LastThursday

You are neither dead or alive, awake or dreaming. There's nothing to fear. (Ego) death won't turn you into an uncaring sociopath or take you to another place. You will just be what you will be when and if it comes.

I don't often get to talk non-duality with my friends. They are distinctly "dual". Saying that, I don't feel pity for them or anything stupid like that. I don't feel as though my awareness is somehow "more" than theirs. So what's the difference? Why would I call myself any more non-dual than they are? I met someone recently however that I resonated deeply with. Let's call her S for anonymity's sake, although I did ask her permission to use her photo in this post (I made double sure it wasn't searchable on the big G) - I think it was some sort of company photo. She agreed with me that often a picture tells a lot more than sheer words and agreed to let me post it. Now I would say that despite her age, she is very "with it" and switched on. It's funny how these things happen sometimes, she was the friend of a work colleague and we got chatting in the pub after work. I think I was having one of my funny days of feeling very deep and meaningful and somehow we got on to the subject of spirituality. I think she kind of felt a relief that someone else was as interested in this stuff as she was. So we got talking. We've met a few more times since - totally platonic honest - waayyy too young for me! Anyway. We recently started chatting about if our own personal consciousness is the only one that exists. I told her that solipsism is kind of a dead end. She said that she felt that it was true but couldn't really explain it. She said she had no way of knowing if other people really are experiencing consciousness or not. I told her that consciousness doesn't belong to anyone and everyone is sharing the same consciousness experience. She told me that that was ridiculous, it was obvious that nothing was being "shared"; it was just her consciousness experiencing everything. I kind of laughed and assured her that I was actually conscious. She took the point, but still wasn't convinced. I tried to turn the tables on her and told her that if I wasn't conscious then by symmetry she can't be conscious either. She cleverly retorted by saying that it's possible that I don't actually exist so I can't be conscious. I kind of baulked at this but ran with it. S carried on by saying that: "Yes I can see you and hear you, but it's possible that this is all just me having a dream, and when I wake up you will just disappear". She was definitely on the right path! I had to wait until I was 47 to reach the same conclusions she had at 27. I guess she was just more spiritually tuned in than I ever was. But I still goaded her some more. So I said, "OK then maybe you're just a figment of my imagination and I'm also a figment of your imagination." She caught me out by saying "there is no MY, you don't exist, just the conscious dream does". So I said "Alright then. Wake up and make me disappear". And fuck me that's exactly what she did. So here I am and S made me disappear. Unfortunately, she also made herself disappear and all that's left is her picture above. Apparently she never existed and my memory of her is hazy now. Just before she woke up she said something very very odd which will never leave me: "I was never real, a computer created me". Now that certainly is creepy. S no longer exists. I miss her.

By comparing it to what reality isn't. What isn't reality?

Hello again journal blog diary mental jerk off thing, it's been a while. Impatience. What is it good for? I like to start off with a mental definition of a term before I start waffling on about it. Impatience is the state of heightened emotional tension due to the discrepancy between one's image of how reality should be compared to its actuality. Nice. Impatience is a future orientated emotion much like its cousin Anxiety or second cousin Perfectionism. It seems that there's a sliding scale of impatience roughly proportional to age. Although certain individuals break the rule and are impatient at all ages. Why is this? Why does age have a bearing on it? It's all to do with apparent passage of time. Older folks see time from a higher vantage point, they intrinsically know that if you wait around long enough, most things come to pass. They will tend to give a thing some thought: "I need a new laptop" and then forget that thought until the time comes around when it happens. Whereas for a younger person any amount of time seems like an indefinitely long amount of time - what if it never comes? The only solution is to make it happen now and in the moment. Impatience is reactionary. What causes the "heightened emotional tension" of impatience? It's the combination of the uncertainty that what you hold in your head may or may not come true, and the indefinite quality of when it might happen. It's a form of anxiety: a fear that what you want may not happen. It's a fear of uncertainty, it's a lack of trust in reality. How is impatience related to perfectionism? They are both similar in that a platonic ideal of reality is being held in the mind and there is an expectation of that ideal manifesting itself into reality. In that sense the two are nearly identical, impatience is a form of perfectionism. The only difference is that perfectionists are interested in the details of outcome itself, impatiencionists (is that word?) are just interested in the outcome happening. Impatience is also a form of social signalling. The heightened emotion of an impatient person is relayed for all to experience, and this can cause emotional discomfort which can only be released by placating the impatient person by giving them what they want. The short of it is that impatience is social manipulation at it's finest. Impatience translates into embarrassment, which itself is a strong motivator. Naturally impatience is very self serving, it is selfish by nature, and by that token elevates the impatient person's needs above other's needs. And because of the relationship with age can be taken as a childish or immature emotion. Sometimes it creates irritation or anger rather than embarrassment. The irritation itself being a strong social signal to "back down or else". So impatience has its place in the pantheon of social manipulation. But bear in mind patient people just don't care about you that much.

