TriumphantGeorge Compendium (Part 10)

POST: Minimalism and Renunciation.

[POST]

Every state of mind has its costs and its benefits.
The human state of mind, the humaning game, has its benefits. You get the experience of striving as a human with seemingly real pressures and potentially get the rewards and joys that success in the human world has to offer – love, sex, art/media, science, tasty food, drugs, communication with other free beings, etc.
However, in order to have these experiences and to have them seem real, certain sacrifices had to be made. You had to trick yourself into believing that you were powerless over the vast majority of reality. That you can only influence reality indirectly via pulling the puppet strings of your body. That the body could make very real demands upon you. Etc.
If you want to have human experiences, then you will want to keep the cognitive structure that generates the human world. The cognitive structure is the tool you use to have the pleasant conventional experiences that you seek (at the cost of the unpleasant conventional experiences you flee from).
If your imagination remains limited to casting for sex, money, a better job, human status, etc. with your magick, then you probably won't be interested in what I have to say. However, if your aspirations range from lucidity to telepathy and telekinesis to deification, then what I have to say may be of interest to you.
All of the latter values require an abandonment of your humanity in some way. What do I mean? Humans aren't telepathic or telekinetic – this violates the human idea of an external world that you and other beings interact with only through your limited bodies. You're going to have to start thinking about the metaphysics of other people's minds and the physical world differently as well as the relationship your mind has to those minds and that world. Thinking in these other ways is indicative of insanity in the conventional world, because you're supposed to be an ordinary human. If you could read and influence the minds of others, where is the boundary between their mind and your mind? Similarly, if you could influence a physical object, where is the boundary between your mind and the object? How could there be other people, a physical world, or even a 'you' in the limited sense you're used to thinking about yourself? These are inhuman questions, and they eventually result in a total abandonment of the cognitive metaphysical structures that keep the human world in balance (e.g. strict laws of physics, strict self v. other), which is what then allows for your magical influence.
Even if you successfully develop some psychic power by changing your cognition of reality somewhat, as long as you desire the things that require a conventional, human frame of mind, your powers will never move beyond simple magick tricks that make your human life a little easier – tricks that can be written off as coincidence or as potentially explicable by physicalist science in the future. The reason is very simple. Even if you've learned how to leave humanity and live in new realms, if you are committed to, attached to, and desire mundane things then the idea of permanently abandoning Earth for these other planes of existence will be deeply disconcerting. You'd eventually return to Earth (or something like it) and thoughtlessly reenter the human realm as you focus on attaining material desires with your limited body, rather than expanding your psychic powers and chasing after things that don't require active self-limitation and lead to self-forgetfulness.
What I'm saying is that your human attachments are the chains that bind you to this world. Human ambitions allow very little room for direct influence by your will. A being with god-like powers would eventually find itself in our position if it had strong desires for these human experiences that require self-limitation. After a period of restraint, even the memory of one's old abilities disappears. Worldly cravings will weaken your paranormal abilities and subject you to the suffering of the human world. Thus, the stronger your rejection of things that require a human frame of mind, the stronger your magick can become.
To become a Lord Mage, you must renounce your humanity.
There are many facets of the abandonment of your humanity. I think most of it can be summed up in terms of status, possessions, and the body.
Status. I think icons of status are relatively obvious. Icons of wealth, of attractiveness, of membership in certain social groups, of image, etc. These earn you all the perks a conventional life has to offer – you get the most play and the least work and the most respect by other humans. These demonstrate your success at humaning and range from sex, money, cars, clothing, ornamentation, homes, precious metals, art...
Possessions and the possessive mindset. The whole idea of material things belonging to individuals. Respecting the concept of material possessions and thinking of objects in terms of mine and not mine. Having a responsibility to maintain those possessions to use to your worldly ends (you've got to keep the house in good condition, the car, the electric razor, the lawn mower, the computer, the books, the driver's license, etc etc etc) and protecting them from damage by environmental conditions or by other individuals seeking to disrespect the possessive mindset and “steal” your stuff. Possessions are mostly either status/image symbols, are directly depended upon for pleasure, or serve a functional purpose in maintaining your life and hobbies in the world.
The body is the tool of action and expression in a world like this. The body seemingly has certain needs for it to be in ideal useful condition. Grooming, hygiene, food, water, breathing, sickness and healing, pain and injuries, medicine, the 5 sensations, heat and cold protection, etc
I think that the more you start to abandon status, the easier it is to relax possessions. As you relax your hold on possessions and status, it becomes easier to relax your hold on the body. It also works the other way. So, in a way these three are connected.
I could talk a lot about the details about what symbols of status and possessions rule your lives and how they can all be easily overcome if you decide to, but I think each of you knows for yourself where you're at in that process and what needs to be worked on. Also, you can learn not just tolerance to social rejection or non-possessiveness. You can learn total tolerance to non-eating, to non-sleeping, to cold and heat, to sickness, to pain, to disembodied states, to astral realities, etc. These are the abilities that will really help you break away from the human world – that will one day help you cope with humaning withdrawal symptoms. But these tolerance take time. Besides being annoying addictions on their own, status and possessions take up time that could be used on developing one's magickal powers, developing lucidity, or attaining liberation. Hell, even if you don't want to devote all your time to multi-life concerns, status and possessions take up time that could be used for adventures and exploration and travel in this life.
As for me, I am only holding onto a show of status until my student loans are paid off (hopefully in three years if my plans work out). Then, I intend to live in a van and work on giving up possessions and learning to live ultra-minimally until I can live with only a backpack of stuff and travel and live like that. After that, there are so many options that I have considered. It is incredible. I expect my life will be a mix of travel, adventure, and spiritual practice after that. I imagine the characters I liked and most wanted to be when I watched TV and played RPGs – unattached adventurers. That seems like a good place to get to for now and to then learn so much more about myself, my powers, and my world.
I decided to eventually move into a van quite a while ago. Recently, I became confident that I could eventually give even that up. And then I realized I might be able to go further than I'd considered after I read about an individual who isn't part of a religious order who hasn't used money in any way in over 10 years.
While he in some ways still identifies as a conventional human, he's managed to abandon possessions and money in a way that I've only heard of in ancient religious texts.
https://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/
I don't know about you all, but I find this to be an inspiration.
So what do you think of all of this? How do you relate to what I've posted here? What are your spiritual plans and your plans for your human life? How focused are you on renunciation v. other practices? What do you believe and what are your values?

[END OF POST]

What, no yachts then? ;-)

• Experiences

I can relate to much of this, and have experimented a little at both ends (being rich and being less so, being status-heavy and not). I've also experimented with letting "TriumphantGeorge" be moved by the background flow of consciousness, and at other times taking direct control of "TriumphantGeorge".

For me, life is about experiences. It can be fun to experience having a Ferrari in the garage, for instance, so long as you don't think you own an "object". What you "have" isn't made of "matter", it is made of "eyes and fingers". In other words, what you have is access to a certain experience without latency.

• Destruction and Emergence

It's relatively easy to switch to an impersonal experience: Just change the context of your attention to be the open, dark, silent, present, thought-free background upon which the patterns of experience arise. As you say, though, I think it can take some time for the structures that have accumulated - become enfolded into your conscious space - to dissolve. You can do this with an "overwriting" exercise, to bring your daily experience closer to transparency. This aim surely isn't necessarily to remove those experiences, but rather to no longer be bound to them.

When I read of some people's efforts in this direction, I've sometimes thought that maybe: It is perhaps a mistake to confuse destroying your current experience, with becoming non-attached to it. The former doesn't lead to the latter, necessarily, and is not even required for the latter. In other words: Just by lying down each day and releasing our hold, the apparent world will naturally realign to our true nature. No grand physical acts of renunciation required.

I still think there's nothing wrong with yachts, so long as you understand what they are. :-)

• Maximum Power!

If you really want full power, right now - basically, a reset - then suicide while persisting attention on the background is probably the way to go. Followed by something like the "sparkles" method for OBEs. Since you get that experience in the end anyway though, I never saw the hurry.

If you do the man-in-a-van thing, or the wandering nomad, what do you think is going to be cooler about it? Not a challenge, just interested. I find it totally fascinating. I'm not sure that you have to zero-out your current 'dream contents' to have everything you want though, but maybe it can make it come quicker?

...

Great response, thanks.

Of course having a Ferrari can be fun. But there are two things that come with having a Ferrari.

I agree with where you're coming from in general. That's why I say that usually we are seeking experiences rather than status. Because status experiences, such as "ownership", are conceptual, and often come with additional experiences that aren't desirable.

Ferraris: My answer generally is that you wouldn't want to experience ownership at all, unless you had so much money that it didn't matter. Rather, the experience you want is using a Ferrari when you want it (and not having one when you don't), so surely you'd just "wish" for some sort of arrangement that gives you just that.

Aside: I used to live in an apartment block where a few people had expensive, high performance cars in the basement garage. They'd take them out for a spin periodically. Thing is, those cars aren't designed that way; they need to be constantly run and tuned, and kept in decent environments. Almost every time those guys took them out, they'd have to get the car jumped into motion, or it would have some sort of problem while they were taking their girlfriend on a trip to show off to her parents, or it'd have to be off for retuning before the trip. To be a member of a car club would make much more sense for these people - ah, but then they wouldn't have the "status" of "ownership".

This maybe fits more with what you're saying.

But... why not use magick to have Ferraris and yachts and a cool house and them not to have onerous obligations? Why not use magick to have an income stream that doesn't have burdens attached?

Perhaps... you are not being ambitious enough? ;-)

That's the thing. I see problems and conflicts between my present lifestyle and my future ambitions...

Basically, to be free of the influence of external powers (and internal powers).

I can visit... hermits (if they want to chat for a bit)

Can I just say, separately, that this is a fantastic line! :-)

Anyway, you've answered my next question which is: you seem to be focused on freedom-from rather than freedom-to. In my experience, the former takes care of itself, if you concentrate on the latter. (Magick works best by somewhat ignoring your present circumstances, and concentrating on the circumstances you desire?)

You have a student loan. Are you using magick to 'delete' that yet? Or are you going to slog through the three years?

That vs. sleeping in the same room in the same house with the same neighbors for several years, staring at screens, working for some jackass boss for the bulk of my life, having to deal with conventional humans's ignorant bullshit all the time, etc.

Thing is, in my viewpoint, you don't need to physically do anything about "human's ignorant bullshit"; it only impinges on your life to the extent you focus upon it. Like a dream where you fixate on something, then re-focus and it dissolves into the background. It was never really "there" anyway. You were just experiencing your own conceptual momentum rendered into apparent objects.

Personally, I'd least go for a Matthew McConaughey-style Airstream existence. :-)

“All your life, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain. It was all the same thing. It was all the same dream that you had inside a locked room. That dream about being a person. And like a lot of dreams , there is a monster at the end of it.”
— Rust Cohle [Matthew McConaughey], True Detective (HBO)

Yeah, but I have this huge commitment and attachment to the material/external world. There are other people. There is a world. And my conception is that they are relatively static and fixed, though the rules can be bent a little. This is what I presently believe. If I believed that this world was a dream deep in my bones, then I would destroy it and build a different one. Ordinary people treat each other and myself like shit, and they are generally ignorant fools. Problem is, I'm still dependent on this body and I'm currently deeply dependent on them to take care of my body. Thus, I have to deal with their shit all the time. It feels like 70% of my life is consumed by my human job, my human interactions that are necessary to get what I need from people, my human chores, etc.

So much of this perhaps results from your current ongoing attachment to the material world, while your ambition is to be unattached to this, as a way of realising your potential as God. However, becoming God will be a case of recognition, not becoming. If you are not God now, you can't become God. So your path is about reaching this conclusion and accepting it, surely.

All the rest - Ferraris, money, desires - doesn't really matter much, just images in consciousness. They're here because, as God, you have implicitly created them. And your sense of limitation, the same. I think you might just be putting off the inevitable. How are you going to transition?

I repeat: If you are ever going to be God, then it must already be so, simply concealed from you, by You. You must in fact already be the whole world, and not just /u/AesirAnatman. There are no other people, and no /u/AesirAnatman, except as fragments of You.

As has been said elsewhere, the truth is that you are a vast space of consciousness, in which all experience - this world - arises. The content of this space is a direct result of your intention. All content - thought, body sensation and movement, surrounding landscape - is a response to the momentum of your intentions.

For as long as you act based upon the assumptions and concepts of a material world of limitation, your results will occur bound to those assumptions and concepts. But really, you are already free.

When you do get around to destroying the world, building a different one, how will it differ? (Given that your current world is like it is, because you are like you are: it is a reflection of you.)

What I want is to become conscious of my manifestation of the apparently external world and reclaim control over it in the same way that I am conscious of and control my manifestation of my body and thoughts.

Got ya. The thing is, as you point out later, you don't usually directly control even your body and thoughts; there is already the momentum of previous intentions. Rather you 'amend the direction' that things are going in. The larger world within you has the same problem: habits have been established, have momentum/inertia, so these days very few manifestations seem 'direct'.

I agree with you. But I am not conscious of my intentions. I don’t pay attention to them and am deeply habituated along certain mental pathways.

Yeah. It's a major difficulty, actually. You usually can't be aware of your intentions, because they are first-cause, you can only infer them. Even if you intend deliberately, what's actually happening is that you're experiencing a result, the "deliberately"; the intention already occurred.

That's why people tend to work on their assumptions and beliefs, on deleting the 'structure' they have accumulated. "Eliminating habituation", you said nicely. Or hold on to a "feeling" that corresponds to their desire, so that experience falls in line.

Magick would be a much more common power – similar to the Force, except more powerful and somewhat more common. That’s some of what I would do if I were able to consciously reconstruct reality, at least at first.

I think magick must have been more common in "the past". Our shift over the last few hundred years has been dramatic. Once people imagine the world to be a certain, other way, it tends to behave accordingly, annoyingly.

"Release all your desires from the internal, so that they are forced to manifest in the external", is an approach I've been playing with.

The problem of commitments and habits is a secondary problem. The primary problem is ignorance.

I see those as the same hurdle to overcome? You are right that we "ignore... the vast majority of our being". We attend to the surface appearances, "the show", and forget the script, the internal from which the world is "pushed out" into the external.

On intentions: I think you infer your intentions from the thoughts and events that occur to you. But then, having realised where things are going, you can redirect?

That's why people tend to work on their assumptions and beliefs, on deleting the 'structure' they have accumulated. "Eliminating habituation", you said nicely. Or hold on to a "feeling" that corresponds to their desire, so that experience falls in line. Can you explain more?

Coincidentally, I was just having a conversation earlier, see here [POST: Continuity (/r/Psychonauts)].

Experiences leave traces which influence other experiences, and so on. Uninterrupted, your world (internal and external) deterministically unfolds in whichever direction its going, in alignment with your enfolded beliefs and expectations. Unless you update those beliefs and expectations.

How do we do this, how do we detect it? If your experience is a result of your 'enfolded structure', then you can't experience it directly. But, your "feeling of how things are", your "felt sense" does contain this. It's like a global summary of the structure of your world.

To change the direction of your experience, you must change the underlying structure, which you do by asserting new facts, and having them felt to be true. Subsequent content will then fall in line. (The content of your experience is transparent and illusory, what you do with that simply doesn't matter.)

EDIT: I still struggle with wording this "intention" stuff well. So, please indulge my attempt and bounce back so I can clarify, get my thinking better on it!

Maybe some intentions are inferred. But I think many are directly recognized. For example, if I start paying attention I notice that my body is sitting right now - thus, it is my intention to manifest my body as sitting. My body is typing at the computer in response to your comment - thus, it is my intention to manifest a response to your comment.

I'm not so sure about this. I think that there is a "momentum" to events, to thoughts and actions and the environment, that continues deterministically until we use our "free will" to interfere are redirect it. At which point it becomes a deterministic chain pointing in a new direction.

Further, it was my unconscious intention to be bouncing my leg, but when I noticed/realized what I was doing, I was able to decide/intend to keep my leg still.

I'd have that as an example of interfering, but perhaps not even. This just happened automatically as a set of experiences one after the other. Your attention spontaneously moved to your bouncing leg, which then stopped, and your attention moved again... and so on.

Would you provide an example of how intentions could be inferred?

In the same way as character. Your idea of who someone is, is a bundle of experiences of that person, from which you infer what that person "is like".

Intention - as "first cause" - is a movement or reshaping of consciousness of itself, by itself. Like a blanket folding itself, or a pool of water rippling itself. You cannot find the "cause" of the fold or the ripple, only the "results": the folds and the ripple. You infer that the folds or ripples were "intended", but you cannot find the "action" that led to the "result", because they are the same.

One the "first cause" has happened, the ripples continue in a deterministic fashion, the pattern propagates automatically, until another ripple is created by "first cause", and so on. In this case, we don't "intend" everything we appear to do - all those appearance are result, patterns in consciousness. Those results could be called our "intention" (as in, what we meant to happen), but the intending itself is occasional, and cannot be experienced. Some people never intend. They are born, and they just play our in alignment with their initial nature or direction. Others constantly interfere, suppressing the spontaneous movements and responses and become disconnected and separate, internal vs external. The happy balance is to occasionally decide what you want to happen, and intend it (by declaration/acceptance or a variation there of), and then let things be.

Note: If you have a thought "I will do this" or "this will happen" and then the action occurs, the thought didn't cause the action; the thought isn't the intending. It's just another result.

TL;DR: "Intending" is a particular thing, consciousness changing itself. It is not the same as an action.

Ok, I understand. Deciding to manifest new beliefs and thus altering reality according to our will. Magick.

Yep, basically. You can "insert a belief/fact" that a particular event will happen, or you can "insert a belief/fact" that is more general, that the world now 'works a certain way' from now on.

