TriumphantGeorge Compendium (Part 9)

POST: Thinking again about the concept of "Lucidity".

[POST]

I think i have come to a point where i am no longer interested in philosophical and logical debates between idealism versus materialism. This is mainly because i don't think this debate will ever end, and me pontificating upon it is nothing more than a samsaric oroboric cycle. The capacity for the imagination is infinite, and i realized the idea of trying to achieve lucidity by disproving materialism by argument is a waste of time. This is because no matter how good or solid an argument i cant make, the materialist can always dive into his imagination and counter it, and i can counter whatever the materialist throws at me, because of the depths of imagination.
I dont mean to sound egotistical here, but besides all the philosophical back and forths, i think what really makes me a subjective idealist or makes me feel lucid is just seeing existence from a different vantage point. In other words lucidity is a certain awareness of awareness that i don't think everybody has yet or ever will. I mean say i was in a non lucid dream arguing with a dream character about whether or not this was or was not a dream. We could argue endlessly about it, and i could convince the dream character he is wrong, but i have realized having a solid philosophical framework for subjective idealism is not enough to achieve lucidity. Lucidity is a direct intuitive knowing of the dreamlike nature of things, an actual sense of perception and not just a convincing theory. I'm certain now that the reason you cant convince most materialists is not just because they have a bias reinforced by eloquent mental gymnastics, they simply lack this type of perception. Trying to describe the non material nature of consciousness to a materialist is like trying to describe the nature of orangeness to a colorblind person. They just cant see it or feel it. And this is not simply wishful thinking in the sense that it feels good to think of the universe as a dream or a kind of faith, its just being a fish who has seen dry land and trying to explain it to other fish that haven't been above the surface. Language isn't adequate, experience is the key, just like you cant know what its like to trip on a hallucinogen by reading about it, you have to actually do it.
Its getting over that seduction of the drug "being right and the other person being wrong" that western civilization tantalizes with us. I've also come to realize subjective idealism creates a very different kind of epistemology. Rather than materialist living in an idealistic universe delusional thinking materialism is true, instead materialists live in a materialist dream within a deeper dreamlike universe, and there is technically nothing wrong about that in that it is just one part of the geography of the ideaverse, we have just become lucid and are trying to escape it, creating our own dream worlds rather then being stuck in someone else s.

[END OF POST]

Your point on the infinite depth of imagination and its connection to this is great. If our thoughts and our world are one and the same, and our world works according to something like this:

Make a decision that something is true, go looking for evidence that it is true, and you will discover that it is true (for you)
-- TriumphantGeorge

Well, then there is nothing to be done. Until a materialist decides and commits to becoming - or exploring being - an idealist, to having an idealist experience, then he will remain a materialist. His world will back him up with the corresponding materialist experiences and thoughts and logical reasoning. It is not really possible to describe the nature of idealist reality in anything but quite imprecise metaphors, and those metaphors are only meaningful if you have had the direct experience. Unfortunately, having the direct experience requires a prior commitment to it, a commitment that logic alone cannot induce - so it's circular.

Hence the idea of providing exercises and thought experiments that are experiential rather than logical - just-deciding, switching off your senses, overwriting yourself, and so on. It's a way to short circuit all that thinking-about.

POST: Mechanics of Manifestation from the No-Self Perspective

But if you just say "whatever happens is what you want" then you'll be left following appearances and never being able to challenge what you see.

Can I pick up on a couple of things?

What do we mean by "want"? Our man obviously never really wanted to be paralysed in an "ego" sense. Ask him, he'd say "no thanks, operational legs are cool!"

So, what is the nature of this wanting? Do we not just mean the direction of the flow of life, if it were unobstructed? Obstructing a path leads to "alternative methods". For instance, perhaps he didn't want to be a performer anymore, however he resisted the opportunities that presented themselves, and so it came to extremes. He didn't want to be paralysed as such; he wanted the eventual outcome and temporary paralysis was the path that resulted.

Meanwhile, on will and possibility. Why do you find it difficult to accept, say, putting your hand through a wall? Have you had any progress in getting yourself to expand out your presence, overwrite your boundary yet - or do you still find that exposure/fear response getting in the way?

EDIT: Hey, wait a minute... what's this?

because the manifest appearance is in some sense a shadow of the past wants

I'd go with this. There's always traces. The "past" is a tricky word though, because of the presence of all time as contributor, but we can ignore that mostly.

There are times when being content is the wrong attitude.

I don't read it as "being content", as in wanting to stay in your current state forever. It's sort of the opposite. That were you to remove all obstructions then what you want would come to pass. Because you obstruct, then you end up with things you don't really want, temporarily, as a means of forcing you towards what you want. I guess it ties into your idea of "being ready to pay the penalty". You are always on the way to getting what you desire (I think), but if you obstruct the path to that, you'll get nasty side-effects as your world tries to force its way to that configuration, by working around your "held patterns".

Nah, it's not that shallow.

Yeah, just a plausible description to illustrate my point, you get the idea though. That he might have accidentally created his paralysis situation, because he wasn't consciously managing himself / his world.

I know why but I don't want to talk about it now.

Nah, not about the why - was just wondering if you'd made progress, since I was writing up something on it (overwriting yourself, deleting boundaries) and if you'd had something to report, it might have been interesting to me.

LOL, progress in my life is something that's measured in decades. It's not an hour by hour thing.

What? How do you find so much to post about then? ;-)

I have a very active contemplation life. My experience changes slowly. I can experience this or that peak experience, but that's not what I regard as change. Those peak experiences are like temporary blips. Change is slow, gradual and lasting.

A good point about peak experiences. People go seeking for these, but I think that - apart from perhaps knocking someone out of their complacency and showing there's something more going on - they can be a distraction from real change.

Please don't confuse me for someone who poo-poos or warns people against peak experiences. I am not like that at all. In fact I've given out many instructions on how to enter into a peak experience.

I think they are a distraction if they become a pursuit. Interesting about the Buddhist perspective you describe.

It's critical, whether you avoid meditative absorptions or not, to not have fear and revulsion toward them.

I think they can be enjoyed for what they are. To meditate in order to seek enlightenment, say, is folly. To do it because it's enjoyable, or to gain an experience, that's fine, or a flash of insight, whatever.

Peak experiences, by their nature, are "peak" and so you don't learn how to rest in that state in general, if that is your aim. So people who dedicate themselves entirely to peak-seeking can be missing out, setting themselves up for 20 years of retrospective disappointment, when they could be more direct and start having it now.

What do you think a 3 year dark retreat is, for example?

I think it's a process of relaxation.

Maybe the problem here is the word "peak". By definition, peak experiences are transitory, but can offer temporary insight. This is what some people get from meditation (mantra until thoughts cease and they can see the background; one-pointed until exhaustion and attention opens out). For the general state, perhaps we can say "optimum" or "highest" or "expansive" or "relaxed as awareness" - or whatever. Something that doesn't seem to involve force.

Transitory experiences leave lasting marks. Also consciously induced transitory experience should be distinguished from those which arise unconsciously. A consciously induced transitory experience potentially establishes or firms up a commitment, potentially a new one, and that's important.

Obviously I don't mean relaxation as in chilling out - it's in the proper sense, of releasing into a more optimum, sustainable state. Of course, consciously pursuing a state can establish new patterns. Or more importantly: delete them!

The word "temporary" is probably clearer, then. But we know what we mean.

The word "temporary" is probably clearer, then. But we know what we mean.

"Peak" is a relative term.

Yeah, I just think that "relaxing into the valley" is more what it feels like, in terms of effort. But equally if you approach it energetically to write the plateau, you'll find the valley and the plateau are in fact the same place. Either/or. What's important is that the final state doesn't require maintenance or energy - it is stable and effortless.

This is why it's best not to poo-poo peak experience, or at minimum, be extra extra careful in how and what exactly you poo-poo so as not to confuse anyone.

People have wasted their whole lives meditating intensely to recapture that "calm, oneness" moment they had years ago, confusing the experience with enlightenment. But enlightenment isn't an experience, it's a state. You can't maintain an experience. And a forced experience can't be turned into a state. That doesn't poo-poo peak experiences - they can be a source if great insight and wisdom. But so can Reddit sometimes. You don't want to try to spend your whole life there though, in the hope of eventually reaching some experience of non-stop insight. ;-)

Clarifying then: Insight is an event, enlightenment (or being awake, or whatever) is a state. One might inspire you to the other, but should not be confused with the other.

EDIT: Sorry, the method by which you gain one (insight, an experience) should not be assumed to be a method by which you can gain the other (a stable state).

Of course relaxing only 5 minutes at a time is an excruciatingly slow way to lower your base level of tension. That's true. And if your relaxation times are also attended by bad conceptual schemes, then your relaxation can even have a counter effect of making you more tense at a base level.

And if what you do between-times is counter, then you are a see-saw. So, the state (this particular one) is something you eventually want to have during daily life. A method that peaks can lead you there, perhaps gradually shift you - but what's important us that the effect persists in some way, when you are not doing the method.

It's about changing your patterns. Your default state (relaxed state?) is what you want to modify and retain. That is the measure of your progress, yes?

Sure. A "distraction" doesn't mean "detrimental" of course - the warning is not that one is to avoid an experience, but to beware of confusing it for something else, for the goal and the method. Enjoy 'em, and be encouraged by them, and get 'em when you like - but remember they aren't necessarily "progress".

You make a good point about being wary can cause problems; it can lead it a type of resistance which can really block change. Like trying to do things "right" can be a massive barrier to change.

Are peak experiences really objectively, unquestionably distractions?

Yeah, incomplete sentence/thought: not detrimental to one's path per se. It just doesn't progress it if you keep chasing those experiences instead of continuing on the path.

It's about taking the experience, but staying on target. Because if an experience is content, then obsessing over it moves you away from the background - the opposite direction from expansiveness.

Chasing a pattern is like opening a door in a dream: there's usually a landscape for you to investigate beyond it. Look at a pattern and it'll become more and more detailed, just-in-time to give you more to explore. Forever. But you are not in fact making progress; you are creating, not realising.

And never trying to do the right things is also a massive barrier. :) Isn't that funny?

Haha, good :-)

So either you chase those experiences or you continue on the path? That's the dichotomy?

Oh, you are being picky. The sentence doesn't even say that. I said if you keep chasing those experiences instead of continuing on the path. In the sense that, once you discover that alcohol doesn't make you better at passing your exams, doesn't mean you have to quit drinking. You just don't drink as a study-aid.

What's wrong with adding a little qualification to what you said, you know, the thing in bold?

Uh-huh, it was obvious. As my bolding above demonstrates! You feeling hungover or something? Seem more irritable than usual today. ;-)

(Happy New Year, by the way, hope 2015 is a good one for you.)

What if you just realized you can create?

You are never not creating, so I let's replace "can create" with "are creating". It's the "highest siddhi" as they say. Once you realise, you should probably stop for a bit, take a breath. And then, instead of accidentally creating by implication, scatter gun style - i.e. constantly looking at patterns and, gosh, there's even more detail there - decide to do it consciously, with your new-found understanding. Or not even. :-)

You know what I mean: The method by which (most) peak experiences are achieved is not the method by which ongoing realisation can be maintained.

"Stopping" is no different from anything else. Stopping is still a temporal mental fabrication. Still creating.

That's not what I mean. It's something more like "ceasing interfering". You let what you have created keep rolling on its own momentum (this is of course your own creation, but you are no longer tweaking it). As in, you stop adjusting the patterns.

We're talking about realization. You know, when the person wakes up to the fact that their nature is creative and always has been thus?

So, exactly what I said.

That's something I agree with. I just don't share your attitude toward peak experiences. Which is funny, because I don't even experience that many of them lately, and yet I know should I develop your style of aversion/dismissiveness toward them, I'll just hamstring myself later on.

I think you're reading into what I'm saying incorrectly. It's not an aversion to peak experiences, it's the confusing of peak experiences with achievement on your path. Have 'em, enjoy 'em, if you get insights then use 'em - but don't go looking for them (except for fun).

I don't agree that there is such a sharp dichotomy.

I think we are talking past each other, because these terms encapsulate a lot of different things, and we're not giving examples.

It's something more like "ceasing interfering". That's delusion. That statement objectifies experience. It makes you a stranger to your own experience.

That's just wording.

It comes down to a difference we have: You see (as I recall) that creation and experience and intending and deciding are constant ongoing things - constantly active. Whereas I see it as patterns and momentum, unfolding deterministically (if not predictably) until redirected by intention (i.e. patterns and path are reshaped). In your view, there could be no "letting go" or relaxation.

I definitely cannot accept your view, at least not literally.

Perhaps we can take a different tac. Do you beat your heart, or does it beat itself as an ongoing unfolding pattern that has arisen and will fall? In what sense do you "do" your heart-beating? It doesn't seem that you have to maintain it moment by moment; it just happens. However, at any point we could choose to act in a way that stopped that heart. (Although I'd miss ya.)

Is it perhaps you think that, if things are not actively maintained, they will relax immediately into non-existence? This isn't how things work though, from investigation. The more complex the pattern, the more self-supporting it is, the more persistent and the greater the inertia. That's why "letting go" doesn't immediately return you to open space.

There is no relaxation or tension because both relaxation and tensions turn out to be mental fabrications.

Could you talk a bit more about what you mean by "mental fabrications"? I'm not sure what you mean. Where would these fabrications be? Or do you just means that they are structures just like every other structure or pattern in consciousness?

We're muddling things here.

Ultimately, there is no-thing and that is you. That is understood. Any patterns which appear within that, are just what they are: patterns in/of awareness. To call them "fabrications" is redundant, they are patterns of experience, that's that - although within the context of other patterns they also have additional relative meaning.

To return to volition, there is no causality between one pattern and another, so there is no need for maintenance. Your "consent" is neither here nor there, because you don't have the power to consent as a person. If you "train yourself" to alter your heart rate, you're really just asserting against the pattern. You are not "doing" anything. It is a fact that patterns given momentum - within the context of the pattern of time and space - will continue until interrupted or compromised. (A sand castle pattern will stand indefinitely, except for the overlapping of patterns called "wind" and "tide".)

You are still talking about "someone's mind" and "my heart", I note. I assume you are talking from the personal perspective there, rather than standing as the background.

"Overlaid": There actually is a bit more to it. There are granularities of structure, but overall there is no solid underlying substrate because there are no permanent things at all, quite right.

I am not muddling anything.

I mean, you and I are muddling, talking at slightly different angles.

Subjective idealism can lean toward realism or anti-realism.

I don't see how, if it is subjective idealism. The book with the whirlpools isn't subjective idealism; it's idealism. Hence it can posit an extended world made of awareness of which "little you" are one folded, spatial section (in the metaphor, anyway), of a "mind at large". Everything is in mind, of mind. Subjective idealism says it's your mind. Of course, the two blend into one after investigation, depending on perspective and dis-identification.

There is no background. If you think there is a background, then again, you're objectifying an aspect of your being.

The background is you and is completely non-object-based - but simultaneously it is of course the foreground. Formlessness/form, all that.

On Angles, Minds, Backgrounds

If you talked at a precisely the same angle as me, you'd be me, right?

I was really using the word "angle" casually, but this is nice. We are all at different angles to the world, and to each other. If two such perspective were to have an identical angle, their experience would be identical in all respects.

Kant believed that even though all we can know is the mind, nonetheless the mind was orchestrated somehow or influenced by things beyond it. So Kant's idealism admits a whiff of objectivity into it.

A whiff of objectivity, from the perspective of the "small mind", in that it suggests that not everything is contained within your experience, right now. I believe everything is included in this room, right now, as it were. Colloquially speaking of course; the room itself is not an actual environment.

But when we say it's your mind, we don't mean it's George's mind. We mean it in a very abstract sense. Just enough to affirm responsibility and to avoid objectifying experience, but no more than that.

Is there a better way we can phrase this? To me, there's no such thing as "George's mind" - there is an idea that occasionally appears called "George" which is quite heavily structured; other ideas and thoughts, even actions, occasionally arise which are consistent with the limits of that "George" idea. But there's no way in which I am "George", except that those ideas and thoughts are appearing in and of me.

Then it can't be called "background" since it isn't to the back of you, or in fact, to the back of anything. It's like remember how you chided me for talking about levels, saying there are no levels?

Yes, it's not "background" in the sense of levels. It's not like having a canvas and then putting paint on it. It's more like a canvas where you form the canvas itself into bumps in the middle. The "foreground" is the bumpy shapes, because they stand out in your attention. The "background" is the un-bumped areas surrounding it, which you tend to ignore.

The word "background" has a connotation of passivity. Are you saying that your ultimate nature is one of passivity?

Hopefully my refreshed imagery counters that. If you "are the canvas" then the so-called "background" is just the infinite expanse which does not currently have a pattern. As the "canvas", you can form into any shape you like. Of course, there will always be more "background" than not, because the canvas goes on forever. Also, missing from this metaphor, is the fact that most of this "canvas" is unstructured - as in, 3-dimensional space itself is a pattern.

I'd say we're at different angles to each other. The way you put it makes it seem like there is an objective world that's neutral to all of us.

Not as intended: Literally, my experience is that I am 'positioned' in the world in one sense - and in a more configurational sense I am 'angled' to other perspectives.

I doubt that my mind can really be called "small." The error in Kant's view is that he reserves an area of mind which belongs to nobody, as it were (or maybe it belongs to God in his view). Thus he objectifies subtly an aspect of his experience.

