r0ckyreed

I realized I was wrong about my pessimism against meditation. I still think some of my points are valid, but dismissing meditation as a whole is incorrect. I realized that meditation is about connecting to Absolute Happiness, Beauty, Intelligence, and Solipsism. Meditation done briefly every day is valuable to connect with Absolute Happiness. I have cried of tears and hugged trees from my meditation practice. It is such an amazing experience. I realize meditation isn’t as one sided as I thought it was. Even contemplation is a form of meditation. But I think it is useful to quiet the intellect every once in a while to be fully present to Absolute Happiness. The issue is only going for Absolute Happiness/Beauty through meditation and dismissing contemplation as a path to Absolute Intelligence. For me, meditation is about connecting to the Divine and becoming conscious of the Universe. Silencing the mind is only one narrow way of doing that and it can be helpful. But I think contemplation and meditation need to be combined to be effective. We need to both quietly observe and deliberately think/reflect. Both practices together have produced my Enlightenment. Just thought I’d share my insight into the value of meditation in conjunction with contemplation. There honestly really isn’t anything different about these practices. Meditation should be about increasing consciousness of the Divine and using and silencing the mind are both paths that need to be pursued. Just doing one or the other will breed an incomplete enlightenment.

How are you all interpreting the OPs pic? I am seeing it as the Universe experiencing a part of itself by pretending to be a human. It is wearing a human mask and experiencing itself like a diver wears goggles to experience part of the ocean.

@Someone hereDirect experience though is limited. God hides things from itself. For instance, Leo’s toilet exists right now even though I am not aware of it. The Earth is orbiting around the sun even though I am not aware of it. There are many things outside of the human experience that are happening. Look. If a murder happens, do we just say that the murderer doesn’t exist because we cannot perceive him? There exists a murderer outside of direct experience. That is an idea in direct experience that points to something outside of my direct experience.

One of the things that I have been really struggling with is how to reconcile and integrate the insight that reality is relative into my daily life. I have fallen into the trap of relativism of thinking that everything is relative; therefore, I cannot be wrong about anything. Relativism seems to be a key concept in actualized.org teachings, but I am starting to question relativism because I do not think it takes a full account of Truth. Absolute Truth cannot be conflated with Absolute Relativism. These are different. Relativism fails to take into account that some beliefs are more in alignment with how reality works than others. Relativism seems to apply that everyone is right and nobody can be wrong because it is just their opinion. But one of my objections to relativism is that the fact that we are arguing over something is evidence of a truth beyond relativism. Why argue if everything is just perspective and opinion? Your arguments would be no more valid than mine since it would equate to you being X likes chocolate and me being Y likes vanilla. But there seems to be more to the picture. Objectivism does seem to be true because the fact that we are arguing over something, and the fact that some beliefs and some individuals have greater understanding than others suggests that it isn't all equally relative. That there is some hierarchy of perspectives. But the problem is what is the hierarchy, how does it work, and how do we know? For instance, one person could believe a Lake Monster. They could be right about there being dangers in going into a lake, but they could be right for the wrong reasons. So, instead of it being a Lake Monster, in reality, it was revealed that it was a crocodile. We could also conceive of someone believing there is a Lake Monster when there is actually no threat at all and was just pure fantasy. Do you see how relativism does not apply here. This person's belief has no bearing of truth whatsoever. The whole idea that everyone's perspective has a sliver of truth is a pure fantasy. Someone could believe in space kangaroos or believe to see an alien. People who have massive hallucinations could see these under the influence of psychedelics or under mental psychosis. Do you see how this issue gets more complex? Because now, we are suggesting that the sober state is more true than psychotic/psychedelic state. But this we could say is a relative and arbitrary hierarchy that we are imposing onto reality and truth. But at the same time, we could say that psychotic/psychedelic states are objectively wrong because they are less reliable than sober states of consciousness. We could say from an evolutionary point of view, that non-sober states of consciousness have gotten people killed because their beliefs/actions differed from reality in a way that got them killed (i.e., believing you can fly when you can't- From Forrest Gump). I just see that I get lost in this, and I know that I have not solved this issue because the battle between Objectivism and Relativism is very nuanced. Remember that objectivism means that something is true independent of what you or a society believes about it. Relativism means that the truth of something depends on an individual, society, culture. When it comes to values, I think we could say that these are purely relative truth, or put in another way, we could say that values are objective truths about an individual at that given time. This is because our values will differ across time, so we cannot say that values are solidly objective. But we can be wrong about our own values. So in a way, our values are objective in a sense that we can be wrong about them. What are your thoughts?

