Carl-Richard

@Oeaohoo I would say that the knowing of God's fundamental nature (God as Oneness, which is one form of revelation) is exactly that: it goes beyond constructs and contexts. However, the mind has a tendency to corrupt such teachings in retrospect (the moment they're put into language), especially when it comes in other forms of revelation like visions or voices from God (which are often inherently linguistic). (This may seem like a tangent, but it's related): With regards to say eschatological visions, a postmodern question could be: are you interpreting them literally or metaphorically? Are they literally about the end of the world, or are they a symbol for e.g. the general fight between good and evil? For example, I really like the story of the Fall as a metaphor for the origin of metacognition (or reflective self-awareness), i.e. the time when humans really became human (which probably happened as recently as 30-50k years ago): we ate from the tree of knowledge and became aware of the fact that we were naked. You could argue that such ancient myths were designed to be taken metaphorically, as they predate rigorous sequential reasoning and instead rely on the mind's innate quality of making associations as a means of communication. This associative quality, in that it's inarticulate and intuitive, is driven by the very roots of your being (archetypes, the unconscious), and stories like the Fall can therefore serve as a sort of deep memory cue for those aspect within yourself (in that you "remember" the fall into self-awareness of your ancestors through your DNA so to speak). Pre-literate mythic people would be much more attuned to this than we are, as they were again less burdened by the noise of the intellect. So in a way, the inarticulate or metaphorical ways of communication are both less corruptible and more amendable to the deeper truths of your being. (If this seems disorganized, it's because I first misinterpreted your comment and then had to rewrite some stuff, and also the fact that I just recently fixed a broken sleeping schedule and threw all my hormones out of whack ).

I know a friend from high school who has it. Haven't talked to him in years though

There is probably a coffee table in front of him when he is recording.

Based on what I've heard, it's only a relative increase compared to other brain regions, but the same area still has lower activity compared to the sober state.

@thisintegrated Just from a first person perspective, I simply prefer the feeling of not knowing over illusions of knowledge, which is a tension I feel very often when I engage in MBTI typing, to some extent SD. However, I've noticed that with the very best models, I don't really have to engage in them consciously, because they're in a sense too obvious, maybe because they're fully ingrained in my thinking, or because they're an integral part of common language, like with Big 5. For example, when you're describing a person using normal personal adjectives, you can easily siphon each description under a Big 5 category in retrospect (because that is how the model was constructed). However, with MBTI and SD, it feels kinda forced, like my mind is funneled into some stereotypical lines of thought and post-hoc reasoning; square-pegging round holes.

I think that was in fact the main thing that triggered me that time you used sex as a metaphor (more so than the emotional dissonance). It was a kind of deconstruction or hyper-generalization of the concept, which seems to be your preferred style of communication (which is perfectly valid). I guess I prefer to work more within a standard linguistic framework and leaving the concepts as they are, although that certainly also has its flaws.

@Razard86 You have a thing for deconstructing concepts ?

If your life is good right now, why roll the reincarnation dice?

You're worried about thoughts, my dude

Mysticism and depth psychology generally uses different definitions of consciousness: phenomenal consciousness, which is transpersonal, vs. self-consciousness (metacognition), which is personal. Phenomenal or transpersonal consciousness is absolute reality. The unconscious is the non-metacognitive or inarticulated parts of one's personal mind. It's the forces and influences on the personal mind that the personal self (ego) is not able to talk about.

That's a scary thought, but that's all it is for now: a thought.

42:35 - 45:00 (context: he just talked about self-mutilation rates). 36:56 Schizophrenics are also social outcasts in Amazonian tribes. 50:35 interesting story on that topic.

I think 99% of famous people never intended to become famous, certainly famous intellectuals.

You're projecting human traits like metacognition and free will onto God. God just is. Creativity is its essence.

