LastThursday

@Shir you're welcome. What are friends for, if not to provide loving advice? Too right. It should be free! Hahahaha.

I have a friend (no it's not me lol) who has been permanently single all the time I've known him. He has even been approached by women at times, but has simply not engaged with them. He doesn't care for men either. He seems happy enough to me. Although he has a number of close friends, so they do seem important to him. My point is, who cares? If it doesn't cause you suffering not have certain types of relationship, friends or more sexual ones, then don't worry about it. It's not worth the mental energy thinking about what you could be missing out on, or if there's something wrong with you, or feeling a need to conform. Put your energies into something more productive - like developing yourself. Personally I need a tactile relationship with someone. The rest of it? At this moment in my life it's a pain in the neck. But I absolutely refuse to pay someone to have my needs serviced... Oh well.

@Espaim Reddit, snap. Someone on r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix suggested to look at this video from some bald headed dude telling us "You don't exist". At the time I just couldn't get my head round it, but I was hooked.

One for the introverts working from home:

One important mantra I live my life by is not to be in debt. For me not being in debt is just an extension of my other mantra and that is to be as independent as possible. That's not to say I have never been in debt, I have, many times. But the intention is always to get out of debt as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, society is predicated on being in debt. You'll find that your government regularly racks up huge debt, so this mentality comes from the top. The only way to borrow large sums is to have a good credit rating, which essentially means that you have a good history of paying debt off. In other words if you need a temporary loan to tide you over, you need to have already been in debt. This of course is completely ridiculous, but no-one ever questions that. A much better way is to move the zero point of your finances upwards. What I mean by this is that if your outgoings matches your income, your bank balance should read higher than zero. In UK money I would say a buffer of £10k is extremely useful. The aim being to always have £10k present in your account. It's fine to dip into this money because that's what it's for, but it should always be topped up as soon as humanly possible. Is this reasonable? I don't think it's impossible to save £1000 a year over ten years say. That amounts to £83 a month. It's high, but if you build it straight into your outgoings, it becomes normal. One way to achieve this is through lifestyle minimalism. Don't buy useless crap, and that includes services such as gym membership and that TV sports package. That is, unless you actually use those services fully, most don't. Another is to always cook for yourself, restaurants and takeaways are expensive and very bad for health overall. Alcohol is expensive and bad for health, avoid bars and pubs as much as possible. Don't go for an expensive flat or buy a house that's too big; find something that's "just enough" and nothing more. Live in a cheaper area if possible. If it's avoidable don't have children until you have saved enough money. Don't have expensive or lavish holidays. Don't buy silly expensive cars with lots of power and that require expensive parts - don't ever buy a brand new car. There are many many things that can be done to reduce outgoings. The main theme being not to be a sheep, you DON'T need to buy into society's values on what success or progress means. The other side of the coin, is to work on your earning potential. In today's world that means changing job regularly every two or three years, and upskilling as much as possible. It takes time to master a certain type of job, so that necessarily builds inertia which is undesirable - it makes changing career a lot harder. But, once you have enough cash saved you should look to be flexible in your career and explore different avenues. This is something I admit I haven't done yet, I find there's too much inertia, the money is too good - but the core of my being knows it's bad. You shouldn't just save £10k, that's a recommended minimum. If you can save more, then do so. One money saving option I'm currently seriously considering is to build my own house. More on that in my next post.

Dielectical Monism! I knew there was a catchy phrase for it. More here (although it's a pithy episode):

It's non-duality pretending that dualities exist and arguing that it's really non-duality using dualistic language.

This is what a lot of practice looks like. The change you see is mastery of making videos and presentation. The main take away should be that you too can master a discipline - but boy does it take a lot of practice, years in fact. Start now.

Are we all going down a Blind Alley? I hope not. These ladies properly rock.

