Decide

[Everything]

Hey all, quick question on the view of Taoist about decisions.

 

When we make decisions, we do it for the sake of living itself. Not making decisions one becomes depressed, storing their anger inside untill it becomes sadness. Taking away someones freedom of making decisions will do the same.

 

However... I am kinda on the weird side of humanoids, lol. Passiveness is one of my characteristics or weakness one might say more often. As I look too much to my self and the way I treat my environment with the decisions I make in life, I tend to carry the weight of the entire world on my shoulder in immature victim thinking. My friend, on the other hand, tends to do the opposite of only getting the perspective of "how does the environment treat me" and his weakness is impuslive decisions and thus destructive. So for my life, decisions has mostly been either passive, destructive or constructive.

 

How do you guys view all of this? Especially the part of passiveness being kinda "less alive" in some sense. You guys don't view the purpose of life as making decisions? Perhaps you can take it a step further and give consciousness to the rocks you walk upon. consciousness to the entire universe as one living organism. In some way it is making decisions, only too slow for us to perceive in a direct way. Perhaps the rock is part of something bigger, and this big thing is making the decisions. You guys believe that passiveness is actually no diffrent from decisiveness? That we're part of something bigger, fate perhaps.

 

I am mostly passive, not out of the immature sense carrying the entire world on my shoulders when making decisions, no. I am passive to find meaning in my decisions. Sometimes I make alot of decisions, I feel alive, and even happy when I've been making good decisions for a while, everything lines up perfectly. But when I look up at night, at the stars, the entire universe, so big, I tend to feel so small and become passive, just enjoying what is witnessed. Feeling like that everything I decide is perfect, even if that decision is making no decisions. weird feeling huh?

Edited August 22, 2010 by Everything

[Encephalon]

RESOLVE

 

Banish uncertainty.

Affirm strength.

Hold resolve.

Expect death.

 

Make your stand today. On this spot. On this day. Make your actions count; do not falter in your determination to fulfill your destiny. Don't follow the destiny outlined in some mystical book: create your own.

 

Your resolve to tread the path of life is your best asset. Without it, you die. Death is unavoidable, but let it not be from loss of will but because your time is over. As long as you can keep going, use your imagination to cope with the travails of life. Overcome your obstacles and realize what you envision.

 

You will know unexpected happiness. You will know the sorrow of seeing what is dearest to you cut down before your eyes. Accept that. That is the nature of human existence and you have no time to buffer this fact with fairy tales and illogical explanations.

 

Each day, your life grows shorter by twenty-four hours. The time to make achievements becomes more precious. You must fulfill everything you want in life and then release your will upon the moment of death. Your life is a creation that dies when you die. Release it, give up your individuality, and in so doing, finally merge completely with the Tao.

 

Until that moment, create the poetry of your life with toughness and determination.

 

- 365 Tao / Daily Meditations - Deng Ming-Dao

[voidisyinyang]

Hey all, quick question on the view of Taoist about decisions.

 

When we make decisions, we do it for the sake of living itself. Not making decisions one becomes depressed, storing their anger inside untill it becomes sadness. Taking away someones freedom of making decisions will do the same.

 

However... I am kinda on the weird side of humanoids, lol. Passiveness is one of my characteristics or weakness one might say more often. As I look too much to my self and the way I treat my environment with the decisions I make in life, I tend to carry the weight of the entire world on my shoulder in immature victim thinking. My friend, on the other hand, tends to do the opposite of only getting the perspective of "how does the environment treat me" and his weakness is impuslive decisions and thus destructive. So for my life, decisions has mostly been either passive, destructive or constructive.

 

How do you guys view all of this? Especially the part of passiveness being kinda "less alive" in some sense. You guys don't view the purpose of life as making decisions? Perhaps you can take it a step further and give consciousness to the rocks you walk upon. consciousness to the entire universe as one living organism. In some way it is making decisions, only too slow for us to perceive in a direct way. Perhaps the rock is part of something bigger, and this big thing is making the decisions. You guys believe that passiveness is actually no diffrent from decisiveness? That we're part of something bigger, fate perhaps.

