Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

Is it ethical to interact with people by their worth or particular attributes?

It seem like our attributes define us: tall or short, blue eyed or brown eyed, masculine or feminine, rich or poor. It would seem that the attributes are instrinsic to our very being, you can't change your eye colour for example.

Some attributes are variable, like our employment or maybe hair colour. People are useful because they are able to do certain things that you can't. For example, a builder can fix your roof. A builder has a certain worth, and we pay that builder what her/his skills are worth to us. We don't actually care about who the builder is as a person. In effect we simplify the person down to their worth to us in the moment.

This happens constantly in out interactions with others. We notice a set of attributes a person has, and then extract their worth to us. In the case of a builder, we do it the other way around: we want a set of particular attributes and seek out people who have those.

To a degree we have to simplify the complexity of dealing with people. We just don't have the time to interact deeply with every single person we could meet. Instead we look at their attributes, apply a rough and ready formula and pigeonhole them. One of those pigeonholes is "what is this person worth to me and how useful are they?".

Worth is multifaceted. But it can be distilled down to a few areas. First, can a person provide for a need that I have? Secondly, how useful could the person be in future? Third, are they part of my tribe or do they share my values?

Most of us would disagree that we only choose to interact with people who are worthy in some way. It seems dehumanising to collapse a person's entire existing down to a few attributes we deem to be important - and indeed it is. This is what allows all the -isms to exist. We conveniently sweep under the carpet that we are dealing with complex emotional beings with needs and wants and concerns of their own - and we choose to just focus on a few aspects that either attract or repel us.

We do the same thing to ourselves. We simplify our very selves by attaching a set of seemingly immutable attributes. Then we rate how worthy or useful we are according to those attributes. We are not capable of being loved if we are "ugly" or play sports because we are "clumsy". We are attracted or repelled by our own abritrarily given attributes. We hang ourselves by our own petard.

But there is a better way. It should be obvious. We are not our attributes. We are not our worth. We are whatever that thing is that is reading this now: an infinite field of awareness, with infinite possibility - and so are others, treat them like such.

[LastThursday]

Sometimes change takes us seemingly out of nowhere. Really all that time it was lying dormant in the background. Then one day we become aware of it. We shrug it off innocently. But we find it doesn't go away. Whatever it is is a deep part of us we've not attended to. It becomes apparent the change is going to be seismic, and we ain't ready for it. We need to keep stable and stay accepted. Yet there it is, growing stronger every day.

We can try and outrun the change. Keep busy, keep distracted, stay where we are and pretend it's not there. We dabble, we start to accept we could change, it's scary and uncertain. Something suddenly clicks or snaps. It's not in our control anymore and the old way no longer suffices. What seemed genuine before is now fake and we're starting to live a lie. There's no going around it. We have to become it. There's no other way to be true to ourselves.

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Performing Magick

Is it possible to hack reality? It's certainly possible to go all philosophical about it and spend all that time theorizing about hacking reality. Or you can take the engineering view, try stuff, keep what works. Although, even engineering needs an idea of what needs to be tried, otherwise you're just wasting time. So here's stuff I've read or contemplated, with a view to trying some of these out:

1. Doing things out of the ordinary

This comes out of the idea that reality relies heavily on consistency: everything fits together and is continuous. The exception to the rule is you, that free-willed awareness. You are outside of material reality and not bound by its laws. So you can genuinely be inconsistent with reality. The more things you do out of normal routine, the greater the chance of odd things happening (breaking reality).

2. Simultaneously holding contradictory thoughts

In the normal course of thinking we do it serially, one thought after another. There's two categories of thoughts (amongst others), closed thoughts and open thoughts. Closed thoughts are facts about the world: it's raining, I'm cold, I'm going to the shops. Open thoughts are wishes: I'd like cereal for breakfast, I want a sports car, I wish it was sunny.

The idea is to hold both an open and closed thought simultaneously causing a sort of cognitive dissonance. The two thoughts would be closely related in some way. The trick is practising holding two thoughts at the same time, it is possible to do. The easiest way to do that, is to "anchor" each thought to something physical (especially locations on your body, see NLP anchoring). You then present both anchors at the same time, triggering a sort of Pavlovian response of thought.

