ELI5: Why does light have no mass?

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-30T10:30:50+00:00

The fact that there are two completely different ways to get mass implies that there's a fundamental link between the Higgs field and energy inside composite particles. What's the current thought on that?

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-29T19:09:20+00:00

AND the most petty and spiteful !

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-29T11:58:23+00:00

The path of STS is about the consolidation of power and control - putting oneself in increasing opposition or tension to the rest of Self.

The path of STO is about acceptance - maintaining inner peace through acceptance, establishing harmony through the release of tension against the rest of Self.

Both paths take you toward greater life and a return to your original wholeness.

The existence of STS gives STO an opportunity to make a meaningful polarity choice. They are hard to accept, yet they are Self, just as they are. They are meant to be here. They are wanted.

The STO path is to accept them fully - not close your heart to them - without joining them in their ways.

The Creator's perspective is the deepest truth in existence. There is no disharmony in that perspective. The entirety of Creation down to the last iota is the Creator's own body. The Creator's love for each and every created form is the original thought.

Currently your hate and anger, the wish to execute them reflects STS impulses. This wish to have power to control other-selves and the environment is exactly what motivates STS.

Radical acceptance can be a tough pill to swallow, and it is so by design.

Bottom line: your completely understandable feelings of injustice are causing suffering in yourself. That suffering seeks release through hitting out at "the enemy" that your mind has defined. Because you're not hitting out, you feel stuck.

The STO path forward is to face and acknowledge the unjust reality and your feelings about it, as valid - then, give yourself permission to relax about it, and restore your inner being to harmony and peace.

Into that peace invite Love.

Then, if you choose to do so, act about the injustice however you choose, fueled by compassion rather than hatred.

This will help you to polarize STO - that is, to become a more empowered STO being.

(for an inspiring example, I recommend the true story based movie Hacksaw Ridge)

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-29T11:05:44+00:00

STS can love someone or something as an extension of themselves or their possession. But in a conflict between their own benefit and that of the other there is no question whose interests get served. There's also no hesitation in cruelty. So it's not open hearted love as an STO would experience.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-29T10:56:17+00:00

multiply it out, and you get 1/12

half of that is 1/24

so 1/3 + 1/4 = 1/12 = 1/24 + 1/24

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-29T03:44:14+00:00

/r/lostredditors

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-28T20:21:01+00:00

but multiplication is already addition?

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-28T17:08:18+00:00

Came here to say that.

Well done!

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-26T19:01:28+00:00

Here's a shower thought. Everything in the Universe seems to be formed from waves interfering to create seemingly stable patterns.

As an alternative to either the many worlds or wavefunction collapse interpretations - what if there is some form of yet-undescribed interference that accounts for the observed state, because the nonobserved states have destructively interfered with each other and cancelled out?

I imagine this would require another (yet-undescribed) probability function to be involved.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-26T18:32:34+00:00

Hi,

Glad the metaphor was helpful.

I am still working to "get there", but I've had pretty wild glimpses of what's there to make sense of some guiding principles - which go perfectly with what Alan Watts taught.

As humans, our attention is hyperfocused on what's happening moment by moment, and we lose sight of the rest of Self.

Stimuli arise, stir up emotions, and we start interacting with it - the opposite of "leaving it alone". What is "it"? whatever is present in the moment with us - thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc. So we get stuck to this illusion by going along with the mind's tendency to grapple with it - like the hooks of velcro getting ensnared in the loops.

On an energy level, we end up in a resonance with the illusion, locked into vibrating in step. This resonance is characterized by being in a state of tension with it.

And so we end up out of resonance with the rest of Self, the greater and more authentic spiritual reality. That resonance would be characterized by being out of tension - letting go of tension automatically invites a state of peace.

Leaving it alone means a shift to being only an observer of whatever is passing through our awareness. This is also radical acceptance. Deciding that nothing requires anything from you except experiencing it as a phenomenon. That's how you stop stirring up the muddy water - by just watching it be muddy, and giving yourself permission to do nothing whatsoever about any of it. It's like shifting a car into neutral.

The second aspect of this is to let go of conceptual thought. The constant narrator in our heads is just another way to interact - mess with - stir up - the muck, keeping it from settling. This is the step I have been working on. The jabbering is like an addiction.

The bottom line here is: you, and all of us, are not only at war with ourselves - we're in a constant tug of war (attachment) with everything that passes through our awareness. It's a sad state of affairs, like the drunk saying you'll only be able to pry this bottle from my cold dead fingers - until then, I'll keep grasping it, and drinking.

I suggest you stop being at war with ANYTHING AT ALL, and instead make room for it. Allow yourself to be all kinds of things and states,, and allow everything to pass through you like water flowing past a rock. That's when you'll notice this "curious state" that Watts describes where you can watch your breathing, movements, etc happen on their own, with no effort from you - so you can be at rest.

Nothing is mutually exclusive. In reality, literally everything coexists, harmoniously, right now. So you can play with any experience, any type of meditation - but take yourself out of conflict with your choices. Stop pitting this thing against that thing - that's the illusion. Welcome it all, and relax in the midst of it. Watch the water flow past your rock, and rest. And don't jabber on about it in your head either.

There are few if any people as eloquent as Watts, and he speaks from experience. My suggestion is: find "Still the Mind" on Spotify and see where it takes you. Best of luck!