 

I am mostly passive, not out of the immature sense carrying the entire world on my shoulders when making decisions, no. I am passive to find meaning in my decisions. Sometimes I make alot of decisions, I feel alive, and even happy when I've been making good decisions for a while, everything lines up perfectly. But when I look up at night, at the stars, the entire universe, so big, I tend to feel so small and become passive, just enjoying what is witnessed. Feeling like that everything I decide is perfect, even if that decision is making no decisions. weird feeling huh?

 

Decisions go hand and hand with technology. When we work with technology then the right hand is dominant and also the left brain is dominant to make decisions. So for decisions we have intentional planning, we have linear time, and we have a contained sense of space -- since technology contains infinity for mathematics through geometry.

 

Science has proven that any decisions about motion are actually not our decisions -- our brain perceives what motion our body needs to make and then our body makes the motion -- only later does our left-brain become aware of this lower brain decision, and then the left prefrontal cortex "decides" to make the same motion.

 

So the decision to move is an illusion -- our brain convinces itself that "we" decided to move even though our conscious left brain does not have the power in this decision!

 

http://lawandmedicine.wordpress.com/tag/libet/

 

Libet’s findings suggest that decisions made by a subject are first being made on a subconscious level and only afterward being translated into a “conscious decision”, and that the subject’s belief that it occurred at the behest of her will was only due to her retrospective perspective on the event. He showed that the preparatory brain activity that occurs as you make a ‘free’ choice about something is actually made a few hundred milliseconds before the decision reaches your conscious awareness. In other words, your brain makes a decision before you do, and ‘free will’ is an illusion. (1)

 

So when we practice meditation and body transformation then our sense of time changes -- it's via relativity -- if you speed up the frequency of your consciousness when it approaches the speed of light then there is a slowing down of time. When time slows down compared to your own awareness at the speed of light it means you can perceive more bits of information within the same amount of time -- or what would otherwise be subconscious now becomes part of your conscious decisions.

 

For example if you are listening to someone talking -- the person talking may not be aware that in fact what they say to you triggers an association of thoughts that are not directly related to the content of the person talking. So while you're listening you are also thinking about things which may not relate to the same direction or line of thought of the person thinking.

 

At the same time the person talking will probably become aware that while you appear to be listening you are actually thinking about something else not directly related to what the person is talking about. Meanwhile while you are thinking about something else besides what the person is talking about you become aware that the person talking to you realizes that you are thinking about something that is not directly related to what the person is talking about.

 

Robin Dunbar calls this the "fifth level of intentionality" in humans:

 

http://the-mouse-trap.blogspot.com/2008/09/intentionality-order-order.html

 

Leaving asides the main premise of the social brain hypothesis, which I find convincing to an extent, he also claims that monkeys have only first order intentionality, while apes have second order and humans are able to function at about fifth order of intentionality, with some like Shakespeare being able to work on the sixth order.

 

So human society functions most naturally in groups of about 100 people so that this 5th level of intentionality can consciously keep track of all the various levels of thought between different people.

 

In science there is also the concept of "self organization" which is called "human swarms" as well:

 

http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/guestinsights/2010/08/smart-swarms-the-power-of-self-organization.html

 

Picture a crowd at the beach. Without anyone being told to, sunbathers are likely to distribute themselves across the sand in a self-organized way, clustering their blankets and umbrellas in a zone close enough to the surf to feel the ocean breeze, but far enough away to avoid getting soaked by a rogue wave. If someone happens to stand and point at the water, other people will stand and look too, until it seems like everybody's standing and looking. Is there a shark out there? Is someone drowning? A wave of alarm races down the beach as fast as it would through a school of fish if a hungry barracuda had suddenly appeared.

