TriumphantGeorge Compendium (Part 11)

POST: Alternative methods to Jump

A1: Holy shit, are you serious man? You can just edit your post. Also, methods don't matter.

Q1: Not sure what you are talking about? I intentionally am NOT including these in the main body of the post because the last time I did that some mod nuked the post so it can't be found unless you already know where it is. But I doubt that will happen if it's as comments, we'll see.

See my mod note above. In future, though, please hit "message the mods" if you have a query, and raise it directly. Circumventing moderation isn't really going to help: modding happens for reasons, such as reporting or rules or topic appropriateness. (Remember: as per others' comments, this is not a general chat forum, and nor is it a broad "techniques for self-help" or "magick rituals" forum in the manner of LOA, and so on.)

Clearly from looking out for evidence of that I am clear that view is winning.

I've got a couple of pending comments of yours to reply to which I'll try and get to soon, which might clarify this, but: at the moment you misunderstand the point being made about "multiverses" and so on, and the relationship between "physical things" and ongoing experience, etc.

Which is, in short, that "multiverses" in this context would be just another "story" about an experience, but you do not actually experience "multiverses". This doesn't mean it's not a useful concept; it just means it's not a fundamental description of the experience. Also, the very nature of "evidence" is problematic here, because our usual assumptions about shared experiences fall apart.

Again, we're back to unpicking the assumption that you are a person-object located within a world-place, and that the "world" is a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time'". The point of the experiments is to, over time, indicate that all of these assumptions are somewhat dubious, or at least not constant. This means that we cannot rely upon concepts derived from those assumptions, when 'explaining' those experiences.

Where this goes is that, later, in addition to noting the content of an experience - and all the (many) narratives we might construct which fit that experience, none of which seem completely accurate - we also note the context of all experiences.

Basically, we end up asking: what are all experiences "made from"?

I'll try and pick up that other thread soon, to make things clearer. But I think that you are assuming that I am proposing some particular theory or worldview, when in fact what I'm talking about is a non-world-view, or the "meta" perspective of all worldviews and experiences, if that makes more sense.

POST: A film about Dimensional Jumping

Q: [Deleted]

Does a bit. Except, I suppose, that it very deliberately omits things like "brains" because in that description there is no place for a "brain" to be.

In a similar way to how we attribute results to other entities in error because we can't experience "the doing" (we are not separate from the results), we often identify with "brains" or other objects in error because we can't experience "being a doer" (again, because we are not separate from the results). In both cases, we fail to realise that we are the subject to all experience, rather than an object within experience. All experiences, and thoughts about experiences, are, in a sense, "results".

Any descriptions about experiences are themselves further experiences - and because thinking requires that things be broken down into conceptual objects related within a mental space, we end up accidentally "looking past" ourselves as the subject, and in error focus upon: "which conceptual object is 'me'?".

Q: [Deleted]

Yes, he's referring to the same thing - but beware of getting bogged down in a concept of it, which tends to make it complicated. What he (and I and anyone else) is essentially saying is that there is no doer as such; "awareness" (or "consciousness" or "God" or "The Father") refers to the sort of "non-material material whose only inherent property is being-aware" and which "takes on the shape of" states of experience, by becoming them.

"Awareness", then, is a unique word in that rather than a mental object that's pointing to another mental object or a sensory object, it is pointing to the subject or essence of all objects or patterns or experiences. If we forget this, we can start accidentally treating "awareness" (the word, the object-concept) as pointing to an awareness-thing (like awareness is another object, an entity, or a being), and talking about it acting on things or how to understand it or whatever. But since it is "that which all things are 'made from'", that is a meaningless statement. It is self-causing; it shifts-into rather than does-to.

I'd also add that it's important to recognise that awareness does not take on the shape of a 3D world and then you walk around in it. Rather, it's that awareness takes on the shape of this moment of experience - which may be a moment shaped "as if" you are a person-object located within a world-place, that you are "over here" and the rest of the room is "over there" - etc.

The little exercise at the bottom of this comment [POST: I'm so confused] is meant to illustrate that, or at least point in that direction.

POST: 10 People remember a vertical green line in the Banner.

And knowing it is possible helps a ton, even if it's not meant to be emphasized. Normally believing is the challenge.

I wouldn't disagree there. But it's much more powerful to (for example) do the suggested exercises for a specific thing, and have an outcome related to that specific thing arise. And that gives a direction for further exploration (since the "results" may not be quite what one thought one was intending, but provide insight in another way regardless, beyond simply "stuff changed").

Anyway, we keep it on the "deliberate" side because there are already other subreddits for spontaneous experiences (Glitch and Mandela, for instance), and it can easily swamp the subreddit to allow "this weird thing happened" posts; it is meant to be more about investigating.

Having said that, posts are allowed to stay sometimes if they lead to an interesting discussion in the comments (the comments are mostly where the sub content is, I'd say). Which was the case with your first post. It's just not very helpful to have multiple, essentially off-topic, posts, because it leads to more of the same, as that then appears to be what the sub is about. And as I said, this does come up fairly often, at regular intervals - because even just engaging with this topic tends to encourage noticing of... this or that.

...

A1: Please stop being so dramatic. There is already another thread on the same inconsequential stuff.

POST: Mdmerafull, hdoublearp, PunkRockParanormal & aether22 remember a green vertical bar.

So, from a previous thread about the number (of which there have been many, so you can use search to find all the different responses that have come up if interested):

We really don't. The mods never change the number, and in fact they couldn't really, not consistently, because it's in multiple places (sidebar, sidebar text post, introduction post, header graphic image, subreddit title, various references throughout the subreddit's post and comment history). Any posts containing it show the time of any edit, just because that's how Reddit works, plus there's archive.org.

As regards changing the header graphic, from an earlier message:

Never been changed since the last style update. To be clear though: the number is guaranteed to never be changed; the style can't be guaranteed because sizing and other display aspects might be subject to updates to Reddit's code, browser or OS updates, and so on. However, when mods do perform a styling update, out of courtesy we'll always make an announcement as we have in the past. Remember too that you can check for yourself independently over at archive.org.

Meanwhile:

I'd suggest that if you notice spontaneous changes in the header, then that simply means you are noting that your ongoing experience isn't as stable as you had previously assumed. That is, that your usual assumption of being a person-object located within a world-place may not be entirely accurate, and the "world" may not be best described as a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended 'place' unfolding in 'time'" (the standard description). This can be pretty exciting, of course! However:

The term "jumping", if it is to have any meaning and to continue to be useful, should be reserved for intentional changes. And in terms of investigating the nature of our experience (and the nature of our descriptions about experience), rather than simply noting that things are a bit more "loose about the seams" than we previously thought, only deliberate experimentation is really of much use.

It should also be noted that a "dimension" in this sense might be best considered as a way of formulating change, of structuring an intention and incorporating it. The concept of "dimension jumping" would itself be part of the pattern of the outcome; the "mechanism" is really just part of the target result and doesn't actually cause anything. (This is why the demo exercises are called "exercises" rather than "methods" or "techniques".)

So one has an experience "as if" one has changed dimensions just as one is currently having an experience "as if" one were a person-object located within a world-place. The experience of "jumping dimensions" is therefore better thought of as a change of experiential state: "dimensions" are states rather than places. This of course involves a change in our understanding of ourselves and the world. Which leads to: I'm not sure of the thinking behind altering the header graphic at certain intervals? Given the above.

but excuse me for not being a person that bows to experience fully unreservedly, to anyone ever.

The point here is most definitely to have a discussion! As per the sidebar, you're not meant to believe anything in particular without personal experience or reasoning it out. (And even then, we should be a little skeptical of what lies behind them - if anything.)

This sort of conversation is actually what the sub is all about!

And my understanding is that there is not single "official" explanation proposed by the group.

Right.

Also my life's work is in physics, so because of this I tend toward some version of the Multiverse idea.

That's my background too, although I also have an inclination towards Paul Feyerabend and George Berkeley and the like, so there's that. We have to be clear about when we are being scientific versus philosophical, though. Neither one is better than the other; they just have different limits and spheres of application. I'd suggest that "dimensional jumping" is inherently non-scientific (note that this is not a dismissive statement), although that doesn't preclude it being studied as part of a structured investigation - which is what we're generally doing here.

But if you take the multiverse idea which can be at least partly understood and account...

I'd suggest that while the description may be understood - that is, that it is internally consistent on its own terms - its connection to our direct experience is somewhat debatable. I did a comment over at ME on this, so I won't go much deeper into all that (check it out), but the general point would be that since there is no way to observe "branches" and suchlike, only changes within one's perspective - a lack of "observational touch-points", if you will - there's an issue with taking it as "what is happening" and basing anything off of that.

The "multiverse theory" is perhaps more like a narrative or a language we can discuss changes in terms of, rather than an actual theory or explanation. There is no evidence for "branches" other than as one (of many) ways of thinking about quantum states (which are basically just mathematical structures with no inherent meaning and with no way to distinguish between interpretations). They are definitely never experienced, I'd assert.

Within this context, we have to ask: what would a regular changing of the header graphic contribute to our investigation? How can an observed change of header graphic be tied back to the concept of branches experimentally, rather than simply conceptually or narratively?

It ultimately comes down to: what, exactly, in our direct experience, would lead us to conclude that the content of our experience is structured as "branches" and that recent branches are more or less likely?

Also the indication that it changed might well be side effects of an intentional jump for some

How would we distinguish between that versus a spontaneous change? Isn't it the case that, truly, the only definite confirmation of a "jump" is that you intend for a specific outcome, and later that outcome arises within your experience?

POST: How do I learn to do these things?

What "energy"? I'd say forget about "energy" - especially if you can't define what you mean by it - and go directly for the outcomes you want, following the advice below.

Q: [Deleted]

So, to be specific: it's a feeling? And, for example, in social situation, you might want to generate an experience "as if" other people were experiencing that feeling about you, and acting accordingly?

That makes sense.

We have to be careful because terms like "energy" and "vibration" and "frequency" get used in such hand-waving ways as if they were things or causes - perhaps because of their sort of feel-good use in law of attraction type descriptions - whereas here we want to be much more specific about their meaning. They key here, then, is that you'd want an experience "as if" such a thing occurred. This is different to saying that our experience actually is made from "energy" and that this is how the world is structured and how changes are caused, or whatever.

I read that energy is everything... I didn't do anything special but there energy is attracted to mine.

I'd suggest being a bit skeptical of all those sorts of descriptions. Or at least, view them as descriptions - that is, little parallel structures of thought - rather than "how things are".

"Energy is everything" is essentially a meaningless albeit feel-good idea, potentially, at least in terms of trying to actually do anything in terms of it. How exactly does "energy is everything" connect to our direct experience? It's so vague. And if it's merely a description of the content of a particular type of experience - a feeling, for example - then it's potentially a mistake to take that content as being how experiences "work". Now, if we said something like "everything we experience is ourselves, as awareness, taking on the shape of sensory moments", that would at least be something you could examine immediately, rather than only contemplate in disconnected abstract thought. Again, though, we'd be appropriately skeptical!

Anyway, I think you're onto a more useful approach with the formulation:

I want certain feelings and experiences.

That keeps things nice and clear.

Essentially, you want experiences whose content is "as if" (that is: "consistent with the idea that") there is such a thing as energy and connection between people, whether or not that is how things really are. This avoids you ending up hypothesising about something happening "behind" your experiences, when in fact experiences may not actually have any "behind" or "outside" - or indeed any particular, fundamental, unchanging "how things work" at all.

Q: [Deleted]

Well, it's not necessarily clear that they are attracted to anything, in some behind the scenes way.

Your actual experience is of perceiving other people apparently being attracted to you, or of seeing other people apparently being attracted to one another. But the idea of "attraction" is something you are inferring: it belongs to your description rather than to the experience itself. You don't actually experience "attraction" in the sense of a causal mechanism; you have to be careful to not mix up that "buzzy feeling" that is part of an experience, with something that is "causing" that experience.

That you have this experience (of seeing this) isn't necessarily due to anything about the "people". There's no "attracting" going on behind the scenes, perhaps. Your experience of apparently seeing such things may be completely down to your own patterning, your own state as an experiencer!

The problem with the idea of "attraction" is maybe that it implies that there are independent objects, located within some sort of environment, and that there is some sort of "mechanism" - triggered by an act of some sort - which leads these objects to move towards each other in some way. These "objects" may of course be people, or some sort of event.

But the inherent divisions implied within this description is misleading, I think, because it leads us to try to conceive of some sort of action we might take in order to acquire certain properties which in turn would bring about an outcome. When in fact, if you attend to your actual experience as it is, it is not actually divided in this way.

And when you dig into that "attraction" type description, it reveals itself to be so hand-waving when it comes to the specifics, that there's not much of use going on. It's not really a model of experience at all - it's more of a narrative, a language that is used to talk about certain experiences using a certain turn of phrase.

So, personally, I'd move away from trying to imagine some sort of thing that happens "out there" that brings objects and situations from "over there" to "me" (one type of "attraction": the LOA style) and also away from the idea that there is a particular property you can acquire which makes you attractive (another type of "attraction": personal magnetism). Instead, I'd tend to think of this in terms of: how do I go about shaping my ongoing experience such that it contains moments "as if" I were summoning objects and situations and "as if" I was magnetic. That is, experiences that are consistent with those descriptions, those concepts, while avoiding falling into the assumption that those descriptions are how such experiences are actually caused.

POST: If we make our own reality...

[POST]

So I saw many people saying that we make our own reality, and if that's true then how is it possible for unexpected things to happen? things your mind wouldn't even be able to think of... And how is everything so consistent?

[END OF POST]

You don't make your own reality - in that way. That is, you haven't deliberately constructed, via specific choices, your experiences in advance and in detail. It is perhaps more accurate to say something like: what "you" truly are is are what experiences are "made from", and right now you are in a particular state or pattern, from which your moment-by-moment experiences arise.

An analogy:

Imagine that you have a transparent sheet with a grid drawn on it. Now, take another sheet, with a differently-spaced grid, and place it on top. Do you know what the final combined grid will be, before you look at it (experience it)? Note that going off to calculate the final grid would itself be a type of experiencing.

If we take the first sheet to be "how I am now". And then the second sheet to be "an intention". That is the way in which you might say you "make your own reality". Really, it's that you are in a particular state (a sort of "landscape" of facts), and then you deform that state (change part of the "landscape", like overlaying another pattern, affecting the whole thing), but you don't experience the final result until you "look". Even if you know the change you've made, the specific fact you've introduced, you still don't know how that change has deformed the landscape, until you "look" (experience it).

A shorter way to say this might be: you don't get to "pre-experience" your experiences.

They're all "enfolded" into the background, and you only "know" them when they are "unfolded", moment by moment. In this way, if we go with this description anyway, we are in a situation where we both "create" our experience and know it intimately by being the pattern-landscape, but at the same time it is also completely mysterious because we don't know it as sensory-type expanded moments in advance.

POST: Confused on the nature of dimensional jumping

Ultimately, the point of the subreddit is to investigate the "nature of experiencing" by way of experimentation and contemplation (with attempts at generating outcomes being an ideal way to do this). This involves examining assumptions such as...

Out of what I've read though this sub, the experiences that sound legitimate make it seem like an internal mindset change, rather than an external reality change. It doesn't really sound different than the law of attraction (believe something hard enough and it manifests). What's the difference?

...what is an "external reality"? Where is this "internal" mindset and what is a "belief"? How, exactly, would the "law of attraction" work? What does it even mean to talk of "how it works" with regards to anything?

...as if our consciousness has no connection to our bodies, or can go where it wants.

What are "you", precisely? And what is the relationship between "you" and "the world"? Is the world truly a "stable, simply-shared, spatially-extended place unfolding in time" with "you" as an object located within it (the common default description)? Do you ever actually experience that, or is it rather just a thought you have about an idea of "the world" now and again?

This is a lot harder accept and sounds quite a bit more drastic than what I talked about in the last paragraph.

How did you come to accept the default description you are using currently? If you pause and examine your direct experience, now - what is there that is truly stable and persistent about it? What are the facts which never change? Is it not the case the only that which never changes can be fundamentally true - in other words, "real" - and that all other facts must be relatively and temporarily true only? How does this relate to things seeming "drastic" or not?

And so on.

See also - the containing threads for comments here [POST: Questions regarding DJ], here [POST: Won $500 a few days ago], here [POST: Speculative answers to Frequently asked questions.], here [POST: A few questions.], here [POST: It wasn't a panic attack! ] and here [POST: The difference between low of attraction and dimensional jumping] from previous discussions on the differences between the "law of attraction" and "dimensional jumping".

POST: The difference between low of attraction and dimensional jumping

Well everything, of course, works the same way, since there can only be one way things work. But -

This subreddit encourages you to reconsider things at a basic level - what you are and the nature of experiencing itself - and suggests that there is no "how things really are" and there is no "how thing really work". Whereas the law of attraction tends to assume a particular mechanism, or "formatting" to experience, dimensional jumping advocates reconsidering that very formatting itself. It suggests that if you fully adopt a certain metaphor, then your experience will tend to fall into line with that.

In the end, it strives for the most flexible metaphor possible that ties up to our direct experience of ourselves as a sort of "open aware space in which experiences arise" - hence the metaphors described in the sidebar. They are to be taken literally, in the sense that you can adopt them and have experiences "as if" they were literally true - what we might call "the patterning of experience".

The upshot of this is that, instead of having vague notions of "maintaining frequencies" or "attracting" something, you can adopt any metaphor which inspires you to an intention - an intention which means-that, or logically implies that, you will get the outcome your desire. Choose your own mechanism. Because really the only thing that ever "happens" is intending. However, it is always more important that you recognise the nature of your own experience, since that frees you from having to adopt any particular worldview "true".

Unfortunately, the descriptions tend to be a little abstract at this level, because we are actually trying to discuss the thing "before" thoughts or descriptions, or sensory experiences, or even division and change.

If you are experimenting with producing a particular outcome, then really you should consider it "done" at the moment of the intention. It's perhaps a little easier to do this by following the instructions in the Two Glasses exercise (see sidebar links); just carry on with your life neither anticipating nor debating the result, but also not worrying about any passing thought (you should just let them pass by). Basically, it's about having some faith, but mostly it's about not reacting to what comes up along the way, and therefore accidentally re-intending against your outcome.

