Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

Photography 2

What is a photograph? To most it's blindingly obvious. It an image or shot captured on a camera for later presentation. But really it's much more than that.

The first thing is the idea that something is being captured or shot at. It really has the hunting and trapping instinct behind it. Photography has some of the hallmarks of this. For some photography there is a lot of elaborate setting up and waiting for the moment to arrive. For other types of photography you quickly point, shoot and bag the specimen, to consume it later. It's curious, the bow and arrow is replaced by the camera.

What exactly is being "captured"? To cut the chase what's being captured is an interpretation of a moment in space and time. The pure light going in through the lens is stored and manipulated in countless ways until the result is nothing like the original. Photographs are not faithful reproductions: we don't have rectangular vision or view things in two dimensions. Photographs are composed, staged, framed, shot in black and white, lightened, blurred, colour corrected and digitally manipulated to create drama or intrigue. A single photograph may even be composed of many other photographs mashed together.

A photograph is a good metaphor for how reality works. Ultimately what we perceive as reality is merely an interpretation according to our mood, circumstance, thoughts, age, and countless other factors. What we perceive is absolutely unique to us too.

What's being captured is ourselves.

What else is a photograph if it isn't a facsimile? It is a sensory poke in the eye. It's a bit like that song or perfume that reminds you of an old flame. The photograph can transport you back to another time and place and give you that disconcerting discontinuity, that you have changed so much and that a lot of time has passed. It can also convey a frozen story like a frame in a cartoon, all the elements then become a symbolic visual language. A photograph can also be like currency to be used in exchange for social media attention.

In the end a phograph is never static or solid, it shifts and morphs with the viewer; just like the rest of reality.

Edited August 27, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I'm enlightened. No really.

This business with enlightenment is just the embodiment of a paradoxical riddle.  And, it's exactly the embodiment process that seems to be the problem. Most normal practices in every day life are about attainment. The word attain comes via Latin and French and basically means "to touch". We people are kind of obsessed with feeling and touch, it's the only way we know something to be true. You see, sight and sound are not nearly enough. The only way to find truth is to have an emotional reaction towards it. Without touching the truth we're not sure at all: we have to embody the truth; become the truth.

But enlightenment is not really about anything at all. Seekers of enlightenment have already failed. They've failed because they're seeking to attain some truth and embody it emotionally. But how is it possible to attain something that doesn't exist?

What? How can enlightenment be talked about so casually as if everyone knows what's being understood, it must be true? How can I sit here and write that enlightenment doesn't exist? What makes me so arrogant and sure?

If enlightenment is about anything it is about being. Here's a thought experiment. Try and imagine what you will be like on 23 June 2037. How will you have changed, what life experiences will you have had, what will you look like, act like? Maybe you can make a good guess, maybe you just have a vague notion of what being older will be like. People of a certain age may even be able to recount exactly what it is like to be the age they are and how you might be that age one day. Does it seem like an impossible task, or even rather pointless? Why not just wait until 23 June 2037 and then write in your journal what it was like on the day?

So. One day you may or may not be enlightened - there probably isn't even a date on it. But, when it "happens" you will most probably know. Until then there's nothing to seek or embody. All that can be done is to increase the odds in your favour that it will happen in your lifetime and follow the spiritual path. In all likelihood you will have many false starts and many jolts of new awareness to confuse you. But you will just have to apply Pascal's wager and hope for the best. That's all there is to it.

The recognition of that vague hope is one step on the path to Truth.

Edited September 1, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I'm not enlightened. No really.

This journal entry will be long. I'm not sure if airing my dirty linen in public is really that useful, but it's going to be no worse than what I've posted previously. I'm hoping for some sort of insight or catharsis by getting it "down on paper".

It's 6:38 am here. The reason being is that I woke from an odd dream. Sometimes dreams get under you skin and unsettle you in ways that make it hard to get to sleep again.

This post is really about shadows. For every day that passes the likelihood of accumulating negative circumstances increases. If you have the basics of survival covered: food, shelter, money; then really nearly all other negativity is down to people. People are a pain the arse. Usually the pain they manisfest in your life is mostly caused by their selfish behaviour. This is behaviour that they exhibit which lacks empathy towards you in some way. This can either be through ignorance and lack of awareness, or it can be on purpose. Either way the result is similar. People are selfish and it's a fact of life. You are selfish too.

Exposing the selfishness of others is a double-edged sword. For every selfish act that someone else has done that's affected you, you have probably done some selfish act that has affected more people in turn (with or without your knowledge). And it can be beneficial for healing purposes to acknowledge one's own selfishness also when doing shadow work. I won't be doing that in this post however, because that's probably for another time. What I recount below may seem onesided and that in itself is selfish, but hey this is my journal.

