tsuki

"I" exists as a thought. Even though it claims that the subject is an object (I am this, I am that), this is impossible.

Mu

@Vivaldo Your interpretation of the film is incomplete. it does not incorporate the existence of space-monkeys, men that followed Tyler into their own demise, and were trained by being dehumanized. In truth, Fight-club is a commentary on how a persons interior rots when they follow conventional, pre-destined paths led out by society. This is exemplified by the protagonist, a nameless character that is deeply unhappy with his life, to the point where he has a schizophrenic breakdown where he develops an alter-ego to vent his frustrations. Tyler is, in essence, the protagonist's will to destroy that is created because of repressed unhappiness and status games. Tyler's destructive nature is shown throughout the film and he is not an edgy character that is detached from society. He is actively destructive towards himself, other people and institutions. He hates himself, Marla, and space-monkeys. Ultimately, he shoots the protagonist in the face and blows up Wall street. Weak, purposeless men that are not connected to themselves are attracted to Tyler for the same reason the Protagonist created him. If you find Tyler attractive, watch the hell out. Let me say this again. Tyler is not a strong character, a perfect man. Tyler is the embodiment of repressed anger and destruction that men seek when they are unhappy. Fight club is a study on trauma and how it shows up in masculine expression.

Why would it be about you? Why would anybody want to hurt you intentionally, with full understanding that they are inflicting pain? Let's invert this situation. Try to imagine that you stand in front of a person, and deliberately do something that they don't want, precisely because they don't want it, just to inflict pain. Not because you are reacting to something within you, like anger (which not about them, but about you), but to do it for "their" sake. What would be a reason? The issue is not "between you and them". This is your issue. You are hurt, they are not, they are not thinking about it. For them, it does not exist. There is no magical space that is sprung "between", in which the problem hangs. When you want to "communicate your negative feelings" to them, what you communicate is that you want them to change the way in which you feel. This is not possible. You are creating your own feelings by thinking. Let me get more specific. You are thinking that something must be true, and when people's behavior does not correspond to these expectations, you feel bad. Then, you react to this feeling and blame the person for "doing this to you". This is a little bit abstract, so let me give you a few examples that may, or may not fit your case: You may think that you are a good person, and that it means that people ought to be kind to you. When people are unkind, you feel bad because it violates your assumption that you are good. Then, you react to this feeling and try to make other people act kindly towards you, so that you can think of yourself that you are a good person. But the misunderstanding here is that people act unkindly for reasons that are unrelated to you. People may be unkind because they have to stomach a perfectionist boss that is abusive towards them. They are unkind because they their have a toothache. They are unkind because they were just thinking about a teacher that scolded them unfairly in third grade. The truth is that people's behavior towards you, and your moral standing are unrelated. You may also think that the purpose of relationships is to provide pleasure, to have good time. When difficult emotions arise (and they inevitably do), you think that you do something wrong and blame yourself for "not being social enough", for not being pleasant. What is missed here is that people's emotions are related to your behavior only through their interpretation. Their interpretation is, in turn, strongly related to their beliefs. Regardless of whether these examples fit, or not, their common theme is that there is a belief that emotions are something external, that is done to you, and that you are a passive recipient of them. This is false. You are creating your emotions by thinking about people, about the world, etc.

Personal sex preferences, arranging ones life to one's benefit - all fine, whatever the content. Speaking of it in a manner that suggests any form of a superior lifestyle? Disgrace unfitting of a teacher. There are many women that don't orgasm during regular sex, for all sorts of reasons. If sex is the central point of a relationship to you, say it plainly. But don't assume a role of a model that speaks of what relationships should look like and what is pathetic. I've seen a lot of shit talked here on this forum but I haven't been so pissed off in a long time.

@Leo Gura What you call your personal standards stop being personal once you are vocal about them in a community that looks up for your guidance. Yes, you have said to not believe you, not copy you, do the work, etc, but in the end it is not a student's fault when a teacher spouts nonsense from their personal bias. Choosing to be in a relationship with a woman that has been traumatized is not pathetic. That is you spouting nonsense from your personal bias. What you wrote is just disgraceful.

