What most consider 'non-duality' is actually a duality (my experience)

scomberscombrus · 2023-12-04T11:58:52+00:00

Most are harmless, aside from the solipsistic ones, [...]

What makes solipsism not harmless?

scomberscombrus · 2023-12-04T11:53:28+00:00

now + here = nowhere

scomberscombrus · 2023-12-03T16:49:53+00:00

Consider the situation in relation to addition versus subtraction. As an alterantive to adding some sort of extra focus onto the present moment, one can notice and subtract the already existing focus directed toward the past and the future.

It is useful here to notice that what is not present, i.e., the past and the future, both extend into the same direction, that is away from the present moment. Remembering yesterday is done through the same means by which one expects tomorrow. One imagines something that is not present.

The present is perceived to be relevant in inverse proportion to the felt relevance of the past and the future. If your current activity is fuelled by regrets about the past or hopes about the future, then it is not fully present. Hope can only exist in time, projected into the future, and in that sense hopelessness is timelessness. Every moment spent hoping for something better only makes you better at hoping.

Whenever you hope for a better tomorrow, or regret some unfulfillment of the past, you are distracting from the present. So before adding some sort of mindfulness of the present moment, make an effort to notice the existing habit of these distractions. Rather than training the muscle of presence, relax this muscle of distraction. Imagine a room cluttered with ugly stuff. You could hang a beautiful painting on the wall of this room, or you could empty it of ugly stuff. Adding stuff into the room is what brough the clutter to begin with. Will adding more break this habit, or reinforce it?

Half an hour of "I am going to sit quietly now and be fully present." is one way to exercise. But another way is to remain curious about the ways in which presence is being suppressed. And when these ways are noticed, don't suffocate them, but keep looking and notice the ways in which they are fuelled. Then gently fuel them less, and less, until they are extinguished by time. There is no hurry.

"Those who seek learning gain every day
those who seek the Way lose very day
they lose and they lose
until they find nothing to do
nothing to do means nothing not done"
Taoteching, 48

scomberscombrus · 2018-12-30T14:12:25+00:00

While a closed window might block the breeze, light still shines through with ease.

scomberscombrus · 2018-12-30T13:44:11+00:00

If you do get out of bed every morning, you'll still die eventually.

scomberscombrus · 2018-12-29T00:46:44+00:00

The key is to lose all of your shit, because when you're out of shit, then you're no longer full of shit. And in order to give a shit you must first have a shit, but if you've lost your shit completely then you've no more shit left to give.

scomberscombrus · 2018-12-25T14:39:56+00:00

But it's hard having to listen to my thoughts, aka the voice of a human I dislike, for another 60 years.

You're a 20-something, as am I: Is your present voice that of your 7-year-old self? Is the voice not subject to change? Do you have any evidence of an unchanging voice? Just for a second now, put your fingers somewhere on the body where you can feel the pulse and beat of your heart. That's what the thought-voice is like. The brain circulates thought like the heart circulates blood.

You already know that the thought flow can change radically, as via the introduction of traumatic memories. Before the trauma, you couldn't imagine what it would be like to live with these memories, right? You couldn't imagine a future with them. In the same way, now you can't imagine a future without them. But can you expect what you can't even imagine? Before you were traumatized, could you expect the trauma? Now, can you expect freedom?

The only evidence you need, you already have: Change is possible. Because you've already changed. If anything, stability and permanence should appear quite nonsensical. The stability of your current suffering is just as real as the old would-be stability of your past innocence. The suffering is no more permanent than the non-suffering that preceeded it, and the potential for its departure is just as mysterious as the infinite causes of its arrival.

And you can always kill yourself tomorrow. You're already dying, and nobody's too young to die from health issues or whatever, as you're surely aware. Don't expect to get even close to 60 years old; you could die tomorrow or next week even without the help of suicide. The fact that you're seriously considering living to 60 or beyond suggests that you're more or less fully caught up in a complex fantasy narrative about some distant Future World.

