TriumphantGeorge Compedium (Part 4)

True Will & Subjective Reality

In the magickal writings of Aleister Crowley and Thelema, the concept of True Will - appears - fundamental:

The ultimate goal of a Thelemite would be to understand and perform their True Will. The concept postulates that each individual has a unique and incommensurable inherent nature (which is identical to their “destiny”) that determines their proper course in life, that is the mode of action that unites their purest personal will with the postulated course that preexists for them in the universe.
The idea is that to the extent that one is pure in their will, one is carried along effortlessly by the momentum of the universe like an expert sailor allowing the current to carry the ship along its intended course with minimal effort.
In Crowley’s ethical treatise Duty, he identifies True Will with the Nature of the individual.

Could we call this "what we really, really want" vs what we think we want, perhaps? In his book Head Off Stress architect, author and mystic Douglas Harding put it:

In fact we can distinguish three areas of intention or will: (i) what you think you want, (ii) what you really want and (iii) all the rest, what you're up against, what the Universe wants. Now if it should turn out that this third and immensely larger area is what you really, really, want, and you not only contain the world but intend the world, that you want it all - (i), (ii) and (iii) - to be just as it is, why then you would be happy indeed. If you were wholeheartedly to choose the whole lot, all your stress would be laid to rest.

Unrestricted Freedom? Going With The Flow?

If waking life is an unbounded dream in the same sense as a lucid dream is, then our ability to create change in line with our ego is unrestricted. However, if there is some deeper structure to us - that what we might like to do isn't necessarily what we should do in a more fundamental sense - there may be limits, due to a pre-existing momentum.

We might in anger want to tear up the world, say, but that desire is actually an indication of our sense of separation (not truly feeling at one with the rest of this 'dream') and so is not our True Will; we will not be successful in having strong results in that direction, results that persisted. Similarly we would only be able to resist certain actions and paths for so long, before we were "made" to follow them or do them. The universe would play nice with us initially, but eventually get impatient and nasty - - -

An analogy might be that we are whirlpools in the river who can by force push ourselves in any direction, but it's always going to be easier to follow the rivers path. Or waves in the ocean born with a momentum in a certain direction, with our power only being to tinker with the details of the path and the amount of suffering along that path.

A main concern would be one of listening and paying attention as well as directly manipulating, to try and pick up on this 'momentum' - because a with-momentum route would be the most efficient and most likely route to succeed.

True Will: True in Experience?

In your experiments with magick and subjective reality, have you found any problems getting what you "want" vs what you "should do", or a sense of a direction that things want to go in? Or do you see this as a completely flexible reality that the observer can potentially direct in any way they want? Have you come up against, or benefited by recognising, such a thing as 'True Will'? Or is it just a morality-based, human-centred concept with semi-religious origins?

...

Q: good to see some thelema being brought up here, i was hoping we could get some western mysticism in here. And to your question i have noticed there is a kind of resistance from the universe to get what you want versus what you should do. But i have found that depends what part of the universe you ask for these things. If you are in tune with the more angelic energy it wont necessarily give you what you want but it will give you the essentials that you need because it wants to make sure you dont interfere with the aspirations of your higher self. If you are in tune with the demonic it will give you exactly what you want, but this is dangerous because the demonic doesn't care if your wish is actually harmful to yourself or detrimental to your bigger goals. For example if you ask angelic entities or energies to help you find a mate, they will first turn you into the kind of person who can have a healthy relationship before making it happen, where as demonic entities or energies will give you some one even if you are clearly not ready yet and it may mess up your life. So demons answer want you want where angelic entities give you what you truly need or should do. I dont know whether or not you guys like the idea of external deities, you can think of it as certain parts of yourself, but thats the best way i can frame it for now.

Interesting.

I guess you could look at the "angelic" path as a request with the flow, and the "demonic" path as a forcing. And it does highlight the problem that, if you try to work out by surface thinking what you want and how to get it, then it's not possible to anticipate the subtleties. Only the larger universe can take that into account. So angelic=grounded/wide view, demonic=ego/localised?

How do you think of "external deities"? If we're talking subjective reality then "everything is mind", supposedly, however some things are perceivable within our 'phenomenal space' and others are not. External deities tend not to be (although this isn't hard-line). Hmm. And what does "bits of yourself" mean in subjective reality?

Q: im not really sure how i perceive these beings because although i am a subjective idealist, im not certain on solipsism or which degree in which to apply it. My experience with working with spirits is that they are higher dimensional beings in the literal sense, or as personifications of base energies in the deeper universe, hence why people have different experiences and interpretations of them. Of course maybe internal vs external is a duality altogether and even if you say everything is internal you still imply the existence of the opposite of external like up versus down. So i would say they are both external deities and internal aspects of our deep inner minds simultaneously.

Simultaneous, yes. My stab:

We can follow subjective idealism without solipsism if we recognise that what "we" identify with as a person is a "dream character" and that is of no greater or lesser status than the other "dream characters" we encounter. In this sense, everyone is a part of our larger selves (the whole world). Then, spirits can be seen both as external beings and as aspects of ourselves - as can everything/everybody else.

Q: My opinion: You can't ever not do your True Will. You are always intending truly and honestly. A more important question is - are you conscious of your True Will? What are you doing? Why? Where are you taking yourself? Some people's True Will is to be unconscious of their True Will and struggle against themselves. Others seek to regain consciousness of it - to become LUCID. Everything is always your intention, since this whole reality is the result of you. You've just made 99.999% of yourself unconscious and habituated and call that aspect of yourself the external world/universe. I think paying attention is key in order to learn one's intentions. That's how we bring things unconscious back into the light - from there you can use what you are conscious of to, so to speak, lean on the rest of your commitments to manipulate reality.

I think paying attention is key in order to learn one's intentions.

That's what I was getting at with the "listening" idea and of a "momentum". If this is "all you", then maybe the whole thing is your True Will. Although you might try and fight against it (that momentum) out of ignorance if you aren't paying attention and don't recognise it. (So that would be about finding and eliminating resistance then, I suppose.)

Q: The way you formulate it is not good because it can easily make people think that the status quo is our True Will in some way that we can't do anything about. This universe of limitations is our True Will, but when we rid ourselves of the universe as it is known, that too will be our True Will! Now, if you say it like that, there is no chance of getting it wrong.

It's not an easy thing to formulate really. Essentially, we are talking about our Nature.

There are things you want and things you don't want. There are things you don't realise you want or don't want, because you are not sufficiently aware of your true identity. As you become mindful of your thoughts, your body and the environment and its ground (of everything) then you know. The universe (the content) always moves in (or attempts to move in) the direction of this fuller knowledge, whether you yourself are aware of the knowledge or not.

Which is why releasing blockages, etc, is part of the process, in addition to any magickal/intention techniques. You can always have whatever you choose, but do you really want it?

This universe of limitations is our True Will, but when we rid ourselves of the universe as it is known, that too will be our True Will! Now, if you say it like that, there is no chance of getting it wrong.

There's a whole debate on what 'True Will' means in Thelema, because 'will' can be thought of in different ways, but the conclusion is probably 'True Nature', which keeps it away from individual acts of will.

Q:which keeps it away from individual acts of will.
Which is both sad, and imo, not Thelemic anyway.
I tell you what I feel when I interact with you. I feel like lots of times you keep me down, you keep me ignorant. You feed me shitty, limited, tiny conceptions. I have to say "no" like three or four times, reject your garbage conceptions, only to find what? You agree! It then turns out you do know better. And then you start telling me the real truth! But first I have to knock four times. I have to reject garbage four times before you bring out a tasty meal I actually want to eat.
Your reticence to bring out the best, instantly, is something I don't like. You think it's like I have to earn it or something. Like I don't deserve to hear a certain truth until I force it out of you. Wrong. I deserve more than you can tell me. If you're holding out on me, you're going to hell. I'm going to figure out whatever you keep secret from me no matter what you do, but when I figure it out and I realize you knew it and didn't tell me, I will really, really hurt you. Now, by contrast, I don't hold out on people. I always tell people my level best. I don't scale anything down. At least, not at first. I try to present the most challenging variant of what I know. Only when there is a problem do I begin scaling down. So I bring my tastiest dish first, and if you choke, I bring you something shittier. I work backwards. And if I don't explain something to people, it's because I myself don't know. It's highly unlikely because I am intentionally keeping some truths to myself.

"which keeps it away from individual acts of will." Which is both sad, and imo, not Thelemic anyway.

It's an attempt to separate the vague notion of "free will" (that you can do anything you want, including go against your own desires) with your God-like Will. But then, if you act against your desires, that's still your God-like Will surely! I'm undecided on the best way to think/talk about it. Maybe it's just because two worldviews are being mixed together.

I tell you what I feel when I interact with you. I feel like lots of times you keep me down, you keep me ignorant. But first I have to knock four times.

Really? It's not intentional. Usually I'm just 'feeling out' the best way to write things that I know non-verbally. I let this stuff slide for a while, so I'm kind of rediscovering some aspects as I go, and converting it from how I used to describe them, and realising new stuff along the way. Also, I find that I'm often not clear initially what you mean because you think of things in quite different terms from me, until I get the "a-ha" moment: that corresponds to this, okay. For instance, the "enfolded/unfolded" stuff, and use of the word "universe", it just takes a few spins round to get us talking about the same thing, and then we make progress and things speed along.

Q:But then, if you act against your desires, that's still your God-like Will surely!
Duh. :) Godlike will is not limited in any way. God can impose limitations on its own experience for as long as God likes. That very freedom to impose arbitrary limitations in arbitrary configurations for arbitrarily long is freedom from limitations. That's because no single limitation is necessary as far as obvious phenomenal reality goes.
Really? It's not intentional.
In that case I will assume you're just confused and don't know better. But I always feel like you know a lot more than you let on, but it's like you don't want to say it, you just want to keep it to yourself or something. And it feels like I am pulling it out of you. Like you're not exactly forthcoming. Well, if you're confused, then fine. But I get really surprised when after a long conversation you finally agree with me. It makes me think, what the hell were you saying the earlier thing for then?
Are you assuming everyone needs to be kid-gloved? Is it possible that in an effort to take my own assumptions as your starting point, you actually downgrade my view? As in, you think I hold assumptions which it turns out, I do not?
Basically I hope you will blast me with the best version of what you know. If I scream or can't grok it, then fine, see if you can chew it for me. I hope you don't think I am an idiot who should be spoon fed like a tiny baby. Try to tell me the best thing you know and see how I react first.
For instance, the "enfolded/unfolded" stuff
Yes! But remember with that stuff, it turns out later that you understand that super-order is not possible. But you were spoon feeding me assuming I am an idiot. In other words, you were working from limited assumptions, very very slowly toward the less limited ones. But I was all the way at the end already! I was there before you even explained anything to me. Remember that?
Remember when I said "but there is a problem" and I proceeded to explain why there cannot be any kind of final order? And you said "Oh yes! That's where this other thing comes in... blah blah." Well, why didn't you start with that other thing to begin with?? You assumed I was average, that's why.

Duh. :) Godlike will is not limited in any way.

Yeah, but you see what I'm getting at? Of course, everything we experience is because we create it, however we can deliberately will for things from ignorance, because we don't know our true selves well enough (beyond simply intellectually knowing it). Just because we are God, doesn't mean we are completely conscious of ourselves, due to limited attention. We can Will from the perspective of God, or Will from the perspective of an individual. That's why there's a point to doing exercises for awareness and so on, so that your perspective becomes more and more God, less individual, and so your intentional meddling becomes closer to "God's Will" rather than "ego/individual's Will".

Is it possible that in an effort to take my own assumptions as your starting point, you actually downgrade my view? As in, you think I hold assumptions which it turns out, I do not?

Hmm, perhaps. But I think it's more that it takes a while to understand what you're getting at, in my own terms. I could just write a screed in my own terminology I suppose.

Yes! But remember with that stuff, it turns out later that you understand that super-order is not possible ...

Well, there was a super-order, then a super-super-super... until infinite granularity.

But you were spoon feeding me assuming I am an idiot.

No, it's just how dialogue works. I talk about "implicate/explicate" as my basic explanation, we get on the same page, then it's like "wouldn't there be a super-order or not", well yes-but-no in the limit. Limitless potential, yes, but it matters that it's folded inside the current experience, and you only get that if you go through the steps (otherwise you have a need for an external 'observer' to keep everything existing, all that). Really I am just 'replaying' how I went through it myself, I suppose, prompted by the discussion.

If was writing a post or essay, then that's different, because I'd think the whole explanation through first.

You assumed I was average, that's why.

Hardly. You seem to have a great handle on this stuff, and coming from another direction, so I get a new way of seeing it I wouldn't have thought up myself. You are also much more direct/ambitious with it than I would think to be, which is great. Pushes it along. If I've come across as condescending or something, I really apologise! I don't see this as explaining, I see it as exploring.

Q:Just because we are God, doesn't mean we are completely conscious of ourselves, due to limited attention. We can Will from the perspective of God, or Will from the perspective of an individual.
Yes, but even if you will from the perspective of an individual, you secretly engage in willing from the perspective of God anyway. So we can make mistakes, but it's our sacred right to make mistakes. Trying to prevent every mistake is wrong, in my opinion.
That's why there's a point to doing exercises for awareness and so on, so that your perspective becomes more and more God, less individual, and so your intentional meddling becomes closer to "God's Will" rather than "ego/individual's Will".
You should be careful not to create a sharp distinction between God and individual. God is the core of every individual, as that individual. In each individual God is complete. If you say "I am a part of God" you are wrong. If you say "we are God" you are wrong too. Only if you say "I am God" will you be right. Anyone who reads this should understand this the same way. We don't share Godliness. We are each the one and only God, complete. But how can this be? That's because we aren't substances and the restrictions of substances do not apply to us. God is not some fixed amount of stuff that needs to be shared out to some fixed number of individuals who are themselves made of stuff. God is limitless. Individuals are limitless.
No, it's just how dialogue works.
Only when you do it. I do better than you. I go faster and I am more direct. As a result I don't waste time and I tend to end up with amazing results.
I talk about "implicate/explicate" as my basic explanation
That's because you set the bar really low. REeeeeeaaallyyyy loooow.
You are also much more direct/ambitious with it
There! That's it. I don't like all this dancing around. There is no time. Anyone could die at any time. I might not be here tomorrow. What's the use of unnecessary delays?
If I've come across as condescending or something, I really apologise!
Not at all. You come across as someone who holds out the best for last. Not condescending per se.

So we can make mistakes, but it's our sacred right to make mistakes.

Yep.

Only if you say "I am God" will you be right.

Agreed. It's like "you are the dream" vs the "dream figure" or even "all the dream figures" or even "all the things in the dream".

Only when you do it. I do better than you. I go faster and I am more direct. As a result I don't waste time and I tend to end up with amazing results.

Well, good for you then! ;-) Although from my perspective you jump to conclusions - or rather, attractive viewpoints - without building towards them. If we don't do the steps, then it can become more an act of faith. That's why we need to do some exercises/experiments. In truth, "waking life=lucid dreaming" is a hypothesis that needs testing. That's why I wrote the True Will post: what are people's actual experiences, separate from what I want it to be like?

Q:Although from my perspective you jump to conclusions - or rather, attractive viewpoints - without building towards them.
Precisely. Why build? If someone is lost, they can ask a question. By not assuming the worst about my readers, I get to explain things at the edge of my understanding instead of re-explaining the ABC's for the Nth time.
That's why we need to do some exercises/experiments.
I strongly agree! This will be very helpful. I left a message in the moderation email. It seems like the mods are ignoring it, lol. It's not a problem. One way or another we'll get our wiki. :)
That's why I wrote the True Will post: what are people's actual experiences
I don't know about that. In your True Will post you were suggesting that the universe offers a pushback of some sort, and that your True Will is to realize that the dull state is exactly what you are willing, which is not a good thing to say because fatalism is a very immediate implication here. In general there were a lot of fatalistic-sounding, suffocating things:
However, if there is some deeper structure to us - that what we might like to do isn't necessarily what we should do in a more fundamental sense
This is suffocating. People don't come to a place like this to breathe this kind of fumes. People want fresh air. Not more of "how it is, is how it should be." Is=/=ought. Someone said that.
We might in anger want to tear up the world, say, but that desire is actually an indication of our sense of separation
No it isn't. I can tear up the world if it's mine. Where's the separation? I've torn up lucid dreams in the past precisely because I didn't think there was a separation. I can restructure the contents of my own mind and this has limitless implications. This means I can tear up this world if I want to, and I can do it out of anger, and that's OK too. I only have to answer to myself.
Similarly we would only be able to resist certain actions and paths for so long, before we were "made" to follow them or do them.
Suffocating fatalism. What the fuck?
A main concern would be one of listening and paying attention as well as directly manipulating
False dichotomy. Listening is meddlesome. And manipulation is effortless. Etc. Basically that post was waaaaaaayyyyy below your own capacity. I know, because I talk to you. I know you can do vastly better. You didn't give us your best in that post. That post was a turd.

Precisely. Why build? If someone is lost, they can ask a question.

That's easier in a one-on-one context, rather than over comment threads. Having said that, we approached real-time so it was probably less of an issue!

In your True Will post you were suggesting that the universe offers a pushback of some sort... suffocating fatalism...

Yeah, that post was a prompt. Regardless of what I think, what do people actually experience? And how does that correspond to their progress? In the post I included three links to different interpretations of 'True Will', to keep it broad. I didn't want to defend a position, I wanted people to tell me if they experience pushback, and what they attribute it to if they do. (Be that the 'universe', bits of 'themselves' that they haven't integrated, lack of confidence, misidentification.)

Yeah, I have what I think is how it all works. But we don't generally have complete freedom, because we are fragmented. That we can requires some work, some exercising. You'd agree, surely? Bold confidence and expectation can work wonders, but I still ain't teleporting about the place, y'know?

