caspex

I think true friendship is born out of shared experience and hardships. I think exposing yourself to many people should get you a few acquaintances to crack jokes with or share some time with. To convert them into friends you should plan hangouts and things to do together away from uni. Some people you click with instantly, those are the best.

Aside from the Wikipedia article, can you tell me any good resources to learn more about causality?

If there's enough influence, you won't have a choice

Hm. I was under the impression that 'Cause' denotes a factor that the effect is dependent upon while 'Influence' being a factor that may not be the sole determinant. Which is why I used the word Influence and not Cause. I do think these things will be important in developing a framework for effectively engineering influences or predicting outcomes in the context of cognition and behavior and I am sure a lot of the specific research is already conducted in fields of psychology and such. However for now I am trying to thaw out the definitions, goals and philosophy of Plasmism. Thing is Plasmism is something that unexpectedly popped into my head during Upasana as an insight and I am trying to thaw it out since then. I can see it but can't quite put it into words. Until I can properly define what Plasmism really is I can't decide on whether it should be given a separate name instead of something like 'Determinism with a focus on personal development'. I think it is worth it, at least personally, to see this through.

Not really. Realigning your values is only a part of it. If you do that you are helping yourself out by modifying your internal influences (more motivation, finding more meaning in the work, etc.). Plasmism is wider in that where it accepts the fact that external influences play a major role in shaping your actions as well. The goal with Plasmism, at least for personal development, is to create a system of influences in one's life that pushes one towards their goals. I am not suggesting complete effortlessness but what I am suggesting should be the difference between success and failure. In my experience this is what successful people do naturally anyways. They either are lucky enough to have those influences or build those influences themselves. What I have noticed in people, regarding internal influences, who are considered 'Great' throughout history is this: There are two cases, they are either born with certain influences already active within or develop them in childhood/later in life. I heard Professor Jiang once say that Ivy League universities require you to write an essay not really to judge your character but to judge whether you have any underlying trauma that can push you towards success, ultimately benefiting the university having you as their alumini. (His point is more nuanced than just this statement but I paraphrase.) This makes sense from the perspective of Plasmism. If you developed a compulsion towards achievement and perfectionism, due to your poor upbringing, you are more likely to attain success given the opportunity than somebody who is satisfied in themselves and their conditions. After all, you have this 24/7 internal influence within you influencing you constantly to achieve or be perfect. Now I am not suggesting developing trauma within, internal influences and internal strength can be built in healthier ways. I was thinking of a new term for this called 'Internal Anchors'. Internal Influences like perfectionism that pervade most aspects of your life. I haven't really defined what I mean by external or internal influences yet as I am still working on it so it would be foolish to talk extensively on the topic just yet. Also, it's important to note that you'd need supporting influences to even be successful at getting really clear on your values and whys.

