LastThursday

Nearly none at all I would say. The only subtle difference is one of "ownership". With LOA/manifestation you simply set things in motion and give up on owning the process, with goal setting you take ownership of what happens with every step. But, the result may be the same in both cases. I wouldn't say LOA is any easier than goal orientation and taking action. It could be that a lot of things have to take place and run their course before the manifestation happens: in some ways the journey is always more important than the end result. Even with the goal orientation/taking action approach, there is a lot of luck, synchronicity and grabbing chances which you can't "own".

I thought I'd pick up on this. If manifestation is true, then this would be exactly what would be expected if God "leaked" into lower levels of being. As a God, you/it would hide its own powers from itself, by separating itself from itself. In other words if you wanted to pretend you were not a god (as a kind of game of forgetting), then you would hive off a part of yourself and make it less godlike and less powerful. This game of forgetting isn't perfect, and glimpses of godlike powers (manifestation) would occasionally happen. It's not perfect forgetting, because God delights in discovering itself again, but only slowly and bit by bit.

The only difference between introverts and extroverts is where they get their kicks from. Extroverts get their fix from socialising, introverts from pursuing their own thoughts. There's no difference in creativity, intelligence, emotional intelligence, passion, focus, strength or any other measure. In fact introverts can be quite social, they just don't get most of their pleasure from being social - introverts can be just as socially aware as extroverts. Also, it's not one-size-fits-all. Introverts are not introverts in all situations, and likewise for extroverts. Maybe you're more extroverted with close friends and less so with acquaintances, or more introverted in a work situation than outside of it.

Whenever I'm introspective, which is a lot, I feel a kind of melancholy. When I'm not being introspective I have a tendency to detach from emotions and analysis and just let reality wash over me. This is something I've learnt to do over time as both a defence mechanism but also as a form of Stoicism. I've come to realise that a lot of my sadness is caused by negative rumination and that detaching from it is beneficial. I don't process emotions too well, I find that they quickly overwhelm me and stop me functioning properly. Stoicism or my version of it has it's pros and cons. One pro is that I have become impermeable to the small problems in life, nothing really fazes me. Yes I get irritated and agitated, but it's short lived and I don't get too sucked into the drama of things. There's a kind of sweetness in not being too fazed by life; I see others getting wound up and upset by things I find trivial and not worth worrying about; I've saved myself a lot of suffering this way. Most things are not worth the emotional energy, they come and they go and they have no long term consequence. The con of Stoicism, is that no action is taken. In a bid to remove myself from my emotions, I have become static and unyielding. I think most motivation comes from the emotions and from emotional desire, and largely from spontaneous thoughts. The process is something like: thought -> emotion/desire -> action. Because I've detached from emotion I've broken that chain. I have thoughts and desires but there's never any emotional impetus behind them. But neither can I pretend to have emotion, I can't fool myself, I'm too aware of what I'm doing to myself. My Stoicism has also been coupled with minimalism. I worked out somewhere along the line that being minimalist in all aspects of my life was beneficial. The benefits are many-fold. I don't take on trivialities and stresses, where I see others blindly taking on things that they regret later. I also don't engage with the consumerist-throw-away ethic society imposes, the things I buy and consume are meaningful and long lasting. I don't try and fill my life with things I hardly need or use, or use as a crutch to prop up my emotional state. I'm more agile and freer when change happens, because I'm not so tied down. But minimalism is stark and unforgiving. I'm confronted directly by life and not blinded by the mask of "stuff". It's painful when it's clear there's nothing to fall back on other than my own wits - the buck always stops with me - and I don't always live up to that responsibility - I'm always exposed to my own inadequacies. Stoicism for me is a rejection of responsibility and a rejection of the stress it brings - I already had too much of that as a teenager. Be that as it may, the one area of stress in my life is work. I'm not allowed to be off the hook there. Yes, when I'm not allowed to hide and have to confront problems head on at work, I step up and I'm always successful. But it's always someone else's problems I'm fixing. This has been the theme of my life: fixing other people's problems. I want to let go once and for all from being a trouble-shooter for someone else, I'm fed up with it. I want to re-orient instead and start to be a creator rather than a fixer; and a selfish creator at that, one that suits my needs and desires.

