Zetxil

@CuriousTraveller In theory maybe, but when you find attention what is there being attent to that? See where this is going?

@CuriousTraveller @cetus56 No, what he is saying that when you do focus on them you will notice them almost "dissipate." When all of the things you can focus on dissipate what are you left with?

@zambize How much bark (cinnamon) do you eat? Is your bark as strong as your bite?

Hot take: cinnamon isn't sweet

@CuriousTraveller That is just a fun part of the journey of the individual! Consciousness, how people typically describe it, is something intangible (not in the physical world where we can touch or point a finger directly at it), but it can be "found" expirentially by the individual. Once it is found, that individual can't point at it to make someone else realize what they are talking about! We can talk about it because everyone realizes it exists, there is just no "evidence" of it in the physical world!

Congrats of finiding it! We all experience what I believe you to be experiencing! Now focus in on in during a few meditation sessions! And try to grasp a better understand of it! (Where it originates from/what it is) If you feel it is causing more detriment than good, go speak to a physician and get your head scanned! A sudden onset could be caused by an abnormality within your body, but if you find that it has always been there and you have just become aware of it, great! You stated it to be the latter so it is most likely what we all experience! ?

@zambize You will eat what you have in your house to eat! Be conscious of what you want to digest in the future when you go shopping (also don't go shopping on an empty stomach). Keep up the awareness friend! Love you! ?

@LastThursday This concept seems to be the exact thing you are missing in your model of the world! The you/individual. You can say as much as you like that things are continuous (which they are)! But that doesn't quite encapsulate the whole model! To deny the concept of choice entirely is to deny the existance of an individual, and to deny the concept of an individual would mean that this conversation couldn't happen. You have to incorporate both sides to get a complete model. I don't disagree with anything you say! You just don't say it entirely! (To say it entirely seems to be unspeakable, but that seems to be what we are trying to do here on earth, one must try and figure it out instead of sit in complacency and ignorance of what it is!) "So how do you get from one to the other?" - We experience both and incorporate into the spoken model! I may understand what is happening here! You (the individual/lastthursday) are fully accepting of the eastern model of the world without any integration of the western model of the world into your own model. You are confusing the topic of this thread to be free will=choice. So we can look at it like this: The idea of choice is incorperated into "constrained will" and if the idea of choice can be incorperated it means it exists. @lmfao Do past and future not exist in your experience? You have no memories or ideas? You can't envision what something will look like after the passage of time? Is time not a concept you have an understanding of?

@7thLetter HAHAHA Oh they are completely different! Forex is definitely a long term strategy! I think there is possibility in a crypto short term strategy (huge amounts of variability), if we are still are talking currencies, but I haven't developed anything towards that! Markets on the other-hand fluctuate in pretty consistent ways over the course of days/weeks with some variability (publicity in the news can cause a lot of unpredictable variation) and have easier trends to be able to pick up and notice. I am sure there could be a strategy(s) developed for more short term forex trading, but it would be a lot more intensive than stock market trading due to the general consistencies of the world relations on any given day. One of the great things about fiat currencies is that they are pretty steady day to day, but that makes it harder to trade short term for individual profit.

oh? Ponder this question, you may find something interesting about self: Does their need to be an experiencer to have an adventure?

Find what invigorates you! If you want more options to choose from to find whatever you want to do, talk to a school advisor! They can give you other options within the academic sector that others may not be able to! If you find you want to look outside the academic sector, the internet has just about every option available to you! The key here is figuring out what you want to do and what excites you when you learn about it! When you find that thing, do that! Good luck and Congratulations!

Alan Watts is a good person to listen to if you are curious on death from an eastern perspective! I believe of of his more famous quotes went something like this: Viewing the world it looks like I can make two statements on death. When I die, my bodily functions will stop working. After I die, a baby will be born with bodily functions. How you interpret those statements is up to you! No one knows, for certain, what happens when we die. To me, death will be an awfully big adventure!