I think there are various ways to approach this. However when it comes to procrastination you hardly have to do anything about your internal influences(although it could be that your internal influences such as your trauma do not sit well with your external circumstances which cause you to procrastinate, in which case you can try to solve your trauma or you could change your external circumstances). You don't really need to find a way to remove your internal need for comfort. That influence, I feel, will always be there. What matters is when that influence really triggers and calls upon you to seek comfort. When it comes to procrastination you can remove influences, or add new ones. It depends on why you are procrastinating. The thing is, if you are a user of Plasmism your first instinct is to look for influences that cause your procrastination instead of blaming yourself. Nobody just wakes up one day actively looking to avoid what they want to do. Depending on why you are procrastinating, you can remedy it accordingly. Here are two types of examples: -- External Influences example: a person who is stressed due to bickering at home cannot focus as well on his/her studies. Strategy: remove influence Influence to remove: Home Environment i.e. find a library or any other place to study. -- Internal Influences Maybe some person procrastinates on learning about a subject because they have been at it for very long but have made little progress. Maybe each step forward feels like two step backwards in whatever process they are pursuing. Strat: introduce influence Influence to introduce: a community that is trying to learn the same subject (just one example of a solution) Explanation: In these cases you seek comfort because you perceive each step more as pain than progress. Each time you head out to do that thing you have been procrastinating on, it's like setting out to hit yourself with a hammer. The problem here lies in your perception of what you are doing. A common solution I have seen is joining a community who is doing the same thing as you. To see others do it gives you hope. To see others rant makes you feel you are not alone. This is in line with Plasmism because you introduced an influence, the community, in your life to mold you into a person who perceives their task more realistically. It influences you into seeing reality again and realizing it's not that hard to take small steps each time. "As they say when climbing a mountain, only focus on the immediately next hold to grab onto instead of looking at the peak." This quote right here can influence you to feel inspired. So if you're procrastination is related to creative pursuits you can look for things that give you inspiration. Reading your favorite authors, looking at painting, traveling. Maybe there are things influencing you didn't even know were influencing you. Judges could have never guessed who goes first can influence their decision making. There are many such examples, I have only written a way to think about it from the perspective of Plasmism. What Plasmism offers for now is not anything new, you already know the stuff I wrote above. It just influences you to think in terms of influences instead of waste time feeling guilty.

Nothing's at stake calm your heart don't be silly the ego's really smart the world permeates your being yet on a ghost you cling the flower in your heart yearns to bloom pour the mind water it with your tomb one day your heart shall spring up high it's canopy covering the sky

Yeah I think for now it is best to call Plasmism a behavioral interface over causality. I intuit there is something to discover here which may make it a distinct model, which is why I am so interested. I can't really figure out what that intuition is yet.

Yes. I think that's how reality works. I think Plasmism takes the pressure off the individual to beat themselves up into wondering why they do not wanting something badly enough, or why their willpower isn't strong enough.

Yeah basically science but I think people who do science will be unhappy if I called my lack of rigor science. It's more like a personal endeavor. As for unit, I already have a name but unsure how to properly define it yet. 'Subtilon' which is formed from 'Subtilis' with the suffix -on as used in 'electron' 'proton' etc. Literally 'Subtle Object'. But it's not gonna be an objectively measurable unit, at least that's what I think. The reason for treating influence as a unit would mainly be so that in any given situation the practitioner of plasmism can define what the particular subtilons in that situation are and use the properties and categories as defined to predict outcomes. 'Influence' seems too vague to me for now. The main idea is that one can introduce 'subtilons' in their lives that will push them to be a certain way therefore molding themselves. As for now I see problems with this framing which is why I did not include it in the post above. I am still figuring out how to define Subtilons. It could potentially be a wider term than influence.

The idea is that even though free will is illusory as individuals we still operate within the system of influence that is reality. As far as our POV is concerned we may as well act as if we have free will. Plasmism aims to accept the reality of no agency while still aiming to act in ways that may be able to utilize this mechanism of influence within reality. It is acknowledged that whatever actions one might take to use influence as a means for change is already influenced and not within one's agency, but one acts anyways in hopes of a better future.

It definitely overlaps with causality. As it stands now it's just a reframing of causality/karma or determinism applied to behavior and cognition. But I do intend to thaw it out further. The direction I want to take this in is treating influence as a unit and finding properties in how it interacts with other types of influences. That can move Plasmism from a reframing to an actual model. That'll take me some time so just wanted to get this much out for now.

This is what has been working for me after lots of trial and error.

This is horrible. What I don't understand is why every time something like this is brought up it is chalked up to extreme cases and people start bringing their opinions on feminism. There is never even an ounce of empathy shown for these women by such people. I see some users here falling in that trap. Also by the way, what CNN uncovered with 'Zzz' is not an extreme case at all just fyi. This shit is rampant. I live in India and am a 21 year old male. I have had classmates and other men approach me saying 'Did you see the new leaked video? You haven't? Well I have it I'll share it with you'. When I ask them where they get such videos they usually point to either other men or telegram channels. When I tell them off they just see me as somebody who is not part of their culture and continue on anyways.