Listening is meddlesome. And manipulation is effortless.

Listening is a creative act (whether it is perceive something apparently persistent or not), but if the intention in listening is to hear what your 'larger self' has to say - by which I mean, the bits you've not yet expanded to include - then that's what you get, right?

Until we're actually fully expanded, and directly experience ourselves as everything on a constant basis (rather than just 'know' it) there is still going to be the sense of an apparent 'other' to our 'self'. Dunno about you, but I am not constantly identified as the "the background awareness" quite yet...

That post was a turd.

Heh.

Q:Regardless of what I think, what do people actually experience? And how does that correspond to their progress?
Then why was there so much leading material? Your post didn't come across as a genuine question. It came across to me as a statement of fact, with some few questions tossed at the end for fun and flavor.
I didn't want to defend a position
Then why is a significant portion of your post dedicated to promoting fatalism and limitation?
Yeah, I have what I think is how it all works. But we don't generally have complete freedom, because we are fragmented. That we can requires some work, some exercising. You'd agree, surely?
I wouldn't say "fragmented." We have prior commitments that are blocking the new commitments we want to undertake. We've been approaching experience from a certain point of view for so long, that to change how we see things now can feel somewhere between impossible to insane, plus or minus. This isn't a problem of fragmentation, imo. If you believe there is an external world, it isn't that you're fragmented. Consider. In my lucid dreams I feel the world as just as external as I feel this world here. But I can still manipulate it freely. This feeling of externality doesn't pose a problem. Why? Because in a dream I know that feeling means nothing. It has no implication. It isn't a fact! It's just a feeling and it's OK as a feeling.
If you say we are fragmented, you're saying the feeling of separation is something that should be transformed. But I would say we should transform our knowledge, and not our feelings per se. It's what we know about our feelings that should change.
Listening is a creative act (whether it is perceive something apparently persistent or not), but if the intention in listening is to hear what your 'larger self' has to say - by which I mean, the bits you've not yet expanded to include - then that's what you get, right?
Yes.

Then why was there so much leading material?

Ya gotta frame it. I present the idea, the implied challenges, which is one of restriction, or at least one of optimal path. And really, I don't know if we are restricted or not. I have had some experiences where 'this' was the thing to do; I was told.

I wouldn't say "fragmented." In my lucid dreams I feel the world as just as external as I feel this world here. But I can still manipulate it freely.

That is a good point. But this is about knowing. When you truly know something, rather than think it, I find that I feel that truth. In fact, at the point of lucidity (assuming I didn't enter directly), that is the sensation that changes. And when I get those 'Dream Yoga' moments out and about, it's the same: the nature of the experience changes somehow. 'Feeling' isn't perhaps the best word, because I don't mean a bodily feeling or an emotion - it's a felt-sense or felt-knowing. It's the difference between definitely this is transparent like a dream to just seeing it that way mentally. That's what the expansion-type exercises are about; reaching out to that. (The 'looking inward' thing gives you the same flavour though, at least as a starter.)

Q: Ya gotta frame it.
Why did you frame it with so much fatalism?
And really, I don't know if we are restricted or not.
We aren't restricted by anything substantial or external. I know this, even when I don't experience it. How so? Because I don't take suggestive appearances to be indicative of anything other than themselves. A suggestive appearance is just a suggestive appearance. I don't let my mind to fall into the suggestions.
When I see an appearance suggestive of distance, I don't think "oh my, it really is distant!"
When I see an appearance suggestive of wood, I don't think "oh my, this really is wood!"
When I feel an appearance suggestive of wind, I don't think "gosh, this really is wind!"
Leaving suggestions only as suggestions I am supremely honest with my experience. I can't report a suggestion to be something other than a suggestion and remain honest. To report a suggestion to be something other than just a suggestion is a speculative act.
But this is about knowing.
Yes.
In fact, at the point of lucidity (assuming I didn't enter directly), that is the sensation that changes.
Yes!
'Feeling' isn't perhaps the best word, because I don't mean a bodily feeling or an emotion - it's a felt-sense or felt-knowing. It's the difference between definitely this is transparent like a dream to just seeing it that way mentally.
I agree. :)

Why did you frame it with so much fatalism?

It's not actually fatalism, it's presented (from sources) as a 'higher path', and an optimistic thing to strive for: alignment and effortlessness. But there is a negative aspect to it, if you just want a wide-open dream, if there is a pre-existing direction to things, which is what is implied.

Leaving suggestions only as suggestions I am supremely honest with my experience. I can't report a suggestion to be something other than a suggestion and remain honest. To report a suggestion to be something other than just a suggestion is a speculative act.

Yes. This is the essence of reflective experience, acknowledging the transparency.

We aren't restricted by anything substantial or external.

No, not substantial or external, there is no evidence for that. However, the restriction doesn't take the form of an underlying substance, if it exists, it takes the form of not being able to simply adjust your experience to match your intention. And for whatever reason, people report that you can't.

Felt-sense or felt-knowing... I agree.

I think this felt-sense in combination with knowing 'where to look' is fundamental to the endeavour. The idea of a felt-sense/knowing is pretty alien to most people, although some related work has been done in psychology that almost gets there by Eugene Gendlin, which has a philosophy based on 'implied steps' and unfolding.

Q: It's not actually fatalism, it's presented (from sources) as a 'higher path', and an optimistic thing to strive for: alignment and effortlessness.
Ordinary effortlessness, the path of the least resistance, that's just the status quo. It isn't likely to be transformative. Effortlessness in the context of knowing that everything you experience is an illusion -- that's transformative. That's not a status quo supporting attitude.
However, the restriction doesn't take the form of an underlying substance, if it exists
That wasn't clear to me in your post. While you weren't talking about substance explicitly, the wording you used was highly suggestive of it.
it takes the form of not being able to simply adjust your experience to match your intention.
Have these people given up the intention to remain a human, sane, etc? In other words, you can't intend to be a well-adjusted member of society and also omnipotent. These are mutually contradictory intentions.
When I exercise omnipotence in my lucid dreams, am I a member of the dream world in good standing? Abso-fucking-lutely not!! I laugh at everything I see in my dreams when I am lucid. I disregard everything.

It isn't likely to be transformative.

When people hit 'realisation', is it transforming or is it discovering? The effortlessness is that of following the path revealed once blockages are cleared, not just an 'avoidance of discomfort' path.

That wasn't clear to me in your post. While you weren't talking about substance explicitly, the wording you used was highly suggestive of it.

Hmm. I could have been clearer then.

In other words, you can't intend to be a well-adjusted member of society and also omnipotent. These are mutually contradictory intentions.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I just saw Lucy. But, I don't see why you can't flip between the two, or create two perspectives at once. In fact, you definitely can, if it's to mean anything at all.

Q: When people hit 'realisation', is it transforming or is it discovering?
From my POV, if you discover something, but it changes nothing about your experiencing and it doesn't introduce new capabilities into your life, then you didn't discover anything, or you discovered something in name only.
The effortlessness is that of following the path revealed once blockages are cleared
Doh! Well, that could take some effort and unpleasantness. :)
But, I don't see why you can't flip between the two
Because being a believable human being requires a firm commitment. If you're flipping here and there it implies a lack of commitment. This means humanity won't have the same weight to you as to a normal, or legitimate human. This will very likely come through and be visible to others.
I think actually if you want to hide yourself, instead of flipping back to human-mode, you should remain as God, and simply make the people in your vicinity ignorant of what you are. Make people blind to your genuine essence. But you'll need to use your full power to do this. You won't be able to produce this effect as a human being.
So what I am saying is, you can do anything, but it tends to have implications and consequences. If you're flipping here and there, it implies a lack of commitment. Being a noncommittal God you become a caricature of God, and being a noncommittal human you are a caricature of a human. You'll lack power in your God modality and you'll lack sincerity in your human modality.

From my POV, if you discover something, but it changes nothing about your experiencing and it doesn't introduce new capabilities into your life, then you didn't discover anything, or you discovered something in name only.

I'd say you discover more about your true self, which is transforming because your subsequent thoughts, actions, experiences and so on will now be informed by that expanded identity.

So what I am saying is, you can do anything, but it tends to have implications and consequences. If you're flipping here and there, it implies a lack of commitment.

Commitment is important, it's true. Maintaining parallel perspectives is probably not very meaningful other than a fun experiment to try.

... and be visible to others.

What others?? :-)

Q: What others?? :-)
I meant your ideas of them. Not genuine others. Like dream people or the people in your hallucinations.

Of course. ;-)

Super-Simplified Models of Reality

One of the outcomes of Oneirosophy is that, since all experience is effectively dreamlike and is you, we recognise that models of reality are pretty arbitrary and pattern-based.

However, we do usually feel we need of some model or metaphor in order to contemplate and direct our experience. And indeed, it is discovered that a fully absorbed model itself behaves as an "active metaphor" which shapes our experience. I was briefly musing about what the most basic but useable version of my idea of reality would be, ending up with the text below. What are your own "super-simple" or "rule-of-thumb" models?

TG's Super-Simplified Reality Model™

Think of yourself as an open holographic conscious space.

• All patterns are present right now and active right now, dissolved into this space.
• Nothing is hidden or elsewhere; such patterns are simply not activated at an intensity level that is noticeable.
• Meanwhile, there is no time or space, other than as a formatting pattern.
• All content is ‘imagination’.

To bring something into experience, we imagine or recall that pattern. We do this simply by intending to do so. Everything else is then completely automatic.

• The first step is to decide to enter a state of detachment and absolute allowing. This is to cease the re-activation of current patterns and allow them to yield or subside.
• Optionally, one may also spend time imagining an open empty space, in order to clear oneself of residual experience.
• From then on, one does intending-imagining to trigger experiences you want to have.
• Our identification should be with the open space, rather than with any particular piece of content that appears within it.

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Q: I like that you put a trademark this time.
Our identification should be with the open space, rather than with any particular piece of content that appears within it.
I think this is the part that's hardest for most people. I want to highlight that so that maybe we can make it easier for everyone on a whole. The reason it's so tricky, I believe, is the language we use in daily convention is built around the notion that you are a physical body and the world is a physical place. If you're a particularly socially active person, you'll be very hard pressed to maintain the awareness that you are, in fact, the whole experience, and not the body of Joe Somebody talking to Susy Cuteface. You're experiencing that, sure, but because language is going to likely encourage you to use the words "I" referring to Joe Somebody, you will easily slip back into the notion that Joe Somebody is the all encompassing identity of who you are. It happens so quickly and is usually not noticed until you take a moment to reflect on who you actually are.
So a word of advice, if you are socially active or a regular member of society - whatever that means - take some time in isolation to work on this stuff. However much you've got, the more the better. If you can't go more than a few seconds being aware that you are everything (and nothing) and not just "a guy" or "a gal," then trying to figure that out while you're in the midst of the play of human society is going to drive you nuts.
TG has a pretty good releasing exercise I'll try to find, otherwise "regular" meditation works. Which by the way, is not the act of "concentrating really hard to make thoughts go away." That's someting else, still useful, but meditation should be thought of as a broadening of focus. Feel free to ask questions in your meditation as long as they are relevant to you. "Who am I?" Is the question that ultimately you're trying to answer when you meditate.

I like that you put a trademark this time.

Haha, well Nefandi and I were joking about my particular turn-of-phrase, so I thought I'd make it official. ;-)

Your observations on language and socialising are spot on. The hurdle they produce is that the language implies and triggers a being-a-person pattern (felt boundary and location) but it also directs and narrows your attentional focus. A useful way around this is to adopt the idea of "letting the world come to you". Rather than focusing in on things with one sense or another - e.g. "concentrating on what someone is saying" - sit back a little and have perception arise by itself. This will feel different to your usual mode: rather than (say) grasping for seeing, and therefore seeing images, you will tend to perceive objects and meaning, without effort. This is great for eyesight improvement; a related article can be read here.

© 2015 TriumphantGeorge. All rights reserved.

*Q: I couldn't find the exact link but I had it saved in a word document (that's how good it is people!)
Daily Releasing Exercise

• Twice a day, 10 minutes, lie down in the constructive rest position.
• Completely let go to gravity. Give up totally, play dead.
• If your body moves or thoughts come up, let them be. Just let them release without interference.
• If you find your attention becomes focused on something, the same: just let go of your attention. Give up, again.
• At the end of the session (don't worry about exact timing), decide to get up, but don't make any movement. Wait until your body moves by itself. This won't happen for a while, but during one session, it will.
• In general, resist the urge to interfere with your body and mind, to push it along. Settle back and let it run at its own pace.*

That's the chap!

It's basically the passive version of Overwriting Yourself plus the experience of Just Decide. It's simple and effective. It feels good and it involves nothing more than not-interfering, so no excuses!

[POST BY Nefandi]

1. It's hard to say this is some kind of final version of what I use, but here it goes: Possibilities are limitless. All conceivable and a vast array of currently inconceivable states of experiencing are possible to attain and maintain indefinitely.
2. Manifestation = current intent - prior intent.
3. Intent (or will) is always effective, even if there are no currently visible effects.
4. Intent is structured conceptually. Conceptuality is neither evil nor something one could rid oneself of, but if one fails to understand the nature of conceptuality, there is a possible downfall there.
5. Everything matters because everything is effective, provided it's still supported by your will in some way. That tiny mundane memory from 30 years ago? It's still affecting who you are today and it even affects the quality of your meditation. If you don't like this, you have to transform your memories, or their meanings. If you leave things at status quo, expect their effects to last indefinitely. Thus, even stupid and mundane events from 10 lives back can be affecting you today. Good news: nothing is lost. Bad news: nothing is lost. Good news: everything can be transformed. Bad news: things don't necessarily transform of themselves, so passive waiting is often a waste of time if transformation is what you want.

And then I always reflect on my value ladder:

1. Wisdom.
2. Power.
3. Compassion.
4. Imagination.

In that order of importance.

[END OF POST]

That's a nice summary, especially the note about memory.

Outside: The Dreaming Game

BACKGROUND: A description of an exercise I originally came up with elsewhere, but I think it could be useful to folk here too. In subjective reality, we would be both the player and the creator for the content.

Inside Outside: The Game

If everyday life were an apparently massive multiplayer video-game, then dreams would describe how the mechanics of such a game, which is called Outside, operate. (See related subreddit which expands on this concept.)

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

Generally these worlds are more flexible than Outside, because to save on processor and memory power, all games function on a co-creation, procedural expectation/recall-based engine - so the more players there are, the more stable a game world becomes. Because Outside is the main, default subscription for all current players there (part of the terms and conditions), you always reconnect to Outside whenever other connections collapse.

Outside Inside: An Exercise

You can prove this to yourself by trying to observe the disconnection/reconnection in progress, or illustrate it via a thought experiment, to be done '1st person', as if you are having the experience:

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

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

EDIT: See here also for a good article and a couple of comments which point out the "dream-like" nature of subjective experience.

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Q: Intention is just the preprocessor for rendering

In a game-world defined by belief, expectation and accumulated knowledge.

Q: Generally these worlds are more flexible than Outside, because to save on processor and memory power, all games function on a co-creation, procedural expectation/recall-based engine - so the more players there are, the more stable a game world becomes.
There are as many people in dreams as in the waking experience, so that theory is wrong.
Outside is the generator of those experiences
If that's true, you're a victim of the Outside.

There are as many people in dreams as in the waking experience, so that theory is wrong.

Some dreams. Some dreams are just you. Some dreams are lots of people. Stability seems to vary accordingly. But, y'know, it's all open to experimentation.

If that's true, you're a victim of the Outside.

Outside turns out to be your 'larger self', the dreamer, the dream - of course.

Q: Some dreams. Some dreams are just you.
And for some periods of time during the waking experience it's also just you. I think if the differences exist in how populated the environments appear, they are not big and they vary from person to person. Some people dream of other people a lot more than others.
Outside turns out to be your 'larger self', the dreamer, the dream - of course.
So why keep it a secret until later?

I think if the differences exist in how populated the environments appear, they are not big and they vary from person to person.

True. It varies. There's definitely some "conceptual momentum" in more populated dreams/realities.

So why keep it a secret until later?

Because that's what the world does.

Although to be clear, from evidence alone the world appears within you. The 'space' is your larger Self, the content isn't necessarily authored by your smaller self alone. It's co-authored.

From experiments: waking, lucid dreaming, OBE, it seems that there are persistent worlds that you are "tuning into", dreams where you are sole creator, and waking life... which is co-created more stably than most. In effect, there is only one creator (Big Self), but there are many apparent small contributors (small selves).

Q: Although to be clear, from evidence alone the world appears within you.
Only if you look very very carefully. :)
The 'space' is your larger Self, the content isn't necessarily authored by your smaller self alone.
The smaller self is authored by the same force that authors the so-called "outside." The smaller self doesn't actually author anything and has no independent motive force. This independence of will is falsely imputed onto the body and the smaller self. There is real free will, but it's not centered in the human body or around it.
In effect, there is only one creator (Big Self), but there are many apparent small contributors (small selves).
I agree with the first half but disagree with the second. There is only one creator, the big self, and you are ultimately that big self, end of story. You're not actually TriumphantGeorge, you only play one on TV.
From experiments: waking, lucid dreaming, OBE, it seems that there are persistent worlds that you are "tuning into", dreams where you are sole creator, and waking life... which is co-created more stably than most.
I think it's better to say we get tired of grasping onto this style of experiencing and detune. So it's not so much as tuning into other realms of being, as detuning from this coarse experience. Upon detuning some quite random and often nonsensical dream takes place. Dreams can be made less random, more meaningful and more sensical, but as I see it, that's not the norm. Dreams can eventually become acts of consciously tuning into different realms, but by default they're what happens when our white-knuckled grip can no longer hold this experience and we fall away from it exhausted.

Agreed with all. It's about levels of explaining.