Fuck bitches, get money! In a slightly more serious note: 1.) 9-5 job, keeping living expenses as low as possible while still being near work so I can spend less time commuting and more time doing things I find enjoyable 2.) Investments in currencies (forex trading) and stock market trading, long and short term trades. Stocks move no matter the market. If you have a good credit score you can look into shorting stocks, works well in a bear market and can help you learn how the market fluctuates (it takes a good investment of time upfront to become decent at shorting stocks reliably ~7-8 months in my experience, but it totally worth it long term) With a bear market coming up *hint* *hint* *wink* wink* there is a great opportunity to learn before trying! 3.) I only try to keep as much money sitting in the bank as is needed for 3-4 months of expenses (for emergencies) but this number should vary from situation to situation. I.e. I am not financially responsible for a family yet! The rest is invested in long term (~60%) and short term (~40%) investments. I also tend to take larger risks with my short term investments in the market because I feel financially stable long term investment wise! 4.) Currently paying off student loan debt which is boosting my credit score, but no credit card as of yet. I try to stick with the rule of earning before spending! (obviously that isn't perfect) You look to be in a perfect position and are already taking steps to stay that way! Congrats!

@lmfao @Aeris Are we denying the existence of past and future in our situation?

@Joseph Maynor Of course! The following image may help illustrate the idea. person A says 6, person B says 9. The truth of the matter is that something is written at their feet. Truth applies to the situation. In our situation, truth is what we agree upon it to be! Seems like a simple enough concept to grasp. There are multiple truths to be discovered, one must simply look for commonalities of all perspectives. Why do you capitalize "mind"? You should find a different word, or string of words, to describe what you mean by "mind." "mind" has too many meanings: brain, head, awareness, perception, reasoning, processing. What I think you are getting at with mind is the faculty of consciousness and thought? correct me if that isn't what you mean! You see the "truth" that I spoke of was exactly what I said it meant when you asked I could see why you may have been confused with the word truth, so I corrected it.

@Joseph Maynor Hmmmm it isn't really a clinging, more of a test, thrown to the wind to see what respose is received! In our case here, truth is the shared commonalities in experience between two or more individuals!

@LastThursday You don't seem to see my choice in setting up the situation to begin with and letting the cascade of events happen? It isn't a justification of free will, but more like a direct experience of it to the individual! The whole is set but the individual experiences it. So to say it doesn't exist is not a total encapsulation of the truth! Think of it this way: in order for a concept to have any meaning it must exist. Solely us conversing on the topic proves that both free will and no free will exist! To pick a side of a paradox proves no real understanding! True randomness doesn't exist, that is a fools jurisdiction. I used the word to describe the essense of it! In the example sited the idea of randomness comes in the end result of the choices made. Maybe uncalculable is a better term. Do you not have options in your life? Moving forward through life you have choices you can make to persue different options. Do you not? Those options ahead of us aren't predefined just harder to achieve the more they differ from our current path! @Joseph Maynor But isn't that the essense of what we are trying to discover in the persuit of truth? A commonality in the words and associated meanings between as many individuals as possible

Let's work through it together! When we conjure up a paradox of concepts, comparing something to the exact opposite, we bring into light both concepts! In our case here we have something like this: (Anything) versus (Nothing). But the concept of nothing is a fun contemplation because as humans we have no real concept of nothing except in the total absence of something! So one could maybe see it like this (Anything) versus ( ). <-- even this is a little wrong because there is still a boundry around the concept of nothing. In other words nothing has to be contained for it to exist and if there is a container something exists! Boundaries can't exist in complete nothing (That is a theory of what was before the big bang: no container). No one knows what happened before they were born experientially (that's a fun analogy to the big bang) @ajasatya That seems to be the question, doesn't it?