@somegirl When you bring rational logic to justify how you feel, you are encouraging your friend to do the same. They most likely also think that they had a good reason to be upset/angry/insensitive, because they were overwhelmed with other stuff in their life and weren't paying enough attention. To them, it was never about you, which is exactly why it was hurtful to you. Also, notice that the situation in which you were hurt is already gone, and that you are the one that brings the pain into the conversation and in doing so, prolong it. I don't want to imply that your pain is irrelevant, or that you are feeling something incorrect, I am merely referring to relationship dynamics and what is playing out between the two of you. Specifically, how you are creating anger and resentment in your friends. So, what can be done about it? First, realize that you are, indeed hurt, like a hurt animal that needs help. Even though your friend has hurt you, you need their help, you need them to apologize to feel better. You need them to behave a certain way so that you don't face this difficulty. This is a position of neediness, not of assertiveness, as conventional logic would make you believe. You cannot handle this properly if you dress up in self-righteousness, moral superiority, or victimhood. How can you expect to open up and be vulnerable to a person that has hurt you? This is a double-bind. That person cannot help you if they are not receptive to your needs. Saying it to them, telling that they are insensitive will not help. It will arouse self-righteousness. Don't do it. What should be done is to withdraw from the relationship until you feel better and feel that you are ready to spend some time with them again. You have no right over this relationship, its nature is completely transitory. If you hold on to it and "make it work", you break it. A relationship that must work is not worth having.

We currently are nowhere near the technology that would be truly creative. Artificial intelligence as it currently stands is extracting patterns from data we feed to it by constraining a more general computational algorithm that we also chose for it. The fact that it is unpredictable to us, and that the extracted patterns are intricate has little to do with art. To me, one of the defining characteristics of art is intention. AI is more of a programmer's brush than it is an artist.

@Mosess ?

Because I was conditioned to believe that my feelings and perceptions are not the truth, and that I need to justify them with rational logic.

Define what emotional mastery means to you. Get to learn how emotions work, how they arise, what they communicate. Inspect your circumstances and understand how they relate to how you feel and think at any given day.

I wouldn't be too judgmental about your difficult feelings towards her. Your children need your protection and you are giving your absolute best do provide it. Forgiveness does not imply that you should welcome her into your life as if nothing happened.

Another misunderstanding is that you are supposed to manipulate your perception of reality to be in accord with a description that you read somewhere. Meditation, contemplation, and spirituality are about recognizing what is already true, and already the case. You are not supposed to manipulate, alter, or otherwise modify yourself, or the world. This is not the goal. This pursuit is irrelevant. If you can manipulate your experience and see something differently, then it is not the truth of the matter, but a facet of your experience. So, reading something, relating to it, bringing it into the context of the investigation is completely irrelevant to contemplation. What is true is already true, regardless of what you know, or don't. When you recognize something true, your relationship to it may or may not change, but >>change is not the method<<. It may sometimes be helpful to remove things that distract you, such as TV, loud music, or your beliefs about the matter, but these things are not the truth. For example, when you investigate yourself, then you are present in your experience regardless of whether you are sitting, standing, doing yoga, or sleeping. It is not about an emotional state either, because you are yourself regardless of whether you are angry, blissful or fearful. There are states that are helpful towards this investigation, for example, it may be beneficial to develop focus so that you can stay longer with the task without being distracted. It may be beneficial to develop good posture so that you don't hurt yourself while investigating. But investigation, in of itself, is itself. It is not thinking, it is not wrinkling your eyebrows and looking serious, it is not sitting peacefully, it is itself. It is irreducible to anything else. So stop thinking about distinctions, or removing them, but investigate what they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtk3HCgTa8 In this talk, Rich Hickey talks about complexity, simplicity, easiness and difficulty. How these two dimensions are distinct, how they interact, and how to build reliable systems that are easy to maintain. He uses programming as an example, but this is a great presentation about how clear thinking can help us navigate life.

@Meliodas This question is relative to what you truly want to do in life, what is your highest calling. It is also relative to where you live. There is no general answer to this question, I'm afraid. As for the trip regarding to getting where you truly want to be, dream big, but take small, actionable steps. This is so important, so simple and so easy to overlook. Don't try to do things that you cannot do and make up stories about how your dream is impossible. Do the things that are possible in small steps, and trust that right opportunities will present themselves at the correct time. Also, be willing to adjust your dream when it no longer feels right.