Bro's philosophy is either be all in or all out, peak black and white thinking

There's no witness either that's only a stage in between. I don't think this is a hot take on this forum but a lot of self proclaimed awakened folk get mad when I say this.

I will write a post on this soon but essentially you need to understand you are an animal who acts based on stimuli. Right now there are many causes and influences around you and inside you that cause you to doomscroll and be indisciplined. Find those influences and eliminate them, while creating causes in your life to make you more diligent.

I was reading the Hatha Yoga Pradipika with commentary by Swami Muktibodhananda and found this interesting passage I want to share.

@Oppositionless Just any Guru in general. If somebody were to teach how to awaken your kundalini, how would they know you actually got it and are not deceiving yourself? Is there some sort of energetic shift that they can feel which the kundalini projects outside? I apologize if my questions are shallow.

Title - Beyond the Sky One's mind is just like the sky sunshine when happy rain when you cry Cloudy is sad Stormy is mad A gentle breeze when you're a tad bit glad. The clouds are your thoughts they're never fixed taking shapes of all sorts everything's mixed. Now look beyond your mind You will find a space that is one of a kind where exists no haste There are no clouds, nor is any air Only a shroud of the one who's aware From there look below there is your mind oh so small, oh so small

This is my intuition

I see. What about a guru? How do they know?

There's gotta be a diamond among all the coal. You have to get your hands dirty sometimes. It seems people here cannot confirm nor refute my post.

I have been studying Vedic Astrology for more than a year. I started out a believer to give it a fair shot and it worked wonders. It was giving me so many answers to my problems and explaining why I am the way I am through my birth chart. But somewhere along the lines I realized that since every placement has so many different predictions it'd be almost impossible for your chart to not relate to your life in some way no matter what. I have a debilitated SUN which explained a lot of my personality as I grew up. But I realized that I also had many moments of confidence and personal strength which would oppose the Sun being debilitated; but because that's what I saw in the chart, I started associating only those experiences and recalling only those memories. If it was exalted I would still relate to it. If it was in any of the other 10 signs I would still relate to it somehow. At some point I realized that the Chart has trapped me into being a particular type of person. Vedic Astrology didn't help me break free of my shortcomings but trap me further. It just seems like a very elaborate system to justify circumstances. But here's the thing, I see the value in it as being a deep categorization of the different archetypes and energy templates of human societal reality. It's a great way to think about and create new characters in a fictional setting by plopping down planets in various houses and interpreting how they would interact with each other if this were the birth chart of the character. It's also great in understand how archetypes interact with each other and also in different aspect of lives. Such as the Sun and Saturn axis and how that same archetype plays into so many different levels of our world. However at the end of the day, I come out thinking that Vedic Astrology as a means to analyze the life of a person is meaningless and counterproductive. Not only that, birth charts probably don't even tell you anything about the life of the native. I can understand planets affecting the world currently but how does that translate over to: "The planets were in an unlucky position when you were born so you're gonna be unfortunate most of your life". Moreover, no matter what I say, it has a counter for it. "Your sun is debilitated but you're still confident in yourself? Well it must be in a good placement in D9 or it must be neechbhanga". "Your Mars is strong but your body is weak? Well the mars must have given you a strong character!" Yeah, and if my body was strong you'd have attributed it to the strong mars, but not when my body is weak. There's always a counter because there are always multiple predictions for any given placement. Now, Having said all that, there's an astrologer called Abhigya Anand who used this very same practice to predict the pandemic in 2020 and also the Bangladesh stuff before it happened. You can find his videos on youtube. Stuff like this really makes me wonder whats true and whats not. Maybe I am missing something. If somebody here is highly experienced in this field it'd be a huge favor if your could clear my doubts. I am open to astrology being real, I have been for many years, but I need proper logic behind why and how it works. I would also like thoughts from the rest of you too as to what you think about this stuff.

Does anyone at least know a good forum where people practice astrology