r0ckyreed

It is implicit understanding. I have an implicit understanding that space is infinite even though I cannot explicate or prove it or even directly verify it. Even though my experience feels finite (because I can only see so far) it is actually infinite partly because the space around me has no beginning or end.

@Razard86 Wow. That was powerful. You are right. I am overthinking it. My mind is tricking me into another deception. Now I kind of understand why Buddhists say “thinking is dangerous.” The external world and the Amazon package are thoughts in my mind. No more real than past and future. To even think an external world exists is to be lost in the illusion of time. Now, I can see that. Thanks for your intelligence!

Perceptions and ideas or otherwise, consciousness. Ohhh!!! I think I may be getting it now! My subjective experience or consciousness is all there is to what I call reality. I can imagine things outside but they are inside. But my consciousness is mentally constructing everything around me that I am not aware of. So what I call the external world is actually just 1. Consciousness and 2. a mental construction. If my mind is constructing all of the physics and laws without my awareness, then my mind is constructing the external world without my awareness. The external world now is redefined as my own mind!! Because even though I am not aware of what my mind constructs, it/I still constructed it nonetheless. So things existing beyond my awareness is not the external world, it is the nature of Consciousness or my own mind or Field. Let me think about this a bit more to try to make it clear in my mind. I kinda realized that what I call the external world is not what I was meaning by it anymore. Everything around me is inside of this Field, which feels like a mind or brain. Where I think the external world is, I am only left with my mind or Field. It is the feeling of being inside of a mind or brain that I recognize to be my own. Let me contemplate this more to see if this is full of crap or not. I have to directly grok it.

Sorry for my ignorance. I am trying to understand and trying to deconstruct my games and BS. It is hard for me to see my own blindspots. And I don't outsource this to anyone else, as it is nobody else's job but my own to spot. However, the main reason why I propose the question here on the Forum is so that I can gain more awareness of my blindspots so I can grow and gain a deeper understanding and become wiser. I am just ignorant to the games that I am playing right now, and I am not sure what games you mean. I am open to challenging myself and the games that I am playing. It is hard to do that though when I don't know. It is hard for me to understand, so I apologize for my ignorance. I am openminded, curious, and have a genuine desire for truth. I just want to understand the truth and not believe in it, which is a trap that I noticed myself fall into in the past. So that was a game that I was playing for sure. In my current situation, I only have access to contemplation and meditation as tools for gaining insight and understanding. I guess I do not fully understand really what is meant by no external world because there appears to be more than my subjective experience, but I know that from my point of view, my subjective experience is the only thing I know and can say exists even though there appears to be more to it. Thank you for your time and insight. All the best, Rocky

No. I haven't. And I admit this. But I cannot assume that my subjective experience is all there is. Nor can I assume that there is an objective reality. My experiences tell me that only my subjective experience exists because I have never experienced any experience but my own. But my logic/inference suggests to me that there is more to reality than my subjective experience. Each creature I see appears to have a consciousness of its own. There are many humans and creatures that know way more than I do. I am still trying to figure all of this out because both my perceptions and logic can delude me. So how can I trust any of my faculties to derive the truth? It seems like logic is a better lead because at least it can question the truth-value of my experience, whereas sight and sound are just appearances without question. The main issue is what kind of logic and how do I know whether my logic is valid or not. So I don't immediately get out of this conundrum. That is one reason why I love contemplation because I can use my intellect to question existence. What I really mean by logic is the use of the intellect to contemplate. I don't mean following narrow rules, which is a big limit I see with logic. I don't think I am just the body. I am the perceptual field of experience. I am all the sights, sounds, tastes, feelings, smells, and thoughts. I am The Field. What I mean by external is there being things outside of The Field like the sun, galaxy, ozone layer, etc. because those things are ideas within my Field, but they are not in actuality within my Field at this time. I believe that I can go to The Golden Gate Bridge, but right now, it is a belief in my Field. My whole question is that just because the Golden Gate Bridge is not inside my Field, does that mean that it ceases to exist? If so, then why do I hear about it indirectly through news, etc. It seems to imply that I can experience it directly out there somewhere in my Infinite Field of Consciousness. I think Consciousness still holds things in existence even though I cannot perceive them. Take the video game of Skyrim or GTA V for example. The game holds all of the locations in it, but you are only aware of your current one. You can think of The Screen as being what holds everything but is only aware of what is there. The Screen or Field of Consciousness is holding things that are outside of my current awareness of them. At least, that is how I imagine that to be. I apply that same analogy to the world that what if my Field or Consciousness is holding things in existence that are beyond my awareness of them. I think this makes sense given that space is infinite. And space is nothing more but the emptiness within my field that makes room for all objects to exist. If you can agree that space is infinite, then that implies that there can be objects in that space whether they are currently perceived in my Field or not. Can't you conceive of this? If so, then it is possible that objects can still exist outside of your Field while being rendered or held within your Field. We only perceive only a small fraction of The Field when compared to the Infinite Field of Consciousness. It makes me wonder why experience is designed like it is? Why is my sight only limited to this oval in front of me and why can't I see 360 degrees all around me. My auditory field can hear 360 degrees, so why is my sight limited to what is in front of me? Etc. Etc. We say that sight is our primary or dominant sense, but yet, our sight seems more limited than our sense of sound. Thanks for your response! I am still trying my best to understand given my ignorance. All the best, Rocky

