TriumphantGeorge Compendium (Part 27)

POST: I know it has been said for a long time, but I'm really starting to notice that a trend towards society waking up

[POST]

If you look at the front page of reddit right now there are advancements in science that are for the benefit of the Earth as opposed to big business. Fewer than 18% of Americans smoke cigarettes. We're seeing a population that is starting to focus their attention on the injustices of world and call BS. Ferguson may not be our brightest hour as a species, but it is a sign that things are heading in the right direction. People are fed up with nonsense and MORE importantly, willing to take action for that which makes sense.
The internet is informing us at newer and faster rates than ever before, and yeah, we're using it to spread memes - but we're using it to educate ourselves too. Mainstream media is dying out. The revolution of self-governed media intake has begun. This is huge.
I really feel society is not a lost cause anymore. I think we can salvage the good bits, with the aid of technology and action, for a future that is free and peaceful. It's not something I'm taking for granted, but it's something I have the motivation and belief that it is no longer futile to work towards. I call upon you, Psychonauts, to keep being you, and doing it in as many ways as you can or want to! Our society is no longer a place where free-thinkers must hide-away in secret societies. Upload your thoughts to twitter, start blogs, tell your friends what you truly feel about the world! Together we might just wake up in a paradise...
The truth is no longer taboo. Spread it like semen. The facets of control will try to suppress us but like a teenager who sees cleavage we are unstoppable in our desire to undress truth from the restrictive bondage of censorship that has been imposed on us for far too long.
Even now I almost went to bed without posting this, out of fear it was too melodramatic, but fuck it. We vote with our voices and actions. Use this information as you will.

[END OF POST]

The truth is no longer taboo. Spread it like semen. The facets of control will try to suppress us but like a teenager who sees cleavage we are unstoppable in our desire to undress truth from the restrictive bondage of censorship that has been imposed on us for far too long.

So, who's going to set up /r/TruthFap? ;-)

Much of what you say is true, but not in terms of the history of the planet, really just this societal go-round. The free access to historical information is the big change, but societies have risen send fallen in this cycle of understanding-and-overthrow for centuries. It is rarely about transformation; it is usually about reset.

Q1: /r/TruthPorn sounds better IMO

Probably fits a bit better.

EDIT: Deleted my bad idea in the second sentence.

Q2: It is about consistency. The best analogy of it is that it is like driving a car. Just because the car couldn't always be at 60mph doesn't mean that you should stop driving the car, when you know that is only doing it again and again to always be in that state. So, it is matter of also not judging how you need to do it again and again, because even we do same things in our lives everyday. You always have to wake up from your bed, eat, take a shit, go to work, doing what you do everyday, rest, sleep, etc. Why would having a peaceful and connected society be any different? For corruption, crimes, and so-called injustice acts that cause an effect to society, they must be repeatedly done to continue to exist.

Perhaps peace gives rise to violence, justice give rise to corruption, calm gives rise to the storm. A reset gives rise to a overshoot gives rise to a reset.

POST: Are we just biological computers with unconscious on/off switches? Is it possible we are all being run by a program called FreeWill.exe?

"The Eyes are the WindowsTM to the Soul."

If you look really closely in the mirror at your eyes, you'll see a small piece of lettering: "Version 3.1". It explains a lot.

POST: My limbo

I feel like I can gain no further insights about life.

Just give up on it. You'll never have any intellectual answers that satisfy; you'll just keep creating more complex thought-structures (stories) that are circular. Take a step back. If there is "an answer" or a "how things really are", then the answer must already be here, and how things are now must be how things really are.

Q: This is what I try to do, but it never goes away

Stop trying even to make it go away; that persists it. Just let it sit there - and go about your other business.

Q: Thanks, I'll try

Haha, no don't try!

Today's Ill-Conceived Metaphor

Think of it as, say, having a loose thread on your shirt. The thing to do is, leave the thread (nagging question) alone. Occasionally you might catch sight of the thread, and be tempted to get 'pulled in' to pulling at the thread. But you know that's just going to make your shirt (concentration, focus, balance, thoughts) unravel - you've done it before, it didn't help - so you let go of that idea and carry on with your work. You leave it be.

Then one day you realise it wasn't a loose thread at all, but part of the overall pattern of your shirt. Suddenly you see it! It's so obvious, it's just there without any effort!

The more you concentrated on the thread, the less you could see the whole pattern. You squinted your eyes to focus, you bent your vision out of shape, you got in too close. The more you pulled at the thread, you disrupted the pattern, ruined it.

Only when you gave up, and got on with other things, could your senses and perspective settle, and be ready for the insight.

POST: What is your theory of everything?

Q1: Everything is. Maybe.

Q2: Is is what is. Its all is.

All is Is.

POST: Rupert Spira discusses the nature of awareness

Yeah. Recommend his books, Presence Vol I & II. You can read a sample here. Greg Goode's book The Direct Path is similar.

the felt sense of separation being much more persistent than the intellectual view

Yes, this. Oddly, was just talking to someone about this very point, try to come up with the best way to describe it.

Because the "felt sense of separation" is basically a persistent tension or a "stuck, attached thought" in your direct, ongoing experience. Thoughts about being separate or whole come and go, as does all thinking-about. Meanwhile, direct-experiencing persists and is literally how the world is for you, right now.

You can only get rid of it by it happening to collapse, by attending to it while also attending to space (what Spira's work does), or more forcefully by deliberately overwriting it with open space via intention.

But since people don't really understand that they are experiencing a "sensory-mind-dream" in the first place, this doesn't make any sense to them. Spiral is by far the best at leading to this in modern language, I reckon. Although Francis Lucille is a good read too (related).

Glad to hear about the book and mediations. I'm always on the look out for new exercises for myself and others.

Q1: Well said! I've had to discover this in a groping-in-the-dark kind of way as clarifying the view and settling the mind chatter didn't bring the liberation I had expected. I think of the body as a sort of data compression for the long-term storage of thought, and exploring that is a sort of "down and through" process instead of the "up and out" (mental transcendence) that I was hoping for. I guess that's why everyone's talking about embodiment these days.
deliberately overwriting it with open space via intention.
I'm not totally sure I understand what you mean. Got an example?
I'm always on the look out for new exercises for myself and others.
Same here. Please share anything good you come across. I'm sure you know of Douglas Harding's brilliant experiments. I happened to notice your link to Gendlin's "felt sense", and I've found his focusing really useful. Tom Stone has some good techniques in a PDF called Pure Awareness (can't link from phone), but there's a bit of cheese factor too.

Embodiment

Yes, quite so! One of my first insights came from trying to improve my eyesight: I found an article about "seeing from the core", which basically amounted to shifting the location you are centred in and "looking out from". Then I encountered someone who suggested that rather than attending to the head area (third eye or whatever), one should go as "deep down as possible" - effectively, your lower core.

Effectively, what you're after is to centre yourself in a body-space location that doesn't suffer from accumulated tension and hence is a source of ongoing thought-generation, nor leads to the accumulation of tension.

I'm not totally sure I understand what you mean. Got an example?

Lie down (constructive rest position), get relaxed. Let go completely. Now expand your "presence" (whatever you want to call that, Peter Ralston calls it feeling-awareness, which I like) to fill the volume of your body, and then beyond into the room. Now intend that to be open empty space. You will experience push-back because - like with Gendlin's Focusing - you are asserting something (empty openness) that isn't true. Stay with it. Gradually your current experience will move towards the intended experience, the goal you've set it, of open space. Essentially, you are simply accelerating the natural release/dissolving process.

Same here. Please share anything good you come across.

This one is fun (turning off your senses and recognising you are still there, couched in this instance of the subreddit's "life is a video game" premise), and the "where is your real hand?" exercise is good for pointing out you are in a dream (you can't point to your real hand, it is "outwith the experiential space"; if you say "in my head" you try to find your "real head", so in what sense do you have a real hand or a real head?).

Yes, Douglas Harding is very good. Although I will say that it can lead to the sense of being absent in the head area without it necessarily expanding to the experience of being a complete background to all experience, and he doesn't really talk in that way. Not heard of Tom Stone; will give him a look. Greg Goode's The Direct Path, um, what else...

Anything that isn't the Tony Parsons "you-can't-do-anything", repeat-the-same-words approach!

Q1: Great stuff, TriumphantGeorge! I'm not familiar with Ralston, so I look forward to checking him out.
I really get the lowering, or balancing of the the centre of attention, cuz I've found the sense of being behind the eyes to be the source of a lot of unpleasant energy buildup in the head.
I just got back from a week of working one-on-one with a retired Direct Path/Daoist teacher, doing all kinds of embodiment exercises and learning about the different bodies (energy, astral etc.). I'm still sorting out what seems useful at the moment.
Nice to chat with you. You've clearly done a lot of exploring. Feel free to drop me a note if you come across anything inspiring. Cheers!
edit: Oh, and by the way, your game analogy and diction was stellar :)

cuz I've found the sense of being behind the eyes to be the source of a lot of unpleasant energy buildup in the head.

It can be. The head is a tricky area. There is a spot about halfway back, on the vertical centre line, which feels like "home", but most people go too far back or too far forward. It's easier to go further down that line, to the chest or abdomen. Why do it the hard way? :-)

Nice to chat with you. You've clearly done a lot of exploring. Feel free to drop me a note if you come across anything inspiring. Cheers!

And you - happy exploring!

POST: I have crippling social phobia.

Meditation, mindfulness, daily relaxation, contemplate the nature of what you are?

The longer it goes on, the more "stuck inside" you can get. Anxiety becomes a feeling that you, ironically, become comforted by or afraid to let go of, without knowing it.

You need to expand your "attention/presence out" into the world again. You are probably tightly localised inside, stuck at the back of your head, with your crazy amygdala just loving it! Just a daily relaxation where you lie on the floor, let go, and imagine-feel 'expanding into the room around you' can help loosen off the hold. (Note: this will feel a bit daunting/exposing at first, but then it will feel great.)

Some ideas to explore: This guy [http://www.anxietynomore.co.uk/] has some interesting things to say on anxiety. The Alexander Technique can help you regain control of your body and mind without tension and effort. Rupert Spira's books are good at exploring awareness, as is Douglas Harding.

POST: Having a hard time understanding Alan Watts.