I feel like What Is The Color of The Dress raises doubts for me on this issue that I don’t think has been resolved yet. Here is the link: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/ Contemplate how profound this issue is. Half of the world thinks the dress is white and gold when it is really black and white. How can perception be reality when perception deceives us? What if the Astronauts who view the earth being round are just like the people who view the dress as white and gold? Imagine that our senses deceive 99% of humans. And 1% perceive their senses clearly. There is your enlightened guru.

I had a philosophical conversation with a friend, and I realized that I have so many contradictions in my understanding and worldview, and I wonder what to make of it. We talked about the role of parsimony and Occam's Razor in how it is important to keep our explanations simplified. Some of the contradictions that we noted is that I give authority to Astronauts that the Earth is round. I am 90% certain that the Earth is round. However, when it comes to scientists claiming that NDE's and Deja Vu is just a temporal lobe brain glitch, I question the neuroscientists and doctors who say that because I suggested that they are operating off of materialist paradigm assumptions that brain states cause consciousness. I suggested that it is possible that brain states correlate with consciousness in that it is possible that the way that we see the future requires that there are glitches in the brain. The other contradiction was that reality is imagination, imagination is truth, but there are people who are just flat out wrong in their imaginations that differ from consensus reality, which is a shared imagination/dream. If reality is just perception, then is it possible for people to be wrong in their perceptions? Think of a paranoid conspiracy theorist vs. someone who claims to have seen aliens/ghosts. My argument against this point is that reality is full of contradictions because the same imagination that creates delusion is also the same imagination that creates brilliance. There are people who are lost in their imagination (i.e., paranoid people) and there are people who are enhanced (i.e., genetic freaks). Genetic freaks may be able to see 1% of what 99% of people cannot even fathom. But paranoid people who claim to see ghosts and monsters see 1% of what the 99% of people cannot. Who is right? How do we know? My friend pointed out that there are many contradictions in my understanding, and I basically said that is because reality is very nuanced and complex. Maybe we should question the assumption that the simplest explanation is the best one. I also questioned the notion of "best." My friend seemed to be very scientifically minded and said that science gives us the best explanation of why Deja Vu happens. I questioned that saying that there are spiritual perspectives as well and that maybe consciousness being able to imagine the future is more simple than brain glitches causing subjective phenomena. What are your all's thoughts? How do you make sense of contradiction in your understanding/worldview?