To verify claims and conclusions. Ask your doctor next time if we need proof of the effectiveness of your treatment. No it isn’t. Nothing is obvious or certain. You can’t even tell whether you are dreaming or not.

Contemplation & Experiment Word for Word Journal Notes: "What is the external world? The external world is the idea that something exists and has a nature beyond perception, ideas, and consciousness. Things exist in a world outside of my subjective experience. Does the external world exist? I don't know. Everything I have ever experienced has been consciousness What I believe is outside of consciousness is based on an idea right now that I believe I perceived. My mind creates a narrative-logic of ideas based off of what I perceive. I hear a sound and the idea of air conditioning or bird is immediately attached to it. How do I test the hypothesis that there is or is not an external world? I am imagining a white grand piano in the living room of my grandparents house. What is that thought? Is there an actual piano beyond my thought? It seems like everything that exists is my perceptions and ideas. The actual piano that I believe exists is what I call direct perception/experience. If I do not directly experience an idea, does the idea have actual existence? Let's test this. I closed my eyes and walked around the room. Just because my visual field is closed doesn't mean my other senses are closed too. The room and space remain when my eyes are closed, but the room and space when eyes are closed aren't filled with color and vision. It is just blackness. The tactile field still exists and perceives the room the same. My mind has a memory of where my phone and most objects are in the room are. It has a memory of what my phone and guitar looked like. But my journal was not where I thought it was. I imagined it being on my small table, but in reality, I felt it on my bed. If my awareness of space, touch, and hearing still exist in my room when my eyes are closed, I can assume my thoughts of things outside of my room exist as well. Why do I prioritize sight as my main perception!!? All perceptions are equal including thought. Just because I perceive a wall in front of me and hear something behind it, doesn't mean that there is nothing behind the wall because I cannot perceive it. The visual form of what I am hearing is something I am imagining now, but that does not mean that the visual form of what I am hearing cannot be seen, which that is also an idea that I can see what I am hearing. But can I really? A bird is the form I see and the sounds I hear. That is what a bird is to me. Even when I don't remember where I put an object, it still exists as potential. I didn't remember where I put my journal or car keys, but it still existed as touch with my eyes closed. If I couldn't find my journal with my eyes closed, could it still exist? As an item that can be touched? The only way I can say anything exists is if I perceive it. But just because I say anything exists or not, does that mean that it actually exists or not? The actuality of existence seems to be my perceptions of it. I spun around with my eyes closed and didn't know my orientation. Then, I heard a sound from my phone that appeared behind me and I knew where to go. The perceptions of this journal right now are more real than the mere idea of it within consciousness. To say that this journal exists means that I can see it, touch it, hear it, smell it, and think of it and of course, write in it. The journal exists for its perceptions and its utility. Te reality of my journal when I am not perceiving it is a mere idea that I conceive. But the question is, when I am not perceiving something or conceiving it, does it exist beyond perception and conception?" - r0ckyreed's unfinished contemplation on the external world

