Telepresent

Examine

Well I'm going to post a useless reply because I know nothing about NLP. But I can describe CBT a little bit. The basic idea of CBT is recognising and challenging your thinking. The basis is that much/most of our thinking is automatic, and our emotions react to that automatic thought. Many/most of these thoughts are negative - Negative Automatic Thoughts (NATs). CBT is a methodology for learning to recognise, challenge, and replace NATs with more realistic, helpful, and emotionally healthy thoughts. It trains you to recognise different kinds of NAT (there are a whole bunch, such as black-and-white thinking, or overgeneralisation, or mind-reading), to recognise how you emotionally react to that thought, and to challenge whether that thought/emotion is truthful. I've found it immensely helpful, if frustrating because a) I want to be 'better now' and it forces me to challenge the whole notion of 'better now' and not give up on myself; and b) because every time my girlfriend says "what kind of thinking is that?" it infuriates me because I'm no longer justified in wallowing in my emotion! But yes, I find it to be a life-changer, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to get to grips with their own thinking

Perhaps, although any great work is great (in my opinion) because it invites interpretation and opinion - and so you read the interpretation of the enlightenment journey onto it. Any honest artwork explores or asks questions of the human condition, and often don't provide answers, so it is up to the partaker to fill in the gaps and, in so doing, come to understand themselves a little better. As much as you say the hero's journey is about enlightenment, I could also say it's about the solidification of ego. That's the great thing about art, so far as I am concerned - as much as it is about what the artist is trying to say, it is about what the partaker translates

Can I ask what the question is? Not with intent to answer it, but because you've made me very curious!

Read the user guidelines: you're in violation. No discussions about sourcing drugs, psychedelic or otherwise

Problem there is the word 'of': the 'of' is neither the true essence of the thought (the true essence being a mental sound, picture, etc.), but the 'of' is not the actual thing being thought of either. It's kind of magic

@EmptinessDncing Now I'm not done, so maybe I can't help you at all, but you trigger a question so here it is: you mention "not this and not that". Talk to me for a moment about the world, about objects, about "this and that". What is "this"? What is "that"? I.e. don't worry about you and your not being for a moment, worry about everything else. You ask us the question "So what am I missing guys?" - what are we? To what do you address that question?

The problem I see with "who am I?" is that it gives a concession to the idea of "I", so many seem to search for an object. And as we move beyond body/mind/whatever on a physical/mental/emotional level, we might start trying to attach "I" to awareness, consciousness, Now, whatever. The thing is that doing that - just by creating the label 'awareness', 'consciousness', 'Now', we are creating an object. And the actuality of 'Now' cannot be an object. So the word Now, the thought Now, the idea Now, is never true. Never. However... Now is true (just not whatever you think of when you think of that word!) Meaning the Truth is True. Now and always now, timeless and spaceless and infinite. So 'Now' is both a metaphor (as all words are signs, not the actual thing), but also the only True thing. But those two 'Nows' - the thought and the Truth - are not the same thing. The True Now contrary to thought, because thought is an agent of objectification, of division. Every thought creates two. The meaning of every thought is false. But we can use thought against itself, to deconstruct the conceptual world it has built and see what is actually True. So if you're approaching self-enquiry attempting to answer the question "Who am I", you will never succeed (which I guess is the idea, that eventually you recognise that you're just not there), but I wonder if people get stuck here. If you try to answer the question by attaching to 'Now', saying "I am Now" or "I am the truth", you've failed. I don't like the question "Who am I" for this reason. I much prefer "What is true?" or "What am I made of?", and digging and digging and digging and not being satisfied with any answer that arises. Because every answer, every definition, every thought, can still be deconstructed further

One thing I would say to be aware of, is how much of your moral compass is based around things you hold valuable, and how much is based on what you think other people think you should do. The reason I advise caution here is that I rode a 'morality is all relative, there's no good or bad' train for a while - and I violated values I still held. I committed actions which hurt others, and while I tried to justify them in a 'no good or bad' way, the emotional truth of it slammed into me very, very hard. In this case I hurt other people, but importantly I also hurt myself very badly as well. Even if other people are not involved, not hurt, it does you no good to hurt yourself through violating your own sense of morality. I'd rather advise investigating it: work out what you believe, why you believe it, and whether you think you should continue to believe it. If you want to change, reduce, or re-orient your moral compass, by all means do - just don't smash it if you're not ready emotionally

