TriumphantGeorge Compendium (Part 12)

POST: How do you solve a problem like feedback loops?

All that would lead me to believe that it's in my best interests to find ways to 'collapse' the feedback loops around me - but I wonder if there's not a more direct way? Is it possible to instead reduce our dependence on feedback loops?

Hmm. Yes, I'd say. Because the feedback loop is a sign of you resisting learning by trying to control the process. When you learned your first language as a child, did you use a feedback loop? Was it "pretty tough"? I don't think there was a force of will involved there.

Learning and problem-solving are just what the mind does, naturally, as part of its "structure" - unless you are holding onto your pre-existing patterns and preventing them modifying (or only letting them be modified in a controlled, limited manner - deliberately and consciously by "you"). The urge to manage and 'be aware' of things happening is a restriction that prevents progress in any endeavour. Perhaps all that is required to become, say, a musical prodigy is to give yourself a metaphorical bang on the head.

In any case, we're getting away from the point, which is not language learning!

No, but it's a good example of limited change in adults compared with spontaneous, effortless development in children. And one of the reasons adults have such a hard time is because they start thinking in terms of concepts like "impetus", "model" and "feedback loops" and approach things as if their ideas of how something works is how it really works underneath. Which is at the root of many problems people have with manifestation generally...

If I could 'contort my tactile sense field' in such a way to get instantaneous feedback, finding which contortions work and which do not would be drastically faster.

Why do you need the feedback? Can't you just ask for the end result and have it? Feedback is just an experience. If you are getting the experience of feedback, that's part of what you have intended...

But more often than not, my intentions do not manifest immediately - so maybe what I'm asking is this: how to better connect intention and manifestion?

I'd say that intention and manifestation are identical and that you are getting exactly what you are asking for. Manifestation is always instantaneous!

If I intend something to happen next month, it is true right now that it happens next month. The manifestation occurs immediately from the perspective of the timeless landscape of the world. Following the intention, your ongoing present moment then has the experiences as they are laid out. So if you intend something and you go through a cycle of feedback before you get the final result, maybe that's because you intended that whole process - by implication, through your expectation about how the world works. The structure of your mind dictated the pattern that your manifestation would take. To get more "direct" then, perhaps one must dispense with any notions of "the mechanism".

TL;DR: You need to intend to "skip to the end!"

POST: We talk a lot about getting away from the consensus on this sub, lets talk about methods of escape.

A1: mostly from no longer believing that what goes on in my imagination is fake and whats out there as being real
This type of observation is key. In order to undermine convention really thoroughly I need to become aware of my most subtle trends and the tacit, silent, unspoken reasons that underpin those trends.
Another one from this series is the idea that there are objects that can bump into each other and displace each other, that compete with each other for space, etc.
Another subtle idea is that whatever appears visually is more indicative of an outer world, and whatever appears to touch (body sense) is more indicative of an inner world. Example: I am itching (tactile sense disturbed), but I see no bug and no red area on the skin (visual sense is not in line with the tactile). I think, "ah, it's just in my mind." Then! I see a bug and a red spot (visual sense is disturbed), but I am not at all itching (tactile sense is peaceful). Then I think "Oh, I really got bitten just now, even though I don't feel the itch." So when the sense fields fall out of harmony, it's obvious that they don't all take on the same import in the mind as to what they may signify. The fact that I am aware of this is incredibly useful in breaking down convention. I am seeing how ridiculous it is to use one sense to mean that and another sense to mean this (this and that, that and this). It's totally arbitrary. Nothing is forcing me to think this way.
And so on. There are more ideas/insights like this.
They are very very subtle and they're generally very hard to notice, but noticing them detonates the convention much more than any kind of repetitive exercise. I don't think we can exercise our way to a sense of absurdity, and it's exactly this sense of absurdity that undermines convention. Still, exercise is incredibly useful as it often (if not always) serves as a fertile ground for contemplation which can then generate an appropriate sense of absurdity. So I am not really poo-pooing exercise as much as I am trying to put things in a perspective that I myself find very powerful in my own life.
Of course what happens next is exactly as you describe, because once you for example stop thinking that imagination is fake and non-imagination (whatever the heck it is) is real, it alters how you live your life. So when you do find your manner of living grossly or subtly altered, that's a good sign that you've probably hit upon an authentic change of mind.

Good point. The whole identification of certain senses with your "spatial perimeter", combined with the assumption that events occurring within a certain timeframe after an intention defines your "temporal perimeter", is a powerful illusion.

From elsewhere:It's great talking about the illusion of space and being connected, but unless I can look around and see it to be true then what's the use?

So I think we always need to start with our actual experience, and there are two aspects of it which are probably key:

• How do I come to mark out one area of my present moment experience as "me" and the rest of it as "not-me"?
• How do I actually create movements and thoughts - if indeed I can detect myself doing so?

And my answers are: That it seems pretty arbitrary how I divide up the world (I think of it as being divided but it isn't really when I look), and that I seem to just "want it" and a bit later the experience happens (so I just assume my limitations are based on sensation and distance and time). So I don't know about connected, but things definitely don't seem to be divided.

but the first "step" is instant

Yes. This is where our common mistake comes from. Our intention is a reshaping of the universe. Just because we don't encounter the experience until later, we think either we didn't cause it, or that our 'prayers were answered' by some more circuitous route. Similar to our conversation a while ago about inserting facts into the future. It is true now that I will find the bookstore "later".

We maintain a narrative that describes a causal domain. A narrative as I mean it is more than just verbiage.

Yes. It's basically part of the assumed belief- or habit-structure of our world that dictates the form of our experience.

Also from elsewhere:

(Random bits of comments I keep meaning to gather together. Excuse the spatial/level metaphors, obviously they are not actual.)

The room around you is just a floating image. Its true source is deep down, enfolded. We confuse our sensory experience for being "the entire reality" but in fact all the good stuff happens elsewhere. Perhaps we might envisage it as: All intentions, even if apparently directed at the immediate surroundings, actually insert themselves at the lowest level of reality, undivided, and then bubble up everywhere.

Even if you just decide to reach out and pick up your cup of coffee, that decision actually goes "the long way round". The intention creates a ripple at the very fundamental level, which then shifts the universe, which is then experienced "locally" as an image and sensation of your arm moving and a cup being held. And because every intention inserts itself at the seed of the whole universe, you lifting a cup actually affects the whole of reality to a slight degree. If instead you had furiously smashed the cup on the ground, that violent intention might have shifted the whole universe slightly towards aggression: a painting in a gallery in Dusseldorf falls from the wall; a disagreement between two men in a bar in Iceland escalates into a punching match; a clear sky in Australia darkens and a storm begins.

It's deeper in the mind, more toward the sub- and un-conscious regions of our own mind right here. Of course I do realize that you know it.

Yeah. There really is no way to escape from spatial metaphors, eh! The "elsewhere" is enfolded into the "apparent here", it's all here - etc. One of the things I've been doing lately is deliberately 'being the space' and having present moment experience obviously floating within it, while maintaining the felt-sense of everything being in that space.

Donald Hoffman

Ah yes, I liked that talk. I came across his paper on Conscious Realism and Interface Theory a while back and found it quite capturing. There's also a really nice short video with him chatting to a former colleague about switching to this stuff once he'd secured tenure, attitudes toward this sort of thinking, etc, but I've not been able to track it down again (it was vimeo or whatever rather than youtube maybe).

What we change is relationship

Right, I like that.

The only time what you're saying is potentially true is if you've already taken up much of the known universe into your own being on a conscious level.

Yes, I agree. Actually, the image in my mind was of watching television news and seeing reports of things around the world happening. It is truer to say that smashing the cup with an "attitude" can affect the rest of your experience (the apparent world), not just the cup.

one really needs to maintain a special kind of relationship

This is the interesting bit. Shall we talk about that?

Is it simply a case of settling into that background sense, to connect with it? In other words, letting go of our hold on the present moment sensory experience to access the subtle layer?

Like the sun hides the stars due to its proximity and intensity, so the texture of sensory momentary experience obscures the background dimensionless felt-sense of the world. When I switch my perspective to background awareness, I am no longer identified with my body sensations or the concept of my body, and my intentions manifest swiftly. Recently someone mentioned how they "imagined their body was an empty shell" and would just command it to, say, find a lost object or jump a distance - and then let their body do it for them. (EDIT: I quoted it here [POST: [Proposal] Investigate How to Reprogram, Build a Wiki].)

Is this the sense in which we command change in the universe, insert a new fact and then let it bubble into experience?

Or maybe it's the only way? It's hard to say for me right now.

I'm thinking that it's the only way - that all ways are basically that way at their core. I use words like "background" and "dimensionless" just to convey it's not an object or a thing.

Is this 'switch' something vivid? Is it like a pop or a click?

No, you don't experience it like that, it's really a change of perspective rather than a click - like the feeling when you change which side of a figure-ground image you perceive. But there is a difference, because in figure-ground you lose the other perception completely. In this switch, it persists but differently due to context:

So, say there is a room full of furniture. Your attention "latches on" to those objects all at once. Then you switch perspective to be aware of the space of the room. You are now perceiving the space of the room, the objects, and the space in which those objects appear/that they occupy. Really, it's just a releasing of attentional filtering. If you're in-between perspectives at the moment, you may be experiencing something more like 'figure-ground' than 'figure-ground-and-space'. Additional thought: Because we are all of experience, we can simply do this by 'just deciding'. (That's why people like Greg Goode can say - look, forget thinking it through and convincing yourself, just take a stand as awareness and see what happens. If it works, you know this stuff is right.)

When I want to insert a fact, I just train myself to expect it. This is probably not as efficient as what you're doing.

It's much the same in the end. It just might take a bit longer because you are wearing down the opposition to it, rather than letting go of the opposition?

"It just might take a bit longer because you are wearing down the opposition to it, rather than letting go of the opposition?"; This is probably true. I know I am not nearly as unhinged as I could in principle be. So my changes tend to be slow, especially if they are something I consider significant.

Yes, that's something interesting: the more significant, the more it's a "thing", the longer to push past.

If you have a point A where you currently are (at all levels of your reality), and all you want to do is leave that point

That's a good image. Freedom from vs freedom to. The purpose of dissolving limiting structures is surely to make more routes - and more efficient routes - available for the change from "here" to "there" to arise. (Simple belief that a target will become your experience can itself do a lot of "softening" of restrictions, mind you.)

Complete freedom from all structure and restriction is - empty space? Or - things exactly as they are now. Depending.

EDIT: It's not an error that New Thought approaches were all about "ignore where you are, ignore the evidence, concentrate on the facts you want to be true".

...

I'm trying to do a short version of that overwriting exercise whenever I come across something where I am avoidant or fearful (in an out-of-my-comfort-zone way). This frees me up to make a proper choice about whether to do something or not, rather than just out of habit or because I'm just vaguely worried about it - and see things as sensory experiences rather than my assumptions about it. Hopefully the idea is to be more aware of the conventions I am following, less bound to them.