Maybe read one of his more general easier books like What is Zen? to get a flavour of him first. Or try Rupert Spira's Presence Vol I & II and Douglas Harding's Head Off Stress for another approach to essentially the same fundamental insight. Then you can return to the 'world-level philosophy' stuff.

Remember also that Watts saw himself as a "philosophical entertainer" as much as anything, so often he is having fun and playing with us as well as offering insight. Sometimes, over time, that can obscure rather than help.

...

Q1: Give us an example of a paragraph that you don't understand.

Q2: In the second chapter The Game of Black and White he goes on about how there is an off for every on, an up/down, space/no space, good/bad, etc, etc. I understand that. But I completely blacked out when he started talking about our future as plastic being with inorganic body parts. I couldn't see the correlation between the two clearly.

Q1: There isn't an elegant way to really explain what he's trying to say fully in this chapter, but in my interpretation, he's trying to show all the ways we try to control ourselves and nature, and how futile it is when we don't really know the consequences of our attempts to control things (GMOs as an example).
He's also making the point that all this technological progress doesn't really move us anywhere, and that we're still as unhappy as ever.
Watts' style is to slowly build up his points through metaphors and what-ifs so that you can more deeply see the point he is trying to make. What I wrote up there may be simpler, but it's not nearly as rich. If you don't yet see the connections, just keep going. You'll either see it soon, usually the end of a chapter, or you'll get it later on the toilet or something. :)

Watts' point is that it doesn't really bring us fundamental happiness, if it's bound up with struggle to control. Which I think is fair. I don't think he's against, say, washing machines and computers as such.

It's not clear that the everyday life is much better, though, taken as a whole. Inequality is still massive, and in many respects people have less control over their lives than in earlier times. Every skyscraper that gets built needs a slum somewhere in the world to compensate for it, and that's a situation that only gets more extreme as resources require more effort to extract. Still: Fusion?

Watts' argues that progress is guaranteed or always beneficial. Our current optimistic science view says that "things always get better", we're always pushing history on, we're always on the up. But this isn't really true. Past civilisations were probably a lot nicer to be in than ours. We are ourselves probably hitting the end of a super-cycle, with multi-bump financial collapse on the way, and our global, just-in-time supply-chain dependencies could well be our undoing.

But: The Internet.

I wouldn't fancy going back in time to before The Nice Things!

Q3: Watts' point is that it doesn't really bring us fundamental happiness, if it's bound up with struggle to control. Which I think is fair.
Well, I don't want to get too in-depth about this conversation since we seem to be more in agreement than not. But, one thing:
More or less, I think that alleviating basic material suffering is largely a pre-requisite for achieving the sort of "fundamental happiness" you and Watts are talking about. It may not be possible to convert suffering directly to happiness, but alleviating suffering is an excellent first step towards that conversion.
Sort of like how you can't build a house without a having a foundation first.
As long as a people are still having to spend their days worrying primarily about where their next meal is coming from, any sort of higher enlightenment is all-but impossible. (See also: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.) Once people are comfortable enough to believe they have food, shelter, and clothing for the foreseeable future, their options for personal growth and mental progress become far greater.
And since those struggles for control are also based largely in day-to-day material needs, this suggests that further alleviation of such basic suffering should (hopefully) lead to fewer harmful struggles over control of those materials. ie, No one cares who "owns" a river, if everyone nearby still has access to it.
Just look at how, in the last 70 years, Europe has gone from 2,000+ years of effectively nonstop warfare to being a relatively stable, prosperous, and peaceful united community. And the defacto leader (or first-among-equals) of the EU today is the country that, 70 years ago, was considered among the most evil and harmful in all of history. Now that's karmic progress! :->
(OK, that was kinda in-depth after all...)

That was an enjoyable read! We pretty much do agree.

Although I'd perhaps add that before people started living to 80 years old, they were happy enough living to 40 years old. In that sense "happiness" is context-based.

Sure, we might also say that "enlightenment" is possible in all circumstances, because it's insight-led - but certainly being well-fed and having access to infinite informational resources makes it more likely. Not being afraid of "death at any moment" surely is beneficial overall for lots of things!

The quest for control moves its target as society changes. Before, it was about making people dig holes in fields for framing, by physical intimidation. Much later, it was about having them support the interest of the powerful (such as consumerism as a strategy for managing "overproduction") by psychological manipulation. Today, it's about the use of both, because the tide of recent progress is receding again. "Human resources" are the basic energy input to high society. In each case, everyone strives to have power over their own existence, and this always requires (even if implicitly) having power over others' existence in support of that. While resources are plentiful, only the lower level really sees suffering; everyone is given a practical level of freedom. In tighter times, the ladders are drawn up, and the illusion of progress for all is shattered.

Viewing "technology" not only as material but also psychological, then we might say that "technology" and "progress" doesn't lead to happiness or not - rather, the extent to which we are free to be ourselves and determine our lives does. And that has varied wildly over time.

(Ah. Went on a bit there...)

POST: "The universe gives you what you need, not necessarily what you want". Alot of questions regarding purpose of life, universe, reason.

You infer purpose and your character from the thoughts that appear in your mind, the actions you end up doing, and the circumstances that arise in your environment.

Your purpose is what you end up doing, if left to 'unfold' without interfering with yourself.

Everything else is theorising.

POST: [serious] Do you believe that free will exists?

The point is really that your decisions should be the best decisions possible. You don't want to be free to do just anything random, you want to be free to do "the best thing".

That involves having the most information, the most accurate and comprehensive information, feeding into your decisions. If you focus on the mind, you will make decisions based on theory. If you focus on the body, you will make decisions based on emotion. If you expand your awareness to "all that is", though, then your decisions will take into account everything: the universe.

So really the only decision you ever need to make is to say "yes" to letting go, releasing your narrow attention, and letting the universe act through you - because that is going to be the best decision, the ideal path anyway.

From the Richard Linklater film Waking Life (transcript here [Deleted]):

Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time is actually just this constant saying 'No' to God's invitation. I mean that's what time is. I mean, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's two thousand and one. And there's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in.
...actually this is the narrative of everyone's life. That, you know, behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes." All of life is like, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you." then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace." I mean, that's the journey. I mean, everyone gets to the "yes" in the end, right?

TL;DR: Do I have a choice?

POST: Synchronicity and the forces of change.

Q: my parents are around the same age as yours. i've talked about synchronicity a few times with my mother before, more of just how it is a peculiar phenomenon. i was in england (which to me is a pretty magical place to being with) with her a few months ago and that whole vacation was like the most synchronicity i ever experienced. every single day we would talk about a topic and then boom we'd see it referenced all over the place. it was actually pretty crazy and mystical in it's own way. i went on that trip in june and it really did me a lot of good, got me out of a slump. i live in quebec and last winter was just a long rough cold shitty winter. i was really just bummed out by the end of it. not so much depressed, but just down. but after that vacation i felt rejuvenated. my thinking was more 'psychedelic'. i could see more possibilities, i was more positive.
but ya even before that my mom had said she most definitely experienced it. though i didn't really delve into discussing any deeper meaning about it with her. i'm still not totally convinced that most of the times i've experienced it that it was not just purely coincidence. funny thing is i've had the exact same thing happen while watching jeopardy too. i'd be talking with my mother and right there the topic we're discussing turns out to be in one of the questions. that is another layer of synchronicity between you and i now haha.
it's definitely an interesting thing when it happens. not sure what to make of the whole thing. to me surely everything is connected, i experienced that, but i don't know if one thing makes the other happen if you know what i mean.
my bad for the long drawn out post, i'm kind of just venting. but there's one more thing i'll say since it sort of falls into this topic of having a sort of 'epiphany' and trying to share it with people, and with me going on a vacation.. well, i think at this point it was two years ago, i had went on a 3 or 4 week long vacation with my best friend. we went through europe and it was just amazing. i had so much fun and i was seeing all sorts of interesting, new things. well anyway, by the end of that vacation it was like a fucking psychedelic trip! i don't know what the hell happened to me, but i have not been able to feel like that since. i honestly would say i hit the closest i have possibly come to being 'enlightened', without really using any drugs either. but as soon as i got back home and started interacting with 'normal' people again, had to go back to work, etc, it all faded! in a matter of weeks, i was back where i started. and then this past winter, i even hit new lows! what point does this have to do with your post? well, i guess i was trying to to share what i was experiencing and people would just brush it off. and eventually it got to the point that i no longer felt that way. so in a way maybe these experiences are so personal that it doesn't matter what other people think and trying to explain it actually takes the meaning out of it.

That was a good rant, got me thinking.

I don't think one thing causes the other, so much as "they are aspects of the same pattern", or something like that; it's all one thing.

I wonder if being with other people, in a clockwork daily life, just wipes out that sense of connectedness or wonder or whatever it is; it seems to close you back up and make you withdraw. Maybe because daily life tends not to be very stimulating, it's on repeat? The feeling of adventure and looking fades away.

POST: The thin line of self reflection

Why try to stop thoughts? They're just part of the environment. Let them be - unless it's a particularly useful one. They'll settle down by themselves, just as - say - muscular tension settles down if your stop fiddling with it. If you fight something, you imply an opponent, and a fighting-back. Better to accept the content of experience, release focus and settle perspective to the background awareness again. Good point that thoughts imply character or the structure of ego, though. But is enough that the thought appears and you recognise it; you don't need to do anything about it.

POST: If we are all God...

Not having a belief system makes it incredibly hard to set up any meaningful goals and pursue them.

This is difficult. After much messing about, and playing with 'subjective idealism' (dream-world) stuff and so on, I figured that if almost everything is arbitrary than what matters is what I am experiencing. So goals should be able the experiences you want to have, rather than things and 'achievements'. And the way to set experiences as goals is to spend regular time imagining them from a 1st person perspective, summoning the feeling of already having the experience - a la the old Neville Goddard 'adopt the feeling of the wish fulfilled approach (retro here [http://www.prayertheartofbelieving.com/]).

EDIT: This conversation reminds me of an experiment blogger Steve Pavlina tried, where he adopted the belief of a 'subjective dreamworld' and tried it out, with various results [https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/09/hacking-reality-subjective-objectivity/]. There was a three part Q&A in response to readers [https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/subjective-reality-qa/] and related articles [https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/your-own-private-universe/] vs lucid dreaming [https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/09/subjective-reality-vs-solipsism/].

