Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

I'm blessed by not being ill very often. I think it may have been a few years, but this week I've been feeling under the weather. When it comes to the discomfort of illness the body will override thought and other things to get its own way. Even corporate culture can't dismiss illness, it's the one of the few "excuses" for being temporarily excused from wage slavery. Is there anything to learn from the body during illness?

What illness does is to suspend normal activity and put you into a different state. We're very used to taking our bodies for granted and only notice them when there is some physical or emotional need. Even then, we try and ignore or misinterpret what we are being told: we carry on working or over indulge in one thing or another, and our bodies scream louder until we give in. If the body is ignored persistently and over time, then this will manifest in many different ways, either through attracting illness or through dysfunction. This dysfunction can then trigger mental illness as we try and battle with our bodies.

Often, the different state illness puts us in has a dreamy or agitated quality. We feel like we've been taken out of ourselves and are incapable of normal thought processes or normal action. I wanted to take a long walk today, but I had to cut it short, the pain and weariness in my body wouldn't let me continue. And as I sit here, with a headache I just want to stare into space and not think at all and yet I don't feel tired enough to sleep. Often sleep is the only source of comfort and escape in illness. It is in sleep that our bodies recover and stop being abused by every day life: we are rewarded for it.

Sometimes we don't know how to slow down and shut off our constant toing and froing, both physical and mental, we run ourselves ragged. Our bodies then either remind us or punish us for being so silly. Then we fight with our bodies with drugs and self medication and other dysfunctional behaviours. Doctors only treat the symptoms and not the causes, and they want quick results, it's what we want too.

Illness has its own course however. It starts of at a whisper and then grows to a crescendo, before dying back down to nothing. We are powerless to hurry it along or to want to indulge it, it sucks, its painful, it makes us emotional and unstable. But when illness does disappear we have learnt our lesson and that is to savour every second we are not ill, and, not to abuse ourselves and our bodies.

Edited May 13, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Fifteen odd years ago I was the team lead in a small set of three developers - me included. We mostly wrote web software for the large further education college we worked in, we also did a lot of reporting. Managing people and their workload can be an irksome process. Each person has their habits and foibles and you have to cater to those one way or another. One of the guys loved his mobile so much, I had to tell him to lock it away it in the day lest it distract him from actually working! The other guy was different.

This guy was keen and he would constantly ask me questions. Now, I didn't really mind it too much, it was for the best in the long run - the more I helped him upfront, the less help he would need in six month's time. But he had a unique manner in asking his questions. He would ask, I would answer, and then he would argue about it. This used to wind the other guy up. It didn't get to me so much though, I would simply explain my reasoning because often he wasn't seeing the bigger picture. I was a pragmatist he was an idealist. Occasionally, my reasoning about some bit of coding was too subtle to even explain, and I would simply say: "do it however you want, but I suggest doing it this way". He would flounder at having nothing to fight against.

I've noticed this style of question asking often in some people, lets call it "combative questioning". I think there's several things going on here. One is that some people are naturally contrary, they see the world in opposites. I should know, I'm one of them. Whenever something new comes into my system, my instinctual reaction is to reject it or at least question it, and then to make up my own mind about it. Deep down I can't abide being in mindless agreement, it makes me feel like a sheep, and I'm not, I have my own mind and will. It's a style.

Another thing that's going on is looking for agreement. The question sometimes is simply a smokescreen designed to find people who are in agreement with their point of view. If they get lucky, someone will echo what they were thinking and they satisfy themselves that the question has been answered. Of course, this sort of thing is not questioning at all, it's sort of the opposite. Asking questions requires an openness on the part of the questioner. The questioner needs to be open to the possibility of both getting conflicting views, and views that conflict with their own worldview. Instead of rejecting all answers that don't "fit" their worldview, they should say "thanks" and then go and contemplate on the answers at length. Usually the most unpalatable answers have the most truth to teach you. Finally, they should have enough courage to update their world view without a fight.

Both guys never did change their ways in the time I was there. But I did get them back by leaving behind a bunch of impenetrable subtle code for them to "learn" from.

[LastThursday]

If you live long enough you get to go to many places in the world. My list so far is: UK, Ireland, France, Andorra, Monaco, Spain, Italy, Malta, Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Czechia, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Iceland, USA, Japan, Thailand, India, South Africa, New Zealand. 

There are a number of places I'd like to still visit, the South Americas, more Scandinavia, Canada, Australia, Pacific Islands, Vietnam, Cambodia. Some places I'd definitely revisit and explore more: Japan, Thailand, India, New Zealand. There's beauty and culture everywhere. Some places I'm curious about, but not so sure: Russia, China, Pakistan, African countries. And of course I shouldn't forget about the country on my doorstep: the Netherlands.

When I visited New Zealand it was both a chance to swan about doing not much for a few months, but also with half an eye to checking the place out to see if I could live there. I definitely fell in love with the beauty of the country, both North and South islands. Strangely, one thing that put me off was its sparseness of population. Towns and cities are small in European terms. I felt as though if I settled anywhere in New Zealand I would soon exhaust everything there was to see and do in any particular town or city. Also, ten years ago when I visited I was unable to detach from being my mother's carer. Another point not in it's favour is the remoteness of the place. Even Australia is a long flight away. Physically visiting friends or family would be out except maybe once or twice a year. However, they speak English, I have skills New Zealand may like, technology now is such that keeping touch is easy, and I could build a tiny house there a lot more easily than in the UK. If I changed career to photography, I would have endless material.