POST: Truthfulness as a quality of experience.

[POST]

Convention will tell us that truth is some kind of objective thing out there that cannot be denied. But the more i think about it, when some new information or event validates how you perceive the world their is a feeling of truthfulness to it. In other words things can feel truthful in the same way things can feel sad, happy, or frightening. 1+1=2 elucidates a feeling of truth where as 1+1=3 elucidates a feeling of falsehood. If our experience is fully subjective and their is no objectivity, this idea seems to make sense, we define what is true and what is false, but without any form of lucidity we do it in a blind way rather than being conscious of it

[END OF POST]

I've been playing with the idea of two truths:

• Direct Truth - Something that is true by direct experience, knowing and being. This is the truth of the facts of experience. The solidity of a table, the softness of a pillow - directly, experientially true - and so are world facts.
• Conceptual Truth - A story or conceptual framework which is self-consistent. This is when a pattern of thought "feels right"; it has narrative coherence. A system of thought can have conceptual truth even if it doesn't correspond well to direct experience.

There is a feeling associated with both. The first is what dictates the form of your experience. However, fully adopting the second can over time affect the first, as the patterns you fully absorb can deform the structure of your mind/perception. Fully absorbed conceptual truths become direct truths.

Now, do you want direct bullshit or conceptual bullshit? Cause it's all bullshit. And separating bullshit into two piles of bullshit is also bullshit.

I think you've over-called it here. It's the difference between thinking-about something and it being directly-sensed. Like talking about "enlightenment" and "awareness" and "everything is one" as ideas, versus directly being it. Recalling our earlier conversations about the felt-sense, etc.

Call it "direct experience" and "thinking about ideas" if you like. The reason I use the word "truth" is because that's how people describe this in general, and also the idea of "truth" in philosophy and logic (self-consistent). Call it "patterns as they really are currently" and "patterns you are thinking about". Of course it's all "made from" the same non-stuff, ultimately, but it's not very useful to reduce everything to that level constantly. It is the source of possibilities, but the fact is that people's ongoing moment does consist of patterns.

At this point you realize you don't have to regard anything as more or less fundamental.

Neither is fundamental, as such. It's actually a matter of location (here and there). That isn't the problem, the problem is the habit of confusing one with the other - of seeing one in terms of the other - that people confuse that a self-consistent conceptual framework with an accurate description of their experience. This blocks development, particularly by limiting investigation by studying the "qualia" experience. The use of the word "direct" is to indicate that there is no representation involved.

They're inseparable. You can't neatly slice experience into conceptuality and qualia. Your conceptual schemes influence how qualia appear and vice versa. If you want a point of power, if you like magic, it's actually more powerful to regard conceptuality as the more fundamental aspect. That's how and why incantations work. Incantations wouldn't work if conceptuality wasn't skeletal. Moving the bone moves the muscle and skin attached to that bone

Of course, at the base level, we agree with on this - it's how magick, and indeed everyday life, works - and we've covered it in earlier discussions. Hence it must be a matter of wording and getting the thoughts right. So, the problem seems to be with the word "direct". Now, with other audiences this word makes sense, because it brings peoples attention to what is (apparently) happening in the sensory world now rather than being off in ungrounded thoughts.

The point I am conveying is that we must not confuse nice systems of thought with: a) the true reality, obviously, but also: b) the current state of the apparent reality, the ingrained patterns of the world. In other words, a good story doesn't mean that's how things are. We have any number of "good stories" in our minds which we take for granted, which are without basis. We can often see those "good stories" instead of what I'm calling "direct experience" of the patterns of the present moment and felt-sense. Of course, the fact that persistently thinking about something is equivalent to experiencing it, which eventually creates ingrained habits-in-the-world, is the icing on the cake.

All phenomena are not themselves. There is no direct experience.

Isn't it better to say something like: phenomena are themselves, as experienced, and that is all they are? For instance, a "tree" literally is that image over there + all the ideas you have about "trees". But there is no underlying, "secret causal tree" at the source of that.

To say that some experience is "direct" is to imply it is non-hallucinatory, genuine, authentic, and right. Now. Do you really want to suggest something like that?

Your points are valid but I don't think they apply to what I mean here. The core is the distinction between representational (one step removed) thinking which forms a self-consistent structure that is basically a castle in the sky - i.e. not bound to experience at all. "Direct" is just a handy (for most) word to indicate the difference. People intuitively understand a "directness" to sensation rather than thinking, when it's pointed out. Of course, at the next level of understanding, the word is less useful. I'm not sure what a replacement term would be for the different context, but "direct" is okay for that level. This is a general difficulty: That descriptions applicable to one stage of understanding have to be revealed to be "not quite the correct story" at a later stage.

phenomena are themselves Of course not. I hope you're joking.

What do you suggest "phenomena" are?

You're saying you can cleave experience neatly into representational and non-. I am saying you can't do that.

No, that's not really what I'm saying. This is actually a subtle topic, mind you. However, thoughts-about things are not the things themselves. Self-consistent theories about awareness are not awareness, and so on.

You can insist on a difference ...

This is where context comes in. At one "level" there is an apparent difference which seems obviously the case. Then...

Anything you want them to be, except themselves.

It depends what you mean by "themselves".

When I do this, the thing-itself is gone after I remove thoughts-about-it.

Right, the experience of something is the full thing (the image and all meanings). Bringing a thought up about it, we summon the meanings without the "external" image. So yes, for a "tree" or whatever, they are the same thing, it's just a matter of location.

So - when I speak of Conceptual Truth I am talking about were structures, associations or stories. So, a theory about something ("how it works" and "what it is really underneath") which feels true because it fits together like a puzzle, but in fact doesn't really point to anything.

The word here to use is perhaps "relationships". The framework is a set of fictional relationships between the thoughts. Again, though, we have the problem of levels of understanding - because if you truly accept a set of relationships, the world can start to seem as if it behaves according to them. That's feedback for ya.

I don't know if you realize this or not...

Right. That's what the felt-sense thing is about. The meaning of a tree is felt, known, because you are or become that. You experience that tree and all trees. The felt-sense is the facts-of-the-world.

Maybe I could only hear, because I didn't have the conceptual framework for evoking a sense of sight using volition.

This is a good one. Or even just the first time you saw a tree, you wouldn't see a "tree". You'd see... green blobby bit on top of brown uppy-down bit. Which is a good question....

How can it be possible for us to experience a tree for the first time?

I agree. But what you're saying is that you can somehow bracket the relationships and examine things outside relationships and still find the same things, just without the relationships. And I am saying, that's impossible.

They are entangled, it's true. It depends on the extent to which the story is accepted, absorbed, experienced. Maybe it's better illustrated by example. Say I have the story off: marble rolls along floor, hits marble, second marble rolls - this is cause and effect, this is momentum, this is energy transference. So in my mind I have a "conceptual truth" about it.

With the senses, I just see two spheres rolling. But I felt-sense it as "marbles" and if I know about physics I felt-sense the event as a cause-effect, energy-transference. If I believed that marbles contained "motive spirits" then I would felt-sense the event as an interaction of spirit personalities, entering an agreement to exchange motion.

Aside: Today's random truths along with poor soundtrack [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgiwVYZM5A8].

When he experience this new way of forming sens-impressions, he really was confused and was asking questions about it to try to conventionalize his experience.

Interesting. We also have an extra trick here: that we experience experiences, knowing. When we go checking whether we "see" or "hear", then sure enough we do, but that's because we went seeking for that experience. When I "see" a door over there, normally I don't see it at all, I have a total door experience which isn't separated out into individual senses necessarily.

The channels are learned to be separate.

That arbitrary separation limits the nature of the experiences we have. For instance, it leaves no name for the felt-sense so people don't notice it; it leaves no name for the ability to feel-aware out into the space around you and into other objects and people (which we might call "presence"). In fact, apparently-personal experience really is about that feel-aware thing. Try withdrawing that sphere back into yourself, and you'll quickly discover you "go blind". You might still kinda see stuff, but it's like peripheral vision, and you don't have the sense of meaning.

You see shaded circles, and they're not rolling, they're just moving. :) But if you keep stripping it down, then the circles will need to go.

Yes, this is of course right. So here we go, we're getting to a better description for the oneironaught vs the everyday guy:

The difference between (what I called) Direct and Conceptual truth is simply the extent to which a pattern has become ingrained, stabilised, become a fact-of-the-world. This is of course a continuum; the two terms indicate the extreme cases.

So for example, I realize the cup is to the left because I can imagine it being in all sorts of other locations. I don't actually have to imagine it, just the fact that I can, if I want to, means I have tacit imaginary context that I am using to give meaning to the cup's location.

Yes, you instantly are aware of all the possibilities of "cup-ness", because that's what "cup-ness" is.

There is no experience that corresponds to the Direct extreme. I hope you realize this.

Sure, neither extremes exist, although the idea of the extreme is useful for gaining understanding at a certain level. If you are having any experience at all then you are experiencing a concept, albeit of an extremely subtle, low-amplitude form. I mean, even the concept of a "concept"... arrgg, there is no escape! Ah, but yes - take a step back, switch context.

I think it's dangerous.

Well, I think you and I have an ongoing disagreement about how to describe things. You seem to prefer a jump-to-the-end approach, whereas I see a staged approach as better. Depends on the audience, really

You're right that getting stuck at any conception is a risk.

Illusion

Always a tricky word. I like the "playdough of experience" metaphor though. :-)

...

From last week's episode of Constantine (spoilers):

Lily wakes up to rejoin the living world, but John and Ritchie remain in the construct. Ritchie wants to stay behind in his own reality, basically as a God, so who can blame him?
Constantine can. He warns his friend that he’s eventually going to go as crazy as Shaw, and that his decision isn’t about creating his own world, it’s about running away from the real one. Having regained consciousness, John pleads with Ritchie, still in his altered state, to come back to him … which he does after a few moments of hesitation.
Having found new purpose, Ritchie puts more effort into his teaching position, lecturing about humanity’s certainty of suffering, giving into cravings, and the possibility of inner peace.
-- Constantine Season 1 Episode 11 Recap

Maybe you should quit all this reality-messing, playing God, and just get a nice teaching job.

Do you really believe this?

No, but I do enjoy the show and it sometimes gives me a bit of food for thought. (And it's interesting when the topic of a TV show synchronistically relevant. Although in my reality I wouldn't be hacking the hands off innocent kids. Promise.)

I like being encouraged to question myself occasionally - particularly in "these matters". Because it's easy to go off-path.

You might prefer another quote:

Ritchie: “All this time you’ve been here, you coulda been building worlds. You coulda been redefining life and how we live it. Instead you gave into your weakness, and when you did, that’s the day you became obsolete.”

Q: I figured you were just testing me. It's a waste of time. I am well beyond all doubt.

But... aren't you tempted? Don't you think this might be a fascinating distraction? Given that the world you are experiencing right now is your creation anyway?

