LastThursday

It's the difference between eating pizza every day, or savouring every mouthful of Roast Pavé of Wild Salmon once a year. Ritual, setting, ambiance, pace, dressing up, trying something new.

Transports me to a different, yet familiar, time and place.

Ever encountered a difficult person? Someone who constantly fights the the world, or doesn't play by the rules, or is completely intransigent, or is just plain chaotic and insane? How is it possible to love such a person? Should you love such a person? Notice the negativity which arises when you are with these difficult people. There will be a whole bunch of judgement going on, about how this person shouldn't do this, or should be more loving, or think like you, and how they can't see the obvious? The irony is that your judgement makes you a difficult person. Maybe you can justify your judgement to yourself, by saying that you can't help it, that difficult person brings out the worst in me: their negativity is infectious. If you look past the judgement there is love to be had. A person is difficult because they challenge your worldview in some way. If you have an ignorant unempathetic boss, they are challenging your view that everyone should not be ignorant and unempathetic. It is actually you who are imposing upon the world and that it should function in a certain way. It is that dissonance that is causing your misery. It's both a rigidity and lack of acceptance on your part. Often difficult people are self assured, righteous, immobile, intelligent, manipulative, lacking empathy, or have wonky thinking (outside of the norm). They are not wrong for having these qualities, it is the normal spectrum of human behaviour, they are normal from a human perspective. They can be got through to though, if it's your wish to educate or change them or help in their suffering. But you have to go through a different path than normal, judgement will normally be met with resistance. One powerful way is through suggestion. You mention tangentially that things could be different if they tried something else. You say to your horrible boss, that they could get more productivity if they eased off the micromanaging. You pit a strong positive against their strong negative. Give it time to seep in and let the difficult person take ownership, as if the thought were theirs. Be strategic in how to inject positivity into a difficult person's view of the world. Another way is to match the difficult person and meet them on their level. For example you have to deal with an impolite person, who never thanks you for putting in extra effort. You then become as "difficult" as they are. Become impolite and short, don't do small talk, don't smile. You reward every bad bit of behaviour with equally bad behaviour on your part, you reward good behaviour with good behaviour. You are matching their difficulty head on. The change in your behaviour will become very obvious to them, and this will cause confusion on their part which will make it hard for them to continue with their difficult behaviours. They will start to actively seek an easy life, by doing the things that make you behave well. Stand firm! You can of course just be stoic. You're pleasant, polite and forgiving no matter what the difficult person throws at you. You lead by example and show that there is no malice or judgement from your part. They will carry on manipulating and being aggressive and yet your passive nature shines through. It is hard to be unpleasant to someone who is constantly pleasant to you, something clicks eventually and you change. The difficult person "wakes up" to their challenging behaviour and it cannot be ignored after that point, something must change. Often the thinking processes of a difficult person traps them in their behaviours. If you are insightful enough, you can help point out inconsistencies in their thinking, and sometimes this hits home. The difficult person realises that they are conflicted and this is the source of their suffering. This can initially result in confusion or a kind of silence and introspection as they try and resolve the conflict. Even if they choose to ignore the conflict, the realisation cannot be undone. Difficult people often suffer from conflicted thinking which they aren't aware of. But it all has to start with you. Ask yourself "Am I a difficult person sometimes?", and if so are you willing to change?

Yes. Where does thought end? Say you saw a familiar person in the street. You walk up to them and no, they're someone else. Was that familiar person just a thought or was it your reality at that point? What's the difference between thought and reality?