It's pretty weird to me that people find it weird that people don't have an internal monologue. If you get me. I do have an internal monologue, but not exclusively. For example if I'm working on coding, then how could I have a monologue for this sort of thing?: function monologue ($speak_to_yourself) { echo $speak_to_yourself; } I may use an internal monologue to say the odd word here and there as I'm typing it, but I don't think about coding with a monologue at all. It's mostly visual if anything, or usually it just bubbles up from nowhere, or it's a kind of intangible sensation. I definitely don't have an internal monologue in conversation. And I definitely don't have a running commentary as I go about my day. I think many people identify so strongly with their internal monologue that they confuse it with consciousness or awareness or a sense of self. Nothing could be further from the truth. Honestly, if you were zapped with a ray gun that made you stop talking to yourself, you would still continue to exist and to think.

Slightly dramatic style: Going through the "The Crisis" was a torment. Most mornings I would awake from bliss into dread. Some mornings I wouldn't wake at all, I just couldn't face it. Through it I knew one thing, that if I was going to survive it I would have to carry on as I always had - plan B was just too hard to contemplate. Unfortunately, plan A was unbearable. "The Crisis" was certainly existential. I hadn't had a word for it until a Life Coach I was consulting with half jokingly pointed out that my crisis was in fact an existential one. I believed at the time it was a hand waving gesture on his part. I honestly believed my problem was a materialistic one. I hadn't ever married, I hadn't brought up children, I seemed incapable of leading anything other than a mediocre life. The icing on the shitcake was that I was in fact now old and there was no going back. It seemed that all my friends and people I cared about all had exactly what they wanted: to be normal. Why was that so damned hard for me? I had tried so hard to be part of a tribe. I had long term supposedly deep friendships. I'd had the long term girlfriends, I was the first to buy a house amongst my friends, I had a high salary and a university education - the first in my family. I had tried to do everything that society had asked of me. But none of it really stuck. I knew deep down it was all bullshit and nothing could undo the sensation. That sensation undid me in the end. The time had come when carrying that sort of cognitive dissonance around couldn't be tolerated any more. Either I would be normal and fit in or I would go all out and be different and unfettered. I fell for the first person that gave a damn and I desperately wanted normality with her. I chased her like a hungry wolf and she nearly succumbed. But after a very long period she rebuffed me with conviction - she had finally made a decision, and I wasn't it. During the early stages of both being in love/lust, strongly wanting normality and strongly wanting out - I lived a zombie existence. During waking hours I couldn't bear to be indoors. I in fact wanted to run far far away. I spent many many hours just walking aimlessly. I would take trains to nowhere in particular just to be somewhere away from my home town and myself (Eckhart Tolle's story strongly resonates with me here). Slowly over time the realisation took hold that my crisis was very much not a materialistic one. What I realised was that I hated myself, not in a cut myself kind of way, but in the same way that a lazy or fat person is vilified. I hated that I was a coward around people, that I needed people's love so badly, that my own indifference and indecision caused so much resistance and inaction, that I gave away my responsibility to others, and that no matter what I tried I would fail, and even worse I wasn't particularly interesting as a person. I ran to New Zealand completely unplanned for an unspecified amount of time. I ended up being amongst 20 somethings. This helped. I had an excuse to behave like a young person again, and I could reinvent myself. I ended up being called Tom for two months (despite having Guillermo for a name). I came back somewhat rejuvenated and full of a sense of my own ability to change my circumstances. Coming back was painful. The mental torture was still there, just to a lessened degree. But I made strides to do more things by myself. I would sit in pubs and restaurants and cinemas by myself. It was unbearably uncomfortable at first. In the end I realised that my "normal" friends didn't do this sort of thing: they were the cowards. Over time this gave me great personal strength. During that time I would find myself crying at music in the car or being uncontrollably emotional at work. I needed to learn to love myself, I even saw a hypnotherapist. She cleared some of my "blockages" and I began to feel lighter. That incessant feeling of needing to run slowly went away over years and I began to settle into my current self asymptotically. How am I now? A lot more mentally stable. I've learned to accept my mediocrity - just like everyone else does - it no longer presses on me so hard. I've also learned that I'm very much responsible for myself and the direction my life takes. And I still live in hope that life will end up being wonderful and maybe one day extraordinary. Fuck normality, I was never cut out for it.