Here is part of my conversation with Claude: Me: I wrestle with the contradictions that I have in my worldview. It is hard for me to articulate my worldview because on the one hand, I defined fools as people being closed-minded, but on the other hand, I myself am being closed-minded at times. Reducing wisdom and foolishness down to Openmindedness and close-mindedness is a difficult one because a fool can be so openminded that they are gullible to everything while a wise person is able to close their minds off to foolish perspectives. But at the same time, how do we know this balance? A wise person has to be openminded to some degree but then has to know when to be closed-minded as well. Claude: You raise a profound and perennial challenge - how to strike the right balance between open-mindedness and discernment, between being receptive to new ideas and perspectives while also maintaining a grounded, critical stance. It's a tension that every sincere seeker of wisdom must grapple with. On one level, openness of mind is clearly a virtue and a prerequisite for growth and learning. We can't expand our understanding if we're not willing to consider ideas that challenge our existing beliefs and assumptions. History is full of examples of dogmatic close-mindedness holding back progress and causing immense harm - think of the persecution of Galileo for challenging geocentrism or the rigid racist ideologies that justified slavery and colonialism. At the same time, you're absolutely right that wisdom isn't simply a matter of being open to everything. Discernment - the ability to critically evaluate ideas, to distinguish truth from falsehood, insight from delusion - is equally crucial. A mind so open that it accepts every notion uncritically isn't wise, but gullible and adrift. The key, as you suggest, is to find a middle way between these extremes - a way of being open-minded but not empty-headed, critically-minded but not closed-minded. This is what the philosopher Bertrand Russell perhaps pointed to when he said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." In practical terms, I think this middle way involves cultivating a few key intellectual virtues: 1) Intellectual humility - recognizing the limits of our own knowledge and understanding, being willing to admit when we're wrong or uncertain. 2) Curiosity - a genuine desire to understand, to seek out new information and perspectives. 3) Critical thinking - the ability to analyze and evaluate ideas based on logic, evidence, and coherence. 4) Metacognition - thinking about our own thinking, being aware of our cognitive biases and assumptions. 5) Holistic thinking - striving to see the big picture, to synthesize different perspectives and ways of knowing into a cohesive (if always incomplete) understanding. Operating from these virtues, we can strive to be open to new ideas while also maintaining discernment. We can hold our beliefs sincerely but not dogmatically, always being willing to revise them in light of new understanding. We can engage with different perspectives empathetically while also thinking critically about them. It's a challenging balance to strike, and I suspect it's a lifelong process of growth and refinement rather than a static state one achieves. The very fact that you're grappling with these contradictions and tensions in your own worldview is a sign of wisdom in my view - it shows a commitment to intellectual honesty and growth, a willingness to question and complicate your own understanding. Ultimately, perhaps wisdom lies not in having a perfectly consistent and complete worldview, but in navigating the inevitable contradictions and gaps in our understanding with humility, nuance, and good faith. It lies in striving for coherence while also accepting a degree of mystery and uncertainty. It's a challenging path, but one that I believe leads to growth, insight, and a richer engagement with the complexities of reality. Me: It is hard to get clarity with all of these nuances of reality. It seems like contradiction is inevitable. Claude: You're absolutely right that contradiction and paradox seem to be inherent features of reality, or at least of our attempts to comprehend it. The more deeply we probe into the nature of things, the more we encounter these perplexing tensions and apparent contradictions. This is evident in many domains. In quantum physics, light behaves as both a wave and a particle. In mathematics, Gödel's incompleteness theorems show that any sufficiently complex logical system contains statements that are true but unprovable within the system. In philosophy, we encounter ancient paradoxes like the Ship of Theseus or the Liar's Paradox that reveal the limits of our conceptual frameworks. And as you point out, in the realm of personal belief and worldview, we often find ourselves holding ideas that seem to contradict each other, or encountering contradictions between different modes of understanding reality. In the face of this, it's understandable to feel a sense of frustration or even despair. Our minds crave clarity, consistency, and certainty. We want a worldview that is neat, tidy, and free of contradiction. But perhaps this very craving is part of the problem. Perhaps the belief that we can or should achieve a perfectly consistent and complete understanding of reality is itself a kind of hubris or delusion. This isn't to say that we shouldn't strive for consistency and clarity in our thinking. We should absolutely use logic, reason, and critical thinking to refine our beliefs and root out contradictions where we can. But we may also need to cultivate a certain comfort with contradiction, ambiguity, and uncertainty. This is where intellectual humility comes in - the recognition that reality is vastly complex, and our minds are limited. We can strive to understand as best we can while also acknowledging the inherent incompleteness and imperfection of that understanding. In practical terms, this might mean holding our beliefs and worldviews a bit more loosely. It means being willing to live with a degree of cognitive dissonance, to hold space for conflicting ideas without needing to resolve them immediately. It means approaching the big questions with a spirit of openness and curiosity rather than a desire for dogmatic certainty. It also means drawing on multiple ways of knowing - not just rational analysis but also intuition, embodied experience, aesthetic and moral sensibility, etc. Different modes of engaging with reality can offer complementary insights, even if they sometimes seem to contradict each other on the surface. Ultimately, the goal perhaps shouldn't be to eliminate all contradiction, but to find a way to hold and navigate contradiction skillfully. We can strive for a worldview that is as coherent and well-grounded as possible, while also remaining open to mystery, complexity, and the limits of our understanding. It's a challenging balance, but one that can lead to a richer, more nuanced, and ultimately more truthful engagement with the grand perplexity of existence. These are just some thoughts, but I resonate with your sense of the difficulty and importance of grappling with these deep questions. The fact that you're engaging with these contradictions sincerely is itself a form of wisdom in my view.