The only other country were I think I could live is Spain, but that's nearly a default option. Certainly I'd have to live there for a year if I wanted dual nationality and get my Spanish citizenship. Spain is a beautiful country and stuffed full of culture, and of course I have a large amount of family in various pockets around the country. Also, living there would "re-balance" me. I have a deep affinity for Spain, it's literally part of my DNA and the older I get the more neglected it feels. It's an odd sensation, spirituality says to dis-identify with everything, and yet I want to identify more with certain parts of me - it's all a game. I could also do with somewhat improving my rubbish Spanish.

A good long time ago my girlfriend and I toyed with the idea of living in Canada and we nearly moved there. I think we would have chosen places with more temperate climates such as Vancouver or thereabouts. If I remember rightly, what attracted was generally the high standard of living and their English speaking, by that token we were less interested in the French speaking areas. We also both had desirable IT and engineering skills. We were young and excitable. But in the end the idea quietly dissipated.

Another place that I'm intrigued by is Scandinavia and specifically Sweden. Again they have a high standard of living, they generally speak good English, and they have an aesthetic I like (I know that's nebulous). I did begin to teach myself Swedish a few years ago. If anything the Swedes are even more reserved that the British, but I don't think I would feel out of place there. I guess the only off putting thing, is the low light levels and cold weather - I'm very much a sun and warmth lover. 

Edited May 14, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

When I spoke to my dad recently, he was telling me about a druid he went and saw. Druid. Well anyway, the druid told my dad that he had had a curse put on him by one of his exes, and that most probably she was some type of witch. I must say I can't help myself here forgive me: my dad's ex hexed him - kind of flows of the tongue doesn't it? Anyway, the German word for witch is Hexen. There's definitely an etymological relationship there. Germans always capitalise nouns, strange lot, I find it an infectious habit though.

Where was I? So yes, regardless of whether my dad had been cursed or not, and what exactly a modern druid does, it did raise in me a kind of curiosity. Can people's malicious intent harm you? I'm thinking pure intent here, and at a distance, well away from the intentee. Fundamentally can I make someone unwell just by thinking or wishing bad things on them? Maybe some of you witchier types are shouting at me now: yes! yes! Ok, but I'm learning here, don't think badly of me, yikes.

Have some of the times I've been unwell either physically or mentally been due to being cursed or had venom discretely directed my way? I don't believe I've pissed off many people in my time, but there have been a few, and probably more than I think; I have been known to be blunt and direct at times. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly interested in seeing if I can affect other people at a distance. But the question does arise that when I do in fact think of anyone, it may have either a positive, neutral or negative undercurrent behind it. Am I accidentally affecting people this way? It's enough to make me paranoid, or at least feel as though I should be more responsible in what I'm thinking.

The other side of the coin is, is there a way to undo or protect myself from both stray negativity or malicious intent? Do I have to perform a ritual, does it have to be that dramatic? Or can I simply just become aware that I've been cursed and tell myself to "calm down mate, don't worry about it", and poof! it's gone? Can I turn the curse positive in some way?

One practice that I did try in the past to heal myself against people that I thought had seriously wronged me, was to sit and meditate and then imagine a bright white beam of light and love entering my body, let it build up, and then direct it through my heart and into the body of the wrongdoer. It can be incredibly hard to do this, evey fibre in the body can wrench this way and that, saying no no no; but you battle through with the white light and keep going until all the negativity is gone. Finally, I switched off the white light and imagined giving my enemy a huge friendly loving hug.

So countering badness directed at me, with goodness directed at them. I must say, that bespoke exercise did help a great deal to heal my anger, frustration and feeling of being shat upon. And the person didn't even need to be there. Maybe in my own way I helped that person too?

As for my dad, I hope he gets the curse lifted for his own sake, however he chooses to do it. I think that ex hexer Hexen gave him a lot of pain.

Edited May 15, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

The Manifestation Manifesto

I think I've talked previously about manifestation. To be honest, my journal is getting too long to try and re-read and refer directly to previous posts, I'm starting to need an index! It's a testament to some aspect of my memory, that I have a very good memory for stuff I've written about already - but there's probably a limit somewhere. I'd hate to be a bore and repeat myself. 

The crux of what I'm getting at in this post is: how flexible is reality? 

The thing we identify as being our body, is the interface with which we effect change in the world out there. It should be obvious to anybody that to get anything done at all, we have to use our bodies, whether this is using our hands, feet, or vocal cords. It is all fundamentally physicality. There's three broad types of doing. That is: rearranging things, recombining things or directing things. In more down to earth language: tidying things up, making things or bossing people.  

It's in the nature of doing that there's some sort of agency and intention behind it. Generally speaking there's a sense that there's a something (you) that decides and then the body carries out the action. In normal circumstances that linkage is immediate. You think to yourself that you'd like a cup of coffee, and the body then obliges and physically makes one. Even when it doesn't seem immediate, it still is; you think you'd like a coffee at 3pm and then 3pm comes and again, you remember that you'd like a coffee and then immediately make one. It is not as if you program the body in advance and like a robot it carries out the task unconsciously, and you think "woaa, why am I making coffee now? Oh yes, I thought about it three days ago", no, that isn't how it works.

Can this system be hacked? 