 

So a more appropriate model for decision making might be music -- the question -- the ultimate question of intentionality for a decision is

 

"who is listening?"

 

If you are listening to someone -- if you are really listening -- then who are you to really listen? When does listening start and stop?

 

If all your thoughts are based on the I-thought -- where does that I-thought come from? If you repeat I-I-I-I over and over and any thought you have you think who is thinking this? And you think "I Am" -- and then you listen to the source of the I-thought -- repeat I-I-I and LISTEN to what is the source of the I-thought....

 

Then this listening means no one is listening! Who we really are is this eternal self-organizing of listening as consciousness -- and that eternal process creates spacetime, creates light, energy, matter -- and that eternal process of listening self-organizes -- harmonizes -- knows what to do.

 

But there is a specific means for this decision making to happen -- it's through the yin-yang resonance so that your left and right brain are yin and yang -- the right and left hand, the upper and lower body -- etc. And so through specific exercise you can increase your ability to listen to intentionality -- to be aware of the decisions that your mind is making -- as it is part of the greater mind called reality.

Edited August 22, 2010 by drewhempel

[Everything]

Decisions go hand and hand with technology. When we work with technology then the right hand is dominant and also the left brain is dominant to make decisions. So for decisions we have intentional planning, we have linear time, and we have a contained sense of space -- since technology contains infinity for mathematics through geometry.

 

Science has proven that any decisions about motion are actually not our decisions -- our brain perceives what motion our body needs to make and then our body makes the motion -- only later does our left-brain become aware of this lower brain decision, and then the left prefrontal cortex "decides" to make the same motion.

 

So the decision to move is an illusion -- our brain convinces itself that "we" decided to move even though our conscious left brain does not have the power in this decision!

 

http://lawandmedicine.wordpress.com/tag/libet/

 

 

 

So when we practice meditation and body transformation then our sense of time changes -- it's via relativity -- if you speed up the frequency of your consciousness when it approaches the speed of light then there is a slowing down of time. When time slows down compared to your own awareness at the speed of light it means you can perceive more bits of information within the same amount of time -- or what would otherwise be subconscious now becomes part of your conscious decisions.

 

For example if you are listening to someone talking -- the person talking may not be aware that in fact what they say to you triggers an association of thoughts that are not directly related to the content of the person talking. So while you're listening you are also thinking about things which may not relate to the same direction or line of thought of the person thinking.

 

At the same time the person talking will probably become aware that while you appear to be listening you are actually thinking about something else not directly related to what the person is talking about. Meanwhile while you are thinking about something else besides what the person is talking about you become aware that the person talking to you realizes that you are thinking about something that is not directly related to what the person is talking about.

 

Robin Dunbar calls this the "fifth level of intentionality" in humans:

 

http://the-mouse-trap.blogspot.com/2008/09/intentionality-order-order.html

 

 

 

So human society functions most naturally in groups of about 100 people so that this 5th level of intentionality can consciously keep track of all the various levels of thought between different people.

 

In science there is also the concept of "self organization" which is called "human swarms" as well:

 

http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/guestinsights/2010/08/smart-swarms-the-power-of-self-organization.html

 

 

 

So a more appropriate model for decision making might be music -- the question -- the ultimate question of intentionality for a decision is

 

"who is listening?"

 

If you are listening to someone -- if you are really listening -- then who are you to really listen? When does listening start and stop?

 

If all your thoughts are based on the I-thought -- where does that I-thought come from? If you repeat I-I-I-I over and over and any thought you have you think who is thinking this? And you think "I Am" -- and then you listen to the source of the I-thought -- repeat I-I-I and LISTEN to what is the source of the I-thought....

 

Then this listening means no one is listening! Who we really are is this eternal self-organizing of listening as consciousness -- and that eternal process creates spacetime, creates light, energy, matter -- and that eternal process of listening self-organizes -- harmonizes -- knows what to do.