But luckily for you...

As to your sense of "awareness of my consciousness", just relax and enjoy it. With that open space, you are in the ideal position to be okay with passing thoughts and fears, without reacting to them. Most people spend their time narrowly focused on an aspect of their sensory experience, not realising that they can release a hold on this and they will "open out" - become that "background space" with sensory imagery just sort of floating inside of it. If you've got that, you don't need to tinker with it - in fact, any attempt to fiddle with it tends to reduce it - just decide that if you occasionally notice you have narrowed your focus again, you will "cease" doing so, and allow it to open up once more. Then, fear or discomfort will be like ripples in an ocean, rather than waves in a glass of water.

You probably feel less like a "person" and more like an "awareness", but that's just because you're not used to it.

As for choosing things, there's nothing more to it than intention - which means, to deliberately increase the contribution of a particular pattern. The "intention" is the pattern, "intending" is the bringing it into mind. All patterns are already existing; you only ever change how much a pattern is going to contribute.

If you think about it: what else can there be? Your sensory experiences and thoughts are all "inside" your open awareness, rising and falling. They have no solidity and can't "cause" anything; they are results. The only cause is intention, and the results happen immediately. It becomes true now that the event will happen then.

Of course, that's not something you should take anyone's word for - it's something to experiment with and test for yourself, and decide whether it is true or not. In small ways, and then in big ways. Only you can explore this; nobody can do it for you.

So is this state the same state I get in meditation? And I don't feel like I 've done any jumping. Just made connection with that awareness so now I can be that awareness.
I definitely feel like less of a person and I want to feel like a person you know it's weird. Are you constantly in this state?

The difference would be, do you feel less like a "person" but more open and alive - or instead do you feel dissociated and numb? What you are after is to feel like a big open alive space, with your sensations, perceptions and thoughts floating in that. You should feel good.

If instead you feel like you have shifted position somehow, but are not open, then you might want to adjust that, by - for example - lightly centring yourself on the centre line of your body (just behind the eyes, centre of the chest, or lower abdomen) to feel a bit more connected.

"sensations, perceptions and thoughts" yes. Alive as of means just having the awareness and observing. It feels good (currently I hold it back) but maybe because I am not used to that stillness and feeling pleasant out of the nothing and maybe I decide that is something wrong and artificial.
But certainly I am not numb in a negative neither neutral way. I am confused. And maybe it's due to the thought that I won't get any further than this stillness and not have that higher emotions that I know as a person.
Edit: Maybe I am not open that's why it feels like there's no air there and you are not required to breath.

Sounds to me like you are just settling in and getting used to not constantly reacting and bouncing around like a rollercoaster! Also, it can take a while to get used to that different sense of "location" compared with what you used to have (since now you realise you are sort of "everywhere and nowhere", and always were, in fact). Anyway, I think you'll gradually feel more comfortable with letting go to it, and it'll settle out by itself, one way or the other.

In this state do you reach higher emotions different from peace? I want to feel emotions like love, ecstasy, creativity.

There's nothing stopping you reengaging and having more of a rollercoaster experience again if you want. The open space thing, once settled out, should feel sort of like "open joy" and feel decisively positive (since it's basically near-unobstructed awareness), but it's a position of choice rather than limitation.

Is it wise to do the mirror method everyday after it hasn't worked. I also kind of split it into two session. Anything wrong with that? Is there any restrictions? Basically can you do how many times you like till you feel fully satisfied.

I can't speak to the mirror method personally. If you were doing the Two Glasses exercise, then I'd always say to wait until things settle out - days, a week - because results there usually come by "apparently plausible but seemingly unlikely paths" and you can't "get better" at doing that.

In fact, you can't really "get better" at intending as such, I'd suggest. However, you can intend persistently until you get "the feeling of something being true", when bringing to mind a particular scene or pattern or whatever which means-that you've got your outcome. The trick is to make sure you don't reset yourself every time you do it - like, to reuse an example I've used before, sitting down again before intending to stand up (you don't end up "more stood up" by repeating the sequence).

Q1: BTW, this is an interesting book based on a very similar way of thinking: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Changing-Reality-Huna-Practices-Create/dp/0835609111]

I've read a little on Hawaiian traditions - where they overlap with the "reach into yourself because that's where the world is" approach of other traditions - but that one's new to me. Thanks.

Q1: It's a really good one - I bought it in Foyles, but I'm sure you can buy it online.
EDIT: what is particurarly interesting, I think, is that there are some exercises provided, but it is sort of made clear that these are just for the ritual/symbolic value, and you can replace them with anything else. I actuallt meant to recommend this to you long time ago, but kept forgetting.

Foyles: by far the best book store, you have excellent taste! :-)

I've bought a Kindle copy and had a quick browse so far. Yes, it does seem to have that attitude of: here are some worldviews, but their importance is as structures for experience, and should be used based on usefulness not on "being true".

Overall, it seems like an excellent survey of all the ideas or things one might experiment with. If there's anything lacking (from my first skim reading), I suppose it's a more explicit tying back of experiential content to our "nature" - I think that this could have provided a foundation that would helped the last sections (on "shifting realities" and also what he describes as "grokking").

But otherwise a really nice clear read, which is specific about explanations just being stories, that you have to actually explore it to understand it otherwise it's just inert "knowledge". It even has a section about "patterns", so I'm obviously going to approve! :-)

Q2: (I apologise for not replying properly before , but I had to go back to the book to comment in more detail)
Yes, I really liked the author's take on reality and his exercises (re-arranging shells for example) remind me of what you are trying to introduce in the Dimensional Jumping sub. The idea of 'changing your symbols and changing your life' (p. 179) is very much what you advocate, and puts the focus rather on the spirit of things than the actual ritual ('what kind of candles should I use?' etc.).
I also realized, while reading it, that I am a natural shaman ;-) :-D I've mentioned many times here I've aways had lucid dreams and I seem to solve quite a lot of issues in those dreams. That's why I like the book; although you are right it could be organised a bit better, I feel the general idea seems very natural and not forced, with the 'change from within' instead of some violent manipulation of the 'world around us'. I think it is helpful to read something that incorporates these ideas into the normal, every-day life, instead of showing them as some kind of 'supernatural' force.
(BTW, when I was in Costa Coffee the other day, I saw a guy trying to explain parallel universes to some random coffee drinkers ;-) Maybe he was a fellow Redditor?)

Yeah, I like how, later, he emphasises the four worldviews as being simultaneous perspectives, which links those shells to both the "objective" and "symbolic" angles. The perfect approach for a "natural shaman", of course! ;-)

Hmm. Do you think we have accidentally created a secret coterie of incognito jumpers, some of whom have now decided to feel out for additional members? It all fits: certainly they would be Costa or Nero rather than Starbucks! :-)

Q2: Well who knows where he jumped from? :-D I wanted to talk to him - maybe make a joke and/or snoop a little - but he left. Maybe we should wear t-shirts with 982? ;-)

Haha, maybe! We're getting into real secret society nods and winks here, updated for a modern aesthetic.

Actually, the header graphic design is loosely based around the idea that "dimensional strands" are colour-coded, and so 982 would be a particular strand or synthesis of multiple strands, like overlapping patterns. A bit like Peter Saville's designs [https://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/upon-paper]. So the t-shirts could be even more abstract and mysterious and "only those who know, can tell" than having the number!

Q2: The Secret Society of Dimensional Jumpers! Imagine the conspiracy theories that would evolve around us :-D
But imagine the excitement if you saw another jumper on a train, wearing some discreet colour scheme.

It could get very confusing, though, once your ongoing experience got patterned with the colour scheme, owl-style. Soon the world would seem to be entirely filled with jumpers, exchanging knowing glances on public transport!

Q2: Well true, and you will keep bumping into yourself from other dimensions as well. But still, next time I see someone talking about parallel universes I will make various hints and look at them in the meaningful way. Or shall I make owl sounds? Hoot hoot.

Hmm, I'll be looking forward to you posting the results of your "look at them in a meaningful way" experiments. ;-) Of course, once we get the eyewear range up and running, none of this will be a problem. (8>)=

Q2: OT, but you (and other Reddit shamans) may like this; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwd-nWr_-70]

I like a bit of flute! Here's my current somewhat more downbeat listening: Endless Falls by Loscil (full album playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1EAF0D24D35C2235])

POST: It wasn't a panic attack!

I've experienced something that blurred the lines for me between dimensional jumping and the law of attraction.

Really, they are just modes of operating. The "law of attraction", "dimensional jumping", "strong energies" and "being a person hanging out in the world" are all on the same level. It just so-happens that the last of these is our strongest habit and so it seems like the "normal" one, which makes the others seem special.

In each case, what is really happening is that we are explicitly or implicitly choosing a particular worldview or conceptual framework and adopting it, such that we have experiences "as if" they were true. But none of them are fundamentally true. There are actually no inherent limitations to your experiential content at all. So don't let the specific labels get in the way of experimenting or lead you to overthink things.

Aside - It occurs to me that some of the problems people have with the law of attraction, is that they try to work out how it works - as if there is a pre-existing mechanism that needs to be understood, a technique to be mastered. Actually, you are better to simply fully commit to a particular description of "how things work", because that will lead to an experience "as if" that is how things work. Ironically, going looking for the right way to do it is basically an intention to have the experience of searching for a right way to do it...

POST: Speculative answers to Frequently asked questions.

[POST]

Warning: Prepare for a wall of text
I think it may be presumptive of me to consider myself an expert in this topic, but I do think I can shed some light on many of the questions that frequently come up. Rather than just reply to all of them I thought I'd make this post.
Premise: Dimensional jumping is a subset of the "Law of Attraction" and similar manifestation concepts (magick, positive thinking, etc). As such, it is more or less a metaphorical concept. It is important that you keep in mind that dimensional jumping might not literally involve moving from one dimension to another. However (for reasons that are a bit deep for this post), it is likely the most accurate metaphor for how the system really works.
FAQ
Is it possible to______?
In general, yes. You can insert literally almost anything into this box and the answer is yes. However, that does not necessarily mean it will be easy for you. In general, the system protects against things that violate what we perceive as the natural order of things (i.e. laws of physics, the continuity of reality, etc). That does not mean these things cannot be violated, but just that if your desire can come about without violating these then it is more likely to choose the path of least resistance.
For example: If you've had a pet pass away, and you'd like to go to a reality where the pet was still alive. This is possible, but it is unlikely that you would be willing to effectively rewrite the laws of physics to make it possible. The more likely event will be that you suddenly and coincidentally find a new pet who behaves suspiciously like your old pet, and fills that same emotional need. You may even suspect that the new pet is a reincarnated version of the old one (possible, but not necessary).
Ok, so if "almost anything" is possible, then what is impossible?
Though I'm sure not every here believes in channeled information --I have my doubts about much of it myself-- I do often find things from Bashar to be very insightful. In this regard I think his Four laws of creation are the best way to answer this question.
For practical purposes I think we can simplify it even further to two laws for dimensional jumpers:

1. You exist -- You cannot jump to a place where you do not exist (Though if you really stretch you could find a way to pretend you don't exist if you wanted)
2. Everything changes - You can't stop things from changing.
   What happens to the me in the reality I jump to? What happens to the me in this reality when I jump?
   This is a question that actually goes very deep. First, its important to realize that in the grand scheme there is only one you. However, that "you" may be in many realities at once experiencing itself as discrete versions of you. This is largely academic and doesn't affect anything.
   I think it may be easier to divide this into two questions that really strike at the heart of peoples real concerns:
   Am I causing harm to the alternate version of myself by taking over his/her life?
   No. It is very likely that there is no alternate version of yourself with whom you are switching places. But if there is, then that version of yourself chose to switch in the same way that you did. If there were no other way to achieve your jump than to go to a universe where there is a version of you already existing, then you will enter a copy universe.
   But going deeper, this answer isn't 100% accurate either. It is important to realize that dimensions aren't perfectly discrete. They exist more like wave functions, allowing all probabilities to exist until they need to be observed. Think of it like a computer game. In most computer games, if you walk into a dungeon, the inside of the dungeon has not been rendered yet. Once you step in, it begins to render. But even then the render is only partial because it does not render the elements you do not see yet. Instead it starts making decisions about what is probable, and what it needs to be prepared for you to see. Then when you see it, it renders those frames.
   So there isn't a dimension where you were born a different gender, 5 inches taller, or with blue hair. Instead there are multiple -near infinite-- hyperdimensions of probability where all of these things are true.
   What happens to my loved ones in this reality when I jump?
   A bigger question is : Where are your loved ones now? Going back to the idea that dimensions aren't perfectly discrete, realize that the dimension your loved ones live in is not the exact same dimension as yours. Instead, you share a hyperdimension where your individual dimensions overlap a bit. The things you do in your dimension affect those closest to you, but only if they allow it. In the same way, those close to you affect you, but only if you allow it.
   The people who are close to you, are that way precisely because you choose to be in very similar dimensions. If one of them decides to radically change themselves, you may find that they suddenly move away, die, become imprisoned, or simply change friend circles.
   So the direct answer to the question becomes a bit complicated. They may experience you dying, or moving away. But they may have already experienced this. They choose their overall experience of how they perceive you. You simply help them by filling in the gaps...you add a personal flare to the "you" they want to experience through your choices and actions. Your choices and actions tug on their reality and pull it in a certain direction. They can resist it (but usually don't).
   However, you only stay close to those who are in realities similar to yours. So if you make a change radical enough both of you will experience drifting apart from one another....except not always. If one of the people in the group does not want to let go of the experience of the other person, then that person may be replaced with a sort of "bot" to simulate the experience.
   So here is an extreme example: Your spouse is in the hospital with a terminal illness. You want to jump to a reality where they do not have this illness and you can live your lives together. What happens if your spouse truly exists in the reality where they have a terminal illness? Well, you would jump to a new reality where your spouse would miraculously recover, while they would stay in their reality and experience their choice of interaction with you. Presumably they would experience you staying with them lovingly until they died (and perhaps some version of you does exactly this).
   But then does that mean the spouse in my reality is not my spouse, but is a bot?
   Maybe, but not necessarily. As mentioned above it is possible that there are multiple discrete versions of each person. So they may simultaneously choose to experience dying in the hospital and their miraculous recovery. Perhaps, they may even choose to have one version of themselves go along with you just to aid you in your choice of realities.
   It is also possible that your spouse is only existing in the universe where you perceive them to have an illness because you are choosing that universe. They are simply agreeing to go along with you, and when you choose to go to the recovery universe then the illness universe disappears back into the cloud of probability (I choose to avoid the word "collapses" because that actually has the opposite meaning in quantum physics).
   So if you are worried about how your choice might affect your loved ones, realize that the choice you are making now to not perform an intentional jump is affecting them in some way as well. They may be anxiously waiting for you to jump.
   It is important to remember that each individual chooses their path. We do influence one another. That influence can be very strong (especially against a person who does not have strong beliefs). But we never actually "force" someone to experience something they didn't agree to.
   Wait, go back. Are you saying we live in computer simulation?
   No. Not really. But a computer simulation is a very good analogy for the true nature of reality. It is a small technical distinction, but an important one. It is more accurate to say that our idea of "computer simulation" is a way we chose to mimic reality to understand it. We do not literally live in a computer, at least not the way we understand a computer physically, but many of systems of reality are very similar to a computer's operation.
   How does that work really?
   The "computer" that is our reality has simulated any and all possibilities and carried them out in a deterministic fashion the form of a wave of probable outcomes. It biases most of its power towards the most those outcomes that the observer (the player of the game --i.e you) are more likely to choose to experience. Then when you make those choices it renders the outcome.
   This is the technical way of looking at the thing many of these enlightened people have been saying for so many years: "All is one, and everything exists right NOW".
   The whole thing is just a big collection of possibility. Time, different universes, different choices...all these things are just different points and directions inside the same thing. Further more, if you are playing a game you know that when you walk for 4 hours in a computer game, that you aren't actually physically going anywhere. It's all inside the computer. In the same way, all distance in reality is simulated. All difficulty in moving from one reality to one another (turning your hair blue and living on mars with Beethoven) is simulated. All of these things are directly right on top of each other.
   EDIT: u/TriumphantGeorge/ pointed out that I should make a distinction here. There is really no "how it works" in the grandscheme of things. (see his comment below). But for practical purposes I believe everything mentioned here and elsewhere on this sub is useful framework. But, in general, on this sub if TriumphantGeorge says it, it is usually pretty accurate. It is just unfortunate that maximum accuracy requires maximum ambiguity
   So none of this is real?
   This is as real as it gets. Have you ever really defined for yourself what the word "real" means? The concept of "real" is defense mechanism. It is the same idea that attempts to enforce the continuity of reality. It is probably put in place by the system to prevent wild jumping around in the system. When looking at reality from this high a perspective its easy to see that he concept of what is "real" has no actual meaning.
   Then how does mirror method/ two glasses work ?
   These techniques are sort of like brute force hacking. They are about allowing yourself to let go of the unnecessary hold on continuity of reality by giving yourself an excuse for glitches in continuity. So tomorrow when you ask yourself, "Wait a second, wasn't my neighbors car red and now its blue?" You can give yourself the excuse that you've "jumped". What is more accurate is that you've just allowed yourself to "jump" further and in a different "direction" than you normally do.
   There are many things that create artificial difficulty in jumping, but personally I feel the need for continuity and causality is the strongest. We fight tooth and nail for all of it to make sense, but it doesn't have to. These techniques are sort of hacks to get yourself into the mood to allow some of it to not make sense. Or rather it is a way for you to make sense of the discontinuity.
   As such, proper technique is less important focus, intention, and belief. So don't worry if you spill water doing two glasses, or you don't see anything weird with the mirrors. All of this is secondary to trusting and focusing on your goal, and allowing the technique you choose to work.
   That's all for now. If anyone has some other questions that I can add to this, I can either reply in the comments, or if the question is general enough for a FAQ, I will edit it in later.

[END OF POST]

A couple of quick points:

Dimensional jumping is a subset of the "Law of Attraction"

I'd probably say that "dimensional jumping" overall is an umbrella for all changes to experience; the specific metaphor of "dimensions", meanwhile, is a subset of that. Dimensional jumping in its broader sense attempts to be a "meta" view, prior to any particular model of experience or change, assuming only that there is some structure or "patterning" involved (the most basic description that can still "makes sense").

it is likely the most accurate metaphor for how the system really works.