I've come to think, though, that the best approach is first to absolutely let go of all control, of all hold on yourself and the environment. To accept everything just as it is, as an experience, with no backing or belief structure. From there, with a minimum of "enfolded forms", your assertions can take maximum effect, because they are no longer filtered in the same way.

Give it all up, to get it all.

Which a few texts make reference to actually: let everything go, to gain everything; destroy yourself to gain the universe; the meek shall inherit the Earth.

I think that momentum isn't objectively out there. We believe that the mind has a sort of momentum, and so it manifests that way.

Yes, I agree with this. The problem is where we draw the line, for convenience, when describing this. Will try to pin it down a bit more later.

I think it is possible to manifest a reality with no habit, with no momentum. Instantaneously manifesting every new whim and impulse regardless of what was manifested previously.

I think this is indeed possible, and as we relieve ourselves of what I will call "enfolded structure" then more things can happen and by more direct narrative routes (or even no route at all).

Hmm. I don't think like this. I think everyone is always intending, but in different ways. Some people are mostly creatures of habit, living out the same basic lifestyles they have lived for many lifetimes.

So, this is where we need to clear things up. We probably don't differ, but we are using "intending" and "deciding" and "momentum" differently. I probably mean something more like "redirecting". Let me try and paint a picture and we'll see. I'll begin without using those words, and then try to reach definitions by the end.

Please excuse length!

The Experiential Mind-Space: Implicate & Explicate, Enfolding & Unfolding

1. The Structure of Experience

I'm going to assert that the structure of personal experience is something like this diagram.

We have an open 'mind-space' in which our experiences arise. Experiences leave traces, "structure" enfolded into the background, and that affects subsequent experiences, which tend to unfold by "snapping to" the pre-existing traces, and so on.

. . . unfolded experience (explicate) > enfolded traces (implicate) > unfolded experience (explicate) > . . .

So we have an "implicate" level (containing enfolded forms) and an "explicate" level (the unfolded objects you are experiencing at that moment).

At this point in the description we are completely passive. Experiences are simply happening to us, and over time the memory-traces are funnelling subsequent experiences into a stable form: call it "habits" or "regularities" or "laws" or whatever. Also, these correspond to "beliefs" and "expectations" and even "facts" - the same thing!

If the universe began with random noise, gradually it would evolve into a structured environment. The way dreams start, from hypnogogic sparkles and imagery, is like this. A while world is formed by itself without input.

(By experiences, I mean both sensory and thought, they're the same, and both leave traces in the implicate order. They differ only intensity. I'll pick up on that later.)

2. Momentum and Intention

What I've called conceptual momentum is basically just the fact that, left alone, patterns of experience become more and more established and have greater influence.

When I talk of "intention" what I mean is the decision to directly interrupt this process and redirect it. Of course, you might say that not interfering is itself an intention, but I want to be more specific about the term. Intention is the act of deliberately changing the enfolded structure of the "implicate" level. Having made these changes, the experiences that unfold at the "explicate" level will afterwards be aligned with the new "facts of the world'. We cannot affect the unfolded objects of the present moment directly - they are just mirages, completely transparent and without substance. All change must happen at the enfolded level.

The changes made to the implicate level might involve the insertion of a single event ("this will happen tomorrow") or a new state ("this is now true") or a new relationship ("thinking this means that this action will follow") or broader rule ("this always happens") or statement of identity ("I am like this").

However, in all cases we are simply changing the shape of the 'sand dunes' upon which the 'mirages' are formed.

3. The Mechanism of Change

The key to this is that there is only one mind-space. So just as spontaneous sensory experiences leave traces which affect future experience, so thought leaves traces which affect future experience.

Thinking of a particular image will tend to result in experience following those images, etc. However, this is not very powerful. What you want to do is change the 'global' structure at the implicate level, not just create particular instances. This is done by the additional sense: our "feel" of the world, our "direct knowing".

By creating the feeling of something being true, we adjust our enfolded structures to correspond to that fact. All magick - visualisation, ritual, etc - is simply an indirect way of generating that 'feeling of truth'. However, it can be done directly.

What "intention" really is, in fact, is the raw summoning of that "feeling of truth", of shifting your implicate structure directly into a new state that corresponds to the world you want to live in.

4. Overwriting Yourself with Empty Space

Finally, this leads to one of my favourite exercises. What we really want to do is open ourselves out from habitual paths of experience so that more things are possible, by the quickest route (or no route: instant manifestation). How to do, given the above?

Basically, we want to overwrite our enfolded structures, our implicate level, with open unstructured space - complete possibility. We do this by literally switching our focus to the background awareness, and asserting as fact and adopting the shape of no structure, of 'dream', of open space.

When we do this, we feel the 'push back' of existing structures. It is tempting to use effort to push through this, but that's a mistake. It's not actually 'push back' you are experiencing; rather you're just becoming more aware of the existing structures. Asserting something makes you intensely aware of the contrast between your current beliefs and the fact you are asserting. Persist, and the enfolded traces will dissolve; the implicate order will move towards the shape you are intending.

I think everyone is always intending, but in different ways.

I know what you mean by that. By my formulation above, I'd say that people are implicitly choosing to remain the same by not "redirecting" their path, because they don't update their "enfolded schema" as I've described. They are not actively intending therefore. Or worse: they are affecting it unwittingly by generating thoughts from ignorance! Mostly though, everyone is just experiencing the unfolding of their current direction, forever unadjusted.

Okay, that's my best attempt at describing my thinking so far. Keen for any input or disagreement, alternatives!

EDIT: Minor grammar tweaks, clarification of wording.

I believe it's possible to manifest in a way that doesn't create any habits.

I do too. By using absolutely no effort, we leave no traces. How to do this? Edit the structure of the implicate level, with no attempted forcing of the explicate.

Also, I don't think there's a sharp division between beliefs and experiences. That is, I'm not convinced there's a sharp division between the implicate level and the explicate level.

There isn't. In reality, they are single swirling intertwined process, like waves bouncing off waves. The explicate and implicate are both just patterns in consciousness, but the implicate level is the "timeless level" whereas the explicate level is the "unfolded now".

EDIT: And you are experiencing your beliefs directly all the time in terms of a subtle "background knowing-feeling". The ongoing sensory moment is really a shape-changing time-based aspect of time-less belief: they are really all one pattern.

I don't use the word intention the way you use it here because the implication is that relaxation is non-intentional

Because my definition is that "any change from the way things are going is an intentional act", that's not a problem for me. But in fact, you can find yourself going to lie down and relax, and it wasn't deliberately intended - in the sense that is just flowed from your current momentum. Everything that happens and everything you do is always just flowing from your current momentum. Unless you are constantly re-intending. Which would be a sign of a lack of faith, really.

what I was saying above about being able to manifest without creating habits or immediately drop all forms of conceptual momentum if I choose.

If you manifest by insert single-event facts into the implicate level (i.e. declare a truth, make a change at the non-sensory level) then you are not creating habits - you are "amending the blueprint" directly. So, you might think there'd be two ways to change a habit. If you keep performing an action, that will change a habit by gradually leaving a trace. Alternatively, you can reach into the structure of habits itself, and change it directly. Magick is about the latter.

EDIT: Can we avoid creating traces simply by deciding not to; by remaining in a "dropped, open state" at all times?

I think the manifestation of all of our beliefs (felt truths?), whether new or old, is intentional. But, I understand how your use of the word works in the perspective you have outlined here.

There's no good word really. The essence is "things continue in the direction they are going, in accordance with established habits, unless you use Will to edit your implicate level". You can say that all things that subsequently arise from a change in direction are "intentional" in that you chose the direction, but that's not how I've been using the word.

"Mostly though, everyone is just experiencing the unfolding of their current direction, forever unadjusted."
I don't like the way this and the whole deterministic language sounds. I think that people are living freely in the context of freely adopted commitments and habits.

This is where we differ, and I think it's very important to the idealist/non-dual/dream-like worldview. Once things are rolling in a certain direction, then your experience is deterministic. You are however free to intervene and redirect at any time, but often you won't. You will "have the experience of making choices" but you won't really be actively interfering in their occurrence. They "choose" how to practice, but really they are just acting consistently with their current direction.

They no more "choose" than they choose the beating of their heart and the flow of their blood and the growth of their fingernails. It's all happening from and in alignment with their "enfolded schema" at the implicate level. Acting consistently with one's Current Nature isn't a choice. The only true free will we have is to change our nature, and to stop interfering all the time (if we do that).

Neville Goddard had a stab at a similar world view. Just to give air to another way of wording it, here's a bit of cut-and-paste of the relevant passage in one of his books:

MANY persons, myself included, have observed events before they occurred; that is, before they occurred in this world of three dimensions. Since man can observe an event before it occurs in the three dimensions of space, life on earth must proceed according to plan, and this plan must exist else­where in another dimension and be slowly moving through our space.
If the occurring events were not in this world when they were observed, then, to be perfectly logical, they must have been out of this world. And whatever is there to be seen before it occurs here must be "Predetermined" from the point of view of man awake in a three-dimensional world.
Thus the question arises: "Are we able to alter our future?"
My object in writing these pages is to indicate possibili­ties inherent in man, to show that man can alter his future; but, thus altered, it forms again a deterministic sequence starting from the point of interference—a future that will be consistent with the alteration. The most remarkable feature of man's future is its flexibility. It is determined by his attitudes rather than by his acts. The cornerstone on which all things are based is man's concept of himself. He acts as he does and has the experiences that he does, because his concept of himself is what it is, and for no other reason. Had he a different concept of self, he would act differently.
A change of concept of self automatically alters his future: and a change in any term of his future series of exper-iences reciprocally alters his concept of self. Man's assumptions which he regards as insignificant pro­duce effects that are considerable; therefore man should revise his estimate of an assumption, and recognize its creative power.
All changes take place in consciousness. The future, although prepared in every detail in advance, has several out­comes. At every moment of our lives we have before us the choice of which of several futures we will choose.
── Excerpt from Out of this World, Neville Goddard

EDIT: Ever played with tulpas? I haven't , but this post was an interesting attempt do discuss "realness" while faltering on the subjective/objective bit: private truth vs public truth?

This is a tricky topic, and I'll try my best to not dance about it. In order to give a sufficient answer, we have to pull in a few premises.
First: Reality is subjective.
Each and every person has control over their definition of what is real and what is not. This is not to say that there doesn't exist some kind of publicly-observable universe; rather, I am saying that each person has control over their perception of what they say, they feel is real or not. These feelings have a special term; they are called qualia, and they are the mental representation of the sensations, from the most physically founded (such as "hot" or "cold") to the most symbolic (such as "weird" or "nice"). I posit that reality is defined by some form of qualia, some attribute of realness, that makes certain concepts (including, but not limited to, perceptual concepts) seem real. That is to say, you and you alone have control over what you find to be real.
Second: Truth is subjective.
What does it take for one to find something to be true or not true? Well, in the same way there is a qualia for reality, some property of realness, I posit that there's also a qualia/property of truth. In this case, we have a convenient name for the things that are assigned this quality: belief. In many communities, including scientific ones, belief has become a "dirty word" meaning something that is taken to be true without proper evidence or support, but in the way I use it, I intend it only to mean the things taken to be true (regardless of how they've come to be regarded as such).
(Note that I am not denying that there is probably also an objective, public truth, which both science and philosophy strive to find, but it is necessary for us to think of truths as categories of concepts, the representations, and not necessarily the referents of said concepts.)
Since belief is sufficient to establish a subjective truth, it follows that, if you believe something is real, it is real--to you. This is not to say that someone else cannot come about and deny that it is real, but, since this is your mind, you are the only person you need to prove the reality of anything to (in these cases).
The most tempting counter-argument would seem to be Russel's Teapot--if I were to claim that there were a teapot somewhere in orbit about the sun between the orbits of Earth and Mars, the burden would be on me to prove it--even if I evasively claim that such a teapot can't be observed at present (for any particular reason). However, the existence of the teapot is a public truth, a truth that, if it were taken to be true, would affect everyone's experience, and not just that of the claimant (myself, in my wording). If I sincerely believed, without doubt, that there was indeed a dark-matter orbitting teapot, then that would be how it is with me, and I would find no fault in seeing it as true. (If I were so inclined, I might even look oddly upon those who didn't find such a teapot there.)
Again, we're dealing with the mind, not the universe. This is an odd realm where existences can be summoned by mere thought, where the rules of logic don't apply (where you can conceptualize the statement that is true and not true at the same time--there, you just thought of it), and where the law of the land is laid by belief, oriented by, and affecting, perception.
So, what of tulpae? What of these sentient "imaginary" friends? I could not expect you to believe, without any evidence, that I'm talked to by a stuffed snake, with whom I carry out my discourse. I have established, with my logic, that the mere act of believing that he is a sentient, independent being, is sufficient to make him a sentient, independent being in my subjective truth, but is he?
This is where science would indeed be useful, but it finds difficulty in exploring these areas. Let's start with a small exercise; don't skip to the end until you've performed the step you've read. It's really quite simple: 1. Think of someone you know fairly well; it doesn't matter who (friends, family, distant relatives, co-workers, etc.) 2. Think of what would happen if you encountered that person (wherever they would normally be) and asked them if they liked your hair. Could you think of the way they would react? Congratulations, you have predicted their behavior.
Now, here's the kicker: to whom did you direct the question?
In reality, the question doesn't matter. The environment doesn't matter. Your choice of person doesn't matter, aside from the fact that it has to be someone you know well. You possess some concept, some model of their behavior that you used to predict how they would react to that environment. I call such a conceptual entity a simulant.
For the sake of brevity, I'll wrap this up. I hold that tulpae are simulants--but a special kind of simulant, or perhaps their own simulant, that is not modelled on the behavior of any physically manifested person, but of some subconsciously-created model that satisfies what it means to be a person, subjectively. The host, the primary consciousness, also no longer has, or exercises, control over the tulpa's environment. It becomes independent simply because the host believes it so.
I have ommited a great deal on topic like what it means to be conscious, or what it is like to have an identity, because that would require significantly more discourse, which would really only be appealing to the philosophers among you :P
── Grissess, on "We are /r/tulpas,creators of sentient imaginary companions. Ask us anything!" (/r/AMA/)

...

By relaxation and effort I meant not physical relaxation or effort, but mental relaxation or effort – I think what I'm referring to here is akin to what you are calling flowing with momentum v. re-intending.

Yes. They're probably related though: physical tension (being made of mind too) probably gets in the way of the other.

I think this is what I'm trying to say along the lines that you think in. Basically, we don't have to maintain stable traces (what I call habits, I think) and only adjust those maintained/stable traces when we manifest making deliberate decisions.

Right!

I think that all choices and free interventions and redirections are in a sense unfolding expressions of intent/will similar to the way that habits are unfolding expressions of intent/will.

So, this is a tricky area. Can we run over it a few times?

I'm think that there are two parts:

• When I "make a decision", that is a bit of "thought theatre" where I appear to mull things over. Really, that's just stuff happening along existing lines. I'm not actually intervening in the path.
• When I "redirect", I am actively "changing my shape" or changing my nature such that subsequent manifestations will be in line with that.

Now, I will always make a choice that is in line with my Nature - so that is deterministic - however, the options that appear to me do so creatively and cannot be predetermined - so that is non-deterministic. (That's why we are free.)

Tulpas

Never felt the urge, but came across the topic and found it fascinating. Particularly the idea that our own personality "in our heads" could be classed as just "the first tulpa", spontaneously created as a response to interactions in childhood. What you "really are" is the aware space behind that; "you" are just an experience you're having.

Identifying with one "tulpa" or another is arbitrary. So people could create a new tulpa, and then shift their identification from their default personality to this. (Probably not recommended. Who wants to become a toy stuffed snake for the rest of their life? ;-)

I think that you are the path. I think that making a decision comes in context of thinking, imagining, and contemplating. That relationship is intentional - it's a manifestation of your will.

The 'thoughts that appear' are in line with your 'underlying Will' - let's call it your current nature. But you do not deliberately choose them or control the process. It's just an experience.

When I'm walking on a trail and I come to a fork, I'm not just responsible for the first step I take down one of the forks. I can always stop, turn around, wander into the woods, whatever I want to do. Every step is intentional and my responsibility. Similarly, every thought, action, and decision is intentional and my responsibility.

Basically, when you do intervene, you can say that subsequent events are your responsibility and that by making an intervention at some point, you "intended" the path that resulted - because you never interrupted it.

We're saying the same thing, it's just that I'm emphasising that it is very rare that we actually decide/act. Mostly we just experience the unfolding results of our current path.

• Your world unfolds deterministically from its current point.
• However, you can "intervene" at any moment to change its direction, to set it on a different path. (Other words for "intervene" might be to "re-direct" or "intend" or "decide". However, most words have non-deliberate-action meanings too, so it can be confusing.)
• The fact that you can intervene at any point means that you are responsible for what occurs, and could be said to have "intended" the outcomes even though you didn't consciously choose the details of those outcomes.

I don't think we have an essential nature. If we have a nature, it is infinite freedom. No choice is deterministic, it is volitional.

Our essential nature is wide open unstructured space, yes. However, from very early in our experience we accumulate "patterns". Probably from our acquisition of a body structure as a foetus onwards, perhaps even earlier in the form of some 'felt structure' from simply having a presence in the world.

What people call "True Will" or "True Nature" is really the structure or pattern we've inherited simply by appearing in (or as) a world such as this. Further patterns get laid on top. Stripping the secondary patterns returns us to our natural place as a being-of-this-world. Stripping that back, leads us to absolute open freedom.

If we have a nature, it is infinite freedom. No choice is deterministic, it is volitional. Even if it is in line with my presently maintained commitments and habits, it is still intentional.