Also, I did an experiment for the external world and this is what happened: External World Contemplation Experiment I closed my eyes and spun around the room so that I was completely disoriented and didn't know where anything was. I used my imagination to move about the room. And then, I moved about the room with a silent mind. Just because I close my eyes and turn off my visual field does not mean my other fields turn off as well. I still have the auditory field that is in waiting mode for any sound to occur upon it. My tactile field is also still open as I found out the hard way when I moved about the room. I went around the room touching items and I realize that I was touching what felt like a computer and a guitar. I know it is my computer and guitar because I feel it. Why do I doubt that such objects exist when I do not see them? What makes vision the ultimate authority of consciousness? This is what I wondered. It occurred to me that vision and my other senses, including thought are all equal. No sense is more true than the other. They are all equally true. What I call my computer is nothing but my sensations of sight and touch and imagination. However, there were two things that happened. I tried to imagine where everything was. What makes me think an external world exists is that I imagined my journal being on my desk, but in reality, it was on my bed. Even when I did not perceive my journal, I imagined it to be in a place where it wasn't. Now, I don't know if my journal was always on my bed even with eyes closed, but when I used my tactile field, I noticed that I was wrong about where I thought it was. Everything exists exactly where I left it, or for the most part, where I thought I left it. How is that possible if an external world does not exist? My mind was totally wrong for where my journal was, so how can it be solely responsible for where everything is now? I will have to entertain this thought more because the only way I know any of this is because I perceived it through tactile field and sight when I opened my eyes to see that I was wrong about where I thought my journal was. This shows me that an objective reality exists in the sense that reality is not just what I think or believe but at the same time, I cannot say that reality exists independent of mind. But I know it exists independent of what I believe or think about. Then, I had my eyes closed and I disoriented myself and then I just stood there trying to contemplate what the existence of anything is. How do I know I exist or have a body? Etc. But then, my phone rang and it was the dentist calling me to confirm my appointment. Lol. This makes me wonder that how does my phone ring and how does the dentist office call me if they don't exist when I don't perceive them directly? How do I know it was the dentist who called me? Because I have their number and answered the phone. How do I know their office exists beyond my own mind? I guess I don't know that either for certain. However, what makes me convinced that it does exist is that the space around me that I perceive is infinite. Space literally has no walls to it. The walls of space are contained within space. Objects cannot exist without space. If space is infinite and there is an end to my visual field, it must imply that like the tactile field with my eyes closed, it still exists. Like my auditory field with my eyes closed and no sound, it still exists as potential for all sound. I may not be able to hear what people are talking about, but I can know that they are talking even if I cannot make out what they are saying. I will probably have to do this experiment again because my thoughts on all of this are still not clear. The only way I know anything exists is because I perceive it and imagine it. What my experiment revealed is that my imagination can be completely wrong, but my perceptions are completely right. I was wrong about where I thought my journal was, but my tactile field showed me where it was. It also revealed to me that we base our whole understanding of the world through primarily the visual field. We take the visual field as being what the world really is. But all fields of experience are equal

I think if we trace the causes back, it will be an infinite regress problem. And yes, I can see how the tracing of the causes is an imaginary process that conflates the map for the territory. But how we live and survive, we presuppose that there was such a process for things. The mind cannot accept that everything I perceive to exist has no creator, origin, or process. From your state of consciousness, if you saw an unknown Amazon package, would you infer that there was a process? It could be a bomb or a book inside for all you know. Our survival mind cannot accept that there was no process; otherwise, we couldn’t exist right now and have this conversation. We could blow up and die from being wrong about what exists inside the box, which from what I hear on the radio/news, that stuff can happen and I know that is hearsay, but it is still possible. To survive, we assume that external world exists. It may not be a true model but it is helpful for sure. I am just wondering how you would incorporate the insight that there is no external world if you notice that things seem to appear behind the scenes like an unknown Amazon package and the inference of something inside. Doesn’t your mind do that naturally? I get how everything that I call "existence" is something I perceive or imagine, but when I am looking at an Amazon package, I cannot say for certain what exists inside it, but I know something exists in there that I cannot currently perceive. What is inside could be almost anything such as a book, a bomb, the wrong book, a movie, a condom, etc. With rationality, I can eliminate such things as a TV, tennis racket, etc. depending on the size of the box. How do you explain all of this?

How does it not? It sounds like Heaven and Love to my ears. I don’t think an awakened mind cares anymore “improving your experience of life.” What more is there to do if you realize that your existential nature is complete and identical to God?

My goal is to make a thread dedicated to understanding the conservative worldview. The series on When The Left Goes Too Far really inspired me to try to understand the conservative worldview objectively without bias. What resources have helped you increase your understanding of politics? You cannot understand politics without understanding conservatism un-strawmanned. Here are some resources I have discovered so far! https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/

There are many problems with Plato. A better question is what is wrong with empiricism since Actualized.org claims that Direct Experience/Consciousness is King?

I still think I made some good points that haven’t received complete sufficient responses. No one has debunked my points yet for how an Amazon package appears on the doorstep. There is a process involved even if you don’t perceive that. You have an understanding and logic that it didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Even a bad detective finding a dead body would understand that there was a reason/cause behind how someone died. There is no package or death without a series of causes. It just seems foolish to state otherwise given how we understand how things work. We know that for every result, there has to have been a process regardless of if it was held in our consciousness or not. Our consciousness sees the results of the processes but it doesn’t also witness the processes. The same can be said vice versa.

