tsuki

From my perspective, the only meaningful way to talk about consciousness is to say what it is not. There is no way do describe it positively. To say that 'it is a universal substance of reality' is to produce a sound that seems like a sentence but contains no information about it. To cling to a positive description of consciousness is a misunderstanding. To try to understand it via symbolic manipulation of such descriptions is a waste of life.

@pluto Great read. Some interesting insights came as I read it. I have one question, though: Do you differentiate I, THE ONE and ALL THAT IS? The I is what is before discovering THE ONE, or is it synonymous to ALL THAT IS? Or is it that ALL THAT IS identifies with both self and other, as opposed to I that identifies only with the self?

@Zweistein Yep ,

To me, beauty of this journey lies in its completion. It's like a man that wants to learn martial arts to be unbeatable. In the process of learning how to fight, he has to understand the desire to conquer others and in doing so, he conquers himself. The conquering of himself however, makes him understand that fighting is unnecessary. So he carries on with his life peacefully, being a martial artist unbeknownst to anybody. The reason for the journey however cannot be taught by stories, or reasoned into by stating the benefits. The man thirsty for power is not satiating it to gain something, but to prevent his suffering at the hands of fate. As he embarks on the journey he is ignorant of his ultimate peacefulness and this persistence in ignorance is what makes him wise in the end. Others that see the completed, peaceful, master may try to emulate him, but now they are in a double bind. At one hand, they want the master's power, but also need to be peaceful to emulate him. It does not occur to them that the master has exhausted his violence, not rejected it. To be a master yourself you need to exhaust your thirst for power by being powerful and seeing its limitations. To me, this is what makes it beautiful. Its cyclic and paradoxical nature.

I think that you shouldn't concern yourself too much with judgments. All statements are judgments. By saying anything you judge reality to be such and such. This is why I prefer to answer questions by asking more questions. I think that questions are much more honest to what we experience.

@123456789 Also: if you're interested in existential philosophy, you can check out Eric Dodson's channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8ziBzqZlGAvv4krfAAORQ

@Skanzi Hey, I just wanted to know that I read this and that I relate very much to what you are saying. Unfortunately, the determination required to go this deep cannot be conveyed through words. It has to spontaneously come from within, which of course is the expression of being-intuition that is not yet recognized. Using thoughts and feelings as the guiding system is a preliminary step to the synergy. But why does it occur? No idea. I do not know why people like us go into such extreme lengths in questioning the self, but it really brings something wonderful. Even if it is simply the feeling of relief when you stop banging your head against the wall .

Everybody suffered only their own traumatic childhood, so comparing yourself to others is absurd in this respect. I think that we all are drawn to self-improvement, but the means of the improvement are different. 'Normal' people try to change the world to be more hospitable, but 'we' change ourselves to need less. There is not much difference, really. Not unless you can't see that there is no you that improves anything. That change however is not visible externally, so after all - reality has its final laugh at us.

@EddyC There is no creativity unless you express it. There are lessons to be learned from the still mind, but the still mind is not the end of the journey. The mere fact that you can learn without thoughts is a very profound lesson. Once you understand that, there is no point in stilling the mind any further.

@fluidmonolith Great post. You should have put it in a separate thread. You would get more traction with it that way.My response will be short, mostly because your points are valid. There seems to be one thing you are missing, which cause your puzzlement, however. Belief is not a thought stored on a readily-available thought-pile. There is no access to such a pile, other than by experiencing the thought as you think it. There is a passing sensation of speech that goes through your head as you think a thought. Beliefs are mute and invisible. Beliefs predicate what thoughts you can think, and you can arrive at beliefs by interpreting your thoughts over a long period of time. That arrival at a belief by interpretation is still only a thought. All thoughts are here and now, and beliefs are nowhere to be found. You cannot experience the safety of a bridge, other than listening to your thoughts and feelings as you cross it. This experience however is not something that can be extrapolated onto future events that can occur on the said bridge. That is because the safety of a bridge is a property of you as much as it is a property of a bridge. Safety is the boundary at which you and a bridge meet (touch), without intersecting. There is no external, objective, perspective about a safety of a bridge. Like you said - no amount of experiments can determine whether the bridge is safe, but do you understand why? Safety of a bridge is not found within an objective structure of a bridge. To a bridge, its safety is irrelevant. To you, it is irrelevant what is a structure of a bridge as long as it is safe. To a squirrel, there is no such thing as a bridge. Not because it is too stupid to notice it, but because it has no beliefs about it. Beliefs are what lets you experience the world in a tangible way. They are not your enemy, but in order to understand what they are - you need to first become enlightened. Enlightenment is not knowledge that you put on your thought-pile to change what you can notice. Enlightenment is a rupture (obliteration) in the web of your beliefs which you experience personally. The extent to which you experience it personally determines the degree of your awakening. There are degrees that feel like death and this is why we call it as such. It is not because we have experienced physical death, but because there are no words that can possibly describe it. It is because we destroy our beliefs that are the root of tangibility of the world. This is why talking about enlightenment is so difficult.