Berkeley and others do this too. It's because they implicitly use a spatial metaphor. There is no notion, say, of space and time also being structures, patterns in awareness either - so they are left trying to make connections across a fictional gap.

See, I too believe that not everything is consciously obvious in my present experience.

Yes. It's all there. And we seem to agree that the metaphors of levels, hierarchies, dimension, sizes, distances - they are convenient terms to use when getting a particular point across, but they are in no sense 'objectively true'; that is not how things are actually organised. Language is spatial and temporal, so it is understood that temporary compromises have to be made for the purposes of communication.

At the same time, even though you may be different from me, you aren't George, and I am not Nefandi. We may become one and the same perspective in one and the same being. And we may remain as though separate. However, there is no way to establish anything objectively...

Experientially, we can observe that the "place we are looking out from" - if we direct our attentions in the opposite direction - is unstructured, unified. We are looking out from the same place. So in that sense, we are the same.

Can you flip this around? What if we take the bumps to be the background and the unbumped surface to be the foreground? If you can do this instantly, you've preserved your mental flexibility.

Well, I actually do think of this as a bit of a figure/ground image. It reminds me of this, in fact. You can do a similar thing in the room right now: just bring the space between objects into the foreground, making the space the "object" and the objects the "space". (It takes a little practice, that, or it did for me.)

Space is a subtle concept, but really to say that I am a space is too limiting.

Actually, I was trying to be clear there that we are not space - that "space" is another subtle structure that is experienced (and therefore not us). As is "narrative". We can't actually experience what we are, we just are it. Which is why it is, well, of infinite capacity and potential.

I can be said to be outside all things, or even unrelated to things at all, having no definite relationship to things.

Outside of all things, and yet also all things.
No relationship to things, but all relationships between things.

That's the problem with being God: it's so darned hard to find the words to describe One-self, eh? :-)

It's possible to read something like what you wrote, and come away with the attitude of "well, since nothing we say is exactly correct . . . I like the attitude that comes out this way "well, nothing we say will be exactly correct, still . . .

Right. Now, this isn't a problem for 'informed discussion' - we both know that there is a moon we are "pointing to", as it were. However, without that knowledge it can seem that we're really saying that it's totally arbitrary! It should be striving for the best way to communicate during a particular discussion - picking the best metaphors for the particular point.

Which is why dialogue like this is important. Going back and forward, trying different images, until one or a combination of them works (sometimes a combination that is in logical conflict, but overall captures the properties).

"Place we are looking out from"
I don't think I understand this one fully. What are some of the more interesting implications of this?

It's that we can each directly experience that we must all be looking out from the same, um, experience. That "being" thing. Basically: point your finger at your face, follow where it's pointing with your attention to "where you are looking out from", notice the complete structurelessness of it. Everyone has that same "source" in their experience. It's also a quick way of switching to the "background" rather than the "foreground". (Caveats apply to those terms, as discussed.)

We shouldn't try to describe God in terms of a static picture. God cannot be photographed or painted. Instead we should describe God's tendencies, such a tendency toward limitlessness and freedom, a tendency toward playfulness, etc.

Hmm. Never static, and yet always the same. I like the description you used there. Playfulness has always seemed like a great word to use.

On Realism and Not

Okay, that makes things clearer. For me, 'philosophical realism' would be the idea that there is an aspect of reality that exists independent of your perceptions and thoughts about reality. A more 'general realism' would go further and say that what you perceive has a direct correspondence with reality (the version you mean). So it's maybe actually better to go for the negative term you suggest, 'anti-realism', which is unambiguous in saying 'there's no objective reality outside this'. Whether that leads to solipsism or just an admission of non-provability is icing on the cake.

Anyway, I've gone meandering there...

For the subjective idealist, what he experiences is reality. There is no behind-the-scenes. There may be regularities in his experience, but they are not "caused" by some external structure - they are their own cause, they are habits. There are no limits, potentially, to what might be true, or how reality might apparently "work", or how things might be structured internally.

The subjective idealist recognises the room around him as a floating image, transparent and without solidity - without origin, even, except from himself.

Now, I am a subjective idealist, and to me nothing I experience is reality because it doesn't satisfy 1 or 2 above 50%.

Perhaps it is better to avoid the terms 'real' and 'reality' because they are difficult to use in a formal sense. For this discussion, yes experience is 'unreal' because the is no external backing to it. (Hence dismissing both philosophical realism and general realism.)

For the general reader, they tend to think in terms of 'my reality', say. In this sense, for the subjective idealist all of experience is reality - there is no secret substrate behind the scenes. One might say "mind" or "awareness" is the true reality, I suppose. But this doesn't work in the same way as we say "matter" is the reality in materialism, because experiences are 'made from' mind in idealism, whereas experiences are not 'made from' matter in materialism. But anyway, we can happily agree that subjective idealism is - of course - not realist.

"The subjective idealist recognises the room around him as a floating image, transparent and without solidity - without origin, even, except from himself."
This I think is a skillful image you paint, however, this isn't what "reality" is, is it?

Seems to be, to me? ;-) You know what I mean though, from the paragraph above.

I agree that there is no substrate, but there is a secret "behind" the senses (although not literally behind).

Right. I've tried to convey that in the past using metaphors (of course) of things being "enfolded" and so on. To communicate that 'everything is here right now' even if it is not presently in the form of sensations.

That's why the Daoist sages say, visions blind the eye, sounds deafen the ear.

As the sun hides the stars.

Well, my preferred species of it isn't at least [not realist]. Maybe you prefer the realist flavor? I currently lean toward anti-realism.

And meanwhile, these terms are so unfortunate - mixed in as they are with 'being an idealist/realist' in the sense of pragmatism. Bah. Notions of realism/anti-realism can seem almost constrained to a materialist-type framework (or rather, a dual view). I probably don't tend to think in those terms at all, until it comes up in conversation. I've always taken things to be "real at what they are", even before getting into Berkeley and then moving on. Not through deliberate choice, probably through ignorance initially, in fact.

Thoughts were "real thoughts", chairs were "real chairs", experiences are "real experiences". I was very quickly into the idea, because of playing with memory and stuff being my first interest, that any notion of a "real world behind the scenes" as itself just a thought within my mind, in the same "place" as the world in my mind.

I think so. ;) I am convinced that I know what you mean.

I'm convinced that you think you know too. ;-)

...

He never even once abandons the formula to just say "there is no self." In one Sutta the Buddha is asked point blank if self exists, and he remains silent. Surely that was a great opportunity to say "self doesn't exist." But the Buddha passes up on that opportunity and doesn't go there.

This is true. That is because the true self is not a "thing" and is not of "things"; it can neither exist nor not-exist. Only objects can exist or not-exist, and there is no object involved here.

Where it is tricky is that we talk of this through the "puppet" of this personality, an adopted shape for expression. The desires and actions and views of the puppet are arbitrary. There is, in a sense, nothing there. There is no objective self therefore.

The puppet doesn't come bundled with its own will.

I agree. That's why I said "through" the puppet personality. The puppet has no causal power, it is merely a pattern through which experience can be funnelled. Since it has limitation - because it has form - if you accidentally identify with the puppet, you will limit your abilities.

Or, worse (and more accurately), you will associate some parts of experience with yourself and your intention, and the rest will seem to happen to you, even though it sometimes mysteriously reflects your feelings, for the good or the bad.

That's something I agree with. Also, if you identify with the puppet you'll start thinking you've been born and will be subject to dying, because that's what puppets do: they're born and they die.

This leads to: What aspects of your experience are due to your misidentification with the puppet, and what aspects are due to your true self?

How do you distinguish, say, between puppet desires (wants that arise from the structure and world-as-perceived-by the puppet) and true desires, those that arise from being the universe and knowing everything.

After all, identifying with a puppet happens at a pre-puppet level, so it is an aspect of my true self.

Well, it happens within awareness, just as any identification with other world (pattern/object) aspects. You are still just looking at the puppet-pattern, but confusing it is "you" because it's all you see, seeing the thoughts seeded from the pattern as "yours" in a more global sense than they are. Important: There are no levels. Where would levels be? There are no hierarchies either. Those are conceptual, organisational frameworks: thoughts. Everything is at the same level, even different granularities.

I don't. And I don't recommend anyone try that. Instead one should evaluate desires not in terms of true/false but in terms of skillfulness, in terms of the outcomes they lead to, etc.

Those evaluations will themselves come via your identification or focus. The thoughts that appear will arise consistent with the puppet-structure if you're still attached to it. In other words, the desires associated with the puppet, that arise through the filter of its patterns are deformed and not what the larger you desires (necessarily). It's what you think you would want if you were just the person the puppet thinks it is. This isn't just about yachts. Even the desire to live forever or have infinite power could be a desire sourced/filtered via the puppet-pattern. Until you release a hold on that pattern, then you won't feel the actual flow of your true self, or at least it will be eclipsed by the persistence of the puppet image.

So, how do we tell what we, as our true self, truly desires?

As I said, you're confusing the issue when you ask your question in this way. Your question sharply segments desires into true/false, and that will impede your reflection if you go any further under that assumption.

Well, in a sense the puppet-pattern is responsible for the thoughts that emanate from it, but only in the sense that the a whirlpool is responsible for its shape. Causally, of course, it's doing nothing. It may well be that the only way to notice that you are not the puppet us for the puppet-pattern (or world-pattern as unfolding via the puppet-pattern) to result in such a thought. Fundamental awareness has no desires, of course. It is already complete.

You need to stop saying that the puppet is responsible for something.

Perhaps let's say "associated with" thoughts that appear related to the pattern. The pattern, the puppet and the world, actually appear within you. You are not a person, you are aware of a person and a world through a person. And yet, all that those things are, are you. So you have ultimate responsibility.

Fundamental awareness has no desires, of course. That's not true.

How can structureless openness have desires? There is nowhere it wants to be, nowhere it wants to go, nothing it wants to become. Only patterns within awareness can change, have a direction, have a desire (= an unfulfilled tendency) and move towards it. So, the puppet-pattern can have desires, the world-pattern can have desires. You as awareness can facilitate or obstruct those desires manifesting by holding into forms, patterns and preventing them changing - or instead allowing movement, or even more directly updating the patterns to accelerate change (however this comes with penalties re:balance and stability).

This thread is the more interesting one...
...it's the "the territory is/becomes the map" thread.

[QUOTE]

Topology
Topology (from the Greek words τόπος, 'place, location', and λόγος, 'study') is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing holes, opening holes, tearing, gluing, or passing through itself.

[END OF QUOTE]

POST: Feedback model of experience

[POST]

==I've been interested in feedback loops as a model for a lot of different things and I tried to communicate a consciousness feedback loop, but I was too vague before. I would like your help in expanding on this concept.
I declare two systems we'll call belief and perception. They are in a feedback loop that we'll call experience. Perceptions seem external and beliefs seem internal. Perception influences belief by manifestation. Belief influences perception by intent and willpower (maybe? Haven't hashed this out very well).
In the materialist experience perceptions absolutely must influence beliefs. To phrase it in terms of a feedback loop, perception amplifies the existing beliefs through manifestation (the signal). To a materialist, if beliefs influence perceptions, they're probably misleading until verified with more perceptions (experimentation as extremely compelling confirmation bias). Anomalous perceptions, while possible due to beliefs usually taken for granted, are discarded as faulty equipment (believe none of what you hear and half of what you see).
Wizards tend to lean towards beliefs influencing perceptions strongly such that each and every perception is possible based on our beliefs and they're prone to what would usually be considered anomalous experiences. The signal going from belief to perception is the intent combined with willpower (the willingness and sincere desire to override perception).
However for me, it's easy to fall back into materialism because my will to change my beliefs is overpowered by my habitual perceptions. Or, my intent+will signal is overpowered by my manifestation signal.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback]
To consider a chicken and egg argument is fruitless because they monistically exist simultaneously with experience. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/monistically]
Thanks for your perspectives.
Addendum: I realized the source of some of my confusion.
I will replace perception and manifestation. So belief influences manifestation through perception rather. The strength of that pathway is based on repeatability. It's a mostly passive pathway, yin, etc.. The belief system receives perceptions from the manifestation system.
Willpower is the strength of the belief->manifestation pathway and intent describes the information to manifest.
So to re-word my wizard and materialist stereotypes the materialist is extremely passive and the wizard is extremely active (in regards to influencing manifestation and belief). I'm onto something...
Here's a blurry picture of a graph for you to peep, complete with the remnants of my dinner:

[END OF POST]

This is along the same lines of my own thinking, however I approach it a little more simply in terms of structure. Belief and perception (experience) are of the same thing - they can be seen as the same thing at different stages of solidification.

In fact, my next multi-part post was going to be called Magick is Memory (along with one on Overwriting Yourself) and be on this very topic. But, here goes with a quick summary version; see how it fits in with your ideas:

Passive Memory

Every experience that arises leaves a trace in awareness, an after-image. That trace influences subsequent experiences, which are filtered through it. Which in turn strengthens the trace. In short, there is a memory effect. Over time, certain patterns become more entrenched - habits, beliefs - just as the flow of water deepens channels in a landscape via erosion.

This is the passive mode and this is how the landscape of our worlds are formed at the start. There is a randomness of activation (random rainfall) which due to the clumsiness of randomness seeds patterns (eroded areas), which eventually turn into stable habits (deepening erosion into channels and pathways). Experience shapes beliefs shapes experiences. Beliefs are the same as habits of the world. Beliefs are not things you think, they are the structure of your world.

It is not just apparently "external" experiences that participate in this effect though: simply thinking a pattern will also contribute to this effect, although to a lesser extent.

Active Shaping

The magician realises that this is the situation, and seeks to benefit from it in an active mode, using a couple of extra insights:

• The resistance of patterns to change is related to his gripping of those patterns, his identification with those patterns.
• He can stand back and identify as the background awareness, which is unaffected by pattern and memory.
• If he does so, then the effect of his consciously directed thoughts (summoning a 1st-person imaginary experience corresponding to his desire = intention) is greatly amplified, even instant - because he can completely sidestep trying to push it and hence resistance.
• In the extreme case, simply deciding will be sufficient.
• It is generally easier to have manifestations that are consistent with the deepest habits, so that the occurrence can still be dismissed as "plausible". For instance, those lost keys don't directly materialise in mid-air, they appear in the drawer you already looked in (but perhaps you hadn't looked properly?), and so on.

Effectively, the magician makes his world more vulnerable to the 'memorisation' effect, leading to a more rapid circumvention, alternation or dissolution of existing habits - for a one-off manifestation or for a change in how the world works. In either case, the magician is "inserting new facts" into the world; he is updating its memories to correspond to the world he desires.

The overall situation is somewhat sketchily illustrated in this diagram.

Additional Comments

Was looking at the initial version of your post, just saw the update - your little picture is basically the "process diagram" for my own! Nice. I do believe we don't need the extra step of separating them into "systems" though in the end. That's fine for illustrating a process, but there is no separation between filter and flow, between belief, perception, experience, manifestation - it's the same patterns being activated.

There is only awareness - with raw creativity (randomness) and memory (persistence) on the passive side; the active side is simply awareness deliberately shaping itself, changing or circumventing memory at the root level.

This gets away from the chicken-egg metaphor problem.

I originally started along this line of thinking to describe how people always think they are right in their world-view - could it possibly be because they literally experience their beliefs as reality? Beliefs are the laws or habits by which your world unfolds? How to intervene in this? And so on. This became a disussion in materialism vs idealism vs nondualism over at a philosophy forum.

Recently reread Edward de Bono's The Mechanism of Mind, which is very strong on memory and pattern metaphors. It's out of print but I've posted my PDF copy at the link. You might find it interesting.

However for me, it's easy to fall back into materialism because my will to change my beliefs is overpowered by my habitual perceptions. Or, my intent+will signal is overpowered by my manifestation signal.

This willingness to ignore the evidence (what you are seeing and how you are feeling) and push on regardless is one of the most difficult things.

In my reply to Nefandi I suggest an alternative strategy. Complete skepticism of results on the passive path but overwhelming willpower on the active path (yet you may not believe the results are even significant until it gets crazy).

Hmm, interesting. The identification with the background rather than content is maybe a version of doing this, actually: It disengages you from taking the passive arisings "seriously", reducing the fear factor of disruption them, which then makes active assertions less troublesome.

You mention something else which is worth pursuing:

But Ananda becomes surprised when Tathagata points out that what he's using to "investigate it" (i understand it as, consideration/contemplation) isn't his mind, which disturbs him.

The word "mind" is really problematic. It gets used for "thinking" and for "the space my thoughts and sensation arise in" and also for "the object-less non-material material that is the substrate for experience, and is my true nature".

I see what we "are" as the background ("awareness"), any object or pattern content or traces - beliefs, experiences, etc - are all of the first two types. Magick is about modifying the patterns. Insight or enlightenment is about recognising yourself as the background rather than any pattern. Of course, the two go hand in hand, since patterns are "of" the background.

But really it needs defined every time it's mentioned, it seems.

The origin of the world then, which required pattern and persistence, is not itself a property of awareness. An finite number of random 'flickers of pattern' can have occurred before the first one that lingered as an after-image, a memory, then even longer before two occurred, which then allowed a stable and interrelated, self-supporting set of patterns to emerge.

(The word "consciousness" is also problematic because people think of it as localised self-consciousness.)