The dream then.

I'm being driven around in a transit van. The driver is my sister. In real life she doesn't know how to drive. We are in some sort of parking lot or whatever, there's loads of gravel on the ground. My sister is doing doughnuts in the van and sliding it about the place on the gravel. At first it's kind of fun, I'm sat in the back of the van. But the van actually belongs to me, and eventually I get concerned that she's going to crash into something. I tell her to be more careful and lay off the tricks - she ignores me. Inevitably she prangs the van into a post, and I get out to inspect the damage and get angry. She still doesn't really acknowledge me and just wants to carry on messing about. I tell her that I'm off to catch a train home and go off in a huff.

I wait for the train for a while, but it doesn't arrive. Eventually my sister turns up at the station with my mother, probably with the hope of placating me. I ignore them and give up on the train, I ask my sister where the van is and go try to finding it again. I'm then suddenly in a situation where I'm physically grabbing my sister and causing her pain. I explain to her bluntly that the pain she is feeling, is exactly the same pain that she is causing me by her ignorant behaviour - I have the strong sense that this is the only way to get through to her and I'm angry.

The dream ends by me finding the van and again sitting on the back seat. Several shifty looking men then start looking into the van probably with a view to stealing it, they don't spot me sitting in the back. One of them says it's not worth it (i.e. not cost effective), and they walk away. I get jittery and decide to lock the van using my key fob, which of course attracts the attention of the group of men. Suddenly one of the men gets inside with malicious intent, and I consider using my keys to thrust into his neck for my own defence. I can see the situation worsening, but thankfully I wake up.

Some of the longest shadows are cast by family members. There are often strong emotions associated with family and this can make it nearly impossible to resolve long standing problems. I learned recently (within the past ten or so years), that sometimes the best strategy is avoidance. This has meant that slowly over time I have distanced myself from my family and some friends too.

When I was young and mostly before teenagehood, I was very close to my sister. We are only 18 months apart in age and we had similar temperaments and the same upbringing. To a large degree being the older brother I was responsible for her, so already the relationship was unequal. Being the 80's we played outside for most of the day, every day. We were inseperable and it didn't cause me any great problems. Occasionally I resented having to play protector, but not often.

However, when my father left my mother I was then a teenager and my sister nearly was. With hindsight the event was traumatic for all involved, but it wasn't a surprise to me at the time. But, my sister was very affected by this and this is were the rot set in. She turned against my mother, perhaps she even blamed her, I don't really know. She was always that bit closer to my father than I was.

We would regularly visit my father who had decided to move about 200 miles away with his new girlfriend (she had her own two kids). And we went on holiday together one time, Mallorca I think it was. My sister was at the age of being into boys and she had her first holiday romance. Teenage hormones and attachment as they are, I think my sister was devasted when she had to go back home. This I believe tipped her over the edge, and from that point on until now her behaviour has been erratic.

She soon moved out of home and spent a lot of time with a bunch of older men. She couldn't really engage with anything: she was interested in fashion and clothes making, and nearly enrolled for a course in college, but pulled out at the last minute. She held down a few temp jobs, but then gave up trying to work altogether and just relied on boyfriends to maintain her. I went to university and she decided that she wanted the same, but she wasn't prepared to do the work and take the courses. Instead she just decided to gatecrash and sleep on my friends' floors. I resented her for her behaviour and "invading" my private space.

Eventually after a few decades of this sort of being "lost", she met someone and settled down and had kids. I am pretty close to her kids and would often visit, and really also to try and rekindle that closeness that we had as kids ourselves. But her instability hadn't really gone away, and after a good ten years or so, she fell out of love with her boyfriend. She met an American bloke online as part of her blog and she fell in love. In all reality he was never going to move to the UK, and she ended up moving over to America without her children. She was in the middle of a university degree when she did this, she had one year to go to finish it, which of course she didn't. At that point I decided that I'd had enough and completely shunned her (and to this day).

Now I suppose I could be seen as reactionary or judgemental (or even selfish), but I had always been there for her when she needed support and shelter. I had always encouraged her to try and stand on her own to feet and to improve herself. And she had for all intents and purposes "used me" many many times, but I had compassion. But she had repeated exactly the same trauma my dad had inflicted and that was too much for me.

Avoidance can be a good strategy were emotions are involved and the situation is impossible to solve any other way. I can't talk to my sister, because she's not interested in what I have to say (the parallel with the dream is obvious), she just does what she wants to do and fuck everyone else. It's a way of being that suits her own ends. However avoidance doesn't erase memories and it doesn't remove suffering, it just lessens it.