Synchronicity. These meaningful coincidances sometimes seem bizarre or contrived or as if you're being pranked. On the surface they appear to be random and rare. I have a few incidences of these I remember clearly: I was in a kind of phase of limbo in my life. I had moved away from Brighton on the south coast and moved back in with my mum in London, with the intention of going travelling for a few months. I had my sights set on New Zealand. I had stopped working altogether a few months before and so was free. I would meet up with a friend of mine who worked in banking in the City. There was a coffee shop he frequented near his work. On this day I turned up and found him already talking to an unfamiliar woman. Somehow they had got into conversation. It turns out she was working for another bank, but she was a New Zealander. She gave me a few tips of places to visit and said that she had a friend who ran a hostel in Oban on Rakiura. A few months later after having gone the length of New Zealand from North to South, I spent a few days in Oban. I made myself known to her friend who happened to run the only other hostel on the island, and conveyed my "hellos" from her friend! Another synchronicity happened in New Zealand. On the way back up North to Auckland, I was posting pictures on Facebook and mentioned that I would be revisiting Motueka. Coincidentally and completely unknown to me a friend of a friend was also in New Zealand at the same time. Apparently he had been travelling around Asia and Australia with a whistle stop in New Zealand. We spent the day drinking and smoking and catching up. Another one also happened in London. I had a few weeks before been to the Globe Theatre to see some Shakespeare. I was walking in South East london when I noticed the Sackler Studios, which I believe is a rehearsal space for the Globe Theatre. I kept thinking about that name Sackler, there was something about it but I couldn't place it. A few weeks later I found myself in Kew Gardens in South West london. There they have a walkway over a lake called the Sackler Crossing. Again I started to think about that name Sackler. I had been sent a yearly alumni email from my old University in Brighton, and that triggered something in me and I looked up the name of the various faculties around campus. And there it was: "The Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science". This was a completely brand new buidling and hadn't been there when I was studying there. Turns out Sackler was a philanthropist and had fingers in many pies. But the personal connection was weird. And one more for luck: A few years back I was reading a Wikipedia article on the Great Fire of London. I find history fascinating. As I read down the article a strange compulsion came over me to look at my Debit Card. It was only after I saw my security number: 351 that the penny dropped I was kind of gobsmacked. Did my brain unconsciously make the connection? Or was I driven by a different force? Do I have a theory for Synchronicity? I do. I think there's a sliding scale of surprise to synchonicity. Or to see it from a different angle: synchronicities are everywhere. For example seeing two cars of the same make is a synchronicity, but there's not much surprise to that - it's expected and mundane. In other words there's a kind of pattern matching process between disparate things which is constantly going on. Meaning is being given to the world of appearances by matching things together. In order to recognise anything at all from the chaos of qualia out there, there has to be a patterning process going on. Everything is categorised into recurring patterns. Where do the patterns come from? YOU. The patterns are simply a kind of echo of yourself in space and time. You are shattered into a trillion fragments and you keep noticing parts of yourself and making connections between them. A different view on it is to think of patterns as symmetries (in the mathematical sense). These are just the same thing viewed after different transformations. The "Sackler" episode above is just a symmetry, different views on the same thing. It had to be personal because the symmetry itself sprang from me. The way to make more synchronicities happen is to play closer attention and be more surprised. Of course this can be taken too far and you can go around the whole time being surprised at how everything is weirdly and very personally connected. But hey, different strokes for different folks.