Q1: Watts said that if you were God, you would probably eventually end up losing yourself just for the thrill of it.

Q2: I would definitely like to believe this to be true. :)

Q3: Could God create a creature capable of forgetting that it is God?

Q2: No doubt he could, the question I want to know is why.

For the adventure! Because he knows he'll wake up afterwards, and remember it's an illusion, it doesn't matter what happens in the dream. "Whew! What a ride!", he'll exclaim. And dive in again.

...

Q4: Okay. No. Stop this bullshit where you pretend that thousands of people dying of starvation, people sawing off other people's heads and the millions of other horrors that make up this existence are somehow 'perfect'. That's just bullshit.
I think Bhuddist philosophy (this whole, life is suffering ergo suffering is a okay) is just as damaging as any Christan dogma ever was. The Spanish Inquisition was nasty, but this 'all is okay' clap trap explains that it doesn't even matter!
It's a philosophy for the intellectually lazy, the smug and the easily satisfied and I don't believe it's okay for one second. And I'm pretty sure you wouldn't either if you were to truly experience the horror of what some people's lives actually are.
The top post on this comment is a ridiculous dismissal of all that is by comparing the suffering of millions to 'god mode' on a video game. As I type this, there's the statistical likelihood that several hundred people are being raped and murdered. That's not fucking okay, and no amount of saying everything is perfect and humming a bit is going to change that.
The world is not a dream. The world is not perfect. The world is inhabited by fierce and perverted monkey creatures some of whom thrive on death and mayhem and pain and there's nothing 'perfect' about that.

Is that really what Buddhism says? I had to look it up, mind:

When we encounter phenomena, and have a feeling of dislike, worry or pain, we say that there is "suffering". This should not be generalised to "all life is suffering", because there is also a lot of happiness in life! Noises are disturbing but nice melodies bring happiness. When one is sick, poor, separated from loved ones, one has suffering. But when one is healthy, wealthy, together with one’s family, one is very happy. Suffering and happiness exist in all phenomena. Actually where there is happiness, there will be suffering. They are in contrast with each other. If’ we only say that life is suffering when things do not go according to our wish we are rather foolish.
The Buddha says, "Life is suffering". What does "suffering" mean? The sutras say: "Impermanence therefore suffering". Everything is impermanent and changeable. The Buddha says that life is suffering because it is impermanent and ever-changing. For example, a healthy body cannot last forever. It will gradually become weak, old. sick and die.
One who is wealthy cannot maintain one’s wealth forever. Sometimes one may become poor. Power and status do not last as well, one will lose them finally. From this condition of changing and instability, although there is happiness and joy, they are not ever lasting and ultimate. When changes come, suffering arises.

Seems more like, "life involves change, nothing is permanent, the experience of change is unpleasant".

The world is a dream, in the sense that we overlay our thoughts on top of our experience and so perceive our views rather than what is there. It is perfect in the sense that it is all in balance and working together in harmony (food chains, etc).

POST: How I believe time works

[POST]

The "Zipper" represents (you in) the present.

It binds all the possibilities to make one true reality.

It goes from bottom to top.

Adding perspective to it.

Looks like a book, doesnt it?

The book gets bigger and bigger every seconds.

It's huge.

Here's the book.

[END OF POST]

Q: [Deleted]

I agree, nicely put.

Thinking-about something requires that you turn it into conceptual objects and arrange them relative to one another in space. We end up with "moments" and "timelines" and "branches" and "dimensions" and so on. But those are mental diagrams of an idea called "time". If you check your actual experience, you cannot find that "time" at all, except when you think about it. In other words, it's only ever a concept. Time only exists upon reflection.

Time is a conceptual pattern (an idea about change) upon which we hang other conceptual patterns (ideas about events). We create pretend objects then put them in a pretend relationship. It's still fun to play with though, and I doodle with that sort of thing all the time (ahem [The Infinite Grid of All Possible Moments]).

POST: Continuity

[POST]

O this post could be so long but I'm going to make it brief. How much value do you guys place on continuity in your experience? Would you trade continuity for super powers? How about bliss? Nirvana?

[END OF POST]

Discontinuity all the way.

Wow, a discussion on a 6 day old thread nice! I agree, discontinuity allows more freedom in a way, and in a sense the continuity we experience is kind of imagined. I mean, we are never the same as we were, we just think we are. Makes me feel a little less sad about losing one of my favourite notebooks (believe it or not the same notebook from my story on glitch_in_the_matrix, which I take it you read) where I wrote down a lot of my passions and dreams. They're bound to change anyway, but still it hurts.. I want it to show up. I guess that's me wanting continuity. I'm a conflicted soul in this way.

Was browsing and the title caught my attention (I love the idea of "discontinuities).
Anyway -

• We are always the same "background", but the content changes.

Discontinuities in the content would make life far more flexible. If you don't mind things appearing/disappearing, your circumstances changing dramatically, your environment shifting - you can have everything, potentially! But you can also lose everything, potentially. If you are willing to let your world be that ephemeral, then one moment may not lead to the next. All vision might fade...

Thing is, where was that notebook when it wasn't in your hands? It was just a thought in your head (or actually, a 'background feeling/knowing'). The thing itself wasn't anywhere. You never had it in the first place, much.

But, yeah, I know what you mean. Losing things hollows out a bit of your emotional self/content, and leaves a gap. A petit mort! Time for a magickal spell, perhaps, to have it re-materialise?

EDIT: Have you thought about how you might capitalise on/create discontinuities?

Isn't the world already that ephemeral, it's just I don't perceive it to be.. yet?

Yes, it is, I would say.

The Model

My general model for this is, quickly:

• Think of yourself as the background of experience, the 'awareness' in which it arises.
• Experiences arise, and leave traces.
• Those traces then structure subsequent experiences, leaving traces, deepening patterns, creating tendencies.
• Unfolded objects > enfolded forms > unfolded objects > . . .
• Experiences then tend towards stability => objects and narrative.
• We could call these laws (apparent physical laws, cause and effect), habits (repeated actions) and beliefs (lighter patterns structuring our perception).
• But: There is no "real" underneath. Like hypnogogia before sleep, sparkles > fragments > images > objects > environments > dreams. Randomness becomes stability, unfolding both deterministically and creatively.

Anyway, with that out the way, the content of our experience is just that, it's just what we perceive and nothing more. Objects are made of "eyes and fingers", with no solid backing.

In a lucid dream, if you declare a new fact (state a new belief) and don't resist it, the experience comes to be. Content aligns with your beliefs. I think that waking life is very similar, albeit more stable and sluggish, because it has been around a lot longer than your dreams; it has solidified. But all that is preventing a complete discontinuity isn't the continuousness of content - that is illusory - it is the stability of the beliefs or 'enfolded forms' in awareness.

The Implication

If you start tinkering with your beliefs and expectations, your experiences tend to adjust. You get coincidences and synchronicities. It's as if your world tries its best to "line up" with what you've decided the facts should be. This is how "magickal traditions" all work at their root.

But the kicker: Adopting a new belief, or "inserting new facts", is easy: you simply declare the new truth. No effort required. However, you must completely let go of resistance to what happens, to the change, and to the new idea. (Fun free book by Alan Chapman which discusses similar ideas, here.)

That's quite frightening. Anything could happen.

Getting extreme and unlikely: Say something happened in the past and you'd like to change it. Say you could, by simply lying down, letting go completely, and declaring it so - say you could suddenly find yourself "reset" to that time. Would you do it? If I told you (I'm not, but as an emotional experiment) that this could be done. Would you? I reckon you'd find it hard to make yourself do it. The implications for the reality of your surroundings, what "people" really are, etc, are pretty disconcerting!

An Experiment

You should try an experiment, via the Alan Chapman book maybe. Simply declare: "My book will come to me this month" or "My book is coming to me this month" - it has to be worded as a present fact - and let that become true to you. ;-)

Note: It's about the feeling of it being true, rather than imagining it in pictures or whatever. Simply the statement, and the acceptance of the feeling. It's a fun experiment. Whether it works, who can tell - - -

I've experimented a bit with discontinuities, but you have to be careful. The truths you adopt really do have an effect: So, if you start thinking poorly of yourself, for instance, then things line up very quickly to prove you right! I've seen depressive people enter massive doom-spirals because of that.

So it's important to "think positive" - but not in the cheesy, "positive thinking" way - rather, in adopting a positive, desirable vision for your life as a feeling. (A bit like old Neville Goddard's idea.)

Thank you very, very much for this reply. I feel you've given me an outline to something huge and obviously life-changing. I'm interested in what you have said, and am going to probably study this comment for quite a while. If what you are claiming is true, I want to use it for love and light and the unification of awareness with the best possible experience for it, which I currently imagine to be a really kickass story. Perhaps I am naive in thinking this way, but it is how I feel, and normally I'd say I can't change that - but I suppose according to you I can. Still, there are facets of this narrative I'd like to explore. There is a woman... I have a feeling things will start to get really, well, unpredictable, when I finally encounter her again. I suppose I'm preparing myself for that. Again, thank you for taking the time to explain all this to me, I truly appreciate you sharing your knowledge. It's nice to be able to discuss concepts that most would deem insane or unrealistic. It makes me feel freer just by doing so.

Well, personal experience is the key - decide for yourself what is true for you. Take on other people's ideas and see what they add to your own understanding/knowing. Yeah, 'love and light', that's the way.

And remember you have to live the humdrum aspects of life as well as the more random/exciting/bizarre ones, while you are still in amongst it! :-)

Have fun - - -

POST: Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? | Oliver Burkeman | Science

A1: I'm working on it, shmeesh, hold your horses.

A2: I'm working on my thesis at the moment, here is an early draft:

Haha, spectacular.

...

To Dennett’s opponents, he is simply denying the existence of something everyone knows for certain: their inner experience of sights, smells, emotions and the rest.

Part of the problem is maybe this idea of "inner experience". To me, all my experience appears in a conscious, aware space. So in a way, all of my experiences are inner - that chair over there, that thought over here. There's no separation. But I can't detect an outer in my experience, so really they aren't inner either. This is the background to all experience. Consciousness isn't a thing, it's a context. (Any thoughts I have about my-"self", George, also appear within that context. Which means those are just concepts and not the "real me".)

