this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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weirdway
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weird (adj.)
c. 1400,
• "having power to control fate", from wierd (n.), from Old English wyrd "fate, chance, fortune; destiny; the Fates," literally "that which comes,"
• from Proto-Germanic wurthiz (cognates: Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt "fate," Old Norse urðr "fate, one of the three Norns"),
• from PIE wert- "to turn, to wind," (cognates: German werden, Old English weorðan "to become"),
• from root wer- (3) "to turn, bend" (see versus).
• For sense development from "turning" to "becoming," compare phrase turn into "become."
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How would you reconcile omnipotence and companionship with conventional beings? Do you think the difference would bother you in anyway? Do you think it might affect your relationships?
I bet Bill Gates sometimes yearns for someone who is an "equal". Someone who is as powerful as he is, as rich as he is. And there are people in the world who exist that can rival his power, whether they are billionaires or politicians or whoever. But most of the people he comes into contact with are not quite as rich and powerful as he is. Even in his inner circle, I bet there's a hierarchy. He could be the kindest, most generous, most friendly guy and that unspoken power hierarchy will still be present. I wonder if he sometimes wishes that he could be 'normal'.
Let's say an omnipotent entity is travelling and comes across a community of people. He socialises with them and has a fun time. He decides to stay there for a while and creates close friendships with 2 people. He knows that he could leave that world forever if he chooses and move on. He also knows he can bend that world to his will if he wished. His two friends aren't privy to that knowledge, they are just conventional beings.
The entity grows to really like his two new friends and wishes that they could accompany him. But the power difference is so large, these two people would get ripped apart if they traversed beyond their realm and they would probably emotionally and mentally suffer a lot. It would be like taking 1000 doses of DMT in a row, it would completely destroy them.
The entity also feels strange when he hangs out with his friends. He knows something they don't and it bothers him greatly. And even if he told them and revealed his power to them, he would still feel weird because of the massive power difference. If your friend revealed they had god-like superpowers, would your reaction to them change? It certainly would.
The entity knows that if he wants to be life long companions with these 2 people, he needs to help them along with their own spiritual journey and make them equals.
If you were in the position of this entity, would you make them equals? Let's say that you really like your new friends and enjoy their company and you want them to be individuals with their own agency, even if it means that they'll eventually part ways with you. Would you want to bring them onto your level?
Or would you seek your friends in an alternate universe where they have already reached "godhood"? Thus eliminating any "mentor-student" relationship and allowing you to see them as true equals. How would you reconcile the fact that you manifested them? Would it still feel authentic? Or would you not even entertain the idea of having equals?
And finally, if you ever came across an "equal" in your travels (a subjective idealist or some sort of enlightened spiritual practitioner) through pure chance, as in you never manifested an encounter, and you ended up really enjoying their company, would you join up with them or leave them behind and move on alone?
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-09-23 21:22:45 (dne6vfr)
An omnipotent entity would either declare those 2 friends as "powerful enough" and by virtue of this declaration it would become true for all intents and purposes of that entity. Alternatively, this entity would never get lonely in the first place, because it would routinely encounter people like itself, at an appropriate power level, because that's the entity's will, and it being omnipotent, as it wills, so it is.
Basically an omnipotent entity has arbitrary tuning of anything and everything. There are no problems that remains problems for long.
For an omnipotent entity a problem is when they change how they want their experience to be, but didn't get around to actually changing their experience yet. And being able to contemplate possibilities without those contemplations spilling out into the protected domain of experience is part of omnipotence too.
Although I have to say it's weird to call an omnipotent being "an entity." It's like attributing will and life to a body, just as wrong in the final analysis. I would refer to something as an entity when I regard it as distinct from myself and as being "out there." When I regard myself I am not en entity to myself. Just like to myself I am also not a body or anything other concrete and optional.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-09-24 16:45:54 (dnfhzj7)
If I ever did come across such beings, I think I would help them along but ultimately leave it up to them to decide. I'm not in the business of subjugating other conscious beings, but I'm open to helping them and giving ideas to them. It would be their choice to come along or even participate in any of this.
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-09-25 12:11:34 (dngugc6)
I think mostly the same way, except if someone or something crosses one of my red lines, I will take a decisive measure. I want to be kind but not squishy.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-09-25 12:24:39 (dngv276)
Your post just reminded me of this great song. When I heard it a few years ago and heard the line "i use the magick to glo", I had no idea what it meant, but now everything in that song makes so much sense, hilariously so.
Anyways, your post brings up the whole "world-sharing" topic; whether or not there actually are any "other beings", in the way you speak of them. I like to think of myself as just an open space of awareness, as shown in this model.