Hopefully, we've got to the bottom of that earlier in this reply? If not, tell me.

Deterministic is a word generally used to refer to the idea that something is externally determined and out of control. Unless you mean that I determine those choices.

I mean "deterministic" more in the philosophical/scientific sense. I mean that, once a path has been set in motion, it will follow a cause-effect narrative just like dominoes falling down. This will continue until a conscious entity intervenes and redirects the flow to a different path. Most people do not make interventions; their choices are simply experiences along the same path.

Unless you mean that I determine those choices.

It's a tricky area.

We don't determine the options but we choose which option to follow. What saves us is that there is a creative aspect: At any point (once you are free from being a particular "person") you can summon fresh, creative options to choose from - options that could not be predicted in advance, direct from the infinite creative fountain of background awareness.

That is where we get our real freedom. Freedom to choose amongst the options we see is one level of freedom - freedom to create new options that could not be predicted is a whole different level. (Obviously, the new options come from 'the whole universe' rather than 'the personality', so it's a matter of contribution. All options come from 'structure' of one sort or another.)

[On the "first tulpa":] I think this is a fascinating idea, a great point I never thought about before. I'd be interested if you wrote out your thoughts on this in more detail and made a post.

I'm trying to tie together pattern formation, "learning", personalities and world formation at the moment. If I get it sounding reasonable and coherent, I'll be doing a post on it definitely. I'd like to follow the full story from empty space to randomness to patterns to structure to world, and the implications for "me", "the world" and for "magick".

This would involve nailing the above stuff in terms of language too (which is the problem I/we have more than anything, rather than the actual content of our ideas).

EDIT: Lots of people play with the free will vs determinism thing (see here for someone who even does the dominoes metaphor). You can short-circuit it by saying: "I have the freedom to intervene according to my own interests, based on the information available to me, and that's good enough." It then becomes about how much information you have, and whether you have a "gap between impulses" which lets you intervene - which is where freedom to summon options and choose between them lies, and is a matter of (dis-)identification with mind, body and (re-)identification with awareness.

...

Related thoughts, that occur to some people when they have expanded insight: If we've got it all figured out, with absolute power, what's the point in going on?

I'm excited that you posted this because I had an intensely similar (if not a little darker) experience on mushrooms. It was my first time, and there was one guy (sober) telling me that I was literally creating my reality and could experience whatever I wanted. His tone was not that of new-agey speculation, but of knowledgable certainty. We would talk about music, and a guy would ride by on his bike and ring his bell an abnormally large number of times. We talked about girls and two girls came up and introduced themselves to us. His message was, if you want it, believe it will happen, then it will.
Later, I'm upstairs at this girls house, she had just gotten out of the shower. I should preface this with please do not try this at home**. I walk up to her while she's in a towel in her bathroom and give her a hug from behind. She dropped her towel exposing her naked self to me and let me feel her breasts. After holding her for a moment, I walked off in amazement thinking: "holy shit he was right, none of this is real, it is essentially a dream, if I believe it, it happens."
I walked back downstairs to confront the guy who told me this. He's laughing, enjoying my dumbfounded confusion of how to handle the situation. I begin to get scared. If I'm Neo, who is this guy? Then everyone goes upstairs and we read Shel Silversteins "The Missing Piece." If you don't know it, it's about a pac-man-esque circle who rolls around trying to find his missing piece so he can be a whole circle. There was a very profound feeling while we all sat around to read this childrens story book - like I was being told a story that was a metaphor for something of ultimate importance. It turns out that the circle finds its missing piece in the end, becoming whole and entirely satisfied, before realizing that was paradoxically the most unsatisfying experience it had ever had. He much preferred the thrill of finding the missing piece. All the while this guy is looking at me nodding, as if to say, you should be paying attention to this.
I'm struggling with reality at this point, not sure if I can even consider what's happening to be real. I realized that having god powers meant complete control, complete control meant no free agency for others, no free agency meant no one was real. I then had visions of my family as puppets who only did my bidding. This scared me beyond expression. I felt very alone. I asked one of the people there if I would ever be able to go back to the way things were. She asked me if that's what I wanted. I said yes, and she says "then it will." Sure enough, I fell asleep, and like dorothy waking up from the Wizard of Oz, all the craziness had disappeared. All the people there were back to being real, and the guy who had been my Morpheus for the evening was back to being a regular guy.
──3man , "Ego death from Mushroom causes Instantaneous Manifestation" (/r/Psychonauts)

POST: Getting excited about the unknown

I'd never heard the term "bibliomancy" - it's great!

In the dreams I know that whatever comes up isn't an issue because it is undoubtedly just more dream material ... My feeling is that there isn't anything but this dream-material.

Haha, yes! The fear maybe comes from thinking that you are "real" rather than also dream material? But if it's all dream material, there's nothing to fear - it's just a matter of when you are going to say "yes" to the dream.

Q:[Deleted]

Doesn't mean it won't be a bumpy ride - the first thing that'll happen is things will try to line up with how they should be, rather than how you've forced/resisted until now. But longer run, yes.

EDIT: The most important windows are metaphorical.

The issues, limitations are due to "conceptual momentum" - basically, the co-creation or co-influence aspect of this experience. Once habits are formed, you need to either dissolve them or intend across them. Dream-worlds have habits too, remember. When you walk in a dream, do you find yourself constantly falling through the floor? No. Why not? It's just a "dream floor"!

In a lucid dream, we assume we have complete control.

Hmm. And we don't have complete, direct control. We control/seed our expectations and the environment responds, within the limits of our beliefs about the dream.

A dream of being awake is the same as being awake, if it has all the properties of waking, I'd say. Right now, you are dreaming of being awake on Planet Earth.

Sure. I was just trying to make the point that a dream of total control ultimately isn't any different than a dream of total futility. They are the same essential substance, the same event. "We control/seed our expectations", In my view this is equally part of the dream as well. edit: I'm just trying to consciously know the source of all dreams. That's my goal. So I realize it kind of departs from this subreddit's point of focus.

Yep, it's all dream.

edit: I'm just trying to consciously know the source of all dreams. That's my goal. So I realize it kind of departs from this subreddit's point of focus.

I think there might be a problem with that: I think you will never be able to experience it. Experiences are made from 'dream-stuff' - sounds, pictures, sensations, all that - but 'dream-stuff' itself isn't made of anything. If you ever experience "the source of all dreams" it will just be another experience, made out of dream-stuff. The source of all dreams is: open, unstructured consciousness, shaping itself by itself, causelessly - intention unfolding.

That's how I'm seeing it at the moment anyway.

When I look honestly, it seems to be like this: there isn't anything but dream-stuff and the open knowing of dream-stuff is an inherent, inseparable property of dream-stuff. Wow!

Yes! I offer you the blanket metaphor:

The analogy of the blanket, where the blanket is "raw awareness" and ripples or folds are "objects", is quite apt. How does the universe know itself? A blanket with no folds could not experience itself, relative to itself. Only by 'taking on shapes' can consciousness experience itself.

Openness is unfolded blanket (non-stuff), while the folds of the blanket is the content of experience (dream-stuff, the blanket experiencing itself). So they're never separate. We just get confused because we think of 'dream-stuff' as separate objects rather than patterns in continuous awareness.

Dustin Hoffman knows I'm right. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfIiRKLMjDY]

Nice, never heard the blanket metaphor before. What movie is that clip from?

It's good eh. Replaced my "tray full of jello" metaphor, thank god. :-)

(Although what I said isn't quite what he says in the film really.)

It's from I Heart Huckabees. Jason Schwartzman and Mark Wahlberg become the clients of "existential investigators" Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin. Full of quirky fun but clever observations too. It's worth your while!

...

My suggestion: You can simply decide and accept that it is - it will then gradually fall into line. Or you could try lying down, relaxing, and strongly asserting it with Will to shift more quickly, on a daily basis. (Similar to how in Tibetan Yoga you are encouraged to constantly say "this is a dream" during your waking life, but x10 it.)

If you keep tinkering with the debate, though, your perception won't settle.

The mistake you are making is: "you" are not fundamentally real either. You are the dream-space (as emphasised previously here). /u/everydaymotherfucker is a dream character just as /u/TriumphantGeorge is, and your friends and family are. It just so happens what you really are is experiencing its dream from a particular perspective.

See here for instance, for an idea of how it can be if things truly dissolve.

TL;DR: You are a figment of your imagination too. Recognising the dream does not alone dissolve the habits of the dream, however it does mean you will realise how intention works, and how you can get your desired experiences.

It does all like to line up, given half a chance, which is nice. Yep, keep it dreamy . . .

POST: Anyone ever heard of Bashar before?

[POST]

[http://www.bashar.org/index.html]
I found this uniquely interesting. I don't 100% agree with it or anything, but you might check out the 'principles' under the 'about' button. A medium channeling an extraterrestrial from the future who is trying to awaken humans to their innate divine potential, basically. The stated motive is that humans are so shitty that if other beings in the universes see that humans can make themselves lucid, then they will gain more confidence in their own capacity to become lucid.
I think it is fun and interesting. What do you think?

[END OF POST]

Yeah. I'm not so sure about his "style" and the manner of his inspiration, but his 5 principles are about right:

1. You exist…you always have and you always will. You are eternal.
2. Everything is here and now.
3. The One is the All and the All is the One.
4. What you put out is what you get back.
5. Everything changes except for the first four…..

POST: A report on my recent experience.

Interesting. The pain thing, particularly: pain is like an interpretation on top of a sensation, I find.

Yes, intention should be effortless. Attempting relaxation is a great way to practice. Lying down and simply Willing to be relaxed without doing anything, feeling the initial resistance of your body before it dissolves, gives you the experience pretty directly. There is no "strength" to this Willing, you simply direct your experience or you don't. And you make sure you don't fight any resistance; you just persist instead.

One can get caught in one's own perfectly created dream, and the dream can begin to run away into random directions if one disowns it too much. I need to be careful not to be a victim of my own success.

Care to expand on this idea?

If it's effortless, it's not me.

Yes, we think that if something involved no effort, if we can't detect ourselves doing-by-pushing, then it can't be us.

...

I never quite got the language right for willing and intending either. There's the "target experience" (your intent? your direction?) and then there's the "active directional wanting", the thing that you do (willing? intending?) for your current experience to move towards and become that target experience?

Q: [Deleted]

Good response. Yes, "wanting" isn't what I meant really. By Will, I mean that we change the 'shape of ourselves', towards a desired shape, our 'Intent'. If we were to release ourselves fully, then our experience and actions would always correspond to the desired shape. Any sense of 'resistance' against applied Will now, is due to your owns resistance, rather than the requirements for a "force". In effect, you are Willing in two directions at once, hence the tension when it is experienced. On sensing awareness as it is, this post was interesting.

Sensations are a fact of awareness, but you can be self-aware or aware-aware. The perceptual space in which experiences arise. By awareness, he means what you call mind - really. As opposed to attention, etc.

I would say to him, "If I am awareness, I should be able to change you to Bugs Bunny."

You might find this article [http://www.integralworld.net/salmon18.html] interesting in that regard. And also this talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRiVYv2ettA] on physical laws, and 'intervention'.

The way in which Spira declines striving is in the sense of using effort to look for what you are, not in the sense of wanting to be personally better and more successful, say.

However, we should return to this 'fatalism' idea. So, if you're going for all out subjective idealism (it's all you, just you, and there's no Rupert Spira guy, it's just you saying things to annoy you) then you can do anything, anything. Rabbits into roller coasters. Stay young forever. Would you say that the reason you aren't seeing other people do this is that they are "your world" and you don't believe it yet, haven't made it possible yet?

I have tried many experiments of a 'direct' nature, include some time-fiddling stuff. There have been results - revised histories etc - but I do seem to confront an inertia which isn't my personal inertia, it seems.

Meanwhile: the idea of conceptual momentum? [http://powerbeforewisdom.com/Fundamentals-of-Magick/Will-vs-Physics.html] Quote from article:

Back to my dispute. I believe that the laws of physics are able to be affected by will. I believe that the assumption that the laws of science are universal, persistent and solid actually helps make them so... until they encounter different beliefs that are either more strongly willed in a local area or which have more “momentum” for a lack of a better term.

(Several good - as in thought-provoking - articles on that site.)

...

He doesn't though. He denies the role of will. He also doesn't talk much about knowledge being important in experience.

The 'will' part is something that's problematic for most non-dualists. Other than that, he's pretty good at pointing out the experience. His TV Screen metaphor is just to show that your experience is made from consciousness, only you don't notice mostly. Most people don't get that far - it's a good first step before you do stuff. Well done you and me, but we're not the norm. I think he presents it excellently for the newcomer.

Duh, no shit! Subjective idealism is the topic of this subreddit. LOL, so finally you want to discuss it? I am pleased to hear that.

Sarcastic b*! ;-) You know what I mean. Our phrasings swing back and forth between assuming it and not. Nefandi is a dream character, of course, with human limitations. To do more, you need to become "the context".

I think of Spira as an entry door. This is how some people get introduced to thinking about the nature of mind.

Of course. This is agreed. Then read a good lucid dreaming book (Waggoner) and apply what you learn. However, "fatalism" is neither here nor there - limitations are revealed to exist or not by successful action. Anyway, the key difference is "Will" and that can only reside as a movement of the context awareness (the real you, mind, whatever). That's what's missing in discussion of brain/consciousness/free will, and so on. That's where the "magick" comes in.

Okay, that was fun. Subjective idealism, here we are. But why oh why am I not getting all the results I want/Will?

Bah, I think Spira puts it well and I like his books for getting the direct experience (for our larger audience). You, of course, are super-advanced and it's all just kindergarten for you. ;-) Wasn't comparing you to anyone, of course.

Wrong. Failure doesn't reveal limitation. Think about it.

It does; depends on the nature of the limitation though.

Because you think you're a human.

So for as long as I continue to get negative results, it will be because I still identify with being human? Sounds a bit of a get-out.

Think about it. When you control your lucid dream environments, are you doing it as the character or as a dreamer of the whole dream?

etc. Look, sure, I know this. And reabsorbing "eggs of separation" and regaining their power is not new - e.g. even business versions:

Question: Using your language, if I’m creating and experiencing the illusion of an economic downturn, the numbers aren’t working, and it seems like I need to layoff employees and take other cost-cutting steps, how do I handle that in Phase 2?
Answer: Illusions are illusions. The storyline doesn’t matter. There’s nothing unique about the illusion of an economic downturn, layoffs or cost cutting measures. . . Use the Process (reabsorb discomfort) as you see fit.

However, it seems to take far. too. long. It'd be nice to come up with a more blanket technique. My 'overwrite everything with empty space' works quite well, but you need to persist doing it in circumstances.

It's not about ignorance though. You can realise you are 'all this' but not directly experience it, still have bits and bobs of separation causing you trouble. In my experience, you do have to 'do something' to bring things back into you (or 'the one' or whatever), to dissolve boundaries when they appear.

And they're not always there, they're often enfolded - you can only dissolve them when they appear.

However, it is what you call felt-knowledge

Yes, the "felt-sense".

What happens when you become lucid in the dream? Does your feeling change? Generally for me, nothing changes other than I now suddenly know,

There is a 'clarity' though, an opening up. The quality of it does change.

That's not my experience at all. It's definitely not from lucid dreaming.

I'm talking about dissolving boundaries in "real" life, when you encounter a discomfort of separation in a particular situation, and dissolve/merge it to make it fully part of you again.

Clarity: I meant, upon it turning lucid, I find the clarity increases. Then I can do what I want, but everything does become more "so".

You should be able to treat any appearance as you would a dream. So it's strange that "real" life demands a different approach from that which I use during lucid dreaming. You have to explain why so.

It is apparently so, in terms of the reduced flexibility. However, the 'using prolonged Will' aspect is the same.

Q: [Deleted]

Yeah? I find there's a bit of a shift with the knowing. But you could just say that's the "felt-sense" of recognising it to be a dream.

Q: [Deleted]

Good idea. Actually, the relevant stuff for 'oneness' would be the dissolving the 'threat' of apparently external things, such as bills and other financial stuff. In fact, all boundaries correspond to, or are signified by, feelings of discomfort or tension in the situation. This is easy to do, but the things need to be happening now, first.

Okay, will do that later this week.

More extreme: Time travel (experiential time travel). Possible? I often use time travel as a way to explain that arbitrary-moment view of experience. Goddard's "revise your history' is in a way similar to this. Will include an example of that too: it's basically a dissolve followed by a creation.

Q: [Deleted]

Right. What I'm talking about is absorbing and dissolving the "felt-sense" of separation of something. Basically, taking the external "stuff" and making/recognising it as internal, part of you again. Once done, these things fall within your "control" - or at least, they fall into line with your Will.

Subsequently, things will not be pursued against you, people change their moods, all that. Rather than having to explicitly manipulate, doing this just means things "fall into the right direction". It was the Business Game book that first game me the idea to do this: surely if there was no sense of threat, then the threat had been dissolved?

It's not teleportation, but it's pretty useful.

The "felt-sense" isn't like touch-feeling; it probably corresponds to what you are calling "knowledge" (but not "I know facts"), or "knowing" or "experiencing".

It sounds intriguing.

You encounter something. You feel discomfort. You dissolve that discomfort into yourself. You find that the corresponding "external" object, what it represents, gradually stops being a threat. For instance, people pursuing you for something - will just stop. You can replace the "discomfort" with "gratitude", which works too. Some people have experimented with returning their bills, writing "not paying, thanks very much for the opportunity" and doing this. I never went that far!

Have you encountered dangerous wild animals?

People. Yes.

Q: [Deleted]

A bit of both. The dissolving of the tension feels like "taking it into you". You are doing it "within you".