If I wanted a distraction that was really fascinating, I'd rather be distracted by massive displays of massive personal power.

But you already have (had) that power. And you chose this. It's difficult to tell how much of this we might have chosen previously. Have we burdened ourselves with an adventure which is nothing but challenge?

Perhaps the purpose of this is to teach yourself acceptance. That you will realise that you are struggling against yourself, that the power you seek is illusory, you have already made a decision against it, and it's simply a matter of you eventually giving up and accepting.

Or not. Who knows. ;-)

For the old decision to have force you have to ongoingly consent to it continually.

My "concern" would be that a person can be unaware of the old decision. This is an opportunity: I still don't like the "ongoing decisioning" language. So how about this:

• Our intention is the temporal landscape of our world, which we experience moment-to-moment, laid out timelessly. It is equivalent to the fact-of-the-world. To say "we have an intention" is just to say "my landscape is this shape", to say that what I am is this shape.
• To intend is to change that landscape. We intend by simply changing our shape, since the landscape is us. We become the result, even though the facts we have inserted might only unfold as sensory experience at some point in the apparent future.

So (being dualistic for a moment), your intention is the blueprint and to intend is to change the blueprint.

We can be aware of a result, which is now.

This is true. And I don't believe in irretrievable decisions. You might choose at one point a nasty outcome (unwittingly), but once you understand the nature of things, you can recognise this is a bad unfolding, and correct it. I was definitely a full-time idiot in the past. Now I'm just part-time. :-)

I love it though.

I know you do! I am resisting though. :-)

My main bone is that you think decisions are like some kind of brief bursts that can be dated on a timeline, like you can pin some decision to 6am Monday morning, for example.

There are a few things going on. Some certain intentions could indeed by tied to a particular time, where we say "I change this part of the landscape". Meanwhile, because the world reflects your nature, as you evolve by accepting and developing your ideas and yourself, there is a continual evolution of the contours of the landscape. Finally, in any case intending doesn't just insert a particular event. It inserts facts, which mutate the landscape as a whole.

All of these are the same things, really, just particular cases. Appearances constantly change because: The landscape itself is evolving due to intending; We are "traversing" the intention landscape by unfolding and refolding "moments" from it. Again, these are basically the same thing.

As for changing the blueprints, you can have a blueprint for how to change blueprints. And then you can change that meta-blueprint as well. Etc.

Hey, I placed no restriction on the number of dimensions those blueprints have! ;-)

This is what I call decisioning. :)

Okay, we'll let you call it "decisioning" for now then, I suppose. ;-)

This is the level where most people would say I was going crazy, or, if many people experienced it with me, they'd say it was a coincidence and I have no moral right to claim what happened for myself as my own volition's doing.

Right. This is where the notion that our decisions happen "the long way round" is useful. You don't move the arm that you can see, what you do is insert a fact into the landscape such that you will experience "arm movement* in a second or two.

We had this conversation before, but it's worth us restating: That we place arbitrary boundaries on "us" and "world" based on apparent distance and body-sensation, and the self-created tension of "doing". This leads us to arbitrary see some experiences as results of ourselves, and others as happening to us. In actual fact, all intending affects the global intention/landscape, as extended time-and-space patterns (or more subtly). You might not deliberately intend the sunny day today, but at the very least you implicitly "decisioned" a weather system such that sunny days are possible. All kings, no subjects.

"You don't move the arm that you can see, what you do is insert a fact into the landscape such that you will experience "arm movement* in a second or two."; This isn't immediately obvious to me. I find the idea interesting. But how exactly is it useful? What can you do with this approach that you can't by thinking you're just moving your arm about?

It's vital, I think! We adjust the felt-sense not this current "arm experience". For practical everyday circumstances it doesn't make much difference, but seeing it this way removes the difference between creating humdrum physical motion and changing the weather.

Yeah, you're saying it's a good thing. But my question was, what can you do with this style of thinking that you cannot with the more conventional one?

Accepting it removes the attempt to experience "doing". It leads to effortlessness, wu wei. An leads to a direct knowing that the movement of your arm and the movement of the clouds are the same. So the benefit of it (on-theme with our earlier chat) is that accepting this will "decision" your experience into a better, clearer, more powerful one. More enjoyable.

Ah, finally. This is interesting indeed. Well worth the long trudge through however many posts we exchanged. I'll have to think about this more.

The trudge was the result. Have a play with it, be interested to see how you find it.

So do you live this way? I mean, you no longer think you're moving your arms about or whatnot, when your body is moving?

It's identical to that thing I was saying about "switching perspective" to the background (with the usual language caveats).

I do get caught up in "doing" now and again, but that is a reminder to switch. Before this, I was a major do-er of things. Everything was about applying deliberate tension.

Did the switch to fact-insertion thinking happen gradually?

Once I got to the "timeless landscape" thing then it seemed to follow, from the metaphor of the mirage and the desert and all that. But it took a while to connect it to the wu wei thing I'd been looking into years before and the whole thing about trying to detect when/where exactly I "do" things like deliberate arm movement.

LOL, you're still doing things. You're just more subtle and crafty about it, and more relaxed.

Ha, no there is a difference. I've done the sneaky-crafty thing too! It's the difference between the whole world moving together, all from/of/as that same place. The more I talk about it, the more I pollute it by implying something else. Always the way with me! :-) Refer to my original words and ignore the rest.

Even if the whole world moves together, you're still engaged in doing because you're guiding the world to just one destination among infinite possible ones. As effortless as you appear, you're still using volition. Inserting facts is using volition. Still doing. Just a subtle kind of it. Doing is that for which you take responsibility.

That definition of doing sounds a lot like decisioning! ;-)

I understand the concept, but to actually live like this is entirely different. This is the kind of thing that happens gradually over decades or lifetimes, but is expressible in a single sentence or two.

(Loosely speaking) you could see it as living from the landscape of the felt-sense, letting unfolded experience take care of itself. Just try adopting the idea by simple decision; see how it plays. "Imagine it is so" and see what happens.

But I can't conceive of experience as "itself." There is no "it" to me.

I know. Excuse the language thing!

I already do this when I do magical transformations. :) But when I move my arms and legs I still think the old / conventional way.

Right, it's the same. It's just about bringing it to the mundane.

POST: What is time?

[POST]

What is time?
Take a minute to repeat that question to yourself a few times. Slowly, ideally, so you can take a step beyond contemplating it intellectually and actually start investigating the reality you're experiencing presently.
What is time? How long is the present moment?
Stop reading, turn your head away from the screen, and actually spent a minute or two on that. I'll wait.
So it's a fairly unconventional thing to think about, and this is made obvious by how difficult it is to really contemplating the question using word-thoughts.
For me, the most basic way that I tend to think of time is as the perceived non-simultaneous, non-instantaneous quality of experience. Everything doesn't appear to be happening all at once in a single moment. Things seem "spaced". Well, that leads us to some questions: in what sense are all things not simultaneous and instantaneous? What do I mean that everything isn't happening all at once?
Well, it seems that I can remember things that have happened that are not currently happening, and I can imagine things that could be happening which aren't. But neither the past nor the hypothetical present or future have any genuine existence in what I'm actually presently experiencing, and so there would seem to be a sense in which I cannot really say that anything has already been or could be happening which is not presently happening. This is a fairly familiar concept to most, I assume. The past and future "borrow" their reality from the present.
So, since describing time as the quality of experience by which things aren't all happening at once, we're left without a satisfactory explanation for what time really is. Is time an illusion entirely? Well it certainly seems that things have happened "before" now -- it doesn't feel as though each moment, reality is essentially recreated as near-identical to before. But even thinking in this way presupposes the existence of time. It is difficult to think in ways which exclude a temporal aspect entirely.
If time is "real", we can ask ourselves how it came about. It doesn't make much sense to think of time as having had a beginning, because a beginning implies temporal causality (i.e. one thing provoking another by virtue of having happened before it so as to bring about a change). We could imagine a Self, or Brahman, or God, entirely outside of time, or experiencing a very "different kind" of time, in which causality is no longer a relevant factor. This is a bit like if humans experiences a film frame by frame, they might perceive one frame as -causing- the next, but from the vantage point of the True Self or God, all of the frames would be laid out and perceived "at once". But then, why should we perceive time in the causal way that we do?
What's perhaps interesting to contemplate, here, is that the linear, causal way of thinking about time is a relatively new one. Judeo-Christian ways of thinking, in particular, made the linear and causal way of thinking about time the cultural default, as you can learn about in detail elsewhere, because it is a way of approaching time that makes Original Sin and the Death of Christ genuinely applicable. Judaism and Christianity have uniquely emphasized the historical and conventional facts and their causal relationship with practitioners. Punishment and accountability only work in linear, causal time. Before this influence, however, the most common way of thinking about time was as cyclical.
Cyclical time is often thought of in the sense of Mayan calendar cycles, but this would be like thinking of linear time as the Gregorian calendar. Focus instead of the subtle quality of experience that cyclical time lends itself to, like the quality of experience that linear time lends itself to (i.e. strict causality, a determined and unchangable past and an unknowable future which cannot influence the present).
The quality of cyclical time is far more interesting than the linear, causal, conventional way. In cyclical time, causality is very different. Where on a number line 1 leads to 2, which leads to 3, on a circle, 1 can be said to lead to 3, but 3 can just as equally be said to have laid to 1. Thinking about this inverse in causality for a while is worthwhile. Whereas in linear time, the future is some empty, unknowable, non-existent void, in cyclical time it is granted a relationship with the present that is on par with that of the past. Events in your memory have "caused" the reality you're experiencing presently, but in a very real way, things that you conceive of as having "not yet occurred" have just as much influence on where you exist right now (though if you've got a mental image of the circle, the distance is obviously much greater between 3 and back to 1 again, ergo the less obvious connection in conventional ways of thinking). In cyclical time, the present moment is the re-actualization of something which has happened "before" and will happen "again" -- only the past, present, and future have all had an equal influence on one another because the concept of before-then-after causality doesn't apply here.
I find this a hugely interesting thing to think about. Maybe a few of you will read this and, seeing it fresher than I can, it will inspire further thoughts on the subject that I'm able to conjure. I'd love to hear them.

[END OF POST]

Good stuff. Something that fascinates me is the way we represent time in our minds metaphorically, and how that influences our approach to it. We literally experience time as represented in our perceptual/thinking space!

This is different across different cultures too:

• Western people tend to imagine time as running left to right on a "timeline", literally in front of them. Past is to the left, present is directly in front, future is off to the right. All time is visible and the causal nature of past=>present=>future is implied.
• Some other cultures have time running back-to-front (so to speak). The past is behind your head, out of sight. The present is directly in front of you. The future continues onwards into the distance. Here, the past cannot be seen and the future is obscured by the present moment. Causality isn't clear - only the notion that you must get past the present in order to access the next moment in the "future".
• EDIT: Just reminded that my Dad used to imagine time as a sort of simmering bubble floating off to one side. All events were sort of "dissolved" into this. It was an ongoing present containing all moments in time.