Maybe in an isolated sense (as there is a trade-off in choosing different levels of analysis), but in the larger scheme of things, you only end up covering more ground, because the higher levels aren't contradicting the lower. For example, SD doesn't explicitly describe or explain DNA, genetics or evolutionary game theory, but the things it does explain is certainly not incompatible with those things. It captures larger structures, hence it's systemic, biopsychosocial, metatheoretical etc. I mean pragmatic in the sense that one recognizes conceptual constructs and theoretical models as useful fictions – nothing more, nothing less. Reality seems to work "as if" what one is postulating is true, i.e. descriptive, explanatory and predictive utility. You could say postmodernism takes this conclusion too far and gets lost in the weeds ("all metanarratives are equally valid or invalid"), meanwhile metamodernism sticks its head up and regains some perceived sense of control. It does so by conceding that it's indeed only a perceived sense of control, but that this is still useful ("an useful fiction"), unlike say modernism which is stuck in a type of naive realism ("this is objective reality"). It's not just a practical problem, but also a theoretical one. Models are supposed to simplify reality into neat categories whereby one can e.g. create explanations (reducing one category to another, e.g. "biological inheritance is the generational transfer of genes"). If reality is indeed infinite, then the conceptual approach will never give a complete account. In a sense, giving a partial account is the point. That is what is useful.

Want to blow your mind even more? Psychedelics decrease net brain activity.

Like with most things, it's the extremes that are problematic. You have little to worry about unless you're a professional athlete or completely sedentary.

Nothing wrong about having ambitions (you just need to find the right ones for you). It keeps your senses sharpened, you get to apply yourself and do meaningful things. Maybe you even get to tap into your deepest potential (what you were "born to do") and experience flow states. Of course, it all has to be grounded in the sober ground of being, but removing one or the other will most likely leave you incomplete. Intrinsic joy is found in the marriage of meaning and being.

So you have no problems with non-duality as a philosophy, only the people who talk about it?

Which philosophy do you feel is being misconstrued?

whY nOt bOth? ?

Use the force

Hehe. I've kinda taken the path of "surrender" in the sense that I see debating and passionately sharing one's opinions as something one just does as a human, and that I neither hate myself or others for doing it. I just try to keep it as civil as possible, and also that when it does get heated, I'm not surprised or demoralized by it (like "why are humans like this???"). It's like every time I get the thought "oh well, this is just ego", I'm like "duh!"

@Michael569 I considered locking the thread earlier, but you beat me to it It doesn't work as well when you're not also blocking her (it's not mutual blocking), but again, it's not an effective solution. It's about pragmatics: making people less likely to get into conflict. It doesn't stop people talking about you, but it stops people talking to you. It might seem stupid right now, but I think if we tried it out, it would have more positive effects over time. However, I'm not sure how to know for certain when somebody is blocking somebody or not

Yes. Metamodernity is when postmodernity re-integrates some of the aspects of modernity (progress, meta-narratives etc.), more specifically a metatheoretical/systems/biopsychosocial evolutionary lens. It says that we have to work with the natural impetus of evolutionary systems and not against them. Examples are Game B, Spiral Dynamics, Integral Theory and Nordic metamodernism. You get ideas like radical inclusivity/pluralism ("don't hate the hateful"), "transcend and include", "don't abolish modern society/technology and escape to nature; marry them!" You get increasingly more useful models/fictions for addressing the survival challenges that you've defined as important. An example is again zooming out and seeing the relationship between biological, psychological, societal and evolutionary factors. The postmodern critique helps to keep that within the pragmatic frame, rather than making hasty conclusions of universality or objectivity (e.g. "my model applies to everything/everyone" or "my model is not merely an useful fiction; it's absolute truth"). True objectivity lies outside all relative contexts and constructs (the transcendent, the formless, the absolute, God etc.), so in that sense, there is a way out (mysticism), but it's generally not a good survival strategy on its own. If you care about survival, the intellect (rationality, science, morality etc.) and its relative biases should not (and cannot) be abandoned, as survival is inherently a type of bias. Mysticism that outright denies intellect leads to naive skepticism and nihilism, loss of order, direction, purpose etc. For the sake of functionality, being (the East) must be married with meaning (the West).