You are absolutely right. I need to focus more on the structure and not so much of the content. I guess I am just not sure what is meant by consciousness then. There are a lot of things that I am not aware of but that seem to exist. Knowledge is an example of that. Maybe knowledge is nothing more than consciousness being raised to a greater awareness of itself.

I way overthought it with my examples. The only example needed to illustrate my point is when you lose your keys. You have an idea of keys and you assume they exist outside of your perception!!! How is that!!? What are you really looking for? Of course, your keys to your car are an idea, and you have an idea of them existing somewhere that you don't know. Where is it that your keys exist if not perceived? From your subjective experience, your car keys (prior to finding them and when you actually find them) are just an idea and visual, auditory, and tactile perceptions. Your keys don't just disappear into a void. They are out there somewhere out there waiting for your consciousness to be conscious of them. Sometimes, they are right in front of your nose. Also, a burglar could have stolen your keys and took your car away. From your perspective, you may not know this. How is it that stuff isn't happening behind the scenes? I feel like there is knowledge about the world that our current subjective experience does not have full access to. Even if you didn't witness your car being stolen, how do you explain it's disappearance? There is an objective answer of where your car vanished to. I am gonna keep contemplating this until I find an answer. It is not so clear to me whether there is or isn't an external world. I know my car keys and car are nothing but my ideas and perceptions, but if I find that if my perceptions of my car in the driveway cease to exist, I can infer using my ideas that my car was stolen and is somewhere out in the world of my consciousness. I can then explore the world of my consciousness to find my car. Am I missing something here? I hope this makes sense. Thanks for all of your helpful insights and feedback so far. I am really trying to crack this big fat nut. Edit: What does it even mean when you lose something? Doesn’t that imply that it is located outside of consciousness and can be find within your consciousness? Thanks, Rocky

Yeah that is a better example! If there is no external world, then what the hell is The War In Ukraine? That point always stumps me. Homelessness and child traffickers exist even though I have never directly experienced any of them. They are an idea in my head, and I believe that it is a real problem "in the world." But I get that the only world I ever truly experience is my own experience. Homelessness and racism are indirect ideas that I hold in my consciousness right now, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. I am not sure I fully understand the no external world argument anymore because I feel like I am strawmanning it.

That makes a lot more sense now. The reason why I believe in external world is because of all the amount of training and construction of it. Man, it is so convincing though that there is an external world, a world beyond my perceptions because after all, who am I writing to since all I perceive is my perceptions?

I have! I have also had a dream where I was lucid in the dream and then I woke up and told my mom about it. But then I "actually" woke up and realized that I dreamt waking up and telling my mom. Me waking up was a dream!! It makes me wonder if being lucid was also part of the dream of a story I was dreaming up! I have also had a dream where I posted a question on the Actualized.org Forum. So I know that I cannot know for certain whether or not I am dreaming right now. What I mean by an external world is a world or any phenomenon that exists outside of my perceptions, ideas, and consciousness. I know, it doesn't make any sense because anything I think that is beyond my consciousness is an idea held within consciousness. But I truly think that my girlfriend and her house still exist right now even though I am not perceiving it at this moment. I also believe that even when I am not seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, or thinking about something, it can still exist. I have bumped my head before on something behind me. So that item must have existed beyond my perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness. But right now, I am thinking of that incident, so it exists within my consciousness right now. I am going to have to think through this more because I get that I am imagining my Amazon package right now, but at the same time, I still think there are things that happen behind my consciousness of them. My mind is creating a story of the Amazon package right now and will create a story if/when I see the box tomorrow of a book being inside. It just seems irrational to think that a package arrived out of nowhere. The story I concoct is an illusion, but so is the story or lack of story that the package appeared out of nowhere. If that were the case, then what are detectives investigating? They are using their imagination to create a story of how a murder took place, but they can find the killer. How is that possible if there is no external world? I know I can imagine all of this inside of a dream, which is why I still have no position on the matter. I can literally see how both sides have a point. I cannot get past The Dream Doubt, but neither can I get past the doubt that it could be possible that there is more to reality than what I perceive and think about it.