Think of it like a computer game. The computer generates the scenery and characters on the fly as you navigate your way around the map. Your mind is like the computer. So if you could access the computer directly you could make it generate (manifest) anything you wanted it to. It's the same with the mind. Of course the analogy is not quite the same. The mind is not made of logic gates, it doesn't "compute" stuff - we're not in the Matrix movie. So don't take it too literally. The big problem is how does the computer game character (you) hack the computer directly? Maybe it's impossible? What Leo is hinting at, is that it may actually be possible. But you would need to raise your level of consciousness to a much higher level first. You would have to become a sort of God with powers of creation. That's my take on it.

@VeganAwake that's exactly right. There is actually nothing to do, nothing to be killed. @BipolarGrowth In the triangle illusion I posted earlier, nothing needs to change other than an awareness that the (blank) triangle in the middle is not really there. All it takes is a spontaneous shift in awareness. It can't be "forced" any more than the spooky triangle can be made to disappear in the optical illusion. If it happens, it will happen by itself. But it sure helps if someone gives you a nudge in the right direction.

How about our dreams happen when our bodies are acting out reality during the "real" day. Then full reality is replayed during the "night" when our bodies are inert? It would explain why we need to sleep so much. Freaky concept. Anyway, we're actually dreaming all the time, there's no difference between night dreams and the dream of being awake. We only think being awake is more intense and persistent, but that's not really the case.

I like it. How about: There are no mountains, only rock.

