Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

The three horseman of the apocalypse. 

Ok, that's a bit overly dramatic. What am I talking about? Commenting on this forum. 

There are three reactions I get when offering my thoughts on a topic. They are:

Interest: Somebody understands where I'm coming from or finds my advice or viewpoint useful.

Misunderstanding: I am saying one thing, but it's completely misunderstood. Either I haven't explained myself well, or it just doesn't click at all for the other person.

Tumbleweed: I am completely ignored. Maybe I've jumped in at the wrong point in a conversation. Or what I thought was an amazing insight, actually wasn't. Or what I'm saying is just too "out there" to engage with. Or even, the participants in the thread don't value my input in any way. Or they do value my input but just don't respond.

I'm philosophical about all three horsemen. Nothing is lost. Everything I comment on deepens my own understanding. If it helps others do the same then great! It's not a popularity contest. Although I've had over 11,000 views on this journal, I'm flabbergasted. I'm so popular shower me with love love love darlings....

Edited April 8, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I thought I'd get the following explanation off my chest about Direct Experience (it should have one of those movie trailer voice overs).

I've commented that DE is discontinuous, and that it's like a hall of mirrors or reflections or echoes. I'll try and unpack that a bit here.

Imagine rolling a die. You might get the following sequence:

62361444253614526344462533552

That is a grossly simplified picture of reality. Each number represents a different possible conscious experience or quale. Looking at the sequence of numbers it's essentially random, with no pattern at all. At it's heart consciousness is chaotic and completely random. In such a world you would have a fleeting rush of jumbled experiences. You wouldn't be able to discern anything at all, because there's no pattern or structure. In a sense nothing exists.

Ok, you improve the consciousness stream (CS) by installing a Pattern Recogniser (PR). This PR only does one thing to start with it recognises "444". Notice how in the sequence above the PR would notice two sets of "444". Imagine 444 represented a table. In the stream of consciousness represented by the sequence, a table would suddenly appear and then disappear twice.

See how crucial the job of the PR is? It makes things come into existence. What? Yes. What makes things come into existence is the ability to recognise patterns, nothing more, nothing less. What makes a table exist is the PR, not the CS. The CS only triggers the PR randomly. But you definitely need the CS to experience anything at all. The CS without a PR is nothing at all, a PR without the CS is nothing at all.

So ok. You can recognise and directly experience a table. But isn't its appearance completely random? Yes. But reality is not like that you say! Before I continue the above model represents two aspects of DE well, its discontinuous and spontaneous nature, and it's structured appearance. Let's now increase the complexity of the PR. Let "25" represent a cup. And then we go up one level and let the "444" followed by "25" be a cup on a table. Notice how the cup appears twice in the sequence, once on the table and once near the table.

Ok let the PR increase in complexity to a very high level. All these randomly rushing qualia (CS) are corralled by the PR to represent the room you're sitting in with a glass on your wooden table. The CS is the fabric of reality (the hardware), the PR is the set of operating instructions (software). If something is not in the PR, then you will not recognise it at all: it won't exist.

In a way the "444" sequence echoes or reflects throughout consciousness in time. The table keeps on coming back into direct experience, it exists. But it's appearance each time is a complete coincidence. However, it's bound to happen because the probability of rolling three fours in a row is high. In effect the PR takes a slice through CS as it changes. From the viewpoint of the CS the table comes into and out of existence in a random manner. From the viewpoint of the PR it only ever sees tables. The PR makes the coincidence happen. The PR structures DE.

The PR is extremely intelligent and can program itself. It can increase its own complexity over time and learn to recognise more and more patterns in ever more complex configurations. The PR is existence itself. Reprogram the PR and the whole of existence changes: cue psychadelics.

The only objection left is that the world seems to hang together and isn't completely random. Imagine rolling a 6 a hundred times. Impossible! But not in an infinite sequence. And that's the answer. We just so happen to be living in a part of the infinite sequence of consciousness where everything hangs together and the PR makes that happen.

Edited April 8, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Is it ok to be hypocritical? 

"Let him that is without sin cast the first stone."

This quote from the bible has it right, but only from one perspective. It alludes to the fact that we are prone to judging others before we judge ourselves first. That if we are going to take the moral high ground, we should be more moral ourselves. The sentiment is in the right direction, it's an invitation to clean up our act: admirable.

But having got into a conversation in one of the threads on the forum (https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/63872-haha-this-survey-was-interesting-men-vs-women/), I realised there was a chink in the armour of this way of thinking. I can't remember what the woman was being stoned for (too lazy to look up, maybe adultery?), but you can bet your life that most of those wanting to stone her were not guilty of the same offence. So, the bible quote makes out that sin is sin, in whatever guise it comes in. My realisation is that you can't compare apples and oranges. 