"To look for a real, substantive thing called consciousness, Dennett argues, is as silly as insisting that characters in novels, such as Sherlock Holmes or Harry Potter, must be made up of a peculiar substance named “fictoplasm”

Which is funny. But highlights the problem: those characters appear in my awareness too when I read about them. In other words, Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter are made from consciousness. If consciousness is not a "thing", but rather the material from which experience is shaped, then it's either an error or a straw-man argument to dismiss consciousness by categorising it as such.

It’s like asserting that cancer doesn’t exist, then claiming you’ve cured cancer.

It's more like asserting that words and sentences don't exist, using words and sentences.

Well, it certainly doesn't help that our only means of expressing consciousness is mediated by language... a tool of consciousness.

Well, I guess... art? Art and the felt-sense.

But, yeah, as soon as we are using division or objects in our communication, we are already in trouble. How can something point to something that it is made from?

I've actually considered art before, but if you think about it, an artist can never paint anything that fully depicts his entire knowledge/understanding of art

I agree, but I think we can capture "meaning" in art, felt meaning. Sure, not the fundamental truth (because that is what the art is made from, not what it depicts), but it allows us a deeper connection than language.

. . .but as soon as we think about it, we begin to attach all of our comfortable symbols and concepts to the experience we're trying to describe, and we taint it in the process.

Yes, I think that's spot on. Even sitting quietly on our sofa, we can relax into this open feeling, but as soon as we think about it we "ripple the water" as it were. Direct perception and thinking occur in the same space, so to perceive clearly you have to let yourself settle - no forcing, no trying. That's why "there is no technique".

I'd be interested if this was also true for near death experiences...

Lots of them still seem very "content-based". Sometimes people feel peaceful, they often have a sense of a greater connected space, but it seems they are still having an object-based experience. Maybe there's a balance to be had between giving yourself to the experience, and holding back a bit. This might make the difference between dying and not, though...

It's a real shame that the Guardian article is so inaccurate.
I strongly recommend you read Consciousness Explained - it's a killer book and I think you'd have a great time with it.
In particular, Dennett does NOT claim that consciousness doesn't exist. What he's against is the Cartesian theatre model of consciousness, where a "little man" sits in your brain telling you what to do.

I did read it (about 10 years ago) and its "multiple drafts" model. It's a very enjoyable book actually; he's a smart guy with a nice style. As I recall, the problem with Dennett is actually that he's talking about content not consciousness.

It's quite a nice model for describing the formation of the apparent world as experienced in one's first-person "aware space". In fact, it's pretty close to the idea that our experience is an "ongoing dream 'inspired by' the senses". (The nature and location of "the senses" is another matter.)

But because he's determined to infer what consciousness is from that, he ends up clashing; just as he does when he confuses directed introspection with thinking-about, and therefore sees construction rather than observation. (He really implicitly assumes that we can only apprehend the content or patterns, but this is not true.)

In any other area, it would be a good approach: See what is there, then derive the terms from that. In this special area though, "what is there" and the thing being "explained" (consciousness) are the same thing and therefore outside of your examination, because it is that which all examinations are also made from. Which means in some ways that having a theory about consciousness is meaningless. One can only have theories about patterns within consciousness; that which awareness is aware of, as and within itself. In fact, I think this is exactly true. Now, it's been a while since I read him, so maybe I am misrepresenting!

POST: What are some of your "out there", unconventional thoughts about this reality and your own consciousness?

This life is a dream and each of us is a small fraction of the dreamer. Anything is possible. Nothing is forbidden. But what we do to each other, we do to ourselves.

I like this efficient way of saying it. Do you see yourself as the dreamer?

Hahaha my ego wishes! No, I think we are literally one God-soul, lost within itself.

Yeah, "Phwahaha, you are all my obedient puppets now!" :-)

Doesn't that mean you are the dream character and the dreamer and the dream environment? Meaning "duck_amuck" is a character who borrows his power from the dream, as it were, but he's still the dream and the dreamer too - just as /u/duck_amuck borrows his power from Reddit.

Actually, I quite like that idea, and it fits experience a bit:

Characters borrow their power, so they can only "submit requests" for what they want to do to the larger dream, hoping that the dream will then move them as requested. All the while, of course, they are actually the larger dream all along, pretending they have to ask...?

Here's a picture of duck_amuck hanging out with a chickeny pal, pretending to be separate.

EDIT: Better: They are the larger dream, having confused themselves into thinking they are the character.

Lol to the pic.
But yeah, something like that... Ego is the character. Self is the dreamer. Self has unlimited power, but the character is the one driving the story within its limited scope/means/belief systems.

Self-ego-character, sounds about right. "Big Self, Little Self". Would make a good title for a children's esoteric television show.

Another way is to rebrand this. Self is the universe. Ego is just a bit of that universe. What we call "you" is just the sphere of attention, perimeter of experience we are currently maintaining. We think that we are "ego" when we localise on the region of body-space where selfish thoughts seem to arise (typically, towards the rear of the head); we think we are the universe when we dissolve the perimeter; in-between and we think we make "connections" and have non-local paranormal powers.

Idk what in your post made me think of it, but it's too bad there's not a legit mystery school teaching today... The realization of consciousness and the tools to work with it should be available to everyone.

Yes. There are lots of 'cult-type' efforts and 'self-help' arrangements, but there's nothing legitimate. In school, we don't even teach the history of religions and beliefs/worldviews anymore (as opposed to the content). I am very interested in seeing insights brought into modern, accessible language, together with investigative approaches ('exercises' without any nonsense) a person can use to discover themselves and the world. People like Rupert Spira attempt this to some extent, but somehow it doesn't cover the whole subject (life!) for me.

POST: Just a reminder: There's nowhere to run.

[POST]

:D

[END OF...POST?]

:-/

A1: When you can fly, there is no need to run.

A2: When you can exist in all places at once, there is no need to fly.

A1: When you are both nothing and everything, there is no need to exist in all places at once.

A2: When you simply are, there is no need.

* * *

TG Comments: Misc Communities

POST: Tell us what you didn't like about the ME Sub (/r/Retconned/)

Just to interject:

It's probably worth including a link to the thread where that comment came from, just for context, since it also contains a few other thoughts that might be of interest to this subreddit. (Which I'm fairly supportive of overall, I might add, regarding its idea of providing a place who want to adopt a particular perspective and run with it.)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/4sr6s0/wheres_new_sub_post/d5bswdx?context=3]

Note that while it's true that I don't share a belief that MEs/REs are "necessarily dimension hopping", the reasons for that are more subtle than one might assume, in that I think it might be missing the point, rather than be wrong. After all, I also moderate other non-mainstream subreddits which encourage pushing at the limits of our assumptions, so it's not like I'm exactly a major promoter of the default story when it comes to unusual experiences!

Are you the guy who started the mandelaeffect sub? Because I remember a thread by the guy who started it...

No, I joined as a moderator quite late on. Was asked to help out when the subscriber count exploded and things got totally out of hand due to mentions in the media and in the default subs. (I did a redesign, wrote a proper sidebar, set up filtering, helped do a troll purge, that sort of thing.)

Was there a reason given as to why you specifically were asked to help moderate, notably above many other much more active contributors?

As I remember it, I'd just done a tidy up for /r/glitch_in_the_matrix and in a comment thread I made some suggestions for getting the place under control along the same lines. So that involved a new sidebar and definition and rules, making /r/MetaMandela as a place where all the nonsense could go, and so on, and then doing a purge of all the trolls that had invaded from elsewhere. Following that, I've not had a whole lot to do with ongoing moderation other than keeping the tech side up to date, sharing thoughts occasionally. I wrote the current experience-focused definition to try and have the subreddit be "explanation agnostic" - in any direction. I can't really speak to its enforcement though, except in cases where I've picked up on reported posts myself or whatever. But I have to say: it's not an easy subreddit to moderate without it having an official view and having 10K subscribers. Which is why this might fare better for those who share a perspective. In particular, it'll maybe have less of an issue keeping it on topic (reports of experiences, suggestions for models and mechanisms) and avoiding it descending into a constant "us vs them battle for truth" narrative where people just fight from a group perspective rather have a discussion. I think the sub gets messages from all "sides" complaining that they are being penalised for defending themselves (the answer being, perhaps: if it's got to that stage, the thread is pretty much already ruined and off topic). Again, I can't speak to your own experience really.

Interesting that you are fairly supportive of our effort at providing a place for those who are taking a particular perspective (that this is not false memory). But there is at least one mod over there who is not taking that stance. I have been banned from commenting, and it seems like the only reason is that I created this sub.

The way I see it is that the /r/MandelaEffect is a general subreddit about the effect - the experiences, the theories, the thoughts about it - but it is not specifically for those who have experienced it or who take a particular view. It's a bit like a forum about "God" where people of all religions, plus atheists and also philosophers who challenge the very meaning of the concept, get to participate. And so sometimes that gets heated because people are speaking from emotionally-charged positions which are sometimes polar opposites. Not always conducive to collaborative discussion! These subreddits, on the other hand, would be more like a "support group" model (loosely speaking). However, you have to be realistic here: the moderators of the main/original subreddit quite reasonably aren't that keen to have people posting to the effect of "this subreddit's shit, come over to our subreddit instead". When the idea was of a private subreddit for deeper discussion, that wasn't a problem so much. When it became a public one also, then naturally people advertising it without selling it as a fully distinct topic is going to be less well-received - it's seen as spam. (One thread fine, perhaps, but the number of "meta" posts was generally getting out of hand, as I understand it, with constant "us vs them battle for truth" narrative posts getting reported.)

It might have been beneficial to almost do away with a reference to the Mandela Effect and the other subreddit altogether - the term comes with so much baggage now anyway - and just go all out for a variant of the "glitch in the matrix experiences involving memory and world facts" definition.

If I ran a subreddit for people managing a disease, say cancer...

Hmm, if cancer was something that you could only know for sure existed when you yourself had it, maybe. The core issue, the thing that causes all the trouble, is that if you've not had an ME experience then there are no other signs for you that the ME actually exists. Perhaps a better comparison would be "enlightenment" or, until relatively recently, lucid dreaming?