No, you don't get to remember their memories, etc. Actually, it really is more of an "internal working" than a reaching out externally. You are dealing and changing with your own response (=assumptions about meaning?).

Doing magick in an LD is often a great way to get success. We need to put a bit more effort into extending around abilities into RL, though. It is not necessarily true that we'll be able to convert one thing to the other (despite our brushing aside of 'fatalism', etc).

Q: [Deleted]

The timescale matter, of course. If it's not tomorrow morning, and not next year, and not by 2030, then it doesn't matter (if you'll excuse the pun). There is a separate thing there: persisting oneself beyond the "vale". However, if we can't do "amazing things" in a relatively short period of time, I'd be pretty disappointed surely?

Q: [Deleted]

Okay, revisiting stuff: Have you experimented much with Neville Goddard yet? It's the most direct thing going. In fact, really, it is the only thing. Even just doing a daily "overwrite yourself with the feeling of empty space" works wonders. I've been deleting all sorts of bad ideas/assumptions along the way.

(In fact, I'd say, this is something to do whenever it occurs to you as you go about your day. Where your body "apparently occupies", create the "direct felt-sense" of open, empty space, blending seamlessly into the surrounding environment.)

...I was already thinking similarly and doing something of the sort prior. I don't deviate from my own style.

I often find the same thing. Yes, it's a good read, can provide inspiration. New take on things: just decide. That's all. Nothing else.

Yes. Usually I come across books that are already what I'm thinking about, they just expand things a little, or provide a useful context. Goddard was like that; I was already doing open-space-overwrite, and that just made the connection between that and a felt-sense for desired situations.

It's inspired a mixture of things: an Alexander Technique idea (from Missy Vineyard's book, How You Stand, How You Walk, How You Live) and a sprinkling of Les Fehmi's work (The Open Focus Brain, Dissolving Pain) and Douglas Harding's Head Off Stress, seeing that you are empty space really, and Eugene Gendlin's Focusing work, particularly his larger psychology book (rather than the small introductory one). It's inspired by those, bits in each of those. It's not in any of them. Nearest is Dissolving Pain, I'd say.

Maybe because I'd referenced the "summoning of the feeling" that Neville talks about at one point? There's a similarity there. Just imagining visually doesn't do it, you need to "feel" the space in place.

Q: [Deleted]

That's exactly it. I used to do it just with the space in the room, then reaching out further into the structureless "place" - then I realised my body was just an idea "overlaid" on experience, and so deleted that too. At that point, you realise your "body area" is actually home to other things, such as "stuck thoughts' and "uncompleted movements" which you have accumulated over time.

In fact, your human body is already your body. Can you bend your bones as you might rubber? I bet not. And you're one with your body. So here again is evidence that oneness is useless for magick.

You probably aren't "one" with much of your body, but I recognise your point. So, what's the missing thing? Magick tends to work by synchronicity mostly, with only a few people getting further (a guy doing 'Abrupt Physical Manifestation' creating patterns in plates, etc).

The missing thing if you can't bend your bones! But if you can then the missing thing is your attachment.

Q: [Deleted]

Bah. You should give it a go. "Obviously true" as in, they can be applied and correspond to observations. You will disagree with it overall, but still. Elimination of co-creating agencies is a must. How to reabsorb them?

POST: Not all insanity is created equal.

And to have no thoughts easily and reliably you literally need to have no concerns about anything. You need to be certifiably insane.

It can be a positive stance, Zen style: that you understand that the appropriate action will occur to you in any circumstances if you let it, since you are part of the larger movement of the world; and recognise that thinking about things and planning actions in advance doesn't actually help you act appropriately.

Yeah, I see two types of thought:

• Unbidden thoughts as arising spontaneously from 'tension' or conflict of some sort, so trying to eliminate the thoughts while still retaining the conflict isn't going to happen. You either get rid of the tension by investigating it and resolving your conflict, or you simply accept it and release control, let go and let it unwind.
• Intentional thinking - deliberate rumination and planning - that's optional and you can simply decide not to do that. You may be an obsessive thinker, but you can decide to give up and let it go, and decide not to follow unbidden thoughts in to rumination territory.

Trying to deliberately fight the first type of thought will not work. "Good Zen" involves simply "sitting" and letting thoughts rise and fall and finish their business, remaining with sensations rather than trying to shut thinking down.

Leading to: surely "seeing all this as a dream" is the ultimate in letting go of personal control and localised (bodily) tension, since we then identify as the whole thing? It's all an "expression of you", after all.

I don't think any authentic Zen masters considered the world something larger than themselves. And neither do I.

No, they considered the world within themselves, but the character they were experiencing was part of that world. So concerns about the character acting appropriately are misplaced. (And mostly when we talk of action in everyday life, we are speaking of that character.)

It depends on what you mean by "personal."

I mean, controlling your "body" (mental or physical) directly - intentional thought and physical control - and by retaining tension in it as a defensive/conflict management approach. What I really mean is, if you truly accept this is a dream, then many of your concerns would evaporate - you would release your grasp - because those concerns are for the survival of the character, not the dream.

Maybe? It's not 100% certain.

For sure, there are different folks and different strands. Most of the stuff I've explored seems to come to this though. Zazen is an allowing rather than a striving.

I don't equate my person with any specific body.

Sure, but most people do, and I'm talking about how a person moves from one view and way of living to another. For clarity: "who you really are" is everything, whilst "people", including "your body", are characters/mental objects within that.

Zazen allows striving and relaxation...

I don't think we're actually disagreeing. It's a "lively sitting". The point I made before (see other response) is that the point isn't to stamp out thoughts.

What do you mean by "everything"? Are you saying I am the sum total of the manifest things?

No, you are that in which the apparent manifest things appear.

If you can conceive of yourself that way, then you can conceive of yourself any way you like. If you can see yourself as a formless container that takes on the form of the objects of experience, then equally you can identify with any object, or configuration of time and space.

Once you've hit "openness", then you can pick and choose. Being able to choose to limit yourself - for fun or curiosity - is the greatest freedom.

One might say that our present localised experience is a limitation we freely chose at some point, but we don't remember. Moving on: The initial pitch was mixing subjective idealism with chaos magick, but we haven't really explored that much.

Q: [Deleted]

I did spot that post, actually. I thought this was interesting:

If you tell your friends, the world will change to make the event mundane. It will turn out that someone left the pad in some sort of diagnostics mode or there will be a software bug that allows 10% of random codes to work or something like that.

This is true, in my experience. The universe (heheh) strives for self-consistency. Open the door, there's a room beyond; seek an explanation, and one is provided. But also:

Magic isn't about making unnatural things happen, it's about making natural things happen at the right times and places.

I just founding it interesting that someone would phrase it that way.

I think that if one does not specify the route the result will take, then it adopts natural processes as the mechanism, in accordance with your own understanding of what "natural" is. When you look for an explanation, one will appear which, again, fits in with your idea of what a reasonable explanation would be.

The alternative is for you not to retain a memory of the change. (Often others don't retain memories pre-jump.)

Q: [Deleted]

He's the man.

I think coherence is semi-inherent. I think things arise in patterns across time rather than events, and so the 'world' tends to keep being 'of a piece'. Once you've accepted one thing, other things tend to fall in line with it, and so on.

If you're not a believer in such things, it could be that your 'reality' of your 'extended person' won't contain such experiences, and you'll subjectively 'split off' if something like that's going to happen.

Q: [Deleted]

Not the best wording. That the world will tend to serve up experiences in line with your beliefs, and that your memories will tend to correspond to your current experience. Your subjectivity would 'split off' rather than give you an experience which wasn't coherent (wasn't consistent with itself).

Yes. An unwitting strategy though. It's either avoided, or edited out.

In our current reality "don't like strangeness" probably describes most people, right?

Whether they realise it or not, yes.

Someone over at 'Glitch in the Matrix' just posted this [https://old.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/2gqtyb/metaswitching_realities/], and I thought I'd have some fun replying. :-)

...

The problem would be, can you overcome the momentum of experiential habits such as these?

You fear a personal death. And to be sure, to genuinely confront the nature of yourself and of your world, will indeed involve your death in a fundamental sense. What seems insane on this side of the jump, won't be on the other.

Say: If you genuinely experienced the world around you as a dream, and yourself as a dream figure, then the solid, material everydaymotherfucker would be no more. You would be part of a larger movement.

You have to give. up. (Your personal self. Not a life.)

Stop thinking, my friend. Just stop. You cannot work this out by thinking. The other side, as it were, isn't "over there" - it's "in here" and all around you. It's not even a "side", it's where you've been (and what you've been) all along. So no need to worry! :-)

I'm going to give you a daily practice to do, and other than that you're just going to get on with your life, and see what happens, okay? Stabilisation is key. Here it is:

• 10 minutes, twice a day.
• Lie down on the floor, feet flat with knees bent, head supported by books, arms by your side or hands resting on abdomen. (Like this.)
• Decide to give up completely to gravity: to "play dead".
• Let go of your body and mind, let them move as they will. Allow them to unwind.
• Don't even "pay attention"; just let your attention be open and wide. If it focuses on some thought or pain briefly, let that happen, and let it open out again.
• After 10 minutes, decide to get up, but don't do anything about it. Wait until your body moves by itself. (This won't happen first time, but eventually it will happen.)

Basically, you are letting the "stuck thoughts" and "uncompleted movements" you have amassed unwind and dissolve themselves. You do not need to do anything for this to occur. Gradually, your perception will become clearer and clearer.

Note: Any effort to focus or do anything will get in the way. There is a method of accelerating this by "overwriting yourself", but it's nicer this way.

This is all you need to do for now. As you go about your day, if you feel yourself becoming tense or defensive or worried, take a breath and just mentally recall the last time you were there, supported, by the whole universe. Okay? Trust in that.

Thank you very much :-) I will try this exercise beginning tomorrow, but for now it is time for bed. I plan on sticking around here, this subreddit has really grabbed me. I was reading lots of the posts between yourself and Nefandi and they were very interesting. Out of curiosity, what is this "overwriting yourself", what does it entail?

I should write a post on it really...

Rather than allow the "mental objects" in the space of awareness to gradually unwind and dissolve, you can overwrite space to be empty by direct intention, summoning the extended feeling. However, it means you get no acclimatisation and you are completely evaporating the boundaries very quickly. It involves confronting an existential fear of openness. Imagine if you wished the floor disappeared, casually, and suddenly it turned into an infinite void! You might be... uncomfortable with that! :-)

There's no rush, though; I think it's better to do it the gradual way. Note that Nefandi and I are pushing the edges in our discussion; there's no reason to commit so fully in my opinion, until one feels that they are at that stage (or even ever, as you see fit).

Anyway, do update on how you get along!

...

So what you call "unbidden" I'd call "irritating." They're still your thoughts even if you don't like them.

Surely, but the difference is useful. I can sit here and generate and pursue thoughts deliberately. If thought are arising from conflict though - even if that conflict is an ongoing and maintained conflict through unconscious intention - they are still unbidden, in the sense that I was not intending thought as the outcome. All experience is intentional at route, however there is a difference between direct outcomes and indirect.

In the direct creation of thought one simply has to stop creating them. In the indirect creation of though one has to stop doing whatever-the-indirect-thing is (in this case, the maintenance of conflict or tension).

I strongly disagree. This isn't good Zen at all.

Okay, context is all: the point I was trying to make is that "Good Zen" doesn't involve quenching thoughts by trying to stamp on them, that's a problem and muddling up with modern Western meditation nonsense. It is a staying-with, and more.

Sakyamuni said to the vast assembly, "Through sitting in the lotus posture then samadhi is realized in the bodymind and its virtue and dignity can be recognized by the people. Just as the sun illumines the world so the mind is cleared of dullness, laziness, and indolence. The body is bright and not dull. Perception and cognition are also bright and supple. You should sit like dragons coiled. Just the image of the lotus posture brings fear to king of the demons of delusion. How much more so should he see someone sitting without collapsing or leaning but actually experiencing the truth?

Quite so.

All good. And nice quote. "Investigation" is a good word. It's not an effortful investigation, or a manipulative one, it's an exploration of what-is.

POST: Playfulness.

Extra one:

Imagine - feel - that beyond your field of view, the world just stops, and there's just... blankness. If you're indoors, the view out of the window is just a flat picture, nothing behind it. If you're outside, then the landscape at the end of the road or the garden is just a vertical image, then nothing. And as you walk around and the landscape unfolds, really imagine that it's being created 'just-in-time' for you to experience.

(Extended version: There's always darkness in the direction you're not looking in, in your own self portrait, and the things you see before you are just floating transparencies.)

...

Schizophrenia here we come for the first bit! :-) I really like the "live mash-up" idea, turning things into blended movie scenes. Great!

But honestly, a shift towards some healthier perspectives and philosophies makes mental issues it a totally different experience.

Hmm, so if people have a larger context then these experiences aren't necessarily so problematic. The universe does give you messages, but not always; you are connected to something larger than yourself, but you are also an individual. It's when we are consumed by the experiences that it's a problem.

... how they took a shaman from Africa and showed him the ... He says we have lost the power of ritual which brings understanding and peace to those persons.

With psychotherapy and so on being modern attempts to vent that, but only within a specific modern context. Interestingly though, more and more techniques are approaching vision-searching and shamanic types - Focusing and Reichian stuff, even the current mindfulness fashion. The more we lock ourselves down and 'externalise' aspects of ourselves, they more they will try to break through?

The truth is that normality is a variable in space and time. And delusions stem from interpreting strangeness as symptoms, instead of tools to dismantle the conventional boundary between reality and fiction, truth and falsehood, sense and nonsense.

Yes, I think a lot of modern problems arise from trying to deliberately narrow our experience within certain boundaries - our experience of what's around us and what arises within us. This is why modern life can be so stressful maybe: you are subtly engaged in a constant fight with your moment-to-moment experience.

The missing skill for the typical modern western person, I believe, is to be able to actively engage and disengage with experiences, both conventional and bizarre.

I suppose our basic model is that of "we see things directly". This isn't even about materialism/idealism or whatever - just the assumption that our experiences are unmediated, and responding to them in that way. So we tend to discount things even as simple as how our attention is directed, and that we can take control/responsibility for that, than we can widen with context, or narrow for immersion. Instead, it just all seems to "happen to us", mostly. That, and not understanding intention; trying to do everything 'muscularly' or 'bodily', not realising that the direction we "set" is the main creator - I have been thinking. Any moves in society which shift us along these lines has to be a good thing.

It seems more and more in recent years, to me, that the right way is to not append a truth value to it.

To accept the experience as is, and then have the interpretation as an additional thing, rather than having the two be blended? Then the interpretation can be judged on its usefulness. I like that.

Although this subreddit is about subjective idealism, my baseline default view I go for is much simpler and is simply that of direct experience. Upon investigation:

• It feels like there is a big open space of awareness.
• A world of objects seems to arise within that.
• Bodily sensations and thoughts appear there too.
• The experience seems to respond to my intention in limited ways.
• The response seems to include the environment, as well as my thoughts and my bodily actions: coincidences and opportunities, tuned.
• Whatever is "behind" the experience can never be known, or whether there is anything.

With the addition then that anything else is "explanatory icing on top" and should be recognised as such. Getting narrowed on any one interpretation tend to block out the arising of, or the recognition of, other paths that might come up which are better suited to your desires as they change.

("Getting narrowed" was the nature of my mistake which got me into my messes.)

...

Nice. One word: soundtracking! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCJOZ8dgSLM]

Similarly, if you're bored, adding (non-matching, comedy) subtitles onto your day is good fun. Don't pre-think them, just decide you're going to have some appear when people are talking, and you'll be surprised at what comes up. Oh, and everyone should be wearing a silly hat.

Q: [Deleted]

That's great, how it can be customised too; I'm going to play with using that sound.

I wonder how far we can go with this, treating our current experience as the "raw material" and editing it. This is pushing towards hypnotism all this (of course, same thing really), but can we edit out sounds and so on, on the fly? I can add things in, pictures and extra sounds, with varying levels of clarity, but I'm not so good at deleting. And then, how persistent can things get.

My only beef with hypnosis is that most of it is highly associated with profit-seeking, and also...

Often, but that's more in the use than in the phenomenon itself. Actually one of the first 'esoteric' books I read was on hypnosis, by this guy whose page on fallacies is quite interesting. That and some book on visualisation by Ursula Markham, who first introduced me to the idea that visualising could affect reality (the old "create a car parking space for yourself" trick in particular).

We can, at least in principle. Isn't this known as a negative hallucination in hypnosis?

Yes, that's why I brought up hypnosis - but I don't seem to be able to do it by my own self-suggestion. And yet, I was viewing this editing process we're doing as essentially self-hypnosis. But actually, there's a bit of a difference between doing direct imagination stuff and suggesting something and accepting/allowing it.

I agree completely. But in practice, suppose you want to learn about hypnosis? . . .

This is where old-fashioned books come into their own. That the internet is the place we look for all our information means we are constrained by the 'form' that it shapes things into (websites, forums all require monetisation or that's why they were started). Authors of paperback books on a topic used to do it for the passion and for a selected audience, because the money wasn't good and the availability would be limited anyway. There are few website versions of that sort of thing, except from more academic researchers or a passion for spreading the good news (e.g. Eugene Gendlin's Focusing library).

Let's see... how about editing out pain? Am I dissolving pain or editing it out? How would I know the difference?

Good point. Pain is an interesting one. You can dissolve it just by including into the the awareness space that surrounds it. This also works for distracting sounds: it seems to be the attempt to isolate the sound or ignore it which makes it distracting. But that's not quite deletion, it's incorporation or dissolving object boundaries into the continuum.

What is the difference you think?