 

But there is a specific means for this decision making to happen -- it's through the yin-yang resonance so that your left and right brain are yin and yang -- the right and left hand, the upper and lower body -- etc. And so through specific exercise you can increase your ability to listen to intentionality -- to be aware of the decisions that your mind is making -- as it is part of the greater mind called reality.

 

Well, becoming aware and present minded go hand in hand with making decisions, ofcourse! I'm not sure what you're talking about, but making decisions when on auto-pilot thinking about past future or some place else is the same as passiveness. Or suffering when the decision you made is based upon the past or future. The only way to grow as a person is to become a witness in the present moment, being aware, then making thoughtful decisions, especially when you're fearful, one must decide to think before acting and doing the right thing, or impulsively go in reflex mode. Decisions with anger is more action prone, sometimes too agressive, sometimes assertive. However, these require patience and discipline to fulfill your needs. Ofcourse one might go about doing the wrong thing automaticly, not being able to make the decisions fast enough becayse you have not practised, you weren't patient and looked for a push-buton result.

 

When you want to change bad habbits, you stay present minded long enough untill you patiently change them in a disciplined way, by becoming aware. Same with fighting. You can't just try and decide to fight all the time if your body does the fighting for you. You first learn your body to fight, then it fights for you. This doesn't mean that we are not the one who decides wether to fight or not!

[Brian]

...

[Everything]

Are you referring to passivity (the behavior of being non-aggressive or non-assertive), or to willful avoidance of being decisive about choices within your own life? I think the the former is part of becoming a balanced person (passivity balancing with assertiveness) while I think the latter is most often an attempt to avoid responsibility. I wouldn't say "less alive" but I would say "less involved with one's own life."

 

 

 

42 (Just a joke...)

 

I view the purpose of life as an opportunity to learn about myself & about the universe, to love those close to me (and thereby, hopefully, add value to their lives) and to pass along my love and my learning to my child in order to improve his starting point in his own life. Along the way, I am enjoying life and cherishing almost every moment, even the difficult ones.

 

 

 

I think the passiveness to which you are referring is a subconscious decision to avoid responsibility for conscious decisions by letting other elements in your environment determine the events in your life. I also think ascribing this to fate is a rationalization that is employed when that subconscious decision becomes conscious, to avoid even responsibility for avoiding responsibility. If I am walking along the sidewalk and reach a train track, I can choose to pause, look to see if a train is coming and then consciously make a choice as to my next action, or I can subconsciously (or on "auto-pilot") choose to not look and "take my chances." To then claim that stepping in front of that fast-moving freight was a matter of fate, however, is a cop-out.

 

 

 

I think what you are saying here is that you view your passiveness as contemplation. I think this is a good thing! It is an important step in becoming aware of, and in control of, your own life, by becoming aware of and in control of your own thoughts and actions. You then muddle the point, however, by saying that you feel good about yourself when you are NOT passive but that you retreat to passivity when you are overwhelmed by your own sense of insignificance. Weird? Naah, not really. Sounds pretty normal to me. Now that you are aware of it, though, I think it is something to work on!

 

Or maybe I totally misunderstood your initial post, in which case please ignore all that I wrote above!

 

Yeah, solitude does that. It questions you things like "Should I really view death as a disease or should I view immortality as a good thing." Which emotional idea is more enhancing when making decisions? My whole life was once based on running away from death, living long enough to find a cure. It felt my heart with anxiety and anger 100% of the time. These kind of limiting believes are hard to identify and change. One requires a great perspective of someone else to focus on. But when not done with discipline and patience, your old believes will return in an instant, and you're trapped again from making decisions, rather passiveness is the way for you in that moment.

Edited August 22, 2010 by Everything

[Brian]

...

[Everything]

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

 

What if one cannot choose which journey he wants?

[Brian]

...