Either way I got some serious stuff to chew on. Look forward to your post.
I don't assert my model as reality, it's a map, it's a model. I don't want to confuse the model and the reality. But if it's a useful model, I'll keep it around, you know?

Usefulness is the way to judge things, definitely! And models are a great way to explore your assumptions and a soften the edges, give you something to work with. (Because it's hard to start with "everything is possible" and then truly adopt that. Even trained pilots, who know they can fly because of the machine they're sat in, still take off from ground level...)

Although, contrary to the old saying, actually the territory does become the map after a while, to a greater or lesser extent. Of course it has to, otherwise we couldn't have magick (= assertion of truth and subsequent consistent effects).

The more flexible and ambiguous the situation, the more easily the effect becomes "memorised" by the world. For instance, simply and truly deciding - and feeling the certainty of the fact - that you will have a lucid dream will give you lucid dreams (as recent poster here has rediscovered, although a few have said this in the past).

...

That Jacob Lieberman book is interesting. It think his central experience was accidental though, but he almost got there. Great point that the assumption of an external world (or, assumptions about vision) inhibit progress:

People don't see with their eyes unless they centre their attention there, thus limiting their vision drastically - what's meant to happen is that vision comes to them in their minds. If they'll let it! Simply changing "where you sit" in your body-space, and letting your awareness open out instead of concentrating, can have a dramatic effect. Hence "seeing from the core" and similar approaches.

This technique explores the central line of the body. It relates to the spine and spinal cord, as well as to the chakras, the flow of chi and other energetic paradigms. The center or mid-line is especially important in vision because our two eyes need to coordinate around this line in order to work well together. Once the student has learned to find this central, energetic line, she/he finds the place on it that is the most comfortable, and rests there. Most people have a place inside themselves that is familiar and feels like home. For instance, one person may have done a great deal of martial arts, and centering in the belly is easiest. For another, centering in the chest is more natural. We each have our preferences and styles. In addition, vision is not always the primary sense we are using at any given moment. We cannot attend equally to what we are hearing, seeing and sensing. One sense must be the most important, or “the figure”, while the others are less important, or “the ground.”
-- Seeing From The Core, Rosemary Gaddam Gordon

But if people won't give up control, of holding onto their old way, they're screwed.

Good test to do with yourself: Sit back and be in the room. Do you feel that the room around you is in focus, just "there"? Or do you feel that you are scanning around, and that the world is blurred in parts, like in a movie scene? If you are relaxed and letting vision "happen", the whole room should be just "there". Because it's not actually possible for your eyes to be seeing the whole room anyway; you are dreaming it.

The same lessons apply to perception and action more generally.

Seeing from the core is a deliberate choice. It's an aspect of control, not the giving up of it. Maybe you mean, people need to learn to exercise control in a more skillful manner?

Yes, the wording depends on the perspective. They are giving up trying to control seeing by effort, but of course in ceasing to do that they gain influence over their experience more fully. Their previous attempt at control has obscured the nature of the situation, and the nature of the control they should be exercising.

Enjoy your walk.

It's not just that they gain more influence. The act of the giving up of this "control" is a deliberate choice. It is a type of self-control (or self-influencing).

At first, they are are influencing the wrong thing - creating the wrong thing: generating the experience of feeling their eyes, rather than of open vision.

POST: Lust of result

To me, magickally speaking, "lust for results" has a couple of interpretations:

• In order for change to occur, the current pattern of experience needs to unfold and flow to the desired state. Continually checking or focusing on progress is equivalent to "holding on" to the current pattern; it implies the current state rather than the future state and keeps you there.
• Lust for results implies doubt - you end up creating the experience of doubting, than of having.

Say manifestation works by you adopting a pattern or desire as being "already true" - either already true right now, or that it is already true that it will happen at some point in the future. The truth being accepted or known at the implicit level, it is inevitable that the everyday apparent world will correspond to it. Then anything that implies your desire is not already true right now in "configuration space"*, will cause a problem. Lust implies lack. Satisfaction implies abundance? Which is why the proper version of positive thinking - maintaining a constant "feeling" of certain fortune, optimism and happiness and following the intuitions that arise from that - is a powerful general practice.

By which I mean the imaginary underlying timeline space where all possible moments are arranged. Inserting a fact into any point in the timeline means it is true now and forever at all moments. Inserting an event into February 2015, for instance, means that it will be true that "this event occurs in February 2015", now and always.

POST: "I think therefore I am" vs "I experience therefore I am"

[POST]

Lately i have been thinking about arguments against materialism, but i've realized that this debate is so confusing because both sides are arguing from a different premise as to what consciousness actually is.
This lead me to Rene Descartes famous quote "I think therefore I am". Now Descartes was not a materialist but a dualist, but his mechanistic view of the universe certainly got physical-ism going in a big way. But if you really think about the quote "I think therefore I am" these five words are really the foundation of physicalist thinking. We take this quote for granted because we assume saying "I think therefore i am" that we are talking about experience, but if you think about it, the modern equivalent of it is more along the lines "I am a data processor". In other words instead of identifying with that which experiences thoughts and feelings, it is identifying with the thoughts and experiences themselves.
The way i see it, intelligence and consciousness are not one in the same thing, intelligence is not consciousness itself but a byproduct of it. According to Bernardo Kastrup the way materialists are avoiding the hard problem of consciousness is by using what is called pan psychism the idea that matter has conscious. I realized that i had pan psychist outlook mixed with an idealist one, but i didnt realize that pan psychism was still very materialistic because it still implied matter is fundamental and mind is secondary. Matter itself can contain informtion the same way a computer can, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is conscious. Rather than being conscious it processes information in a self reflective way, but it does not experience itself, but the thing is materialists think that these self reflective information processes are consciousness.
This is the reason why materialists have such a hard time with the p zombie concept because they think that thoughts and experiences are the exact same thing. A p zombie has thoughts but it doesn't experience its thoughts, we as conscious entity's do experience our thoughts but according to buddhism and eastern philosophy we ourselves aren't our thoughts, but merely a kind of formless observer that watches them.
If you think about the scientistic materialist type, they tend to attribute a large part of their identity to their intellect and scientific knowledge, and rather than realizing they are experiencing an intellect they think they themselves are the intellect (they say, we are our are brains, a data processor) which makes sense why they believe they can upload their consciousness to a robot a la Ray Kurzweil.
So in summation to say "I think therefore I am" implies you are your thoughts and to say "I experience therefore I am" is to identify with the thing that experiences the thoughts and not the thoughts themselves. And don't get me started on the not even being that which observes the thoughts, i don't know how i feel about the whole anatman concept yet. I mean this phrase "I think therefore I am" is one of the most famous statements in western philosophy and is the foundation of the western concept of the self. I'd bring this up to materialists, but i feel like i might as well be arguing with creationists, they say they are open to evidence but i dont believe that anymore.

[END OF POST]

Nice post. Yes, I reckon "I think therefore I am" is better viewed from an idealism perspective: that there is mind, means I am?

Like The Dreaming Game exercise suggests, you are the "wide open unstructured space" in which all experiences arise, including the "feeling-awareness" of being an observer. We are actually awareness, and thought and sensations and images and objects, they appear within awareness and are patterns of awareness. That describes our 1st person view.

Meanwhile, the 3rd person view - that of seeing other people's brains, all that - appear within the 1st person view. But really, the whole world is within you (awareness), including "you" (thoughts and body sensations). The great thing is, this means that materialism is within idealism, so you get the benefits of consciousness-experiences, but also the benefits of science's codification of observed regularities.

Over at Bernardo Kastrup's website and forums some people have been trying to bash out a modern way to phrase this; his books are worth a look. It's not an easy task to describe this, even thought the experience itself - realising the nature of your reality - is easy and direct. Basically: awareness/consciousness is fundamental. And it is obviously true.

EDIT: This: [https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/metaphysical-speculations/sZzukBdzC5s]

POST: Loudness versus Realness

[POST]

You probably have all encountered a person, politician, entertainer, who was particularly loud and obnoxious, and while they may not be more truthful or entertaining than others, they seem to get all of the attention because they are so loud. People will think one comedian is funnier then another comedian because he/she is very boisterous and loud, even if what he/she is saying isnt funny at all.
This is what its like when it comes to defining the inner dream world and the outer one. Its not so much that the outer world is more real then the inner dream world, they both have similar levels of realness, the outer world just tends to be louder and the inner world is quieter. But the problem is that many people confuse "realness" with "loudness" in that if something is loud then it is real and if it is quiet it is unreal/imaginary. It may just be so that the loudness of this world is merely drowning out the presence of other worlds
But what im pondering is, is the loudness of this world natural or is it something we create do to our own intention/attention?

[END OF POST]

Great observation.

It's been said elsewhere (in idealism books) that the reason we don't experience, say, other people's thoughts and perceive locations elsewhere, is that our local experience is just "brighter" - similar to how we can't see the stars on a sunny day. They're still there and they are within our awareness; it's just that the "sun" of local experience is so much more intense. Psi research and so on would indicate that we can tune in to this though; filter out the strong patterns and ripples, focus on the subtle background ones.

POST: Twice perfect.

Aw, very nice. The calm of open space, with the power to tinker in a relaxed manner.

Can I get a how-to guide?

Start simply, before getting too extreme. Do the basics:

• Do a regular relaxation/release exercise - just lie down on the floor each day for 10 minutes and let go completely to gravity, give up totally; it doesn't need to be a formal meditation.
• Get yourself a lucid dream experience or an OBE experience. That will loosen you up.
• Read about idealism, such as Bernardo Kastrup's Why Materialism is Baloney. And read up on non-dualism with practical exercises: I recommend Rupert Spira's Presence Vol I & II.
• Check out the reading materials for magick on this subreddit: see wiki.

POST: Maintaining an attitude and a frame of mind of a Deity.

So, key to this I'd say is expanding your identity to cover the whole universe. You dissolve your commitment to the solidity of the content, but recognise the ground of the universe to be yourself.

To dissolve your personal history is important. It is present within your current experience right now, and seeds it, as you indicate. There are exercises and other experiments people can do for this sort of thing (some mindfulness-related, some about updating your imagination, some about revising your past by replaying it and editing it). Everyone has their own approach. Is it worth gathering suggested exercises together somewhere with results? Or is it too early for that sort of practical thing?

No, the universe is too limiting of an identity.

Okay, I used "universe" to mean "that which contains everything" there. So that vast, infinite unbounded space for me is the universe, or "me". Alternatively, I could have said that the universe is the 'content' (all objects) and I am that which the universal content arises within. Same thing. We need some word to use.

Sure is. I even put one exercise that you suggested into a wiki for this reddit.

Okay, good. Well, maybe tweak it up and people can think of what they'd like to contribute. Personal experience, plus: There are lots of books where there's one exercise or little snippet - e.g. the Neville Goddard approach, there's a good exercise or two for undoing your past in Reichian stuff, whatever - and it can save people actually tracking down and reading whole things if we can just cut to the important bit.

How about mind?

Hmm, 'mind' is a problem because it's commonly used to mean "the place where personal thoughts are". Don't really want to say "mind of God". We've played with calling it "vast unstructured place" where a "phenomenal space" appears (sensations) and/or "ideational spaces" (dreams, thoughts) appear without necessarily being spatially connected, all that. But that's too involved.

What are others? The "ground of being" or "the ground", "infinite awareness", "underlying consciousness'? Is there something that sounds more, well, solid and practical?

I think it is a mistake to think that this is what mind is. Mind contains all of reality. . .

That's very nicely written. I agree, but it is true that your everyday person thinks of a mind: theirs.

. . . once common misconceptions about them have been eliminated.

Yes. "Mind" does have the benefit of not having the sense of a restricted space or structure, and implies awareness/consciousness of course. I've seen "Mind-At-Large" used to try and encapsulate this, but actually if you clarify that mind isn't divided and supports perspectives, it seems misleading, since it implies a spatial divide between different individual minds.

Anyway, when it comes down to it this is about how we refer to it in this forum. I wonder whether if it might be an idea to have a post which clarifies the "picture of reality" we're using, with terminology. (I say this even though I dismissed the call for a "terms of reference" post a while back.)

[Cross-post because a point occurred to me:] The trick of "waking up to the moment" as if you've just been dumped here is good for this.

Also, you need to bear in mind that if you are a deity-like figure, you may have made some decisions prior to current appearance that you are now unaware of. You may have set some stuff up, a bit of a path or whatever, that restricts your complete freedom to some degree.

Now for the mandatory Alan Watts' "What if God got bored" video link [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckiNNgfMKcQ].

POST: Videos of the siddhis (warning: animals harmed/killed in the making of these videos, might be disturbing to some, nothing gruesome though)

Always interesting. But I wish the videos were more complete. For instance, I'd like to see the paper selected from a random stack of paper, then held up, then the burnings (so nothing was placed on it beforehand, chemicals etc activated by motion or time). I'd like to see the lighter taken from someone's pocket, then placed on the floor, then move (so nothing was connected to it, or underneath it, nothing unusual about it). Why not levitate the lighter rather than just move it sideways? That's what I'd do. Why not control the bull more directly, summon it to me? Why not ignite the paper at the edges, where it was being held by those guys' fingers? That would be far more fun. :-)

Otherwise there are other ways to do those things, and they can just be parlour tricks. (Original source video by Lawrence Blair for that is here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aos0hnwiHt8]). He's not very impressively critical, unfortunately, a bit of a gee-whiz enthusiast from the start. Sometimes magic (sans "k") tricks are ways to promote a movement whose real power is mostly invisible (healings and so on). I remain open.

There are plenty stories of monks and everyday people having siddhi-like experiences though, and people who have no bias in this area but have pursued 'realisation' report that "they do come".

One of the side diversions of this whole thing, is at a certain stage to cultivate the siddhis, powers, that do come with the seeing of who one is - and they do come.

I just wish we'd catch the good stuff on video properly...

This kind of stuff is easy to doubt if you want to.

One should start with doubt, and work from there, in these cases.

It's part of the show this one; it has "drama". (Particularly if seen in full context.) Just as he's landing during the fade-out, the bottom of the wall seems to move a little, for instance. And you'd keep the camera still and on him all the time if it were really an 'investigation'. (Anyone who could do this for real would be a fool to do it publicly.)

The usual 'real versions' of things are always less dramatic, more like glitches or reality shifts. No gestures should be required for magick, only intention. Gestures are just to persuade yourself. Or for fun. Direct right-now manipulation, there's not much of it.

Gestures in public performance are for misdirection and showmanship, for entertainment or promotion. Aside: It's amazing to watch an expert at work - e.g. Derren Brown doing quite simple card tricks on camera where you can see exactly what he's doing if you look (view first then read brackets if interested). The 'Smoke' trick (deck rotation 1:35, rolled prep card pull from box 2:03, cigarette drop 2:15, described here) and 'Card Prediction' trick (card push at 0:57, card peek at 2:42). In the former, though, Stephen Fry does seem to do something odd himself, just after lighting up...

POST: On being human, whats up with that?

I've taken the 'non-human' stuff to be more in the spirit of "self-realisation" - i.e. that your true nature is not a person, but the things that is aware of being a person. You have humanity, but fundamentally what you really are is not a human. You might consider that more of an expanding-out though.

But then, all the same things follow from that.

You just reminded me that being alone was also a huge fear for me and probably still is. And a big part of fearing to be alone for me is also fearing to be misunderstood. I used to really not want to be misunderstood. I've been taking some little active steps to let go of my desire of trying to be understood. I'm trying to teach myself that it's OK if some people don't understand what I am saying. Because this really used to obsess me, and that urge still visits me like "wait, no that's not what I meant, I should explain exactly what I meant!!! aahhhhhh!!! I am not being understood!! I feel alone!!" I'm trying to get a grip on that.
It's also fear of being obscure or invisible.

"Self love" does get a bad rap in some corners, especially recently eh...

they confuse it with narcissism, which to me narcissism is actually self lust not self love.

Or fapping...I see narcissism as compulsive self-defence.

POST: Visualization within the manifest context region of experience.

This is an excellent breakdown of the nature of present-moment experience, best I've read!

So the important thing here is to feel and not just think.

And that is the magic key: to avoid thinking-about, which just creates images about things (ideas), and instead to use direct sensing, to explore what's there. Creation vs discovery. (Although what is discovered was once created, of course.)

We tend to think of visualising and imagining as something we do in a special 'imagining place', but there is only one 'place' really, where our sensory experience and our thoughts all appear, even though sometimes there seem to be different parallel/simultaneous 'spaces' within that place. You can stretch out your 'feeling' forever in the 'sensory space' (manifest) or contract it or bend it. It's a completely non-physical space after all, made entirely from 'mind'. Depending on your view, sensory experience may or may not be 'inspired by' an underlying something, but that doesn't really matter. Because there's definitely no "matter" in your experience. You can overlay anything into the sensory space, or you can have 'parallel spaces' and put imagery in there creatively, or connect to other existing imagery - which might expand into a direct lucid dream if you focus in on it.

[This stuff is why I included the Rupert Spira and Greg Goode books in the reading list. They're all about these 'experiments' to explore your present experience, and read pretty much exactly like your post. But you have to do it to get it, really.]

Ultimately there is something we can call "basic space"...

I label it as a "place" rather than a "space" because the latter term implies a three-dimensional structure or grid in which things arise. When you 'feel out' you find that it's more of an "unstructured openness", and structured spaces appear within that. As in, "space" is itself an object-like thing. It also makes it easier to talk of different "spaces" whose locations are undefined (e.g. you are sat at home in your kitchen but imagining a tree; the location of the "tree" is often not really exactly located anywhere in the "kitchen space" until you make it so; it's in its own "space" elsewhere).

The "spaces" notion also allows different versions of experiences to coexist, because they are not located with reference to each other.

But some people will probably feel like matter sort of draws your mind to itself...

Yeah. Apparent-material interaction take precedence because they're our 'ground level' I suppose - they're the "frame" for the rest of our experiences. Just as we often assume we are our thoughts and body because they are the most persistent, most unchanging part of our experience, so we assume this is the world because it is relatively stable and unchanging relative to dream-spaces and their content.

POST: The importance of magic in Oneirosophy

[POST]

This is the point where i go beyond dzogchen buddhism and bring chaos magick into the mix in terms of Oneirosophy. The reason mystisicm is emphasized over magic in buddhist traditions tends to be because the goal of buddhism is to get past material things. In other words buddhists tend to not be interested in using spells to get money, lovers, job offers, or cursing people because they see this as illusory and nothing to get hung up on. In a sense they see it as reinforcing attachment.
But the reason i think magic is important is because i have seen how working with sigils have allowed me to see the dreamlike nature of this dimension. For example, in a dream you think of something and it appears, this often times lets you know you are in a dream. In the same way using a sigil to get something in this world allows you to see the world in a dream like way because you experience a direct cause and effect relationship between your thoughts and the external environment in the same way as a dream. Using a sigil to get money in this reality makes things seem illusory in the same way flying in a dream makes things seem illusory.
This will manifest as a synchronicity, but it is important to use magic to induce these synchronicitys, because if you just let synchonicities happen, it still doesn't appear under your control. Synchronicity or coincidences are important because it is one way to see the material world operate under similar rules and cause and effect relationships as a dream world.

[END OF POST]

Thoughts: 'This' shared dream works pretty much as our personal dreams do, it's just that it's a little more sluggish. It's been around a lot longer, and so has built up more established habits. Meanwhile, our personal dreams are usually created anew to some extent, and so haven't become entrenched. Even if you don't deliberately intend, synchronicities are arising in alignment with your 'current direction'. You are always getting what you really, really want, or at least opportunities to do so. Until you 'intend' to change direction again. (Although we can interfere in moment-to-moment details, really it's the overall thing that is important.) This means that magick is just how everything works, all the time, anyway.

You don't even need a sigil; just a decision.

(A further thought: If we were to take this seriously, perhaps then we'd have to shake the notion that we are 'located' in this world while we are off having dreams. It's more a case of us connecting or tuning in, but we have a default.)

POST: Open eye visualization to induce lucidity

[POST]

In addition to lucid dreaming, i think getting really good at daydreaming can be very helpful in terms of breaking the boundaries of reality. Because i think when we dream or even lucid dream we can still create a kind of dualistic distinction in our minds of waking vs dreaming. When one can induce very vivid visualizations or day dreams one can look at both worlds at the same time, in a sense having one foot in the material and one in the astral. For example i was on my bike yesterday and i noticed a basketball. While riding i left the basketball behind but i imagined myself dribbling, i imagined feeling the texture of the ball, the weight of the ball, the smell of the ball and i tried to make myself feel like i was in two places at once, standing dribbling a ball and riding a bike.
What also helps to make you daydreams more vivid is to make your waking perception less vivid, this can be done by having your eyes partially opened. So what i recommend is to meditate and pretend you are somewhere else, somewhere you can imagine vividly with all five senses. But the goal is not to completely immerse yourself in that visualization but to try to balance the vividness of your daydream and your waking experience so they are as close to equal as possible. When done successfully this seems to kill the distinction between real and imaginary when both of these experiences are at similar levels of vividness.

[END OF POST]

You've just triggered a memory of the first book that got me interested in lucid-style dreams before I'd encountered the term, I'd completely forgotten about it until just now: David Fontana's Meditator's Handbook: Comprehensive Guide. Out of print now (the later version of the title doesn't have the same stuff), but it had exercises where you would practice each of your senses, and then attempt to create and enter a dream directly from the waking state, Tibetan Yoga style.

Exciting stuff, and basically what's accidentally happening with "dream insomnia"?

...

That looks like a good list. I think the subreddit summary covers it quite well. There's a bit of this in each of those topics, it just depends on what people are in it for - e.g. Buddhism for the bliss-out, occult for the rituals - but those people would get bored here pretty quickly and self-select out. Nothing wrong with the occasional materialist troll, if it leads us to explore and clarify our thinking or ability to communicate. (And, y'know, we can always let threads die.)

This is almost like "practical philosophy" rather than occultism/esoterica!

POST: Paul Levy - Recognizing the Dream Like Nature of Reality

There are only 6 ways you can experience: 5 senses and mind. Anything else you think is different is just a product of the mind.

A more straightforward way to begin investigating this (rather than jumping ahead as some of the earlier responses have), is the recognition that all of those things occur in the mind - by which I mean the "aware perceptual space" that you seem to be, that all your experiences arise in, be that "the senses" or "perceptions" or "thoughts".

That's basically the starting point for idealism, in fact: What is the nature of my direct experience, prior to my deductions about it? What things to do I know for certain? And what things are actually part of a constructive narrative?

Yes I agree with you the perceptions can't occur without the mind, but that doesn't imply that there is not anything outside that is causing such effect.

It implies that it is meaningless to talk about something outside the mind - since you will never experience such a thing. In fact: are there any spatial boundaries to the mind?

And logically speaking, something which has an effect on the mind would also need to be made of the same "stuff" that the mind is made of. So: what is the mind made of?

Both of those questions can be answered directly, right now, in your present moment experience.

The argument is, roughly:

...that in your direct experience, everything appears in "awareness" and is made from "awareness" (or consciousness, or whatever you want to call it). It also has no boundary. That is your starting point. You will never experience anything that does not appear within that, and of that. Furthermore, any thoughts you have "about" an outside or other materials or properties, will also be within that, and made from that.

So how does it make sense to talk of something outside of it, or made from something other than it?

Extras - Do you ever experience your brain doing anything or translating anything? In fact, do you ever experience "a brain"? When you talk of "a property your brain can translate as experience", what form would that "property" take and how exactly would it translate it from that form in into the form of "experience"? Finally, if you are imagining that right now as - what form is that imagining taking? Is it not a thought, within awareness, made from awareness?

You just talked about external things. Are you saying that what you just said doesn't make sense?

I'm trying to save on quote marks here. ;-) But I don't believe I did talk about any actual external things, things external to awareness. What would those be?

Well we are not gonna go anywhere. I am seeing how subjective idealism is just a way of interpret things. I know people here is not gonna agree.
No matter how you call the things the world is gonna still being the same.

Actually, forget subjective idealism for a bit - really it's all about two aspects:

• There is the relative content of experience.
• There is the fundamental nature of experience.

You can argue about the first one, but the second one is something that's pretty much a direct experience which is available and cannot be argued with (it just "is"). Idealism is the interpretation of the former, in terms of the latter - whereas most schemes don't even consider the latter, adopting a naive view of perceptions and conceptualisation.

So it's fine to talk about brains and the world and all that stuff, but in the background we recognise that those things all occur in the same context, of patterns within awareness.

Literally look around right now, and recognise that this is all arising within your mind-space, include your body sensations and so on. In other words, your direct experience is of being an "open space" in which sensations, perceptions and thoughts arise. Any conclusions you draw beyond this, are narrative fictions, abstractions.

For example, the idea that "the world" is of the same format as your present moment right now, is an assumption. Given the above, in what sense is the room next door actually "over there"? Spatial extent is part of an experience, it is not a necessarily a property of the world as such, just as the colour red is not a property of the world, and so on.

So idealism is really saying: throw away assumptions, start from what you know to be true directly, and build out from there - all the way avoiding the reification of abstractions.

Note - I'm not trying to sell the perspective here or persuade you of anything; I'm just trying to describe it so that you understand what it actually is.

POST: The question that would reveal everything to me.

Do I, or any other perceiving being, have the ability to choose without being conscious of the choice being made? Or to put it in another way; if subjectivity is true, and I create all of my surroundings, then how is it that I do not recall choosing my surroundings? Did I do it beforehand and then choose to do a memory wipe or do I choose in this moment what my surroundings should be?

It's because you have accumulated patterning. "Choosing" is an experience; relative creation is a shifting of state. They are not the same thing. You do not experience shifting as such, you only experience states.

Pretty much you don't choose your surroundings and actions specifically; they are simply logically implied by your current patterning, as part of that patterning. All this means your current state logically implies your entire experience right now and forever. Which means fundamental creation has already occurred, always - all you can do is redistribute the relative intensity of contributing facts via intention (=summoning a particular pattern or fact into greater prominence). Meanwhile, observing something in the senses is equivalent to "fixing" a particular fact, increasing its contributing intensity to a maximum, which is why subsequent experiences tend to be coherent with prior observations.

When it comes to intentional change and the final result ("do I choose my surroundings in detail?"), a useful metaphor to consider is that of moire fringes. Say I take one pattern and then intend another pattern over the top - can I pre-know the resultant pattern before I experience it? I cannot. Note that calculating the resultant would also be an experiencing of it.

For example, imagine a red car right now. Did you draw it in detail? No, it pretty much just autocompleted from the words "red car" into a particular instance of a red car. You could not have anticipated the form of the resulting car prior to its appearance in the senses. You had the experience of intending "red car" but you could not at that moment say you chose the actual car. Of course, if you take all the little intentions that have occurred over all time, all your accumulated patterning, then you did choose the exact red car in a sense.

Summary - You do not recall choosing because you do not generally choose your surroundings specifically. Creation does not occur in the way you are assuming. It is more like having a certain list of facts or patterns, whose distribution of relative intensity constitutes the "world-pattern" from which your ongoing sensory experience arises.

I wanna add another question. What happen with other people? Is it not a conflict that everybody choose their surroundings?

Everyone is their own copy of the world. At least in the sense that everyone is a conscious space which has "taken on the shape of" a particular state, from which arises an experience of being-a-person-in-a-world. This means that we are not sharing the world in the sense of sharing a place (in space and time); it is more like we are sharing a set of potential experiential patterns.

That doesn't answer my question. What does happen with everybody choosing their surroundings?

Everyone gets what they choose (within the limits of their own habitual patterning). As I said, the world is not a place.

...

Bah, I knew it. ;-) On the "choosing" thing, I'm pointing out that choosing itself is an experience apparently unfolding in time, the experience of choosing ("hmm, this or that, let's see") whereas a state shifts applies over all time, outside of it.

So, I'd say our disagreement is only because you are describing things in time. The subconscious mind doesn't fill in any details as such - the environment really is already there, you might say; it's just that it's very dim. Associative triggering brings it into brightness. That triggering itself happens outside of time too.

In other words, the full pattern of all experiences is within the current state, although it seems to unfold in time (because we've got a "things unfolding in time" pattern in our state). That's why we can know what's happening "next" - it's because it's already sat there, in a pre-existing landscape. Nothing is every created, it's just that the relative contours of the landscape are adjusted. That's why things can seem to be generated instantly.

What caused the patterns to accumulate?

Strictly speaking, we should say something like "redistribute" or "reshape" the world-pattern rather than "accumulate", but it's easier to think of each intention as the addition or overlaying of a pattern onto a notional baseline. We should think of the world-pattern as an already-existing landscape, which is modified by intention (actually, its modification is intention and vice versa). Where did the initial state come from? It didn't - it exists outside of time and is eternal. But since our intentions appear to occur to us in time, accumulation of modifications is an intuitive way to think of it.

Also if I intend to do something, didn't I just choose to intend?

We also need to be careful on our phrasings when referring to intention. So "intend to do something" might be better termed as "intensifying the fact of 'experiencing this action at this specific time'". But you can equally intend other, more general facts, or even quite abstract patterning.

Meanwhile, it's perfectly possible to have the experience of choosing and then the experience of doing, and there be no intending involved, if those experiences are already baked in to the landscape. And one can also intend without having the experience of choosing first, in the sense of weighing up options - although one might have the experience of ceasing to change shape, based on a feeling of coherence. It's a direct shifting. Not easy to put into words. But...

In terms of your question, "how is it that I do not recall choosing my surroundings", it's because there is always a landscape (in the sense of a world-pattern of facts, and also in the sense of a "world as content"); there are always surroundings. Your intentions can shift or define that landscape - and intending to update one element will involve a shift in the whole landscape since all intentions apply globally - but you do not need to have the experience of "choosing" it for it to be there.

Okay, that wasn't as clear as I'd have hoped, but the core to all of this anyway is: content is not created in the same sense as, say, a games programmer deliberately creates a world, through selection and in time. Right now, the landscape of experiences is laid out, including the experience of choosing. That experience itself doesn't cause or do anything, that's an illusion due to the fact you only have one part of the landscape in the senses at a time. (Back to: experiences are local; intentions are global.)

All choice is done without the chooser being aware of the choice being made. Choice is an illusion of the brain. Sam Harris's lecture on free will explores this phenomenon quite rationally and I'd recommend you watch the whole thing, but I've linked to the most relevant bla bla bla bla bla

This seems a bit muddled, because on one hand you talk of a brain "doing" things, and on the other you talk of a non-spatial and non-temporal consciousness. If things simply are, then it what sense does "a brain" do anything at all? What is a brain, in that case? If you catch my drift.

Your consciousness causes the whole reality, but the brain causes the sense of individual identity. Your brain (and body) acts like a filter of consciousness, limiting perception to just bla bla bla bla bla

The point I'm really getting at is, and I could have been more specific perhaps:

In your story of experience there, do you really need "a brain" as the substrate of your experience? What would your brain be made of? How exactly would your brain "cause" the sense of individual identity? Also, in what sense does consciousness cause reality? Does that mean reality is something different than consciousness?

From the subjective point of view (given the topic of this subreddit), would it not make more sense to dispose of the concept of a brain entirely, since we will never actually experience such a thing, and instead stick to what we can observe, which I suggest is:

• That our experiences arise within the context of an open awareness or consciousness.
• That our experiences arise as patterning of that open awareness (they are "made from" it).

More directly:

• The fundamental nature of experience is consciousness; the relative content of experience is patterns within consciousness.

We might see "brains" (grey lumps of stuff) within our experience, but we never experience being a brain - we only ever experience being consciousness, consciousness taking on the shape of an experience.

But to say that your individual experience is all there is is a solipsistic failure to account for the existence of that which you cannot experience.

I think you are still implicitly beginning with a notion of a spatial world unfolding in time, and then placing experience within that. However, it doesn't really matter for the larger point.

On the solipsism issue -

I'm not proposing a solipsistic view because I'm not talking about individual experiences, rather I'm talking about experiences which are of apparently being an individual.

Consciousness itself is "before" division or change; it is before multiplicity or relativity. We might use terms like "parallel-simultaneous", or use the metaphor of there being different experiences occurring at the same time, or sequentially, but actually we can't really speak of it at all, because "spatial extent" and "unfolding time" are themselves experiences, and out thoughts are formatted in those terms. It is already "too late" to speak of that which is before the experience. There is no context that can be thought of or described.

For convenience, I tend towards that metaphor which describes the world, rather than being a "spatially-extended place unfolding in time", as a "toy box" of potential experiential patterns, because it circumvents: the mistaken impression of "parallel" or "simultaneous" experiences; the idea that there is a world that is "happening" other than the experience of it; and the idea that there is an experiencer or "doer" separate from the experience or the "happening".

On the issue of subsets -

Again here, we have to be sure to avoid the idea of there being a selection in space or time - which means we also cannot have creation events within our model. The dodge for this is to say that all possible patterns already exist, and all that changes is their relative contribution, constituting a particular state. In effect, an eternal landscape whose terrain can be adjusted by becoming a different set of contours - by shape-shifting into a new form. ("Intention" is the name for the relative intensification or reduction of one of the patterns which constitute that landscape.)

As always, though, these are conceptual tricks to some extent - the direct experience is much simpler!

Haha! Well shit, dude, then we're saying the same thing, but just describing it different ways. I suspected that with my last post. We're just each catching the other in semantic traps, which is always the problem of using language to describe that which is more fundamental than language.

Heh! Well there you go. It does seem that a lot of our conversations here come down to terminology. Nature of the business of nature, I suppose.

POST: Intention and nonduality

The next step then is, how to intend more directly? How to step behind experience and generate it?

I'd say you can't get behind anything, because you are everything. You are the "open aware space" which "takes on the shape of" the world, of experiences. Specifically, at the moment you have taken on the shape of being-a-world-from-the-perspective-of-a-person. You don't generate anything, you are it and you become it, and between intentions you remain static (the apparent unfolding of sensory experience is a static pattern). It's probably better thought of as a pre-existing state or landscape, a world-pattern consisting of a relative distribution of facts or patterns (including a "time passing" pattern) which you can amend the contours of, thus changing which facts are most prominent and so changing your subsequent experience. To "intend" is therefore to shift your own shape as this landscape, and all intention is direct, in that it involves amendment of this landscape. However, some intentions or re-shapings will correspond more directly and obviously to sensory experience than others.

How to intend?

Well, there is no technique, and any attempt to "do" intention is doomed to fail, since it involves you identifying with one part of experience and trying to act upon the other part (which is impossible anyway), to partial collateral success at best. How does one shift one's shape? You-as-open-space simply becomes the new state, the new pattern. For direct intention (in the sense of directness of result), basically you just decide. This might be most accessibly described as "thinking an unbounded thought that something is true" or "asserting a fact" or "summoning a pattern in mind". If that is problematic, you can assign meaning to another act, mental or physical. You decide that, say, that conjuring this mental image means-that this thing is true, or that performing this ritual means-that this event will happen.

Of course, this is a trick: you are still intending directly in the sense of asserting a fact, it's just that you are asserting one that implies the desired fact as an extended pattern. This distracts you from the fact that the conjuring of the mental image was by intention, as were the physical movements. You could just have intended the result without the intermediary, immediately updated the landscape, and experience would have apparently flowed towards it naturally, provided you did not resist what arose (thus re-intending against it).

(This also leads to the observation that: experiences are apparently local, intentions are actively global.)

The ideal?

The ideal approach is to perhaps begin with asserting that we are an open space in which experience arises - and then cease opposing sensory experiences from that point on, and to only occasionally intend particular facts into prominence. Otherwise we are thrashing our landscape, rippling the water of our world. Our experiences happen by themselves, but leveraging this requires an apparent relinquishing of control, in order to gain full control.

Your posts have been really great lately, TG. It's very no-frills. You're describing what there is, without trying to package things in accessible metaphors. Self as "open aware space", IMO, is one of the best and clearest concepts to come out of this sub.

Thanks! Where the metaphors come in, as I see it, is in that intermediate zone where we try to connect one perspective to another - for ourselves initially, and in our conversations with others later. Basically, re-encoding it to build a bridge between worldviews that allows people to move from thinking-about things to direct-knowing them.

But once we've got there and we realise our nature directly, it's all much simpler: the thought (pattern) of something literally is that thing (albeit without a context) and that applies to "me"-as-person as much as anything else. Then, metaphors take on a new role: they are not just for description, they are for actively formatting yourself. We realise that's how they worked all along, that's how we came to our new understanding. An act of explanation is also an act of creation, or creative reshaping at least. There's really nothing else to say at that point.

...

A1: I'm not sure exactly how this fits in but maybe it will be helpful to you. This is a Taoist perspective on intent from Practical Taoism translated by Thomas Cleary. There's some Traditional Chinese Medicine stuff at the beginning I left in, because who am I to edit, but it really gets good by the end.
Intent As The Go-Between
Master Ziyang said, "Is intent only the go-between? The science of spiritual alchemy can never be apart from it, from beginning to end."
The Master of Round Unity said, "The reason practical wizardry needs intent is essentially just to assess the operation and keep it in balance. Intent is associated with the spleen; that is why wizards call it true earth. True earth means harmony. Now in medical practice, a pulse may be floating or sinking, slow or rapid, empty or full, but as long as there is stomach energy, one does not die. So the stomach energy is also harmony.
"In spiritual alchemy, active and quiet exercises must not be off balance in the slightest; if there is any imbalance, it usually results in illness. Throughout it is essential to assess relative gravity, relative buoyancy, relative strength, and relative freshness and to adjust them, causing yin and yang to match each other, so water and fire are evenly balanced, not allowing excess, which would cause other troubles. If not for intent operating this assessment, how could you guarantee you won't make a mistake and go wrong?"
Zhang Sanfeng said, "What is intent? It is the outward function of the basic spirit; it is not that there is also intent in addition to the basic spirit."
Master Ziyang said, "Mind is the natural leader: when it is used without artificiality, then what activates it is the basic spirit. This is the alchemical use of mind."
So you should not overactivate intent. Once you overactivate intent, you are trying to force progress and not being natural. The problems caused by the toil of forced exercises are not trivial; even if you use them skillfully, you still do not escape attachment, contrarily increasing the ailment of intention. This is why votaries of the Sect of Life do not reach the Great Way of absolute nonresistance.
The location of awareness of basic spirit is intent; awareness without an effort to be conscious is skillful use of intent. If you have even a single thought of deliberate arrangement, then you are overactivating intent.

POST: Technique for developing intellectual lucidity

[POST]

I think that no matter how far or how deep we push our consciousness into the insane, the unbelievable, and the non logical there will always be those ideas and dreams that ultimately baffle us and come across as nonsense. Everyone likes to ponder the peculiarities of scientology, ufo cults, NWO conspiracies and such but is there utility beyond this beyond schizophrenic fantasy or amusing ideology? I like to spend time browsing these weird and peculiar dream worlds because it for some reason gives me a sense of lucidity, but I never really realized why until just now.
Depending upon how one perceives things there will be different reactions to claims such as reptilians putting micro chips in your brain. The objectivist reacts to claims such as this as ridiculous in comparison to their own worldview. The subjectivist on the other hand does not have an objective worldview to compare this reptilian fantasy too, yet the logical part of their mind cannot accept this. So the effect that takes place here is you are exploring a dream/ideology you know is not objectively real but at the same time you don't reject said ideology either and just explore the particular dreamscape as it is without judgement, which creates the similar feeling one has of being in a lucid dream. But in order for this effect to be successful you cannot have another dream/worldview to compare to, you must let it sit in the void totally as it is. This is why materialists who explore weird belief structures don't have a sense of lucidity when doing this because they are comparing x(weird belief) to y (perceived sane belief). What i'm saying is recognize the weirdness of X but do not compare it to any kind of Y. You don't want to fully believe or disbelieve in X, its kind of similar to Robert anton wilsons general agnosticism but taken to the next level.
So here is what you do. Find a book, online community, of an ideology that you could never possibly find yourself believing in under any circumstances (If you cant do that make up your own) read it but neither believe what you are reading nor disbelieve, neither agree nor disagree. Just enjoy the novelty of the strange exotic dream, and you will notice a strange sense of lucidity takes place.
To make this more evident I will give you an example. Earlier today I was browsing a subreddit known as digital cartel. Its a subreddit of a man who seems to be suffering from schizophrenia thinks he is jesus and that the NWO Is trying to control everyones mind. I was reading a section about how he was talking about how secret socieites have been planting micro chips into EVERYONES (literally every single person) for over a thousand years. This is something most rational skeptical minds of the mainstream world would not be able to accept, but instead of going with my reflexive Bullshit stance or to believe it forthright, I kind of just flowed through the ideas without emotionally or intellectually investing in them any way.
One of the goals of this subreddit is to bypass this sort of objective mind that prevents us from seeing the dream like nature of things, yet it seems it can be used for our advantage in certain circumstances such as this. Eventually if one understands this state of consciousness it can be expanded into ideologies/dreams that seem more solid and more reasonable. But I think those who are new to the oneirosophic path should start with stuff that they in no way could believe in from the context of a conventional mind.

[END OF POST]

One things that comes from viewing the nature of experiencing as being fundamentally true, but the the specific content of experiences as being relatively true, is that you are in a state of permanent "open verdict". We see that all worldviews are "castles in the sky", in the sense that they are coherent and self-consistent, but none of them have a solid substrate as their foundation. One part of a worldview is true in the context of the other parts; none of the parts are true fundamentally; there is no privileged content-based platform from which other content may be judged.

The question then becomes not whether it is possible that reptiles are running the world, but whether it is possible to have an experience "as if" reptiles are running the world. (Turquoise says yes.)

POST: So I just watched a video that I think you all may be interested in

[POST]

[https://youtu.be/BNloJT8-pfw]
This is a great summation of oneirosophic thought and a practical guide to using it. Amazing too, that I found this video after deciding I would go on YouTube and find a video instructing me to be able to manifest what I want in the world, and then gravitating towards this one. Guys, this is real. You are creating the world. Take responsibility of this, not like Atlas and have the world on your shoulders, but see that the world has no weight until you make it so godamn heavy.
There's a part at the end that didn't make sense to me. Literally the last thing he says is "let your mind starve." At first I was like, wait, what? But upon reflection what I think he means is this: Allow your mind to remain empty, and only feed it what you create. The emptier the mind, the clearer what you have to create becomes. If your mind is filled with junk you can't even create anything, is what he's saying.
How does one keep their mind empty? I would say this is where meditation comes into play. Also, T-George has a daily releasing exercise that is similar to meditation but maybe easier? If someone could link that, that would be great.
Tl;dr Mind empty = choose what mind makes. Secret discovered when you know what you think, you can find. You find it through aknowledging the relationship between thought and self.

[END OF POST]

Also, T-George has a daily releasing exercise that is similar to meditation but maybe easier? If someone could link that, that would be great.

Here you go:

Daily Releasing Exercise

Every day, for 10 minutes, lie down on the floor in the constructive rest position: feet flat, knees up, hands resting on abdomen, a couple of books under the head so that it feels supported. Lie down in this position and give up, play dead. Give yourself to gravity, the universe, whatever. Let go of your body, your mind and - particularly - let go of controlling your attention. Allow your body and mind and attentional focus to shift and move however they want. And if you happen to notice yourself "holding on" again, gripping anything, just let go once more. Now, sometimes you might find that your attention narrows on a particular sensation, which then intensifies, peaks, then releases, after which your attention opens out again. That is fine. Just let that happen. Let anything happen, for those 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, for those interested in a bit more of Neville, he put out so much material that it can be hard to navigate, so here are some key document links to help get an overview:

• Imagination Creates Reality
• Awakened Imagination
• The Pruning Shears of Revision
• The Power of Awareness

There's also a great resource with all of his books and lectures: here [Dead link]. (The talk above is there, under its original title of Mental Diets.) If there can be said to be a metaphysics behind his material, beyond simply the interpretation of the bible as a series of metaphors for the true nature of experiencing, then it's in Awakened Imagination and Out Of This World. These actually work very well in partnership with Berkeley's Three Dialogues, I think.

==Hey, thanks for reposting that. You know, I don't recall the "knees up" being apart of it, is that new? Curious why you say to that, is it to keep one from getting drowsy from lying down?=

It's just what happens when you put your feet flat on the floor! Knees together might be a better way of saying it. Anyway, the linked image makes it clear what I mean, hopefully. The reason for that particular position is that, if you have no residual tension, you'll be completely relaxed into the ground - and if you do have residual tension, your body will eventually run out of energy maintaining its position, hence "release".

Haha well yes of course! But I mean why that instead of just feet straight out, lying flat? Is that not going to allow the same release of tension?

It puts your body in the ideal posture in terms of lower back and neck positioning, particularly the tilt of your pelvis. Which is also why you do it on the floor, rather than on a soft surface (which just tends to support your current posture with held tension). The idea isn't to "feel relaxed" so much as to eventually release into full support, which translates into effortless standing and movement later (and other things too of course).

Sounds very rewarding. Thanks for the tip.

POST: Why don't we discuss our own experiences more in this sub?

It's curious how language has become a type of prison in a way.

I'd broaden this, even, to say that descriptions have become a type of a prison - because, particularly recently, people have come to view descriptions as being accurate depictions of the world, even seeing them as the world itself, rather than "parallel constructions in thought" that are basically catalogues of (a subset of) observations to date.

Where this gets tricky that, although descriptions themselves do not limit the possibilities of what might be observed because they are non-causal (apart from some mild patterning side-effects), intentions are causal - and so intentions based on those descriptions tend to imply those descriptions as their extended patterns.

For example: there may be no evil sprits as such, but if you start intending your route to the shops based on avoidance of spirit attack, your state will shift somewhat towards experiences "as if" there are such things, even though you have not specifically intended the "evil spirit world-description" as being true.

Q1: descriptions themselves do not limit the possibilities of what might be observed because they are non-causal...intentions are causal - and so intentions based on those descriptions tend to imply those descriptions as their extended patterns
so creating a description that is suitable to one's desires can be a basis for creating intentions
if i am not the source for the universe then who is watching? surya is the observer of karma (action) (and the knower of all dharmas) and i instruct surya on yoga (the process of union of saguna brahman with nirguna brahman) thus the solar system is permeated with knowledge
the result is kaivalya mukti 2 - wiki
at least that's my working description at the moment

[QUOTE]

Kaivalya
Kaivalya (Sanskrit: कैवल्य) is the ultimate goal of aṣṭāṅga yoga and means "solitude", "detachment" or "isolation", a vrddhi-derivation from kevala "alone, isolated". It is the isolation of purusha from prakṛti, and liberation from rebirth, i.e., moksha. Kaivalya-mukti is described in some Upanishads, such as the Muktika and Kaivalya Upanishads, as the most superior form of moksha, which can grant liberation both within this life (as in jīvanmukti), and after death (as in videhamukti).

[END OF QUOTE]

Since "intentions" are just "patterns you are intensifying into prominence" in order to reshape experience, those can be outcomes, facts, or something more like "formatting" (basic descriptions of how the world works). That's why metaphors are so useful, and that's where the idea of "active metaphors" comes from. If you formulated your outcome in terms of a "solid spatial world", then intending that will imply that worldview - intend that worldview - along with the outcome. If you formulate it in terms of an "infinite grid of parallel moments", then you'll be implying that worldview instead, and will find your overall experience tends to shift towards it. So you can, of course, simply intend the worldview instead to make a more general change. (Easy to test: Just go around for a couple of days intending that "life is a dream" and you'll quickly find that... it is. Then switch "life is a material world" and you'll get that happening instead.)

Your description, then, is one such "active metaphor" and you will tend to have experiences consist with that if you use it directly or implicitly. However, there is no fundamental "how things are" at all; which is why "seeking for knowledge" is an endless and pointless task. There's only one thing to understand, and that's something you do by noticing rather than working it out.

so fundamental formatting of the universe is also an intention

To slightly rephrase, just because "universe" is a bit of a messy concept: the formatting of awareness is the accumulation of intended patterns and their implications so far. And: since all intentions have a meaning, which is their extended pattern context, then to intend always implies the worldview of which that intention is a part, just as you say.

so what i notice becomes reality, but what i notice is reality

...since there's no separation between "noticing" and "reality". Which is why it can perhaps be better to phrase things as simply "experiences", because that removes the notions of an action, an actor, and an independent object. Instead, we have "experiencing" which "shifts (itself)" to take on the shape of states or experiences.

Q1: just because "universe" is a bit of a messy concept
what i mean by that ("universe") is - 'everything that exists materially' - because everything that does not exist in 'reality' exists in brahman (or as the infinite grid of all possibilities) waiting to be manifested.
the formatting of awareness is the accumulation of intended patterns and their implications so far
right - how i am now is as a result of what i have done before: i.e. the cumulative result of karma ("action") and those actions have been based upon patterns (my dharma or self-determined law of the universe -)
since all intentions have a meaning, which is their extended pattern context, then to intend always implies the worldview of which that intention is a part, just as you say.
yes, because that which is understood has meaning in context (the "extended pattern") based on the intention based on the pattern (in this case, my dharma, since i am talking exclusively about the universe)
...since there's no separation between "noticing" and "reality".
the only difference is time (i.e. actions performed) which of course is based on previous experiences (self (parabrahman, 'infinite grid') → pattern (dharma) → action (karma) ↔ all together as an experience (brahmasource - a state of consciousness)
Which is why it can perhaps be better to phrase things as simply "experiences", because that removes the notions of an action, an actor, and an independent object. Instead, we have "experiencing" which "shifts (itself)" to take on the shape of states or experiences.
yes

All good!

...

xoxoyoyo: my dick is bigger. now tell me about your dick

Q2: Well yeah I get that, but knowing about your dick doesn't offer any useful new information. I'm quite able to imagine more or less what other's dicks could possibly be like. What I'm not able to imagine are things I've never thought about or heard of before. If you've imbued your dick with some kind of amusing superpowers, now that I would be interested in hearing about.

xoxoyoyo: the point is that you are playing a shitty game of knowing yourself through comparison to others. If you are "doing better" then yeah, you can feel good about your "progress". If you are "doing worse" then you can feel bad about your lack. We tend to do this with everything. Instead of living life we live in our judgements and opinions about life. You and I are completely different people, different backgrounds, different lives. There just is no basis for comparison regardless of how much it appears there should be. Stuff like this tends to be pissing contests. That is why in many traditions they tell students to STFU about their "progress". Like at work, discussing salaries. No "good" comes of it.

Green-Moon: I agree with xoxoyoyo. The idea is not to 'compare' yourself with others. I don't know if that was ever your intention, but you will inevitably end up unconsciously comparing yourself even if that is not what you want. That is human nature.

I agree it is quite interesting to read about other's experiences but its more along the lines of "entertainment" for lack of a better word, rather than actually allowing myself to let other's experiences set a benchmark for me. If the idea is to simply read up on other people's experiences then maybe we can make a seperate sub for it. I personally believe this sub is best suited to discussion about onerisophy rather than describing personal experiences. But as mentioned before the idea isn't to look at other people's experiences so that you can get an idea of "progress". I think it can negatively affect your personal journey with oneirosophy when you begin to bring other people and their experiences into it. It is about you and only you. It is important to remember that.

But it is enticing to read other's experiences. I believe I read one of your comments about one of your experiences and it was very interesting. But I'm not sure if that's the best thing to do. We are here to discuss not to advise or show. This is our own personal journey and we can only walk this path alone.

POST: Hell Zen. (by AesirAnatman)

[POST]

http://hellzen.pen.io/
Not original content. Not to be taken as truth, of course. Use it to stimulate your own contemplation, if you find it interesting as I did.
Also, there are a couple good mind experiments in there.

