TriumphantGeorge Compedium (Part 3)
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Oneirosophy Misc Posts
Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity is a key term used in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology to conceptualize the psychological relation between people. It is usually used in contrast to solipsistic individual experience, emphasizing our inherently social being.
In our own dreams, the whole dream is 'us' and our intentions manifest fairly directly (although there are cases where strange things do happen); we are 'sole creator'. The experience is of being a 'dream space' but identifying with a 'dream character' who acts as the perspective centre.
In waking life, although our personal experience is identical upon examination ('awareness space' with content arising in it and identifying with a perspective character), the world tends to be less obviously flexible and we assume that there are other 'people' sharing the world with us - who themselves are experiencing an 'awareness space' with content arising within it.
The only observable difference between waking and dreaming is really the sluggishness of the environment in response to our intentions, the rest is imagined. But I still find the 'multiple perspectives' thing quite tricky to get a handle on. Sure, I know that I am not a person, I'm a 'space with an imagined dream character', and in that sense on equal footing with the other people I encounter (avatars?), but I've yet to come up with a really satisfactory way of thinking about this.
Any ideas?
(Non-duality writer Greg Goode brings up this issue in a presentation on Common Stumbling Blocks to Non-Dual Realisation which is worth a read, here. [http://heartofnow.com/files/images/greg.talk.conference.pdf])
EDIT: The discussion below has also expanded into notions of intention and free will, and the implications of this for intersubjectivity.
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Hmm, I'll need to think about that a little; seems interesting.
Our expectations are internal to our being, they're not something we can look at the way we look at chairs.
No, but the world we experience does reflect our internal expectations and biases - we live ourselves through our 'external' happenings?
Q: The only observable difference between waking and dreaming is really the sluggishness of the environment in response to our intentions, the rest is imagined.
I think that's true in general, but I've had lucid dreams where I was certain I was dreaming, but I still couldn't manipulate squat for the life of me. I haven't had many such dreams, but I've had at least two or three or so. The biggest difference between lucid dreams and ordinary waking is our expectations, I think. We expect different things from dreams. This isn't observable in the environment per se. Our expectations are internal to our being, they're not something we can look at the way we look at chairs.
But I still find the 'multiple perspectives' thing quite tricky to get a handle on. Sure, I know that I am not a person, I'm a 'space with an imagined dream character', and in that sense on equal footing with the other people I encounter (avatars?), but I've yet to come up with a really satisfactory way of thinking about this.
I explain this via subjective convergence and divergence. Because subjectivity is just a point of view, these points of views have the same flexibility that mathematical points do. They can converge and diverge arbitrarily. I want to note I am only comparing flexibility of relations here. I'm not saying subjectivity is a mathematical point.
Yes, that's why I included "although there are cases where strange things do happen". Sometimes you encounter other characters who seem stubbornly like 'other people' rather than part of your dream, for instance.
One possibility is that, although in general your dreams are 'seeded from scratch' - they are fresh and borne in a new 'space' - this is not always the case. Sometimes you are joining as a perspective in a pre-existing environment. Like connecting to an online gaming experience.
This raises the extra question: If we are a 'space', when we dream are we connecting to existing 'mind-realms' and sometimes seeding them, and why are we apparently by default connected to this particular 'waking' one?
(Robert Munroe, the OOBE guy, in later books starts connecting to other worlds - he thinks - to the extent where he revisits the same place and 'person perspective' later, and finds that their lives have moved on as if they were still playing out in his absence; the worlds are persistent and independent, apparently.)
But intent is a powerful thing. If you think you are connecting, it will manifest just that. So in effect, you might as well be connecting if you really believe you are. So there is that too.
There is that. That's the thing: expectation is pretty powerful, and hard to disentangle. And expectations often seem "obvious".
To me expectations are the most devious things ever. I often discover expectations when I didn't think I had any, at the least opportune moment usually. I certainly have hidden, subconscious or maybe even unconscious expectations that I haven't unearthed yet. I am pretty sure of that. They're sneaky as hell and they hide very well in the background of my mind where I can't find them easily.
They act as filters, sometimes dangerously so. Sometimes it just won't occur to you to do something important because of your expectation that it isn't possible, or it simply isn't included in your worldview.
For instance, I am really interested in the 'making decisions' process, because I think I actually didn't really make decisions for the first chunk of my life; rather, I experienced sequences of thoughts. I wasn't intending to change course. This didn't matter, until 'environmental events' derailed one particular project because I didn't keep on track, and I didn't really know how to maintain it.
It's important to remember that relaxation is intentional too.
Yes, and this brings up another line of thought. I followed the Alexander Technique for a while (my can't-recommend-it-enough book here), and many teachers talk about "sending messages" to yourself to release your neck, and so on. Martial artists such as Peter Ralston similarly (although much more knowledgeably; that book is a guided exploration of what it is to be a person).
Basically by "send messages" they mean intend, but most people don't know how to intend. All they know is how to move their muscles, directly and clumsily. Hence all those tense-up-and-release relaxation approaches. Not needed: just lie down and intend to be completely relaxed until you unravel bit by bit and get there. You are just moving yourself from a universe where there is tension, to one where there isn't.
Intent is very hard to understand because we tend to have misconceptions about it.
For example, we tend to speak of intentions as if they were separate little bits. In reality intent is one uninterrupted flow. Intent has no starting point in space or time, no ending point, no transition point, etc. All the changes in intent are imaginary and somewhat arbitrary, but as imagination they're also real. Intent is also multi-level sometimes (maybe often).
So for example I do a contemplation like this. I relax my arm on the table. Then I raise my arm. And I lower it. As I do this, I ask myself, when did I intend to raise it? My real answer is, "as I intend ongoingly so it is raised ongoingly." But my question demands some kind of singular atomic burst of decision, but that's not what happens. So my question almost wants me to say that I intended to raise my arm at 15 hours 15 seconds, and starting from 15.5 seconds to 20 seconds my arm was raised. This separates intent from action. This also atomizes, chunks intent into a single burst at 15 hours 15 seconds. But is that how I really intend?? NOOOO!!!! I don't do this!!! I can stop my arm at any point during raising it!! Intent is ever-ongoing!! It is ever-smooth! There is no burst! Intent doesn't precede anything. Intent is concomitant with action. In fact, intent is identical to action. Real intent is indistinct from the dynamics of experience. It isn't something that precedes or follows or exists on par but somehow separately from experience.
Also, there is no obvious point where I decide to raise my arm. Raising the arm looks like a clear distinction. First relaxed, now raising. Seems like there is a difference. But there is no point in time when I can say the arm is no longer resting and now it's only raising. There is some ambiguous interval where it's maybe both resting and raising or it's unclear? But the transition is smooth. There is no sudden jump. So no matter how suddenly intent appears to change, its real character as I see it is smooth and there is no single point when we can say now it stopped doing this and started that.
We don't know how to intend because we intend all the time, but we cover up the function of intent with our bogus ideas about how intent works.
Intent is always: perfect, effortless, spontaneous, smooth, beginningless, endless, flowing.
And now I want to mention the multi-levelness of intent. This one is simple.
For example, I decide to play a game of chess. As I sit at the chess board, that intent is ongoing. I also intend to move individual chess pieces one at a time. In truth this is all one smooth flowing intent. But conceptually we can say it has two levels: 1st I maintain ongoing commitment to a game of chess, and then 2nd, in the context of that commitment I move the chess pieces according to the rules to which I have committed myself to. All this is concomitant and ultimately it's impossible to strictly separate the intent to play chess from the "individual" intentions behind each move. However, it helps to talk about intending to play chess, and then to also separately talk about the individual chess moves. That's just one example of how intent can be multi-layered.
I'm with you and not. To some extent here you are inferring intention when what is really happening is the continuation of an existing motion as a complex momentum towards an intended goal.
I'd simplify this by saying: intent cannot be experiences for experiences are results; intent is injecting a goal into experience. It can be ongoing, or a flash, or whatever. It can be an instance of "free won't" - just halting a direction experience is moving in - or setting a new target, immediate ("raise my arm"), short term ("off to the shops to buy milk"), or long term ("become King of the Monkeys").
It's like making a wave in water while being the water: rippling yourself. You can then adjust the ripple's propagation by rippling in the opposite direction, or adding more detail, or whatever. You might feel a sense of resistance when you change the direction, but other than that it's an effortless process with control of details unnecessary - wu-wei?
We're probably just arguing over language here. Momentum = ongoing influence = intention. I would have been better saying changing my intention or changing my goal to be clearer. And yes, experiences always flow towards your intention. (But one does or can infer one's intentions from the experiences that arise, because you can't actually experience the act of intending itself. That's how you discover you have hidden assumptions and so on.)
I guess I was trying to get away from the idea that the ongoing influence of intention would require some sort of continual maintenance or effort; it doesn't. Resistance and effort is only encountered when you are conflicted.
Am I a bit clearer there? It's always "all you" so you're never uncontrolled or running wild and all over the place, in that way. However, it should be effortless if all is well.
No, this would place intent somewhat ahead of experience. It's concomitant. The intent is not in the future. You may have a future state you want to arrive at, but the actual flow is always controlled ongoingly. This ongoingness requires intentional presence at all times. It means intent cannot be removed from action to be either before or after, or you'll get a situation where some action happens by itself without intent, and then it can't be controlled in that time. Well, nothing is ever "by itself." "By itself" is not a valid state of anything, ultimately, even if it appears so. Do a little thought experiment. Imagine that you arm is raised, but don't raise your arm. Now think that it will be good to raise your arm and that you should do so, but again, don't raise it yet. This gives you the end goal, but no action. Why not? Because even though you have conceptualized a goal, you haven't moved to it yet. So intent is not really the goal. Intent is deliberate and choosy movement, change. It's choosy because you can always choose something else at any time. You can abandon your goal. If actions had to move toward goals, once you had a goal, you'd be forced to complete it. Because you can also abandon goals, goals are not intent per se.
I revise my statement, and say "flows-with"!
By 'goal' or 'intent' I don't mean a conceptualisation of it, I mean an absorbing or becoming of it. It's not an aim, although that's how we might talk of it afterwards.
Let's explore with perhaps more important examples: magick. A classic New Thought way is to "adopt the feeling associated with having attained your goal" and then wait for thoughts, actions and events and environmental changes to occur until that goal is your present experience. How does your notion of 'intent' fit in with that? As I see it, I could view this as having 'changed myself' into the person with that outcome and now it's just unfolding.
Would 'intent' be better phrased as a sort of 'mental posture'? Because it's not an action itself, but language forces us to frame it as such.
Intent is not physical action exclusively. Intent is mental action of any kind. Or you can think of it as mental orchestration of action instead of action. But orchestration happens concomitantly with action.
Hmm, interesting. So, taking my example, I would say that I only need to 'intend' adopting the feeling-state corresponding to my desire (the intention and the adopting are the same thing really, I just 'adopt the feeling state' really). Then I leave it alone, and the world lines up. (In a dream, the change might happen instantaneously, but in waking life, it doesn't.)
At any point I can 'intend' again and have my experiences flow differently. The core idea here is in this "feeling" - it's the "global sense' of yourself and the world. What would it feel like if this were your experience? It is the feeling of "your shape" at this moment. In this view, "intention" isn't action at all as such, but it is "with" action, it is the decision of what your action means. The action itself doesn't matter. Summoning a feeling is probably the simplest action you can take, non-physically and non-mentally.
Hmm, I am not being as clear as I'd like.
Yea, because look at the big pancakes of intent here. During dreaming, you let go of objectivity to a large extent and you no longer adjust your expectations toward what you might think is a neutral standard of some sort (this is what objectivity is). In your dream world you think there is just you, so there is no neutral standard that you commit to. "Commit" is an important word, keep it in mind. Since you have no commitment to constantly adjust your experience toward a neutral standard, it flows instantly or very quickly with your intent toward your goal. When you are awake, things are more complicated. When you're awake you then have an unshakeable and abiding commitment toward some seemingly external neutral standard. You no longer think it's just you. You think whatever changes happen now have to be witnessed and approved by, and be participated in by multiple observer-participants in addition to you. This is your commitment to convention. So whatever other commitments and intentions you try to generate during magick, they happen in the context of that prior commitment to convention. Guess what? That context is not magick-friendly. The whole point of that context is to make it look like experience isn't owned by you! If it's a neutral ground, you can bring some changes to it, but no huge change can be done by you without some cooperation of others. You can move your body around by yourself, and that's about it. Anything more fancy requires cooperation. In other words, the whole point of that commitment to convention is precisely to prevent magick. So if you try to use magick as an ordinary human with a commitment to convention, which most humans maintain unshakably, then it's likely to either fail or work super-feebly. What you really want to do is something crazy. You want to abandon your commitment to convention. No more neutral ground. You absorb all of this waking phenomenal reality into yourself as your dream. It's no longer a democracy. Now it's just you, just like in a dream. Now things are not fair anymore. Now you've made yourself a tyrant. Now you can use your magickal intent. And now without your commitment to humanity (convention) you can make things happen as quickly as in a dream. However, because all this is done in a kind of inhuman state, it would be scary as fuck, because as you do this, you wouldn't be doing this as a normal human. When you abandon convention you're basically at least temporarily leaving your "I am a human" card on the table. You're not acting with human limitations, but then you're kind of like a beast or a deity. You're not human. For most people this is too freaky to even contemplate, never mind actually experience.
I agree on the commitment thing. It's the, erm, magic ingredient. I used to use the phrase "fully intend", but there's no decent way to say it. Essentially, it just means step forward without a care for doubt and have it happen.
Still, this loops us back to the intersubjectivity thing. Now, I know I can have other people behave differently, and for recent events to be effectively 'deleted' so I can have another go, and so on. And I know I am not a "person".
I am all people? Am am none, I am the people, the environment, the space in which the environment residues, and "that" in which the space appears. What are you? What happens when "we" both reshape ourselves (i.e. the universe)?
Let's say you perform a powerful spell where you take control of the world as your dream and you kill me. Poof. From your POV I am gone. But from my POV nothing happened to me. So I can't see the you that knows I am gone in my world anymore. So our subjectivities diverge. In my world I get a copy of you that never performed the spell. And in your world you get the world without me in it.
Yes, this. Taking this further, by making it less extreme, if you and I "intend" different things, do our subjectivities diverge so that we both have the experience we desire?
And the "you" that I am left with, what is that? It's a "you" without anybody looking through that "viewport"?
You want to settle your mind on what I am, right? But truth is, there are so many versions of me that whatever you settle on as me is also me. So if you decide no one is looking through this viewport, that's possible. That's within the continuum of what I could be. If you decide I am not a pzombie and I am looking through the viewport of this body, that's possible too.
We always try to eliminate ambiguity, don't we?
Yeah, this is the core of what I am getting at with the "intersubjectivity" topic. It also helps tackle some of the moral issues that players in the game might come up with.
My previous approach to this was to think of ourselves (myself, yourself, whoeverself) as "extended beings" across all possibilities.
So, if we think of a (rather multi-dimensional) grid in which all possible moments, all possible experiences, are laid out, each from my 'viewport perspective' - well, I am extended across all of them, but I am only looking into one of the locations at a time. The history or 'timeline' of myself is the path I travel across that grid, moment by moment, choice by choice.
I tried exploring this idea through the perspective of time travel a while back - taking this more extreme example of 'changing the moment' to try and bring out the issues and details - but actually I think it just confused the issue, because of course people wanted to discuss actual time travel mechanisms a la sci-fi.