So, what to do? How do I resolve this shadow with my sister? Do I forgive her yet one more time? Do I just say fuck it, she's not someone I want to associate with? Or do I pretend, and do inner work to heal the pain? Do I just call her, confront the thing and have it out with her? Do I just wait a few decades until she comes around and takes some responsibility for her actions? Am I actually being selfish myself and causing further pain?

It's 8:01 am.

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Self sabotage. Anyone?

Why do we do it?

I do fear myself, mostly.

I fear what I'm capable of.

Fear of breaking myself.

Fear of real freedom.

Fear of losing me.

Fear of disidentification.

Fear itself.

Self sabotage.

Why do we do it?

Are we deserving enough?

Do we have a right to have what we really want?

Do we have any right to be what we want?

Self worth.

Self esteem.

Lack thereof.

Self sabotage.

Pretend, why not?

Pretend we're moving.

Pretend we're progressing.

Pretend we're growing, and developing.

Pretend we are doing enough.

Pretend we are pretending.

Self sabotage.

Cowardly ignorance.

Closemindedness.

Naivety.

Stupidity.

Self serving agendas.

Narcissism.

Isolationism.

Sluggishness and sloth.

No vision.

No curiosity.

No plan.

Self sabotage.

Edited September 3, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I use this journal mostly to talk to myself. It's really quite odd. If you have kept up with my posts, then you might think you have a picture of me and my life. But strangely, my inner mental life bears absolutely no resemblance to my journal in any way. I do not sit here thinking in essays to myself day to day. When I write, it's composed there and then, spontaneously; it doesn't come preformed from a mental script. In that sense my journal doesn't capture me at all.

So what am I doing with the journal? Well, I have the pleasure of a nearly infinite amount of context. You only see the chair, I see the whole room. The posts are simply me shifting furniture around, so that the layout is more pleasing or workable. 

In terms of style, I could write like this:

"Well, LastThursday didn't you have a good time yesterday. Yes LastThursday I did, it was fun wasn't it. Yes it was wasn't it?"

But that would be insanity. So instead I choose to write as if I'm talking to someone in a kind of one sided conversational style - sorry I mean monologue, that's the word. Naturally, if it has the side effect of making you more aware or it's helpful or even if it just gives you entertainment, then I'm more than happy about that. And, I'm also very open to suggestions here about my "mental furniture". 

So what is my inner mental life like? Well it's part spiritual cliche:

• Thoughts, sensations and emotions arise or appear from nowhere. It's constant but not a torrent.
• I only verbalise mentally when I'm working through difficult problems, mostly computer programming (it's my job). Or sometimes when going through scenarios in my head, but that's rare. Or reading.
• I don't hold on to thoughts too much any more - even the emotionally charged ones - I just let them pass.
• When I'm not talking to myself (most of the time), I still think. I still have emotional reactions good and bad, thoughts still come and go.
• Thoughts about the past and future come up often, but I don't indulge too much. If I do indulge I do it for sentimental reasons or to try and get some resolution or for planning purposes. If it doesn't work, I let it go and move on.
• My emotions are very much on an even keel most of the time. I very very rarely get overwhelmed by them. 

Because of this looseness of thinking, I find the journal useful for capturing thoughts and ideas which I would probably just forget. Having some sort of self feedback is useful for me. However, I realised a while ago that holding on to thoughts too tightly was causing my depression and giving me a lot of pain. When I finally became aware of this, I worked very very hard to learn to just let thoughts pass, even if they kept coming back. Nowadays I'm calm and composed, and there's a kind of mental quietude which I never had before - it's glorious.

If you were to meet me in person. I would be nothing like you imagine I am. I'd probably appear to be far more normal and down to earth. Which is the authentic me?

Edited September 4, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

What is art? What is an appearance? What is beauty?

Consider the following appearance:

In the first few seconds of looking you will have made a judgement about what you're seeing. A quick assessment I might have made includes:

• It's a woman combing her hair
• It's a Japanese woman.  She's most probably wearing a kimono and there are Kanji characters, she has far eastern facial features

Is that what I'm actually seeing? Is that what I'm directly experiencing? Or am I making an interpretation? Good question. What else am I seeing?

The most plain thing is, is that if it is a woman, then it is not a lifelike reproduction like a photograph.  It is a stylised representation of a woman. In turn that means it is most probably an artwork. In fact the artwork is almost cartoon like.

