Anderz

I found two traps in spiritual development: to gather information as beliefs and measuring progress in terms of those beliefs. In these videos Peter Ralston talks about the danger of beliefs and Teal Swan talks about the problem with wanting to reach a goal. Teal also talked about how desires themselves are not the problem. The problem is the fixed ideas about needing desires fulfilled. I will examine my own beliefs. One thing I can notice is that my beliefs, even those that might be correct, are a part of my crystallized ego! And I will practice taking my desires as being a compass instead of trying to transcend desires. Heck, the fluid ego that I equate with the transpersonal stage might simply be a recognition of the limitation of fixed beliefs and desires. And when the fixedness of the mind at the personal stage is recognized an opening may happen into the fluid state. I was unsure about the word "fixedness" that I used now, but there actually is such a term! And it matches in part the idea of lack of flow:

I started listening to this long video where Brian Scott is reading one of Joseph Benner's books. I had never heard of Benner before Brian's live stream of another Benner book. It sounds like Benner is talking about the transpersonal stage.

An insight that now came to me is that if it's true that there is only one will, then it's that will which will make me realize it or not. And it may be impossible to predict beforehand when that will happen because each moment is more complex than the previous one. Stephen Wolfram has shown how it's impossible to predict the results of even many simple processes. One has to actually do all the calculations needed, step by step in order to find the answer. In the same way reality progresses step by step and cannot generally be predicted beforehand.

One key and tricky difference between the personal stage and the transpersonal stage is the sense of free will. Transpersonal must as I see it mean the absence of free will or it would be the personal stage. In theory it's really simple. There is only one reality, hence only one will. I will practice experiencing reality as this one will. So that my actions and other people's actions are the same will.

I now got a new insight: desires block inner peace! So what happens at the personal stage is that we are always driven by desire to find fulfillment, even when seeking inner peace through alcohol and drugs, and in so-called "normal" situations through food and other milder forms of addiction. I will experiment with being mindful of how my desires blocks inner peace. And as a practice I can narrow my desires to only desiring inner peace, which still is a desire but at the personal stage it can be used as a tool for the practice.

I found this video where Shunyamurti says that desire is an inherent narrative of lack. And that's the ego's narrative. The Self doesn't need to think, such as thoughts driven by desires. It seems to me that he is talking about the Self as the transpersonal stage. And my guess is that there can be spiritual enlightenment even at the personal stage and with desires still remaining.

Something I haven't figured out yet is that when we run around with transpersonal awareness how will we be motivated without having desires? My guess is that it will be some kind of transcend and include of desires. What is the problem with desire?. I can identify several problems; 1) desires are based on past knowledge and are therefore limited and inflexible, 2) desires require discontent to function, and 3) desires are what keeps fear in place. Those problems are my starting point at the moment for investigating further into desires.

Jason talks a lot about transhumanism and the technological singularity. I think that the technological singularity has already happened! If not to a breakaway civilization certainly to lots of advanced civilizations in the universe. And that kind of technology I suspect can teleport itself instantly because of working at the level of waves and entanglement rather than manipulating atoms. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And post-singularity technology is basically infinitely advanced. And I believe that such technology already exists on earth! The purpose of our own public development of science and technology is that we need to develop on our own and create our own unique ways of doing things instead of becoming a bleak copy/clone of some already advanced civilization.

The main idea about Frankenstein's monster, the golem, the Tower of Babel, the second beast in the Book of Revelation and even the devil in the sense of the good aspect of Lucifer which means light-bringer and how Prometeus stole fire from the gods, is that it represents the personal stage of humanity, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At the personal stage we believe that we are doing things, such as writing an internet post, developing science and making things , which actually is a misconception as has been pointed out by spiritual teachers. The dragon also represents the personal stage and the phoenix represents the transpersonal stage as I see it. The phoenix is rising out of the ashes of the personal stage and into the tree/water of life. And also, it's integral transcend and include, so the "dragon" is preserved in the form of technology and so on. I don't know if Jason will agree with that view but I think it matches what he teaches. He also mentioned Atlantis in relation to the Great Flood, and that's I think stories about an ancient breakaway civilization that went hiding, "sank beneath the water". Even the lake of burning sulfur in the Bible I think represents the burning of the personal stage, the second death, from which the phoenix arises:

I found Jason's recent interview difficult to understand, but it made me think that Frankenstein's monster is like the Tower of Babel in that it's about a human-made construct attempting to do its own thing as a separate entity. That's precisely the personal stage of development! I will replay the interview to find out more.

If reality is changeless then what is the impermanence Buddhists talk about? Manifested reality changes, so as I have mentioned before, in that sense our reality is always impermanent even though the unmanifested (Brahman) is changeless. Memories are a part of manifested reality, so memories are impermanent! The foundational memory is the interconnected information in the graph of the Wolfram Physics Project model and when Leonard Susskind talked about how information is indestructible it's that information which is permanent. Even manifested reality is a part of the changeless unmanifested, but it's growing all the time which makes it appear impermanent. Fear is therefore an illusion since the future will never repeat itself. We have been there, done that and got the red bloody T-shirt. At the personal stage we are stuck in fear and at the transpersonal stage we realize that it's impossible to be stuck in fear.

It's possible to even go one step further than psychosomatic causes of illness. And that is that consciousness is prior to even the mind. It of course depends on definitions but I define mind as meaning the content in consciousness. And consciousness is a state of being aware. Notice that consciousness is a whole indivisible subject. Even the Integrated Information Theory (ITT) mentions that as one of its axioms. And mind is always duality, always separate experiences, including physical reality. Even space has different locations and is therefore a duality construct. And since no separate objects can exist by themselves without something holding them as one reality, consciousness is our most fundamental nature. And as I see it, consciousness is the unmanifested changeless and infinite reality observing the always finite and expanding manifestation of itself. So we are already healed! And maybe it's just a matter of recognizing that for physical healing to happen.

