LastThursday

Then that's a good start to your answer. Everytime you get an answer, keep asking more questions. The key insight to consider from the answer you gave me, is that other people are a kind of "copy" of you, so they must be real, because you also think you are real.

Start with a simpler question. Ask yourself if you are real?

I don't think that you can ever really help people. The best you can do is to encourage people to investigate for themselves how to cure their own unhappiness. I can bet that any type of help you're thinking of is only about temporarily alleviating the symptoms of suffering. That's things like giving money to a homeless person or sitting and listening to a friend tell you their troubles. Most people's problems are systemic. In other words they're rarely simple; the more you dig, the more you find, until eventually you realise it involves their entire identity and history. You realise for yourself you can't fix it all for them. You are not them. Further, helping in this way is a problem for you. To be able help someone you have to embody their problems to some extent. And as soon as you do that, you start suffering. Empathy is suffering. It may be minor and manageable, but it's still suffering. So in my experience be gentle to yourself. I try and do the following: Help as much as you're prepared to give in terms of time and emotional commitment. If it gets too much, then help less, or not at all, or leave it to others (or professionals). Your own wellbeing is just as important as theirs. Realise that any help you give is only going to be a temporary fix. Be informative and suggest that there are ways to improve their wellbeing, but that they will have to do it for themselves. In fact, embody those ways yourself. The best way to show people how to change is by example not by instruction.

For me a strong question is either one that takes you out of your comfort zone, or one that questions something that you take for granted.

Shocked? No. Understanding reality is imagination doesn't change reality. It just changes your thinking about reality. If you are shocked, it's because it's a new idea to you. But reality doesn't care if you are shocked, it carries on being imagined. The situation is a bit like being told your father had an affair for years. It's very shocking at first, but your father is still your father, he didn't change. All that changed was your perspective. So now, you react to your father differently. So maybe what's next is that you treat reality differently?

Everything is Synchronicity. As a fish becoming aware of water.

@yangmilun I say there are two types of imagination because I see a lot of confusion about it. The people who doubt that imagination is "everything" say that it can't be true, because they can't just imagine a stack of cash and it just appears in front on them. They're confused because the only kind of imagination they are aware of, is the everyday daydreaming sort. Usually daydreaming has no effect on "reality", it's just thoughts (although LoA people might disagree, they may or may not be deluded). So what is the other type of imagination? As I pointed out, there is no 100% consensus between two people about reality. So either one person is lying or they're both experiencing different realities. That means that your reality and someone else's reality are relative to each other. There is no absolute reality "out there". Scientists are confused, because they don't realise that their "absolute reality" is actually constructed or inferred from many different people's accounts of their own personal realities. Their map is not the territory, there is no territory. So where does each person's reality come from? It is imagined. The real question is: Imagined by what? And an even bigger question: Do you have any control over it?

Because there are two types of imagination. There is the everyday daydreaming kind, where you wish you had 10 million of your currency and HB10s hanging off your every word. Then there is reality. Even a scientist doesn't deny reality. A scientist will say the brain "creates reality", so even they agree reality is a construct. But they then go and confuse themselves by saying that there is a "real" reality not constructed by the brain - not realising that they too have brains. So you may as well give up and say reality is constructed, full stop. You can check this by sitting in a courtroom and seeing that the witnesses don't agree at all on reality. If reality is constructed, then this is no different to saying it's all "imagination" or "a dream". Same meaning different words.

I'm not wedded to the idea personally, I just gave a shopping list for contemplation. I may have conflated God and you and omniscience and that made it unpalatable to you. The idea was that there are an infinite number of strands of consistent stories and that you could be one of them. But all the strands together make "God". Anyway, here's another one for fun (I'm full of them): d. There is no consistency whatsoever in awareness and perception (i.e. it's all chaos, random). But. There is one exception. There is a singular source of unchanging "sameness" in awareness which pervades everything. You tap into this "sameness" source when you feel things are "consistent" or the the "same" or anything you feel you "know". In other words it's the sensation of familiarity. That familiarity can be about anything or everything, but the underlying cause or source is "sameness". It similar to the idea of the number "2", there are many things that there are two of, but there is an underlying twoness which ties them all together. The "sameness" source is the glue that holds together reality, without it it's chaos.

Do you climb Mount Everest for a trophy or for the experience?

Don't forget, you are society. Just like if you're stuck in traffic, you are the traffic. If society is your problem, then start with yourself and work outwards from there.