Time is a very interesting topic. I see two types of time. Conventional time. That's something like today is September the 7th, 2014, 3 hours, 3 minutes. This kind of time we try to all agree on. This time pertains to the supposedly neutral common ground, the objective realm of the Earth and the "physical" cosmos, etc. And then there is subjective time. Subjective time can include things like your past lives, dream time dilation experiences, and other time dilation experiences, etc. Subjective time is your own time as you experience it and it can dive into and out of conventions of all sorts, loop back onto itself, etc.
I think 'time' gets to the heart of things, because what we often implicitly mean by magick and manipulation is a discontinuity in our experience. A jump from one moment to another moment that would not normally follow from it.
Conventional time is surely imaginary?
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Let me put it this way. Goals don't set themselves by themselves. That's why intent isn't the same thing as a goal.
Yes, that's fair enough. Goals are a conceptualisation or representation of a desire. It has no 'motive force', just as simply owning a photograph of a nice fast car doesn't create any momentum towards you actually owning one.
Precisely
With this stuff, there's always a hurdle of developing a common language with which to discuss it. So let's have "goal = conceptualisation or image". So, can we say that "intention" is the meaning that is attached to a particular act, be that mental, physical, or something else? Or even more broadly, "intention" is the meaning we attach to a particular change. This means that intention itself can't be experienced alone; it is not a thing, it is almost an applied interpretation, live.
(We're returning a little to Alan Chapman's idea here, that it doesn't matter what you do as your magickal act, it's what you decide it means that counts.)
I agree that intention cannot be experienced alone. That's why I keep saying how intention is concomitant with change/action. Another word we can use for intention is permission. So if I intend to raise my arm, I permit myself to raise my arm. If I intend to relax, I permit myself to relax. So allowing, permitting can be thought of as intent. A synonym. Does that help?
I think we are essentially agreed. I don't really mean 'assigning' as a label attachment - that returns us to conceptualisation - so much as doing-with-purpose. It's simultaneous. The language is introducing a duality here where there is none. Another way I see this is a 'releasing into a direction'. When we walk forwards, we release ourselves in that direction, as an analogy.
I believe intention is the fundamental thing. It's a muddied word. Are we better to just jump in and say it's free will and we have free will because we are the fabric of experience, and so can shape ourselves however we choose?
Excuse this extended quote, but it's from a decent recent book which tries to capture some of what we've been discussing, without me having to type too much (Bernardo: see this as promotional!):
So, in the context of all these metaphors, what is it that makes mind move?
Notice that the answer to this question cannot be a phenomenon of experience, since experience is already mind in motion! Whatever the primary cause of the movement of mind is, it cannot itself be a movement of mind. Thus, we cannot find the primary cause in physics, biology, psychology, or any area of knowledge. The difficulty here is the same one behind the impossibility to describe the medium of mind itself: since all knowledge is a movement of the medium of mind, that which sets mind in motion cannot be known directly. But we can gain intuition about it indirectly, by observing its most immediate effects in experience and then trying to infer their invisible source.
Our ordinary lives entail unfathomably complex chains of cause and effect: one thing leading to another, which in turn leads to another …and another, along the outlines of a blooming, unfolding pattern that we call the laws of nature. But at the very root of the chain of causality there seems to be something ineffable, tantalizingly close to experience, yet just beyond it: freewill.
Whenever you make a decision, like choosing to close your hand into a fist, you have a strong sense that you were free to make the choice. But usually that sense comes only after the choice is made –immediately after – in the form of the heartfelt certainty that you could have made a different choice. The direct experience of freewill, however, remains ambiguous: before you make the choice it is not there; and then the very next experience seems to be already that of having made the choice. The experience of making the choice seems lost in a kind of vanishing in-between limbo, too elusive and slippery to catch at work. It is as though freewill were outside time, only its effects insinuating themselves into time.
Yet, freewill can be so tantalizingly close to experience – perhaps arbitrarily close – that many people are convinced that they feel the actual choice being made. Personally, despite having paid careful attention, I have never managed to satisfactorily ‘catch’ this elusive experience in an unambiguous manner. I can’t prove it is not there, but I hope to have evoked enough doubt about it that you are open to the possibility that choice itself is outside experience. We only really experience the prelude and the immediate aftermath of choice, never the making of a choice.
Though I am aware that this is the trickiest element of my entire argument – resting, as it does, more on introspection than logic –I contend that freewill proper is the primary cause of all movements of mind; the freewill of the one subject of all existence. Freewill can never be experienced directly: it is the driving force behind all experience and, thus, never an experience itself. But we can infer its existence from the retroactive sense of free choice that we have immediately after making a decision. This sense of free choice is, so to speak, the ‘echo’ of the primary cause reverberating within our psychic structures.
- From Why Materialism is Baloney - Bernardo Kastrup
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This is junk, sorry. Choices are not important. Never confuse volition with choices. I was talking about this before. Volition is not something that comes in atomic little localized bursts and I explained why not.
I would tend to just use "intention" for all of the above, with context adjusting the meaning. The reason is that it's the most vague version, which doesn't necessarily imply "doing" or "gripping", which to me gives the wrong sense. All of them just mean "directing the content our experience" in some implicit way, surely.
Whenever you make a decision, like choosing to close your hand into a fist...
To be fair, here I think he's just trying to point out that you can't experience the doing, the "first cause", so people retrospectively tell themselves a story to fill the gap. There are moments of redirection and interference, however, when we change course. Calling them "choices" or "decisions", those are just best-effort words to fill in an event that is ungraspable as an experience.
This is confused. I don't believe this at all. I already explained what problems I see with this narrative and I don't feel like repeating myself. His fault from my POV is that he's chunking intent. Intent should not be chunked.
Hmm. I agree there is no real "stopping-and-doing" but it's difficult to discuss this without isolating examples, even though that isolation is false. So I'm giving him a pass on this, for now. ;-)
I'll give it one more try. Every moment is a moment of choosing. They're not some rare and special moments that happen only once in a while. Now take all the moments and erase boundaries between them. Now you got what I call "intent" or "volition."
I know what you're getting at, that's why I said there's no "stopping-and-doing". Although conceptually this is fine, I find I don't really experience each moment as a moment of choosing, when I examine it. I think that I could if I were more attentive and present, but I don't. I seem to drift in and out of that over time.
But I do! :) I experience it! :)
I think this is part of the point of this sub, and of Dream Yoga. You have to examine your experience in order to change it. You can have that experience if you hold on to yourself. Really entering into a Dream Yoga view, though, surely you would have the opposite sensation? Just a thought.
Funnily enough, arm experiments like that were something I did do when following that Peter Ralston book (Zen Body-Being), which is all about exploring how you work. There's a 'pre-feeling', then a movement, that is ongoing. But the key is my attention is on it. Meanwhile, my foot is tapping up and down and I haven't noticed, and I'm frowning with one eye slightly closed and I haven't noticed.
Think like this: if you think there is a unique and specific moment of choice, then what is this followed by? A choiceless moment? And then what? Another choiceless moment? At what point will your ability to make choices come back?
You can make choices at any time - i.e. interfere with what's happening. The ability never leaves, provided you are present to the moment. But you need not ever interfere. Zen Buddhism is much concerned with the arising of 'natural action' as a response to the environment, for instance, without 'doing' or 'choosing'.
You are not required to manually control yourself each moment. You can do so at any time, but equally you can step back and let things happen. In fact, you probably live most of your life this way without noticing.
Then there's is Jiddu Krishnamurti's way of describing 'choiceness awareness':
Krishnamurti held that outside of strictly practical, technical matters, the presence and action of choice indicates confusion and subtle bias: an individual who perceives a given situation in an unbiased manner, without distortion, and therefore with complete awareness, will immediately, naturally, act according to this awareness – the action will be the manifestation and result of this awareness, rather than the result of choice. Such action (and quality of mind) is inherently without conflict.
- Choiceless Awareness, Wikipedia
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The only way you can't be present is to choose not to be. In other words, you end up always winning here, no matter what.
Attention is a filter, not a torch-light. But, it can get stuck and localised, defaulted. A key practice is to dissolve that boundary, expand back out again, I have found.
When you don't interfere you are still choosing moment by moment to maintain a space where things can happen in a disowned context.
This isn't an ongoing choice though. Once you've 'stood back', you don't need to keep re-choosing it, maintaining that position, once you have practiced this for a while. At first you do need to maintain a space because your default attention might be highly localised; but this will loosen by itself eventually, quicker with encouragement.
Think about the state of the muscle in your tongue. When you move your tongue during speaking, do you interfere with it? And when you stop moving the tongue you stop the interference? This makes it sound like your tongue has its own mind and its own desires that you interfere with.
You don't interfere in such detail, or should I say "choose/direct". The choices you make tend to be broader than that, and everything falls in line. Just as when you stand up from sitting, your body coordinates itself, you don't have to manage all the muscular movements individually - or at all. By interfere, though, I'm not suggesting a separate 'interferer' and an 'interfered with', although you can artificially experience one.
Nonsense. Sorry. There is no independent reality. Because there is no independent reality, there is no free-of-bias anything.
There is the 'relaxed position' of things, however. What you get if you stop forcing your experience. This isn't about there being a 'real underlying reality' or whatever - just about 'mind' (or whatever you want to call it) being left to settle. Note though, a relaxed mind isn't necessarily an unmoving, unchanging mind - just as a pool of water will still have its original ripples once we stop disturbing it.
Besides, isn't a torch-light a filter of sorts too?
Attention is a filter in the sense of being a masking process. The key difference in the default state implied:
- With the torch-light metaphor, the implication is that the default state is nothing - no content - and we have to actively, with effort, shine our attention on things to gain information.
- With the filter/mask metaphor, the default would be wide-open awareness, and what we're doing is contracting that to have our attention limited. Furthermore, with a mask your attention needn't be a simple 'circle of light', it can be distributed at different intensities across experience - for instance, people have a tendency for their attention to jump to the objects in a room, and be unaware of the spaces between.
All choices are ongoing
Okay, this is our way out. I would agree that choices are ongoing, just not that they are necessarily continually, actively made or re-made. If that make sense. Meanwhile, we could rephrase relaxation as a release of attachment, if that's better for you.
Would your filter metaphor...
The filter metaphor of course also allows for a focusing and active constraint. It's "the win" because it gives you the benefits of the torch-light metaphor (narrow attention) with the benefits of open awareness and of structured attention over space. (It also corresponds nicely with some research on 'attentional styles' and perception etc.)
Wide open awareness means awareness that is open to possibilities. One such possibility is absolute nothingness.
There are two senses in which attention can be wide open. One is in the sense of right now, taking everything in as it is in 3D-space and more - including the underlying background awareness for everything. Then there is 'what is possible', also opened up. So, yes.
Filtering suggests that you aren't meddling with anything...
I see where you're coming from. It's the 'creative aspect'. The filter doesn't imply that what's outside the filter is safe from influence and manipulation. It is a filter of attention which overlays awareness. Awareness itself is unbounded. There is another thread to this of course: The creative aspect of attention. In a lucid dream, I open a door, and without fail there is something beyond it...
Then it's not so bad, but I'd wager you'd be dominated by the presently apparent phenomena in this mode.
Not if you have direct experience of the open unbounded space. The idea of the filter is that if you release it, you are unrestricted in that way. You would experience the phenomena in context - the context of a dream-space.
Filter metaphor suggests that objects of attention exist before the act of attention attends to them. That's how materialists think.
Not really (just). Berkeley's idealism, for instance, doesn't suggest that experiences don't exist in some way separate from an individual attending to them. He phrases it as everything being witnessed by "the mind of God", by which we really mean that there is an unbounded consciousness, of which each of us is a part, or a witness via a perspective.
I don't conceive of myself as filtering something...
If all possibilities exist, and you are only experiencing one, then you are filtering, not creating. But this is really just how one thinks of it. We've moved along here somewhat though, from what I initially meant.
Two sorts of filtering, then:
- Filtering of the 3D Present Moment Experience: Here I am, right now, experiencing this moment. I don't feel that "I am a vast open space", I feel more enclosed than that, more constrained. If I let go, however, I find that my "hold" on the experience loosens and opens out. If I keep doing this (over a long time) my 'attentional profile' gradually expands and opens. Alternatively, I can force this by actually stretching out evenly into space. This removes the distinction between "me" and "my environment", letting me feel the dreamlike nature directly. This is something I have deliberately experimented with.
- The Filtering Of Possibilities: Enfolded within every moment and every space is 'all possible moments'. Like a configuration space with all possible combinations; we are at one location in the space at any one time - we have filtered down all possibilities into a single current experience. The current experience is the 'unfolded' one. This is more a way of conceptualising possibility.
The latter might be better viewed as a creative act, an implicit or explicit one. The first one was really what I was referring to. I assume already that "anything is possible".
I'm not a part. I am the whole thing! And so are you.
Yes, it just seems we are a part, because we have a perspective. Just because I am not constantly experiencing all my memories all the time, for instance, doesn't mean they are not enfolded in me. (Not a great analogy.)
You see the need, though, for things to be 'enfolded' somehow? Because we both need creative access to 'the whole thing'? All time, all space, all at once?
Extra thought: we are not actually 'located'.
Creative access = opening the filter = dropping inhibitions / restrictions. It's always access to yourself, of course.
Additional Question: What's your problem with advaita/non-duality?
Now, there are some authors I think are pretty rubbish (Tony Parsons, for instance), and many of them don't get how free will can be incorporated, even though to me that just drops out of it naturally. However, it does seem to me that most are striving for a similar thing at root - i.e. to directly experience that there is no separation between you and your environment, you are "all this" and there is no underlying solidity beyond that. Meanwhile, most idealists are happy discussing it philosophically, while never actually living it.
I dislike Advaita teachers because they promote choicelessness and absence of free will.
I agree that will is paramount. In fact, one of my concerns about subjective idealism as commonly treated is that it doesn't adopt this fully, due to still holding onto the notion of 'objects' and encountering rather than being or making. Will forms perception, it is inseparable from awareness, because the Will is about changing awareness.
I think it's the "Neo-Advaita" people that are particularly bad (that one can't say anything, basically!). We should probably separate Advaita from Non-duality; there are people in the latter camp who have a better grasp of things.
This isn't what I want at all.
If you and the environment are not separated, 'merged', then it's surely saying that it's all under your control - there's just experience under Will (or "ongoing choice" as we phrased it).
Better to say: you don't merge, you just recognise that there was no separation. Of course, it's up to us whether we want to experience 'being a body with magical powers' or 'being this whole room and changing it how we want'. I want that cup of coffee over there to change into a glass of water? Well, I am that cup of coffee, so no problem.
The feeling love thing, so not what I mean. I mean something more like, bringing/recognising your surroundings are under your influence.
The experience can feel like merging when it happens, but in fact it is just realisation. Delocalised experiences can be a mix of exhilarating and terrifying. Which is not unexpected: it feels like a threat of death, and in a sense it is.
It's a big hurdle for this stuff, which is why most people are happier with servitors and sigils and so on for magick - an obvious intermediary that you are "sending out in to the world". People are resistant to OOBE-type events for the same reason. Separation anxiety?? :-)
I am so fucking glad I invited Triumphant George instead of Pavlina. I know Pavlina would not think of this cool thought even in a million years, sorry. You are superior to the people you quote, imo.
Why, thank you, most kind.
