Insight Homework Worksheet Thread

[r0ckyreed]

Thread dedicated to doing the work.

 

What is Insight? - Homework from video

Over the next 30 days specifically, contemplate the following questions from the worksheet.

Insight Worksheet: My Initial Contemplation Pre-30 days

What is insight?

- Insight means in-sight, which means to be in my sight or awareness.  It is becoming aware of something, resulting in a greater understanding.  

What generates insight?

- The mind/consciousness.  Insight is about awareness and understanding of something.  The Universe is becoming aware of itself.  How did the Universe get the idea to create a human or a dog or a tree?  How did the Universe come up with the laws of physics?  

Nothing external can generate insight without the mind able to grasp it.  For instance, a donkey seeing itself in the mirror but does not have the insight that what it sees is itself.  How did I get the insight that the human body I see in the mirror is me?  It is not so obvious.  It takes a level of consciousness to reach a certain level of insight.

Why is insight different from belief or knowledge?

Belief is about my personal thoughts, opinions, and convictions for how the world works.  Knowledge is having facts and information about the world that are backed up by evidence and logic.

Insight, however, is beyond belief and evidence.  It is an implicit level of understanding.  Knowledge can be viewed as an explicit form of understanding.  The Earth is round is an explicit understanding.  The insight that there is no wall in the universe and that space is infinite is an implicit understanding.  There is no way that I can prove my insight that reality is infinite, but yet, that is how it is.  Insight is a direct consciousness of something that is typically more intuitive and beyond conscious reasoning.  

What are the biggest insights Ive had in my life?

 1. Morality does not exist

2. No-self

3. Eternity or timelessness

4. Heaven

5. Happiness - What happiness really is.

6. Why I used to stutter

7. An insight into how to improve my vision and visual acuity rating.

8. Self-deception - realizing all the tricks I use to deceive myself

9. God - Realizing that God exists, atheism is wrong, and that I am God

10. Realizing that human beings don't know anything but pretend that they know.

11. Realizing that mainstream science is a hallucination and no different from shamanism and Greek Mythology

12. Realizing that I was wrong about free will being an illusion. 

13. Realizing that I was wrong about materialism/physicalism/atheism - it is important to note that the greatest insights are the ones where I realize how wrong I was.

14. Realizing early in life that arguing with others is pointless.

15. Realizing that being a music major was not what I wanted to pursue.

16. Gaining more clarity into what I wanted in my life.

17. Realizing that Solipsism is true and there is nothing but my consciousness

18. Realizing that first-person experience is all there is, and that the external world is a hallucination.  The external world will never be anything but an idea, concept, and hallucination in my mind.

19. Uncovering my top 10 values.

20. Realizing the importance of reading and committing to it.

21. Realizing the importance of waking up before the sunrise.

22. Realizing that I am 100% responsible for all my happiness and suffering in my life.  I create my own Heaven or Hell.

23. Realizing that alcohol/drunkenness is stupid. Why does everyone wanna get drunk if it decreases your intelligence?

How have insights Ive had shaped my life?

I have become so much more intelligent and wiser in my life.  I have made really great life choices.  I notice I am happier and in control of my life than others I encounter.  I am immensely more creative and love my mind.  I am better able to help others.

How have insights has had shaped civilization?

 Insights have shaped civilization for better and for worse.  The invention of social media, cars, nuclear bombs, electricity, texting, and iPhone was derived from an insight.  This insight has both helped people and killed people.  Insights themselves are neutral, neither good nor bad.  How they are used determines the quality unless it is an existential insight.

What are the greatest insights mankind has had? 

 The greatest insights of mankind is philosophy, the creation of science, justice system, government, computers, video games, writing, reading, language, meditation, the teachings of Buddha, Christ, and many other great thinkers, art (music), movies, realizing non-duality.

Can the capacity for insight be developed? If so, how?

Insight can be developed through literally any environment, but it takes consciousness to penetrate to the insight.  You can gain an insight into meaning in a prison environment like Viktor Frankl, you can gain an insight sitting under a Bodhi tree, and so on.  

For me, insights come most easily to me when I am not actively searching for them, but come out of the blue.  This out of the blue insight comes after I have been engaging in a topic for a while, but then I give it a rest and put it off.  Maybe I am not alone in this, but a great example is after engaging in a conversation with someone, you will go home realizing that you could have said X or Y.  

Insights also happen when I am relating to other people.  I actually have gained many of my insights by relating and listening to other people, as well as thinking it through on my own.  As an atheist, I did not know about pantheism until a friend of mine told me about it.  This made me question the conception of God that I had and was arguing against.  As an atheist, there is a conception of God that one has without really knowing it.  Others can point things out to me that I do not always see in myself.  But what is really powerful is being able to derive insights on my own.  That is the real superpower.  It is easy to derive insights when engaging with others.  It is harder to derive them on my own, but deriving an original insight into life is so much more rewarding than gaining an insight into what the Buddha discovered, which to be honest, many of the insights I have are not original and come from other people.  But just because an insight I have is not original does not make it any less insightful.  It takes insight to understand the insights of another.

What would happen if I seriously developed my capacity for insight?

  I would become limitless. I could create anything I wanted to.

How much is the capacity for insight worth to me?

 The uninsightful life is not worth living.

How is insight related to understanding?

 Insight is understanding.  Insight is gaining a deeper understanding into life.  It typically is sudden.  But insights can also be gained through introspection and reflection of the past.