I've been watching pick-up videos. It's one of those things, someone posts an interesting video and it piques your interest for whatever reason. This seems to be not so different from pick-up itself: an attractive person piques your interest and you want to know more. Well that's what I've gleaned from the videos I've watched, I'm not a P.U.A. myself. Do I want to be one? Not really (I'm not a sheep, I'm a lone wolf, awooooo). Do I find women interesting? Definitely, very - well some of them anyway. What I personally find cringy about pick-up is the contrived nature of the idea. I can see the strong parallels with being an actor going for an audition. You breathe deeply, shake it all off and inhabit the PUA character. You then get on stage (approach) and deliver the act of your life. Then the woman says "yes" or "no" or even worse throws rotten vegetables at you. Now don't get me wrong. There are many situations in life which require you to perform like this: job interviews, PHD vivas, best-man's speech, company presentation. But why should pick-up be any different? Because being an actor takes dedication and effort, and it takes you away from your natural centre. I've always found it strange that Hollywood actors have their own personalities. They spend a large part of their times inhabiting other characters: you would expect them to be so good that they were chameleons with no natural centre. Every interview with the same actor should reveal a completely different person. But that's not the case Jim Carey is still Jim Carey. Weird isn't? So even a very proficient actor has a natural character they they always return to. This character is the the one they've honed to perfection over a lifetime and it's the one they're most proficient with. We're no different. Pick-up is "weird" because participants are forcing themselves away from their natural character. So how would you be a non-cringy PUA? First, you would forget the idea of actually being a PUA, you're not; instead you're just you doing something you normally wouldn't. This is actually a very normal activity. We are constantly bombarded by novel situations, every situation is a new one. In fact novelty is the de-facto mode of reality. So why is it that we feel very uncomfortable in novel situations? In a word: improvisation. Most of us are shit at improvisation. Strangely, most of us start off being very good at improvisation. Kids universally role play and make up games and respond unconsciously to their emotions. Then usually puberty kills those improvisation skills and we have to agonisingly re-learn them - most of us fail. And improvisation is a skill, it takes constant practice, because we are constantly confronted by novelty. A large part of improvisation involves failing and making mistakes and learning to correct our course on the fly. Improvisation is always a conversation not a scripted event. What can kill improvisation is embarrassment, shame, not being present, lack of fluidity, and stock (scripted) behaviour. Good improvisation is wickedly hard. One of my pet hang-ups is all about fluidity in my interactions. I've worked very hard to improve this aspect of myself. It hasn't come easy at all. What's helped is precisely removing those things that hinder good improvisation. I have become a much much better improviser. For fun, here's one approach I use to use in nightclubs (in my youth) when I was a lot less fluid: Situation: A group of three attractive women. Banging club music. Bad lighting. Me: Approach the group. Hone on in on the least attractive one of the group (but still attractive). Make eye contact. Start talking. Me: "Do you think I'm good looking?" W: Nervous laughter. No answer. Me: "Which one of your friends do you think I find the most attractive?" W: Pulls a face. "Well maybe Katy. She's such a babe." Laughter. Me: "Really? Do you think she would find me attractive?" W: Tries to get Katy's attention. ....

There is an observer. But there is only the illusion of separation from what's being observed.

I remember about 15 years ago on my regular driving commute I had one particular recurring thought: "I wonder how many more times I'll be doing this?". On the surface it's not such an odd thing to think. But being as I am, I began to dig into it a bit more. It can feel sometimes that a situation will never change. Maybe you will never find that job, or you will never get over the death of a loved one, or you'll always be taking that bend at 27 miles per hour. There's a kind of fatalistic sisyphean vibe that can kick in and it can feel like a prison. And then one day it happens, you simply stop doing it, you stop feeling sad, you get that job. Most of the time you don't even notice that you've stopped and you just forget all that time you spent in repetition and it seems like a far off dream. We just as easily slip into doing repetitive things without a moment's thought. For example during the lockdown here, a few friends thought it would be good to meet up virtually on Zoom. There was no plan and not much forethought. But we have kept up the weekly meet for four months now. We quite literally silently sliped into it. How much longer will it last? From experience, one particular week it won't happen and that will be that. This is what "letting things go" really means. Things, people, posessions, situations, come into our lives without notice or planning and they just as easily disappear. We mourn their loss or get angry at having things taken away from us, or that some part of our identity has been changed forever. The expression "nothing lasts forever" is a deep truism about life and it can be hard to accept. Can we go deeper? How long does a thing last? In our minds it has a beginning a long repetitive middle and an end. But this isn't really true. We can break down that repetition into parts: Monday's drive, Tuesday's drive, Wednesday's drive and so on. Our gut knows that each repetition is different from the last. We know every time we see our loved one they are not quite the same person they were last time. How far can we go dividing? When does something really start and really end? How many discrete slices is a thing made up of? At its core, the whole world is constantly starting and ending. For every new moment that starts the previous moment has ended. How much of it do we mourn? Should I mourn the loss of me five minutes ago, the man I was then? No. Another truism is "life is for living". That's just an acknowledgement of the transitory nature of our experience on this planet. If you can learn to grab each moment for what it is: brand new and fresh, and just let go of that old moment then you are flowing with life, and that commute is something to look forward to. Sisyphus would be proud.

@mandyjw Jim Newman I'm not too familiar with. But having had a quick squiz on YouTube this made me chuckle: Maybe it's the absurdity of the conversation. Maybe it's Jim's comedic timing? I get it. But Eckhart and Rupert? Come on, where's the evidence?

