Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

I thought I'd talk about my favourite subject: myself.

Actually, I seldom talk about myself other than as "filler" for small talk. I don't particularly care about this, I have no strong need to divulge what's going on inside my head IRL. Even in this journal I do this mostly out of interest rather than need, and I definitely don't divulge everything.

I learned a very long time ago that people genuinely don't care about your innermost needs and desires and mental drama. People just care about their own mental drama above all else and relate everything in the world to that. Giving it more than two seconds thought, how else could it be? Although, I do think this gets amplified by our very individualised Western culture. We only pay lip service to actually caring about what others are experiencing. In fact when someone is really on the edge and needs proper attention (I've been there), friends and family are utterly clueless. None of us have been socialised well enough to be able to deal with intensity of emotion or difficult needs. This is because someone in a vulnerable state pulls us out of our individualism, and we're immediately out of our comfort zone.

There's a question on the forum asking why people are just not interested in investigating consciousness and reality. My immediate feeling was that it was like asking people to understand how computers work (computers being a good proxy for consciousness because they're ubiquitous and inscrutable). People take computers for granted (as they do reality), because they're always relating the world to their own mental space. Most people are highly interested in survival, mating, food and the soap opera of their ragbag collective. Asking people to understand how computers or even worse how consciousness works, is like trying to force first contact with an alien: it's terrifying and to be avoided. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it doesn't even cross most people's mind that the question can be asked in the first place!

What does all this say about how people function? First and foremost you can't blame people for being disinterested in you or the big questions in life. Mostly, they're just firefighting and trying to stay alive and to have some semblance of positivity, if not happiness. None of us have been explicitly taught how to comfort and genuinely help someone in need - and how those skills are beneficial to us, and no-one has been taught that understanding reality can change our lives for the better. And, none of us have been taught that collectivism is necessary to balance out individualism and make us all  a bit more human.

[LastThursday]

What is reality? For starters it's not the word "reality". And therein lies the problem of explaining reality at all. What is the stronger truth? Words and explanation or the sensation of love? Is the "sensation of love" even a proxy for what is being actually experienced? Language is a finite algebra for a boundless experience. Silence is more descriptive of "reality" than words could ever be. Still, even in the silence words infect our perception filling the world with things and happenings. Try and throw away those things and happenings and what is left?

Edited February 11, 2022 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I met up with friends this weekend and ended up having discussions about respective mother-in-laws. One set of married friends has been trying to improve the relationship between the husband and his mother-in-law with some success, but there is still tension there. The husband just can't get really get over her behaviour and he's just never going to like his mother-in-law. I suspect the mother-in-law in this case is both jealous and used to getting her own way with her daughter, and her daughter is never going to push back very much.

With the other married couple, it's a very similar situation. Except in this case the wife is very direct and no nonsense, and this creates a lot of friction with her mother-in-law. Again, her mother-in-law is used to getting her own way and has been quite mean towards her at times, with her husband being in a difficult position in the middle of it all.

I was impartial, as I'm not married. My only advice was to remind both couples that they're in their forties and capable of running their own lives without input from their parents, and also the fact they were married and committed to each other meant they should be singing from the same hymn sheet.

Most of us have the same problem with our parents continuing to treat us like children into adulthood, and we in turn revert to being children around them. Often, we find it very difficult to confront them and do things our own way, or explain to them that we don't wish to do things their way. This is especially acute if we're still living with them. Confrontation with parents can lead to feelings of rejection on their part with the associated tension and emotions that that brings. But. We should create firm boundaries with our parents and reassure them that we're not doing things out of spite, but because we're independent adults. Each generation has its own view of the world and ways of behaving and we should be cognisant of that too.

---

I also got into a discussion about my level of boredom and frustration with my job. I said to my friend R that my overwhelming feeling was that I just wanted to quit my job. I wasn't really looking for validation but just a different view on things. I knew that that idea would make him feel uncomfortable in a sense. He said that I shouldn't quit, as I'm in quite a good position - I'm effectively my own boss and have a lot of knowledge of the their systems - and instead I should just make myself more mobile and work from different countries. He does know me fairly well and so yes, the idea of working from a beach cafe on my laptop sounds great in theory, or working from a different country each month sounds great. 

I have enough of a safety net that I could keep myself afloat for about two years without a job; quitting isn't such a scary proposition. I do feel strongly that despite my cushy number, the work is as dull as dishwater. I'm just not excited by it in any way, and then again I've never really been that excited by any of my jobs. My career in IT is lucrative, but underwhelming. Essentially, I need to change careers and really I need to work for myself on things that excite me. My love affair with STEM subjects has ended and my interests have shifted. I spend a lot of time on this site, not because I'm addicted but really because I'm shifting myself into a different direction, and trying to work things out.

But my interests are scatter brained and settling on one particular thing I find impossible. It has to happen organically and that takes a lot of time. I also feel I need to get my level of confidence in myself and my self esteem up enough so that I can work for myself.

I need to just let go of my career and do something completely different. Quitting my job has to be a first step, but I also need to have a firm plan before doing it. The previous times I've been in the same position without a job have been time wasting and stressful. I should do it better this time.

Edited February 14, 2022 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I've been working on mind control.  Control of my own mind. Really it's more about modulation of consciousness (without drugs, because illegality scares me). I've been working on two fronts, the waking dream and the sleeping dream.