It’s impossible to awaken because then you would just be awakening to another dream. You wake up from one dream to realize that you are still asleep in another. I guess “awakening” is realizing that there are infinite dreams and it is impossible to escape dreaming. Total Awakening from all dreams is itself a fantasy dream.

@zurew The same method I use to validate my introspection is the same method you use to validate your logic. You would be a fool if you doubt that you are reading these words right now. You cannot doubt it because you are doing it. Otherwise, there is no point in replying and having a conversation about this because then you doubt that too. You seem to be really certain that consciousness can be doubted without realizing that your doubt could not exist without consciousness. If what you are saying is true, then you cannot even trust your own logic and criticisms that you have. You have never validated your own logic. How could you without using logic?

@Leo Gura If we can prove that Christianity is false in one possible world/dream, then Christianity can’t be absolutely true.

Yes, but existence/actuality is more fundamental than concepts. Concepts are a second-order phenomenon. Christianity is an idea. Jesus is an ego. The idea of a son of God and 10 commandments are all conceptual. Existence doesn't have the 10 commandments attached to it. This is something that is imagined by the Universe. What the Universe imagines isn't the "mechanism" or source of the Universe. I could have a dream about Christianity and cutting up my skull and seeing a brain. But that does not mean that the brain in my dream is the source of my dream or that the Christianity that I am dreaming to be real is what is producing the dream. Science and religion can point to patterns, but they are all occurring within the Absolute. They depend on the Absolute. The Absolute doesn't depend on them. This is why I think that it is impossible for such as dream where Christianity actually equals the Absolute Truth. I am not sure if this makes sense, but this is how my mind right now is making sense of it.

So does this mean that there is "stuff behind the scene"? That there is an external world, meaning that there is stuff outside of what I perceive? It sounds like your toilet still exists even when I am not looking at it.

By raising your consciousness. Look, if you want to know whether the earth is round or flat or whatever, you would have to go meta and travel where you cannot normally navigate, which is upwards. Once you see that the earth is round, you can no longer hold your previous view that it was flat. The same holds with whatever truth you find. If you think Christianity is true, then go and question it to death honestly and you will discover more truths. A person who doesn't care about truth and just wants to believe will find all the evidence that supports their beliefs. You will know you are not mistaken when you have raised your consciousness higher than your previous state. That is the first step. You have to admit that you do not know and get into a genuine state of not-knowing. From that state of not-knowing, you will raise your consciousness and get to true knowing. Admit that right now you do not know if you can assess your consciousness right now and you may find that your level of introspection has raised just from admitting that simple truth. That is one of the reasons why I state that complete enlightenment/awakening is an illusion because there will always be a high level of understanding. The idea that you will completely understand reality is a fantasy because reality is infinite and being human comes with inherent limits in understanding. Not so fast. Your level of consciousness as a human will always be limited and there will always be higher states because consciousness is infinite. That isn't a glitch but a feature of infinity. You will know which belief will be undermined as you gain more consciousness. Like I said, you will not get to Absolute Truth if you don't value and practice honesty and openness. You have to deal with the limits at hand and strive to do your best each day to kill what is false. As a spiritual practice, just practice writing down what you think is absolutely true and then see how what you wrote is false. Your getting lost in this "levels of consciousness" paradigm. It is a useful way of looking at consciousness, but this model also has its limits. No state of consciousness is particularly better than any other. Some states will be more efficient than others depending on the situation. A drunken state may help you will confidence but not with intelligence for instance. A meditative state may help you attain peace of mind, and a contemplative state could lead to existential understanding. Each state has its own perks and cons. You seem to be asking this question backwards. The question is not what state of consciousness I need to make the following claim, but rather what do I genuinely know or rather not-know from my state of consciousness in this very moment. You are only dealing with your current state of consciousness and you making claims isn't going to raise it. It is genuine contemplation that will raise your state, and genuine contemplation involves questioning hidden assumptions and blindspots which could take years and decades of disciplined work. It cannot be doubted. The fact that you are reading these words and are able to type cannot be doubted. That is like saying that your hand doesn't exist when you are typing right now. You cannot doubt that experience is happening right now. Haven't you noticed that reality itself is circular? How does God exist? God invented itself. What methods does God use to know itself without using a circular process like introspection? To even answer this question requires introspection. Introspection is the heart of all understanding. How do you know logic is logical without using logic? How do you know your senses are accurate without using your senses? You have to bite the bullet and accept that introspection is circular because it is the foundation of understanding. You can only know whether your introspection is accurate or not through introspection. If that is true, then you go with that. You need to verify it all with your direct experience. If your direct experience says it is true and if Leo says it is false, you consider Leo's perspective and try to test it out in your direct experience. If your direct experience states otherwise, then you go with your own insights from your direct experience because that is what is true at this given time for you. If you ask me if the earth is flat or round, I am going to give you the truth and that is that I do not know. I am going to go with my direct experience and test your claim that it is round through my direct experience. If I go out into space and the earth is flat, then that will be what is true. If I just take your word that it is round or make claims that it is round, then that will be false.