[Everything]

Make the conscious decision to start walking. The destination is not the journey, the journey is the journey. Life is full of decisions and many of them will prove to have been mistakes. One learns by those mistakes, however, while the non-decision decision only teaches the same lesson over and over.

 

When you are driving a car on busy streets and you reach an intersection at which you are unsure of the correct turn, do you stop in the middle of the intersection and wait for clarity or do you choose a path even it it is wrong?

 

lol awesome interpretation.

 

Silly me

[Maddie]

Isn't passitivity / assertiveness and decision making and planning the domain of the Liver? If so, I would suppose that troubles with these issues might be aided by working with the Liver and its meridian.

[Everything]

Isn't passitivity / assertiveness and decision making and planning the domain of the Liver? If so, I would suppose that troubles with these issues might be aided by working with the Liver and its meridian.

 

lol

 

From what I've heard, the liver mostly has biological purposes to it, not psychological ones!

 

What kind of liver are you talking about?

[Everything]

Isn't passitivity / assertiveness and decision making and planning the domain of the Liver? If so, I would suppose that troubles with these issues might be aided by working with the Liver and its meridian.

 

Oh, you are talking about traditional chinese medical techniques? Do you mean trough accupuncture?

[Brian]

...

[Maddie]

LOL! he's talking about your liver! As I understand it (which is only in a very superficial & amateurish way), the liver and gallbladder, as a zhang fu pair, cover emotion and decisiveness, repectively -- so the gallbladder would be more correct (I think...) This is from a TCM/energetic perspective rather than from a "Western medicine" perspective.

 

Hopefully, someone who knows what they are talking about will step into this thread (as opposed to me! )

 

Yes that is what I'm talking about lol sorry for the confusion. Well technically the Liver from the Taoist / TCM perspective deals with planning, and its paired Yang organ the Gallbladder deals with decision making, but since the Liver and Gallbladder are paired I just sort of lumped them together.

But additionally since you mentioned assertiveness as well, that is also considered a balanced attribute of the Liver, as well as kindness, and anger.

In acupuncture being easily angered or depressed (anger turned inward) is a reslut (often) of Liver chi stagnation, which is a very common pattern in the West.

Check this out it will tell you a bit about this ....

 

http://www.wingmakers.co.nz/Nature_Meridian.html

 

http://www.fivespirits.com/hun.php

 

http://www.heavenearthchineseherbs.com/chinese-medicine-liver-and-gall-bladder-organ-system-disharmonies-symptoms-oID-9.html?zenid=8q0ef8ppq0lltucmqjcstbfjg4

 

http://www.itmonline.org/5organs/liver.htm

[Maddie]

Oh, you are talking about traditional chinese medical techniques? Do you mean trough accupuncture?

 

As far as methods go yes acupuncture is one of many, others that I use specifically for the Liver are the Inner Smile and Healing sounds.

 

Below is Mantak Chia's version of the inner smile, you can do all the organs, or if you are wanting to focus on one you can do just that as well.

 

http://kheper.net/topics/meditation/inner_smile.htm

 

The healing sounds

 

http://www.universal-tao.com/article/smile.html

[Brian]

...

[voidisyinyang]

What if one cannot choose which journey he wants?

 

http://www.economist.com/node/16789226

 

Ants solve their own version using chemical signals called pheromones. When an ant finds food, she takes it back to the nest, leaving behind a pheromone trail that will attract others. The more ants that follow the trail, the stronger it becomes. The pheromones evaporate quickly, however, so once all the food has been collected, the trail soon goes cold. Moreover, this rapid evaporation means long trails are less attractive than short ones, all else being equal. Pheromones thus amplify the limited intelligence of the individual ants into something more powerful....

 

Hivemind

 

In 1992 Dr Dorigo and his group began developing Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO), an algorithm that looks for solutions to a problem by simulating a group of ants wandering over an area and laying down pheromones. ACO proved good at solving travelling-salesman-type problems. Since then it has grown into a whole family of algorithms, which have been applied to many practical questions.

