Looks like solipsism is a topic of the hour, so this inspired me to share some of my thoughts on it. I don't often speak about solipsism explicitly and now is as good a time as any.
Firstly I want to clarify the definition of solipsism. It's possible I use a somewhat non-standard definition of "solipsism" and so just in case, it's a good idea to define the term. Solipsism to me means a unified subjective point of view. So it's both unified, as in, non-dual, not excluding anything as "other" or "out there" and subjective, as in, personal, perspectival, something to which other alternatives do exist. So an experience is subjective if it's perspectival. All experiences are perspectival. And something is perspectival if other alternatives exist. So for example, if I think events happen in time, since I can imagine events not happening in time, at least the conventional variety of time is optional in my consideration. So time is perspectival and subjective.
So what solipsism does not mean is something like "Everything is only Nefandi." That would be nonsense. I can experience any sort of identity or body. Because nothing concrete (specific) in my experience of myself is non-optional, when I unify my point of view, I am not unifying it under my conventional identity. Insofar Nefandi appears to me, so do say TriumphantGeorge, Utthana, and so on, at least, in this specific configuration of experience I am in now. So my view is unified in myself, but I am not strictly speaking Nefandi. I am experiencing Nefandi and to some extent you can say I am Nefandi-ing, but that isn't accurate, because in addition to Nefandi-ing I am also TriumphantGeorge-ing, street-ing, car-ing, cloud-ing, time-ing, space-ing, universe-ing, and so on. But it would be accurate to say that Nefandi-ing right now is at the forefront of my awareness and it often blinds me to other activity I am performing right now.
In most cases I positively don't want to be aware of this other activity, because I want it to happen on autopilot, on its own, without my explicit guidance. Which is to say, I want a breathing living game world to be inside of, however, it is a world I want to be able to adjust, or even eliminate, if it doesn't suit me. But so long as it is suitable, there is really no desire for micromanagement, and indeed, some amount of surprise is enjoyable in and of itself. In this way it makes good sense for me to hide certain "things" from myself even if those things are still just myself.
So why would any of this be interesting or relevant to me? The main reason is the ability to perform complete transformations and the development of personal confidence that extends all the way to the level of concrete manifestations (as opposed to say only confidence in the abstract nature of things).
I recall the most basic and most enjoyable moment of my lucid dreaming career, and like for many lucid dreamers, it's learning to fly. And how was I able to fly? I was able to fly only after I realized, thanks to lucidity, that everything I am witnessing is a mind-made world of my own creation. So my view in a lucid dream has become unified subjectively in myself. And this is what gave me certainty and knowledge that I could manifest the experience of flying. And voila, I was able to fly. The enjoyment and a sense of mastery from this experience is unforgettable. I want to learn to fly in all kinds of ways.
Flying bodily through the sky is just one kind of flying. Flying is a metaphor for experiencing without limitations. Normally there is a limitation of gravity. When you fly you remove the limitation of gravity on experience. In lucid flying I have realized that ultimately gravity in all the ways I experience and know it is a self-imposed habit of my own mind. Because this is so, I have options with regard to that habit. If I like it the way it is, I can keep it. I can also modify it or make it adjustable or even make it inconsistent in some way. Options abound.
When the viewpoint becomes unified and subjective, this does create a source of personal power. This, above all else, grants the power to direct experience in any way one may desire.
Of course, like anything, this modality has potential pitfalls. In particular, if you always satisfy every desire, you may start to lose tolerance to adversity. As the tolerance to adversity decreases, smaller and smaller intensity is required to create a sense of the experience being undesirable. So supposing I have a huge tolerance of pain, but I take care never to deliberately injure myself, after say 100 or 10000 subjective years of this, I may find even a feather against the skin feels like intolerable pain. And I am not saying this is a set in stone eventuality, but personally I do see this as a very likely possibility, assuming no arcane mental activity that would prevent ordinary habituation from working as usual.
On the other hand, overfocusing on tolerance one becomes passive and inexpressive. If you can tolerate anything perfectly, why live? Why sing if you can tolerate silence perfectly? Why write articles if you can tolerate ignorance? Why caress someone if you can tolerate absence of touch of a sentient being? Perfect tolerance removes any reason for anything at all. At the extreme of tolerance one just exists, as a mere insensate thing.
So I always develop myself in both directions. I learn to tolerate pain and adversity. But I also learn (or re-remember) to be extraordinarily expressive. To me this is what freedom is like: I don't have to do anything, but I also don't have to avoid doing anything. In other words, I am free in both directions. I am free in the direction toward greater and greater passivity. And I am free in the direction toward greater and greater activity or influence.
I think that ultimately all control is self-control. As a random aside, hypnotists like to say "all hypnosis is self-hypnosis," and one of the consequences of such a view is that when you hypnotize an audience, you are actually hypnotizing yourself into experiencing that you're hypnotizing the audience. And so self-hypnosis is always the first step for any hypnotist. Since solipsism doesn't train you to control something other than your own mind, I regard solipsism as the reader's birthright. Why? Because it's your birthright to learn to control your own mind to an arbitrary degree, if that's what you want to be learning, or remembering (since secretly you already know all there is to know anyway). In a way solipsism is the most modest position, since it's all only and ever about self-knowledge and self-control. For a solipsist adept, luckily, self-control implies all possible forms of control that actually matter in one's experience, but that's just a nice aside. The main driver for a genuine and sincere solipsist is not other-control, but self-control.
Th, th, th, that's all folks! :) At least that's all I wanted to say of my view on solipsism at this time.