I think it's going to pour out. Let's keep the ideas flowing, something will stick: BEING LIGHT How to lead a virtuous life? I'm sure many have had a stab at this. There's many paradigms and rules and facets to explore. There's a kind of high ideal and low ideal. The high ideal is to (re-)connect with God itself and surrender. That's good but there's a lot of uplifting of consciousness necessary for that. There's all that stuff inbetween to wade through first - the low ideal. Light is a good word, because like most words in English it has many meanings and facets ("love" being the most overloaded). Singular abstract nouns are useful in that they encapsulate a thought story in a very compact form factor, they make a good marketing tool. Simple innocuous words can slowly seep into us like some Trojan horse carrying a life altering cargo. Ok enough metaphorical language. The first meaning of Light I want to explore is its connotation of being less. I've always had a penchant for the lightness of small and minimalistic. It always struck me that a functional thing should pack a punch, it should be as useful as possible using the least resources. The de-facto example is the Swiss Army knife. It is optimal in the sense that it can do many things in a small package and be carried anywhere. This makes it beautiful and easy to love. Some of my most valued and used possessions have this quality, my mobile phone, some of my programming books. Other objects are just supremely adapted to their singular purpose: my distance glasses, my pocket watch, my electric piano, the table I eat from and on an on. By this metric minimalism means not having things that are badly adapted to their purpose or not having things that are not used. Things like these cause frustration and friction in every day life. Having things you don't use take up physical space, and can cause you to use mental energy paying unnecessary attention to them, even if it is just to look at them every single day. The wider implication is that of using the Earth's resources and contaminating the environment with waste; with unuseful and needless objects. The second meaning of Light is that of not being heavy. This is kind of related to "being less". But this connotation is about not carrying heaviness or unwanted weight around. This can be both physical and mental. The physical speaks for itself, and is talked about endlessly. The mental is a bit more slippery to get hold of. Things are mentally heavy when they get us down, depress us, make us resistant or make us fatigued or apathetic. There are many causes of this heaviness, but there are also many cures for these afflictions. It appears that a huge part of Actualisation is in fact curing ourselves of this mental heaviness. This is the seeking of Enlightenment, the shadow work, and generally looking on the bright side of things. Making ourselves light is the reason for the work. We should aim to also flow without resistance to life, to be as light as a feather. The third meaning of Light is that of being bright . To be bright is to radiate warmth and love to the world as the sun does and to be a guide in the darkness. Brightness washes away the darkness and shadows and encourages growth and feeds us. This is what relationships do, and should do, they should bring us light; make us grow and develop as people and protect us and help us survive. We should be a guiding light and provide an example for others to follow, this is gentle and humane persuasion. But the brightness we radiate is unconditional otherwise it is dimmed. It is easy to be a black hole that sucks in light from its surroundings, but it is another thing to be the sun that blazes. The fourth meaning of Light is to be not serious. High value is placed on seriousness, following rules and being compliant. How else does anything get done if not taken seriously? Isn't survival and the acquiring of knowledge and work and society a serious business? What is its opposite? Being playful, not caring too much, being unattached, not giving too much weight to things. These are underrated things. The elephant in the room is being unattached. Zen Buddhism is completely about this and goes counter to common sense experience. If we're unattached we are free from suffering, and all seriousness is about suffering or potential suffering. We should all aim for life to be playful and free of suffering, laughing is allowed, being friendly and breaking our own rules on occasion should be tolerated. We shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. We should be light. Children know this, adults often forget.

Dear Journal. I'm trying to fight the odd feeling of being pulled in two directions now. Yesterday was quite energetic and body focused. Now today the mind wants to steal back the attention and ignore the body. But the the body still wants to be out in the sunshine, and moving and seeking adventure. I'm working on a personal, computer programming project. I use it to exercise my knowledge of programming and ultimately it helps me to survive by sharpening my skills and allowing me to do my work (job) more effectively. I also very much enjoy thinking and problem solving. It does however require a fair bit of lead-in time about 30-60 minutes. By this I mean it takes time to get back into the mindset and the complex structure of a computer program. In other words getting into flow takes time. Some days flow doesn't come. Sometimes programming problems seem insurmountable, and you don't have the energy or insight at that moment to solve them. You try and start programming, but nothing flows - you give up and try again some other time. That leaves me with frustration. I can't get into flow, but the mind wants wants wants - and because of this the body is disengaged. I need a good strategy to solve this sort of problem because it causes me a sense of suffering and because it's super unproductive - I usually end up doing nothing and wasting time on crappy internet or worse. Ok. When in doubt, don't do nothing Guillermo. I'm getting dressed and then going for a drive to who knows where.