With respect to the sleeping dream I've already commented about that in a previous post. But quickly: more outdoor, friendly dream characters, for everything to function properly and less frustration. I'm mostly doing this because I have very good dream recall, and I think that it may also have positive side effects on the waking dream in the longer run. My dreams have slowly been improving.

With respect to the waking dream, I've also talked about that too previously. I have had various success at changing my vision with more saturated colours and with heightened sense of smell, other modalities less so. What I want to do really is see how far this can be pushed, and ask what can be changed and what can't? Does this form of control extend to anything more than just playing around with my senses, or can it extend to more abstract things out there in the world?

I'm suprised that scientists are not flumoxed by sleeping dreams. Yes yes it's all spurious brain activity. But that explains precisely nothing. How is it a world can be conjured from absolutely nothing but electrical activity? If you're a materialist what and where is the interface between the world of qualia and that of matter?

I often talk to my subconscious. Not that I believe in any such nonsense, but that is beside the point. Whatever it is I'm talking to can affect things I don't normally seem to have control over, I'm a pragmatist above being a disbeliever. I address my subconsious as "Unconscious".  I then talk to various "parts" of my psyche with permission from Unconscious.  Mostly this circumvents my rational analytical mind, which often gets in the way with these sorts of interactions.

Some of these affectations come from my NLP training or at least the way I was taught it. There, my subconscious was very a much an entity beavering away out of sight, or so I was told, it was the puppetmaster. I saw first hand that a lot of the NLP techniques actually had a profound effect on me, so my pragmatic self jumped at opportunity to use this way of communicating with myself as a tool.

Observation of the client is a very important aspect of NLP to "calibrate" that your interventions are having an effect. This is a bit of a black art rather than a science, but changes in skin tone (flushing), or eye movements, or barely perceptible facial movements give the game away. Fundamentally, unless you're very practised at hiding tells, you're constantly communicating non-verbally.

One type of communication is akin to hypnic jerks, which are seemling involuntary muscle contractions. These tend to happen more when in a trance and if a person displays these they can be a very useful way to directly communicate with the client's subconscious. I never did have these hypnic jerks myself when doing my NLP training. But I learned to have them eventually.

I would often have hypnic jerks while falling asleep. They were as annoying as fuck. I would just about be getting to sleep and then be rudely woken up by my stomach muscles contracting (for example). One lunch time at work, I decided to have a quick nap in my car. Because I was sat upright, I kept dozing and my hypnic jerks would kick in and wake me up again. I had the sudden inspiration to use my NLP techniques and ask my "Unconscious" yes and no type questions. To my utter amazement it responded by jerking. I haven't looked back since.

Nowadays, I can ask my subconsious direct closed questions and it will respond with various different muscle jerks. Generally, right hand or foot for yes, left for no, both for don't know. This is exactly how I've been able to change my dreams. The sensation really is like I'm not consciously directing these kinds of movement, I don't feel ownership. Often there is a long delay before my subsconscious answers me. I've got so good at it, that I can actually nominate any part of my body to tag it with some sort of answer.

Does my subconsious lie to me? I suspect it does yes. I also have to treat it simplistically, complex questions or requests can confuse things. It's like talking to an intelligent child.

I've decided to try and go esoteric and have recently been playing with the idea of trying to manifest paranormal powers. So far without much success. I've asked Unconscious if it can do any of the following: remote viewing, clairvoyance, telepathy, flying, materialisation, time travel. It's a big no to all except flying and materialisation. No matter how many times I've asked the answers have been consistent. Materialisation interests me very much, and would be very very cool if it were possible, but no luck so far. My subconscious says it is fearful about demonstrating materialisation, but seems adamant that it's possible. I haven't got to the root cause of that fear, but perhaps I'm scared of insanity or the consquences of such a thing, if it were possible. Suffice to say, if it happens, I would be very hard pressed to keep it secret.

Anyway, this is all great fun.

[LastThursday]

Notes to self:

Representation (this is not a pipe)

Projection

No self and construction of the self

Counting perspectives and conciousness, the set of all things

Survival and fear of being alone

And tying it all together.

[LastThursday]

My dreams are going in the right direction, I had an outdoor dream where I wanted to go swimming at the beach. It looked a bit precarious in that the beach was made up of largish rounded boulders. Also, I didn't have appropriate swim wear and no sunspray. If I remember a dream, I've got into the habit of mentally overlaying a big green tick or a big red cross over the things I like and don't like - hopefully Unconscious will get the message eventually.

Anyhooo....

I'm going to talk about that which can't be mentioned (it begins with S and ends with ISM and has a P in it).

One of the most profound pieces of art I know of is this one:

I've never thought much about it until recently. It always seemed to just be kind of a joke by Magritte. Obviously it's a pipe and obviously it's not a real pipe duh.  But it does a good job at looking like a pipe doesn't it? Magritte breaks the fourth wall by explaining his trick. Notice how the pipe is a disembodied pipe with no context, it's pure pipe. So much for artists and their conjuring tricks. Let's go more abtract.

What about the word "pipe"? Ok here's my version of Magritte's joke: the word "pipe" is not a pipe. This goes to show what a sham words are. I may as well have said "this statement is false". You see how subtle Magritte's joke is? Not only is the picture not a pipe, but neither are the words saying it's not a pipe!