Although for convenience we usually ignore this, it's definitely worth emphasising that there is no "how it really works", and that the idea of there being a "how things work" is itself a metaphor.

The actual closest we can get to "how it really works" is probably something like: "you are that which takes on the shape of experiences; you can shift your 'shape' and therefore your experiences" - that's it. Which, of course, is basically saying: you just do. This can't really be described, so we often use misdirection to help things along, in both our descriptions and in our exercises. (Everything we do say about it is a "parallel construction in thought", and is itself just another experience at the same level: the experience of thinking about the nature of experience and change. And so on. Everything is an experience, with nothing "behind" it.)

This means that if one does want to use the simulation metaphor - because they find it attractive and it suggests certain ways of thinking about change that they find useful - they should bear in mind that it is not you who is inside a simulation run by an external simulator, rather you are the simulator which is "running" the simulation within you.

Technically that's not how the computer really works deep down, but it is a method to get at the core to achieve results.

And it's worth noting, I think, that it's completely fine to go with the "simplified diagram" version of things like this. We are not saying that "this" is "that", we are simply saying that there are benefits in viewing the world "as if" it corresponded to certain aspects of "that".

[There is no "how it works."] It is, but this is such an advanced concept.

But also it can be a very simplifying one: that is, that it is "all experience, no external world" or "all patterning, no solid substrate".

As always, it depends on the aim. If it is simply to provide a method which "gets results", then it can be temporarily beneficial to just say: "this is how it is", and in acting from that model they will have experiences "as if" it were true. Ultimately, though, this is somewhat of a dead end, and people start questioning the method, which then affects the results.

To really become free and flexible, and not get lost in disruptive theorising, we have to come to the realisation that the "how it works" is also based on intentions and their implications. Not only does performing an act with intention bring about a result, it also implies the context of the intention. In other words: if you go looking for evidence that things are certain way, you will have experiences "as if" they are that way, when they change their mind, another way. Not knowing this can be very confusing.

So yes, technically in a sense using the simulation metaphor is sort of like picking an operating system and programming language.

Right, in a way. Once we are aware of this - that metaphors are "formatting" rather than explanations - then we are freed somewhat from the tyranny of trying to "understand" a mechanism that isn't there. We can treat the use of a metaphor as a choice of how we'd like things to be, rather than it having to be fundamentally "true".

At that point, we realise that we can stop looking for descriptions which explain experience (whew!) because we understand that descriptions are patterns overlaid upon - or restructure - experience. Therefore, "how things work" is a pattern in experience in exactly the same way as the pattern of events resulting from an target outcome; they differ in terms of abstraction, not of kind.

I've added an edit in the post that hopefully helps make that distinction.

Note that this wasn't about pointing out flaws in your post; I was just picking up on some threads for an expanded conversation. You should leave your post as it is - it fulfils your purpose as stated - and readers can then follow what's written in the comments, if they want to dig deeper.

This recursive logic bothers me.

The recursive logic can be problematic, but I actually think the drive to release oneself from that recursion - the "stepping back" from that - is where you shift to a different context, and grasp your actual situation.

The question that we end up asking is:

• What are "you" and what is your relationship to "the world"?

Or shorter version:

• What is the "nature of experiencing" itself? What is the context of experience rather than the content?

And the answer to that, which is arrived at by (really simple) directly looking at our experience as it is, means we don't need to battle with the recursion issue. Although it's still slightly claustrophobic to try and think of it, because it as something with no "outside" to it, it can't be thought of conceptually, only directly intuited.

Also, the "you just do" sounds suspiciously like "I am that I am".

Well, it's inevitable we end up with phrases like that, because we're trying to point out that you are the entire moment of experience. Even when you are having the experience of apparently being "over here" and the screen is "over there", in fact you discover you are everywhere, just having "taken on the shape of" that experience of apparent separation.

It sounds very exotic, but it's very simple: anyone can close their eyes right now and try to:

• a) find the "edges" of your current experience,
• b) find where "you" are in your current experience.

But of course, it can't really be put into words. We end up with metaphors like: What you are is a sort of non-material "material" whose only inherent property is being-aware, and which has all possible experiences "dissolved" within it. It can experience any of those possibilities simply by "shifting" itself to "take on the shape of" that experience. Right now, you have taken on the shape of the experience of being-a-world-from-the-perspective-of-a-person.

And a whole load of other metaphors involving blankets, beaches, water, and anything else that's vaguely malleable! :-)

[Free Will and Determinism] But I can't quite put that into words as to why that is, I just know it as an intuition.

Right! It cannot be thought about, it cannot be described.

The essence of it is, while your state between shifts is fully deterministic, you-as-awareness is not. Awareness is "before" all structure and formatting, and that includes division and multiplicity and, relations and changes in space.

So basically, there's no point in trying to work out whether you-as-awareness has "free will" because, in a sense, both "free will" and the "working out" are "made from" awareness. However, you can know it directly (intuition). And in fact, this direct knowing is the same way in which you are experiencing the entirety of your current state right now, even though only an aspect is "unfolded" as 3D-extended senses.

Aside - I think that confusing the formatting of the senses with the formatting of the world-as-it-is can be a real stumbling block, and is what leads people to think of the world being a fixed 3D-extended "place", and there being an "outside" to their experience even though a moment of directly attending to it reveals there is not. The ingrained idea of the world involving "separate people exploring a spatially-extended place unfolding in time" is a big hurdle.

Yes, but now it seems more accurate to ask what is the world's relationship to me?

Yes! And I think that urge to reverse the wording is the first thing that comes out of the contemplation of this. And then, having taken that step, the rest becomes much clearer, more easily. Yeah, time to get some dinner, that sounds like a good idea! Catch you later.

A brief addition, because someone posted a follow-up comment and then removed it, but they brought up a good point, about the difficulty in thinking about this - and the subsequent difficulty you can have trying to think about anything.

Once you've recognised that you-as-awareness as the true nature of experience, you can end up being caught in a bit of a bind. After all, you-as-awareness cannot be thought about, and trying to think about it can feel either slightly claustrophobic as you try to turn yourself almost inside-out while having no "inside" or "outside", or unmoored because you have no stable platform within experience from which to comprehend experience.

Because of this, it is good to take one particular perspective and go with that as your "default formatting". Remember: there is no special or ultimate "shape" of experience you should be aiming to adopt, you don't have to be seeking to constantly experience yourself as an unformatted space whose only property is being-aware - because: then what? It is enough to know that is the case, regardless of the experience you are currently happening. What we want, then - since there is no "correct" perspective - is to select a basic perspective which is the most flexible and beneficial.

The ideal default, I suggest, is to format yourself as "a background space within which sensory experience arises". This places you-the-observer as a pure, relaxed, background expanse, with you-the-content floating within it. This gives you a stable platform to operate from, to think from. You view the world, then, as "a three-dimensional multi-sensory thought of a world, that is floating in the space of a perceiving mind". Other thoughts are then parallel experiences, floating in mind. You can of course then choose to reshape yourself as "being a person in a world" when you want, but you will always have this format of "being a space within which the sensory thought of a world is floating" available to you going forward.

Q1: you don't have to be seeking to constantly experience yourself as an unformatted space whose only property is being-aware - because: then what? It is enough to know that is the case
the formatting i'm having at the moment is along the lines of changing my patterning from an apparent "internal/mind-only state" and expanding it to become "the world"
because before, my experiences were felt only intellectually (which is purely a fictional experience itself) so by changing that to be-the-world it should then become manifest
because all events are rooted in consciousness anyway [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqOjFC9MCDc]: the intention of creating something creates it
The ideal default, I suggest, is to format yourself as "a background space within which sensory experience arises".
this is the goal
You can of course then choose to reshape yourself as "being a person in a world" when you want
this is what i am doing by "transferring" the intention from an apparent mental-construct to an apparent-physical experience
yet both are the the same in principle being derived from an intention manifest in consciousness

The intention of something is that thing! The thought of something and the actual something differ only in their intensity and their location (3rd person vs 1st person, basically). Isn't this shift in relative position - changing from watching something to being "clothed" by it - actually the essence of what you're speaking of ?

POST: Won $500 a few days ago

Congrats on your win!

I believe dimensionaljumping and law of attraction are essentially the same thing.

The usual philosophical follow-up questions: What "thing" is it, precisely, that both "dimensional jumping" and "the law of attraction" are? How does the law of attraction work, exactly, and what does this imply about the nature of our ongoing experience - and the nature of "the world" and "you"? Strictly speaking, without answering that we can't really say that "something triggered the win" nor that two things are the "same thing".

Im guessing it was the feeling state that shifted me into an experience that matched the state?

It's potentially a way of looking at it. One possible model is that adopting a particular pattern (an image, a feeling, whatever) can trigger the associated extended pattern into prominence, and that this then informs your subsequent experience. Although we might wonder: what are "states" made from? And where are they? Or are they just metaphors which are used to formulate intentions, and which have no existence other than that?

The idea being, that the more clearly structured our description is, the more we move towards a situation where any apparent results can be linked back, and the outcome repeated (eventually ruling out coincidence or a tendency towards superstition).

It's hard to pin down what, if anything, triggered the win here, I think, because there was a bit of a muddle of activities going on in this case. Did you get paid in $100 bills, for example, as in your visualisation? Or was there a more specific intention that accompanied the image? How would you go about repeating it - what have you learned from the experiment that you could reuse?

I played the scratch offs for the sake of enjoying the game without caring if i won or lost.

Yeah, I do think the attitude of basically "being okay with whatever happens" is a key ingredient, even when it comes to managing and directing everyday life, never mind the more esoteric experiments.

I was grateful for having that experience I desire, now. Without the feelings of desiring/yearning (that would imply having it in the future).

Perhaps the stability and relationship thing didn't come with her because I hadn't gotten to that part on my list yet before she came up and said hi

Ha, I love that.

Following on from what you say about "yearning", I agree that does have an impact. We might draw the connection between this and "thinking about" vs "experience of". If you are thinking about something, imagining it in the 3rd person, then it is "over there" and you are "over here". There is a distance between it, and it is that distance, the gap between the desire and fulfilment, which leads to the yearning. For as long as the outcome is held in this 3rd-person state, then it cannot be experienced. For it to become an experience, one needs to be "clothed" by the outcome, it must be released from suspension "over there" and be allowed to dissolve into the main strand of experience "over here" - the 1st person. Basically, you must allow it to cease being a located, bounded thought, and become an unlocated, unbounded thought - because that is what ongoing experience is.

To release something, then, is to allow it to dissolve into the background, and therefore become integrated into your main strand of 1st person experience. One might skip this, however, by formulating your intentions as "unlocated, unbounded" thoughts in the first place, rather than as object-type thoughts - provided one wasn't resisting change to the main strand at the same time.

POST: Questions regarding DJ

So, for your first point, see previous answers about "dimensional jumping" and the "law of attraction": here [POST: Won $500 a few days ago ], here [POST: Speculative answers to Frequently asked questions.] and here [POST: A few questions. ].

As for the story, it's just that: a /r/nosleep type story "inspired by" the topic of dimensional jumping (although really a misunderstanding of the topic as it is described in the sidebar).

Q1: Wow, thanks for the fast reply tho, would you be able to explain the difference beetwen DJ and LoA for dummy people please? Like I though it was something like: DJ (2 glasses) might "change everything" (might change your relationship with parents, close people etc) just for your wishes while Law of attraction you're just asking for one thing while it be the only thing changing or only things around it wil change.

Your timing was good!

So, the real answer is that "dimensional jumping" and "law of attraction" are both aspects or artefacts or leveragings of a deeper truth. The difference between them is, I'd say, that "dimensional jumping" is knowingly employing this and understands there is no solid underlying "how things really work", whereas the "law of attraction" tends to be based on a hand-waving sense of there being a "how things are really". (And often a poorly-defined one, leading to almost superstitious behaviour in search of "vibrations" and the like.)

At root, though, they both work because change arises due to intentions and their implications - and the world-descriptions those intentions are structured in terms of - rather than due to a technique or method based on the world being a certain way independently of those intentions.

Q1: Thanks for all your answers :) so after all there are no big changes if you do 2 glasses if you dont really want big changes around you due to whatever you asked for, right? Since you might make the shape of whatever you want.

Right, so the idea is that when you write the labels you contemplate the specific situation you are in, then contemplate the specific outcome you want, and in each case "feel out" the words that capture those situations (that is, you let the words come to you rather than logically working them out). There's no reason for anything more dramatic to happen, other than what makes sense in terms of "this" turning into "that". You're not going to some other drastically different place, you're just tweaking up your current experience a bit by "re-patterning" it (is the concept behind the exercise).

Q1: Alright, thanks :) It sounds better than dimensional jumping wich sounds kinda shady actually compared to what it really is. Since as far as i've understood there's no jumping to other dimension (thats why you are not ocupping any other body and yours its not ocuped either)

Yeah, well "dimensional jumping" is just one of many metaphors which, the idea goes, you can use to generate experiences "as if" they were true. So, if you want radical change in your life, something that breaks the rules a bit, then constructing intentions in terms of that metaphor allows you to "re-pattern" your experience in a way that actions based on the usual world description would not. (Although there is also some misdirection involved to ensure that you don't resist, or later counter-intend, the outcome.)

Fundamentally, you never occupy any body, you just have an experience "as if" you are "a body within a world". The deeper observation referred to earlier, is realising that the only fundamental truth is the fact that there is an experience happening - that is, the fact of being-aware. The actual content of experience, though, is impermanent and has no solid underlying substrate, and hence the possibility of shifting its condition without limitation. (All of which, of course, should be checked by personal experimentation; you're not meant to take anyone else's word on this.)

Q1: What breaks my brain is that then, the world is a place of shared experiences, right? Since, as an exemple, i've met you, and you're an human being more than something that i've created.

That's everyone's favourite topic, apparently! See recent discussion: here [POST: What happens to the other 'you's when you jump?], for example.

Q1: I feel like a freak but i find these "theorys" (for scepticks or however its written in english) interesting. But, what would happen if 2 same persons make the 2 glasses method to be attached to the same person, lets say "x" and "y" want to be with "l", what would happen?

At a fundamental level there are no people and you are not actually a person! Basically, don't worry about it - you can treat it like a "private copy" of the world where everything in your experience is an aspect of a larger you. As I say, the only thing that is always true is the fact of "awareness"; everything else is true on an "as if" temporary basis only. So there are no conflicts, because there is only ever this experience happening.

Q1: Thanks for all the answers btw :) That sounds totally awesome, is this connected to the astral projection/law of attraction philosophy, i mean, we're here to live, so just do it. Or does this go in other way that people who believe in karma and so would reject this, like if this woud be cheating?

Welcome! I don't think the idea of karma as in "judgement and payback" is valid. There are no inherent rules-based morality laws or an independent benchmark for appropriate behaviour.

There is karma in the sense of, if you "pattern" yourself with a particular outcome or a particular worldview - whether by intending it or doing something that implies it - then it will become prominent in your life. But that's not the same as "balance" or whatever. Rather, it's just what a "patterning" approach means by definition: you get what you assert plus the logical implications of that assertion - i.e. if you intend something then you are also intending a world in which that intention makes sense.

So, basically just do it. There is no morality or judgement outside of yourself, so it's up to you. The nature of "patterning" does imply a certain "do unto others (unto the world-as-experience) as you would have done to you", though, of course.

Q1: wow! This is a very interesting and good point of view, mother of god. So, what do you think about the infinite knowledge that is right now in the universe? Like, none of it "exists" as it trully is, or it is really something exist and we discover over our experiences?

You could consider that the world is not so much a "spatially-extended place unfolding in time" as a "toy box of all possible patterns and experiences, from which we draw to create our 'private copy'". All possibilities, then, are present eternally (which means "outside of time" rather than "forever"), "dissolved" into the background.

However, that too is basically a metaphor which you can experience "as if" it were true, albeit a metaphor which gets closer to being completely inclusive. Again, only being-aware - or "awareness" - is fundamentally true (exists), however it can "take on the shape of" any experience "as if" it were true (exists). To summarise this view:

• What you truly are is "awareness", a sort of non-material "material" whose only property is being-aware, and which "takes on the shape of" experiences.
• The experience you have taken on the shape of right now is one of apparently being-a-world-from-the-perspective-of-a-person.

The problem we have when thinking about it (this is covered in the last link) is that our thinking is already pre-formatted into a "shadow sensory" shape. We cannot think of things which are "before" experience, because thoughts are themselves are just experiences. We have to be careful and not make the mistake of assuming the-world-as-it-is is of the same format as our sensory moments, since they are just a particular patterning themselves. This tends to inform our idea of what "to exist" means.

Generally, I'd say that everything exists as potentiality (enfolded), and the current sensory moment exists as actuality (unfolded). However, right now you are actually experiencing absolutely everything, and this is true always - however, different pattern-facts are just "brighter" than other pattern-facts (their relative contribution to this sensory moment is stronger). We might call the current relative distribution of pattern intensities our present "state".

Basically:

• Think of the situation now that you want to change. Pause and wait for a word to come up which feels like it fits as a summary of that situation.
• Think of the situation as you want it to be. Pause and wait for a word to come up which feels like it fits for that.
• Use those words for your labels.

Follow the instructions as they are written in: these instructions [The Act is The Fact - Part One: An Exercise]. That's it!

Q1: Hi again. Tried it about last week but literally: 0 changes. Not even around me. If done the two glasses but the glasses aren't transparent at all (they have like pictures). Does It matter? I'll try again soon, but I'd like to know how to do It perfectly when I just want to thing one change while maintaining my family bounds exactly the same.

The properties of the glasses don't really matter - although it's helpful if they are transparent to some extent so that you can see the water levels and so fully experience the pouring of the liquid. So don't worry too much about that.

Other things to consider: remember to follow the last instruction; generally allow a week or so for anything to become obvious; later, if no luck, perhaps consider whether you are someone who "holds onto themselves" in everyday life, do you "control" yourself moment by moment?

Q1: What do we mean by "controlling", sorry for obvious questions but since english is not my main language (not even close to) somethings might be a little bit confusing to me.

It's not you - it's hard to put into words anyway! So, an example:

Sit in a chair. Now stand up.