The outlines of the woman's face and kimono have thin black edging and large areas of plain colouring. There is no attempt at portraying shadows and the image has no depth in that respect. For example her skin is a completely uniform colour. Her kimono is very textured with the flower designs and what looks like a dense leafy pattern. This gives the kimono a sense of contour which gives the body of the woman a sense of 3d shape in space. The flat pale colour of her skin accentuates her facial features and contrasts starkly with her black hair and dark kimono.

Her red belt or tie and red lips contrast starkly in colour with her kimono and black hair.

Notice how much there is to see. The more you look, the more you see. The image is not just one complete whole: a Japanese woman combing her hair, but there are many layers to it and sub-structure. The artist has made deliberate choices in order to portray the woman in a kind of minimalist style - with just enough detail to bring her to life.

One very overlooked fact with picture art is that universally it is in a rectangular frame. The image is conventional in this respect. It is part of a tradition.

See how much interpretation there is going on here? There is not a single thing that hasn't been judged and assessed. Is it really possible to get a raw and unadulterated experience from an appearance? No. For an appearance to make any sense at all, it needs to be understood within some sort of context. It also needs to be literally constructed from our previous experiences and memories. There is no "direct experience" without some form of interpretation. Every single direct experience has personal bias - there is no purity to it. "Direct" is a misnomer.

Is the artwork above beautiful? I think so yes. Her face is symmetrical, her skin unblemished, her hair long and feminine. The artist (Hashiguchi Goyo) has skillfully given the woman a standing gait, her back slightly arched backwards, and she looks pensive, the combing action looks automatic - she's done it many times before, the lips are painted for a reason, there's a sexual frisson there. And that's where the artist has excelled, he's given her a story.

The beauty lies within your intepretation of appearances. If you pay enough attention there is beauty in all appearances and the world around you.

Edited September 7, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

It's an ongoing battle of mine to reduce all tension and anxiety in my life. Part of this is to do with physical tension. Where to start?

My observations are that I have tension:

• Around my neck area
• In my jaws
• Around my face 
• More on the right side of my body: shoulder, arm, leg.

I'm also prone to getting headaches and that would tally with the tension in the neck and face areas. I also know that another source of headaches is prolonged pressure on my back, mostly from sitting for long periods. I've also observed that I'm more likely to have a headache if I sleep too little or for too long.

I do also suffer from mild lower back pain on occasion and this is almost certainly from prolonged sitting and stiff posture, i.e. tension on the whole back. And sometimes I will wake up with back pain.

I would like to eliminate the headaches and back pain. But I would also like to have a more fluid walking style and relaxed posture.

Some of the causes of tension might be:

• Embodied low level anxiety
• Prolonged computer work
• Overcompensating for bad posture

I've made a solid effort to install a habit of releasing tension in my body regularly, but it feels like the effects are only temporary. How do I fix this tension permanently? Maybe some history will be helpful.

I was first made aware that I'd developed bad posture in my early teens. One striking photo showed me with a pronounced hunched standing posture. At the time I was addicted to my computer (still am) and my parents blamed my posture on that. I would sit for hours on end in front of my computer. Looking back on it I'm not so sure.

I remember distinctly the point where I became quite insular. This was after some trouble with some rough local kids where the police got involved. Without being particularly conscious of it, I think I decided to withdraw socially at that point. I was also bullied at school, despite it being low-level. My parents were also arguing a lot, and my dad largely absent.

Several physical changes happened around then. My eyesight became rapidly worse. I had increased sweating especially in the hands and feet. My posture worsened. My sense of smell worsened and my nose became blocked. I had a lot of tension around my stomach. It could have been just bodily changes associated with puberty. But really I think I embodied the social withdrawal and anxiety. I literally didn't want to see the world, and I wanted to curl up and hide or at least protect myself by always being in a tense  "fight or flight" mode.

I think I also embodied a lot of my mum's anxiety as a kind of mirroring.  I believe that the increased sweating was a manifestation of this. And it would be very effective at stopping me from being more social: shaking hands and intimacy were out.

I made a concerted effort to improve my posture when I went to university, and my new found social confidence helped a great deal, as well as a conscious effort to stand straight. This has largely worked: my massage therapist said I had quite good posture recently. But years of forcing myself to improve my posture I think has created lasting tension around my back and shoulders and a stiff walking gait.

I also think computer work and using a mouse has increased the tension around my shoulders and right side of my body.

The tension in my face and jaws is more intriguing. I've always been quite prone to smiling even as a small kid, which I think mostly is an appeasement signal rather than a friendliness signal. So it's a manifestation of social anxiety. Whilst smiling has it's place, it's not a particularly masculine trait. So it's useful to be able to turn this off when necessary. The tension in the jaws is definitely an ingrained defence mechanism and probably the main source of my headaches.