@Joseph Maynor Good question! You seem to be confusing conscious with being aware though! You were once aware of breath and you will be aware of it again! Being aware of breath can ground consciousness into the body! We have the choice in what to be aware of! @LastThursday Choice seems to be all three of those things in different situations! @Nahm Understanding of all of what? I didn't follow what you were getting at with the word "this" Of course! Thoughts are connected with previous thought and thoughts yet to come! There doesn't seem to be a tangible word or phrase that connects individual thoughts to the greater whole, but one can realize that they are connected in some way (usually unique to the situation) @Jack Walter Leon Free will: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion. How it works is what these conversations are about! ? Basis for having free will could be the integration of the realization that something is wrong and making a change in a different direction! It is more like you are making a decision taking into account as many influences as possible not 100% independet of influence! That seems to be the superpower of the individual! What you stated, probably not. What I stated is the way it has come to me! @LastThursday Just because something is dependent partly on something else doesn't mean there isn't choice involved! Think of it like this. I am walking down a path and there is a 3 way fork in the road! I have the ability to chose one of those three ways based on what I previously know about each path! In this case we can say I know nothing of the paths! So I chose one at random and it takes me to another 3 way fork and so on and so forth! The path that I have traveled is set, but the choices made along the way were, there will continue to be choices ahead! Everything is everything and everything is affected by everything! That is why we have the "butterfly effect" choice is a part of that everything! @Principium Nexus You can only ever be here for the sake of being here! Thoughts about what the future will hold arise, but that doesn't mean they don't arise and can't be thought about in the present!

@tsuki I didn't misunderstand your point! I was just trying to give a more physical world example that more people can realate to! My pattern still seems to apply to both situations still, physical and psychological. When exploutative measures are used that is where corruption occurs, but if one has mutual agreement with another/many, benifical progress can occur! I never claimed I am resposible for civilization? Did I? Why are you grouping me into this claim? Human nature is by definition part of nature, yes ? Not really so much as an argument as a mutual exchange of ideas! We both benifit from communicating with each other!

@Truth Addict We do chose what and when to believe through! To say there isn't choice as fact still misrepresents the Truth of the matter. People practice religions and switch religions all the time! You chose to switch away from Islam (do you not understand the choice in the forming of patterns?) Pragmatism seems to be what we are trying to do here on earth isn't it? To take complex patterns and simplify them into more practical, understandable, and communicatable ways? Same here it can be difficult to ecapsulate all meanings of the word think! That seems to be one logical way of thinking about it, and we are trying to bring that truth into our ego so it can be communicated with other egos. The ego has to "go up a level" (one of the most wishy washy things I may have ever said haha) to be able to come back and speak on the same terms of the other egos that identify in a similar manner. This in turn can bring other egos closer to Truth. (I still don't understand why you capitalize the T when you type it!) When more egos are closer to the truth it seems to be easier for an individual ego to take that next step forward in the direction of truth!

@Truth Addict Ah! I understand your statement! There is clear inequality between individuals, that seems to be necessary for development of any society, also, to determine what is the best situation (or correct amount of inequality) is still unclear to say for certain. Saying that bosses benifit more than the employee is too much of an over statement! Bosses have a lot more risk involved with job security as well as the amount of work put in to currently preside in that position! There is still a balance of hierarchies. Now, don't get me wrong! There seems to me some hierarchies that have a greater expansiveness than others (money/power being the first two that pop in my head), those types of hierarchies tend to be more universal between individuals! If we are all equal, there is no fighting, but that also means progress is hindered by the lack of competition! For me, the goal is to find the best system for all involved in the system! Having many many systems seems to help me find balance in other systems instead of focusing solely on a singular system. (I used the word system too much haha hopefully my logic can still be followed) ? Maybe the ability of equal opportunity to transition in every hierarchy is the best situation for all! (I know Jordan Peterson has thought about hierarchies as a "good" model a decent amount, so if you are still confused you could watch some of his lectures/interviews!) @tsuki Saying that humans are a monkey with an oversized cortex w/o an instruction manual is so over the top misleading to what we actually are capable of ?? If CEO's are exploitative they seem to perpetuate this issue being discussed, but you should take into account CEO's that don't exploit their employees and when it is more based off mutual agreement of exchange! I find freedom comes from understanding that we are animals, and that we are also sooooooooo much more than that! @Zigzag Idiot That's a really good quote! Sometimes we have to shimmy our ladder onto another wall when we find that wall to be unfit!

