LastThursday

Do you equate self-control with mastery? Mastery can be a very long and many faceted process, patience is definitely needed. But mastery is also an incremental process, and you can gain its benefits bit by bit. At some point you won't recognise yourself as the same person anymore, because mastery will have changed you. What seems hopeless at the start is hopeful at the end. Mastery is just what you choose to master. If your hope is to tolerate pain and master it, then that's what you should do. What you're describing about yourself just seems like a problem of motivation. Motivation is complicated. In broad strokes there is positive motivation and negative motivation. Positive motivation are things like, exciting goals, rewards for achievement, satisfaction of completion, recognition, free leisure time. Negative motivation are things like, deadlines, not having money, bad consequences for not completing, letting others down, not keeping to some standard. Some motivation is more neutral, like having a plan, collaborating with people. You need to work with all types of motivation.

Start with recognising that you're not a machine, but a human. You will have disciplined days and undisciplined days, allow yourself that. You will also have only a certain capacity for discipline, and that may be a lot less than you want to achieve your goals. But that capacity can increase with lots of practice. Use techniques like Pomodoro to help stretch your capacity. From a philosophical view you're always doing something, even if it's just sitting there breathing and blinking. You cannot not help but be doing something, 24/7. So disclipline is not a matter of active versus lazy, but of constantly steering your activity in the direction you want. Also, everyone is different. Work out your own psychology. For example, my natural tendency is to be haphazard and go from one task to another, so I just go with it, and allow myself to work in small bursts, and lots of differerent sub-tasks of the main tasks. But, I can also work well with timed tasks, such as 1 hour on task A, 1 hour on task B ans so on. Maybe morning versus afternoon works better. Learn what works for you.

The flipside is that subjects like Solipsism, Free Will, Spiral Dynamics get discussed at all. Isn't it amazing that there's a bunch of people willing to talk about these niche abstract philosophical ideas on a public forum? Yes their definitions and usage get abused and misunderstood, I'm with you on that, but still.

I used to be sad about the lack of it here. But I've changed my mind about it. It's hard to convey humour in text and very easy to be misunderstood. One person's humour is another person's offence. Some humour can get misundertood as trolling, even if it isn't. What one person finds funny might be seen as childish by another. British humour is not American humour. And on and on. I inject a bit of humour from time to time, because I enjoy it, but I try and keep it to a minimum, and not get too upset if people don't pick up on it.

Totally. Bloody annoying though. But I admit I'm not immune either in the ego department. I like to use the full force of my vocabulary for peacocking purposes, a.k.a, showing off. Not that it does me any favours in any way. Anyway, I'm rambling now.

Only my personal pet peeves: Any topic with the word "Leo" in it. Any comment that has something like "Leo please answer". Topic starters that don't engage at all in any of the answers. Using made up language or terms nobody else understands. Threads that derail into nonsense. Lists. But to answer the actual question, I strongly don't vibe with all the pickup emphasis in the Dating section. There are other saner more agreeable ways to find someone, you know. There are saner ways to learn social skills.

To me insight is the same as understanding, with a sprinkle of surprise. Something like, it was there all the time, but now I've become aware of it, I understand, how surprising. I think it's totally possible to forget insights and to get dumber over time. Sometimes there's a certain amount of practice needed to make them stick, especially if they come from other people. Also, sometimes it's like, ah yeah I get it now, wow. And then sometime later, actually I don't get it, I thought I did, doh! Commonplace book. Why does that phrase spring to mind...? I forget.

@Something Funny I get the sentiment. I can go on to Amazon or eBay right now and get nearly anything I want, and I don't even need to get off the sofa. Any idea I have someone's got there already or it would cost a bunch of money to set up and protect. Either, you're making the same thing but better, cheaper or in a slightly novel way. And most things on Amazon or whatever, I don't actually need. But despite all that, it is actually possible to be genuinely innovative and creative, and there will be a market for it somewhere. It just takes practice and effort. There's probably never been a better time to be visible to the world and showcase what you're about if that's what you want.

And, in long? What's simultaneity? I mean, I know what the word is, but what does it mean to you in this context?

Awakening is a funny word. The unsaid assumption is that you're asleep. Asleep to what though? Plenty plenty I'm sure, but I don't know what it is yet. So to me awakening is the process of discovering what I don't know yet. By "know" I mean the whole breadth of experience. And therefore I'm constantly awakening. But, there is a philosophical awakening to be had. And this is done by mental contemplation of everything. Even a light contemplation on things can yield some awakening. It's about constantly asking questions and finding your own answers to them. Everything is in plain sight, you just have to learn to see it. That's one facet of awakening. There are other types of awakening.