What about we snap a photo of a real pipe? Can we now say that that is a pipe? No of course not. Even a photo is just a representation of the world. A photo is just coloured paper or pinpricks of light on a screen, it has nothing to do with the objects it takes pictures of.

Alright, how about we go out, buy a pipe and fill it with tobacco and smoke it? That surely must be a pipe, right? Yes. How about we make a pipe from thin papers stuck together and fill it with tobacco. Is that a pipe? No not really, it's a rollup. What's the difference?

The problem here is that a "pipe" actually has a fair amount of leeway in the real world: different colours, shapes, sizes, styles, meterials, fashions and so on. So when we use the concept "pipe" or even paint a pipe like Magritte, we are somehow drawing on an idealised template for what a pipe should be (the disembodied pipe). Already you should be questioning reality. A "pipe" lives inside our heads and not out there in the real world. It's just that some objects out there coincidentally match with our mental templates and we happily tag those objects with names such as "pipe".

Let's move on to people.

(Sorry Leo my condolences)

Imagine you were wearing a dumb VR headset that always just projected whatever was in front of it. It's so good at its job, that you have no trouble going about your business and doing all the normal thing you can do. But; the lawyers have got involved and every 15 minutes it must flash up the message "this is only a representation of reality we are not liable for any death or injury caused by using this product".

The question now is, is what you're seeing through the VR headset reality or not reality? It's the same joke as Magritte's. How is it that we can understand the representations on the screens in the headset as reality? Are the people we see in the VR headset actual people or just representations of people? Or is it again just that we have a mental template for a person and that objects and things out there just so happen to match our templates?

In a sense we simply take our idealised templates of pipes and people and project them onto we reality. We make the stuff of reality snap-to-fit our expectations. That's the deep message from Magritte's painting.

Let's go one removed from people. What about consciousness? First things first: the word consciousness is not consciousness. Be that as it may, I'll carry on as if you understand what I mean by me using these letters: consciousness. 

If you do know what consciousness is, then you must be experiencing it right now because that's part of its definition (or mental template/concept) and if you're experiencing it then in a sense it must belong to you. I use "belong" in a fairly loose sense here, but because consciousness is a special concept it encompasses everything in your experience. Experiences belong to you, don't they? If all experiences are captured by consciousness then by extension consciousness must also belong to you.

We can take the next logical step and say that if you're experiencing consciousness (or consciously experiencing) then surely all other objects out there that match your mental template for a "person" must also be experiencing consciousness. Surely, if even the logic is tenuous here, we can always confirm our suspicious and just ask the person "are you conscious, what are you experiencing?" and they will reply as if they're having experiences.

Whoa hang on. I've already said that words are a sham and can't be trusted. Is there another way to see if someone is conscious? Maybe we just observe their behaviour over time and conclude that: yes, they behave like I would and so must also be conscious. But aren't words and behaviour only a representation of potential consciousness? We could just as well read a novel and conclude that Harry Potter is a conscious person.

The only thing I can trust with absolute certainty to be conscious is me. Everything else in the world is just a representation like Magritte's picture - no matter how convincing. Consciousness is worse by virtue of the fact it's once removed; at least with people we can see them, touch them and smell them. With consciousness we can only get secondhand reports at best. It seems like there is one consciousness at least and all the other potential consciousnesses may or may not exist.

What if we turn the flashlight of Magritte's insight back on ourselves? Is it possible that like some sick-twisted artist having a joke, that we too are just representations on a canvas - but without the convenient warning "ceci n'est pas une personne". In this paritcular case the canvas and the paint would be consciousness itself. There's no reason to treat ourselves any differently from other people: if they are simply mental constructs, then so must we be (and vice versa). In reality, there is a template of what a person is, and consciousness applies it to its experiences and makes it snap-to-fit. You are as much a mental construct as the pipe is in Magritte's painting.

If you are in fact just such a construct (or concept or mental template), then any sense in which things belong to a "you" is also a construct. It follows that you cannot say that consciousness or its experiences belong to "you". Consciousness has no owner(s) and as a side effect it cannot be counted. For conciousness to be countable it would have to be put into a one-to-one correspondance with the natural numbers: 1,2,3,4 and so on. But since consciousness cannot be attached to anything, it isn't countable. Solipsism is fundamentally wrong if the self is a constructed entity, because there isn't one consciousness or even a you to experience it. Magritte refutes solipsism and refutes the self, that's why it's such a profound piece of art.

Why can solipsism invoke fear? This is purely an emotional response to having our survival threatened. If there are indeed no others to fall back on, we are truly alone forever and extremely vulnerable. We are left to wander the wilderness by ourselves with only the jackals and cactuses to talk to. We have to survive by our own wits and possibly fall into madness and delusion without knowing that we are. Maybe we already are insane.

We escape solipsism by escaping the self, we are not people, we are consciousness pretending to be people. That is even more scary because in that case we truly don't exist and all this is is is... what is it?

(P.S. I couldn't resist: it's all a pipe dream).

 

 

 

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

How to deal with the reality of a war?

As a helpless onlooker I can't help but feel like a dirty voyeur if I subject myself to endless hours of newsfeeds. If I stop doing that and instead refuse to engage with it at all, then I'm simply sticking my head in the sand and refusing the reality of reality. There is no happy medium, there is no happy in war.

