LastThursday

Dunno. Glitches don't like to be looked at in my experience. They are like wild animals. But maybe there's a way to feed them?

They are one and the same thing. No pushing was done. I am both a son and an uncle simultaneously. The real mystery is why this something - which is unanswerable in my opinion. And secondly, why does it hang around like a bad smell? Why doesn't awareness flip into an alternate universe every Thursday? Oh well.

Set up a camera and film yourself. I bet the inconsistencies will disappear.

Drama, gossip, intrigue. Who doesn't like a good story? Especially if it involves people going through hardships and transforming themselves in the process. What things go into the stew to make a gripping story? Novelty This is the bedrock of a story. The only reason to tell a story at all is to discover something new. This is what drives gossip at the water cooler. We as humans are insatiable information hoarders, especially when it comes to facts about people - we just can't get enough. It applies to both sexes equally; just the way it's shared may differ. Conversely, if you are simply recounting a story where the listener already knows the facts or the facts are not that novel, then it's a crap story. So a good story will continually drip feed you new tidbits of information; even better if you have to piece together the information yourself. This is the stuff of detective crime dramas. The other form of novelty is not so much about gossip as about setting. If the setting is wildly different from your everyday life, then nearly everything will be novel. Mostly every book and TV show is about different settings: places, periods, planets, people. Transformation Going from point A to point B is often not the point in good story. "It's the journey" as is often said, or more accurately plot. What drives a plot forward is the trials and tribulations of the characters in it. These hardships then change the character through the course of the journey, It gives the characters in the story meaning and depth. So it's sort of beside the point if a character starts off sad and becomes happy, or vice versa. It's what happens to them to make them the way they end up being, that is interesting. I think the reason why transformation is so interesting, is that we can relate it to our own selves. It's clear that we transform over time, but it happens mysteriously and slowly. In a story that transformation gets condensed down to hours or a few hundred pages. And maybe we can even guess part way through the story what the transformation will be in the end, and have the satisfaction of being either right or bamboozled by plot twists. Hardship In nearly all great stories, something bad happens. The bad upsets the happy balance of the characters' lives at the start of the story. If the character is bad themselves at the start, then we want to see them transforming into good people, but through the medium of hardship - they have to work for it. If the character is good, then all we wish is that they deserve a good life and that they settle back to normality by the end, after all that adversity. The ups and downs of a good plot, then creates cycles of tension and release, which we find mesmerising. There is also the sense in which if the characters don't encounter the bad, then their transformation wasn't earned. If the alcoholic reforms by page 3, then what's the point of the story? Unless, that is their spouse dies in a horrible car crash on page 4. Do they go back to drink? Or not? Hmm? So to the point of my story, I mean, post. We are all living in our own narratives. Our whole identities are bundled up with the story of our lives. These are the settings, the hardships and the transformations we are a part of. And we take it very seriously indeed. We are and become the characters we weave into our own stories of ourselves. This activity really is very odd. When we talk to our friends it's clear that they are living in their own individual dramas of which they are the main protagonists. They are so embodied that if told to behave or be different they will actively resist it. You are no different. A huge amount of "self development" is coming to grips with the fact that you're fabricating a story about yourself - you are even fabricating the notion of a "you". Even the phrase "self development" implies the transformative aspect of a good story. It's stories all the way down. There are two ways to go. One is to completely throw out any sort of narrative and become untethered and completely free. This then becomes a drive towards recognising that all is relative and a drive towards meaninglessness - where the narrative would normally supply meaning. This is understandably a scary process. Surely meaninglessness is just a kind of death and dreariness? Meaninglessness is bad right? Another is to stay in the narrative, but to actively and consciously manipulate it to "improve" your life. And the way to do that is to constantly apply the three aspects of a gripping story to your narrative: novelty, hardship and transformation. So this is the drive towards more meaning in life. Take a holiday to somewhere exotic, grind your way through the mortgate, make a family, and transform into a virtuous wise person by the end. The story of Western society. Personally, I would like a dramatic life full of meaning, but it seems I'm slipping inexorably towards having no narrative at all. Please god let me have both? Stay tuned for the next episode of life and times of LastThursday!!

