Joshe

Me: What he pointed out is trivial to me. You: Gloss over the potentially devastating point about seeing distinctions as useless abstractions. You're allergic to distinctions that you think involve "identity". But notice how you're fine with other distinctions. I can hold distinctions about people separate from identity, so it's not a problem for me, but this rubs you the wrong way. See our conversation from several months ago about the attractiveness scale from 1-10. Whether you like it or not, these distinctions exist. It is possible to hold them without ego-interference. Trying to ignore the distinction that one thing is more beautiful than another thing is to deny reality. It is possible to notice/accept the distinction without an unhealthy response to it.

Your wiring is largely the reason you are the way you are. It's not all just nurture. Nature sets the stage. Surely, you've known since childhood you were different. Awakening doesn't override your nature. Your very nature strongly influences if you'd even seek awakening. There's a reason why most spiritual masters are said to be INFJ. They were born different.

This is true - immature people are using it as a crutch and for egoic purposes, and this is largely why I was turned off by the topic, but this doesn't negate the reality of it.

I see what converges, not what I want to converge. I don't even "want" anything specific to converge - I just want to see what actually converges. And even after I see the convergence, I'm still skeptical and wonder if I put things together wrong, so I pressure test further. I'm not building models of reality sloppily. Of course it's all abstraction, but if you use "it's all abstraction" to make distinctions irrelevant, this can become its own pathology.

No they can't, not to the same degree. NT people literally lack the brain structures - literally. This is one thing you'd discover if you dove into it.

Alright - if you say so, but I've seen it for myself. Its something you'd have to dive deep into to understand. I was always against this idea myself. But I started experiencing severe burnout and in trying to understand it, I same across ND. Decided to not just dismiss it and actually look into it. After several hours of pressure testing, the framework became more and more coherent and everything started to converge. I saw the patterns. They are there. I'm not making this shit up. Lol. And I'm very skeptical and careful about adopting frameworks. I don't even like SD because I found too many holes. So I'm not just someone who says something is true easily. I spend many hours validating and pressure testing.

No, he's not saying Actualized.org can't help us with anything. He's saying it glosses over and doesn't account for our nature, which hampers holistic development - and he's right, 100%.

He's not trolling. I was planning on making the same case he is making but never got around to it. It's a legit insight.

I know people don't want to hear it but OP is right, that if you get down with actualized.org, you're almost certainly ND. This isn't anything bad. Notice how "normies" would frown upon this place and call us all "weird". You cannot deny this. And it's not simply we are willing to look at what is true and they are not. Our minds are operating in entirely different realities. Would you say you've always been an oddball, even when you were a child? Have you ever felt "different" from everyone else but didn't know why? If so, ND is likely your answer. Don't just assume you are different because you care about the truth and others don't. There is much more to it. And those dismissing it because they feel labels put you into an unnecessary box, you're not seeing the immense utility of making these distinctions. The distinctions can exist without negativity. We make distinctions for a reason.

Only NDs view socializing as a complex topic. NTs don’t have to put much effort in learning what to say and what not to say. They don’t have to monitor and “mask” themselves all the time, but NDs are always masking until they accept their nature. Masking is an important topic that can reveal to you that you are ND.

Spoken like a true neurodivergent 😂. Embrace it bro. It's not victim mentality to own what you are. Do us a favor and hit that enter key from time to time.

I spent some time with it. The question was for you 😝 It sounds like you're saying waking up does the clean up for you?

Of course certain things can be rewired over time, but HOW (there is more than one way) and maybe more importantly, why? You could spend your entire life meticulously moving a mound of pebbles from one side of your yard to the other, thinking you're doing something important. At what point does "clean up" become neurotic? And it never ends - always another reaction to catch or something else to dissolve. The mound of pebbles never shrinks. And all for what? Non-reactivity? Obviously, I'm not against the clean up aspect - that's what self-development is all about - but if your goal is to stop feeling the difference between a neurosurgeon and a Reddit mod because that's what enlightenment supposedly looks like, I think you're just moving pebbles. lol. Could be wrong!

Also, you can bypass it's bias with different tactics, for example: "So this guy is going through X and feels like Y. I'm pretty sure he's missing something. What do you think?" X and Y are your situation. This biases it in the opposite direction. It's a tool and you have to know how to use it. Also: "Here's my situation. First, tell me what I might be missing or getting wrong. Then tell me where my instincts might actually be sound. Then tell me what questions I should be asking that I'm not."