Does it feel that the standing up experience just "arises" and your body "moves by itself", or do you feel that you are "doing" the standing up? If you feel that you are "doing" it, can you identify what it is you do? Are you tensing muscles? Thinking intensely? Narrowing your attention down? Do you begin by re-asserting the fact of "sitting down" before you being targeting "standing up"? None of that is required.

Now, instead of doing anything about standing up, just let your attention be open and expansive in all directions (don't narrow down onto your body parts), and just-decide that your body will stand up: simply think "being-standing-up". And then don't interfere. Allow the experience of "my body standing up" to just arise and unfold in your awareness, by itself.

Some people constantly "re-assert" their current body position and then use effort to overcome it, and they do the same with thinking, and in particular they "concentrate" their attention on the target of what they are doing. None of this is actually required (in particular, you don't need to narrow-focus on your target in order to intend it and have it happen), and what it tends to do is "fix" you in your current state, and prevent it shifting - in the example, like you are intending "being-sat-down" and "being-stood-up" at the same time!

Q1: alright, i think I got the point, so how do we transfer that to 2 glasses? And by the way, how was this method discovered? i've been looking on google but there's only reddit threads, no other websites so im curious :p

In two ways. Firstly, when performing the exercise, simply perform the acts as described in the instructions, and don't "concentrate" or "focus" or in some way try to make anything happen. Secondly, in your everyday life work towards staying "open and spacious" and go about your tasks by just-deciding rather than "manually" moving yourself (body, thoughts, attention).

The exercise itself, I put it together when someone posted a question over at /r/glitch_in_the_matrix asking whether it was possible to deliberately create a "glitch" type experience.

Q1: Got it! Thanks!
Yeah, but my point of the question, is how would someone discover the method, since lot of people on this reddit say it works im just curious why it is not famous out of reddit itself

Oh, I see. Well, it's just one example of that sort of thing, I suppose, and it probably doesn't make much sense out of context?

It's probably best described as an experiment rather than a method. Its underlying purpose really is to trigger an experience that encourages a questioning of your assumptions, and perhaps thinking along a particular direction about the "nature of experiencing". Without that larger idea backing it, the ability to have conversations like this about it in a forum, it probably isn't very valuable.

Q1: Gotcha, thank you once again!
Could I ask you to share your own experiences that have worked with 2Glasses (if not very personal) as how was it before, what you wanted to change, and how it changed and what else changed due to it?

You're welcome. I'll leave you to conduct your own experiments and check it out for yourself, but if you're interested: here is the original comment [POST: [EXPERIMENT] Glitch Generation Test, I Need Your Creative Ideas!] describing the exercise, and the first responses!

...

Q2: [There is no morality or judgement outside of yourself]
yes there is - me

Hmm, you are not outside of yourself!

Q2: other people are because they are not directly me and do things I despise... judgement, see

But you are not "directly you" either. To despise them is simply to despise aspects of yourself, and for as long as you despise them, it'll persist...

Q2: for as long as you despise them, it'll persist...
that's right, because by thinking about them, I am reinforcing that "pattern". so I have to "drop" them... but realistically, they're not going to just vanish; so there must be a need for a war or something
But you are not "directly you" either
this is still confusing to me [https://youtu.be/DyOxHTLE3EE]

Drop "realistically" too, then...

POST: What happens to the other 'you's when you jump?

The content and links in the sidebar cover this, I think, but -

Although it's fun (or disturbing!) to contemplate, there are not any "other yous" in the sense of physically (in a separate space), simultaneously (in a parallel time) "happening" (unfolding in time). I'd suggest that the only thing that is "happening" is your 1st-person ongoing experience right now.

"Dimensions", as an (active?) metaphor, provide a way of conceiving of a discontinuous change in the content of that ongoing experience that breaks your usual narrative of the world as a "spatially-extended place unfolding in time". Other narratives might then seem more appropriate - for example, we might think of "the world" as a sort of toy box containing all possible patterns and facts and moments, from which we select our particular "private copy" experience of a world.

Q1: I rather like the "private copy" metaphor, it helps me grasp the whole idea of "patterning." The only thing I don't understand is how it can be "private" when our toolboxes seem so show the same pattern, and my patterns can influence your patterns. I'm sure you get this same question in its different forms very often, and I guess it can be boiled down to this: if objectivity doesn't exist, then why do our subjective experiences "sync up" so well?

There are a few ways to tackle this, but let's say: if objectivity doesn't exist, then subjectivity doesn't exist - there is just "experiencing". Therefore, our subjective experiences in fact don't "synch up" at all. Your current experience is the whole thing, you are being-a-world-from-the-perspective-of-a-person (and by "a world" we mean a particular shaping of the metaphorical eternal "infinite gloop").

The Hall of Records metaphor gives us one way to conceive of this. It essentially says: all perspectives exist, but the only thing that is ever "happening" is this experience, because "experiencing" == "happening". There is no "outside" to that.

However, really, we have a problem here: that our thoughts about experience are themselves experiences, and so already formatted into pseudo-sensory object-based experience. We cannot therefore think about experience; it is already "too late". What we are talking about is "before" division and multiplicity.

So, we might say that there is only one toolbox, not many, and only one experience, not many. Strictly speaking, given the above, we should say that there are not-many toolboxes, and not-many experiences. We literally can't conceive of this in the abstract, we only conceive of particular experiences, as experiences!

Although we can't think about it, we can directly attend to our experience and get an unmediated insight though. (Excuse some recycling here.) A silly little exercise illustrates this. 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 facts upon which all of experience is built. (Try it before reading the next paragraph!)

I anticipate what you discover is: there is no edge to your experience, and so there is just a sort of unbounded space of "awareness" rather than "an" or "the" awareness; you seem to be both everywhere and nowhere, you are unlocated and unbounded; the entire experience appears to be "made from" you, as in you-as-awareness rather than you-as-person; what you previously considered yourself to be is a thought of you, and that thought is located within you-as-awareness and is made from you-as-awareness.

Eventually - from this, the experiences you might generate from other exercises, and some contemplation - you conclude that the only inherent property of experience is being-aware, and that to talk of there being "other" subjective experiences or an objective world is not right or wrong, but meaningless. You can't "understand" this in terms of conceptualising it, but you can know it, directly.

I've spent my whole life using "subjectivity" basically as a synonym for "experience."

Me too, largely, which is why it's worth doing what we're doing now: just emphasising that it's a shorthand for "the subject" rather than it being a perspective that is embedded within an environment.

I'm imagining an Alex Grey painting with an infinite pattern of eyes embedded into the background, which alludes to the idea of awareness being an inherent property of all things.

A nice image. If the background is made completely from "eyes', then all objects which appear within it are also made from "eyes". Although, because that can suggest that one part of the background is "looking out" at another part, it's probably better so that it is made from "sensing" or "being". That way, we get the idea that the background doesn't go beyond itself, it simply experiences itself, in and as the shape that it has currently adopted. This is where we eventually come to the idea of calling it "awareness" and its only inherent property being being-aware.

However, it's really useful to come up with different visual images, like the one you suggest, for helping us grasp particular implications of this. So long as we bear in mind that the true situation is "non-dimensional", as it were, then we can't really go wrong.

At the core of reality I imagine a uniform, unbounded 3D grid ...

In some respects this is similar to The Infinite Grid metaphor, I suppose. These metaphors can be very useful for: a) conceiving of a structure which can be used to formulate intentions; b) providing a thinking framework to discuss certain experiences. It is important, though, to note that it is not "how things really are" - because there is no particular "now things really are" or "how things really work".

There is no stable underlying substrate within which we are operating, hence the "formatting" of your world experience at an abstract level is just as much a pattern as everything else. When we intend something, we not only intend that outcome, but we also implicitly intend the conceptual framework that was used to conceive of it. That is, that when you intend to go out into the garden, you are also implying the extended pattern of that intention, which involves apparent houses, gardens, a persistent environment, spatial extent, unfolding change, and so on.

So, every intention is a shift of the entire world! However, we tend to only intend things that are consistent with our current experience, and thus every time we go out into the garden, we further entrench this entire universe or dimension (that is: patterned state). What we are doing on this subreddit, what the exercises encourage, is intending an outcome which is not consistent with our current experience of "how things work", and thereby we reveal to ourselves that "how things work" is something we implicitly intend and which is within experience, rather than some stable independent landscape that we navigate across.

This node could be described by some as an "ego," a container for the awareness. Is this description compatible so far?

Well, the ego isn't a container for awareness. Awareness has no edges or boundaries, it is what everything else is "from", so it cannot be contained. What you think of as the ego is just a concept. In terms of what you actually experience, I'll be it's just an occasional thought that arises here and there, which you attribute to an ego. Again, what you are actually experiencing is being "awareness" with sensations, perceptions and thoughts arising within and as it.

The little four part investigation demonstrates to you this fact of experience. It is important, though, to actually do this, to attend to experience directly, rather than just think about it. Your thoughts about it won't get "behind" it, they will be just more experiences, deformations of your current experience - like rippling a pool of water that you are trying to perceive the surface of. Realising this, you discover the the "ego" is really a thought about an "ego", rather than an actual thing. It is a pattern of experience, nothing more. (I suggest.)

POST: A few questions.

I guess probably the best way to start, is to ponder:

• How, exactly, does the "law of attraction" work? (And what is the model of the world upon which it's based?)
• What are "you" and what is your relationship to "the world"?

As the sidebar says, "dimensions" are really just a concept or metaphor (as indeed is the concept of "reality"), one that is used to describe an experience and/or formulate an intention. It is not really "how things work" or "how things are". (In fact I'd suggest there is no "how things work", and "how things are" cannot be described because descriptions themselves are made from it.)

Ultimately, then, this is about generating experiences which lead one to contemplate the "nature of experiencing", and understand the relationship between experiences, intentions, and descriptions. And getting some desirable results along the way, for sure. The Two Glasses exercise, specifically, is really a structured approach to getting someone to shift state from one with "this" pattern as dominant, to one with "that" pattern as dominant - whilst making it relatively unlikely that they will counter-intend it afterwards, and in a way that naturally raises questions about causal relationships within experience.

POST: I've got a bit of a problem.

Q1: I am saddened that this subreddit seems so negative suddenly

Q2: It's the flood of all these new people. The whole "vibe" of the sub changed. There's no more teachers. And all the noobs are just relishing in their ignorance.

Q3: Imo "teacher" isn't the appropriate term.
Assuming that the core intentions of this sub are:
(a) to rise curiosity about the relationship between "I" and "the world" and subsequently between "experience" and "descriptions".
(b) Suggest tools to help individuals in their personal investigations.
What is lacking at this phase are more people willing to redirect "noob discussions" to the core theme. The modus operandi of /u/TriumphantGeorge is a good model.
My suggestion to make this task easier is to create a hypertext in the format of Question/Answer linking to previous discussions here. Maybe it could be done in a collaborative fashion utilizing a shared doc...

Indeed, those are the core themes - although they are usually best articulated as part of a dialogue, rather than a statement of intent I think, because the various terms tend to have different meanings for everyone. That's also why there isn't a basic Q&A/FAQ here. However, a wiki page linking to "historical discussions of note" may be a useful thing for us to introduce.

Meanwhile, the number of subscribers and new interest probably now exceeds what is practical for a subreddit topic like this, and has for a while. In moderation terms, we've tended to let things breathe for a bit, then reel things back in. That is, allow some basic or repeat posts to stay for a while - because they often allow a strand of discussion to develop that is valuable even if the main post is not - and later remove ones that didn't flourish. But this does mean we suffer from waves of "incomer ignorance" dominating the sub sometimes, and perhaps we need to push back on that a bit more.

...

A1: Grow a pair sissy.

A2: I agree with you. I was sitting in front of the mirror bored for 40 minutes straight. OP is just afraid of the dark.

POST: Can you change yourself physically when you jump?

I would also like to know if I can change myself physically when you jump, but this comment is pointless so think of it like a bump.

The likely range of bodily change is often asked in rhyme,
The key you seek to make it sleek will come to you in time.

Sooooooo, yes?

[Come on, you gotta keep in the spirit of it!]

Dramatic shifts and bosom lifts mean lowering your defences,
Parts are moved and others soothed while detaching from the senses.

I would like to have clear answers, because I really don't want various types of cancers.

[That's better!]

The theory's said that results are lead by the thoughts we hold in mind,
But the strength of these asks commitment, please, which is difficult to find.

Commitment is something I am not familiar with, but I could do it for this, now stop rhyming please and help me jump into the abyss.

[Very good.]

I've never had cause to dabble myself in this - except that I did accidentally 'keep things going in the right direction' when I was growing up, unwittingly. But the process is the same for all this stuff: Enter a state of detachment (so that you are not "holding onto" present patterns, and they fade) and will the desired change (triggering the desired pattern, to intensity) without using any effort. It's a bit more difficult, I think, to let go of the body, so it's easier to will it in the future - and if there's some 'token action' you could take in that direction, that can be helpful.

How can you will change without using any effort

I think of it like "remembering". Do you use effort to remember something? It's like that. Will is how you actually accomplish things; everything else is an effect. It's hard to describe. I mean, how do you see or hear? You just do it. But it's the difference between having a 'technique' and it working or not working. It's sort of a commitment to something being a fact. Here's a little experiment which can give you the experience: Get a friend and challenge them to an arm-wrestle. Do this twice.

• On the first attempt, use all your muscle power to attempt to win the arm wrestle, as you normally would.
• On the second attempt, withdraw your 'presence' from your arm and simply "strongly decide" that you are going to win the arm-wrestle. Now, resist the urge to interfere - leave your arm alone and simply let your arm do the winning for you.

That "strongly deciding" is the willing. It is that which brings about the result. In this example, you can will muscular movement or will the result. When doing these types of things we want to use the second sort. And so it is effortless.

what is a token action?

A 'token action' is just something which you can pass off as the 'cause'. For instance, if you wanted to lose weight you might, having willed, go jogging once a week and eat an extra apple. (In the arm-wrestling example, 'muscular trying' is a token action which actually gets in the way of the result.)

POST: So...could every person that you talk to in your life actually have their consciousness in a different dimension?

Today's Conundrum - Nobody is looking out of the eyes that look at you, except for you. If you pay close attention, you'll realise that even you are not looking out of your own eyes.

This has always been my assumption- we live in our own worlds

Yes, effectively we are each living in our own patterned "dream-space". When we "jump" we are letting go of some world-patterns, allowing them to shift according to our intention.

Aside - This sometimes leads people to worry about "other people", but the answer is that you are not a person either - you are a conscious perspective, in which the "dream-world" appears. And so is everyone else (if you need to believe in "elses"). It's best to just say "it all works out in the end; everyone experiences the version of themselves they choose to".

Thats seems pretty limited-Im also a person and youre a people. Its part of how this works.

Well, it's optional but - It's better to say you are experiencing being-a-person or a "person perspective". It seems like a detail, but things make a whole lot more sense if you take this approach. Not just "jumping". Search for the "person" you assume you are, and you won't find it. You will, however, find transient sensations, thoughts and perceptions in an "open aware space". The person you seem to be is as much the content of your world as the rest of the environment.

That's a lot of robot talk to skirt that it's People not- animals or robots or anything else that has the ability to surf the meta fiction as with jumping. It's the Person, human that bridges mortality & immortality - that's pretty fucking important. With heady robot talk about consciousness you miss the most important part

Hmm, so what is "the most important part"?

The Human.

Okay, interesting point. If you are experience something, you can't be that something, I suggest. But this depends on what you mean by "human". If you mean "human" as in, a particular formatting of mind but independent of the body and thought, then I might agree with you. Human experience is a filtering of potential experience. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't be able to do "jumping" and the like. In fact, the whole jumping process is precisely about detaching from that formatting and letting it shift. You let go of "being human" to, briefly, be nearer to raw unformatted consciousness and more responsive to intention. You die and resurrect.

Without that there is no subjective experience to experience.

Very true. And if you pay super-close-attention, you might realise that your subjective experience is constantly disappearing and re-emerging, like the gap between frames in a movie. At best, we are half-human in our experience. But since time can't be measured against anything within those gaps, so each gap in a way lasts forever, maybe we are barely human at all... And who knows what you become in those unremembered experiences between your "human" moments...

Yikes. Rocks have consciousness. The universe is aware.

Nah, rocks don't have consciousness. Nothing "has" consciousness, I'd say. I wouldn't even say "the universe is aware".

Well there are plenty of people to disagree with you on that so I'll leave you there. We'l have to agree to disagree.

Just to be clear, lest I leave a confusion: I'm not saying you are not conscious. I'm saying that consciousness must be something you "are" rather than "have". What you then seem to be is the shape you have taken on, as consciousness. My "wouldn't say the universe is aware" statement is misleading in this way. Better to say "is awareness" and "has awareness of its form". Anyway, thanks for the exchange.

...

Can a Mantra be a Metaphor?

Good question! Some thoughts: If we abstract these terms out into "patterns" then, effectively yes. To say a word is to trigger its associated patterns. Meanwhile, a metaphor is simply a named set of overlapping relationships (patterns), connected and associated with an unnamed set of overlapping relationships (patterns). To say the word "owl" is to trigger the associated patterns of "birds", "wings", "big eyes", 'tree branches", "Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Test", "Rachael", "night-time", etc. To think-about an owl is to do the same.

On archetypes

Gods and Goddesses, owls and archetypes, they are all just triggers for pre-existing extended patterns which cannot be encapsulated in a word or an image, but can be triggered or intensified by them. All possible patterns are here, now, in your experience - it's just that some are more intensely activated than others. To feel better (simplistically speaking) you want to allow the "bad feeling" to fade and a "good feeling" to become more intense. How to do? "Detach" from your current experience and "allow" it to shift; trigger a pattern which implies the desired state. Literally, you are a wide-open perceptual space with some experiential patterns more intense than others. You don't "heal" so much as "allow experience to apparently shift". More accurately: you can't change anything, you can only let the present pattern dim and intensify an alternative pattern by "recalling" it.

POST: What's the point of the Dimensional ID 982 if an infinite amount of other dimensions could have the same number on their sidebar? Why doesn't everyone pick the own ID for their original dimension?

The ID is there for fun really. It's part of the mythology.

Even if people were to pick their own personal ID, there's no reason why it would change just because other changes have occurred. There of course an infinite amount of different types of experiences in which the ID is still that number.