What's a systems level view of beauty and attraction? We all have personal ideas of beauty and things or attributes that sexually attract us to people, or of sexual fetish. For brevity I'll be lumping together beauty and sexual attraction (although these two things are not necessarily always in alignment). And, I'll call the individual different things that attract us attractors. Each of us then has a personal set of attractors. Whether hard wired into us as human beings or learnt over a lifetime, is not particularly relevant for this discussion. In terms of people, the set of our attractors defines who (and what) we are attracted to. Also, not all of our attractors need to be triggered in order to find someone attractive, indeed some attractors may have a stronger effect than others. It goes without saying, if you take a single attractor such as: "has blue eyes", then not everyone in the population will fit this criterion. However, other attractors are less specific or in other words a greater section of the population will match, say: "is female". Not all attractors are binary on/off, some like for example head shape may vary between turn off and turn on or somewhere inbetween. So an attractor can sort of half trigger as it were. So we can find a person mildly attractive. Already there should be something here to work with. People who trigger more of your attractors will be less common in the population - because the probabilities multiply. Say the probabilty of blue eyes 1 in a 10, and the probability of female is 1 in 2, then the probabilty of finding a female with blue eyes is 1 in 20 - so less likely, more "beautiful" people are less likely. The more attractive a person (by your standards) the less likely they are in the population. The obverse of the rare beauty is that average attraction is far far more common (because of normal distribution). If being female is enough then its 50% of the population, or if blue eyes its 5%. Average attraction is simply that less of your attractors are triggered. Of course the situation happens both ways. For mutual attraction it's necessary that both party's attractors be triggered. That means the probabilities again multiply, making mutual attraction far less likely than the attraction any single person feels. This can even make for lopsided attraction, were one person finds the other more attractive than they find them (maybe the attractors a person has forces them only ever to find average people). Worse still, you may have a set of attractors for a very slim percentage of the population, in which case you may never meet those people. On average, average people will find other average people attractive, but will always find beautiful people (or ugly people) a lot more rarely. But in a monogamous culture, that will mean that most average people will be taken by most other average people. What about the people who are left over, the beauties and the uglies? One more dimension to attractors is that in general you are attracted to people who are similar to you. Your set of attractors is largely linked to your upbringing, social circle and physical appearance. Beautiful people will end up with beautiful people and ugly to ugly - because all the average types are taken and you're attracted to mirrors of yourself. The upshot of all this, is that there is a kind of stratification of couples in terms of beauty and attraction. People end up being with others that look or behave like them and have the same level of beauty. If you want more beautiful people in your life, then you both have to make yourself more attractive in general and increase your personal range of different attractors. It's all maths.

Did god give us free will knowing that we will commit sin and suffer a consequence? Or was god hoping for a different outcome?

I would say there's a strong disconnect in science between blind faith in rationalism and the "in your face" nature of consciousness. The irony is that consciousness has always been there and isn't going away any time soon. Science as it is is incompatible with consciousness - despite science itself being played out within consciousness.

Ok, so I understand the cause of all suffering is (original) sin. What is the cause of sin? Where does it come from?

@jim123 would you think there is any suffering not caused by sin?

I'd look up in the sky, but your point is understood.

Could you explain this further?

And to add, that flux appears to happen at a certain rate in our subjective experience. That's how the concept of time is built up in the first place.

This is infinity: LTNEOIOVNVMTEFEEHYIIYNNTIGHTIYNG And from that infinity you are pulling out a finite reality. It could be LOVE or TIME or EVERYTHING. Any finity awareness pulls out of infinity has to spell something meaningful - it will fit together seamlessly, second by second. You are walking a path through infinity. Will every word be spelt out in the end?

