tsuki

Conscious ness is one and distinctions exist within it. There is no "your" consciousness. Consciousness is equally yours as it is tree's.

I found an interesting use for the song auto-repeat feature that my mind comes with.

You are full of shit and games, Mandy.

Does it really feel good to think this way?

The person is never enlightened.

@Gesundheit

I had similar thoughts about the correspondence of the small mind with the big mind. However, there is nothing special about mathematics that allows it to model reality any better than other form of thought. Mathematics is extremely logical, to the point where computational process is mechanical. This is its strength because it forces the user to formulate their ideas very precisely, but it is also its flaw because it cannot deal with paradox. In order to advance mathematics, you have to be illogical and defy conventions that are absolute within other domains. You example of non-euclidean geometry is perfect for this. Everybody knew that the universe is flat until someone started questioning the 5th axiom. Then, all hell broke loose. Also, the idea that the small mind is somehow limited is an illusion. Where do insights come from? Where does the Unconscious end? The "person" has never came up with a single original idea because it is a set of rules and axioms that can be questioned for self-transcendence.

This discussion is just stupid. ?‍♂️ When convincing someone, if you are arguing, then you are losing. If you are trying to convince someone of nonduality, then you are not getting it.

A whole lot of misunderstandings. Harris sees no difference between awareness and consciousness. He says "my consciousness" and Rupert does not address this. Sam is not conscious. Consciousness is Sammy. The fact that Rupert's lights went out during surgery and that the world continued does not disprove Rupert's claims. Ruper seemed to have been bamboozled by this rhetoric. Also, nonduality does not exclude science, which was the main point over which Sam got so defensive about!

@seeking_brilliance can't wait to see it! Again, thank you it was amazing!

@seeking_brilliance If you were trying to communicate with the inner child, then maybe it would be easier if you made it more allegorical? It seemed to me very abstract to free the dog with my inner strength. I think it is why my imagination went along and made the strength concrete. So perhaps, you could represent the virtues as, let's say, items, or something else? Like in books for children?

I am speaking about me particularly here, so please don't take it as a general direction where you should take your craft. I would have liked it more open-ended. When I was endowed with the power of my choosing (strength), my child just went ahead and was strong, so I didn't have to invent anything to break the dog free. So giving encouragement when I already snapped the leash off was breaking the immersion. You took a risk when creating this story because wisdom, courage could yield very different approaches to the challenges you presented. So I understand that it must have been difficult to write one narrator for the whole story. I think that, all in all, you were too protective of me. As if you were unsure if I am imaginative enough to go along with you. This was so amazing that I'm sure that you could be bolder and just let the fantasy play out on the part of the listener. Now that I think of it, there were parts of the story that were mandatory, so perhaps this was the pressure for you? So that you wouldn't leave the listener behind?

IT TOOK ME 4679 POSTS TO GIVE MYSELF THE PERMISSION TO BELONG HERE

This was amazing! You are very creative and talented! I really liked the sound cues you sprinkled it with. The warm up was very good, I should practice it more. Somehow, the adventure was too realistic for me. I went ahead and just snapped the leash with my hands and I used magic to stop the rain. So I got desynchronized during the walk a few times. Got a good cry out of it though. Amazing!

Man, I wish I could do this. We're heading out into the woods tomorrow with my wife and her girl friend in hopes of building a fire. It feels awful to have the societal pressure on my back, telling me that is illegal and that we can get in trouble. Fuck you superego, I am going to do this and I am not going to be haphazard about it.

Are you ok? If you ever feel like sharing more of your adventure to someone that will not disbelieve it, I'm all ears.

@Vrubel You are repeating this over and over again. Realize how defensive you are. This is not a discussion about China's economy, but about atrocities they commit against minorities. You are acting like China's spokesperson in this thread. Stop diverting it's course.

"Just reinvent itself"? lol Ain't gonna happen. Not for a country this big.

Hahahahaha! I love you man! Glad to see you back!

