Joshe

I concur. It's funny you thought of the meditating tech CEO. So did I. I thought of those high-functioning guys from that show "Billions".

Maybe I half-assed it, lol. Didn't go far enough. Nah, I had to stop because I wasn't ready to surrender it all. I knew that I was about to take it too far. I saw the path and what I would would become if I didn't stop. Now, I'm having suppress spiritual development. Everyone around here is trying their best to attain it, and I'm fighting to keep it at bay. lol. It used to be all I wanted, now it's a hinderance. Really cool that it worked out for you like that though.

Yes

There's a good lesson to learn from your experience. Notice how attached you became and how much it hurt you to detach. Experiences like this can facilitate you becoming mentally stronger, or they can just as easily facilitate the opposite. It's nothing to shrug off. Contemplating what was going on with you internally is a great growth opportunity.

Not if you see the futility or absurdity of your goals. You sort of lose a lot of drive once that is seen, and it can't really be unseen once it's seen. Ever hear "ignorance is bliss"? In a way, it is, because it allows you to run on specific programs that can be very beneficial for worldly attainment. But once you see those programs for what they are, you can't as easily run on them, and eventually, awareness of them makes it very difficult for them to run at all. This is the main reason why I think spirituality should not be pursued until near the end of life - when one is actually ready to surrender everything. I'm convinced meditation and spiritual practices will only fuck you up in terms of wordly productivity. At least, this has been the case for me. Can't speak to others, but I'd bet it largely applies to most.

Those practices will show you how silly the pursuit of things you want are, thus decreasing effectiveness to attain them. So, if you can't unsee, you have to create something new.

The degree of monkey-see monkey-do seems to correlate with the degree of consciousness or metacognition.

Alter ego construction. The idea is that you intentionally construct an ego with a full-fledged identity, worldview, values, etc, and learn to fully embody it on command.

A few years back, a company called Kitu or something like that made these caffeine + L-Theanine drinks. I would mix one of those with some modafinil and consciousness opened up like crazy. I wouldn't consider this a productivity boost though. Just a boost in consciousness. Aside from that, I haven't noticed any benefit of just L-Theanine and coffee.

Yes, you will end up neglecting one or the other, which is good for neither. Both endeavors can easily devour the other, and both endeavors have their own risks and usually involve many setbacks, any of which can be the catalyst for the destruction of the other - or worse - both. That said, you see men successfully manage both all the time. But I get the sense most of them don't strategize on how to do it, so maybe that's a big part of it. You might just need a particular psychic makeup to do both at the same time.

So in other words.... Let's hear your pure, unfiltered response. Let it rip bro. lol

And what is it according to you? It seems that you're pointing at objective things that can permeate the consciousness of multiple agents, and you're intuiting there's potentially something more profound about those objective things than we realize. Is that what you're getting at? If so, it's an interesting idea.

What do you mean? I would say it’s the perception of each conscious agent that feels the wind.

It’s not different. A sense perception is shared in the same way physical space is. Everything gets shared the same way. That includes sights, sounds, time, and physical space.

Different conscious agents coming together to focus their consciousness upon the same thing. Your question seem akin to “how does the sky allow for birds to fly in it”. The answer is it just does - it’s how reality is.

Yes, I don’t take credit for anything that might be good about myself.

I'm open to being wrong, but all things evolve, including the human psyche. I'm not big on spiral dynamics but if humans used to largely be stage red and now they're largely blue/orange, does it not make sense they will continue to move up the spiral? On a long enough timeline, we either self-destruct or transcend. When I consider advanced aliens, it's seems unlikely they haven't transcended this dog eat dog, law of the jungle mentality.

It makes you feel good to hate trans. Most people here don’t get off on shit like that.

And yet the average human character has evolved far beyond what it was 5000 years ago.

The solution is evolution.

You can be successful and keep your values. They can actually set you apart. I have the ability to manipulate the shit out of people but I won’t do it because I couldn’t live with myself if I did. It wouldn’t be worth it in the end. Betraying yourself isn’t an option, even if it means you sacrifice everything.

Tis true - to be happy, you first have to remove unhappiness. But you cannot stop at the removal of unhappiness, lest you bullshit yourself like someone who mixes blueberries in a broccoli and chlorella smoothie, takes a sip and says "Mmmm, delicious". If you're chronically sleep deprived, it doesn't matter how peaceful you are - you will experience the opposite of happiness when you're forced to experience something you don't want to. When you remove all the blockers to happiness, happiness doesn't just usher itself it. Relative peace and calm is easier to access, but I'm not sure I'd call that happiness. Happiness seems like success - it's different for everybody.

I don't think so. This gets back to the "perception" aspect. Meaning is derived from the perception of the context and content. Without the context, the content can't have meaning, but that doesn't mean the context gives or assigns the meaning. Context does largely determine what meanings can be derived, (which is what I was trying to get at with the "objective" quality), but subjective interpretation interacts with the objective aspects to select what meaning actually arises. Context limits meaning and makes specific meanings more likely. It paves the way for meaning. Without context, content can't be interpreted meaningfully. The main aspects are: context, content, and perception. All of these are interdependent. Context = the structured possibility space Content = the distinctions inside it Perception = the interpreter that derives meaning It seems hard to come up with a good definition for context without mentioning the other 2. Keryo brings up a good point about how context changes over time and is influenced by previous meaning making. This seems important to have in the definition. All that said, I'm still failing to see how this inquiry pays off. All I'm doing here is exercising my cognitive abilities.

So you're a Karen?

Yes. Yes, outer space is just the "possibility space" for things like distance between objects to exist. "Distance" would be a variable assigned to "content" within the space. The collections of content do comprise a particular context, because context cannot exist without content. But that does not mean content = context. Context isn't reducible to the things inside it. The possibility space and the things that arise in it are inseparable, which is why my definition includes content. My definition includes the space itself, the content, and the perception aspect. Together, these create "context". I think the definition needs all 3. Yes, this is what I meant by "dynamic". The possibility space can allow for an infinite number of configurations, but once you start to make distinctions by setting variables, constants, and constraints, the space takes on a particular shape, thus forming a context. But the possibility space itself is not sufficient for defining context IMO. When you look at a small tree next to a big tree, the big tree is objectively bigger. The distinction is not subjective. The perception of the distinctions include both the subjective and objective content. I'm not sure though whether to call perception "content" though. The perception part of my definition could use some work. It might even be best left out, I'm not sure, but I feel like it has to somehow fit in. I mentioned dynamic and nested as properties of the possibility space, not the content. "Context: a dynamic, nested possibility space, shaped by constraints and structured by variables and constants." I think the disconnect is coming from my inclusion of content in my definition. I think we agree that context is the precondition for content, but the way I see it, you cannot exclude content from the definition because without content, there’s no distinction, and without distinction, there’s no context - all there is, is the void. Context only has meaning in relation to content. So maybe you could say that the ultimate context has no content, and maybe we could call that the absolute context, but if we define that as context itself, we don't really capture what context is. Context only becomes context when there’s content/distinctions inside it. No content, no context. BTW, I'm no expert on this stuff. Engagement with this thread is my first go at this and I'm forming these ideas somewhat on the fly and from intuition.