I'm really not sure. At root, it must be the same thing. Something like the difference between deliberately picturing a car (which means you create a particular, chosen image), say, and just saying the word "car" to yourself (which will result in a picture appearing spontaneously). Is it about the level of detail you attempt to control? "Control" seems to be at the core though.

I have about 10 books on hypnosis from the best authors, including Erickson.

Yep, I still think the best info I've got on these topics is from some of the earlier books. (Those early NLP books are probably the only decent ones, for instance.) Luckily: PDFs.

You know that some languages are pictorial to begin with. Like the ancient Chinese was just a bunch of pictures. What I mean is, pictures are not necessarily all that different from words.

But there is a difference between generic symbol and particular instance. Chinese might be a "bunch of pictures", but it's not a bunch of specific images. In the first case I'm choosing this car (controlling the details), in the second I'm requesting a car. So with deletion, perhaps dying to control the negative directly is the problem (basically "don't think of an elephant"?). I dunno.

As I've learned hypnosis is 99% hard work though. I thought there was some trick to it, but nope. Just practice, practice, practice....

I think what's being practiced, though, is intention and being passive, no? The trick to self-hypnosis was always acceptance/giving up, or that's what I found. It's both easy and very difficult (like the threshold thing when inducing an OBE). The thing I found hardest was to resist the urge to try and make it happen.

MILD - good example. WILD or direct-entry being even more so. (Just looked up for examples, and I like the images used in this guide - quite Waking Life movie-like.)

I agree. Words and symbols are more abstract. A symbol doesn't tell you about shadows, hues, and the details of the shapes.

Suggestion: Symbols are abstract, but experiences are always concrete? (Except the experience of a symbol.) So I see the word "car", but it works by triggering a bit of a "car experience" in my awareness; that's how I get the 'meaning" of the word.

What I find difficult is all the talk relating to a hard split between conscious mind and subconscious. It seems like the hypnosis books take the perspective that the conscious mind is somehow an enemy. I always had problems with that.

Yes, it was just a hangover from previous worldviews I think, and a rubbish notion that you directly control yourself and there's the mysterious "other" to be wary of. To be fair, these guys mostly weren't philosophers eh.

I don't agree. I have many abstract experiences. I would go so far as to regard myself as an abstraction. To me abstractions are just as felt and real as any concrete phenomenon.

Explain further. By abstraction I mean "does not resemble the thing it represents, is pointing to". By concrete experience I mean, an experience based on senses, even if "mental senses". So the sense of myself might not be solid like a table, but it's still a direct experience, even though I can't describe it properly. "George", however, is an abstract symbol pointing to that experience.

Actually, I should reassign my words. Let's have symbols are pointers (obviously), abstractions are non-direct-sensory experiences (although they will likely be made up of images, sensations, etc), concrete experiences are external-world-type. Because when I think of the past, although I experience it as a visual timeline from left to right in my experience, obviously it's an abstraction. And if I feel time passing, sure it's a feeling, but it's not a thing.

"I" in this case doesn't point to anything.

Well, that's a special one of course!

Maybe the distinction between concrete and abstract is purely conventional and arbitrary.

I think that's so. All experiences are "concrete" in some way (there's always a sensory component), but they may mean something else. When an experience just means itself then that's fundamental.

That's why you can't explain love, it is "just itself".

Having said that, I think the experiences you list correspond to a "landscape of feelings", bodily sensations, that correspond to the subject or idea or the experience of "being in love" or whatever. You think with your whole body. If you think of "a tree" you get a picture maybe, and some sounds, maybe the idea of an environment, but also your whole body subtly changes into a slight tension-pattern associated with that idea.

This feeling-aspect is key to experience and knowing/being, but cannot be properly verbalised.

What are feelings, if not bodily sensations? If you are scared, for instance, how does that manifest itself?

Impatience is, I'd suggest, a feeling of tension between the position you are in now (literally, physically) and the position you'd like to be in - a muscular tension pattern.

Q: [Deleted]

That's okay. You hear sounds without physical ears, your see pictures without eyes, you feel touch without hands, you feel bodily sensations without a body. You don't actually ever experience a 'physical' body anyway, of course. Even if you were a materialist, you would still have to say that you experience your body "after the fact", as a mental object. We could say "body-space-located" perhaps. But anyway, the feeling of fear is, say, a tight feeling in the stomach area, a clenching of the chest, other sensations, etc.

I know what you mean. But I tell you, when I was floating in blackness in that one experience, I felt fear and I couldn't feel anything like a stomach or tightness, at least, not anything normal that would be obvious.

I do know the experience (a version of it). It still seems to me that it is a "located feeling" with a "meaning". Hmm, but it's basically going to be a felt-sense meaning. You don't need an actual spatial body to have that experience, I guess.

Q: [Deleted]

Open awareness at base (how can one experience a lack of something?).

"Tension" is there's a discomfort associated with the perceived lack of change.

Q: [Deleted]

But what would the nature of that experience be? A tension between your expectation and what's there? For instance, there's a difference between just experiencing an empty garden, and experiencing an empty garden while expecting it to be full of trees. The basic experience is the same, but the latter has tension?

So "an apple" doesn't really refer to anything per se.

Platonic ideals! "An apple" conjurs up a "mental object" of an "apple" (in picture form, other sensations, probably a whole structure actually), that fits or becomes "attached" or anticipates a whole spectrum of experience.

(This is an unsettled topic from hundreds of years, of course.)

I'm going to suggest it's a "global sense of apple" and that it's more felt than experienced as, say, a particular image. That's what I was getting at by "probably a whole structure".

There are only experiences?

We've just got into the habit of categorising some experiences as "concrete" (tables) and some as "abstract" (not tables). More specifically, when we look deeper, we discover that we define things which are actually felt-senses and felt-knowing as abstract. Probably just because they can't be described in verbal language, and representations can't be created in terms of images or sounds or sculptures. However, these felt-senses can to some extent be evoked by other experiences. And that is what art is.

Q: [Deleted]

The pure-blackness experience is one of the things that eyesight improvement tries to do - the Bates Method, specifically. You imagine pure blackness behind your eyes, which corresponds to complete relaxation of the eyeball, hence optimal vision. Supposedly. But it shows the overlap between imagination and perception.

I guess we feel like it's editing if we think phenomenon exists objectively in some external domain. Otherwise we feel it's more like dissolving. But I don't know if there is a clear difference.

That's an interesting point. Also, there's a warning after dissolving pain not to "go looking for it" afterwards to check it's gone or whatever, because you end up re-creating it. Hmmm....

• Dissolving is "delocalising" I suppose, de-objectifying something. That's how the pain thing works: you are dissolving the boundaries around a "stuck thought".
• Dissolving/editing a tree, what does that mean in this context? Exclusion of it from your awareness field I guess, releasing it into the background. "Inserting a new fact" into experience.

What we experience is a continuum which is "cut up" into objects, so we're not deleting that part of raw experience, we're just saying "don't interpret that as a tree", maybe?

In fact I like to check it out often, just to see if it dares to resurface. If the pain does resurface, that's good. I just remove it again, and better.

For sure. I think the advice is tailored to those less well-versed than the likes of you and I! But it's an interesting point: that you can dissolve and and recreate it at will. So it's not real-real.

"What we experience is a continuum which is "cut up" into objects, so we're not deleting that part of raw experience, we're just saying "don't interpret that as a tree", maybe?" Maybe. I've never done this, keep in mind. So I can't talk from experience.

I was thinking of how it might work in hypnosis. Thing is, I'll secretly know it's a tree; do I have to avoid "going looking for it"? I like your idea of starting by making things fuzzy. I'll play with this next time I'm bored in the garden.

...

One time I imagined that corporations had an independent being (like spirits/demons) and were possessing the employees and buildings . . .

That's good. The corporation as egregore/servitor. Probably truth in that. Interesting to actually get yourself to see things that way, though.

The void that I started to see in people's eyes began to creep me out, as did the weird feeling this created when I would walk down a street.

Shows how you "fill in" the idea that there are "actual people" inside the bodies you pass by every day. But really, you don't know. (Philosophical zombies! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie])

Q: [Deleted]

Look forward to that. It seems that maybe when you "externalise" anything (basically, declaring it not under your direct control now) it takes on a bit of an independent will of its own. Basically like little servitors or spirits, but it could go quite wrong quite quickly if you're not grounded in yourself. ("Schizophrenia here we come!" again.)

This post [http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/fotamec2.html] - on the sigil/servitor Fotamecus for time compression - is what brought that thought to mind. Once something is out there, it can become its own thing. I'm not quite sure how to integrate that stuff into the 'subjective reality' worldview as yet.

Reversing heavy othering requires understanding othering, and having the heart to reverse it.

Servitors can be recalled and reabsorbed, but once you've created something that's expanded almost into a world, then it's a more daunting task, of course. Maybe more of a reset.

POST: Death

[POST]

How well do you personally know death? I've been so well acquainted we've shared conversation in dream. Everyone has met her and known her realm. We've all been there before we were us.
Death is a big thing. Friends all.

[END OF POST]

I love this topic. But what makes you think you aren't dead right now?

Because he's God, and God is eternal. Of course.

If everything in God is life, where does the idea of death come from?

Duality. We are so used to the dichotomy of object/space, existance/nonexistance. We cannot comprehend 'oneness' and 'eternity'. The idea of death comes from the temporary nature of appearances.

Where does duality come from?

Good question. The sense of here and there, from the identity we accumulate gradually from birth and from language, from the tendency of our 'attentional profile' to become 'clumpy' and jump to objects instead of spaces?

Duality is inherent to all cognition. Even non-duality is known only in contradistinction to duality.

Ah, nice. All words imply a surrounding space, implying an "other". Language guarantees seeing the world in terms of dualities.

Language / Beyond language.
Duality / Non-duality.
Conceptual / Non-conceptual. <-- this distinction is a concept, btw.
That which is beyond duality is also beyond ordinary cognition.

A-ha, I like that. So, maybe also: direct experience vs thinking-about or conceptualising.

==Well, "direct experience" suggests that there is indirect experience. But experience is always direct. Self-limited people have direct experience, not indirect.

The contrast is between, say, actually feeling the space in the room or experiencing being vastness, rather than thinking-about it. When you talk to people about this stuff, sometimes it's hard to get them to actually use their awareness, rather than just play with the concepts. Took me a while on that score.

Of course, thinking is still a direct experience - of thinking!

Much better than possibly implying people have indirect experiences.

Yes, all experience is direct, it's a case of: what is the nature of that experience. To realise what's going on, it's a matter of directing your attention to the right place. Experience is experience is experience. There can be no indirect, when experience is made from you.

And this amazing "thing" that people could be feeling, this undefined timeless place which is the site of experiencing, it isn't far away! It's closer than the veins in one's own neck. It's all right here.

Right! Intimate is the word!

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet - Tennyson

People spend years meditating and following this or that path. All of that can be fun, but it is not necessary. You can simply direct your attention to where you are looking from, and see that it is capacity for everything.

NOW you are talking. This is my favorite kind of George. :)

In a way, there's nothing more to say than that, once you've got it.

Well, that's just brilliant, and this combination appears new to me. I haven't heard it said exactly this way before.

I think I probably nicked the term from Thomas Traherne and his idea of a metaphysical space, but there you go. It fits.

Every time I go for a contemplation... Here, let's cheat.

I know what you mean. Playfulness, yes. Insanity one I'm interested in. Also, art and magick and awareness are inexplicably bound, exploring the creative process, combining the two, all that.

Our minds are infinitely creative. You don't have to work yourself over to become creative.

This is bang-on true. In fact, people applying effort to creativity is what prevents it. People try to keep busy doing stuff thinking this will make them more productive and produce more ideas. But that's not true. What you have to do is, clear space for the ideas to come. Or should I say, allow space. Creativity is the rule!

POST: On timelessness and age. (by cosmicprankster420)

[POST]

it seems a lot of humans get worked up over the concept of age, how long ones meat body has been in operation. Something i have pondered is the idea of being timeless or eternal, not defining ones self by their age. For some reason my birthday is coming up in a month and today i was mildly distressed about turning 27 mainly because i haven't accomplished that much in the material world in terms of jobs and mates and so forth. Even though i have graduated college and have a completed fantasy novel manuscript, there are so many ways this golf score we call our age binds us to the material world and reduces lucidity.
In addition to not associate with being human, i've began to realize what makes us humaned or what binds us to the material world is the ticker of age, this scoreboard that defines our worth in this materialistic society. Associating ourselves with our age seems to make us hyper aware of our physical human bodies, and i believe i want to transcend that by not identifying with my age and instead think of myself as eternal, timeless, outside of time, never born. When that ticker becomes insignificant it seems much harder to be attached to this particular dimension and harder to associate ones self with being human. Why should our dream be defined by a score we call age, i just came here to play the game and have fun. If we move the metaphor from dream to video game, its like materialists are those gamers who get way to frustrated in world of war craft and associate their self worth with there score in the game, when being lucid makes you say "dude, its just a game, chill out".

[END OF POST]

AesirAnatman: I'm glad you posted this.
It's interesting because about a week ago I was asked by some document I was filling out how old I am. I sat there for a good minute asking myself 'am I 22 or 23? I'm not sure' until I did the math for the years and figured it out. I realized that conventionally this is a very weird question to ask myself.
Age doesn't matter much to me because I've stopped identifying and caring about that aspect of my humanity. This extends beyond occasional forgetfulness of my own age - I never remember the ages of my friends or family or their birthdays. Stranger yet, when I interact with children or elderly people, I basically treat them as I would anyone else. I don't baby children (and often have ended up bringing out incredibly intelligent aspects of kids simply by treating them as such) and I don't try to appease the elderly. Granted, this isn't entirely true with me with the elderly members of my own family at present, but is basically true otherwise.
there are so many ways this golf score we call our age binds us to the material world and reduces lucidity.
YES. Right now I'm trying to learn to live ultra-minimally so that I can live in a van in order to not need to work very much. However, I'm still going to school for a CS and Philosophy degree in order to pursue a career even though I have no desire or intention to have such a career more than 2-3 years max. I want to have graduated college, with no particular benefit to myself.
i believe i want to transcend that by not identifying with my age and instead think of myself as eternal, timeless, outside of time, never born.
I feel this desire as well.
its like materialists are those gamers who get way to frustrated in world of war craft and associate their self worth with there score in the game, when being lucid makes you say "dude, its just a game, chill out".
Hahaha, I feel this way so often.

Good post. @cosmicprankster420 & @AesirAnatman:

Bringing the magickal aspect into this though: If not things, or a career, there are experiences we'd like to have, I guess? And situations we'd like to be in, and situations we'd like not to be in.

There are two approaches, and I reckon making the decision early as possible is best:

• With Plan: You can select what you want and start adopting it as your reality now (magickal techniques; Neville Goddard; etc). This is the Deity Dreamer approach: This is all your reality, under the control of your imagination.
• Without Plan: You can commit to staying relaxed and open and paying attention, deciding that you will always follow your intuition and the synchronistic opportunities that arise, no matter how you feel. This is the 'True Will' approach, or rephrased: that you already always know what you want in ways that you can't consciously think, but you'll know when to act when the time comes. Intentional purposelessness.

Either one is a form of commitment and works. Half-baked versions of either mean you just get bounced about. I've jumped between the two, and it confused things. (In college days I spent loads of time thinking and reading about relaxation, self-mastery, philosophy and magick and not them putting them into consistent daily practice and exercise or really paying attention to what I actually wanted, flip-flopping. I could have saved myself a lot of messing about.)

i believe i want to transcend that by not identifying with my age and instead think of myself as eternal, timeless, outside of time, never born.

That's great. However, you have to recognised that you will have the experience of being a particular bodily age and so on as 'time' unfolds, and you should plan to deal with that, in terms of what you 'intend' and the situation you want to be in. Better to be in that nice house with a pool and staff, than not.

"dude, its just a game, chill out".

If only there was a handy strategy guide! [https://www.oliveremberton.com/2014/life-is-a-game-this-is-your-strategy-guide]

I mean, it's always going to be better to: a) be a millionaire before 30/35/40 whatever than not, and b) to start doing things you love, with money coming from that, sooner rather than later. And if you're not really interested in CS/Phulosophy or want a career in it, but really want to be an actor, then do that now - etc. Otherwise you'll never get the $10M blockbuster action movie payday while you're still young enough to pull the moves and the ladies*. :-)

The materialism/idealism, waking/dreaming, reality/illusion philosophy or practice doesn't really change any of that, since they are about experiences. Whether you do it by old-fashioned means or by magick, you still have to make the choice.

[Amend as required]

POST: Confessions

On Fearlessness

Hmm. How to assist this state? One of the benefits of recognising that you are not 'this body' but are the whole dream should be the recognition that the whole dream moves with you towards your goals? And that apparent fears are anxieties arising from not completely embracing that viewpoint.

This may have a side-effect though: That any efforts of manipulation that imply that 'you' are separate from 'the environment' might reinforce a materialist view of stubborn not-me resisting change.

Another approach to releasing fears can be to simply to do a daily exercise where you lie down on the floor and just leg go of yourself, body and thought - basically, "play dead" and let things move and unwind by themselves. You'll find that a lot of fear is held as 'defensive tension' in the body with co-located thoughts and feelings. They gradually release and work themselves out over time if given the chance.

Actually, on exercises: Does anybody have particular daily practices they'd like to share? (S.R. or magick-related ones, I hasten to add!)

...

That's why you should have continued! That's the point! It's initially a bit daunting and can be unpleasant though: all your defences are being deleted/released, after all. The process is usually relatively gradual overall but can be very "bumpy" - as in, things might be quiet for a while and then there's a big release.