In regards to others, I wouldn't assume that anything other than what you've experienced yourself has any kind of agency or awareness separate from you. Maybe "others" are given a sort of artificial awareness, to make the illusion more convincing, but ultimately, I wouldn't spend much time or effort worrying about others, that sort of goes against the whole "subjective experience" viewpoint. I would ask /u/mindseal for his/her take on "others" but I think it's best just to treat experience like a RPG game (here's another model relating to that idea)
Originally commented by u/WrongStar on 2017-09-25 09:22:49 (dngmdqx)
lmao
That's one perspective you could take. However the thing about subjective idealism is one has the choice to choose what they want to experience. I'm currently dabbling in solipsism but I see it as a tool, a means to an end or even just an experiment out of pure curiosity. Once I reach my final state, I'll probably drop it.
Solipsism isn't your only option. If you wanted to, you could choose to experience other "minds" just like yourself, with their own agency and will, completely independent of yourself.
If one mind can arise within awareness, why can't two or more exist? The awareness that embodies these minds is the same awareness, and this is the awareness or "open space" you are identifying with. If you've ever had a dream of being a different person, you might realize that the awareness of it is constant throughout both waking, deep sleep and dream life. That awareness never changes. However the content of the experience will be different and that content can dictate whether you feel like entity 1 or entity 204.
So if entity 1 can have agency, couldn't entity 204 also have agency as well? What is stopping both entity 1 and entity 204 from existing simultaneously, seeing as both arise in awareness? Solipsism may feel absolute when you identify entity 1 as being the only mind or intelligence arising in awareness. But what law states that only one mind/intelligence can arise in awareness? Why should awareness only experience itself through one mind?
I probably didn't explain it well, but this link explains it much better.
Another thing to think about. Think back to when you were still a hardcore physicalist, viewing other minds as being 100% real. Would you say your current view somehow renders that invalid?
If you think about yourself as the person you were 8 years ago (assuming you were a hardcore phyiscalist then), then the people that existed were 100% real to you. You treated them as real and in your mind, they were real people, real minds with their own agency.
So you do have options here. You can choose to believe that solipsism was always real, regardless of what you thought about others in the past. Or you can choose to voluntarily adopt solipsism as a tool which might imply that you somehow shifted away from these "other minds". I wrote this in a hurry, so there might be some things not worded properly, I'll try and fix it later if they exist.
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-09-25 12:03:21 (dngu1z3)
Well, I'm not exactly a subscriber to solipsism (first time hearing the term). I'm still a bit new to all this so was just trying bounce some ideas around and see what other views there are.
But if we understand the idea that reality is consciousness/awareness taking the form of experiences, then we really can't stray too far off from the truth. That being, the only fundamental truth is awareness itself. Everything else under the umbrella of possibility is true/false in a relative sense. So, things like what we are talking about now, come down to choice. Whether or not it's one we remember or a long forgotten one of the past, it still is a choice. Re-reading what you wrote at the end there, I'm seeing that we're ultimately saying the same thing :)
Also in regards to Rupert Spira, I'm wondering if you've ever heard of Greg Goode as well. His books 'Standing as Awareness' and 'The Direct Path' got me started on all this, and that's what connected me to Rupert Spira. I even see he's listed in the 'friends' tab of the website you linked, so if you're looking for a good read, check him out
Originally commented by u/WrongStar on 2017-09-26 21:28:01 (dniz6do)
I agree. There's a lot of choices and options available to you and that's the beauty of it.
Ah yeah, Greg Goode is a boss. I've read his "Standing as Awareness" book but I've not read his "Direct Path". Really helpful book though, his explanations are cutting edge and very easy to understand. In fact I should probably check out his "Direct Path" book for a quick mental brush up.
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-09-26 22:43:42 (dnj1o84)
I emphatically agree with all this.
The whole point of subjective idealism is to broaden the awareness of the various possible intents one could engage in. It's to open up the horizon, or to point out a sky beyond the sky. If someone walks away thinking "solipsism is the only way" then I am afraid they completely missed the boat. Subjective idealism allows for solipsism and in some specific ways solipsism is powerful, but if it becomes restricted to only solipsism that in my view is no longer the real subjective idealism anymore. Subjective idealism is a more general understanding that intents produce experiential results. That's it. If one intends to relate to experience as purely private, there is a concomitant experiential range for that, and one can cultivate insights and skills inside that range. But just as easily a person can intend that there are minds, spaces or even things outside themselves and that they're independent, and in accordance with that intent, there is also a corresponding experiential range. It is possible to cultivate insights and skills inside those ranges.
The only common denominator for subjective idealism is that you cannot claim that you're irrelevant in the manner your experience happens. So if a subjective idealist intends to experience an independent space of some sort, and they're saying it's only independent because they intend that it is and will relate to it in that way, then they're a true subjective idealist still. So as long as one acknowledges that experience is profoundly volitional in an intimate sense, one is a subjective idealist already. From there the field is wide open as to how specifically curate one's own willing/knowing/experiencing.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-09-25 12:19:02 (dnguu6r)
Agreed.
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-09-25 21:08:11 (dnh93ju)