Experiments in world building

[Akim]

I'll start this journal with things that are important bits of wisdom I discovered for myself.

• Examine and investigate deeper what you really want to do and really don’t want to do. It is like your subconscious is coloring things as more import, so that you pay attention to them.
• Deliberate, don’t choose too fast. Also along with previous rules, really contemplate what you really want and what will be your best decision.
• Desire is your main fuel or may be even the only fuel, so learn your desires, integrate them, have meta desires about changing desires, but not just what you should desire, try to find authentic desires about changing desires.
• As a counterpoint to desires, limit yourself, develop disciple. Otherwise you growth will be greatly determined by external problems that you have to solve, kind of involuntary growth. It is best to limit yourself voluntarily.
• Golden rule, being kind and forgiving is like cheating. I don’t know how it works, karma, magic, self deception into reinterpreting things as positive, in any way it just works wonders in life.
• Second guess your thoughts, think how they may be false. Argue with yourself in your head, but not in a negative, self-depreciating way.
• Integrate everything, especially inside yourself. This is what inner peace means, settling inner conflicts. Take time to do nothing external and just slowly integrate yourself.

[Akim]

There are two ways to grow, doing things based on what is told to you and experimenting yourself. They are both valuable, with only first you easily get stuck in things that don’t work for you, with second you just don’t know what is possible and your dogmas and low consciousness desires greatly limit you.

Here is meditation example. Most instructions just don’t work for me, I don’t have the discipline and focus needed. I struggled a lot of time until I decided to experiment and find ways of meditation that work for me.

1. Guided meditation like Headspace, it constantly reminds me to return to meditation after I get distracted on the second second. Gradually this instruction gets internalized, or so I hope.
2. 1 min meditation with the bell sound every 10-20 seconds. Just right for my current concentration powers, years of video games and internet take their toll.
3. Not really meditation, but contemplation. Read or watch some complex information like Leo or Peterson video, classical literature, Buddhist suttas, Wikipedia articles, philosophy. If you don’t really understand what is said, even better, you mind will get more engaged trying to crack it. It puts mind out of usual stupid loop into more sophisticated thinking. Then relax and do nothing, like sit in a chair or lie in bed. Interesting, insightful thoughts usually occur.

[Akim]

I’m kind of lost in the complexity of reality. Things are so strangely related, twisted, non obvious, it is shocking.

In ordinary map of reality explored by billions of people, things are kind of known. It is great to have that as an option. But there are so many territories that can be explored. In some, thousands of people ventured and explored things, like serious pursuit of Christianity or Buddhism. Those are like relatively safe explored continents. But there are immeasurable number of other ways to map and construct reality. Some are fascinating and beg to be explored. But you don't know anything, there are many silly mistakes that you will make. Kind of like you are on a new planet that no one been before. You can't just work for someone and rent a room to read books and watch videos on the internet. You have to discover for yourself how to breeze on this planet, is it possible, is there ways to get or create food.

This survival metaphor is really liked by psyche, there is something deep and fundamental about it, not just in a sense that I was formed that way by evolution. There are systems, systems that survive are systems that can guard themselves, explore to find opportunity, integrate and assimilate things. The job is to constantly renew your system, explore, try to understand things around you, look for useful information. What is more fundamental than that? May be understand that you are a part of a bigger system, like family, humanity, identify with it and work for its benefit.

I want to be wiser and make better decisions. Why? I love making good decisions and making my world better in some way. Why? Some things are just better than others. Why? I don’t know, but I am not willing to drop that intuition based on my inability to articulate an answer.

[Akim]

I find viewing myself as a system is a good metaphor. Like there are a bunch of modules that compete like it is described in a book “Why Buddhism is true” by Robert Wright or sub personalities by Jordan Peterson. So I have intellectuals, who lobby consuming more information, science lobby that wants to do experiments and expand known possibilities, traditional religious people, who want to create order based on tried and true principles, business people who want to earn more money, different foreign lobbies that want to maintain productive relationships with others, survivalists who want to prepare resources for worse days, vegans who try to reduce meat consumption, people seeking different basic pleasures etc. They form a system and consciousness is kind of like a parliament where they discuss and argue issues, they will even try to deceive each other to advance their position. After viewing it that way, there appears a group that wants to integrate different lobbies and improve cooperation. To build a stable hierarchy of values and integrate the whole system around it. Groups may push their values, but they have to do it in the most truthful manner they can, if they want to get their interest to have higher priority. They also have to accept the current balance and try to cooperate with each other.

[Akim]

I really liked “learning = observation” video. It helps to reframe awareness as observation because it makes the process more exciting and you can do much more of it. I tried to observe human photos for 25 minutes and started to see more details and differences in them. I also discovered that after several minutes the emotion of the face you observe overrides your emotion, so you can pretty much experience any emotional state at will.

Short stories are great. I started to read them instead of big fiction books and really enjoy it. Instead of rushing through to see what happens next in a novel, I reread and contemplate a short story, see how all elements are important in it. Great short stories packed with condensed observations about the world. The last one that I liked is "The Standard of Living" by Dorothy Parker. It is just several pages long but filled with observations about culture, social hierarchy, how people interact with one another.