Edit: Isn't your response at odds with your being-a-deity post?

The thing is, it is scary. You are opening yourself out to "become the universe" - it's the thing all those non-dual and buddhist efforts lead to: identifying yourself with the wide open space of awareness and all its contents.

As soon as you do it, you become aware of all those bits and pieces you have generally been avoiding. And you just feel completely exposed. I guess that's why there's much talk of "faith" and so on. You only realise how hard you are holding on when you try to let go like this.

People who start doing mindfulness, for instance, are often surprised to discover they feel a bit worse when they begin! But then those feelings dissolve into the surrounding space. There's an interesting book by Les Fehmi called Dissolving Pain which has techniques for this; they are applicable here too. In fact, lots of magick/help approaches essentially boil down to the same thing.

There's a book called Busting Loose From The Money Game by Robert Scheinfeld (cheesy website here) basically written as a business self-help book, but in actual fact it's based around a "process" of dissolving "discomfort eggs" as they arise and releasing their energy. In other words, mindfulness and dissolving your reality into openness.

"become the universe" .. It's beyond that even.

Yep, so language update: From now on, let's have "universe" mean "all the objects (content)" and "place" or "ground" of awareness be the vastness with all its enfolded infinite possibilities.

We're talking about the same thing.

But what's interesting is that there are ways to express the same thing that will make people slightly afraid and recoil. And ways that will make people giddy with fun and joy.

Yes. It's a lesson to learn: when you talk to people about this stuff, you have to begin from their worldview and build outwards, leading step by step. That's why there are so many, need to be so many*, ways of saying the same thing.

I don't like this, because it tries to homogenize possibilities.

How does it? We say that "you" are the open infinity, and the "universe" is the temporary objects and processes and observations arising within it.

Only in your mind. Your level of expression hides too much. Fuck people over with insight! Slam them with truth. Maybe not always, but sometimes.

Heheh. But the thing is, they won't understand you if you don't start from their current concepts! I don't mean you start by agreeing with them, only that you begin with their terms of reference.

Your language update redefines the universe to be something completely distinct from how people typically use that concept.

Hmm. Well, maybe it's a word best avoided. I usually use the word "world" anyway, to refer to the "appearances" we experience. It reduces scale to what we're directly experiencing, and makes the bridge to "dream-world" easier. And you can indicate to people how to 'feel the background space' from there. "Universe" is too abstract actually.

You'd be surprised.

Actually, I'm with this to some extent. You don't necessarily need to walk people through from scratch, and you have to 'feel about a bit' to find where to start from, adapt as you go. Assuming the best and tuning is a good approach.

Eh, the word "world" again implies internal consistency...

A "world" does appear to have those things, like a "dream-world" but it's easier to think of it being illusory, and "hanging in space". Or I find it easier anyway. You can literally sit people down and say, 'what do you see?" and then show them that their current experience is limited and sits inside a vast open place.

I mean, all this depends on who you're talking to of course!

Of course, I'm only teaching myself!

They are, of course, not so much "inside a vast open space" as rather "inside me"... Ha. Well, lack of confidence in my ability to communicate it, perhaps. This may indeed be true. But in both ways!

To understand and be understood. :-)

It's a trade-off that you can balance out later. Not so the other way. But, yeah, it's something worth considering, particular with non-face-to-face discussion.

POST: Investigation of the utility of dream manipulation

[POST]

==Dreams have long been used as a form of divination, either as glass through which higher powers are seen darkly, or an interface with the subconscious mind for self understanding. What else can dreams be used for? Herein, we will attempted to break the possible applications of dreams into two primary categories:

1. practice of skills under non extant conditions, and
2. practices of skills that cannot, or do not, exist. Subdivisions of each are explored and reveal a host potential uses for dream manipulation.
   I do not wish to deny the potential of divinatory dreamwork, but since they have been long explored, I instead wish to strike fresh ground.
   The most obvious feature of dreams is that they are a natural (non-drug induced) nonrational form of cognition. Many studies exist that suggest that dreams are a way for the brain to integrate experiences, and to undergo simulation of various experiences without risk. Interestingly, a study was done in which participants practiced a skiing video game. Those who practiced it shortly before sleep learned at a faster rate, and many reported dreaming about skiing.
   It thus seems that dreams allow us to practice skills, and retain some improvement from this practice. Further, given the existence of lucid dreaming, it is possible to practice under conditions that are not physically possible, or to practice skills that could not physically exist.
   Let's examine these two possibilities separately. (1. practice under non extant conditions, and 2. practices of skills that cannot, or do not, exist)
   The former could be of clear use for practicing under dangerous conditions that could exist, but have not yet occurred. Anecdotally, many people who engage in athletics report that first visualizing a task before attempting it results in better performance. It certainly appears that way for me in regards to difficult tasks of fine motor skills, such as playing a difficult passage on piano, or drawing a long curve of relative complexity, and for gross motor skills, such as vaulting objects, and safely landing from a height.
   A subcategory of this conditional practice involves conditions that one does not expect to participate in, such as special cases of physical rules (modified gravity, or friction), or even extremely unusual topological circumstances, such as higher dimensional locales, in which one can move away from a position without apparently moving in the three directions most familiar to us.
   The utility of this subcategory is not as immediately obvious in “waking life.” It can, however, be vital to effective fiction writing and the creation of video games. Further, if memories do entail the formation of neural connections, and there is transferability between skills, then these “impossibly practiced skills” may provide insights into physical practice that would have been much more difficult to obtain otherwise.
   Now we will continue on to the second of the possibilities, the practice of skills that cannot, or do not, exist.
   The first form of utility in this category that comes to mind is that it may exercise abstract thought. In undergoing experiences that cannot exist, one must create them oneself, and thus creative, and likely critical, thinking will be involved.
   The range of environments that can be imagined is far too large to list, so let's devise some categories: literal, symbolic, neither/both literal and symbolic.
3. Literal
   Literal environments that are not possible refers to “physical” environments that are not possible. This was touched upon in the practice of skills under conditions that could not exist. The same essentially applies here. Only in dreams can one hunt the Jabberwock.
4. Symbolic.
   In this category we will find ideas that represent something other than what is sensed. Language, games, mathematics, and allegory, lie here.
   Lived hieroglyphics, while potentially possible with augmented reality, are currently not a reality. The ability to communicate directly through the creation of symbols of meaning or desire with more dimensions than typical speech is possible within dreams. Words can change color. A single person can speak in counterpoint, the precise melodies and species containing relevant information. A person can be surrounded in meaning in a way not currently possible. The environment itself can speak, and change form in linguistic meaning bearing ways based upon what is happening.
   Games that are not possible in real life can occur in dreams. These might include games like Hesse's Glass Bead Game, or could perhaps be even more abstract. Imagine a game in which one must navigate a whirling house party of uncountable rooms by changing the demeanour of each room into something congruent with a sphere of the tree of life, in attempt to create a sequence of rooms akin to the tree,
   It is already common for people to visualize mathematics, so that is not new here. Instead, one can live mathematics. While in mathematics it is possible create rules for a system without regard to its physicality, here the impossible physicality may become manifest.
   Allegory is often employed in the use of dreams for divination, so it does not need any more investigation here. Simply put, forms of symbolism already internalized may be lived out in dreams, and thus one may further develop modes of symbolic thought through ritual in which the effects are much more pronounced.
5. Neither/Both Literal and Symbolic
   Here there are two categories, 1. environments that are both literal and symbolic, and 2. environments that are neither literal nor symbolic.
6. Environments that are literal and symbolic abound in literature. A “real” world exists within fiction, but it often also contains a higher order discourse that uses people and places as its fundamental carriers of meaning.
   Environments of this sort would entail an apparently physical locale, in which every physical action incurs a symbolic response. Cutting down a tree both results in that tree being felled In the “physical world” of the dream, as well as attacking whatever symbolic associations that tree held for the dreamer.
   This is often little different from ritual in folk circumstances as evidenced in Frazer's Golden Bough. For example, Frazer writes of a range of traditions in which the last person to reap their crop is said to have “taken the old man,” “become the old man,” or “killed the old man.” This unlucky soul then undergoes various unpleasant treatments for working more slowly than the others. This may include being wrapped up in wreathes of corn and beaten, or simply having to host a party with free alcohol for all comers.
7. Neither Symbolic nor Literal
   From a rational perspective, this can be interpreted as meaningless. If a sensory impression holds no literal meaning, and it holds no symbolic meaning, where can it hold any meaning?
   To employ a Joycean distortion of language, “information” is “in-formation.” Sensory impressions that are placed into formations have already been placed into a system, and systems, being created by consciousnesses, impose meaning. Of course, many systems can be placed over the same data, but a multiplicity of meaning does not deny meaning.
   Therefore, it would seem that only pure, undifferentiated, sensory input can be meaningless. That is, it is only meaningless if no thought is made about it, if it is not organized in any way, or put in reference (in formation) to something else.
   It could be argued that the mere presence of sensory information is itself information. The fact that a sound is a sound, already means that a system has been placed over it. The same can be said for all of the other senses. For a sensory input to be neither symbolic nor literal, the person sensing must be unaware what sense the input goes with. If the sensing person is aware what sense is employed, then it has already been categorized.
   Further, the fact that something is sensed in the first place is a category! It is a distinction between sensed, and not sensed. No continuum can exist here. If it is partially sensed, then it is still sensed, but one has imposed further information onto it, namely that there is something unsensed as well.
   If one wishes to state that something can be both sensed and not sensed, and not in some partial fashion, but in its entirety, one is still categorizing it, namely into the category of being sensed and not sensed.
   If we assume that something lies in fault with the above, it remains unclear what benefit there is to experience that is neither symbolic nor literal, experience that holds no meaning, not even the concept of meaninglessness. If possible, it may be a way to simulate death, depending on the nature of death, and thus prepare themselves for what is to come, but given that view of death, time is limited, and might not be best spent practicing what they are guaranteed an eternity of.
   …
   It is apparent that dreams may be utilized for many purposes, though some theoretical categories appear to be neither possible nor desirable. With the development of virtual/augmented reality and designer drugs, some of these categories may become accessible in “waking” states.==

[END OF POST]

Interesting post, but I think it might be more suited to /r/LucidDreaming or a subreddit about dream interpretation. This forum is about subjective idealism, as Nefandi mentions, and so is more about the dreamlike nature of waking experience.

Check out our Reading List if you want to find out more, get the perspective.

Whether or not "everything" is "unreal" in the sense that you mean, my points about the uses of unreality apply. It just happens that my points apply to a larger category, if subjective idealism is closer to the mark than materialism.
Details about a speaker do not determine the value of what is said. If Hitler said "exercise is healthy," the fact that Hitler is the speaker makes no difference to the truth value of the statement "exercise is healthy."

Of course, exercising didn't do Hitler much good in the end!

Yeah, everything ends.

He should have stuck to making 'keep fit' videos, made a fortune, retired to an Austrian village in comfort. This may in fact be a way around the "can't kill Hitler" problem in time travel...

Now we just have to figure how to send that message to the future...

...so that the instructions can be followed in the past. Maybe in spring 2015? (Comedy-gold)

...

That's not even the main problem. Nethodsod is not espousing subjective idealism. It's obvious he's a materialist. He doesn't understand that this world is an illusion. He thinks some shit here is real and there are molecules and atoms and shit. And brains with chemicals in them. Basically, from a subjective idealist POV he's completely clueless and his points have no worth at all. He's not showing how everything is unreal or how to get in touch with unreality. He's clinging to convention with every line he writes. I can tell he's scared more than any one of us here.

It is really the main problem. From a lucid dreaming perspective it's all good; materialism vs idealism doesn't really matter. It's just that this subreddit isn't focused on that.

That's only true if you're talking about lucid dreaming as a secular, non-yogic activity, then I agree.

Agreed.

Yes, in retrospect, this post wasn't a great fit for this sub. I was acting under the impression that lucid dreams were expected to be a tool for realizing this unreal nature, and thus figured that an investigation of the uses of dream manipulation would be helpful.

No worries! It's great to know that thoughtful people are interested in contributing.

The idea is here is that your dream and waking life are a continuity - both consist of 'dream images' with no hidden underlying solid substrate - appearing in the common background of your awareness. What they are beyond that is another thing, of course. Certainly, lucid dreams can be great for rehearsal and a host of other brilliant applications, as well as exploring your 'base'.

However, fundamentally the hope is that you might be able to apply your lucid dreaming abilities more readily to waking life (in a "magickal" sense) than is commonly assumed, if you truly accept subjective idealism and operate from it. An additional benefit (for some, the key benefit) is a recognition of your true nature and place in the world, and the nature of that world, as a 'good' in itself.

That's why the reading list is a strange mix of dream yoga, chaos magick, lucid dreaming, personal investigation and philosophy!

You know, I don't really disagree with anything you said. I used to be a very hardcore subjective idealist. However, I have since become agnostic towards the issue. That is, I don't think we can know if anything exists beyond our apprehension (noumena being what is "really real" in philosophical jargon). From that I decided (perhaps not for the best) that it is typically to one's advantage to act as though a physical objective reality exists, even if it does not.
On the other hand, I do practice magick (hermetic informed chaos magick with an emphasis on ritual in dreams, and the creation of egregores/servitores/whatever to personify parts of the mind). And I do think that the observed world (whether or not something lies beyond it) is completely mind. Thus, at least that observed reality, if not "absolute reality," can be manipulated by intent.
What I don't see the value in, is making "waking" life completely like what is seemingly a dream, even if both are hallucinations. Again, that's a result of my "acting as if" principle.

I think 'secret agnosticism' isn't a bad thing either. Thing thing is, 'waking life' does act "as if" there is a background, but it turns out to be flexible: it does adjust to your beliefs and expectations and intentions. Since 'dream world' is the most flexible possible approach, and the most relaxed approach, that is to the benefit. In a way, it's much like magick traditions that all, in the end, teach you to work on yourself and reach 'realisation'. The world does seem to try to respond "as if". There's no such thing as a servitor as such, but the world will respond to you as if there were.

The difference between the waking world and the dream world is really the depth of the establishment of habits. The waking world has been around a lot longer than any dream you're going to have, and has stabilised. It is still potentially semi-unlimited (it is just mind-imagery) though. However, the 'will' or confidence or commitment-to-worldview required to make things happen is much greater. Hence the 'Dream Yoga' style effort (if you've not read Tenzin Rinpoche's book, it's worth your time, and is "available"). I understand your 'objections' though.

Also, something that occurred was, all waking imagery is essentially symbolic too; it represents "meaning". This is something I should have taken from your post.

It is not clear that the Buddhist notion of emptiness is equivalent to "lack of substance."

I've always taken this to be that there is no solid underlying. That the world is an illusion not because it is not a real experience, it is just that the nature of that experience is not what we assume.

One examines the cup of coffee before us, and realises that it has no solidity: it is a floating image, with occasional other sensations when we 'touch' it, but nowhere can we find the 'solid cup of coffee' we imagine. Then we turn our attention to ourselves, and find that we are not solid either: empty space with the occasional sensation floating here and there!

That's my understanding at present anyway.

That's a common one, but it is also applied to other things as well. In Confucianism, the idea of self is "relationally constituted." That is, you are the sum of all your connections to other people (and maybe the state, nature, and "heaven"). This fits in well with the idea of emptiness, and for some Confucian Buddhists, allows for emptiness as no-self to exist without completely leaving behind the material world. Many Buddhists are closer to dualists, thinking that there is something physical in addition to something nonphysical. Buddhism is one of those weird systems that is very open to reinterpretation, having few core beliefs. Given that everything we "understand" is illusion, from this point of view, everything can be reduced to utility, rather than "truth," since all things will be false in some since. This utility is very "Utilitarian" in that most Buddhism involves ways to reduce suffering.

I see. Buddhism seems quite 'scientific' in some of its forms, in the same sense as this. It seems to have a 'practical' aspect that works with its flexibility.

In truth, with idealism there is nothing to say that there isn't an underlying 'X' that 'inspires' our sensory experience, it is just inaccessible and cannot be commented upon. It has to be inferred by the restrictions and limitations we observe. In that sense they cover the same ground.

...

If we assume there is no material world, how does it immediately follow that desire is the only element involved in manipulating hallucinations? Further, it is not desire in general you suppose, but "desire to hold on to the hallucination."
Might there be hallucinations that we do not desire, but seem to arise nonetheless? It is certainly not inconceivable, and thus cannot be assumed an impossibility until demonstrated as such. Then there is the issue of the degree to which unreality is consensual. Do the thoughts of others influence our own thoughts? Do we interact with others at all? Berkely, for example, (a well known subjective idealist) thought that God was all-seeing, and thus kept "unreality" stable. Of course, none of the above matters if you wish to throw out the idea of rationality altogether. However, at that point, anything goes, and there is no-thing to be obtained or lost.

Some good points. "The rope and the snake", for instance?

And, certainly, it doesn't follow that belief/expectation are the only things at work. If this is, say, a 'shared dream' then there's more to it than your personal belief. As I say elsewhere, one difference between waking and most dreaming is the longer-lasting nature of this waking world, and it's potential to have amassed 'habits'.

I say "this" because this is the 'default' world we seem to return to. In fact, it might be better to call this our 'base dream'. I'd say there is no difference to the way waking and dream realities are built and behave, but it might be that dreams build up 'habits' and 'solidity' (really: predictability and self-consistency) over time. And since our base dream is longer lasting with more active dream characters, it has stabilised to a great extend. This is why most magick seems to occur via 'useful coincidences', even if incredibly unlikely. It is rare to directly observe a discontinuity occurring.