The manifestation spreads to everything, the probabilities shift so that everything aligns with your goal. So to manifest a ring, you will manifest skills first then manifest a well paying job after. LOA says it's not necessary to concentrate on the intermediate steps, these will come about as a consequence of the goal. The bigger or more unlikely the manifestation, the more intermediate steps it needs, the longer it takes. I would say there is a delay to all manifestation, either short or long, nothing is instant. Personally, I think would try and manifest some of the intermediate steps, because than can have other beneficial side effects - but it could affect how long it takes to manifest the end goal, because you may take a less than ideal path. There's also the "be careful what you wish for" effect. Sometimes, you get what you want manifested, but there's negativity attached to it in other areas. For example maybe you want to manifest a great paying job, and find you get fired a week later, have to wait six months for another job and then get that great paying job.

I have a strong interest in manifesting objects (materialisation) and want to be able to do this if at all possible. One way to start is the slow way. Reality likes to be coherent. Manifesting from thin air is very incoherent, so it doesn't happen very much if at all. Say I want to materialise a gold ring, I can go to a shop and buy one. The reason this works is because it's very coherent and conventional: there's a reason and cause and effect, I pay money, I get gold ring. So the way to start is by bending the probabilities of reality. There is hard scientific evidence that thought alone can affect the probability of quantum randomness. Quantum randomness is the base of reality (don't tell the Idealists!). So thought bends the probabilities of reality. The way to increase the effect of thought is through intensity of emotion, ritual, and by associating other thoughts with it. For example if I want to manifest a gold ring, I wouldn't just think of a gold ring, I would imagine my excitement and me wearing it and showing it off to others etc. You create a powerful story and framework around the thought. Once you bend reality, it takes time to manifest stuff, because it has to seem plausible and coherent. The more implausible the longer it takes and the less likely it will manifest.

Hey @Esilda, thanks. The way out of being stuck is to improvise. As you put it, the mind and body are part of one thing and one affects the other. Why not act out your thoughts and analysis through your body? You may have different insights and solutions. Use different positions in the room for different thoughts and try different body postures and movements to walk between the thoughts.

It really depends on which perspective you want to take. No perspective is true though. A perspective is just one way of slicing reality. On one level time doesn't exist, so any talk of simultaneity, or not, makes no sense. With no time, nothing is happening at all. But that perspective is too mindfucky to work with sensibly. Reincarnation or ideas of living the life of everyone eventually are out. Another perspective is that consciousness cannot be counted. Stuff inside consciousness can be counted, because consciousness has the property of being divisible. But consciousness itself is unindividuated (a.k.a. non-dual), it doesn't belong to a me or to a you, we all belong to consciousness. Ideas of there being only one consciousness don't make sense either, because there is nothing beyond consciousness - counting requires comparison. But the real consequence is that there can't be a me and a you, we are figments of some divine imagination: divisions within a timeless consciousness.

I thought I'd improvise. Everything is an improvisation. This happens at a human level and at a super-human level. Improvisation is the enmeshing of several different impulses. There is the creative spirit, where new things are forged from re-configurations of the old, but also plucked from a pool of divinity: brand new and never seen before. There is the spirit of the master who lives and embodies her craft in her very being, every action and thought guided by a deep well of understanding and experience. There is sensitivity, where there is subtle and near supernatural intuition to ones environment and equally subtle flow back into that environment. There is playfulness, where new ways of being are experienced and absorbed, and there is constant interplay between me and you, this and that, past and future. There is a fundamental love in all its forms, joy in every thought, delight in every movement, surprise in every change, appreciation and gratefulness in every act. We live in a beautiful constantly unfolding improvisation.

This company called easyJet, they've figured it out.

Never feed a troll. You've put me in an existential bind. Will my executive control functions win over my lizard brain?

The other side of the argument is that if you've never had an orgasm, then having someone describe it is useful. It lets you know that an orgasm is possible and it gives you encouragement to try and have one for yourself. Personally, regarding solipsism I think it's a lot of hot air about nothing. It's just that people don't have the mental and emotional apparatus to work with it or even understand it. It's exactly the same with the free will discussions (which have thankfully gone away). I'm tempted to be a huge troll and start a thread about how solipsism and free will are connected. But I wont! I will resist...

I think @Preety_India also wants to learn to be extremely feminine, so until she embodies it naturally, it will be a game and an act. But it's always going to be a game, because femininity is socially constructed in the first place. An interesting question would be what (straight) women think being extremely feminine is, because that would take the attraction factor out of the equation.

