I am stumped by this question

[trenton]

In this thread, I am not asking for an answer. Instead, I am asking for clarity on what exactly I am being asked to answer. next i am looking for how inquiry should even be done to approach this kind of question. The question I am exploring is "what is the nature of anything." I am genuinely stumped on how to even approach this kind of question. The question seems extremely loaded and tricky to even try to answer.

The reason I was drawn to this question is because I have done a lot of intellectual work which was ultimately in service to self-love through self-knowledge and self-understanding. In my case, it was a wounded child who felt unlovable. I used various psychological frameworks to explore the inner world. This included perpetrator psychology and developing empathy for people who cause severe harm. This empathy I applied to extreme devilry ultimately applied back to myself. It became the tool for self-love that allowed me to feel again. My feelings were previously shut down completely because love was believed to be wrong or dangerous due to being associated with my parents who hurt me.

However, I questioned these frameworks deeply enough, and I noticed that there are clear limits to the psychological frameworks as well as the sociological frameworks I have been heavily exploring. Yes, they are useful and highlight certain truths, but they have limits. For example, empathy is one form of love, but then in spirituality there is now claims of metaphysical love through unity of being. This is when Leo might say things like "you are ontologically identical with a sex trafficker." What throws me off is that this does not seem to logically follow empathy. Empathy is like one approach to love by understanding someone as a human being. Leo's claim is fundamentally different in that it is about the metaphysical nature of the perpetrator and the self. From the metaphysical perspective, morality becomes irrelevant because the nature of anything at a fundamental level would be such that the surface level content could literally be anything. It could be a rock, a tree, a bird, or Ted Bundy. Leo appears to claim "I am (blank)" could be filled in with literally anything and it would not make a difference. The reason I seem to hit a wall at this point is because metaphysical unity does not logically follow empathy even if they don't contradict each other. they seem to be two different flavors of love within different domains.

In the case of psychology, there are various metaphysical assumptions that don't compute with Leo's claims. For example, psychology is fundamentally the study of humans. It assumes that we are separate beings with distinct minds. Given this assumption, it would never occur to someone to ask "what if I am ontologically identical to SpongeBob?" This all raises the question, what if the reason I struggle to love myself is because I fundamentally have a wrong or limited concept as to what the nature of love even is? If it is true that metaphysical love is possible, then what if this would give me a completely different approach to self-love, which is the fundamental reason why I was drawn to philosophy and intellectual work in the first place. Ultimately, me trying to understand metaphysical love is the logical trajectory of the child trying to love himself, but I also have done at least a little bit of metaphysical inquiry which has deconstructed this identity.

First of all, if it is the case that the content of existence is irrelevant in terms of the nature of love, then it suggests that I can simplify the process of love. Previously, I used complex psychological frameworks in order to make empathy for serial killers possible by studying criminology and discovering counter intuitive findings. However, these frameworks are loaded with filters like self vs. other, other mind theory, morality, humanistic approaches, and so on. All of these filters can still ultimately grasp a flavor of love, but it is also possible to go straight to love without all of these filters designed to make empathy for serial killers possible. Of course, all the love I applied to these people ultimately applies to myself as well, but it still operates within materialism and dualism.

When I started doing some metaphysical inquiry, I noticed how I started to trigger a sense of being threatened due to the sense of destabilization. I noticed how when I started looking through the lens of different metaphysical frameworks such as solipsism, it radically changed my relationship with reality in that I would now see other human beings as though they were me, but just another aspect of my own mind which appears to be philosophically sound. This has all kinds of implications in terms of how worldviews are organized. Of course, there are so many questions here that I am not even close to having a clear answer, but my tentative answer which I quickly came to was metaphysical relativism.

The idea is that it is possible to see reality through multiple lenses of metaphysical presuppositions which in turn changes ones relationship with self and reality. From this standpoint, there is not an obviously objective one answer to which metaphysical presuppositions are correct, but at least it is a start which recognizes how reality, self, and the relationship to other is constructed at least partly by imagination. I also noticed that in doing this inquiry, my experience and my awareness were being directed based on past ideas I heard. The questions asked seem to direct how experience is felt. This is why the problem with metaphysical inquiry is that this particular domain appears to be especially susceptible to the power of suggestion and conformity.

Imagine for a moment, that Leo never told you that you were God. If you are here doing serious self reflection, then do you think that your inquiry would have been directed toward something like "I am nothing" instead or maybe "I am pure consciousness." The fact that so many people here say the idea that they are God seems like it should be impossible if not for Leo suggesting such a thing in the fist place. This is why part of the problem of doing metaphysical inquiry for me is that I first have to ask "how does it even occur to someone to ask these kinds of questions?" Imagine, that you just walk through your normal life until one day a kid at school says "Hey, I was wondering if the nature of consciousness is such that it constructs all of existence through infinite imagination. Is this the fundamental nature of God and reality?" Why would anybody even ask something like this?