I would often count my breathing at the start of a run, four paces in, four paces out. It feels quite artificial, but it does stop the mind wandering, and it put focus on my breathing and regularity of pace.

I think I've said it before, my prescriptive answer is that there is no purpose to this in any way. It just is. Saying that it doesn't stop purpose from being the main thrust of living, you just understand that purpose is there as a motivator or a prop to feed your human needs. There is no right way to carry out the process of living, and you don't have to live with purpose. But you're asking a more existential question. There is so much coherence to experience that it seems silly not to give it purpose. Experience seems "designed" and put together too well not to be purposeful. What is purpose though? It's goal oriented action. And I think that is where it falls apart. The more you examine this the more it's realised there is no end goal to it, it just carries on and on, there is no purpose to it. @saif2 would you say that the purpose is then just for God to manifest itself?

Let's do some writing. What to write about? Let's see... I'm somewhat uneasy with the "understanding" that Leo talks about fairly regularly. He likes to say that there is a certain sort of understanding that is outside of language and logic. I think the premise is that that sort of understanding can't be argued out of by using language or logic, and so there is an absoluteness to it. I can get behind it to some extent, for example if I experience a pair of red shoes, the understanding of redness and shoeness (is that a word?) is outside of language insofar as I don't need to label the experience with language, I can just experience. Furthermore it isn't just raw sensation, I also "understand" my experience, it has meaning. That tacit understanding of experience is not exactly what Leo is pointing to however. He is pointing to a deep understanding into the workings of reality, so, more than a pair of shoes. What's the difference between the two, other than degree? I think it's what Leo would say is an absolute understanding, one that can't be mistaken for anything else, that can't be un-understood again. If I see a face in a crowd and think it's someone I know, even though I understand my experience, I could well be mistaken in my impressions, maybe it isn't actually someone I know. I understand the wrong thing. And that's where my uneasiness comes from. How can there be two tiers of understanding? Isn't there always room for being mistaken? Materialism aside, this is exactly what the process of Science aims to address. The principle mechanic of Science is simply the statement: I might be mistaken in my understanding. It realises the inherent bias and unreliability of experience. It should be noted that Science does not throw out experience, it just isn't absolutist about it, instead it wholly understands the relativity of understanding and does the best it can with that. The actuality of Science and the way it's practised can be argued with however, it's not a perfect system. But its underpinning principle is what makes it so powerful and productive. Where does that leave absolutist understanding? Imagine the conscious experience as an ever shifting sandbox of stuff. Because it's a closed system nothing gets in or gets out, and due to the nature of consciousness there is no separation from it. We pretend that we can talk about and explain the conscious experience as if we're commenting on it from a detached viewpoint, but we're always in the sandbox not outside of it. You then get the very circular: consciousness is explaining consciousness. More relevant here is that consciousness is understanding consciousness. How can that be? It seems like however absolute an experiencing of understanding is, it always comes down to the circular: consciousness understanding consciousness. An absolute thing is something that is true for all time: a Truth if you like. The sandbox of consciousness makes everything within it relative to itself and without a ground, there can be no absolutes within it. You may baulk at that. The only absolutes are what consciousness deems as absolutes. Naturally, you can be absolutely sure about an understanding, but only because it's being tagged as such. Hang on... Isn't it true that I'm absolutely sure that I'm always experiencing something, and that reality exists? Well, how can that be? How can things exist and that raw existence not be absolute? If consciousness is constantly shifting, and understanding itself relative to itself, then nothing at all is absolute, nothing can be true for all time, everything is relative and finite, only truth exists not Truth. That's my objection to having a deep understanding of consciousness or reality: there can be no such thing. There aren't two tiers of "understanding". Could it be that existence itself is orthogonal to absoluteness? Absoluteness being only an experience within consciousness; maybe it's just a concept with a word attached. If existence is completely relative as a consequence of its nature as a closed sandbox, then all its constituent parts must be relative to each other. And yet there it undeniably is, all the time, it exists. Is there a way out of that impasse? Is existence absolute or relative? One deeper understanding could be is that consciousness is not a unified static field: it is constantly redefining itself from itself. It's more like a river than a rock, more like an unfolding than a shifting kaleidscope, not a screen with experience being projected on it. Consciousness constantly redefines what it itself means, constantly upgrades its own operating system. It is not a single monolithic entity, it is no entity at all, it's uncountable. If there is an absolute understanding of consciousness to be had, it is that it is not constrained by absolutes.