Q: There's definitely some "conceptual momentum" in more populated dreams/realities.
You're saying the dreams where more people are present tend to also be heavier, more solid, harder to modify when lucid in them? I'm not sure I agree, but I can't say I disagree either. I mean, is that your experience? I haven't noticed anything like that in my dreams. I have noticed that dreams do vary pretty greatly in how easy they can be to modify, but to me that variance has nothing to do with how populated they appear. But I haven't done a very thorough study of that.
Because that's what the world does.
So what?

You're saying the dreams where more people are present tend to also be heavier, more solid, harder to modify when lucid in them?

That's my experience - but it could be down to my own expectations and theories! :-) Just more stable in general, less fantastical and random. I can still overcome things, but the background is far less flaky.

Q: That's my experience - but it could be down to my own expectations and theories! :-)
Interesting. It's always fascinating to hear about how other people dream. I used to assume everyone's dream contents were roughly the same, but I've come to realize: not so.

Yes, me too: I think lots of hidden assumptions may subtly come into play. Perhaps that's why dreams are a good insight into underlying beliefs?

Q: In periods of reduced activity, your "game-space" disconnects and either connects to another pre-existing game-world
Is that pre-existing game-world another person's dream? Or a realm that multiple dreamers visit? Or none of the above?

That multiple dreamers visit, that was perhaps seeded by a single person at one point, but other came to occupy. Sometimes you might find yourself being a pre-existing character, looking through their "viewport", sometimes you might just appear as "yourself". Sometimes you might accidentally find yourself in a world like this, with a complete history, and be the only visitor with knowledge. Depends on the nature and flexibility of the environment.

All worlds persist to some extent after creation, although they may gradually fall apart through lack of intention/expectation.

The First Tulpa

Introducing Tulpas

According to the definition at the /r/tulpas subreddit, a “tulpa” is an imaginary friend which has its own thoughts and emotions, and that you can interact with. It is an apparently independent consciousness existing within the creator’s mind. It has its own opinions, feelings, form and movement. It is an additional “person” within your consciousness. Tulpas are created deliberately, but can arise accidentally.

Deliberate Tulpas

Deliberate creation involves regular forcing, where the host deliberately visualises and interacts with the expectation of the presence of the tulpa - implicitly seeding it by giving it attention and expectation. At some point, the tulpa develops sentience and begins to act of its own volition.

Another aspect of tulpa creation is the development of a mindscape or “wonderland” - basically, a persistent mental environment where the host and the tulpa can interact and explore together, without having to “overlay” the tulpa over the everyday world experience.

Accidental Tulpas

An accidental tulpa, such as a childhood imaginary friend which may persist into adulthood, does not arise by deliberate forcing. How does such a tulpa come to be? Perhaps by expectation and implication. The child's need for company and exploration of itself via another implies an additional consciousness with which to interact. Alternatively, it may be that the development of the child at an early stage involved the creation of multiple sentient aspects, of which one became primary.

The First Tulpa

As a child, we are passive and receptive. Over time the actions of others towards us implies that we have a sentient personality - that we are a "person" or have a person inside us. Responses are expected of us that align with this notion. In short, the world around us forces the empty mind to come up with a sentient personality in the same way as we might force a tulpa. In fact, oneironauts all know that the “person” they experience themselves to be is not who they really are. I am the awareness in which that “person” resides. The “person” itself is in fact nothing more than a tulpa: the first tulpa, which we confuse as being ourselves. [1]

And what of the world around me? It seems stable enough, a persistent environment where the person can interact and explore. Like a “wonderland” for the first tulpa, in fact:

A mindscape/wonderland can be imagined in such a way that large areas of it are undefined or lack clarity. Traveling within the environment outside of areas you've consciously defined can lead to a subconscious, dreamlike generation of environments and landscapes. This has been known to provide interesting and exciting activities for tulpa and their creators alike - it is quite literally letting your mind wander.
-— What does it mean to ‘explore’ a wonderland, Tulpa Subreddit FAQ

You are awareness, and you have passively created a wonderland and a tulpa with which to explore it. The person you think you are is just your first tulpa.

With this knowledge, you might choose to create others, to delete your first tulpa and take your stand as the creator, and you might even consider amending your wonderland to a more pleasing layout, for a more flexible existence... [2]

[1] In fact, it could be said to be our-self, it's just not what we are; it's something we have.

[2] Check out the Tulpa Guides. I think many of the techniques referred to there could be adapted for oneirosophic endeavours.

...

Q: i like the idea that we are are own tulpas. But this raises another question i've been toying with lately. If I am just awareness, why is it that i have a preference for certain types of tulpas, or is that the original tulpa creating tulpas of its own? Their is the idea of the individual ego and the All but i'm beginning to think their is an intermediary between these two, a middle self if you will. If one incarnates as a goblin, a cucumber, a parrot, a cactus, a lizard, a frog, and so on those are individual egos, the lower self, but the middle self would be the essence of greeness which all the things in that list have in common and the highest self is the entire rainbow in which the color green emanates from.

If I am just awareness, why is it that i have a preference for certain types of tulpas, or is that the original tulpa creating tulpas of its own?

Thinking it's not awareness that has the preference. Other tulpas: I'm thinking it happens just by implication. The first tulpa implies further tulpas by expectation and implication, in the same way it was created.

I don't see "ego" as central overall, in the larger picture. The ego is an idea that you have, and because you identify with it you end up with thoughts and actions that arise consistently with it, out of expectation. Other regions of awareness end up with the same thing: behaviour via expectation, clustered around an idea, from deliberate or accidental forcing. So it depends on where you "stand". If you are standing as /u/cosmicprankster420 then you experience a world that is implied by that tulpa, and that includes other tulpas. If you stand as awareness itself, then you no longer take the perspective of the first tulpa, and this no longer applies.

But I'm not sure I've understood your idea of a "middle self" properly!

EDIT: Synchronicity alert: As I was typing that, the YouTube series WTF Moments from MoveClips.com I had in the background played the "there is no spoon" clip from The Matrix. Although this was immediately followed by a clip from Mr Bean. Make of that what you will.

Q: His middle self idea carries two constituent parts. First is like a Platonic Form. Using his example, his middle self carries a certain attribute that is transmitted to tulpa-selves, in this case Green. Second, it's almost like the HGA concept. A higher self that stands as an intermediary between the Ego and the All. Edit: I encourage any of my psychonautic friends to eat their preferred mushroom and read my post. I'm freaking myself out at this point.

Ah, I see it.

Well, there can be endless subtleties of patterns within the awareness that we are; a pattern of predominant "green-ness" could indeed precede/seed subsequent manifestations. It wouldn't need to be a "conscious choice" as such, simply a bias in the pattern. (i.e. None of them are really "doing" anything.)

Q: Deleted

I like the interpretation, although the tulpa is not meant to share the same form as the host. However, with the First Tulpa, who's to say a Second Tulpa can't have equal bidding, and perhaps take over? Maybe it's more like the recent BBC America TV Series, The Intruders.

Q: Alan Moore describes an interesting experience he had with someone else's tulpa that he was able to interact with here. Start at 1:03:15 and go until 1:13:00ish in order to get some context and then the experience.

Very interesting, thanks. It bridges the boundary between tulpas as practiced on that sub (create a sentient consciousness, spend time in a wonderland) and the Tibetan twist (actual materialisation, in this wonderland). The difference may of course just be one of limited beliefs, and hence constrained experience, today. In other words, the level of "solidity" required for most people to perceive a form may be much higher than it was previously.

Still, interesting they experienced her differently visually. Does "everyone" experience us the same, I wonder?

Q: Another thing I was thinking about as I've been mulling over your post is that other people are all indistinguishable from well-developed tulpas that are occupying a well-developed mindscape. Earth is just another mindscape in our imagination.

Yes, exactly!

This is what I'm saying with the final paragraph: You are the First Tulpa in your awareness, and all around you are the other tulpas you have created - some by request, some by implication, all unwittingly - to explore your mind together as this unfolding wonderland...

Q: Believers in tulpae are like dogs mistaking their own reflections as others. Only in this case it's a mental reflection. If you think that deluding yourself into thinking like a stupid dog is an accomplishment, you have my greatest sympathy.

The point is that people are already deluded, before they get involved in deliberate tulpa creation.

Q: Yes, one of the big things is that people will make a "tulpa" of other people, projecting their own thoughts etc into others when it's completely unwarranted (I was guilty of this in the past with extreme social anxiety, thankfully I was able to completely cure it.) Gods themselves are just "tulpae."
And of course method acting is just sort of like being your own tulpa.

"Stimulant" is a related concept = Your internal representation or simulation of other people that you use to understand the meaning of their actions, anticipate their responses to yours. Difference is the underlying assumptions about experience: One is your model vs an external world and person, the other is seeing people as an actual part of [the larger] you. Separating the two experiential would be challenging, since from your localised perspective the evidence is identical.

The Circular Ruins

The purpose which guided him was not impossible, though supernatural. He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him in minute entirety and impose him on reality. This magic project had exhausted the entire expanse of his mind; if someone had asked him his name or to relate some event of his former life, he would not have been able to give an answer. This uninhabited, ruined temple suited him, for it is contained a minimum of visible world; the proximity of the workmen also suited him, for they took it upon themselves to provide for his frugal needs. The rice and fruit they brought him were nourishment enough for his body, which was consecrated to the sole task of sleeping and dreaming.
-- The Circular Ruins, Jorge Luís Borges

To know you are not a person, this can be done. Releasing your hold upon content and therefore attention, your focus loosens and expands, deepens: you re-identify as the world. To discover that you and all experiences are made of consciousness, the non-material material whose only property is awareness, that is easy. However, it is the patterns within this consciousness that constrain your perspective, not the nature of it.

What are you beyond the world? What is its context? How can you perceive outwith a container that has no boundary, escape from a room without walls?

* * *

Misc Posts: /r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/

Darkroom Vision & Chef Hats & Dreams

I was reading a blog post on how we represent the world to ourselves - a really great article, here at the Well of Galabes blog - and a couple of the comments underneath it seemed relevant to our Glitch explanation efforts so I've included them below. They emphasise how much our experience is at best 'inferred' and at worst 'created'. The comment on the narrative flexibility of dreams is interesting too.

You can imagine both of these appearing in this subreddit in one form or another, as reports.

Darkroom Vision

"I realized I have a much more dramatic example of the pure subjectivity of perception in my personal experience. It's what I call my "darkroom vision."

When I was in college and taking photography classes, we were provided with a large community darkroom. The safelights were always on in the darkroom, of course, as there were often several people working in it side by side.

One day when I was working, the power went out and the safelights went off. A darkroom with no safelights is truly dark; even with full night vision adjustment human eyes will perceive no light. Those of us who were working in there fumbled our way out to wait for the power and lights to return. After a while it was apparent that power was not coming back anytime soon, and I had left some prints in the fixer bath. So I went back into the darkroom to retrieve those prints and move them to a water wash.

When I got in the darkroom, I realized that I could very faintly see the big table in the middle of the room with all its individual tubs of developer, stop, and fixer. This disturbed me, since a darkroom is supposed to be absolutely dark. I reached for the corner of the table, and when my hand reached it, there was nothing there. The table immediately vanished from my sight. I fumbled around a bit, found the table by feel, and instantly it popped back into view in a new, and "correct" location.

Though this image was faint, it was definitely a visual image, indistinguishable from what I would have seen had there been a very dim light in the room that was just barely above the threshold of perception. But, given the disappearing and reappearing act the table put on, it was also clearly coming from inside my mind, not from any "objective physical reality."

After this experience, I discovered that I can always see by this "darkroom vision" when I am in familiar places in total darkness, but (here is the key) ONLY if it is a place I know well in the light. It is very useful. The image includes things that I do not have a direct conscious memory of. If I have misplaced something, I can look around for it, and when I see it and reach for it, it usually is there. It's funny, when it is not there, to see it vanish. But it is usually not far from where I saw it, and it will pop back in to view when I do get my hand on it. In one darkroom I was even able to read the hands on a large timer clock, getting some idea of how much time was left before it would chime. The reading I saw on the clock was often not exact, but it was fairly close.

And of course the evolutionary biologist in me appreciates what a wonderfully clever adaptation this is, to present all this subconsciously stored information in a handy visual image, showing me all of my mind's best estimates of the position of everything in the room relative to where it judges me to be. I don't have to think about it at all, it is effortless on my part. I just look around. And it updates instantaneously in real-time based on new data."

-- Bill Pullium, comment [http://galabes.blogspot.com/2014/06/explaining-world.html]

Objects Revise Themselves

"I remember working in a kitchen, when a few of the cooks began to wear tall white paper hats like the chef had always worn. One of these cook's had a similar body-type as the chef, and sometimes when he'd enter the kitchen, from a distance and out the side of eye, in peripheral vision, I would actually "see" the chef enter the room, until he got closer and the image would shift back to the cook in question.

This happened after I had started meditating and noticing the activity of my mind more. I was surprised, because it wasn't just that I was unsure of who this person and thought, "That might be the chef", it was the for a really brief moment, I actually had an image in mind of the chef entering the room, which was quickly altered as the cook came into better focus.

Interesting also in that, from a social primate point-of-view, my mind was always scanning for the chef's presence, and how he might view my work.

I notice that phenomenon in the evening light as well, when I encounter an object that I can't quite make out what it is, but looks to be the size of an animal - it is very quick, but I can see my mind trying on various perceptions to the hazy figure: "Is it an animal? Is it a raccoon, or a dog?" until I can get a better view of the object, and the perception settles down to something more stable.

I imagine these moments of perceptual uncertainty make conscious a process that is normally hidden from me, of how the mind decides what something "is", like a table, or chair, or person, etc., and then supplies an appropriate image, though it seems to me like I am simply "seeing" something that is "there".

Something else - in becoming aware of my dreams, I noticed that my mind has these moments of indecision, then decides on a narrative framework for things, then will alter past happenings to fit that framework. I'd always thought dreams were like movies playing from beginning to end in order, but on closer inspection, it seems more like streams of thinking, in which the mind will decide on a story, then go back and change what happened before to make that story coherent!"

-- Daniel Cowan, comment

EDIT: I also meant to include this link in there: we don't just see with our eyes [http://www.healthaim.com/brain-able-to-see-in-pitch-black], we see with our whole bodies. Absolutely all input acts as a source for our perceptions. Other interesting reading here.

EDIT2: Also this page on seeing through eyelids [http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/seeing-through-your-eyelids-spreading.html].

EDIT3: And this article on "visual loops" vs inputs [https://dondeg.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/the-beginning-and-the-end-of-consciousness-in-the-brain/], which would fit in with the idea of an ongoing, persistent 'dream environment' which is updated as new information becomes available from the senses.

EDIT4: The stranger in the mirror illusion [https://mindhacks.com/2010/09/18/the-strange-face-in-the-mirror-illusion/]. And this completes my collection of "subjective is not, or is what you think it is" round of links.

...

I'll add another experience which is more accessible, that we've probably all had but perhaps not paid much attention to: When I misread a word, I actually do experience the wrong word - I literally see that incorrect word in front of me - and then it 'snaps' to the right word when I go back to check.

This highlights how our experienced world is basically an inferred dream-space where the objects are a best guess, 'inspired' by sensory(?) input and historical context, and is continually updated as new information is received. This brings to mind Donald Hoffman's ideas on our experience being like a 'user interface' to help with our aims in the most efficient way, rather than an accurate representation.

Anything could be going on behind the scenes. What we perceive may be directly related to our aims and goals, as things are filtered accordingly.

The dream thing really trips me the hell out.

Yep. Basically, each moment strives for 'coherence of narrative'. You're doing it right now. Actually, the process described of "trying on different interpretations" is an example of this. Normally we don't remember this; once the perception has settled, it was "aways that way" for most of us.

We delete any inconvenient histories as we go, once we've reached a decision.

I've heard about the night vision thing before. A lot of people say that when that happens you're looking through your pineal gland, your third eye. Interestingly the pineal gland actually contains rods and cones like your eyes do.

Yes, I've had the experience of 'seeing through eyelids' and the accompanying feeling is that I'm centred and 'looking out from' somewhere near my prefrontal lobes. This is also a technique used by some vision improvement approaches, interestingly - to "find your centre for seeing".

...

Not been there. I only heard about "gaslighting" recently on another thread (thought it was something to do with being Hitchcock-film-like, which it sort of is I suppose).

their pretend histories are totally real to them.

Probably don't even know they're pretending. I mean, it just is real and that's that, it seems. A universal tendency gone wrong? Will check it out.

...

Q: Just discovered this today.
EDIT2: Also this page on seeing through eyelids.
That's easy. The eyelids don't block 100% of all light, just most of it. Even fingers don't block all light. Having a hand waved (even not your own) between your tightly closed eyes and a light, you should easily be able to tell whether the object is between your eyes and the light, or not. Alas, nothing about the objects form and/or color.
Edit: And telling the direction of movement of the object is not difficult, too, because it's not really the eye that "sees", it's the brain that interprets the optical signals, not in terms of something like pixels but in terms of characteristics: A finger can have the same characteristic "moving from left to right" as a ball and as a stick and as a car. So with closed eyes you can't tell much about an object but the characteristic "moving from left to right" can be deduced from the brighter light / lower light order anyway.

A good attempt, but you've already come up with the seed of a better answer:

it's not really the eye that "sees", it's the brain that interprets the optical signals

You can take it a step further. Your brain doesn't interpret optical signals and turn them into images directly. The signals from your eyes and other organs all just contribute information, to the extent they are available and 'online'. What we actually do is essentially imagine our surroundings, based on inputs from the senses and from memories. Not in a "processing way" and not through conscious effort; this is the passive activation of previous patterns.

Certainly, if there are little bits of movement detectable those will contribute - but even in complete darkness you can still see the room around you when relaxed (and if you allow it to happen), although often it'll be a little bit wrong. (This skill is very handy, because when you look at how eyes work, they are rubbish at seeing - you are mostly blind anyway.)