I'd piped up in the thread saying that a man pretending to be blind had no ground to castigate a thief stealing from him. I myself trying to be clever and sort of taking the moral high ground (I was casting the first stone). My gut instinct was that deception was deception in whatever guise and the fake blind man was being a hypocrite - and perhaps malicious, knowing full well that for some the temptation to steal from him was too much. What galled me was that this was labelled as entertainment, however that's an aside, and just my personal preference and me being "moralistic".

The other guy on the thread was arguing that theft is worse than impersonation. My riposte was that the two were in no way comparable and hence one was not worse than the other (i.e. not all sin is the same). This undermines the bible quote. The only ones who shouldn't be "casting a stone" are precisely the ones guilty of the same offence - everyone else should have free rein to punish the offender. But! In turn the offender should have free rein to punish the other sinners for their individual sinning.

This applies to how we should see hypocrisy. We need to tread carefully. If a guru says that we should meditate for an hour a day, but s/he doesn't actually practise meditation at all we shouldn't be too quick to judge. Whether the guru walks the talk is irrelevant, the advice is sound.  If the guru sleeps around with his devotees, but advocates not taking advantage of others, again we are not in a position to judge: the advice is still good. We care about the message not the messenger.

One particular example comes to mind, that of Wagner (composer). He was clearly an out and out racist. But he composed some amazing music. Can we actually discard his music because of his views? My answer is no. His music has nothing to do with his racism.  To do so is doing ourselves a disservice.  In any case the guy is dead, he is no longer a racist. The message was the music, the messenger a racist.

We are totally within our rights to tell someone else to clean up their act, even if our act is less than clean.  Otherwise, society doesn't function. In turn they can tell use to clean up our act. In the thread example, yes, the fake blind man should castigate the thief, but also the the thief should punish the fake blind man. What the punishment should be, well that's another story.

There. I've changed my mind @BornToBoil.

I never thought I'd be delivering a sermon on a Bible quote. There's a first time for everything.

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Note to self: acting dumb to teach.

[LastThursday]

Acting Dumb to Teach

Something pinged after posting the Offering Advice thread (https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/63985-offering-advice). This thread hooks up with a previous post in this journal where I was pouring my heart out about feeling helpless to help others (https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/50371-journey-to-nothing/?do=findComment&comment=863458). And for some quick background, hooks up with a part of me that really feels and wants to help other people actualize and boost them. I see so many people suffering even if in minor ways, and I often feel unable to help them even though it seems it wouldn't take much to do so.

The style of my Offering Advice thread was actually typically and unconsciously @LastThursday. This is where I bring up a topic of conversation knowing (or thinking I know) full well what the answers are. This may seem pointless or even dickish. After all, could I just be doing it to seem cleverer than I really am? To boost my own ego. In other words I play dumb only to pretend to get sudden realisation and then show off my "new" found knowledge?

The other aspect of the the thread was another also a very me thing that I do. I love the recursive and self-referencing style of posing questions. I think this basically comes from programming where this sort of thing goes on all the time - things referencing themselves - and is quite powerful if used correctly in that context. With reference to the thread, I was fully conscious that in answering a question about Offering Advice, the responders would actually be offering advice. The responders themselves would be exemplars of what good offering advice should be. In this way everyone would win; I would learn and they would learn by actually doing rather than opinionating. @neovox was clever enough to see through my ruse though, and I felt embarrassed.

But having been caught out, and after cogitating for a bit, I realised I actually had no need to be embarrassed. I think the playing dumb technique (if I can call it that) has some value, especially if consciously set up, rather than in the slapdash way I do it. For some history, I think I do this all the time in my interactions, especially when I was a lot younger. It stems from always being two steps ahead of everybody else. People would try and teach me new things, and I would already know more than they did about the subject, cue eye-roll. I found that I would often dumb myself down so that I could relate to people on their level. It became an ingrained habit.

Teachers often employ this mode of teaching. They will set up a topic and (transparently) pretend not to know anything about it, so that the pupils were at ease to engage their creativity and come up their own ideas about the topic. The teacher then guides the pupils by throwing out tidbits of new information, so that pupils come eventually to the "right" conclusion. It's a style. And, self-directed learning is a powerful skill to instill.

The idea of playing dumb to put people at ease is an important one I think. People can get defensive around a clever dick, it engages their inferiority complex and can sometimes make people angry. In fact the terms "clever dick" and "smart arse" were coined exactly for this use, to bring down a clever person a peg or two. It's important though, if playing dumb is to be consciously done, that it's done with respect - as a style of teaching rather than an underhanded technique to gain some sort of advantage.

The main thrust of playing dumb is to learn something new for yourself and for others. You set up the question so that anyone who answers may actually bring some novelty to the answers, it's a way of engaging creativity. Any new knowledge can then be integrated and synergised with the knowledge you already have. You in turn can offer back that newly synergised knowledge in a virtuous circle. In the process all the other responders learn something new and feel as though they have done so at their level. Contrast this with the usual way to expound on a topic: statements of (your) truth are given out to be digested by others. If there are objections or rejections to this truth, these may not even be stated, the responders simply lose interest and go elsewhere - everyone loses.