The technique I started off with was the 'rope technique', of which there are a few variations [http://out-of-body-experience.info/best-techniques-out-of-body-experience/]. But basically, you just relax and try to 'feel a rope in your hands' as you pull yourself out. It takes a lot of courage to push through the initial vibrations, and other potential unpleasantness. (If you haven't played with this in a while, it's worth a punt, just to see what happens now...)
Ah, this is astral projection, which is also very interesting. But in my experience it felt like my actual physical body lifted up. It was no AP. I was alone in the room, and I am describing an experience here. I hope no one jumps to any conclusions.
Don't worry, I'm a total narcissist really.
But in my experience it felt like...
Interesting. The whole area of resistance is a curious one. For instance, if we lose our keys we are happy to look over at a nearby table and see them there, even though there's no way they could have got there. However, the other way round - we look at the table and then they appear in front of us - we're less happy about. Even if we think it might be cool. So we filter out those possibilities, those "reality shifts". And this is before we've even begun deliberately willing changes.
I take all stories with a pinch of salt, but people do seem to get quite thrown by fairly simple changes [https://realityshifters.com/pages/yourstories87.html] because it raises other questions: in that case, if my world changes, do I take my friends along with me, or do I now have different friends?
This adds an extra level of caution to intentional acts.
Back to continuum of being. They're not the same or different. There are levels of difference and levels of similarity, but the exact relationship is ambiguous I think. We can of course try to nail everything down in an attempt to gain conceptual clarity. So we can say they're different, for example. That's fine too. But really nothing can force us to think that. It's just a choice.
Yes, but from the person's perspective, not having a philosophical framework to refer to, and mostly never having even thought about this before, they get pretty spooked. Some deliberate efforts at world-changing, like the 'Tesseract Magick' experiments (pinch of salt but interesting), make a definite point about bringing people along. Better maybe to say that aspect of a person?
Some of the ones in /r/glitch_in_the_matrix are apparently absence seizures: here, here, here. Or... is that just what the experience seems like because you didn't take anyone else with you when you 'jumped'? (If you look for an explanation, surely you will find one, such is the creative nature of attention.)
Even having a solid philosophical framework is only a minor advantage, I think.
It might make the difference between "hey, cool!" and losing it. But as we've covered previously, there's a difference between having thought about something and knowing and feeling its truth. People dabble with magick, having read all the stuff, and it's all fun and joy until demons actually do turn up!
"Better maybe to say that aspect of a person?" Better for what purpose? Goodness of this or that is relative to some aim, right?
My aim in saying "aspect" was because it fitted in nicely with my concept of "extended persons". As you say, we often strive for clarity, but if I just say "extended person" then the nature of that extension - multiple copies, multifaceted, holographic - can stay nicely ambiguous while still conveying the notion of being more than just "this version, here", and "aspect" sits well within that. No metaphor I've played with really fits. Which is to be expected, in a world of infinite possibilities... ;-)
This area is why I was questioning your notion (as I read it at the time) of choices being continually actively made, although I like "ongoing choices" or "continually active choices" as an alternative.
Because this version of me, typing at my Mac, is the "viewport version" as I see it, the one I am experiencing in my "space-that-is-me", and from this perspective all the other parts of my "extended being" as seen by other people are philosophical zombies. They are unfolding in automatic fashion, choices unfolding in tune with their trajectory and character, but not being redirected.
So you see the real yourself, while when I look at you I see a pzombie? I am not sure I understand.
Yes, effectively the "extension" is infinite, but it's simpler to visualise.
For instance, I think of all possible moments as being a grid of 'viewports', with each square in the grid being a 'picture' of the view into that moment. Of course, that grid is infinite, and the adjacent squares aren't spatially located so there's no 'adjacent', and they aren't squares, and the 'picture' is actually an entire world from a particular perspective.
It's just about giving myself something handy to refer to, while understanding that it is just a partial representation of something that, essentially, cannot be represented by its nature.
Thinking in terms of continuums helps me to avoid thinking about people as if they were substances.
This is key, and that's where the 'viewport' idea comes in originally (as a first stab at this). You see, from your own perspective you aren't here at all, you're transparent, you are just 'tuned into' this perspective on this environment. You are only a person from others' perspective.
Playing with this, what "you" really are is "that which looks through the grid" or the opportunities it represents. I filter my attention so that I am only experiencing one particular possibility, one grid square viewport at a time. What "I" am to you is a picture, an image, which may or may not have a consciousness looking through into this part of the grid.
Of course, as an "extended person" all possibilities are playing out in character, it's just that I am not necessarily attending to that part. If I am not attending, it's like I am a philosophical zombie, that part of me.
Typical, conventional people will see my vivified body as a person. They won't see my subjectivity the way I experience it.
They don't perceive your subjectivity, just a picture of Nefandi, moving about, implying a subjectivity. Whether you are 'really there' or not is not detectable from their point of view. There is also the issue that the particular 'you' they are experiencing as a companion in their world is something they themselves select, implicitly or explicitly.
Every POV is ultimately possible. That's the secret.
Yes, that's right, that's the thrust of the 'grid/viewport' metaphor effectively. On deeper analysis, the pzombie problem actually disappears because of this, but it's a handy way of imagining at the earlier level.
Sure, but it's not my problem. ;) It's their problem. I am fine.
Heh, quite. And this is not a bad point to make: since you only actually experience one 'selected reality' at a time, the rest is basically imaginary thinking-about, just a way to keep the possibilities alive within you.
Thing is, once you make a jump, you can't get back, because the history of the jump is now part of this moment. You can perhaps go to a new moment similar to the previous, but that moment-prior is inaccessible with the memory intact, sort of by definition. If we delete aspects of the world (Lathe of Heaven), fixing it won't take it back really, the best you can hope is to make it as indistinguishable as possible. But then, how much control of the details is really possible?
What you say is only true if you don't want to edit your own memory, but want to keep your memory "straight" as it were, without any funny business, while limiting all the weirdness to the external realm. So you keep your subjectivity neatly organized and ordered, which means your memory is stable, while all the crazy jumps and magickal events are affecting only things you think are "external" to your person.
Yes, as you traverse 'the grid' I think you would want to retain the memory of your path, wouldn't you? Of course, you could never know for sure that you had done so, because the memory is also part of the world associated with your the grid/viewport position. I can't think of a reason not to want to retain an 'internal' trail of the jumps/changes made.
Boredom! The almighty reason for everything.
Well, eventually. That's the old story about God though, isn't it? God gets bored and so deliberately forgets himself to make it all exciting. How far can I push it? Further, more adventurous, more apparently risky. Finally, what would you dream? You'd dream this dream, of powerlessness. (The Alan Watts angle on it.)
Precisely. You don't think I chose the word "almighty" in "almighty reason" by accident, do ya?
Heh, good.
I'll tell you a little secret. I am in the process of creating a number of very powerful lords. Overall this will increase chaos in the apparent world. And that's because I don't like our world, and I am bored besides.
They won't stand a chance against my machines.
I don't think you get my meaning. When I say "lords" what are you imagining?
Video game reference.
Heh, not even close. I guess I'll let you remain ignorant. Looks like my secret is safe even though I told you what it was.
Haha, sequence error on my part (was just reading something and it made sense). Serves me right for being flippant. My second guess (vague memory, had to look this up) is Michael Moorcock's Elric saga. It matters not, of course, because perhaps tonight I will mentally edit this exchange so that I was right all along. ;-)
And: What's wrong with our (apparent) world anyway?
You're not in an occult frame of mind when you make your guesses.
This is true. I'm parallel processing right now. You're lucky I wasn't anticipating an apocalypse of New Zealand singer-songwriters.
"And: What's wrong with our (apparent) world anyway?" What's right about it?
Hmm. If there's something wrong with it, that really means there's something wrong with me. Or rather, something wrong with you, depending on your perspective...
I vote you. Because the world seems alright to me.
My world is not a democracy. But you simply happen to be right anyway. I don't like this world and I will change it. In fact, I already have changed it and will change it some more. When I am done, I will like it again. Who knows how you will feel though, lol.
Subjective decoherence will see me right, of course. In fact it already has, naturally.
That's not what I will see. ;) But you already knew that.
Quite! :-) Oh, but I still want to know what it's wrong with it, that you would change. (Beyond simply destructive fun, of course.) Out of interest.
Rampant philosophical materialism. Religion. Dogmatism. Property ownership.
If you hang around long enough and are successful, subjective idealism will turn into a religion! Albeit with only One follower. ;-)
Well, materialism, religion and consumerism have become the assumed structures of our time I suppose. They're all under pressure though? Property ownership will become a vaguer notion, but not without a massive copyright fight. (Once digital copying 3D printing generalised object instantiation.) It's the rebalancing of money-power that's the real worry. "I drink your milkshake!"
Perhaps you can help it along?
P.S. If you ever get the chance to time travel then, you might want to pay a visit to Edward Bernays, the father of modern marketing and manipulation. (If you ever want to get all het up, I recommend reading his book.) Also check out Adam Curtis for further fury. I've been looking into this stuff recently.
There is no "perhaps" about it. I've already helped it along. I guess I can help it along some more, but I also have my own personal interests. There is a hard limit for how much I care about this conventional world and this world's destiny. I do care some but only so much. And after that I really don't give a shit if the moon falls from the sky and everything burns.
Fair enough!
...
Q: From the Tesseract Magick link:
There are phenomenon that we should warn you of. Time will sometimes be pe rceived in a different way immediately before, during, or after a Tesseract. This increases in the practice though the fear and uneasy feelings concerning it go away in time and experience, rather like fear of flying. Precursor effects on reality are usually balanced by after-Tesseract events, and are often symmetrical with them. The effect can be sudden shifts in time or space. Driving a hundred miles in less than 20 minutes. Going through the same stop twice in the same direction on a public transit system. Losing the entire day, someone once skipped their birthday. Distortionsin space. Being able to perceive beyond a closed door to the extent that you walk into it. A universe where the sky is red and has green cracks in it. Universes where there is no radio or TV on the air, and there is a smell of ozone in the air (jump again immediately!) People can change eye color, hair color, height, weight, or personality. Only those that jump with you can be counted on. Everyone around you and every social circumstance can change rather dramatically in the most highly vectored jumps.
Some say that Tesseract jumping is a better version of suicide, and should only be undertaken in the same circumstances. Some say it is habit forming and leads to permanent tourist syndrome toward any universe one finds oneself in.
This is gnarly. :) Notice the psychological link to suicide too? Once again we're back to the warning post.
Quite. I thought it might appeal. I have experimented a little, but nothing so Philip K Dickian has resulted. (Incidentally, this is one reason why Flow My Tears... is included on the reading list, along with Ubik. Now, there's a guy who had some experiences; he kind of blended his reality with his writings.)
Only those that jump with you can be counted on.
Yeah.
When I was in college I missed an exam once, which is to say I was sure the date of the exam had passed, and then I unconsciously made it as though I still had a few days until the exam. This was interesting, but also the only reason I even remember this is because of this conversation. That experience drifted away from my conscious memory pretty quickly. I say "unconsciously" because I didn't perform any kind of magick working or anything.
The memory part is often a problem. But luckily not just yours.
My favourite New Thought friend, Neville Goddard, has a good "pruning" [https://realneville.com/txt/the_pruning_shears_of_revision.htm] exercise which I really should remember to do more often: Each night, replay the day you've just had and amend it to your liking. Change all the errors to what should have happened; delete those disagreements. Reset the situation for the new tomorrow.
Go into a shop, ask for something. They don't have it? Go take a browse, delete that conversation and reimagine it. Try again. Change your feeling of the world into one where it is there. If you do this wrong though, through being inattentive or casual, it can go really wrong pretty quick.
It's much easier to do forward work though. For instance, have tomorrow's exam contain the two questions you actually studied for. That's more everyday magick of course, but its apparent retroactive component can be a challenge for some.
Meant to add: I think things like this happen all the time, we just don't notice it, because of an apparent rule of self-consistency. That is, memories and the moment seem to fall in line.
Perhaps the world does indeed get recreated each moment, in line with our direction, amendments as required/desired...
Q: Go into a shop, ask for something. They don't have it? Go take a browse, delete that conversation and reimagine it. Try again. Change your feeling of the world into one where it is there. If you do this wrong though, through being inattentive or casual, it can go really wrong pretty quick.
This is how I break locks on the doors to my apartment building, lol. What I do is assume the door can't be locked and pull it. I hate having to open the front door, basically. It's a hassle. So I just pull it. Sometimes the door is locked and when I pull it nothing happens. But I don't give up. I have a habit of pulling the door while assuming it can't be locked. Then what happens is I find the lock is broken, or the door is slightly ajar, or the lock mechanism failed to engage, etc. I even surprised the fuck out of my wife a number of times by magically opening the front door that wifey was sure was locked. haha.
I like the locks thing, nice. What I'd like: deliberate fast travel [https://realityshifters.com/pages/yourstories98.html]. (Glitch 'n' shifts sites are good for inspiration I think.) There's also that whole siddhis teleportation thing [http://tomkenyon.com/siddhis] for one day. A little ambitious for now, though.
The revision exercise is a good one, and it helps practice what I think is vital: generating the feeling that summarises something as being true/real. His Power of Awareness book is worth a read; I should add that to the list. His lectures tend to emphasise his Bible-as-instruction-manual-to-reality mindset, but his books less so. And it's free.
Q: I like the locks thing, nice.
Yea, it's tame when it works, so anyone can try it. Things like fast travel can be stomach-turning for some people. I don't know if I want to be practicing fast travel personally. I want to find a gradual path to these things. So something slightly better than fiddling with locks maybe should be next. Maybe, or maybe not even better, but just more similar stuff until it becomes routine.
A small, repeatable change of some sort. Things like the "prune the day" exercise are a good place to start though, just for general use, because of the apparent indirectness, but the measurable effects, in terms of unlikely reversals.
Stanley Sobottka: A Course in Consciousness
This short dialogue [https://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/Dialogue.htm] provides a nice quick summary of how to get from "here" to "there" - a sort of "reality loosener" for times when all this stuff seems a bit too solid. The full course is quite interesting, a well put together survey of all the different aspects of science, metaphysics, and non-duality. I recommend it. It covers everything, even if you do not agree with its conclusions yourself, it will give your reference points for all the issues.
Valuable material, even if it doesn't quite embrace the "subjective idealism + magick" aim of this subreddit:
When we realize that "we" have no control, there is a sense of freedom and energy because control is bondage even if we think "we" are the ones in control. This freedom brings with it the awareness of a power that is mysterious and profound, the power of Consciousness (God). Ironically, if "we" try to use that power, it disappears. This is a twist on the saying, "use it or lose it". Instead, it becomes, "if you try to use it, you will lose it". If "we" toy with the power of God, "we" will get burned by disappointment and disillusion, but when we realize that "we" have no control, the power of God, even though subtle, becomes awesomely apparent.
...
I brought the topic up over here - albeit not being so direct so as to encourage discussion - and there were some interesting responses worth a look.
[DIALOGUE]
TG: "Control vs Letting Go", What are our opinions on trying to control our world and environment by technique and will (direct approach), versus letting go and undoing ourselves to achieve greater clarify (indirect approach)?
In the end, both approaches seem to have the same aim (a mastery over experience, or an expansion of it), but they are quite a contrast in path.
Do we have particular ideas on one vs the other, and how to approach each path?
