Anderz

Here is a new(?) unusual mix of styles.

Trusting people with credentials more than laypersons about a specific area of expertise is valid, but it's an incomplete approach! It's like how the word 'trustless' is actually good when it comes to for example decentralized systems. So what is the problem with trusting experts? One problem is that it's just second hand information, we don't have direct knowledge ourselves. Secondly, an expert could be lying! Either willfully or out of ignorance. Lots of corruption and manipulation schemes going on at the personal stage. I predict that one major solution to this is that artificial intelligence (AI) will become extremely clever and will soon easily be able to outperform human experts in most areas. This can be useful as a transition from the personal stage based on trust in authorities to dropping that need of trust at the transpersonal stage.

How to deal with the integration between the individual and society, so that it becomes a harmonious whole? One thing I noticed is that the crystallized ego is prone to struggling against life. Lots of effort caused by friction spent at the personal stage. So the key seems to be to lessen the frantic struggle of the crystallized ego. Eckhart Tolle said that in what he calls presence (as opposed to be lost in thought) it's possible to do things fast and even run in some situations and with inner peace. And reducing friction is not about becoming lazy, at least not in the usual way which is still a form of inner conflict with life. Instead my practice will be to be restful and then have high energy activity when it feels right.

The polar channel idea and entropy I mentioned earlier also applies to society vs individuals. At the personal stage this situation is scary. Society is like a "Matrix" that is sucking energy from the individuals in society. Much like how in the Matrix movie the machine world had turned humans into energy sources, like batteries to fuel the system. My reasoning for why this is so is the obvious fact that humans grow old and die while society as a whole survives. This might seem like a natural situation, and as a developmental stage it is natural, however it's also a situation where society is the noise-free polar channel and the individual people are the noise channel. Not good. The transpersonal stage resolves this situation I predict by removing the lopsided situation between society vs individuals so that both survive instead of one side sucking the living daylight out of the other side. A balance is achieved when entropy is recognized as order instead of as in the personal stage where entropy appears as disorder.

Stephen Wolfram has talked a lot about combinators recently, such as in this recent video: It quickly gets very complicated and over my head, but I recognize, similar to his physics project that the foundation is extremely simple. It's similar to information but more powerful. All information can be represented with binary notation. For example all information on the entire internet is just a bunch of ones and zeros. So why the need for combinators? What hit me is that the combinators combine all the information into a single unit! Binary information is dualistic. It's just a sequence of ones and zeroes. The combinators on the other hand as I see it form an integrated wholeness, actually a holarchy which means a hierarchy of holons. Combinators include the interconnectedness between things into a single whole which can be seen as a nondual perspective. The transpersonal stage is as I see it a larger holon than the personal stage. I will do some more research about combinators to see if they can be used for understanding holon structures and from that find how the transpersonal stage emerges out of the personal stage.

Aaron Abke has this new video where he makes a clever interpretation of this passage in the Bible: The word 'yoke' can be interpreted as joining which is the same meaning as the word 'yoga'.

I suspect that worry is a result of the intellect striving to bring order out of confusion. I will experiment with allowing confusion when worry comes up. The usual way the mind works at the personal stage is to try to come up with solutions to worry. Even if the intellect comes up with a solution it strengthens the crystallized ego and makes it harder. Allowing confusion to enter the mind dissolves the worry. That's the idea I will test by practicing it.

How to deal with bad things happening and unacceptable situations? I think Leo is correct that when looking at reality from the absolute and total perspective then everything is good. So a strategy to try is to judge everything as good. And that situations are bad in a relative way and will in the long run turn out to be good. So instead of immediately trying to correct problems, my practice is to first question whether it actually is a problem, and if so if there are other ways to deal with it or simply wait before jumping into action trying to fix problems. It's similar to delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is only relevant at the personal stage I believe. At the transpersonal stage I think that the opposite is the case, that we then aim for instant gratification, not because of impulsiveness but because of understanding that everything is good.

Professor Robert Sapolsky talked in a video about a television program where people have three choices to get help with answers, 1) eliminate half of the choices, 2) call an expert or 3) ask the audience. And the best result is when asking the audience with 91% correct answers. I have heard about similar things, such as people guessing how many balls there are in a jar. The guesses are all over the place, yet when all the guesses are averaged it results in a very accurate answer! Imagine the power of being able to access the wisdom of the crowd directly with our minds. And not only within a small group of people, but the whole world! At the personal stage we are disconnected and isolated to only our own personal knowledge. Basic information can be found on places like Wikipedia but much knowledge is more complicated and related to specific situations. The transpersonal stage I believe gives us the capacity to access the wisdom of the crowd directly in our consciousness, and without the help of technology. As a simple analogy, the personal stage is like a standalone computer disconnected from the internet, and the transpersonal stage is like a computer that is connected to the internet.

The personal stage is dominated by reductionist thinking. That's of course useful, but limited. And I came to think of how basically all our personal memories have this kind of predictable reductionistic patterns. And how we structure society is in the same predictable ways. Things like language, laws, money and calendar time are clunky, rigid, conceptual and predictable structures. I will experiment with loosening up my inflexible thinking by allowing confusion to remain. The idea is that the confusion will blend with my crystallized ego and restructure it. And I believe it can be achieved by not clinging so much to thoughts. Especially "serious" thoughts about survival and how to cope with the future are prime candidates for becoming more flexible since they are especially hard and crystallized.