On top of that, the inquiry itself is already biased by the idea that I could be God. Why would it occur to me to ask "what if I am not a human?" I never would have thought of this sort of thing without a random encounter with actualized.org. How do I do metaphysical inquiry if the questions themselves appear to shape experience through suggestion? I notice that my awareness is then able to see from the perspective of the multiple possible questions as though they were true in terms of the nature of my awareness. This is also consistent with my psychological studies in that it was found that suggestion and group conformity literally changes a person's perception of reality. This applies not only to moral domains such as gang dynamics leading a person to engaging in sexual harassment for the approval of his peers, but also to the perception of beauty, physicality, and literal length of line which appears longer or shorter based on suggestion. This would also be consistent with reality being a hallucination being dreamed, which is implicated in neuroscience despite the metaphysical assumptions baked into it.

All of this said, in terms of the question of metaphysical love, it opens up a completely different possibility in terms of what love could even mean. It seems to correspond to my childhood assumptions about love in some ways such as love being impossible without truth because my true nature would be lost and I would therefore love an illusion. Ultimately, my entire intellectual project of worldview building is and always was me attempting to love myself through self-understanding. If there is an absolute truth in metaphysics, then that would have implications for self-love in terms of what my relationship to love would be. The difference is that Leo appears to have been operating from genuine metaphysical curiosity from the beginning. In my case, it was trauma based intellectual work attempting to understand reality in service to self-love when I felt that I was unlovable. From this standpoint, my intellectual frameworks may not be designed to even answer a question like what is the nature of anything. My prerogative is heavily biased by a wounded child trying to love himself.

I have also noticed that throughout my life, part of my mind was attached to religion despite conscious disbelief. In that case, religion was representing something that my mind could not let go of in terms of goodness and love and "truth." The problem is that religion has a lot of moralistic language which targets the wounded child and then creates a difficult cognitive dissonance which took me years to resolve. Open metaphysical inquiry appears to be superior to religion because it offers the same possibility of God's love without the mythology. This is also speaking to what the child was seeking without the moralistic language that confirms that he is irredeemable.

Anyway, that is some of my inquiry into the nature of reality while sober without psychedelics. Apparently, when deeply focused it is easier for autistic individuals to enter deeper states of consciousness because the neurotypical mind has many automatic social filters for navigating the world which I do not have. One of the drawbacks is that the autistic mind is also prone to sensory overload which is why consciousness work can more easily feel overwhelming. There are pros and cons to applying the autistic mind to this kind of work because deconstruction can feel even more destabilizing due to sensory overload. I have already gotten accustomed to challenging deeply held assumptions in other domains such as politics and psychology. Even so, the metaphysical challenges still appear to sting me and trigger me more. It is just really hard, but I should be able to manage hard feelings given everything I have been through in my life.

What do you think about the nature of metaphysical inquiry and how it should be done or applied? I don't need a final answer about the nature of reality, but at least we can explore the nature of inquiry about metaphysics.

[Osaid]

Nice.

Experience itself is quite obvious, isn't it? The fact that you're experiencing. Maybe it's the most obvious thing there is. The truth of this can be experientially "grounding" or like an "anchor". Whatever there may be, if it is true, then it must include this fact of existence, which is the most obvious. Meditation is good for recognizing this.

Therein, the confusion doesn't seem to come from experience or existence itself, but it comes when you start dissecting this obvious fact of existence into its various contents, like "what am I", or "what is that", and so on and so on. 

So, I think a good course of action is to keep focus on what is already seen to be real and infallible, and then the unreal and fallible will vanish on its own. You can run around trying to disprove an infinite amount of different things, or you can just keep focus on what is already real and self-evident.

18 minutes ago, trenton said:

This is also consistent with my psychological studies in that it was found that suggestion and group conformity literally changes a person's perception of reality.

Then, it would probably be great to ask:

Is there an aspect of reality which is not susceptible to change? Essentially, an aspect which is changeless or unchanging.

[Hojo]

The metaphysical love of God is not in the same category as human love in terms of relationships.

It has nothing to do between relations besides the permanent attachment you have to God.

God cant think, it uses a dream so that it thinks about stuff. Without a dream going on God cannot do anything.

You cannot contemplate yourself into understanding the nature of love you have to stop thinking and it will automatically happen by itself.

Thinking keeps you away from Gods love thats why psychedelics work, they shut off your thinking brain and you instantly merge with God.

 

 

Edited 19 hours ago by Hojo