A1: To try and control the world [external reality] demands continuing and varying efforts, and leans on the ego and self. Say someone was bullying you. Calling you names and such. You could try to engage that specific incident of bullying via magic, and manipulate the external world to stop the bully. But odds are another bully could come along, and you'd have to start again from square one. By operating internally the bully is no matter. There could be 100 bullies and it wouldn't make a difference... because you've change yourself. Either in a way that you aren't bullied at all, or that you've moved beyond the external and you are no longer concerned with it. Same with financial troubles. Every time you have a money problem, you could try and focus on the external world to enact change for that specific, localized issue, and solve your problem, but money problems can come again. If you work internally, and let go of the external world, you find an everlasting solution so that any number of independent, localized issues could arise without concern.
I think that the ultimate solution is to achieve internal change. To work only on yourself. If you achieve that, there is no need to concern yourself with control.
Yes. This is actually what I've come to think: The "external" experiences, or unfolded objects, arise in alignment with your enfolded forms (beliefs, assumptions, expectations, character) just as your thoughts do.
You can fight the unfolded objects, again and again, but they will just re-spawn, because you haven't tackled the "facts" of the world. Amend the "facts" (your enfolded beliefs and mental posture), amend the phenomena. Whether this results in no bullies arising, or simply that bullies don't bother you, depends on the nature of the "fact" and its new version?
If I suffer from headaches and neck pain, I can keep taking painkillers to change the experience (object to object), or I can notice my bad posture, and change myself > change the experience (form to object).
No need to control the objects, if the underlying forms have been tackled.
A2: As a witch, there are too many effective techniques to not try external change, and they're easy too. Granted, tons of witches get stuck here, called 'practical magic' and never use the craft to expand their own spirit or spirituality. Internal change is for those seeking enlightenment or betterment of the soul. But it is also really and truly effective for things you don't know how to externally modify. I've seen a lot of schools of thought, occult and religious, who think you should internalize only, but for some, and perhaps this happens with women most of all, we've already internalized the blame too often and too much and so going in is actually harmful. Change is always the goal and a good one, and not the seeking of blame, but sometimes, we have to trick the brain into seeing one source as the culprit that is healthy for us as well as effective in changing the whole situation. I like to look at it like a web of connections, where a situation is brought about by a number of circumstances and the craft usually makes you focus on one, inevitably changing the pattern and whole chain.
Thanks, that was a refreshing new angle for me.
A3: Speaking through a few years of martial arts experience:
Pure control is like the hard styles, karate, taikwondo, etc. An opponent/unwanted situation comes at you and you deal with it directly. Break his arm, get your way. This way is generally effective and has the advantage of not taking a long time to learn. However, you're at a disadvantage against a person/situation that can overpower you.
Pure letting go is like the internal health practices, like qigong or tai chi the way it's practiced in the west. It focuses on making you healthier and health translates into strength and general wellbeing, but by itself it's not going to be much use when shit gets real. It might help you deal emotionally with the consequences, assuming you're still alive.
In between you have a whole spectrum of arts that try to combine the two philosophies. Aikido, wing chun, krav maga, many others. Don't fight force with force. Get off the line of attack. Hit to weak targets.
In general: Adapt where you can in order to be more effective at getting what you want. Let go so that you can control.
In general: Adapt where you can in order to be more effective at getting what you want. Let go so that you can control.
Great. I've done some qigong, and found it very helpful. I still don't fancy my chances in a random bar brawl, however.
I guess, engage the flow of circumstances as much as possible; insert a 'controlling adjustment' where opportunity arises but only if required.
A4: I was taught that the external world could be changed only by changing your internal frame of mind. For example, your beliefs attract situations or experiences to you. By changing your ideas about a situation you can actually change the situation. By trying to resist a situation or fighting something, you can sometimes just create the opposite of what you want.
Interesting. Do you have any personal experiences where this happened?
A4: Look into thaumaturgy and theurgy. You are essentially asking what the difference is between the light side and dark side. Right hand path and left hand path. Of course there are other paths. I have found the right hand path always succeeds whereas attempting to manipulate circumstances may not always bear the expected fruit. However there are times when it makes sense.
Thanks for the tips. I really like that idea; the terms are new to me.
I'm likely mixing it up with both: one as a means to the other and back again. So it makes sense that there's the continuum. In actual fact, I'm probably of the view that editing "me" is how I make circumstantial changes anyway. (Because, fundamentally, what else is there?)
A good example I can share happened recently. I was very angry with someone because I felt they were treating me unfairly. Then I realized that this was just my idea about who they were, and it was just a belief. When I got rid of the belief I saw the person as a person just like me, and we were able to get along fine after that. When you really change those deep beliefs, magick happens. But only if you believe it will!
Did their behaviour "seem to change" afterwards as a result?
The two aren't contradictory, perhaps we could interchange control with will here? It could be one's will to engage his/her world and environment by technique and will. You don't have to choke every aspect of life to death to get what you want.
Control maybe better phrased as "holding on" in that case. With "will" just the occasional redirecting of yourself/the world.
That way it's a balance: Always having the open, "let go" attitude - with occasional "re-targeting" ?
A5: To paraphrase something I have read, "To take a step forwards in the outer world, take an inner step forward. To step forwards on the inner, take a step on the outer."
So for example if we wanted a payrise, maybe the work we have to do is not external but an internal attitude change. If we want to overcome an addiction or some other inner 'problem' maybe changing some aspect of our external life is the way forward.
I find as I let go and 'undo' as you put it everything falls into line for me. On the other hand as this happens I also am put in circumstances that cause me to grow and learn and let go further. Perhaps as I let go the blocks and tension are released also for me to work through. Maybe this is the cause of contraction into a state of 'control'.
I think as we let go we 'control' our world with a gentle touch, like seeing a master of his trade making his work look easy.
Technically the state of deliberate control is in opposition to almost every school of enlightenment and spiritual growth.
I mentioned this in a post a day or two ago, if you let young kids choose their day it would be a trainwreck after one or two days - they really don't know what is best for themselves.
Maybe think of it like a relationship, is a controlling partner ever an amazing partner? Be a good partner to life and the outer world. Give and take, nurture, forgive, teach and learn. Help, heal, sooth and discipline. Life has been around for billions of years, us as 'egos' a few decades... I'd say life knows what's what.
I'd also like to say thank you TriumphantGeorge, I love your posts and I click on your name whenever I see it to drink of your recently spilled wisdom. Thank you.
On the other hand as this happens I also am put in circumstances that cause me to grow and learn and let go further. Perhaps as I let go the blocks and tension are released also for me to work through.
"Put in circumstances", yes. There is an interplay between the inner and the outer, which I guess goes back to the idea of one being a reflection of the other.
Be a good partner to life and the outer world.
I love that metaphor: Working in partnership with life.
It's very tempting to constantly fiddle and manipulate yourself/the world, pushing yourself along, "end-gaining" - but that has the side effect of fogging your vision of who you are at that time, and to the way things are naturally flowing at that moment. Spending most of your time watching, listening, being, doing, with a small intervention here and there - itself coming from inspiration - is much more effective. I come to realise the hard way! :-)
Thanks for the compliment; much appreciated!
I think that "letting go" is more a means of altering self to more easily fit in with world, whereas "control" is altering world to more easily fit needs/wants/desires of self. Therefore I don't see "letting go" as attempted mastery over experience. But that's just what I've found to be true in my own life.
Hmm. And perhaps "letting go" as both a way to allow experience to flow more easily, and also to (ironically) make "control" easier, as you have reduced inner-conflict.
...
I would love to see a discussion of this here. My intuition suspects that the apparent polarity of control vs no control is itself a misunderstanding of something fundamental that underlies both understandings. But I don't know enough about it myself
The short version from me, to have control is/requires a release of control. We release ourselves into a direction, rather than push ourselves into a direction. That we feel that effort is required is a misunderstanding. For instance, we tense up our muscles in order to move, to 'feel ourselves doing it', but actually the tensing up gets in the way of our movement!
The Arm-Wrestling Exercise
Get a pal, challenge him (or her!) to an arm wrestle. Now, you're going to try two methods:
- The first time, put lots of effort into it. Really and try to win that competition! Use all your power, all your muscle!
- The second time - don't. Once in position, simply decide that you are going to win, and then leave your arm, your muscles, completely alone. Direct your attention elsewhere (into the space around you, onto the place you want to end up, the space behind your forehead - just keep out of your arm), and simply wait until you've won.
This illustrates that the attempt to control actually gets in the way of getting what you want, in this case. Make the decision, let the path unfold by itself. See here [http://doorsausage.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-fetching-suit.html] for an interesting tensegrity-based description of this.
Imagining That
Imagining That
WHEN we talk of imagination and imagining something, we tend to think about a maintained ongoing visual or sensory experience. We are imagining a red car, we are imagining a tree in the forest. However, imagination is not so direct as that, and to conceive of it incorrectly is to present a barrier to success - and to the understanding that imagining and imagination is all that there is. We don’t actually imagine in the sense of maintaining a visual, rather we “imagine that”. We imagine that there is a red car and we are looking at it; we imagine that there is a tree in the forest and we can see it. In other words, we imagine or ‘assert’ that something is true - and the corresponding sensory experience follows.
It is in this sense that we imagine being a person in a world. You are currently imagining that you are a human, on a chair, in a room, on a planet, reading some text. We imagine facts and the corresponding experience follows, even if the fact itself is not directly perceived. Having imagined that there is a moon, the tides still seem to affect the shore even if it is a cloudy sky. And having imagined a fact thoroughly, having imagined that it is an eternal fact, your ongoing sensory experience will remain consistent with it forever. Until you decide that it isn't eternal after all.
Exercise: When attempting to visualise something, instead of trying to make the colours and textures vivid, try instead to fully accept the fact of its existence, and let the sensory experience follow spontaneously.
Next up: Teleporting for beginners.
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Q: Deleted
There is no external. So, plot twist: there is no internal either!
Yes, everything is pretty good fun. :-)
Q: Deleted
Got ya. Well, you'll probably already get a few more red cars in your life just as a result of reading that post. ;-)
The fun is in pushing to skip intermediate experiences.
Q:
When attempting to visualise something, instead of trying to make the colours and textures vivid, try instead to fully accept the fact of its existence, and let the sensory experience follow spontaneously.
There is value in making the visions vivid as well. What your saying is orthogonal to making one's visions vivid and visceral.
I'm really saying it'll come for free.
I'm saying that the way to experience a vivid object is to imagine that there is one, and let your experience fall into line. You can't "vivid" the image directly, because it has no substance. But obviously vividity is desired.
Q:
I'm really saying it'll come for free.
Why? It doesn't have to. The mind is so flexible that anything you can imagine you can end up experiencing. So, can you imagine using your technique and not getting vividness for free? I can.
I'm saying that the way to experience a vivid object is to imagine that there is one, and let your experience fall into line.
I agree. Basically what you're saying is that the state of our senses and our conceptual-volitional framing are not two separate things, and I agree. But I don't think it's wrong to emphasize vividness first. It's gentler. What you suggest is a much stronger shift toward the crazy, which I like, but it's a tough pill to swallow right away. Especially with you talking about teleporting next.
But I don't think it's wrong to emphasize vividness first. It's gentler. What you suggest is a much stronger shift toward the crazy.
The exercise (as described) is for "mind" visualisation rather than external creation (let's not go there yet). I found taking that approach completely changed my results. Instead of trying to "draw" the image of a cube floating before me, I declared there to be one there - letting the "drawing" take care of itself. Because if something is there, of course I can see it. "Leading in", to make the desired result an obvious and inevitable conclusion. Harnessing the auto-complete function.
Especially with you talking about teleporting next.
It's a fun exercise. And if you are truly dedicated...
Q:
The exercise (as described) is for "mind" visualisation rather than external creation (let's not go there yet).
This wasn't obvious to me at all. I was under the impression you discussed materialization-level visualizations, and nothing less. When you believe a thing truly exists the way I think this keyboard here exists, that's materialization. That isn't "mind level" (funny name, since everything is "mind level").
I found taking that approach completely changed my results. Instead of trying to "draw" the image of a cube floating before me, I declared there to be one there - letting the "drawing" take care of itself.
I already do that. In fact, I can't even remember ever drawing a cube face by face. That isn't how I visualize anything. My visualization is very abstract: I allow my mind to move toward a gestalt of a possibility, and it appears. I don't do gradual building up little by little.
In some sense there is gradualness to my visualization practice when I look for more details. But when I look for more details, I expect they're already there, and I just need to look more carefully. I don't actually insert details into my vision one detail at a time.
So this is already obvious to me, and I thought you were talking about erasing the boundary between visions and what we call "reality" which is a staggering achievement in my view, and isn't gentle at all. It's the kind of stuff that blows people's minds, and not always in a good way, if not careful.
And if you are truly dedicated...
:) This is why I like you T-George. You're willing to take us as far as any of us dare to go, am I right? Or am I right?
This wasn't obvious to me at all [mind level]...
They're the same. Sorry, I'm actually confusing things by typing away here on mobile (not least due to autocorrect). The post is about material-level visualisations (experiences) that you aren't even aware you've made via "imagining that". In short, your life as you (or "people") are living it now, usually without realising.
"Imagining that" shows that we produce experiences by implying their inevitability according to facts we have accepted or allowed.
The exercise deliberately doesn't differentiate; the process is identical. The only difference is... the immediacy of the change from an image to an experience, and the directness of the correspondence. Visualising will always lead to some result of some sort. What sort of fact are you creating?
"Imagine that" there is a cube in front of you. Does a cube intensify, materialise, condense, drop to the ground in front of you? Or do you walk into the next room to find that the TV is showing a program about 4D geometry and the history of the tesseract (thus giving you both the cube and the context).
How real does it have to get before it changes from being "triumph" to "terrifying"?
You're willing to take us as far as any of us dare to go, am I right? Or am I right?
What can I say? When you're right, you're right - and you're right. :-)
Q:
"Imagine that" there is a cube in front of you. Does a cube intensify, materialise, condense, drop to the ground in front of you? Or do you walk into the next room to find that the TV is showing a program about 4D geometry and the history of the tesseract (thus giving you both the cube and the context).
The first happens, but the cube not only doesn't drop in front of me, it is quite faint unless I strain myself looking for it while making efforts to ignore everything else I am now experiencing.
Okay, I'm going to say: no effort at all. Relax, and quietly and continually assert the fact of its existence. Don't interfere at all with whatever arises in the senses. After all, when there is (say) an apple in front of you, do you try to make it more vivid? Of course not. The object is a fact, it's appearance is inherent - the images comes to you, you simply receive it. Let the world come to you. So again: focus on the fact of existence. Quietly assert the fact in a mood of expectation until it feels and becomes "true".
Q:
After all, when there is (say) an apple in front of you, do you try to make it more vivid? Of course not.
That's not necessarily true. I sometimes do try to make it more vivid, which is why I have bad eyesight. ;)
Quietly assert the fact in a mood of expectation until it feels and becomes "true".
I do that all the time. I am smart enough to know the theory of manifestation, believe it or not.
Ha, I am of course not doubting the smartness of your manifestation, dear Nefandi! ;-)
Yeah, I used to mess with my eyesight/seeing all the time. A lot of this whole thing is because of that - realising that surely it is indirect, and sensory experience is spontaneous and effortless. Instant vision improvement. Because you don't see with your "eyes", unless you really try to. Anyway, you get idea. It comes back to what you were saying about still feeling that there is a difference between mind and physical. Well, it's really all imagination - images arising in correspondence with imagined facts.