I think that all humour is about surprise. And fear. Fear and surprise. Oh yes, and ruthless efficiency... Ok, I'm half Spanish give me a break. Some spiritual teachers are surprisingly jovial, Sadhguru springs to mind and even Mooji. But if you want serious and intense then definitely Rupert Spira or Mr Tolle. Leo is quite serious, but he has his moments. I'm constantly battling against my innate sarcasm and seeing the absurdity of life. To serious people I can come over as insincere or even thick or stupid or even threatening and aggressive. Should I hold back? Maybe, maybe not. Dunno. Humour is very powerful.

It's easy to fall into the trap of ageism or age bias. SD is a progression, with different rates up the Spiral for different folks and different societies. Sure you can take an average, but that isn't hard and fast. Once you level up so to speak, you tend not to slip back down the Spiral, it's a ratchet effect. At an individual level, it's most likely that some of the jumps up the Spiral happen at different biological developmental stages. These are at puberty (12-14), around 25 years (brain maturation) and most probably in the late thirties (35-40, mid-life crisis territory). But again those aren't hard and fast, it depends on the individual. The last of those is interesting. I've seen it happen to so many friends of mine male and female. An awareness kicks in (possibly developmental) whereby strong introspection and a "taking stock of life" vibe happens - and I would argue that this can propel you up the Spiral into higher stages.

It's undeniable that the body does "stuff" outside our conscious awareness. Our blood pumps, food digests, and myriad other mechanistic things churn around. Occasionally that "stuff" is brought to our attention: we feel lethargic, we feel hungry, we have a heart attack. But what about the more intangible things: things like our learning and memories and ideas and emotions? Do they have a life outside of our conscious awareness? Most people would say "yes". Most people call it the subconscious. It's an interesting term: sub-conscious. Sub comes from Latin and it means below or under. It metaphorically betrays itself; the metaphor being that consciousness is like the clear air above a lake and the subconscious is the murky water of underneath it. And, occasionally stuff pokes up above the waterline to delight or scare us. There's also a mechanistic assumption that somehow the machine is churning away somewhere in the murk. I'd argue it's nothing like that at all (but see my previous post for a contradictory view!). Unlike bodies and the world "out there", thoughts and feelings have no permanent form. They are whispy and etherial. Because of this they don't have permanent existence, there's a kind of nothingness quality which permeates them. All machines operate on a kind of algebra or symbolic manipulation. For a four stroke engine, this is shiny steel and liquid gasoline: the steel has a certain shape and configuration, the gasoline has certain attributes and explosive tendencies. For a body the machine is chemistry and physics: different elements each having their own chemical and physical properties are configured in specific interlocking patterns in a vast network. In theory if you can specify a machine in enough detail you can replicate its workings. What sort of machine would work on thoughts and emotions? The obvious one would be language, with all its symbolism and rules and logic. But immediately there is a problem with this idea. Unlike a four stroke engine, the engine of language is not made of thoughts and emotions, but words and sounds. Language is more of an intemediary than the actual thing itself. Thoughts are converted to language are converted to thoughts. Nonetheless, is it possible that the machine of language is churning away and subconsciously processing our thoughts and emotions? I'd say not. The main evidence against it is that you can't get your subconscious to supply you with tomorrow's essay on "Consciousness" whilst you do other things. In other words producing language always involves conscious exertion. The thoughts and ideas come on a whim and are converted there and then into language - the same being true in reverse. There is no language machine under the waterline, it's all above the waterline. Could there be any other sort of machine which sorts and processes thoughts and emotions out of sight of consciousness? For this to happen thoughts and emotions would have to be stored somewhere so that they could be held for processing. But how do you store a thing which is ephemeral or highly abstract like love? If you talk to a materialist then both the machine and the storage mechanism is the human brain and more specifically neurons. And this effectively reduces it to chemistry and physics. But this has precisely the same problem as the language machine idea does: at best the brain is an intermediary for mind. Somehow the brain must have to convert electrical signals and activation potentials into such intangible things as the thought of a swooping bird (and possibly do it in reverse). A four stroke engine is just the same chemistry and physics (mostly carbon): can it process a basic kind of thought? It seems extremely unlikely. Again as with the language idea, is it possible to ask subconscious to churn away and reproduce a kind of mental play for you, ready for you to hit "play" and consciously re-enact it? All whilst you're doing other things? No, it seems not. Even dreams are conscious activities. It's all above the waterline. There is no subconscious, give up the idea. All the processing and machinations of the mind happen in consciousness. Yes, consciousness is that powerful.