That's the nature of knowledge. It's a ratchet that gets ever tighter. I can't undo the knowledge that war is happening in a democratic nation not far away from me. And yet what do I do with that information? I can neither react nor not react. That sensation makes me uneasy and is destabilising; double binds are never pleasant.

If I show solidarity and yell from the rooftops at the outrage of it, for what benefit do I do that? If I do nothing and carry on regardless and pretend it has nothing to do with me, then isn't it the same as knowing a rape is happening and doing nothing? Am I truly so helpless, I don't even know, although I suspect the answer will be yes.

I watched the incessant news on the Falklands war, the Iran/Iraq war, the Gulf war, the genocide in Yugoslavia, often for years and years on end. I've ignored other wars and great suffering in other parts of the world. I've seen enough wars from my armchair in my lifetime to make me sick of it.

This war in Ukraine will be no different from all the other ones: great numbers of innocent people - no different from you or me - will be dead by the end of it. Putin will have what he wants and a new normal will take its place, he won't care one iota about those whose lives he wiped out - I suspect he will be pleased instead.

 

[Leo Nordin]

@LastThursday

Sorry if it annoys you to read this, you don't have to. But I wanted to tell my story at least, because I thought you might maybe like to read it, or hear something new. Here goes:

My first time trying real "meditation" that means doing something completely new with my consciousness, I think was an enlightenment experience. Or rather closing into the point. It all started with mister Sadhguru saying enlightenment comes by doing nothing. I layed down on my bed and did nothing, I was so used to always doing something working with children, thinking, learning, figuring out how to be happy... That meditation was my first experience of interfering with my own energy levels, but doing nothing I was simply almost like a void but pretty lifeless, somewhat lethargic in the process. Then he said enlightenment is the easiest thing. So I had learnt how to not waste energy not to cling to anything, but that was a clinging in of itself. Now the second meditation was an upsurge of hidden desire of laughter/happiness feeling. Watching sadhguru speak I was so sensitive to laughter, I just continued going into it "consciousness apparently" more and more and after some time my consciousness started to go all over the internal structure of my body. One second it was there, then gone, then reappeared somewhere else. Then I gone even deeper and my consciousness or the "me" started to dissappear completely, then reappear at times. I didn't continue deeper because it could affect my school life. 

I was 16 years of the time and this experience I could go into at any time shook my life around so much and due to situations I gone willingly for 2 years exploring different states of being. But beings of unconsciousness I was never a meditator guy so I had no clue about what I was doing. After almost going insane due to not having any core consciousness and therefore many times, insane multiplying and dividing of consciousness happened. Extreme dualities and cyclical movements in the almost all the sensational centers, chakras or whatever. The only difference between that insanity and my sanity now is from the cyclical movement is of a deeper consciousness. Instead of in every part of my body/mind/being. All these enlightened masters or whatever seem to be having their cyclical movement closer to the place from where life within themselves is created. Cyclical means that all energy you use will kind of get back into parts of your consciousness, in the dualities it is right now. So it is very easy to make everything yourself yet that just means It will be too much to handle, it will take over. Even if a single body part is strongly identified as the a center or part of yourself, it will go crazy given a minute. So it is understandable how I misunderstood gurus and I always do things on my own so I don't really listen to anyone anymore, because I have already heard almost all they have had to say. 

So the realisation isn't really a realisation as they say. But more specific what they very much would like to call human evolution of consciousness. Coming back to the womb. If you move in the opposite direction you become insane, so enlightened people moved in the opposite direction of dualities if we have to use these terms. And reached first normal sanity, then more and more into their core.

Actually I don't think I am going to ruch cosmic feeling types of consciousness, I am only 18 years of age. I don't want to get too close to the finish line. I want to be a little more expressive with the world because I haven't had time to enjoy or explore it yet. 

[LastThursday]

@Leo Nordin

Thank you for you story.

My niece is 18 years old, and a friend of mine also has a 18 year old daughter. I suspect I'm nearly the oldest person on this forum as I'm 50 this year. I only mention this so you can get some perspective on who I am. Let me tell you my story and where I'm coming from.

My niece is interested in getting some tattoos, as a birthday gift I gave her some money (what else do you give an 18 year old???). She has a boyfriend of at least three or four years or so, I suspect it's true love. I don't agree at all with her getting tattoos - I don't have any myself, nor does her mother - my sister. Nevertheless, I've encouraged her to go for what she wants. She moved out of home to Wales at 16 with her boyfriend and it ended disastrously, she's back living with her Dad in England. I wish she was a more confident person within herself overall.  She's my sister's clone, always unsure of herself. My sister is the near female version of me, but somewhat more emotional, impulsive and wayward - less analytically minded and more artistic (which I wish I was at times).

Only with hindsight do I know what it was really like to be 18 years old. What was I doing then? I was going out with a tomboyish auburn haired half Irish girl a year younger than me. She was a friend of my sister's, my sister being 18 months younger than me. I stole her from my sister. My sister has never talked about it, but I think me stealing her affected her greatly. But love is selfish. I loved this Irish girl very very much. Even now I miss her vitality and the youth we had when I met her at 15. Her family took me in when my family had already imploded. I'm forever grateful to them for what they did for me. When I turned 18 who took me out and celebrated? my girlfriend's Dad. I was sick as a dog after all that grog, but the love was mutual. They were my second family for a while. Her younger sister is on my Facebook, but I don't have the bottle to ask her how my old girlfriend is doing - I know they fell out later on. The reason I love music so much is due to her, I remember going to open air concerts with her perched on my shoulders drunk and chanting along!