I love the time travel genre of films and tv and books. Some of my favourites are Doctor Who and Looper and The Time Traveller's Wife and the Time Machine. But there are hundreds of examples of flashbacks which is just time travel in the subjunctive and dystopian video games set in the future, The Last Of Us. I'm not sure where my love of messing around in time came from. But it's most probably from these sort of media. I think when you live long enough you watch the world around you slowly morph into something unrecognisable yet familiar. It's an odd sensation whenever I pay attention to it, and on occasion it would be good to revisit that familiar past or at least be able to re-evaluate it with older wiser eyes. Strangely my way into to Actualized was via Reddit. I went through a longish phase of browsing through r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix. Some of the stories on there were mundane and dubious, but some I found super interesting. The infamous one being "The Lamp", where some college kid gets hit on the head and is out cold. During his unconscious state he lives an different life time, gets married has a kid and so on. Then one day he notices there's some wrong with his lamp in his room and it starts to warp and he suddenly wakes up and is back to being a college kid with concussion. He's devasted to have lost his alternate reality family. Great story. But there are other superb stories where people are walking familiar routes and all becomes unusually quiet and there are no people. Or stories where holiday trippers are driving through towns that don't exist on maps, never to be found again after trying to re-visit them. Or kids on buses stuck in time-loops where they keep seeing the same buildings or people every few minutes. If any one of these stories is true, then reality is a lot more malleable than I'm experiencing right now. My experience of reality is rock solid and unrelenting, it has the same "feel" day in and day out, stuff just doesn't "glitch". But I'm pretty convinced despite first hand evidence that glitches do occur, and even better it's possible to make glitches happen. There's even a guy out there that thinks he's cracked it and can make glitches happen by holding contradictory thoughts simultaneously - his theory being that the near future is shaped by our thoughts, and that by thinking one thing and doing something completely counter to that, reality glitches. I have two personal experiences of stuff being weird and incongruous, perhaps even glitchy. One is where I was walking home from work, my usual route. It's a short half mile walk. I turned a corner and a few hundred yards down I see an old woman come out of a building. What struck me was her dress. I can only describe it as Victorian or possibly Edwardian in style, long down to the ground, all black and slightly shiny material, and she wore a small bonnet. This was totally incongruous, because I was convinced that a South Asian family lived in that building. The building itself was more modern, so definitely not Edwardian even. My only thought was either she was going fancy dress or some sort of Quaker religious service in traditional costume. As she approached me head on, I could see she was quite tall, maybe 5'11" or so and easily in her late sixties. Definitely not fancy dress then. She had good erect posture, but walked in a slightly laboured way, as an older person would. Her face was thin and serious looking - my impression was of someone of Eastern European extraction, definitely not British. We made eye contact and she could tell that I thought something was up, but she wasn't nervous, in fact the opposite, she was suprisingly confident and matter of fact. I crossed the road as if everything was normal, but I couldn't help but look back. Strangely, she also looked back at me. Suffice to say I never saw her again and I must have walked that route literally thousands of times. My other incongruous situation was when I was travelling on the train for a first date a few years ago. The main thing to note is, I had been in two minds whether to drive or not. The train was inconvenient, as the station is a good mile way. At the very last minute I had chosen to catch a train so that I could have a drink if necessary, so I rushed to get the train. I was dressed smartly as expected, so again that was a little unusual for me. Lastly, I don't catch trains often. There was about five minutes before the train arrived. I had noticed a woman dressed for the office on her phone, she was above average atractiveness and a little taller than me. I don't really know what caught my attention about her, she noticed me however, but then looked back at her phone - I thought nothing of it and started to think about the date ahead. The train pulls in and we do that British thing of working out which door to go through on the train carriage. If one door is too busy, we swap doors, and try to find a seat as quickly as possible. But just before I enter the woman is behind me and starts talking to me. She asks me directly if I was going on a date. I was slightly perplexed - it's extremely unusual here for strangers to talk on trains and especially ask personal questions. I replied that I was and she said that was "nice". I found a seat and she sat directly opposite me and another guy had sat adjacent to us. She then proceeded to ask me if I wanted to play a game. Again I was taken aback, but I thought why not? And she also comandeered the guy next to us - he was reluctant and slightly embarrassed but went for it. She took out her phone and played this app game where a word pops up, you put the phone to your forehead and she asks questions and we say yes or no - the sort of game you play at Christmas. A few rounds of this and the other guy gets off at his station. I have one more stop. She explains that she had written the app with a friend and was wanting to "test it out". I said it was fun. She continues to reel off her life story and the fact she lived and worked in Chelsea (London) and had a good job, but was unhappy. At the end she thanks me and says "people never talk on trains". My impression was that she had some mental health issues or in the least she was lonely, but she seemed dressed for the office and otherwise pretty normal - it was weird. To me, both experiences had dreamlike qualities. Both had out out place elements and stuff that didn't quite fit normality. I want to experience more! And maybe some time travel too...