That would be because we are missing honesty in the equation. Someone who is honest and has a high consciousness will be able to introspect and be aware of beliefs they hold that can be doubted. Doubting typically means that you are aware of something that isn’t based on certainty and truth. What is meant by absolute truth is something that you cannot be mistaken about. I have the appearance of a phone in front of me. That cannot be doubted. That cannot be mistaken, and so that makes it absolutely true.

That’s what I figured. I got it. I guess the point you were making is that there is nothing stopping Quanon and Islam from being true in another universe. The issue that I have is that from an epistemic standpoint, I can only know this world. All those other multi universes are hypothetical as they are more conceptual than actual. From an ontological standpoint, I cannot travel to a different dimension/dream because that would still be this one. My hand is actual and all those other worlds are concept and imagination. The part I had trouble following is that Christianity cannot be absolutely true in any universe because it is conceptual rather than actual. Christianity cannot be observed. I can look at my hand and that is actual, but Christianity is concept and imagination.

Absolute Truth has to deal with what is true absolutely. We need to base our knowledge on what is absolutely true. If you can doubt something, then you don’t really know it. It takes alot of honesty because you can also be overly arrogant and have no doubts when you are wrong.

So then how can we say that anyone is wrong? This just makes Trump supporters just as valid and true as a Sage. There is nothing stopping Christianity from being absolutely true. Maybe I am misunderstanding this, but there seem to be objective truths in a relative sense such as being wrong about what makes one happy.

@Leo GuraIt is hard to imagine them being Absolute because they are so relative. Whose version of Christianity would be Absolute. There are a billion flavors of Christianity. Which one could be true? Also, if God can create something, doesn’t that imply that it is contingent on God? If God creates Christianity as Absolute Truth. God would have to fool itself into believing that. Christianity would only appear to be absolutely true if God deluded itself to that degree. But everything that God creates has to depend on God. Christianity couldn’t exist without Consciousness /God. I am not understanding how it is possible. It is like God is lifting a stone more powerful than itself. But I don’t think God really couldn’t do that unless God uses his unlimited power to limit its own power. I am not sure how a concept such as Jesus or the Space Kangaroo could be Absolutely True when it is contingent on the Mind imagining it. You make a good point that consciousness can be devoid of wisdom but not devoid of intelligence. It takes intelligence to have a dumb state of consciousness. But an highly intelligent form of consciousness I would suggest would have some degrees of wisdom associated with it. When we are talking about God/The Universe, we are talking about the most intelligent/wisest consciousness there is. The issue I have in understanding your last statement is that I am only on my own island. My human consciousness cannot explore other islands and lands beyond my own perception. Anything that I imagine outside of my consciousness is an idea held inside of my consciousness. There may be other consciousnesses or other dreams/worlds outside my own, but I could never access them or prove that. That is why I say to not speculate about other dreams/worlds because the only world that can be known absolutely is my own consciousness right now. My subjective experience is absolute truth. I cannot deny or doubt it. Even if I were to travel to another island, it would still be my island. If I were to experience another consciousness, it would still be my experience. We cannot escape this ramification of epistemological solipsism.