Take a step away, go be 27 and enjoy it. Then if and when you're ready, go again. You, the "I" may die in the end, but all this carries witnessing itself.

Ok time is a concept, agreed. But what then is a memory of a past event? I mean if the "past" is just a concept, then what is a memory "of" exactly? If it is pure hallucination (like in a dream), then why does it seem so relevant to us personally? Why can other people corroborate a "past" memory of yours? Just thinking aloud.

I'm going to be a killjoy. No moments, no happening, no now. As you say, time doesn't exist.

@Intraplanetary To get to the root of LOA, you have to get to the root of intention. Where does intention come from? Is the future outcome of LOA and an intention linked even before the intention arises? Could you even see the intention as a precognition of the final outcome? Maybe LOA is even more absurd than you thought.

I still haven't got to the bottom of why some days I'm focussed and productive and others I just cannot concentrate on anything. It's like my mind flat out refuses to think in that strict logical step by step way needed for me to do my programming work. Instead I find my mind just drifting in a kind of right brain dreamy reverie - like reality could just consume me and I wouldn't notice or care - and it might actually be a blessed relief just to diffuse into nothingness. So to more magick. If magick works, then for me it is less left brain analytical and more right brain creative/artistic/intuitive. However, to get a handle on it I still need to do the analytical groundwork. It's like the division between science and engineering. I could just engineer my magick and be done with it. So very much a pragmatic trial and error approach - if it works, keep doing it. But trial and error is slow and inneficient - timewise. This is where science comes in, it makes models which refine your approach and point you in the right direction; it's analytical and initially also time consuming, but it pays off by synergising with engineering. One discipline feeds off the other in a virtuous circle. I need both. So to start off with, more science than engineering. Boundaries Magick is really about directed transformation. But not just any old transformation but specifically targeted transformation, mostly done in a non-conventional way. By non-conventional I mean not using the body, but perhaps other methods such as using the mind, or psychadelics, or something else. What could be that something else? There is a strong three way connection between awareness, existence and boundaries. They are really three words for the same thing. Any one of these three things implies the others. Changing boundaries means shifting awareness means morphing existence. Hopefully, you can see where I'm going. By somehow affecting any one of these facets purposefully, then magick can happen. The other thing to take note of is change - ironically the only constant in existence. What change refers to is the constantly changing boundaries of awareness. Perhaps what I didn't really outlign about my metaphysics in my last post, was that I don't consider there to be an observer. This isn't needed as awareness is aware of itself. What is being observed is awareness itself. Awareness "takes on the shape" of reality in all its glory and gore. It's like a painting that sees itself; it's made up of brushtrokes and colours (the boundaries). How then does the "directed" part of "directed transformation" itself arise? Of course like everything else: through awareness. See the circular way in which things happen? "I" am interested in magick and becoming a magician, but, that interest arose from awareness itself. It isn't me that wants to perform magick, but awareness itself. Does awareness know in advance what the outcome of that magical interest will be? Awareness transforms itself, as it always has done: change is constant. So the starting point in learning magick is to let awareness do the heavy lifting. Awareness will direct itself in any case. The seed has been sown. How do I perform magick using boundaries? One way would be by conceptual shifting. A large part of how we see the world is precisely through our map of it. We see cars and people and clouds and poverty and the thousand other things that make up society. To transform our perception of the world is magick in itself. There are any number of ways to change our conceptual understanding. One is simply to gather more information about a concept. If we learn how a car engine works, we will have magically shifted the way we see a car. This is happening constantly by itself, this is what maturity means. Systems thinking is another way to revise conceptual understanding. We learn to join together disparate concepts and see how they influence each other, and how changing something here can affect the whole system. Efficient magick is then knowing exactly where to peturb the thing we want to transform (viewed as a system). Systems will often reach equilibrium, either steady state or cyclical. Knowing where and when to pertub a system, can establish a new steady state or cycle. Does any of the above help? Only in a very meta way. Take away for today: change concepts and understand systems to perform magick.

