r0ckyreed

What Leo means by imaginary isn’t the same as what is colloquially meant by imaginary. By imaginary, I think he means mental construct. A horse is more mentally constructed because it is something you actually experience whereas a unicorn is just an idea in your mind.

But ice cream doesn’t exist because I’m not aware of it right now. You see the issue I’m pointing to? How could you even have the idea of me getting ice cream without inferring into some objective reality. Your statement already assumes that ice cream exists outside of my current experience.

I don’t mean to sound harsh or rude. I just get frustrated when people think their consciousness/perspective is absolute. My perspective is only relative out of many in comparison to the universe. My brain depends on the universe. The universe doesn’t depend on my brain. Of course, I could never know for certain whether something exists outside of my consciousness, but I cannot equally say that my consciousness is all there is. My consciousness is all that I am aware of. My consciousness also tells me that there are things that seem to exist outside of it such as when watching a video of someone stealing my car.

Conscious experience is all you have, but that doesn’t mean it is all there is. Truth is prior to proof. There are things that are true that you could never know and experience. Just think about this, whenever you learn something new, what was that before you knew about it? It’s not like Mars doesnt exist before you become aware of it. It was there before you were aware of it. But think about this, there are millions of colors that exist right now that your conscious experience doesn’t have access to. Don’t confuse the limits of your mind for the limits of reality. We are perceiving the world through our senses, but that doesn’t mean the world is just our senses. Our senses can delude us. You’re not considering that things could exist but our human brains could never access them since they are part of the universe. You think our nervous system has total access to reality? Human experience is one relative experience out of many. There’s postmodernism for ya.

I will say that an interesting thought is that we were all born from death in a way. We didn’t exist before we were born, yet from death life springs.

How can you be so sure? Death literally means the cessation of consciousness like a dreamless sleep but infinitely deeper. If an afterlife or continuity exists, then there is no death. When you look at a dead corpse, what continues? That consciousness is gone.

How do you explain that it still exists outside of my awareness? For instance, my friend could video record it being inside of the thief’s garage. If it really vanished into nothingness, then how is it the case that I can find my car and that my car could be stolen in the first place? My car is literally nothingness right now, so how can it be stolen? You see this idealism is bullcrap. It is not in alignment with how reality works. By this logic, there is no murderer because he is nothingness. But if we really believed this, then we wouldn’t bother to search. We would just say that our qualia shows us a dead person and that’s it. When you throw rationality out the window, you are left with delusion.

How would you know? Isn’t that just death denial? Sure, you are imagining your own death in the same way that you are imagining you being sick. But the reality is that death is going to happen in the same way that sickness is going to happen. People who denied Covid was a form of death denial.

Captain America and Aragorn are my favorite examples of masculinity.

Everything we do is geared towards death denial. Personal development for instance and wanting to create massive value that outlives you. Reproduction is the desire for immortality.

I liked the blog posts about contemplation, how meditation is not awakening and multimodal learning. I read every word of the long writing on your blog posts. I would like to see more about critiquing rationality, going meta-rationality, and teaching us how to think/contemplate more deeply. You do a great job in pointing out the criticisms and highlighting the limits of a certain thought, but I think more could be done on how to actually go meta on rationality for instance or how to go meta on postmodernism. My favorite blog post was your one of contemplation that you wrote a long time ago about how the ultimate game is contemplation. https://www.actualized.org/insights/the-metamorphosis-of-my-work My biggest struggle is still deconstructing rationality and science. I see the limits of rationality and science, but I cannot help but firmly believe that these are our best methods of deriving general knowledge about the world. Science is superior to Mormonism, rationality is superior to belief. I cannot be unconvinced, but I can see the limits that rationality alone may miss out of intuitive insights that may not make logical sense. But my mind wants to understand truth and for it to make sense.

There’s postmodernism in action lol. Is there such thing as an original intent or Leo’s original personality or is it all just my interpretation.

I think you’re an INTJ. J types are more goal-oriented and prefer having plans and structure rather than being spontaneous. I get the impression from you that you prefer sticking to your goals and your routine and if something sidetracks you, you do your best to get back to your plans. J types make detailed plans about their lives and future and prefer to have organization as opposed to chaos. But I also see you being more fluid and unstructured in some sense. For me, I am about 55% P. It’s also interesting that you are a T type since T’s prioritize rationality over feelings. I say it’s interesting because you seem to prioritize intuition over logic. I go back and forth between INFP and INTP.

I don’t think this question really has been answered. How is my conscious experience all there is if there are things that happen outside of it such as a thief stealing my car. I can go find my car out beyond what I currently perceive. It’s not like my car has vanished into nothingness until I perceive it. A thief can scratch the car even though I’m not there to observe it. How else would you explain how the scratches got there?

You ultimately want to learn how to meditate and contemplate without any external source. You want to learn how to just be awed and satisfied with just existence itself. The simplest method is just to walk through a forest and look at the trees as if seeing them for the first time. Hold a leaf, marvel at the beauty, and contemplate it.

The blog is sometimes more insightful than some of the videos.

Just because you haven’t experienced something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You haven’t experienced Mars, but yet, it exists even when you aren’t aware of it. You haven’t experienced the paranormal, but yet it exists.

ADHD is a gift in many ways. You are more aware of stimuli that others tune out. Another way is that your mind cannot stop thinking and wondering about reality or whatever you’re most interested in. Don’t forget about the hyperactive component. I have so much energy and have little awareness and care for social norms. That’s some of the benefits of adhd and autism. Your mind just thinks more creatively because your mind can jump around so much more easily than others.

I’m not sure what you all mean. The whole point of contemplation is to use your mind to deeply focus your thinking on a single question to derive insight. Contemplating death is a good meditation. Of course, you fear death and fear can be a good thing. But you want to contemplate death so you can live your life.

It’s an insight. The only reason I was able to have an insight was because I had clear defined rules. I practiced reality testing and when I was driving my car in my dream, I hopped out of my car and the road was still moving. That’s when I had my insight. Other times, it was me doing other reality testing techniques.

You are still gonna have your own discoveries. I go to the bookstore and find many great books that aren’t even on the list. Just get the book list.

Look into Maranasati

Contemplation. ADHD is a gift. Use your mind via contemplation.

Being single is the greatest gift you can give yourself. All that energy you give to maintain your relationship (which is a collective ego btw), you could give to becoming an amazing philosopher. Ofc, you can have a relationship and be an amazing philosopher, or you can become an amazing philosopher and pursue relationships, but learn to be happy without sex and relationships. If you take Buddhism all the way, you will become so detached and will hit a place where you feel happy just existing in your own solipsistic field. This field is the place where true relationships should be built from. Attachment is not love.

What do you all think of The Manipulated Man by Esther Vilar? She talks about all the ways women manipulate men and talks about the manipulations of the dark feminine.