I thought I'd broach the subject of having a love life. When it comes down to it I feel very conflicted. It's something I think about consistently almost like a reflex. But even now I'm struggling to gather my thoughts coherently. Ok, time for Mr Left Brain, a list of points: I get horny I want regular sex with women I don't want to have to compromise what I can and can't do by being in a relationship I'm an all or nothing type of guy, I can't have a part-time relationship, it would drive me crazy I do want intimacy, sharing and joy and some adventure from a relationship I have an acute sense of beauty and especially for faces (see below), it's important to me I want to flirt and attract attention, even if not to get off I don't have opportunity/make opportunity to put myself in situations where I talk to women All my social circle are around my age or older (i.e. married with kids, i.e. no source of new people to meet and no partying) I'm prepared to go out by myself, but I'm always very conscious of my age I do like the idea of having a family and all that, so that limits the age range I can go for I'm 50/50 about taking on someone my age with kids, there will be hurdles to overcome A 50 year-old woman can be attractive no doubt, but it gets much rarer I'm not into PUA tactics, it just sucks, although I will approach if the situation allows it: nightclub, possibly pub but unlikely Online dating is low odds, I mean I do scan on occasion, but the response rate is nearly non-existent There have been one or two work colleagues I have found attractive and got on with, but that's just luck of the draw I could do courses or activities that would allow me to meet women, but from experience you get stuck with a particular cohort, and if no-one fits that's it, no luck. And I would need to do something I'm interested in I'm at my most relaxed, confident and self-assured I have been in my life, and I feel frustrated that I'm not in a position to explore that more with women I don't want to go out with bimbo even if she was a supermodel, intelligence is important to me I know for a certain fact that if I'm looking for some sort of good fit in a partner, it's a numbers game, I need to meet a fair amount of women to meet one that fits my standards To a degree my standards are high, because I have a lot to offer, I'm high value in a lot of ways Energy is important to me, I don't want a woman that just wants to stay in all day on her laptop or painting her nails, there's a strong inverse correlation between age and energy I would happily go out with women in a wide age range, but I'm acutely aware of being judged if the woman was noticeably younger than me, whilst personally IDGAF, I'm also not into making my life harder for no reason at all: she has to be worth the aggravation! I'm sure there's a lot more going on, but that's the stuff that immediately surfaces. In terms of the face thing, I've taken various tests and I'm a super-recogniser or at least I'm high up there. I have both an extremely good memory for faces, and attention for facial characteristics: https://theconversation.com/facial-recognition-research-reveals-new-abilities-of-super-recognisers-128414 I like a good body (especially good skin) in a woman, but the face is most important to me. I would probably have a bias against stick thin, but it's not out. I'm not bothered by height, but I know for a certain fact that women are. But I'm a shorter guy at 5'7", so probably it tops out at 6' in a woman (without heels) for me. I'd probably feel odd going out with someone under 5', but I have done 4'11"! I feel it's a bit childish to say I have a type, there's so many different characteristics that might attract me in a woman physically let alone personality. I would genuinely say I'm race/ethnicity agnostic. But that's not to say I don't have biases in what attracts me, I do, blue eyes for example, or jet-black hair or blonde. But it's the entire package so to speak, not just individual characteristics I go for. I don't think I have any sort of race fetish, but I've never really given it much thought. The way I see it, is even in spite of everything else, I will have to look at this person day in and day out, she has to be interesting to me visually, I'm a very visually-led guy. My ex always had a particular pair of jeans she looked good in, and that attraction never wore off. And vice-versa, if something were to bother me about appearance, there'd be no shaking it off. It's a visual shallowness I guess, but not something I have control over. Ok. So if hypothetically I had a stream of "encounters" with women that fit my vague criteria at least visually say, but no real relationship, would that satisfy me? I think it would do a lot to satiate that horniness I regularly feel, and give me some sort of ego boost too. I would probably keep things mostly private from friends etc. I'm not sure how maintainable that is longer term, and knowing me I'd probably fall in love with most of them. So being put through the emotional ringer regularly is not something I relish. I'm not sure I've got the right mindset for a numbers approach to it. But not getting into relationships would leave me free to be myself and not compromise. I'm definitely not into long distance relationships. I mean, yes it can start that way, but one or the other would have to move. Either I'm in a relationship or I'm not, I don't want some vague something in-between or meeting via Zoom now and then, that would suck big time. I suppose the only other thing, was that if a relationship were to become serious and longer term, that she is amenable to having a family (my ex wasn't and that caused problems). And for god's sakes no dogs or horses. I get the companionship thing, but it's just not me. I actually got a message from a dating app from a 25 year old recently. She was definitely attractive facially, and was a Buddhist, so maybe? I found myself being reluctant to message back, it's a big age gap, but I did, however she didn't follow through. I think 25 is pretty young for me, but it's a hard lower limit. I'd probably be more comfortable with 30 and upwards to 38. After all, it's only a number. But I would feel kind of odd being introduced to parents younger than me!! That's it, no real resolution, or much coherence about what direction to head in. Fuck it. I'll just carry on as I am for the moment. Singledom bliss.

Some more (not) doing: Euphoria take me into slumber, Make me insensible to petty concerns, Remind me of whoat* I was meant to be, Of becoming etherial and lightly bound, Vaguely and indifferently embodied, Just resting and slowy divesting, Euphoria take me deeper, Let me forget it all, And renew, Me. * not a typo, smoosh of who and what, one for the dictionary

@Swarnim this is great. It's the realisation that gender was within us all that time. Normally we project a gender on to another person, unconsciously. Gender isn't a simple construct it's very nuanced and deep. But as you've realised you can project a different gender onto yourself. What's happening is that you're emphasising or bringing out what's already inside you, like turning up the volume. The other realisation is just how flimsy and fluid your own identity is. You undid decades of indoctrination of being male with a short amount of meditation. There should be loud bells ringing: 1. You can turn up the volume on any desirable characteristics you would like to "embody". 2. You and your identity are a construct, and you are free to remove it if you want, or to be anyone you want to be. 3. You already have a method for achieving 1 and 2.