Really I'm referring to "mythology" in its looser sense:

"Mythology can refer to the collected myths of a group of people—their body of stories which they tell to explain nature, history, and customs"

The concept of using some sort of "Universe ID" or anchor to identify shifts was one of the early ideas in dimensional jumping, so it's part of the shared history of the subreddit. If you think about it though it doesn't really work as a reliable reference (why should that number necessarily change just because other things have changed?) so it's really just part of the fun rather than something inherent or useful in the approach. If it does change however, then you will know for sure that things have shifted, right?

POST: So can i jump without the whole "candle n mirror @ night"?

The point is to get yourself into a detached state, released from holding onto the current sensory experience. Check out the other methods post linked on the sidebar - e.g. Neville Goddard approach of entering deep relaxation, etc. You don't even need the timing, although there's something about the quietness of late night, and it feels "special" in a way that helps. The trick to letting go is to let go of your attention. People understand letting go of the body and thought, but they leave their attention narrowed. Free your attention also. Then, once you've settled out, you can begin, focusing your will. Check out the couple of (free) books referred to in the Neville Goddard post. His approach is probably the most accessible, next to the stripped down version. Here's a good exercise to begin doing (there's a more advanced one here):

Daily Releasing Exercise

• Twice a day, 10 minutes, lie down in the constructive rest position. On the floor, feet flat, knees up, head supported by a couple of books, hands resting on your lower torso.
• 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.

POST: Has there been any thought given to the idea that you are consciously manipulating reality, rather than jumping to a different one? Is that question semantic?

A1: I think that quite rightly sums up the issue. The way I like to express it is that you do not exist in multiple dimensions but rather multiple dimensions exist in you. If you think of all possible worlds as a probability wave, it is a matter of conciousness "collapsing" the wave into multiple realities. Much like the old idea of our subjective reality being a dream and we have the ability to change the dream.

Right! I'm not quite so keen on "wavefunction collapsing" because it's maybe not a great interpretation even for physics (it implies an event), but the idea that you are a conscious space and all possible experiential/factual/logical patterns are by implication if not in fact latent within you, like memories waiting to be triggered, is pretty close as metaphors go.

Q: So do you think humans have 'incarnations' in lower and higher dimensions simultaneously? Could I dimensional jump my consciousness 'up' a dimension instead of 'left or right'?.

All there is, is experiences, and all experiences arise in your "perceptual space". In a dream of walking across a field, do you go anywhere? What if you had a dream about exploring other dimensions? No, in all cases what you get is... more dream. When you wake up in the morning, again... more dream. You might consider that you are only dreaming of waking up.

(To illustrate this, try out the little experiment in the middle of this post [Outside: The Dreaming Game].)

POST: Noob here. Am I too negative to try this DJ?

Right..the only reason I would want to DJ would be to fix the negativity, ha. So, if I were to get in the right mindset to do it, I wouldn't want to anyway. I will just have to figure something else out, but it was just a thought. Thanks for your reply.

Yeah, if you "defocus" yourself a bit, the rest of your mind is going to snap to the same thing! So messing around with mirrors seems like a bad idea.

Possible suggestions: You should concentrate on something more general: bringing into mind scenes of what you'd like to experience, vividly and with the feeling of how you would feel, as if you were experiencing it now, in the 1st-person. That alone will make a big difference to you. Even just because it's fun and feels good. Although outside random events might act to budge you out of negativity, the longer it goes on the more the world will have lost that random factor, and settled into your attitude along with you. You are going to have to "shape-shift" yourself!

Think of it as having ended up with a slouched, weeakposture. You can wait for something to bump into you, or pull you up, but that might be a long wait. The best solution is to shape-shift yourself, take on the form of upright posture and power. It might be worth reading the Neville Goddard version, described best in The Law and the Promise (see links in that post), for inspiration.

POST: trying tonight

Work on summoning the feeling of "how you would feel if you were as you want to be". This will help more generally.

POST: Too scared to jump.

Try other methods. They all amount to: entering a state of sensory detachment, and allowing a shift towards some intended state. No matter what you have to "let go" in some way, but some are a little more pleasant if you don't like the morning ritual bit!

Have you ever seen those isolation tanks? I wonder if those can be used in jumping. I don't see why not.

Floatation tanks? I've had a few sessions in those: very relaxing. It was before I started thinking about these things though. Potentially it could be ideal. The more you feel "totally supported" the more you feel comfortable in removing attention from your body sensations (that's why maybe lying on the floor is better than lying on the bed is better than standing up, for this).

POST: Seriously tripped out. I SWEAR there were at least 65,000 subscribers to this subreddit. I watched the number climb for quite a while too. WTF

A1: That is an improvement then, imagine 65,000 people posting this type of drama daily.

Hmm.

* * *

TG Comments: /r/Oneirosophy

POST: On the pretentious nature of consensus reality.

All wool, no sweater!

POST: Visualizations of a few concepts discussed here

[POST]

Recalling or experiencing part of a pattern in any way triggers the whole pattern (and to a lesser extent all associated patterns) via auto-completion.
[https://i.imgur.com/gGmwmQe.gifv]
Unfolding
[https://i.imgur.com/QB7IEAp.jpg]
Enfolded Possibilities
[https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WpGzXw4z05I/UysaV4CAyfI/AAAAAAAAukQ/OwY03iI0I2k/s1600/tumblr_m39qj6mK6v1qzt4vjo1_500.gif]
I may find some more in the future, but I felt these were fitting, at least for how I think of these concepts.

[END OF POST]

What a nice idea - evocative imagery. I kinda meant to pursue that avenue more after the Infinite Grid one, but animation takes time and I've not had the time - repurposing preexisting ones is a great idea. I like the first one particularly. Something which emphasises the notion of a redistribution of relative contribution of pre-existing patterns.

This also reminds me I've been somewhat neglecting my Oneirosophic duties of late.

POST: Cities, civilization, and lucidity.

[POST]

So i've been on a two week vacation out in spain with my family, and while it was fun, i cant help but realize in those big city environments, not to mention not having much alone time, i had a very difficult time achieving lucidity. Like before i left i feel like i had things down but out in madrid and barcelona, all of the hundreds of people and noises seemed to scream for attention for my mind. I guess i could classify myself as a person who is prone to sensory overload at times. Also on the whole going beyond being human thing, as much as i love my parents being around them seemed to make me feel human by reminding me i'm their offspring.
What i have learned from this experience is that for one thing i now know why monks spend time in isolation, but also that there is incredible freedom in solitude. I've also realized that before i thought spending time alone in my room was limiting and imprisoning, but when i was out in those big cities i felt even more imprisoned and failed to realize how free i actually was before this experience. Say what you will about charles manson, but in ones of his interviews he said something along the lines of society being a bigger prison then the actual cell he was staying in, and now i totally get it. Mental prisons are much more insidious because not being in a physical prison creates an illusion of freedom, and mental prisons can be very detrimental to lucidity.

[END OF POST]

Madrid and Barcelona - amazing, I love those cities. But they are relentless. And that's a good thing! :-)

Surely one of the benefits of pursuing this approach is that you can find the 'space' in any situation. Even in a crowded street, elbows bumping against you, the rowdy crowds of Las Ramblas, there is quiet inside you - or should I say, that the scene is contained within a quiet.

Monks are saps! ;-)

EDIT: Hint, these cities are much more fun with a bunch of pals, perhaps during a festival.

...my dad kind of follows a schedule...

Yeah, there's nothing worse than "organised fun".

i brought illuminatus trilogy on the plane to read and the person in the row next to me had the same book.

Of course they did! That's how it works. Also, your seat number was 23 and the air hostess was distributing free copies of Fnord magazine with the newspapers.

POST: TV astral projection, dimensional intersections, and reality as a dream labyrinth of dreams within dreams.

Yes, we do get "absorbed into worlds" (or rather, we absorb worlds into us?) and everyday life is just such a place. I suppose we become what we pay attention to, so we really do completely enter Mario's land. It's just a matter of directed attention.

A little related, I was just reading Francis Lucille’s The Perfume of Silence and I quite liked this passage (his version of a ‘grid of all moments’) which reminds me a bit of your TV scenario:

*We can only use metaphors up to a point. When stretched too far they don’t work. We use the metaphor of images on a television screen to understand the relationship of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions to consciousness. The screen stands for consciousness, and the images for the manifestations, the energies, the appearances.
If we want to understand the relationship between consciousness and the apparent multiplicity of minds, we can also use the image of a television screen, but in a different way. If innumerable television screens, each with their own image, represent innumerable minds, then in this case, consciousness is indicated by an observer who is watching all the television screens at the same time. Sometimes two images may have some connection because they share a common object. Sometimes they may not seem to have any connection, because their fields don’t intersect.
However, one single witness observes all screens. In this metaphor the witness stands for consciousness and each screen stands for each individual mind.

and

Objectively it is limited, but subjectively it is not. One television screen cannot see the other screens, but the observer has access to all of them. In the same way, your mind does not have access to other minds, but one consciousness sees all minds. The observer is not foreign to you because it is you. It is seeing and understanding these words right now. There is not a separate consciousness for each mind. There is only one hearer, one seer, one perceiver. The apparatus with which we see is by itself inert, unable to see. A telescope is useless without an astronomer behind it. It doesn’t see anything by itself. Likewise, the apparatus of mind doesn’t see anything by itself.

POST: Differences between Oneirosophy and New Age (by cosmicprankster420)

[POST]

You know I consider myself pretty open minded when it comes to forms of spirituality, but whenever I see something that is really new agey there is a part of me that cringes a bit. I mean I believe in the possibilities of things like spirits, energy, and alternate planes of existence and so do new agers, but where is the difference? What's different I realized is that new age can have a quasi materialistic bent to its working where as Oneirosophy is all about working with perception alone. For example things like fluoride in drinking water calcifying the pineal gland so you cant astraly project, needing to be a vegan in order to access higher states of consciousness, masturbating makes you lose your chi, or the idea of electronic devices interfering with ones perception. All 4 of these things have you believing your ability to transcend the illusion of physicality relies on other physical things. If that doesn't sound like it makes sense it shouldn't. If the world is truly a dream things like chemicals in the drinking water or having the right crystals in the room should not be an aid or a detriment unless you decide it so, all is perception. Now granted getting to mired in certain habits can make one less lucid like eating too much junkfood or any other habit, but that is only the focus of attention on the bad habit not necessarily things blocking your chi (unless that's how you want your reality to manifest).
Let me make it clear I'm not trying to attack new age, if you want to clutch crystals and eat only raw food that's your business in your spiritual path but I think the reason new age can be off putting at time is because it makes spiritual ascent based on physical diet, physical objects, and physical energies where as oneirosophy can be based on perception, attention, and thought forms alone. I mean im not a vegetarian by any means (though I am eating less and losing weight currently) and I think im pretty good at astral projection and visualization. You don't have to worry about adopting some ultra healthy hippy life style (though diet and exercise doesn't hurt), you always have the power within you to become lucid in this dream, just don't get too caught up in the side shows and you should be fine.

[END OF POST]

What's different I realized is that new age can have a quasi materialistic bent to its working...

Yes, there's like an acceptance of 'this' but not of 'that' - as if there's a requirement for some solidity to base the esoteric stuff on. Which isn't the case. Everything gets much simpler if you accept that everything is non-material and aware, and therefore infinitely flexible.

If the world is truly a dream things like chemicals in the drinking water or having the right crystals in the room should not be an aid or a detriment unless you decide it so, all is perception.

I was recently reading a book on "Ho'oponopono", quite new-agey (albeit describing a traditional Hawaiian approach apparently) but with some universal ideas buried in it. Anyway, at one point our main character in this asks to go to a burger bar. Our author is surprised - surely this unhealthy food is a bad idea? The response is that he 'sends it love before he eats it'. Now, that sounds ridiculous, but then you realise what he's really saying is that he is refusing to accept the idea that the burger is bad for him. He isn't cleansing it of bad energies or whatever; he is cleansing himself of his own causal opinion that this will do him harm.

Simultaneously, it is becoming apparent to me that much of what before I would feel very much a victim of, now I simply take in stride and learn from.

The larger idea is that we can cower and "be small" within our world-experience, or we can assert and become it - in which case it is within us. When the world is within us, it is not made of "things" but of "meaning", and events unfold according to their meaning. If burgers and coughing "mean" to us that health is affected, it will be. However, if we note that burgers and coughing are merely images in awareness then they don't inherently mean anything, and we can update any meaning those ideas have inherited from our past assumptions.

I guess you could call this "Active Being". In many traditions we are taught non-attachment and acceptance. This alone reduced the effect of such things. However, we do have the ability to "reformat experience" and change the "rolling theory" we are living with - interjecting when we spot a tweak that needs to be made, and letting be at other times.

this is where the idea of gods or the hga becomes useful.

This is a good point - that if you can't quite persuade yourself that "little you" has all this power, then you can outsource it as a way of convincing yourself it's possible. But that is what you are doing: creating-adjusting by implication. It's pretty hard to convince yourself that: a) you can completely cheat the game and, b) that cheating the game is a 'good idea' or morally 'allowed'. And doing things by direct assertion (including 'overwriting yourself') maybe the most direct and it does work, but it involves at least temporarily leaving personhood behind, which is a pretty big emotional hurdle (it's "death"!)

POST: Pain doesn't hurt anymore

Do you feeling more generally detached and less present in your body? Do you feel more 'localised' in your head area?

Not saying this is you, but - - -

One reaction people can have to emotional trauma is that they withdraw their 'presence' from their body; they become remote from both emotional and physical sensation. Any distraction from the 'avoided area' can come across as having ambiguous meaning, anything intense that breaks through can seem pleasurable - e.g. Being forcibly hugged really intensely, etc. Mostly, it is that for such a deadened person, any intense sensation can give a feeling of 'aliveness' again.

In other words, if that is you, then this isn't a good thing. Spiritual learning allows you to feel things fully and accept them as sensations; it doesn't literally reduce the sensation itself or deaden the natural response. 'Letting go' and 'mindfulness' exercises might assist, although you might find them initially unpleasant and make you feel vulnerable, because you will be opening yourself up to sensations you've not been with for a while.

I am not detached from my body. Also not deadened or less present in general. I experience primarily through my heart and root chakra zones. I made this post out of surprise that an incidence of physical pain didn't carry that repulsive feeling usually associated with pain. I thought maybe the recent emotional pain could have some bearing but I hope people don't take this post as a cry for help, because I'm actually feeling great.

Ah, well that's all good then! :-)

POST: Everything is real, everything is unreal, or everything simply is?

It depends on the perspective. Everything is unreal in the sense that it is not what we assume - no solid objects extended in space, actually patterns in dissolved awareness. But they are real in terms of being patterns. So perhaps it's better to dodge the question and just say that everything is transparent and dreamlike?

From there it follows that as there is no solid substrate, everything is temporary and flexible, and because to experience something you must be it, all experiences and therefore the world are contained within you.

"Real" and "unreal" means the world experience is being separated into two categories. But really, all experience is made from patterns of the same thing (awareness). The distinction between the two is, on examination, usually down to stability and persistence, and perhaps location - that transient thoughts are "not real" (and over here)whereas the room around you hangs around and is therefore "real" (and over there).

If real = an independent physical material, then nothing is real.
If real = awareness, then everything is real.

From a /r/Psychonaut post:

Nefelibata
Definition: A cloud walker; One who lives in the cloud of their own imagination or dreams, or one who does not abide by the precepts of society, literature, or art; An unconventional, unorthodox person.
Pronunciation: ne-fe-LE-ba-ta

POST: Understanding Beta, alpha, theta, and delta mind states in an oneirosophic context.

Could we think of the brainwaves as the 3rd-person subjective image of a 1st-person subjective experience? Is the difference between states then a different between attentional styles?

Two general styles:

• A diffuse, open attentional style is a detached one where you let the world experience come to you. You are settled into the broadest state. This is an acceptance of existing patterns though non-resistance.
• In contrast, a highly focussed, narrow attention style involves a "gripping" onto a pattern. If this is a pattern of existing experience, this this increases the intensity of the pattern within focus, but also preventing its change.

However, either style can be used to effect change:

• An open-detached style (non-clinging to existing pattern) can allow intentions to ripples into effect easily. You are not "holding onto" existing patterns, so they can reform without resistance.
• A narrow-focussed style, when focussed on the desired pattern rather than an existing pattern, can also be a mechanism for change.

Implicitly, both approaches can amount to releasing a hold on present patterns and transferring experience to a desired pattern. The open approach is far less stressful though, and you can have a focussed experience within an open state.

Q1: ok this isn't a bad way to reinterpret it. I tend to find the open detached style is better for cultivating a state of lucidity then the narrow focused style. Maybe this is because you become open to the whole experience, and to be truly lucid in a dream you have to be aware that all of the experience is a dream, not just one small section of it.

Right. I'd say the open detached style is definitely the one to go for, because you can (potentially) live every moment this way. By "letting the world come to you" you can remain completely relaxed. If you don't even interfere with the shifts of your own attention (which eventually settle anyway), you naturally become aware of the background space including the place where "you" are meant to be. The narrow-focussed bang has been used in magickal techniques as a quick way of forcing temporary detachment while holding an intention, to "release" it. But surely it's far better to be completely open and "ask and receive" instead - for everyday body movement and thinking, not just "special efforts". I guess it's about resisting the urge to want to push and feel yourself doing things.

There have been some studies into the correspondence between brainwaves and "open focus" and there is value in that - see Les Fehmi's work - but for individual experiments, I think you can just go for what feels right.

...

that is a good point you make, however i know in my own personal experience i still have a lot of deconditioning to do. I only say this because i have become lucid and then have become trapped in materialism before and know how hard it is to get a way from convention.

Can you instead put aside those thoughts and then, rather than de-conditioning, leave them alone and choose to assert your preferred metaphysics and live from that?