So much for causes. Solutions? Not many as yet:

• Continue the habit of noticing and releasing tension, hoping it has a long term effect.
• Maybe some form of hypnosis or CBT or talking therapy for lingering anxiety (although I'm reluctant to get back into this) .
• Iontophoresis machine for sweaty hands - which I use, but this is not a cure
• Change diet and intake - I've already largely cut out caffeine, as I'm pretty intolerant. I've stopped smoking a few years now.
• Improve movement and decrease sedentary lifestyle - I walk and play sports regularly, but my work is very sedentary

Any ideas welcome.

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I like a good thought experiment. 

There's a number of questions raised on the forum which are actually thought experiments. Most of them come in the form of "Why can't I do/become X?". Top of the pile is "How do I become enlightened?".

Really most of these questions are hypotheses. The questioner has forgotten to actually run the thought experiment themselves. Instead they're asking everyone else to run it for them. This is not necessarily laziness, just inexperience at working through the consequences of a hypothesis.

For kicks I'll run through an example and the reasoning as I go.

"Why can't I time travel?"

To start with, always always start with empirical evidence. Yes, I know it's a thought experiment, but most thought experiments are based on the real world. So these two further questions should immediately come to mind:

• Have I ever time travelled?
• Do I know of anyone else who has time travelled?

Normally this should be enough to squash the hypothesis. It's the law of large numbers. If someone "out there" had actually time travelled, the media would be all over it. But in this case Andrew Carlssin comes to mind, so there's plausible grounds, even if very very slim.

Next comes the mundane answer:

• You are actually time travelling into the future all the time

There's always a mundane angle to a hypothesis, it shouldn't be dismissed as an uninteresting or unsatisfactory answer. Sometimes the mundane has a very deep truth to it.  And often further questions come, which can help explore the original hypothesis:

• Why is there travel in only one direction?
• What does a "direction" mean anyway?
• Is it possible to change the rate of travel into the future?
• Does everyone travel at the same rate?
• Is the motion into the future fluid or jumpy?
• What about when I'm asleep? Does time stop?

Next is the familiarity angle. This is kind of slippery to understand, but it goes like following. Say you were born into a race of beings with abilities and you could actually time travel whenever you wanted. Basically, you invert the hypothesis. What question would you be asking then? Maybe it would be:

• I've just realised I can do this thing and I call it "time travel", anyone else?
• How long is it possible to go without time travelling? A whole lifetime?
• I've never been stuck in a time loop. Why not?

You then invert the hypothesis a second time:

• What haven't I realised yet about time travel?
• Am I actually time travelling without realising it?
• Do I actually have abilities that don't seem like abilities?
• Am I missing the blindingly obvious?

Lastly there is the embodiment angle:

• Who or what is actually time travelling?

This may seem obvious, but it's not. It can open up a whole can of worms:

• Is it your physical body?
• Is it your mind?
• Something else?
• Does the whole world change around you instead?
• If you time travel into a younger self, are you still you?
• Does you current mind replace the mind of the younger/older body you jump into?
• Does your physical body go with you? If so, what about physics? The movement of Earth and Sun through space?
• Do you actually jump into some other historical person's body? 
• What controls the jump? Is there an incantation or special formula or special state of mind?

And normally this is where the hypothesis blows up and you move on to the next one!

 

[LastThursday]

OMFG

 

[LastThursday]

Day 17,436

Long ass meeting this morning at work, completely sapped all my momentum for anything at all. Took lunch soon after. Then took a walk for an hour.

It's surprisingly warm here in Kent for mid September, 26 centigrade. Back in now listening to Chemical Brothers, in the hope of some momentum. Instead I'm on here writing to dear diary. 

I've got to set up and code an automated SMS for incoming property valuation leads. Simple enough, but also complicated enough to not want to engage with it. I can get away with it for a while longer, but not much. Then I've got to modify some Excel reports so they have a column for revenue.

A friend of mine wants to try out his fancy camera later. His idea was to photograph the sunset at Beachy Head on the south coast. It's nearly an hour's drive for me each way, good thing I enjoy driving. I'll take some shots as well. I'll probably use a shot for a later post some time - and then spout some nonsense about appearances and how the Sun is not real blah blah blah. Sunset 7:14 pm local time.

All that faffing about (I mean socialising), should take me up till nine at least. Might engage with some more self hypnosis later (more in a later post), I'm kind of getting addicted to it. Then to bed at midnight and day 17,437 begins.

[LastThursday]

If we were inclined to believe in God, then a curious type would actually go to the trouble of trying to find God - and not have blind faith. Those with faith would simply say: "Why search? It's blindingly obvious!". The retort ,naturally, is to say I was given curiosity by God and also that I'm stupid.