In fact, people who go blind later in life sometimes find that after a while they can "visually perceive" objects around them again, as other senses provide clues from which the presence of those objects can be inferred.

In other words, what you apparently see around you right now is a hallucination "inspired by" whatever information is available.

Which is why you can still see in dreams, even though you don't have any eyes!

The problem here is with the word "seeing" because in common usage it implies "eyes" or that you are somehow perceiving a thing that is definitely there.

Perhaps it's better to keep it to the essentials: "Seeing" is having the experience of seeing something, whether or not there is a something actually there, in the form of an image.

Also, I don't believe that one can still "see" in complete darkness

You can. You don't need any light at all to experience a complete room around you (as described in the post). When you try to act on the basis of that image, it will update according to the cues provided by touch though - in the same way everyday seeing is updated by the little snippets of optical information your eyes periodically provide. Or more accurately, the content of attention as it scans. It is a relatively rare experience though, but if you relax enough you can have it. In fact, it might be the natural state of vision if we aren't interfering through effort.

But this works only once you know an object and/or have seen it before.

You can only see things you've seen before (when you see a new object, it is made up of raw shapes and colours, or other familiar elements in an arrangement; it takes a while for it to become its own complete pattern). If you have a misunderstanding of an object, you will "see" that misunderstanding, until a closer look reveals the contrary detail.

It's a fun thing to experiment with.

Huh? Seeing without having eyes, in a dream? That never happened to me.

Of course you have. I mean, do you think that "dream eyes" take in "dream light" which is then processed in a "dream brain" so you can have some "dream seeing"?

Although your dreams do sound as though they could do with a bit of perking up! ;-)

An interesting observation though: Sometimes we have "knowing" dreams where we aren't actually experiencing. Almost like we're just getting narrated the content. And you are usefully highlighting that we don't all have the same experience!

(If you've ever had a lucid dream though, you'll realise that a dream environment can be more vivid than everyday life.)

Right. We can get right to it: How can you tell the difference between "full imagination" and not "full imagination"? After all, we only know we are "deceived" when our experience shifts in a "correction".

I mean, have you really examined every part of the room you are in? And yet, you don't feel as thought there are "gaps" in your visual experience of it. There are most likely vast parts of your daily experience which you have never examined properly - and you are therefore just completely hallucinating, without knowing it.

I think of it as "dreaming, inspired by the senses". Of course, I have no access to the information provided by the senses at all - only the final conclusions - but we tend to assume that what we are experiencing is in some way contributed to by such things.

If that would be the natural state of vision, it would be better to have no eyes - I just don't believe that.

No, that's not what I mean. I mean that, in a relaxed and open state, it is possible to have a visual experience of your surroundings even with eyes closed.

When you go up and down stairs and use your keys with eyes closed, if you pay attention you'll find that you do it via a sort of "three-dimensional feeling-out". There's not much difference between this and a "three-dimensional visioning-out".

What about babies? Everything is new to them, they don't have names for anything, how could they learn to see?

Why do you think having names for things matters? (It's an interesting assumption!)

Babies learn to see slowly, and it happens passively. There are probably raw "archetypical" or building-blocl shapes which can be perceived immediately (it is thought). Exposure gradually clumps these together into trace patterns. Lines and circles become associated in certain configurations into whole patterns of increasing complexity, into what we term "objects". Simple exposure over time will result in this pattern formation.

What I see with dream-eyes is full imagination.

Right, you don't have functional dream eyes, do you? You just have the imagination. The dream eyes are inside the imagination. Your dream experience isn't "inspired by" the input of dream sensory organs.

Close your eyes and take it away: With eyes closed you can either image it still being there, or taken away.

A couple of questions to ponder:

• Why don't you go blind (or blurry) every time your eyes move?
• Isn't blinking and eye-shifting essentially closing your eyes?
• How can you tell the difference between a dream experience and a waking experience, apart from by memory and expectation of what is "usual". In other words, what about the direct perception of the moment is different?

I had some dreams where I could take control over what I did

Yep, if you knew you were dreaming while in the dream, that's lucid dreaming. Interesting that you don't have colours! Next time you have such a dream, just "ask" for it to be super-vibrant and in colours. And don't take "no" for an answer! :-)

Interestingly, in the 1950s/60s it was thought that dreams were black and white, and people nicely played along by having black and white dreams, and those people didn't believe it was possible to dream in colour because they'd never experienced it. But it was. The same thing happened with lucid dreams.

* * *

TG Comments: /r/DimensionalJumping

POST: I went to a complete different reality for sometime

[POST]

Ok I don't know whether u will believe me or not but I believe that I went or kinda saw an alternate universe . Though I still want your opinion on this..
I have always been an admirer of alternate realities stuff but I didn't knew that there are some methods of jumping realities . Then i found this subreddit about a month ago.( Since then ive been following this subreddit everyday). I kinda understood that mirror method and 2 cups are the two best methods of leaping .Honestly I was kind of scared doing the mirror method so I did the 2 cups . It was really easy to do it but I didn't notice much changes after it.
I thought that I should try some new method then I saw this really easy new method 'The Vaccum Method '. After I researched a bit more about it, I started to practice it every night before sleep and then meditated about it.
Ok shit got real today. I really woke up early today and during afternoon time I really felt sleepy and decided to take a nap. I lay on my bed and started 'Vaccum method' excersize again. After doing it I kind of started thinking about my crush and started having a lucid dream. But then kinda my sleep broke after an hour or so. But after I opened my eyes , I saw I was in some different house , I got fucking scared and closed my eyes again , I thought to myself that I might have changed reality but why am I in a house worse than my own house ? Did i come come to a worse reality ? I opened my eyes again and saw that same house and closed my eyes again. Now I started sweating and panting. Here I understood that this was real not a dream cause I felt my sweat . Then I opened my eyes and saw my own house , I really felt happy and relieved
All I want is that u guys give your opinion on this. I believe I shifted for sometime ,do u agree or have some different thoughts
Sorry for typing mistakes and bad grammar

[END OF POST]

Just as an aside, it's worth pushing back a little on the idea that there is some amazing method - the method - out there to uncover.

Much as it's tempting for newcomers to want to jump on a "fool-proof method", it is important to consider how any "method" relates to your actual experience, to the nature of it. Otherwise there's a risk of just engaging in yet more "sensory theatre" without really digging into the underlying situation - and going through the loop, once again, of finding something new, getting a sorta-result, then it not working, and then moving onto something else (because you never really knew what was working about it in the first place).

If ultimately what you're doing is lying down for a bit and imagining some crap for ten minutes, or saying some words for a while, it's worth pausing to consider how precisely that would make any difference to your experience. If that question isn't answered, if you don't dig deeper into it, then it's really just a superstitious activity, with no idea of the "causal" element of any change - and (interestingly, tellingly) you often find the reliability of a "method" fades out pretty quickly.

This is why the two exercises in the sidebar are really intended as illustrations of something, rather than methods as such. (Although of course the subreddit is built out from an original idea that there might be a "technique". But then deconstructing that notion to gain insight.)

It isn't exactly explained why the exercises work either.

The exercises may or may not work: they aren't promises, they are experiments.

If they do work (or more broadly: if experiences arise subsequently which seem related to doing the exercise) then that's a starting point for contemplation. A starting point for considering what those outcomes imply about the nature of your experience (of "you" and "the world"), perhaps leading to an insight or at least a revision of your description of things, or even of your attitude towards descriptions in general. This may even include revisiting the whole idea of there being a "how things work" at all, in the usual sense.

Anyway:

What the exercises are, though, is the stripped-down essence of an approach for investigating this. So just making up variations of them with extra stuff on top - saying this or that, imagining this or that - in the hope that some "secret sauce" will be discovered that gives "results", without having a clear reason for the additions, probably isn't very useful.

Doesn't change happen because you want it to happen?

That's an interesting hypothesis. How could it be tested? What exactly is the nature of "wanting", and why would it be relevant or causal in terms of generating subsequent experiences? How does "wanting" relate to "me" and "the world"? And how, precisely does one go about "wanting" anyway?

So, perhaps the question isn't so much "why wouldn't it work?", but rather: "why do I think it would work, what is the basis for the choices and additions I am making, and how to I test those assumptions specifically?"

With all the proof out there from this Reddit and Glitches Reddit combined there has to be something to this.

The idea behind the exercises is that one can actually check for oneself whether there is something to it, or not, rather than just reading stories about it. And then, because they focus on two particular facets of experience related to this, dig deeper into the nature of it by targeting different aspects of experience in turn. (There may also be a philosophical problem with "other people's stories", that isn't even just about believing them or not.)

So, you are saying the exercises may work but not because of the exercises but something we don't quite understand yet?

Ultimately, I'd end up suggesting that what one might end up discovering is: it's more fundamental than any of those ideas you list would suggest. It is "before" them. All of those ideas still have, as an assumption, that you are some sort of person-object located within a world-place. And ultimately, they are all essentially little "stories" about the content of experience, rather than the nature of experience itself. That is, the context of all experiences.

This is why we keep coming back to this notion that, when we come up with "explanations" for things, we must also bear in mind what a "description" actually is. Does it get "behind" our experiences? Or is it, instead, just another experience also (the experience of: "thinking about experiences"), at the same level. Saying that something is magick or witchcraft or virtual reality or whatever, doesn't really add anything necessarily. (See also this comment about the literal "parallel universes" or quantum physics type explanations.) Particularly when we are dealing with an experience of world-facts or the "formatting" of experience changing. Descriptions might be useful ways of thinking about such things, but they don't really - cannot really - encapsulate their nature or the cause of them.

If we go one step more "meta" in this way, it's like we take a step back from both our main strand of experience and the descriptions we make up about them. The problem we end up with, though, is that we're now dealing with something that is "before" concepts. How can you describe that which descriptions are "made from"? And so on. But maybe you don't have to describe something, or be able to communicate it, in order to know it. And perhaps demanding that something be conceptualised or restricting oneself to explanations - requiring that something "makes sense" or that it can be "understood" - is a barrier to a more direct realisation of the true situation. In other words, I might end up suggesting that it's not that there is an explanation for how the exercises work (or any other methods in fact), in a fundamental way anyway, but that the attempt to construct one, or the willingness to put our experiences and assumptions under the microscope in this way, might lead somewhere useful regardless. Even thought it perhaps can't be articulated.

Extra bit: If making changes is simply about thinking (of? about?) what we want, then we must still consider what exactly we'd think - because there are many ways to think a thing of course - and also consider how that relates to the world (is the world itself a thought, if so in what way?) and what we are (if we are the thinker of thoughts, where and what are we and what are thoughts made from?), etc.

POST: Has anyone had success with the "Vacuum Method"

[POST]

Hi Everyone, Recently I've been keeping up with this forum in hopes of changing a decision that I made in the past. I have read of this new method from TheFirstGlitcher, I would like to use it prevent myself from making this decision or shifting into a reality with a new past in which I had never made this decision. I created this forum to find out if anyone besides TheFirstGlitcher has had success and their opinion if I would be able to switch to an alternate past or someday miraculously wake up in the past in which I can stop myself and this will all be part of a distant memory that was unreal. If it's not possible, I understand, but I would like to hear your opinions. Thank you so much! Please let me know what you think, any response is welcome! Also I'm not sure if I have done it correctly, this is probably why nothing has changed, but I also wonder if the shift that I want is even possible?

[END OF POST]

A: You could take a random carrot, declare that carrot as blessed and eat it and get results..

Q: lol I see your analogy, but why is it that these methods work for some and some it doesn't work. Most people claim that it is possible for anyone to jump for anything. I'm asking if there is a full proof method to make it work or if it is even possible to cause a shift in reality because if I wash my hands in hot water I'll still burn my hands, the world is very real to everyone so why is it that some experience these shifts and some do not and if it isn't possible to revert the past or a past decision doesn't this limit the ability of a dimensional shift. It's not so much I'm skeptical, I want to learn more about it as I wish to revert a decision I made and the people of this sub Reddit such as yourself seem to have more exposure to this type of information. Thanks!

The idea isn't that that your experience of the world isn't real - after all, in a dream you can kick a stone and hurt your foot and refute nothing about the dreamlike nature of it. The experience is always very real, because it's the only thing that is real. Whether it is consistent, and what the nature of your experience is, that is what you are pushing against I suppose. So rather than the world not being "real", it's that your standard description may not be an accurate accounting of it. That is, that the idea that you are a person-object located within a world-place may not be a good description of your actual experience (where "the world" is typically assumed to be a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time'"). The world is real, but it may not be "real" in the way you have been thinking that it is "real".

As for "methods", maybe see my other comment below. The very concept of "methods" and "techniques" (fool-proof or otherwise) can be a distraction here.

...

The "Vaccum Method" is a post someone did a while back.

It's worth pointing out, though, that the two exercises highlighted in the sidebar - and they are deliberately named "exercises" rather than "methods" or "techniques", because those terms tend to imply something about our experiences that might not actually turn out to be true - are intended to illustrate two aspects of experience (which turn out to be the same thing actually). That is, they are not simply self-help style techniques for bringing about change.

In other words, it's not the change that's important, necessarily, it's the fact that there was apparent change at all that is key. Other (so-called) methods and techniques tend to just add extra "sensory theatre" on top of these key aspects. This can end up obscuring the genuine insights that should follow from a proper "experiment and contemplate" type investigatory attitude.

So, when encountering a new "method", it's worth asking the author how, exactly it is meant to work, and what the thinking behind it is, and then probing the assumptions that lie behind the concepts used in that thinking. Otherwise we risk simply, almost superstitiously, doing various actions and hoping, somehow, that change will occur, with really understanding the "secret sauce". Otherwise, in fact, people are at risk of taking a "cargo cult" approach to the subject (that is, emulating the visible actions only, while never grasping the "motive").

Hence the (intentend, anyway) strong "philosophical" component of the subreddit: unpacking assumptions rather than just trying out tricks.

POST: My perspective on dimensional jumping (Introduction to creating reality with your thoughts)

[DELETED POST]

EDIT: The point of this comment was to try and explore in more detail what, exactly, the concept of "thoughts create reality" means, from a particular perspective on the nature of "you", "thought" and "reality". However, it's a bit muddled in the execution, oh well.

It might be worth explicitly distinguishing between passing thought and deliberate, intentional thought. This potentially allows us to clarify that it's not the thought as such that does anything; thoughts could be viewed as simply pseudo-sensory aspects of your current "state", really. (Where a "state" is the current set of fact-patterns contributing to, and fully defined the future moments of, your ongoing experience.)

Rather, it's the intentional content - or the "direct meaning" - that makes the difference. Here, by "an intention" we mean the fact or pattern that we seek to increase the relative contribution of, and by "intending" we mean the increasing of that contribution (whereby shifting the "shape" of one's state, of oneself). There is no act involved in this, though - there's no mechanism or technique. One simply intends.

Meanwhile, the sensory thought aspect is itself a result of intention, not a cause; it's a bit of theatre. Now, for sure, you can get synchronicity arising if you visualise something - a bit like having deformed a surface and the contours being overlaid upon experience from then on, or drawing upon a television screen and the pattern "shining through" the gaps to be incorporated in every image to some extent (see: the owls exercise, for example).

However, a fact is itself an experience of "meaning" - it has no spatial or temporal component itself. It is unbounded and sort of "dissolved" into the background of your experience, with only its sensory aspects arising occasionally. So when you want to intend a fact, just conjuring an image or saying a phrase isn't necessarily what you want to do. Certainly, it may trigger the fact-pattern by association, but really what you want to do is intend the fact-pattern directly. This can't be described in words, but you "know" when you are doing it. You do it whenever you shift yourself in mundane ways. (Ponder: do you conjure an image when you change your destination when walking along the street? No, you feel-know-intend the change, directly.)

There is not a "you" and "the world"; there is just you-as-awareness which has "taken on the shape of" the experience of being-a-person-in-a-world. Whereas the construction of language forces us to talk of a "doer" and an "act" and a "thing done to", in our actual experience this is not the case. Attempts to enact "doing" tend to complicate things or lead to failure, because we assume a separate mechanism that we are trying to harness. In fact, there is no mechanism: we shape-shift our experience, our state, via intention, which is self-caused change.

All of this suggests a very fundamental reason why we can encounter difficulties:

• Intention is literal and direct.

Thinking doesn't create your reality, your state. A thought actually is a pattern within your state. A passing thought is a view of your current state; a deliberate thought is the intensification of that pattern in your state. It's almost claustrophobic to think about: there is no separation between you and your state, you and your thought, you and your sensory experience, you and your intention. There is no gap between thinking, intending and experiencing.

The point of this, is that the thought "I am happy" literally is the fact-pattern of "I am happy", and increasing its relative "intensity" of via intention will increase its contribution to your ongoing experience. However, to be clear, it's not the words "I am happy" that you want to intend - that is a mistake easily made (leading to all sorts of synchronicity about happiness or the phrase "I am happy"). Those words are part of the extended pattern of being-happy and can be used to trigger it to an extent, perhaps. However, it's really the fact-pattern of which those words are a sensory aspect that you want to intend.

This literal nature means that you need to be aware of what, exactly, you are intending, because the mechanism here (if it can really be called a mechanism) is that of a "dumb patterning system", a direct deformation of your present state. There is no intelligence between you and intention and the change of state. If you conjure up "this visual image", then that visual image will be more prevalent in your experience. If you conjure up "this visual image which means that fact will be true", then that fact will be more prevalent in your experience (and probably the visual image too).

Essentially, then, it's like you are drawing patterns directly upon awareness - sometimes in 3D, sometimes "non-dimensionally" and abstractly; sometimes sensory images, sometimes "facts" or "formatting" - thereby increasing their prominence in the unfolding world-experience from that point onwards.