I feel very sure that this playing dumb technique could be more formally polished, but I'll have to give it more thought.

In the next episode I'll expand on how to ask recursive and self-referencing questions.

[LastThursday]

Self-referencing questions are delayed maybe until the next post. Instead I'll talk about thought. Ha! A self referencing topic: thought about thought. I just can't help myself.

Can thought explain itself? Maybe, although I've spoiled the punchline. But I can at least give it a go. 

What can thoughts be?

The most commonly accepted would be sub-vocalisation, or talking to yourself. This isn't so much muttering as more hallucinating. You hallucinate a disembodied voice which may match your spoken voice to some degree (or maybe not). This voice then gives a sort of running commentary either on what's happening "out there", or more of a ruminating sense of creating a story around a subject. Being linguistically based, sub-vocalisation is very structured. That is its primary strength and why its used for logical thought. Logic shares the same highly structured appearance, but adds consistency for good measure. Language is not necessarily consistent and hence not necessarily logical. So sub-vocalisation can be co-opted for logic: and that is what some people refer to as thought.

What else can thoughts be? For those non-sub-vocalisers (me included sometimes), it's those sensations and experiences that don't emanate from the material world. This is a very vague definition and problematic. After all, how do we learn to distinguish the material world from the not-material world? Anyway, I'll carry on. It's totally possible to think visually, for example when mentally trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle. It's possible to think kinaesthetically, for example when threading a needle or making a cup of tea. Or auditorily when you have an earworm. You could even imagine tasting a lemon: that is thought.

You could argue because all those non-sub-vocalising types of thought are not logical that they aren't thought at all. I would strongly disagree. In fact all of those other modes of thought can be logical and self-consistent. For example imagine thinking about arranging three differently sized blocks so that they support each other. There's an inherent logic about that puzzle, and it uses both visual and possibly kinaesthetic thought. But thought does not have to be logical at all. 

What else is thought? Memories. That is those sensations which you mark as having happened and you are somehow replaying now. The close acquaintance of thought memory is fantasy or thinking about the future. That is just thought you mark as not having happened. It's worth noting as an aside that it is precisely this "marking" system that goes awry in some mental health problems or is the source of episodes of Deja Vu.

How far can thought be stretched? Anything which happens...now, is due for instant shelving into the near past. Once an experience has passed, it instantly goes into the realm of memory and therefore thought. In a strong sense the present moment is just thought: it is constantly slipping away. The whole world is a thought.

And that, is why thought can explain thought, in exactly the same way a banana explains itself just by being itself.

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I sometimes get the What The Fuck Is Going On symptoms. The main manifestation of it comes on when I'm listening to music, especially with repetitive motifs or rhythm. Music speaks directly to my being and unlocks that sensation of WTFIGO. To a large degree so does being blasted by nature. I've had some experiences where I nearly cried at the enormity and beauty of nature. I've not yet combined the two for a double hit.

I'd say it was more sensation than thought. It's a kind blend of incredulity and directness, a paradox. I can't believe it's all happening, yet it's all happening. Despite what anyone tells me or says or expounds, I know very deep down within myself that there is actually no answer to WTFIGO. Saying it's all God or non-duality or other such thing is shifting the blame sideways. In fact I would say it's unhelpful, as you're simply adding another layer of indirection. It's like trying to explain a knot, by tying more knots. 

Another odd sensation I get is that I'm so analytical and in my head, that I wind myself up emotionally and yet it all passes away in the end. Then I do further analysis and come to the conclusion that I overreacted, and I lost myself to thought, I wasted my time, I tainted my experience of this. Analysis about analysis. The further I push myself with this line of reasoning, the more I think that I should give up reasoning altogether: I'm just spoiling my experience of reality. And yet, analysis and reasoning is just as much part of reality as anything else. The mind ties itself up in knots.

What is a better way to approach WTFIGO? I know intuitively that giving up thinking about it at all is a step in the right direction. Some would think that was defeatist, but they would be the thinking types. Another is to actually goad myself into having more WTFIGO moments. Go out in nature, explore the world and people and cultures, steep myself in it. There's this idealised notion of mine that cavemen or hunter gatherers or our ape ancestors were always in this state of WTFIGO. There were less blinded by the paraphernalia of civilisation and modern living. "Closer to the source" some mystical types might say.

One more situation in which I get WTFIGO is taking an afternoon nap. It's that feeling of something deeply familiar and cosy just as you wake up, that soon gets lost as (self-) consciousness takes over. And if any explanation held water then WTFIGO is simply a feeling or knowing of a deep familiarity with everything and that you are it.

 

[LastThursday]

How do you know your self worth? I want to go over one particular dimension of self worth, that of attractiveness.

Before I launch I should add that being attractive has fundamentally nothing to do with self worth, but in every day life as it is, it does.