How would you go about this task? Looking for things involves having some notion of what it is you're looking for. This is one level of indirection. In one sense you've already found what you're looking for, but only in your mind's eye. Is the God in your mind's eye, the God? Almost certainly not. The God you find in the end will almost certainly not be what you are looking for - but you need to start somewhere.

A starting guide might be to examine what the attributes of a God are. Usually it's some sort of supernatural power with a bias towards meddling in the affairs of people. Another concerns the plurality of God. Is God one or many? If it's many, then finding God will be X times harder. Were the Greeks right or was Akhenaten? Either way, we can narrow our search to just one particular God.

The supernatural power angle is interesting. By definition this is something outside of "nature" and beyond it. As a power it can affect "nature" as a by-product. So, is there anything in "nature" that has been affected supernaturally? Well living in 2020 as it is, science can explain nearly all natural occurrences as simply that: natural occurrences. It would seem that science has squeezed out all room for anything supernatural at all.

What does supernatural really imply? It says that there are effects for which there are no explanations for their cause. Science is clever because it can explain away all effects by setting up experiments which replicate those effects and therefore give us causes. It also describes a large number of effects from a small number of causes (e.g. electricity). For someone that didn't understand shocks, they would be supernatural. Science says ignorance is no excuse: there are no supernatural causes; God in that capacity does not exist.

What about stuff science cannot explain?

We have to tread carefully here, because science is arrogant enough to say that everything will be explained in due course. But that's just crystal ball gazing - it shouldn't be believed. The hot potato that can't be explained is consciousness itself. Maybe God is to be found there? Is consciousness a supernatural power? That is very very hard to answer. Is consciousness the cause, the effect or both?

Another feature of God is that they are omnipotent. God should have set up the entirety of existence in a manner of their choosing. They are the ultimate cause of everything. If so, then it may be worth looking there. What is special or weird about the set up of existence, something that could point to where God is hiding? 

Here are some strange things about life for example:

• There is currently only one species of human
• Humans are completely unique animals with many unusual characteristics
• The further we look out into the Cosmos, the more we realise the Earth is completely unique as the only place with life
• There is no reasonable explanation for how life arose from dead matter (no experiment to reproduce it)
• All life is extremely intricately arranged (constructed/evolved)
• All life interacts with other life and the environment in very subtle and balanced ways
• The whole biosphere of Earth works as an intricate whole, as a single entity
• Earth is in the habitable zone of the Sun
• Earth is protected from radiation by its own magnetic field
• Earth is covered in water

I could go on and on. But you start to suspect something is up the more you look. These are all things science could explain - but a sample size of one is not good science.

At least if I haven't found God, I've found the shadow of God.

 

Edited September 16, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

To be free and wild:

http://www.roberttwigger.com/journal/2020/8/31/the-phenomenology-of-wild-2.html

[LastThursday]

I can't decide whether to talk about projects and mastery or being trapped or something else.

(Five minutes later)

Being Trapped

I often think about freedom and how I could me more free. We are held fast by our appearance and character and by our internal world. Society and relationships function around identity. Externally this is your appearance most notably your face, but other physical attributes come into play. Identity is important because dealing with people is cognitively taxing. If you had to learn about a person from scratch every time you met them, then nothing would function at all. Identity then is a shorthand that allows you to get up and running very quickly when dealing with people. Identity is a gross simplification of a living being.

Once you have formed a mental model of someone's identity, it becomes fixed and inflexible. Their character becomes congealed in our minds and in our interactions with them. We think we "know" our parents, our friends and neighbours. Further, since we are all playing this game, everyone becomes trapped in an inflexible web of identity. Sadly, we also do it to ourselves.

We often identify with our histories and with how other people treat us and we become stuck there, unable to change and develop. The bottom line being that if we change too quickly, panic and outrage sets in and it's difficult for us and others to cognitively process. When we change, our identities have to follow in lockstep inside and out, otherwise relationships don't function.

This of course is complete bullshit. The real truth is that we have no tie to the past or our identity. As beings we are a completely adrift and free. We secretly know this and yearn to be ever freer, but can't quite bring ourselves to completely break free of our characters. We are scared of what we're capable of and scared of being labelled insane or worse: being insane. If we constantly become someone else, how can we function in society?

Naturally, being identified by our passports or a social security number or our names or our skin colour or culture - all that is complete insanity. What we should be scared of is that we're already insane and we don't realise it yet. Unlearning our identity is the only way to really live.

Points of View

A question that was asked on one of the forums has been swimming around in my head for a while. 