What kinds of insights exist?

 Practice, spiritual, psychological, political, business, marketing.  The kinds of insights I could have are infinite.

Where do insights come from?

 The same place where thoughts come from.  They come from The Field of Experience.

What tools exist to help me generate insights?

 Contemplation, journaling, reading/research, conversing with others, solitude.

Is there such a thing as a false insight? If so, how is it distinguished from a true insight?

I have thought about this for a bit.  My conclusion is that there cannot be a false insight.  Insight is connected to truth.  If your insight turns out to be false, then it wasn't really an insight to begin with.  It was just self-deception.  Insight by its own definition is an awareness of something that is free of self-deception.  If the insight is really self-deception then it wasn't really insightful but foolish.

However, I do want to acknowledge this point that I thought of.  What if an insight is true at one point in time, but false at a later time?  For instance, I could have an insight that daylight savings will be very useful for the world!  Turns out that this was true back in Ben Franklins time, but it turns out that daylight savings is useless now.  But is daylight savings not still insightful even though it may not be of use now?  I think insight can also be relative and absolute.  So in the relative sense, an insight can be false, but in the absolute sense, it cannot.  Relative truth is always changing depending on history, culture, and many other factors.  Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.  He had an insight into that invention, but it turned out that the cotton gin went against his intentions.  Was that an insight or foolishness? See, it is harder to tell.  

So here is the short answer: False insight is relative insight. But there cannot be a false absolute insight.  For instance, the present moment is all that exists.  Anything imagined outside of the Now is an idea in the Now.  This insight into the eternality of the Now cannot be false.

But it is hard to tell what insights are relative or absolute.  I mean how do I tell?  Is the realization of Solipsism an absolute insight or relative?  Well, relative to my first-person experience, I can only be sure that I exist.  But can I know absolutely that my experience is all there is?  I am not sure.

Can I fool myself with an insight?

  Yes.  I can misunderstand the insight I am having.  I can have an insight but then misunderstand it after I trying to filter it through my ego-mind.  I can have an insight that Solipsism is true, but then I can then use that to act like a Devil.

What is the relationship between insight and states of consciousness?

 My level of insight is related to my state of consciousness.  If I am struggling with basic survival, my insights will be stuck at that level.  But if I get my needs met, then my consciousness can raise to things beyond basic survival.

What is the relationship between insight and thinking? Can there be insight without thinking? 

 There can be insight without thinking, but making sense of it requires thinking.  Thinking and insight also originate from the same space.  Thinking can produce insight but not always.  An example of insight without thinking is being rude to someone and then getting slapped in the face.  

How is insight related to mental construction?

  Reality is a mental construction.  I prefer to use that term than "reality is imagination."  Insights are going to be relative to the mental constructions I have created.  To have an insight into morality does not exist requires that I first have constructed morality.  The same with the sense of self and the same with limiting beliefs.  There is no insight without mental construction.  Awakening is an insight into how I am mentally constructing everything.

What is the relationship between insight and wisdom?

 The more insightful one is, the more wise they are.  Wisdom and insight are both aspects of higher intelligence.  Insight is holistic by its nature.

What is the relationship between insight and truth?

Depending on the type of insight, insight will be related to Truth.  You can have an insight into how to become a con artist and scam people.  That is what Andrew Tate did.  Tate had an insight for how to make a lot of money.  But does that insight relate to truth in anyway? No. It doesn't.  Practical insights are relative insights and are half-truths at best.

Existential insights are my connection with absolute truth.  Awakening is an insight into Truth.  So insight for the most part is related to truth but not all insights are.

When do I have the most insights? Where am I and what am I doing?

I am writing, reading, contemplating, or hiking out in nature.

Complete Insight Worksheet Post-30 Days and then compare and contrast my understanding.

 

Share your own results to this homework!  

Then, repost in the next 30 days after contemplation.

Edited January 30, 2023 by r0ckyreed

[nhoktinvt]

why do homework when you can copy others lol

[r0ckyreed]

32 minutes ago, nhoktinvt said:

why do homework when you can copy others lol

Why copy others when you can do your homework?  

[nhoktinvt]

idk man 

9 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

Why copy others when you can do your homework?  

 

[mmKay]

Mathematically i like to think of it as : " ∞ + 1 " 

Physically it's equivalent to " The Universe is in constant expansion ".

To attract insight you must make space for it. It won't appear if your mental bandwidth is busy. I love brainstorming and then wiping the board.

Flex your mental muscle and release. Then repeat. That's how you fish for them. 

One insight I had from the episode is that I took from granted that I have the ability of having insights. It didn't even cross my mind that it's possible that some people aren't capable of having them. 

This is how insight feels like in my mind :

Edited January 30, 2023 by mmKay

[r0ckyreed]

5 hours ago, mmKay said:

It didn't even cross my mind that it's possible that some people aren't capable of having them. 

I am skeptical about the study Leo mentioned that claimed that 20% of people do not have insights.  I mean that is crazy.  That would mean that they do not get any new ideas into their own minds.  An insight can be simple as realizing that nobody knows anything for certain or that there could be a more simpler way of doing something.

If a person cannot have insights, how can they still be alive?  A simple insight could be to uncover what one really wants out of life.  That can be very insightful.

I don't buy it.

Edited January 31, 2023 by r0ckyreed

[Leo Gura]

@r0ckyreed Good work!