Two ways of hacking spring to mind. The first is to remove the agent. In other words you stop attributing your thoughts and intent as being the motivator of your actions. This seems strange, but in fact it isn't. For every act of doing there are a hundred thoughts not enacted. So by that token, the probability that "you" are controlling action seems low; what is so special about certain thoughts and intentions that make you act, while other thoughts do not make you act? Attacking the other side of it, for those lucky thoughts that did result in action, who's to say that you're not retrospectively claiming ownership of the action? It's like getting a full house at Bingo and claiming, yes I did in fact make that happen. Forget agency.

So what does agentless doing look like? Nothing special. If indeed we can entertain that other people are philosophical zombies, then there is no agency on their part in any case - but still nothing looks out of place. The fact is, is that doing is part and parcel of the normal churn of consciousness. Any act of doing is inseparable from the context it is done in, and it's ever expanding contexts until the whole universe is involved. In that sense nothing is done, it just happens, without agency behind it.

What else?

The other is to effect things without the use of your body. One proxy for this sort of action, is when you ask someone to do something for you: you go to a coffee shop and ask for a coffee. I mean you are still physically using your body (vocal cords), but it's closer to what I'm getting at. If you can't use your body, then what can you use? The only thing left is thought and intention. It's clear here that to make a coffee some sort of physicality is needed, otherwise we're in the realm of the supernatural. But it's not supernatural for someone to make you a coffee, and that's where things get interesting. Is it possible that agency by itself is enough to change the world? Is it a law of nature that all personal change has to be done by your body? This goes directly to the heart of the mind/body problem (the body in the context of this post). Maybe the mind interface to reality is broader than just the body? If so then, it behoves us all to crowbar open the possibility. Law of Attraction anyone? Is it also possible that the non-body parts of the interface, can behave in an immediate fashion? Is there an inbuilt delay to the Law of Attraction, and why should this be so?

Ok. So we have agentless action and bodiless action. What about combining the two? 

It's abundantly clear that doing is happening everywhere, but we relabel that doing as happening. Stuff is happening constantly seemingly without agency and without bodies. In effect, that is exactly what materialism is about, it's matter acting without agency or bodies - instead we have a bunch of rules about how and if things can happen.  So how does idealism appropriate agentless, bodiless doing? It says that the agent is just an illusion in any case, consciousness is "doing" itself. Any sense of agency is just another offshoot of consciousness deluding itself and is in fact unnecessary. What about bodiless doing? It would just say that a body is no different from everything else in consciousness, it is seamlessly integrated into it; a body in effect doesn't exist, because the boundary of the body is a fiction. In the end this type of thinking leads into non-duality, everything is one, and there are no boundaries at all.

It's obvious that if everything is part of the same block of stuff (consciousness), then agentless, bodiless action is in fact the norm. Any sense that the agent has for being in control of reality through their body is complete delusion. Consciousness is the master, and we are at its whim. If consciousness wishes to cook the probability books to make it seem like we decided to make a coffee with our hands, then it's its prerogative. If consciousness cooks the books differently and turns you into a millionaire without seeming effort, then its up to it, but it will still delude "you" into thinking it was "your" hard work and good sense.

 

[LastThursday]

Sort of reminder to self:

One thing that continually bothers me about idealism, which I like to call Consciousness First (CF), is how does the stuff in consciousness affect consciousness itself? Materialists will say that consciousness is only a product of matter, so it's obvious that matter affects consciousness: taking drugs (matter) will modulate the conscious experience for example. But how does this work in CF?

For example, you have a vial of clear liquid which when taken affects the conscious experience. CF says that you can't tell the difference (experientially) between a vial containing water and one containing a drug, because they both look the same. Any inkling of there being some substance disolved in the water is pure fiction, and conversely just believing a certain substance is disolved in the water isn't enough to predict the outcome of taking it. CF seems to have lost some sort of predictive power that materialism has.

I find this state of affairs with CF irksome (even though I want to believe in it). Where is the room in CF for the unknowable? If directly experiencing (a.k.a. not creating a narrative) is the baseline of CF, then where does all the unexperienced stuff live? Where is the room for the non-directly experienced molecules of 5-Meo-DMT?

Likewise for object persistence. Materialists explain this as the laws of conversation of mass (for example). This simply says that mass doesn't disappear. Whereas in CF objects constantly pop in and out of existence - you only have to cast your gaze somewhere else for the whole world to change. But object persistence is hard to deny. When you do in fact look back, lo and behold the same objects reappear. You can make philosophic arguments about them not being quite the same objects (they've aged and so on), or that persistence is just a trick played by memory (you remember the objects in memory). But those arguments just push the problem somewhere else. What role exactly is then memory playing within CF? If memory itself is causing the sensation of object persistence, then isn't memory making the whole world hang together? Isn't memory then in fact consciousness itself: it is the thing creating the persistent world? Something doesn't smell right about it. Is memory prime or is the direct experience prime? Isn't memory just an experience? Or is all of experience just a memory - especially since the present moment is contantly being swallowed by memory.

Questions, questions.

Edited May 17, 2021 by LastThursday

[mandyjw]

 

17 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

What role exactly is then memory playing within CF? If memory itself is causing the sensation of object persistence, then isn't memory making the whole world hang together? Isn't memory then in fact consciousness itself: it is the thing creating the persistent world? Something doesn't smell right about it. Is memory prime or is the experience prime? Isn't memory just an experience? Or is all of experience just a memory - especially since the present moment is contantly being swallowed by memory.

