r0ckyreed

If half the world see the dress as white and gold and the other half sees the dress black and blue, then who is right? Can you see how contradictory this is? What if your awakenings are like you seeing a white and gold dress when in reality the dress is black and blue? You see, we cannot trust our senses even though our senses are all we have of reality. It is our rationality and contemplation that tells us that our senses deceive us. And even our own rationality is deceptive. Discovering what is true is like trying to best yourself in a game of chess. https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/ Edit: It is a self-referential problem because we are using our senses to discern that our senses are truth/false.

I had a deeper interpretation of the picture. The visual field represents part of the reality that you are viewing and the black space represents the nothingness of your visual field. If you look at your bed and then turn your back to it, the bed becomes that black nothingness. But it really isn’t black. When you turn around, your bed becomes the visuals of colors and shapes. @Leo Gura is this what you mean by the external world being infinity/nothingness?

@Leo Gura Okay. That’s what I thought. It sounds like there is an external world but it is nothingness/infinity. I am still not sure what this means but it helps to explain how there are other minds and things outside of my perception. Even though my perception is limited, it is still absolute. I could go blind and deaf, but that does not mean that the visual/auditory worlds have stopped existing. It just means that my access to the visual and auditory worlds consciousness are impaired/limited. It is the classic tree in the forest question. I would say that the sound is occurring and not occurring because infinity holds all possibilities, it is just that there is nobody to perceive sound. But if there are no perceivers of sound, it seems like the whole meaning of the existence of sound changes because our brains create sound qualia out of sound vibrations/waves.

They might be good enough to keep us alive, but that doesn’t mean they are good enough to discern truth from falsehood beyond survival. It is easy to assume that practicality/survival = Absolute Truth. But I would suggest that our senses are heavily biased towards survival. For instance, if you see a snake in the forest, then your fear might cloud your perception to where you start reacting to sticks and roots on the ground. I know this has happened to me, but think about the other ways your senses are impacted. Also, your rationality is also impacted too. If you ever had a bad experience with something, you will start to rationalize why you aren’t good at it and why you are a loser, etc. But I would argue that this isn’t true rationality because it is biased and distorted thinking.

@Someone here How do you explain that I could have a video camera of the murder that right now exists outside of your experience. Of course, when you view it, it will be inside of your experience. But right now, my experience holds more knowledge about it than you because I was the witness and you were not. I have the camera and you don’t. I think you are taking the Dream analogy too literally because our night time dreams are very different than this day dream. In the night dreams, everything is dependent on your imagination, whereas in this day dream, everything is dependent on the Universe’s imagination. One thing that you have to realize is that you cannot trust appearances and your own senses. Rationality has its limits, but I would say it is a higher form of knowing that is based off of the senses. We couldn’t have rationality without the senses, but I think rationality is higher because it is the part of our mind that can analyze our experiences and can distinguish illusion from reality. If you go to a magic show, do you honestly believe that everything you see the magician doing is actually what is happening? The magician knows more than you about the nuances of specific sense-perceptions which is why they are able to fool you. If a magician is able to make it appear like your wallet has vanished into thin air, does that really mean that it has? Use your logic. It obviously still exists somewhere else in your “dream” but you aren’t aware of it. Please contemplate what I wrote. If you just go off of your senses, then it will seem like solipsism is true, but if you combine that with rationality, you will notice the limits of your perception such as the color of the dress. I still see white and gold even though it is actually blue and black. Notice how I would be a fool if I claimed that the dress is white and gold even despite the knowledge of how light impacts perception.

I is Consciousness. I is Absolute.

@Someone here If a murder happens in the forest and if no one’s around to witness it, did anyone get killed?

I have so many contradictions in my worldview. For instance, on the one hand, what it seems to mean for something to exist is that I can observe it. If I cannot see it, feel it, think it, then it does not exist. But on the other hand, it seems like there are things happening behind my senses.

I think I am started to get it. The human experience is absolute and it is relative. The Absolute is wearing the mask of a human and the butterfly. My hang up has always been on idealism because it seems to suggest that when I am not observing something, it doesn’t exist. But in this dream, there are things I do not observe that still exist. For example, germs, Paris, and my ex-girlfriends. The Universe is putting on the human mask to experience one aspect of itself. The experience that the Universe is experiencing seems like it is both absolute and relative. It is relative in the sense that the human experience is one out of infinite experiences, and it is absolute in the sense that it is truth/consciousness.

I am viewing this picture as the black represents the Absolute or “external world” and the mask represents the ego, and the visual field represents the relative limited human experience. Notice that the human experience of the butterfly is only a sliver. The picture tells me that there is more to reality that meets the eye, which is why there is more black background. This is what I mean by the “external world”. I mean that there is more to reality than the human senses. If there was no external world, then there could be nothing beyond the human view of the butterfly. But the Absolute holds everything seen and unseen.

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.