Thunder_Gooch

Also See: http://thetaobums.co..._16#entry355087

Think of it less like predestination, and more like a choose your own adventure story book. Wikipedia article on the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics http://science.slash...iverse-question http://www.newscient...ntum-sense.html

At death for almost all people on earth, their yang spirit dies with them, and returns to the earth, what remains is the yin spirit, a subconcious mind with no willpower or emotion. Just a dead husk which is eventually reincarnated back into this world or a world like it. Death solves nothing.

Sunlover, Just as a reality check, there are a small handful of people on earth who have broken out and can transcend reality at will. One in a billion. Cutting emotional ties to friends and family isn't going to turn you into a hsien like John Chang's teacher Liao Tsu-Tong (also known as Mr. Weird Banana) You can't just disbelieve in reality to transcend it, it isn't that easy.

I don't know really. I've never even met someone that was 1% compatible with me.

rainbowvein, Sure tons, that's not what I am looking for though. I am looking for somewho who shares my goals and dreams, so that we can combine our efforts to work towards them. If I can't find someone like that I'd rather live alone.

The whole point of being in a relationship is that you are happier with someone, than you were living alone. I've been miserable trying to date normal women, I'd rather live alone than to date a fake plastic doll of a person. That's just how I feel.

How can I love someone who's personality repulses me?

I'd settle for a platonic friendship with a male roommate who shared my dreams even. More than a lover I want a friend who understands me and shares my dreams, it doesn't mean I necessarily want to pork them. I have no trouble getting laid, even though it does feel empty to make love with someone you don't love or care about.

K, I am not sure what the opposite of a consciousness that emerged from lower levels of complexity would be, perhaps if we created an AI it would be a non emergent intelligence, maybe sort of kinda. Free will, well that's a very tricky question. You don't actually exist to choose anything, and the world you live in is a virtual reality anyway. You are democracy of cells, and what you experience as the world around you, and personality, memory, sensation, etc. all of that is just you cells chatting away on their electrochemical internet, and you have no existence as a consciousness independent of that. You are just the voices of trillions of beings together as one consciousness. But, you can still choose to do any possible thing within your power moment to moment. In 2005 I had an experience of being a disembodied wave of energy/consciousness flowing through time. Time was a solid object, my body when I was born, and my body when I died were all apart of the same solid object, and I was merely flowing through it, my location determined the time and date. Both past and future have already occurred. Any book you could possibly write, or thought you could possibly think has already happened. That isn't to say that free will does not exist however. There are infinite pasts, presents and futures. Every possible future exists, as does every possible past, for any possible observer. Moment to moment whenever you make a choice you are navigating through infinite potential future realities, but these realities existed prior to you observing them, so nothing is ever truly created or unique to you as a person. You have freewill to choose from infinite preexisting realities, but that is all. It is not possible to ever create something new or unique, including your own personality, or ego.

Thanks The Mahayana Buddhists compare the mind to a mirror which reflects reality. When you think about it the reality you perceive occurs INSIDE your mind, not outside of it. You are seeing a simulated virtual experience which is representative of an external reality if there is one. The map is not the territory however. A representation of a thing is not the thing itself. Plato's cave allegory also alludes to this, with the men chained to a wall in a cave who believe the shadows on the wall to be reality. The cave is your mind, and the shadows on the wall are the reflections you see with your eyes. Another interesting thought that may bake your noodle. Each of your cells is an independently intelligent organism. You are like a society of cells. Your brain and nervous system is like their internet, except instead of fiber-optic cables they use axons and dendrites to send messages. It is the constant chattering of your cells online that gives rise to your consciousness. Your consciousness is just the energy and information exchanged by your cells. We as humans also give rise to a larger consciousness in which we play the roles of neurons, we just don't realize it.

Marbleheald, GrandmasterP, As far as sex is concerned I am seeing a pretty cool college chick. We get together we have a good time and she goes on her way. Sex isn't the issue. If I need to get laid I get laid, but it isn't something I am actively seeking. I would like to find a friend who shares my dreams. I would settle for a male even, in a platonic, roommate, training partner, nonsexual sort of way. But the odds of finding anyone who feels the same way I do, has the same motivations I do, has the same dreams as I do isn't very likely.

Not looking for a plastic companion, I am looking for another human who shares my dreams lol.

I am not a buddhist. LOL

Still not interested.

I am vegetarian, (I will eat chicken or turkey it it is provided, but I never buy meat for myself) but imagine for a minute, that you are a strict vegan, and the sight of meat makes you sick. Now imagine the person you are in love with hunts deer, shoots and kills them and smokes the meat themselves. You live together so you have to put up with being around their cured meat all the time, and the knowledge they are kissing you with their meat juices. Now imagine you are one of only a hundred vegans on earth, and meeting a person like yourself is almost impossible, or at least extremely improbable.

GMP, I've dated her type before and it didn't work out.

I seek continuity of consciousness between lifetimes, or perhaps to continue as a spirit (consciousness) that does not reincarnate.

All the women I've dated have felt like soulless empty dolls, no interest in dating more of them. I'd rather just be alone.

WWROA, None of us ever really die, the experience will continue forever. However I am seeking continuity between lifetimes like you suggest. Instead of on/off/on/off/on/off I seek to be either always on or always off. I don't want to wake up with complete amnesia as a child and start over, only to forget it all and start again, and again.

GrandmasterP, I am no longer looking, I've given up the search. If she exists shes one in a billion, and I don't have time to sift through the rest to find her. I'd rather just focus on my own path than worrying about it.

Jetsun, I'd like someone who shares my goals and dreams as a companion. Just a person to talk to sometimes who understands you. If I can't have that I would rather be alone, because being in a relationship otherwise is just a financial, and emotional burden I don't wish to bear.

I agree 100%.

Nikolai1, I am not a spiritual person. I don't like being associated with spiritual practices. What I practice isn't about becoming a better person, or saving the planet, or realizing the truth of enlightenment. None of those things could possibly help me in what it is that I want to achieve before I die. A relationship in which we do not both share the same end goal serves only as a distraction.

DAO rain TAO, I waited a little while to let the thread die down. I'll try to answer your question now that it isn't derailing the thread. The problem with your question is that nothing exists including yourself. Existence is a delusion. All there is an energetic, experience of information. You have no body, you have no friends, you have no family, you have no possessions. You are just an experience. There is no one experiencing the experience, the experience is just happening. There is no you in the equation other than the experience itself, that is all you are. What you feel, what you see, what you smell, what you hear, what you taste, what you remember, what you imagine, all of the experience is you and you are nothing more than an experience at all.