I noticed that too. When you just drop truth at people, they respond as if a baboon threw shit at them. When the difference of consciousness is too great, it gets tricky to tell wisdom from trolling.

Start with YouTube. There are tons of free lectures available. You can also start with Stanford's encyclopedia of philosophy.

@SBB4746 Leo seems to disregard Peterson for some reason (and even go as far as judging him to be Blue), but I'm more cautious than that. What I always find interesting about him is his persistence on treating good and evil as primary ways to orient oneself in the world. His measure of the two seems to be utility, but I'm yet to see a video in which he goes in depth about what is the goal is he trying to optimize. Well-being he often speaks about is such a broad term for me that it incorporates both pleasure and suffering, so it really is not a great way to give direction to life. Growth, for example is a dimension of well-being that is directed by suffering, so we cannot simply orient ourselves towards maximum comfort. Meaning, on the other hand is self-constructed and requires a discriminator on its own so that it can be used in the framework of utilitarianism. Given his outrage with postmodernists, he seems to be aware of that, but I haven't seen any videos with an explanation. Peterson is a strange figure to me, but I respect the knowledge about Jung he spreads. A popular conservative is a rare sight these days.

It is not that you do not care about your job. From what you've described it seems like you care too much. As disturbing as it may sound: it is really easy to confuse the two in the midst of things. The institution you're working in is not going to get any better any time soon, but it definitely is: the best thing that we have right now better off with workers that actually understand the problems it is facing. However, the point of view of the institution is only half of the problem. The other half is your suffering related to your inability help people to the extent you want. Again: as disturbing as it may sound - the solution to your problem may lay in your attitude towards your work. You cannot help more than you can. Unless, of course, there is more you can do, but for some reason you don't do. Do not blame yourself for the extent of your influence, because you are working with finite resources. If your suffering is related to the observation of how much money is 'wasted' on middle-man people like yourself, then stop blaming yourself for trying to live a decent life. Everybody working in welfare deserve to live a reasonably comfort life. Even more than people from other fields. Caring too much can prompt you to do all kinds of things. Don't be too harsh on yourself.

I really resonate the definition by @Etagnwo, but disagree with his reasoning towards the end. For me, there is a very important aspect of maturity: without the part about the conscious usage of the mechanisms of the psyche. The point I am at clearly suggests that whatever may I discover within myself, another unconscious part pops up to steer me. The discovery of mechanisms is simply a re-formulation of whatever is already present. Re-formulation that hides half of existence from my conscious attention. So, maturity to me is the acceptance of the equivalence between using and being used. It is the acceptance of ever-present duality in which parts imply each other, forming the inexpressible singularity of existence.

@Hotaka Be careful with your exploration, friend. Going too far off to the Unknown will yield experiences untranslatable to us, mere mortals. Without grabbing the essence of what you're experiencing, you will drift away, losing touch with others. At this point, others may not interest you, but you will interest them. Inability to express your experience will take you to some unpleasant places. Your wisdom will be barren unless you plant it.

This interpretation smells of solipsism. Think of yourself as a neuron within the infinite mind. It is like saying that this neuron will be able to become the whole mind. All a neuron can do is to dissolve its own identity and become united through its indistinguishability. The mere act of dissolving identity makes the neuron become a superconductor. It feels like a superpower, but is totally mundane.

@lmfao Parenting is tough. Not simply because of the need to support yourself and your child. It is, because the parent's personal worldview is being treated by the child as absolute truth simply because there is no other point of reference. As you grow up, you learn various other perspectives about things that happen, and it may seem like your parent is being stuck. Your mother probably went through the same thing as she grew up and now, having lived all these years and transcending all of these worldviews, she is probably convinced that she is a reasonable human being. It is not your, nor anybody else's fault, that you mistook her worldview as the world when you were a child. This is simply you growing up. I'm not saying this to somehow deny your pain which you went through, but to point you to the fact that what you see now is still, a relative worldview. The story about your mother and about you is not just a story, but it is something that lets you cope with your suffering. It lets you see your suffering as something meaningful, which is a valid approach. The frame of reference you've chosen however, is not constructed to explain human interactions. Science will diagnose your mother's autism, but will not let you relate to her. Relating to other people is not done solely through but via mental capability to produce stories that do not place burden of responsibility on anybody. This mode of being in which there are aggressors and victims is a rationalist's way to enforce causality in human interactions so that laws of science apply to other domains. Human interactions are non-causal. The way in which you perceive your mother determines the way in which you treat her. The way in which your mother treats you determines the way in which you perceive her. This is why compassion is important in these relationships. Compassion is a mode of being in which you endure perceived mistreatment to protect your perceptions of others. Because you never know whether you are being reasonable or not by being hurt. After all, all perspectives are relative. It is a mistake however to ignore your own suffering in order to protect others. Everybody is equal, including you. Your suffering is not less important than other people's suffering. Listen to it, but be compassionate. Towards everybody.