But overall the concept is right: that's why I said that this was like a "support group" model - for people who have been through a "trauma" (not quite) that only other people who've had similar experiences can truly understand.

Also, I wouldn't expect the cancer subreddit to feel any need to tell the cancer-denier subreddit what it is up to. Respect needs to be mutual, no?

That is where my suggestion of avoiding linking this too much with the Mandela Effect (the term, not the subreddit) comes from. Then we have two distinct forums exploring "memory-related phenomenon" in their own way. The subreddits themselves stay friendly, and those interested in such things have two distinct venues: a general argumentative "about" one with some baggage (old subreddit), and a specific more "personal" one with a fresh take (this subreddit). This would be greatly helped by not having them link one another, thus tempting one view to "educate" the other? (Speaking off the top of my head there, really.)

The ME sub really has been overtaken by people who have no valid arguments...

I have to say, though, that problem with posts from all perspectives is a lack of detail and solid thinking. That applies to people describing their experiences (they usually don't actually do this, they just announce that something is different), and people attributing to "memory error" or "reality shift" (they don't say how, exactly, it accounts for the details of specific examples). This is one reason why people who haven't had an experience wonder what all the fuss is about: rarely does someone explain it from a personal experience perspective, usually there is an argument in the abstract, which may, eventually result in indignant resort to specific details (by which time it's buried deep in the exchange).

Any intelligent discourse is downvoted and ridiculed. It's pretty disgusting actually. But, it sounds like y'all are fine with it and that works for me...

Well, that's not quite fair...

Downvoting is outside of everyone's control, unfortunately. It might be disgusting, but literally the entire internet can casually downvote any post, unless you go private. It's not okay, but it's also not solvable. The ridicule is not okay either and we try to weed it out - but...

As you might discover here eventually if you're unlucky, if you've got 10K subscribers and mainstream exposure, you end up with tens or hundreds of casual one-off visitors who engage in one snarky exchange. Unless you literally pre-filter every comment, there's always an element of it gets through before someone reports it, or it gets cleaned up. Which leads to...

We will have to continue linking the RetCon name to ME though, not necessarily on your sub, but it's an important part of making people aware of the bigger picture.

For sure - the point I was making was that the term "Mandela Effect" is somewhat tarnished, and that, in fact, is what leads to the bulk of our casual trolls I think. Its baggage also attracts people who have a very specific and heartfelt view of what the explanation is - not false memories, but definitely this-exact-thing - and sometimes that can present an issue too. So I was suggesting that you might relieve yourself of some of the pain the other subreddit endures if you avoid making yourself seem like an "ME subreddit", but rather more like a "glitch" subreddit of which the ME is one possible example (which is the approach the actual glitch subreddit takes, really). So, to finish up on that, you might well find that running a public subreddit is a bit trickier in the details than you might imagine: downvoting can't be prevented, casual trolling can't be prevented in advance, the "us vs them" setup usually isn't as clear cut as it first appears, and unless everyone completely agrees on the details of a subject you usually find that emotionally-charged exchanges to happen and it's often not obvious where the cut-off point should be. (And if everyone does agree, it's often not very intellectually productive of course.)

Basically I'm saying, unless you stay niche, you'll likely find it "ain't as easy as it looks". How would you cope if all the /r/MandelaEffect audience started checking out this place, or if it got the high profile (mentions in the media, mentions in default subreddits) that produces the waves of passing trade that /r/MandelaEffect suffers from? It's worth considering. So: you might want to deliberately make decisions that help keep you low-profile.

I get the feeling you are playing good cop since their bad cop routine didn't work.

Eh?

My point about detail wasn't about your own posts particularly - several posters do take the time to be more in-depth - just an observation that generally speaking people posting experiences rarely take the time to emphasise the actual experience and the specific personal memories involved , and people posting theories (including "false memory" or "confirmation bias" type theories) tend to present a categorisation rather than an actual description or model. For example, if someone has the experience of a map changing, then it's important to say why they think that is so - what they experience of noticing is like, and why they are certain that there is something going on. Like, if you were a geography fan from childhood and had a wall map in your bedroom, used to memorise all the places, always planned to go trips and so on, then one day years later you see a TV programme and the map looks different - hmm! - you look at other maps and they are "wrong" too, then you check out your childhood map and it is "wrong" too. This is not confusion due to different projections and so on!

And most importantly: the detailed description underlines that this is not an example of a "kinda maybe sorta thought it was probably always 'that' way" memory vagueness; you have specific personal memories of events which involve the fact. You get the idea. Meanwhile, do you really think (and I'm not necessarily doubting it, I just want to hear why, if so) that there is some deliberate push to suppress discussion of this sort of thing, for some sort of purpose? As opposed to just the usual contempt people have for things which conflict with their worldview or personal identity, and people on a mission to "defend science" (which is a ridiculous notion, of course)?

For instance, the "guerilla skeptics" which organise themselves to ensure Wikipedia stays "correct" (see her talk here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FuJT9mp0jw], interview here [https://dataskeptic.com/epnotes/ep012.php]). There would be a difference between this and an effort to "suppress the truth", because the latter suggest there is a truth that people know and are trying to keep quiet, whereas these people don't believe there's anything to it they are just extremely focused on pushing "science" and "rational thought" in sort of abstract way.

Thank you so much for taking the time to engage in a dialogue about your sub. I'm sure some of our readers will find the information helpful. But, as you said, helping to moderate a public sub takes a lot of attention and that's really what I should be focusing on right now. Thanks again and good luck.

No problem, was happy to respond to your points and clarify as appropriate. All the best.

...

Personally, I have never sworn or spoken that detrimentally about the ME sub. I was banned for creating an alternative. And we have moved away from the Mandela name for just that reason. [https://retconeffect.wordpress.com/home]

No, I'm quite sure you haven't (I don't know the background to that, unfortunately). What I meant was, I think it might have been better to not pitch it as an "alternative" at all, and just as a new thing, when announcing it on that subreddit (after messaging the mods of course). It's a bit late now, but I would have happily helped tweak the wording to avoid conflict - beneficial for everyone. It also might have helped save you from the troll/downvoting influx that comes with this. (You should get your AutoModerator up and running sooner rather than later.)

Anyway, what's done is done. I've always quite liked the "retcon" concept in media, and it evokes the idea of "revision" which is used in other contexts, so that's a good choice to build something new upon I think.

POST: Did the Two Cups Intention Method from /r/DimensionalJumping Last Night... and Woke Up Today Filled With Negative Emotions and Hostility (/r/Retconned/)

(Oops, you deleted your post in the other subreddit just as I was replying, so I'll put my response here in case you find it useful.)

You're overthinking this, I'd say. And "spiritual contracts" and "negative vibrations" have nothing to do with this - or, at least, you should very carefully consider what those concepts have to offer in terms of a useful accounting of your experiences, rather than simply accept such ideas at face value. If you've performed the two glasses exercise, then the only result that matters is whether, at some later time, the intended result arises within your experience (or not). It is problematic to attempt to attribute any other experience to the exercise: it can quickly lead to all sorts of superstitious type thinking, since any reasons you come up with are inevitably going to be completely ungrounded in actual experience. That is, you'll probably just be free-wheeling all sorts of vague ideas based on whatever you have previously read, but never actually experienced personally. For instance, do not assume that this exercise is based upon occult ideas or multiverses and the like.

My suggestion: follow the last instruction, let it go, and deal with any specific outcomes as they arise, and not before.

POST: Ever heard of r/DimensionalJumping? (/r/threekings/)

Q1: The interesting thing about it is that if you read their methods, they are just standard magick to get you the things you want. That raises questions: are they interpreting simple magick working as "dimension jumping"? Does all magick work through dimension jumping and we don't realize it? Are they both doing normal magick AND dimension jumping in addition to that because that is the intent?
I'm leaning toward the lasst one, because I've never experienced other abnormalities (things being "different" after a ritual/spell), other than the purpose of the ritual/spell coming to fruition. Then again, I wasn't looking for them, so I don't know.

The underlying concept of that subreddit was, in fact, partly to encourage an exploration into whether the idea of "methods" (and related notions) was valid at all. And, from there, to seek to unpack the nature of "experiences" and the nature of descriptions about experiences.

Making a distinction between those two "natures" - and investigating the relationship between them - tends to highlight that taking concepts like "dimensional jumping" and "magick" or whatever as literal independent things might be an error. And so talking about "dimensional jumping" being a version (or not) of a "simple magick working" can be a bit meaningless, if all that is truly meant by "magick" is just a way of talking conceptually about certain sorts of experiences. The basic assumption that there is anything "behind" experiences, and the descriptions can somehow capture that "behind", might be... unsupported.

Which isn't to say that those descriptions aren't useful - for discussion and planning and designing and so on. But they are not "what is happening" (itself possibly a dubious idea). After all, the basic common everyday description of being a person-object located within a world-place (where "the world" is taken to be a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time' that is made from 'parts'") is certainly useful. But it is perhaps not really true as a direct experience, when we check.

That "checking" was really what the metaphor (?) of "dimension jumping" was intended to promote, as presented in the subreddit anyway. Note that "metaphor" doesn't mean you can't have experiences that are patterned exactly "as if" something is true; it's just that it is not fundamentally true. Descriptions might not capture experiences, but they might have utility in structuring them. And so on.

Q2: I'm just curious. Why make the subreddit a read only archive? It was an interesting sub until it closed down. The new r/DimensionJumping isn't that active.

That "new" subreddit isn't really even the new subreddit (it's not a continuation).

The thinking behind making it a read-only archive:

The original idea that developed was that the subreddit would be fairly unmoderated in terms of posts, but we'd bash things out in the comments section, via dialogue. So it was basically "moderation by contribution" (of moderators and regular participants who'd been around for a while). This worked well when there was only a few active contributors, slowly increasing. I personally spent a lot of time engaging in quite detailed conversations (in the sense of leading an investigation, not dictating conclusions) and so did many others.

However, eventually (as often happens for niche topics) the subreddit got swamped with users - often via indirect links - who didn't read any previous discussions or the intro material before posting, leading to repeated questions and/or a naive idea of the subreddit based just on its name. The volume meant that the old model just didn't work anymore. That number of pseudo-one-on-one couldn't happen in parallel.