Can you give examples highlighting the difference between "this visual image" and "this visual image which means that fact will be true". Like if I imagine myself holding 2 million dollars in cash, is that belonging to the first or the second category?

It's probably better to experiment with something more abstract. So, first imagine a sphere in front of you - say, a blue sphere with no particular detail, just floating there. Okay, now imagine a sphere in front of you, identical in every way to the first, except also imagine that this sphere is imbued with the special power to make the room filled with joy. But do not change the sensory aspect of the sphere in any way when you do this.

This is basically "imagining the fact of something being true" abstractly. That is, that an object, or your ongoing experience more generally, has a property, without actually visualising any sensory aspects to that property. Instead of doing all the "sensory theatre" of picturing stuff, in an effort to associatively trigger the fact or as an excuse to do so, you can just directly do intending-asserting of the fact into greater prominence.

Finally, after taking a pause to clear yourself out a little, instead of using the sphere image, simply directly intend that the room is filled with joy, and experience the result of that. That is, wordlessly intend the fact of: "it is true now that this room is filled with joy". And, um, enjoy. Aside - Note that there is no effort in doing so, and any "trying" will just distract you, amounting to an intending of the "feeling of trying" rather than the fact of "joyful room" being true.

I can see the differences between the two explanations.
"Imagining the fact of something being true" = Imagining the fact along with the emotions you will (expect to) feel from having it
Image = Yin
Emotions = Yang
Yin/Yang = Manifestation/Shifting
I think that some people would have to be at a point in their life to where they understand themselves better to really grasp this concept.
If someone has constant inner/outer distractions or conflicts then this maybe extremely difficult to conceptually grasp yet perform.
I'm fairly new to this but I would appreciate any feedback.
Thanks.

There can be a difficulty, sometimes, with elevating emotions and treating them as if they are special rather than just another sensation-perception within an experience (albeit a difficult one to put into concepts and language). I suggest that emotions would be best understood as a sensory aspect of the fact, arising as an object within experience.

Meanwhile, the fact itself is sort of "unbounded" or "timeless and spaceless". It is not experienced as an object, instead it's sort of just "known". You might call it a sense of "meaning".

So, while "imagining (intending, asserting) the fact of something being true" might result in an experience of an emotion, it is not necessarily required, and the emotion is not itself a cause. When we say "the feeling that something is true", we aren't referring to an emotion, we're referring to a felt-knowing, a global sense of a particular thing being true. The problem with some approaches (many LOA descriptions included) is they miss out this "secret sauce" and therefore just produce minimal intensification of some of the patterning associated with facts, rather than direct addressing the facts themselves. This can still produce "results", of course, as synchronicity (basic "patterning") but it can be frustrating to work with, because there's no real understanding of the cause ("intending").

Unfortunately, this activity of "intending" can't be described at all, really, only pointed at. Intending has no mechanism or method, and is before "things" so is non-conceptual. And so we hit the difficulty whereby people end up focussed on what can be talked about and thought about (basically: objects within experience, which are results) and miss out (when writing) or don't realise (when reading) that there is a specific actual cause of all change (which is not any one of those experiential objects). We then can end up with a "cargo cult" version of the topic:

The term "cargo cult" has been used metaphorically to describe an attempt to recreate successful outcomes by replicating circumstances associated with those outcomes, although those circumstances are either unrelated to the causes of outcomes or insufficient to produce them by themselves. In the former case, this is an instance of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

(See: Richard Feynman's fun lecture also.)

That is, people try to generate the results by just intensifying part of the pattern associated with the target fact, perhaps getting some outcome by association, but not really going for their target directly. The distinction between doing the owl exercise (increasing the intensity of contribution of the "owl" extended pattern) and actually intending a specific outcome ("it is true now that [this fact about owls]"), basically. Or between imagining some objects (the blue sphere for example), as opposed to: imagining some objects while asserting-intending-knowing it means-that something is true or will happen.

In this context, isn't the cause (to create) and deliberate intending the same thing?

This is why all of this ultimately leads to an exploration of the "nature of experiencing" - that is, examining what "you" are, exactly, and what your actual relationship is to "the world".

Intending, then, is like "shape-shifting". You might say you are shifting your state, where by "state" we mean the set of relative contributions (or "intensity") of all possible facts or patterns, which means to shift yourself. There is no "you" and the "state" or "world" - instead, you sort of "take on the shape of" a particular situation or experience (in the broadest sense, not just the current sensory moment). Right now, you have "taken on the shape of" the experience of apparently ("as if") being-this-person-in-this-world.

So there is, as you say, no difference between causing and intending. We might define "an intention" as the fact or pattern we wish to increase the contribution of, and "intending" as the intensifying of that pattern - shifting to a state where that fact-pattern is more prominent.

Although we often use the word "create" for this sort of thing, actually that's strictly speaking not ideal. The implication of the above is that all patterns exist, eternally. Patterns are "before" time (with time, or change, being an aspect of experience, a pattern like any other, rather than something fundamental). They cannot be created or destroyed; they just are. This means that every experience, at least implicitly, is always available, and that we simply "shift our posture" such that some are more prominent than the rest.

Now, returning to what "you" are, if you discount anything which changes in your ongoing experience (how can something be ultimately true, if it can shift?), the only permanent thing turns out to be the property of being-aware. Or at least, it is meaningless to talk of the absence of that. All other facts or patterns can be more or less "true", but not that.

Putting it all together, then:

We might say that what you truly are is "awareness" which is "taking on the shape of" states of experience. Between shifts, the sequence of moments you experience is fully determined by the facts within that state. The apparent change of sensory content moment to moment is actually static also in this description: "time passing" is just another pattern, albeit a more abstract formatting than most. The only true change that ever occurs - and hence the only cause of apparent change in ongoing sensory experience - is when we "intend", which is just word used to point to the act of us shifting ourselves to a different set of prominent facts.

...

I suspect we are probably talking at cross purposes a little, since we are using some words in different ways, and some underlying assumptions are perhaps different. The word "thought" is a problematic one anyway, I guess; it's too vague!

So, in your description, where (and what) are "you"? And where would "another consciousness" be, relative to that?

This is why I am having a hard time separating intention from other thoughts.

In type or nature they are identical, of course. However, there is a distinction to made made between thoughts which simply arise spontaneously, and those which arise from deliberate intention. In the first case, it's just a passing thought appearing in accordance with your current state (more later), in the latter you are reshaping your state by way of deliberate thinking.

There is no difference in sensory experience between the two. And in fact, there may be no sensory aspect to intending if there's no result component which overlaps with the current moment (although one "knows" one is intending.) The "how" cannot be described, because it is like "shape-shifting". But there is a difference in that one is an aspect of "how things are" and one is "changing how things are".

So, pondering -

"Intention", then, is simply a term used when referring to a "pattern" that one is increasing the contribution of ("intending"), which is done simply by "thinking it" or 'imagining it" or more accurately: "experiencing it" or "asserting as an experience". The fight with language here is because we want to avoid implying that there is a "thinker" who then "thinks the thought", with one being "over here" and another "over there" in any sense. Really, one "takes on the shape of" the fact, pattern, or experience. This last point is key.

Loosely, the outline of this description would be:

• The only fundamental fact is the property of being-aware - or "awareness".
• All other facts are relatively true only; they are temporary. They can be conceived of as "patterns" in awareness.
• All possible fact-patterns exist eternally, "dissolved" into the background. Your state is the current distribution of relative intensities of those facts.
• What you truly are, is "awareness", and this is always true, regardless of what "shape" you have taken on.
• Currently, then, you-as-awareness have "taken on the shape" of a particular state. This state consists of all the facts or patterns currently contributing to your ongoing experience. It fully defines your experience - as in, all subsequent moments are fully determined, between shifts of state.
• To alter your experience, you shift your state by changing the relative intensity of a particular fact or pattern. You do this simply by "intending" - that is, a sort of "thinking" but not a thinking about, rather a thinking as. Still better described as a "taking on the shape of" or "becoming of" a situation.
• Intending cannot be described (because it is "before" concepts) and is non-experiential (has no inherent sensory aspect), although sensory aspects may arise from doing it if the change in state involves an impact in the current "moment". However these are results of intending, not causes of outcomes.
• There is no "outside" to experience, and awareness is "before" division and multiplicity. The only thing that is "happening", is this exact experience, right now. And thoughts you have about an "outside" to experience, are also experiences (that is, the experience of thinking about experience) and are "inside".

And so on.

As the last point suggests, though, there's not all that much point in thinking about this relentlessly, because ultimately thinking is just another experience (although by doing so deliberately you are to an extent "patterning" yourself for future experiences: so we might choose our models carefully if we are going to focus on them a lot). Simple experiments and exercises show the way more clearly, once we have put "descriptions" in their proper place. For example, the Feeling Out exercise at the bottom of this comment is useful for bringing us back to our actual situation, rather than an idea about it.

POST: In what way are other people real?

[POST]

I've read multiple accounts of people using intention, in order to radically change other people's personality. If you can use "Dimensional Jumping" to turn your greatest enemies into your friends, what are the implications of this? Does this imply that other people are puppets? Are they conscious, sentient beings? Are our family, friends, and strangers sentient, autonomous beings? If you have an abusive husband/wife, and you use a tool like the mirror method to "shift to a reality" where this person now treats you nicely, what does this mean?
My current model of "reality'" is that awareness/consciousness is playing every character in my reality. In that way, the same awareness that is acting as if it's the person "A33777" is the same awareness that is acting as if it's my parents, siblings, friends, strangers, and anyone here who will be replying to me. I don't yet know how to answer how that "same" awareness can interact with itself. But, just as I have my own autonomy (I assume I do?), other people that are also being "played" by the same awareness that is playing as me also seem to have their own free will, since they are also that awareness that is able to intend for things to happen (I assume).
But if I can use my intention to turn an enemy into a lover, it does not seem that other "people" have free will. It doesn't seem that they have an active consciousness, that is able to freely intend things to happen in the same way I do. But, while writing this, I realize that I can use my own intentions to hypnotize the "person" my awareness is playing as. If I have severe anxiety for example, in theory, I can use my intentions to become a super confident person overnight. But still, this is not as significant as being able to "change" other people.
In my dreams, my consciousness is playing every character; but yet, it still seems as if I am the only conscious "being," the dream master. I seem to be the only focal point in which experiences are happening. It would be a radical change in thought, for me to start thinking the people in my dreams are having experiences in the same way I am. Any thoughts?

[END OF POST]

Let me have a go here. It seems that you perhaps are still partly identifying as a person, and implying that this person is in a "place" of some sort with other people, and you're saying things like "my awareness". This can lead to an incorrect imagining of the situation, I think.

It is not your awareness, I'd suggest. It is just "awareness". What you are, is "awareness". That is, that which has as its only fundamental property the property of being-aware, and which "takes on the shape of" experiences - including aspects like "spatial extent" and "time passing" - playing out currently as a series of multi-sensory moments. Right now, you-as-awareness is "taking on the shape of" apparently being-a-person-in-a-world. All that is fundamentally true is being-aware, but you-as-awareness are having experiences "as if" other things are true.

Pause for a moment and check your actual experience as it is. I suggest it is something like being an "open aware space within which experiences arise" - like you are an unbounded mind, with a stable, bright, multi-sensory, 3-dimensional thought of being in a world floating within it. In what sense, then, are you a person? What does that being-a-person consist of? Surely, it is just sensations, perceptions and thoughts - with the idea of being a person occurring from time to time? You don't actually experience being a person at all. Other people, similarly, are made from that. Basically, visual, auditory, textural, and so on, aspects and a felt knowing.

All of which arises as a 1st-person perspective. And that's important. That is, as soon as you find yourself thinking about this and imagining the situation from an imaginary 3rd-person "view from nowhere", then you are immediately "wrong". Because you are not inside the world; rather the world is inside you, with a particular sensory aspect of it being "unfolded" at any, or as any, particular moment.

You are then left with identifying the actual properties of this 1st-person mode - which is all there is. For example:

Feeling Out Exercise

... a little exercise can help give us a direct experience of what it means to be the subject to all experience, to recognise that we are not an object and that we are "unlocated". We might close our eyes and try to:

a) find the "edges" of your current experience.
b) find where "you" are in your current experience. and:
c) investigate what your current is experience is "made from". finally:
d) think about yourself, and then note the location of that thought and what it is "made from".

The conclusions of this are the direct facts of your experience - the only actual facts, really; everything else is transitory. Whatever you think about your experience is also another experience within this context. You can never get "behind" or "outside" of this, because it has not edges or boundaries; there is no behind or outside. (If you think otherwise, then pause and notice that your thought about this is also "within" and "inside".)

This final observation is important. Specifically, that "awareness" is "before" things like division and multiplicity, objects and change, and so it makes no sense to talk of "an awareness" or "other people's awareness" or any number regarding awareness at all. There is just "awareness"; uncountable. You can't relate different experiences or perspectives within a framework of time and space, because time and space are themselves aspects of an experience. (Although obviously not accurate, the Hall of Records metaphor tries to offer a easy way into envisaging that.)

it literally felt like I was somewhere in my head, so I had to stop the exercise.

Sometimes it helps, here, to then notice where, exactly, you are experiencing that location from.

Sometimes it is discovered that you are sort of "looking at" that felt location from outside of it. Sometimes it is noted that the "feeling of being in your head" is a feeling within a larger field of "feeling-space". Both of which mean, of course, that you are actually not just in that location, because otherwise you couldn't be aware of the location within a larger context! You must be the context, in order to be aware of a location within a context!

As you imply, though, it can be best to just leave things be if they are a struggle, and let it percolate for a while. Occasionally, doing these exercises can feel quite claustrophobic, as you try to "capture" yourself within your attention, and discover that this isn't possible (because your attention is within you, not the other way around). The trick, overall, is to eventually cease trying to effort it into getting a conclusion, because efforting is itself a deformation of your "shape", like rippling the water you are trying to see a reflection in. Anyway, it's good to return to this one now and again even after you've "got" it - it can be very pleasant and relaxing to remind oneself of it when it is noticed we've become "narrowed down".

Q: Sometimes it is discovered that you are sort of "looking at" that felt location from outside of it. Sometimes it is noted that the "feeling of being in your head" is a feeling within a larger field of "feeling-space". Both of which mean, of course, that you are actually not just in that location, because otherwise you couldn't be aware of the location within a larger context! You must be the context, in order to be aware of a location within a context!
Wow, this is really good; I didn't think of it that way. Perhaps I should have persisted with the exercise a bit longer. I'll definitely give it another go. What would you say for the first exercise, "feeling the edges" of your experience? Do you mean in the sense, that, when you close your eyes, you try to find the "edges" of the "blackness" that you see, or the "edges" in terms of the "mental space" of the mind?

For the first - words are problematic, I suppose, but I do mean feel out, mentally, or with attention, to see if there is a "boundary", an end, to your moment of experience in any direction, and if there are any "edges" to it. It's not a visual thing, particularly. Perhaps sensing is a better term to use. "Mental space" is a good enough term, although of course that does presume a result (that there is a mental space in the first place).

What is concluded - you can check for yourself, definitely don't take my word for it - is that "being" has no edges or limits, but also that it's not necessarily got spatial extent either. So perhaps "openness" or "void" ends up being the way to describe it, with your current spatially-extended sensory moment floating within that.

Ultimately, we're just noting that the idea of an "inside" or "outside" to experience is meaningless because, as we've just explored with the "where am I?" thing, any discovery of an "inside" already implies that you are the context of that "inside", and so you are the "outside" too, and that is also within/as you. This then helps us note, again, that "sensory experience" and "thoughts" are of the same nature, further emphasising that thoughts about an outside are themselves just more experiences within/as us ("inside").

You can see, here, how lots of the usual questions we might have asked earlier become nonsensical. By the time you get to the end of it, questions about "inside" and "outside" have resulted in answers which make those two words quite problematic to use! The answers actually destroy the questions!

Every time I read one of your posts lately I feel like we are on two opposite sides of a coin. I read something and my immediately reaction is "That's not right at all!" then two seconds later it says "Oh wait, no I see what you mean, your just looking at it from the other side". There have been a few of them like this lately, that I have difficulty reading and then suddenly have a flash of intuition of "I don't know what he's saying, but I know exactly what he means". It seems like your approach "pulls out while pushing in" while mine does the opposite. Instead of pulling out to find the edges of my awareness, I envision pulling inwards to a core identity. From there I ask what is the "he/she/they" that exists before my pattern is placed on top of it to filter it. In that sense another person is a core identity that my belief puts through a filter. As I see my core identity as multifaceted and capable of anything, so must the other person be. So in that sense if I go from a reality where a person dislikes me to one where they like me, I didn't change them because between my core/higher self and that persons we've established agreements on how to express all of those energies and let out awareness choose the ones we want.

It's sort of both, simultaneously, really, the "pulls out / pushes in". It's that thing of there being "no-thing" but also "all possible patterns, pre-existing and eternal", at the same time. And you could look at people that way, too: that the "larger person" is all possible versions of that person, and you're just seeing one "aspect". To some extent, though, we're just playing with descriptions there, but I think it gives an intuitive way of thinking about the sort of experiences it is possible to have.

POST: Successfully jumped to contact Future Self. Have evidence of success.

[POST]

Soon after contacting my Future Self, and asking for clear manifestations from him that would leave no doubt in my mind as to their source, the following video manifested in my reality:
Scientist have Evidence that our Future Decisions can change the Past Reality
A clear message: There is science to justify what you are doing.
X-Post from /r/DangmaDzyu

[END OF POST]

So, normally this would be removed because of rule 3. and it also seems a bit off topic with the link:

3 - Links to possibly useful material should include discussion as to its relevance, and a personal review if possible.

However, it's worth having the discussion.