Yes. I thought about the same thing with Skyrim, GTA, COD, and the most obvious, dreaming. Like I stated in my other post Awakening Is A Dream, we cannot fully unravel The Dream Doubt. Of course. Of course this whole scenario is something that is being imagined in my mind. Of course I am imagining that I have an Amazon Package coming tomorrow. Of course I am imagining someone else reading what I am writing right now. However, my point still stands that there are many things that I am unaware of that still seem to exist. I honestly don't know whether there is or is not an external world, but each of us live our lives as if the external world exists. Every time you send a text message or call your friends or chat with others online assumes that there are other people that exist somewhere beyond your current perceptions, somewhere in the "world." But I do get that the only "world" I have ever encountered has been my consciousness, perceptions, and ideas. The issue is that how do I know that my consciousness, perceptions, and ideas are all there is. You can imagine you are in a dream and that is fine. But you might as well apply the same logic and question the assumption that life is nothing but a dream. What if there is something beyond our perceptions? After all, our perceptions from the point of view of being on Earth tell us that the sun appears to go across the sky, and our perceptions from the point of view from outer space tell us that the Earth is round and we go around the sun. People knew of this before they ever had a direct experience of it. So what if, there is something more to consciousness that we cannot perceive? I honestly have no idea. I am literally trying to question everything I assume to be true. I don't want to believe that the external world exists or not, I want to know whether it does. I grant you that I have never known anything beyond my mind/consciousness. Everything I have ever experienced has been within my consciousness, but it makes me wonder how the hell my phone rings out of nowhere? I mean if all of a sudden, you had an unknown package arrive at your doorstep, your mind would suggest that it didn't just appear out of nowhere, it wasn't delivered by a deer nor an ant. Some human delivered it and maybe if you are a deductive detective, you could figure out who delivered the package through inference. Just because we can only infer the external world doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If there was no external world, how is detective work even possible? Detectives use their imagination to solve crimes, but their imagination points to a world that exists beyond it. If it was just my mind constructing reality and that is it, then how is it that murder still happens when I am not there to perceive it or imagine it? All of this has made me question such claims that there is no external world and reality is nothing but what you perceive because on the contrary, it appears otherwise. In addition, you would assume there is something inside of the package as well. Why wrap a package with nothing in it. You don't know what is inside the package, but you can imagine opening the package and there being a book inside of it. How is that book in there? Did it appear there because you opened the package and perceived it or was it because someone wrote the book, sent it to publisher, and then the book was shipped to Amazon facility where it was wrapped and packaged? The latter answer seems more logically the case. Even though logic is based off of our perceptions, I find it that just trusting our perceptions alone leaves out a huge chunk of reality undiscovered. Logic tells me that an external world exists and my perceptions tell me that only what I perceive exists. I am curious to what you have to say to my response here. Thanks for your time and thoughtful insight here.

Does Nothingness Exist?

Don't take what I wrote too personally. No words were put in your mouth. What I stated wasn't directed at you. It was a general statement to not give authority to others and to think for yourself. It is good to listen to people who are high quality so I give you that. Sometimes though, silence is good too. It is all relative. However, I think it is much wiser to spend your time contemplating as opposed to reading or listening to others. For every hour you spend reading or listening to others, you need to be contemplating 1.5 - 2 hours is my rule of mind. I have no idea what the hell awakening is anymore, so I have no idea if you are awake, but I highly doubt it. If you think you are awake, how do you really know? Nobody is immune to self-deception. See my post on Awakening is a Dream for more on that. In terms of open-mindedness, there reaches a point where open-mindedness and closed-mindedness come full circle. You don't want to open your mind up to nonsense. There comes a point where open-mindedness becomes toxic. You eventually have to close your mind off to all nonsense, falsehood, and fantasy and just focus on what is true, but to get to that stage requires high degrees of open-mindedness because distinguishing between truth and falsehood is filled with many tricks and traps. All the best, Rocky

The most important person you should be listening to is yourself. Be careful in giving your authority away to other people. If you do that, you become a slave. A master is one who keeps their own authority and thinks critically to derive their own answers about reality. No amount of listening to other people will awaken you. That also includes myself.

Look out for Trump and DeSantis!

Esse Est Percipi

Science with a small s is what is mainly being critiqued. Big S Science, or what I call Pure Science, is contemplating, meditating, and using psychedelics to investigate consciousness. I believe Pure Science can implicitly understand the nature of consciousness, whereas conventional science is a narrow, biased method that isn't holistic enough to understand. Conventional science cares about utility not truth, whereas Pure Science cares about pure understanding of reality. The people who are laughing and strawmannirg aren't doing Science (with capital S), they are doing pseudoscience.