Anderz

@Apparition of Jack Okay, yes but I think it's a combination. Easy to use high quality products with integration between them is also a key to Apple's success. Only clever marketing will be insufficient. I learned recently that the valuation of companies like Apple is hugely connected to the brand. And that's too a kind of marketing. The big tech companies have become like bitcoin almost, haha, where the value is determined by "brand" more than mere performance. Another example is Tesla and someone said that Elon Musk can say anything, even that they will fail, and Tesla's stock value skyrockets.

Apple's strength is the integration of all their products and ease of use. That's great. The problem is that Apple's products relatively seen are getting more costly. Ray Kurzweil has shown that the price/performance of information technology improves exponentially. Think halving the price each year for the same product with the same performance. Ten years ago Apple indeed had an acceleration of price/performance. In recent years the opposite has happened and the trend for Apple's products is today the opposite and a slowing down instead of the acceleration predicted by Kurzweil. This means that Apple either needs to come up with a radically new kind of product(s) that puts them on the curve of the future or they will become the Zenith of the 21st century.

Teachings that say that "you are not the doer" might be useful at some point in spiritual development, but really it's an ego trap. It's like saying "don't think about a pink elephant." It fortifies the idea of being a separate doer. A better and the correct approach is to say: "you are the doer" and then go on explaining what the doer is. In nonduality the doer is the totality. And our past memories need to be seen from a true perspective which is that the "me" as a doer in personal memories in reality is the totality as the doer. Everything is the totality as a doer.

Apple is at the moment valued at almost two trillion dollars. That seems incredibly overvalued to me. Trump's ban of Huawei only weakens TSMC, the Taiwanese manufacturer of Apple's microchips. Apple is a so-called fabless developer of microchips which means they can't even manufacture their own microchips. And Apple's products seem to get more and more outdated. For example Huawei launched its foldable phone Mate X in 2019 and Apple still hasn't anything near that level of technology. Now there is a belief that Trump has dealt a deadly blow to Huawei: I doubt that China with over a trillion dollars spent on microchip research and development today is dependent on U.S. microchips. It's just that China waits with playing their strongest cards. Long-term planning. That's not something western tech companies can afford to do. And as it says in the CNN article, it weakens the U.S. semiconductor industry. That's risky for Apple since China controls the entire Asian semiconductor industry! Well, that's my guess anyway. (Clarification: China unlikely "controls" Japan's tech industry for example but I do believe that indirectly they do through cooperation.)

One problem with superdeterministic models is that they are not falsifiable. But it's still possible to compare them with other models. For example one expert said that if precise enough instruments make it possible to take a whole series of measurements in a row, very close to each other in time, then that will test the randomness of quantum mechanics. If it turns out that QM isn't really random then that points in the direction of superdeterminism. And the recent science article I posted showed experiments that rule out several possibilities yet does NOT rule out superdeterminism. So that also points in the direction of superdeterminism. And by adding more pointers like that superdeterminism becomes a stronger candidate even though it isn't falsifiable.

Here I found a new scientific result done with actual experiments: With confirmation bias I pick ..... superdeterminism! In nonduality superdeterminism is a result of reality as a whole being the cause. So there are no separate causes, neither from the past nor from the future. And the new scientific experiment is consistent with this and even says that superdeterminism is a possible candidate.

I found it useful to be mindful of suffering instead of on thoughts. An even better method I discovered is to be mindful of pleasant feelings instead of thoughts. That's a bit trickier because it's suffering that fuels thinking so suffering can easily be found even when it's hidden at first. Pleasant feelings without artificially inducing them through drugs, food or entertainment etc may be absent at first. And then being mindful of suffering can be used until pleasant feelings start to replace the suffering.

This is just my amateur guessing, and I could be making a fool of myself here, haha. It seems to me that Wall Street is a silly playground for mindless speculators. As a case in point, Apple is today valued at almost two trillion dollars. That's an insane overvaluation. Apple can't even manufacture it's own hardware and Huawei's Mate X launched in early 2019 is years ahead of what Apple even has today. My second guess is that China already has superior semiconductor technology. What we see today on the public market is old stuff from China and they wait with playing their strongest cards as a part of a long term strategy. Wall Street is just like a mad dog in comparison able to make short-term predictions based on a delusional belief in western superiority, and not much longer term sight than that.

I like to repeat explanations, because those can evolve and also for my own practice it helps me to recondition my mind. And by posting it in a journal like this makes it easy to make sure that my ideas become more solidified and coherent. So what is God? From a nondual perspective I think of God as the infinite intelligence of the process of reality. So God is not some separate being or even a process by itself. God is an aspect of the process of reality. And nonduality means changeless or there would be a duality where one thing controls another thing. So not even God has free will. God is not some boss separate from us. God is the only will. And thus even the ego is acting according to God's will. The ego is a necessary development in order to produce individual personalities. And the thinking mind is a higher state of development than animal existence without the intellect. The nasty thing with the ego is that its thinking is fueled by suffering. Therefore I will use Gurdjieff's intentional suffering practice and focus on the suffering instead of the thoughts! That is not going back into animal pre-intellectual consciousness. Instead it's a meta perspective above thinking. The purpose of which is to identify and resolve the conflict-ridden habit of the ego's thinking.