The idea here is that thought directly instructs reality how it should behave. Most thought is routine and fixed by your environment and context, making a reinforcing feedback loop. Holding simultaneous thoughts breaks the feedback loop (breaking reality).

3. Intend to do one thing but do another

This is similar to point 2, except you strongly intend to do one thing (especially go to a particular place), and right at the last minute do something completely unrelated instead.

Again the expectation of going somewhere or doing something specific (closed thought), feeds into reality. It's like asking a computer to load up the scenario of "going to the shops", there is a lag where the processing happens. But then you throw away that intention and do something different. This doesn't allow reality enough time to "set things up", therefore breaking it.

One way to go about this is pure habit: constantly change your mind. In practice this could be difficult. Although you could have a source of pure randomness (i.e. some mobile app that connects to a site that produces genuinely random numbers), and dictate your life that way. Essentially, routine thought and behaviour leads to routine reality.

4. Affirmations

This is the repetition of closed thoughts. In other words you act as if you had the things or qualities you desire. The repetition "guides" reality to match the thoughts.  The idea here is that thought is reality and that reality is a lot more malleable that it appears. Scientifically, it could be that thought directly biases the underlying randomness of reality towards a particular outcome. Or in other words, thought is attached to the engine of reality: imagination.

To make the affirmations more powerful, all the senses and connections needs to be engaged. So instead of just thinking: I want a million pounds, you feel the money in your hands, smell it, imagine bragging about it, imagine buying all those amazing things. In other words you fully immerse yourself into a story, you become it in your mind's eye.

This is no different than trying to remember. When trying to remember something, you increase your chances by engaging all the things connected to it, until one of those things trigger it. For example, say you have forgotten the name of a childhood friend, you can improve your recall by taking yourself back to when you were with them, and imagine all the other things you used to do with them etc.

Affirmations are just like trying to remember something, you are literally constructing reality through thought.

Edited July 17, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Every time I've sook
Around and up and down
And you're nowhere
And so you're nowhere

Maybe I'd been mistook
A sound and here and there
And you're somewhere
And yet you're somewhere

Now now I'm shook
I've found it and you were me
And you were here
And yes you were here

[LastThursday]

Consciousness, State and Description

(The following is more of a set of notes more than anything else)

So you're conscious. If we drink alcohol for example we can agree we perceive the world differently from normal. The difference is not so great, but it's noticeable. You can label the altered state of consciousness as "drunk", and you would describe yourself this way to someone else. 

The description of the altered state can be as fined grained as you like: loss of inhibition, loss of balance, worse impulse control and so on. No description is all encompassing however. There are nuances that just cannot be put into words, maybe you just feel different but cannot describe that feeling. 

The state of consciousness you find yourself in is whatever you are aware of in the moment. There is a sense in which the state has infinite depth, no amount of words will fully describe the state. Consciousness can enter into any state it wants to, it's unrestricted. Consciousness is "always on", and so is always in one state or another. If you like consciousness is constantly moving between states. The movement between states is seamless and instant.

It may be (almost certainly) that there are states in which awareness is greatly expanded, and you have access to things which you don't have in other states. Despite consciousness being the engine behind reality (i.e. consciousness generates consciousness), it is modulated by its own content. In other words the stuff in consciousness in turns affects the state of consciousness. So you take a drug such as ethanol (a phenomenon within consciousness) and it affects consciousness itself. When the drug wears off (again a phenomenon within consciousness), the state of consciousness reverts. 

This is expected, consciousness affects itself, that is its very nature. How is something created from nothing? By a self-influencing entity arising from nothing. It has to be self influencing because it is not allowed to have a prior cause. This means that consciousness can spontaneously shift into a different state. In fact this also defines consciousness, since it's a self sustaining feedback loop, the loop is constantly feeding back. Consciousness keeps updating itself, it is a state of constant flux. 

Essentially, every new phenomenon in consciousness is a new state of consciousness. There isn't a "baseline" state for consciousness, really there aren't states at all, because state requires something to endure long enough to be identified. State is related to the word static or unchanging. But consciousness never sits still. 