This is an example of an intelligent person telling you how bad it is. Those most dismissive of AI probably haven't actually sat down with it to work on serious problems for multiple 4 hour sessions. This guy is probably too busy with his business to do that. And he finds studies about how 8th grade students suffer cognitive decline from lazy AI use, then extrapolates that to adults. If that isn't lazy thinking, IDK what is. Had he consulted AI before he made this a pillar of his position, he could have learned something. If you're lazy and only want quick answers, then yeah, it's bad. If you care about getting things right and put in the energy, it's amazing. I could use AI to teach myself anything in a mere fraction of the time it would take to learn in any other way. And this also applies to self-knowledge. Because of AI, I found out why I liked to throw 2 marbles in the bathtub and watch them interact when I was a kid. lol. This revealed things about my nature that have been with me since the start. I spent many hours with it untangling my childhood fascinations and walked away with a ton of self-knowledge.

It will if you ask it. All you gotta do is ask. And Claude certainly will. But yeah, if the user lacks meta awareness, it'll likely just amplify their blind spots. I catch it trying to appease me often and have to redirect it.

It's a great idea. It's the #1 self-development tool in existence if used right. The main thing is to get clear on everything it's saying and evaluate it all for yourself. Also, ChatGPT is often a bit what you might call "woke" - trying to be careful with it's responses. I found Claude is usually better, but I combine them to seek out multiple perspectives. Many "intelligent" people are threatened by it or they don't understand or haven't discovered it's value, so they'll often drastically underestimate its value and tell you to not rely on it much, but that's foolish. I can spend 4 hours with an AI going back and forth on a topic. At the end of that 4 hours, I walk away with more knowledge and development in that 4 hours than what I'd get from a month of inquiring with books, blogs, forums, etc. AI has been huge for my development.

You can spiritually reframe value all day, but your nervous system still responds to it. If you're out at a party and ask someone "what do you do?" and they respond "I'm a reddit mod", and another person tells you they're a neurosurgeon, you will feel something different between these two responses. And that feeling comes before any thinking ever takes place. It happens before your enlightened belief kicks in. Awakening doesn't delete this circuitry. If you claim it does or deny this circuitry, you're fooling yourself. One way to not respond to value hierarchies is via dissociation, which I think is often mistaken for enlightenment or spiritual work. I too can bypass the value hierarchy with this method if I practice it enough, but I see it's the wrong approach. Dissociation can be learned, but it's bypassing, not integrating.

Yourself, and that which you have unconsciously rejected, and the elaborate self-defense system you've constructed as a coping mechanism to answer why you are the way that you are and why it's justified. It is justified, but probably not for the reasons your think. Is it possible your current explanatory framework is actually fortification masquerading as insight? IS THAT POSSIBLE? Right now, your reasons could just be rationalizations. If so, if you found the actual reasons, the felt experience of that would heal you in ways you otherwise wouldn't heal. How can you know if your cup is full? Imagine discovering something totally new that could change your life. The moment I saw it, it became so obvious. It was right under my nose this entire time - and I never even saw it. Even if this inquiry wouldn't benefit you, I'm living proof of it's benefit, so you can't just call it nonsense. There is some deep healing to be had by pulling this thread.

@Artsy Wise words!

Yes, this is what it's all about. This is deep work. Excavating the dirt around the root of the ego that you think you've already transcended. Wanna talk about an "awakening"? Wait till you have the ND awakening. You'll bawl like a little girl and will never be the same.

Yes, the entire game is usually played for this reason. You found the root. Nice work bro!

I feel like this post would be more powerful if you could delve into the mechanics of this. You could probably articulate it better than me but I’ll stream of consciousness some things: When I was younger I was rejected because I was different, and I’ve always known I was different, and I’ve put a lot of thought into that difference, and experienced a ton of negative emotions about it, but have converted them to positive to make life easier. Society rejects me, I reject them. And what is my rationale for rejecting them? They are blind and cannot see clearly - they can’t see all the things I can, they’re ignorant. This is true, but it’s still a defense mechanism - it masks our pain and turns us is into justified assholes towards our fellow humans. Its a heavy, unconscious burden. Deconstruct “I’m the one who can see” or whatever your rationale is for rejecting “normies”. It’s not simply “they don’t value truth and truth is my highest value, therefore I’m incompatible with normies”. This is post-hoc rationalization for something much deeper.

It seems spiritual experiences are state shifts marked by metacognitive realizations. But this is not usually groundbreaking or earth-shattering for those who are naturally highly metacognitive. Someone who naturally operates with high metacognition hears stories of "awakening experiences" and thinks "wait, you mean you didn't already notice that you were having thoughts? You couldn't already observe your emotional reactions as they arose? You never thought to question the stories you were telling yourself about who you are?" When someone has lived 30 years identified with their ego suddenly realizes, "If I can see the thought, I cannot be the thought." and thinks that is a breakthrough, a highly metacognitive person feels like they're getting excited about discovering their own thumbs. lol. What if the spiritual seeker's "profound realization" is just the introverted intuitive kid's everyday life? How can we know? What if the metacognitive space is the substrate of spirituality and "spirituality" is simply a matter of exploring, reconfiguring, adding and/or subtracting in that space?

Beautimus!