Questions, questions.

So memory is thought, and awareness is always aware of thought. If we think we ARE a thought (if we believe that we are the body, essentially) we miss this. The feeling (emotion) that is directly experienced along with thought (only in the present moment can you know how a thought feels) indicates how aligned with awareness (unconditional love) the thought is. So if I remember something traumatic from high school, it feels bad. If I remember something sweet my kid did, it feels good. I get more of what I think about. If I think about Toyotas, I notice more Toyotas. If I think about people being assholes, I see people acting like assholes all the time. Beliefs are thoughts I keep thinking and are like the roots of various thoughts that I revisit a lot. So beliefs like memories will powerfully but usually unconsciously color my experience. The belief that I am a thought, means that I put particular importance on time, because the thought "I" is the only thing that connects my past with what I think is my now or my future. 

[LastThursday]

@mandyjw I drew a diagram I hope you don't mind (I'm a visual guy):

I'm starting to suspect the only way around it - with respect to what is prime - is to start collapsing things, or removing boundaries. The lines in the diagram are equivalences of some sort.

One thought that did occur on my walk this morning was how consistent dreams appear to be when you're having them. There is a sensation that everything hangs together (just like waking life). When you wake up, all the consistency falls away and you realise the dreams were a mess. The point is, maybe the waking world is also a mess but just appears to hang together, sewn together by memory or a sensation of consistency?

Ok to the collapsing.

If there is no observer/observed dichotomy then awareness is not observing thought. Awareness becomes thought, the sensation of thinking just being the sensation of awareness itself. As so with memory, memory becomes subsumed as some type of thought (another collapse), which is just more awareness. I can lasoo memory, thought and awareness all together.

This idea about alignment of thought with awareness (via emotion) confuses me in light of my collapsing. I feel as though you're putting over some idea of truth and the emotion is an indicator of how much truth a thought has? If there is a wellspring of unconditional love and you can be more or less aligned with it through thought, then thought itself cannot be unconditional love (because thought is conditional on emotion). It would seem that unconditional love somehow cannot be collapsed into awareness.

Is memory also emotion? It would seem like memory can be just pure emotion: you must remember how it feels to be angry in order show anger. But memory is much more than just emotion. It's images and sounds and so on. Maybe all memory is tagged with emotion? This tagging then flags how aligned the memory is with unconditional love? I suspect all emotion is memory in any case, so those two sort of collapse together.

Thinking and noticing. Noticing is definitely just a synonym for awareness. I need a dotted line between the two in my diagram! It would seem that awareness is not just a passive thing, but an active process that can be directed by thought. Since thought is awareness, awareness then just nudges itself around, things become amplied (more assholes) or things become muted (less Toyotas). Awareness then is like the weather, changeable, but no-one's in control of it.

Belief is also thought, but as you say a kind of repetitive thought. I also think belief should be linked to emotion, because belief has a component of emotion about truth. Belief is about things which are true in some way. Is truth then just unconditional love? Belief colours (think emotion) your experience because it is emotional.

So far so collapsed.

Time. What is time all about? It is precisely to do with persistence. Without any form of persistence, time is a shambles. So you're right to point out that the belief of "I am" or there being an "I" is all to do with persisting in time. If this didn't happen I guess, we could all just disappear without warning in the next second. In that sense "I" is just a thought attached to emotion, which is awareness.

Not sure I've found an answer. But I've managed to smoosh everything in my diagram together into one thing.

[mandyjw]

I totally get the visual learning thing. I also love how you UK people spell color. 

This is how I'd draw it out only there are no really bubbles or separations from anything, and there's no edges of the paper to awareness. 

In your direct experience you already don't experience time or a separate you but thinking makes it seem as if there's a you in time and that you do. So what we're doing rather than saying "all thought is wrong" (which would itself be a thought and a belief) is we want to align thoughts with the "qualities" of Awareness, or what we actually already are. The only way or time that we can do that is now. We are choosing which thoughts we want to entertain for the purpose of creation and love, etc. (Where this falls apart is that Awareness is the unconditional knowing of everything, so it has no qualities, but since we're using thought and language to point, we say that awareness has qualities, and then we throw those pointing thoughts away once we experience this.) Awareness is open, unconditional, both knowing and unknowing, borderless. 

You can only feel now. You are only aware now. We can think OF a feeling as a thought about an emotion later, or fear/desire it in the future. But feeling itself, the direct experience of emotion only happens now. That's the magic of it. So you could say that feeling or emotion is the awareness of the thought, it is not a thought, but it has a pre-thought knowledge OF the thought. It also dictates which thoughts that come to you and your thoughts dictate how you feel, they are not separate from each other. If you are feeling bad, you are likely to recall bad memories, if you are feeling good, if you recall memory it will likely be of something good. It get's crazier, if you are feeling good and recall a bad memory, and do not identify and step into thought belief, the memory will be seen in an entirely new light. This is the unconditional love piece, and how forgiveness happens (we don't do it). We only believe (think) thought is separate from feeling, like we belief ourselves to be separate from the world. See how crazy tricky that is? It's astounding, breathtaking. 