[END OF POST]

A1: Here are the most interesting proposed exercises inside:
Grasping mind:
The Buddha, sitting in Jetta grove, said: "Past mind can't be grasped, present mind can't be grasped, and future mind can't be grasped." Why take his word for it? He was speaking from HIS experience. Try it for yourself and see what happens. Grasp past, present, or future mind I am waiting. Did you grasp your mind yet? Did you grasp any mind at all? Past? Present? Future? It's getting scary in here. Don't be afraid. Scary moments like these are what my Hell Zen is for. That's when it really jolts into gear.
Shiva Zen
Let's try some Shiva Zen. Ready? This will take about four minutes. Shut your eyes and, breathing in, sense your subtle energy (ki, chi, prana, or what have you) flowing up the spine. Up from the bottom. As the subtle energy reaches your head, it bursts into a golden or white radiance and goes simultaneously everywhere at once. This is Manifestation, or Creation. Your energy has become all forms, everything simultaneously, expanding like the post Big Bang universe. Breathing out, now, once you've reached the limit of your breathing in, feel the energy drop down your spine, to the bottom. Your golden-white energetic radiance, so explosive on the in-breath, is now contracting, sinking, becoming a zero point. Utter darkness. Utter stillness. Quiescence. No forms. No thoughts. Everything has now contracted into the tanden (ki-point, 2-3 fingers below navel). This is just pure and empty potential, consciousness without anything to think about. It's imageless. Yin. It's so wonderful, this Yin zero point when every phenomena has collapsed back into pure potential, isn't it? Some people want to stay here. But no. If you're going to live, you've got to breathe. So breathe in again. If you don't, your body will make you do it anyhow. Right? You're now breathing in again, the energy is going up your spine, forms are appearing, you'll see bits of dream, galaxies forming in space. It's all exploding from your head, especially just above the crown, in all directions. "Let there be light." Wonderful! A universe appears. It's fun to see the universe appear and disappear with your breathing. You'll also discover pretty quickly whether or not your personal preference is for "forms" or "formlessness." IN breath rises and expands infinitely. OUT breath sinks and contracts infinitely. In breath = everything. Out breath = nothing.
Pervasiveness of awareness
What is IT that's intensely aware of your body and its movements in space, yet mysteriously, when you look for it, is found nowhere at all? Put your hand behind you and touch the back of your skull. Feel the awareness in your hand. It is aware, isn't it? You can feel your hair. The awareness in your hand is now located a few inches in back of your brain. If it's the brain that's aware, how is this possible? You have just been introduced to the pervasive nature of awareness.
Unchangingness of awareness:
Let's try an experiment. Sit down, shut your eyes, and concentrate on trying to find your awareness in space. If it's in your head, what part of your head is it in? See if you can find the center of your awareness. Isn't it strange that your awareness seems to be as much "in" your chest, or shoulder, or feet, as it is inside your skull? Weird stuff. But even there, can you find the exact point where your awareness is? This is the interesting part: try bending forward with your eyes shut, concentrating intensely on your awareness. Now straighten, just as slowly, to your former sitting posture. Did your awareness move? Did it bend slowly forward when you did, then back? Try it from side to side. Lean back, all with your eyes shut. You're aware of all this, clearly aware, but is the awareness moving at all? If the awareness IS moving, does it move at exactly the same rate as your bodily movement? Does it lag behind? Or jump forward?

That's really good - straight to it.

Zen isn't Sutric buddhism. You understand the Void not just with your brain but your whole body, down to the cleft hooves. In Tantra, this is called the Yoga of Spontaneous Realization. It is an ongoing and unending Enlightenment you don't need to name or grasp.

And an enjoyable read.

For anyone who liked the exercises, you might like Rupert Spira's efforts, his books Presence Vol I & II are filled with one-chapter little experiments exactly like that - just questioning what your actual experience is. I put it in the reading list I think. Sample here. He gave a recent conference talk, transcript here [dead link], which is maybe worth reading to get the idea.

Not quite so much fun, though!

POST: How would you detach from reality in an easy manner?

There's a saying in zen that would have helped tremendously for me to have understood at the time that says, "All fear is an illusion. Walk straight ahead no matter what."

I've never encountered that saying before, but it gets directly to the heart of it.

Ultimately, if you want to have dramatic things happen, you have to "be okay with whatever happens" and not block the unfolding of the patterns you have made - you can't be re-intending every time an uncomfortable feeling or apparently "incorrect" sensory scenario arises. Doing so results in you "thrashing your world" due to repeatedly intending something then re-asserting the previous state once the "out of control" or "happening by itself" feeling comes up (which commonly accompanies change).

The whole thing about "surrender" and "allowing" and "non-attachment" is really about the recognition that, although we might intend a specific target experience, we do not deliberately select the sequence of moments which arise between "here" and "there", and so we must give up to the mystery as the unknown path unfolds.

Definitely a good question to ask ourselves is: Am I constantly unwittingly re-asserting my starting state?

You make a good point about emphasising that it's not surrender in the sense of giving up, it's surrender in the sense of trust. You are giving up the fight, because the right thing is happening, so there is nothing to fight.

To cover "starting state", let me reuse an example:

If you are sat in a chair, and want to stand up, you should intend being-stood-up and let experience unfold accordingly. If you approach it this way, your body will feel like it moves "by itself" and there will be a sense of effortlessness - because no muscle movement is occurring other than that required to shift position. (If you are feeling muscular effort, that is the feeling of creating effort, which means you muscles have done their movement bit, and are now doing something else.)

However, what people usually do is being this be re-asserting their current position. They begin by locating themselves being-sat-down and fully establish that before beginning. They then try to overcome being-sat-down by intending their muscles "manually" in order to get to being-stood-up - which they do by keeping being aware of being-sat-down throughout. In effect they are continually re-asserting their initial state of being-sat-down as part of their strategy for being-stood-up.

So, this is similar to people who try to make changes to the world in other ways, but do so by starting with the world as it is, or be constantly checking how they are doing by comparing where they are now vs the initial state (which simply re-asserting the initial state again, to a greater or lesser extent). This is really part of the broader problem where people try to be "over here" while making changes "over there", in space or in sequence. For example, wanting to fill the room with your 'presence', but attempting to do it while remaining firmly located in your body area, maintaining a mission control aspect. This can happen because people confuse being "detached" with being spatially located separate from the world. This is not quite what is meant. "Detached" really means "allowing".

I really dislike the langauge of surrender because for me it evokes something external whereas you're trusting your own process of othering

Yeah, I don't think there's any single "best" way to phrase it.

The language for "that thing where you stop interfering which feels a bit like things are happening to you but they are the things that you have already created" is pretty tricky, and I'm inclined to think it just depends on who's on the other side of the conversation.

For someone whose main problem is that they are constantly grasping onto their sensory experience, "surrendering to the flow" type imagery probably capture the feel of it. So long as the context is one of being assertive in other ways - in other words, the reason you surrender moment-by-moment control is because you've already asserted the outcome - then it cane useful.

However, if it gives the sense of "surrendering to God's Will" without also informing you that "God's Will" corresponds to the landscape of your accumulated previous intentions and their implications (including any ideas you had about a "God"), then it's more problematic.

Some of this is unavoidable if you want to have a sense of progression.

I don't really mean this in the sense of extinguishing your notion of the past, or your memory. I mean it in a much more straightforward way of not re-asserting the current state, by looking for it or implying it.

Firstly, I want you to remember that I still continue to respect your opinion. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Likewise! Your last response is on my list, so don't regard my delay in replying as anything other than me wanting to mull it over for a bit, because I think we ended up talking about slightly different things (releasing the current state vs releasing accumulated progress over time).

Quick thoughts:

There is nothing stopping you skipping from one "frame" to another in my description, other than refusing to release your current state, or somehow re-asserting it. By "refusing to release your current state", I simply mean not continuing to assert aspects of the current frame (sensory aspect or implied pattern or fact), so that it can shift. You can't stand up if you keep focusing on the sensory experience of being sat down.

The essence of a "patterning" approach is that there is no permanent solid structure at all, even though we have built up some habitual structure over time. If you look at the grid metaphor animation, for example, the starting and ending frames are totally disconnected. All potential frames are simultaneously available and accessible.

The brutal simplicity underlying all this is:

You are an "imagination space" - that is the context. Sensory experiences arise within it, via patterning - that is the content. There are no restrictions on content. Changing the content means intending-imagining what you want (basically: intensifying the contribution of a pattern) while not intending-imagining something contrary to it, and hopefully not something that limits the manner it can appear to manifest by.

Everything beyond that simple account, is a description of specific patterns which we already have, or which have benefits if we format ourselves with them. This is the idea of "Active Metaphors" - you intensify a metaphorical pattern, and your ongoing experience starts to align with that metaphor.

So if we wanted to have the experience of teleporting, then for sure we could just intend fully and do a "frame jump", since there is no fundamental underlying mechanism to things other than intending-imagining them happening. However, another approach is to introduce into your world a mechanism or fact, to make it possible as part of the content of your world rather than an exception or jump outside of it - e.g. the "infinite grid" or whatever.

Looping back to your points:

1. For convenience, a "frame" is just any particular sensory arrangement. So it doesn't really make sense to say that a frame would be flexible internally - because that would be another frame. (Remembering, though, that the concept of "frames" is just a handy metaphor; experience is not really arranged that way, although it can be formatted to behave "as if" it were.)
2. Think I've tackled that above. There is no true model of reality. However, models can be useful for coming up with ideas for "as if" experiences.
3. I agree with what you say about "confidence". Really what one wants is to fully be the entirety of content and then shape-shift. There is no technique to that, and it is always true anyway, however we can get stuck imagining-that we are not this. Stuff like "letting go" is just one way to relax the division and settle out into being the entire space and all that's within it. It's not letting go of control as such, it's letting go of (spatial) attentional focus and, counter-intuitively, becoming fully attended as a result. It's also letting go of re-intending the current state, to allow yourself to shift. I say "also", but in effect the two turn out to be the same thing. Holding onto attentional focus is one of the last ways, having allowed body and thought to flow, that we subtly restrict our shifting of state.

Okay, I ended up typing a full response there, but perhaps it clarifies where I'm coming from and how it connects with your comment.

The everyday example is, if you're getting up from a chair to go into the next room, you don't being by feeling out with the senses to find the experience of yourself sat down, and then try to manipulate that experience into standing up. You think only the fact of being-stood-up and allow your sensory experience to apparently flow towards that position.

Pushing this further, if we were to teleport from one room to another, how would that play out? We wouldn't be aiming to forget the memory of the room we started in, but we would be aiming to completely let go of the fact of being-in-the-room, to allow it to be replaced as a relative truth by the fact of being-in-the-other-room.

So that's the sense in which I mean not checking or comparing. It's perfectly okay to spend some time contemplating how much you've progressed. But when you are actually performing a state-shift, you should not be checking on your progress by bringing up the initial state for comparison, because that re-asserts that initial state again. You keep finding yourself sat down in the chair / un-teleported again!

I probably do feel scared quite often, just in everyday life. Or maybe "nervous" is a better word. Generally though, I find unusual situations - those which reveal things to be not as they seem - to be comforting rather than scary. Although it wasn't my conscious aim in exploring these things, when I reflect on it I think that the mundane version of the world would actually be much more scary.

So, I was probably quite a fearful child I think, and to some extent that stayed with me, but a counterintuitive side-effect of it has been that I've always been good for emergency situations when things go wrong - because I was comfortable with an ongoing sense of discord anyway. Unflappableness derived from baseline flappability? :-)

For "this stuff" - mind and reality - I was interested in it from when I was in early high school, so I started playing with stuff like astral projection, did that thing of being super-scared of the onset of the experience, eventually committed to it. Over time you accept the fear as a feeling that comes up, and later when you have a sense of being-the-context as your identity you are more okay with the content that comes up, because it's within you rather than something external coming at you. So what's important is finding new moorings after unusual experiences have cut the ropes on the old ones. And being okay with not-knowing - the inherent mystery of not having pre-experience of your upcoming experiences - while also having confidence that intention is effective.

You still feel the feelings though. You're still having a "person" experience. But it's more like ripples in an ocean, rather than disturbances in a glass of water.

You know, something I was pondering lately: I think it's quite common for people to think that they want a cool "glitch" or a "manifestation" - until they get it, and then they're suddenly not so sure. There is an anxiousness that comes with it, the anxiousness of intuiting that there is potentially no inherent stability or boundary? How would you phrase it?

The implications of "high weirdness".

• The world is not a "place". That's a pretty scary thing to realise. Anything might emerge from the "gloop"!
• I am not a "person". That's troubling too, initially. The stable foundation I thought I was, has no solidity!

Without anything to replace those two negatives, we are left with just The Unknown without any sense of trusting, and that can be scary. So the story of being okay with being scared, is to have a replacement for those? When you get a fear response with "reality" stuff, what sort of thing is it that you find shakes you?

Stacked Weirdness & Power

I was feeling like I no longer knew what reality was, what was real and not, and then I started to get scared. Then I backed off toward normality again.

I think knowing that one can pull back is a definite advantage. It's an option we want - "the right but not the obligation". At least then we can experiment and still feel safe.

There is an issue that once you've allowed a level of weirdness to happen, it does tend to multiply and become dominant. It's not like you've tweaks a specific event, so much as adjusted a generalised fact, like having ticked the checkbox called "Enable Hyper-Associative Events" on your Life App, and the corresponding fact-pattern is now overlaid upon all experience.

In general, I'd say the more we react to a pattern, the more prominent it becomes. It doesn't really matter whether that's a positive intention or a negative reaction - anything that focuses on or even implies the existence of the pattern, intensifies it. And so we get that guy over at Glitch who had been fighting the ever-growing instances of "11:11" for decades, not realising that anything he does about it will persist it. This is the real danger I think: that if we don't twig, then we can end up battling against something we've triggered, and get swallowed by it.

I had a dream once, where I was floating in the void. I came across an infinite invisible wall. I pushed and pushed and couldn't get past it. It started to feel very claustrophobic and unbearable. Finally, I took a step back... and just walked through it. I think that dream was maybe trying to tell me something at that time! :-)

It's not as though I suddenly become more powerful myself.

In what sense do you mean, "more powerful myself"? If you are looking for the experience of feeling yourself "do" reality shifting things, then I'm not sure you are going to get that, since intention itself is effortless, and you sort of are the whole of everything. Or do you mean just having a more direct sense of the impact of your intentions?

I feel something shifting inside me. It's like, "Oh... I used to feel like that.. but now I don't. Hmm..." That's the best I can describe it.

Ah, that's really interesting, particularly what you say about the less you need to make deals, the more powerful you become inside. As a general approach, I think it's very good to, when you realise you have attributed power to some "outside" imagery, to intentionally draw that back into yourself (metaphorically, but also that's not a bad way to imagine it).

You mean not a human. You're still a subjectivity, which is also a kind of person. Just not a human or conventional person.

Yes. I think the phrasing of "not a human" sounds to a lot of people like we are claiming to be something else, like "non-human", but I like that term "a subjectivity" - it's similar to "a perspective" but without the implied point of view aspect.

Fear of the Unknown & Dreams

Like for example that dream where I felt things got so real that if I didn't wake up, I'd be dreaming it as my life instead of my old life... I guess unknown can be freaky if you expect yourself to have some needs in the near future.

That was a really good example and description. So, it's a variant of "not knowing how the world works anymore" and the fear that comes with it. This can happen both in "this" world when weirdness starts happening (even when that means getting something we want), and in the "other" worlds of dreams and projections when we have no accumulated knowledge.

I think perhaps we can prepare ourselves for this in our daly lives, and it's about building up confidence in something we rarely use. It doesn't necessarily required weirdness, but a sort of openness, in order to answer the question: how do I survive in an environment that I don't (think that I) know?

One of my little experiments used to be, to ask my body to go and find things, and then let it move by itself. The mild version of this was, to just ask to "know" where something or someone was. If I was late meeting up with friends and didn't know which bar they were in on that street, I would just ask my body to go to where they were. In both cases, you are intending an experience and then allowing it to arise - whether that's the experience of an action or the experience of a thought.

How doe this work? Well, if what you are is really a "subjectivity" who is currently having the experience of being-the-world-from-the-perspective-of-a-person, then all facts are available and all events are possible. One simply intends an experience, and allows it to unfold as overlaid upon the currently active patterning.