So what's going on here. If consciousness doesn't have "states" then what is it? Consciousness is defined as itself, whatever it is in any particular moment. Because there's nothing static about consciousness it isn't possible to compare different states, because there aren't any. It isn't possible to verbalise a state, because there aren't any. No sooner have you described a "state" than it has become something else.

There isn't a limit to how much consciousness is on display, in fact it isn't unfeasible to be infinitely aware. Consciousness itself is unbounded. This is why there appears to be an infinite amount of universe and stuff out there. Consciousness can become finitely aware if it chooses to be, and to wonder where all this stuff came from.

Edited July 19, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

We're all stuck in double binds. 

A concrete example is that my landlady increases my rent once a year without fail. I don't like this - who likes paying more money for nothing in return? In this case the double bind is that I cannot move without reducing my standard of living. This is because all the other rental properties in the area have similarly increased in price over time. And yet, my rent increasing is actually reducing my standard of living because I have less disposable income each month.

In this particular example, I have many options: I could move into somewhere cheaper and smaller; move to a cheaper area; buy a property; move into shared accommodation. All have their cons. All involve some sort of increased suffering. The result is I stay put as it's currently the lesser of all evils.

I could list out lots of other double binds I find myself in, briefly: wage slavery, familial ties, wanting sex and intimacy and freedom at the same time, being part of UK society, reliance on having money, and the biggest of them all survival.

All double binds lock you in to a certain way of being and as a consequence restrict personal freedoms. It may seem possible to break a double bind by just walking away or not caring. For example you are in a relationship with an abusive partner. "Just walk away!" you might be told, but you're not financially self sufficient or have no other support: you have no ways or means to pay for rent (for example). It's either get abused or live on the streets. Similarly, it's an ongoing trope that the poor just need to work harder and not be so lazy. And yet the poor are in the double bind of survival, it's either poverty or death. 

The dating section of the forum here (oh what fun it is) is all about double binds. Young males are in a double bind: they have a strong desire for sex driven by biology and hormones, and yet it seems that desire isn't getting fulfilled. They are told to do this and not do that, and yet doing anything different means going against their very nature. They are also in the double bind of immaturity, to get their desires met they are effectively told to act and think more maturely, but in order to gain enough maturity they have to wait and suffer the uncertain process of maturation.

All double binds cause a certain amount of discomfort and suffering. Some people never escape their double binds. Acceptance can be one way out of the suffering. Over time you learn to exist within the confines of most of your double binds and you just accept your lot. If life is a game then it is one with rules and double binds and you're simply not able just to do and be what you want. Society itself is a double bind, either you play by it's rules or it makes life extremely difficult for you. You could move to another country with a different set of rules, but it's no different. Even if you lived anonymously in a jungle away from society and living by your own rules, then you hit that bedrock of double binds: survival. You can choose not to eat or drink or sleep, but you won't live long if you do that.

And yet, out of double binds can come a lot of creative energy. When forced to operate within the confines of a double bind, there is still generally a lot of leeway in what can be achieved. For example escaping wage slavery requires a lot of work and cunning: you effectively learn to live day to day by your wits and this sharpens all aspects of your being. It is stressful for sure (hence the double bind, wage slavery is less stressful), but humans are meant to live creatively and by their wits. In other words a double bind is sometimes a phantom of our own creation. Wage slavery is only slavery in our minds not in reality. And yet, you can't simply tell a person "don't be a wage slave!". To escape a double bind sometimes it is necessary to get a taster of something new to convince yourself that there was no double bind in reality. Perhaps working for yourself is actually the lesser of the evils.

It then pays to be experimental around double binds. Test the waters and see if a double bind is actually real or just borne out of habit or ignorance of other options. But it has to be done in a way that causes least suffering and is authentic to your needs.