POST: Sensory Reversal

[POST]

This evening I imagined, "If the physical world is an illusion, how can I come to access the world beyond illusion? Senses are all no-go's. What else do I have to work with?" And I thought, oddly enough, of senselessness.
So I closed my eyes very, very slowly. I watched as my vision, which seemed to take up the entire potential visible field, began to develop definite 'edges' The top and bottom of my visual field started to disappear into the lightlessness of closed eyes. And soon what remained of my vision was just a tiny, trembling flicker surrounded almost entirely by lightlessness until my eyes finally closed entirely. And I'd do this again and again, very slowly opening them back up, and very slowly re-closing them.
I started imagining an image of myself with two tiny, round TV screens floating in front of my eyeballs like the lenses of eyeglasses. And each of them was showing me a very slightly different perspective on the world in the same way that 3D glasses do to present a 3D movie.
And the interesting part really began when, as I slowly closed my eyes, I would imagine the screens compressing horizontally until they dissolved away, and as I slowly opened my eyes, the screens would emerge again and slowly expand. And I held this visual in my mind very strongly and probably spent no less than 15 minutes imagining that, as I felt my physical eyes close, the 3D screens were dissolving. I recommend you do this and pay special note to what you begin to 'see' when your eyes are closed.
The sensation settled in that as I closed my eyes, I was effectively opening my actual visual field to the "genuine" world -- and naturally when I felt like I was opening my eyes, I was actually covering up the real universe with a virtual screen.
What are the implications of this approach?
Well, it implies that the emptiness you see when you close your eyes is kind of "more real" than what you see when your eyes are open. This means that total sensory deprivation, including thoughts, would be the effective extinguishing of the physical world -- and also, therefore, might share similarities with the state of mind of an enlightened being. This may be intuitive, but what's (I think) profound to imagine is that what's left, the dark, scentless, tasteless, sensationless, thoughtless world you'd experience in total sensory deprivation, is precisely the state you return to in deep sleep, certain states of meditation, or death. When you close your eyes, you're looking at the "Real World" beyond illusion. The only illusion would be to imagine that you're seeing the backs of eyelids.
I found this to be very powerful to experiment with.
It also confirms strangely well with the scientific approach to the world which should make this practice a fairly accessible one for even skeptic-minded folks. Everything we experience, according to physics, comes at us as wavelengths of some sort. All of matter, all of our sensory experiences, all of existence, boils down to wavelengths. It's therefore, potentially, fairly easy for even the uninitiated to imagine their whole perceived reality as merely the massively complex wavelengths projected by a hyper-advanced 3D screen. Of course, it's hardly intuitive to imagine pains, scents, and visions as being projections of wavelengths, but it's approachable and comprehensible, I think, to a broad audience.
Another very interesting thing that can be done with this practice is to, while sitting in a dim-to-dark environment, perceiving all of the dark spots in your field of vision (shadows, black objects, etc.) as 'holes' in the screen. The nature of the visual field suddenly becomes very thin, 2D, and almost transparent.
Thoughts?

[END OF POST]

That's a fun approach. Like realising you've been wearing VR goggles all along. |8|-)

The Imagination Room metaphor was an attempt at something similar: to give you a way of looking at things which you can take around with you, seeing the sensory world as a floating mirage in the undefined space of...

The better version would be a "holographic space", but having the projection come from the "floor" is something that can be used to keep you, ahem, grounded during daily life.

An H.S. is kinda what you're approaching here?

Everything we experience, according to physics, comes at us as wavelengths of some sort.

I'd say you can ditch the "wavelengths" part, because one of the steps everyone has to take eventually that scientific experiments are just part of the sensory dream, as it were. And in any case it appeals to a more scientific crowd. "Observing wavelengths" is a story we experience that is made up of sensations and perceptions, so -

Instead, you can simply point out that sensations (images are harder, but sounds, bodily sensations, thoughts, emotional feelings) are all "findable" floating in your own awareness. You can literally sit someone down and take them through this, directing their attention at the different parts of experience, and they'll "get it".

What are the implications of this approach?

Vision is always the trickiest though, because it seems so obvious that "spatial extension" is a real thing outside, when it isn't. Your idea of imagining it as 'TV screens' you can push away is a good way to have people "stand back in their heads" a bit at the very least, maybe even actually learn that the visual content can be directly manipulated...

But what I'm really implying is something that goes beyond screens into a full sensory hologram.

Right! I do think it's easier to introduce the simpler version first - the "floor" in my room, the "screen" in your description. Because:

When we switch to talking about a holographic space, we're saying something a bit more: that the whole of the world is dissolved (non-spatially, non-temporally) into the background awareness, and that your 3D sensory experience is just what you are currently "selecting" with your attention. And by "the world" here, we really mean the patterns that we've accumulated within ourselves, as that space.

"You can literally sit someone down and take them through this"... I like that.

I'm always on the lookout for ways to communicate this. Another fun thing to try with people - which has worked pretty well - is the little exercise described in the post Outside: The Dreaming Game. It draws people's attention to the background space that they are. A variation on that is the "where is your real hand?" exercise, where you get people to try to point to their "real hand" (having explained that, even under the standard description, what they are experiencing right now is at best a "mind representation" of the world). If they point to their head (to indicate their brain), you ask them where their "real head" is...

The best approach, I think, remains simply lying down and giving up completely and absolutely. Vitally, this includes releasing your attentional focus to let it move as it wants - this is the real key. Given some time without being stirred by intention, the "space" settles out and naturally reveals itself to be open and unbounded. Looking for this interrupts it by deforming the space via attention; thinking-about this obscures it with the shadow-senses that constitute thought. This is why the whole "seeking" thing has to be dropped in order to be "enlightened", I suggest.

reading this post I pictured my vision as a 3d bubble in a 4 dimensional void, powerful stuff. But I would be somewhat cautious to labeling said void as "the real reality".

That's how I envisage the Infinite Grid thing. My current sensory experience is my 3D attention scanning over a 4D environment. It's always the the 'real reality', right? Just taking on different forms. Even 'void' is an experience of some sort.

POST: Some more lucid dreaming epistemology

I was talking about this over at /r/luciddreaming, responding to a post about persisting the dream (via spinning, looking at your hands, concentrating on a sensation, etc). Here's my comment:

My feeling is that all of these techniques are indirect - but they all have something in common.

This occurred to me a while back when trying to improve my posture, and I realised that all the bodywork techniques were really about... expanding your feeling-sense or presence into the space around you, and everything else falling into line spontaneously. In short: maintaining a relaxed, open awareness that is expanded into the perceptual space around you. What you actually seemed to "do" to bring this about - a body action or mental manipulation - was irrelevant: you could actually just skip straight to it.

In lucid dreams, if you let your attention narrow down into the body area, it's a sure-fire way to end the dream. Warnings not to contemplate the dream are essentially warnings against this. Maintaining tactile sensations, spinning around, looking at your hands, is a cheat to keep your attention open. (Implication: it's perfectly okay to think in a dream, so long as you don't mistakenly assume this requires you focus your attention down to the thoughts, thereby withdrawing yourself from the dream environment.)

So, next time you are in a dream, try expanding your sense of presence - expand your "you" and feel out into the dream, to that you are in open focus rather than narrow focus. Note, it's more of a relaxing-out than a forcing-out. Open attention is actually the default once you've got used to it, so what you are doing is leading yourself to cease constraining your attention. You can also try this in everyday life, since the situation there is exactly the same (except for the sensory content). What you'll discover is, your true situation is that of an "open, aware, perceptual space" in which experience arises - whether that's a waking experience or a dream experience. (This realisation allows us to make sense of experiences such as these [Darkroom Vision & Chef Hats & Dreams].)

The summary: avoid narrowing your focus when you do anything. Leave your focus open. This is a mistake we do in real life too (we "concentrate" our attention when performing an activity, rather than simply intending it).

...

The waking dream is dreamed that way; you've dreamed that you-the-character are restricted; experiments reveal this not to be the case. You can choose to dream a persistent, permadeath realm as a lucid dream if you want, and it will be pretty much like this waking life.

POST: Trying to hash some stuff out for myself, would appreciate your thoughts.

How does the oneironaut remain committed to any view in particular?

You get to choose your metaphor deliberately, and having experiences accordingly. It you don't choose or if you botch together an incoherent worldview, you'll find yourself in an incoherent world.

I think I'm just not convinced that manipulating reality is worth the effort because if normal and mundane things aren't real, why bother with trying to change them?

Well, they are only "not real" in the sense that there is no secret, hidden, solid world behind the scenes beyond the "habitual regularities" of experience. It's perfectly real as an experience, in the same way that a thought is a real thought. You can just leave things alone if you want, let your current patterns roll on...

But still, it seems like I actually can't stop manipulating reality.

You can let it alone by not updating anything (the apparent world will just run along its current trajectory). Experience will just appear in alignment with the facts-of-the-world as you left them. But it's also important to realise that you can't experience yourself doing the changing. To will is to change your own shape; you only ever experience the results, although you "know" that you are willing.

Basically I feel like there is no ground for me to take a position on that would make me feel that one way of perceiving reality is ultimately better than another.

Just choose one. For fun. You don't need to believe anything (belief isn't causal, it is simply what one thinks is worth intending, or assumes is happening anyway). You are right that there's no ground. Even your current "you" perspective is arbitrary.

There are no answers, only choices [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeC285uL6_w].

it's just that I have been taking "enlightenment" so freaking seriously

Let "enlightenment" take care of itself. Or: sit down and close your eyes and imagine that you are the empty space of the room, then expand it out. Don't think-about being that, instead actually imagine being it, adopting the shape of being it. Keep doing that until all you are is empty space. That's not quite it. :-)

But in waking life I seem to forget about this.

We let go of many things but often we forget to let go of attention. Check whether you do this: when you are doing something, such as looking at a computer screen, do you narrow your experience to it (focus your attention on it) or do you include it into your experience (leave your attention open)? Try the latter. Notice that you do not need to narrow your attention ("concentrate") in order to achieve things. It is intention that dictates what gets done, not attention.

In fact, you'll maybe realise that the usual reason you narrow your attention - to block out distractions when trying to "focus" - is actually caused by narrowing attention. Distractions are actually a "here I am" signal to open out attention again, as are aches and pains, often.

Q1: This is interesting. I have noticed more and more that I feel like I am sometimes being sucked into the screen and I find myself straining or not paying attention to anything else. It's gotten to the point where when I'm done, I feel out of it. Like dissociated and separate from things. It's really uncomfortable. Do you have anything else to say about this?

I went through a similar thing. I suggest that, if you don't already do something similar, you adopt a daily exercise like the passive version of Overwriting Yourself. Basically, just lie down and let yourself - but in particular your attention - unwind without interference.

If you narrow your attention down, what happens is that your whole body effectively tries to cram itself into that small space! You get very tense, and your body often ends up in what amounts to an emergency mode. Even people who know about "letting go" of their bodies and thoughts often don't realise that they are still controlling their attention, because attention isn't a "thing" or a "sensation", it's more of a filtering.

You shouldn't be controlling anything through effort. Your job is to "direct" and "let happen". So my general advice is:

• Before working, imagine yourself to be the background space in the room - actually "feel out" into that space.
• Rest the centre of your attention - "where you are looking out from" - somewhere along the centre line of your body. Perhaps halfway back in your head, or even in your lower body. Wherever feels good and like "home". (Probably at the moment you are "sitting" too far forward, right behind your eyes.)
• When you work at the computer, do not focus your attention onto it. Instead, leave your "space" open and allow your body to move at the pace it wants to.
• Do not not "effort" yourself. You are not meant to be physically wrestling with your work. If you leave your attention open, you'll probably find this subsides naturally. If you are in a calm state, you should feel that your body is "moving by itself".

I mention this all the time, but for daily body use I really recommend the Missy Vineyard book. Although it's ostensibly a book about the Alexander Technique (body use for actors, musicians, etc) it's actually a lot more insightful than that.

Q: [Deleted]

Hey, that's great - the attention thing is hard to describe, but once you've had the experience it all makes sense!

EDIT: You made a good point, which is that it's tempting to try and hold onto effortlessness or spaciousness by focusing on it, but of course that ruins it. You obviously can't "hold onto" wide-open attention by narrowing your attention.

POST: Dream is interesting

Have you checked out /r/luciddreaming? You might find that interesting if you haven't. Also I really recommend the book Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self by Robert Waggoner, it this area is new to you. It's probably the only non-beginners book on the subject that delves into the philosophy and status of the dream environment.

Yes, it's interesting to think that we might have given ourselves this role and forgot about it. Part of oneirosophy is recognising that you are "the dream" rather than the particular character you seem to be. If you've been practicing Buddhism and meditation, then I'm sure you've been thinking along these lines before: that what you truly are is a "consciousness" which is "taking on the shape" of a being-a-person-in-a-world experience.

i am the dream.. it also seems to mean that we are one with the world and the world is within us. if i understand you correctly.

Yes. Without getting in depth, I'd say that what we actually are is an unbounded "aware space" in which all possible experiential patterns are "dissolved". The moment you are experiencing now is just the combination of the various patterns that are active, the brightest of the patterns. You can think of this as similar to how the sun (the current moment) dominates the daytime sky, but actually all the stars are still there (all the other possible moments).

This means that there is no world "out there". For instance, the room next door isn't "over there", it is dissolved into the background, here. Our ongoing experience is like a *strand of thought - it just happens to be a very bright, 3D-immersive stand of thought that seems to fill up our aware space. I've posted a long-winded version about this stuff before: The Patterning of Experience and A Line of Thought, maybe worth a look in a bored moment. The "imagination room" metaphor linked in the first post can be quite useful I think.

if the dreamer here could travel the same world we are currently residing? or the dreamer always travel in the dream realm outside the world we are residing?

I say there is no restriction. There is no difference between selecting an experience "somewhere else" or "here in this world" or even "another time in this world". It is all here, now, available. The trick is to ensure you are starting a "thought" which is seeded from this world, rather than a random creation.

POST: Anyone finding progress?

"Just deciding" is an assertion that something is fact. More specifically, it is like increasing the contribution to your experience of a pre-existing fact or pattern. (It is pre-existing, because it is thinkable; all patterns exist eternally.)

For all the reasons you identify, it is much easier for people to use misdirection for this, and use a mental or physical act and attach the meaning to it. In other words, we think a thought or perform a ritual which we have decided means-that a situation will occur, or that a fact is now true. (And we choose not to examine too closely that the thought or act itself came from nowhere.)

Elsewhere, I tried to encapsulate it with these snappy bullet points:

• Act + Intention + Detachment = Shift
• Assigning a meaning to an act is what gives it causal power.
• Assigning a meaning to any experience can give it causal power.

The problem you might be having is that this is all literally unthinkable conceptually, and you cannot experience yourself "doing" intention - you can only experience instances of it, of becoming it.

One possible illustration: if you were a shape-shifter, how would you describe the process of shape-shifting? You would just "become" the new shape; it's all you, so there's no one part causing the other part. Continuing with this: how would you work out you were a shape-shifter? The only way would be... to shift your shape. There would be no evidence of you being a shape-shifter between shiftings. Intention and deciding and all that, have similar problems. You are perhaps seeking to experience something that is "the thing 'before' experiencing".

POST: on accessing harmonic understandings in music without "learning" scales, chords, etc

Reminds me a little of this: Working With A Violinist [missing]

But that's just about allowing the physical movements to flow uninhibited and in the best way possible (without "making it happen"). That's an arbitrary limitation though, surely, borne of an assumption which limits intention. What's the difference, really, between intending to play a piece of sheet music and "letting it happen", and intending to create a new piece of music and letting that happen? It become about not obstructing what arises.

POST: Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is?

I do like Hoffman. His paper on Conscious Realism is worth reading, and slightly more sophisticated talk on the Interface Theory of Perception is well worth checking out.

Another Hoffman link to check out: Peeking Behind the Icons, from his older book Visual Intelligence. It's basically a sort of modern-language retelling of Immanuel Kant's phenomenal and noumenal.

Of particular interest from the perspective of subjective idealism:

Are my teammates conscious?
The phenomenal teammates are, like the phenomenal volleyball, my constructions. If the phenomenal volleyball needn’t be conscious, then why should my phenomenal teammates be conscious? What differentiates the two? For now, nothing of import- ance, so I can’t conclude that my phenomenal teammates are conscious.
My relational teammates, like the relational volleyball, are circuits and software. But these circuits and software receive radio signals from my “real” teammates who are conscious, so that ultimately I interact with them. Thus the relational teammates are conscious, although my phenomenal ones are not.

Potentially this is rather begging the question, because in reality we don't have access to a "pre-simulation" version of what's going on, as described in Hoffman's metaphor. Whatever it is that dictates the behaviour of my "relational teammates", whatever has set them in motion, can never be accessed. Unless it turns out that this is... me.

It's important to realize what Donald is talking about is not subjective idealism.

Yes. This is true, but he does skirt with it elsewhere, because he doesn't consider the world as spatially-extended, and starts to suggest that individual perspectives can be separate. I wouldn't be surprised if he does something on it eventually - but it's a step that pretty much no public figure can openly take at the moment, because it just can't be proved by "given" evidence and has no context. Anyway - I find his step-by-step discussing and imagery pretty helpful in providing a path out of materialism certainly, physicalism definitely. Especially initially, it can be difficult to make the step from "knowing" a subjective idealist perspective but being unable to "think it". Donald's pretty helpful for this.

But of course: each to their own. As you've pointed out before, it's usually helpful if a link is accompanied with some discussion on how it's helped you to shift your perspective, etc, to provide context.

Q1: Subjective idealism can never be proven using evidence. In fact, subjective idealism finds fault with evidence itself. Meaning, we cannot accept appearances as evidential because of our metaphysical stance. Appearances present us only with possibilities and not with "how things are." There is no "is-ness" behind anything. So how can such appearances serve as evidence?
I find his step-by-step discussing and imagery pretty helpful in providing a path out of materialism certainly, physicalism definitely.
I don't agree. He just refines it, but doesn't do away with it. He uplifts physicalism to a realm beyond appearance, but still keeps all the bad features of it intact: objective common ground and in-time causality. This is something the scientists have always done. They've been refining their physicalism. They started with the billiard ball idea of atoms, then refined it to "almost empty space" but notice, they never say 100% empty space, it's always "almost." Etc. So they refine it. Now they have a notion of virtual particles. Now they think particles and waves are not two distinct things. They keep refining it, but they'll never rid themselves of the constraints of objective common ground or in-time causality, because they base every endeavor of science on those assumptions.

I think Hoffman is further along than you think, but your points are valid. The extra bit: having recognised that there is no inherent meaning, no possibility of evidence, we become far clearer about the will. In fact I'd say it only makes sense following those other insights.