The bit in bold is the real reason I think you're asking the question. The short answer is no. The longer answer is that it's all about perspective or framing. When you're disengaged from something or feel separated from it, it's very easy to judge it negatively or to dismiss it as not being interesting. Life becomes boring and dull when you're not engaged with it. The are several ways this could happen in my experience. I will add the caveat that I have in no way solved all these problems for myself: You are not engaged with the present moment. This means that you're not experiencing the full majestic force of reality, instead you're distracted away from it. You are too engaged with thought and you're not being "present". Thinking is a poor substitute for reality. It also distracts you from paying attention to what is really happening around you. It's like watching a movie whilst scrolling on Facebook, you're missing most of the action. You are too engaged with maintaining your identity and story. This is a tricky one. Basically your ego is getting in the way. Your ego is a rabbit warren of interconnected ideas and memories and on and on. Your ego is constantly grabbing your attention and distracting you from reality. Most spiritual work is really about damping down the ego, so you get a chance to engage more fully with reality. You're stuck in a goal or future oriented mindset. In other words you're never "here" you are always striving to be "there". This habit is ingrained from society, it's very hard to escape. It also disengages you from reality. You're not "letting go". More accurately most of us hold on too tightly to things in our lives: people, possessions, memories, identity. This causes suffering, which in turn consumes your attention away from reality. Your job or habits means you're stuck in a rigid sitting posture looking at screens at close range most of your waking life. This consumes all your attention and your body suffers, giving you negative signals. All these things are really about attention. It's very possible to shift your attention so that you are more fully engaged with reality and this means it will be a lot harder to judge negatively or to dismiss it as being uninteresting. When you truly pay attention you'll find that reality is astonishing and very very exciting.

One of my pet hates is when people talk in riddles. Having studied NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), I know that there is a range of language that can be used to convey information. On one end you have scientific or legal documents, which use very specific and long-winded language; on the other you end you have poetry and the soundbites of politicians. It's all about deletion and equivalence. Deletion comes in many forms, but the main forms of deletion are grammatical and semantic. Here's some examples: She walked through the gardens and smelled the pink flowers. Emily, who had just entered her 36th year was a keen horticulturalist with a fascination for roses. That morning she was walking through the National Trust gardens and smelling the scents of different pink roses. See how in the first example "she" is referring to someone that hasn't been introduced yet, i.e. "she" could be absolutely anything. This is grammatical deletion. The word "she" is a grammatical placeholder for something that should have already been specified earlier. However in the first example "pink flowers" is a semantic deletion. While it is grammatically specific, it is semantically unspecific; what sort of flowers are they, how big are they, what shape, what species? In the second example, we know that "Emily" is mostly likely a female human, who is 36 years old etc. There is no grammatical deletion here. There is also a lot less semantic deletion here. Although even here there is room to be a lot more semantically specific. Equivalence is a grammatical trick used to connect two things which are normally not associated with each other. It's often used in metaphorical language or in explanatory language. Here's some examples of this: I feel sad because nobody talks to me. The universe is made of love. Light are waves which travel through the vacuum of space In the first example the word "because" serves to connect two disparate ideas: "feeling sad" and "nobody talking to me". Note that by themselves they are quite distinct concepts. But the grammatical trick serves to make one concept imply the other. In the second example the word "is" serves to make the two concepts equivalent to each other. One concept is "the universe" and the other "made of love". Note that semantically, it really makes no sense whatsoever, it's completely a grammatical trick. The last example is again another equivalence using "are". Light is being equated to waves. Note that the everyday notions of light and waves are completely different from each other. So what happens when we're faced with deletion or equivalence in language? We naturally try and mentally "fill in" the deleted information or we try and make the equivalence "work" by creating a new mental model that incorporates both ideas at once. Note how these two activities are similar, extra information has to be supplied by our imaginations - the extra information doesn't in fact exist in the communication itself! Specific language and non-specific language have their places. But when discussing abstract topics, it's much better to stay specific so that as much information is conveyed as possible: Q: What is consciousness? A: It's the dragonfly floating on the wind. Meh!