But if so, why does manifestation tend to occur via an intermediate sequence of experiences? Because we are highly resistant to sensorily experiencing a discontinuity. Continuity of experience is a very ingrained "fact". How to break down the barrier and realise that it's all just envisioned facts within your awareness?
One way is to explore direct creation and feeling the pushback. However, that does tackle an important assumption: that we assume that objects are in locations. Actually, a location is part of the property of an object. Including the object of "the person that is you". The facts of your location is an attribute of your apparent object. And that is why attempting teleportation is a good exercise. You don't go to a new location - rather, you change the location-fact of your bodily object and your sensory experience falls into alignment accordingly. The location comes to you.
Q:
Ha, I am of course not doubting the smartest of your manifestation, dear Nefandi! ;-)
If you're not careful I'll let you take that title in my manifestation. If you think that's a good thing for you, you are mistaken.
Yeah, I used to mess with my eyesight/seeing all the time. A lot of this whole thing is because of that - realising that surely it is indirect, and sensory experience is spontaneous and effortless. Instant vision improvement.
I agree. When I focus on this I also get that instant vision improvement. But habit is a bitch. So I haven't really insisted on changing my bad vision habit and I get something that I would expect to get in my case: crap.
It comes back to what you were saying about still feeling that there is a difference between mind and physical.
Exactly. This is a difficult (for me) habit to really uproot. I'm working on it and you're helping, not always by suggestions, but sometimes even by just talking to me about it. Many of your suggestions are obvious to me. Some are novel. I like that I invited you to come here. :) Thank you T-George. But, please, do go on.
But if so, why does manifestation tend to occur via an intermediate sequence of experiences? Because we are highly resistant to sensorily experiencing a discontinuity.
Yes, and, we feel like everything in manifestation needs a "legitimate" history behind it. It can't just appear. There has to be a lead up which legitimizes it. Maybe I am saying the same thing in different words. Maybe history is precisely this sense of continuity that you're talking about.
Continuity of experience is a very ingrained "fact". How to break down the barrier and realise that it's all just envisioned facts within your awareness?
One would need motivation first. One has to either really detest one's current state, or really want to experience a new state, or both. Then one needs tons and tons of courage, patience, wisdom and persistence, not all necessarily in that order.
One way is to explore direct creation and feeling the pushback.
This is one of the best ways, because it's so direct, and the "pushback" shows you instantly what you're doing wrong.
Actually, a location is part of the property of an object.
I don't agree. Location is a relative property. Locations relate objects among each other, or they relate the corners and edges of an object. Locations are not embedded into the objects or corners. They're sort of nowhere, because they connect two, three, or more other things, and they're not preferentially embedded in any of those.
The facts of your location is an attribute of your apparent object.
I'm not buying that one, see above.
And that is why attempting teleportation is a good exercise. You don't go to a new location - rather, you change the location-fact of your bodily object and your sensory experience falls into alignment accordingly. The location comes to you.
Makes sense. But actually living with the consequences of having performed this is the hardest part.
we feel like everything in manifestation needs a "legitimate" history behind it.
Things usually need to be "plausible", even if it's a really shoddy surface version of plausibility that upon investigation involves crazy retroactive coincidences.
and the "pushback" shows you instantly what you're doing wrong.
Not that you are in the wrong direction though, but that you need to be with it for a while, let the resistance unravel and your world to resettle and remain coherent. Break through aggressively and you're at risk of... breaking yourself. Good points about motivation and so on.
Location is a relative property.
Maybe that was too precise. What I'm trying to say is that location is the fact of an object, not its environment or landscape. To move something, you assign the object a new place or indeed no place at all; you do not update the inventory list of a location.
Makes sense. But actually living with the consequences of having performed this is the hardest part.
Right. Even the smallest shift can be troublesome. This is a whole other level. Say you do the teleportation exercise and the image of this room fades from your awareness, to be replaced with the image of the room next door. What's next? An important outcome is, instead of just thinking about being an aware space and all that, you will actually know as a direct fact that you have no location.
Q:
Break through aggressively and you're at risk of... breaking yourself.
Yes, and while this may not be my first choice, I don't worry too much if it happens, because there are benefits to be gained from that scenario as well.
An important outcome is, instead of just thinking about being an aware space and all that, you will actually know as a direct fact that you have no location.
At this point it becomes lived knowledge. This kind of knowledge is very hard to forget or to regress from. So it's very valuable.
Right, and I'd suggest that lived knowledge is the only true knowledge. All else is thinking-about. And of course, it's not just a matter of not being located; it's a matter of not being a person. We shall see who is up for dedicating themselves to the exercise.
Q:
I'd suggest that lived knowledge is the only true knowledge.
That's definitely wrong. Aspirational knowledge before it is lived, when based on proper reasoning is also true. It's just not as strongly embedded in the mind yet and is not fully matured. It's wrong to say only oaks are true but acorns are false.
I'm going to revise my statement and say "lived from". You can live from knowledge and that is different to thinking-about. Aspirational knowledge is something you live from.
Q:
Aspirational knowledge is something you live from.
T-G, people don't always drop onto the path fully baked, having made all the right beginnings in the right places. This can be (but doesn't have to be) a messy process. In some cases people don't actually correctly embrace their aspirational knowledge. They struggle with it. Sometimes they live from it for a second or two, sometimes they think-about it. But however anemic and pitiful their efforts at that stage are, that doesn't make the knowledge wrong.
Yeah - Things can sound a bit prescriptive and uncompromising in these conversations, but that's just an artefact of keeping things to the point. Of course, development is often muddled and confusing and evolving - this way and then that, feeling our way along - and sometimes scary. My thinking has historically been all over the place, for instance, and I have been mostly on the wrong track. But I think everyone finds what they are comfortable with and want to "live from" in their own time. But the extent that they live from it will dictate the extent to which it appears to be true in experience. They can adopt this or that, and this or that will then be there.
There's no "what we should do". I mean, there's a healthy opinion that people should live their lives fully as given, and leave the underlying patterning well alone. Y'know, just enjoy the fruits! :-) Life doesn't actually necessarily require ongoing reality-maintenance; just some occasional fantasising and an open attitude can be sufficient for most. This stuff is for when we get curious about how much tinkering is possible.
Q:
Life doesn't actually necessarily require ongoing reality-maintenance; just some occasional fantasising and an open attitude can be sufficient for most.
I agree with the first half, but the second half requires some kind of objective knowledge to make stipulations about statistics. Of course we may say things like that, but you're talking to me now. I say things like that to morons who are stuck in convention, all the while knowing that there is no such thing as objective common ground and statistics.
I think having the urge to explore things as we do on this subreddit is pretty rare. By "sufficient" I mean "happy not to go deeper". Y'know, without any morons there would be no geniuses! ;-)
Q: Sometimes I wonder if I would have rather been average among geniuses. But I am not going to artificially dumb myself down to achieve that. I'd rather magically raise everyone up. I tire of myself being nearly the only one who knows anything esoteric, along with say 5 or (generously) 10 friends. This is idiotic. I want there to be millions of people like me. I want to sometimes be challenged by stuff I haven't considered yet, instead of constantly reading about stuff I thought about 5, 10 years ago and 10 lifetimes ago, recycling everything for the n-th time. I don't want to burden people with being completely responsible for supplying fresh material for contemplation. I take responsibility for that. But it sure would be nice if I came across stuff more often that let me think, "Why didn't I think of that?" So basically I want to be a God surrounded by Gods in one limitless field of glory beyond glory. Instead of feeling small and lost, I will feel like this raging radiance of Godliness will be magnified beyond compare, where each God reflects each other God's Godliness and primordial perfections. To me this is superior to the second rate situation of me being the smart one surrounded by a bunch of 2-bit idiots, which is fun for 5 minutes but gets crushingly boring soon. Well, I am still pretty social, so I am projecting my personal desires onto my ideal social environment. Maybe it's a flaw.
Maybe it's like... everyone wants to be the cool, witty, smart, attractive popular guy. But if you actually become that guy, your life is pretty boring. Everyone laughs at your jokes, is amazed by your insights, wants to spend time with you, no achievement is required... but you're basically a broadcaster or a Presence for other people to enjoy!
Far better to be a wit amongst wits, and differently so. To know the most about music, and have a friend who knows the most about movies.
Otherwise, there's sorta nothing to do or explore, no adventuring to be had. Like, the world is fun to explore together with a group of equals, supporting each other in different ways, being the other parts of you. If you're King Of The Monkeys and everyone is subordinate, all you have is people aping you.
Q:
Otherwise, there's sorta nothing to do or explore
I wouldn't go that far. I can explore stuff right inside my own mind, indefinitely. I'm just saying, if you can be surrounded by brighter and more creative beings, why not? It's not that they're necessary for having fun or to have something to explore. It's just a nice option.
This is your own mind.
Q: OK, here's the big piece you're missing. You're not taking habit into account. For something to be effortless, it's not always enough to just relax. Sometimes a new habit has to be developed because the previous habit may have qualities that negate whatever you're trying to do next. This can take time.
This can take time.
Absolutely. I'm not saying this will just happen. You might need to spend hours, days. But those hours must be spent without effort, keeping the assertion below the level of strain. And there might be all sorts of patterns criss-crossing in the way. Part of the process is that these will all appear uncovered and then fade. But you don't need to do any investigation and go looking; just by keeping focused these things will come up. You "sit with them" and acknowledge them, and they pass.
Q:
Absolutely. I'm not saying this will just happen. You might need to spend hours, days. But those hours must be spent without effort, keeping the assertion below the level of strain.
This sounds like a very good advice to me. In general I have an unhealthy habit of confusing struggle with directedness that is pure intent. At the same time patiently persisting can feel like a struggle even if I am not straining. Just the constancy and the unyieldingness of one's aim can seem like a struggle sometimes.
And there might be all sorts of patterns criss-crossing in the way.
I don't know what you mean by this.
In general I have an unhealthy habit of confusing struggle with directedness that is pure intent.
I was really guilty of "efforting" and thinking that was how to make things happen. Still do sometimes of course. The whole "Just Decide" thing came from that.
Unhurried patience and acceptance is the way, but it's not easy to stick to. It's much easier for things that you don't need to happen. If you can get curious about the experience that is happening along the way, that really helps for me.
"And there might be all sorts of patterns criss-crossing in the way."
I don't know what you mean by this.
Oh, just all sorts of intermingled assumptions and resistances.
On a related note, there are people who can't mentally visualize.
Very true. Although I'd add: at the moment, for everyday folks.
I think lots of people only have 'felt' visualisation by default. That last link pretty much describes how it was for me. It took me a long time to be able to 'image'. I could feel-know the object in a location, but I didn't really see it there. I could feel its rotation and movement though. And trying to manually "draw" the image part didn't help.
The approach of 'asserting' was what got me there really, although I conceived of it as a sort of autosuggestion. I got the idea partly from a NLP story where he basically just paced/led and told them that they could see pictures vividly in front of them when they desired. And then they could. (See Milton Erickson model for the general idea.)
I figured: Why need the hypnosis aspect? All that we're doing with that is accepting one suggestion which implies another fact. Creation by implication, like in lucid dreams. I can see the world around me, in both waking and dreaming life so nothing's wrong with the "mechanism" really. Why not assert that there is a bright mental object there, which of course means it would be vivid, and let the sensory aspect come? Start with the feeling of presence, and allow the evidence to appear. Of course, different for everyone. And that is basically hypnosis by another name.
Thanks for those great links - there's probably a lot more we could explore here in this area. There's a whole thing about imagination and perception in general, and "letting the world come to you" rather than striving to manipulate and control the senses, graspingly.
Q: here's probably a lot more we could explore here in this area. There's a whole thing about imagination and perception in general, and "letting the world come to you" rather than striving to manipulate and control the senses, graspingly.
By this do you mean allowing the manifestations occur in a way that is congruent, as in not a discontinuity? I'd like to begin messing with (probably terrible choice of word, let me rephrase), experimenting, hm, introducing, discontinuities into my experience. Thus far, all my discontinuties have been able to be explained (of course, my fear has allowed for this to occur), do you have any advice for calming the fears of discontinuity, and being able to delve deeper into one's more immediate powers to effect change?
By this do you mean allowing the manifestations occur in a way that is congruent, as in not a discontinuity?
No, not necessarily. I mean literally not straining to sense or see things. In my thinking: Change is an indirect thing: you update the facts-of-the-world and then your sensory experience falls in line with this. Sensory experience, being a sort of 'mirage' that is based upon those facts, is something you just let happen therefore; you can't actually interact with it. For the biggest changes, you need to withdraw yourself from the current patterns - particularly, withdraw your emotional involvement (because although it's just another sense, that maintains patterns more than anything). Withdraw yourself from requiring plausibility and continuity.
That's why you should go about being 'non-attached':
- There is no solidity to sensory experience anyway; it's the image that floats above the hologram, as it were.
- While you are emotionally engaged with the sensory experience, you are grasping onto and persisting the patterns that produce it. This prevents change.
Q: Thanks, it all seems so basic when you spell it out like this, and it is. I think I need a reminder that this stuff is not totally nightmarishly difficult. If anything it's rather humorous that we are in this amazingly magical world and some of us continually get stuck in our concepts and attachments, thankfully I feel that I am getting stuck for briefer and briefer moments as time goes on.
The problem is, any indecision you have is reflected in your sensory experience. If you 'kinda think' one thing but 'kinda think' another, that muddle will muddle your experience!
That is why looking for evidence doesn't work. The world (seems to) align with your approach to it, whatever it is. There is actually no "how it really is" behind the scenes to uncover, no secret structure except what has been accumulated as patterns over time. That's where the whole "faith" thing comes in - which really means that you should ignore what your senses are telling you, and continue to assert what you desire. Given this knowledge, what seems like a good idea is to assert the most flexible worldview possible. Stop thinking about stuff (that just muddies the waters) and declare things instead. There are lots of metaphors you can adopt for this - my favourite at the moment is The Imagination Room, where the transparent floor is patterned in such a way as to filter the 'creative light' shining from underneath, into a fully immersive sensory image; change the patterns=change the facts -> change the image, but you are always in "the room" no matter where you seem to be.
Set aside a half hour, sit somewhere quiet, and do nothing except assert silently and effortlessly that this is a dream world made entirely from your imagination and assumptions. Just focus lightly on this as a fact, and see what happens.
Q:
If you 'kinda think' one thing but 'kinda think' another, that muddle will muddle your experience!
I've been doing this. I will stop.
The Imagination Room, where the transparent floor is patterned in such a way as to filter the 'creative light' shining from underneath, into a fully immersive sensory image; change the patterns=change the facts -> change the image, but you are always in "the room" no matter where you seem to be.
Good analogy, I like that and it does currently work that way in my mind somewhat - instead I imagine the within is the unmanifest void of possibility and unlimited love. Wherever I look or see I am really seeing the expansion of this unlimited power, love, expressed as form and sensory expression.
Set aside a half hour, sit somewhere quiet, and do nothing except assert silently and effortlessly that this is a dream world made entirely from your imagination and assumptions. Just focus lightly on this as a fact, and see what happens.