Play an instrument, I like to play piano. Good for turning off monkey mind for half an hour.

If I'm going to be a magician then it will have to be on my own terms. It has to be my own brand of magick. That's not to say I won't be taking input from other sources, to the contrary. But I will synthesise my own conclusions. So to start in earnest. Hacking reality. The base of it all is my metaphysics. My model of how the world functions. Now it would be silly to say that altering the map will alter the territory - changing my metaphysics will not produce magick. However, I need a "way in", so using my existing map at least will orient me so I can find my way. What is my metaphysics? Stuff exists, that's an absolute certainty. Time strictly is an invention. No past, no future, no present. The "shape" of existence, it's patterns and textures are formed by one thing only: boundaries. Boundaries form hierarchies and interdependencies. "Form" comes from boundaries, as do concepts, and language and belief. But concepts, language and belief can in turn affect the boundaries and hence what is perceived (but not all that is perceived). Boundaries are completely fluid. Awareness is aware of itself. This is the defining feature of being aware. By this mechanism awareness brings forth existence from nothingness. Everything is constant change. And as a corollary everything is constant death and rebirth. Everything is correlated (affects, linked) to everything else to a greater or lesser degree. This is systems thinking at large, tug one thing here and something over there responds, maybe even non-intuitively. The most efficient way to affect reality, is through the body (but magick implies there are other ways). Dreams and thoughts are very much part of reality. We are living and participating in a dream. Reality is seamless. There are no gaps to reality. Everything bleeds into everything else, it is a whole or unity. There are no gaps to awareness. It is always "on". Reality has "rules", it's corrolary is that there is "structure" to everything. Reality and consciousness is very personal to "me", it's happening right here, right now. There is no way of knowing if consciousness is happening any place else. Awareness itself is essentially unrestricted, nothing is out of bounds. Ok, so that's the map. Some of the things on the map are related to each other, or seem to contradict, or have further questions attached: No time, but constant change (?) Reality is seamless; no gaps in awareness; everything is correlated. And yet there is division in the form of boundaries? We are in a dream, yet need the body to affect anything in it? The dream is constrained by rules. There is constant change, but there are rules (?), the change is not chaotic. Boundaries must also be part of reality (right?) and are part of awareness. What? Awareness has parts? Isn't this circular reasoning? Is awareness being aware of itself the cause of boundaries (a.k.a duality)? Does awareness have the capability to tie itself in knots? To somehow "boundary" itself? Are the boundaries the rules themselves? Awareness is unrestricted, and yet there are rules (restrictions)? How does magick relate to all the above? That's a start. More later.

It's a sliding scale rather than a binary thing. The idea of cause and effect is just a narrative. For example say I hold a ball, then realease it. It drops. We say that letting go of the ball causes the ball to fall. Cause and effect. But it's actually a synchronicity in disguise. Even if we perform an experiment to release a ball ten thousand times and watch it fall ten thousand times. We can never know if something different will happen the 10,001th time. We can never know if the cause is the actual cause. It's only ever a correlation or a suspicion. A synchronicity is just a meaningful correlation betwen two events. But the meaning and correlation is invented by our awareness. Cause and effect is synchronicity.