Let's talk about the face. None of us can see our faces without looking into a mirror or a webcam. We a born not knowing how attractive we are facially. In any case, when we do look in a mirror we are probably not the best judge of our own attractiveness; what do we have to go on anyway? We look at magazine covers and say, well, she's attractive or he's attractive. The standard is set by our societal mores at any one particular period in time. That's it? Do we look at others and then judge ourselves? I'd say not. We still need a yardstick with which to measure. That yardstick is other people's reactions to attractiveness.

It is the active reaction to attractiveness that we use to measure own attractiveness. I'd say 99% of the time we don't even think about our own attractiveness, we are actually neutral towards it. But if every time you walk into a room full of strangers some of those strangers stare at you, their pupils dilate and their faces flush - then even the most stupid person will eventually realise that they are invoking a reaction in others. What about me could be invoking that reaction, I think? Well... every time I see a good looking person, I have the same reaction. Bingo! I must be attractive. 

And so it goes. This reasoning is mostly unconscious, over time you build up a map of your own attractiveness: your face, hair, body, arms, legs, skin and so on. Sometimes it becomes overt and you will consciously obsess about your attributes, because you know deep down that attractiveness is variable and doesn't last and, that it's completely in the eye of the beholder (generally society at large); you could lose your attractive self worth at a moment's notice.

What happens if you don't pander to someone's unconscious knowledge of their own attractiveness? i.e. you don't flush and dilate? I'd say it's nearly impossible not to give the game away, but there's still a slim chance of pulling it off. The reaction will vary between completely being blanked, or intense curiosity. But even the blankers will wonder what's wrong with you at least - you will get their attention either way. And, if you're in the attraction game (most of us are looking for sex or a committed partner), then getting attention is half the battle. This anti-attraction pattern only works on those who expect attention (even if unconsciously).

What about all those average Joes and Janes who "know" they're actually averagely attractive? Indeed, what about them? What I mean is that these types probably don't obsess or even think about their attractiveness in any big way. And they have it right, we don't naturally know our own attractiveness, only other people can tell us that. We inherently don't care and nor should we. Self worth is illusory.

How attractive was this post? I can only tell by watching the viewing numbers tick up. That way I will measure my self worth.

Edited April 14, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

One thing I enjoy immensely is songs with good intros.

I'm stuck in the 80's but don't let that put you off. The Police were masters of the intro, but their best was this one:

For more 70's flavour, David Bowie always had good intros:

Back to 80's:

The Beatles were absolute masters of the intro, for a 60's flavour:

For a more 90's feel, the Galagher brothers were excellent introists:

Back to 80's:

A bit more 90's:

On a par with the Police, the Beatles again:

And who can forget the 70's and Stevie Wonder, another master of intro:

That's your lot.

[LastThursday]

This may or may not be rambling. Is that a useless comment? Are all comments ultimately useless...? Erm. Anyhow.

I'm a different person to different people. When in London, I revert to type to blend in. I become more bolshy, more laddy, more Estuary English in my speech. When at my home locale, I speak like I write and I'm prim and proper. Each has it's uses. Am I fake? No'at all darlin'. All these characters are within me. Saying that, the characters don't have hard boundaries, I don't have multiple personality disorder (although that would also be handy sometimes). It's more like a change in emphasis: it's still me fundamentally.

I think what I like about increasing the volume of certain characters is that they come with different attributes and mindsets. The Londoner in me is more masculine and process oriented and confident. The mid-sized-middle-class-town-suburb character is perhaps more intellectual, high brow and conscious. My Brighton character is young student, beer drinking, letching and playful (god I miss him). Not all my characters are attached to places, some are attached to people. To my dad I'm very sensible, stable and somewhat distant (he brings it out in me). To my sister I'm more jokey, slightly competitive and very rambling and casual (we were always that way), but I always have the upper hand being the eldest. To my ex, I'm disengaged, quiet and nonchalant - she knows too much about me and given half the chance will judge me, even in front of others.

This brings me to an important thing I've noticed. These characters are mostly brought out unconsciously in a kind of stimulus/response pattern. The people and places stimulate the dialing in of certain characters. If I were to play the wrong character, there would be bewilderment. This has happened to me (or one of those mes) on a number of occasions. I remember having started university and then meeting up with my pre-university ex-girlfriend, I somehow forgot to switch back to form, and she thought I was drunk, despite being completely sober - bewilderment. My dad has seen me innebriated many times and been very surprised and sometimes entertained by my other characters. My sister recently got blasted with my spiritual character - that definitely surprised her - she was glad I'd come to the same conclusions as her (she having been woo woo all her adult life), and I full well know that she was expecting the unemotional atheist character.

What is my takeaway from all this? Dunno. But it's sure fun to mix things up once in a while.

P.S. It came back to me, the point of this post. Spirituality tells you to give up the ego, but if you want to continue living in the world of mortals, then it's much better if you can be flexible, and summoning characters on demand is the way to do it. I'm still waiting to channel my "GOD" character, God help us all.

P.P.S More ramble... it occured to me that I have different characters on the forum too (must be unconsciously, otherwise I'd a noticed earlier). So: agony uncle, Philosophical Man, Mr Joker, Mr Abstracto, in yer face and cetera.

