MutedMiles

I don't define ego so broadly, for me, If i just look at my experience. I just see an awareness of perceptions, thoughts and sensations. The experience is still there if don't talk about it or even think about it. If i just let things are happen as they are, there is no making sense of things there for "ego". Thought isn't always organized and sensations if there is an awareness of them along with thoughts they appear as body. However sometimes when I sit and thoughts subside, sensations are just pulsations and a kind of amalgam of vibrations and there is no body there. The reason I'm mentioning this is because, I don't a see point of creating such a broad thought object called "ego" and then mapping whole reality around it. I would rather stay with my direct experience and move from there one step at a time. It's just a matter of language that "I" appears everywhere and all-around, but it doesn't mean that's the actual experience as well. Making sense of things is not an exercise of "ego", Only making "sense" of things in relation to "ego" is the exercise of "ego". Understanding isn't an activity of "ego", ego comes afterwards and takes credit, understanding just happens in a timeless moment that "ego" has no recollection of. Sometimes this process is more pronounced, you look at something an you get it. You don't know what knowledge you are collecting, there is no "you" there, "You" is a very surface phenomena. There can be an awareness that, there was no you at the first place. It happens intermittently to me and during those periods i have no resistance, the sensations are totally open, no resistance to any feelings.

It's about what's more easier, living there each day or trying to move somewhere else. I have been through this, i thought grass is greener on the other side. it's was definitely better initially some of the time went by well. However then i started seeing issues here too, which made me even more unhappier. I used to write stuff in a diary years back. One day i was particularly unhappy and suddenly occurred to me that I'm un-happy because I can't now imagine a better place, since the place I earlier imagined to be better doesn't proved to be "better", now I must face it. Now when I think through this, It seems happiness eludes us at times because of what we become chasing it. We become a competitive grunty person, someone who lacks good luck and has to fight through the ordeals to be a happy person. Such a person doesn't have a relationship with living that is conducive to happiness. Personally i would be way happier now to be in your place , To give it a fresh try. I would start by reading more and follow my enthusiasm and won't resist whatever that i call "ugly" in the society rather i would try to make sense of it and would go all in. Not chasing some eluding happiness but start from what makes me happy. Life is what it is, Why do we have an expectation of it to be something else?

I don't think ego makes the knowledge coherent and in it's absence it's disintegrated. Things work as they are ego is a perspective through which we look at this living. I like the notion that, ego is like a "joker" that appears after the circus show to take credit for it. We don't create our thoughts, they just appear. We don't decide which thought will appear. Even the things that we feel that we are in control of, for example decision making, again it appears with conviction that this is the right decision. Decision occurs to us. Even if one goes down into weighing options at a granular level, again we don't create the thoughts of all options and then the process and how we feel about a certain thought options. It just occurs, Ego is just a perspective on it that just jumps form thought to thought as a wrapper around it giving a sense of control.

This is a good post, and in a weirdly ironic way the post talking about "fake" itself is synthetic and in a sense fake . You made your point and proved it too. Just a side note: ============= The problem with GPT - 4 and later versions too specially the chat interface. is that it wastes your time, by engaging you in a large response, particularly the bullet points, i have system instruction added to it where i trained it to be mindful of the fact that i have finite life and every second that i waste while reading synthetic distraction is killing me slowly. So I do get better and short responses mostly.

What do you expect ? There are laws against them to be executed if they happen to be in wrong place and stating something very obvious. Everyone has a particular experience of religion in their life while growing up, due to how it is interpreted by society and people around them. For some it's like a "toxic relationship" which they need to quit to be alive and healthy again. Mostly early on Ex-Muslims are filled with rage due to obvious reasons and some make the rage an identity but many find there way in life after few years and being an Atheist doesn't play any major role in there lives. I found seasoned ex-Muslims to be really balanced and un-biased people. It's a rare combination of courage, integrity and insight that makes someone take such a huge call, specially people from some of the less privileged countries.

If it's not your direct experience it's just speculations and concepts running around in your head. The best advise i received on spirituality is to stay with my experience. Now I can have all the knowledge about consciousness but those are concepts that i'm accumulating, having more concepts like that doesn't mean I get it. These words point to something that's what matters.

I don't know what they mean by conscious experience, however while writing this reply, there is awareness of what is happening at this moment, it is something involving thoughts, sensations of my body and my hands pressing buttons additionally there is awareness of visual space too, and making sense of this along with characters appearing on the screen. Now making sense of what's going on, does have a social angle to it. However the real fact of being aware of all this is clearly at a much fundamental level. To understand we can imagine another thought experiment. By imagining a child when he is just born, Now assuming there are no concepts at that moment, the child is very aware of the experience of what's happening, that to me is consciousness which clearly precedes all concepts that will come afterwards, including the concept of the "self" and living and experiencing life on behalf of a person in whatever social context that person happen to find himself.

I think I'll die somewhere between 70 and 80, while being optimistic. This means i have some 20 to 30 years left in me. The reason is medical issue that i have. This is optimistic assessment otherwise I could die anytime. I'm otherwise healthy and well, and sufficiently active also don't have any chronic diseases, just a genetic condition that i have from birth which was discovered very recently.

For me, it's Erik Satie: