Carl-Richard

Then all humans are bad, which is fine to believe I understand that enlightenment is a recognition of something that exists beyond all beliefs. But still, enlightened people have beliefs. They just see them for what they are; beliefs. The main danger lies in making beliefs into something they are not; to conflate belief with reality. Beliefs, assumptions, whatever you want to call them, are necessary for maintaining your existence as a human being. Sometimes you need to form a belief about something or assume something based on little information, because your physical existence is limited and you don't have access to all the information in the universe, so you need to make shortcuts in order to survive. Unless you've left your physical body, beliefs are required for existing.

I'm not saying belief is a bad thing. It's just an honest description of what it is. As a beginner on the path, you come to believe that there is such a thing as enlightenment (which at this point is only an idea in your mind, spurred on by an intuition or some conceptual knowledge suggesting that it might be a thing), and you may believe that there are methods that can take you there (some people don't), and you keep trying the methods despite not experiencing enlightenment as a fact (you put your faith in them; you believe in the possibility of enlightenment despite not having a direct experience of it). So of course there is a lot of belief involved, but also intuition and conceptual knowledge, which serve as hints, but your intuition and conceptual knowledge are not direct experience. Beliefs are not incompatible with spirituality. Your beliefs about enlightenment are guided by things like your intuition and facts like the history of yoga.

My short-lived career as a Pivot animator 😂: Pivot is a really simple program for making animations, and I remember I loved to make funny animations with it when I was 12-13. I just re-watched the videos and was a little bit surprised of how good they are (for being that young). I certainly didn't lack creativity 😆 At the same time, I remember I wanted to make videos more professionally (RuneScape videos), and I asked my dad if he could buy me his video editing software that he used for work, and he said yes, but I never got it. I think if I had gotten that, there is a decent chance I could be a video editor today (maybe even a full-time YouTuber). I also asked him for a double bass pedal for my drum set which I also never got, and similarly, I think I maybe could've become a drummer instead of a guitar player. Same with me never bothering to buy a decent music editing software (like Cubase, which is what one of my friends from music class used) or basic recording equipment (the aforementioned friend had his own studio); maybe I could've been a musician today. It's weird to think about how your life could've turned out different, and it kinda hurts when I look back at these missed oppurtunities, because I feel like I'm more of an artistic right-brained person than anything else, and that it feels like I was supposed to pursue these oppurtunities when they arose. I have also always had some deep-seated desire to be world famous somehow (page Dr. Freud for that), and I think that also feeds into the missing-out feeling (as becoming a musician and a YouTuber are probably the top 2 go-to ideas for becoming famous, at least for my generation). On the other hand, I'm partially grateful for not having made some of these more creative pursuits into a job and thus turning them into something you have to do for some extrinsic outcome (turning intrinsic motivation and spontanous expression into extrinsic motivation and contingent expression). I can see some of this development in my academic pursuits, and it seems unavoidable to some extent, despite your passion for it (especially due to the practicalities specific to the academic machinery). It's not something I'm too bothered by, because life is all of life is like that yo some extent (it's about becoming an adult and seeing how not everything will suit your utmost sense of comfort or immediate impulses). Regardless, it's good to have something that you can go to as a "safe space" where nothing needs to happen and where you can be fully free to do whatever you want. But also, there is of course a downside with not being constantly immersed in something and being pushed to develop your skills, as your skill level also feeds into your level of enjoyment. So there are pros and cons to everything, and at some point, you have to be grateful for what you have. And who knows; maybe I wouldn't have found spirituality in any of those timelines? I can't imagine what kind of person I would be or how much suffering I would've gone through up to this point, or if I would even be alive. It's weird to think about.

@Yimpa 😆

9 minutes 45 seconds of your time. You're in a dream, conflating dream for reality. The only way you can see this is to wake up (become lucid in the dream).

Can you explain what that is?

That is not what you were saying. You said science doesn't start with a belief, only ends with it. I'm saying it always starts with a belief. Even in so-called exploratory research where you do an investigation and you don't have a clear hypothesis, there are many beliefs involved in shaping the investigation.

What do you mean by that?

You have to believe that the method is able to take you to the outcome that you believe you want.

What does this have to do with control?

All you see as an ego is illusion. All you feel as God is true.

Science involves forming a hypothesis that you believe is true and then testing it.

When you frame it that way, my peak philosophical insights must have occured back when I was a chronic weed smoker and had the emotional stability of an emaciated Jenga Tower (I'm being a bit facetious, because a was essentially kid back then, and weed is weed. But I might as well since we seem to have reached some kind of common ground). When I try to remember my most profound insights, I run into the problem of 1. not remembering them (because weed), 2. mostly remembering trivial stoner thoughts ("wasting time is because of a lack of planning"; "rivers are machines that run on gravity"; etc.), and 3. remembering hypotheses that lack any specificity or are simply trivial ("this and that can be explained by glutamate vs. GABA transmission"). The one insight that stuck with me most from that era and which ended up being corroborated is "the perception of time depends on access to memories", which came as a result of the only time I deliberately sat down to contemplate a question for an extended period of time (probably only for like 5 minutes to be fair, but still, the intention was there, and it seemed like a satisfying answer). So in summary, despite my mind being an inexhaustable fount of novelty, I wasn't a very clear thinker. I even had this thought explictly one time: "this weed is making me have so many thoughts all the time, I must be getting a huge advantage over other people", which sort of illustrates my lack of "clear" insight. It would've been true if most of those thoughts weren't garbage (or maybe I'm being too hard on myself).

I remember chugging down several tablespoons of turmeric and some black pepper and getting high on it (I was experimenting with how to enhance the weed high). It definitely had a nice effect, but the effort to consume it was a bit much.

Modern society contains various things that are at an evolutionary mismatch with our bodies and minds. For example, porn, hyper-palatable foods (soft, high sugar, fat, salt, etc.) and social media are not things we've evolved to consume at all, let alone on a regular basis. And why are they so bad? Because they're hyper-salient (highly stimulating) sources of things that are considered rare or valueable resources from an evolutionary perspective. When you get accustomed to consuming these highly stimulating things, your brain downregulates your ability to get reward from less stimulating things that are healthy and build resilience (make you stronger), like exercise, real social relationships and real foods. You're essentially numbing yourself to the things that you're supposed to do as a healthy organism, and you're making it harder for yourself to be motivated to do those things. And as you become less motivated and do less of the things that make you resilient, you become weaker and experience progressively less pleasure and more pain, and then you keep going to the hyper-salient sources of pleasure, because those are the only things that can give you pleasure, which creates an evil spiral which is hard to get out of (in other words: addiction). Another factor is the lack of some kinds of evolutionarily matching stimuli, like natural environments (trees, green hills, skies, mountains), natural lighting (direct sunlight), large social networks (we evolved to live in tribes with upto 150 people), regular physical activity, etc. The artificial environments that modern society exposes us to are "hypo-salient" and make us more prone to addiction, as we have to compensate for the lack of stimulation we otherwise get from the natural environment.

But it doesn't have to be repetitive unresolved conflict, i.e. classical neurosis, or being constantly distracted by irrelevant information, i.e. psychosis. Again, in enlightenment, the DMN is not discarded, only re-prioritized. As you said, it's a trade-off between functionality and novelty, but you could make the case that there exists an optimal trade-off, judged by how "useful" it is. For example, how low IQ can you have before the gain in novelty is not useful for anything? I would claim enlightenment is generally closer to the optimal trade-off, while the Western normal exists on the lower end of the trade-off optimum. When you deviate from the optimal trade-off, any gain in novelty that is useful becomes exceedingly rare, but again, the novelty that is gained might be specific to that level (not possible through any other means), which might be useful for society at large. I think it helps to emphasize that functionality includes to a large extent the concept of intelligence in the strict cognitive sense (information processing capacity; working memory, executive control) and not just "softer" psycho-emotional aspects that impact well-being. These of course overlap, but to emphasize the distinction is prudent in this case, because you're indeed trading off intelligence (in the sense stated) for novelty, which is a tricky trade-off. Nietzsche might've been one of those rare cases where an otherwise sub-optimal trade-off did produce some exceptionally useful insights. That said, Buddha surely had a creative output: his teachings (the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold path, etc.) were quite brilliant in capturing the intricacies of the spiritual path and providing a framework for advancing on the path in a balanced way (one that discourages so-called "spiritual bypassing"). Creativity doesn't necessarily have to involve a complete and utter novelty of the kind that has never been seen before, but often simply a refinement or integration of existing insights (I would actually argue that most forms of creativity are of the latter form, but you can of course have gradations on that).

Let me be a skeptic but also a New Ager at the same time: if there are people who can give detailed accounts of claimed past lives, even thousands of years back in time (I know one such case), then where are the self-proclaimed starseed people with detailed memories from their star system of origin? To be very clear, I don't mean the people who say "hmm, I think I might be a Pleiadean, because I feel weirdly attracted to it when I hear the name". I mean the people who say "yeah, we lived in these small huts that levitated above the ground, and we communicated using telepathy, and one day when I went to school, I fell and hit my head, and I was taken to the hospital and was magically healed". Can you find me these people, or just any reasonable argument or evidence? Then you might be onto something. Regardless, it goes to show that if you want to convince someone about something, you can't just be casual about it (which is probably how most people approach this type of New Age beliefs; it's just something to fill your head with; no burning desire to truly get to the bottom of something). Be ambitious about it.

This is an old thread. If you want to start a new thread, do that (but don't expect it to stay up for long either; it seems a bit unproductive to merely complain about a certain type of people).

So I got covid exactly one week ago. It hit me pretty hard as I had just finished my last exam and slept bad the day before, and I had just barely recovered from a lung infection. My fever calmed down by the 5th day, and that is when I started to notice that yes indeed, the same brain fog is back. I can't say for sure how long this one will take, but last time, I swear it took several months before it slowly went away (or I somehow got used to it; I have no idea). Somewhat luckily, I caught it at the beginning of the longest Christmas vacation I'll ever have (almost 2 full months long). Somewhat less luckily, I can't afford even the slightest hit to my cognition for the next semester, and I feel there is a slight chance I'll still be affected then. Yes, it's only the 7th day, but it's currently so bad that I can't watch something as innocuous as House with my brother and understand 50% of what is going on at times. Time feels like it's constantly sped up, like I'm having weed withdrawals, and I can't think any interesting thoughts. Today, I went to the gym for the first time since getting sick, and I expected to be weak and lousy due to the infection, and I was correct (I can lift the same weight I'm used to, just not at the same speed, focus and intensity). It didn't really better my brain fog at all; if anything, it made it slightly worse. I'll see if sprint training does something (it should make my mind clearer anyway), which I'll maybe try tomorrow. Anyways, any general tips or special knowledge about covid that could be useful for speeding up recovery? I'm seriously contemplating getting regular vaccines for this shit if this happens every time.

@EyolfTheWolf @Yimpa I'm as far as I can tell back to normal. I just kept to my normal routine really (which is more healthy than not).

DMN activation is definitionally neurotic (neurosis = mental conflict). It disrupts current processing with emotionally salient and sometimes completely task-irrelevant information; it creates conflict between the task at hand and some new information. I've simply been claiming it could be the case that an overactive DMN could lead to certain creative outcomes that would not be possible otherwise. After all, the DMN is also definitionally a provider of insights (a radical new way of looking at things). It's just that when the DMN is overactive, your ability to perform on tasks and thus have particularly brilliant insights might be severely diminished, hence enlightened people might be more creative (or brilliantly creative) on average. But again, that doesn't mean that an overactive DMN couldn't produce different types of insights which could be brilliant (because it's indeed a different state), but arguably at a lesser rate (because general task perfomance is lower), hence there is some luck involved for the person who does strike gold. An enlightened person cannot be in such a state. Funny side note but relevant: I just watched a video where Jan Esmann (a really interesting mystic) talks about how enlightenment impacts things like IQ, and he personally reported seeing a 30 point IQ increase from when he was in his 20s and "unenlightened" compared to his 50s where he was deeply established in enlighenment, which is particularly fascinating as your IQ generally decreases with age. This is by the way consistent with the fact that neural networks related to working memory and executive functioning (which are closely related to IQ) are essentially synonymous with the task-positive network. That tells you the scope of the increase in functioning that we're talking about. That said, Jan is specifically talking about energetic phenomena that becomes available at various stages of enlightenment (increased Shakti, kundalini awakenings), which is of course less easily captured by the DMN/tasking dichotomy. Nevertheless, it provides a strong suggestion that functioning can be highly increased by practicing the "enlightenment" type of spirituality. Additional interesting side note showing overactivation of the DMN in relation to psychopathology: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/task-positive-network No wonder why we have a mental health crisis when not only the more "common" mood-related disorders like depression and anxiety are implicated, but also psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. This also hearkens back to the point about overactive DMN leading to unclear thinking.