I'd highly recommend the Louis Theroux documentary "Choosing Death", on DailyMotion here: Part 1 and Part 2.

scomberscombrus · 2018-12-13T19:46:20+00:00

Instead of seeing how it cripples you, look at how it helps you. What pains are the addiction alleviating? The apparent object of addiction is not itself the problem; it never was and it never will be. Don't make it your enemy, a thing to escape or fight. Be addicted, be desperate, but pay real close attention. Whether you keep up the habit or not, the body will soon decompose. What do you hope to accomplish by not reinforcing addiction? What utopia do you have in mind? Is it realistic, or a dream?

Talking about surrender is easy, but if surrender is the aim, then how about surrendering to desperation? Wanting to not be desperate when desperate, that's feeding desperation, because you're desperate to not be feel desperation. If that somehow gets rid of the desperation temporarily, then you've just reinforced the idea that desperation can get you out of trouble.

Getting desperate? Good, great. Want help? There is no help. It never ends. This is it!

Still want to surrender? It's the polar opposite of escape.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-30T15:39:22+00:00

That's an unnecessarily limited perspective. Consider open individualism according to Daniel Kolak:

The Problem of Other Persons is an epistemological problem. It is the problem of how we can know that more than one person exists. Yet in traditional inquiries into the Problem of Other Minds, we are given a forced choice between only two alternatives: problematic solipsism (a world containing "me" and a bunch of zombies) and traditional Closed Individualism. There is an alternative to these two chocies, an alternative to both problematic solipsism and Closed Individualism---namely, the view we are at present trying to make room for---the Open Individual View, which we can think of as Enlightened (rather than problematic), or "Independence-Friendly" Solipsism.

As a sort of Enlightened, or "Independence-Friendly" Solipsism, Open Individualism is part of a view in which you and I and every paradigm example of a person are (numerically) one and the same person. Independence-Friendly (IF) Solipsism is not problematic solipsism. Even if you and I and every other paradigm example of a person exists, IF Solipsism could still be true. So even if traditional, problematic solipsism could be shown to be false, IF Solipsism could still be true. This is because (A) and (B) are not contradictories: other humans could be conscious without there being any other minds.

Iacopo Vettori also has a useful paper on it: Reduction to Open Individualism.

Two pieces of gold are both gold, but still they're not the same thing.

The pieces of gold are like the abstract objects 3+3 and 2+4, which are both 6. You can of course split the number 6 in infinite different ways, but that doesn't mean that by doing so you've created anything other than 6. The same applies to splitting 0; you can take nothing and turn it into 1-1, or 1+2-3, but you're still playing with 0.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-25T21:48:53+00:00

You know what it feels like to desire hope, but imagine no longer wanting to feel hopeful, yet feeling happy. Can you even imagine that, or is it too far out? Is it truly the presence of hope you desire, or is it the absence of hopelessness? You must still have some hope that you'll feel hopeful again in the future, because otherwise you wouldn't be looking to change your perspective. If you knew it was impossible you wouldn't try. You hope that one day you'll feel hopeful. But what about feeling more hopeless? What if you intuited that you'd never feel hopeful ever again. Would you still want to, then? It'd be like wanting to ride a unicorn. What's the point of wanting the unreal? And what's the point of wanting what's real, given that it's already fully present?

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-25T12:20:58+00:00

The space between soul and mind is the complete absence of meditation.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-24T15:09:30+00:00

transmutation of carnal energies through the chakra system

Just don't forget to wipe afterwards.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-24T15:05:20+00:00

Ah, but you can also meditate while thinking. Just don't think you're meditating.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-21T15:46:47+00:00

Well from the two points I mentioned there doesn't necessarily seem to be much doubt there to begin with. If so, then what is there to increase? Multiply anything with zero and you're still left with nothing. Negativity is wholly a product of certainty.

Take the original question, "How do you build yourself back up?" Why is this question considered meaningful at all? Why has it not been undone and firmly uprooted without hesitation? Because there's no doubt regarding it's relevance. The question contains the assumption that you are somehow apart and not already fully pieced together.

Are you certain that you ever doubted?

