Can second-order reality mold first-order reality?

[Azza]

In Leo's newest video he was talking about consciousness as a first-order reality and human beings and the universe as second-order reality. But is it possible for thoughts to mold consciousness? If not, then how does law of attraction really work? There's a way i see it is, law of attraction exists but we can't really control it. 

[Guest Quanty]

Want to attract something? 

Run from it.

[Azza]

@Quanty haha does that mean playing hard to get is the way to go?

[Joseph Maynor]

That’s fine.  All this stuff is metaphor really.  What matters in a theory is utility, concision, scope of applicability, etc.  Once you know Existential Truth, theory-building becomes art much more so than science.  We’re not looking for truth in words anymore.  That’s the paradigm-shift.  As I think the great John Dewey would say — we’re adapting to our environment as part-and-parcel of reality, and solving problems that actually arise for us as we go throughout our existence.  This in your head business is taken way too seriously, right.  People look for truth in concepts!  There’s a higher truth that’s pre-conceptual — and people call it all kinds of things.  The job of Enlightenment is to teach you this higher truth.  And it’s not a conceptual truth.  It’s more (I hate to use the word) fundamental than that.  You gotta be able to separate awareness from meaning — awareness from thought stories — awareness from conceptual systems — whatever have you, right.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Leo Gura]

You have to really understand what 1st and 2nd order reality are, otherwise your words just turn into word salad.

For example, when you are using a computer, you are sort of altering 1st order reality via 2nd order reality. What a human sees as "moving a mouse cursor" is really 1's and 0's behind the scenes. So really you're moving 1's and 0's, but the user interface of the computer makes it feel like you're moving a mouse cursor. This makes it appear as though "the mouse cursor" is causing the computer to do stuff, but that causal connection is sort of an illusion. It's always 1's and 0's moving around. Clicking on an icon does not cause anything. It only appears to.

What's happening in these kinds of situations is that different levels of reality are being conflated.

[sarapr]

@Leo Gura then how can you set them apart?

If they get conflated how can you distinguish first order from second order?

Edited June 4, 2018 by sarapr