 

Its most successful application is in logistics. Migros, a Swiss supermarket chain, and Barilla, Italy’s leading pasta-maker, both manage their daily deliveries from central warehouses to local retailers using AntRoute. This is a piece of software developed by AntOptima, a spin-off from the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Lugano (IDSIA), one of Europe’s leading centres for swarm intelligence. Every morning the software’s “ants” calculate the best routes and delivery sequences, depending on the quantity of cargo, its destinations, delivery windows and available lorries. According to Luca Gambardella, the director of both IDSIA and AntOptima, it takes 15 minutes to produce a delivery plan for 1,200 trucks, even though the plan changes almost every day.

 

Ant-like algorithms have also been applied to the problem of routing information through communication networks. Dr Dorigo and Gianni Di Caro, another researcher at IDSIA, have developed AntNet, a routing protocol in which packets of information hop from node to node, leaving a trace that signals the “quality” of their trip as they do so. Other packets sniff the trails thus created and choose accordingly. In computer simulations and tests on small-scale networks, AntNet has been shown to outperform existing routing protocols. It is better able to adapt to changed conditions (for example, increased traffic) and has a more robust resistance to node failures. According to Dr Di Caro, many large companies in the routing business have shown interest in AntNet, but using it would require the replacement of existing hardware, at huge cost. Ant routing looks promising, however, for ad hoc mobile networks like those used by the armed forces and civil-protection agencies.

 

For example, according to Vito Trianni of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, in Rome, the way bees select nesting sites is strikingly like what happens in the brain. Scout bees explore an area in search of suitable sites. When they discover a good location, they return to the nest and perform a waggle dance (similar to the one used to indicate patches of nectar-rich flowers) to recruit other scouts. The higher the perceived quality of the site, the longer the dance and the stronger the recruitment, until enough scouts have been recruited and the rest of the swarm follows. Substitute nerve cells for bees and electric activity for waggle dances, and you have a good description of what happens when a stimulus produces a response in the brain.

 

Proponents of so-called swarm cognition, like Dr Trianni, think the brain might work like a swarm of nerve cells, with no top-down co-ordination. Even complex cognitive functions, such as abstract reasoning and consciousness, they suggest, might simply emerge from local interactions of nerve cells doing their waggle dances. Those who speak of intellectual buzz, then, might be using a metaphor which is more apt than they realise.

Edited August 23, 2010 by drewhempel

[Brian]

...

[voidisyinyang]

Colonial neural networking, of a sort. The rapid evaporation eliminates the trap of "certainty" while also aiding in the informational challenge of route weighting.

 

Yeah it's fascinating stuff to be sure!! Amplitude, frequency, phase shift. There has to be several orders of "logical type" or network feedback -- that's what Gregory Bateson was focused on. The best network weight adjustment is the "80-20 power law" which is also the 4 to 1 Pyramid Tetrad of Pythagoras -- 1:2 is the emptiness, 2:3 is yang as the Perfect 5th and 3:4 is yin as the Perfect 4th. But if you change the direction of TIME as logical order of type -- then 2:3 = 3:4 violating the commutative property (2:3 = 3:2). So that built in asymmetry makes it an infinite system. That's why NINE is the number of growth in Taoism -- 1:2:3:4 = 10 but as an open system "1" or the I-thought is not a number.

[Brian]

...

[voidisyinyang]

The direction of time opens up a whole new tangle, doesn't it?

 

BTW, the other day, you were talking about action preceding thought, which I've pondered for several years since learning that. Your post made me think about something else, though. Did you know (you probably did!) that the brain appears to actively edit the timestamp on memories in near-real-time? Seems to snip segments as well as stretch adjoining segments to eliminate discontinuities. The easiest illustration is to consider moving your eyes from side to side -- if you did it with a camera, the transition would be jittery as the motion exceeds the "sampling rate" (for lack of a better term) of human vision, but the brain appears to edit the "broken frames" out to present a smooth picture or to avoid storing obvious garbage or something. This rapid motion is accompanied by a blink, which I suspect helps to facilitate the process by shuttering the transitional frames to make them easier to identify.