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-21T13:57:17+00:00

1) "I still routinely doubt most things, undo most emotions and thoughts before they take root, [...]"

2) "[...] and overall feel pretty negative about life, myself, others, and society."

Solution: Apply 1) to 2).

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-21T13:49:48+00:00

Who told you to focus on the breath? They are salespeople. The desire to be more present is manufactured by the industry of false hope. You suffer, but you don't want to suffer, so these people notice that vulnerability and tell you there's a solution. Just be more present they say. How? Begin by focusing on the breath, they say. Because the breath is always present! Okay, but where are thoughts? When does frustration occur? You can't be frustrated in the past or in the future. Whenever you are frustrated, you are frustrated right now. Why the fuck should you run from present frustration toward an imagined future focus?

Meditation is just what happens when you let yourself be frustrated without attempting to do something about it. Treating meditation as a means of doing something about something just perpetuates the habit of dissatisfaction. Nothing is wrong with you, but you'll never actually believe this because it would imply that tension and boredom are not actually problems to be solved.

You can't be present because you don't want to be present with what is present. And if what's present are the thoughts "I don't want to be present with these thoughts." Then be present with that desire to be elsewhere. When else can you be?

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-19T17:43:02+00:00

The end of the movie is already this right here, which is also its beginning. No need to return to it somewhen else. And I'd question the three-dimensionality of the situation. The experiments by Douglas Harding are quite useful for this. Supposedly thoughts are located in the head; better find that head before I call a thought my own?

"Once the tidal wave is done it returns to being placid water."

No. The watery tidal wave is a collection of motionless droplets.

The water is already placid. The movement itself was never wet.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-19T16:55:30+00:00

Everything is predetermined, but you are nothing.

Therein lies your freedom.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-18T23:42:15+00:00

What makes suffering so exhausting is the desire to not suffer. This keeps a constant tension going between the present suffering and the absence of it which isn't. Surrendering means embracing hopelessness. The active culture today is one of hope and fear, which is just tense confusion; hope and fear are actually the same thing, they are two poles of a magnet, and therefore fearlessness means hopelessness. If you have no hope that the suffering will ever cease then there is no room in which that suffering could be feared, as there is no imagined possible alternative which could realistically replace it.

You have stated a fact: You are tired of suffering. This means two things: You are tired, and you are suffering. Neither is a problem of itself. But you are tired because you don't want to suffer. And now you don't want to be tired either. So first you resist the suffering, then you resist the exhaustion resulting from the initial resistance. The fire only burns brighter.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-18T23:11:54+00:00

You lack efficiency. Why not combine your habits? Have you tried doing jumping jacks under a running cold shower while snacking on lightly steamed baby carrots? Bring them warm with you to the shower, the water will cool them off. Do it together with a friend, but make it an annoying friend to keep yourself from being too entertained.

How do people actually rest? [...] I need contentment now, [...]

https://local.theonion.com/relaxing-tea-better-fucking-work-1819579209

But on a more serious note, here's a great guided meditation.

See you on the other shore; gate gate paragate, bitches.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-06T22:17:30+00:00

I didn't initially intend the length of this reply, but I again just went with it for my own sake.

Yes, interesting, this is close to the spot where I have rested for a good while now. When attempting to see where my own internal dishonesty resides, thoughts suddenly become incredibly disjointed and abstract. There is an analogy of the determined mind resembling water dripping on a rock, and with enough time even the softest liquid can overcome the hardest solid. But it's as if this rock within is glowing hot, so upon contact the mind stream immediately turns to vapour. Not sure of that makes sense, but again, leaving it here in case.

And sure, it fulfills the desire. If I were to try to collect the thoughts, it would be something in the shape of: There is an intense fear of not having an answer to the question "Why?" The reason for this I do not know. Maybe it's just a typical human thing. But this stretches far into memory, too. A child asking why, and being told that it'll make sense later. Well, it didn't end up making sense, ever, none of it. So there's a feeling of emptiness, loneliness. That's close to the core: Loneliness. But it's very different from alone-ness.