I think it'll be good to get out things that arise and put them down in written form. I have so many lost thoughts and ideas, and some of them were very good.

I can't get enough of this stuff. One day the whole thing will be explained.

It should be noticed that the process of understanding consciousness happens within consciousness. To understand one aspect of consciousness requires understanding that it is self-referential by nature.

Do you meditate at all? I find the two activities for me are quite similar. But I suppose I've practised quieting my monkey mind for many years now. I just keep bringing my mind back to what the body is doing and my breathing. The one thing I find tough is when fatigue sets in and my mind screams at me to stop! My solution to that is to look up at the sky (don't trip), for some reason it lessens the feelings. I think if you get to that stage I think you'll find it's quite hard to be bored. Yes that's ideal if possible. But you can learn a lot just by being attentive. Notice your pace, how heavy and flat your feet fall, how you hold your head, how you swing and position your arms, what tension you hold in your body, how you pronate you feet, how you breathe - long and deep or short and shallow, how the breath co-ordinates with the rhythm of your legs.

@Judy2 do you feel running is an enjoyable activity, or is it just a means to an end? Do you want to do it for its own sake? Funnily enough I wrote about running in my journal a while ago I think the point I was trying to make in that journal entry, is to be present and attentive to your own body when you run. As @Rigel says, there's a million things you can adjust and improve each time you run. Learn to see it as a process of mastery, rather than just an activity you have to get through.

@Someone here it's funny, from a young age all I've wanted is "peace", exactly that place of silence and acceptance you talk about. In my case it's like a setpoint I'm always trying to return to, and the world just keeps pulling me away from it. I'm not working at the moment precisely because I want peace, I have to fight and sacrifice for it. But I've come to the conclusion that peace and not peace are just two sides of the same coin. I've learned and confronted and matured by engaging with the movie of life, even if I always felt an underlying discomfort with it. Some of my best experiences have been when I haven't been at peace. Most of that distraction has been caused by people, they are a both a blessing and a curse. Have I reconciled the two? To a large degree I have, I often feel at peace even when engaged in the movie of life; things flow and are a lot more easy than they used to be because of it. The icing on the cake would be to proactively and peacefully engage with the chaos of living, but I'm not there yet, peace still wins out.

I've been journalling on here now for well over five years. It was a long while before I actually wrote those first words. I had recurring thoughts about wanting to write but never took the plunge. One point of procrastination was that I really didn't know what to write about, in retrospect that reticence was ridiculous. I'm really not one much for perusing my old outpourings, in that respect I'm not nostalgic, even if I am in other aspects. There is a bit of me that likes to keep moving forward and not get stuck on revising old stuff. I'm the same with books very rarely reading them more than once (except LOTR). To some degree I'm the same with old friends and acquaintances, even if I sometimes think about them and miss them. I also rarely get attached to objects, unless it's something that connects me to a time or place or people, my tastes are very specific. I think deep down that revisiting old stuff can be a bit melancholy, not only can you not re-experience the entire thing in its totality, but in fact you realise how much is lost to memory. But boy, my outpouring in 2021 was prolific. I actually had a lot to say, and just sharing my thoughts on everything the passed through the conveyor belt of my mind was cathartic. It also allowed my ADHD prone attention to actually pay attention and build something coherent from my thoughts, that alone has been tremendously useful. It has also been an outlet for a part of myself that I normally keep very private. Most people are not polymathic in the way they express and think about things, and so it has been difficult for me to also express that side of myself. And also, the introverted part of myself has felt a bit cringe in explaining to others what's taking my interest, so I generally don't. But, to be a fully rounded human all parts need to be expressed for their own sakes. I've also very much enjoyed other people's journals on here. There's such a variety of views and experiences, and it feels good to know that everyone has their own struggles (schadenfreude much), as well as I do; there's a kind of silent cameraderie in that. It's all valid, the good, the bad, the ugly. I've tried to be as open as I can possibly be on a public forum. I'm basically anonymous which helps. Yeah, if anyone tried hard enough they could probably find me on the internet, but hey ho. Naturally, there is some stuff I've veered away from on here, stuff that is just too cringe and is a bad look, I'm only human - don't worry I haven't murdered anyone lol. I do notice that I've slowed down a lot on the journalling here. I could probably have kept up the same pace as 2021, but whatever it was that needed to get out, I've kind of nearly exhausted. Plus, I tend to very much go through phases: I used to run regularly, I used to play keyboard regularly, I used to go clubbing regularly etc. etc. Old things give way to new things. Sometimes old things just go; be conscious and savour every experience as it happens.