Edited April 15, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Talking of characters, The Student version of me is obsessed with Anfisa Letyago at the moment, for the talent, the music, the looks and I just love the name to death (love is such a feminine word to use, but I love it):

 

[LastThursday]

I just can't keep away from this journal. I guess all the introspection and review and acknowledgement is doing something somewhere. Maybe I just enjoy writing it?

Do you have a genius? From memory, I think the word is etymologically related to genie and djinn, you know the type where your rub your lamp and out pops genius - sorry a genie - in a large plume of smoke. "What three wishes do you desire master?". Well, I want to be a genius in information technology (tick), languages, (semi-tick), and being human (erm...) This gets the nub of genius. Is genius given or inherent, does it or does it not belong to you?

My own personal take is that genius doesn't exist or at least not in it's conventional form. There are just degrees of attainment. Was Mozart a musical genius? Mozart grew up in a musical family, so it isn't at all surprising in that sense. Yes it's quite possible that Mozart had a predisposition for music in his genetic makeup, but a baby is not a genius in any sense. Maybe his family were musical in the first place, because they too had the same musical genes. So Mozart's genius was given by his environment, he just so happened to be acutely tuned in to that environment.

Are we all geniuses? In a certain unconventional sense, yes. Most of us learn to speak a language and to walk on two legs. Those two activities are extremely underrated, because it's so common. Both are in fact impossibly complex to attain. Try building a robot to walk on two legs on all terrains: a supremely hard problem. Equally for understanding language - GPT3 is good, but not quite there. Ah, you say, but we're genetically predisposed to those two activities, it's a cinch; and Mozart was predisposed to music. 

So genius is just a conventional way to label someone who is an outlier in some area, or many areas. Leonardo Da Vinci or Einstein springs to mind. Both had breadth as well as depth. There is a bell curve distribution to nearly everything, and you'll sit in the middle of it for most things. Learning your native language sits in the middle of the distribution (a.k.a average). Learning 10 languages sits on the edge of the distribution (a.k.a. genius). 

Is genius then attainable? Yes. And it requires two primary skills: pattern recognition and synthesis. With pattern recognition it's about noticing the structure in the every day that nobody else notices: scientists do this all the time. But there can also be a more spontaneous and disorganised element to it that can be improved upon, and this is mostly by acquiring new knowledge and pure repeated and concerted observation. With synthesis, it's about taking those patterns and using them to predict or build things that others wouldn't. Synthesis is lateral thinking or problem solving in action. Synthesis is about imagination and playfulness. 

So instead of rubbing that lamp and acquiring your three wishes, learn to acquire a genius: pay attention, use your imagination, and play!

[LastThursday]

Maybe if I just keep on writing, it can defibrillate a career as a writer of some description. Instead of abstracting away in computer language, I can abstract away in the English language. The latter attracts me more and more as I go on, the former is phasing in and out and was just a bit of fun for forty years.

Enough waffle, I'd like to talk about archetypal motifs in stories, with a view to applying them to the stories you invent about yourself. Here's a few example motifs I've noticed:

• Regret for past actions or lack of action
• Blaming externalities and people for your failures or for missing the good things in life
• Reconciliation with those that gave you up or fulfilling a dream you held
• Coming to understanding and forgiving close ones for their actions and your resentment towards them
• Encountering great hardship and overcoming it and either becoming stronger or weaker as a result
• Having nostalgia for times that were rough and inhumane, and comparing them to the dullness of the now
• Having grand dreams thwarted, but realising it was for your own good
• Receiving a mysterious gift or knowledge and uncovering its mystery or realising it gives you or unlocks special powers

The above is just the marrow of soap operas, novels, and fairy tales. But they all have a grip on our imaginations. The truth be told your life as it unfurled didn't follow a narrative, it just happened, haphazardly and without a proper plot. But you absentmindedly and retrospectively thread the events together into a consistent and plot driven narrative: things were destined, how else did you get here? How else do you get over to someone else "your story" in a format they can digest? The disaster can be to fall for your own story, only to then unpick the tale and restore a non-historical view on life: shit happened and it's no longer happening.

Those archetypical stories you use are like trinkets tinkling on your wrist. Personally, I have/had resentment towards my parents for messing up my life. But the only path to reconciliation is by giving up the narratives: there was no resentment, there is no reconciliation to be had.  I could click my fingers now, and the stories would disappear and I would be left with reality as it stands: an elderly father who I connect to now and then. Why not love him now as he is? If I don't like him now, as he is, then it's not contingent on some story I've held on to for 30 years. No, it's because his views are incompatible with mine.

We can't help but be lost in fantasy. The past has long swept away beneath our feet, but we insist on holding on to a story we have of it. How liberating for ourselves would it be to cut the trinkets off?

Edited April 16, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

One thing I learned from the way I was taught NLP (see a previous post) was to do first and explain after. That is teach by example not by theory. So in my quest to explain self-referencing questions, I'll talk about words, of course, using words.