I didn't even touch spirituality until my forties. My Dad has always been an intellectual New Age Hippy since his late forties or so. He's 76 this year. I've been exposed to self help just about forever because of him. I'm the sort to just take in any and all information, and I suspect I have a degree of aspergers beacuse I remember things very clearly and easily. I also get obsessed and I love sucking in information.  It's taken decades for me to get my social skills up to scratch. I think I can pass as a normie better than most normies apart from the odd glitch and social stupidty. Most normies are clueless anyway. I suspect quite a few people on this forum have aspergers but are in denial or ignorant about it. It's as clear as day to me who they are.

So I'm telling all this so that you can see that you have plenty of time and space to explore yourself, there's no rush.  On one level, being nearly 50 is not really so much different from being 18 - I remember it like it was literally yesterday.  However in other ways being 50 is like having lived the life of three of four different people. You won't understand this until you reach my age. Imagine the sum total knowledge and experience of you and two or three of your friends, that's me.

I thnk young people deserve every chance and guidance they can get (the world is fairly shit). I don't have children myself and it's not looking likely I ever will; but if by proxy I can help guide even just one person then I'm happy to do it. I have infinite patience, but not much room for stupidity, maybe that's my aspergers. So be it.

 

[Leo Nordin]

Funny thing you were writing about Aspergers, haha, I was actually diagnosed with it as a child. It was nice to read your reply, refreshing, somehow. 

I am going now, probably won't be on this forum for some time. Have a nice evening, bye. 

[LastThursday]

On 26/02/2022 at 3:28 AM, LastThursday said:

I'm the sort to just take in any and all information, and I suspect I have a degree of aspergers

So my sister contacts me out of the blue yesterday and says that she thinks she might have autism. Was she reading my mind? Was she reading my journal? Yikes! No. Nobody knows about my journal. NO-ONE.

It turns out that she just took one of these pop psychology tests online, so it has to be taken with a pinch of salt. However she scored 20 out of 30, and she didn't seemed surprised by the result. I took the test and scored 10, which would mean I don't have it. Obviously it really isn't a clinical diagnosis in any way. But it does confirm my suspicions. She asked me an interesting question about whether I would have scored higher when I was younger. I would say that was a definitive yes. I've done a lot of work on myself since. Although, on the whole, I would say that my social skills have always been more grounded than my sister's. I keep wavering between feeling that I do have some form of Asperger's and/or looking for a problem where there isn't one. But I guess it's a spectrum and mine wouldn't be marked enough to cause me major problems.

Strangely, over Christmas I got into conversation with a teacher friend of mine, where she has to deal with kids with autism regularly. I'm not sure how we got on to the conversation, but there was some implication that she realised that she herself may have some signs of it and she said her brother definitively has ASD. Perhaps she could sense that I would understand, or maybe was even tacitly hinting at me. Anyway, it was interesting.

I will say that whether I choose to identify with a label or not really makes no difference. In a way I could use the label to get me off the hook for any social faux pas, but that's just abrogating responsibility and it doesn't push me to fix my problems. I have first hand evidence that I can fix my problems albeit with a lot of work. But I just see it as part of my ongoing self-development. Maybe if my "problems" were more severe I would think differently? I don't know. I suppose identifying with it would help it be "out in the open" and my friends and family would be more accepting of any weirdness I display socially. But to be honest, we're all weird at one time or another aren't we - HFA or not?

 

Edited February 28, 2022 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Coffee.

I didn't think I was a coffee snob. That is until I saw this guy's reaction (@ 6:40):

Whenever I visit friends I desperately try and avoid any form of instant coffee, because it frankly tastes like shit. I'm not a big tea lover, but I will drink it because it's quick and easy to make, so I tend to fall back on that especially at friends'. Except; I don't tolerate caffeine. Tea is less caffeinated than coffee, but after two cups I start feeling spaced out and sweaty, yuk. I've trained one set of friends to switch to decaf, so there is hope in the world.

I also own (and use) a Moka pot, yes a Bialetti. I've had friends round who said I was "posh" for having such a thing. WTF do they expect, I live in the heart of middle class England and I'm half Spanish! Yes, I suspect I'm a coffee snob: "How many sugars would you like in your coffee, mate?", "If it's that instant shit, I'd prefer salt.". The irony being that until I identified with aspiring middle-classness (thanks Uni) all I drank was instant.

---

Now for the serious half of my post.

Is it ok to sit in limbo? I mean is it ok to have nothing going on but just being? What's an acceptable amount of time to live like this? Days, months, years?

There is a strong drive in Western society to be constantly heading somewhere, to be busy. You've got 40 productive years, the clock is ticking, go go go! Then it's a constant scramble to get things in order and to have a trajectory, to play the game that society has layed down.

A lot of us hit a brick wall around age 40 or so. You've bought into society's game and completed all the easy levels. You reach a point where you can indefinitely coast and survive, you have the house, the car, the family unit, the job that pays enough, the annual holidays. But this brings on an existential crisis, because you've been going somewhere all along and then suddenly you realise the same featureless road just carries on and on into the distance without end. That lack of destination is really hard for us Westerners to digest. It was hard for me to digest.