A couple of examples in the dream world where one draws upon knowledge implied by the situation, via intention, deliberately and not:

However, in order to progress in your dreams you will occasionally need to make a leap of faith. Make sure that you take them sparsely, and that intuition is on your side.I started walking into a direction that took me away from where I previously was. Putting my focus on something else put my body into auto-pilot. In this case I got the idea of the key being for my spaceship mid-way. (Spaceships use ignition keys, just like cars right? cough)
My body automatically walked me towards where this spaceship is, even though I did not know where it was. Somewhere deep within my thoughts I knew that I had gotten to this space station somehow. If the key indicates that I own a spaceship, then I would have arrived in this spaceship, and I would also remember where I parked it.Putting myself in "autopilot" I can walk to locations that make sense for me to know within the dream plot, even if I don't consciously know where they are.
-- From Hyu's guide on Persistent Realms

and:

We went outside and he gave me the strongest bear-hug I've ever experienced. I couldn't breathe and soon became unconscious. It was like waking from a dream; this world was a dream and I awoke to a reality more real and vivid than this world is. I saw the illusion of this existence on Earth dispelled! It faded away and I didn't regret it. Soon I found myself in the "real" world in a huge city that I already knew. My memory seemed to return--Yes--I had gone to sleep and dreamed of a little place called "Earth" and now I was awake. "That was a silly dream" I thought, and I soon forgot all about "Earth." I continued my life, just like before I fell asleep. I lived in that fantastic city for years and years--centuries it seemed. I lived there so long that I COMPLETELY forgot all about Earth. For hundreds of years I had forgotten Earth. If someone was to ask me about it, I couldn't remember, since it happened so long ago. Then one day I was walking to a store. Suddenly a confusing loss of direction hit me and I felt myself falling. Suddenly I opened my eyes only to see strange leaves, the sky and FD and the other boy looking at me! Where was I now? How did I get here? What happened? Then I remembered: Hundreds of years ago, I fell asleep and found myself here. This place was called "Earth" and was a part of a weird dream. I must have fallen asleep again. Slowly my Earthly memory returned. I asked the boys how long I had been unconscious. They said only a few minutes. They asked me what happened, and I told them I didn't want to talk about it.
-- From Robert Peterson's OBE guide

In other words: we do not need to fear the unknown. Just because we have not explicitly thought about the knowledge, recalled it, does not mean that the "right action" is not available to us. In fact, right action is always available, because we never truly act, rather than intend or imply outcomes and experiences arise in line with those intentions. We can surely confirm this for ourselves in non-challenging everyday life and develop a confidence for fun, before putting ourselves in any situation where this would be required for survival?

So, much of interest there (and your paddling and swimming imagery was nicely evocative). I'm thinking that perhaps they can be seen as pointing to a single idea perhaps, which also takes in that option to reduce our needs rather than fulfil them (or as a way of fulfilling them). It comes down to this idea of the "tactical" move and of "power".

I'm gonna riff on that a bit -

I suggest that there is only one mechanism, only one thing that ever "happens" - and that is intending. Even the apparent actions and events that occur, they are not "happening", there are (metaphorically speaking) aspects of a landscape that is static between intentions. The experience of "time passing" is itself a static pattern.

This means that there's no such thing as "tactical" this or that, and no variation in levels of power - because all that there is, is the "nuclear option". There is only one way, and that is the pressing of the big red button. Every intention is a reshaping of the landscape, and therefore in effect the complete destruction and then creation of a world. There is no path to power; the fundamental truth of the matter never changes. Having the experience of "feeling powerful" - that is just another sensory experience, and has nothing to do with power as such (except in the sense that one uses the true and only power in order to generate an experience of "feeling powerful").

Yes, I'd agree that if you can imagine something, then you can intend it, because imagining is an intending really - an intending of the experience of an image - and only a small adjustment is required to make it "real" - to intend it 3D-immersively rather than in a separate strand of thought. And this leads us to an important point I think...

What we intend is always to have experiences. Our intentions correspond to generating experiences "as if" things were true. Experiences themselves have no causal power - one moment does not cause the next moment, they just arise sequentially is all - so there can be no tactical or developmental strategy. You have intended an experience like "this", or you you have intended an experience like "that". The content of experience is itself actually irrelevant, other than personal preferences. What we are, is the context of experience - and having recognised this, we are freed from concerns about power, mechanism, and so on!

Sp, we may desire the experience of feeling ourselves "doing" our events, rather than experience them "happening to us", but it will just be another experience. Intentions are always "global", even though experiences may be apparently localised. Knowing this, we have a choice, and that is what matters. We can have... fun. If we switched our experience to one of "seeing the entire landscape" rather than just a partial view, then we'd be having an entirely static (although blissful) experience. We'd get bored pretty quick... except that there would be no time, so that makes no sense. :-)

What else is there, except for intention? There is no other method or mechanism - it's all sensory theatre. It doesn't matter whether it's small or large changes, moving your arm or moving a house, you are always intending: "intensifying the thought that something is true".

For sure, the "infinite grid" is imagination - but so is "the world as place" and anything else we can conceive of. That is the such-ness of things, and everything exists always. It's just a matter of how prominent that particular imagining or pattern is in our experience. Relative intensities of contribution. The world is ourselves as aware imagination itself, shaped into a particular form - and intention is the reshaping of ourselves.

So I'm not saying that the "infinite grid" or whatever is how things are - the opposite really. I'm saying there is no fundamental unchanging "how things are", other than ourselves-as-awareness taking on the shape of a state. Anything beyond that, is the form we have adopted. Fundamental truth (context) vs relative truth (content). And we are free to shape ourselves however we want.

However, this does in effect mean we are always using the nuclear option - the full power of God, as it were - because there is no other option. When I interrupt the flow of things and move my arm, I'm just intending the fact of arm movement, but actually I move as the whole world in order to do so, since there is no separation. The process is always: I shift state as a whole, and my subsequent sensory experiences arise from the new state.

And of course the world - as in, the complete description that constitutes its state - is static between intentions, between reshapings. If it wasn't, then that would imply there is a power outside of ourselves, even though we have no outside!

So, to emphasise: This isn't about the any particular approach we want to experience ourselves apparently doing; it's what underlies all apparent approaches - our nature. Beyond that we are completely free to do detail work or broad shifting however we please, for the simple enjoyment of it. (Knowing that all approaches are basically optional, chosen because they fit our views at the time, how comfortable we are with them. After all, there's not much point making changes for the sake of it - the purpose is to have fun or otherwise increase the quality of our experience.)

Knowledge. There are different ways to conceive how experience should be structured.

Knowledge, I would say, corresponds to an aspect of "state", as distinct from intend-ing would be the change of state. Beyond that, of course, everything's up for grabs.

How would you define "knowledge"?

In some sense you always use the most powerful capacity of intent, but that's generally below the level of conscious awareness.

Well, that's quite the thing isn't it? You don't experience yourself intending as such because intending isn't a thing, and an intention isn't a thing but an aspect (although once can use an object to represent an intention). If you aren't "looking" at the part of the world you are shifting, then you won't experience anything - other than sort of very slight felt-knowing.

You seem to ignore the relative problems that human or recent ex-human beings have. You can't answer a real life problem with theory.

Well, it does answer problems in the sense that it shows the relationship between aspects of experience - importantly, it highlights that no structures are solid, and that cause is intention and not in the content of experience - but then we progress to specific examples to illustrate this.

I'm not sure what exactly your objection is, in terms of how it would relate to life and making changes? The base notion is of course just "relative intensities of facts = state ---> sensory experience". The conclusion is that you don't need to worry about mechanisms and techniques, except in the sense that you imagine-that you are doing something causal, then you are, and that if you decide something means-that another thing is true, that is cause. But nature of that cause is "the thought that something is the case". After that, it's playing with examples, to demonstrate that causal/acasual mix.

If you teleport somewhere, the me that you'll meet there...

We actually just can't talk about that - it's meaningless to talk about "the you" that I will meet, right?

On fears, they really have to be tackled specifically. There's the general fear of change, which I think can be answered by recognising our true identity as the context of experience - but specific fears depend on their relationship to one's identify, I'd say, so there's some unpacking to do, unless you just commit to an outcome. Eventually, it's the story of developing trust?

We hit the limits of language and metaphor here, because "intending" isn't a thing or an act, since that implies a doer and a thing done. But that's never stopped me typing away before, and it won't stop me now...

Intending vs Sensory Theatre

Firstly, you should view all of your sensory experiencing as a result. No part of a sensory experience causes another part of a sensory experience. If you feel yourself moving your arm - maybe a verbal thought then a muscle tension then an arm movement - you need to recognise that all of that was a result, and none of it was the intention.

• Intending has no sensory aspect.
• If you experience a sensory outcome, it is arising as an implication of the intending.
• You cannot experience yourself intending as such.

"Intending" can be viewed as you changing your state - where "state" means the current distribution of patterns and facts that constitute your world, dissolved into the background of your experience. One way to think of this, is as a landscape whose contours are the facts and patterns. Your ongoing sensory experience then arises, like a mirage, from this landscape. You cannot change the mirage itself, all change is indirect. You change your landscape-state, and subsequently all your experiences will be aligned with that state.

• Your state is the 'cause' of all your experiences.
• It consists of all possible facts and patterns, at relative strengths of contribution. It therefore implicitly defines the sequence of moments that are queued up into the future.
• All change is indirect and is a change of state, a change of the relative prominence of certain facts and patterns, a redistribution of the landscape. "Intending" is what we call changing state.

"An intention", then, is what we call the pattern which we are going to emphasise in our state. It is like an unbounded non-sensory thought, a dimensionless fact. Emphasising such a fact involves a literal and direct reshaping of this 'landscape'. Basically, a reshaping of ourselves. But wait - if we only sensorily experience something when intending if the intention affects the part of the landscape we are currently "looking at", how do we loop this back to direct experience?

Mostly: faith. But for the purposes of exploration, we cheat. Although we can direct without any sensory theatre, it is easier initially to use misdirection and create an experience of doing something, but have that "doing" not interfere with what we are trying to accomplish.

Back to the Chair

When people get up from a chair, they typically use misdirection by intending muscular tension (an experience of "doing") and during that the intention of standing up occurs. But in this case the misdirection and the desired outcome are opposing one another.

Instead, let's have our experience of "doing" be independent. We sit in the chair, and we place our attention on the background space of the room, and we decide that by focusing on the background space of the room, our body is going to stand up. Rather than intending that "tensing my muscles means-that I will stand up", we are intending that "focusing on the background space of the room means-that I will stand up".

Of course, one could simply non-sensorily intend the fact that "I will stand up" (the "just-decide" approach), but actually the "assignment of meaning (or causal power)" approach gives you a good experience of a general principle. That is, that intention is always the true cause even though it cannot be sense.

Once you've played with the background space example, you can try "looking out the window means-that I will stand up". Then, "saying 'stand up' means-that I will stand up". And penultimately, "being here in this position right now means-that I will stand up". After that, you are at raw intention, and are in a position to extrapolate your new understanding of causality to your experience of the world more generally.

Was that a sort of intending that I was doing or was the energy already there being unleashed from the awakening I was going through and I was just overlaying unnecessary imaginations on top of something that was already happening anyway?

I'd say that you were imagining-that something was true with conviction, and your ongoing experience was patterned accordingly. There was no energy "out there" but it is enough that you have an idea of "energy" and imagine yourself accessing it. You committed to your own logic, and everything else followed.

In terms of the parent comment, you were "intending" a situation as true by implication, and then experiencing it. (You could have directly asserted what you wanted without any of that "sensory theatre", however it's much easier to allow something to happen if you think that it "makes sense" somehow.)

What your awakening did, was free you up from your habitual patterns, crack you open. and make things more fluid in terms of what could be asserted or implied. Although, as you notice, you can make yourself quite unstructured quite quickly if you're not careful - basically, put yourself into a manic mode!

For some reason the idea of there not being any challenge at all seemed to take the fun out of things.

Indeed.

So you can directly assert something by simply just-deciding that it is true. This amounts to assigning fresh meaning to the current experience: "my current situation means-that this is true", which is equivalent to "my existence means-that this is true". All perhaps without any sensory aspect to it at all.

But as you've noted: where's the fun in that? Because where that would end up if we pursued this fully, is with a completely disconnected experience, just like everyday casual associative thinking or just random hypnagogic imagery. Getting bored, we would once again allow that imagery to coalesce into a scene and then an environment, just like the beginning of a dream, and we'd be in a world again. Although this time we know its nature.

Understanding this, we can skip that process.

So, overall, once we have the idea that the only causal power is ourselves as intentional state-shifters, this frees us from our limited concepts. Strangely, one of the benefits of the realisation is that we no longer have to burrow down to the fundamentals, because we've recast all experience and so can be high level again - while retaining our updated perspective. Basically, be more playful, treating ourselves and the world within us as "all imagination" and all imaginings as facts at different relative levels of intensity or contribution.

POST: Sensoria vs visualization.

Another good question is, why is it so easy to imagine your dream world? Not this one, your sleeping dreams. That also is imaginary.

Yet, it's completely without effort. I was talking about this elsewhere, intention + automatic pattern completion, copy-pasted below. The point is, you shouldn't be doing much of anything with your conscious mind except "requesting" - effectively raising a part of a pattern, which then naturally "raises" the rest of it.

Excerpt:

Good point about "allowing" imagination/results. I learned visualisation from David Fontana's The Meditator's Handbook which basically amounts to:

• Regularly try to visualise various objects and environments.
• Eventually realise that it's not "you" that creates the images. They arise in response to you intending to have them - if you allow this to happen.

Relevant quote:

Visualization: A Key to the Inner World
. . . [When visualizing people] At this point, notice the creative power of the mind. If you have worked through each of the visualization exercises I've given, mastering one before going on to the next, you will find that, as in dreams, the mind creates the face for you without conscious effort on your part.

The world around you might be described as appearing in the same way. Dissolved within you are beliefs, expectations, knowledge, all sorts of accumulated archetypal patterns and so on, which might be said to "filter infinity" into superimposed patterns (facts-of-the-world as 'dissolved into the background'). Your intention is a "selection" from the resulting possible patterns.

You do not need to control the details because - like the smell of a flower bringing forth all the related memories and knowledge associated with it - the result is already part of the extended pattern with which the intention is associated.

In other words: Intention is a static selection mechanism; it is an additional 'fact' you add to your world. This is why "allowing" needs to be the basic approach: you are not creating an image, you are 'letting form' or 'letting through'.

The whole point with visualization is to begin bringing subconscious/unconscious capabilities into the conscious domain.

Why would you want to bring things into the conscious (actually: present moment expanded sensory) domain? That's like people who want to be directly aware of all the "steps in between". But there aren't any steps, unless you are experiencing them. If you get whatever you want, that's enough. There is no secret mechanism behind it. There is no "how it works" to anything.

The "point" of visualisation is... to summon desired sensory experiences.

EDIT: The so-called "unconscious" is perfectly present at all times as the background to conscious experience. It just isn't experienced as unfolded image-sound-texture. It's the stars in the sky vs the midday sun.

What if you could not only begin to visualize on the level of sensoria, but also share those visuals and other senses with another being in the so-called waking sensory universe? For me this is where the interest lies, and it would be of great achievement if it were possible in a consistent way. This is real magic we're talking about. I've experienced something along these lines, so I know it to be possible in some capacity. In your scenario you describe you are simply trading one illusion for another, except you would be the God of the illusion. Perhaps that comes with its own perils, and if it is so that we are already in an illusory universe that is "run" so to speak by a God, then I'm not sure that trying to master the illusion is the correct goal - I would assume that mastery over the Truth would equally provide mastery over illusion, with the added benefit of being aware of the true nature of reality - not simply being a master of shadows.

And this is a key issue, right? Say you have the ability to create a fully convincing visualisation of an army of angelic warriors, floating in the sky above you.

If everyone can see those warriors, you're God.
If only you can see those warriors, you're mad.

Right, so I'd rather aim to be God than mad.

Good choice! :-)

Thing is, it's how deep you go to make the changes I think. Mild autosuggestion and you are creating hallucinations for a localised self (dreaming you are mad: oops). Deeper, deeper and you are creating hallucinations for consciousness as a whole (dreaming the whole world is mad: fine).

So many dilemmas of free will vs determinism when you get into that though.

Don't worry about it. You always have free will relative to the "dimension" you are standing on, which corresponds to the one you can't perceive at all. For instance, you are having a 4D experience of a 3D world right now, which means that you are "standing" on and intending from 5D. (Although actually you are awareness and beyond dimensions fundamentally, but this is a convenient way to think about it.)

I questioned how this could be. How could some other being be having free will, but also be synchronistically answering my inquiries?

It happens all the time. One may think of it as over-determination. That everything is already taken into account. So, the conversation in the bus is about whatever it is and is about your situation and is about the guy next to you's situation, all happening simultaneously. Since this is a headache, it's easier to just say: look, waking life is just as dream-like and metaphorical as dreaming life. It is filled with personal meaning because it basically is yourself as projected out.

Imagine that everything that you are is folded down into a little, tiny speck in your heart area. But what this does is, it projects out in all directions a metaphorical representation of you. You are therefore literally experiencing yourself, exploring yourself as you go about your day.

If you want to include other people in this, imagine they too have the same setup, so that everyone's projections overlap "holographically" as it were, and the final result is meaningful for all. (You can skip that part because everyone is all you anyway, in effect.)

How are you picturing this 5D world to be?

So for a 4D space (which you are viewing from a 5D stance) you can see it as the Infinite Grid metaphor I posted previously. If you then visualise each small square as being a tube, then you can go further, etc. But really there's no need, because we've already chosen one organising concept ("moments") and said that the grid is infinite. See yourself as the vast conscious space in which the (determined) grid appears, is dissolved in, and imagine traversing the moments by unfolding them one by one (free will).

Remember though, there is no dimensionality "really"; it's just a way of conceptualising things and formatting experience so that you can contemplate it and formulate intentions.

There is no time or space aside from your experience of time or space. There is no spatially-extended world beyond theses walls; the world is instead a list of facts dissolved into the background, unfolded into/as the senses as you explore it with your gaze.

How does everyone have free-will if they are me?

Other people: Think of them as "Extended Persons" with many aspects, only one of which is being experienced in-the-senses by you. But really it is easier to think of them as parts of you. Or: That every moment, every perspective, every possibility will have a turn at being experienced.

As you see, it depends how you look at it: in-time, or from outside of time, etc.

There give been reports by people of everyone suddenly looking round...

It's like a choose your own adventure story book.