If you imagine having an amazing interaction with someone you're taking it all in, listening, and feeling every word that they say and at the same time appreciating the heck out of them. Likewise, they do the same with you. This is how we love and want to be loved, and coincidently, that's exactly what awareness is doing with us right now, all the time, but only ever now. Because we are love, loved so completely like that, if we think a thought that is not true about ourselves or unaligned with Awareness, we feel bad. This feeling/awareness is our guidance that all of us have. Yet because awareness is free and unconditional, we can go there if we want. Ironically that's where we start building walls and beliefs out of thought, which impose limitation and condition, out of our inherent freedom. The feeling of freedom, the freedom that is already the case, is traded in for the idea of freedom.

 

 

[LastThursday]

@mandyjw I'm going analytical.

Struggling to Articulate My Experience

One of the inadequacies I find in writing is that words are never enough to convey my experience. For example if I pick up a nominalisation like "thought", I start off knowing what it means. I talk to other people and find that no, it doesn't mean the same thing to other people. Worse it has a range of shades of meaning. In this particular case, for some people thought is just sub-vocalisation, in my case it's images, sounds, sensations. I can think about music and hum a tune, or a visual maths problem or how I might carry myself to run better etc. Maybe I can even think with my fingers and play a tune. None of those use sub-vocalisation. 

So even in the case of thought, the more it is examined the blurrier and all encompassing it becomes. Different nominalisations then start to overlap, memory for example overlaps with thought, but also feelings are incorporated into thought and so on. Logically, when using language each nominalisation has a boundary or area it is allowed to cover. Some things don't overlap, maybe "love" and "object persistence", some do, and others are completely inside another: all memory is thought. Taken together all these words form a kind of joined up landscape of experience. But that word-landscape is just a map, not the territory: the territory is unspeakable or indescribable.

In my experience though, none of these nominalisations actually have a boundary. Thought ends up being everything, the more it is examined. The world "out there" ends up being thought. And the catch all words "consciousness" and "awareness" already are everything. This is why oddness like "everything is unconditional love" happens. "Unconditional love" is just another nominalisation. Everything blurs into everything else. Something blurs into nothing. Everything is God.

That blurring is exactly right. My experience is non-dual, everything is everything else. The other way to see it is that there are no gaps in experience, for example it's not possible to make rip in the visual field and for there to be nothing there inside the rip. A gap is just a discontinuity or a boundary. This is probably the answer to the object persistence problem. Object persistence seems magical in light of subjective idealism, because it appears that there is a discontinuity in experience: we look one way and then another and subjective experience changes instantly, a discontinuity. But actually there's no gap in awareness at any point. There's also no gap in the unfolding of consciousness. There is no time. And without time, memory isn't needed, everything happens now and persists. Awareness is a sensation of familiarity. The only mystery left is why there is no awareness of everything at once. But that is the mystery of existence itself.

Edited May 19, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Confessional

I've always had a distaste for over-the-top behaviour. I feel a deep embarrassment about overt attention seeking and self aggrandisement, or blowing up the smallest things into a show. This sentiment I think comes directly from my parents, my dad is quite reserved and not ostentatious in any way, my mum was a bit more showy but still essentially reserved too. Saying that, my mum also had a tendency to blow up at the smallest of things, she was never able to hold back her emotions. I railed against this over-emotional reaction to everything and became detached from my own emotions as a result: emotions were unpredictable and untamable.

When my mum died earlier this year, a number of people - neighbours, distant family - shared with me their grief and love for her.  Death is strange because there's a large component of emotion involved, and that emotion can manifest unpredictably. I was choked up every time another stranger would say how they thought my mum was a nice person and how they liked her. I was also tearful at times when I thought about my mum and then realised I wouldn't be able to enjoy her cooking again, or to take her out and have fish and chips, or to see her at Christmas again. I cried freely at her funeral. I wasn't embarrassed by any of this emotion I felt, it was actually ok.

I still don't know what I feel about my mum's actual death, I have neither thought about it deeply or seemingly had any strong emotion over it. There's somewhat of an undercurrent of guilt at not feeling more strongly about her passing. A big part of me feels relief however. I have mentioned before that my mum wasn't able to fully able to tend to all the things life threw at her. I know that I'm a capable person, and I would deal with her local council, and form filling and some of her money matters and so on. I had effectively been her part-time carer since my parents separated in the mid 80's. I definitely and firmly blame both my parents for putting me (and my sister) in this unfair position and treating us badly as a result. My sister was able to escape the caring role being younger, but I was never really able to. It's easy to scapegoat your parents for all your troubles, but they are actually responsible for some things. There's always a strong emotional dynamic in families, that can be both hard to explain and hard to free yourself from or to forgive.

As you get older you slowly become aware of death. I mean it's in your face all the time in the media, but it's meaningless and detached. It's portrayed in a cartoon way in films or in a serious but far away sense in the news: it never affects you directly. It started with my grandparents, I was too young to be overtly sad or to understand them passing away. But I was in my late twenties when my nan passed away after having had several strokes. That was my first funeral. Before that one of my music teachers had died (heart attack), and I had had a strong emotional reaction to it, it just seemed like such a shock at the time, and I was told to stop being so silly by other teachers - I resented that. 

When people your own age die, it seems to be closer and more personal. My cousin died of cancer in her late thirties, and she was about a year or so older than me. I think her death hit me deeply existentially, but not emotionally, as adults we hadn't been that close. There was a lot questioning and recalibration that happened around that time, I wouldn't say her passing was the trigger per se, but was part of the maelstrom. Around the same time I'd found out that someone from my year at primary school had also died. It certainly made my own mortality so much more real. I rue the day when my friends die.