@Zigzag Idiot I like the message. The clip is like a painting, or something you'd see on a Christmas card, with a certain doing nothing vibe to it. The other thing that springs to mind is: is a rhetorical question and a rhetorical answer just a duality? And is that itself a rhetorical question, or is it an answer? Welcome to my mind.

Not much to report today. Just haphazard rhetorical type questions. Is it ok to have nothing going on? Have you ever been with people and felt the suffocating vacuum of having nothing to say, even if it's only momentary? What if you've been with your partner for years and in fact the norm is to say nothing to each for long periods? Should every moment be filled with activity? What about boredom, how does that figure in having nothing going on? Isn't boredom a fate worse than being a loser? Winners always have something going on. Being bored is just admitting to being a loser (?). How is it possible to life live and be bored? Aren't they complementary opposites? What if you give up doing anything? Just recontextualise activity as nothing. Isn't that bliss? Isn't that just admitting death in through the front door? Isn't death a fate worse than knowing you're a loser? Can you attract any/thing/body by doing nothing at all? Can anything get done by doing nothing at all? Doesn't the world revolve anyway? Can't you just recontextualise doing nothing as constant activity anyway? Isn't doing/doing nothing just a duality to be squashed like a bug? Only to be left with an uneasy sense of WTF?

Some things you can't know beforehand, you just have to try them. Relationships are like this. They're dynamic entities so there's a certain amount of leeway to readjust as you go along. You can account for yourself and do all the things that lead to a healthy relationship, even if you have further work to do on yourself. You will naturally develop and change anyway and so does the relationship in response. You can't account for your partner though, and it's possible they are unable to have a healthy relationship with you because of their level of development. It's a risk that has to be taken.

My condolences. I understand how difficult it is when a parent passes away. I wouldn't consider subvocalising when reading to be thought per se, it's just a mechanical action. It may trigger thoughts though, such as images, feelings and so on. It may even trigger further subvocalising which has nothing to do with what you're reading, so that would be a form of thought. Thought is a complex interplay of many different experiences, subvocalising is just one aspect. If you think about it, you could also think visually in words, it needn't be auditory. For example people who spell visually (in their mind's eye), are often better spellers than those that do it auditorily. They are thinking visually in words.

All language requires context. You can use just words to create context, like in a novel, but most every day spoken language is done with reference to reality (i.e. non-language context). I don't think Leo is careless with his words, he's actually very precise. It's just that you need a large amount of context to understand those words - which Leo actually provides in his videos and elsewhere. The problem arises because it's very easy to be lazy or mischievous and just take a phrase like "I am God" without any of Leo's context. It's unfortunate that a word like "God" is already so loaded with it's own traditional baggage, so it's incredibly easy to misinterpret what Leo is saying. Personally I have a lot of trouble with a phrase such as "everything is love", but that doesn't mean this phrase shouldn't be used. There is some onus on me to understand it, communication is a two-way process.

@Kamo don't get me wrong. I subvocalise with the best of them. Just not computer code or thought. I wish I could read without doing it too, it would be cool in a nerdy way. Reading isn't thought though. I'm very intrigued to know what happened to you at 24? Hopefully I won't regret the question?

Indeed my perception differs which is why I go on about it. When I do computer programming for example, I don't actually talk to myself in Javascript, that would insanity. No. It is thought, but it's not my internal voice. It's a mixture of images, memories, "knowing", finger memory, intuition and so on, there's hardly internal voice going on at all (except to curse at bugs). It seems completely alien to people that they could actually think without talking to themselves, I find it amusing and weird.

Yeah PR is about as sexy as climate disaster, I hope there's an upswell eventually and the system changes. As with any sort of major shift, there's always pros and cons. The Brexit/pandemic timing is just serendipitous (if I can use that word) in terms of vaccine performance, it's blind luck. There may be eventual upsides to Brexit, but in the short to medium term it's pain all the way. Anyway, half my heritage is European so I can't talk calmly about Brexit without my blood pressure increasing. Call me biased. That's a good observation and probably some truth to that.

@mandyjw that's making me hungry, time for some light lunch, hopefully my ego's waistline doesn't get bigger.

I'm reluctant to feed the ego but here goes: YES YOU (and others of course). I only found it out after I started taking the lessons, she seemed like any other normal Aussie. If anyone ever offers me a choice between two different coloured pills, I'll going to change my name to Neo and learn some martial arts.

What the country lacks is choice. It's basically a two party system, and power flip-flops between the two. The Lib Dems are out of the picture now. One solution is to have more even power sharing and proportional representation (PR) so that alternative parties are more accurately represented. This is the norm in a lot of European countries. The Green Party would immediately get a boost in MPs if PR was in place, for example. Brexit itself is a calamity, both in terms of firmly dividing the populace, and for costing the economy billions for no apparent gain (and probably mostly loss). But it's not a surprise, we live on an island, and that isolationist streak runs through the British mindset. The irony being we invented globalism. France is only 20 miles away, and yet we couldn't be more different.