First, I'd say that science does not justify what you are doing. (See previous comment elsewhere on that topic and also in this thread, to save me reproducing it. It references the simulation hypothesis, among other things). However, this is not a bad thing. This subject is inherently unscientific - it is philosophical or metaphysical. That doesn't mean that it doesn't involve things that are true, though. Science itself doesn't discern truth, merely whether a particular description is effective or not, so one shouldn't feel the need to have one's ideas confirmed by science as some sort of stamp of authority - but, that does not mean we shouldn't be rigorous about our own thinking about our experiences.

Second, following from that, I'm not sure why you would necessarily attribute any experiences you have to a "future self". It is important, here, to separate out the direct content of an experience we have, versus the description about that experience. This recent thread digs into this issue when it comes to the topic of "higher powers" - I think the same unpacking applies equally to "future selves". In short, one should be wary of the extent to which you are simply filling in the gaps with a bunch of ideas or assumptions, with no "touch-points" to the actual experience. It can be best to keep a "meta" perspective, where we don't commit to any description, merely find it useful or not (and bear in mind the nature of descriptions throughout).

POST: Suns of Eternity after Two Glasses, possible jump?

[Deleted post]

What "higher powers" would these be? More specifically, where would they be relative to you, and how exactly would they influence your experience? (We shouldn't just take these vague notions for granted without digging into them a little, or else we can end up accumulating stacks of semi-superstitions that are not in fact experienced. Just because you might have an experience "as if" something is true, doesn't mean that that description should be taken as "what is really happening". It's important to keep returning to what exactly was experienced, so we don't risk potentially getting distracted by little fluffy stories.)

Q: Deleted

Okay, but: why? Why believe those things? As in, what in your direct experience has led you to believe them? And believe them in preference to other possible descriptions?

This might sound like I'm pushing back against your beliefs, but that's not quite my intention. Part of this subreddit is (meant to be) focused on examining the "nature of experience" and the nature of descriptions about experiences. And so, if we were going to talk about "higher powers" or "signs", we'd inevitably dig into why we might think there was something "separate" or "out there" that was doing things, and so on.

And so:

In such an investigation, first we might end up focussing on confirming (or dispelling) our everyday assumption that we are a person-object located within a world-place. (Where "the world" is described along the lines of being a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time'".) That is, checking whether that is an accurate description of our ongoing experience or not. The demo exercises in the sidebar are one way to start playing with that, for instance. And then, if we move beyond those assumptions, we must then make sure we aren't just swapping one story for another - making the same mistake, in a different way. Even the notion of "dimensions" as places is potentially suspect, and so on (since at face value it still characterises us as an object in some sense, when we don't really experience ourselves as that, perhaps).

None of which is to say those descriptions can't be useful, but that is different to saying they are fundamentally actual. The experiences might be actual, but the descriptions of them might be best viewed as metaphors or narratives - and this includes "dimensional jumping" itself. (For fun, do maybe check out the little exercise in that link, as a way for us to maybe get past the concepts here.)

Looping back to the idea of a "higher power", then, it is might potentially be viewed as a black box concept to fill in for the fact that only a minor aspect of our present state is seemingly unfolded "into the senses". In other words, the "higher power" idea is a side-effect of the error of conceiving of ourselves as an "object in a place": it is a problem with the description rather than an aspect of actual experience. The generalised version of this view is that our ongoing experience appears to be "patterned" in certain ways - that is, our experiences have content "as if" things were true. But are those things fundamentally true?

If something can be changed, it cannot be fundamentally true. Sometimes we might have experiences "as if" there are higher powers, other times not, and so on. What is the only unchanging property of our experience? Is it perhaps only the fact of "awareness" itself? What else is definitely always true? Etc.

That is the challenge: to investigate what is true. And that's one reason we'd maybe push back on descriptions of "higher powers" and "signs" or indeed "dimensions" - to see if we can have experiences as if they are not true, or differently true, as well as apparently true. Again, that doesn't mean we can't find particular descriptions attractive and enjoy them; however, if we are being sincere then it's important to take account of the nature of descriptions themselves. You get the idea!

Q: Deleted

I guess the key idea is that we don't let the content or context of our descriptions go unexamined. Or perhaps better to say: it's completely fine to use one description or another, but we choose to also recognise the nature of those descriptions. (Which are perhaps best considered as a sort of "parallel experience': the experience of "thinking [or feeling] about experiences", which doesn't get behind the experience.)

And so, please don't filter yourself when you post, because of course "beliefs" are themselves an aspect of experience - and what we're ultimately about here is an exploration of the nature of experience. However, have in mind that "meta" perspective where we are taking one step back from the descriptions we use.

Importantly, even though descriptions might not be "true", that doesn't mean they're not useful. We may certainly have experiences "as if" they were true, and that is itself of interest: just because our descriptions and beliefs don't explain our experiences, doesn't necessarily mean they can't be used to pattern our experiences - a reversal of our usual way of thinking about them, and itself a reason to keep an eye on them.

POST: Isn't this too good to be true?

[POST]

So you're telling me that I can just jump to another dimension whenever I want to change something. Isn't that sort of cheating? And how could it even be safe? I don't think we were supposed to be able to jump between different universes

[END OF POST]

Basically, the theory is that your subconscious mind is creating the universe that you perceive.

Well, not quite.

What exactly is a "subconscious" and why would it need to be convinced of anything - what power can it have to manifest things in your "reality"? I think it is worth considering that the idea of "the subconscious" is a needless conceptual filler: it is never actually observed, its introduction does not actually explain anything, and it has no link to our direct experience. It also presupposes some sort of division between "you" and "the world" and an intermediary or "mechanism" that operates in the background, unobserved. It's not clear that this is justified.

All of this is conjecture of course.

Yes, that's the theory - and nicely described, too! But then, to what extent does it connect to our actual experiences? Isn't it just a placeholder or conceptual connective tissue to join up what is experienced sensorily? That is, is it perhaps more of a "story" or a "language" than it is an accurate explanation of our actual experiences - particularly for our current topic of discussion: experiencing changes in the world which apparently break our standard description of it as a "place"?

The number of "observational touch-points" that connect the idea of the subconscious to our lived experience seem few, to the extent where it might be better not to invoke it at all, especially when it takes the form of a pseudo-computer-programming analogy (as it tends to do these days).

I guess I'm saying that I see no reason to believe in the concept as "true", although one might find it a useful way to talk about things (while remaining aware that it is not what is "really happening"). It's the crossing of that line that I find perhaps unhelpful - again, particularly in the current context, for various reasons. It all hinges on what exactly you think "you" are, and what the relationship between "you" and "the world" is, of course. For example, I'd suggest that we can't simultaneously invoke a psychologist's idea of "the subconscious" and also the law of attraction type idea of "the subconscious", since they would require different notions of "you" and "the world".

Sort of related: I quite enjoyed this article about Freud recently. An extract:

Freud believed that all cognitive processes are unconscious. What we call ‘conscious thought’ is just the brain’s way of displaying the output of unconscious cognitive processing to itself.

Now, from that I'd probably suggest deleting the notion of "the brain" or "processing" (these are never observed), and simply say that conscious thought is. All the rest of it comes about because we make the error of thinking that all experience must be expanded out into objects, or it isn't there. Unconscious thought - or "the subconscious" - isn't unconscious at all. It is here, now, in experience as an "awareness context": but you might say it is enfolded or "dissolved" into and as the background, rather than unfolded or "expanded" into the foreground. However, that means it doesn't "happen" or "process" anything or do any thinking - it is more like a static landscape or state with sensory experience an aspect of it, with nothing outside of that, and it is not personal.

POST: Did the Two Cups Intention Method Last Night... and Woke Up Today Filled With Negative Emotions and Hostility

[Deleted post]

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

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

POST: Superhero Dimension

[POST]

Alright this is going to sound stupid. Is it actually possible to jump to a dimension where superhuman actually exists? If so, is it possible for me to gain Superspeed in that dimension?

[END OF POST]

Q: No, it's 99.99999999999999999999999999999% likely that it isn't possible.

How are you calculating "likeliness" here? What model are you using to obtain your result? Or do you really just mean "I really strongly feel that's not possible, but not for any specific reason"?

While I certainly appreciate you chiming in here and there, it's not much use to anyone if you are going simply be dismissive (and in some previous cases antagonistic), without going into why, exactly you believe what you do. One of the main points of the subreddit is to dig into the thinking behind views.

Anyway:

The standard answer to this question is that you can create "persistent realm" in a lucid dream, which can be returned and which to all intents and purposes behaves as if it is as "real" as this waking experience. In that sense, it is 100% possible to "jump to a dimension where superhuman actually exists" and to "gain Superspeed in that dimension".

What is the difference between this and apparently "really" jumping dimensions? I'd suggest that the only difference is that you "wake up" from a persistent realm, but do not "wake up" from daily life - yet, at least. If one switched one's experience to a persistent realm and then never resumed this experience, though...? That would be what OP is asking for. Although such an experience might not actually be much fun "in reality", I'd say.

Here you go again typing an entire paragraph of "words" in "quotes"... he wanted to REALLY jump somewhere fast

Haven't you heard? "Quotes" are the new CAPS!

Expanding on that:

The reason I put things in quotes - other than when literally quoting a comment or someone else's terminology - is to highlight that the word or phrase is not to be taken at face value, and that its usual meaning or underlying assumptions are perhaps one of the things under investigation. Your glib comment about being "realistic", for instance, would make a good example. Because how, exactly, are you defining or judging what is "realistic" versus what is not? What's the difference between "really" jumping somewhere fast and having an experience as if they are? Etc. As they stand, in the context of this discussion, your comments are basically meaningless.

One of the points of the subreddit is to engage in some philosophy and unpack these sorts of things. This seems to have gone over your head.

As suggested in a previous comment:

Treat this as an investigation into the "nature of your experience" (and of "descriptions"), consisting of experiments and subsequent contemplation of the results. You're meant to reach your own conclusions, really...

Ultimately, you are led to confront your assumption that you are a person-object located within a world-place. That is, whether the standard concept that "the world" is a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time'" is in fact a completely accurate description of your ongoing experience.

(With apologies for multiple levels of quotation marks.)

POST: This sub feels like what /r/lawofattraction is trying to be

I do think that, as things currently stand, the ultimate perspectives of the two subreddits are quite different, even though from a surface glance they seem similar - and that's why the content differs.

They're both seemingly just about trying to change your experience.

But here, that's not quite what the underlying purpose is.

Firstly, it's largely about investigating whether experience can be changed, by conducting experiments in order to check our usual assumptions. It just so happens that a good way to do this is to try and get desired results - and this has the happy benefit of you getting something you want, if the result is a positive one. Nothing is to be taken on blind faith. You do have to do the exercises, or there's no point! (Talking about how "likely" something is, for example, is a waste of time; you'll only know how likely something is if you check.)

This is the "practical" part.

Secondly, this subreddit is also careful about taking descriptions and explanations for granted. Specifically, it's cautious about the nature of "descriptions". In LOA-type forums, often we see lots of posts and links about "how the world really works" and various techniques and methods. These are sometimes greeted with enthusiasm as the next "truth".

But there is an underlying assumption hidden that there even is a "how things really work", and that a description can get "behind" experience and capture that. That's not necessarily the case; descriptions can be seen as just yet more experiences at the same level (the experience of: "thinking about experiences"). Parallel constructions in thought.

This also brings the idea of a "method" into question, and highlights the risk of conflating "conceptual truth" (a self-consistent description who's apparent truth is really structural coherence) and "direct truth" (a fact about experience that you can apprehend directly, such as finding location of "you" in this moment of experience).

This is the "philosophy" part.

Finally, we do have to make a distinction between people "talking within the framework" of the subreddit, and having blind faith about any particular aspect of it. If you are going to take a line of investigation, you do have to put aside caveats and pursue it fully for the duration. For example, "is this-idea-for-an-outcome possible?" is both a practical and a philosophical question. It doesn't necessarily means someone "believes" something in the manner of faith without proof; they are exploring possibilities and thinking through the implications.

Meanwhile, from a relevant thread yesterday:

Treat this as an investigation into the "nature of your experience" (and of "descriptions"), consisting of experiments and subsequent contemplation of the results. You're meant to reach your own conclusions, really... Ultimately, you are led to confront your assumption that you are a person-object located within a world-place. That is, whether the standard concept that "the world" is a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time'" is in fact a completely accurate description of your ongoing experience.

No matter what conclusions are drawn, at least from that point onwards the investigator will be living their lives based on an understanding of their experience that has been tested and confirmed, one way or the other.

I find that this sub has a large difference between what the sidebar says its about and what people make posts about. I read the sidebar when I first came and it resonated with what I had been doing, so I subscribed and check it frequently looking to find people into similar things. I rarely find posts here though that are, Imo, anything to do with what I interpret the sub as being about. It's a shame. Tbh I think the name of the sub is misleading and attracts people that believe they're Dr Samuel Beckett. Do you know of any other subs that may be more of what I'm into?

I think the main content of this sub happens in the comments really, as part of an ongoing discussion. The actual posts are mostly a starting point for that. And it's "moderation by contribution" here mostly, so other than the sidebar-linked posts and the overall perspective, there aren't any "official" posts or views. We think that works better for an open-exploration type format.

The subreddit name: Yeah, in a way it can be misleading if taken at face value, and to an extent it's a historical artefact, but it should really be taken as a provocation, I'd say - a challenge to investigate. Posts based on assumptions about the name sometimes lead to good unpacking-type conversations. If I were setting up a new subreddit, though, I'd choose a different name (although probably not one that was much more straightforward).

Like most public subreddits, it's inevitable that it doesn't get to stray too far from a certain introductory level because of new arrivals and the difficulty in developing a strand of thought over a prolonged period (see: /r/luciddreaming and so on, similarly). So this place is always likely to be a transition between one thing and another - but that's fine, I think.

There's also the issue that, in fact, after a certain point there's not really much more to say. To quote Alan Watts slightly out of context, there's an element of: "If you get the message, hang up the phone." The "posts as seeds" and the level of ambiguity here is actually one way of allowing the perspective to shift around, and different angles to be taken on the same underlying insights and concepts.

Anyway, as regards other subreddits to check out, depending on your angle, /r/oneirosophy is one possibility and, for a more curated experience, perhaps /r/weirdway. If it's a more formal philosophical discussion of this you're after, or something more about metaphors and mental processes in terms of perception, there's nothing I've found that's particularly great.

Care to expand on the themes of "what I interpret this sub as being about" and "what I had been doing"?

I don't want to call acceptance of these principles "blind faith," but I'd suggest that contemporary empiricists have acknowledged that accepting these principles largely uncritically allows us to ask more interesting, and more sophisticated questions, by standing on their shoulders.

Indeed.

It's not "blind faith" - or should not be - though, because one isn't really proceeding as if the principles were "true' so much as they are useful. If they stopped being useful, you could just ditch them. And there is no reason you can't simultaneously use other principles, even ones which directly conflict with the favoured set, if that works for a particular circumstance (drifting more into Paul Feyerabend here than Popper, I guess).

Conceptual frameworks might be said to be largely "castles in the sky" - more self-consistent than they are actually consistent with direct experience, other than a subset of somewhat artificial elements we call "observations". These "observational touchpoints" are the threads which link description to experience, but even the formatting of linkages is itself an abstraction, a set of hidden assumptions - ones which potentially pre-filter lines of enquiry, if we are not careful. And so:

Science is perhaps better viewed as a loosely overlapping collection of frameworks and strategies, rather than a single "knowledge" or "method" - even though it is rarely represented as such in everyday, even professional, discussion.

And, very loosely speaking, the sort of "meta-strategy" that this implies is the (ideal) overall angle of the subreddit, with perhaps one addition: that the nature of observations in terms of the direct experience be included. That is: "truth"?

POST: I'm so confused

I read that it's [dimensional jumping] some type of metaphor. So if you dimension jump from 'poor' to 'wealthy' would that just change your state of mind to work harder to get wealthy? Or would your whole reality change and you will automatically be getting more money?

It's a metaphor in the sense that it's a particular concept for describing an experience. That is, you might have experiences so discontinuous that they are "as if" you have "jumped dimensions". In that case, the experience is literally true, but the description is a metaphor - since you don't actually experience "dimensions" as such. It's just that the experience is consistent with such a concept; other descriptions could equally apply to those experiences too. In other words, descriptions are never "what is really happening". They are, in a way, also experiences: the experience of "thinking about experiences".

Anyway, the ultimate point is that the direct experience is primary; descriptions do not "cause" experiences and are not "how they work"; descriptions are secondary. However, it might be observed that intending something in terms of a particular description might "pattern" your experience to be consistent with that description. (This is still not the same as the description being "true", however.) This can only be explored through personal experimentation, though, so you must begin by doing the exercises in the sidebar, and see what experiences you have.

At this moment now, you might say that you are having an experience consistent with or "as if" you are a person-object located within a world-place. And you generally think of that "world" as being a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time'". But also you might say that this is not actually what is happening.

What is happening - you might consider - is that you-as-experiencer has "taken on the shape of" the experience of apparently being a person in a world - that you-as-awareness has taken on the shape of a 3-dimensional, multi-sensory "moment". The description of what that moment is and its content, that is in parallel or simultaneous with that sensory moment: it doesn't get behind it.

And so, again, the description is a metaphor, but the experience is literal. The description is a metaphor because it is a conceptual construction, as a parallel experience, which tries to replicate certain elements of the experience to make it thinkable, but that doesn't mean the description points to just a "state of mind" (in the way you mean it anyway). Part of the fun of the experiment is to explore how valid your everyday descriptions are, in the face of the direct experiences you can generate!

This includes your descriptive ideas of "your own perception", "other people" and even the broader concept of "reality". You may find that all of those terms have hidden assumptions which will need to be unpacked, as you progress. For example, you might consider in what way "other people's reality" is actually experienced by you. And, in fact, to what extent you truly experience "a reality", given that this concept sort of implies a "place" that is somehow external to you. Do you experience something external to you? If you think so, then in what way exactly? And so on.