You are trying to relate the investigation of difference with knowledge that you already have. First, you must see for yourself that you don't know what difference is. You can see that things are different, but you don't know what is difference. You are not looking to explain what is difference. You want to find it, like you find your hand when you to scratch your head. You want to witness difference directly. Book of not knowing by Peter Ralston may be of help.

There is more fun in the domain of touch. Touch a wall with your hand. Close your eyes. Focus on the sensation of the wall and try to find the difference between you and the wall. Where do you end, and where does the wall start? How is it possible that a wall "limits" you? What is "limit"? Also, other senses are interesting for this contemplation. Focus your attention within the domain of sight, vision. Look around. Now, focus on your hearing, listen. Go back and forth between these two domains. When you do this, try to pinpoint the exact moment when you transition from one to another. Where does sight "go" when you are attentively listening? Where does hearing "go" when you are watching with focus?

Yet another one: composition, when one thing appears to be superimposed with another thing. Look at your hand and start moving it. Observe the shadows and lighting on your hand. How is it possible that there is a shadow, and that there is your hand, and that there isn't anything "between" them? Is there a difference between them? How do you perceive them if there isn't one? How can something be two things? Or another one: abstraction, when one thing can be multiple things at the same time. Take a pen. Ask yourself what is it and give your most honest and straightforward answer. Then take another thing that is the same. How can something be precisely a pen, and yet, there are two "pens"? What is >>the<< pen? What is it? Pinpoint >>the<< pen, the thing that made you pick the second pen that looked like the first one.

Also, distinctions can be approached in the context of space, or in the context of time. In the context of space, there is a distinction between two distinct objects that exist simultaneously, in two different locations. Like your one hand, and your other hand. Try to locate the distinction between them while perceiving both of them. Then, there is temporal distinction, where there is one object that changes, but is still recognized as one object. Like when you observe your hand, and you move it, so it changes, and yet it is still a hand. This one was more subtle for me. How is it possible for a hand to change (be different), and yet still be a hand (be the same)? Again, try to locate this distinction.

@Alfonsoo Instead of trying to approach this issue with the mindset of "how do I dissolve distinctions?", I would rather suggest to look into the nature of what is distinction itself. Look at one object, look at another object, and then, try to locate the distinction. After you are clear on what distinction is, try poking at "what is existence?".

@Preety_India I am very sorry for what you've been through and that you constantly have to face someone that is supposed to be your greatest support, but is hurting you so much. I am recently pondering the way in which we are conditioned by our environment and how we repeat the behavior that caused us pain when we are in a situation that is similar. Knowing my own anger and pain, I am sure that you would very much like to claw her eyes out and I bring no consolation in this respect. What I want to say though is that this aggression that is in you is the echo of all the situations in which you've been hurt and I know how difficult it is to resist it without creating a self-image of being a "better person". I am sure that your mother suffers from the same image and uses it to justify her actions, as "being right", always fighting to avoid a "catastrophe", etc. I will never ask you to forgive her, but I will ask you to consider. There is a vein of suffering, pain and ignorance that runs through your family, and from the looks of it, you are the first one to watch it closely. Don't try to fight it with force, retaliate, argue, or otherwise rebel. This is more ignorance and suffering. Just watching it for what it is, holding on to saying inner "No" resolutely is enough. It will come around eventually, maybe when you are independent. Maybe sooner.

Nope. Not at all. Bunch of know-it-all smart asses that try to establish spiritual pecking order. This section is a perfect mirror of the toxicity of relationships/dating/sexuality section, but all dressed up in sugar, flour and fairies. Stay away if you don't want to get addicted.

Actually, Spinoza used to say that the mind is the image of a body. Which is to say that the body has a body, or that the body thinks of itself and has an image of itself. Similarly, a phone has a phone, which is the image of the phone, we conventionally call "the operating system" (android, OSX, etc). Within the operating system, various applications can exist and interact with the phone irrespective to its hardware details. This is, basically how the illusion of separate self works, which is simply a self-image. This self-image works like an operating system for your beliefs that can target your unique existence as if just one kind of person was there.

Ask a more specific question.

Funny that English has a verb "mind" that literally means "to be busy with". "I mind my own business" Ha! You do indeed!