Think of how dramatically our approach to living can be altered by which visualisation we adopt.

...

"But neither the past nor the hypothetical present or future have any genuine existence in what I'm actually presently experiencing". I definitely disagree with this. What you're saying privileges the apparent over the latent in a way that isn't warranted upon closer examination. In fact to cognize a cup's location on the table I must have some sense of where else it could have been but isn't.

In fact, one of the basic errors people make - once they think beyond just things being "objects" - is to assume that a cup is just that visual image plus touch sensations. Actually, what we experience is an entire cup-ness which is entangled with its context.

Yea, but if you say it like this, it becomes hard to understand to anyone who isn't living in your own mind. That's why it's necessary to unpack this more if you really intend to be easily understood by other people.

Hmm. What I mean: So, cup-ness would be all previous experiences with cups, everything you have heard about cups, combined with everything you know about the current place where the cup is - all folded into a single knowledge-feeling.

...

Yes, I'm not too keen on the delivery myself - I'm not a fan of that whole 'channeling' thing - but the principles definitely and many other views are fairly in tune with 'this stuff'. It's put more straightforwardly than Seth and ACIM, for instance.

1. You exist.
2. The One is All and the All are One .
3. What you put out is what you get back.
4. Change is the only constant...

Except for the first three laws, which never change.

POST: Have any of you made it to the mental plane?

You'll need to expand a bit on what you mean by that.

in some occultism there is a hierarchy of the physical>astral>mental and spiritual plane. The mental plane is the one beyond the astral i think in this context

Ah. Isn't that where you go pretty much every night? By which I mean, the unstructured void space in which environments are created.

...

%darkblue%A1:%darkblue% Have you made it to a non-mental plane?

POST: Synesthesia and the deeper nature of qualitative experience.

[POST]

One of the common misconceptions that people make is that one needs a physical brain and physical senses in order to have experience. AKA You cant experience color without eyes, music without ears, smell without a nose etc. As someone who has multiple types of synesthesia i have realized this is not true at all. My main types of synesthesia are associating numbers and letters with colors, associating sound with color, associating color with sound, associating sound with taste, associating color with taste. The more interesting of the two for me is both associating sound with color and associating color with sound because it creates a really weird sensorial feed back loop. In other words in an internal sense, the distinction between color and sound are blurred and may both be the same type of experience filtered through different sensory experiential refractors from my point of view.
Whats really strange though is when i hear a sound which causes an experience of color, i dont see the color with my physical eyes, i feel the color within my sense of being. Same thing when i see a color and associate it with a sound. When i enter an orange room, i will experience the sensation of the note C flat, but i wont physically hear it, i will instead feel the quality of C flatness within my being.
What i've realized is that the idea of color only being a phenomenon associated with seeing and light or music only being a phenomenon associated with hearing and sound waves is yet another aspect of human convention. Orangeness and purpleness are merely qualities of mind beyond the category of seeing and light, because orangeness and purpleness can exist within sound as well as taste, smell, and touch. The five senses merely divide experience into separate categories in the same way a prism turns a white light into the 7 colors of the rainbow.
Here is where it gets really weird thought. Some of these synesthetic experiences i have posses no analogue to this particular phenomenological world. When i taste some sounds, sometimes they cannot be related to any tastes of food in this world, at best i can make vague approximations of sweetness or fruitiness, but there is nothing else like it. Or sometimes color schemes will invoke feelings of notes, chords, and instruments that have no basis in this dimension. I've been thinking today that my synesthesia may be opening up my mind to aspects of experience outside of this world, things thought to be impossible and incomprehensible. perhaps the reason we cant see into these deeper outer experiences is because we cling to the conceptual island called an ego or the idea of being a brain, which in its self creates the limited perception. But my synesthesia seems to be a doorway to some other mode of experience, in that i have these experiences in my mind and being but my five senses have no way to categorize them or fit them within their prism, like trying to fit a triangle through a square peg. I as awareness experience the triangle in my hand but my sense of sight is like the square peg in which it cant be filtered through to create a refracted experience.
What if when we are unconscious in deep sleep, we actually do have experiences, but because we are so rooted in our egos five sense interface, we have nothing to bring back from it. like fitting a triangle through a square peg. But through cultivating a certain type of awareness, maybe even non synesthetes can recognize the qualities of experiences light and color and sound and music as one pure experience. It is in a sense recognizing that one can have these types of experiences outside of sensory experience refractors, and perhaps defining the five senses as a kind of experience limiter, one may access deeper types of dreams and understand a level of being and a type of experience outside of the dimension of material conventionality.

[END OF POST]

So, the "five senses" could simply be a category scheme that we've become attached to, and filter through. This limits what experiences we have, but those limitations aren't inherent to experience at all. We are effectively choosing this channel-streaming.

An article over at Aeon magazine talks about synesthesia being the natural state at birth. Does it get pruned back because we adopt or submit to the notion and experience of separate senses, when of course in "mind" there is no such distinction?

I've experimented with my senses quite a bit, and if I let go of seeing and hearing, it returns to a blended experience of "meaning". As soon as I try to see with my "eyes" though, for instance, my experience turns "eye-shaped" and vision seems "partitioned".

If you go checking for sense separation, I think you imply its presence, and get what you are looking for. I don't have obvious synesthesia, but movements and patterns definitely have "sounds" associated with them, for example, and colours do have a mild texture to them.

So, do you become more synesthesia-ish when tired or relaxed generally?

Q2: i honestly feel more synesthesiaish both when im relaxed, and in a more positive mindstate. Like if im worrying about some inner anxiety, im not noticing the external world as much and hence less associations.
actually the things you described might be a form of synesthesia, as it manifests in many different ways. The thing is, a lot of people who have it don't realize they have it, they just assume everyone else experiences the world the same way they do.

It is I think, but pretty mild. I hear sound effects accompany real life projectiles or for animated gifs, for instance, and the animation on this page about clustering illusions has white-noise/electronic-noise that evolves as the clusters form.

Basically, it's like I do my own real-time Foley work (sound effects) for the ongoing movie of my life. Next up I need to master ADR (overwriting dialogue) for when I don't like what people are saying to me!

I've thought that those two ideas are potentially powerful for a bit of reality-twisting if applied in the correct frame of mind. It's a bit like a New Thought technique.

...

Supposedly, the word "capacitie" was originally used by the poet Thomas Traherne to describe an aware ego-less space in which experience arose (see here), then Douglas Harding took that and used "capacity" in his books:

Pointing Home
... looking inwards, turning the direction of your attention round 180˚ from the objects out there to you the Subject, to the place you are looking out of. Do you see your face? Do you see anything at all there - any colour or shape, any movement?
Looking in to the place where others see my face, I find no colour or shape here. I find boundless capacity or awareness this side of my pointing finger. This capacity is empty, clear, transparent. It is self-evidently awake, aware.
At the same time this capacity is full of everything happening in it: my finger, my view of the scene beyond, sounds, feelings…
I am now seeing Who I really am – seeing the boundless One at the very heart of myself, the One in whom the world is happening.
What do you find? Are you also looking out of this wide-open, crystal clear, awareness?
-- Experiments, headless.org

It's a really nice way of capturing it. It dodges the "potential for/of" problem. You are simply capacity, without qualification.

EDIT: My Spirit by Thomas Traherne here, excerpt:

I felt no dross nor matter in my soul,
No brims nor borders, such as in a bowl.
We see. My essence was capacity,
That felt all things;
The thought that springs
Therefrom’s itself.

*Q1: I think I pretty well explained my objections to defining mind as a capacity in my response to Utthana, but I'll touch on them again here.

1. Potentiality only makes sense in terms of actuality, and vice versa. Like light and darkness. To define mind as potential is incorrect in the same way it is incorrect to define mind as light.
2. A capacity is unchanging for eternity. You change and develop, but your capacity does not. Therefore, you can't be a capacity.*

I'd say that's why it's phrased as "boundless capacity". It's not capacity for a particular things, but open capacity for all experience - it refuses nothing, it has no restrictions. That way in which Traherne uses the term makes clear it is not an opposite: he does not mean capacity is structured or an object; it has no opposite because it is neither one side nor the other. Still, it was just another attempt for an author to use a novel word to imply something unlimited and without duality. These work for a while, then someone suggests the opposite and that it is limiting whilst the true nature of it all is without limitation. There exists no word that can't be shot down for having an opposite.

POST: Free Will and Predestination: Your Tyranny as Freedom for Others

Really been enjoying your post and comments. Your descriptions of the 'ultimate truth' of things is very clear, and that your world is a combination of your intentions-so-far. But also wondering, practically speaking...

You can choose to shift into the reality where that is already happening in their intent and in the process of unfolding. . . By implication, you can force it to be the case that someone falls in love with you freely, or becomes lucid freely, or commits suicide freely.

How does one choose or force, in your understanding? Is it enough to simply make the choice, is it a case of 'allowing' it because it is already your intention, or is there something more specific to do?

For example, how would you force someone to become lucid?

How do you raise your right hand into the air? If you give the (I think, not quite correct) answer that you tighten and loosen certain muscles, then how do you tighten and loosen those muscles?

I think those who move their arms by "tightening and loosening" are like those who think step-by-step to solve a problem. They are intending through graduation rather than intending the result and allowing.

I think that sometimes we have to give ourselves permission (or allow ourselves) to exercise certain intentions, but I think the intention to act is separate from the permission to intend to act.

Hmm. I've previously been unsure about this "choosing your reality all the time" view, but I think in the end it was just a matter of perspective.

• Where there is greater resistance to a direction, one must more deliberately intend.
• Where there is minimal resistance to a direction, simply deciding is sufficient.
• When there is no resistance to a direction, it is effortless and we are unaware of our creation, because we are simply experiencing our beliefs, manifesting spontaneously.

Because the final one involves no conscious act, as it were, I've shied away from calling it creation, but really it's just terminology. Essentially, all manifestation is a matter of adopting beliefs ("inserting and accepting facts" as I have phrased it) and your experiences will subsequently line up. Deciding and intending are just the experience of overcoming some belief push-back or doubt associated with a goal. The actual appearance of creations, the manifestation itself, is always effortless.

Would you agree?

I think the intention to act is separate from the permission to intend to act.

I guess it could have levels. There can be resistance to performing the act at all (resistance to using your power to achieve an outcome) and then the experience of the intention (resistance to the possibility of the desired outcome).

(Making someone lucid) ...ut to decide that, you need to be aware of what beliefs you are manifesting presently and what options you have instead and what they would feel like...

Yes, this makes sense. Forcing someone to become lucid is actually a matter of allowing yourself to experience then becoming lucid. I guess this doesn't need to be a two-step process necessarily. If you asset a new fact ("my fist will be clenched") you will get immediate feedback if there is a problem ("already clenched!"), just by doing the assertion and while pushing through it. Resistance might be factual ("already done!") or belief-based ("that's not possible!"), but either way if there is a barrier to dissolve or move through, it is revealed.