I'm conflicted. I can't help but look at my peers and think Nope. Not because I don't love them, but because conventionality is not for me. Equally, I look at my peers and think, why shouldn't I have that? they seem happier and more fulfilled than me. It's a torment. Am I really so different and special that I should fight against it? Why don't I have a house, wife and kids, I'm a pretty down-to-earth normal bloke. Also, I have known friends who in a million years I wouldn't have thought would have gone for conventionality, and yet, they too succumbed to getting married and having kids; they're probably happy enough.

Happy enough. Now there's a phrase. Should that be what I'm aiming for? Given Western society's dictats that I should try and maximise everything, isn't happy enough just a cop out? And is it really all about happiness and the level of it? It seems one-dimensional to me. On the other hand should I be getting lost in potential?

There's a million potential things I could do with my life going forward (how I hate that expression). I could indefinitely think about what I could potentially do without ever doing any of it. Maybe the better option is to plump for something that I can actually get traction with, and go for that for all it's worth and exhaust it - whether it brings happiness, wealth or anything else. Maybe purpose is all it needs.

 

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

There's a strong connection between every different aspect of your being. Seen as a dynamical system all the various parts interlock and feedback on each other. The system has an equilibrium point, where opposing parts will balance each other out. This is good because it normally stops you from experiencing extremes.

The point of equilibrium is itself dynamic, it's not a static point. It will shift around during the day and over longer timescales, it may cycle or jitter around uncontrollably. You may experience periods of highs and lows, energy and lethargy, focus and distraction. But there's an ill defined locus for all this dynamic equilibrium activity, this is your set point, your temperament.

Because the system of you is dynamic it can be pushed and poked around. You can inject highs (or fear) by taking a rollercoaster ride or lows by thinking about all that is bad in the world. Unfortunately, your ability to move your equilibrium point is affected by the your system too. If you are unfocused, distracted and in low spirits, you become unable to affect yourself or take action; and you become stuck in that particular funk. There are so many ways to become stuck: depression, addiction, treating your body badly, isolation, gloom and doom thinking, helplessness. Sometimes, the only recourse is to force the equilibrium to a new point by taking SSRIs or by external means such as therapy or self medication. 

Once the equilibrium is shifted to a new place, it may be self-sustaining and you don't need the drugs or the therapy - that should always be the aim of any intervention. There are other ways of keeping your equilibrium in a more desirable zone. This is to increase self awareness over time and to build useful habits.

Increasing self awareness starts of by taking in external knowledge. That knowledge teaches you about yourself and makes you more aware of aspects of yourself that were hidden before. For example maybe you start to realise that the day after drinking lots of alcohol you feel morose. Or, you realise that you allow yourself to wallow in self-pity after a break up. Once the awareness kicks in, you can consciously force your equilibrium point in a particular direction, by pumping up the parts of you that oppose your negativity. For example you go out and walk in nature every day after a painful break up. The idea is to move your equilibrium point and not to suppress this part or that part of your being.

Building up habits allows you to automate keeping your equilibrium in a good zone. It may be that your natural genetic disposition makes you prone to depression or lethargy. Having habits such as exercise and a clean diet or a fixed sleep regime can push your dynamics in the right direction. It also frees up thinking space, your habits become a matter of course. Repeated habitual behaviour becomes a lot easier over time and can seem almost natural. You need good awareness here because you can also build habits that push your equilibrium in the wrong direction - and those habits you must crowd out. Maybe you're prone to the habitual reward highs of social media, so must actively build up opposing habits, like only engaging with social media in small amounts or at certain times.

Since everything in your being is connected: taking exercise makes you think good thoughts and makes your body feel good and puts you in a good mood; it's relatively easy to shift your dynamics around. All it takes is increasing awareness and healthy habits. This is just self development by another name.

[LastThursday]

Two posts in a day. What's wrong with me?

A few posts ago I mentioned that I was experimenting with altering my perception, mostly with a mixture of subconscious communication and self hypnosis (I suspect the two are the same really).

One thing I wanted to do was affect the clarity of my vision (literally not figuratively, although...). I had laser treatment close to 15 years ago, and my vision is good, but in the interim it has deteriorated especially at night or in low light. Also, they never were quite able to completely compensate for my astigmatism (irregular shaped focal point), so there was always a slight distortion around bright lights and at distance.

But I seem to be on the verge of cracking this. My process so far has been to imagine twiddling knobs on a kind of console, increase that or decrease that part of my perception. As mentioned previously it works great for smell and colour saturation - especially purples and blues. But vision sharpness has been difficult. I fell upon instead of a using little ditty (mantra if you will), which goes:

"Every time I blink my sight grows more distinct."

I just say it over and over in my head - even if I feel like a moron. Slowly over the last few weeks my subconscious (so called) has got the message. What seems to be happening is that my distance vision has improved but also has my close vision - and to some degree my low light vision. This is all great, although it's still unstable at the moment. I have to revert to using the mantra for it to kick in. But I'm hoping for permanency.

I'm a pragmatist, so I don't actually care what the explanation is (I suspect pupil constriction improving depth of field, or improved "processing" from both eyes by the brain to remove noise, as each eye has slightly different aberrations). 

I'll keep poking around and report future findings.