Good metaphor! Everyone "on Earth" is reading the same book simultaneously, but they had different starting pages and take varying routes. :-)

...and therein lies the paradox.

Right. Eventually you'd choose limits again. You don't really want all your friends and family to be puppets, do you? Most people just opt for a little bit of influence in times of need. The very occasional "I command that this will happen", and a guaranteed result.

If you do bring about a massive discontinuity, would you want to remember it? For instance, jump back to correct a mistake? I think that once you'd done the deed, you'd opt for ignorance again.

Do you mean looking around or looking rotund?

Ha, rotund, good! I mean, people who have "waking up" moments and it seems like everything goes quiet and the other people notice, it goes all Inception. The puppets pause...

Relevant because it's a flicker of loosening grip and focus, and yet being the whole environment.

No, but I've come to the conclusion that I want my body to be my puppet.

Easy:

Relax. Decide that your body is a "shell". Tell it to do something and let it move by itself - e.g. "body, go to the shops" or "body, resurrect". Simply be the experiencer. Build from there. Read the middle sequence of the Missy Vineyard book for inspiration.

POST: Some reasons I hate this realm.

[POST]

==1) In ideal circumstances, life here is too short.

2. The body is weak and subject to damage if exposed in most environments too long.
3. Sentient beings reproduce in this realm without the permission of or consideration of the community of sentient beings in the realm
4. The body depends on material resources simply to prevent decay and death
5. Most sentient beings here are unwilling to communicate and compromise at all, and those that are willing to communicate and compromise are on the whole extremely ignorant
6. Beings here are concerned with pleasures, status, and possessions above wisdom, integrity, and virtue.
7. Magick is almost non-existent.
8. There are limited resources available, and essentially all of them have been claimed - making it difficult to pursue material games and arts or even survive in this realm without becoming a slave.
   My goal at present is to end up in a realm where these qualities are all 100% the opposite. What are your opinions on this realm?
   But, hell, at least I don't regularly have molten metal dropped upon me, get sliced into pieces, suffer from a ground made of hot iron, or get attacked by beings with iron claws and fiery weapons until I'm rendered unconscious from pain at which time I am revived, over and over for 1,620,000,000,000 years.
   Edit: oh, I forgot one
9. Sentient beings eat each other in this realm==

[END OF POST]

Nice list. Wondering: If there is only one being, being the world, does most of this go away?

7. Magick is how the world works, right now. Perhaps: What you really mean is that you are displeased with previous results (established habits in experience) and wish they hadn't become so ingrained.

If there is only one being, being the world, does most of this go away? Hmm, I'm not sure what you're asking. Would you clarify?

Well, it seems churlish to complain about the details of one's own creation (following the subjective idealist angle of this subreddit). And your desire to "end up in a realm" seems quite passive?

That depends on how you understand magick. I understand magick to be direct acts of will that break the fundamental rules of convention: the laws of nature.

I'd go with something along the lines of: the process by which desired experiences come into being.

Past intentions create patterns which may place limits on the routes by which future intentions unfold. The results of previous magickal acts may become "ordinary" with time and familiarity, may even become so entrenched as to be called "laws".

I think if we define magick more broadly than this, then the word ceases to correspond to its conventional meaning, and starts to become indistinguishable from 'will/intent' in general.

I see where you're coming from. But I'm thinking that to separate the two in this way is a false dichotomy which might obscure the flexible nature of things - the mechanism and process is identical. The "rules of the realm" aren't rules/laws so much as habits, etc.

Opening your hand and levitating are the same. But... one is less likely, apparently.

We can never know why we created a place as we created it, so that has to wait I suppose. But ...

Why do you think transforming yourself will allow you to leave this place? Or rather, that this is the way to get to another realm?

On the magick thing: You are correct of course on the distinction, but the humdrum and the strange arise by the same process, from and of the same origin. This matters because...

Who cares about "convention" and other people? If this is the realm that you created, then all that matters is what is conventional or frightening to you. The "normal" simply corresponds to habits you have developed, experiences you have fallen into repeating. The "esoteric" are just those that are less commonly experienced. There is no difference other than that.

So... the question to ask is, why have you fallen into treating some things as a big deal and not others? Is that perhaps the reason - the only reason - you find certain things more difficult?

Are you effectively just procrastinating making "the jump" by presenting it to yourself as a challenge?

If I want to create and maintain a new realm, I have to change myself.

Might we rephrase it something like - "change the form that I have taken"?

Another reason they're difficult is because a part of me thinks it's dangerous to tamper with my mind in these ways. I'm not totally comfortable with and confident in my own mental power. I think I might go insane or hurt myself. Physicalism is still a deep habit I'm fighting against, even though I intellectually reject it.

Right, and that is where the stress comes in. I was conversing with someone the other day, about how "anything might be possible" but that we actually would often choose not to be able to just, say, command people or instantly teleport, because it would break our model of the world, our sense of stability and safety.

This is why I wondered about the "procrastination explanation". And that you might want it to be a slow, gradual, effortful, challenging process where you fiddle about and transform each subtle pattern and structure.

Habits don't usually just disappear, and I'm not sure I would want them to anyway.

The second clause is key. They can and do disappear instantly. And this realm disappears every time you dream or do an OBE. You could just not come back. You could create a persistent dream world and attach to it, or create a tulpa wonderland and swap places, and you're outta here. Or a 'dimensional jump'. They're all the same thing really.

Because by investigating and experimenting you're not really accomplishing anything except making yourself more comfortable with radical change (nothing wrong with this, it's a perfectly acceptable way to progress). What you are doing is "dreaming more experiences" for yourself, only these experiences are "about" uncovering how the world work and changing it.

You can't get away from dreaming (because you and the dream are the same thing) but you can dream anything at any time. The only trick is that you have to let go of dreaming that you are adjusting this dream, and you have to stop applying effort because it implies a certain sort of dream itself.

Someone asked my a short while ago if there was a 'cheat sheet' for using the 'Infinite Grid' metaphor, and I drew this up. The key is the "allowing". Just as with visualisation or even daily perception, mastery involves coming to the stage where you let go and "let the world come to you". Effort prevents this, because it implies and creates a different experience.

Not that I think instantaneous transformation is impossible, but it's not for me right now.

That's totally fine. And the exploration-investigation aspect is pretty good fun anyway.

You got infinite power. Get used to it. ;-)

POST: The Block of Family Members

[POST]

I am having a block in my progress that pertains to family members that perhaps someone can point me a way out of.
I am finding myself making tremendous progress when I set my intentions correctly and maintain mindfulness of the situation I am in - more clearly, that I am in fact God observing the situation unfold and creating it at the same time - whilst simultaneously acting as a character in the drama. However, there is the one aspect of my life that seems to draw me back into the belief systems of being a simple human with the same limitations I have always had - and that is my family. My family, whom I see very frequently, seem to be distracting me from this truth at every turn - in part it is my temptation to speak to my father about very esoteric ideas, and our following disagreements. It is a very bizarre relationship, one that is constantly pitting me against myself in ways that I cannot fully describe. I feel forced to act a very stiff role, one where I am very limited in what I can say. It is a role of naivety, perhaps much more than I truly am. I also have some friends whom I play this naive role around. I am very tired of it and wish it to be gone. I know a healthy amount of naivety is good for business, but I do not wish to fake it any longer. Can anyone else relate to this, or have any advice with relationships with family members? Friends I'm not too worried about as I can always cut out friends I am not jiving with, and make new friends along my wavelength - but family seems to be a difficult block for me right now. Maybe I need to manifest myself a life in a place more distant from them.

[END OF POST]

Can anyone else relate to this, or have any advice with relationships with family members?

You could go directly into this. Actually, perhaps it's the perfect opportunity for you to amend some of the 'facts' of your world. Wanna be God for real? Just keep it simple. It doesn't matter how you do it, but I'm going to give you one approach.

First - Decide on a scenario that would imply that you and your father had now found a way to converse about 'the nature of the world' and all that you'd like to share and discuss. Perhaps the two of you sat at the table, talking in an animated and enthusiastic way, drawing diagrams, bantering about possibilities.

Then - Having decided, go and lie down somewhere and let yourself relax. Now, bring to mind that scenario, as it would be from your perspective, looking out from your eyes, and make it super-vivid, until you really feel like you would feel if it were happening now. Persist until it is real to you.

Really bask in the experience, in that sensation, immersed in the feeling of it being true-that-it-is-happening, right now. Then go grab a beer, watch telly.

I appreciate the approach, this could work, but it feels too much like affecting my dad's free will to be the way he is. I'd rather let him continue to be entrenched in his own ideas at this point. I have given him enough clues to the nature of reality, and will continue to. I think wanting him to see things the way I do is unnecessary, and probably limiting my progress as I try to continually skirt around these things with him.

Well, your Dad is free to experience whatever world he wants from his perspective and you can't affect that anyway. All that you can affect is the aspect of your Dad that you experience. This is not a simple shared dream - it is "highly dimensioned" and you'd be better thinking of everyone as an Extended Person. Everyone gets to experience whatever they want; including the sort of experience they have of others.

In any case, the suggestion I'm giving doesn't change him, it just means you are going to have an animated, open discussion about something, as father and son. His views can remain the same afterwards. :-)

POST: What are some of your tips for shaking off the physicalness of physicality?

...paying closer attention to the daily bodily motions that we consider automatic.

Right, but you don't need to then fix those automatic motions. That persists them. The answer is to learn to not do anything physically at all. Ask to do something, then let your body do it in its own time, spontaneously. I have to say that lots of Alexander Technique books and lessons have lost the spirit and experience of the core idea. That's why I specifically recommend the Missy Vineyard book because of its middle section; that's where the insight is. It is the realisation that you don't need to do being a body.

When you experience yourself "doing" something, you are in fact experiencing yourself tensing up and opposing spontaneous movement. And once you have the idea of body-doing in this way, it lingers. You are always subtly "holding yourself in position" - and this is what gives you a sense of being a solid body, rather than a transparent space in which sensations occasionally arise. You have basically creating a permanent, oppositional felt-experience in the body area, that you will seem to have to push through to achieve anything.

In reality, you can just decide to move and your body will do the necessary things itself. "Stop doing the wrong thing and the right thing will do itself." In fact when we make such "decisions" the whole universe moves a bit in response, in answer to the larger intention.

Over time the accumulated sensations and ill-formed ideas we've become wrapped in will naturally dissipate once you stop re-imagining them all the time, and you will feel more "transparent and open", although you can take more conscious action to help yourself if you like.

Here is a different example that uses this approach for using this to rediscover an object you've lost and can't remember where you've put it. The final step is the most important.

TL;DR: We tend to want to experience ourselves doing-the-doing. The secret core idea of the Alexander Technique is that this is impossible - we in fact only experience results - and any attempt to control the "how" of movement actually opposes it, and increases our sense of inertia.

I did this exercise a couple of nights ago, and I had the same feeling of futility... Perhaps the Missy Vineyard book will have some pointers on how to do-not-do when it comes to the body.

It can be frustrating. The book is good because it can spend the time telling the story, give you a feel for the time it takes, not something we can do in these comments. Having twigged 'something was up', she is determined to have the experience and it takes a while, until one day... her leg just "moves by itself". Remember, you've spent years maybe even decades constantly implicitly intending yourself to stay still, to stay fixed and controlled. You've created a hurdle of immobility which opposes your intention to "just allow movement". But it will happen.

Vineyard isn't necessarily correct in her explanations for things; but she describes well the process and experience for spontaneous manifestation of bodily activity.

I know this may be a tough question to answer, but in this lost object example, what does the command or deciding feel like that the body responds to?

It actually has no full sensory component. Sure, we might internally verbalise or something, but that is all just theatre. What it's like though is, the background felt-sense of the world shifts a tiny bit. It's already true, you are just waiting for it to happen now. If there's a feeling, it's of "absolute allowing". It's a state of fact and knowing, rather than an action.

Intending/deciding and free will are before sensory experience. That's why they can't really be talked about or described, even though you "know" you have them.

To Contemplate

What is the difference between your arm moving spontaneously and your heart beating and the sun moving in the sky? It's like the Zen thing about who it is that "makes the grass grow". Perhaps you "do" them all, but you ascribe authorship only to a subset of your experiences, for some reason. How do you distinguish between what you are the author of? Is this an arbitrary distinction?

Could it be that we don't "do" anything at all, we merely decide what we are and the kind of world we live in, and sensory experiences then arise spontaneously in accordance with that? Imagine that! ;-)

EDIT: Made a few tweaks, added some sentences.

POST: Invoking the Witching Hour. New exercise

[POST]

So I came up with a mental exercise today that I think that tackles the issue of both cultivating temporal lucidity and lucidity in general. Legends talk about the so called "witching hour" where witches and sorcerers would cast their spells and call upon spirits. It was traditionally around midnight but most occultists agree due to our new modern lifestyle the witching hour is around 3am. But what is so potent about the witching hour and late night time in general? Is it because it is dark outside and no one else is up. Well that is a big part of it yes, but in an oneirosophic context, it is generally the time of day when we are asleep and dreaming. In other words 3 or 4 am is the time of the day when the physical and spiritual are most closely linked because it is the time of day our selves and our meat suits associate ourselves with being asleep and in a dream.

Instead of thinking about being in a big waking dream, try to go further and assume you are actually in one of your many sleep cycle dreams right now. So the exercise I lay out is very simple, whatever time of the day it is, try to convince yourself it is around 3 or 4 o clock in the morning. If we think of ourselves at being at 1 o clock in the afternoon, its a time we associate with being awake and not dreaming, and hence not lucid. If you ever have a lucid dream, even if its the day time in the dream, there is a vague sense that its very late at night or very early in the morning even if in the dream its full blown daylight. In other words when its five o clock in the afternoon, you want to create the feeling that this is not only a dream but in actuality its very early in the morning and you are about to wake up for work/school.

And if you really want to take this to the next level pretend its no only 3 am, but since its spring right now, pretend its actually 3am and early winter or late fall. When it comes to lucidity, there is that time when a lucid dream collapses and there is nothing, but you still cant feel your body yet, the awareness of that place/state of mind is crucial IMO.

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I like this.

Related-ish article here [dead link]: In olden times (because of the darkness, work hours, and lack of electricity) people would have two sleeps. They would go to bed fairly early after nightfall, then get up in the middle of the night to perhaps talk, have something to eat with the family, or spend time thinking and writing, before returning for a second stretch of sleep until morning.

Because of the sleepy-dream-time that this period of wakening occurred in, the mind would be more attuned to the symbolic, creative, dream-like realm and people's writings would reflect this.

I think it might have been me that posted it before, but since I couldn't find the comment, I figured I'd repost. I just liked the whole 'vibe' of the situation it describes. Except, how would I charge my phone?

POST: How To Grow Faster?

Define "grow"!

You're already complete; it's just a matter of having one experience rather than another. Is there a particular experience you are looking to have?

Q: You're already complete
So says you. And then a thousand people implicitly or explicitly tell him he's a piece of shit. What should he believe if he continues to solicit the opinion of others? People don't all agree with each other. If you really solicit opinions of others as something that can potentially define who you believe you are, then you're cutting yourself off at the feet, and you'll never be confident in any endeavor, including the endeavor of leisure and relaxation.

It seems obvious to me that everyone should agree with me - and indeed, will. ;-)

Good point though: Don't believe thoughts or experiences as your source of what is true - assert.

But to assert effectively one needs some stunningly glorious wisdom and understanding of one's own mind. It's not cheap. I've been at it for some time now and I am pretty serious, and still I can't rate my asserting abilities as anything above pitiful. I know I can do better, and will.

The assertion itself isn't as important as the detachment (withdrawing emotional investment from the present 3d sensory experience) and "absolute allowing" (letting any experience come through, without obstruction). It must also be an open, unbounded, spacious mindset.

These are challenging, because it feels quite vulnerable and exposing to do this. Imagine that! :-)

Very good point. Asserting is important, and finding ways to give your assertions gusto and matter of factness is important indeed. I agree with you that detachment is the more critical and perhaps more difficult step for some. I find that I can assert myself to be detached. The trick is being constantly detached without having to constantly remind yourself verbally. Would love some tips on that!

The trick is being constantly detached without having to constantly remind yourself verbally.

Yeah, once you "just decide" to become detached, it happens (because it's a change of state just like any "decision"). The trick is to never directly interfere with yourself ever again. Ever.

But... habits.

You have fallen into the trap of thinking there are "levels"... There will always be more and it will never be enough.

This is a great observation, I completely agree with it. We can think we are discovering the secrets of the universe, looking closer and closer and uncovering more detail and relationships within the world. But actually, we are not getting deeper at all. All you are doing when you investigate the world is... creating more world.

There's awareness (the background that you are). And there's experience (game content). And you are signed up for an unlimited, on-demand DLC package.

POST: Why experience exists?

Q1: The question: why does experience exist? is made of experience. So would be the answer. So how could that be satisfyingly answered?

Q2: Good point. So it seems we'll never know...

It's really that there is nothing to know - because it's not that you exist, it's that you are existence. And to exist at all is to be, and to be is to experience being, and to experience being is to have an experience.

This is a problem of language: language is "too late" for examining this sort of stuff, because to speak we have to conceptualise, and conceptualisation is thought, and thought is "shadow-sensory", and that requires division and relation of mental objects... which is unfortunate, because we are trying to talk about the thing that is "before" division and multiplicity (because it is it).