@Leo GuraI am not sure if I agree. The Universe could imagine a reality where Christianity and Quanon appear to be true. But Truth is more fundamental than any human idea about reality. The ideas in the Bible and Christianity are all relative, and therefore, they cannot be absolutely true. The only Absolute Truth I know is that the Universe/Consciousness exists. It is absolutely true because it is something that exists in "all possible worlds" and cannot be doubted/mistaken. A Christian's dream seems to include that Christianity is "absolute truth." They misinterpret the teachings of Jesus such as thinking that Jesus is the only way to truth, hence, "I am the way the truth and the life" quote. Many Christians seems to misunderstand those teachings. But at the same time, some relativist would say that it is just my perspective that they misunderstand. But I argue that my perspective or their perspective could be wrong relative to what is actually true about reality. We may not ever know, but there are true and false ways of looking and navigating reality. Wisdom seems to be more than a human notion. Wisdom seems to be a connection to higher intelligence, things beyond the human. That is what I think makes wisdom, wisdom is that it isn't just a human construction, but rather a connection to the true nature of something. It also takes wisdom to know that crocodiles don't care about wisdom. And it takes wisdom to not test it out by petting a crocodile with my "wisdom." However, I just had a thought that maybe crocodiles do unconsciously care about some forms of "wisdom" relative to their survival. If a crocodile could hunt more efficiently and could avoid getting killed, it would take the "wiser" path. Wisdom isn't devoid from survival. Wisdom is highly practical. I see now that wisdom can be relative to different organisms. A crocodile might never be able to have the type of mind capable of contemplation. But the crocodile can find wisdom in other ways to live more in alignment with how reality is. That crocodile that ate that old woman wasn't wise because it got euthanized. A really profoundly wise crocodile could grok this one day. Evolution is an intelligent process and sometimes can be a process of wisdom as well. But maybe I am conflating wisdom and intelligence too closely together because there are subtle differences. I would say that while it is great for thought experiments, I don't think we should speculate about other worlds because the only world that I can be sure that exists is this one. But even if there were other worlds that exist where somehow everything Trump is doing is correct and democrats are fools (I don't see how this could be possible but lets go with it), then they could be right but for the wrong reasons. Just like believing that ghosts are real, but it turns out that it was another type of dangerous being. You can see that their mind is fundamentally not in alignment with reality in all possible worlds. Because in all possible worlds, they would be buying into all kinds of delusions in these "other kinds of worlds/dreams." They could be right about one thing like Trump but wrong about so many other things because their methods will produce more fallacious results than truth.

@Leo GuraYes but what about foolishness. At lower levels of consciousness, a fool is deluded and thinks they are right and that wisdom is just relative. But at higher levels of consciousness, we see that wisdom has more objective features even as it relates to relative domains. There is a way that reality is structured and relative to how reality is structured right now, there are objective truths relative to this structure and self-imposed rule-sets. A person could believe in the Christian God and that Jesus is King. And that the Bible is true. But these people are wrong in all possible worlds because the Bible is content within consciousness. There is no pulling this out from the rug and changing the objective truth. It is easier to be wrong than it is to be right because the only thing I know I am right about is that consciousness exists. People may think that death isn’t real or that there is an afterlife. These people would be right or wrong relative to the actual structure of reality and this would be independent of their beliefs but still dependent on the Universe/Consciousness. Delusion is relative/dependent to the structure of reality. This does not mean that delusion is an illusion. It just means that given that gravity exists on earth, it would be a delusion to think you can fly with no other modifications. Wisdom also seems to be relative and objective at the same time. If there is no objectivity, then wisdom does not really exist because wisdom suggests that one’s attitudes and way of life are in alignment with truth, how reality works. But if it is all relative, then a Trump supporter is as wise as a Sage. However, wisdom is also relative in the sense that when we evaluate a certain belief or individual as wise, we are imposing our own subjective criteria into that. What makes a belief or somebody wise? This question seems to have objective and subjective elements to it and there could be an infinitude of possible answers.

