tsuki

Breaking yourself is scary. Scariness of it is the whole point! The old Jenny emerged, because you couldn't handle the chaos without her. You had to frame the chaos in a way that seemed orderly somehow and Jenny is a by-product of that framing. The fear of transcending her is the same fear of the unknown that you tried to conquer in the first place. Do not let the fear fool you into thinking that you are changing something by transcending her. The chaos you fear is ever-present. You keep Jenny to keep yourself away from facing it. It is a crutch. A crutch that psyche needed to carry on. She is an imaginary friend that your innocence needed to have strength. She may be imaginary, but she is still a friend. The question is: are you ready to return the crutch? The fear asks it. Is the fear overwhelming? Is it bearable? Are you ready to bear it? You better answer the question honestly, as you now see Jenny for what she is. Your friend will patiently wait until you are ready and give you every reason to avoid the fear. This is her mission, after all. To be a crutch.

@Hamilcar In what sense your self is an illusion? What is an illusion? What is a self? I honestly don't know answers to these questions and I believe that the problem you are posing is predicated on your belief in your peculiar understanding those concepts. What I was trying to point out in my first post is that emergence of any property is based on our recognition of it. The AI will become self aware, because I will become aware of its self-awareness. A pen is useful, because I know the use for it. The sky is blue, because I call it so. There is no blueness in the sky. I am the sky's blue. The idea that I am separate from the sky is based in spatial distance between us. Once you become aware that this separation is optional, you may very well make the cup of coffee self aware.

Instead of making more and more complex AI programs that would reveal awareness to us, we should better focus on recognizing awareness in a cup of coffee.

I'm not a psychologist and my understanding of Jung is certainly not academic, but this is very much true from what I've gathered. This is basically the link between alchemy and spirituality - the idea of breaking a substance/Ego down into its constituents so that something new is born. Rebirth is not transcendence in a sense that one becomes 'better' than his previous self, but different. The whole point in my opinion is to see that your current self is fundamentally incidental. It is no better or worse than any other 'I' that could come out of this process. There is great value, however, in staying in this basic, chaotic form that has no structure. From what I have observed in myself - letting go of your precious foundations of reality that the Ego is made of, such as family for example, is at the same time synonymous to healing. I don't know why these foundations build themselves when we become chaos, but structure always returns, eventually. All I can do is to observe them and let them dissolve when they are no longer needed. The standard notion of Ego that is created out of fear of the unknown doesn't stick with me, because the chaos from which it arises cannot be harmed. There is nothing that can be done to it that it would have to fight against and create the Ego. On the other hand, Ego is always fearful of return. Transcending this fear is what is I think that is learned from repeated Ego deaths. The self is real. Any self that is constructed is as real, as the no-self in my view. The no-self seems very appealing from the point of view of the self because there are practically no no-self selves out there. The no-self self makes the self so unique that it cannot resist not pursuing it. Pursuit of enlightenment is egoic in this sense. There are however valuable lessons to be learned from pursuing it, which I still do.

An interesting perspective on spiritual growth form the point of view of ancient alchemy. What do you think? In my opinion, it could explain many methods people use to attain enlightenment.

It's been a while since I watched this lecture and this is what sticked with me: Lecturer draws parallels between Jungian psychology and ancient alchemy and suggests that Jung read ancient alchemical books as inspiration. Psyche in its most basic form is pure chaos. It is made of archetypes that are inter-personal, universal across cultures and languages. Psyche is not something internal, but it is equally external. Chaotic, basic, psyche means a chaotic world that is impossible to understand and exploit to fulfill our own needs. Out of this chaos Ego arises which is a set of beliefs that are held as basic. We grasp to some aspects of reality and call them 'true'. We do that so we can reason about the world. Trust in family members is a good example of egoic grasping. When you are betrayed by your mother or father - your world shatters and you feel immense suffering. Most people would rather not admit the betrayal and lie to themselves than face reality of what happened. Patriotism is another example. There are people that grasp so hard to idea of a nation as a baseline for reality that they would rather give up their life than see it destroyed. The lecturer says that the ancient alchemy devolved into 'chemistry' of matter to protect itself from Christianity. It was not originally about matter, but about psyche. It was an art of shattering Ego and returning psyche into its archetypical form. In this context, Enlightenment may be seen as permanently returning to chaos and willingly staying there. Many different spiritual schools have practices that torment Ego so that it sees its own unstable nature.

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@Chives99 Mental illness is a social institution. Mentally ill people are ones that have no way of expressing their worldview that is translatable to other people's experience. Things that are completely normal now would get you killed not as long as 200 years ago. Things that will get you killed now will be perfectly normal in 200 years. Mental illness is a socially regulated way of trimming irregularities among consciousness of different people. Sanity is a limiting factor of your growth. If you become aware enough, you will be able to tell that any personality is a mashup of different people treating you in a certain way in your past. Insanity of people with multiple personalities is not originated in construction of their psyche, but their inability to cope with social norm of being unified. They are insane because they are honest about their experience and expect understanding of dishonest/unaware people. There is a reason why gurus don't talk about their deep experiences on late-night shows on TV. They are sane because they understand that they will not be understood.

So you don't need life, and yet - you still live it. You need enlightenment to live your unnecessary life, fully. Do you really need a girlfriend? Do you really need enlightenment? You don't, as you don't need to live. Some people at this point may ask: but tsuki, are you saying that I should kill myself?! Death is as meaningless as life. You will die regardless of your actions, so why not stick around and watch the fireworks while they last?

@TheSomeBody What do you need life for?

@TheSomeBody What do you need enlightenment for?