Yes. Good summary. For example doctors learn the body system so thoroughly they know how to intervene in its workings and push it this way or that. Or you go to a therapist who does exactly the same thing for the mind. I realise I strayed into woo territory, but I don't dismiss such things out of hand. The placebo effect is a scientifically studied phenomenon, so much so that it is used in drug trials: it is just pure suggestion, so it shouldn't be undersestimated. As for law of attraction related activities that's less clear to me, but I still don't dismiss it. I was more suggesting a mechanism than outright saying "it works" or that there is a strong effect. I would say the effects of rituals, LoA etc, are subtle and they're not going to break the laws of physics or biology. But if there is an effect, it would be because it shifts probabilities around; reality has a kind of "looseness" about its workings at some level, and it's possible to play with that. Imagination does however affect reality more directly, through your body. You imagine doing an activity and then your body does it. I've never heard or seen anyone explain how this connection between imagination and the body works in a satisfactory way. I'm just proposing that magic/ritual is imagination affecting things other than the body - it's not so much of a stretch. The effect is just a lot weaker and fickle.

@ZGROPIUS I don't have a direct answer in your case. But I have some experiences in rapid change. I have some ideas about magic also. The body, mind and environment form a dynamic system that likes to keep itself in equilibrium (which includes homeostasis). The equilibrium can maintain both positive and negative states, where a state is some part of the system: physiology or mental state. It can seem like a particular equilibrium is fixed or permanent, but this isn't the case. Even with a chronic condition, the symptoms (states) can come and go, this is an indicator that the system is in constant flux. All systems maintain equilibrium through feedback loops, if the system goes too far out of equilibrium then feedback loops push the system back into equilibrium. For example if your body gets low on energy then you will crave something to eat to restore that energy, the craving is a feedback loop. There are thousands of them in the body and mind, and even from and back to the environment. The mind/body/environment system can be pushed into a new equilibrium at any point, and this can happen suprisingly rapidly. This can be done by pushing it far enough away from its existing equilibrium that the existing feedback loops don't work to push it back. Because the system is dynamic it will generally settle back into a new equilibrium over time. All that is a long winded way of saying that if you mess with the mind/body/environment in the right way, you can experience rapid permanent change. I think some of the success of magic is down to suggestion, in other words hitting your mental feedback loops, so they stop keeping the system in equilibrium. I use "mental" here loosely, because suggestion goes deeper than just positive thinking, it can have strong unconscious and physical effects in the body if the suggestion is taken seriously. Having a Taoist Magician suggest things may help. I'm a pragmatist, the result is more important than the means, so I'm not against it, using suggestion can be very powerful. There is a more esoteric side to magic in that it may warp reality enough to change the world, and in your case, your somatic illness. It would do this because at its base level reality is fluid and largely undetermined, and magic shifts the probabilities towards what the magician desires. The rituals are designed so that there is the greatest level of effect achievable. In short we're doing magic all the time, but in a messy unconscious way, Taoist magicians are structured and focused about it. This also suggests that reality may attract towards outcomes, and work more like abstract thought, than a machine full of protons and light. TLDR the body/mind/environment is a system, magic shifts the system.

I was idly just wondering what spirituality is actually for, I mean that in terms of its application or usefulness. Does it have to be useful? Is it like maths which is either pure or applied? Is spirituality pursued? Is it a system with its own jargon and paradigms? Is spirituality just self-development in a different guise? Or is it just a bunch of reframings and recontextualisations on experience? Is it nonsensical, circular, self-referential reasoning and language disguised as profundity? Is it New Age wish fulfilment where crystals, vibrations, quantums and any other co-opted mystical language suffices? Is it just mysticism by another name, full of ineffable, barely explainable ideas and experiences? Is it pure metaphysics? Is it religion? A religion? Is it just an antidote for those that found STEM subjects hard? Take the above how you will. I'm not sure how I feel about spirituality at all. I'm not sure if it's something I practise, something I'm just interested in as an intellectual pursuit or just a way to pass the time; or if in fact I have no clue at all what it is. If there's no final end game with spirituality then what is it I'm doing with it? I find it ironic that I feel the same way about spirituality as the language used within it: everything is nothing, nothing is everything: spirituality is something, spirituality is not something at all. Huh.