Mason Riggle

@Breakingthewall yep. The ego comes and goes like whirlpools in a river. And like the ego, whirlpools don't exist separate from 'what the river is doing'.. You can't take a whirlpool out of a river and show it to me. Whirlpools appear as patterns in rivers, and don't actually 'do' anything other than be how they are, when they are, if they are. Sure a whirlpool makes bubbles, and swirls around, and erodes the riverbed, and sucks things in.. all kinds of things a whirlpool does.. but is it really DOING those things? If it was aware that it was, and produced thoughts instead of bubbles, one thought that might bubble up is 'I'm doing this..' I am responsible for all these things I do.. Me, the whirlpool.

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@Iksander It's always now. There is no 'independent of'.. which implies something separate from something else. This eternal moment (the past doesn't exist anywhere other than this moment, nor does the future) is all there is, and you're it. I'm it. There's nothing separate from 'everything'. You are already effortlessly being yourself, and any attempt to do otherwise is just more you being yourself. There is one path, and you're already on it.

@Iksander "I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware." - Alan Watts.

@Iksander yep. Consider, is your hand 'part of you' or 'external to you'? Both, yes? If the 'you' who own's 'your hand' or is aware of 'your hand' is not identical to 'your hand', then who are you? If 'your hand' is part of 'you'.. then 'your neighbor' is just as much a part of you. "Am I doing all of this, or is all of this doing me?" - Alan Watts

Being.

@r0ckyreed I used to be a member of several very active 'Determinism' facebook groups where it was talked about to death. Many come to the realization the neither 'determinism' nor 'indeterminism' (should such a concept be rational) give room for 'free will' in the sense of being able to do 'other' than exactly what one will do. And since 'determinism' isn't necessary to be 'true' to show 'free will' to be a nonsensical notion, people may actively avoid the topic in favor of 'experiential' evidence of the lack of free will, rather than logical proofs.

@vizual no, you are misunderstanding my metaphor. To be selfless is to 'not be a distinct self'.. With no self, who is left to feel selfless?

I'm saying the 'ego' can't feel the lack of itself any more than 'silence' sounds like something. What does a song sound like when it's over?

For fun! Everythingness loves pretending it's a 'self' (selfishness) so it can seem like somethingness at all. Feeling 'selfless' will never happen, because when there's no self, there's no self left to feel any way at all.

I'm not sure I follow.. responsible for what stuff? Do you feel like a 'thing which is responsible' that sits somewhere inside your organism, controlling your organism, 'seeing' what you see.. 'hearing' what you hear.. 'knowing' what you know? Where, inside your organism is this thing? If 'this thing' is 'looking out at the world'.. what if it could also look inside and 'see' it's thoughts and feelings (internal) rather than 'sights' and 'sounds' (external).. it might recognize this boundary (external/internal) wasn't real, and the 'thing which experiences both' does not have any 'place' to exist.. There is no 'thing which experiences' separate from 'that which is being experienced'.. there is just 'experience'.. all of it... and 'you' are all of that.

...he said, using words, to describe experience.

If an organism had a sense organ as powerful as the eyes that could 'see' your internal environment at the same time as your external environment, it might recognize there is no boundary between the two and there would be no 'place' for that 'perspective' to exist... there would be no 'looking out' at the world, or 'looking in at the world'.. there would just be 'the world', which is the case. It's the imaginary boundary between 'you' and 'that which is not you' that calls itself 'ego' or 'self'.. and that boundary doesn't exist.

@Tyler Durden imagine looking into a microscope.. and zooming in further and further until finally you zoomed in on Earth and then found yourself and zoomed in on yourself until you saw yourself looking into a microscope, and zoomed in on the back of your head, and kept zooming in further and further until you finally zoomed in on Earth and found yourself and zoomed in on that.... That's a metaphor for the shape of experience.

@r0ckyreed Determinism is talked about all the time. It's essentially a 'fixed chain of causality'. The notion that events are 'determined' by prior states of existence. People often use Determinism as one method of 'debunking' notions of 'free will'.. because according to determinism, there is just 'what will happen as determined'. This, however, is not the only method of 'debunking' notions of 'free will'. To really 'break down' notions of 'free will'.. simply try defining it, and begin to realize there is no logical notion of freedom.. you're left with nonsense. You can also directly experience your complete lack of freedom at any moment if only it occurs to you to pay close attention to what your actual experience is like.. "Any attempt to change what is occurring, is just more 'what is already occurring as it will'." -Me

Of course the future will turn out exactly as it will turn out, and this moment is an absolutely necessary 'step' along that path, as determined by all of the past. Any attempt to 'change' the future, is actually just 'causing the future', and changing nothing. In this sense, you might recognize that you are already always being exactly how you want to be, otherwise you'd be some other way. You don't even have to try. It's safe to 'let go'.

@SQAAD there is liberation in being 'unfree', as paradoxical as this sounds. Why? If there's nothing you can control.. what the hell are you worried about? All the worrying in the world won't change anything, it will just be more of what is happening. Count your blessings.. you are this amazing, seeing, feeling, thinking 'being'... happening exactly how you are.. and that's fucking incredible!

When you divide a mobius strip (a one sided, one edged surface) in two, you end up with 1 mobius strip.

One, not two. There is no 'experience/one who experiences'.. only 'experiencing'. There is no 'doer' of 'what's being done'.. only 'being'. It's all happening, and no-one is doing it. There's nothing to do and no one to do it. "I am. OH! I AM!" - Leo Gura

Have you ever considered that there is no separation between 'you' and 'God's Dream'? What if there is no 'you' distinct from 'that which is not you'?

@iboughtleosbooklist the 'ego' is imaginary separation. A 'you' who exists separate from 'that which is not you'. This is how 'existence' works. For 'satisfaction' to 'exist', so must 'dissatisfaction'.. to know 'up' requires knowing what 'down' is. 'Existence' is necessarily dualistic.. and imagining satisfaction separate from dissatisfaction is one way the Universe carves itself up imaginarily so that it can exist (seem like somethingness rather than everythingness/nothingness) at all.

I think it's important to remember that the dreaming/awakening analogy is just that, an analogy. The map is not the territory. An apple similar in ways, to a tomato. An apple is not exactly like a tomato, however. Don't conflate the two. Awakening is often times a deeper understanding of reality which includes previous understandings, rather than replacing them. Addition doesn't 'go away' once you discover multiplication.. you just have a deeper understanding of the relationship between numbers.

@kamwalker agree. Many people are shown the Camel, but refuse to look at it. "I have seen a Camel.. you can go the desert and see one too." "Yeah right.. Camels don't exist.. I'm not wasting my time looking for one in the desert." How do you show someone something who refused to look at it?

Consider: If you were dreaming, and in this dream you were trying to convince the characters in your dream that you were awake, this would be evidence of you still being asleep and lost in the dream, and not awake.

Reductionism is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts. I don't see a problem with this, and it seems consistent with Holism. The challenge is recognizing the arbitrary relativity of boundaries. My hand is made up of 5 digits, but it's only 1 hand.. is my hand 1 thing or 5 things? Is it both? Neither? How long must a knife be before it's a sword? How tall does a chair have to be before it's a stool? Where is the 'edge' between the atmosphere and space? How far down my arm does my wrist extend?