That could be possible to a certain extent. It would also explain how far lost we've gotten from functionality, painting ourself into a corner with dense conceptual schemes and metaphysical materialism. It got us modern science, but it also got us the modern mental health crisis. That said, while the culture around enlightenment prevalent in the East is probably less conducive to creativity, the enlightened state itself is still an immense source of creativity (indicated by what we know about flow states). There have always been relatively few actual enlightened people, so this probably skews the numbers in favor of the West. I wonder what a society where e.g. 50% of the population is enlightened would look like in terms of creativity. Nevertheless, again, you can't underestimate the possible impact of the few obsessed lucky neurotics that strike creative gold and do so soelly due to their neurotic nature.

Statistically, yes, but again, I reject the reductive framing. That is why I wrote all this. If it was as simple as "it's an absolute good", I wouldn't have made all these caveats.

It's a similar concept, yes. If flow is optimal functioning while engaging in a highly demanding task (which indeed correlates with activity of the task-positive network), then enlightenment is optimal functioning irrespective of task demand. In other words, flow is optimal functioning in highly challenging activities (like a virtuosic music performance or an expert-level sports feat), while enlightenment is optimal functioning in all activities (with a caveat, which I'll go into later). What if we re-framed anxiety as excess self-talk, and that enlightenment doesn't make self-talk disappear, but that it arises merely when it's relevant to the task at hand? And because "tasking" is the enlightened person's default state, they will do exactly what the self-talk has mandated without hesitation, without unnecessary repetition. "But is hesitation not sometimes a good thing?". It's generally a good thing if it entails identifying a lack of sufficient information for making a careful decision and assertively putting off making a decision until more information is available, but it's generally not when simply ruminating on the same information over and over without seeing a resolve and not taking action (and it's the latter that is removed with enlightenment, not the former). (I partially challenge this point later). The thing that happens in the enlightened state (or if you're simply close to it) and thus drenched in the tasking mode is that (almost) all of the task-relevant information becomes available at lightening speed. When you're in the normal Western neurotic state of mind (overactive DMN), the task-relevant information is sometimes not readily gathered, or at least slower and in smaller segments, all the while it's being clouded by a constant barrage of task-irrelevant information (essentially ADHD symptoms). There are neuroscience studies showing how over the course of several trials of performing the same cognitive task (particularly a boring one) and where there is a possibility for making errors, the period of time leading up to an error is predicted by an increase in DMN activity, which reflects a lack of attention to the task at hand and immersion in task-irrelevant information (for example thinking about what's for dinner). All in all, your clarity of mind and your ability to make decisions is undoubtedly increased by making the tasking mode your default state, which will supercharge your development and achievements in major ways. We know that enlightened people who have worldly ambitions are capable of undertaking enormous things (look at Sadhguru for example). There are thus definite upsides to this mode of being. But are there downsides? Maybe. If your goals are for example highly aesthetic in nature and rely on some sort of authentic anxious vibe (for example a certain type of musician or poet), then maybe enlightenment is not for you. As for more "functional" goals, could obsessive rumination for example be a good thing in certain academic professions? You could make that argument. But then again, the likelihood for these people to for example engage in unclear thinking, defend logical dead ends or engage in relatively meaningless pursuits, may cause bigger problems than it solves on average. Maybe once in a while, you get a lucky guy who strikes gold and that could not have done it in any other way, but again, if you want to go for the safest option for increasing functionality, enlightenment is definitely the answer. Any explanation of enlightenment is insufficient It's simply because of how central it is to how humans work, how biological organisms work, that you can place it in such a high place relative to other things. That said, if you're not a human, not a biological organism, don't value survival, don't value functionality, or if you value some highly niche aesthetic goal (or otherwise), then sure, maybe enlightenment is not your best bet. But if the opposite is the case, then most likely, statistically, it is your best bet. That is why it's at the core of religion (and why religion is ubiquitous in human culture, almost synonymous with it). It's largely considered an universal good.