Words have a dual nature. If you run your hands lightly over a bas-relief, you feel the most prominent aspects of the sculpture. That prominent aspect is the dictionary definition of a word, with its web of familial attachments to other words. When words are used in conjunction with each other they create the sense of the sculpture beneath your fingers. A word is the relief of the sculpture the bit that is mutually agreed upon by its users.

The unspoken side of words is the bas, the shadows. It's the unagreed upon tacit context of words. If I say "red fox" immediately an animal is produced with its russet fur, white underside and black socks; it skits and jumps and smells the air. That's my context, my bas, the relief is just the plain web of words relating to "red" and "fox": what the dictionary says.

So it's clear that a web of written or spoken words defining each other can only ever be a relative enterprise. Any system of relative relations cannot have an absolute base, the system is untethered and free floating and finite and enclosed. The conclusion is that a word has no absolute meaning; indeed words themselves change over time and new languages are born and evolve. But this relative layer of relief is grounded absolutely by the bas, the parts the dictionary doesn't define: the living red fox.

When someone asks the impertinent question "What is God?", they are looking for the bas by using the relief. Responders can only describe the sculpture of God with reference to the reliefed parts they can touch: the words on the screen. The questioner still has the job of filling in the bas around that relief, it must be a completely personal venture and completely silent because words are not enough. "God" has no absolute meaning other than the one we discover for ourselves.

Edited April 17, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Honestly, I'm not going to keep up this level of posting. Even once a day is a lot. But somehow writing is becoming easier, is it just practice, habit, or energetic need, channelling something, attention? Hm.

Next subject: figure and ground.

The conceptual framework for this is nearly the same as my last post (bas/relief, ground/figure). But in a completely different context. I find the underlying commonality interesting.

Today, something that I do regularly came into sharp relief.  One version is about interacting with people. The normal sensation is that here I am, and there you are, and there is this exchange of information between us. I have a strong sensation that you are this separate being with your own troubles and thoughts and ways of doing. We both share this space of the material world and can agree on things happening within it.

On occasion, and because of much spiritual work, I get the figure and ground flip. I get this equally strong sensation that all that is happening is an interpretation. The only thing I have to go on is the information that I get from you. I literally have to construct an idea of you in my space of awareness. I know this construction is mostly not done consciously (although maybe this is a belief rather than truth), nevertheless the feeling is unsettling. It's as if everyone is a character in a novel, and what I deem as normal, is actually just getting lost in my own interpretations.

Then of course, I have to go meta, and realise that I myself am just another character in a novel. Awareness is interpreting me. Just as I'm "fleshing out" the uncommunicated details of other people's lives, am also doing the same thing to myself.  As a previous post alluded to, I'm confabulating a narrative on my own life, and the life of others. And then the figure flips back into place, and everything is normal again.

The other instance where this happens regularly is believing in a past. The normal state of affairs is to emphatically live in a timeline and where stuff happened (you remember it with memories). Then sometimes, again, the figure and ground flip. I realise the past is complete fantasy, and that I'm completely free of it, and I sit there suddenly unchained and liberated. The sensation is like playing hide and seek and hiding in a cupboard. I know I've found a great hiding place, and I could hide there indefinitely without being found by the past or the future. I, the character in the novel have learned to hide from the author.

These two things often combine. I'll get together with friends and have a good time. During the event I'm fully present, but loosely attached so to speak, I don't think about anything that will happen in the future, or think much about the past, I'm just there. After the event I don't feel a need to go over things in any way, I simply move on to the next activity, the past becomes fantasy and the characters that I call my friends go into hibernation. I may pull them out and give them some thought, but it's rare.

One big side effect of all this ground and figure flipping, is that sometimes I'm so detached from worry, that I can't bring myself to act, I simply shelve it and it doesn't occur to me. I'm very much just in the moment mostly. I then get a rude awakening when some deadline has passed, or I realise weeks or months have passed and I haven't maintainted some thing or other. It's very much like time has concertinaed into the present moment, there's no depth to it as such.

This state of affairs is completely counter to how I was, say ten years ago, when I felt very much conventional. I wouldn't say there's a sense of unrealness per se, in fact I'm more in flow and connected than I ever was and I'm very much at peace most of the "time".

Where's this headed? I suspect that at some point the ground will permanently be switched with the figure. Or more likely they will blend into one. I will simply stop existing as a character of my own making and I'll be the ground of existence, in a timeless dimension. Other people will also stop existing as characters and there will be no difference between me and you. That day will be soon: says the author.

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

What is my morning routine? It varies. There are elements that I like to incorporate if I can, some are non-negotiable. Very roughly an ideal morning for me is:

7:30 Wake up

7:40 Shower + Clothe

7:50 Take supplements and water

8:00 Meditation/self hypnosis

8:30 Qi Gong stretching excersises

8:40 Walk at least 30 mins

9:10 Work

10:00 Breakfast

Naturally this doesn't pan out every day. Shower, supplements and breakfast must happen. Most of the variation is due to waking up times. I'm not super strict with waking up and it can vary within a window of an hour - and is largely dependent on the time I go to sleep, which hovers around midnight. I'm better in the spring than the middle of winter and this is soley to do with lighter mornings.