@Paulus Amadeus here's a few ideas to think about: a. All perception is chaos. The only thing that's consistent is your memory. Your memory defines a template for your perceptions to "fit into". In other words it simplifies the chaos by categorising it. For example, the category of "cat" is simple and consistent, but the actuallity of the perception of a cat is different every time. b. More radical. Your intuition about consistency is wrong. Consistency is just an awareness like everything else, and is therefore prone to misinterpretation. In other words you think or feel that your house is always the same house in the same place, but you're deluded. For example the street changes with the seasons, the house falls apart without maintenance etc. Is it really your house? c. Even more radical. You (God) are experiencing everything at once (the entirety of existence). But to make a nice story out of it, the creator of the dream does a pick and mix of perceptions from the whole of reality and weaves them together into a consistent story about you (your life). I like C. Just think, if C wasn't true then everything would be chaos and inconsistent and you wouldn't be aware of anything at all.

This always confuses me: If we agree that words and language (including non-verbal communication) are not the things they represent, just merely pointers to things they (might) represent - how do we: 1. Convey, explain, convince people that spirituality exists and is worth pursuing? 2. Know that my spirituality is the same as your spirituality - and if it's not, then what exactly is it that we're doing, when we do "spirituality"?

@arlin in my experience doing NLP on yourself is hard. It requires high levels of self awareness, because you have to apply the techniques and be aware of your responses at the same time. I would say that having someone do NLP to you is far more effective. Your unconscious is very powerful but it works very differently from your concious everyday mind. It likes a good story, even if it doesn't make sense. It likes reward more than punishment. It's language is emotions and instinct and associations between things. It works by intent and gut feeling and lucky guesses. And it will bypass your concious mind if it has to - it's sneaky. So if you want to learn how to speak to you unconcious then you need to know it's language first. Nowadays I literally speak to my unconcious, and it will respond. But it doesn't always do what I want! It's like a fickle spoilt child.

@milii it's natural to be jealous sometimes. Sometimes other people have what you want really badly. But your jealousy is holding you back from getting what you want, don't you see? It takes emotional energy and hard work to keep being jealous all the time. It's so much better to use that energy to improve your life instead. One day other people can be jealous of you? No?

Stand your ground and say "no" when it's important to you even if you feel uneasy about it. That's you being authentic. But also concede sometimes and say "yes" when you need to - even if you feel uneasy about it. There's strength in doing both.

If they look and behave like humans, they will have an electronic self (ego). Otherwise they will easily be found out and treated like second class citizens or worse, abused. Survival breeds a "self".

I've had some experience in it, although I haven't used it professionally. As a rough technical outline it's made up the following areas: Specific use of language to induce change in a person (hypnotism, therapy type questions, reframing exercises etc). Watching body language (eye movements etc) to create rapport and improve communication. Using tactile or auditory stimuli to induce multiple 'states' in order to produce new (positive) behaviour. A theory of how stimulus - response works, in order to understand how to change (negative) behaviours The traditional uses are to cure phobias, anxiety, lack of confidence, quiting smoking, fear of public speaking and many other things. It's not scientifically proven, but hey. I would say it was fairly similar to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Personally it has helped me get over a lot of anxiety I used to suffer from. If you want more depth, start on Wikipedia. Then get hold of the books Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton Erickson and Frogs Into Princes. But the self help sections of bookstores will generally have one or two books on it.

That one. I'm not saying it's a big addiction as such - I have it myself. But it's creating some suffering or some negativity at least, that's why you're posting?

Jump off a cliff and then tell me as your falling to your death (of the body) whether you falling is still a story. And don’t give me a slick little nondual rationalization. Yes, in the Absolute there is no one to die and no one falling and no ground. In yet you will still fall until you hit the ground. I don't care. Stop projecting. Which way is down?

@Giulio Bevilacqua you only have two options: Make a decision and change now Don't make a decision now and carry on the same If you want to stop the suffering all you have to do is choose one. Looks like at the moment you've chosen the second one - and there's nothing wrong with that - it will all turn out ok anyway.

@rnd why not actually do the work and break the addiction?

That's just a theory - just simpler than Newton's.

Acceptance is a beginning. But a hungry animal once fed will still be hungry again later (addiction). It's more effective to find alternative (spiritual) nourishment as you don't have to go hunt for it and it fills the belly more.

Ok: Is getting married and starting a family going to interfere with my spiritual work? What do I do if my future spouse is not on-board? Thanks!