@JessiChell ever thought about being a coach or counsellor? I'm sure you'd take to it like a duck to water. You're right about seeing people for their depth (both men and women) rather than some superficial boxing made by society. The mind likes to simplify doesn't it? If it can boil things down to a binary choice it will - supermodel wife versus not-supermodel wife. It's kind of ridiculous and potentially damaging. Anyway, thank you for reminding me to keep a broad and open mind. Every human being is unique and complex. I think the reality is, if I meet someone I will assess, judge and feel my way into a relationship - it's an improvisation rather than a set of rules. I should throw out my a priori desires as they're not always so useful. I should instead learn to be an exceptional improviser.

Started the day off being good to my body: 10 mins Qigong - basically stretching 20 mins meditation - lots of thoughts, but managed to quiet down towards the end 60 mins walk - a bit of nature and quiet streets 20 mins piano playing - Bach is logical but beautiful. Need to get up to speed but basically there with this (that's not me in the vid!): I think I'll avoid as much possible the laptop today, and give my posture and eyesight a break. The body needs to be in constant motion and the eyes need to see both near and far. Will visit friends and their mansion of a house, and since I'm not allowed indoors because of restrictions, I'll have no excuse but to be outside most of the day. Plus their six year old daughter is high energy and I kind of wind her up too and use my energy - to the detriment of the poor parents!!

Reflection Eternal loving it. More Nujabes please, more jazz hip hop. Still struggling to work so I'm here. @JessiChell you make far more intelligent points than I could articulate in my two dimensional observations. I tend to lead relationships via some form of intutive understanding. So I find trying to pin down verbally exactly what it is I want from a relationship nearly impossible. I can only go by my values: beauty, adventure, intelligence, maturity, kindness and spirituality. A love of music and talent helps too. But those things are just the hook, your other questions are very valid. It seems odd to me to see those points written down though, normally I would probably feel or intuit my way towards those things, rather than have them there from the outset. Interesting. I very much understand wife screaming at husband, my parents were very much this style. It was hell for the whole family. Not that it was all her however. At least my mum had the looks. It's a definite "thing" embedded in my psyche. I'd say my dad was average looks-wise, so he definitely scored there. But they paid dearly for that both of them. Puts me right off from having children and potentially giving them hell. Anyway who needs teenaged children at 65? Fuck that. However, going out (long term) with someone under the age of 35 would be nearly guaranteed to end up with children. What a dilemma. More work...

We are all desperate for love. But we gotta switch it round and become the love - just let it pour out of us and light up the world

Time to start doing some bloody work. This fits my audio-visual sensitivities:

Hedonism has the connotation of seeking to feel high for the sake of feeling high - it is its own reward. There's a negative element of addiction to it. To transform it into something healthy would be to change the intention behind it. For example I get a thrill from being able to play a complex piano piece. So the hedonism in this case is more expansive - I get to learn new skills in the process. This is how healthy reward should work, I do something, then I get rewarded. But if it's pure reward - alcohol or cocaine or whatever - it's starts being unhealthy - it is reward for the sake of reward. There's nothing wrong with feeling good - but there should be some healthy intention behind it. Obviously, you can go one level up the spiritual ladder and say that "feeling good" is our natural state and that we should always be seeking to be in our natural state. But note the intention, its about removing the barriers to being in our natural state - it's not about feeling good for the sake of it, or not ever feeling bad.

@zeroISinfinity I was very much into hedonism in my teens, 20's and 30's, mostly alcohol and night clubs. But really the hedonism for me was about the excitement of interacting with new people (women) and letting loose and being free. I also learnt a lot from the experiences some of it wonderful, some of it brutal. Nowadays I find hedonism kind of empty. It's fun now and then, but I think I've drunk from that cup too often - I need something different I need to expand - spirituality gets me there better.