Edited March 4, 2022 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I thought I would cover some basic tips when writing in English. Like it or not your are judged and can judge someone based on the way they write. Much like wearing appropriate attire for an interview, if you dress well you're more likely to be judged favourably. I will say off the bat that I have an interest in languages and I have an interest in writing well; so I do have a bias and a particular style of my own. Take what I say with that in mind. Some quick tips:

• The first word in a sentence capitalised. Sentences should end with a full stop (or period). Exclusively writing in lower case is fine in the right context, normally in very informal writing. But I would say that even then capitalisation and basic punctuation is so easy to do, it should be done.
• Names of things should be capitalised. People's names, place names and product names should begin with a capital letter. 
• Commas should be used to break up long sentences. Normally, you would use a comma where there is a natural pause in speech. So in my previous sentence I might have spoken it like: Normally [slight pause] you would use a comma where...  There are other slightly more complicated reasons for using commas, but I won't cover that. It's possible to overuse commas (I tend to), so only try and use them for clarity and to break up long sentences.
• Paragraphs. Paragraphs a like a unit of meaning. Normally all the sentences in paragraph have some relationship to each other. In normal speech when the subject changes or you move on to the next point, you would convey this in writing as a new paragraph. The "wall of text" problem is a good reason to use paragraphs, because they visually break up the text and makes it easier for your eyes to scan over the text when reading. You should keep paragraphs to between three and six sentences.
• Homophones. These are words which sound the same when spoken, but are written in different ways. The worst offenders are: there, their and they're. You should practise getting these correct. "There" refers to a location, like over there. "Their" is a possessive pronoun, meaning belonging to them.  And "they're" is a contraction of "they are". Also whose versus who's can cause confusion.
• Apostrophes. This can be very tricky to get right. There are two reasons to use an apostrophe. The first is in contractions. The most common contractions are baked into writing style and these are: who's, can't, don't, they're, we're, I'll, we'll, would've, should've, could've, we'd, I'd and so on. Learn what the contractions stand for (e.g. they are, we are, we will) and use the apostrophe correctly. The second reason is to indicate possession or when something belongs to someone. Some examples are: Jane's cat, the UK's parliament, the cat's whiskers, the King's men, my aunt's inheritance. So singular nouns should be followed by an apostrophe and an S. Plural nouns are harder. The confusion arises because in speech singular possessiveness and plural possessiveness can sound the same. For example: they lady's house and the ladies' house; or my friend's dog versus my friends' dog. Both examples sound the same when spoken, but when writing a plural possessive the apostrophe comes at the end of the word. Note that some plurals don't end in S and so follow the same rules as for singular possession: the men's moustaches. Some words end in S and so it's possessive may or may not be followed by apostrophe S. For example: the Jones's holiday or the Jones' holidays, Jesus' sermon or Jesus's sermon. There's no hard and fast rule here, but I would say write down whatever matches your speech. Don't write non-possessive plurals with an apostrophe, so don't do: my cat's, those dog's over there.
• Nouns versus verbs. It's easy to confuse the spelling of similar nouns and verbs. The most common mistake is advice versus advise. Advice is a noun and spelt with a C and advise is a verb and spelt with an S. For example: I gave John some advice (noun), or, I advised (verb) John. Practice is another tricky word because both spellings are acceptable. For example: I often practise (verb) piano, or, I like piano practice (noun). But, I often practice (verb) piano, is also acceptable. However, the noun practice is always spelt with a C, and the verb advise with an S.
• Don't confuse of and have. The problem here is that in normal speech the word "have" can sound like "of". For example: he could have eaten with us. When said quickly the word "have" sounds like "of", so you may want to write: he could of eaten with us, which is incorrect. To get it right, only ever use "of" when talking about belonging or possession, otherwise use have.
• Spell check. Always use spell check, there's no excuse not to. Sloppy spelling can come over badly especially in more formal situations. The biggest source of spelling mistakes is double consonants and to make it worse, American and British usage can vary: focused versus focussed, labeled versus labelled. Always have the correct language variation set with your spell check.

The best book I ever read on writing clearly was: Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves). I recommend it if you want to come over better in writing.

 

Edited March 7, 2022 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I thought I'd improvise.

Everything is an improvisation. This happens at a human level and at a super-human level. Improvisation is the enmeshing of several different impulses. There is the creative spirit, where new things are forged from re-configurations of the old, but also plucked from a pool of divinity: brand new and never seen before. There is the spirit of the master who lives and embodies her craft in her very being, every action and thought guided by a deep well of understanding and experience. There is sensitivity, where there is subtle and near supernatural intuition to ones environment and equally subtle flow back into that environment. There is playfulness, where new ways of being are experienced and absorbed, and there is constant interplay between me and you, this and that, past and future. There is a fundamental love in all its forms, joy in every thought, delight in every movement, surprise in every change, appreciation and gratefulness in every act.

We live in a beautiful constantly unfolding improvisation.

[Esilda]

On 14/03/2022 at 10:44 AM, LastThursday said:

I thought I'd improvise.

Everything is an improvisation. This happens at a human level and at a super-human level. Improvisation is the enmeshing of several different impulses. There is the creative spirit, where new things are forged from re-configurations of the old, but also plucked from a pool of divinity: brand new and never seen before. There is the spirit of the master who lives and embodies her craft in her very being, every action and thought guided by a deep well of understanding and experience. There is sensitivity, where there is subtle and near supernatural intuition to ones environment and equally subtle flow back into that environment. There is playfulness, where new ways of being are experienced and absorbed, and there is constant interplay between me and you, this and that, past and future. There is a fundamental love in all its forms, joy in every thought, delight in every movement, surprise in every change, appreciation and gratefulness in every act.

