around long enough, most things come to pass. They will tend to give a thing some thought: "I need a new laptop" and then forget that thought until the time comes around when it happens. Whereas for a younger person any amount of time seems like an indefinitely long amount of time - what if it never comes? The only solution is to make it happen now and in the moment. Impatience is reactionary. What causes the "heightened emotional tension" of impatience? It's the combination of the uncertainty that what you hold in your head may or may not come true, and the indefinite quality of when it might happen. It's a form of anxiety: a fear that what you want may not happen. It's a fear of uncertainty, it's a lack of trust in reality. How is impatience related to perfectionism? They are both similar in that a platonic ideal of reality is being held in the mind and there is an expectation of that ideal manifesting itself into reality. In that sense the two are nearly identical, impatience is a form of perfectionism. The only difference is that perfectionists are interested in the details of outcome itself, impatiencionists (is that word?) are just interested in the outcome happening. Impatience is also a form of social signalling. The heightened emotion of an impatient person is relayed for all to experience, and this can cause emotional discomfort which can only be released by placating the impatient person by giving them what they want. The short of it is that impatience is social manipulation at it's finest. Impatience translates into embarrassment, which itself is a strong motivator. Naturally impatience is very self serving, it is selfish by nature, and by that token elevates the impatient person's needs above other's needs. And because of the relationship with age can be taken as a childish or immature emotion. Sometimes it creates irritation or anger rather than embarrassment. The irritation itself being a strong social signal to "back down or else". So impatience has its place in the pantheon of social manipulation. But bear in mind patient people just don't care about you that much.

It's pretty weird to me that people find it weird that people don't have an internal monologue. If you get me. I do have an internal monologue, but not exclusively. For example if I'm working on coding, then how could I have a monologue for this sort of thing?: function monologue ($speak_to_yourself) { echo $speak_to_yourself; } I may use an internal monologue to say the odd word here and there as I'm typing it, but I don't think about coding with a monologue at all. It's mostly visual if anything, or usually it just bubbles up from nowhere, or it's a kind of intangible sensation. I definitely don't have an internal monologue in conversation. And I definitely don't have a running commentary as I go about my day. I think many people identify so strongly with their internal monologue that they confuse it with consciousness or awareness or a sense of self. Nothing could be further from the truth. Honestly, if you were zapped with a ray gun that made you stop talking to yourself, you would still continue to exist and to think.

Slightly dramatic style: Going through the "The Crisis" was a torment. Most mornings I would awake from bliss into dread. Some mornings I wouldn't wake at all, I just couldn't face it. Through it I knew one thing, that if I was going to survive it I would have to carry on as I always had - plan B was just too hard to contemplate. Unfortunately, plan A was unbearable. "The Crisis" was certainly existential. I hadn't had a word for it until a Life Coach I was consulting with half jokingly pointed out that my crisis was in fact an existential one. I believed at the time it was a hand waving gesture on his part. I honestly believed my problem was a materialistic one. I hadn't ever married, I hadn't brought up children, I seemed incapable of leading anything other than a mediocre life. The icing on the shitcake was that I was in fact now old and there was no going back. It seemed that all my friends and people I cared about all had exactly what they wanted: to be normal. Why was that so damned hard for me? I had tried so hard to be part of a tribe. I had long term supposedly deep friendships. I'd had the long term girlfriends, I was the first to buy a house amongst my friends, I had a high salary and a university education - the first in my family. I had tried to do everything that society had asked of me. But none of it really stuck. I knew deep down it was all bullshit and nothing could undo the sensation. That sensation undid me in the end. The time had come when carrying that sort of cognitive dissonance around couldn't be tolerated any more. Either I would be normal and fit in or I would go all out and be different and unfettered. I fell for the first person that gave a damn and I desperately wanted normality with her. I chased her like a hungry wolf and she nearly succumbed. But after a very long period she rebuffed me with conviction - she had finally made a decision, and I wasn't it. During the early stages of both being in love/lust, strongly wanting normality and strongly wanting out - I lived a zombie existence. During waking hours I couldn't bear to be indoors. I in fact wanted to run far far away. I spent many many hours just walking aimlessly. I would take trains to nowhere in particular just to be somewhere away from my home town and myself (Eckhart Tolle's story strongly resonates with me here). Slowly over time the realisation took hold that my crisis was very much not a materialistic one. What I realised was that I hated myself, not in a cut myself kind of way, but in the same way that a lazy or fat person is vilified. I hated that I was a coward around people, that I needed people's love so badly, that my own indifference and indecision caused so much resistance and inaction, that I gave away my responsibility to others, and that no matter what I tried I would fail, and even worse I wasn't particularly interesting as a person. I ran to New Zealand completely unplanned for an unspecified amount of time. I ended up being amongst 20 somethings. This helped. I had an excuse to behave like a young person again, and I could reinvent myself. I ended up being called Tom for two months (despite having Guillermo for a name). I came back somewhat rejuvenated and full of a sense of my own ability to change my circumstances. Coming back was painful. The mental torture was still there, just to a lessened degree. But I made strides to do more things by myself. I would sit in pubs and restaurants and cinemas by myself. It was unbearably uncomfortable at first. In the end I realised that my "normal" friends didn't do this sort of thing: they were the cowards. Over time this gave me great personal strength. During that time I would find myself crying at music in the car or being uncontrollably emotional at work. I needed to learn to love myself, I even saw a hypnotherapist. She cleared some of my "blockages" and I began to feel lighter. That incessant feeling of needing to run slowly went away over years and I began to settle into my current self asymptotically. How am I now? A lot more mentally stable. I've learned to accept my mediocrity - just like everyone else does - it no longer presses on me so hard. I've also learned that I'm very much responsible for myself and the direction my life takes. And I still live in hope that life will end up being wonderful and maybe one day extraordinary. Fuck normality, I was never cut out for it.

Think of it like a computer game. The computer generates the scenery and characters on the fly as you navigate your way around the map. Your mind is like the computer. So if you could access the computer directly you could make it generate (manifest) anything you wanted it to. It's the same with the mind. Of course the analogy is not quite the same. The mind is not made of logic gates, it doesn't "compute" stuff - we're not in the Matrix movie. So don't take it too literally. The big problem is how does the computer game character (you) hack the computer directly? Maybe it's impossible? What Leo is hinting at, is that it may actually be possible. But you would need to raise your level of consciousness to a much higher level first. You would have to become a sort of God with powers of creation. That's my take on it.

@VeganAwake that's exactly right. There is actually nothing to do, nothing to be killed. @BipolarGrowth In the triangle illusion I posted earlier, nothing needs to change other than an awareness that the (blank) triangle in the middle is not really there. All it takes is a spontaneous shift in awareness. It can't be "forced" any more than the spooky triangle can be made to disappear in the optical illusion. If it happens, it will happen by itself. But it sure helps if someone gives you a nudge in the right direction.

How about our dreams happen when our bodies are acting out reality during the "real" day. Then full reality is replayed during the "night" when our bodies are inert? It would explain why we need to sleep so much. Freaky concept. Anyway, we're actually dreaming all the time, there's no difference between night dreams and the dream of being awake. We only think being awake is more intense and persistent, but that's not really the case.

I like it. How about: There are no mountains, only rock.