The emphasized portion shows why I felt that bringing gender wars up was appropriate in the context of gasligting. The paragraph that I quoted previously did not mention gender wars explicitly, but I connected it nonetheless. My experience of the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine is limited to my own efforts to become a whole, integrated, person that has a broad spectrum of human possibilities. I do not understand it on a meta level, so I do not know how it relates to the phenomenon that I previously called gender wars. I have not studied the feminist theory, so I don't know the extent to which culture suppresses femininity. I view this repression more as a personal dynamic that exists within many or all individuals, also due to generational trauma. I know from my own experience that the lack of a proper relationship with my mother has negatively impacted my ability to connect with my feminine energy. This is why men are hyper-masculine and display aggressive dominance. I am not a women and I know this only theoretically, but the same dynamic exists in women, where their relationship with their fathers would impact their ability to connect with masculine energy. Given that Boomers are pretty traumatized, it is not all that uncommon that both of the parents are terrible at raising children. This gives a reason for the dominance of the masculine over the feminine that we see today: overly submissive, dependent, women and overly dominant, childish men. In all of this, I am kind of skeptical of this theory because it seems to explain too many things too neatly. This is why I also want to hear your story and how you see the current situation via your meta-lens. My personal experience seems to contradict yours, but I have not studied the world at large so I may be biased. I think that ambivalent abuse is at least as common as the definite one and introducing absolute labels creates more confusion. This is fine, I appreciate your input. When talking about women being labeled as victims, I was referring to divorces. It is true that it is not a fact but an impression, I have not gone through a divorce and have not studied them too much. I am not denying the fact that men are more violent and commit more violent crimes. I may have overreached in giving my opinions here. I'm glad to hear that I'm pretty self-conscious about giving my opinions on politics. I find that people are rarely willing to listen when presented views don't reinforce theirs. @Surfingthewave Thank you for starting this topic. This is one of the best discussions that I participated in on this forum.

@commie I will take your words in good faith. All help much appreciated.

This is the survival strategy that we've been built to use. Let me use an analogy. There are things that the physical body is meant to do, and there are limits to it. There are degrees to how you can move your ankle. You can twist it few degrees around your calf, but don't twist it 180 degrees. Your psyche is like this to some degree. There are things that you can freely experience, but there are things that are too extreme. Seeing your father hit your mother is like twisting your ankle 180 degrees. It will "sprain" your spirit, leave a trauma. So, let's say a soldier sprained his ankle under fire and ignores it to keep moving. This tactic works well short-term, but is lethal long-term. It is very difficult to live your whole life with an untreated sprained ankle, you gotta do this. Moving about with it will make it worse, so you are forced to stop and heal. Psychological trauma is similar. When you are three, you don't have the mental capacity to process the experience of being abused. You have no framework of evil that accounts for the possibility for your father to hit your mother. As a child, your father, by definition, cannot be evil. You fitting in with your family is absolutely crucial if your want to survive. So what is the way out? Denial. You deny that you have seen this and keep on like a soldier. This is a good strategy short term, but lethal long-term. This will haunt you like a sprained ankle you ignore. You have to stop and heal, to go back in memories and actually understand what was happening and express the stored emotions. The question is, how long can you keep ignoring your sprained spirit until it is unbearable? It depends on the depth of the wound that has been inflicted. Paradoxically, the deeper the wound, the longer you have to deny it. For example, how long does it take for a Jew to process the experience of seeing their loved one raped and killed in a gas chamber? Some wounds are too great to heal in one lifetime, so they are passed on to the next generation. Each generation does some of the work until it can be properly processed. You could say that we are, psychologically, one organism. We are still haunted by the shadows of the world war II. This is a fault of the judicial system that has no understanding of how trauma works. I'm guessing that it's because men are more likely to lash out physically against women and bruises are easier to prove, so women are automatically called the victims of oppressors to close cases. In my experience, no more lethal force exists than a woman that knows your triggers and is dead set on making you feel miserable as a man. This is all I'm willing to say before people get triggered. As for victim blaming, nobody deserves abuse, regardless of what they believe, how they feel, dress, or act. This is the biggest mistake people usually do with their trauma. Your behavior has nothing to do with me. You can speak whatever you want and it has nothing, zero, to do with me. If I feel anything in response to this, these feelings are my own doing and they are telling me things about me. If I feel sexually aroused in response to a girl that is frivolously dressed, this tells me about me. Not about her. She is not a slut because I am aroused. She may have known that I will be aroused when she dresses like this, but my arousal is my thing and gives me no right to do anything. This usually goes over people's heads. People are at the mercy of their own emotions, they can't stand them, so they have to shout or hit when they are angry, to stop feeling angry, etc.