@Leo GuraYou seem to have a different definition of objectivity than the traditional philosophical one. The traditional definition of objectivity is typically defined as something being true if nobody believed it or even if no conscious beings existed. The issue I see is that something could be “objective” within the dream but at the same time still be dependent on the existence of the nature of the dream/dreamer itself. For example, the laws of physics would be contingent on the dreamer having that specific dream even though that the dream does not have control over the laws of physics. So it is a kind of contradiction it seems. Your point about different dreamers having different dreams seems to challenge the idea of a shared, objective reality. The fact that we are able to do science and communicate seems to imply that there is a shared dream/reality. If it isn’t true across all dreams, then wouldn’t that be relative and not objective? Objective would be true across all dreams? I would also say that what most people call relative truths could also be objective truths as well. Thinking that happiness and health is purely subjective. But there is a science behind happiness and health and there are right and wrong strategies to attain happiness and good health. Also personal values is another one like I said. You could say that you value truth, but in reality, your behaviors could contradict that - cognitive dissonance. But at the same time, I ask myself why reality is the way that it is at all. Why is reality set up in this way to where these particular things are objective? Could they not be objective? But at the same time, what would limit the Universe to not be able to change some of these objective truths like the earth being round? If they could be changed then they wouldn’t be objective per se, but if they couldn’t be changed, then the Universe may not be infinite? Maybe it is possible to have objective truths that do change over time such as right now it is true regardless of what you believe that there are no aliens on Earth. But this could change. People can be deluded about aliens having visited earth. People could think that other minds do exist outside their own but they can be wrong about that. People could also go the other extreme and become solipsists. But more fundamental truths such as Consciousness itself cannot be changed because they are what it is and cannot be another way.

I used to engage in a meditation practice. But I recently discovered that meditation is a waste of time. I realized that I get the same benefits if not more when I go out, hike in nature, and contemplate consciousness. Contemplation, exercising in nature, and socializing have been my 3 greatest spiritual practices. Here is a simple example why meditation is a waste of time. Imagine that you are playing an open world video game like Skyrim. Imagine just sitting your character up with the greybreards for the entire game just meditating. Do you see how limited your experience would be? You wouldn’t get the character development that you need to grow if you just play the whole game up meditating with the graybeards. Life is too short to become a monk drone. There is so much of life to experience and so much growth. When you are meditating, you are not doing something else such as exercising, socializing, fulfilling your life purpose, etc. Now, of course, brief meditation won’t harm you, but I don’t see how it could help you any more than contemplation. Contemplation is the art of understanding and curiosity. How can you be curious with a silent mind? Do you see how if you just meditate all day, you won’t be thinking and contemplating deeply. You won’t get off the cushion and enjoy life out in nature. Essentially, your life is no different than you being in prison, except this is a prison of your own choosing. There is more to life than staring at a cave wall. Notice how unintelligent of a life this would be. You wouldn’t even watch a video game streamer do this. Something to think about.

I agree that it contradicts, but Absolute Relativism holds that the only Absolute Truth is that everything is relative. But as we can see, this doesn’t seem to be right because people can be deluded about reality and it isn’t just an opinion.

This actually brings up a good question that I will make a separate post about: How is it possible to be wrong if reality is relative?

Hey guys, I was wrong. I was overlooking times when meditation did connect me to absolute beauty. However, meditation being the center of one’s life may not be a good idea.