Natasha Tori Maru

Oh, I wouldn't expect that. In fact, I wouldn't want that! ⁠(͡⁠°⁠‿⁠ ͡⁠°⁠)🖖

Anyway, do not want to derail. More conformity? Houseplants. Can't think of a gift? Generic plant will do 🤣

Zero segue 🙃 I work in the building industry - as a general contractor. I had no skill in the domain prior to joining this business. I learned it all from experience & just applying myself (as well as couching from someone with 35 years in the industry) I am rather persistent even following failure - making an error tends to force me to drive for corrective measures in my knowledge and application. I feel like this is really main quality I have that has lead to success. Resilience. It is really a challenging job that pushes me to my very limit. The best parts about it are creative problem solving & working with hard constraints and variety: no 2 builds are the same. Ever. Many ways to skin a cat. How well you choose the skin the bastard is a function of skill, knowledge, communication & experience. On time and within budget. We do not do domestic - and when I think on it, I wouldn't be half as invested if we did; one of the biggest drivers for me is supporting society by building hospitals, medical centres, science and education facilities. Very, very rewarding and difficult field (to excel in). Which is probably why you see so much bad construction

Through the fog of thoughts and concepts. The human condition that mostly arises from the social domain. Useful, for sure. Valid. But not without the drawbacks of occasionally presenting a distraction from the beauty of being. The beauty of raw feeling, emotion. Sensation. Perception. I think concept and thought is required to arrive at a place of peace after the journey of life. Just my thoughts and experience 🤍

Hiding in plain sight

Seamonkies

@Joseph Maynor How do you define 'direct experience', in your personal view? I admit, mine is a work in progress because at the end of the day I gave it a crack - but I really do not know. I just have some sprinkles of inkling toward it, based in meditative experience

@Joseph Maynor Ha! I was waiting for someone to drive into the assumed definition that would unravel this subject. Speaking for myself 'direct experience' is the codependent subject/object arising of what I constitute 'reality' absent of any interpretation. The closest thing I can get to words pointing to the idea; pure being experience or 'isness'. Subject/object arising beneath thought. Beneath the label. Beneath the interpretation. It is sensation & perception. Thoughts about the experience immediately remove the 'direct' portion of experience. This is why when I reside in a state of 'being' absent of thought, I feel I am closest to nature, existence, reality. Truth. Because nature does not think about itself. Myself absent of thought is the closest I can get to this 'direct' experience. Closest to true nature and reality. This is just my current understanding. So mathematics, to me, is the additional syntactic language humans have created to express natural rules that groups of 'things' adhere to. This is why it feels simultaniously 'discovered' and 'invented'. The patterns appear whether we choose to notice them or not. But noticing them and applying the conceptual 'rules' or language immediately removes one from the direct, sensation based experience of the thing. There is one banana. Now there are two bananas. Mathematics for this reason, to my view, is not direct. This is not to say it does not exist. But that it as a conceptual overlay to explain the playfulness of reality.

I think I am being a bit flamboyant with my language. I think it is more accurate to say I was dejected I was trying to be cheerful, and it was like someone popped my balloon with a giant cinderblock of blunt truth!

Haha I appreciate this! Leo's comment made me so depressed

What is all this reality shit? Incessant questions spawned from there 😃

What?

@Shermaningeorgia Your replies are quite unhinged. Your determination to make everyone an 'enemy to fight' is totally blinding you to constructive discussion. No one has attacked you. Can you show me where in nature there is a label? The birds don't label. The grass - no label. The ocean has no label. The air is. Mammals are. It is the human mind that labels - not nature. They are not permanent. They are a fickle human construct. Labels can help to understand, but they are limited. You do seem very attached to the security of them, though?

I see @Yimpa @Salvijus Thank you, we will investigate. If this is indeed the case, the issues have deepened 😕

Is it? Or is it a language? A language is a concept. Or overlay. Added onto experience. The operations surely aren't direct experience: plus, minus, power, root, factorial.... These are man made concepts for observed behaviour.