It basically asked: "As God, why can't I inhabit someone else's body at will? - to paraphrase.

One angle that occurred to me was, how would it be like if someone else started to inhabit my body? Now, that's interesting! Would you even notice? I mean if it was an outright replacement and LastThursday's mind vanished, what would it be like? Maybe the new mind would become aware that their body was new and different. Perhaps the new mind would think it was dreaming a very vivid dream? 

Maybe there would be some sort of hybridisation. The new mind would slowly meld with the LastThursday mind and would become a new entitity: LastThursday 2.0? How awesome (in the original sense of the word) that would be.

As mentioned in previous posts I've been playing around with hypnosis, mostly through YouTube videos. One particular video encourages you to become a different character (for fun). You sort of step into their shoes whilst under the hypnotic influence. When it works, the effect is really quite strange.

You get to spend a length of time as this new imagined character. You become it. The interesting question is: where does this character come from? Is it pure imagination or is it: "God inhabiting someone else's body at will?" 

Is the change permanent? Possibly.

Projects Versus Mastery

Having worked on many many different projects over time (both for work and self amusement), you start to notice some characteristics. This is the S shaped curve that most projects take. Take building a house as an example. The ground has to be cleared and the foundations dug and laid. This stage can seem to take forever for little change in outward appearance. The house then rapidly gets built. This is followed by the finishing, the minor details and decoration which can take a long time. This is the typical S shape.

I remember having worked on projects where for weeks there was nothing to show: it was all groundwork. This makes managers nervous and they will often start saying crazy things at you. If you have the guts you stand fast and just carry on. You then start to rapidly have something to show for your efforts and the managers stop shouting at you and start bragging that they knew it was the right decision to get you on the job. You then release the project only to find that a million things are not quite right and you have to put the fine detail and "finish" on it - this takes forever.

Mastering a discipline could also been seen as a project of sorts. But the BIG difference is that it is a project without end. Mastery has a different shape to it. It has humps and dips and sharp rises. Sometimes it can seem that nothing happens for years and then all of a sudden great growth and development happens in a short amount of time. This is normal. Mastery above all is an exercise in patience and self knowledge. It's having the wherewithal to notice that there will be peaks and troughs and that is completely normal - wait them out. Don't be neurotic and impatient: that is not the way of mastery - that is for people who do projects.

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

This is entirely the wrong time to post here. Primarily because it's 00:23 and by rights I should be asleep already. However...

I've always been rather scatter brained. Or rather my attention has. I don't think I have attention deficit per se, I'm able to concentrate for long periods on one thing. But when a need to do something that piques my interest arises, I find it hard to not be distracted by it. This distracted feeling generally persists until I've exhausted its energy in some way - it can take days or weeks.  So guess why I'm posting! It already feels better. After I can sleep.

I chalk it down to yet another of my bordeline autistic traits.  And yet, it has its virtues. Like a dog with a bone I will often investigate a subject or idea as far as I can take it. Over time I've built up a huge web of knowledge and this gives me the edge in communicating with people and in my work and just generally understanding how the world ticks. I do have biases in my interests, but really absolutely anything goes. The YouTube algorithm sucks for people like me - it's a real mess of suggestions - just like my mind.

Good night.

 

[LastThursday]

Oh yes. Note for future self: dreams and persistence of awareness.

[LastThursday]

Making Decisions

I had a lengthy (wine fuelled) conversation with a friend of mine this weekend. She was concerned about a decision she and her husband had made to move home. She doesn't want to move, he does, and this is causing an underlying tension. And for the sake of compromise she's going along with it.

This lead me to try and explain how making and committing to decisions causes suffering - because I could see that she was suffering.

Really, there's two parts to decision making.

The first involves having an awareness that a decision needs to be made at all. I call this the "decision point". This awareness usually appears from nowhere into our direct experience. Now it's possible to rationalise and analyse why the decision arose and create a whole dramatic backstory - but the bald fact is that the need to decide arises spontaneously. It's very helpful to be cognizant of this.

The second part is what I call "follow through". All decisions are about future action. Only when the future moment arrives and the action starts does the decision begin to be fulfilled. Normally the "follow through" itself involves a period of time and a number of smaller steps to fulfill the decision.

So where does the suffering arise?

A decision is normally a binary choice between two things. If both choices are unsatisfactory this can create suffering. In my friend's case saying "no" will create tension with her husband, but saying "yes" also creates tension because she doesn't want to move.

