rachMiel

Stories all the way up, and all the way down. (Is seeing that a story?)

Thanks, looks good! I'm a big fan of movies about cults, favorites include: The Seventh Victim Split Image Apostle The Endless Midsommar Warning: Apostle and Midsommar are both quite disturbing.

Trust is the raft, truth is the 'other side.' At some point, perhaps, trust becomes moot, doesn't matter anymore?

What's wrong with hedonism is, ultimately, what's wrong with any 'ism,' it tries to reduce the mystery (and mess!) that is the world to a tidy formula, and living by formula, any formula, is not living freely.

But what amazing intense heightened time they had on the way. ;-)

I like that: the lure of the self. Like a siren beckoning us to the shore. And, though it's (arguably) a kind of mirage, it *feels* realer than anything else!

For the mix: Reality is the intertwining between subjective mind (what's in here) and objective stuff (what's out there). It is not a pure hallucination or creation of the mind, neither is it a pure gestalt of material stuff. It's a collaborative effort.

Good question. I am neither a semiotician nor a linguist, so I'll resist winging it and probably getting it wrong! Ask GPT or Bard: What is the link between the map and the territory? How does a map symbol get attached to something in the territory?

@HMD Bravo! (Who gets to decide what's 'better'?)

@LastThursday I mean symbols in the general sense, things that represent other things. "And how is a representation related to the territory?" How is the map of a square kilometer of the Swiss Alps related to the actual 'living, breathing' territory of that square kilometer?

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy." ?

@HMD Kudos for seeing the challenge of dealing with the wasteland in such a positive light! If Earth is to survive intact, views like yours are called for.

Rituals that are practiced by Native Americans work with 'sacred time' in which past, present, and future co-exist. Things that have been, are, and will be all exist together at the same (non-)time.

Perhaps the map is any symbolic representation of actual reality (territory)? Any set of symbols or glyphs that denote something other than themselves?

It's like the waking analog of lucid dreaming: lucid living. In Matrix terms, you know you're in the Matrix, you know the 'real world' (non-Matrix) is a desolate wasteland, you've caught on, but you choose to stay in the Matrix, or maybe: one foot in Matrix, one in Zion. ?

@Dodo Consciousness=existence is held true in some traditions, like Advaita, in others not. But why give any concept, existence or consciousness or bliss or nothingness or brahman, a privileged position in relation to absolute truth? (Not a leading question, I don't have a good answer!)

What is 'what-is' in the statement: The truth is what-is. ?

@Dodo But why equate existence with absolute truth? Why not nothingness? Or consciousness or spirit or brahman? Why does existence get such a privileged position?

@Osaid Merci. :-)

@UnbornTao "Nobody here knows what anything is." BOOM! :-)

@Osaid "Absolute truth points to what exists." From whose/what point of view? In what context?

@AerisVahnEphelia Sorry, I fail to fathom. 'There is nothing that exists.' Or, 'Nothing(ness) is an existent.' Help! :-)

Say 'truth' is an idea, a human invention. Will it show itself as that?

> Absolutely everything is a fantasy. For years I've been thinking something similar: Everything is a story. Only for me, some stories are more fantasy, others closer to the truth. (Or maybe truth is also a story?) And I keep asking myself the question: Is there anything that is *not* a story? The top candidate: that which is not touched by thought. Take 'pure awareness' (should there be such a thing). Naming and describing it is a story. But is the actual state of pure awareness a story?

Something like: The truth is the truth?