Hoo, there's a lot to dig into just in this question and answer. Don't race past them too quickly - get down into their construction. "I can move the body of a human" is a conclusion, not an experience - and as you say you want to be writing the truth of your experience. I sometimes find it helps to deconstruct what is actually happening by writing without the use of "I" as a personal pronoun. So looking at this question, I might say: I think I am human because thoughts, backed up by emotions, and reinforced by a consensus from humans seen & heard, insist so. The belief is most readily tied into the body/mind. There is an unbelievably strong belief that "I" move the body. Why? What is the process of the body moving? First, there is stimulus: something seen, heard, felt, thought, etc. This stimulus triggers a reaction: an emotion or a thought. This emotion or thought may trigger other emotions or thoughts, until one of the emotions or thoughts is an impulse that the body should move. Then the body moves. This moment, where there is an impulse that the body should move, and then the body moves, is considered to be the moment of control: where the decision is made by "I" to move, and the body directly capitulates. It appears to be cause and effect. However, this does not always work: sometimes the "I" thought gives the body a command, but the body refuses. Either way, for now the moment of "me controlling the body" has been isolated to the moment between a thought or emotion stimulating a bodily response. Retroactively (or maybe also pre-actively), a separate thought states "I did X" or "I will do X". In doing so, this thought neatly bundles the entire process listed above - multiple thoughts, Emotions, stimuli, and reactions, into one neat little package. One object. "I". And there's so much more to dig into just coming from that paragraph! Don't let yourself get away with brushing over very important details. And they hide in plain sight. In the last couple of days out struck me that, for all I use the idea of objects and objectivity to help pull things apart, I've not actually firmly established with 100% accuracy what an object "is"! Dig dig dig...

@Ether Let's try this as a possible way what you call 'you' might be illusory (note the word 'might' - this is something to be investigated). Look at the attached image. Note that there is no white square. I'm sure you've seen this before, and if you're like me there's a good chance you'll go "oh yes I know" and move on. But take a moment to actually look at what's happening here, fully. What is really there? Just the black three-quarter circles, and our mind fills in the gap by interpreting a white square. Even when you know that is what is happening it is very, very hard not to see it. Now let's go to your experience for a moment. Look at what you really, really experience. I'm sure you've looked before, and if you're like me there's a good chance you'll go "oh yes I know" and move on. But really look. Isn't everything, everything, you experience which tells you that you are really a you... an experience? Isn't it all an appearance? This is not some trivial thing, this is very, very important. Because you need to ask yourself - is the 'real' you, whatever you think it is, actually there, or is it implied by those appearances? The same way that the white square is implied in this image? Look deep, deep at what you believe the word "I" points to, and just check. That's all. Don't believe what others say, don't take what other people say on faith or as gospel. Just look at what you believe, then check really fucking hard whether it's true, or whether it's only implied, like the white square.

Ok I need to expand on this because my mind is now restless on the subject! Firstly all words are referential: they refer to something. So the word "cow" refers to an animal. The word itself is not the animal, it is a symbol referring to that animal. But a word usually refers to more than one thing. So in the case of "cow", the word refers to the animal, but it also refers to the sound you hear in your head or say out loud. Similarly the sound can refer to the animal, or to the shapes we put on paper to write down the word. But "cow" can also mean a specific cow, or the idea of cows in general. It might also refer to something else entirely, say a woman I don't like. But then it gets more complex, because "cow" might mean something different for me than it does you. You might picture a black and white dairy cow, while I might picture a highland cow. This is the first point where communication falls down; say I tell you a story about a cow. For ages you're picturing a dairy cow, but then I say "and then it got its horns caught on the bramble" - we've now got a confusion because we thought we were on the same page, but we've just revealed we weren't. Of course, maybe I never mentioned the horns: you think you have an accurate image in your head of my story, whereas one of the most fundamental parts is wrong. And we'd probably never know that a misunderstanding had taken place. But wait, there's more! The word "cow" doesn't just bring up the idea and sound of cow, but also is connected to all kinds of other ideas which come with it: milk, animal, farm, whatever. And your associations and mine will be different. So maybe for you they are milk, animal, farm, but for me they are sacred, holy, etc. On the basic level of "cow" this might not seem too much of an issue, but what about more complex ideas? Because... We learn the meaning of most words in relation to other words. We define words and concepts in relation to words and concepts we already know. "It's like..." "It's similar to..." So we compound differences we might have in understanding on a level-by-level basis, with the potential for misunderstanding getting iteratively greater and greater each time. But hey, let's dig a little further. Have you ever considered how you first came to understand language? You had to work it out for yourself, one association at a time. In a sense, all meaning to language, as you understand it, was developed by you. And every single person's language meaning, while appearing consensual, might be significantly different. Which is why direct communication is so difficult. Because there's so much potential variation in what I think I'm writing here, and what you think I'm reading. With one additional wrinkle: When we first made those initial language associations, what do you think we associated them to? Sights, sounds, etc. sure, but also to emotion. And as much as language is a self-referential system, it's a sense-referential system and an emotional-referential system. These combine to create the meaning we ascribe to any word, phrase, sentence, or concept. There is far, far more contained in a word than just what we think it directly means, and most of what it contains are references to meanings which refer to meanings which refer to meanings which refer to meanings... all of which are subjective. In amongst all that, reality would be lucky to get a passing glance

Have you ever dug into semiotics? It's the study of signs, symbols, and the making of meaning. All words are signs, language is complex and self-referential semiotic system. A sign is not the thing itself. I think this is one of the most important things to understand if you're trying to break through the issue of conceptualisation and language. It's also something we have to get over in discussing this stuff. All words are semiotic. All thoughts are semiotic. The notion that we can say or think anything that is not semiotic is... very troublesome, if not outright false. It also makes it pointless to play the "that's just a concept!" game. Of course it is. Simply to think about communicating it I had to conceptualise and symbolise it. So, yeah, veneration of ideas can only be the veneration of signs, I.e. not the thing itself. Worship not thee false idols...