I suppose I need to assert more. I guess I was afraid I would discover how much power I truly have and not know what to do with it. However, I now know I can always go "back" and I do know there to be a force protecting me from doing anything catastrophic. With that said, I have no reason not to dive into a more flexible world view, unless, well, I rather like earth and its stability. I want to assert myself differently on earth, but I don't want to make earth like the world from Avatar, for example. I know this attachment is holding me back in a way, from unlimited freedom, but I do want to progress into that slowly anyway, as it is not all dandelions, and I do fathom there will be difficulties along the way to breaking apart some of the more rooted ideas and forms. I just thought of this now, I do not wish to uproot the tree (earth, the current dynamic and rules) I mean, I made this system didn't I? I want to explore what's possible in its configurations, not just teleport away from it to another paradise. Regardless if location is static, and only scenery changes, I like the scenery of earth, it just needs a new drama, something of a paradise being built. This is what I will see in my lifetime.
...instead I imagine the within is the unmanifest void of possibility and unlimited love.
Nice also, since it has an associated feel. The reason I use the room metaphor sometimes is that, unlike alternatives such as a 'holographic aware space in which images condense' (which might be more accurate), it has a sensory aspect which can be used as a reminder: We all feel the ground beneath our feet, and whenever we notice that it can be used as a trigger to remember - "ah, the floor through which the light shines, to create my experience". It brings us back to the understanding.
I do not wish to uproot the tree...
Which is exactly fine. Power is the ability to have the experiences you desire, and what you desire is your own business. Others may crave absolute freedom from all conventions and so on, but the real freedom is to choose the conventions you like, and within those explore the possibilities.
I mean, I made this system didn't I?
You made it, but you did it unknowingly.
Now you can do it deliberately and with knowledge. Instead of trying to work out what's going on, changing your mind as you go between different metaphors, resulting in an erratic experience, you can now simply select the one you like and step into that one. Once things settle, it's likely you'll just want to enjoy it. Make occasional adjustments. Always 'skipping to the final result' means you don't have the intermediate experiences. Sometimes that's good; often those experience are where the living of life actually takes place.
Q:
You made it, but you did it unknowingly.
Do we know that I did it unknowingly? Couldn't I have knowingly chosen to forgot in order to experience it in a novel way after having built it?
We all feel the ground beneath our feet, and whenever we notice that it can be used as a trigger to remember - "ah, the floor through which the light shines, to create my experience". It brings us back to the understanding.
I like that. For me it's the same except I retreat inward to that interior space, sort of like where the observer of all this is, almost as though he is the one exhaling out forms and ideas into his television set.
Do we know that I did it unknowingly? Couldn't I have knowingly chosen to forgot in order to experience it in a novel way after having built it?
Quite right, in terms of the life you appeared in, at the point you appeared in it. Plan out the obstacle course, then deliberately forget the design!
I was thinking more that, having forgotten (perhaps deliberately) your own powers of creation, you have since then been making changes to your reality without knowing it. But now you know again, you can - um - be more careful with it. :-)
For me it's the same except I retreat inward to that interior space, sort of like where the observer of all this is, almost as though he is the one exhaling out forms and ideas into his television set.
That's good. Another I've used to remind myself is "two-way looking" - placing my attention both outward into the space in front of me and inwards into the space I'm "looking out from". This makes it easy to notice that it's all floating in a big infinite space. There's a literal gap where you normally assume "you" to be. (This approach originally comes from Douglas Harding.)
A Dream
Some Dream Reminders
"In a deserted place in Iran there is a not very tall stone tower that has neither door nor window. In the only room (with a dirt floor and shaped like a circle) there is a wooden table and a bench. In that circular cell, a man who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot understand a long poem about a man who in another circular cell is writing a poem about a man who in another circular cell . . . The process never ends and no one will be able to read what the prisoners write."
-- A Dream, Jorge Luís Borges
We each dream alone.
"The world I perceive is entirely private, a dream. The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it. Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world? The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it. It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part. In fact all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations."
-- Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj - Part Two - also: Part One
Wherever you go, whatever you discover, it is only... more dream.
Bonus Read
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, also by Jorge Luís Borges, is a short story depicting an unknown country where a conspiracy of idealism takes place. Excerpt:
"They cannot conceive that space can exist in time. The sight of a puff of smoke on the horizon and then of a burning field and then of a half-stubbed-out cigar that produced the blaze is deemed an example of the association of ideas."
-- Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Jorge Luís Borges
...
We might also ask how our dream is formed. Patterns arising and stabilising via hypnogogia is one way of describing this. Our ongoing reality may be thought of as no more than pattern triggering in noise, feeding back on itself.
Q: Right. I'm starting to view it like this too. The fact that the forms have evolved to be this vivid, this complex, it's rather... incredibly remarkable. Remarkable. Interesting. I like to take a deeper look at words sometimes and I feel that in this context the word remarkable is interesting indeed. The forms are so interesting perhaps, that we feel compelled to "re-mark" our world with them, to recreate new and novel forms to attempt to satiate our undying appetite for creation.
Thing is, the "re-mark" process kinds happens by itself, like water waves sloshing around a tank, bouncing off each other, leading to new overall surface patterns, always changing.
The difference between many traditions and the oneirosophic approach is that, where others recognise this "self-happening illusion" as ourselves but encourage detachment and acceptance, we encourage detachment and occasional assertion: a "re-folding" of the material which constitutes us and our evolving experience.
Q: Nothing happens by itself precisely because of intent. And intent is ongoing, unlike what George says. In fact you can see if this is true or not by practice. Do some eyelid gazing until the images start to form. First don't try to control the images. Then control them. You'll see how "by itself" is actually an intentional state since you can intervene any time, so when you choose not to intervene, you're still involved, and what you witness is still partial to your way of looking at and for patterns. In fact controlling and not-controlling are ultimately identical states of volition that differ only in appearance but not in substance or function.
I cover this. It happens "by itself" as in it unfolds consistently with the present state. From below, I deliberately define terms:
On terminology: "intending" is the act of imposing a pattern onto consciousness; "the intention" is the form of the pattern being imposed. If you say "my intention is..." you are saying "the pattern I am imposing is..."
So the "intention" persists and has an ongoing effect, but you are not actively "intending" in an ongoing way to make the effect keep happening. Once you've made the deformation, it persists, provided any part of the extended pattern is active.
This is important: superimposed patterns apparently evolve and unfold in time even though the patterns themselves (the accumulation of "intentions") do not change. This is why there is no effort in continuing to experience the world-pattern you have set up.
Q: I'll try to explain intent in words I think will make more sense to you. Take what you call "just decide" and stop limiting it to a single moment. That's intent. Of course you can intend to go for a walk and so on, and such intents seem like actions limited to specific periods of time. But it's wrong to confuse these for the metaphysical intent. These momentary intentions for this and that obscure the ongoing ever-living intent because they make it seem as though intent starts and stops, when it does no such thing ultimately. Intent is not entirely in-time.
Take what you call "just decide" and stop limiting it to a single moment. That's intent.
It's not limited to a single moment in "just decide", never has been. The act of activation takes place at a "moment" but the activation itself applies globally over all time and space (which also means the activation then didn't take place in a "moment", but there you go). It's a pattern which is overlaid upon the whole "world-pattern". There is no such thing as a momentary intent. All intention apples to all time. To the extent that your apparent past (i.e. future recall of memories) will change in alignment with your intent.
Really, you are superimposing (or triggering) patterns upon patterns upon patterns. The superposition is what gives us the "world-pattern" and the apparent temporal segment of that (again a pattern) is what corresponds to the present experience. Like Moiré patterns.
Q:The act of activation takes place at a "moment" but the activation itself applies globally over all time and space
My point is: there is no in-time act. There is an illusion of an act. If you investigate it, you'll find no act. When does intent begin? When is it sustained? When does it end? These are the classic birth, abiding, death moments for phenomena. So, looking for such moments in any of my intents I don't find them. I can't say when something begins, abides or ends in any intent. Say I want to move my hand left. I can't specify when the action begins. I can't specify when it ends. I can see that as long as the hand is moving the intent to move it is there, so I can sort of specify abiding if I don't split motion into moments. If I split motion into moments, I can't find abiding either. So actions just don't happen how we conventionally imagine. It looks like we do things in-time, but we don't. What I am explaining here is very different from the effects of an intent being applied across time at a certain point in time. I'm not talking about effects. I am saying the initiation (cause) is not something in-time.
My point is: there is no in-time act. There is an illusion of an act.=
We've already covered this before, I think, stemming from: We don't "do" things, rather we "have the experience of doing".
You and I need a different word for intention. I use the word "act" and "activation" to indicate a self-shifting of the world-pattern which is subsequently experienced in the observations which follow. It happens as change but it does not happen in time (because time is actually a now-pattern upon which other now-patterns are hung; it is a flat thought-structure not an environment).
All that stuff about starting, stopping, moments and so on are artefacts of thinking-about experience.
I am saying the initiation (cause) is not something in-time.
Of course. Forget time. The "act" is a shifting of the whole world-pattern, which consists of all time laid out flat (for visualisation's sake). The "act" is not experienced, only the experiences associated with the shift. The "act" leaves no trace and therefore is not in time. There is change but it does not occur in time, which is itself a structure of within the world-pattern. We are inevitably bound to talk about things using language and illustrations which imply to "parts", "location", "space" and "moments" in "time". This is simply because we think by using "shadow-senses". As soon as you have divided something into concepts, you are dealing with parts, and parts are distinguished by location relative to one another in conceptual space. "Act" is maybe the broadest word. "Intending" and "intention" are traditionally good because they can't be imagined very solidly, but (as you are indicating) they can all too often be associated with the "feeling of doing" localised in apparent time.
Q:We don't "do" things
We do. We just don't do them as conventionally imagined. I do things all the time. I move my hands. I walk. I stop walking. I DO things. Even when I don't do anything, that's a kind of doing. But, the source of my doing is not in-time.
I think you're pretty clear on what I mean, right? For clarity: When I put "do" in quotes it is to indicate that I'm referring to the conventional usage of the word "do". Implying that the causing of experiences is not as traditionally thought; there is no cause in experience.
Q:I think you're pretty clear on what I mean, right?
No clue. I never understood your opposition to doing. There is a reason why I choose to say things that I say. I don't say them randomly. I say I do things because I am saying: a) I make choices, and b) I take responsibility. I say my intent is not in-time, because I want to illustrate the following: what deforms convention is not itself a part of convention. So the structure of experience becomes deformed this and that way, but those deformations don't come from the structure that's being deformed. In other words, the experience is not self-deforming. Rather, intent, which isn't exactly experience, deforms experience. Intent isn't something separate from experience, but it isn't the same either. Like white on rice. White isn't rice but isn't separate from it either. In simple language, I am beyond convention. I transcend that which I manipulate.
Another tac: "Doing" implies a there is a thing doing and a thing done-to. "Intending", by contrast, is shape-shifting of reality "across all time and space". Some of that reality might be presently sensorily "bright" and therefore a change would be experienced, some of it not.
If the world was a landscape, then our usual conception of "doing" would be getting a spade and digging around on the hill of the "present moment" to reshape it. However, the actuality of "intending" is that the landscape self-shifts to adopt a new topology as a whole, and any change of the hill of the present moment is a result of this. We tend to confuse this result with "doing".
Q:"Doing" implies a there is a thing doing and a thing done-to.
I don't think "doing" implies that. If doing implied that, we would need to deny that implication. To me doing implies personal responsibility and choice, nothing more. To imagine a thing with concrete parameters as a source of doing is precisely to localize doing in-time, because such a thing exists in time. So when I say doing doesn't originate in time it's already obvious it can't be a thing like say an iron ball is a thing, or a cup of tea is a thing.
However, the actuality of "intending" is that the landscape self-shifts to adopt a new topology as a whole
I say that experience is inert, and has no own-power. So nothing experienced self-shifts. Whatever is experienced is shifted by something that is beyond experience and beyond convention altogether. It's like this. Imagine an author writing a book. The author is not a character in the book. So nothing that's in the book writes the book. The author is external to the book. Even if I describe myself in the book and I put myself down as a character, the character in the book isn't me as such. So you can't hire a book character to write another book. You need to hire the living author, not dead words on paper, which is what the character is. Of course this is only a metaphor and is not meant to be taken literally.
I say that experience is inert, and has no own-power. So nothing experienced self-shifts. Whatever is experienced is shifted by something that is beyond experience and beyond convention altogether.
Exactly. Experience is a byproduct. Experience isn't doing anything, it is just the part of the landscape which happens to have sensory aspects. Only the landscape shifts and it shifts of its own self.
Ping-Pong Balls Metaphor
Imagine some ping-pong balls floating in a tank of water. (In this description, the water is already in a state of motion: ripples are moving along trajectories.) The ping-pong balls are all different colours. On one of them, a blue one, you write "me".
The balls float about, bouncing off each other, due to the trajectories of the waves of the water. As the "me" ball bounces off other balls, you say to yourself "I did that". However, you did nothing.
Now, you splash the water. The act of splashing in and of itself produces no change to balls, however it does modify the pattern of waves. The subsequent trajectory of all of the balls is therefore adjusted. At the point of splashing, the "me" ball might be moved ("I did this"), or it may not be moved for a while.
In this metaphor:
- The water is reality (or whatever you want to call it) or consciousness.
- The waves are the world-pattern as dissolved into consciousness.
- The balls are aspects of reality which have sensory aspects.
- The "me" ball is the misidentification with certain sensory aspects.
- The collisions between balls are "events" and the collision with the "me" ball are those events misconstrued as "things I do".
- The splashing of the water represents "intending", which is to change the landscape of reality, the facts-of-the-world.
Now obviously, we're having to use time and space here in the metaphor, whereas in fact the world-pattern is "static" and more akin to a set of superimposed patterns, dimensionless "facts" dissolved into the background. However, the purpose of the metaphor is to illustrate how the illusion of "doing" is brought about due to focusing on sensory aspects and identifying with part of that.
Q:Only the landscape shifts and it shifts of its own self.
It doesn't shift of its own. Nothing does. Things shift when you shift. Or more specifically, your intentionality shifts.
Imagine some ping-pong balls floating in a tank of water. (In this description, the water is already in a state of motion: ripples are moving along trajectories.) The ping-pong balls are all different colours. On one of them, a blue one, you write "me".
The balls float about, bouncing off each other, due to the trajectories of the waves of the water. As the "me" ball bounces off other balls, you say to yourself "I did that". However, you did nothing.
This scenario is exactly what I am denying! This never happens. Ever. There is no state like what you just described. In your metaphor there is own-power to the system that's independent of your involvement. I am saying no system has own-power at all. I am saying, nothing ever is independent. Everything is dependent. To use your metaphor to convey my view you have to change it in a way physics doesn't allow. So imagine this. Imagine when you extend your hand downward, suddenly a water tank with ping pong balls appears, and the water only moves if you move your hand. One of the balls is labeled "me." When your hand rests, balls rest. When it moves, they move. When you lift your hand, water, balls, water tank, they all disappear. In other words, there is never a state where the water is on its own, under its own power. You're always volitionally entangled in every state.
Now both splashing and calm represent intending. In fact, in my version of your metaphor even the existence of the water tank, water, and the balls, represents intending. In other words, there is no substance to the water tank. Intending is not limited to splashing. Intending is ongoing instead of being limited to intermittent splashes.
It doesn't shift of its own. Nothing does. Things shift when you shift. Or more specifically, your intentionality shifts.
Language tangle! The only thing there is, is you. The only shifting that happens, is you shifting. Hence the landscape metaphor earlier (the landscape changing its own topology).
In your metaphor there is own-power to the system that's independent of your involvement.