It's useful to notice that at the decision point, no action has actually been taken. And until the action begins, the decision is irrelevant, because up until that point the decision is not being fulfilled. This points to a more balanced way of dealing with decisions:

1. A decision point arises
2. If a decision is made not to take action, then the decision should be completely dropped and forgotten about. Ruminating after the fact is fruitless and causes suffering. If the decision arises again in future then go back to number 1.
3. If a decision is made to take action, then a plan should be made about when to take action. The decision itself should then be forgotten about. Ruminating after the fact is fruitless and causes suffering.
4. If the time comes to take action, but action isn't taken, then the decision is not being fulfilled. Either move the start of the action or drop the decision altogether. Either way ruminating any more than this causes suffering.
5. If the action does start, but it stops before the decision is totally fulfilled, then either make a plan to finish the action later or give up on it entirely. No ruminating.

What the above process shows is that the decision itself is totally unconnected to the action based on the decision. The decision itself is of no consequence. The only part of the process with consequence is the action taken. The action itself may be seconds or decades away from the moment of making the decision. If the action hasn't yet started, then the effect is the same as if the decision had never arisen. In other words you are completely free to make another decision or to stop taking action on it at any point in time. Nothing is fixed. If any suffering arises, it should only be at the point the action is being taken - this is where the effort is taking place. Up until that point you are carefree.

 

 

[LastThursday]

Watchwords for future me: love, attention, presence.

[LastThursday]

I have eight minutes before I turn into a pumpkin. How much can I get out...?

Darn it. I had such an excellent thought after reading someone's journal just now. Gone! Alzheimers or just living in the moment or is it Bach distracting me?

Four minutes.

Three minutes.

Ah! So in the last few months, I found an old short video clip I'd taken on a holiday in Iceland. Must have been about 2005 or so. Just three young blokes pissing about on holiday. I think we were drunk and somersaulting over the sofa or some such idiocy. Anyway I showed one of my friends who was on holiday the clip recently. His comment was that I was "completely different". My thought was "you haven't changed at all" other than slowing down and looking older. I took it as a complement. But essentially my thought was: if you haven't seen someone in over 10 years, then if they've developed at all in that time, they should be completely different.

Ok I'm a pumpkin!

 

 

[LastThursday]

I'm going back to consciousness, one of my favourite subjects of contemplation. 

I've noticed the way certain words get banded about on the forum. "Consciousness" is one of those strange words which bother me immensely. I think yesterday I had an epiphany as to why.  Someone commented on the forum to the effect: "it's all consciousness, if there's something underneath reality, it will still be consciousness." Bam! It hit me at that moment.

"Consciousness" is a label. You could argue that it's more than that, but it's not. The word "consciousness" and all its associated web of ideas is precisely just that. The absurdity of the concept arises because its definition is all encompassing. I'll try and give a flavour of why it's absurd:

Q: What is between the planet Venus and Earth?

A: Space.

Q: What is between the solar system and the nearest star?

A: Space.

Q: What is beyond our galaxy?

A: Space.

Q: Ha! What is beyond the edge of the universe?

A: Space.

Q: What is beyond Space?

A: That question makes no sense.

And so it is with consciousness. The word itself explains nothing. Just as "space" explains nothing. It's a placeholder for something we think we understand and experience. So what?

Well the word "consciousness" makes it seem as though we know what it's a placeholder for. It's supposed to be some indivisible all encompassing substance that we all experience. It's a bit like the following:

Q: What is that animal with black and white stripes?

A: Kibbu.

Q: What is that little furry animal that likes to eat mice?

A: Kibbu.

Q: What is that animal with such a long neck?

A: Kibbu.

Q: What is that plant with pretty pink flowers?

A: Kibbu.

So even though we think we know what "Kibbu" is, its very definition is so broad as to actually be useless. But "Ah!" you say, that is the very definition of non-duality: everything is one and the same, it is therefore Kibbu. No. The word cannot come first, and if the word is pointing to everything, then it is no pointer at all.

The fact remains we may think we know what "consciousness" points to, but it's a lie. Reality cannot be captured by one word alone (or any words).

Edited October 2, 2020 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Notice how in my last post I said Reality is not Consciousness. Neat trick eh? IT'S STILL A LIE. Reality is just a word like consciousness. You think you know what reality means. You do not. You are imprisoned by the word "Reality". If you are to push forwards in your development, then it can't be done with words alone.

Notice how "development" is just a word. It's meaning is circumscribed and totally relative. IT'S A LIE. Development is not what is happening.

Notice how "happening" is just a word. IT'S A LIE.

I could go on. But hopefully, you get the drift.

At some point you must stop reading and listening to others' words - and directly experience.

Hang on. What does "directly experience" mean? Ahahaha, more words. I think I'm going insane. Must sleep.

Edited October 2, 2020 by LastThursday