Yes. As a matter of preference, I would shift the emphasis from: "Where there is greater resistance to a direction, one must more deliberately intend." to Where there is greater resistance to a direction, one must more deliberately intend.

Agreed on the change of emphasis, since it better implies the resistance aspect.

It can turn out, quite suddenly, that someone you never suspected was in love with you or was a serial killer or is a master of divination.

Or, plot twist: all three.

We could view ourselves as "extended persons", expanded across a grid of all possibilities. There is an aspect of you corresponding to every possible situation or configuration. Which configuration you end up looking through as your "viewport" is a matter of intention. (Something like this [POST: Meta-switching realities ].)

Sure, that's a valid perspective. I think the ideas of individuals and realities and minds start getting uprooted if we talk like that and I was wanting to write something that was relatively palatable and useful within the context of individuals, realities, and minds.

And it is just a way of thinking about it - in the same way there is no such thing as a timeline, but it's a handy diagrammatic convenience. Intersubjectivity is the biggest stumbling block to acceptance of the dream-world view - are other people real? are actions which involve them ethical? If I am the active entity, is everyone else "hollow"?

Having some way of visualising an arrangement which allows for multiple perspectives where everyone can still get what they want can be helpful I think? Although none can ever be completely satisfactory.

...

If you 'get out of the way' then things will simply continue in accordance with your intentions-so-far, as encoded in your beliefs, habits and expectations. This is not a special state of affairs, therefore. Except that without interference your less firm intentions might fade and stop influencing events. Attribution of different intentions to different 'levels' is just an arbitrary division in thought. There is only one mind, one structure, one experience.

You can't get out of the way of yourself at the level of mind. You're not in the way to begin with. You are just you doing what you are doing.

Actually, I was using that phrase because the poster above used it. Not interfering to me means... well, see below.

What you're talking about is relaxing, which is not you getting out of the way. It is you doing something different. Effort and relaxation are just modes of manifestation that you do.

I disagree here. Given that we are not talking about the physical here! You can 'cease creating' or 'cease adjusting your creation'. Since what you created was created with persistence - momentum and inertia - it doesn't just disappear. However, doing this leaves you with whatever patterns you've created within yourself so far, perhaps unintentionally (as in, unwittingly). So it's not a return to some special state. Although it may allow you to see where you are more clearly. Effort and relaxation are experiences within mind - they are content. So that's not what I'm talking about. It's more akin to taking a break from splashing the water.

At every moment, you are maintaining the appearance of 'stable' things...

All content is manifested (more generally, all experience is manifested), for sure. And I get where you are coming from now. Along the line of, for instance, I can manifest the property of stability of experience, without being specific as to the content - just as I can manifest time going fast or slow, without adjusting the speed of individual apparent events.

The problem is that ordinarily we think that water has an actual natural way of behaving when we don't interfere... What I'm suggesting is that you see those rules as tentative commitments like external rules of reality.

Actually, water was a bad analogy because it's dynamic, it was that or the 'blanket metaphor'. But there's no thorough analogy really I suppose - - -

So yes, at the ultimate level I agree with you. At the ultimate level (excuse the use of the metaphor) there is no structure or non-structural - it's the "non-material material". It has no natural trajectory, because it is not a thing, and there is no context. I was still talking within our commenter's terms, I suppose.

When I was referring to 'not interfering with yourself', I was not so bound up with mental and physical aspects and 'relaxation', but you are right that I was starting from something structural beyond simple 'open awareness' - I was beginning with the existence of the properties of persistence and momentum, although unattached to a particular object, and the notion of a 'held perspective'. Our original commenter was talking about dropping direct manipulation, but was really only dropping down a 'level' - basically identifying with the 'space' in which content appears while not interfering with (i.e. actually continuing to identify with and accept) any patterns that were already in motion. Treating them as special. Then, letting-go further drops you out of those patterns also. A further letting go might rid you of persistence. (Obviously, 'letting go' is a metaphor for a certain intended effect.)

What's interesting is that we can have aspects of creation that are apparently completely invisible to ourselves. Basically, 'facts in the world' that have an influence, but become so accepted that you just don't see them. Simple continuity being one of them?

...

It's never going to be easy. As soon as you start talking about anything other than 'formless awareness', you are talking about manifestation. And each person lives in a manifested world which matches their beliefs, which seem self-evidently true. Whatever you say will seem incorrect in their world, unless they are entertaining doubts. So you try and refer back to some more basic level - ideally just awareness, but then how to communicate that to someone who has thought and experienced only in terms of form, and particular building blocks at that?

So really we do just communicate with ourselves, to improve our own understanding (as ourselves and as other people). In the end, it's just talk, and if people aren't willing to go the distance with direct experimentation or full commitment, they'll just have 'Conceptual Truth' (a coherent thought system) but no corresponding 'Direct Truth'.

Awareness is only a reflective or beholding property of mind. I believe you're simplifying things too far by going for awareness as the common base. The simplest basis that still works adequately is mind, not awareness.

Which just highlights the difficulty with words. Depending on who I'm talking to, the words "consciousness", "awareness", "mind", "larger mind", "higher self" become appropriate - even if not appropriate to me.

And the way you used "awareness" just now would be replaced with "attention" or "attending" or "self-awareness/consciousness", again depending.

The problem with "mind" is that everyday folk often use that word for "their thoughts and feelings".

TL;DR: There is no universal word for the "common base", and all words imply an object or division when there is none. Although maybe we can just call it... The Common Base. Other traditions call it The Ground of Being, etc.

Yes, ordinary people have an incorrect view of what mind really is. But intuitively calling their attention to their own mind is bull's eye anyway

Yes, this is why in-person dialogue works best. You can detect how they are interpreting, and also refer directly to actual experiences than talking in the abstract.

Awareness is not overtly associated with memory the way mind is. Awareness is not associated with making decisions, volitional activity, the way mind is.

I often end up starting with "awareness" because it has no connotations, relatively speaking, except with "being aware". You can then add in all the other structured goodies. Begin with something like the passive process story of random experience leaving memory in turn affecting experience, and then build up to the "active", shape-changing stuff. Depending on the discussion.

On some abstract level there is ineliminable division. For example, when you assert lack of division, you're separating it from the possibility of division. So you're employing discriminatory, segmenting awareness here.

Well, exactly - I even went too far by using further words. "Not division, not unity" would be more accurate. And even then, that implies it cannot be, which is not correct...

All words have wiggle-room unfortunately. Take "belief". It is common now for people to take "beliefs" to be whatever story they say to themselves and others to make themselves feel better. Hence, "positive thinking" and The Secret. But that's not believing - that's hoping, and self-deception.

Yea, it has a connotation of passivity

Which is perfect, as a starting point.

belief is still a great term that should be used.

Not suggesting it shouldn't be used; just suggesting it needs to be redefined. As you say, understanding the true nature of belief is vital. Both of which highlight something important: communication of truth can rarely happen all at once; we often need to go via a series of half-truth stepping stones to build the bridge from people's initial (mis)understanding.

"Which is perfect, as a starting point"; I don't agree.

That's your lack of imagination. ;-)

Passive experience is the perfect starting point because that's where most people begin: experience leaving traces informing experience, while being unaware of it, assuming their world is "external". You can observe this and gain an understanding of the mechanism. From there, you can understand what reforming the world means: reforming yourself. Of course, that takes a but if courage. Belief is then redefined from "thoughts I have about stuff" to the actual structures which are affecting my experience / defining my world. In short, the memories or "facts" I allow. It's then clear what it means to change your world and how to accomplish this - and why some of the commonly promoted techniques usually do not work.

I agree, but I hope this isn't an excuse to give some seriously substandard ideas to newbies. It's wrong. Some newbies are actually highly seasoned practitioners from past lives and deserve better.

Which is why there is no single approach, and dialogues work best. There's no single best path because that implies a single starting point. As you imply, even getting someone at birth does not mean you can use a general approach!

It's got to be collaborative. And if people won't actually try to assert modifications to their world, if they only want to talk about it - fun though that can be, there's going to be little progress, beyond the benefit of passive absorption of new conceptual frameworks tweaking experience a bit.

What you're doing is assuming everyone is a moron and first start them with a flawed idea. Bad! You're following a model of school education where knowledge is given linearly from simple to more complex, building up and up. That's ineffective and slow.

You're totally wrong. ;-) It's not about people being morons, it's about being clear in your communication and building up from the broad picture - so you don't have to stop halfway and redefine what was meant by words like "belief" and "awareness". It's not slow, it's actually quicker than backtracking. If you're on the same pare, progress is fast because you get straight to the meat of the matter.

Spira, meanwhile, doesn't have a model, he simply has a process which points out that you are not the "small self". It seems to work well. He doesn't seem interested in modifying the world after that, so those interested in making further changes must look elsewhere. But he's not selling "powers" or a metaphysics, and is pretty clear he is not personally interested in having a theory or a method. He's good at what he does; he's no good at what he doesn't do. Fair enough.

So, give me "the most sublime conception", in your best words.

There are amazing people out there and you give them 1 to start?

I think I was pretty clear that in a dialogue you find your common ground quickly and progress from there? That's the approach of mutual respect. You keep suggesting that I'm suggesting a ground level, one-way broadcast type of thing when I'm not. You're arguing against a point of view that I am not actually advocating.

EDIT: Ah. See, they're not stages I'm describing.

As far as I'm concerned, the quicker we get to the good stuff the better - I'm not interested in being a teacher, I want to acquire additional tools - but we can always learn better ways to communicate the other stuff. I do however like your quote.

[QUOTE]

Here's what Vimalakirti Nirdesa says about this:
Purna replied, "Lord, I am indeed reluctant to go to this good man to inquire about his illness. Why? Lord, I remember one day, when I was teaching the Dharma to some young monks in the great forest, the Licchavi Vimalakirti came there and said to me, 'Reverend Purna, first concentrate yourself, regard the minds of these young bhikshus, and then teach them the Dharma! Do not put rotten food into a jeweled bowl! First understand the inclinations of these monks, and do not confuse priceless sapphires with glass beads!
"'Reverend Purna, without examining the spiritual faculties of living beings, do not presume upon the one-sidedness of their faculties; do not wound those who are without wounds; do not impose a narrow path upon those who aspire to a great path; do not try to pour the great ocean into the hoof-print of an ox; do not try to put Mount Sumeru into a grain of mustard; do not confuse the brilliance of the sun with the light of a glowworm; and do not expose those who admire the roar of a lion to the howl of a jackal!
"'Reverend Purna, all these monks were formerly engaged in the Mahayana but have forgotten the spirit of enlightenment. So do not instruct them in the disciple-vehicle. The disciple-vehicle is not ultimately valid, and you disciples are like men blind from birth, in regard to recognition of the degrees of the spiritual faculties of living beings.'