You could say that spirituality doesn't concern itself with matters of survival. But if you're into understanding reality for what it is, then survival is right in there in the mix. In the early stages spirituality may even harm your survival chances, but later on you learn to integrate both survival and spirituality - they're not mutually exclusive.

Guillermo why don't you do something with your talents instead of wasting time doing not much at all? I've had that sort of sentiment directed at me from various different sources over time. I get jarred by it, both because what I choose to do is my choice, but also because some - irritating - part of my agrees with the sentiment. I'm predisposed to both agree and disagree at the same time. It's like informing a pretty woman that they are wasting their time by not being on a catwalk. What dawned on me eventually, is that this sort of thing is coming from a place of love. Most people close to you genuinely want to see you succeed, especially if you have the talents to do so. They want to live vicariously through you. This seems to be why talent is so prized in our society, especially if that talent is god given. There's a realisation that talent doesn't come for free, and that it's not bestowed on the great majority of people. I had an odd phase some time ago where I had a hankering to become an actor. To a degree I'm a show off, or an exhibitionist, I like some attention sometimes. It seemed like a good fit. I took some preliminary acting courses, just to test the waters. At that basic level it's all exercises to build trust and to expose your inner self, and to be childlike again to some extent. I very much enjoyed the experience. My teacher had even starred in The Matrix films (the irony isn't lost on me). When I told people about my new direction in life, they were excited for me. I liked the attention. But as it was it fizzled out, I'm not sorry in any way, I learnt valuable skills along the way. I see some talent on this forum, both spiritually, intellectually and in writing ability. Yes, I'm pointing at YOU. And I just feel like that irritating guy. So, why don't you do something big with that talent you have there? Stop wasting time, make it pay and propel you forward. If you become famous, I can name drop you, and you can keep me on your Christmas card list. Of course, I promise to do the same.

Even these are dubious. Aren't they nouns? Nouns and verbs just carve out reality in different ways. Neither are true.

Questioning humour isn't funny. Laughter is a signal to say everything is ok, once danger has passed. I'm not sure humour is just laughter though.

Take a yoga mat.

Amongst some of my friends it's well known how much I despise wage slavery. Since I've been working at home in the pandemic, with one friend in particular we joke to each other by asking "have you started work today yet?" Often I reply no. Some days I actually do no work at all. He is similar, but he has a young daughter and a house to maintain, so he has his own distractions. It's my own form of private protest. I see very much like this: it was not my choice to be born into this society. Naturally, I acquiesce to the extent I'm prepared to. I work as a wage slave because I have no other choice. The flipside is that I live a comfortable life as a result. There are pros and cons and nuance to everything in life. Really, what I'm a slave to is my own fear of living a shitty life, or worse, death. A mediocre life is better than a crappy life. Business is about maximising profit. You push some capital out up front, in the hope that you get the capital back and more. It's a form of gambling or at least risk taking. It feeds into our innate greed and need for more and more stuff, especially money. It is not money per se at the root of all evil, but our greediness. For example, no business would ever cap it's own growth and profits, it seems insane to do that. If the business starts employing more people, then those people are surviving from that greed. What's so bad about that? It's not possible to escape the system. Starting your own business, is just more of the same, you now become a slave to your clients. Maybe you can be conscious and cap your business's growth? You make enough money to give you a comfortable life and no more. Alternatively, you somehow try and escape having to work whatsoever, you live on government handouts. I know deep down I'm doing the wrong type of work. My lack of motivation speaks volumes. The inertia that used to keep me going - my love of computing - no longer does that. My focus is moving to other things, it wants to move to other things. I feel that intensely. But in order to jump the ship of wage slavery I will simultaneously have to do something I have no mastery at and decrease my standard of living. My core being is like nope. The temptation to simply quit working for a while is high and possible for me to do. But, it's no fix for the situation, not really. Previous times I've been in the position of freefall with no income, it was anxiety inducing. If I'm going to do it again, I need a very clearly defined plan of escape. I'm not fighting the system, I'm fighting myself.

A jolly tune - well I like it: Flow, my tears, fall from your springs! Exiled for ever, let me mourn Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings There let me live forlorn Down vain lights, shine you no more No nights are dark enough for those That in despair their last fortunes deplore Light doth but shame disclose Never may my woes be relieved Since pity is fled And tears and sighs and groans my weary days, my weary days Of all joys have deprived From the highest spire of contentment My fortune is thrown And fear and grief and pain for my deserts, for my deserts Are my hopes, since hope is gone Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell Learn to contemn light Happy, happy they that in hell Feel not the world's despite Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell Learn to contemn light Happy, happy they that in hell Feel not the world's despite