@Preety_India yeah, that's just my personal idea of extremely feminine. I suspect men will always confuse extremely feminine for sexy and seductive and impure, they can be such simple unuanced creatures. Here's an example of extremely feminine mostly through attire and hair. But also note how she holds her body and her facial expression (excuse the gratuity):

This is mostly socially constructed. You can learn to speak and act (and appear) more extremely feminine. It's all about body movement, how tension is held and how the voice is used. Equally for men and being more masculine. If you want to learn to do it, then find women that are extremely feminine and copy exactly what they do. Copy their gestures, walk, how they sit, place their legs and hands etc. A lot of the feminity is in the face too. Sometimes it's done consciously but mostly not. Personally, Marylin Monroe has always ticked the right boxes, but I'm old school.

You can actually see it in action by looking at a video on a flat screen and covering one eye. After a short while it pops out and becomes more 3D. When you use both eyes, parallax kicks in and weakens the illusion from a flat screen (because there is no difference in each eye). With only one eye, parallax can't be used, so other cues kick in more strongly. This shows vision is "constructed". Who needs VR?

I thought I would cover some basic tips when writing in English. Like it or not your are judged and can judge someone based on the way they write. Much like wearing appropriate attire for an interview, if you dress well you're more likely to be judged favourably. I will say off the bat that I have an interest in languages and I have an interest in writing well; so I do have a bias and a particular style of my own. Take what I say with that in mind. Some quick tips: The first word in a sentence capitalised. Sentences should end with a full stop (or period). Exclusively writing in lower case is fine in the right context, normally in very informal writing. But I would say that even then capitalisation and basic punctuation is so easy to do, it should be done. Names of things should be capitalised. People's names, place names and product names should begin with a capital letter. Commas should be used to break up long sentences. Normally, you would use a comma where there is a natural pause in speech. So in my previous sentence I might have spoken it like: Normally [slight pause] you would use a comma where... There are other slightly more complicated reasons for using commas, but I won't cover that. It's possible to overuse commas (I tend to), so only try and use them for clarity and to break up long sentences. Paragraphs. Paragraphs a like a unit of meaning. Normally all the sentences in paragraph have some relationship to each other. In normal speech when the subject changes or you move on to the next point, you would convey this in writing as a new paragraph. The "wall of text" problem is a good reason to use paragraphs, because they visually break up the text and makes it easier for your eyes to scan over the text when reading. You should keep paragraphs to between three and six sentences. Homophones. These are words which sound the same when spoken, but are written in different ways. The worst offenders are: there, their and they're. You should practise getting these correct. "There" refers to a location, like over there. "Their" is a possessive pronoun, meaning belonging to them. And "they're" is a contraction of "they are". Also whose versus who's can cause confusion. Apostrophes. This can be very tricky to get right. There are two reasons to use an apostrophe. The first is in contractions. The most common contractions are baked into writing style and these are: who's, can't, don't, they're, we're, I'll, we'll, would've, should've, could've, we'd, I'd and so on. Learn what the contractions stand for (e.g. they are, we are, we will) and use the apostrophe correctly. The second reason is to indicate possession or when something belongs to someone. Some examples are: Jane's cat, the UK's parliament, the cat's whiskers, the King's men, my aunt's inheritance. So singular nouns should be followed by an apostrophe and an S. Plural nouns are harder. The confusion arises because in speech singular possessiveness and plural possessiveness can sound the same. For example: they lady's house and the ladies' house; or my friend's dog versus my friends' dog. Both examples sound the same when spoken, but when writing a plural possessive the apostrophe comes at the end of the word. Note that some plurals don't end in S and so follow the same rules as for singular possession: the men's moustaches. Some words end in S and so it's possessive may or may not be followed by apostrophe S. For example: the Jones's holiday or the Jones' holidays, Jesus' sermon or Jesus's sermon. There's no hard and fast rule here, but I would say write down whatever matches your speech. Don't write non-possessive plurals with an apostrophe, so don't do: my cat's, those dog's over there. Nouns versus verbs. It's easy to confuse the spelling of similar nouns and verbs. The most common mistake is advice versus advise. Advice is a noun and spelt with a C and advise is a verb and spelt with an S. For example: I gave John some advice (noun), or, I advised (verb) John. Practice is another tricky word because both spellings are acceptable. For example: I often practise (verb) piano, or, I like piano practice (noun). But, I often practice (verb) piano, is also acceptable. However, the noun practice is always spelt with a C, and the verb advise with an S. Don't confuse of and have. The problem here is that in normal speech the word "have" can sound like "of". For example: he could have eaten with us. When said quickly the word "have" sounds like "of", so you may want to write: he could of eaten with us, which is incorrect. To get it right, only ever use "of" when talking about belonging or possession, otherwise use have. Spell check. Always use spell check, there's no excuse not to. Sloppy spelling can come over badly especially in more formal situations. The biggest source of spelling mistakes is double consonants and to make it worse, American and British usage can vary: focused versus focussed, labeled versus labelled. Always have the correct language variation set with your spell check. The best book I ever read on writing clearly was: Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves). I recommend it if you want to come over better in writing.