[END OF QUOTE]

(It does seem to me that you break this rule though - we often seem to reset to talking about The Common Ground as if one of us doesn't get it.)

I have it. In your language what you call "Common Ground" is just a stuck thought.

We are not seriously going to start discussing the phrase "Common Ground" when that phrase came from a discussion about there not being any suitable phrases so might as well just pick one like "Common Ground", are we?

It's not a "stuck thought" for me, although that is a good way to describe it when someone actually has a conception of the 'truth' that they attend to as fact, rather than a pointer to fact.

Is what you're pointing to a phenomenon (an experience)?

No. When experiences are dissolved, it is that-which-isn't-coloured-by-experience-anymore (it's not even "left', strictly speaking).

Potential is that which you know but don't experience... You've been saying "describe experience" like once or twice recently

I should be clear that by "experience" I mean it in its broadest sense. Not sights, sounds, and so on. "Knowing" is included too.

My problem with the "infinite potential" thing is that you can't know infinite potential as such. I can know potential from here, but not infinite potential. As with the "background" thing, to speak is to say too much: it is openness, a lack of limitation.

Non-production means whatever is manifest it manifests only 99.999% and never 100%. And non-destruction means whatever vanishes, it doesn't vanish to 0%, but vanishes to 0.0001%.

Whatever is "destroyed" (or dissolved) never truly vanishes, I agree. Memory, in its broadest sense, always persists. There is always a trace of existence. I disagree with the other, though. Unless you can answer me: What is 0.001% of infinity? Better to say: 100% of what manifests (as knowledge or experience) is manifest. What is not manifest (as knowledge or experience) simply cannot be spoken of.

Oh, I can do it in so many ways.

All good phrasings! Although maybe "God in whole and in part". Excellent.

So, given that intellectual understanding, how does you describe how to absorb it as a belief, and utilise it to change one's world?

My Spin

All is awareness. Awareness is neither form nor formless, it is simply aware. This is what you truly are.

Experiences are patterns arising in awareness. Experiences leave traces (via inertia / memory effect) in awareness. Those traces in-form subsequent experiences, and so on. This process is passive (although the creation of inertia was not necessarily). This is equivalent to the formation of habit and stability; this is equivalent to belief and expectation. These constitute the "facts of your world". To change your experiences, therefore, you must adjust or insert facts. This is equivalent to adopting new beliefs. It is not sufficient to generate thoughts-about these facts, you must viscerally know them to be absolutely true. This is done by "Active Assertion" of those facts; by becoming a world in which they are true. The whole structure of the universe is present right now, enfolded into awareness and directly accessible in the form of your "felt-sense" of the world. This process is greatly assisted by ceasing to identify with the content of experience, adopting a state of complete allowing. Identifying with an aspect of experience is equivalent to "holding on" to that pattern. At a minimum, this will result in resistance to change; at worst it will re-assert the existing pattern and entrench it further.

(Obviously skipping over some steps and detail here.)

Your Spin

Pretty similar, although probably differ in the approach details.

I tend to skip the contemplation and try to go directly for the target by assertion. Hence, say, that Overwriting Yourself exercise. The visceral aspect is important in my approach, because that is aligning your direct-knowing rather than just your thinking-about.

Couple of questions:

• How do you tell when beliefs have shifted? By experiences seeming more in line with your contemplations?
• After that, how do you approach making more direct, manifestation-like changes?

Great, here we go:

If all is awareness, what about the unconscious content that's below the level of awareness?

This is why we need to be careful. Awareness's only property is being aware. However, that doesn't mean everything is perceived as an image, sound, feeling all the time. So called "unconscious content" is with you right now, enfolded as the felt-sense.

If all is awareness, and you describe awareness as a mostly passive process, why do you suddenly talk about fact insertion? What is the non-passive element that allows for something as creative and imaginative as fact insertion? You jump to fact insertion without introducing that element explicitly.

I presented the connection between experience-memory-experience first, because it establishes how habits of experience are formed. Then I move on to inserting facts. In a longer description, I'd have talked more about "intention" and then linked that to modifying the felt-sense or particular components of it. That would be the step between the two. Also explore the difference between creating one-off experiences (single event fact) and creating habits (more general facts), and how even thinking repeatedly about something does establish an element of habit. Of course, the "passive" mode is actually the result of a previous creation, but it can be easier to say "here is the simplest rule of the world" and then "here is how we use that". Because realistically, most people don't want to remove the memory effect, they want to leverage it.

How can facts be inserted? Are facts mental fabrications to begin with? In this case they can be inserted, but also, in this same case facts aren't actually factual because they'd be subjective...

"Fact insertion" is basically the name for fully becoming a particular fact, taking an idea and making it true. It's the difference between thinking-about and directly-being. Of course, we're operating on the assumption that everything (all there is) is subjective. In this sense, fact insertion is really a change of location, from over here (apparent internal) to over there (apparent external) in the long run. Practically speaking, it's the transformation from an idea into the felt-sense, which will subsequently manifest 'over there' depending on the factual details.

If the universe is only a manifest set of coherent facts, this leaves out latent potential (a set of all possible alternative facts) which would then have to be outside the universe? Seems clumsy.

The latent isn't existent until it is conceived of, in this description. Possibilities are infinite, but they're not just sat there in a big list waiting to be read. It can be visualised that way, but there is not a pre-made grid of all possible configurations - unless you go looking for such a thing, perhaps.

By "universe" - actually, it's better just to say "world". And world is the set of active facts and also memories. The felt-sense is the world in its entirety - non-local and non-temporal.

If I were to say something similar, I'd say the manifest (which you call 'the universe') and the latent potential are directly present in your own mind. This second half would be important to mention.

I'd go with that, so long as the 'latent potential' isn't seen as pre-made (we could argue this point I guess). I see it more like a creative ability, generative rather than prescriptive. That's how it seems anyway.

To me it sounds like you don't understand the nature of contemplation if you think you can skip it.

In the context of my original comment, I was trying to get at the idea that you don't have to individually uncover and dissolve your beliefs necessarily, if you find you can instead assert a new fact and have it become accepted truth. (If that doesn't work of course, then you have to feel out why.)

Obviously, contemplation is what leads us to be able to say the above in the first place! It's just not necessarily a required component for individual manifestations/whatever.

This in my way of thinking is the second leg of the two legged system: contemplation and meditation. Meditation is precisely adjusting of the facts in my view. Because what I describe as "meditation" is an active, magickal process and not just sitting around like a dead vegetable.

Right. Really I'm just implicitly saying that I'm talking about the second leg, and the first leg was completed 'some time ago' (or you've accepted someone else's conclusions on faith). But with some first leg mixed in - because if there is some dissolving going on while you assert, because if there is resistance and it then fades, you have basically been doing a meditation/dissolving on a limited belief without necessarily deciding to in advance.

Yes, but also by intuition, which you call "felt-sense" which is a very nice term in my view.

Yes. It's basically "knowing".

I contemplate the qualities of will. After a long time of this, I realize that will is always ever-successful in all its ultimate aims....

Right, that was really good. And your notion of "obstacles" is the resistance the felt-sense gives as resistance - contrary facts. Which may or may not be addressed.

In fact contemplation of the nature of the will can be said to dissolve the obstacle of the felt-sense that will is limited in scope and can only legitimately intend a certain narrow class of transformations instead of all conceivable ones.

Yes. One can insert a meta-fact (actually this must happen to some degree) of the notion that "this is a dream-like world and my Will always operates successfully" or somesuch.

Assertion: "It is a fact that facts of the world can be altered simply by assertion!"

Well, I'm so pleased my existence is approved! ;-) Well, the point of this is to have a discussion, to improve all our efforts.

Yes, belief is what dictates what you experience as the world - which includes the thoughts and actions you experience "doing", plus the forms and events which arise in the "environment".

It would be you redefining for others what was meant by the word "belief", right? The thing-in-itself is left untouched of course. They seem to be the same thing, but I like your phrasing. Pointing out a misconception, which changes the idea, or understanding, that the word points to. "Redefining" could be misconstrued as changing the definition without re-pointing to a particular aspect of reality.

I don't want to discard my reasoning ability. I want to leverage it. This is why contemplation is important. Contemplation synchronizes reasoning with experience,

That's fine, nothing against that. I'm all for the intellectual approach. It provides ideas, new avenues, which can all be applied or used as targets. And, y'know, it's all about personal preference too.

"Really I'm just implicitly saying that I'm talking about the second leg, and the first leg was completed 'some time ago' (or you've accepted someone else's conclusions on faith)."
Again this tendency surfaces. It's your tendency to think linearly in a step-by-step fashion...

Here you're off base. In that paragraph, I'm talking about 'making the change'. How you've come to decide to make a certain change, well that's a matter of preference or past contemplation - whatever. Also, assertion highlights any counter-view you might have against your target, so it can be dissolved at that moment, rather than before. It's a matter of preference really.

A lot of these processes run in parallel. Your contemplation may lead or your magickal transformation may be outpacing your contemplation, but these various processes of transformation of mentality run concurrently and non-linearly.

Sure. But it's easier to talk about things one at a time. It's like flying a helicopter: you've got multiple controls, and changing any one setting affects the others, so you're constantly shifting between approaches.

Yes! But I like how you say "felt-sense" because "knowing" is slightly washed out

Yeah, "knowing" has become fairly meaningless. And by "felt-sense" I mean something very specific.

Now, some time ago you were saying potential doesn't actually exist. It's time to remember what you said about the subtle aspect of awareness.

Potential as a 'pre-made path', yes. As a structure it isn't already there. Of course, awareness itself is infinite potential, infinite creativity. So anything could happen, is possible.

Nothing can ever be missing from latent potential such that it'd need to be added later on.

Right. Because awareness could take on absolutely any pattern at any time. I enjoyed your 99.9% computer screen imagery!

... you think decision is an event in time...

The decision is experienced as an event in time; the result or 'inserted fact' is true forever in all directions. "Decision" is just a name I'm giving to adjusting a fact of reality in this case. In effect, it becomes timeless itself because the decision does not persist, only the deciding.

Sure, but you don't have to give an impression, repeatedly, that they actually happen one at a time.

I wouldn't have thought you would have ended up with such an impression.

However, pre-made paths do exist to some small extent as potential. I call those "destinies."

Hmm. Okay, so your idea of "destiny" would in my approach be the inserting of a fact dated for the future ("Next Thursday I will discover a yacht") or just a general ongoing fact of the world ("I am a discoverer of yachts"). In both cases the fact is true now, because it is timeless, even though the corresponding experiences may apparently lie in the future.

"As a structure it isn't already there."
All possible structures exist as all-potential. Potential refers to all cognizables that are cognizable in principle. Since structure is something that we can cognize, yes, it's part of potential.