I've been in limbo now for much longer than I anticipated. It's hard to describe what this limbo is, but fundamentally I've lost faith in being alive, and I've lost that spark I used to have up until my thirties. But the old me died a long time ago, and there's no way back. My optimism and energy has left me. Most of the time I feel like I'm just marking time until my death. I can't tell if I became depressed because of that old death or if depression is still lingering and is the cause itself. No matter, the effect is the same. At least I'm free in a number of ways. I don't have children and partner to maintain. Despite what people say about having family, I know for sure it's 90% grind, it's all survival, interspersed with good bits. In fact escaping grind has always been at the forefront of my being and I've basically got what I wanted. Some may say I've thrown the baby out with the bath water - to use an inapproriate analogy. Covid has also offered me a temporary reprieve from all the faff of actually physically going to work - and the semi-confrontational nature of being in close proximity to people you wouldn't choose as friends, but nonetheless have to tolerate. Again, if LOA is to be believed, I got what I wanted. But what a way to do it, a worldwide pandemic; huh? Slowly over time, I've come to the conclusion that I'm a strange mixture of introvert and extrovert. My parents are at base introverts through and through. So my introvert nature is not surprising: I'm very happy to spend hours by myself and entertaining myself. But I remember being an energetic kid that was always excited to see and be with people: cousins, uncles, aunts, grand parents, friends. And when I went to university as a young adult, I don't think I ever spent more than an hour by myself in three years. I didn't miss or need to be introverted. It's quite possible I've lost that spark because I've been overwhelmed by my introversion. The Extravert in me just gave up, it was fighting a losing battle and so the depression ensued. So what's the point of this post? Other than to get the narrative straight in my head? Two things. I feel strongly like I need to regain that spark and energy if I'm going to continue and stay sane. Secondly, I know deep within myself that life and reality can be magical again, just as it was when I was a kid. Humans are strongly skewed towards magic, we inherently know that the world is unpredictable and mostly unknowable, but also that we possess untapped powers that just need to be brought out and honed. We are magic incarnate. To that end, and since I'm free right now to become whatever I want, I'm going to practice being a magician. That is, someone who bends matter and energy to their will. Maybe it's fanciful, but if I never try, I will never know. I can keep it private, so the introvert in me is happy. But if it works, then the extrovert in me will also benefit. So to start me off I will have the following rules to work with: 1. I'm going to keep the definition of my magick very wide. That's not say that I'll be walking around with wide eyes and mouth agape. No. I instead will build up the magic from tiny beginnings to something bigger. I don't expect instant results. 2. I don't believe in ritual and symbolism per se. It's the tools not the content that are important. Ritual has it's place, but the content of the ritual is not my focus. Again symbolism is just a means to an end, the symbols themselves are irrelevant. Chaos magick appeals most here. 3. I will need to learn how to both hack my mind and how to hack reality. Experimentation and imagination are prime. 4. I shouldn't get stuck in one technique or another, I need to be fluid and free. 5. I definitely won't be using it to directly manipulate or coerce people into doing anything. That's psychopathic behaviour. However, if the side effect of the magic changes the course of my life and the people in it, then so be it. 6. If things happen that I think are magic or I learn new techniques along the way, I will document them here. That's all.

My take, take it as you will: 1. Deja Vu. Memories are deja vu. It's the feeling of "I've had this memory before". To recognise anything, you need memory. All memory is deja vu. Every time you see your mother, it's deja vu - if it wasn't, you wouldn't recognise her. 2. Synchronicity. Existence runs on synchronicity. This is because everything is really connected to everything else. But most of the time you don't notice. Cause and effect is synchronicty. When synchronicty happens without cause and effect, you take notice. But it's actually the default mode of reality. Note that awareness has to be aware of synchronicity for it to be noticed. Awareness is the source of synchronicity. 3. Dreams. We're dreaming all the time, even when awake. There's always an undercurrent of unreality to everything. Unexplainable things also happen when you're awake, but you explain them away with logic and reason. And most of us are lost in daydreams about the past and future and hallucinating talking to ourselves or others. It's quite normal.

It really comes about because of separation. Normally when someone says "I" they mean the thing that is separate from everyone else and the rest of the world. But the deeper you go, the more it's realised that there isn't a separation. Eventually, you become the world and you become everyone else. Everything flows together into one big whole. Then it seems like crazy talk to say the "I" exists. It makes you cringe because it sounds like spiritual cheesy woo woo. Which it is. But only from your perspective. But maybe it also makes you cringe out of fear. Who knows?