Sometimes celebrities and famous people die and you have an emotional reaction to it. I was sad at both the death of Princess Diana and of David Bowie. I still feel somewhat ridiculous for having these emotions over complete strangers, and for singling them out over the millions of other deaths. But really, these characters are part of my psychological make up, I feel emotional precisely because I resonated with them in some way and they were somehow part of me, in the same way that losing a finger would make me upset and sad.

Every human has great potential, even if not realised in that moment. Every human affects a great number of other people, both close and strangers. And, it's so easy to underestimate the impact a person has on the people they touch, and when someone dies, their influence becomes apparent.

This is how we should regard death. It shouldn't be treated just as some formal social convention, soon to be forgotten about weeks or months later. Instead there is a realisation that the death is an irretrievable loss of part of you, and part of your history - and that should rightly be grieved for. And the same goes for other people, and their loss should also be respected and sympathised with. But neither should it be a big show nor an excuse for personal attention, but perhaps that's just my personal bias.

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Is real freedom possible? Depends. Freedom is whatever it means to you. The goalposts of freedom constantly shift so that you never have enough of it. Naturally, in the Construct Aware stage (Ego Development) you start to deconstruct freedom itself. Because freedom gets constantly redefined it itself becomes a prison of sorts. How so? Because freedom is constantly being chased, it appears it's never here today, but always tomorrow.

Freedom comes in many flavours: freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom to be authentic, freedom from tyranny, freedom from prejudice, freedom from yourself, freedom from ignorance, and others.

How about freedom of action? One definition of freedom, is the removal of boundaries or restrictions. Action is always context dependent. The context supplies the restriction. The fundamental context for all action is physicality and more specifically acting through your body. If your body can't perform the action (not strong enough, agile enough, intelligent enough), then you are restricted. To increase freedom, we can augment our bodies with machinery - think cars, cranes, bicycles, and a zillion other machines. One critical faculty is the ability to use our bodies to speak and listen. This really is the human superpower, and why we have dominion over the whole world (half the world's lan surface is given over to human activity). Honing and improving your ability to speak, and to listen will give you exponential freedom: actualization. This is what this entire website is about.

What about ignoring the restriction of context as a way to gain freedom? Aside from physicality itself, there are social conventions. Each situation and place and time has its own set of conventions. These artificial restrictions can be broken, but doing so can come at a cost and so increased risk of being punished for transgressing the rules. Freedom always has to be balanced with risk. You can be free and jump off a cliff if you're a base jumper with a wingsuit, but the risk of serious injury is large. Sometimes the notion of appararent risk is built into our bodily intelligence and manifests itself as fear. Fear is a strong enough emotion that it can stop you from taking a risk that might endanger you life. Fear is the antidote to complete freedom.

Unfortunately, fear can be unbalanced or over-represent risk. If you're fearful of leaving your flat because you're afraid of people, then it has become corrupted. Fear then needs to be recalibrated in many instances to correctly take account of the perceived risk. The only way to do this is to go ahead and take action and then recalibrate the risk. This can be impossible to do if the fear is great, fear sets up a negative feedback loop that can keep you paralysed. And many self-help techniques are really about how to go about recalibrating without succumbing to fear - and hence gaining freedom in the process.

There is a genetic component to fear, and there are natural risk takers and natural risk averse types. Psychopaths can feel no fear at all. Are they the most free of all? To a degree yes, but not being context aware is also a restriction in itself: freedom is nuanced. Taking part in continued risky behaviour exposes you to getting caught and being punished in some way - this is not freedom. Being constantly aware of context takes intelligence, and indeed this is one of the signs of intelligence: you are aware of things that others are not. In this sense sharper awareness and intelligence or knowledge gives you more freedom. Again this is what this website is about, giving you greater awareness of the context for many different things. Being more aware of context allows you to manipulate, bypass or get around it (large corporations dodging paying tax), or simply to understand why the context exists at all (which can give you freedom from ignorance).

Is there some other more fundamental form of freedom? Yes. Look at someone else, it's clear you are not them. You don't have their worries and concerns and physical ailments and their attachment to being them. You are free because you are not them. This should give you a big hint. You are ultimately not free because you are "you". You are stuck in your self-constructed context, your history, your appearance, your ways of thinking, your fears and so on. If you could snap your fingers and become some other person - you detach - then you would be free of your context. This is possible, this is enlightenment.

 

Edited May 21, 2021 by LastThursday

[Leo Nordin]

@LastThursday  

Hello, see this thing is still going on, looks like endless mind games. Though I am not free from that either as of yet. 

It's a waste of your time, though that is not true I still read many things that I wouldn't agree about. 

I don't know where this business of freedom comes from, also unconditional love. There are no such things.

Instead one has to ask, is there another way of living where you don't have to be worried about your physiology, thoughts, emotions, etc. You create only the necessary physiological structure for you to work in a way where the most potent desire takes form at all times. The mental program you create will be very simple and you don't need to be aware of it, it is just there for you to not act compulsive/unintelligently and to not wait too long with acting when you want to so that your mind will always be in order, in a certain type of peace that you take care to maintain, a very high standard of living which you won't give up. From that structure you do not have to be aware of your thoughts etc. You just need to say and do things as the desire comes about at the specified time of your very simple new physiological structure that I really want to empathise because gurus don't talk about it too much, though an overly analytical person like you might want to look at because it is very important. 