Meanwhile, perhaps try out this little exercise for fun, to give a sense of what a shift in perspective would be like on this:

Feeling Out Exercise

... a little exercise can help give us a direct experience of what it means to be the subject to all experience, to recognise that we are not an object and that we are "unlocated". We might close our eyes and try to:

a) find the "edges" of your current experience.
b) find where "you" are in your current experience. and:
c) investigate what your current is experience is "made from". finally:
d) think about yourself, and then note the location of that thought and what it is "made from".

The conclusions of this are the direct facts of your experience - the only actual facts, really; everything else is transitory. Whatever you think about your experience is also another experience within this context. You can never get "behind" or "outside" of this, because it has not edges or boundaries; there is no behind or outside. (If you think otherwise, then pause and notice that your thought about this is also "within" and "inside".)

Q: Do you experience something external to you? If you think so, then in what way exactly?
What attitude/mindset do you suggest as an alternative to the natural materialistic "modeling of things (to better predict their behavior (and profit from that))"?
When you can't control something (i.e. - when you observe a mismatch between parts of what you're experiencing and what you'd prefer to experience), what's your first thought? How is your perspective different from the classic "there are those things out there, beyond my fingertips, I can't directly govern" ?

So, the possibility of control is a secondary thing, really.

That is, that noticing that the entire moment of experience is "made from" you, is within and as you, is the primary thing, the basic aspect of your experience. It is the only fundamental property of it: the property of being-aware or "awareness", the context to all experiential content. This noticing can be direct (look and see that it is so) or can be approached indirectly (by participating in exercises and finding that your standard description, involving a "you" and "world" separation, is inaccurate, and following where that leads).

Now, this fact suggests that your experience is better thought of as "patterned awareness", because it is the case that there are no inherent parts to you-as-awareness, no inside or outside and so on. This is true regardless of whether you can effect change or not. Even if your current main strand of experience just continued "on rails" and could not by adjusted, it would still be true that it was not external to you. It's not "beyond your fingertips" because you don't have fingertips, you merely "taken on the shape of" the experience of apparently having fingertips and there being things beyond those fingertips.

However, it is worth noting that the "you" we are talking about here is not the personal you. Following from the above, the personal you is actually a formatting of experience. You are not a person, you are that which takes on the shape of an ongoing moment of experience which is formatted "as if'" you were a person. Right now, you-as-awareness have "taken on the shape of" this 3D multi-sensory moment of apparently being "over here" and the room being "over there", but quickly you can perceive that it is all "you". So, when you move your arm, you are not a person moving an arm - rather, you are patterning you-as-awareness wth the fact of "my arm is lifting" and subsequently that is unfolding as a sensory experience, with the entire sensory moment being "you".

This leads to difficulty discussing "causing change", of course. Because you don't really cause change, so much as "become" a new state or pattern which consists of the desired experience as an aspect of it or implied fact within it. And there's no "outside" to you - no separation between you and result, no "doer" and "done to" - so you (as patterned awareness) either have changed, or you have not. (Note that this "state" isn't describing just the sensory moment, it's the entire set of facts within that moment, which imply all subsequent moments - until you shift state again.)

You can't try to change state, for instance, because that would just be patterning yourself with the experience of "trying". This might be taken as a suggestion that, if you don't experience the outcome that you wanted to experience, then you did not in fact intend for the outcome, but instead intended for something else. You might have thought that you were intending for your outcome, but further investigation will show that you did not.

A mundane example: you want to improve your posture, but instead of actually intending to "have relaxed ideal posture" you instead in fact intend to "tense my neck upwards and push my shoulders back" because that is your conception of what "good posture" was. Another: you are in an arm-wrestle, but instead of intending to "have my arm be over there in the winning position" you in fact intend "to tense my muscles and thus generate a feeling of power and effort", which actually opposes the movement towards the winning position.

So, getting to the conclusion at last: one way to think of apparently lack of ability to control is that you are tending towards intending or re-implying your misconception of the world - intending your inaccurate description of experience - rather than actually intending the outcome. Which is why there are no "methods" or "mechanisms" to suggest for this, and it's ultimately actually all about exploring and unpacking one's own patterning?

But, you're actually changing a situation in your own reality right?

It's a bit of a tautology, that. If you are changing your own ongoing experience, then you are changing "your own situation in your reality" - because what is a "situation" or "reality" or "experience" anyway? They are the same thing. It is only the use of particular concepts that introduces the idea of a separation between those things. You never actually experience a separation as such.

As for whether you are "actually" switching dimensions, the thing to consider is: how would you differentiate between having an experience "as if" you switched dimensions (that is, an experience consistent with a description using the concept of "dimensions") and an experience of "actually" switching dimensions?

This is why the subreddit ends up being an exploration of both the "nature of experiencing" and also the nature of descriptions about experiencing. We take a step back from it all, and consider what we truly mean by these things.

To an extent, the name "dimensional jumping" is somewhat of a provocation. It asserts the idea of "dimensional jumping" and challenges you to have experiences consistent with that idea. If you then do have experiences consistent with that idea, does it mean you "actually" jumped dimensions? Or does it mean something else, something more fundamental? Does it perhaps imply something about your everyday notions about what "you" are, what "the world" is, and the relationship between the two (and if there is two)?

Or would you be able to plan things to happen for yourself by doing dimensional jumping?

The short answer is: there are no answers, other than just doing it (in the spirit of exploration and experimentation).

POST: Two glasses - Tell me about your experiences...

In the spirit of digging into things for increased clarity:

I actually did not intend it to make me change universes, merely re-pattern me to be better an manifestation

What's the difference between "re-patterning" and "changing universes", though?

And: how do homeopathy and "vibrational medicine" work, and how is the two glasses exercise related to that? What is "energy/intention" stuff exactly, in that context?

There's a risk, here, of bouncing phrases around without connecting them properly to the actual experience, or perhaps reusing metaphors ("universes", "energy" and so on) that are sort of "too late" when it comes to accounting for these experience. That is, assuming that concepts which are foundational in the "standard" or even "new-age" descriptions, which are not in fact foundational to our actual ongoing experience, given fresh experiments and their results here.

For example, most of those descriptions do in some sense still assume the model of being a person-object located within a world-place (where "the world" is a "stable simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time'). I'd say that one of the first assumptions to fall under suspicion should be the "I am an object located in as space" one, and with that removed, you have to approach everything not in terms of content, but in terms of overall context.

Triumphant George, may I ask you something... If you do not want to reply on list and just to myself, that's cool. But do you believe that things can be made to change? I am talking about can into dog or Nissan into Mercedes type change (and experienced by sane people not schizo's), and not in a forward looking "my cat will die, my Nissan will be stolen but I will be given a dog and a Mercedes" kind of way, but in a reality breaking/bending/rewriting kind of way, weather it is retroactive or a "poof" there it is?
Because if you are of the opinion, even covertly, that "jumping" is only good for soft or future changes, things that are not classed as paranormal and are at best unexpected, then we are talking at cross purposes. Because I can't really work out if you are so connected to conventional reality you don't think these paranormal changes are possible and your philosophy is more of an attempt to turn the practice into a therapy, or if you are totally the other way and are so disconnected from material reality that you think anything is possible. Maybe if I had read more of what you have written I could answer this clearly, except if you are being covert about it, maybe not. You have what seems like rationality that I would expect to find in a skeptic, but the view of a mystic.

Not therapy - although of course anything that clarifies might also be therapeutic as a side effect - and it's not about "believing" things. Rather, a rational investigation into the "nature of experiencing", and also the nature of descriptions about experiencing (or just "descriptions" in general). But pursued from the ground up. That is, all assumptions fall under the wary eye, be they "standard perspective" ones or "mystical" ones. Direct experience, then build out (but noting the context if experience not just face value content).

The notion that we are a person-object located within a world-place, for example, might fall under investigation sooner rather than later given some results, but it is not then replaced with another description of the same type: swapping "people and places" with "consciousness and energies", and taking them literally, is perhaps to repeat the same mistake - and so on.

The subreddit itself deliberately takes no official view. First, because it's all about personal investigation. Second, because that turns out to be a somewhat nonsensical phrase (an official view wouldn't have much to say, in a way). Instead, it adopts a "meta" perspective where nothing is taken to be fundamental - except, implicitly, the basic fact of experiencing (that there is experience). I'll try and reply to your other extended comment soon, but meanwhile: in terms of exploring the context of experience rather the content (this doesn't just mean "sensory content"), and considering where a "meta" perspective might fit in, this silly little exercise is worth playing with and then pondering. Note that actually doing it is different to thinking about it, though, and in fact that is part of the point.

Q: But how do you know it's a mistake? I appreciate it might be your philosophy, but how do you know your philosophy is correct?

But how do you know it's a mistake?

It's a mistake in a different sense than you probably mean here:

I appreciate it might be your philosophy, but how do you know your philosophy is correct?

It is not "correct". No description is.

Descriptions are merely useful. As a framework within which to discuss experiences, or they point the way to an insight or experience. Or they don't. Beware the "reification of abstraction" and all that. Descriptions aren't true. That is, beware taking concepts as external things, specifically assuming that descriptions or philosophies "get behind" experience, rather then themselves being experiences (the experience of: "thinking about experiences"). Implicitly, that would be equivalent to saying that the description "causes" the experience. For example, that "gravity" causes things to fall down, rather than being, loosely speaking, the name of a description of - a codification of observations of - "things falling down".

Now, even though it might be suggested (subject to experimentation) that adopting a description in a certain way may lead to experiences "as if" the description were true - something we might call "patterning" - those descriptions themselves never actually "explain" experiences. The description still wouldn't be "what is really happening".

I think the little exercise makes the distinction clear, as a starting point anyway. One thing that is important here is that we don't just get lost in little "castles in the sky" that lack many "observational touch-points" - that is, self-consistent thought structures which are coherent but don't actually connect to direct experience, except very minimally. We need to distinguish somewhat between models and things which are vague and therefore operate more like a narrative or language. (I'd suggest that, as generally used, concepts like "energies" falls into the latter category.)

=But you said mistake, I just asked how it was one? The point I want to make and which I would be interested to hear back from you about is that I believe that a group of people doing this together might, whether for energy/intention or psychological reasons (not feeling it is all on them alone) be more powerful than doing it alone. I also think that having the memory of when it was that way should make it easier to re-establish that pattern and shift much as I believe occurs with flip flops in the Mandela Effect where these are things that people tend to be dramatically more absolutely certain how things are and yet a shift back to how it used to be still takes place. So even in your understanding of how this works, shouldn't this be a novel and likely enhanced method?=

It's a mistake in the sense of taking a conceptual framework as being literally, independently, causally true - taking a description as being "what is really happening". (Unless I've lost the thread here. I interpreted your question as asking me why adopting "consciousness and energy" as a description would be the same mistake as adopting "objects and places". The mistake is to take either as being fundamentally actual or true.)

I agree that having a memory (or any conception really) of something can make it easier to establish or re-establish that pattern as prominent in subsequent experience. It's necessary, even - or at least, if it is no directly conceived of, it must be implicit in what is conceived of.

However, the problem with "a group of people doing this together" is that there aren't any people, and that you aren't a person either - in the sense of being a person-object having an experience. There is a person-formatted experience happening, but that is to say a different thing. Since there are no independent people in the sense of beings, and they have no separate power or intention of their own, then talking of a "group of people" doing anything - doing anything - is ultimately meaningless. Except in one sense:

It would be possible to have an experience "as if" you, as a person, get together with other people and do some sort of ritual and then experience an outcome that is much more intense than that which accompanied your experience "as if" you were a single person doing this alone.

Still, though, the entire experience of this group activity would in fact still be "awareness" just "taking on the shape of" the experience of apparently being a person in a world, with other people, doing this ritual and getting results. In actuality, the entire experience would be a "result", and all the doings and activities merely a sort of "sensory theatre".

Aside - The lesson from that exercise is that there is not "an awareness" or "the awareness" or "awarenesses". There is just "awareness" - unbounded and without inherent structure, which "takes on the shape of" situations and, therefore, moments of experience. (It is "before" division and multiplicity; those are also patterns taken on by awareness; this is why it is not solipsism.) You can notice right now, directly, that this entire moment is "made from you" and that there is no outside to it, or an inside for that matter. Furthermore, you can't find you-the-person anywhere within experience, and any thought you have about the experience or being-a-person are themselves simply further experiences, within-and-as "awareness". The ultimate point being, yes you-as-awareness might taken on the shape of being-a-person-in-a-world-with-other-people-and-doing-stuff-together, but it is a sort of "patterned image", with the all the content of the image being a "result" from the perspective of the context of it. This context is the only "cause", and even then it is more like a "self-shaping" than a cause-and-effect type cause.

But isn't that just your conceptual framework?

Not really.

First there is a direct noticing of what the fundamental fact of experiencing is - and that is primary. Everything else is just an attempt to convey the implications of that.

Which is why I take pains to say that conceptual frameworks are themselves just further experiences. Basically, you cannot think about this. It is literally unthinkable, because we are talking about "that which thinking is 'made from'" - or indeed, that which structures or patterns are "made from". You can't use conceptual structures to talk about pre-structure. However, conceptual structures can still be useful.

It is inherently the case that there are not experiencers (note the plural and the implication that there are objects having experiences). However, there are indeed experiences. There are just not simultaneous, or sequential, or parallel experiencers or experiencees. Hence ending up phrasing it as "experiencing", and so on.

Now, what difference does that make to the person-formatted experience? Mainly, it means that the patterning of that experience is not fundamental, that there is no world "out there" as such, but most importantly it means that nothing in the content of your experience is the cause of it.

And since you are trying to cause change, that may be relevant.

And what does a "persona formatted experience" really mean different to being a person? Wouldn't it be mostly the same thing?

In content terms, mostly yes. But it means that the concept of a "person", a thing located within a "world", is not an accurate representation of your actual situation, and so that ideas built upon that will also be inaccurate. You may make all sorts of "discoveries" as you have the experience adventuring about in the world, including "transformative" experiences with "other people", but you'll never be uncovering anything deep - just more experiences.

Note that I am not disparaging that! That is what it's all about!

However, since this subreddit isn't just a "self help" forum for generating happy experiences, and we tend to spend time unpacking descriptions and concepts to see how the relate to the nature of all experiences, I'm obviously going to spend some time unraveling our perspectives like this.

The whole last paragraph, you say what I can find, but honestly I have not found any of that, maybe I could, but none of it speaks to me as a self evident truth.

Well, you have to examine your experience, now, directly. Rather than either just think about it, or pay attention to the content of it. It's not an easy thing to convey, and I'm not really trying to persuade you of it - I'm just suggesting that this is something you can do and notice, and that the direct fact of your experience somewhat re-contextualises the content of it. Anyway, just put that on the back burner for now perhaps.

I am at a loss as to how any of this is proven, why it is necessary, or really why it is useful

It depends on what you're after, of course. The ultimate aim of it would be to cease to be delusional about one's circumstances. (That is not meant in a negative way!)

So while I find your ideas interesting, nothing really beats results, and there is one thing I know from fringe physics research, theories be damned when the experiments disagree!

Quite so. As mentioned regularly, success of a "jump" is to be judged by having the outcome you intended subsequently arise within your experience - nothing else counts.

However, that is the start and not the end, because typically (after some experimenting) the results seem to rather break the "standard world" model. And not just in a simple way that can be adjusted for easily - it breaks the model of there being a "you" and a "world" at all. And no fringe physics can save it.

Anyway, you'll notice that the subreddit itself doesn't really offer conclusions, it just sets up a couple of exercises to act as the starting point for personal investigation. The two exercises are designed to potentially offer (eventually, when considered and pushed) two insights into our experience (albeit ultimately two aspects of the same insight).

Let me emphasise though:

This discussion isn't meant to dissuade you from trying out "group experiments" or anything else. We're just spending some fun time unpacking the assumptions implied within that idea.

when I first arrived one guy who followed you for about a year gave up, and I have seen a few others who are frustrated.

Nobody's meant to be "following" anyone! Primarily, because this ends up being about unpacking your own experience, and noticing that the idea of independent "methods" and "techniques", or even a specific "how things work" or "mechanism", doesn't quite stack up. But that is to jump ahead: this is a forum for experimentation and discussion, the only extra bit is this tendency to be doubtful about descriptions vs experience - that "meta" perspective thing.

your philosophy is a total rewrite to reality and not just a fundamental plot twist

Everything stays exactly the same, except for a shift in context.

it says more about what it isn't than what it is

That in the nature of it. It's like:

There's a piece of paper. The paper can be folded in any shape. Now, what shape would you fold the paper into, to represent the piece of paper itself? Actually, the only way to point to the paper itself is to indicate how all the different folds one can make from the paper, are not the paper (while simultaneously they are all the paper, confusingly).

Similar metaphors include: trying to make a sandcastle which communicates the fact of both "the beach" and "sand".

It it wasn't like this, then everyone could just read a book or follow a step-by-step method and become "enlightened" (or whatever you want to call it).

it removes useful tool to talk about things and useful concepts.

No, it simply recognises those tools and concepts for what they actually are.

Side question: In your view, if someone wanted to, could they rewrite reality to the point of arbitrarily redefining the structure of the atom? Not just bending but rewriting physics to however they willed?

Well, physics is easy to rewrite: it's just a collection of descriptions, based on a subset of experiences which were abstracted into "observations". The world is not made from atoms - although "the world" (a particular idea) is made from "atoms" (a particular conceptual framework). Just have a few fresh observations, then make up some new descriptions! ;-)

You need to be more specific when you use the word "reality". It's probably laden with assumptions. Do you mean "the direct fact of this moment of experience and its content", or do you mean something like "this particular conceptual framework". Reality, I'd suggest, is this moment right now. Anything beyond that, is storytelling...