@tsuki I don't think in such a strong sense (in cinema anyway). Maybe the myth of protecting your loved ones against all the odds, and being silent and stoic in the face of adversity and having a kind of blind pride in that. I do think that heroic masculinity is also being more frequently applied to female characters in cinema too, as a way to legitimise those female characters. But I don't know (not being female) how much this embeds itself in the psyche of women, not so much would be my guess. Although, if so younger women would aspire to it more than older.

I'm sure this happens often. Or at other times, the socially stupid are more or less tolerated. I've seen similar situations in the software industry (although not in a social sense) where a bad programmer is a detriment to both themselves (because they become stressed) and the company overall, and yet everyone else will cover up for their inadequacies. The socially stupid are allowed to carry on being socially stupid. The suffering angle is an interesting one. The overall implication of the video is that the socially stupid drag down everyone else, so this is a form of collective suffering. Actually, the video is more collectivist than individualistic in tone. I don't know, I'm not so sure myself. There are a million ways to suffer, even for the socially intelligent. I guess the socially intelligent are the ones are more likely to learn from their suffering or they realise more quickly that they are the cause of suffering: but they still suffer in other ways. I'm sure that social stupity comes from all the factors you mentioned. Maybe even the awareness is there but socially stupid habits are so ingrained that they're impossible to stop for the person: they don't learn from their suffering.

@tsuki I was being simplistically minded for effect. I realise the purpose of the video was to highlight that the myth exists at all and how many men may fall for it. In a way it's a kind of romantic archetype that a lot of men hold, me included sometimes. I suppose what I was trying to get at is that there are other ways to be, some of them in opposition to heroic masculinity.

Leo made that plain from the very start, we were watching his journey. Any ride we've been on we did out of our own choosing.

A mythic video. What better way to oppose the masculine hero myth than to simply: genuinely offer up a piece of yourself when it's least convenient and there's no real glory in it.

Two posts in a day. What's wrong with me? A few posts ago I mentioned that I was experimenting with altering my perception, mostly with a mixture of subconscious communication and self hypnosis (I suspect the two are the same really). One thing I wanted to do was affect the clarity of my vision (literally not figuratively, although...). I had laser treatment close to 15 years ago, and my vision is good, but in the interim it has deteriorated especially at night or in low light. Also, they never were quite able to completely compensate for my astigmatism (irregular shaped focal point), so there was always a slight distortion around bright lights and at distance. But I seem to be on the verge of cracking this. My process so far has been to imagine twiddling knobs on a kind of console, increase that or decrease that part of my perception. As mentioned previously it works great for smell and colour saturation - especially purples and blues. But vision sharpness has been difficult. I fell upon instead of a using little ditty (mantra if you will), which goes: "Every time I blink my sight grows more distinct." I just say it over and over in my head - even if I feel like a moron. Slowly over the last few weeks my subconscious (so called) has got the message. What seems to be happening is that my distance vision has improved but also has my close vision - and to some degree my low light vision. This is all great, although it's still unstable at the moment. I have to revert to using the mantra for it to kick in. But I'm hoping for permanency. I'm a pragmatist, so I don't actually care what the explanation is (I suspect pupil constriction improving depth of field, or improved "processing" from both eyes by the brain to remove noise, as each eye has slightly different aberrations). I'll keep poking around and report future findings.

One acts because one can. All bases for action comes from the relative domain, whether you act because of external factors (such as other people) or internal factors (such as desire). Seen from a different perspective, we are always acting: we cannot not act, we have no choice in that. So your statement is singling out particular acts which you preselect as being meaningful and have a basis that you've also selected as being meaningful. To regain control in that sense is simply to act consciously as much as possible.