What physiological structure are you working from. Why not just remove everything which you don't want, that which you know is bad for you but you still cling to it. 

If you want freedom, go and die, or have some sex. It's soo peaceful and light but then you have given up on all the ambitions of this life. 

I am very sorry for my bad pronunciation and English, you with your endless posts, it wouldn't surprise me if you have already thought of these things but I must get upset when I see a lot of bullshit thoughts in your diary. Also such a waste of time it seems like from my eyes. Enlightenment is great and all but the realisation is meaningless, when will you live that way, why won't you live that way. Only for a day people are too scared of the thought. People are too scared say no to work the second they feel tired in the morning, you see how much of an impossible goal this enlightenment seems like from the eyes of a peasant. Too bad. Now good luck to you. 

Regards from one of the youngest on this stupid forum. 

[LastThursday]

@Leo Nordin

I disagree that it's a waste of my time. The original intent of my journal hasn't changed:

 

The intent is not to get enlightened through journalling. That would be futile and silly. It's also not about playing mind games with myself. But it's just about writing things down as they come up so I don't forget them, because they might come in useful in future. It's also just an expression of my creativity, I enjoy writing. That's good enough for a journal.

You ask why I don't just become enlightened? I'll give you an analogy:

Imagine you've fallen down a well. The well is damp and dark, all you can see is the light of the opening to the well far far above. How do you get back out? You try and climb the walls, but they're too slippery. You shout and pray for assistance, but no-one hears you. You wait hoping someone will come by and rescue you. You use your intelligence and make a mental map of the well, brick by brick, hoping it will give you a clue to escape (my method). You start taking bricks out and think about digging your way out, but it's too much work. Then, one day it rains hard and the well starts filling up, and slowly you float up to the surface and climb out to freedom.

You really shouldn't get too concerned or upset about what I write: just get to know your own well.

[Leo Nordin]

@LastThursday thank you for the story, though I feel that you have been trying to get out of that well for a very long time now. And I have to ask myself if you actually know and know how to get enlightened. Though the how to is not easy to explain, once you have entered into it and that way of living once, twice or thrice, you have faith you can again. Actually I have removed so much of any identity that it is difficult not to become "enlightened".

It's interesting because a year ago I started to understand within me which way I would have to live to be enlightened, the day sadhguru said enlightenment is the eisiest thing, instant realisation. Though at that time without being aware of it I had a lot of ego/emotions etc that had to be cleansed from my system, so for a moment I thought enlightenment way that endless bliss that I could feel for multiple hours, it was intense meditation and at that tome it was complete freedom aka short period of enlightenment. Then afterwards I understood living outside the well was no longer filled with bliss because that was just piled up emotions/desires that had to go through for me to get to the next phase. Staying in the system of society I gradually lost more and more of my identity and everything became clearer and clearer though I always knew since 12 months ago how to become enlightened. It's just something you have to do and there is no method for it. That's why I called what you are doing playing mind games. Because It actually in a sense won't get you closer to the way of an enlightened. Either you live completely freely or you play mind games with yourself, there is no inbetween. That's why I also wrote that I am doing the same. When the mind games start to get less and less what will be left will be more and more of the truth. When you are only left with the truth of your desires and wants and identity and the rest of it then you will naturally come to the place where I am right now. In almost constant touch with a new way of living, then it is easy, just to fly out of the well you thought you were stuck in, because actually you just didn't know how to fly, you were scared to fly, but now you know that all I have to do is jump with all my might and I'll be flying, so why stop when you have started, then continue to fly forever untill the day you wish for peace and thereby return to the earth. 

[LastThursday]

Midnight Euphoria

I just this second noticed an odd sensation that I get around now (23:56) some nights. I normally try and practise sleep procrastination. I hate getting up in the morning. And, equally I hate going to sleep in the night. Don't know, it's probably some pattern that started when I was small, lost to time and memory. In my scrambling to do anything but sleep I play music, surf, look stuff up, it's like I suddenly wake up out of my daytime trance. The body gets tired, and the eyes heavy, but my soul loosens a bit and I break free. I start to feel euphoric, on the verge of tears at times, and I feel like I'm on the edge of something wonderful, I can taste it.

Yet. I must sleep and I can't indulge the euphoria for too long lest it take hold permanently.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

@Leo Nordin I'm guessing enlightenment is not something you know how to do do. I'm pretty sure it has nothin to do with doing. There isn't a method to it. All that can be done is to lay the groundwork, which you seem to be doing, and hope for the best. There is the idea that enlightenment requires removing everything - like furniture in a room - before it can be invited in. The ideal enlightment is to both be an egoic human and realised at the same time. I'm going to cite @mandyjw here, because she very much embodies that principle: both being human and being enlightened, there's no separation between the two:

 

This idea is also reflected in the Ten Ox Hearding Pictures. The tenth picture, is Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands, which is this idea again:

https://tricycle.org/magazine/ten-oxherding-pictures/

You are enlightened, yet you wish to rejoin humanity.