 

Yeah very bizarre -- also though the bifocal vision is an illusion of 3D space! haha.

 

So consider this -- that Jupiter and Saturn resonate as 5:4 as discovered by Kepler -- and 5:4 is the cube root of two -- the origin of three dimensional geometry -- but Jupiter protects Earth from comets and asteroids -- nevertheless the harmonic resonance of Jupiter and Saturn lines up, thereby ejecting asteroids and comets out of their orbits -- and thereby destroying all life on earth with 3D mammalian bifocal vision -- previously the Gorgons of the Permian Age (280 mya or so) and the Troodons of the Jurassic age -- 60 mya or so -- and now humans.

 

Yet the Reptilian pineal gland EYE over-rides the illusion of 3D space with linear time -- also the inner smile of the pineal gland over-rides the need to blink -- when you're "flexing the pineal gland."

 

It's in my Deep Disharmony blogbook for references http://naturalresonancerevolution.blogspot.com

Edited August 23, 2010 by drewhempel

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

This is really interesting, a different way to 'decode' especially since you describe yourself as "passive", Everything. In the 70's a man named Luke Rhineheart (syn George Cockcroft) wrote a novel called 'Dice Living', about a gut who starts living his whole life based on rolling dice. It spawned an interesting social phenomenon wherein people would let rolling a die be a way of life. See below:

 

Dice Living

 

Dice living, also known as diceliving, dicing, or die-ing is a way of life made popular by George Cockcroft's novel "The Dice Man", first published in 1971. The book documents the life of Luke, a man who throws dice to make decisions pertaining to his life - including his thoughts, actions, and even emotions. Luke does this in order to attempt the destruction of the personality, become the "random man", and hence appease many of his repressed inner desires and emotions.

 

In order to make choices using a die, the idea is to decide on six possible options, whether they be ways to spend the day; emotions to feel; or ways to act, and number them from one to six. The outcome of the single roll of a die will then decide which of these options is pursued. Options can be weighted, by assigning the same choice to multiple numbers or by using multiple dice. The most important rule is that the dice must always be obeyed, no matter what their decision.

 

Obviously, although one is controlling the six choices, it would lead you in different directions than what you would normally do, depending of course, on the options you list for yourself.

 

For example, this Saturday, I don't know what to do. Normally say, I would go out to a movie by myself or stay at home and watch TV- another anonymous indistinguishable Saturday night in a string of Saturday nights in my life. In dice living, I would make a list: 1. Call a friend I haven't seen or been in contact with for a long time and invite him to dinner.

2. Go out and start conversations with 10 strangers. 3. do yoga meditate for two hours and then watch a spiritually themed movie 4. Call up any female friend and go bowling (which I haven't done in years). 5. Call up 5 friends and invite them over for beers and poker. 6. Clean my junk drawer out, do kettlebells and read short stories....etc., see the possibilities?

 

Then, whichever number comes up, thats what I have to do. You can see that this totally shakes up your behavioral patterns and would lead to a much more interesting life, because it totally takes how you feel out of the equation of what you end up doing. In Dice Living, it doesn't matter that you don't feel like going out, you have to follow the dice, so your normal inertia that leads you to being a dullard and sloth and causes the years to go by and blend together...interesting isn't it?

 

You'll probably get the most out of it by keeping a journal of your experiences for however long you do it. You can do it to whatever extent you wish, for an occasional thing, or, as an experiment, for everything. It's kind of like 'controlled randomness'.

An interesting experiment in self development and conscious living.

 

Here's a good website on Dice Living.

Edited November 6, 2010 by TheSongsofDistantEarth