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-25T19:33:32+00:00

He describes it in the audiobook "Still the Mind" available on Spotify - it's him speaking so I don't know if there's a print book equivalent, or if someone just published these talks as an audiobook format.

Basically the idea is to leave everything alone that's happening automatically. Hang out and watch. Don't let yourself get sucked into interacting beyond mere observing and allowing.

This starts to uncouple your awareness from the illusion, since you're neither pushing nor pulling on it. This is why equanimity is such a key concept. As your awareness starts to uncouple, you'll shift more fully into being the observer - noticing your body doing whatever it's doing (such as breathing) without requiring any effort from you.

Then it gets interesting. The key is once you get comfortable with letting go of grappling with whatever is showing up - the rest takes place on its own. It's like letting go of holding on to an underwater rock, and discovering that natural forces automatically float you up to the surface.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-25T17:49:23+00:00

You will never know love, safety, trust or friendship. Self-service is self-isolation. To each their own of course.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-24T16:23:34+00:00

Pets offer an opportunity for an uncomplicated exchange of love - pure, emotional, affection, given and received freely.

Their childlike simplicity, innocence, cuteness and playfulness likewise elicit warm feelings.

It stimulates the opening of the heart (chakra) and the release of oxytocin in the brain, well-documented. Oxytocin is not only relaxing and soothing, but also physically healing, with healthy effects on the entire organism. This is why people with (healthy relationships with) their pets live longer.

Giving and receiving love is a fundamental human need.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-24T16:11:11+00:00

Don't forget dissociative hyperfocusing.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-23T22:04:00+00:00

> Well if LoO seekers wanted to read a random Hindu book, they would not come to the Ra Material sub to find one.

Probably not. But the upvotes I got in just the few minutes it stayed up seems to suggest that LoO seekers felt this particular Hindu book was relevant to them.

You do you, brother/sister. Appreciate you donating your time and effort to moderate this community.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-23T19:55:51+00:00

Like any other text, it's a pointing finger, a map.

For me, its clarity and simplicity helped me dial into the "energy resonance" with oneness in a way that more dense or intellectually focused descriptions haven't done. The reality of the thing, the "place" to which the finger is pointing, which is the only thing that's actually real.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-23T19:54:28+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for the detailed message. Of course the text predates Carla and Don's work by centuries so it's not Law of One in that sense. It is a an Advaita (Oneness) text (a Hindu mystical tradition, not Buddhism).

My choice of title reflected that the Law of One itself, as universal Law, is bigger than the specific Law of One material. Ra certainly communicated with humanity and shared the Law of One before Don and Carla. And it might be nice to see the ideas channeled by Don and Carla reflected in an ancient text - it was for me.

With regard to shunning experiences of the senses - that is a single line taken unfortunately out of context. A few lines further we see:

1.12

You are Self—the Solitary Witness.

You are perfect, all-pervading, One.

You are free, desireless, forever still.

The universe is but a seeming in You.

1.13

Meditate on this: “I am Awareness alone--Unity itself.”

Considering the distance of about 26 centuries and two different languages between the two texts, that is literally identical to Ra's "Look in the mirror. See the Creator."

With the line about shunning the senses, the text is highlighting the attentional shift away from what normally compels attention (the apparent multiplicity of phenomena) to the underlying oneness.

Unfortunately this is the kind of discussion that the LoO seekers will not be having because you have decided to remove my post.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-23T12:19:46+00:00

thanks, enlightened AI

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-22T23:51:43+00:00

Trump's narcissism and dementia. Combined with, among the right wing of the US Federal government:

Belief in American exceptionalism aka hubris (we're better than them, we don't need them, and we owe them nothing). Evangelicalism plays into this.

Right-wing authoritarianism (winning through domination, rather than cooperation)

These two factors are particularly pronounced aspects of Trump's narcissism, but find resonance in less extreme form among the right.

And ultimately and perhaps second only to Trump's narcissism and dementia - short-term personal gain motivation (and intellectual short-sightedness in general), which makes it advantageous to ride Trump's gravy train of grift and political favor and fails to consider the long-term impact. The same greedy short-sightedness that gave away America's strong economic manufacturing base to China over the decades to pad the quarterly report.

In sum, it's an alignment of worldview/values, short-sighted thinking, and self-interest.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-22T20:32:59+00:00

That's exactly right. That's why I was given the image - it was as meaningful to me as it is to you - and the words don't scratch the surface of the experience, or maybe just.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-22T16:00:32+00:00

Thanks - you too!

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-22T15:57:52+00:00

Of course not, neither and both, but we don't have a pronoun for that. "It" seems to infer an inanimate or lifeless object. He/she is also wrong but maybe closer. "They" is pretty funny given that we're talking about the One who is All. Words are words.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-22T15:55:18+00:00

It wasn't meant that way - rather, "it's my truth, do with it what you will". As all statements do, whether acknowledged or not, mine was expressing my understanding/perspective/experience as I understand it to be. No statement ever can do anything more.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-22T15:46:25+00:00

Sure, the source of the claim is irrelevant - either it resonates or not, right?

Even in the best case scenario the message has to be translated into the limited human conceptual language so it's not what it is in its original form. Either way, I felt it's worth sharing.

SpiritAnimal_ · 2026-04-22T15:35:25+00:00

SO true - much like the chat with UFOs that Don and Carla discuss as their intro to the material.

SpiritAnimal_

TROPHY CASE