Edited May 22, 2021 by LastThursday

[Leo Nordin]

11 hours ago, LastThursday said:

@Leo Nordin I'm guessing enlightenment is not something you know how to do do. I'm pretty sure it has nothin to do with doing. There isn't a method to it. All that can be done is to lay the groundwork, which you seem to be doing, and hope for the best. There is the idea that enlightenment requires removing everything - like furniture in a room - before it can be invited in. The ideal enlightment is to both be an egoic human and realised at the same time. I'm going to cite @mandyjw here, because she very much embodies that principle: both being human and being enlightened, there's no separation between the two:

 

(couldn't delete the video file) 

I know, don't worry about me, I understand enlightenment, and you seem to understand the whole thing as well. Sadly for you, you can't do anything for me, I am not here to learn any such things, I understand everything I have to understand anyways. There is a method for enlightenment but as you said one won't be able to do it without the groundwork, and the method is so extremely simple compared to all your ego so when you are in touch with it it is such an easy feat. Fear is not even in the way because fear and living that way, the method are not connected so it is extremely easy actually,easier then maintaining the identities, ego etc when you see things clearly just the way they are. 

I have not become "enlightened" because I chose not to, I chose to continue with the same stupidly way of living for different reasons, I have given sweat and tears not to become enlightened yet. Just look at this, this is some of the stupidity I have been doing to myself because I promised to wait until summer with enlightenment, I cant even live a normal way anymore even if I tried to for years, I can't even do the things they expect me to do at the workplace where I am an apprentice. 

Because of the currupt system it has become a daily challenge to stay there without accidentally becoming enlightened, and not changing the whole workplace dramatically, which I definitely would. I have learnt a great deal about people and the normal ways of living from doing this. You absolutely must have a very strong ego and different kinds of identities to remain a normal teacher or being or one of the students. But I can't fool myself that well, even though I have tried to create ego within me, to only have desire to do things here which is within the frames of what the school wants is very difficult. It would be easy if I had some more ego. Or if the other teachers didn't suck at leadership, and I am not to interfere when a the teachers try their "best" to keep the classrooms sane. This is me doing all these complicated mind games because I haven't "chosen" to get enlightened already. List of my stupidly tries of fitting in to normal society without being enlightened(because I promised to wait getting enlightened):

For example if I remove the desire to for dramatic action to change things then all my other desires to be a teacher dissappears and I just sit there almost unable to get up and do my "work". Then I am at the peak of peace and femininity, affection and settling down and easily goes into a trance and almost loses all touch with my body and mind. Which sucks, It is not time for deathbed yet. 

If I live my desires without the need to be aware of my physiology but with only slight awareness to not change the workplace, I might look like a god friend of children and beings on the playground first thing in the morning but when I get in for lesson then I see the curruption and stop myself from acting and then my way of being is destroyed for the rest of the workday. 

If I live always aware of my physiology I can tweak it to do what I tell mind to want but that kind of awareness is very tiring and I barely will be able to do the minimum action required from me. Sometimes I become so drained that I come to yet again the peak of peace, this kind of peace is stupid and it is for the day I die. I of course can't  do my work in complete stillness because of the neurons in my mind screaming for healing and rest. 

If I have underlying karma from the morning or day beforehand then there will be too strong desires and too little time to meditate the shit out of me. 

If I have come to work late as on Fridays I have had time to be a fresh life and also create some ignorance within me to the things which are important. Then I might be like a normal teacher coming to school if I am lycky. 

YOU SEE HOW MESSED UP THIS SHIT IS? 

You don't need to answer my post, you are playing your kind of mind games as your journaling an I do mine own stuff. But I just don't know what you are waiting for. For me I am not even 18 years old yet so last year I thoroughly discussed on this forum and I waited untill now when I'll in a couple of weeks am planning to live the way of an enlightened. So what are you waiting for? That's why it looks like endless mind games, my teachers half of my parents already know the predicament of living the enlightened way. They are too afraid of it themselves, so I hope you also @LastThursday are preparing your external situations and get "enlightened" soon. Good luck. 

Also I have told my parents I don't care about money and survival and stuff and will have to see what happens but at the same time I tell everyone as a joke to treat me as a god and give me money and stuff because money is the most important thing in this world. Haha, I wonder what you do/will do to get food on your plate. Everytime someone asks me what I want or what they should do I tell them to gove me money, be my slave, be my maid haha. The funny thing is that I have no idea how I am going to get my food everyday in the near future, also where I'll live and all the other things. But that doesn't worry me much anymore. Thinking about it doesn't help now does it. 

Sorry for my extremely long post, you don't need to read it or reply. Because if you reply giving me some tips or advice or see something I wrote that isn't correct I am not interested. I just came here to share this nothing more. 

 

[LastThursday]

@Leo Nordin if we're not worried about each other, then what are we honestly doing here? I journal to share a part of myself, of course I'm worried about others. Honestly? Start journaling to occupy your mind, let the rest happen by itself.

Part of the "package" of enlightenment is that you realise there is no time. It doesn't matter if I wait two seconds, or until my deathbed for enlightenment. Urgency and impatience is ego and all that.

Anyway, no more labouring my points. Feel free to PM me if the need arises.

[Leo Nordin]

@LastThursday yes, never mind, thank you, yes you are right, I get it now. 

Thank you very much, see you soon, goodnight;D

Funny thing those sentences of yours cleared many of my worries and was also very refreshing to read once I understood. Have a good night 

[LastThursday]

It's been a while (understatement) since I dated. The following is exactly how I would like to date (swearing warning):

Which character am I?