It's been a pleasure to have the opportunity to write it This paragraph contains a point that I've seen circulating many times and it ventures into the dangerous territory of gender wars. I know you well enough to know that you don't do this intentionally and I know myself well enough to recognize that I'm sensitive to this. With this disclaimer laid up front, let me make my point. When it comes to the oppressor vs the victim, there is a distinction to be made here. There is abuse where things are clear cut, like the slave owner vs the slave, or parents vs children, or China's Uighur reeducation camps. In these instances, the abuser holds power over the victim's life and exercises it to mutilate their spirit. From the POV of the abuser, the purpose is to "teach" them the "healthy" way of living so that victims would "fit in" with the oppressor. In effect, this kind of abuse is about making the other person into a psychological crutch that serves to fill the gaps in the oppressor's psyche. I will repeat myself here, this is clearly a very misguided and deluded way of trying to "heal" oneself on the part of the oppressor. It is so twisted and warped precisely because it is a defense mechanism on their part - it is not conscious, reflected and deliberate. No human would do this with full clarity and understanding of the repercussions. Oppressors can only do this because they themselves have no concept of personal boundaries. This concept is a huge step in the process of healing because people are only able to hold boundaries when they recognize that there is something precious within them. "Hold" is highlighted because this is distinct from being defensive, or offensive with respect to boundaries. The moment the person is able to recognize their own inherent value, they simultaneously recognize the value of all others. A person that can truly appreciate boundaries, also appreciates the boundaries of others and understands that they are the precondition of all personal freedom that we all deeply seek. Abuser does not understand this, narcissists never learned their own value so they expand their boundaries indefinitely, having no regard for others. There also are the imploded victims that are always okay with whatever happens without understanding their buried anger. This boundary-less condition is what causes enmeshment trauma. Families in which abuse happens, create children with no understanding of their inherent value. This is where the other kind of abuse happens, with no clear distinction between the abuser and the abused. When two adults of equal power meet, and neither of them understands the concept of personal boundaries, abuse is imminent. This is the so-called toxic relationship and where this ventures into the territory of gender wars. In abusive relationships, the victim and the oppressor swap places in different contexts. Calling one a victim and the other an oppressor is adding fuel to the fire, because both of them fulfill both roles. They are also victims of their own parents, usually with no understanding of this fact. It is not at all clear "who started it" because both partners were attracted to each other, symmetrically. A healthy person that understands the value of boundaries would not be attracted to a person that abuses them. It is normal and healthy to postpone having sex in the early stages of relationships and screen for red flags in the other person to see if they understand what it means to be human. As an example in the political context, I could use these to illustrate my point: the first kind of abuse is China vs Tibet, or Nazis vs Jews the second kind of abuse is the cold war, or Israel vs Palestine. I am not a political expert, but this sounds about right to me. I agree that when there is a clear line between the abuser and the victim, like in the first paragraph, external intervention may have a positive effect. Recognizing who is the abuser is helpful to both and isolating him/her to prevent further damage is crucial. In the other example, calling one an abuser and the other the victim is the injustice itself. Seeing the difference between the two cases takes wisdom that is rarely seen in the judicial system. Usually, women are automatically labeled victims and men are automatically labeled as the oppressors. Punishing either one is a crime on the part of the judge because it sends them off further into the spiral of abuse. The right way of getting out of this problem is to make them both see that they are both creating this spiral. This is immensely difficult because it requires coordinated effort and a deliberate decision to trust (to assume good intentions of the other).

Fair enough. I have observed this connection between victimhood, trauma and gaslighting within me, the family I've been raised in, my wife, her family and how it impacts our marriage. I may have overgeneralized it to other kinds of abuse.