No, there isn't really: because the whole system is you. It is "the current shape of you". Which is what you've gone on to say. Bear in mind the metaphor is to illustrate a certain aspect! The reality has no moving parts, strictly, because it actually has no time element. But if you go all out then... you stop having a metaphor that illustrates anything.
Now both splashing and calm represent intending. In fact, in my version of your metaphor even the existence of the water tank, water, and the balls, represents intending.
Which... renders the word "intending" meaningless. That's why metaphors involve splitting things into parts for illustrative purposes. It's the whole "everything is consciousness" problem. The ultimate truth is basically worthless when it comes to discussion.
The whole universe is, in the end, your "intention" overall, since it begins with the first pattern created up until the most "recent". That's not very helpful as an explanation though, given that we aren't at this beginning now. We could call each change an "additional modification" or "an update to the intention", but most people are more comfortable with "intention" referring to a change to the current pattern. We might talk about the "overall intention" of the system, though, to make this clearer.
Intending is ongoing instead of being limited to intermittent splashes.
I think it is better to say that intention is persistent, that its effect is ongoing, because intentions accumulate (superposition of patterns) and sum to the "overall intention". Intending is better reserved for the changing of the system to a new state. To avoid words like "acting" or "doing", which automatically imply subject and object, doer and done, to most people.
Q:
No, there isn't really: because the whole system is you.
No, that isn't it either. If the system was me, I couldn't be anything different from that water with ping pong balls. In my version of your metaphor the water tank appears only when I extend my hand downward. If I extend it to the left, something else appears. Etc. I can produce different systems and wiggle them in different ways. I am not water with ping pong balls. The whole setup is optional and so can't be my true body. My real body can't have any substance or fixedness to it.
So your metaphor is dangerous as given, because it strongly suggests physical independence of water and ping pong balls. It suggests involvement as something intermittent. You even described it in your own words as "everything is on its own until you splash some water." I am saying: that never happens. There is no "until" in my view.
renders the word "intending" meaningless.
Not at all. Intending is deeply meaningful. Intending means whatever you find is ultimately what you intended to find. If you see water and ping pong balls, that's optional, and if that's what you see, that's your intent. So still meaningful, profoundly so.
Intending is better reserved for the changing of the system to a new state
I strongly disagree. I oppose this view.
If the system was me, I couldn't be anything different from that water with ping pong balls.
I think you are just arguing against the structure of the metaphor, rather than what it represents. Strictly speaking, the whole of the metaphor is "you" and none of it has solidity it has simply "taken on the shape of" the patterns involved; the ping-pong balls merely indicate the current sensory aspects.
You even described it in your own words as "everything is on its own until you splash some water." I am saying, that never happens. There is no "until" in my view.
Again, you are arguing with the metaphor's structure rather than the meaning.
Experience unfolds according to the world-pattern within consciousness until the world-pattern is updated. If your arms were frictionless and tireless and you windmilled them clockwise, they would continue "forever" in that direction until you intervened to reverse them (say). That intervention would be a change of state in the world-pattern; experience would unfold accordingly subsequently. The change would not occur in time, since the world-pattern retains no state in and of itself (although an apparent past may be a part of certain patterns).
The metaphor necessarily uses division and space and time, because all thought requires those things. This is why we cannot speak of the whole situation, only aspects of it, depending on what particular thing we are talking about.
Intending means whatever you find is ultimately what you intended to find.
You cannot "find" anything. As soon as you intend something, it is done. Intending a change in the world-pattern, the intention is already found. I oppose your opposition! :-)
Q:
I think you are just arguing against the structure of the metaphor, rather than what it represents.
No. I've been having this disagreement with you for a long time and I know what you're trying to say. I really see intent differently, and in my view, much better and more profoundly, than how you see it. Your version of intent is some ugly abortion compared to mine. What you call "intent" only approximates intent. What I explain as intent is exactly what it is, definitively. Your view is flawed. Were someone to embrace your view, they'd run into limitations of all kinds. One of which, by the way, would be difficulty in switching out of the human or "being among beings" state, which in your confusion, you still think is easy to do! Haha.
From where I stand, you're more than slightly confused on a number of important issues.
Experience unfolds according to the world-pattern within consciousness until the world-pattern is updated.
From the POV of metaphysics this is bad view. From the POV of practical usability, it's an OK view. In other words, if you think in this way, you'll get some value from thinking like that. Thinking the way I explain is superior, however. And I can explain why so.
Heheh, you're on form today. :-)
So, if all is consciousness which is me, and the shape of consciousness is the shape I adopt, which is the shape of the world - in its entirety and not just this present moment 3D sensory aspect; I am in effect experiencing the whole of reality right now - what else is there? There is no limit in terms of the possible experiences (including not-being-a-human) in this regard.
From the POV of metaphysics this is bad view.
I beg to differ (well I would wouldn't I?). Although of course the metaphor we're discussing is very much meant to offer a practical way of thinking, for usability, as you point out. You seem to be bound to some notion of an ongoing intending when the perspective inherently dictates there is no time, and therefore no "ongoingness" available. There is only state. Of course, we can adopt any position or standpoint, and experience things relatively, but fundamentally that's the deal.
The "world-pattern" does not necessarily refer to "this planet" and "this body". The larger picture is one of associative patterning. More like a "memory block" of all possibilities (logically or actually, no difference essentially).
Q:
So, if all is consciousness which is me, and the shape of consciousness is the shape I adopt, which is the shape of the world - in its entirety and not just this present moment 3D sensory aspect; I am in effect experiencing the whole of reality right now - what else is there?
What else is there? Potential! You're not experiencing the whole of reality. Consciousness is only the shiny property of mind, and consciousness displays only one single version of what all it could be displaying. The fact that whatever you experience is just one version of infinity is called "intent" and "volition" and "subjectivity" and "POV" and by other terms, like "expectation" and "habit" and so on.
There is no limit in terms of the possible experiences (including not-being-a-human) in this regard.
But there is a limit to what you can experience at one time. So in general there is no limit, but you can't be both a human and a dolphin in the same exact instant, because humans as defined are not dolphins, etc. If you were a creature with human and dolphin properties combined in the same instant, you'd be neither a human nor a dolphin, which are creatures with greater specificity.
Although of course the metaphor we're discussing is very much meant to offer a practical way of thinking, for usability, as you point out.
I don't like it. For my purposes I need a more fine-tuned view. Where your view is bad is it suggests inertia as something non-volitional. That's what all this "it's on its own" talk about: inertia. You're saying the system has inertia (which weirdly enough you dismiss in your view of rebirth, so you allow wild changes in experience post-body-death, which is entirely inconsistent even with your own high-inertia view).
You seem to be bound to some notion of an ongoing intending when the perspective inherently dictates there is no time, and therefore no "ongoingness" available.
There is time, just not objective time. But not all your features exist in-time. The root of intent is not in-time. It's beyond time. But I say it's ongoing because when time manifests subjectively every moment is marked by volition. That's what 'ongoing' means in my view. So intent is beyond time and ongoing, both.
Consciousness is only the shiny property of mind, and consciousness displays only one single version of what all it could be displaying.
We're differing on our definition of consciousness then. I've been using it to be the "background awareness" rather than the particular content or structure. I agree on potential: all possibilities are implicit within that awareness.
When I say you are experiencing the whole of reality, I don't mean that this sensory experience is all there is. I mean something more like the entire "logical space" is present and dissolved into awareness, of awareness, and is "being experienced" in that sense.
But there is a limit to what you can experience at one time.
I deny this - but only in the particular sense I mean above. This is why the "ping-pong balls" were the sensory aspect and "the water" was the entire structure. The point on "human formatting" vs "dolphin formatting" is good though. If they co-exist then you aren't aware of one and the other simultaneously; one does not "make sense" within the other.
Where your view is bad is it suggests inertia as something non-volitional.
There's no inertia at all, it's completely frictionless. Unfortunately there's a lack of physical-world things that can be used as a good metaphor! You are a "frictionless material" with no inherent boundaries or divisions which can change shape at any time. Think of a donkey! That was frictionless wasn't it? Your shape changed to be (partially) that of a donkey without any effort whatsoever. Think of a running donkey! Again there was no effort or resistance. The donkey changes direction! Did the thought-donkey encounter any inertia there? No.
It's in this sense that I mean it. It's a completely non-physical change (as are all changes of course).
So intent is beyond time and ongoing, both.
Messy language. It'd prefer to say "has ongoing effect" rather than say it is ongoing. The intention is static but the effect is ongoing (even though that division is obviously arbitrary and language-based).
Q:
When I say you are experiencing the whole of reality, I don't mean that this sensory experience is all there is.
Fine, but you should be careful in how you express yourself because people often confuse ultimate reality and phenomenal reality when you say "reality." Don't be surprised if people interpret "reality" however they please, instead of how you want them to, unless you're explicit. Of course there are idiots for whom even explicit language is useless, but let's assume I am not an idiot. ;)
I mean something more like the entire "logical space" is present and dissolved into awareness, of awareness, and is "being experienced" in that sense.
Configuration space is implicit in experience, but most beings don't realize it. So it's fair to say that in most cases configuration space is an unconscious feature that's shrouded by ignorance. Being constantly aware of the configuration space is a huge spiritual achievement. It's like being awake not only to what appears, but to what could be appearing and doesn't yet. That's not a state of mind common in humans.
The point on "human formatting" vs "dolphin formatting" is good though. If they co-exist then you aren't aware of one and the other simultaneously; one does not "make sense" within the other.
That's what I was saying.
Experience is mostly identical to formatting. Even for beings who knows about configuration space, it isn't so much experience as knowledge. I know or intuit that I could be experiencing something other than this. This intuition is not an experience in an ordinary sense. It's not something that arrives through vision or hearing or touch. It's not a percept. Rather, the intuition of a configuration space is concommitant with the percepts when one is wise. Of course configuration space exists and functions regardless of whether one is aware of it or not. That's also true. But being hip to the configuration space isn't an experience, but knowledge, which is somewhat different from experience. Experience is generally understood to be sensory experience via the 5 senses.
There's no inertia at all, it's completely frictionless.
Then go back to your older posts and reread them. You should hear yourself talk. You talk about a pool with ping pong balls calmly waiting for your input "on its own."
You are a "frictionless material" with no inherent boundaries or divisions which can change shape at any time.
This is better than your pool metaphor as you gave it originally. This frictionless material is always intentional. Intent doesn't need to strike it from the outside. Rather the material self-shifts into patterns, but in this metaphor, the patterns have no own-being. The patterns are only deformations of the material and they're inseparable from such. And deformations are ongoing intent state. So when there is no (new) deformation, that's deliberate, intentional, volitional, etc.
Think of a donkey! That was frictionless wasn't it?
Only because I am accustomed to thinking of different things quickly. But I am not very accustomed to something other than humaning or physicaling. Do you see now? Raise your body temperature by 20 degrees Celcius, NOW! Did it work? A bit more difficult than changing your thought pattern, isn't it?
The intention is static but the effect is ongoing (even though that division is obviously arbitrary and language-based).
I don't agree.
Configuration space is implicit in experience, but most beings don't realize it.
Foolish beings! :-) All agreed on that section, although there is an "extra bit" where I'd go into the world-pattern being the entirety, and being able to dice it according to certain configuration perspectives (e.g. divide it into "moments" or... whatever). But that's just getting metaphorically out of control.
Experience is mostly identical to formatting. It's not something that arrives through vision or hearing or touch. It's not a percept. Rather, the intuition of a configuration space is concommitant with the percepts when one is wise.
I say... we are always aware of the pattern. Just because it isn't experienced sensorily (image, sound, texture, etc) doesn't mean you are not experiencing it right now. "Felt-sense", baby. And as you indicate, another word for this is "knowledge".
[There's no inertia at all, it's completely frictionless.] Then go back to your older posts and reread them.
Bah, you're wanting each metaphor to be all things, and it cannot. Each metaphor illustrates only an aspect and is always accompanied by a "but". The ping-pong balls do not wait for input; the water is already sloshing (frictionlessly) and can be redirected.
Rather the material self-shifts into patterns, but in this metaphor, the patterns have no own-being.
Of course not, but (and remember there's a larger audience in some discussions) if we cut straight to the "not-even-holographic open aware space which is inherently non-spatial and non-temporal and is empty but also full of patterns" it's not very useful, is it? ;-)
We already agree on this area anyway. The only areas we disagree are: the patterning of the world and, the description for intention/intending.
Raise your body temperature by 20 degrees Celcius, NOW! Did it work? A bit more difficult than changing your thought pattern, isn't it?
No, it's perfectly easy. I can intend this no problem. And that intention (pattern) is instantly overlaid upon the world-pattern. However, it doesn't result in a particularly strong change in sensory experience, relative to the contribution of more established patterns (i.e. body is at body-temperature), habits of the world. If I were to "forget" some of those habits then the strength of the contribution would be subject to less cancelling out. All intending instantly creates the intentional pattern and it contributes from that point onwards. The extent to which the contribution results in a sensorily significant result is another issue.
[The intention is static but the effect is ongoing] I don't agree.
Intending instantly incorporates an additional pattern into the world-pattern. The experience you have is of the entire world-pattern. The apparent level of the intention in experience will depend on the world-pattern. Like Moire fringe patterning, the intentional pattern may apparently break through into sensory experience later as patterns align or open gaps:
Reused Owl & Screen Metaphor
You draw a picture of an owl on your TV screen. It is always there, but its visibility depends upon the rest of the imagery onscreen. When the dark scenes of the TV show switch to a bright white scene, suddenly the owl "appears" - it is "manifested". Now imagine an owl idea being dissolved "holographically" in the space around you, and replace the notion of dark/white scene with appropriate contexts. Having "drawn" the owl into the space, you go about your day.
Mostly the owl isn't anywhere to be seen, but wherever an appropriate context arises then aspects of the owl idea shine through and are manifest: A man has an owl image on a t-shirt, the woman in the shop has massive eyes and eyebrows like feathers, a friend sends you an email about a lecture at the zoo highlighting the owl enclosure, a newspaper review of Blade Runner talks extensively about the mechanical owl in the interrogation scene, and so on.
Q:
I say... we are always aware of the pattern. Just because it isn't experienced sensorily (image, sound, texture, etc) doesn't mean you are not experiencing it right now. "Felt-sense", baby.
I disagree. When I dream I have a different felt-sense compared to awake. That's why for example I can dream of a waterworld with identical rules of physics. In my dream waterworld there is no Eurasia, and no America. So the set of factual knowledge is different for the waterworld. But the propensities can be similar. So water requiring heating before boiling can be similar. The propensity toward seeing myself as a being among beings can be similar. The propensity toward seeing myself as human and male, the same. I am generally male in all my dreams. I've yet to have a dream where I am not a male of some type. I've even had dreams where I wasn't a human. But I am always a male. So there are some propensities which keep true between context shifts.
The ping-pong balls do not wait for input; the water is already sloshing (frictionlessly) and can be redirected.
And if you don't redirect it, it is sloshing on its own. Yes? If yes, I deny this.
Bah, you're wanting each metaphor to be all things, and it cannot.
OK, then you should explain what the metaphor is meant to illustrate. Explain the intent of a metaphor. What should I ignore in the metaphor? You should talk about that when you want to be precise.