I still disagree with this. Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but it conjures up for me an image of a whole set of possibilities - options, from which a choice is made. I do not think those options exist prior to us asking for them; they arise 'creatively' and cannot be predicted. That is from experience (apparent). There is no pre-made map of the territory. Am I misunderstanding you?

(Practically speaking, I don't think it makes a difference, so long as their is no apparent limit to the possibilities in effect.)

So they are potential, but also pre-made in a sense, since they are preferentially elevated from other possible experiences that also lie in potential.

Neville Goddard would describe this as setting up a new deterministic path - but one that you could reshape, redetermine, at any point. Deterministic, but not fatalistic.

Oh, yea, they do exist prior to us asking for them.

In what sense do you think they exist prior to asking? (I am not thinking of a coherent and cohesive space.)

It works because all possible assumptions exist in seed form. When you water them with your resolve and attention, they spout.

Clumsy. How did all these "seeds" come to be? It is not required. By starting to act as if something is true, you have implied a fact, created a belief, and that is the seed, the pattern, which shapes ongoing experience. The more interesting question is: How did you get the idea for that particular "something"? Where did that idea come from?

Your final answer is the answer for "potential" too:

Potential is the potential for anything, not specific things. Potential isn't a thing, it's the absence of a thing: the absence of perimeters and limitations.

Potential isn't a set of things as you imagine. It isn't a set of pots, rather, it's a set of all types of curves, shines, volumes, etc. And it's infinite. It isn't things, but all things exist in it as well. But if you just see things in it, that's wrong. Potential that has only things and nothing else is incomplete.

Doesn't sound like a very useful description. In what sense is any of that actually experienced?

Q: For example, you see a cup on the table, but the cup could be somewhere else too, but isn't. And yet this sense that it could be somewhere else but isn't is integral to your perception of the cup relative to everything else. This is near potential, which is very easy to talk about, but most people don't think about it. Far potential is harder.
Look at your experience now. You have a sense of tomorrow even though it hasn't happened yet. But there is a felt-sense that tomorrow is "out there", definitely coming. That too is potential. Near potential.
Consider what it means for cognition to change. First what is cognition? If you start with something small, like a cup, what is it? What's implied in it? Spacial parameters, colors, sound, taste if you should be crazy enough to bite off its ceramic, a sense of resistance when touched, a history of how it came about, like if it's a ceramic cup, then this implies clay, and clay implies Earth, and so on. These contexts sprawl infinitely. If you follow them up first you navigate all the conventional and easy to understand stuff, but eventually you get into weirdness.
For example, because all cognition is optional, we can conclude that the orderly sense we get from time can be replaced by a disorderly one. That's weird. And yet we know what is orderly because we know what is disorderly. Even if you don't experience any disorder for 3 long aeons, you need that knowledge to cognize order.
It's like you know what light is because you know what dark is, and vice versa. So if you were in a perfectly dark room for 3 long aeons, you'd be able to cognize it as dark, dark, dark, for 3 long aeons, without the tiniest ray of light anywhere. This is possible because you know about the potential of light. So without light actually being present, just your knowledge of potential shapes the cognition you have.
Cognitions are infinite, limitless. They include familiar things and unfamiliar. Orderly and disorderly. Contemplate what infinity means. For one thing, it means if you can conceive of it, it's there, included. And it also means your ability to conceive of things will never match infinity, because you conceive only via near potential, never far. You can see just a little bit beyond the horizon of what's familiar. That's all still near potential. Far potential is unknown, and even that unknown is needed to cognize and give shape to the known.
Edit: I forgot to explain change. Basically cognition is hard to separate into parts, but one arbitrary way we could think of it is as a moment in time. One cognition one moment. So each cognition is a snapshot of the known universe. How can it change? In fact, if it doesn't change, how can this be cognized? If something appears not to change, it means you have to know it can change, and yet it doesn't. This knowing what could be but isn't, is knowledge of potential, which is needed to experience change or constancy.

Interesting description.

Isn't this a subtle form of "belief"? In the sense that, what you have described isn't infinite possibility, so much as possibility implied by current and previous experience".

Cognition and parts: I guess there are no "parts" really, as there are no "moments" or "relationships", fundamentally - but one step up from that, there are relative parts and therefore relative positions, relationships. Without the (apparent) division, there can be no conception of difference, of change.

Going further: without the knowledge of unity, we wouldn't cognize division, but without the knowledge of division we wouldn't cognize unity.

Is unity really the opposite of division? Perhaps. But "unity" still implies an object, with edges. If all division ceases, what remains is not unity. Not-unity.

EDIT: And meant to say, you have described the experience of enfolded possibility, but not indicated how or if you can experience infinite possibility. You are just saying it is so, without evidence.

I think unity implies an opposite and I think it is still a subtle object. How could delineations ever be soften to the extent that objects disappear? It's a bit Zeno.

You can't experience it, but you still know it at all times. It's not obvious because it's the background against which apparent things acquire their meanings.

Right. Infinite possibility just means there is no underlying constraining structure. It is not a set of possibilities, infinite or otherwise - it is an absence of impossibilities, which is different. I don't think divisions turn into unity; they just dissolve as divisions, leaving the background. g'Night!

"Infinite possibility just means there is no underlying constraining structure." That's part of it. It also means infinite capability. Infinite potential has a positive meaning, and not just negative.

But it does matter that we define it in one direction and not an other. We might just say "absolute freedom" and dodge the whole issue. But if we understand "infinite potential" as being creation-to, rather than selection-from, then all is well.

When divisions dissolve background is not something that's left over, and I think you know why not. I hope. I know this point experientially and intellectually.

Haha, I knew when I typed that word that you'd pick up on it. Sloppy terminology from me! The Common Ground. But not "unity". Maybe we need a symbol. Like what Prince did.

You can't create-to something that isn't available for that purpose.

We should keep the levels right here. Actually, I think we wrapped this up previously and I just mis-phrased? My bad. Selection-from the opportunities implied by present experience and creation-to them. I've lost the thread, but I think my original point was that there's not some vast list out there of possible futures that we choose from; however the moment implies possibilities and overall they are not numerical constrained, so our views join up in the end.

The ground is in some sense the mind itself, however the mind isn't like Earth...

Yeah, "The Common Ground" doesn't mean "ground" in the way of "platform" or "earth". As I think we already discussed, it simply fulfils the need to have a phrase that basically doesn't say anything about that-which-cannot-have-anything-said-about-it. Not unity, not division, not this, not that, and yet all this and all that, etc, etc. So long as we understand what each other (doesn't) mean, all is well.

You don't understand what infinity means.

I do. And, effectively, it means the same as being undefined in this case. Infinite degrees of freedom is just freedom.

Nothing is missing or absent from "just freedom."

Quite so. It has no degrees, for degrees are limitation. The word becomes meaningless. (This is fun, but we both know what we mean I think.)

It has all possible degrees and all possible limitations. If it had no limitations -- that would be a limitation. In fact, limitlessness isn't absence of limitations, but your ability to choose your own limitations. And we're choosing them from an infinite pool.

How many sectors in a circle?

Infinity.

How much space in a circle?

As much or as little as you like.

How so?

Well, how big is your chair? If it's tiny, you can put lots of them in that circle. If it's huge, then not even one. If pay most of your attention to what's outside the circle, the circle is not even a dot, it's invisible. If you narrow your attention to what's inside the circle, you may not even be aware of its perimeter, thus again, the circle vanishes.

But that's using "chair" as a unit of measurement, surely.
Space is "uncountable".

If you say space is uncountable, it's like space is prohibiting counting. Space accommodates counting, but it's not restricted to any specific set of counting methods.

Space isn't doing anything (and by this I'm meaning the example of the space within the circle). You can count other things across a distance, but you can't count space itself. I can count the number of wooden metre sticks which bridge the gap between one side of the circle and another - but that's me counting metre sticks, not space. Actually, you can't count the extent of any object. You can only count the number of other objects adjacent to it.

Counting is pretty arbitrary. Since there is no strict requirement for it, you can do it whenever and whatever.

Man, you're one of those free-counters, aren't you! The counting equivalent of those Yosemite boys. We've drifted off topic really; my fault. I think the original point was going to be something along the lines of discussing the process of bringing things into "objectdom", but I've lost the thread now.

Healing:

I'd be interested to hear your take on that. Some people - here - seem to be all about trying to actually interact with "cells" and so on. Others just do a broader intention for the result, rather than trying to engage with the problem in detail. Traditions like Hoʻoponopono treat the outer world as reflections of our inner selves. So if you want to heal a hospital full of mental patients, you sit back in your office and contemplate what aspects of yourself they represent - heal thyself!. Which is a bit more like subjective idealism.

State of Zero
After Simeona's passing in 1992, her former student and administrator Ihaleakala Hew Len, co-authored a book with Joe Vitale called Zero Limits referring to Simeona's hoʻoponopono teachings. Len makes no claim to be a kahuna. In contrast to Simeona's teachings, the book brings the new idea that the main objective of hoʻoponopono is getting to "the state of Zero, where we would have zero limits. No memories. No identity."
To reach this state, which Len called 'Self-I-Dentity', one has to repeat constantly, according to Joe Vitale's interpretation, the mantra, "I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you." It is based on Len's idea of 100% responsibility,taking responsibility for everyone's actions (once again according to Joe Vitale's interpretation), not only for one's own. If one would take complete responsibility for one's life, then everything one sees, hears, tastes, touches, or in any way experiences would be one's responsibility because it is in one's life. The problem would not be with our external reality, it would be with ourselves.
To change our reality, we would have to change ourselves. Total Responsibility, according to Hew Len, advocates that everything exists as a projection from inside the human being. As such, it is similar to the philosophy of solipsism, but differs in that it does not deny the reality of the consciousness of others. Instead, it views all consciousness as part of the whole, so using parts of the idea of holism: any error that a person clears in their own consciousness should be cleared for everyone.
-- Wikipedia. Related book: Zero Limits, Joe Vitale

I've got a couple of things to write up - Problems Solve Themselves and Magick is Memory - but just not had much time to think them through and type 'em out.

Meanwhile I re-read a Philip K Dick short story the other day (I know you love him) and it has a nice metaphor for reality editing (posted it here).

In the story, the main character discovers a punched paper tape loop inside him. Experimenting with adjusting it, he finds that changing the pattern changes his external reality. The punched paper holes are akin to the memory structures of our minds. Tape over the hole (memory of belief) associated with chairs, then they'd not only be uncountable, they would be un-anything.

It's quite a good story for introduction people to the idea: what if editing ourselves edits the world?

...