I came to realize that not caring about money is the wrong approach. Because that's still an ego strategy which only cements the inner conflict subconsciously. The correct approach is to be mindful of all the trickery of the conditioning of conflict within the mind and body. Jesus talked about this: And Jesus talked about the heart in relation to this: And you can't argue with the Bible! Well, you can but I see that there is logic to what Jesus said from a holistic perspective. Reality is a wholeness in motion so the ego has a mistaken perspective of believing itself as being a separate doer having to manage things as a fragment in a struggle with the rest of reality.

Have I become brainwashed by A Course in Miracles and other spiritual teachings? No, I don't think so. It's more like the feeling when growing out of playing with toys in a sandbox. The world at the moment feels like a sandbox for children to me. It can be fun to follow what happens in the news and so on, and it's important that things improve on that level, but the whole foundation of society is false. I guess an integral approach will be best, and to still be concerned about what happens in the world and at the same time expect a radical shift. It may be a slow and gradual shift yet short from a historical perspective because of exponential evolution. And I feel that we need to move out of the sandbox and proactively aim for a way out.

I don't want to become homeless, but I'm considering stop caring about money. There is something ridiculously childish about money and at the same time it's connected to death I believe. The whole world is in a silly ego state which is also like a horrible trap. It may actually be that the coronavirus crisis is a true sign of the end of the world ego state. The ego condition has gotten worse and now people are even physically isolated from each other and from their environment. From A Course in Miracles perspective the whole situation today is based on fear and that's a false state. I still believe that there is a lot of value in our civilization but a transformation is necessary, a transcend and include that transcends the ego structures and preserves what is valuable.

Oh! There is a huge problem with integral spirituality as it often is presented, including things like Spiral Dynamics. The world is taken too much as being rational when in fact it's totally in a delusional ego condition. A similar problem with for example lukewarm and mainstream Christianity. There is a tendency of dismissing miracles and a clinging to mainstream science. There is also a ridicule of conspiracy theories. I'm convinced that Jordan Maxwell is more correct when saying "Nothing in this world works the way you think it does." And by being too rational, too scientific and too much trusting mainstream authorities integral teachings are built on a false foundation of reality. And that's just the surface level! Even biological evolution is basically a cosmic trick I think. At the same time integral teachings have a necessary component in my opinion in the idea of transcend and include. Somehow integral spirituality itself needs to be transcended and included. Holistic spirituality might be a term for that, but even that sounds too limiting. Tricky.

One Advaita teacher said that the whole world is an ego/shadow. So my idea about the whole world being in ego consciousness is not new. And when I think about it, it even says in the Bible that the devil is the prince of this world. And of course A Course in Miracles thoroughly bashes the current condition of our world, and so does for example Shunyamurti, and even to a large extent Eckhart Tolle and J. Krishnamurti. So one can use that idea in relation to suffering. I will experiment with practicing mindfulness of suffering in the present moment. And examining whether that suffering is the result of my mind retrofitting memories in the form of inner conflicts. That's probably what happens! At least there is some nasty ego projection going on in my mind. That's the "normal" condition for all people in ego consciousness. And also, Vernon Howard talked about some of this several decades ago:

If everything is already in perfect order and controlled by infinite intelligence as I hypothesize, then why is the world in such a mess? And why do people suffer so much? Heck even myself I have tons of suffering to resolve. So the actual situation actually looks like a falsification of the view that reality is already perfect. One idea is to expect things to sort themselves out perfectly and that we are at the moment just experiencing birth pangs of our whole planet. But then what about thousands of years of human suffering with natural disasters, famine, wars, disease, death and violence? My answer is that all of that is only information in the now. Yes, the past is real, but the past is only now. Nobody has actually suffered in the past! Nobody has ever suffered in the past? That claim might sound outright insane, but it's a consequence of the present moment being all of reality. So for example when we think about a past personal experience where we have suffered, our mind retrofits memories into that experience. There is in fact no evidence for past experiences being anything other than memories being experienced in the mind.

Each person is a unique perspective of this same reality. And the perspective is a no-thingness. That's how I see it but it's just a model, an intellectual idea. In her new video Anna talks about the actual experience of this.

I got an idea about the nasty energy field Brad Johnson talked about. When we are in ego consciousness the energy field we resonate with is full of conflict. And higher being can feel attacked by it. What will happen when we ourselves transcend ego consciousness? Will we too feel attacked by energy from people who are still in ego consciousness? No! Because that's different than for another being outside of the collective ego field. The ego field is connected so when we transcend it we rise above the whole collective field. So the nasty energy from other people will be neutralized. Well, that's my idea anyway.

