tsuki

Are you saying that instead of 'Why why?' it should be 'Where where?' Interesting. Isn't it the same question?

@Ether A map is yet another clue. How do you know that the map is correct unless you walk it? When you walk it and it proves to be incorrect - how do you know that you didn't take a wrong turn? How many walks does it take it for you to get pissed at it and find yourself a new map? How many pissing off does it take you to decide that your temper is too short for this maze? There is no exit. The only exit you can get is to appreciate the gruesome beauty of this maze. Sit down and be content with it. We call it meditation. Did I mention the Minotaur?

Well then, read on. You found yourself in a maze. You are trying to get out, looking for an exit. The maze has clues. Many of them mention God. You know that God must be another clue, so you try to solve it and know the Truth. The secret to the maze is that 'exit' you seek is yet another clue! Solving riddles is just SO FUN! There is no exit. The maze is all there is. Clues are things that keep you occupied while you wander it. The funny thing is that you are the one that plant them! You are the thing that makes the maze a perfect contraption. You know EXACTLY what clue to place so that you find it interesting. Irresistible. Go ahead, chase your own tail. It's fun. There were many answers in this thread. Read them carefully to see the other people's mazes.

Only if you're certain that you know how to read. Are you?

How would you know that another person's answers are the truth? Words are symbolic. They refer to something that they are not. How would you know that your understanding of my words is the same as my understanding of my words?

Why do you need other people's answers?

Why Doesn't God God? Why Doesn't Existence Exist?

Are you going mad, or are you starting to notice our inherent madness? You are right to fear your reflection. God only knows what you may see if you look closely enough...

@yasaidasai You have a very rich imagination. Have you ever tried to draw your fears? You are scaring yourself. What do you need that fear for? What do you need that answer for? It is not useful in attaining any goal.

Your trust in your thought-stories about absolute infinity is what makes your neurosis and anxiety worse.

@SolaceThis post is more directed to myself than to you, as I somewhat agree and disagree with what you've written. Inauthenticity of other people has been a big struggle for me my entire life until... I understood how to be authentic myself. Suddenly, a whole bunch of unexpected people opened up to me and it was a really humbling experience. There are a few points that I came to understand through my experience: Your perception of inauthenticity is exactly that - a perception. The other person is what he/she is. It is you who is being suspicious of their ulterior motive, or self-agenda. What is your self-agenda for judging other people? Inconsistency is not a measure of authenticity. It is perfectly possible to love and hate a person at the same time. Emotions are not logical sentences and seeming contradictions are within your interpretation of emotions, not in emotions themselves. Emotions are, what they are and they are not bound by your understanding of them, or words that you associate with them. You are every bit as fake as people you perceive as fake, or perhaps even worse. You deny your masks. What is the facial expression you make as you evaluate other people's faces? It is a mask of stone. You are being judgmental. There is no other person beneath the mask you are facing. This person IS this mask. You are made of such masks yourself, but you are not aware of them. Your default mask is the mask of judgement that is blind to itself. Grow up. Sorry if that seemed harsh. Like I said - I'm not sharing wisdom, but looking for my ignorance.

No, sorry. It is not compatible with my personal understanding of nonduality. From what I understand from your post, you are trying to validate your cosmology. If you don't free yourself from assumptions of what reality is, you cannot see it properly. Reality simply is. There is no understanding of it other than raw awe. It cannot be explained with a story. Why do you need to explain us? Why do we need to be transcendent beings that cannot 'expire'? This wordy chain of cause and effect is ego talk. You should contemplate its importance to process your emotions, but it is not the answer. At least I think so, while I produce this story.

Tell us something more.

Breaking yourself is scary. Scariness of it is the whole point! The old Jenny emerged, because you couldn't handle the chaos without her. You had to frame the chaos in a way that seemed orderly somehow and Jenny is a by-product of that framing. The fear of transcending her is the same fear of the unknown that you tried to conquer in the first place. Do not let the fear fool you into thinking that you are changing something by transcending her. The chaos you fear is ever-present. You keep Jenny to keep yourself away from facing it. It is a crutch. A crutch that psyche needed to carry on. She is an imaginary friend that your innocence needed to have strength. She may be imaginary, but she is still a friend. The question is: are you ready to return the crutch? The fear asks it. Is the fear overwhelming? Is it bearable? Are you ready to bear it? You better answer the question honestly, as you now see Jenny for what she is. Your friend will patiently wait until you are ready and give you every reason to avoid the fear. This is her mission, after all. To be a crutch.

@Hamilcar In what sense your self is an illusion? What is an illusion? What is a self? I honestly don't know answers to these questions and I believe that the problem you are posing is predicated on your belief in your peculiar understanding those concepts. What I was trying to point out in my first post is that emergence of any property is based on our recognition of it. The AI will become self aware, because I will become aware of its self-awareness. A pen is useful, because I know the use for it. The sky is blue, because I call it so. There is no blueness in the sky. I am the sky's blue. The idea that I am separate from the sky is based in spatial distance between us. Once you become aware that this separation is optional, you may very well make the cup of coffee self aware.

Instead of making more and more complex AI programs that would reveal awareness to us, we should better focus on recognizing awareness in a cup of coffee.