I don't know. But here are some intuitions I have about it: Your personal egoic imagination is not reality. So the moon of your imagination has nothing to do with the moon in your reality. For example try and draw the moon from your imagination, then compare it to the real thing. For your imagination to become reality, you would have to get completely lost and consumed by it - a bit like dreaming at night. Maybe a psychedelic would help you do that. Imagine you had a control, a slider which went all the way from complete order to complete random chaos. On one end complete order, would be utterly boring, nothing would ever change for eternity, it would be completely frozen and still. On the other end, nothing would be still, everything would change every second, it would be a confusing jumble of experience and you couldn't make any sense of it whatsoever. As you can see you can't live a life at either extreme, the only way to live it is to have the slider somewhere in the middle. There's enough order to make it sensible, but enough randomness to make new things happen. In other words the "laws" are the orderly part of existence. If everything in your imagination came true, you wouldn't be able to lead a normal life. How would you control what imagination became reality and what didn't? Would it be possible to maintain your sanity? If everything in your imagination became reality, would you still call it imagination?

We're singing from the same hymn sheet. Are the laws and patterns real? Yes. Are they fixed? No. They are real only insofar as they are being imagined in the moment. And as we're both saying, imagination is the ground of everything. Subjective and objective are the same thing. If we're talking scientific laws which is what I think @An young being is referring to, then they cannot be fixed. Science is subject to revision at any point. For example to say that gravity is a fixed law is foolish. Are we talking Newtonian gravity or relativistic gravity or whatever new type of gravity that comes along in future? Science is a relative collective enterprise, there are no fixed absolute certainties: that would be religion. The laws (patterns) come from science not God. And if not scientific, then I'm not sure what sort of laws are being talked about here.

Yeah, that's the question I was begging. Everything is imagination - there is no world "out there". But if I'd said that first, everyone would have rolled their eyes.

Why have friends? This is something I think about sometimes. I think there is a deep rooted need to be in the presence of other people - it's simply a built in imperative for being a human being. The bottom line so I've read is survival. Humans can greatly improve their chances of survival if they co-operate. Our reliance on other pople can't be overstated. We would die very quickly if we couldn't get other people to provide food and shelter for us. Nearly nobody in modern society has the skills to survive without other people. And even if you had the skills, life would be very tough without other people to back you up. The more effectively we can co-operate the better our chances of survival. We are evolved to maximise our co-operative strategies. Co-operating is a kind of reciprocal agreement, where one day you help your fellow human and the next day they return the favour. It's a win-win strategy. So we're very good at playing the reciprocation game. We even do it with domesticated animals. Even dogs can be our friends. But I feel like there is a different dimension to friendships. We come together so we can be "more whole". What I mean by this is that each of us is a different mixture of traits and abilities - it's what makes us, us. The flipside is that we also lack in many areas. For example, we may be good at planning, but bad at coping with emotions. We all lack in some ways. We make friends so that we can level out our imbalances, by complementing each other with our good traits and abilities and sharing them. The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. We multiply our potential by having friends. No person can truly be an island.

My point was deep. Do we actually experience the world as it is? Or are we always experiencing just our interpretation of the world? Are the specific patterns really in the world? Or are the patterns just a product of our interpretation of the world? For a concrete example, take the Mona Lisa. Is it a picture of a woman? Or is it a just a bunch of brush strokes? Is the pattern of the Mona Lisa really there? Or is she just in our imagination?