However, during lockdown I've been fairly disciplined about getting walks in, just not always at the ideal time and not every single day. Pre-lockdown I would have walked about 40 minutes to and from work, but I tend to get 45 to 60 minutes or more in now. The other things can also be done out of order and at different times. Walking does triple duty: exercise, light exposure (body clock alignment), meditation. I often don't do formal meditation and I'm not particularly invested in it.

I've never been a gym bunny it just doesn't fit my character. I used to run regularly and long distance, and it was still good as a way to kill the internal monologue, a kind of meditation. But it requires a lot of concentration to run well and I was always competing against myself - a completely different mindset from walking. Pre-pandemic I played badminton once a week, for fun, exercise and a different way to engage the body. I've never been a strong enough swimmer to enjoy it as exercise, although I do enjoy being in the water.

I used to do Tai Chi for many years. But I'm out of practice and I don't have the space to practise the forms. It was excellent for calming the mind and for poise and posture and having a base level of muscle tone.  The Qi Gong stretching, really is just stretching exercises, but I find I feel very much looser and less physically tense afterwards. The meditation does the same thing, except for my mind. The two in combination are ideal.

In this country (UK) the levels of UV vary greatly and most folks don't get enough daily exposure on their skin - we are wrapped up against the cold. Vitamin D supplements are a must. I also take Omega 3 as a matter of course, as intake of this tends to be low in diet and so is out of balance with Omega 6, which is higher in diet. There is also some evidence that it improves brain function, although it's not often touted for that function in adults. Anecdotally, I haven't been ill at all for at least three years, not even a sniffle and I put that down to vitamin D - but also having good sleep hygiene.

I'm not particularly fussy about what food I eat. I wouldn't say I eat unhealthily: I very rarely have takeaways, and I don't drink much alcohol, caffeine intake is barely above zero (decaff coffee or tea). But, I could improve definitely in this area. I do have pre-packaged meals and I know these are less than ideal and my vegetable and fruit intake is inadequate. I'm not sure of the solution, some days I just don't want to prepare a meal completely from scratch (it takes a lot more time and energy), and fruit and vegetables don't keep (I shop every fortnight).

I should completely quite caffeine, I know for certain that it disrupts my sleep and intuitively know it is bad for my body. Even decaffeinated coffee and tea has small amounts. I very seldom eat chocolate as that contains caffeine. But I like a hot drink with some flavour and fruit teas etc, just don't do it for me. I stay away from alcohol as this also affects the quality of my sleep and again is bad for my body - and can reduce immunity.

Right! Time to start the day.

 

[LastThursday]

@modmyth the enjoyment is mutual, your journals are great!

I'm doing this in reverse order. I realised I was fairly intolerant to caffeine in my late twenties. It takes an age to clear my system. Mostly it gives me a kind of lightheaded detached sensation (I guess it is a psychoactive substance), and makes me sweat, which I find unpleasant. Those two bodily reactions indicates that it's doing no good at all. The last effect is insomnia, which is also sucks. Realistically I can only get away with one cup of caffeinated coffee first thing in the morning or suffer the consequences.

The video was informative. He talks about inspiration as if it were separate from ideas, but I'm not so sure. It strikes my that inspiration is just an idea that gains momentum or that particularly captures the attention. The source of both is the same. The genius in this case is not the inspiration itself, but the application of skill and effort to execute on it. For a piece to be moving, either it is crafted that way through having a good understanding of emotion (a skill), or it's blind luck. Especially with art, the emotional reaction to it depends greatly on the person experiencing it. Take Jackson Pollock, is his work moving, to me? No. Is it exceptionally inspired, yes, because he had the ability to break out of tradition and create unique experiences in his artwork.

Genius is also thinking out of the box, but that's synthesis or creativity, which everyone has to a greater or lesser degree. Maybe genius just comes along with a confluence of the things the guy mentions in the video: talent, skill, turning up every day, creativity, inspiration and ideas. But also genius especially in the arts comes through consensus. Bach was disregarded until Mendelssohn came along and made him a genius by consensus. In that sense, genius is conferred not innate.

Edited April 18, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

It's been twelve hours. So...

Is there magic left in the world? For me there are moments of minor magic. For a number of years I used to get up on the summer solstice, go down to the beach at 4am and sit in the silence and chill and slowly watch it get light. There's always a surprise and secret delight at the new day coming into being. Equally, sat with friends on holiday watching the sun go down, and being blanketed by the stillness and warmth, and feeling a strong connection to the earth and each other.