The reason for "archiving" the subreddit rather than letting it just continue, is that letting it run on would dilute the material that had arisen within the subreddit. It would continue its march into a general sort of "new-agey/LOA/magick" hybrid and the residual value would be gone. Better, it was thought, to lock that down, and others could continue their more literal idea of "dimensional jumping" elsewhere - and, eventually, we'd continue the core thread in another forum, with a different approach to moderation and contribution.

POST: 2 cups method question (/r/DimensionShifting/)

If I recall correctly:

Given that the "two cups method" (originally: two glasses exercise) was intended as a demonstration exercise targeting the nature of experience and the nature of ideas about experience, the thinking behind suggesting that one should not do it too often would be that it's best to leave some space to more easily, more accurately, observe whether performing it has a link with subsequent changes in experience -- or not.

That's why it was an "exercise" rather than a "method": it can't really be a "method" until it's been proven to actually cause change. And if it does actually cause change (a view that may or may not be arrived at via repeated, distinct experiments) then there are probably more interesting conclusions to draw other than "let's pour more glasses of water to change the world" or similar. :-)

Q1: I don't think it was u/triumphantgeorge as they have a specific idea about dimension jumping that was more based on the importance of discussion not the reality or fixation on the dimension jumping. I don't recall the post you are mentioning, though I am sure someone wrote something along those lines.
Everyday you choose to do something different you are making a jump. Dimension jumping is just another tool. Action of one kind or another is required for you to grow, but the universe always responds to our action.

Yep, pretty much.

Q2: Now that I make you back into Reddit or maybe I just intentionally shifted to a version where you are already back, I wanted to ask you about this exercise of yours. Did you invented this exercise or you take it from somewhere else and explain it with your own words?

I made it up. It was originally written as a quick response in a GITM thread, later slightly tidied up for the DJ subreddit when I fully took that over. It's just an example of pattern-linking really, but it has the benefit of being easily performed plus extremely mundane -- and that's quite an effective combination in an exercise designed for exploring this area.

Q2: Ok, did you still keep that gitm thread, it will be nice to see how it was born, on other note is it connected to Wicca spells. Also I'm curious from what standpoint you are viewing this exercise, from scientific-skeptic approach or from Occultic one or maybe from New age one, I'm pretty much asking, are you believer or not, because you put the label "exercise" and not "technique/method".

Here it is [POST: [EXPERIMENT] Glitch Generation Test, I Need Your Creative Ideas!].

The notion underpinning the DJ subreddit was that it was an environment for facilitating the exploration (experimentation, conceptualisation, discussion) of (1) the nature of experience and (2) the nature of thoughts about experience. No assumptions were offered or encouraged. What is there to "believe" without actually having an experience and drawing conclusions yourself? (Is the idea.)

Also, it's worth noting that the nature of "believing" is another issue all on its own. It's a pretty loose term anyway, but when it is referring to something along the lines of "an idea which I think is true", then the nature nature of ideas comes into play. In particular, the extent to which ideas are (or the thinking of them is) somewhat like a parallel-simultaneous experience relative to the "main strand"; they don't "get behind" our experience or "explain" it in the sense of revealing the underpinnings of it.

Of course, the term "believing" might also, or instead, be used as a word to describe something along the lines of having "adopted a perspective" or "adopted a mental/experiential posture". In that case, one might wonder whether this is something that might be more intertwined with the main strand of experience; perhaps it might constitute a "patterning" of it?

However, these things must be considered and explored; they cannot just be taken for granted because they sound appealing, or because it would be nice if they were true.

(Again, this is the thinking behind the DJ subreddit, and therefore the viewpoint taken in any discussions with "TriumphantGeorge". And it was the underlying approach to the discussion of "glitches" back when I was the prominent moderator and participant of GITM, after having resurrected it from neglect and a lack of "philosophy". It's mostly reverted back to the old ways now I think, unfortunately. But inevitably: it's a lot of work to maintain or even articulate a consistent "perspective" in these subreddits.)

Q2: Hi, I wanted to ask you are labels really needed? Are they just for strengthening your intention or they have a special role in the ritual? Can I just hold the first cup and describe my current situation and for the second cup, hold and set my intention for the change in my mind, then just pour the water? I saw the original post finally and as I see it the original intention was this to be a 'glitch in the matrix generator' and you also said that you have other exercises under your sleeve, did you post them eventually?

For the purposes of this exercise, I would do everything as described. After all, it's only an exercise, not a method, until proven otherwise. If it so happens that you get some sort of interesting results that can be repeated, then you could experiment with changing aspects of it and see what matters and what doesn't. (If you get no results at all, then there's not much point in tinkering with it, no basis for making decisions on what to tinker with.)

Loosely, though, the metaphor to use when considering the relationships between the various parts is: "patterning".

Q3: Great to see you back man. You changed my whole perspective on things at a time when I was very set in my ways. Can't thank you enough!

You're very welcome -- glad I was helpful!

Q4: hey I wanted to ask you something. Is the dimension shifting stuff actually all real? I used to follow the original sub years ago and read all the things you wrote and was a hardcore believer.
After years with no results, I eventually stopped believing and thought the entire thing was a hoax and I still do but every now and then I wonder if it is actually real, were you telling the truth?

Not a hoax, but presented as an exploration rather than a declaration of things being a certain way. Which is to say, "dimensions" should not be taken as literal, but rather as one metaphor among many that could be used to explore "the nature of experience, and the nature of descriptions about experience".

The idea was that by experimenting directly you would find out for yourself; you weren't meant to "believe" anything one way or the other. Unpacking things through philosophical-type discussion would then work in tandem with that. (This was clearer if you followed the in-comments discussions, which is where the actual meat of the subreddit took place. Two Glasses was intended to be a "blank slate" starting point from which this investigatory-type approach could progress.)

The closest approximation to that approach now is probably /r/NevilleGoddard: taking a reference concept or text (in that case taking the stories in the Bible as metaphors about reality) and using it as inspiration for a very direct, active, experimental approach.

Q4: I always thought experiencing the "effortless movement" would be what helps with exploration, to show there is something to all this beyond a reasonable doubt. The most I ever got was moving my arm, it happened years ago and I've never been able to replicate it since. Any tips for getting effortless movement, how long should I stick with it before expecting results?
Also one time I did the two glasses on a situation and that very night it appeared to work which shocked me because the situation was unlikely to fix itself. Then I found out a few weeks later it actually didn't work. But then a few months later it ended up fixing itself and working. But all the other times I did the two glasses, it never worked.
But it is experiences like that which make me wonder if there is something to all this. But if most of the two glasses fail and one of them works, that just seems like coincidence.

On the first point, don't attempt to manipulate or interact with your arm at all. Instead, bring to mind the idea of your arm being in the raised position (it's fine if you need to use a phrase or an in-place image as a lead-in to this) while having ceased to hold onto your experience of the body (simply: leave your muscles and attention alone).

For the glasses exercise, having it "work" or not is perhaps not the right perspective, since it is more meant to indicate whether there is "something worth looking into, nor not". It's deliberately called an "exercise" rather than a "method" (the whole idea of "methods" is tricky; they are essentially experiences after all rather than causes, mostly anyway).

That it might "make me wonder whether there is something to all this" . . . was exactly the point. The only way to combat "coincidence" is to do something repeatedly and in different contexts. However, it's also worth contemplating what exactly is meant when we use words like "coincidence" or "explanation" or "reason" or "cause", and so on.

Or, indeed, what is meant by "me" and "doing", etc.

POST: [THEORY] Could the Mandela Effect be the job of our powerful and underestimated mind (sub conscious)? (/r/MandelaEffect/)

So... What is a "subconscious mind", exactly? Where is it, what is it made from, and how does it work? Or is it just a sort of magic "black box" that explains away anything that we put in it?

Q1: Really? If you don't know, just search.
[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150217-how-smart-is-your-subconscious]

That's sort of my point - it's not an answer, or a thing, it's a concept. Note that I'm not offering a particular explanation for Mandela Effects or the examples you list, I'm just pointing out that "the subconscious" is not an explanation for anything, since it amounts to literally just a category. It's a black box concept to which we assign activities which we infer must occur prior to our conscious experience. At best it's a placeholder for current ignorance, at worse it smuggles in baseless assumptions about how the mind works. Basically, it amounts to saying: "the brain does it... somehow".

Q1: It is a thing. Some stuff don't go in our conscious, it goes straight to the sub-conscious, without knowledge, stuff that you're afraid or that our mind thought that we couldn't handle / understand. I understand what you meant, but the sub-conscious can be a REAL explanation, why not? Due the way it works, or like the scientists and psychologists said how it would work, it should explain pretty well. But i get your point, that's why i posted as a theory.

My point is, it's not even a theory, because it has no content, no mechanism - it can't describe anything in terms of cause-effect relationships and it can't make any predictions. I get what you are trying to say, which is: why contemplate more unusual explanations when it is possible that the brain is responsible somehow? Why keep pondering?

I'd say:

• Because it's fun and interesting. :-)
• Because until there's a detailed model of mind, perception and memory that can be tied to subjective experience, then "the brain did it" is not an explanation at all - it's just an avenue of investigation.
• We currently have no understanding of what perception and memory actually are, or any concept of the form a theory of consciousness would take. So even in that area, we wouldn't stop thinking about the possibilities just because we think it's brain-related.
• Because science is about cataloguing experiences and then coming up with concepts and models to describe them. The experiences dictate the possible models; the current models do not dictate the possible experiences.
• Models are not "what is really happening" and they do not cause phenomena; they are parallel descriptions of certain elements of phenomena. Who knows? Perhaps something based on the concept of "parallel universes" might turn out to the the more useful description, one that can be tested.

Anyway, you get the idea. You have, quite rightly, said "hey maybe this is all the brain doing stuff in the background", as many people have said before you. It's a good starting point for one line of investigation...

Next up: Describing how exactly it explains specific instances of the Mandela Effect experience. For example, a librarian who spent her days reading Berenstein Bears books and then one day she finds it's changed to Berenstain (prior to ever hearing of "the effect"). If it's the brain spontaneously doing something, then what was that and what was the mechanism? Why did she one day experience it apparently changing? Why does she have memories of the encountering "-stein" spelling at all? And so on. It's going into the details that's interesting.