I don't like the language you use because you tend to arrive to this formulation often: "blah blah on its own." I don't like this. You say this often. You say it with the ping pong metaphor. You say the next moment arrives on its own. You say vision happens on its own when you explain how to see things better. This "on its own" is a theme for you. It's not an accident or a linguistic tangle. And I know what you're trying to say. And I reject it. You associate intent with effort and with something that happens in bursts. And this goes together with your other ideas about how the state exists. It all hangs together. I get it and don't like it. It's not for me. I need something more flexible.
For me the persistent features are attributable not to some hard inertia ("on its own") but to cravings or habits. Habits can be hard to change. Cravings could be harder than just habits. These are also called "propensities." So for example, as I said, I tend to appear as a male. This isn't easy to change. I can sooner change to a dragon than from male to female. But that's my mindstream. You might be different. You might sooner change from male to female than from human to dragon. I don't know. Every mindstream can be unique like that.
Generally people that I see are addicted to humaning and to physicaling. Therefore for them to experience hell post-body-death is super-unlikely. These addictions are volitional in the ultimate sense, but in practical terms they're not readily controlled. Hell, most people don't even know themselves as "minstreams addicted to humaning and physicaling." And they're not ready to know themselves like that. So when the body collapses and the story cannot continue, their minds instantly make Earthlike worlds. They may be born in a waterworld. They may be born in a world with one continent. Maybe in the next world water boils at a higher temperature and there are two moons, whatever. But generally the worlds will be similar. They'll differ in superficial ways. One moon or two? That's a superficial difference. Waterworld or 5 continents? That's a superficial difference. The fact that gravity exists and water needs heat to boil is a deeper, more entrenched difference. Entrenched where? In the mind! Not in the world. It's private! And it's not easy to change for most beings I am aware of.
No, it's perfectly easy. I can intend this no problem. And that intention (pattern) is instantly overlaid upon the world-pattern. However, it doesn't result in a particularly strong change in sensory experience, relative to the contribution of more established patterns (i.e. body is at body-temperature), habits of the world.
So you admit to it being hard. Stop saying it's easy. You know what I mean.
Let's say you visualize heat. You'll raise your body temp by a few degrees C at best (star-level tummo practitioner), but virtually never by 20. Your normal body temp is 38 C. You'll never get to 58 C. Proteins cook at that temperature. So in order to raise your temp to 58 C you need more than a slight visualization. You have to mentally break the rules of physics. This is a huge spiritual change. This isn't the same as visualizing heat and raising your temp from 37 (cold) to 39 (feverish).
Ultimately you can learn to do anything. You can learn to make your pinky the same temperature as the Sun's core. But the change in mentality that's necessary to actualize it is insane. Quite literally. In. Sane.
So those habits don't belong to the world, but to you. You aren't a feature of the world. The world, as it appears, is a feature of your private state, but your state isn't capable of change willy nilly. There are entrenched aspects that will not readily change until you work on them.
Prelude
On dreaming, I think it's perfectly possible to have any experience whatsoever. Your disposition to be male is not a restriction, for instance. Nor do you have to experience a dimensional space, and so on.
The threads between individual world-experiences can be narrow, and in reduced connections between patterns can make it difficult to navigate in memory between on and the other associatively. However, there is only one overall pattern and one felt-sense, because there is only one consciousness in which it all resides.
The water sloshes "on its own" in the same way that if you set your arm swinging then (in the absence of friction) it would swing "on its own" from that point onwards, in experience. The experience would apparently oscillate (sensory: "arm movement") however the pattern itself would be static (dimensionless facts: "limit angle=45 degrees; period=2 seconds").
I do not associate intent with effort or bursts! How many times have I said "no effort is involved"? The shifting of a state or the incorporation of a pattern is a frictionless self-shifting which happens beyond time. There is no inertia.
Habits & Cravings
To me, habits are simply established patterns which contribute to experience. So in this regard, indeed your "maleness" may be a deeper pattern which tends to dominate your experience. Would you call "humaning" addictive, or merely established?
You description of next-step world-making, I agree with broadly speaking.
When I talk of a "world-pattern" or similar, I exactly mean these established structures. Long ago (so to speak) these were shallow and malleable, but over time they have become more established.
Some we recognise as obvious aspects of experience, others are more like "contexts" or "based formatting" - time and space themselves are such, as are shapes and colours, and so on.
Later, we have "people" and the like. The established structures deepen and form the basis for yet more complexity. The "humanness" of experience is this formatting. The body itself isn't a part of this, but the sensory division of "a world" definitely is.
The world, the patterning or formatting of experience, is all in consciousness (what you call "the mind" but annoyingly for me that always suggests a container of some sort). A private memory-block of experience that we explore and evolve by that exploration. Observations implying facts implying observations, etc.
Intending is Easy - But
When I say that intending patterns is easy, I mean that the actual doing of it (excuse language) is easy. There's not trick to it as such. The trick is to choosing exactly what you want to happen so that pre-existing patterns don't result in, um, undesirable experiences. If you have deeply established habits (like being 38C) you're going to need to hold that pattern for quite a while and diminish the restriction. Unfortunately, breaking the habits that constitute the body might involve it dissolving before you get to your target. You're gonna need to re-conceive your body first, perhaps, as - say - a floating image with no content whatsoever. Tedious.
Yeah so - as you say - insane.
So those habits don't belong to the world, but to you. You aren't a feature of the world. The world, as it appears, is a feature of your private state, but your state isn't capable of change willy nilly. There are entrenched aspects that will not readily change until you work on them.
Completely agreed. Except that I'd say the habits are in the world and the world belongs to you. The "world" is the entire experiential environment which includes your body and all that also. All of which constitutes the private universe in you!
Don't think we need the "mindstreams" concept, do we?
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So where would you fit intention into this? Hand that initially splashes the water?
Since the water is you and your experience, "intending" would be when you intervene to deliberately reshape yourself to a greater or lesser extent. The waves then continue sloshing, consistent with the amendment made, as if it were always that way.
For instance, if you "reshaped" the waves such that a past event or fact was erased (by which I mean, a persistent aspect of the pattern which is influencing the current sloshing) then from that point onwards it would never have existed; there would be no trace of the former state.
If you were to completely calm the water, you would be restarting experience from scratch, a new universe emerging from minor random background fluctuations.
So in this metaphor, the surface of the water is consciousness - and there is nothing else except for that surface (no depth to the water below and no extent to the surface above). And we can see that there is no definite permanent "past" or "memory" of any previous state of the surface as a whole, because we can choose to deliberately amend or delete any residual patterns (echo ripples) from existence, via intention.
EDIT: On terminology: "intending" is the act of imposing a pattern onto consciousness; "the intention" is the form of the pattern being imposed. If you say "my intention is..." you are saying "the pattern I am imposing is..."
I suggest maybe:
The background of consciousness is never completely empty of patterns. It is eternal. So in fact, all patterns are present and "dissolved into awareness" awaiting triggering.
Babies aren't "new things" they are "new experiences", however the patterns which become layered and emergent for those experiences have always been there.
Drinking the Transcendental Idealism
I've been reading up on Immanuel Kant's concept of Transcendental Idealism and I'm finding it quite an appealing take on the "world as mind-formatting" view. The exact interpretation of Kant's philosophy is still debated even now. With the ideas of Oneirosophy in mind, though, I'd say it takes on a clearer shape than it might otherwise.
The essentials are: We experience the formatting of our own minds; sensory experience is not what things are in themselves; even time and space, cause and effect, are something we bring to experience. That we apparently share a similarly ordered world - what Kant calls empirical realism - is down to our minds being similarly formatted (as "human beings").
Kant at the Bar: Transcendental Idealism in Daily Life over at Philosophy Now (see EDIT) is quite a nice overview of Immanuel Kant's metaphysics, in a breezy read. Although I'd say it makes an error by referring to "the physical data our senses receive" at one point, for instance, it's pretty good at covering the basics.
Meanwhile, from the Wikipedia entry:
The salient element here is that space and time, rather than being real things-in-themselves or empirically mediated appearances (German: Erscheinungen), are the very forms of intuition (German: Anschauung) by which we must perceive objects. They are hence neither to be considered properties that we may attribute to objects in perceiving them, nor substantial entities of themselves. They are in that sense subjective, yet necessary, preconditions of any given object insofar as this object is an appearance and not a thing-in-itself. Humans necessarily perceive objects as located in space and in time. This condition of experience is part of what it means for a human to cognize an object, to perceive and understand it as something both spatial and temporal. . .
. . .Kant's view is better characterized as a two-aspect theory, where noumena [world as it is] and phenomena [world as sensed] refer to complementary ways of considering an object.
-- Transcendental Idealism, Wikipedia
The Stanford Encyclopedia has more coverage in its Kant article here, however much of the discussion is based upon interpretations other than the "two aspects, epistemological" version which I'm inclined towards.
EDIT: Turns out the Philosophy Now article is for subscribers, but AdBlock suppresses the block rather transparently. If that doesn't work for you, see in the comments instead.
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Q: Kant was close to figuring shit out. He made a few strange steps that I'm fairly comfortable dismissing, but he was pretty close, and this is one of my favorites of his and something I referenced in that essay I wrote.
Space and time as a priori conditions for experience is really interesting to play with, and of course you'll find it's impossible to imagine anything non-spatial or non-temporal, so this conclusion comes fairly naturally to anyone inclined toward any variant on idealism. And the important implication is that space and time are neither properties -nor- substantial entities. So they're subjective, they're part of -you-, not anything apart from you.
And I think the idea of space and time being -you- is something which was kind of skipped over by... the thousands and thousands of Westerners who have studied Kant. Either because it wasn't processed fully, was ignored as crazy, or just found a niche in an otherwise mundane worldview they held.
Another thing to take away from this is the fact that there are some Western philosophers who actually do have some ideas to offer, and are worth considering. I've learned a lot from Western philosophers, even if I had to filter a lot out as well. /r/oneirosophy might benefit from a bit of a book club where we discussed some texts apart from those we compose ourselves. I've certainly arrived here only through the likes of Kant and Hanshan and the suttas. What reason do we have to think we all wouldn't benefit from discussing some texts like those?
Good points.
Kant was close to figuring shit out.
He may even actually have sussed it all out but been unable to convey it in the conceptual culture of his time. Definitely, I think many of the problems with Kant are problems of modern (and contemporary) interpretation. That time and space are basically part of the "senses" is a vital component. I can see how it got overlooked, because I think people never understood that this moment right now, in consciousness, is sensory, that there is no spatially-extended unfolding world beyond it that you are exploring. The facts-of-the-world are dimensionless.
Instead, they tended to think of "this" spatially-extended world and then another world which was the source of that one. Getting that wrong leads to confusion about there being two things, or two aspects of one thing, and so on.
Another thing to take away from this is the fact that there are some Western philosophers who actually do have some ideas to offer, and are worth considering.
Things get lost to history too. In the early part of the 20th century, authors like E. Douglas Fawcett (The World As Imagination) and JW Dunne (The Serial Universe) were popular - particularly the latter, whose An Experiment With Time was well-known and influential. Such books are full of ideas of static time, collapsed space, and the observer as a consciousness who brings the dead world into 3D/4D life. Those ideas were the Brief History of Time of their, um, time.
Really, insights just get rediscovered for modern times. Fashions of understanding come and go, based on power-struggles rather than correctness. Theories die and are forgotten because their proponents die and are forgotten. We not on a grand march of progress into the future. It may be that, since these metaphysical worldviews give power to every individual, they are naturally sidelined by parties who have certain economic interests at heart. Not in some sort of conspiracy, just that you pick the worldview that matches your desires, you then tend to promote that worldview, and when you become dominant in society then that is the worldview you will make dominant via education and law-making.
a bit of a book club
It's a nice idea. Maybe suggest it in a separate post. Historically, though, these things tend to lose momentum if too onerous (see /r/OccultStudyGroup for example) so would need to think of a good way.
Q:That time and space are basically part of the "senses" is a vital component. I can see how it got overlooked, because I think people never understood that this moment right now, in consciousness, is sensory, that there is no spatially-extended unfolding world beyond it that you are exploring. The facts-of-the-world are dimensionless.
This also jives with the "interface theory of perception" by Hoffman.
It's a nice idea. Maybe suggest it in a separate post. Historically, though, these things tend to lose momentum if too onerous (see /r/OccultStudyGroup for example) so would need to think of a good way.
I'm not a huge fan of those because you either need to have read the book in question, or take it as homework, which isn't always enjoyable. And some of the books people want to talk about are huge and difficult, and are no easy task to read. It's not like reading cheap science fiction when it comes to some of these books. They're mind-benders that sometimes make it slow to read them.
I think the best way to do those is informally, once in a while, impromptu. So if /u/Utthana feels like talking about a specific book, he should make a post about it, ideally with a link to a free copy of the book so that interested parties can read it, pick a quote from it and put the quote in, then type some kind of response or a reaction to the quote, and ideally say something that could inspire or provoke further discussion. Then I don't see a problem. Just don't expect everyone to join in, because not everyone has the time or energy to commit to every possible book. But in some cases you may meet people who've already read your book and are ready to talk about it, so then, why not talk about it? Seems fine.
Agreed on the book thing. Good observation about Hoffman connection - yes.
Q: Just for the record I want to mention that Kant's brand of idealism cannot be called "subjective." So Kant's idealism is not quite what I would call oneirosophy-grade. I think Kant believed that his mental constituents were in some sense given to him from on high.
Hmm. I think it's open to interpretation a little (there being at least three contrasting ones).
In my reading: The phenomenal is subjective, however he then suggests our "formatting" is the same, hence we have similar experiences (an intersubjective "empiral realism"). Not because externality exists in that way, but because we are that way. This accounts for other people reporting similar experiences - but it doesn't necessarily need to imply that there are other people in the sense of multiple formattings. It can be one formatting, one experience, multiple perspectives. There doesn't need to be simultaneous distinct observers.
But yeah - I think overall it's a nice description (because of its handling of space and time), but as always we take the useful bits and adapt them, put aside the rest.
Q: What I am saying here is that I don't think Kant believed his personal will had 100% scope over the experience. In subjective idealism will and experience are matched 1/1. In other idealisms will is adulterated by outside factors, even if it's all mental. In other words, subjective idealism is the only kind of idealism where your mind really is your own.
Right, the influence or connection between experiencer and formatting isn't really pursued, as I understand it. It might equate, but it doesn't recognise that we can manipulate (really: reshape).
Q:It might equate, but it doesn't recognise that we can manipulate (really: reshape).
The situation is far worse than this. It's not that we can manipulate. We can't avoid manipulating. Drastically stronger claim. And Kant is not pursuing this at all, because Kant is not a yogi or a tantrika or in western lingo, a wizard I suppose. As near as I can tell our choice is to manipulate unconsciously or to manipulate consciously. But non-manipulation is not on the menu.
Maybe say knowingly or not, rather than consciously? It's not that we are doing something we aren't aware we're doing, it's that we are doing something but aren't aware of its impact. (i.e. That all imagining establishes patterns which shape subsequent experiences,)
Q:Maybe say knowingly or not, rather than consciously?
Sure, that's fine.
It's not that we are doing something we aren't aware we're doing, it's that we are doing something but aren't aware of its impact.
What you say is I think somewhat right, but there is also a lot of non-awareness, so "unconsciously" is also a good word. Then once you're conscious you're doing it you can still underestimate the impact.
Also, many people don't realise that "feeling" is an imagining too, which triggers its associations. So for them that does seem "unconscious" - so perhaps there are two areas to highlight: doing stuff without realising the impact, and also not realising you are doing stuff.