@Truth Addict Oh let me have a crake at this one! Such a good question about society! The trick of labour in a functioning society: There is mutual benefit of both parties when there is paid labour! Free labour is slavery. Now, what you call fair in this situation is entirely subjective, but I can try to argue that it is fair or isn't fair, if you would like! that is the trick of balancing a "hierarchy" <-- (Im not a fan of this model, but we will continue with it) to not let it get too split! 1 individual having ruling over all in that respective hierarchy is the extent of polarization of a, what I find to be a negative/bad, hierarchy. You seem to not have a concept of probability/delayed gratification in that processing. The likely hood of you dying tomorrow is pretty slim compared to the likelihood of you living so you should incorporate that into your thinking about this problem as to what is fair. Yes I do see cause I am not blind! Yea this functioning society thing is pretty new in the history of man kind, it has mostly been the split of 1 versus many. For the first time, in my understanding of history, Investigating why this happened seems to be rooted in more freedom of speech of the individual and a larger access to knowledge available in the public, but I find more search is needed to know completely as those being the only causes. what is career a good solution too? There are a lot of good points and I lost what you were trying to get at here. To label what is seen in a functioning society/government as slavery seems slightly the mark if you are using the model of a hierarchy/the interaction of multiple hierarchies to label our society. We, as humans, seem to be stopping the split of hierarchies at an increasing rate, which I enjoy! It is good to be aware!

@RendHeaven Try rephrasing that, you may find you reach a bigger audience because I found it a little confusing. Being more direct with your flow of words has worked for me for people to understand me better! i.e. "with a crystal clear & sustainable life purpose, grades don't matter at all." <-- see how that doesn't entirely encompass the truth of the situation? Grades seem to matter to others growing up for sure! So, there must be a reason for that if they were to truly not matter at all. When you find that reason they mattered for something! It seems that grades still can matter even when someone has a clear and sustainable life purpose!

@Truth Addict go on with the inquiry try to figure it out. You may to come to find you like the answer going on: Sometimes! Sometimes my desires come to me! How questions have: an unexpendabley large amount of possibilities that come to be chosen upon collectively. Maybe omnipotence that can truly know the answer to a "how" question and explain it to perfection. The best we've got, so far as I can tell, is to use percentages and using statistics to predict the likelihood of something occurring in a similar manner in the future. There is a whole branch of study dedicated to this question. To expect a perfect answer would be what we are currently trying to do! "How" questions exist though, to question the norm and provide the opportunity for growth to a greater understanding. Desire comes and goes on its own. No. yes. yes. no. sometimes! or questions have already been addressed earlier in this thread, let's not have to reread. That's a good guess, but doesn't seem to fully encapsulate it! @Arcangelo Oh? care to explain? Maybe you don't see it the way I do! To me it is more of an understanding and integration of paradox itself! In any defense, my knowledge of spiral dynamics is pretty limited (just did a look at a few pics and diagrams). so, I may not have any detailed analysis of each color, but I seem to understand the concept of expansion. Hey! same here! When I incorporate these illusions into an organized structure cool things happen and they seem to be repeatable to an extent! If you see yourself that way you slow progression. you use think quite often and I find a misunderstanding here. What does it mean to think to you? (assuming you think) I find thinking can be useful to assist in solving complex tasks in a quicker period of time, along with a few other things! "Illusion is the part, not the whole." - same here "illusion (ego, me) is part of Truth (God, Me)." - That doesn't seem quite right to explain it though. That metaphor seems to linear to me and not quite as encompassing as me truly is. Don't ya think?