[QUOTE]

The Buddha said, "Noble sons, a buddha-field of bodhisattvas is a field of living beings. Why so? A bodhisattva embraces a buddha-field to the same extent that he causes the development of living beings. He embraces a buddha-field to the same extent that living beings become disciplined. He embraces a buddha-field to the same extent that, through entrance into a buddha-field, living beings are introduced to the buddha-gnosis. He embraces a buddha-field to the same extent that, through entrance into that buddha-field, living beings increase their holy spiritual faculties. Why so? Noble son, a buddha-field of bodhisattvas springs from the aims of living beings.
"For example, Ratnakara, should one wish to build in empty space, one might go ahead in spite of the fact that it is not possible to build or to adorn anything in empty space. In just the same way, should a bodhisattva, who knows full well that all things are like empty space, wish to build a buddha-field in order to develop living beings, he might go ahead, in spite of the fact that it is not possible to build or to adorn a buddha-field in empty space.

[END OF QUOTE]

Well, it was worth our tail-end discussion after all, then.

Yeah, I'm getting bored of agreement. Need to stirs things up again soon. Gonna find me some outrageous beliefs for next time which are completely unsupportable - and yet I shall. All politicians must be Tibetan monks in disguise then. They seem to be able to justify anything - and then justify the opposite a month later.

We can be quite good at coming up with justification for what we want to do, for instance, even if the argument for doing it is itself nonsense. Choose an end point, find a path to it. That's basically what politicians do as a job.

Additional thoughts from earlier:

Is the final state of the mage the non-mage, or "magelessness"?

To be completely flexible, we have to let go of all patterns, all content. No structure, no memory (in the sense of habits), no beliefs. Those correspond to resistance. Only when there is no resistance encountered at all to intention or decision or desire will we have reached the ideal state. (We've touched a little on this before earlier in the thread of course.)

However, when we reach that state, of complete effortlessness, there would be no gap between wanting and getting. There would just be having. So does the idea of manifesting or manipulating the world - having power - even mean anything anymore at that stage? It would be a world completely aligned with your desires. There would be no 'magick' to be done. You would simply be receiving, with no asking required.

Being insistent on consistently letting go is not flexibility. That's renunciatory purism. Flexibility is when you let go or not, depending on what's wise. Just my 2c.

I don't mean it in hard-line way. We are free to adopt or dismiss patterns as we wish! I mean it more as the most reduced state, structurally and habitually, the apparent world could become. After a while, the first thing you'd do is re-introduce some structure again.

Thinking that mages manipulate things to get stuff is so materialistic. How about dancing.

Getting stuff is materialistic, having experiences with stuff less so. If we are about the experiences, then we are "dancing with yachts" rather than owning them. And I agree with your "art" comment. Magick should be "play" as well as "purpose".

Well, to the extent we're mired in conventionality our magick will not always be art. For example, if I have a disease I want to heal, that's not art. That's very utilitarian. There is no shame in that because I am not yet resolved to live as a perfect being.

Yes, that's why I said "as well as purpose". Because while there can always be an art aspect, sometimes there's just stuff that needs sorting.

Yes. Sometimes when I agree, I don't say I agree, but I just write a blurb that almost restates the same thing you said in my own words. It just means I agree.

Agreed.

...

Q: Sure, I accept everything you say as being true. But I also happen to believe that our minds and 'forcing' things have little to do with it. An experience is happening. It was happening just fine when we were small and our minds were just starting to develop. Our minds then were not shaping the experience but a result of the experience. Decisions certainly were being made, but not at the level of the mind. I see that as mostly being true even now. I don't see the manifestation you describe as something we can "do". Rather I see it as getting the mind "out of the way" so that it does not "interfere" with our "greater intent". That is "alignment". Anyway, when you talk motivations and manifestations, it is important to keep in mind what purpose and context they serve. That will define the boundaries and limitations.

Are you referring to "God's Will" here?

What is the nature of our "greater intent"? Is it some pre-birth intention by which we set ourselves in motion, but do not recall?

In that case, any direct interference we indulge in now would mean pushing against our own chosen purpose, our original desire. Instead of "asking" mode, we should rest in "receive" mode.

Q: I believe we grow in two phases. the first is to expand our imagination (everything is imagination) and the second phase is to turn that expansion into a stable reality experience. This cycle repeats forever, or as long as the desire for "experience" remains. We have intent, everything we are a part of has intent, existence has intent. The question is which intent are we trying to fulfill? Are we being who we are, or who our environment wants us to be? Both are valid types of experiences.

And, on intent, are we free to intend absolutely anything - both aligned with our selves or not - and those intentions have equal power?

In the context of "all realities exist" power would be the ability to to bring about a specific reality experience - reality selection.

Yes. So the question would be, is there something special about our original state/path, or are we free to change ourselves (beliefs) as we like, and adopt any path. Do we have a "destiny" at all, other than the intentions or end-points we set for ourselves?

what we "claim" are beliefs are also thought patterns that arise

Well, I agree with this - the word "belief" gets somewhat misused, perhaps. I see beliefs as the way you mind is structured at that moment. Thoughts that arise and events that occur will tend to be in alignment with those "beliefs" (structurings of mind). I see these structures as a feedback loop. Experiences arise (events and thoughts) which leave traces which in turn seed experiences, on forever and stabilising. Unless we use intention to change this, either indirectly (choosing experiences or creating thoughts which leave traces, changing your world gradually) or directly (amending the traces themselves, changing your world dramatically as a one-off event or a new general rule).

Often people talk of one's "True Nature" as a special thing. Are we born with a base structure that gets polluted over time? Or is there really no such base structure? The idea that we can adjust our beliefs suggests we can do anything. Although... we do have a base structure of "being a human, from these parents and in this environment".

The things we want to "learn" are desires we have that conflict directly with this resistance. The learning process is not about the achievement of a goal but in overcoming resistance.

That's a nice way to think of it. I am fond of the idea that desires are just parts of our nature that we have a resistance against, and so are not yet manifest in our experience. (Nobody ever had a desire for something they were already experiencing...)

...

Don't confuse manifestations as existing separately.

Hmm, I don't. I say "in whole and in part" because, like it or not, we might be the whole, but we also simultaneously experience (the illusion of) being a part of the whole. That's why constantly telling people "they are God" doesn't help them very much. "Great! I accept it! But how come I'm still little me?"

Yes, all there is is mind, and all appears within it, with no fundamental division or separation. And you can directly experience this. But most people don't, and wouldn't see how to, because in experience it seems obvious we are separate, until we investigate it in a certain way or make the change deliberately.

To be honest, I don't think we have much to reveal to each other in terms of "the basic understanding", only wording - how we phrase things among ourselves, and how we explain it to others. But it's pretty apparent that this leads us to the "two truths", where using one view in a discussion based on the other is like saying something that is true but sounds false, or vice versa. I kinda hoped to uncover a way to join the two.

EDIT: The context of that discussion was about the wording, rather than the understanding, in other words.

Lots to explore in terms of what that means for life, in meaning and practice though. Hence "practical" exercises are something I'm keen on.

I'm coming to think that the "right wording" is often the phrasing that leaves something out or doesn't quite line up - thereby revealing a gap through which the plummet into the abyss is revealed. So to speak!

Logical structures are castles in the sky, perhaps: they consist of organised pathways we can wander round, seeking to understand the basis of reality, but you actually have to jump off the track to experience the true underlying. To lead someone to understanding, you might have to give them a nudge, or place them on a path that goes nowhere, terminating in mid-air...

A good example is the whole "objects are transparent" insight - that sights and sounds float in awareness, but also are awareness, which means they aren't really any-thing. In words, each description misleads and excludes the other - only by leading to the gap between descriptions, to the experience it points to, can the meaning be truly grasped. (i.e. The meaning must be experienced, known directly, rather than thought-about.)

You're not wrong, and I suspect this has been known for a very long time. It seems to be the basic principle behind the koan, or the finger-and-the-moon, and there's even the likes of this as far back as the Vedas.

Agreed. That's the origin of the "two truths", etc, I think. I

It's only when you try to work around the language yourself that it becomes clear how potentially insurmountable it is. You can "feel-know" it and its complete simplicity, but you can't tell anyone who doesn't already know... because it won't make logical sense and they'll just think about it.

...

I like the idea of a package word. I view it ("you") as problematic in that it implies a 'perimeter' which does not actually exist - but all words do this, whether spatially (nouns) or temporally (verbs).

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

[POST]

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

[END OF POST]

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

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

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

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

POST: Mechanics of Manifestation from the No-Self Perspective

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

Can I pick up on a couple of things?

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are times when being content is the wrong attitude.

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

Nah, it's not that shallow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think it's a process of relaxation.

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

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

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

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

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

"Peak" is a relative term.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are peak experiences really objectively, unquestionably distractions?

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

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

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

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

Haha, good :-)

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

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

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

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

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

What if you just realized you can create?

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

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

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

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

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

So, exactly what I said.

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

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

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

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

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

That's just wording.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're muddling things here.

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

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

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

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

I am not muddling anything.

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

Subjective idealism can lean toward realism or anti-realism.

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

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

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

On Angles, Minds, Backgrounds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Realism and Not

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

Anyway, I've gone meandering there...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As the sun hides the stars.

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[QUOTE]

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

[END OF QUOTE]

POST: Feedback model of experience

[POST]

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

[END OF POST]

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

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

Passive Memory

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

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

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

Active Shaping

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

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

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

The overall situation is somewhat sketchily illustrated in this diagram.

Additional Comments

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

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

This gets away from the chicken-egg metaphor problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You mention something else which is worth pursuing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

The same lessons apply to perception and action more generally.

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

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

Enjoy your walk.

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

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

POST: Lust of result

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

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

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

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

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

[POST]

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

[END OF POST]

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

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

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

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

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

POST: Loudness versus Realness

[POST]

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

[END OF POST]

Great observation.

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

POST: Twice perfect.

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

Can I get a how-to guide?

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

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

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

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

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

No, the universe is too limiting of an identity.

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

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

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

How about mind?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POST: On being human, whats up with that?

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

But then, all the same things follow from that.

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

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

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

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

POST: Visualization within the manifest context region of experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POST: The importance of magic in Oneirosophy

[POST]

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

[END OF POST]

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

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

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

POST: Open eye visualization to induce lucidity

[POST]

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

[END OF POST]

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The argument is, roughly:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can argue about the first one, but the second one is something that's pretty much a direct experience which is available and cannot be argued with (it just "is"). Idealism is the interpretation of the former, in terms of the latter - whereas most schemes don't even consider the latter, adopting a naive view of perceptions and conceptualisation. So it's fine to talk about brains and the world and all that stuff, but in the background we recognise that those things all occur in the same context, of patterns within awareness. Literally look around right now, and recognise that this is all arising within your mind-space, include your body sensations and so on. In other words, your direct experience is of being an "open space" in which sensations, perceptions and thoughts arise. Any conclusions you draw beyond this, are narrative fictions, abstractions. For example, the idea that "the world" is of the same format as your present moment right now, is an assumption. Given the above, in what sense is the room next door actually "over there"? Spatial extent is part of an experience, it is not a necessarily a property of the world as such, just as the colour red is not a property of the world, and so on. So idealism is really saying: throw away assumptions, start from what you know to be true directly, and build out from there - all the way avoiding the reification of abstractions.

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