Shunyamurti said that all disease is psychosomatic. Is that true? I don't know but I think it's possible. If true, that's mindblowing. And it fits with the reports about people with multiple personality disorder having different diseases depending on which personality is activated.

Brand new video with Shunyamurti. I don't know if I agree will all his information but he is certainly at the cutting edge or even beyond the transpersonal stage.

My own composition! I think I will take a break from making music for a while until I have new equipment.

Another benefit of the conscious confusion practice is that it detaches the mind from the collective morphic field of the personal stage. The transpersonal stage is another morphic field which is a larger holon.

I have returned to my conscious confusion practice. Is there something at the personal stage that we can trust? Yes, we can trust confusion. Because that's the truthful state of the crystallized ego with its whole foundation based on a false belief in separation. Conscious confusion is to observe the confusion in oneself and recognizing it for being the truthful state. That's a complete shift from the usual personal stage where confusion is avoided like poison. The practice is to shift confusion into something that's yummy to consume and transmute into inner peace, a form of conscious alchemy.

As a practical example of requisite variety, let's say that I have a worry about receiving something in time for my planned activities. As Eckhart Tolle pointed out, our thoughts are collective. My worry is a result and a part of the whole society and it's a result of my crystallized ego believing lacking, or being uncertain about, having enough requisite variety, mostly about things that appear outside of my personal control. The practice in this case is to question my worry and examine my emotional, mental and even physical condition. And what then is discovered is that my worry is a product of society as a whole being at the personal stage of development which causes struggle and uncertainty. I literally hold the worry in me as tensions as a part of society. And the uncertainty is an illusion. The uncertainty is the confusion caused by tensions and when those tensions dissolve the uncertainty that is the root of the worry is removed along with the relaxation.

Leo mentioned requisite variety in his video about self-trust. He said that our rules are too limited to deal with the complexity of life. The crystallized ego deals with requisite variety by gathering more and more information, knowledge and skills. The problem is, no matter how much information the ego gathers reality always has increasing requisite variety to infinity. The ego manages the complexity of life by simplifying things and by focusing on what it deems important. That also causes a problem since the ego never actually knows what is important seen from the bigger picture. The solution as I see it is to enter the transpersonal stage where the fluid ego is one with life and therefore always has the necessary requisite variety. Instead of seeing entropy as disorder as in the personal stage entropy becomes recognized as complexity at the transpersonal stage. Here is a typical example of how requisite variety is managed at the personal stage of development, and it exemplifies the crystallized egos' (including collective egos like organizations) struggles with choice and risk:

It's also useful to recognize that for example playing a video game or watching a movie, that those are a second order forms of distractions. They distract the mind from its burden of thinking about personal problems who are first order forms of distraction. So there is that distinction while at the same time all distraction can be seen as the same mechanism of trying to run away from confusion. Eckhart Tolle has talked a lot about how the activity of thinking itself soaks up our conscious attention. In this video Tolle says that our thoughts are a result of the collective mind. Interesting point. We believe that we are thinking about our own personal problems when in reality we are thinking for society which still is at the personal stage of development. Thoughts pretend to personal, he said.

How can I defend my claim that playing a video game is the same kind of distraction as going to the dentist? Leo said that society is a collective ego distraction. Many of the things in society are designed to keep us perpetually stimulated, he said. Okay, playing a video game, that's easy to see how that's stimulating. But going to the dentist, how can that be a stimulation? Instead of stimulation, think of it as the capacity to grab your attention. An interesting video game and your dentist, both have the capacity to grab your attention. And that's how they are distractions keeping the crystallized ego busy being occupied with its own thinking.

The insight about distractions is amazing. I came to think of (maybe because Leo mentioned it) how playing a video game for example is a kind of distraction from other heavier and more tedious distractions such as money problems or needing to clean the bathroom. A useful practice then is to mindfully observe all distractions as being of the same kind. Playing a video game is the same kind of distraction as going to the dentist. And then to recognize all distractions as bad in the sense of low consciousness (not ultimately bad). It turns the ego game of distractions upside down so that the crystallized ego can start to melt instead of getting harder.

I's also valid to say that the ego's escape from confusion is in the form of distractions. Even such thing as worrying about paying one's bills is a distraction. The so-called "important" things in life are the sneakiest forms of ego distractions. I got this idea from Leo's video about distraction as a defense mechanism.

Entropy is also related to causality. Since the crystallized ego mistakes entropy for disorder it causes confusion in the mind. And the confusion is turned into fears and desires. In this way the crystallized ego grows and becomes harder and heavier. This in turn produces more confusion which the ego believes it needs to escape which produces more fears and desires in a vicious loop. The crystallized ego believes that itself is a separate cause which keeps the vicious loop of struggle against confusion going. One practice therefore is to be mindful of confusion in the mind and recognize it for being a mistaken view of disorder. And the desires and fears are a form of order, but it's a simple form of order which causes conflicts.

The crystallized ego is a bundle of low entropy. And entropy means disorder so the ego means order. Isn't that good? Even necessary? Yes, but the crystallized ego is a simple form of order that causes conflict. Confusion is entropy. Then why if the ego is order does it experience confusion? The answer is that entropy taken as being disorder is a mistaken view. As physicist Leonard Susskind said, entropy is hidden information. And Stephen Wolfram has a model of physics without disorder. The fluid ego is also order, but it's a more complex form of order than the crystallized ego. So the fluid ego at the transpersonal stage recognizes entropy as order instead of as in the personal stage where we struggle against our own belief in and experience of entropy as disorder.