TriumphantGeorge Compedium (Part 12)

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TG Comments: Misc Communities

POST: Continuity (/r/Psychonaut/)

[POST]

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

[END OF POST]

Discontinuity all the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, it is, I would say.

The Model

My general model for this is, quickly:

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

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

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

The Implication

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

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

That's quite frightening. Anything could happen.

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

An Experiment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have fun - - -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just seeing it how it is! ;-)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

/r/Oneirosophy Highlights

Oneirosophy means "dream wisdom"

This is a place for idealists to further their lucidity by discussing techniques and anything else related to idealism. Techniques may include but are not limited to: contemplation of skillful ideas, meditation, magick, yoga, and lucid dreaming. Sympathetic individuals are encouraged to post their own ideas and practices to prompt discussion.

The foundations of Oneirosophy are:

Lucidity - A state similar to gnosis or satori where one regains consciousness of the illusory nature of waking reality, just as one becomes lucid in a dream.
Idealism All of waking reality is a mental structure, a dreamed reality. Note that a partial reading list is available for background and for inspiration.

Matter is an idea in the mind.

POST: Why don't we discuss our own experiences more in this sub?

xoxoyoyo: my dick is bigger. now tell me about your dick

Q: Well yeah I get that, but knowing about your dick doesn't offer any useful new information. I'm quite able to imagine more or less what other's dicks could possibly be like. What I'm not able to imagine are things I've never thought about or heard of before. If you've imbued your dick with some kind of amusing superpowers, now that I would be interested in hearing about.

xoxoyoyo: the point is that you are playing a shitty game of knowing yourself through comparison to others. If you are "doing better" then yeah, you can feel good about your "progress". If you are "doing worse" then you can feel bad about your lack. We tend to do this with everything. Instead of living life we live in our judgements and opinions about life. You and I are completely different people, different backgrounds, different lives. There just is no basis for comparison regardless of how much it appears there should be. Stuff like this tends to be pissing contests. That is why in many traditions they tell students to STFU about their "progress". Like at work, discussing salaries. No "good" comes of it.

Green-Moon: I agree with xoxoyoyo. The idea is not to 'compare' yourself with others. I don't know if that was ever your intention, but you will inevitably end up unconsciously comparing yourself even if that is not what you want. That is human nature.

I agree it is quite interesting to read about other's experiences but its more along the lines of "entertainment" for lack of a better word, rather than actually allowing myself to let other's experiences set a benchmark for me. If the idea is to simply read up on other people's experiences then maybe we can make a seperate sub for it. I personally believe this sub is best suited to discussion about onerisophy rather than describing personal experiences. But as mentioned before the idea isn't to look at other people's experiences so that you can get an idea of "progress". I think it can negatively affect your personal journey with oneirosophy when you begin to bring other people and their experiences into it. It is about you and only you. It is important to remember that.

But it is enticing to read other's experiences. I believe I read one of your comments about one of your experiences and it was very interesting. But I'm not sure if that's the best thing to do. We are here to discuss not to advise or show. This is our own personal journey and we can only walk this path alone.

POST: Oneirosophy is not "the secret"

7Kek7: ts not a magic genie lamp that will grant you all of your material desires
I disagree, when I want it to be, it has literally been a genie lamp. Changing one's perspective on experience and letting go of materialism is great. But the real power is in then shaping that experience to one's desires.

Giello: Oneirosophy provides a model through which one might understand how or why the Law of Attraction/"The Secret" works. At least, that's how I see it.

POST: Some quotes from Tibetan Buddhist masters (By dharmadhatu)

When you start to dream, the dream begins as a thought, like one you would have in the daytime. But you’re asleep, so the thought intensifies and becomes something like talk or gossip, and then the gossip intensifies or solidifies into images, and then you really think that you’re seeing people, seeing places, going places, and so on. And that is how it works with conventional appearances as well.
-- Thrangu Rinpoche

At first when you pass into the dream state and images arise, you may not remember where they came from. Your awareness, however, will naturally develop until you will be able to see that you are dreaming. When you watch very carefully, you will be able to see the whole creation and evolution of the dream.
Through this practice, we can see another dimension of experience, and have access to another way of knowing how experience arises. This is important, for when we know this, we can shape our lives. The images which emerge from dream awareness will intensify our waking awareness, allowing us to see more of the nature of existence.
With continuing practice, we see less and less difference between the waking and the dream state. Our experiences in waking life become more vivid and varied, the result of a lighter and more refined awareness. We are no longer bound by conventional conceptions of time, space, [force], and energy. Within this vaster perspective we may also find that the so-called supernatural feats and legends of the great yogis and masters are not myths or miracles. When the consciousness unites the various poles of experience and moves beyond the limits of conventional thought, psychic powers or abilities are actually natural.
-- Tarthang Tulku

POST: An Interesting Thought (By CriticalMission)

When we are awake, we know that we are due to internal and "external" factors. First off, our mind is at a heightened state of awareness, as we can logically reason about many complex ideas. Additionally, we "feel" that our environment is stable. Everything is as we remember it, in that we have an innate understanding that we are living in the world we've always know. On top of this, we have certain tests that we can conduct on our environment. These tests can be similar to those tests that lucid dreamers use, known as reality checks. For example, if we look at a clock, look away, and then look back we know that the time will either be the same or be different by one minute. Yet when we are dreaming, the clock will often show vastly different results each time that we look at it.

But what if we have it all wrong? What if our dreams are a more true reality than the physical? Think about it. When we are awake we are very limited by the world around us. There are rules that we must follow. It's almost like we're trapped in a certain state of existence. Yet when we're dreaming we become free; anything is possible. And the more we dream lucidly, the more stable our dream environment becomes. Eventually one can lucid dream so much that one can begin to blur the boundaries between one's dreams and reality. The more powerful a dreamer becomes, the more "real" their dreams seem to be. Some can even experience dreams that "feel" more real than reality itself.

When we dream we have the power to control everything with our minds. Does this not seem like the most powerful state of awareness anyone can be in? The ancient stories of enlightened thinkers discuss beings who can manipulate physical reality with their thoughts. For example, Jesus of Nazareth was said to have brought someone back from the dead, cured the terminally ill, and gave a blind man the gift of sight. Whether you believe that these events actually occurred, or if they are possible is beyond the point. What matters here is the fact that someone capable of these acts would be considered to exist within a higher state of existence.

When we dream, we exist within this higher state of existence. We are not bound by the laws of physics. We can fly, teleport, shape shift, manifest anything instantly, we're virtually limitless. We can still hear, taste, and touch. We can see and smell. We become untethered.

I once had a dream of myself just standing in the street. I was across from the home I grew up in. The crazy part is, everything was indistinguishable from my waking state. One moment I was lying in bed, eyes closed, everything black. The next, it felt as if my eyes were immediately opened. I could see the grass and the road. The mailboxes, the sky, the clouds; all from the point of view of … myself. I looked down and saw my palms. I turned them up and down to acknowledge I was truly there. And then I woke up. Back into the darkness.

Dreams are often not realized to be such until we awaken. But what if physical reality constitutes the real dream? We wouldn't know it until we wake up. Yet oftentimes when we sleep, we are not conscious. What if this is by design? We're not meant to be conscious when we dream because then we would wake up. We would realize that this physical reality is a construct build around us, not our true reality. We would realize that this world is more like a game than anything else. That the limitations around us are simply obstacles to be surpassed. That we play this game with ourselves because there's nothing else to do but to expand our consciousness, and this a means to that end. An organized, ordered world where we can think and interact in such a way that allows us to advance our understanding of the world around us.

May your dreams set you free.