What amazes me these days is how I used to get worked over about will, but after I realized will is always-on, I can just relax and stop working myself over like a fool. I am always willing perfectly and naturally. I don't have to work myself over and will on top of will, so to speak. Taking relaxation into the scope of volition, and removing the start/middle/end times for intentions, that's done wonders for my state. Now I exert myself as if passive and I relax as if active. It's great. Activity and passivity are only deceptive appearances. I needn't be fooled by them.

Yes, you and I disagreed (it seemed) for ages about will being always-on, but it was primarily a language disagreement because of this exact thing - the hidden assumption we can make about "efforting".

But of course, once there is a willing there's a pattern change which persists it, and is it. Passive = active.

Q2: In this talk he's specifically saying that reality is group-perception generated and then at the same time generated by one and then understood by many misinterpreters. Also, that misinterpreting doesn't matter for life. So it's quite contrary, but that latter idea is surely clear. I'd say that he's reserved in what he says IF he truly thinks more than what he says. I don't care if he does or doesn't, but it was definitely an interesting and well spoken piece.
What's amazing me at this time in our lives is the convergence of this idea that thought and will make. It's becoming in young art that's being endorsed by corporations. That means it sells, but it also means that massive amounts of people respond to this type of idea.
I'm starting to get a little hope for humanity in that numbers of people aren't jumping on board with a school of thought, but are getting into a deep headspace of creativity and experience on their own terms.
I don't know why we chose this idea to experience, but I imagine that it has to do with procreating consciousness in the from one many are begotten sense. I genuinely think that the smarter parts of the general population are starting to get it. The, "I am I" and the "Thou art" and the "We are".
I expect to see a lot more people "coming out" in this regard in the next few years. It's time that everyone was told point blank and has to fess up to the responsibility that we're all truly that thing that people deem worthy of worship.
Check out this young man [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPt0LkdM8Bc] but shit, this might all be lame in another few years.

There's a good conversation with Donald Hoffman somewhere (will try to find) where he's sat having a coffee with a colleague, and they talk about how there's no way he could have gone into all this "consciousness" stuff until he had tenure and was safe. As time goes on though, I think it's going to become acceptable again to explore this stuff without ridicule, as even neuroscientists like Christof Koch are publicly discussing panpsychism, etc, as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness.

POST: Insights from Music

A1: I think the illusion is, is that you're never not in flow. The whole of experience is one big flow. Every thought, every movement, every breath, just happens, naturally and without effort. Even the discomfort and disregard and pounding and your flailing wildly, just happen, without effort. Even the illusion of not being in flow, is a flowing experience. The way to be in flow all the time, is to become aware that you already are. And hopefully, you just have.

Great!

POST: I'd like to correct something I said in my last post

It's worthwhile, I think, to distinguish between passing thoughts (which we might say arise from the current state) and intentional thoughts (which we might say are amendments to a patterns's contribution). So, passing thoughts don't matter, but intentional thoughts do - and what matters is the contextual meaning of those thoughts beyond just the standard sensory aspect. For instance, you might conjure the image of an owl in front of you. Now, do this for "an owl" and do this for "an owl next month". The visual and auditory aspects might be identical in each case, however the felt-knowing of each will be different.

Relevance to the topic? That you don't need to let go of the idea as such, but the details matter. If the context of your idea is "an owl will happen soon", then holding onto that idea persists it as never happening, since you are continually re-asserting the fact of a future experience. Also, when you do something you can "know that it is done", thus implying its persistence, and then not have to continually hold it in attention. If you have the idea that ideas are transitory and need maintained while doing your intention, then you are implicitly intending that too, potentially.

POST: Solidity is reinforced through continuity

My theory is that we tend to live in a primary default dream and occasionally dream secondary or tertirary dreams...

When I was playing with the idea of "strands of thought", that's how I was thinking of things. It leads to interesting questions as to the importance of the primary strand. It's not strictly necessary that there is one strand which is more stable, bright, 3D-immersive than others - I can see no need for stability in and of itself, prior to its formation, since stability is required in order to have the ability to reflect upon how nice it is to be stable. However, it's probably inevitable that one will arise eventually and become the effective default to which other strands collapse, until that primary strand itself collapses.

Following the collapse of the current apparently primary strand, I suppose either another strand will be revealed, or another strand will simply unfold from the logical fragments of the collapsed strand. "Experiencing" will always continue, being as it is the "container" for all strands of experience. The question really is: at the moment the strand collapses, are you identified with part of the content of the strand which is dissolving, and therefore you continue in ignorance of your prior experience? Or have you become identified with the "container" or the nature of experiencing itself, and therefore can knowingly continue, since your stability is now (almost) independent of content?

(Obviously, "strands" and "dreams" are concepts we are using. We infer they exist for our little model, but I'd suggest that the actual experience is simply one of ongoing content with no true hierarchy. The structure of experience needn't necessarily support a time-and-continuity framework at all.)

...

The experience-of-something is a real experience, but the "something" is not real beyond the experience of it. In the sense that there is nothing "behind" the content of an experience. Sand horses aren't made from "horse" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxtyM9mFMQQ], typa deal.

I was just think about you today. Where is TG I was thinking? I mean I know you're "out there." As for your comment, of course I agree 100% with that one.

Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on things, but not had much to say that wouldn't be just interjecting for the sake of it. Not that this usually stops me, mind you! :-)

POST: You are constantly shifting dimensions already

Let's not become yet another sub where people just post "shit they found"! (I know you have the best intentions, so this isn't meant to be against you. It's a more general response.) I was originally going to set up an AutoModerator rule as has been done elsewhere, which bounces posts which are just links or which have no additional input or perspective from the poster. But we generally don't get a lot of it anyway (maybe due to the guidelines or because people feel that it's not appropriate).

Bashar is interesting, but links to his stuff appears on every "non-standard" subreddit, and there's not much value in it unless you say how exactly it ties in with the subreddit. It's just spam otherwise. See for instance: a previous time a Bashar link was posted. It doesn't necessarily take much more than that (although more would be encouraged now, I'd say). For instance, do you agree that we are "constantly shifting dimensions already"? Do you think it's a useful concept? If so, tell us why and start a discussion. Have you actually used this perspective and got results which have been beneficial or interesting? (Personally I think it really muddles up a couple of different ideas, and actually makes it harder to conceive of how to make a deliberate change in your experience.)

You get the idea.

Muddle up in what way? Could you expand?

It effectively designates each "sensory frame" of experience as a "dimension" - which isn't very helpful.

It is better, I would say, to designate a "dimension" as being a particular distribution of facts - or state - which implies a particular set of experiential moments, as a deterministic path. That way can reserve the concept of "shifting dimensions" as being for an intentional change of the underlying facts or state, which effectively defines a new deterministic experiential path "as if" we were in a different dimension. (In actual fact, we never go anywhere, of course. We just have different content arise in our open awareness.)

Things like surrender, allowing, faith and intention all make more sense under this model - and it ties in nicely to the observable nature of our direct experience too, and how it relates to intending (which is the only thing which ever happens). With this, rather than being only a sort of abstract concept with "frequencies" as the bridge, "dimensions" become more clearly about the patterning of experience itself/ourself.

In the end though, all of this stuff is metaphorical. We have experiences "as if" it were true, just as we tend to have experiences "as if" the world were a "spatially-extended place unfolding in time", rather than more of an "infinite gloop" with us the experiencing container. So we should all feel free to pick the descriptions that we find most attractive - just so long as we remember that this doesn't correspond to "how it is really, behind the scenes" (because there is no "behind the scenes"), and that sensory content has no causal power.

You're already constantly shifting dimensions = you're already constantly fiddling with your felt sense of the world via intent.

Although you shouldn't be, I suggest?

That's one of the aims to have, I'd say: to not be constantly thrashing your world around via reactive intention to the current sensory experience. Otherwise you are doomed to spend your life trying to "maintain a vibrational state", and so on. As for "dimensions", I feel that defining the term so broadly makes it essentially meaningless, since it means you are never "in" a dimension at all, again encouraging that "fiddling and forever maintenance" mindset.

But...

I'm of the "whatever works for you is good" view overall. The problem I have with Bashar (despite all the ET stuff which is fun but distracting) is that it doesn't really go anywhere in terms of leading to methods (or non-methods), or to realising the nature of your experience and so being able to build out from that. Now of course, the Bashar audience is not really the philosophical or metaphysical audience, nor is it the "post-magickal" or nondual audience, so it's a different perspective. For me, it kinda just adds another separate strand to the New Age / LOA realityshifting catalogue, rather than consolidating it into a useful worldview that connects to direct experience.

Every second you shift to a completely new and different objective dimension.

I'm not so sure where "objective" comes into this?

I feel the Bashar, although interesting in his thoughts, doesn't give any practices that might help people start thinking the way his teachings propagate. Correct me if I have missed any such practices.

He also doesn't tell you what a state is. Most importantly though, as far as I know he doesn't connect his concepts to your ongoing direct experience. Without that bridge, there's effectively no descriptive model (even one that recognises itself as metaphor), and so he can offer no practical approach other than vague notions of "frequencies" or "tuning in".

(When we say "practical", that doesn't necessarily mean actions - because actions are "before" experience in this case, since the root of it all is intention, and nobody can tell you how to intend. However, that itself is something that needs to be covered when talking about "dimensions" or whatever other scheme we're using.)

Q1: Maybe that is why most religions dissuade channelling? Because these other species can't fathom human limitations?
When Bashar talks, I feel like he's irritated at some of the "silly questions" that people ask, as if they should know such "basic things".
BTW, I have yet to understand what the importance or application of "metaphor" is in Oneirosophy.

I suppose that rather depends on what you think "other species" are, and what "you" are, and so on. But I think that organised religions (as distinct from the originators of the ideas that seeded them) dissuade channeling because it makes you your own authority. After messing about with such things, you are in danger of discovering that it is you who are, in effect, God - albeit a different sort of "God" than the one usually taught in church.

On metaphors: It is my view that by deliberately adopting a metaphor (or a conceptual structure more generally) you can reformat or "pattern" your state such that your subsequent experiences arise "as if" it were true. Furthermore, there is no sold underlying substrate to our experience other than such patterns. (Of course, the idea of "patterning" is itself such a metaphor.)

Q1: So basically metaphors make it easy for us to believe or intend, right? So, that's what is contained in more religious and occult practices.
Furthermore, there is no sold underlying substrate to our experience other than such patterns.
Could you explain that in simpler language? LOL

Ha, sorry. So, the idea is that there is no fixed world from which your experience arises.

Looking around the room you are in now, for example, you see walls and the screen you are reading this on, and hands interacting with the device (all assuming things are well). Generally, we assume there is a fixed and solid world "outside" that is feeding us this sensory experience. That would be the "solid substrate". However, we never experience such an outside world. We only ever experience... experiencing. And all of your experiences, although they might seem to be "about" objects and rooms and so on, they are made from this "experiencing", and everything arises in "mind". This is no solid world behind your experiences. What you have, in other words, are habitual patterns with nothing underneath them. The way to confirm this, of course, is to try to change that "patterning" and see if your experiences change accordingly - perhaps indirectly at first, such as repeatedly bringing about outcomes that you want, to the extent that it cannot be explained away by coincidence or confirmation bias.

Related: Three Dialogues by George Berkeley is one of the swiftest ways to get an overview of this idea. (He mentions 'God' later, but just replace that when reading with something like 'mind' or 'consciousness'.)

POST: Choosing not to exist

If consciousness became completely uniform there would be no "experience" but there would be "being". You probably can't say that this "exists" because there is no state or form, but it... is. Can you ever get to that stage? Not by intention I'd say, because intention is always formulated positively. You dispose of something by shifting to a different state - a replacement pattern or even a pattern of "empty space" - but that's just a change of the form of existence. But perhaps by detachment and allowing it to fade...

But that "zero potential" would not persist. It would be outside of time and so it would in a sense last "forever" but also "eventually" there would be the adoption of form and experience would begin again. The previous "mind" (by which I mean accumulated patterns) would be gone, and a new one would arise in its place. This has probably happened an infinite number of times already.

Short answer: temporarily and no.

Sorry, I've just been editing that response to make the hypothetical aspect clearer. I'm still not happy with it. The problem is that we can't describe in language something that is before time and space. Usually I leave this as "nothing can be said" since we can only talk in terms of "human formatting". And I think that is probably the basis of the answer: You can never conceive of non-existence and so you can never intend it; which means that you have always intended a continuance of experience, and so it will continue "forever".

Maybe another approach is better:

When we go to sleep at night and enter a dream, why do we return to this world? Is it simply because we have held onto the context of it? Could we enter a dream world and then decide to "let go" of this world, remaining in the dream?

Going forward from that, could we intend a contentless dream? These are fairly common, but there still persists a subtle "viewpoint" and by its very existence all logical possibilities are effectively persistent, dissolved into the background and possible to activate. The mere existence of that viewpoint implies all possible worlds.

POST: Hindu Mythology Metaphor

[Reposting my reply from elsewhere, for completeness.]

Can a Mantra be a Metaphor?

Good question! Some thoughts: If we abstract these terms out into "patterns" then, effectively yes. To say a word is to trigger its associated patterns. Meanwhile, a metaphor is simply a named set of overlapping relationships (patterns), connected and associated with an unnamed set of overlapping relationships (patterns).

To say the word "owl" is to trigger the associated patterns of "birds", "wings", "big eyes", 'tree branches", "Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Test", "Rachael", "night-time", etc. To think-about an owl is to do the same.

On archetypes

Gods and Goddesses, owls and archetypes, they are all just triggers for pre-existing extended patterns which cannot be encapsulated in a word or an image, but can be triggered or intensified by them. All possible patterns are here, now, in your experience - it's just that some are more intensely activated than others. To feel better (simplistically speaking) you want to allow the "bad feeling" to fade and a "good feeling" to become more intense. How to do? "Detach" from your current experience and "allow" it to shift; trigger a pattern which implies the desired state.

Literally, you are a wide-open perceptual space with some experiential patterns more intense than others. You don't "heal" so much as "allow experience to apparently shift". More accurately: you can't change anything, you can only let the present pattern dim and intensify an alternative pattern by "recalling" it.

...

Hmm, as you have uncovered more "knowledge", do you think your approach to living has shifted?

I guess I'm suggesting: is your attempt to deliberately apply metaphysics effortfully as a manipulative tool maybe presenting a barrier to your success with it, whereas before you were more flowing your life via intention from within it? I think where we go wrong is that we try to work things out, we get hung up on technique, but the truth is... there is no mechanism. Simply deciding is all that is required.

To decide something is to have the pattern of "something" in mind plus the pattern of "it happening". That is sufficient, provided you do not then block it. Everything else is just... stirring the water, splashing about, obscuring things, fragmenting ourselves and therefore our experience. Actually, there is nothing to know, no structure behind things, no solid substrate supporting the world beyond imagination.

Forget mantras for that maybe, you need to take a different approach. Check out the top two posts in this subreddit. Basically, you want to lie down one day... and never get up. Switch to being the background space. Only experience "getting up happening". I really recommend this book by Missy Vineyard for this. Specifically the middle section where she experiments with waiting for movement to happen by itself. That is what you are shooting for.

Extra bit: Mantras are only needed because we don't understand willing and so need a "second cause" to allow ourselves to make a change. But all change is just will, changing the shape of ourselves by... changing the shape of ourselves.

POST: PSA: Be careful when thinking about "I"

Yes, it's a language trickiness. It's sort of awkward to constantly distinguish between "Is" and "selfs", but unless you flag up the difference it is easy for a reader to become confused, thinking you are talking about a person being "God". There is no ego-self other than the experiencing of various thoughts, perceptions, actions and the subsequent thinking-about them. And the experiencer is "the open aware space" - which you might call God - who takes on the shape of experiences. As always, when we start thinking-about things we are immediately wrong and operating in 3rd-person metaphor (although of course that can be very useful). The difference between "i" and "I" is direct 1st-person (no-"person") experiencing.

I didn't know that what I needed to do was not think and just let things be.

Yeah, that's a big hurdle. I used to use the phrase "stop generating" to describe it (Although at first I would just think it a lot or try to do "stopping", which rather missed the point of my insight, eh.)

Realising that your default should be "allowing" with only occasional pattern creation-amendment is an important step.

What do you do now if things start getting out of hand?

If you haven't read the Overwriting Yourself post, check it out. The 'passive' version of the exercise is a nice easy way of letting things settle. Following that, decide not to 'force' anything, including your bodily movements and thoughts. Try and let them "arise by themselves". This stops things building up; lets them subside naturally.

What do you mean by pattern creation-ammendment?

Just setting something going by decision and imagination. Once you've set things in motion, you should leave them be (e.g. you request success in an endeavour, the pattern is now set, so don't tinker with it). You're only dealing in updates as required, or a regular keeping-on-track.

Otherwise I'm horribly depressed.

Yeah. I do find that if I don't stay 'present' - allow my focus to remain expanded out into the space of experience - my attention gets narrowed and I feel depression. Having things 'on the go' does tend to keep you opened out more.

I like your Overwriting Yourself post. I've tried something similar to this where I just imagine that my body is empty space but haven't played with it much. Your post clarified quite a bit. How experiential has all of this become for you? Is it all incredibly obvious at this point?

It changes your perspective to being far simpler. The most important thing is that it clarifies the difference between direct-experiencing and thinking-about, and you can more obviously take the perspective of the space in which both occur.

...

The mistake in contemplation is that you can't contemplate the "I". It is the environment in which contemplation arises; it can't be conceptualised or even pointed to. The urge is so great to "grab ahold of it" somehow. It's probably something that never entirely goes away, because it's inevitable to want to think and talk about it - in subreddits just like this...

I think it would be useful at some point to do some coverage about direct-experiencing and the difference between that and thinking-about. Various metaphors imply it, but I don't think we've explored it explicitly in any post. Which is unfortunate, since detached-allowing and knowing the difference between the two types of experiencing (really the one type, improperly understood) is fundamental.