Is reality consensual? Berkeley's problem is that he implicitly imagined that there was in a sense a three-dimensional space, but the people in it were only observing certain areas of that space - and that things outwith anyone's observation might 'go blank'. However, there is no such 3-d space. If you examine your own experience, you'll find that there seems to be a "vast unstructured place" where your experience arises. Within that, you experience a 'phenomenal space", a structured space with sensory experience, and other parallel 'ideational spaces' where thoughts are (although sometimes they might seem to be located in the 'phenomenal space' somehow). The alternative view is that the whole world is enfolded into the perspective you are seeing now, and moments unfold then enfold into the background one by one. That way, the whole world is always under observation, or 'within mind', and nobody is 'spatially located'; everyone is everywhere or rather, everywhere is within everyone.

Summary: There are some things that need to be understood by experimentation and contemplation.

The enfolded/unfolded idea is well described in physicist David Bohm's world-view of an explicate (what we see) and implicate (which is enfolded) order.

The hologram analogy applies to a limited extent: if the whole image is contained within each part of the image, then looking at any part of the image at all is to look at the whole - this fulfilling the requirement that the world must exist within consciousness at all times (= be "observed" in the most general sense).

I'm pretty flexible on interpretations; to an extent it comes down to "practicality". However, I am keen on a commonality of viewpoint between dreaming and waking, intention and magick, which I think is achievable.

Also, I don't why thoughts can't have nonspatial dimensions to them that we reinterpret into spatial dimensions.

We do have an ability to think-about. For instance, under hypnosis people can experience "square circles" and so on, because you are not necessarily bound by visual and dimensional restrictions. (You don't need to by hypnotised, you can just do this, but you'll find yourself reluctant to let go to it.)

...

Q1: Here's a direct quote from the sidebar about the stated purpose of this subreddit:
A place for subjective idealists to discuss how to get in touch with the deeper unreality of this world...

Q2: I suppose you are right, that wasn't directly on topic. I was under the impression that dream manipulation in general was a tool toward this end.
If what is dreamt and what is typically called "waking life" are essentially the same, then everything in this post should be equally applicable to the unreality of the dreamt and "waking" worlds.

Except perhaps the 'stability' factor?

POST: This is something I am contemplating currently: Stability.

In other words, intent, I now realize, has a clearly effortless aspect. I would even say that true intent, deepest intent, is always effortless.

Yes, I completely agree with this.

I wonder, is the "replacement grounding" required for a sense of stability possibly the consistent sense of identifying with background awareness, rather than any other aspects of personality or objects or whatever? If everything else is going to be changeable and transitory, all that's going to be left is that background; it'll be the only thing to hold on to.

I haven't tried thinking of making background awareness my home base precisely because it doesn't look like anything, it's like I don't know what it is...

I think its property of "always there-ness' despite having no form is why it's potentially good for grounding / identifying with, whereas intent is content (loosely) and so changes.

In one dream I've had my legs cut off and I didn't even blink... I've had dream environments disappear or drastically change...

But, you did know you were in a literal dream (i.e. lucid dream) at the time. Your ("real") body screams for its existence when it gets in danger; you'd be amazed how much it likes being alive (as we judge it). I have in the past assumed I would get to a stage where i'd not care, but then went beyond it and was surprised how... well... fighty it all is!

I still like intent better. :)

You can have both, because the content is made from / shaped from the background. So it's more a case of focus, I guess. Anyway, it's something to play with.

Actually that's something I am working with right now too...

Well, start with low-speed impacts first, yeah? ;-)

POST: Why is Oneirosophy Good?

[POST]

I'll start by saying all this sounds cool, but I'm curious why it is a good idea.
Why is it good to "feel like [you] are in a lucid dream during waking reality?"
Is there some specific reason people should do this? Is there more to the ideas here that I'm not getting? Is there something that one might gain from this way of approaching the world/reality?

[END OF POST]

The extra part of it is the "magick" part. If you've had lucid dreams, you come to a different understanding of what influence or intention means, and what "you" are, and contemplation of what this all means in waking life leads to some interesting ideas. Bits of this were brought up in other threads, but your notion of yourself becomes everything that you are experiencing or that which experiences and your notion of doing something - anything! - means changing the universe. You are performing magick every time you make a decision. What's more, the more you take on that worldview, the more it appears true. And this is important. When you change your view to see waking life as a dream, it will become more like a dream for you, in all sorts of interesting ways. The expectation is that the further you push this, the more flexible things may become...

But, there's still the issue of intersubjectivity. For which I should start a little thread soon...

I am quite familiar with magick, primarily of the hermetic and chaotic varieties. I've also been lucid dreaming since I was a child. I'm still lucid in cycles (weekly or monthly cycles) without putting any effort into it. It eventually became somewhat boring for me, and now I find non lucid dreams to be more beneficial, since the subconscious wellings are less mediated by intention. So you claim that "you" are what you are experiencing, and that you can control what you experiencing, so you can change yourself? Or do you mean something like Crowley's calling every intentional act an act of magick?
Why is it good for your life to be like a dream? Why should you want things to become "flexible?" Are you imagining something like pure intent manifesting desire?

My interest in lucid dreaming also came and went, although has returned. I stopped fiddling with them in the end, more enjoyed the experience unfolding as an observer more; it became more of a philosophical playground.

Non-duality + chaos magick, perhaps as a summary, but the Crowley quote works for me.

Flexibility in terms of free will for your own behaviour, for lifting boundaries for magickal work (what belief could be more flexible?), but primarily for clearer direct perception of the present moment perhaps.

Note: Of course, this is meant to be an exploratory sub for generating ideas as much as anything else - how far can you push this particular idea and what are the effects if you do? There is to be some fun involved.

What do you mean by non-duality?

In its simplest form, the dissolving of the experience that you are 'here' and stuff is 'there'. It's a perceptual thing, rather than a thought thing. (Many-valued logic does look interesting though. I've heard the sea battle paradox before.)

That's kind of what I was asking you! I'm not sure why direct "perception of the present moment" is desirable.

Maybe it'll just be really cool? ;-) Increased freedom of will would follow from clearer perception, I suggest. But the real point of this sub (which isn't mine actually, it just looks interesting) seems to be a question or two, not an answer: what would it be like...? what would it mean philosophically...?

Ah, you see, I figured oneirosophy would have a goal, even though it moreso appears to be a toolset. Sort of like how gnosis is a state achieved for a reason, though its uses are varied. I hope to some some interesting material come of this board!

Well, the extra question is... what can you do if you make this a dream? If you adopt that belief so completely that you experience it, as in chaos magick.

Well, let's hope so!

Beyond the question of what, are the questions of "why?" and "should I?"

Indeed. All to be explored. Or... not, depending. This is interesting though. What are your concerns about this approach?

Well, the main one is that you might not be able to reverse any undesirable changes you make to yourself.
The higher order problem is of knowing what one should use these techniques for. In many eastern religions, these techniques are used to attain something called "enlightenment," whose nature varies from culture to culture. But essentially, the goal is to be happy, or at least to avoid suffering, and in Buddhism, this is largely accomplished through not feeling attached to things.
Unfortunately, if we think about the character of the person who is merely content, and does not care about anything, does that seem like a "good" person. I certainly don't like being around those people, and don't want to be like that.

It is true that changes would be irreversible, even just because of the memory of the change.

Enlightenment, as I see it, isn't about being happy (although that may come), it's about realising there is no division between you and your environment, that there is no "you" as you conceive of it - rather, you are "the space in which experience arises". (Try Douglas Harding's experiments for a fun taster maybe. [https://www.headless.org/])

This is different to not caring or being content. In fact, it doesn't necessarily reflect on your character at all! There are plenty of grumpy, smoking, drinking enlightened people. Rather, it is simply seeing what you actually are.

This then leads to experiential subjective idealism, and from then to a more direct approach to magick. Is the idea.

POST: How I have changed my core beliefs throughout my lucid dreaming career.

I was excited to have this thought but also angry that I didn't think of it myself and needed some stupid book to remind me. I always feel like that about great ideas, lol. I feel ashamed that I didn't already know them on my own, how dare I not know them?

Of course, if this is a dream, then you created the dream book to tell yourself about the dream nature of your reality. So really, you did think of it Yourself, just not yourself. ;-)

Random quote to end the day, since it seems appropriate to this and the other thread we're running [POST: What is Oneirosophy?]:

==In my first twenty years of lucid dreaming, as I came to seek an ultimate or base reality beyond symbols and appearance, beyond dream- ing and lucid dreaming, something deep within allowed the awareness that enlivens me to experience the "clear light" of pure awareness (as described in chapter 7). After exiting that experience, I knew that each dot of awareness, each speck of aware light, existed equally with all others and equally connected to all others. The awareness of the col- lective could be accessed in the awareness of the tiniest speck.
From that moment, I sensed that behind all appearances an un- paralleled, profound connection exists at a deep, deep level. Beneath each experience lies a connectedness. Behind each life, each object, each action, an awareness exists joined to all other life, objects, and actions. The inner working of all this awareness spills out into a reality formed and experienced and connects all in a massive symphony of individual creativity and fulfilment.
In certain moments, if you allow it, you can sense that the world around you is deeply interconnected: the sound of this bird is connected to a neighbor opening his door, the wind rustling the leaves announces the car appearing around the corner, your brief sudden thought of a friend lies in synchronicity with an action hundreds of miles away. The thought, the wind, the car, the bird, all connect at some deeper level where awareness resides, intersects, creates, and fulfills. Behind all ap- pearances lies the movement of awareness.

• Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, Robert Waggoner==

...

There's also a tendency for people to "forget" unusual experiences. The just don't get attached to the rest of their memories; they let them go. I actually found it hard to stick at lucid dreaming initially because daily life would quickly 'overwrite' the feeling and disconnect me from it, then I'd 'wake up to it' again.

If you just relax and ignore your dreams, your dream rules can remain the same throughout your human lifespan or they can drift around a bit.

Just as in life. If you never consciously 'intend' or 're-intend' (either in moving forward or resisting a direction) then you and your life environment (the same thing) will just play out automatically. Many people don't realise they can direct themselves; they just experience themselves. Hence all that talk about 'karma' in various writings; really I think this can be viewed as just clearing out 'bad intentions' (or directions) I think.

I think we can be mostly automatic - once we make our occasional intentional adjustments we can let them run - but if you make none at all, you're in trouble. Particularly because external events will, if you don't 'stay awake', adjust your 'character' and implicit direction, and send you off to the wrong place. A main thing in all this seems to be, at a minimum: pay attention and always listen. You don't necessarily need to interfere, but you need to be aware, and do a spot of magickal intention to counter 'drift'.

Nefandi means well. This kind of thing.

There is one warning regarding this practice: it is important to take care of responsibilities and to respect the logic and limitations of conventional life. When you tell yourself that your waking life is a dream, this is true, but if you leap from a building you will still fall, not fly. If you do not go to work, bills will go unpaid. Plunge your hand in a fire and you will be burned. It is important to remain grounded in the realities of the relative world, because as long as there is a "you" and "me," there is a relative world in which we live, other sentient beings who are suffering, and consequences from the decisions we make.
The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Some people can get pretty lost in this stuff, because on the one hand it works (intention via subjective reality worldview does have effects), but on the other hand there are limits and dangers.

On communication, you only need to take a look here on this very sub to see how challenging it is to refer to what you individually assume are straightforward concepts - because different words mean different things to all us different Humpties, just as you say! Especially when you are talking about experiences.

Consequences are important to consider, particularly if there's a risk that other people will be directly affected without their consent, collaterally. Part of the purpose of this subreddit will be, I hope, to explore those issues too. There are practical, philosophical and moral implications here. Subjective idealism is not solipsism. If you are right-handed, do you happily use it to cut your left hand?

Lack of consent is hovering perhaps highest amongst the top of my issues now having pulled the corruption alarm cord. I am very concerned about malevolent corruption of innocence as a result

I think that so long as you don't explicitly target a person with your intentions, you're okay. Why would you pit aspects of yourself against one another anyway?

It is true, however, that there is no filter: if you magickally intend something it will happen in some form or other, regardless of moral aspects and so on. However, how 'the dream' manages and combines the different intentions of everyone into a single movement is of course interesting (if we view it that way). One of the simplest ways is to say that 'everything gets taken into account' from a timeless level perspective, but that's a little out of scope here.

* * *

TG Comments: /r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix

POST: So, my kitchen light moved. And I'm in an alternate universe apparently.

This means, you realise, that is no longer your wife.

See here:

"The day I posted one particular reality shift story, I had woken up to find my key chain had turned gray. My boyfriend and I always had identical key chains (actually they were the lock devices that came with our Jeep), and they were both black. When one of us picked up a key ring, we had to look not at the black device but at the collection of keys, because we had the same house, similar cars and other things -- so we had to look to make sure that the gold keys to my office were on the key ring or not in order to determine which set of keys was which.
One day, I woke up after a fairl[y] hard night of half sleeping, to discover that my key locking device was now gray. My boyfriend never remembers a time when my key chain wasn't gray, and he insists that a difference in color is the way we always told our otherwise identical key chains apart, which makes me think I also do not have the exact same boyfriend anymore."
-- Changing Keys / Instant Costume Change, Realityshifters.com

You should think yourself lucky, and perhaps not look at that lamp too closely. No matter how strange it might start to seem.

Q1: His other self married her, and he is now that other self. By that standard, she is his wife.

But, he's not that other self - he's the same self, now looking out into another world. She is not the woman he married, in his old world.

Q1: No, but she's not a different person, she's a different version of the same person. He, too, is a different version of the same person she married.

Okay. How different does someone have to become before they are considered a different person? What is the connection between this woman and his wife in the other 'reality'?

(The fact of his knowledge alone means he is substantially different to any other person with his body; her lack of knowledge means the same thing.)

Q1: If he can just randomly appear in the other person's body, in the same home with one subtle difference, the same life, without even an apparent death to explain the switch -- the two are clearly closely linked.

We could think of it as being the same "person" (soul? experiencer?) but looking through the "viewport" of a particular body in a particular environment.

That works for him. But what of her? In fact, is there even necessarily a "person" looking through her eyes? Could she just be a philosophical zombie, operating on automatic with no "experiencer" looking through her as their "viewport"?

(The more extreme possibility is that of "personal dream-worlds" - that we are each living in our own dream but they may/may not overlap with others' dream-worlds. So his change is then just a discontinuity, a shift in his dream-world, perhaps in response to his desire and irritation regarding the light. She is just his dream wife. There may be a wife having a dream-world of her own, but that dream would only interact with his to the extent they have common desires of experience. In this scenario, we are "extended persons" of some sort.)

And what could have caused that be the case? I see no reason for him to have switched to a world -- this world -- where she is just a hollow shell. I see no reason for this universe's version of him having been a hollow shell before this version of him appeared in our universe's body, either.

Well, it might make no difference - most of our actions and responses are automatic, it's just that we experience them. We can, if we choose and if we know how, redirect ourselves and our path though.

There is more to our consciousness than we know. He most likely is one facet of a consciousness with multiple bodies, experiencing a multitude of existences, in different universes. That he cannot consciously connect to the other parts of the consciousness does not mean that they do not exist, or are not linked.

Actually, I do prefer this - what I call "extended persons" - but it's hard to tell the difference between this and the "viewport" version with a single experiencer. A hollow shell can behave exactly the same way, externally, as someone with an experiencer, or as an extended person would. In fact, perhaps his wife's behaviour is dependent upon his expectations, rather than being autonomous herself. With the extended person idea, and infinite worlds in which to express all possibilities, other people actually do correspond to our expectations/beliefs/desires (even if those are detrimental to us).

Combining those ideas:

Everyone can get their ideal world. You are extended throughout all possibilities, but only need to experience the possibility-version that you want. Extended persons and viewport-like experiencing.

To me it seems just as worthwhile to point at random people on the street and state that they might be hollow. Well, yes, they might be. But how is it relevant to this situation?

It's to do with the mechanics of the change, and what we're really experiencing right now. A "hollow" person needn't be any different to anyone else. Because you are effectively acting as a hollow person most of the time - you are on automatic. Being "hollow" just means not being observed through.

It's easier to say that there are infinite universes each with a /u/TriumphantGeorge and a /u/parafact in them, but we "the observing consciousnesses" only look through one at a time. When we interfere, then we jump to looking through one that corresponds to our desire/intention.

We are always experiencing never actually doing.

Human bodies are part of the surrounding environment, seamless with them. We are not the bodies, we are just the experiencers of bodies and environments.

I absolutely disagree that we are only looking through one universe at a time. It's just that the part of me that is aware of looking into this universe is only able to be conscious of looking into this one.

It depends on what we mean by "we". Right now, I am only experiencing looking through this universe. I can imagine that other parts of me are looking elsewhere, but if I can't experience it right now, where does that leave me?

I also still do not see the point of contemplating the potential hollowness of OP's wife specifically when, by both your viewpoint and mine, she is equally likely to be hollow in this universe as she was in the last one -- though we disagree on the actual likelihood. Nothing has changed in that regard.

You have exactly the same problem with your "I am looking through all universes" view - it's not testable. You - you right now - only ever experience one universe at a time. If you "jump universes" you will then experience that one, not two at once.

Meanwhile, you can't tell if the wife is "hollow" or not, because it makes no difference to her behaviour. However, if you are only experiencing one universe at a time (which all the evidence points to), then we can assume that is the same for her, and that given infinite universes, it is infinitely unlikely that she's looking out of those eyes.

However, the universes (personal world-dreams) must overlap in some way. We are all alone, but our worlds are "inspired by" the intentions and choices of all other universes as well as our own.

EDIT: That read as being "shouty". Not meant to be, just quite interested in bashing this out. :-)

The essence of this is, "what is a person" and does it require awareness, a "presence" that is experiencing it? I say no. So why do we need every universe to be "looked-through"? You just pick the one you like best! The rest will roll along by themselves.