@Freakrik A pointer to construct your own green PUA:

I'm bringing the Cartesianism at this point to contrast it with the idea of the mindworld. Cartesianism is characterized by differentiating two disjoint dimensions of reality: the mind and the world. These two dimensions have troubling property of identifying the self in the dimension of the mind and questioning its relationship with the world. The trouble comes from Descartes' method, which involves introduction of an imaginary demon that creates illusion within the senses. In order to find reliable basis for identity, Descartes arrives at cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). The uninspected assumptions of Cartesianism are: there needs to be a reliable basis for identity the demon may create illusions within the senses, and not within thoughts themselves The mindworld perspective is different in that it assumes that the the two dimensions of reality (the mind and the world) are: Disjoint, but sharing an empty boundary (obviousness) The substance of reality is common to the world and to the mind. It does not identify as either of the dimensions. In this perspective, the world and the mind are interconnected perspectives within the mindworld. The following category illustrates its structure:

The idea that all perspectives are a fragment of a larger perspective is a stepping stone to realizing that there are perspectives that are completely disjoint. When you exhaust your top-level perspective, you will be able to make those discontinuous jumps. It will get a lot more confusing up until then, but you will settle in neutrality eventually. Neutrality in the sense of divine indifference. Of an objective, impersonal, perspective of equivalence of all perspectives. Lots of weird things start to happen here, but it is the most wonderful place of all (counter-intuitively). You are becoming more conscious, don't worry. Try to get comfortable in the Unknown, but without rejecting the Known. The Known needs to be exhausted, not rejected. It needs to naturally become uninteresting to you.

TL;DR at the bottom of the post. Even though Leo points it out on many different occasions, I would like to address one thing about the model that seems tricky to notice. When we learn about various stages of the spiral dynamics model, we know that we are somewhere in the spiral. One result of it is that it will influence our perception of other people in relation to us. What is counter-intuitive to me (and I became aware of it only recently) is the fact that our color will influence our understanding of the model as we learn it. Spiral dynamics is a different tool for a person in Red, Blue, Orange, Green, and so on. So please be mindful of what you are trying to do with it and try to see whether it matches up to the color of your choice. The other thing I noticed is that it is, in my opinion, impossible to reliably judge other people's color. From my observation so far, it seems that each stage is in reaction to the excesses of the previous stage through (relatively) deep understanding of the assumptions they make about reality. To illustrate the problem, let's say that I'm Orange: As Orange, I can see that Blue uses religion as the source for making its choices through literal interpretation of a holy book (be it the Bible, Quran, or the law). As Orange, I can understand that it is only a book and my worldview is constructed in reaction to absolute laws of Blue. In my world, everything goes as long as it serves my personal values. It is not immediately apparent though, whether a person that I try to judge is Blue or Green, because both of them use religion/spirituality for different reasons. The reasons of said person however may never become a subject of exploration, because as Orange, I'm not compelled to ask questions about religion that I just rejected. From the point of view of Orange - every reason that does not serve my agenda may very well be absolutist, so every other stage gets lumped together as something that is below me. That argument may be generalized regardless of the color I'm currently at. Rejection of something that comes before our stage blocks us from appreciating things from later stages, so they become lumped together. The other half of the same argument is that we cannot reliably tell which stage we're at, again because of the reactional nature of growth. Things that are rejected at one stage come back later on as valuable in conjunction with the previous stage. Red is compelled to think about itself as Orange. Orange is very compelled to think of itself as Yellow. Again, if we're not rejecting aspects of the model, but exhausting them, then it becomes increasingly difficult to type yourself if you're a high stage. By exhaustion I mean saying as Green: Capitalism is meh, instead of saying Capitalism is bad. Wouldn't a disinterested Blue or Turquoise say the same thing? TL;DR: Spiral Dynamics is a great model with a lot of nuance to it. Judging others with it says more about you than about them.

@Leo Gura Do you think that learning spiral dynamics is a prerequisite to becoming Yellow? Of course, if you don't know spiral dynamics, you are oblivious to colors, so it is a prerequisite for typing yourself as any stage. What I'm asking is whether other people's knowledge about SDi should be taken into consideration when typing them? Or more broadly: should knowledge, or any factual data (like events in life) about people be taken into consideration when typing them? This prerequisite about learning SDi can be seen as a self-perpetuating mechanism of this model. Locking a stage only to people that know the model. It's like a mechanism straight out of an MMORPG.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesianism

When questioning of a perspective becomes relentless enough, one may see that perspectives are interconnected. What is the world other than our scientific understanding of it? From within the perspective of the mind, scientific theory is nothing else than a set of facts that predetermine our perception of the world. From within the perspective of the world however, the mind is subjected to experimental results that are being described. This is a seemingly unresolvable paradox when we think of it this way. These two statements exclude each other simply because we're trying to explain one in terms of the other from both directions simultaneously. What we need to do instead is to produce a third perspective, which is not [mind > world], or [mind < world], but a [mindworld]. From the perspective of the mindworld, the substance of the mind (facts) and the substance of the world (matter) are the same substance. The question is: what are the properties of the mindworld and which parts of it correspond to the perspective of the mind and perspective of the world?