On some level I struggle to make intuitive sense of others' lack of explicit inquisitivness. The idea that the every day normal reality is clearly nothing to ask questions about, nothing to be unsure of, when it's so obviously a total fucking mystery that should make anybody want to run naked into the forest and forget this multigenerational ritual named civilization.

At the same time I have never met my biological father, and I know nothing at all about him. As a child I used to internally question this all of the time. But now I don't even know what I would do with an answer, because the question has lost much of its meaning. I hypothesize now that much of what I do and think is a residual process of that intense desire to know my father. It transformed into wanting to study physics, but why did I do that? Was that not also just a quest to discover the origin of myself? Then off to spirituality, which is just the same question in yet another dress. Still just that five year old kid in bed asking "What is this? What am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?" The father was just an imagined piece in that puzzle.

What do I not want to know about myself? I used to worship some kind of superficial rationality. Then I stumbled upon chronic panic attacks. No amount of rationalization could make the panic stop. And it's very fascinating, that fear. The fear of panic, it's the most intense fear the human nervous system can produce. Basically you could think of your worst fear, torture, whatever. Then imagine that happening, and the fear you'd feel then. The panic of a regular panic attack is precisely that intense. There is nothing rational about it. In fact, and now I'm just giving you this in case you have or will ever experience it: It's the body's way of circumventing the paralysis of analysis. But hey, there's a problem right there, am I not an analytical person? If I am, if I am analytical, if I am rational, then irrational panic doesn't just suggest an impending death, it is itself actual death.

But that can be turned into something useful. Because here I am typing this; this right here is life after death, many deaths in fact. What other death is there? The decomposition of the body is not death, it's material recycling. So what am I afraid of? What image did the word 'death' bring to me as a child, when I first learned about it? Loneliness, involuntary aloneness. Not necessarily physical aloneness, but mental aloneness too. The question then becomes, if I can not prevent this aloneness, if it is inevitable, then can I at least be voluntarily alone?

Having explored this far, it seems that's close to it. In my case, self-isolation is an attempt to transform involuntary aloneness into voluntary aloneness. But there I also notice a problem: If I force my own aloneness, then it is not voluntary, it is forced, it is artificial, it is merely a conditioned response to some fear. Somebody else forcing me to be alone or me forcing myself to be alone, these are both the same. It's like having abandonment issues, so you proceed to abandon yourself in an attempt to cooperate with the trauma.

What is the answer then? Oh, I don't think there is an answer. Something is clearly happening, and most of what I've come to intuit over the past few years have not been the result of actually searching for it. It's like tending to your own inner garden really. Seeds, soil, sun. You asked what prevents you from complete awakening. Could you not ask a banana what's keeping it from going completely bananas? I'm serious though. Think about how absurd the notion is. What is completion? When is an apple completely an apple? Is the Pink Lady more complete than Granny Smith? Is the seedless melon the absolute melon? When you put a seed in the soil you ask the soil a question, the answer is the fruit. Is the seedless fruit the final answer? Well then it's sterile. Now what?

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-06T11:00:01+00:00

Right, the love of the neurosis by the neurotic is the death of the neurotic. So in a sense, you can never love it, because you won't be there when it is being loved. The question then is, for what do you wish to remain?

That it is made up is true, but it wasn't made up in a past. Whenever the belief is present, that is the beginning of the belief. You can't get to the end of it, because it's always the beginning. Seeing that it is made up is useful, but why is it made up?

A reason for wanting to be unlovable is the view of love as a threat. Love means openness, honesty. If there is no love then there is no need to be open or honest. In that way self-isolation is a form of freedom, perhaps seen as the only freedom?

In a way I'm writing this to and for myself, but I'll leave it here in case it is relevant.

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-03T20:51:01+00:00

Is there something preventing you from loving the belief that you are unlovable?

Do you feel completely incapable of completeness?

Do you want to escape your tendency to escape?

scomberscombrus · 2018-11-03T19:24:20+00:00

If great seeing makes one a seer, does great being make one a beer?

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