Previous attempt to visualise this here [POST: Meta-switching realities].

...

Q: [Deleted]

Just decide you are going to notice them. Then you will.

POST: I dream about the future then live it?

[POST]

So this has been driving my completely insane recently and I've decided to share my weird reoccurring glitch.
I dream about and relive days of my life. Now I know how crazy this sounds and I've looked all over for an explanation and I assure you it's not me having deja vu mid day and thinking I had a dream.
This happens about 4 times every year and is usually started the exact same way, with me having a dream about my life.
Now before the incident I'm about to describe I pinned this on stress and told myself I was just making these things up. However this latest occurrence has me 100% sure it was a glitch in the matrix.
Now I've gotten use to these rare dreams of mine but the latest one bothered me because it was so vivid. I specifically remember seeing these pile of blocks when I woke up and someone saying "Frank what if we merge our two piles will my green go with your blue?" The other thing I remember was a co-worker of mine named Jennifer saying something about her son and a baseball injury.
Due to the vividness of the dreams I kept thinking about them all day mostly the blocks and what such a strange phrase could mean.
Later in the afternoon we had a surprise team building exercise with... You guessed it! Blocks.
At first I thought nothing of it because I had become preoccupied and was not thinking about my dream at the time.
The goal was to build certain structures out of these blocks, it began with basic triangles and then it got more advanced to the point we needed to share blocks but every block had to be used in the construct for the team to pass.
I was looking around the table trying to figure out how we could build a tower we needed and I noticed me and my co-worker frank had an extra pile of blocks and blurted out "Frank what if we merge our two piles will my green go with your blue?"
As soon as I heard the words come out of my mouth I froze and remained very quite for the rest of the exercise trying to rationalize what just happened.
After the exercise is done we all head to the break room for some coffee and bagels. While everyone is chatting I hear Jennifer talking to her friend Cathy, I was very hesitant to ask but I forced myself to do it "By any chance did your son get injured playing baseball recently?"
Now I have no outside work Connection to Jennifer so her immediate reaction to me knowing about that injury was to think I was a stalker but I quickly explained to her my dream and convinced her I was not a stalker but she was still pretty sure I was insane.
Creepy right?
But here is where it gets extremely bothersome and the reason I'm debating putting myself in a mental hospital or some shit.
The next day was exactly the same. No dream this time but the day was exactly the same down to little details.
The surprise team meeting was held again with the same problems and initial reactions (the confusion and brainstorming were the same right down to the wire) I was even in the same position where I almost asked frank if my greens would go with his blues.
As we walked to the break room Jennifer was talking to Cathy but I decided to not ask her about the injury this time. Instead she ended up telling everyone about it herself! How could I dream about something happening if the knowledge of the event caused it to not happen originally!?!?!?!?
To this day I still have these episodes randomly but none were as vivid (or maybe I was not as aware) as this one.
Please tell me I am not alone in this and other people have also experienced freak time travel combined with dreams of the future.
Edit: please forgive formatting and errors, I am on mobile.

[END OF POST]

Q1: There's no need to be alarmed by this, it's perfectly okay. In fact, many people have access to this ability, but tune it out or try to rationalize it away.
The thing is, most of our experiences are lined up days before they actually play out in physical terms. So, more sensitive people can get glimpses of the "blueprint" of the event. This often happens in our dream state, because we are less resistant at that time.
Take care and have fun with it :)

It's all deterministic, unless you actively choose to "re-direct"?

Q1: Determinism would imply someone running you life for you. Rather, we have complete freedom of choice- our expectations shape these blueprints. It just takes some time to assemble the cooperative components for the physical manifestation.

No, determinism would imply that a path just "plays out" via its own momentum. When a rock starts rolling down a hill, it doesn't need gravity to keep pulling it. It will keep going until it is redirected (by a collision, or by a change in the landscape).

I think we have free choice to re-point the path, but if we don't then it plays out deterministically. This is why we can tell what is going to happen: the whole future is effectively here, now unless we make an intentional change that affects it at the ground, seed level.

Q1: Ah, I see what you mean.

It's a common point actually. Do we control our actions, moment by moment? Do we constantly intend? No, I'd say we experience ourselves rather than do ourselves - except when we inject a new target into awareness (reshape ourselves). Just as well. I quite like that my blood supply is self-circulating, for instance. :-)

EDIT: Although some people do a constant 'holding back' of themselves. Perhaps most people, even. They don't fully commit to their own flow.

...

Q2: Souuuuuuuurce?

Q3: (It's total garbage, but don't tell anyone I said anything, I'll get downvoted to hell for not believing in supernatural bullshit.)

Q1: Eh, life would be much less fun without the variety of opinions. So we can probably agree they're all valuable. Everyone finds their own little nuggets of truth- who cares, if others agree with them, or not.

Q3: Most of the stuff posted here is 99% batshit insane. There's a few 'actual' glitches that I nor anyone else can explain, but when it's stuff like "I dreamed about the future", I chalk it up to either 1. a brain issue where the person actually thinks they had a dream about that day, or 2. hyperactive awareness in their daily life that allows them to perceive a possible 'future' that just happens, and then they think they are special in some way.
When something posted on this subreddit is only observed by the OP, then the OP should have talked to a doctor to get a brain scan. When it's something like "I have actual proof I jumped into a parallel universe", then I'll be interested. what I'm trying to say, is that for a glitch to be considered real, it should be verified by at least a bystander or a friend, not just by the OP.

Q4: I believe everything follows fundamental laws that we as human beings cannot break. We can't escape from the universe, we can't enter a black hole without being crushed to the size of an atom, and we can't go faster than the speed of light.
As for the question, I believe we have 'free will' in the sense that we can weigh risks vs reward, and make decisions based on that. Unless you have a different definition of free will, I'll stick to that answer.

Of course, nobody's ever tried those things to find out...

As for the question, I believe we have 'free will' in the sense that we can weigh risks vs reward, and make decisions based on that. Unless you have a different definition of free will, I'll stick to that answer.

Isn't that deterministic though? Your preferences are already determined, so your choices are already determined. You might "experience thinking and choosing", but really there's no influence you can have over it. It's all just unfolding, as it always going to be. (And for this reason, nobody has "abilities to see into the future". The future is already there, in a sense. So it's not unreasonable you might end up knowing, but you wouldn't be doing it; the thought would just happen to you.)

Although other views are available [http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/%7Eellis/realworld.pdf].

Q4: It's deterministic if you start from a certain point in time, for one decision. If you start from the very beginning, you're making your own choices (through guidance of parents), and that shapes who you are as a person. Both through nature(genes), and nurture(environment). For instance: I would never eat crickets on a stick. In China, it's a snack you can buy. People love it.

If you start from the very beginning, you're making your own choices (through guidance of parents)...

Is that true, though? I'd have thought the parents and environment were part of the "deterministic" input, so what you've said mean there's really no choice, because you don't choose your nature. You actually never chose not not-eat-crickets-on-a-stick, that choice was pre-made for you by your upbringing.

(Note: I personally believe we do or can have some top-down influence, but it requires a bit of dis-identification with our own body and thought processes.)

Q4: Well it's not like you can be raised by wolves. If you were, and you survived, you would eat meat and berries. You wouldn't know language, and you'd be naked... unless you thought "hmm, fur is warm, I'll skin an animal".

Well, that's determinism in action! No real choices. Wolfy-behaviour all the way.

Q4: You still have choices. "Should I follow this hard rocky road with metal animals?"

Haha. :-) But your options are pre-determined by your upbringing and experiences. In turn, your upbringing led to your nature and preferences, which determine which option you will choose. So it was always going to happen the way it did: loudly squished under the metal animals due to ignorance!

EDIT: Although personally I believe there is the possibility of creativity in the options which appear to us mentally, if we give space for it to occur.

Q4: Okay, then say you get taken away from your parents due to some bullshit. Now you're in a foster home. Your entire life just changed based on that alone. You have free will to hold on to the values your parents instilled, or you can try to get over the trauma of being taken away from your parents, and live out happily with the foster family. Every single person has free will. As a collective, we guide each other.

You have free will to hold on to the values your parents instilled, or you can try to get over the trauma of being taken away from your parents, and live out happily with the foster family.

How do you make the choice? Does the choice you make not come from your 'character'? Did you choose your character? But...

The way out of this is to say: Free will isn't the ability to do just anything, randomly - rather it's to act according to your own nature, given the information available to you. The extra secret sauce is if you discover the technique/ability to "ask for further options" from your creative mind (or whatever). Then, although you will always make a choice based on your nature (determined) you at least have the possibility of a fresh direction (creativity) - which in turn will change your nature. If you don't discover or aren't introduced to the secret sauce, then you'll pretty much unfold deterministically for your whole life. Fortunately, you'll likely be unaware of it. And if you were, you'd respond deterministically anyway...

This whole conversation really boils down to your own definition of what free will is.

Quite probably. Basically, it's a kind of meaningless topic for most people! It doesn't matter if your choices are effectively determined in advance (by upbringing, environment, inherent character, this is a common philosophical argument against free will), so long as they're aligned with your best interests. For most people, that's enough.

Although I'd say that the extra bit: That the options are not necessarily pre-determined, means we have the ability to creatively change our world, rather than simply react to it and be a cog in it.

(Personally, I believe that we can get stuck in a reactive mode, but that we generally do have the ability to live creatively and not deterministically.)

What's your definition?

Q4: My definition of free will is being able to do anything that you desire. If you want to go on a rampage, you can. You will probably get shot, but that's just something that happens. People can snap. They can act any way they want, but they choose to go along with daily life.
An example: I want to uproot my life and move north into a forest. I hate the way society behaves, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that people feel like this is the way life is (and there's nothing we can do about it). If I chose to go right now, I could. My family would be upset, and my friends would turn on me, but I COULD go. I'm completely free to do so. It is my choice, and my choice alone.
Free will is essentially freedom to act and think the way you want. There's consequences, but that comes with others disagreeing with the way you're acting/thinking.

All good. As Wikipedia says, "The underlying issue is: Do we have some control over our actions, and if so, what sort of control, and to what extent?"

So, you are free to do all those things. But are you free to "want what you want", can you choose your thoughts in advance, are you a victim of your impulses? To what extent are you choosing your actions, to what extent are they happening to you? On what basis are you making the choice that is "my choice, and my choice alone". That's the philosophical dilemma of free will (rather than just "freedom").

In that case, whether you consider you have 'true free will' or not might be about where you draw the line - what you consider as "you" and what you consider as external or "the environment".

"Everyday free will" is just the notion that, based on the information you have, you will make choices in alignment with your own character/nature. I think that's fairly straightforward, and what you're going for?

Q4: Again, you're trying to change the definition of what free will is.
free will: noun 1. the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
Based on this definition, we have free will.

The definition is half the problem, but going with that:

the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion

People could argue - if you examine exactly how decisions and actions come about - that you'll find you are actually entirely subject to "necessity or fate", and that the "discretion" is therefore an illusion, simply an experience you have. Note, I'm not really arguing with you! In practical terms, everyone experiences having free will - they just know they are agents, directly. Logically though, it's hard to prove. But then so is consciousness, which is essentially the same thing (free will being "first cause" if it exists at all). And everyone knows they are conscious, simply by the very knowing itself.

POST: Not sure if this is a glitch or reality

[POST]

I'm going to explain this the best I can then provide several scary examples. I dream EVERY night. They are vivid dreams. I read, write and interact with strangers, family and even go to work. I've heard that it's impossible to read in your dreams ( because that part of your brain isn't active?), but I do with ease. Writing is a bit if a challenge and my handwriting looks like a child's. Anyway, I try to forget these dreams- but they always come back to bite me. The dreams make no sense when I have them. Events are out of order and often I have no idea why I'm somewhere or doing something. If the dream seems important or scares the shit out of me I tell my SO, that way I can point out in the future that we knew it was going to happen. Ok, so these dreams come true. They are impossibly accurate. Every job I've ever had, I've dreamed about months or years in advance. Jobs I could never imagine myself doing ( and I mean never!) and yet, they happen. Before you say the dreams are influencing my choices, no, not the way I dream. Example ( not scary)-
I dream I'm sitting at a desk, calculating percentages and gazing out a window. Out the window I see a tree with its leaves blowing in the wind. On the desk I see some sort of statements, stapler, little do-dads , your typical desk. I wake up thinking what a crazy dream, I'd never voluntarily take a desk job. I'm a typical blue collar worker. Low and behold six months later I apply for a bread delivery job( as a second job). It was a few months into the job at the end of a long day. I had to bill each customer for the bread I delivered and discount for the un-purchased bread I removed from the store. There was a desk in the rear of the bakery positioned directly in front of a window ( it wasn't mine but I was allowed to use it). Frustrated from the paperwork I look up to see the tree outside and wish I was done for the day. Then it hits me like a brick, the tree. The desk. The paperwork. The do-dads. It's all there.
Next dream -
I dream I'm holding the most beautiful baby infant, though it's definitely not mine. I smile and somehow know this baby, but I don't. It was a girl that had blue eyes, and dark black hair. I'm alone in a beautiful Park like setting. I can't see very far in any direction because the sun is absolutely blinding. I wake up it's early morning. I can't go back to sleep so I have a very long day the next day.
I lived over 1500 miles away from my family. But the next day I get a call. My sister had had a late term miscarriage. I asked her if it was a little girl with blue eyes and black hair. She wondered how I had known. Somehow I thought it would help comfort her so I told her I knew when her baby died because she came to visit me. My dream occurred at the time she was in the hospital giving birth the night before.
Next dream-
I dreamed I was in two rooms joined by a doorway there was literally 100 people there. I didn't know any of the people. Somehow they all knew me and were talking to me and touching me. I found this very uncomfortable my eyes search the room for someone I knew. Then I saw my father. I ran to him, opened my mouth to speak then I woke up.
Later that year my grandfather died who lives in another state. Not just another state but on the complete opposite coast. I went with my father to his funeral. You guessed it I was at the funeral home standing amongst lots of relatives that I had never met. Somehow, I lost my father in the crowd. I looked around for him and spotted him in another room. I hurriedly went towards him and as I went to speak I realized instantaneously this was that dream. It scared the living shit out of me and I could not speak.
The problem I have is my dreams are broken bits and pieces. I cannot pinpoint these events that will take place. I only realize what is going on as it is happening.
Have I dreamed about my death? Yes. More than once. I will not elaborate, I have heard that you can influence your surroundings more than you know when you speak out loud/write about incidents and it's possible to make those things happen. I'm not risking it.
Apparently this runs in the family- one of my parents also has these predictive type dreams. They can truly be horrifying.
I also seem to have weird glitches in this reality. I'm a relatively shy person and I try not to make eye contact unless I must in my daily routines. I've had more incidents than I care to recall of seeing someone who is gone mere seconds later.
For instance, I was walking out of a building towards a smoke break area. I was looking down to avoid eye contact with a man that was coming towards me. I passed the man then turned to ask how his day went, the man was gone. He WAS there a few seconds ago.
I walked past an office and saw a man sitting in a chair with the lights off. Being familiar with the men who often work there at night I turned around to ask WTF he was doing with the lights off and to have some friendly banter. The was no one there. It's not uncommon for co-workers to nap on night shift, so it didn't strike me as odd.
I've never been on drugs, medications, I don't drink except on rare occasions ( maybe once a year). I've never been arrested. I was raised religious, but do not attend church.
Does anyone else have similar experiences? Are you able to influence the outcome of reality because of your dreams?
Is there a way to shut off my dreams? Anything over the counter? I never feel rested when I wake up. The dreams wear me out physically and mentally.
I posted anonymously for obvious reasons. If someone told me this, I'd think they were crazy or on drugs. For once Id like to sleep with no recollection of dreams.

[END OF POST]

The "shy person" glitches are likely due to you not truly looking at your surroundings. Your mind just makes a best-guess based on peripheral vision and so on, and fills in the environment accordingly. When you decide to deliberately look directly at the "person", your mind-model gets updated and the person disappears/becomes a shadow/whatever.

The dreams, though, are fascinating! Well, "all time is at once" it is said, so it's already happened from some perspectives. You should maybe play with trying to deliberately imagine situations you'd like before you go to sleep. Some New Thought people used to say that this worked. Worth a go [http://www.thepowerofawareness.org/], as an experiment... you might be able to improve the usefulness of your dreams by doing it.

No, although I don't look at faces as I pass people I see their bodies( often from the chest down), gender, what they are wearing or holding.

Right, that's a bit clearer. Don't know if you've being trying to do lucid dreaming deliberately, but that's maybe worth a look, /r/luciddreaming and the Robert Waggoner book perhaps. Might let you get better control in the dream of yourself if not the situation, keeping calm, the better to ask questions and so on. They sound quite challenging anyway.

What do you think's happening?

EDIT: Just read your other reply on the dream control thing.

i know this stuff is going to occur.

The certainty is interesting. And I think you're right: you can know and it will happen. But...

You should read the Neville Goddard book, but for one idea: That although our lives are deterministic in the sense that they unfold along a fixed path if we don't interfere - we have a "destiny" - we can re-direct our lives, and re-point that destiny. However, this isn't necessarily by action (because we'll pre-dream our actions), but by changing your momentum in some sense. I dunno, it seems to be the sort of thing he was saying (PDF here). Whatever you think of that, his little exercise might be useful for you (summoning the feeling of the new direction, in your dream or otherwise). In some ways this makes sense: If you always act in character, then even "spontaneous" action would be in-character and therefore inevitable. Only by changing yourself can you change how you might respond to something in the future, and change your fate?

I'm sure you've experimented with trying to change things, but maybe it can't be done the way you've been attempting it so far.