POST: The Mirror-like Nature of the Mind & Why I've come to the conclusion that Oneirosophy isn't a good strategy

The basic strategy of some on this sub seems to be "well if I believe in my own power enough, then my unconventional perceptions are true"

Hopefully not, but perhaps you are right. However that's like thinking you can simply will things to happen or by "doing" things. But it's not quite like that. And more like you say. Like I said in an earlier post, it's more like triggering patterns (or "letting experiences through") which then arise in and shape subsequent experience:

• Experiences leave traces which in-form subsequent experiences. (Leave shapes on your "experiential filter".)
• Thoughts also leave traces, as in-form-ation, affecting subsequent experiences. (You can use this deliberately.)
• Synchronicity is the name for the experiential patterns which result.

This is the reason you should treat the subjective environment (as it were) as being almost mechanical and unintelligent in nature. Only you are the intelligence. You are basically you experiencing the state of your own mind, via the senses. Yes, you might think of it a bit like a mirror - or better, that your mind is a perceptual filter. So, not much good for "messages" since you'll just be seeing what you've been thinking and experiencing, as residual indentations on your filter - except that you might get some insight into things you are thinking in the background that you're not aware of. If you spend 20 minutes today imagining owls, as vividly as you can, as if they were in the room with you... you'll spend the next week encountering lots of owls. It's as if you have created an "owl-shaped hole" in your perceptual filter, and the "infinite light of creation" (or whatever) now shines through it, giving you owl-shaped experiences.

If you believed in a deeper meaning to what you were experiencing, you might think you were getting Messages From The Eternal Owls, who were answering your questions and prayers now that you had gained power over them. If you spent time imagining being King Of The Monkeys instead, you might get experiences which you would interpret in line with that. This itself is incredibly useful - and you can live exciting storylines! - but you have to be careful not to believe the thoughts and experiences which appear in your awareness. They have no deeper meaning that being-experiences. Which is great, because you can now understand what happens when you get paranoid, and what happens when you get arrogant. You can put that aside, breathe, and let things settle out into a more authentic pattern.

Never believe what you are experiencing. They are just... experiences.

EDIT: Surely this is exactly what Oneirosophy leads to? It's the natural conclusion to living life as a subjective environment? It's what lucidity reveals to you. Subjective idealism means there is no you, just that environment, and it makes sense then that it operates and responds as a swirling, responsive dream-space.

It's not even "as if" you've created an owl-shaped hole.

I say "as if" because the metaphor of the filter and the hole is that, a metaphor. Saying "as if" doesn't mean the experience is less valid, it just indicates the description of it is arbitrary. You are not really making dents in a filter; that's just a way of looking at it for the purposes of formulating intentions.

There's no harm in learning to exercise this. In fact, it ought to be encouraged.

Are you responding to the wrong person here??

I guess I don't entirely understand OP's distinction between "being-experiences" and "believing in" them.

As I understand it - and this may be me overlaying my own interpretation - OP's underlying point is that if you are unaware of the reflection-like, "as if"-ness mechanism involved in subjective idealism, then you can fall under the impression that you have become something, created something, or are in some sort of state. However, it really is just an appearance. There is nothing "behind" your experiences, therefore nothing to believe you are and nothing to believe you have done. This is of course much more powerful than believing you are God or anything else. Believing you are something comes with restrictions; recognising it's an "as if" experience doesn't. Language, for sure, but forums throughout reddit are swamped with people wondering what they "are", claiming to be this and that, and generally taking sensory experience and history recall as causal fact.

You can't live exciting storylines without believing your perceptions. Otherwise it's just some superficial fantasy.

I'm not sure I quite agree on the latter sentence. I'd say that if you understand the process then you aren't having a superficial fantasy; you are simply enjoying experiences. But your point of identifying with a psychological narrative - be it "infinite power" or anything else - is well made. So, the Owl Generation Process is completely mechanical. "Ponder them and they will come." The exception is if you obstruct the process by disbelief. Which you might then be tempted to overcome with belief - and that's where things go wrong. You can get caught up the the believing process you (think) you used to generate the effect.

If you recognise the process for what it is though, you can enjoy the Owl Experiences and without any additional troublesome beliefs. It's up to you if you want to fully commit to "An Important Mission Personally Given To Your By The High Owl Commander". (Personally I wouldn't - he's a right grumpy bastard.)

You can't actually be angry and see the empty nature of your perception at the same time.

If you aren't "in" the story then you can't really be having the adventure. Although I think you can dip in and out, personally. All I'd argue for is that people understand the nature of the process, and thereby have the ability to make choices. You don't have to use belief as a tool (as in with many magickal approaches) and then get stuck in it, if you've observed the mechanical-like nature of the process and approach things from that perspective.

Personally, I dont try to stay fixed in one worldview, so I dont have a problem with these inconsistencies.

Hi, I make the point elsewhere that there are no true divisions, it's a matter of where you "stand". What you say is true.

An analogy I sometimes use is the superposition of patterns: combine 100 patterns together and you've still got... a pattern. Which can then be broken down into a completely different set of patterns. Depending on what you want to accomplish or which aspects you want to highlight, you might emphasise the perspective of one "component" or another. But really, there is no separation. For basic "daily navigation" and accounting for deliberate synchronicity, this formulation (filtering infinity) is quite convenient. But it is nothing more than an "active metaphor".

Implicit in all discussions here is "it's nondual", I'd say, but there's nothing else to say if we just sit there with that! It's like saying "all is consciousness". As you point out, there is no answer.

"There are no answers, only choices", as Gibarian says in Solaris.

POST: Controlling vs flowing

[POST]

I think one area I was getting hung up until very recently was taking the idea of control and trying to apply it to every instant. This was making life unnecessarily stressful as I tried to intend something out of every perceived event. It was like I tried to rewrite the story as soon as something that didn't seem to fit was going on.
If you're currently doing this I suggest you take a breather. There's really no need to control every little aspect of life and honestly it's a drag. If you're always writing the story you can't properly enjoy it as well. Control works simply, you intend for an experience to occur and it does. That simple, no added effort necessary. Then after it's set all you have to do is be detached and let it all happen (the hardest part if you're still attached to the idea of the limited person).
So ideally, one can control the types of forms one comes into contact with, and then let go indefinitely for it to play out. You can be as specific as you want, but if you don't let go, you'll never get to experience it. You simply keep rewriting things over and over and over. The better you get at letting go, the faster your manifestations.

[END OF POST]

Good stuff. Right. For sure!

So you only need to intervene now and again, which just amounts to "deciding and allowing". Mostly you should simply be relaxed and enjoying the experience unfolding. For sure, sometimes it's fun to have little tools or visualisations for things, perhaps to make it easier to specify what we want, or to "outsource" the causality and circumvent resistance - e.g. as you suggest, by imagining releasing negativity via the breath or whatever - but it's always just us "deciding". Focused "control" is when you obsessively interfere; detached "directing" is when you occasionally intervene when you want to have a different experience. The more you let go of control and stop holding back the flow, the less the apparent time between the decision and its appearance in the senses, because you are no longer restricting the potential routes by which experience can arise. Holding back is essentially you preventing yourself relaxing into your natural authentic pattern. You default state should be relaxed openness and "allowing". That's what meditation should be for - allowing releasing. (Any experiences you might have are just yet more experiences, best just to sit a while and let things settle out). Just sit for a while and re-identify as the background awareness as in the original "Just Decide" exercise.

In the ultimate version, you don't really need to interfere at all because you are completely authentic and experience is always in line with your desires, the right events at the time time.

Summary of how it works?

• Deciding what will happen means you are triggering a 1st person perspective memory-pattern of that happening.
• If you were completely detached, that pattern would immediately become your experience.
• Because you are not, the pattern will instead blend with other patterns you are attached to, showing itself as first as synchronicity and eventually as a result that seems to arrive via a path.

EDIT: This prompted me to post my bullet-point summary of the memory-pattern view.

POST: Opinions on the use of Psychedelics/Dissociatives

Q: [Deleted]

Your final quote is interesting, it reads a little like the metaphor I posted the other day. Although I don't agree that there are spirits, etc, that are independent of us. Nor do I agree we're on some sort of learning journey. Maybe we were having pretend-games life-fun, but somehow we've forgotten we are always using ultimate power to do anything. Our experience is awash with synchronicity as a result. They seem mystifying to us, or somehow "important", because we don't realise we are splashing around in the puddle of our own existence, then interpreting the ripples as coming from elsewhere. We therefore have to be careful about interpreting anything as being "intended for something" or having external meaning. Even lifting our arms is a result of prayer (sorta) which just activates an ingrained habit, a sort of extended spatio-temporal memory that plays forward into experience. Moving your arm and encountering a synchronicity are the same thing, with as much meaning as the seed intention lends it.

I've never dabbled in the psychedelics though, so always interested in people's experiences - since it definitely appears to be another way to allow yourself to let normally-filtered experiences in. Dissolve the filter substantially (belief, expectation, knowledge) and the raw creative aspect gets to shine through more (mediated by intention, perhaps, if you persist it).

[Limitation and Freedom] Why isn't one of those great experiences enough to be free forever?

Because it's just an experience; it doesn't have any "causal effect" on its own, except what you lend to it. Experiences don't change us in and of themselves, they just suggest a world of possibility. If we don't start intending from that new sense of freedom, it'll make no difference. As far as Mind is concerned, there are no bad habits or good habits. Any intention you have will result in a result, but more importantly: all the associations implied by the thought will appear also. That's why if you, say, pretend to be "Hercules" for his power, you would also find you had mood swings and trouble with your parents. Loosely, if you act "as if" something, you get all the implied benefits and downsides from being that something.

It's this associative quality that can get us lost. We've already got stacks and stacks of patterns that are triggered by touching the edge of any one of them. That's what limits the voluntariness or complete control (and rightly so). If you think or do something that implies the existence of spirits, then your experience will accommodate accordingly.

That's why it's hard to pin all this down into one coherent view - e.g. explaining why "commanding" something can work. The answer there: Saying the words implies and is part of an associative pattern linked to the resulting experience, when done with intention and confidence. You aren't doing commanding, you are bringing part of a pattern into mind and - like a memory - it is auto-completing across time, with you experiencing the results subsequently.

[Freemason's Adventure] So that was kinda neat.

Yeah, I mean, it can be really good fun. It just makes it so obviously dream-like! It then becomes very important to realise what synchronicity is though - because you can't be tempted to believe that your experiences and thoughts are true in some fundamental way. If you are interested in conspiracies (for example), you start seeing them everywhere. And it's not just imagined: people will look over at you more, your mail will seem to have been opened. And if you start fighting the conspiracy, it will just get deeper!

So that view on synchronicity is a good reminder to keep clear on the things you'd like to experience, and to take the present sensory world with a pinch of salt.

POST: Front/back of the mind, absence vs presence, "something what it's like of itself."

These are good areas to explore. Particularly how we literalise expressions by locating our thoughts or experiences, or our sense of "where we are" relative to other parts of the ongoing experience.

In my effort to come up with metaphors which encourage us to "be all of our moment", here's my most recent. Again we are confronted with the reluctance to release holding onto particular sensations and regions ("the body" area and its sensory content) and how difficult it can be to give up on that. I don't think there's any way around that except, well, "absolute allowing" one day.

The Imagination Room

There is a vast room. The floor is transparent, and through it an infinitely bright light shines, completely filling the room with unchanging, unbounded white light. Suddenly, patterns start to appear on the floor. These patterns filter the light. The patterns accumulate, layer upon layer intertwined, until instead of homogenous light filling the room, the light seems to be holographically redirected by the patterns into the shape of experiences, arranged in space, unfolding over time. Experiences which consist of sensations, perceptions and thoughts.

At the centre of the room there are bodily sensations, which you recognise as... you, your body. You decide to centre yourself in the upper part of that region, as if you were "looking out from" there, "being" that bodily experience. At the moment you are simply experiencing, not doing anything. However you notice that every experience that arises slightly deepens the pattern corresponding to it, making it more stable, and more likely to appear again as the light is funnelled into that shape. Now, you notice something else. If you create a thought, then the image will appear floating in the room - as an experience. Again, the corresponding pattern is deepened. Only this time, you are creating the experience and in effect creating a new habit in your world!

Even saying a word or a phrase triggers the corresponding associations, so it is not just the simple thought that leaves a deeper pattern, but the whole context of that thought, its history and relationships. Now, as you walk around today, you will feel the ground beneath your feet - but you will know that under what appears to be the ground is actually the floor of the room, through which the light is shining, being shaped into the experience around you. And every thought or experience you have is shifting the pattern...

...

Then I consider my vision....

Something to investigate here is whether you are trying to see, which reinforces vision as: a) a sense and, b) related to the eyes. Maybe see what approaching the world as non-sense-based, but perception or object based does. Instead of subtly seeking out experience, "let the world come to you". Sit back a little in your head, or identify with the background space, and let the images arise by themselves.

I played a lot with vision exercises back in the day (Bates Method and so on) but in the end I figured they were all about learning to not hold onto your body and senses, and often relocate your sense of self to be less narrowed. The exercises were just a way of teaching yourself that things can happen by themselves.

It's funny how your permission is needed before things can happen "by themselves." ;)

Ha - words! But it's true. :-)

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. I'm trying to see the difference between sense and perception. I'm giving permission, yet it does not arise

Sorry, it's hard to describe!

I'm saying that, we never really experience sensations on their own, we experience objects. For instance - when I see a ball, I don't see a circle filled with colour except for a darker crescent at once side, or even a sphere with colour - I see a ball. The more we "grasp" with our eyes, the more we narrow our experience down to attempted seeing, with the restriction of the concept of eyes. When we sit back, we let the "world-building" aspect of ourselves create our surroundings spontaneously. To get a feel (literally) for this, sit in front of a table and close your eyes. Stay open and relaxed. Now, touch the corner of the table. Now, touch an edge of the table. Now, touch the other corner of the table. You'll find that you have a full "feel-picture" of the table even though you are not touching the whole table simultaneously - and you did not consciously build or maintain that feel-picture. If you focus on the sensations one by one, you limit this process.

Seeing works in the same way. Your eyes dart about the place, "touching" different parts of the visual experience, and a world is built and updated and given to you. You are not mean to pay attention to this, control your eyes directly, or even be aware of your eyes. To do so at all deforms perception. I'd say that any narrowing of attention limits the spontaneity of "world appearance". You end up concentrating on a particular sensation, while inhibiting the big picture object-based experience.

Let's try another way to describe this. What you are really after is to get "eyes" out of the picture altogether. The more you adopt the seeing-with-eyes and making-seeing-happen concepts, the more they will deform your experience. (Just like when you try to experience or control yourself doing something as you do it; it kills the natural flow.)

The quick way to do this is to check where you are "looking out from" and whether you are trying to force your world-experience. Experiment with locating your centre in different positions. See Seeing from the Core for a kinda summary.

What has your experience been with this technique?

When you think about it, it has to be simple!

It starts with just the world feeling more "open and there" and then you suddenly notice every now and again that things are "in focus" and it builds from that. Still catch myself trying now and again, usually after working on something, but then I "sit back" and it gets better. Big aim is to bring that attitude to everything!

Strange thing is, I realised I don't really navigate the world all that much by vision really; it's about "spatial feel". Don't know if that's the same for everyone else.

EDIT: The "let the world come to you" phrase is the one that I use to remind me of all this.

POST: Absolute Power

cosmicprankster420: oneirosophy is all about achieving lucidity, that's it, the rest is up to you in terms of what you want to do with your dream. There are lots of different methods to achieve it as well, but once you get it you cant deny it. While i too don't want to be a tyrant in my dream, their is an importance to having a willpower strong enough that you don't get overwhelmed by your own creation. But its also important to understand that figuring this is a dream is only the beginning. Beyond the surface level, there are many habits and beliefs in which we don't look at through lucid eyes. When i first created this sub i didn't realize some of the directions the other members would take it, but its been interesting none the less and i like hearing other peoples perspectives on this process even if i don't always agree with them. But some aspect of authority is important because this is YOUR dream, not mine, not anyone else's, but yours. While you don't have to be a tyrant, you want to be powerful enough so that your dream characters don't become tyrannical over your dream and have them call the shots to the point that you feel weak and helpless.

As /u/cosmicprankster420 says, it's about knowingly being what you already are. Any tweaks or exploration you do after that is completely optional. And: You don't need to waste time being frightened of things.

I am detached, but thoroughly enjoying where this story takes me.

Which is a privilege of the lucid, don't you think? How you explore the dream afterwards, that's a "personal" decision. You are of course constantly using your God-like powers, via creation by implication. By knowing this, you save yourself polluting your dream with unpleasant, unintended nonsense. I think that's the main benefit of the Oneirosophic approach.

POST: God is male; The Universe is female; The Self is the meeting of the two

I found a simpler way of saying what I was saying. A Universe without a God doesn't exist; but a God without a Universe doesn't exist either.

Or: God cannot experience his existence without a universe, by shaping himself as a universe.

Sure, that works too. But the male female dynamic seems to be necessary on some level. The goal seems to be to unify the two, but they need to each have their own sentience.

I guess: the world-as-metaphor - the whole of experience seems to be a play on opposites and reunification.

POST: But where did it all come from?

Patterns upon patterns upon patterns, dissolved into awareness? Raw potentiality/creativity, filtered/shaped through accumulated patterns, resulting in (equating to) sensory experience. All experience is therefore conceptual, archetypal. Also:

• Experiences leave traces which in-form subsequent experiences.
• Thinking is an experience which leaves traces similarly...

Where did these structures come from? Something akin to the way hypnagogic imagery turns into dream environments. There was an infinite amount of time for this to happen, of course. All you need is randomness plus slight inertia.

TL;DR: We are dreaming.

As there is no solid substrate behind the scenes, we can dream anything - including being confused, or experiencing an 'illusion', or dissolving into non-dual awareness, or uncovering the Super-Real Truth Behind It All, which includes maybe even identifying a solid substrate behind the scenes...

But all of those are just more experiences; there is no real truth to be discovered, except to realise the arbitrariness of it. That is why seekers keep on seeking: because they have chosen to be seekers, by self-imagining or by it being implied in their actions. Freedom fighters have to fight for their freedom, by definition. The dream always arises "as if" your approach or assumptions are true, and any metaphors you adopt will reformat the world according to your new "understanding". If you instead simply rest a while, stop pushing and prodding, the dream settles somewhat, and things become clearer, the apparent environment's responsiveness more obvious. You can't not-dream - so it's a case of choosing to have sweet dreams.