I'm not a psychologist and my understanding of Jung is certainly not academic, but this is very much true from what I've gathered. This is basically the link between alchemy and spirituality - the idea of breaking a substance/Ego down into its constituents so that something new is born. Rebirth is not transcendence in a sense that one becomes 'better' than his previous self, but different. The whole point in my opinion is to see that your current self is fundamentally incidental. It is no better or worse than any other 'I' that could come out of this process. There is great value, however, in staying in this basic, chaotic form that has no structure. From what I have observed in myself - letting go of your precious foundations of reality that the Ego is made of, such as family for example, is at the same time synonymous to healing. I don't know why these foundations build themselves when we become chaos, but structure always returns, eventually. All I can do is to observe them and let them dissolve when they are no longer needed. The standard notion of Ego that is created out of fear of the unknown doesn't stick with me, because the chaos from which it arises cannot be harmed. There is nothing that can be done to it that it would have to fight against and create the Ego. On the other hand, Ego is always fearful of return. Transcending this fear is what is I think that is learned from repeated Ego deaths. The self is real. Any self that is constructed is as real, as the no-self in my view. The no-self seems very appealing from the point of view of the self because there are practically no no-self selves out there. The no-self self makes the self so unique that it cannot resist not pursuing it. Pursuit of enlightenment is egoic in this sense. There are however valuable lessons to be learned from pursuing it, which I still do.

An interesting perspective on spiritual growth form the point of view of ancient alchemy. What do you think? In my opinion, it could explain many methods people use to attain enlightenment.

It's been a while since I watched this lecture and this is what sticked with me: Lecturer draws parallels between Jungian psychology and ancient alchemy and suggests that Jung read ancient alchemical books as inspiration. Psyche in its most basic form is pure chaos. It is made of archetypes that are inter-personal, universal across cultures and languages. Psyche is not something internal, but it is equally external. Chaotic, basic, psyche means a chaotic world that is impossible to understand and exploit to fulfill our own needs. Out of this chaos Ego arises which is a set of beliefs that are held as basic. We grasp to some aspects of reality and call them 'true'. We do that so we can reason about the world. Trust in family members is a good example of egoic grasping. When you are betrayed by your mother or father - your world shatters and you feel immense suffering. Most people would rather not admit the betrayal and lie to themselves than face reality of what happened. Patriotism is another example. There are people that grasp so hard to idea of a nation as a baseline for reality that they would rather give up their life than see it destroyed. The lecturer says that the ancient alchemy devolved into 'chemistry' of matter to protect itself from Christianity. It was not originally about matter, but about psyche. It was an art of shattering Ego and returning psyche into its archetypical form. In this context, Enlightenment may be seen as permanently returning to chaos and willingly staying there. Many different spiritual schools have practices that torment Ego so that it sees its own unstable nature.

I

@Chives99 Mental illness is a social institution. Mentally ill people are ones that have no way of expressing their worldview that is translatable to other people's experience. Things that are completely normal now would get you killed not as long as 200 years ago. Things that will get you killed now will be perfectly normal in 200 years. Mental illness is a socially regulated way of trimming irregularities among consciousness of different people. Sanity is a limiting factor of your growth. If you become aware enough, you will be able to tell that any personality is a mashup of different people treating you in a certain way in your past. Insanity of people with multiple personalities is not originated in construction of their psyche, but their inability to cope with social norm of being unified. They are insane because they are honest about their experience and expect understanding of dishonest/unaware people. There is a reason why gurus don't talk about their deep experiences on late-night shows on TV. They are sane because they understand that they will not be understood.

So you don't need life, and yet - you still live it. You need enlightenment to live your unnecessary life, fully. Do you really need a girlfriend? Do you really need enlightenment? You don't, as you don't need to live. Some people at this point may ask: but tsuki, are you saying that I should kill myself?! Death is as meaningless as life. You will die regardless of your actions, so why not stick around and watch the fireworks while they last?

@TheSomeBody What do you need life for?

@TheSomeBody What do you need enlightenment for?

@TheSomeBody Looking for utility in life endeavors is a futile exercise. Any chain of reasoning that you carry out long enough will lead you to a non-answer such as: I want to. (Do you really?) I should to. (By which morality?) It is a normal thing to do. (Judging by what standards?) Because I have to live! (No, you don't!) etc You can ask a 'why' question forever only because you do not accept such answers, which are, in fact, correct answers when taken seriously. It is always that you first recognize a need for something, and only then you look for a reason to do it. There is no reason for wanting something, nor there is a reason to live. You simply do. You were brought into this world without any say in the matter and you will depart from it in the same way. Reason is not a domain of existential questions such as pursuit of a relationship. Don't get me wrong - reason is a very useful tool in its domain. I'm a mechanical engineer myself and reason keeps me fed and clothed. I will now say the same thing twice, from two different points of view. The point is, that they are equivalent formulations of the same situation: When you will meet a right person, you will know. When you are ready, any person will do. Sometimes, you just have to get so abysmally sick of your suffering that you will simply grab a solution that you always knew would work, but was too afraid to reach out for. As for the enlightenment part - how do you expect to die, if you have never even fully lived? Having a relationship means that you expose yourself with all of your animal nature to another person while getting the same thing back. And guess what - we are all, simply put, bald apes. It is enough to keep us entertained without silly ideas of becoming a saint.