Aspen

I wish everyone a happy new year, good friends and affordable rent! It feels like a well sized chunk of my psyche got set into place after following the threads here, so I thank everyone for contributing. And also thank the Universe for being profoundly honest and enduring. It's truly a great work, in whichever way it came to be.

Saying free will categorically does not exist seems like a fallacy? A regular dream state is an example of awareness that lacks free will. Awareness is present, but intent is not, and interaction with the environment is clearly driven from the outside. In a waking state intent follows the awareness, and is either driven consciously (will shapes the intent) or externally (intent chases or tries to avoid objects of perception). Conceptualized thought stream does not stem from the will. It's easy to prove - just make we just make an arm go up or down. We have control of the process. Now, if we intend to cease the conceptual thinking for a minute or two, we might not succeed.The conclusion is that the thinking mind is not quite in our control, despite the identification we might hold with "our own thoughts". There is also very practical problem with that approach -- the conceptual mind is very limited in what it knows how to do. Most of day to day operations go beyond words -- we don't use the conceptual mind to remember, to write, to visualize, to drive, to tie shoelaces, or to draw, or move around, or play musical instruments. In fact, in most cases when we go somewhere, it is inclined to go the other way, dragging the awareness away with it. So, we could say that free will is present when intent and awareness are unified, and there is no excessive lust of result. Observing that no free will exists has merit, because this is not something that people usually have a grasp of, or free will it is identified with following the conceptual mind (that one likes categorizing and compartmentalizing, so the person gets obsessed with being somehow distinct from others and feeling personally achieved and distinguished). Even without recruiting karmic principles, it's enough to keep guys running in circles for a good while. And of we reject free will, then there is of course, no need to talk about destiny, since it's now all destiny, and there are no actual decisions, and we are all just lumbering automatons. Just my mishmash of some Crowley and Buddhist stuff, nothing too new or scientific.

In a sense. That is, science guys make a lot of claims that don't stand up to scrutiny. For instance, plugging in Newton's equation for gravity into a lunar eclipse scenario (bodies lined up nicely to eliminate most of the math) yields a gravitational pull of 2+ times greater from the side of sun, so technically the moon should be gone already (is it?). I didn't check with general relativity, because I'm lazy, and I don't really buy the universe with "just gravity". Mostly because I don't see a way to make it stable. The Earth supposedly has a molten nickel core of 10 000 degrees Celsius, but at the same time it has a powerful magnetic field. Would electricity conduct at that temperature? The Solar system is supposedly formed form a gaseous disk by accretion, so we postulate that the heaviest elements reside in the planetary core ... except for the sun, where the core is supposedly hydrogen. And for Pluto, since it hangs out outside the rotational plane. Rotation of the planets happens due to supply of initial momentum and lack of inertia. Accretion happened because the gaseous disk was ... slowing down somehow? due to friction? despite there being nothing to "slow down" against. And we still don't know why the planets rotate around their axis (or don't rotate? moon doesn't seem to rotate). Natural selection does not explain origin of the species, since different species can't interbreed, and thus evolution is profoundly discontinuous. For a new species to appear in that paradigm, at least a pair has to acquire the same mutation simultaneously, survive, not get the mutation removed via DNA error checking, then outcompete /outbreed their own kind to extinction, all without leaving a trace in the fossil record. Ditto for humans evolving from monkeys somehow -- we are not "better adapted" to the environment than they are. We are weaker, we can't handle cold, we can't climb worth shit. Ditto for races -- if skin color is an adaptation for rate of sunlight, European people should be black, and no real difference should exist between Europeans and Asians. Chernobyl was supposed to be radioactive for 20000 years, yet people go hang out there casually 30 years later. (We could split hairs about everything being a teensy bit radioactive, my point is about the boldness of claims). And it goes on, and there is no end to it. I'm not really anti science, but I experience a lack of buy in into the rationalist worldview. It basically a fairy tale that invokes "oh, it happened a really long time ago, real far away, and YOU CAN'T CONFIRM SHIT" several times too many. If all you need is a stopgap against religious fundamentalism it's good enough, but I'd hate to build on that foundation. I wouldn't say simulation, but maybe I just didn't push the envelope enough.

Honk! C: So using the registration e-mail to access Slack, but the system complains that 'member with that e-mail was not found'. Wanted to say hi and try teasing out a path for my mental cultivation C: Probably missing something obvious.

Well, mulling over it again I have the following interpretations : 1. Doing some tai-chi exercises the day before cleared blockage in the nerve channel (sort of like removing a clamp). Some sources say that healing properties of sleep are attributed to brain function reaching lower frequencies aka Theta state, and the autonomous nervous system does the healing. A familiar vet told me cats can excrete a needle they swallow by accident without experiencing any harm, so the body's innate potential for healing is very high. The dream itself, it that case, would be "a finger pointing to the moon". 2. I got a dream visit from someone nice and benevolent C: 3. I was doing this and that the night before (didn't come), so the episode had something to do with sublimation of DA SEX JUICE. I love dreaming! I used to have many dreams where I could pseudo-fly by propelling myself in the air like a jellyfish, was able to run around on all fours and leap several meters in the air. An interesting dream was particularly vivid dream was one I got sometime in my first year after graduation, in winter : an education official was praising we for graduating, and the dream me had tears streaming from his eyes, grabbed the official by the collar and yelled : 'You don't get it! I want to become the sun!'. I mulled over it for several years, since the interpretation of the Sun in our school physics seemed out of question. The breakthrough was when I encountered the reading of Rider Waite Tarot called Journey of the Fool, where The Sun corresponds to embodying effortless effort. That's what led to TTC.

I had a dream where I met someone resembling a guy I used to be pals with back in the uni. In the dream we were is a sort of warehouse, and there he casually jumped off the rafters that were above head height, and I confessed I was wary of doing that, since I have pains and problems with my knees. Than someone else joined in -- and I told them about a cutting pains I have, running down the line from my upper jaw down to the neck and right chest area and to the liver I think? I pulled on it and a sort of a worm came out, or that was the concept I was trying to convey, and they sort of rolled their eyes and went with it - yeah, it's sort of like that. So the worm got tossed out, and they extended palms toward me, I felt warmth. Some unfamiliar music was playing, 5 clean tones played in a loop on a string instrument and two chords on a different string instrument. So the cutting pains have stopped, and the painful swollen lymph nodule I had on the underside of the jaw is gone. I could remember the melody for a while after waking up, but I am not trained in writing down music, so it is gradually drowned out. He had a set of prayer beads with him at times, and more sensitive than most of us were, so he often took his time before speaking, and at times when you got fired up or angry guy would just snicker at you, and you felt like a dolt. I wonder how is he? Didn't hear from him in years.

Hey there! So I recently had a realization that there is either some substance to what all the great philosophers and world religions were saying, or I and everyone else was trained to be mute, deaf and blind. I think my experience with dry fasting was what tipped the scale -- it really does work for health, and the medical establishment is winging it pretty hard. I also researched statins enough to convince my grandparents to get off them with visible health benefits. And sungazing seems to have an effect too -- I did get rid of astigmatism, though the eyes are still not in synch. And I took time off to work on at an organic farm, and their stuff tastes better and has a better shelf life. So now I'm kind of tipping off the cliff in regard to 'What else was I missing all this time'? I signed up for a reiki attunement in October, mostly to get some crutch through means of personal experience. Also working through a book on shamatha and SAW courses, and trying to figure what is my end point for all of this, I must say, I'm glad to be here.