@TheSomeBody Looking for utility in life endeavors is a futile exercise. Any chain of reasoning that you carry out long enough will lead you to a non-answer such as: I want to. (Do you really?) I should to. (By which morality?) It is a normal thing to do. (Judging by what standards?) Because I have to live! (No, you don't!) etc You can ask a 'why' question forever only because you do not accept such answers, which are, in fact, correct answers when taken seriously. It is always that you first recognize a need for something, and only then you look for a reason to do it. There is no reason for wanting something, nor there is a reason to live. You simply do. You were brought into this world without any say in the matter and you will depart from it in the same way. Reason is not a domain of existential questions such as pursuit of a relationship. Don't get me wrong - reason is a very useful tool in its domain. I'm a mechanical engineer myself and reason keeps me fed and clothed. I will now say the same thing twice, from two different points of view. The point is, that they are equivalent formulations of the same situation: When you will meet a right person, you will know. When you are ready, any person will do. Sometimes, you just have to get so abysmally sick of your suffering that you will simply grab a solution that you always knew would work, but was too afraid to reach out for. As for the enlightenment part - how do you expect to die, if you have never even fully lived? Having a relationship means that you expose yourself with all of your animal nature to another person while getting the same thing back. And guess what - we are all, simply put, bald apes. It is enough to keep us entertained without silly ideas of becoming a saint.

That is wise as fuck. Thank you for reminding me that.

Will you elaborate? In what sense love is care? Do you love somebody by making them a meal? Or worrying about them?

What I think is that you both need to learn what love is. It is not something that you see in the movies, or it is not something that you learn from your parents. You learn practical knowledge. Love is not practical. Love is not giving up meditation for the other person because she's unhappy. Love is not being truthful to your sister in front of your loved one. Love is not being worried for your loved one's addictions. Love is not care. Love is not a display of affection the the other person can understand. Love is not making the other person feel pleasant feelings. Love is not exclusive with fear, anger, anxiety and sadness. What your girlfriend is looking for is a sign that is categorized as 'normally' signifying love. In other words: she understands love the same way culture understands love. Love is not wanting to be with the other person. Its extents cannot be measured by making the other person quit things they 'love' in order to see whether you are more 'loved' than them. Measuring your worth against the other person's interests is fear confused for love. Most likely fear of loneliness. Love is not a feeling in the same dimension as fear, anger, joy, compassion, or sadness. Love is like beauty. When you experience something immensely beautiful, it disarms you. There is nothing to be done in order to improve something that is beautiful. Doing anything to the beautiful would damage it. Love can be beautiful, but doesn't have to be. Love does not always disarm you. Love is therefore a skill. The more skilled at love you are, the more you let the other person be, what they are. Love is making the other person beautiful by changing the lens through which you see them. Love is an internal movement of soul, rather than external display of affection. There is no way of measuring another person's love, nor there is a way to express your own. You can have sex hatefully and have a divorce lovingly. As for the difficulty of a relationship - there is no right person for you. You love a person by accepting who they are and letting them be. The more hurt you are, the more finely-tailored your loved one has to be in order for you to accept her. By accepting another person you heal your wounds, as you are repulsed by her flaws precisely because she reminds you of parts of yourself that you reject. By accepting her, you accept yourself. Love is a skill of letting be. There is no difference between loving another and loving yourself. When you love, there is no reason not be by yourself. You need another person to learn that.

Agree 100% I think that we all should say no to group thinking!

@Dino D Be sure to notify me. I could take them on here, but I can easily go for pages and I feel bad for derailing threads.

@Dino D post these questions in a separate thread. I would like to grapple with you over them, as they are my points of interest.

Funny how we judge that judgement is bad.

Hey, no need to get upset. I'm not saying that you are not smart. Nor am I saying that I'm smarter. It is not a dismissal of your view. I agree with it. It is the only consistent model - a model of no models. A paradox that directly expresses the nature of reality. I will even go as far as to say that it is poetic in a sense. It shows how falsity is present in any truth. Sorry for offending you.

This view is truthful in a sense that it says nothing. It cancels itself out without producing a conclusion. What I see it saying is that everything is true until it becomes false. That it is ok to make models as long as they work, but once they stop - you throw them away. Your statement is also a model that breaks down once you start to apply it to itself. Should I still be using it, or did it already wear out?

In my experience, so-called truth and false are a mere outcome of assuming a fixed perspective. The more I contemplate truth and false, the more I'm certain that there always exists a perspective from which mutually exclusive statements are indistinguishable. Any (geometric) point is in this sense infinite(ly small). Spatial perspective is a good metaphor for a logical perspective. Any angle you may assume in observing a physical apple will obstruct its other side. Saying that you see the truth of an apple is like saying that the other side is never experienced. Two people may see an apple from different angles and both claim that they see the truth which is obviously false. Still, they both always experience their own side of an apple and will never experience the other side that they don't see. Even if they move, they will see only the side that they see - the other will be obstructed. In this sense, they both see the truth of an apple and it is obviously true. So yes, two statements can be both exclusive and true at the same time. What prevents one from moving around an apple is the need for stability in life. Once you start to pick your assumptions apart - there is nothing to hold on to. Consistency of truth is an expression of Ego.

@Moreira

Yes and no. No in the sense that you don't get to stop seeing how utterly meaningless everything is. Yes in a sense that there is no other place than the Matrix to be, and any other thing to do. Liberation comes from detachment. It is not that you detach yourself to gain a calm perspective, but the Matrix becomes a game in a certain way. You do not win it by attaining goals, nor do you lose it by dying of starvation. When everything is truly meaningless, death is meaningless as well. It does not mean that life is somehow constantly depressing, or nihilistic. Watching this thing run itself is very captivating and very beautiful. However, it's an acquired taste. You will get used to it. What do you mean by that? You can't talk to people because you gag? You can't be nice to them because who cares? Get your ass back to your life and start playing your role, skeleton!