[Leo Nordin]

Hallo, U once wrote that you liked the idea of building or living in a tiny house. I don't recommend it. It's like a tiny box, I dont think nature intended us to spend time in such a cramped space. It is just a little too unnatural for my comforts. For example if you want to do fast movements you can't because you have to be aware of yourself all the time because you are in such a small space. If you're ecstaticly dancing you would feel that the walls limit your movements and expansion of your desires. At that realization I would probably break the walls of my tiny house and say this has no value to me. I'd rather live somewhere where I feel free, I think it is a matter of integrity. As in enlightenment, I won't explain why. Im sorry but I probably won't hear your reply if you ever want to talk to me again, if you want to reach out to me one has to try harder?

 

[LastThursday]

@Leo Nordin living the dream. Hopefully, you've got internet.

It's definitely not for everyone. What I've noticed is that a lot of of these tiny houses are in the countryside and have a large amount of land right outside. I think this helps with not feeling too confined. If you're very much an indoor person, then having more room to do stuff in is going to be important - especially dancing. But there's a large variety of sizes of tiny house. 

I would like to think it would work for me, because given the right lifestyle and weather I would probably spend all my time outdoors. Or in an urban setting in various bars or coffee shops. 

You should write up your experience somewhere, it would be useful for others thinking of doing the same.

[LastThursday]

Ok some assorted craziness as is my want.

I'm going to model myself after some forum members. So look at me. I'm so effing amazing, you shmucks don't deserve to even comprehend what I'm comprehending, I'm so far above your level that I everything that comes out of my mouth is pure God wisdom. But's it's ok I'm so meta and gansta, that I can still love you, but my love is harsh like the light of Sun, both nurturing and deathly. I was just born at the wrong time, the world isn't ready for me and what I'm capable of, can't you see how much like a God I am. I don't need to do pickup, I don't need to psychadelic myself, I don't need ridiculously worded mystical advice, I am a real MASCULINE man (take a breath) and all sexes just can't help themselves around me, I'm just oozing charisma. I've got so many projects and ideas on the go that I'm going to be a millionaire next week and take the whole planet to the next level. I only grace this forum because I'm elevating the human race.

(Gosh that was cringey)

Next:

Just been watching Missions (french Martian drama) and the immediately watched Gravity afterwards (what is it about Sandra Bullock that does something for me? Huh). It all ended up giving me that odd feeling of detachment from myself. I think it comes from experiencing something - albeit fiction - not in my normal sphere. We're constantly connected by an umbilical to our circumstance: that job, that house, that spouse, that bed, that food. We rarely get that chance to detach. I went through a 10 mile walk through North London just to do precisely that, detach. I was floating in space. But now I've landed again on my laptop.

And more next:

I have occasional moments of clarity whereby I see myself from the outside. Imagine talking to your friend John or Jane, yes just like that. It's as if I momentarily see myself as someone else, it's the most peculiar sensation. I know that that sensation is real, that the character of Guillermo is just a facade. I suspect at some point that detachment from the character will become permanent. One day it will just go pop and I won't be able to return.

Oh and:

This is not a story, it's a stupendous happening and here I am to witness it.

[Preety_India]

@LastThursday @LastThursday

You should live in a box. You're like a little cat.

 

[LastThursday]

Prrrrr prrrrr prrrrr

[Preety_India]

3 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

Prrrrr prrrrr prrrrr

Hahahaha that was cute 

[LastThursday]

Different music has different effects on me. This track always makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. There's always strange mix of emotions.

It's hard to describe why it resonates so much with me. Maybe a deep part of my Shadow is that I don't feel at home. I'm constantly restless, feeling lost and disconnected. I'm in need of a place to call home; wherever I look it's not there. What does home even feel like? I'm forever waging war against the injustice of feeling like I abandoned myself long ago. Everything is impersonal and un-familiar. I'm propelled forward only by the changing of the days and the whims of sea of change around me. If not for that I would cease to be as I'm unable to find true North and impel myself that way. There is no ground or earth to root to and claim as mine - nothing that will guide me when I'm unsure, comfort me when I'm uneasy, or return to after a long time away.

 

[LastThursday]

Telescoping aerials. Matryoshka dolls. Onions.

The concept appears in many places. It occurs most commonly when a thing is added on to layer by layer. It's a very useful way to fill a space and grow. That idea of growth by accretion in layers is at the heart of Spiral Dynamics. The idea of spiritual growth is no different.