Anyway, it might be beneficial to separate out into strands: this sort of conversation and separately your own experiments and results. (Perhaps better to call them "outcomes", actually, since it's a less loaded term.) Because this stuff we're talking about can be a distraction, perhaps, if gone into too early.

Just bear in mind, though, that "getting results" doesn't necessarily confirm a "this is how things really work fundamentally". That is, the nature of the experience of the results. Always follow any apparent causal chain right down the line, right up to: "referring to my direct experience, how did I cause the raising of my hand in order to wave the magickal wand in this ritual". And keep in mind this notion of the context of all experiences.

After playing with that for a bit, this and the other conversations may not be so jarring, because there will be a better sense of where they are coming from (note: that doesn't mean you'll necessarily agree with them of course!).

POST: [THEORY] Why I think we REALLY aren't getting results

What, exactly, is the "will of nature" though?

Isn't it, ultimately, a fictional construct being used as a black box explainer for describing "why I didn't get my outcome according to my assumptions"? Isn't it essentially a replacement for the "will of God" concept. There, too, we'd end up by asking the question: what is "God"? Here, we might ask: what is "Nature" and how does it relate to "me"?

The risk, here, I guess, is that we end up proposing entities which do not exist fundamentally. We may have experiences consistent with the concepts, in a broad sense, but forget that the description itself is not existent or causal apart from that.

Similarly, what is "human intent"?

If the human experience is itself really just a particular structuring of "awareness" (or "experiencing"), then it makes no sense to talk of "human intent" - because "human" is a certain formatting of experience and a certain description of that experience. "Human" is not a being - and that which experiences and intends is itself not human. It loops back to questioning the more fundamental assumption of being a person-object located within a world-place, which the "will of nature" concept implies again.

Now, taking a step back, it is certainly true that our ongoing experience is structured. It's not just a random whirlwind of disconnected multi-sensory image fragments. What is the nature of that structure though, and to what extent is it fundamental? If one supposes that there is a thing called "Nature" and that it has a will independent of you-as-awareness, then one must consider what the nature of that "Nature" is. What it is "made from" and how it interacts. More importantly, what is the evidence of it in direct experience?

We risk swapping one (alleged) superstition with another, except labelling one description as "really what is happening" compared with the other (even though neither is more fundamental). The very idea that there is a "what is happening" behind the scenes at all, as it were, is potentially open to question. In which context I would add:

But the claim is made that we are outrageously free and in principle can have anything that we desire, that only our beliefs or the action of our subjective minds holds us back, that all possibilities are out there, and all you have to do is call them to you.

This seems more like a summary of the "law of attraction" concept and not what is being explored here, surely. That's the sort of thing that is being investigated, not claimed.

All the important questions are functional ones, having a bearing on shaping results.

The problem with sticking with functional questions, is that the very nature of "doing" is also under investigation.

So, in essence I'd still say that you are simply describing the fact that one's ongoing experience is structured, is "patterned". I would not disagree with that. That is certainly true in direct experience.

However, introducing the concept of the "Will of Nature" doesn't add anything further to that observation, I think. If the properties of the "Will of Nature" are simply identical to the observation that "experience is patterned", and that simply "wanting" something doesn't instantly modify those patterns, we aren't gaining anything in terms of insight. Except, because of the implications of the term "Will", the notion that there is an independent "power" or "purpose" which shapes our experience. This is something more than saying it is patterned.

What is the functional, the practical use of that description?

Note: I definitely agree that descriptions in and of themselves are not necessarily valuable. But it is not clear that the concept of the "Will of Nature" goes beyond that either.

I no longer think those are actually much useful as questions.

They are useful because they unpack the relationship between descriptions and the nature of (as distinct from the content of) our ongoing direct experience. More importantly, they force us to examine the relationship between ourselves and our experiences - if indeed there can be said to be a relationship, even.

You are still left with a particular structured description, implying the actual existence of something called the "Will of Nature". Now, it may not be your intention, but implied within you description is the concept of "you" being in some way embedded within some sort of a structure, a structure which is independent of you and imposes itself upon you.

Is that what is actually experienced?

In my opinion, the will of nature exists fundamentally... what I am calling the actions of nature.

In what sense, though does nature "act"? By saying the "Will of Nature" is fundamental, are you simply trying to convey the idea that some of our experiential patterning cannot be modified?

Therefore patterns act upon us which are not malleable simply by a change of notion in regular states of consciousness.

But - is this not just a restatement of the idea that you can't change the more abstract or factual patterning simply by "wanting" or "wishing" (whatever those are, exactly)?

We'd then ask: What is a "state of consciousness" in this regard and why would it make a difference? What is a "deep technique" or "remote state": deep relative to what, remote relative to what? How do these relate to the "Will of Nature"? Is it a battle of wills, a power wrestle between entities? Without asking those questions, then our concepts aren't functional, because they don't suggest anything to "do".

If you contest this, show me someone able to conduct a conversation without a heartbeat.

How does this connect to the idea of the "Will of Nature", though? That still suggests it is a black box explainer for "anything you cannot immediately do".

I think there is a false binary that we are free to change things or we are not. I think at a very deep level we may be free to do so, but I don’t think that level is trivially accessible.

So, I didn't see a false binary there, because that wasn't being asserted (that we are free to change things or we are not).

What you are saying - a useful insight though it might be - still seems to be little more than "we observe that experience is patterned and we also observe that we can't simply update the broader patterning by just wanting-wishing". I think the introduction of the "Will of Nature" and the other stuff simply clouds this. Why go beyond simply saying that there is a "patterning" to experience, and that some patterns seem more easily modifiable than others?

The questions would then be:

• What is the nature of "patterns" and "patterning" (what does that concept point to)?
• What is the relationship between "patterns" and "the world" and "you", and:
• Why are some patterns seemingly more easily modified than others?

Ultimately, then, probably my main issue with your concept is that it doesn't actually explain why someone "really" doesn't get a (particular) result or finds they apparently can't change their experience instantly; it simply restates it in different language whilst potentially introducing something that implies additional entities and relationships that can't be tested (or more: aren't required or useful).

...

So, I'm struggling a little here. After all that, I still don't think you've added anything to the basic statement: "experience is apparently patterned and some patterns seem remarkably persistent". Except, perhaps, with the addition of the idea of a "cosmic agency" or "will of nature" that you must in some way be "aligned" with in order to make significant changes. But then, that itself would just seem to be a synonym for the patterning of oneself as "that which takes on the shape of states of experiences". (When I say "oneself", I of course don't mean human self, since "human" here would just mean a certain patterning of experience: "human" isn't a being, it is formatting of being, in such a description.)

Perhaps we are talking at cross purposes here, though. And so:

To try to get us on the same footing - because it may well be we are sort of talking about the same overall concepts, and I actually feel we almost are in one particular way, if I could get you to articulate it more concisely - in your description, or indeed in your experience:

• What is "the world"? What are "you"? What is the relationship between the two? And:
• What is the relationship between the "will of nature" or "cosmic agency" and that? What is the relationship between your direct experience right now and that?

Without this, to me, it feels as though there's a nice phrase, something somewhat attractively romantic even - the "will of nature" - without anything actually behind it, that we can connect usefully to direct experience.

Q: So, I'm struggling a little here. After all that, I still don't think you've added anything to the basic statement: "experience is apparently patterned and some patterns seem remarkably persistent". Except: Perhaps with the addition of an idea of a "cosmic agency" or "will of nature" that you must in some way be "aligned" with. Perhaps we are talking at cross purposes here, though.
Correct. The very reason that they are "remarkably persistent" is that they are extending from an agentic source that is not empirical "you."
To try to get us on the same footing - because it may well be we are sort of talking about the same overall concepts, and I actually feel we almost are in one particular way, if I could get you to articulate it more concisely - in your description, or indeed in your experience: What is "the world"? What are "you"? What is the relationship between the two? And: What is the relationship between the "will of nature" or "cosmic agency" and that? What is the relationship between your direct experience right now and that?
I really don't know why you would feel that asking and/or discussing questions like that are going to help you achieve results, given that I've already said that any actions we undertake from the waking state are likely to be minimally effective from the get-go. Discussing, defining, philosophizing etc are all "waking state centric" activities, and therefore, imo, the very things likely to have the least possible effect of all activities one could undertake. I sincerely believe you are likely to have more success dancing wild around a campfire at midnight dressed as a stag...and I mean this, especially if you are in an ecstatic trance. Indeed, this is not new of course. Practitioners of magick (who have been doing for hundreds of years what LOA practitioners etc appear to believe they invented recently) have said for ever and a day that altered states of consciousness are the key to the efficacy of magical action. So in OPERATIONAL or FUNCTIONAL terms (sorry to keep carping about it) your questions are literally not the right ones, or the important ones. The kind of questions that are the important ones shift register, and take on shapes such as these. Q: what can I do in a profoundly altered state to make sure that I can at least retain enough memory or control to remember my intent...without destroying the state itself and returning it towards the waking state? Q: How can I most effectively attain such a state in the first place? Q: How can I work with specificity in such a state if I appear to no longer have a "self" there"? And so on. THESE are the kind of questions that matter!

Okay, great - with that stripped down a bit, I'm now a little clearer on where you're coming from, and can probably articulate my perspective on it a little better, in way that will make more sense to you. (More later)

I'm not sure it's a case of "not making sense" to me. Many potential views about reality (or the lack of it) can "make sense" in a self-consistent way, but at the end of the day, I reckon some of them are just more likely than others. That 'empirical you' is the only source of agency is, for instance, extremely unlikely imo.

I agree about the self-consistency point, as regards descriptions. However, I really meant it more in the sense that some of your prior responses, particularly the more general responses, suggested to me that I hadn't gotten across what I had intended to. For when I pick up on this, could you clarify what you mean when you use the term "empirical you"?

Q: So I have a sense of myself as a limited being grounded in a world. That being has boundaries to its nature and its actions which I can't dispel just by wishing them dispelled. I can't point to the Empire State Building and have it take off like a rocket, for example. I can't grow another arm if I lose one in an accident. This inertia in the system is not explained if you are the only agency, and are entirely free. If I declare myself to be entirely free, and yet I still find myself NOT to be entirely free, then something acts upon me. Therefore there is something other than "me" and which might as well be called the World, or the will of nature.

So, let's pick this up again. At the outset, though, I'd suggest that your original post perhaps slightly misunderstands the nature of the subreddit and what is meant by "dimensional jumping" in this context. But that doesn't necessarily matter for digging into what we are discussing right now - we can come round to that later, since it'll follow (ahem) naturally.

In short, it is conceived of as an investigation rather than a method or literal description - which is why the demo "exercises" are labelled as such, rather than as "techniques". This is also why discussion like this are prevalent, rather than just "what is the best way" - because ultimately the very idea of there being "a way" or a "how things work" doesn't entirely hold up to scrutiny. And in fact, the very notion of a "description", and its relationship to one's experiences, falls under scrutiny too of course! (The link I included in one of the earlier responses was intended to clarify this: this isn't meant to be a "law of attraction" type of a deal.)

Anyway, on we go:

So I have a sense of myself as a limited being grounded in a world.

Can you describe that sense of yourself as a limited being more clearly? What leads you to draw the conclusion that you are a being (which I'm interpreting from your language as describing a sort aware observer or person-object located within a world that is like a place-environment)?

That being has boundaries to its nature and its actions which I can't dispel just by wishing them dispelled. I can't point to the Empire State Building and have it take off like a rocket, for example.

What do we mean by "wishing" in this context? I'm not sure that there's necessarily an expectation that "wishing" can bring about changes. Do we mean something like "wanting" or "willing"? And again we'll have to be clearer about what we mean by this. When one "wishes", what are we actually doing? (And there's the problem, too, that people tend to mean different things by words like "willing" and "intending" and so on. We'd benefit from clarifying this by articulating the actual experience of these.)

This might seem to return us to the idea of "functional" - this 'wishing" doesn't always work so what does? - but we'd have to be careful because it's not clear that any action is a cause of an experience. The experience of "wishing" - and indeed anything else that seems like an act or "altered state" experience, that you sense "me doing this" - might be just another result, another experience. While an act may or may not be followed by a desired outcome, it's not clear that the outcome and the act are causally related, other than within whatever description we have adopted. And: what causes the act, since the act is itself another outcome?

If I declare myself to be entirely free, and yet I still find myself NOT to be entirely free, then something acts upon me.

Not necessarily. That presumes that "declaring" (or what you mean by "declaring") has any causal attributes, rather than itself simply being a result, an experiential outcome, of... something.

Therefore there is something other than "me" and which might as well be called the World, or the will of nature.

My problem with this, is that when I go looking for a "me" in my actual experience, I don't really find one. For sure, there are various sensations and suchlike, and the occasional thought, and the sensations and thoughts that appear most regularly I might refer to as "me".

However, the only thing that actually persists is the fact of "experiencing" or "awareness", and not any of those sensations or thoughts. This "me" of experience seems to have no particular location, it's more like a sort of unbounded void-presence which "takes on the shape of" my experience - including the experience of a perspective, with some sensations apparently "over here" and the room apparently "over there", but all of it me-as-awareness. And so, in fact, "me" and "my" is essentially meaningless now, in this context.

And I don't find a "world" either, in the sense that it is normally conceived of, for the exact same reason. There is a "world" in the sense of a certain description or conceptual framework consisting of varies ideas about this main strand of experience, but it is itself an experience - the experience of "thinking about experience". And it is at the same level; it does not get "behind" my main strand of experience and explain it in some deeper sense.

In fact, it turns out there is no place for any "me" or "world" to be, as described in the usual standard description, because there is no "outside" to this experiencing.

Hence, to talk of an "empirical me" other than as a conceptualisation, and a "will of nature" acting upon it, whilst perhaps useful for conceiving of, say, intentional change, is not good for pointing at the nature of that change of of experience. Unless carefully understood as such (a useful pattern which might be overlaid but is not fundamental), it involves introducing fictional entities that not in fact experienced - although one might have experiences "as if" they are true. (This final point, in fact, is the real problem: adopting a certain description and intending in terms of it, tends to bring about experiences consistent with it.)

So, in case that got a little meandering, I'll bring out the key points as being:

• Direct experience does not support the idea of a "me" located within a "world" or a "will of nature" imposing upon it.
• The idea that "wishing" or "declaring" should bring about change - and that it not doing so is indicative of some external agent and/or a division in experience - is problematic unless we are clear about what "wishing" actually is, in the context of direct experience.
• Introducing the concept of "will of nature" tends to obscure the nature of experience and change rather than clarify it - unless it is simply a romantic rephrasing of the observation "some patterns seem more persistent" and is recognised as such.

Aside - You brought up "altered states of consciousness" in a previous comment too, but I've set that aside for now because I think it fall into much the same format as the above, and unravelling will tend to give insight as to the other. While we might talk of "functional" approaches, if it turns out that there is no "me" or "world" in the sense of independent objects, then the idea of an "operation" that one can perform upon the world is already "too late", at least if we are viewing it in terms of so-called tools or techniques. The meaning of "functional" will not be the same after such a shift in context. Similarly, the idea that the phrase "you create the world" is meant in a personal deliberate way also changes - removing the requirement that there be some independent external being or entity deliberately creating things because "hey, I didn't do it". The situation is more like an eternal landscape that is "made from" being and which occasionally shape-shifts into different state-topologies (all metaphorically speaking), rather than a spatiotemporal environment where objects are explicitly invented by beings.

I've come to the conclusion that "reality" is closer to how those who follow Pantheism see it. Everything comes from, goes back to, is a part of/expression of one universal creative "is-ness". And as different as we all are, we're all just bits and pieces of it...having our own experiences, viewing reality from various vantage points. So, you aren't "God"...rather, "God" (if you even want to use such terms) is you. There is an actual fundamental difference between the two ways of thinking.

So, I'd take the general idea of Pantheism but push it a little further than is normally the case. There, one tends to conceive of it suggesting a world which is still 3-dimensional and extended, containing objects, and those objects are "parts of", what you might call "God", and they are having experiences. (I know this is a matter of debate often, but I still find it to be the default impression: a half-step been panpsychism and non-duality.)

I'd take this a step further and say that it is experiences that are "made from" God (or whatever). Not objects and spaces. Again, too, this isn't quite the same way of thinking.

And then:

"God" is you and you are "God", but only in a very particular meaning of "God". We are not talking about an entity God here, not a being. Rather, simply "being". The experience of apparently being a person is "made from" God, but there is no "you" that is an object, a being, that is God, nor is God a sort of being which has taken on the shape of an object. Rather, "God" is what experiences are "made from".

And so, we end up saying best-effort things like (excuse pasting from a previous comment for efficiency) describing "God" as a sort of "non-material material":

[We might say that the] only fundamental, permanent truth is the fact of being-aware - or "awareness" - with everything else temporary patterning on an "as if" basis. Rather than a person with a subconscious who is sending out requests into the world, you are more like a "non-material material whose only inherent property is being-aware or 'awareness', and which 'takes on the shape of' states of experience, states imply and define all subsequent sensory moments". Right now, for example, you have "taken on the shape of" apparently (on an "as if" basis) being-a-person-in-a-world. Meanwhile, this means that any so-called "magick" is, despite any theatrics that go along with it, a self-shaping of oneself into a new experiential state. All apparent entities or techniques or other causes that are experienced are just aspects of that state: moments as "results".

In this case, we don't have multiple "beings" having different experiences, and nor do we have a single being having multiple experiences (the idea of a "single being" is nonsensical here anyway). The only thing that is ever "happening" is this experience right now, and we can't really talk of simultaneous experiences or sequential experiences from different perspectives, because an experience does not occur in time (time is a patterned aspect of an experience).

Interestingly, we end up here trying to construct descriptions which avoid saying things that are incorrect, rather than trying to capture the truth of the matter as such (because "non-spatial" and "non-temporal" things can't actually be conceptualised).