The watchwords for this morning are distraction and motivation. I'm mostly talking about work here. I've been working from home since the lockdown came into force here in the UK at the end of March. On the whole it has been a positive experience for me. I feel less tired, and a bit more free. I reckon I've always had somewhat of a "free spirit" and anything that interrupts that triggers me. It's informative that the first time I ever felt my free spiritedness being interrupted was my first day at school. This was in Spain in the mid 70's - which technically was a dictatorship at the time. I point that out, because deferring to authority was very much the norm then. I think that even at that young age of four years, sat in that school hall with rows and rows of desks separated from each other and to be told to be quiet and sit still was torturous. I rebelled. I would often hum in class to deliberately annoy the teacher. Because the hall was large and echoey she couldn't locate where it was coming from, and if she got close I would stop. In the end my parents moved me to another school, which was a lot better. I was sat with other kids and the setting was more of a classroom style and I made friends. But the feeling of "constriction" never left me. So even now I find myself rebelling against work. I allow myself to get distracted, and my motivation for work is barely above zero - it's just too much of an imposition on my freedom. Work happens in bursts, like being in water all the time and occasionally dipping your head in the water and holding your breath - it becomes a competition to see how much I can tolerate it. To my luck I'm very productive during the bursts. What's disappointing is that I can't see a way out of my quandary. Survival in my society dictates I need to work, but the very core of my being is telling me that's bullshit and it can fuck right off. My being needs to expand not stay constricted! Working for myself may be an improvement in the long run, but it doesn't resolve the conflict. Going back to deferring to authority, that also triggers me. There's a direct connection in my mind between loss of personal freedom and authority. The reasons I was experiencing being "constricted" even as a child was because the adults (authority) were forcing that upon me. I never really forgave them, it was a betrayal. I'm nearing 50 now and I find myself tolerating authority, but never comfortable with it. This sometimes puts me in direct conflict with managers at work and has caused me problems in the past. It's a fine line I have to walk.

Yeah being triggered is emotional and uncomfortable, and it's easy to get lost in emotions. But they are a blessing in disguise. If you can sometimes step back from the emotion and ask yourself why something triggers you, it can be very powerful in understanding yourself and also in learning to understand your emotions better. In short, it's good shadow work and also improves emotional intelligence. Your comment about "letting men walk all over me", explains why you are triggered by his "poor sense of boundaries". These are quite vague ideas, you should get very specific with yourself: Which particular men walked all over you? What actions did they do that meant they "walked all over you"? What do you mean by "boundary", is it physical or mental or is it about loss of control etc. And so on. See how deep you can go.

Take the course. I'm thinking myself of taking lessons for light aircraft, but could be an expensive hobby, and COVID has stopped all that here for the time being. I think with that sort of hobby it doesn't need to take up huge amounts of time - apart from the course itself maybe. If you're running a business you'll need down time, what better thing to do than fly? There might even be some synergy with the business there. If you find yourself going to and fro about any decision in life, then the answer is nearly always: Yes. The scarier the better. Except if you want to go out with an Axe Murderer. Don't do that. It's excellent that your friend wants to pay you back in a way that works for him. Hold him to it. My view on lending money, is to only give what you're prepared to lose. But it depends on the person, money problems can certainly break good friendships. But if you like the guy why not spend time with him? If he doesn't appreciate you for your mind, find more friends that do! But don't delete him first.

I was just about about to write this as an aswer to a post: "Non-duality is the paper on which everything is written. The story of hedonism comes and it goes yet the paper remains. The paper is blank." I didn't because, it wasn't quite right in the context. Too poncy and pretentious. However, I did have a hell of an odd sensation reading my own last words: "The paper is blank". I got chills and become somewhat emotional. It's just like it's there, just below the surface, waiting to burst through. A kind of truth and memory that I've forgotten. And I don't even do mind altering drugs.

I'm on a roll today. So I have an interest in all things computer and especially A.I. I was gobsmacked by this: The question which arose was, how is the A.I. intelligent enough to recreate a lifelike face from a painting? These A.I.s are just dumb mathematical functions wired up in large networks, there's no intelligence whatsoever. But clearly something is happening here. The neural networks have to be trained with vast amounts of data. This data comes in from the real world and is condensed down to binary signals. So if the intelligence lies anywhere, it's in the data. The data itself is intelligent. But how can a passive stream of binary digits be intelligent? I reckon that it's the structure in the data that is key to its intelligence. There's plenty of structure out there in the real world - plenty of intelligence to draw from. Maybe a measure of structure in data would give a scientist a measure of intelligence? The converse question can be asked. Can an A.I. produce more intelligence than it receives in its training? I would say not. If an A.I. is going to take over the world, then it needs to be taught how to suck in intelligence from its environment, otherwise its doomed to forever be our pet.