Wait a minute! Confusion is the noisy polar channel. And the crystallized ego is the noise-free polar channel. That's in line with the idea I posted earlier about how we at the personal stage see entropy as disorder. The additional knowledge is the polar channel model which explains how it works. The crystallized ego struggles all the time to keep itself noise-free. So confusion is something to totally avoid at the personal stage. Entropy which as Leonard Susskind said, is hidden information. So entropy appears as noise simply because we don't understand the meaning as the information is hidden. My idea is that our manifested reality is actually perfect order. So confusion is only a result of a too limited perspective. One practical solution is to allow the confusion to merge with the crystallized ego. And a practice for that is to allow confusion without trying to escape it. The idea is similar to how a vibrational pattern briefly turns into a chaotic pattern before it reconfigures into a new pattern such as in this video: It's also similar to how reductionism is a clinging onto one pattern and is unable to transform into a more inclusive and complex pattern. I found this lecture where Robert Sapolsky seems to be talking about something similar:

Hmm... I now read in a news article that Huawei uses something called polar codes in their 5G technologies. It said that information is separated into two channels and one of the channels ends up with lots of noise and the other with much less noise. That's useful for error correction in transmission of data. To me that sounds similar to how bacteria use asymmetric cell division where one of the daughter cells becomes free from defects and the other cell gets all the defects. And bacteria have survived like that for billions of years! I'm wondering if a similar approach can be used for personal development. Confusion I as posted about earlier can be seen as a form of noise. I don't know yet but I wanted to document the idea in case it can be used later.

The personal stage is very much about manipulation. Sometimes the manipulation is even constructive. Trump said in a recent rally that it's an open secret that the Democrats have committed voting fraud for a long time. That's in line with my speculative idea that I posted about earlier! Let's say that Trump is correct. I'm still on the fence, but for the sake of argument while I have the idea in my mind I need to start with the assumption that the Democrats have been involved in voting fraud on an industrial scale for decades. Is that ethical? It can be! Because if people are greedy then the Republicans will win all the time with low taxes and society remains at Orange as the highest stage in Spiral Dynamics. So in order to pull society towards Green there might be necessary for the Democrats to use voting fraud to prevent society from getting stuck at Orange. Maybe not entirely purely ethical, haha, but I can see a possibility for a constructive purpose.

Another speculative idea that came to my mind now is that confusion can be used as fuel for transmuting the crystallized ego into a fluid ego. At the personal stage we totally hate confusion, and for a good reason. At least with fear and aggression there is a possibility of taking actions. With confusion there is only complete inaction. My reasoning for why confusion can be used as fuel for a personal transformation is the premise that our consciousness at the personal stage is very limited and isolated. That tiny and separate consciousness has to be abandoned. So turning to confusion and welcoming it allows for a letting go of the personal stage so that our consciousness can begin to move towards the much larger transpersonal consciousness.

One tricky thing with my idea is that not having control is horrible at the personal stage. It gives the impression of becoming a bleak and mechanical robot without willpower. So somehow personal control, individual sovereignty and freedom of choice need to be preserved. Ken Wilber's integral approach is absolutely excellent in this case. Instead of tossing out personal control it needs to be transcended and included. I speculate that this integration will be achieved through moving from the personal stage as an isolated individual to a larger holon, a collective consciousness where we become that larger holon. And the integration will happen I assume by the larger holon pulling us into itself through the evolutionary process of nature. This means that personal control will be abandoned, but only when we are ready to take the step into the control of the larger holon. And then our personal control becomes integrated and included within the larger holon.

The transpersonal stage is like taking the foundation of the personal stage and flipping it around. For example a trustless person at the personal stage is something bad. A trustless person at the transpersonal stage has transcended the need for trust, so trustless then becomes something good! It's similar to how in cryptocurrencies a trustless system is something desirable. For example Bitcoin is what is called a trustless system because it's decentralized without anybody in control over it. And so even there trustless means something good.

Who is in control, the id, ego or the superego? Or does it depend on the person and the situation? The answer is that neither of them is in control. So transpersonal mindfulness is simply about recognizing that nobody is in control.

Not much of a remix. Very similar to the original. I just wanted to practice with the new software.

Haha, Leo has a new blog post where he bashes Stephen Wolfram. I'm a huge fan of Wolfram but I agree with Leo in this case. The statement "the universe exists" is undecidable, Wolfram said. I think what Leo was pointing out is that direct experience of the universe is already direct evidence. Even the statement "the universe exists" is a part of the existence itself. From a conceptual perspective Wolfram is probably correct, but it's a mistake in my opinion to remain trapped only on the conceptual level. Wolfram also mentioned somewhat of a nondual perspective when he said in the video "We are it!" referring to how computational equivalence makes everything having the same intelligence, from a rock to a tree to a human to a galaxy to a super AI and advanced ETs etc.

Oh! I now realized that the id is the true part of the personal self. The ego is a construct of separation and so is the superego. So the id is - contrary to the usual belief - grounded in reality. Instead of the id being animalistic and primitive pleasure-seeking, from a transpersonal perspective the id is the connection to wholeness. As a side note, the ego and the superego are of course also grounded in reality when seen from a nondual perspective. The separation is an overlay, a conceptual construct both in society and in the individual at the personal stage.