Kinda like dark matter is a thing but we don't understand or know exactly what it is

To some extent, yes: in the sense that dark matter isn't really a thing, it's an absence, a lack of an observation. The name for a gap rather than the name of an actual structure, while implying that the content of the gap will be of a certain type. Like the planet Vulcan presumed the content of its gap was going to be in the form of a planet. However, the proposal of dark matter ties to fairly specific anomalies in measurement, whereas "the subconscious" is much broader and doesn't' tie to measurements as such. It's the equivalent of invoking a God (of which "computer operating system" is just a modern metaphor) to explain where a vast array of unexplained things come from. Note: I mean "unexplained" in the sense of nobody having invented a well-structured "parallel story" about what's happening, which aligns with observations. In matters of description, it's all about the number of "observational touch-points" that connect the story to what is happening. In that sense - having no internal touch-points - "the subconscious mind" is very much like dark matter.

POST: This needs to stop NOW (/r/MandelaEffect/)

Occum's razor doesn't uses "simple" to mean "most likely" or based on the fewest assumptions

Yeah. It's definitely worth thinking more deeply about what Occam's Razor actually entails, rather than the one-liner retort it has often become. Reproducing a previous comment:

[What Occam says:] It's not really that "the simplest explanation is the best" or inherently superior, it's more like:

• "Given two models with the same explanatory power, it is usually better to choose the one which introduces the least number of conceptual entities."

It doesn't say anything about one being inherently "more true", or that the world itself follows some sort of "simplicity rule", nor is there a restriction on assumptions or new concepts. In fact, if an explanation isn't really a model - as in, it has predictive power - then the rule is meaningless. Otherwise Occam would dictate that the best explanation for everything is simply that we are a "consciousness space" which "takes on the shape of" a subjective sensory experience, with no "world" behind it at all!

Of course, beyond that, there are many reasons to choose a more complex model: sometimes because it provides an "understandable" model rather than one which simply predicts results but is opaque; sometimes because the more complex model shares a form with other models in other areas, and allows the use of calculation or reasoning approaches which have already been established elsewhere. (Mathematics, for example, is full of areas where something is transformed into a certain format for "no reason" - other than it allows a certain approach to be used.)

Really, many "explanations" being proposed here over at the glitch subreddit basically have no explanatory power at all. If there's no way to test a description in terms of predictive power or by applying it to a dataset, then it's not really an explanation. It's not that saying something is "parallel universes" or "virtual realities" or a "false memory" or "confirmation bias" or "brain seizure" is wrong as such; it's that it is meaningless in the sense that it is non-scientific. It's just a hand-waving "plausible story". Of course, pretty much all of our ideas for what happened in these reports is hand-waving story-making - but that's actually part of what makes it good: an exercise in flexing our powers of imagination and reasoning, and spotting the assumptions we use in everyday life without perhaps recognising they are assumptions, and maybe just having fun playfully exploring ideas collaboratively (rather than in combat, hopefully). Plausible stories done in a detailed rigorous way, gives you philosophy.

Using Occam's razor to prove a scientific theory makes me lol. Hahaha. I don't understand complex unknowns!!! If I can't explain what's going on, it's not real!!! Nothing scientific about that "phrase" if you're going to use a phrase to back your theories up, you better be able to use imagination and deduction to back Mandela effect up. Get outta here with your time wasting Occam's razor - has no place in a forum where people are theorizing about wild scientific theories

Again, I'm not sure whether you are agreeing with me, or not. Or if you actually read the comment. Still, I'll choose "agreement" again, since that's more agreeable to me!

POST: People seriously believe this? (/r/MandelaEffect/)

To be clear, though: It's important that any explanation for the experience - be that "remembered it wrong" or "parallel universes", say, neither of which are actually explanations in any case - should be kept apart from the experience itself. People do have the experience; the nature of that experience is up for grabs. (And happens to present major problems for proper investigation.)

"Bad memories" with some generalised references to psychological effects (usually taken out of context) isn't actually a mechanism; "multiverses" that can't be observed don't cut it either for that purpose. If an explanation can't be tested - actually tested, rather than just supposed as "likely" based on common assumptions, many of which are rather recent and quite possibility transitory - then it doesn't count for much as a scientific account, or indeed any account at all. For example, as per your example, it's rather getting ahead of ourselves to say that "the universe changed". In fact, we never actually observe a universe as such. Rather, we experience a series of sensory moments arising within perception, for which the notion of a "world" as some sort of "place", with ourselves as an object located within it, has merely become the dominant narrative.

POST: Scientists believe Parallel Universes ARE interacting. Is this the cause of the 'Mandela Effect'? (/r/MandelaEffect/)

Sorry for the late reply, your comment was stuck in the spam filter until I happened to look back at this thread! Excuse any slight repetition due to vague recall. I agree with your comment about "what if" contemplation. As per Paul Feyerabend, I tend to think physics (for example) proceeds by a somewhat "anything goes" process in reality, with post-hoc justifications afterwards to clean up the story. And that is just fine. However, this makes it doubly important to adopt a "meta" perspective on the activity itself. Specifically, as I said above, the nature of descriptions themselves. I think the idea that our connecting concepts are "true" is somewhat recent, and has become prominent as philosophy has receded as a component in our scientific outlooks. (Even though the view that our descriptions are true is itself a hidden philosophical position.)

This is ultimately what George Ellis is pointing out in his essay, and why Stephen Hawking makes seemingly foolish grandiose statements occasionally, and why N David Mermin makes his comment about the "reification of abstraction". Not long ago, this wouldn't have need to be stated! The idea that the world was really made from "atoms" (rather that "the world", a concept, being constructed from "atoms", another concept); or that light really was a wave or a particle (two concepts) and that it having aspects of both ideas was a problem; or that "gravity" (loosely speaking, the name of a description) is what really causes things to fall down, would have seemed ridiculous. But that is how we talk, mostly, and it's at the root of a lot of the threads we see here and in more "scientific" publications: this weird muddle of the idea of what is "true" or "real" because there is no firm platform upon which the discussion is occurring. Ideas, then, I'd suggest, are about being "effective": are they useful as a thinking tool, or as a predictive tool. Either is fine. Arguments (1) and (2) are both permitted, provided descriptions are viewed in this light, put in their proper context relative to our direct experience. That is, a blend of (1) a conceptual framework which acts as a useful template of relationships in order to facilitate thinking and (2) an abstraction and codification of repeatable observations, with a greater or lesser number of "observational touch-points" for direct experience, but still never getting "behind" direct experience.

POST: I have a theory about why these happen (/r/MandelaEffect/)

I think the same applies here as to quantum-physics-inspired multiple universes descriptions. From a previous comment which then goes into more depth:

I'm with George Ellis on this, as regards quantum theory, string theory and multiverses and so on. Although it might be interesting and fun to consider philosophically, it is essentially meaningless scientifically. Having said that, the Mandela Effect is a philosophical or metaphysical issue, really, and not a scientific one, so this is not necessarily a problem for the subject as a whole; it just means we need to be mindful of what we focus upon.

So, while it is fun to consider these narratives (and they are narratives) about our experiences, they are not testable theories. In fact, anything "outside of" our experience is not testable, and your description is mostly that. We might recognise that there are patterns which are consistent with the idea that something is happening - that are "as if" it were true - but that's not the same thing. Which is fine, of course, because scientific theories aren't about "what is really happening" anyway; they are useful abstractions. However, when a description as almost no "observational touch-points" at all (that is, the description has very few observable components relative to the complexity of its conceptual framework) then the sense in which it is a useful model, rather than an enjoyable story, is questionable.

I really don't agree that "actual scientists" are proposing that we are living in a simulation, although they might engage in such "gee-whiz" discussions for popular-science-type magazines and programmes, as part of their promotional activities. (Nick Bostrom is not a good example.) If anything, one's treatment of such a hypothesis is a good indicator as to what extent you are an "actual scientist"!

Q1: I like your comment, until the part where you claim you don't agree with the unarguable reality that scientists are actually working with this theory seriously and calculatedly. I mean, that's cool i guess, but it's the reality whether you believe it or not. And why the random disclaimer about how Bostrum doesn't count? Confusing.

Bah, I knew I should have expanded on that bit of wordplay! Apologies.

So, that was intended to be a shorthand for a few things implied by the comment and the linked comment. For example, that one shouldn't conflate "working in a scientific role" with "this being a scientific hypothesis". The phrasing of "actual cosmologists and other scientists" heavily implies that the simulation hypothesis is itself a scientific hypothesis. As per the George Ellis article (to take one view), in what sense is someone being an "actual scientist" if they are engaging in what amounts to observationally-untethered philosophical musings?

Meanwhile, when I suggested that Nick Bostrom was "not a good example" in this context, it's because his Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? [https://simulation-argument.com/simulation/] paper (hosted on his The Simulation Argument webpage [https://simulation-argument.com/]) is sort of, intentionally or not, the logic equivalent of a wordplay joke. The amount of coverage it has got in the media as a "scientific" idea is largely to do with the ease with which it can be fashioned into a fun, engaging, pop-culture story in mainstream publications (in articles such as this [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/simulated-world-elon-musk-the-matrix] and this [http://theantimedia.org/tech-billionaires-matrix/], for instance).

Moving past all that, though, I suggest the important question to ask would be: "what is the relationship between one's ongoing experience and any particular description of that experience?" and how the "simulation hypothesis" fits into whatever the answer is.

I think all of these "simulation" ideas can ultimately be reduced to the idea - the long-established and foundational idea - that descriptions don't explain "what is happening", rather they are codifications of regularities in observations (which are themselves an abstracted subset of experiences), by us. The end-point of the simulation hypothesis is, then, really just a rediscovery of the fact that the standard description is just that: a description, a useful abstraction, and isn't intended to be more than that (as per the N David Mermin article in the linked comment).

The "laws" of physics aren't like legal laws which the universe must "obey"; they are "observed regularities" we have woven into a conceptual framework. Any ideas about "breaking out of The Matrix", a la Musk, are a slightly mangled version of "recognising that your experience does not in fact arise within a conceptual framework", and then trying to do some things which are not "allowed". But they were never "forbidden" in the first place. The "simulation" stuff itself is just distracting fluff on top of this.

POST: Why did the devs implement dreams? (/r/outside/)

These aren't features, they are the mechanics of how Outside operates!

