rachMiel

I think the path of nihilism is not for the faint of heart! With sensitivity and intelligence, it can be almost ecstatically freeing. But wobble a bit and you might find yourself in the abyss of despair. Buddhist emptiness (sunyata) is said to be a good antidote to nihilism gone bad, they're similar in key ways, but emptiness avoids the potential abyss-attractor of meaning.

I thought you did a good job, were simpatico, clear, and engaging. The only thing I'd suggest that might improve your public speaking is to do some training with good vocal teacher to strengthen your voice, volume and tone, it was a bit challenging at times to hear you and it sounds like you may have been straining your voice to be audible?

Visual information tends to play a dominant role in our sense of self-identity. It's in the homo sapiens cards. Close your eyes, where are *you* now?

It's probably safe provided the actor can get "unpossessed" when they're no longer acting. And I'd imagine that's a skill most actors learn early on, the ability for them to enter and exit a role fluently. But there are plenty of stories of actors whose real lives and movie/tv roles melted into each other.

Are there any tulpamancers among us? I'd love to get an insider's view of working with tulpas.

From what I've read, tulpas can develop "on their own" independently from their creator. (Hey, sounds like hoomans!) My concern is creating a tulpa that metamorphosed into a negative presence for me and others. You want your imaginary friends to be friendly, right?

The original posting said 'the terrifying beauty of infinity'!

https://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/galileopalazzostrozzi/multimedia/TheHarmonyOfTheSpheres.html

Beware: Take Krishnamurti to heart and it'll change yer life!

@BlueOak Krishnamurti said tons about the danger of being dependent on authority, external and internal. Chapter 1 dives right in: https://ia800405.us.archive.org/2/items/FreedomFromTheKnownJ.Krishnamurti/Freedom From The Known - J. Krishnamurti.pdf

@effortlesslumen You may be able to find the BBC tv production of Lathe, it's great fun.

"Good from far but far from good." I like it! Why "Thanks God"? Do you find messing around with Kundalini potentially dangerous? And how is your Kundalini Kriya practice similar to tulpamancy?

Sounds like sage advice, thanks. That's one of the reasons I started the thread, to get a sense of the danger from the pov of a practitioner.

Stories all the way up, and all the way down. (Is seeing that a story?)

Thanks, looks good! I'm a big fan of movies about cults, favorites include: The Seventh Victim Split Image Apostle The Endless Midsommar Warning: Apostle and Midsommar are both quite disturbing.

Trust is the raft, truth is the 'other side.' At some point, perhaps, trust becomes moot, doesn't matter anymore?

What's wrong with hedonism is, ultimately, what's wrong with any 'ism,' it tries to reduce the mystery (and mess!) that is the world to a tidy formula, and living by formula, any formula, is not living freely.

But what amazing intense heightened time they had on the way. ;-)

I like that: the lure of the self. Like a siren beckoning us to the shore. And, though it's (arguably) a kind of mirage, it *feels* realer than anything else!

For the mix: Reality is the intertwining between subjective mind (what's in here) and objective stuff (what's out there). It is not a pure hallucination or creation of the mind, neither is it a pure gestalt of material stuff. It's a collaborative effort.

Good question. I am neither a semiotician nor a linguist, so I'll resist winging it and probably getting it wrong! Ask GPT or Bard: What is the link between the map and the territory? How does a map symbol get attached to something in the territory?

@HMD Bravo! (Who gets to decide what's 'better'?)