We live in a beautiful constantly unfolding improvisation.

@LastThursday Love this!  

I get so caught in paralysis by analysis sometimes!  

For me its been the case of the body follows the mind vice versa so whenever I am feeling tight I'll move into smooth and slow movement exercises to feel and release myself from my own inner tension  .

[LastThursday]

Hey @Esilda, thanks.

14 hours ago, Esilda said:

whenever I am feeling tight I'll move into smooth and slow movement exercises

The way out of being stuck is to improvise. As you put it, the mind and body are part of one thing and one affects the other. Why not act out your thoughts and analysis through your body? You may have different insights and solutions. Use different positions in the room for different thoughts and try different body postures and movements to walk between the thoughts.

[LastThursday]

Whenever I'm introspective, which is a lot, I feel a kind of melancholy. When I'm not being introspective I have a tendency to detach from emotions and analysis and just let reality wash over me. This is something I've learnt to do over time as both a defence mechanism but also as a form of Stoicism. I've come to realise that a lot of my sadness is caused by negative rumination and that detaching from it is beneficial. I don't process emotions too well, I find that they quickly overwhelm me and stop me functioning properly.

Stoicism or my version of it has it's pros and cons. One pro is that I have become impermeable to the small problems in life, nothing really fazes me. Yes I get irritated and agitated, but it's short lived and I don't get too sucked into the drama of things. There's a kind of sweetness in not being too fazed by life; I see others getting wound up and upset by things I find trivial and not worth worrying about; I've saved myself a lot of suffering this way. Most things are not worth the emotional energy, they come and they go and they have no long term consequence.

The con of Stoicism, is that no action is taken. In a bid to remove myself from my emotions, I have become static and unyielding. I think most motivation comes from the emotions and from emotional desire, and largely from spontaneous thoughts. The process is something like: thought -> emotion/desire -> action. Because I've detached from emotion I've broken that chain. I have thoughts and desires but there's never any emotional impetus behind them. But neither can I pretend to have emotion, I can't fool myself, I'm too aware of what I'm doing to myself.

My Stoicism has also been coupled with minimalism. I worked out somewhere along the line that being minimalist in all aspects of my life was beneficial. The benefits are many-fold. I don't take on trivialities and stresses, where I see others blindly taking on things that they regret later. I also don't engage with the consumerist-throw-away ethic society imposes, the things I buy and consume are meaningful and long lasting. I don't try and fill my life with things I hardly need or use, or use as a crutch to prop up my emotional state. I'm more agile and freer when change happens, because I'm not so tied down.

But minimalism is stark and unforgiving. I'm confronted directly by life and not blinded by the mask of "stuff". It's painful when it's clear there's nothing to fall back on other than my own wits - the buck always stops with me - and I don't always live up to that responsibility - I'm always exposed to my own inadequacies. Stoicism for me is a rejection of responsibility and a rejection of the stress it brings - I already had too much of that as a teenager.

Be that as it may, the one area of stress in my life is work. I'm not allowed to be off the hook there. Yes, when I'm not allowed to hide and have to confront problems head on at work, I step up and I'm always successful. But it's always someone else's problems I'm fixing. This has been the theme of my life: fixing other people's problems. I want to let go once and for all from being a trouble-shooter for someone else, I'm fed up with it. I want to re-orient instead and start to be a creator rather than a fixer; and a selfish creator at that, one that suits my needs and desires.

Edited March 16, 2022 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Dear Diary,

Today I'm mostly sneezing.

It's not often I'm ill. In all the time this pandemic has been raging I've not felt ill once. Now two years on SARS-CoV-2 has finally struck and it's using my body for its own survival agenda. 

Being ill is a very good way to bring you into the present moment. The body screams at you to pay attention to it and to do that you must drop everything else. The thinking faculties slow down, become foggy and eventually stop. Normal routines become interrupted because moving from A to B becomes exhausting. You are transported into a semi-dream like state of constant unpleasantness: enough with the sneezing already!

The body is often likened to a machine or a robot controlled as it is by a plethora of hormones and chemicals, topped off by that fat bulbous energy consuming amorphous mass between your ears. Your sense of being in control of yourself is shown to be a sham when you are ill. No, the body is the Lord and Master, you are just the serf tilling the fields with your petty thoughts and grand plans. To call the body a machine is disingenuous, it's more intelligent and devious than you.

Covid really is a marvel. Its only plan is to reproduce and it achieves it extremely well. I wish I was that single-minded and successful. The flipside is that Covid really only cares about itself, it's happy to kill for the sake of it's own survival. In its wake governments lock up its citizens in terror and upset the normal world order, in its wake your body goes into full overdrive and incapacitates you for your own good.

If you're going to be as successful as Covid then you must take your body with you on the journey. All those fears and insecurities, depressions and inadequacies are mediated through the body, not the mind, and often no amount of ruminating will make a jot of difference. Instead you have to learn to coax and negotiate with, and regulate the body, treat it well, understand its inscrutable workings both physical and emotional. Only then will the mind get its way and the body obediently follow. I'm not there yet.

Edited March 25, 2022 by LastThursday