The ego of course wants to advance and outgrow and supersede and be bigger than the other egos around it.  It has an inbuilt notion of constantly throwing away the older stuff and believing it to be laughable and silly. In this way it can't point to other egos and say: "that's so yesterday and dumb, I'm so much better than that [love me for it]".

That sort of advancement by constant rejection of the old, is completely hollow and unloving and unnatural. It's as if we open the Matryoshka doll and nothing is inside.

The last Ox Herding Picuture, the tenth one, is devoid of ego. The person hasn't thrown all the spiritual layers away. She understands that she too once hadn't even realised there was an Ox and that that naive person still exists in her core. She can re-enter the marketplace with full understanding and compassion because she still has all her layers of spiritual growth intact. She can re-enter and work from any layer and engage others on the same level as them, fluently as a native.

Real spirituality is not just about ascending and growing beyond others' capabilities. It's about being able to engage others fluently at whatever level they are and gently pulling them up if they're ready for it. A mother does not talk finances with her child, she talks teddy bears and picnics, and enjoys her child's excitement.

 

[Preety_India]

@LastThursday I need to be on the same page as you, but I'm guessing you're light years ahead of me.

 

[LastThursday]

@Preety_India light travels very fast, so there's no problem catching up . I can see you have a hunger and creativity for change. I'm happy to help you in any way I can to get there.

[Preety_India]

@LastThursday thank you so much for supporting me in my journey to something(pun)  You're a blessing.

 

[LastThursday]

@Preety_India feel free to PM any time and I will try my best to offer you support.

-

Systemic Problems

This post is a way to purge my annoyance, but also a case study to highlight how things go wrong if you don't think systemically.

In my day-to-day job I produce a lot of reports our client. Effectively this is data analysis, but I'm no data analyst, I'm actually a software developer; when you work for a small company you end up wearing many hats.

The system for requesting reports is for staff at my client's to contact me directly on my personal work email. This suits me on the whole, as adding any layers of formality and procedure doesn't make sense for a small company like ours. Formality and procedure is needed only when larger numbers of people are involved as a form of social cohesion and to stop chaos (tragedy of the commons).

I was reproached - via email - by my client's top guy for sending out a report that he deemed I shouldn't have - data can be sensitive after all, even within a company. My initial reaction was to be infuriated, who likes to be told off eh? I've learned to hold off from responding to emails when in an emotional state though, so I slept on it. I tried to work out why I was infuriated. Was it just the knock to my ego and I was actually wrong and I should just suck it up? Was it that I felt I was being bullied in some way? Was the problem that I was unjustly blamed for a systemic issue? Yes, that was getting closer to the truth.

My client's CEO suggested that report requests are vetted by him before I produce them (and as a way to assert his authority). The systemic problem here is that I'm getting requests directly from staff at all. All requests should be vetted even before they reach our company on the client's side. That way the onus isn't on an external company (ours) making decisions on their behalf.

So my more mature response to the CEO will be to acquiesce to his demands (with the increased level of time and emails that entails), but also to suggest that he has a systemic problem and my solution for it - as a way to obliquely suggest I wasn't in the wrong, but he is. I will point blank to refuse to accept any wrongdoing on my part. He probably won't like it.

And so it is with lots of similar situations where blame is being aportioned. A group of people get blamed for their lazyiness, for stealing jobs, for taking up resources, for not assimilating and on and on. Yet all these problems are systemic, there are nearly always larger forces at work: wars, poverty, migration, social organisation, inadequate infrastructure.  Even on a smaller personal level, people are often blamed even when they acted as best they could - it's simply that they were constrained by whichever systems they had to operate in. If you are poor and need to steal food to survive, the individual can be blamed for stealing, or the system could be fixed so that poverty didn't arise in the first place.

The next time you are blamed or looking for blame don't get emotional think instead: what in the system is causing this problem?

[Preety_India]

@LastThursday well I don't need to pm. I can simply drop in your journal or bring you over to my journal.

 

[LastThursday]

@Preety_India sure no problem.