You are not actually the character you play in Outside, rather you are an open "game-space" which connects to Outside and adopts a particular perspective in the Outside game environment. In periods of reduced activity, your "game-space" disconnects and either connects to another pre-existing game-world, or constructs one on its own, seeded by random data fluctuations. You can see this happening in the case of hypnogogia and fragmentary imagery.

Generally these worlds are more flexible than Outside, because to save on processor and memory power, all games function on a co-creation, procedural expectation/recall-based engine - so the more players there are, the more stable a game world becomes.

Because Outside is the main, default subscription for all current players there (part of the terms and conditions), you always reconnect to Outside whenever other connections collapse. You can prove this to yourself by trying to observe the disconnection/reconnection in progress, or illustrate it via a thought experiment:

• Sit comfortably. Now imagine turning off your senses one by one:
• Turn off vision. Are you still there?
• Turn off sound. Still there?
• Turn off bodily sensations, such as the feeling of the chair beneath you. Uh-huh?
• Turn off thoughts. Where/what are you now?
• Some people are left with a fuzzy sense of being "located". This is just a residual thought. Turn that off too.

You're still there, you realise; you are a wide-open "aware space" in which those other experiences appeared. Outside is the generator of those experiences, including the body and many of the spontaneous thoughts and actions. Only a subset of change: intentional change, is actually your influence. The rest is just part of the game experience. There are rumours of players who have developed limited, dev-like "magickal" powers based on "intentional" procedures, but since these would also produce a revised game narrative to cover their tracks - 'narrative/experiential coherence' is enforced religiously by the game engine - this is hard to confirm.

When you eventually complete Outside, after the final montage sequence, the connection is terminated and the 'world' within you disappears - followed by your next adventure, should you choose to accept it!

So what happens when the game builds a world withing my "dream world"?

It doesn't. You're actually connecting to another server group completely, which is running a different instance of the game engine that Outside runs on, perhaps one with no players except for you.

Since the game engine works by reflecting your expectations/recall back at you, a "dream world" is then spontaneously built for you to experience. Since your default subscription is to Outside, though, when that dream world fails, you are generally reconnected to Outside with the "waking up" intro.

holy shit! you really understand this. very well done.

Just seeing it how it is! ;-)

POST: Randomly stumbled on this guy's posts... (/r/DimensionJumping/)

The point is really that no particular experience is special; all experiences are at the same "level" because there is only one "level". ("You-as-awareness which 'takes on the shape of' states of experience" is one way to describe it, but really that is too fussy and, as mentioned below, there's inherently no positive way to describe this situation. Which is why people do the whole "not this, not that" thing.)

Even an "enlightenment experience", then, is just more content - it's just that the content is not formatted in the same way as the usual "everyday world" content. But it's still just content. Good for noting that the larger situation is "not this, not that", but not much more than that.

Analogy: imagine having spent your whole life thinking about people in cars driving roads, and not having any other thoughts, then one day you have a thought about a man climbing a hill in a vast open landscape. The new thought undercuts the formatting of your habitual thought, opens you up - but it's still another thought. (Note, though, that in this analogy I'm not saying that such experiences are "just a thought about something". I mean to indicate that experiences themselves are essentially "unfolding thoughts" in type.)

So, you can watch whatever you like, and conceptualise things however you want, and read this or that, and listen to this person or that, but all that will be just more content, all with the same context.

The purpose, then, of doing a particular exercise or unpacking a certain way of thinking about things, is to notice via direct experience and experimentation that ultimately there is no fundamental formatting. It's not really an experience (no particular content), so much as a deduction and/with an insight about all experiences, impersonally.

This is why when the DJ subreddit was running, we'd often say that it was about exploring "the nature of experience" and also "the nature of descriptions about experience". Noting the the latter is just an example of the former, helps dodge a lot of needless seeking around (which can be fun, but it's nice to have the choice to do it or not without misunderstanding what such a "seeking experience" is).

POST: What are the "limits" to the LOA? (/r/lawofattraction/)

The restriction on asserting another person's experience doesn't necessarily restrict what you can have as your own experience of them; our experiences aren't necessarily happening "at the same time". The underlying assumption to the argument is that "we are individual people in a shared, spatially-extended place unfolding in time" may well be false. This assumption arises, I suggest, from the idea that the world-as-it-is has the same "formatting" as our ongoing sensory experience. However, experiences with the "law of attraction" or other "intentions that disregard the usual worldview" tend to indicate this should not be taken for granted. Experimenting with directly updating other people can bring results - but you need to view it in terms of updating your experience of them, rather than their (hypothetical) experience of themselves. "Free will" is a 1st-person concept; extending it to 3rd-person perspectives might be am error.

So, one approach would be to say that the world as it truly is, is structured in such a way that everyone can experience what they want as if they had their own "private copy" of the world. In other words, the world is not "simply-shared" like a place, it is "abstractly-shared" like a sort of shared toolbox of potential patterns. Then, the sense in which "when someone enters your life, they are a lesson or a blessing" is that if you intend a particular outcome, then the path between "now" and "then" becomes defined at that moment, and inevitably contains events and encounters along the way which lead you from "here" to "there" - including people-based events. For example, if you intended to be successful in a particular career, events and encounters might include: meeting a person at a party who knows about the industry (blessing: make contacts and learn facts about that business), meeting another person in a particular office who is nasty to you (lesson: how to handle the unpleasant side of that business environment in future), being involved in a car accident (blessing: made you contemplate life, stop procrastinating and get on with switching career), and so on.

Note: the "blessings" and "lessons" that arise are not of the form of "messages from the universe"; they happen simply because you've put a stake in the sand saying "this will happen", and the pattern of the world shifts at that moment to accommodate that fact. It's like having two poles in the sand representing two facts - the fact of how things are now, and the fact of this future situation - and there being a string between them, which winds its way around the dunes and any pre-existing poles. It is a "dumb patterning system" based around a landscape which can be sculpted by intention.

POST: Crossover - Dimensional Jumping + LOA (/r/lawofattraction/)

Now LOA is a source of perspectives on jumping that isn't as...scifi or esoteric.

Ha, I have to say, I've always thought it was kinda the other way around!

Although, I admit, superficially the concept of "dimensional jumping" seems science fiction, but in the context of that specific subreddit that's not quite how it is presented. (It's more like a model or pattern one can adopt, rather than an actual "how it works". There is no fundamental "how it works", it is suggested.)

dimensional jumping is trying to re-invent the wheel, ignoring that the principles have been part of spiritual practices...

Although, I'd suggest that the subreddit isn't doing that, as such. The subreddit is about encouraging an examination of one's assumptions, by triggering experiences and contemplation, so that nothing is taken for granted. Even the concepts of "the world" and "reality" and "me" are suspect. The "dimensional jumping" part, then, is just a way into that, really - as the sidebar indicates, it's just one model amongst many. (Although this exploration - deliberately - takes the form of an ongoing conversations in the comments, rather than in the submissions and the subreddit setup.)

The "principles... of spiritual practices" are something to be explored, not accepted, I'd suggest. They all come from a particular culture, speak to a particular environment, the perspective of their time. There's nothing inherently special about them, in terms of their content. It's more about the "gap" they point to, the context of their descriptions, that's ultimately important. In a way, the wheel has to be continually reinvented, in order to keep it wheel-shaped!

Jumping isn't as developed as the LOA practices.

That is to some extent deliberate, really, although I'd say the "patterning" model that underlies the suggested exercises is quite fully-developed. But of course, the models are intended to be adjacent descriptions ("parallel constructions in thought") and structures used for intentional shaping of experience, rather things which capture "how it is". It's about building a bridge between what can be conceived of, and what can be adopted as experience.

Because, "what is really real does not matter", as you say, if it is only temporary and can be imprinted upon, or shape-shifted by adopting a particular fact or pattern. Rather, having recognised the only thing that is fundamentally true (that is, the fact of the property of being-aware), all other facts are seen as relatively true only.

POST: You need to actually read or listen to Neville (/r/NevilleGoddard/)

It's not so much about "talking down" the Law of Attraction, though? It's more about highlighting that LoA employs a different set of metaphors as compared with Neville's writing, and how mixing those metaphors leads to confusion - or empty pronouncements that, while "inspirational", are essentially meaningless because they have no grounding beyond some sort of general optimism.

For sure, the truth of things is always the same - that's why it's "true"! - but that goes without saying, and is not the issue. There are different descriptive frameworks as a way into "the truth and how to use it", and talking about one (Neville) in terms of the other (LoA) tends to create an unhelpful muddle. Hence lots of questions that people are asking here essentially resolve into having Neville translated into LoA-speak, unhelpfully. Or worse: a question isn't asked, the LoA perspective is just assumed and then the contradictions argued about.

It's like walking into an impressionistic art class and asking everyone to explain their paintings purely in terms of optical physics (or vice versa), or assuming that they will. Ultimately they're still talking about "painting in practice and outcome", but there's a definite choice being made in how to approach it conceptually - “brush strokes” versus “light rays” - even if the desired result is similar. The experience of the final painting is the same, but we wouldn't say that the two perspectives are identical, nor that one perspective was "based on" the other.

Personally, I do think that LoA is a much more vague set of concepts, and that "attraction" is not a good metaphor for the basic fact of experience, since it implies a spatial and temporal aspect, a separation between "you" and "experience" and the notion of something "happening" in between.

In contrast, Neville's approach to this - that creation is already done, that what you are is the context of that creation, and that to change experience you change your (impersonal) state to make some facts more prominent than others - manages to avoid that, while providing a tighter framework less prone to "inspirational" thinking. The different way the two frameworks handle the nature and operation of "visualisation", for example, highlights how much more complete, and therefore useful, Neville's approach to description is.

Hence, maintaining the distinction between LoA and Neville as parallel ways of conceptualising the nature of experience (and the nature of descriptions about experience), is surely valid.

POST: Do you decide? In your own best interests? (r/ADHD)

Do people find that life, and your impulses and thoughts, buffet you about randomly - to the extent where you realise you don't even decide what you'd like to happen never mind make actual plans for your personal self?

Using hyper focus seems to be about getting locked onto, say, a particular piece of work, which may or may not be in your actual best interests personally, for instance. Do people find they don't actually stop to decide, is this the best thing for me?