If there is only now, then when did I for example post my previous post? The answer is that I posted it now. This is a radical change of perspective compared to the usual way of thinking of the past. All the past is now, from the beginning of time to what is manifested now. I found in A Course in Miracles the same claim! ACIM says that "the Son of God emerges from the past into the present. And the present extends forever." I interpret the Son as the manifestation of the Word of God, which is all of creation and in the beginning the Word was God (John 1:1), and then the Word became manifest in the form of the Son. The Son is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (Revelation 22:13). And both the beginning and the end exist now and only now! The Father has no end, God the Father, the umanifested, the form of the emptiness, Brahman, is infinite and so the Father is always greater than the Son (John 14:28). Then what about the claim in ACIM that the past and the future don't exist? My interpretation is that ACIM means that there is no past stretching away from the now, nor is there a future away from the now. This is tricky but I think I can make it consistent with my view which is that there is no past outside of the now and the future is infinite potential not manifested yet. The Word became flesh (John 1:14) which surely must mean the birth of Jesus Christ. BUT, Jesus said that before Abraham was born, he is (John 8:58). This means that Christ existed before the birth of Jesus. I haven't studied the Bible in detail but to me this means that Christ represents the entire manifestation of the Word of God, the way and the truth and the life! Notice that Christ being all of the manifestation includes the devil and wars as well as the flowers and the rainbows.

The "spiritual" slogan "die before you die" is an ego trick! It's only the ego who believes in death so it just fools itself into a spiritual belief and goes on dying anyway. What a loser! The victorious one in the Bible is the deathless one, the one that lets the dead bury the dead. The ego is so certain about inevitable death because it lives among other egos with the same delusion. Nobody has ever died. Because all the past is only now, so how can for example Napoleon Bonaparte have died in some past? He couldn't! Because Napoleon exists now and only now.

The ego is the will of God, and so is a parasite. Everything is the will of God. Or, from an atheistic perspective, everything is the expanding graph in the Wolfram Physics Project. It's the same thing. It's one whole and unified process of life. And in this new video Paul Hedderman compares the ego to a parasite. Eckhart Tolle I think has said something similar, about how we have become possessed by our minds and believe that we are our thoughts. We are our thoughts since we are everything, but that's not what those teachers are pointing to. They are pointing to the mistaken belief that we only are the parasite, the thinking mind, separate from everything else.

There is ONLY God's will. So the devil is God's will in action, albeit at a low developmental level. Some, or almost all Christians may disagree with that claim. But actually it says in John 1 in the Bible that the Word has created everything. So the Bible already says that the Word of God has produced the devil and everything the devil has created. And I think it says somewhere in A Course in Miracles that there is only God's will and I may even have posted a quote about that earlier. I can't find that exact statement now but I found another verse that says the same thing: That's similar to, and in my opinion exactly the same as, the Word has created everything, which in turn as I interpret it is the same as the will of God. So the ego is totally the will of God. Everything is! It's "just" that we need to transcend the ego/devil stage.

If the devil is simply the energy field that contains conflict, then what does A Course in Miracles say about the devil? I found this passage: That sounds similar to Leo's definition of the devil! And indeed, it also fits the idea that the devil is the energy field that contains conflict. Then what about the belief in the devil as some real separate being? Is that only childish superstition? Only at a surface level since an energy field can be interpreted as being a being. And going even deeper there is only one being! The whole process of life is a single "being". What does ACIM mean by Beginning in the quote? To me it means that we need to go back to the beginning of creation to find the connection to everything. I even think of biological evolution as basically being the "devil", haha. Because it's a struggle between seeming separations. A necessary struggle for growth and development but one that we are meant to evolve out of into a higher stage of earth as a single holon.

In this recent press conference Trump was asked (from about 15 minutes) about how Apple is worried about the ban of WeChat and not being able to do business with Tencent they won't be able to sell iPhones into China. Trump replied: "Whatever. I will do what's good in terms of the security of our country. We have been badly let down by China. What's your next question?" Yikes, I thought he would say that the Executive Order only applies to business in the U.S. We will see later what actually happens, but that sounded pretty definite to me.

During the recent press conference with Trump one reporter "asked the Q", meaning asked about Trump's connection to QAnon. Well, the reporter only asked (from about 12 minutes) if Trump agreed with the statement that QAnon is worth listening to. Trump didn't answer the question directly, lol, but he did say that (the statement about QAnon was from someone he previously called a future Republican star) "absolutely, I did congratulate her [about her tremendous victory]." Trump also mentioned a few things about FBI corruption in the beginning. I think that the FBI is innocent, but the DNC might be corrupt as hell, we will see.

In this new video Brad Johnson said something amazing that really resonated with me. It sounds outrageous from a mainstream perspective because that's not at all what we have been taught by parents, learned in schools or heard on the news. His channeling can feel New Agie but there is I believe a kernel of truth to what he said. Brad (and Athena) said (from about 52 minutes): "... humanity needs to grow up ... a lot of races are afraid of us ... because you are so powerful ... when you have these hostile emotions and you're projecting that towards another one of these beings, to them it's almost like they're being raped, by your emotions, because that's how powerful you are. You are again not disciplined enough ... you don't realize what you're doing." That seems correct to me, except I doubt that higher beings are "afraid" of us. It's more like how our energy field is filled with conflict. It's a powerful energy field even in ego consciousness but it's dragon energy in the sense of the great dragon being the devil without us knowing that we have this devilish effect on higher beings.