Does magic have to be sought? It does, because we forget. We are creatures of novelty, it's a very few things that can repeatedly hit us with magic. The sight of my ex-girlfriend's behind in tight jeans (!) The laptop in front of me is pure repeatable magic: the younger me read about things like this in science fiction stories. People are endlessly fascinating and magical (but also annoying in equal measure). But my table is not magical, nearly everything is functional and unexceptional. We have to increasingly go further and further to find the magic.

But that sensation of magic can be stirred inside of us. Because magic is a sensation of wonderment at how a thing can be. A car ceases to be magic when we realise that it's a machine for turning gasoline into motion. A car ceases to be magic when we have to sit in traffic twice a day, every day. But when you actually walk the same route, you start to appreciate again the magic of your car. And that's the anwer, we have to bring magic back by shifting out perspective. If we can shift our perspective on the entire world, then it all becomes magic again.

Another way to bring magic back, is to pay attention. There is so much in the world to see, that we easily miss nearly everything. Curiosity is key. With curiosity we are pushed to explore the nooks and crannies of reality. And, when we come across something new, we sit still and observe and in that moment we can see magic. That should be the pursuit of spirituality to reach a state of magic.

[LastThursday]

Reminder to self: what is thought; restructuring life.

[LastThursday]

Here are some thoughts on thought itself.

I've talked elsewhere in my journal about what is and isn't thought. Suffice to say that thought can be visual, auditory, verbal and so on.

One of the principle characteristics of thought is that it is spontaneous. Until a thought arises: "damn I've left the cooker on", there is nothing there. Thoughts don't creep up on us slowly, they come into our awareness fully formed and ready to go. Maybe in the cooker example, you just have a visual flash of your cooker being on fire. In that sense, thought has breadth, it isn't as if a thought slowly emerges and builds itself up. If any "building up" is to be done, then this is done serially, with one thought giving way to the next thought. This is especially the case with language based thought.

Thoughts are clearly not completely random. Yes, the way in which they arise may be at random times and places, but there is mostly a useful relevance to them. This implies that thoughts are contigent on your circumstances. They are in the main not haphazard and useless. Although, thoughts that aren't relevant or useful or those that cause unwanted distress, do occur and these are labelled as intrusive. That label is interesting, it's as if those type of thoughts come from a source external to oneself. There is a sense here of not having free will to control those thoughts. This is absolutely the nub of the free will argument: do you, or do you not control thought?

I would completely expand out that intrusive label and say that all thought is intrusive, with respect to it not being in your control. You do not control thought, it controls you: that is a radical shift in perspective for some. So the immediate question is, where do thoughts come from, and what does control thought? That would take several posts to elaborate on, so I'll just point back to the observation that thoughts are relevant to circumstances. Largely it's the environment you find yourself in that provokes thoughts. A lot of mental health problems stem from this. The sufferer is medicated and told to somehow break free of their intrusive thoughts, when all along it's their environment and circumstances causing the thoughts. I repeat, we don't control thought.

So why does it seem that we have at least a modicum of control over what we think? One observation is that thought comes in ones. That is, we don't hold several thoughts simultaneously. There seems to be limited space for individual thoughts, and instead we are forced to have a stream of thoughts (or more popularly, stream of consciousness). Here is where it gets more interesting. Not only are thoughts provoked by environment, but they are also provoked by other thoughts. So, you may have a visual flash of your cooker, then followed by some internal monologue, then followed by a sensation of panic. This is in very rapid succession, thought trains can be rapid. It gives the illusion of having a unified thought, but it's not true.  The thought train can be interrupted at any point by another thought (that is a crucial insight for therapy).

It is a feature of thought that it is repetitive. Some thoughts arise throughout the day for example. For example if you are very depressed, you may have recurring thoughts of suicide. Or, if the self help book you read triggers thoughts that you should affirm positivity at 10am each morning. That is how we regain control of thought, we simply instill repetitive thoughts that interrupt (maybe negative) thought trains. The actual source of those repetitive thoughts is still largely the same as for other thoughts: the environment. You still need to read a self-help book for example, in order to start thinking differently. Yes, although, some thoughts install themselves without any prompting and that is the nature of insight.

Insight is interesting because it seems different from other types of thought. It is not. An insight is just another type of "intrusive" thought. But if we have a positive reaction to it, then that sets up an environment in which that insightful thought will be repeated in future. In other words, the insight becomes relevant to us in some way, and that relevance is pegged to our bodily reaction to it (i.e. emotion). It's like thoughts have a rating system based on relevance and importance, in turned hooked into emotion: the stronger the emotion, the higher the rating; the higher the rating the more likely the thought will be repeated again in future. It's not relevant whether the emotion is negative or positive, just its strength. Both negative and positive feedback can result: depression or elation.

Free will is gained only by modulating thought, but thought is modulated haphazardly and out of our control. If you have a thought that you will finally work your way out of depression, that thought wasn't in your control. In a very strong sense, we are all out at sea at the mercy of the waves and weather. This shouldn't be scary or unfamiliar to us, our bodies work and function completely out of "our" control too. Our thoughts and our bodies work in very similar ways.

 

Edited April 19, 2021 by LastThursday