syncretik

My preoccupation at the moment lies in trying to better understand the nature of the othered aspect of myself, the part which crafts the world/my experiences. The questions I'm working on at the moment are: is it self aware as I am self aware? Does it contemplate me as I contemplate it? Am I mysterious to it as it is mysterious to me - or does it "know" me? Is it emotional or indifferent? What is the nature of our current connection? Does it function as a series of algorithms might or is it more nuanced? If I managed to merge with it tomorrow - to what extent would "I" still be "me"? What would I care about if that occurred?

I'm not sure how much headway I'm making with these questions to be honest. Thinking about them, though, has made me realised that I have made assumptions about my othered self, and that these assumptions affect my capacity to manifest things.

One area where I have experienced occasional success lies in willing traffic to improve. When I examined my success in this area I realised two things that my success was always accompanied by:

• a deep conviction that bad traffic was valueless

• a sense that traffic, no traffic, the world wasn't going to be ground-shakingly altered

So why was this important, why would these factors need to be satisfied in order for me to will things different?

And then it hit me - it's because I lack trust in myself and my capacity to make a "good," impressive world. I have accorded my othered self a privileged position, whereby I consider it a better crafter of worlds than myself. Basically, in my mind, I'm the kid drawing stick figures and it's Van Gogh.

And the artist idea isn't just a metaphor - I am quite literally fairly meh at drawing or any other artistic venture and I struggle to visualise in detail. Things I imagine have a fuzziness to them. Meanwhile, my othered self produces this world with its dizzying degree of detail, blades of grass, swirling dust motes, light and shadow, etc.

And since, visually and artistically, I can't compete with that othered part of me - I guess I extrapolated from that that I can't compete with it in any area. If it was better than me at the visual stuff, wouldn't it be better than I at crafting every aspect of my experience? If I interfered - would it be like splattering a big red paint mark across The Starry Night?

Well, looking at it logically, I can see the potential flaws in my assumptions. Being good at one thing is never a guarantee that you'll be good at another. And whatever unconscious awe I've been regarding my subconscious with, there clearly are situations where I have decided that it's wrong - traffic being one of them. God I hate traffic.

So I suppose what I've taken from this is that as an awareness I'm currently saddled with an inferiority complex which hamstrings me when I try to change my experience. My success is usually accompanied by extreme irritation - something has to look really, really pointless and stupid in order for me to be able to magically alter it. And I have to feel like I'm not changing things too much, lest I'm making a big, clumsy mess. So perhaps achieving greater success, with less requisite-angst, lies in more critically querying the pedestal I've placed my othered self on.

First, a few questions to consider: do animals have minds and perspectives? Do all humans in the waking realm? Do dream characters? How about demons and angels encountered in magickal workings? Did you have a mind and a perspective in the past? Will you in the future?

Second, let's remember that, conventionally, no one knows whether or not other people have minds and perspectives (or 'subjectivity' or 'consciousness'). It's impossible in principle, according to human convention, to actually access the mind and perspective of another human. Otherwise, we wouldn't have distinct minds and perspectives. No amount of brain science on others and no amount of conversation with others can definitely answer that question, just like no amount of science can prove that this is a real, external material reality and not an illusory, internal mental reality.

So, whether or not there are other minds is a matter of perspective, like the question of whether or not there is a material world. And like with a material world, the difference between believing and not believing is not a matter of whether or not there are actually other minds. It's a matter of whether you are manifesting your imagination and experience in such a way that it you have experience suggestive of other minds or not.

There is a difference in the way that humans relate to and manifest dream people v. waking people. Generally, humans consider dream people to be mindless and okay to toy with and generally consider waking people to be minded and important to treat with respect. To make the point even stronger, some people consider waking animals to have perspectives and others do not.

Now, imagine that you could telepathically read and influence other people's perspectives. How might that work? It could turn out that their perspectives were accessible and adjustable to you in a way similar to the way that your memories of your past perspectives are accessible and adjustable to you. That would mean that their perspectives are not distinct objects from your mind, but are unconscious aspects of your perspective that you can focus on like your memories. However, in this view, that also means that what you presently identify as your human perspective is only another aspect of your mind that you are accustomed to focusing on more than other aspects of your mind.

Further, imagine that in this state you decided that you didn't like always controlling and knowing other peoples's perspectives. You actively practiced focusing on what we ordinarily call your human perspective without ever focusing on the other perspectives. Imagine that after doing this for thousands of lifetimes you forgot that you weren't just this perspective and forgot that you could read and influence apparently other perspectives – you start to regard them as other. Your perception of the perspectives of others would be essentially what your perception of others is now, abstractly. You would think that those unconscious aspects of your mind were other than you, and you would be mistakenly identifying your mind with your human role, like a person can mistakenly identify with their job or personality or wealth.

Similarly, imagine that some other individual could telepathically read and influence your perspective. It would feel like your perspective was only an aspect of their mind. But, your perspective is an aspect of your own mind, so in this view, too, your minds must not be distinct. From your perspective, they are an aspect of your mind that you are unconscious of that you are at some level allowing to have an influential relationship with your conventional human perspective. From their perspective, you are an aspect of their mind as in the last example.

If we were to imagine that our perspectives had no telepathic influence on each other then we would not be able to interact with one another in any way. If we imagine that our perspectives were completely telepathically intertwined, then there would be no illusion of separation. However, in the conventional world, we imagine that our perspectives only telepathically influence each other in a limited manner – you can directly manipulate my perception of your body and I can directly manipulate your perception of my body. And we imagine that neither of us can directly manipulate either our own or each others's perception of the material world.

Imagine is the operative word here (you could replace it with 'believe' if you prefer). I imagine a perspective that I call you, and you imagine a perspective that you call me. I also imagine that you imagine a perspective that you call me, and you also imagine that I imagine a perspective that I call you. Your idea of other people and your idea of yourself as a person are only ideas in your mind.

Think about it like this. Your beliefs and memories and expectations and values and desires are all intentional mental structures. None of those are you at your core, because you could in principle have different memories or different desires and still be you. Now, imagine that all of your beliefs and memories and expectations and values and desires and all other aspects of your perspective were replaced with mine. Now, you and I are the same.

I only understand and interact with your perspective, with you, as a potential perspective that I could have that I do not. When I interact with you, I am only interacting with an aspect of myself. Similarly, when you interact with me, you are only interacting with an aspect of yourself.

So, in my view, there is only one mind. From my perspective, it is my mind. From your perspective, it is your mind. From any perspective, the mind is their own. So, in my view, there is no distinction between you or I at the level of mind. But there are infinite possible perspectives the mind can take which we can somewhat arbitrarily divide into categories like you, me, him, and her in the same way that we can somewhat arbitrarily divide the infinite colors into categories like blue, red, lavender, warm colors, etc.

I had a passing thought that, abruptly, turned into something of an insight.

I was thinking about two videogames that I've been playing lately, and I considered which of the two I'd like to play. One of the two games is a multiplayer game, and the other is a singleplayer game. As I sat and considered which of the two I wanted to play, I noticed myself doing something that I've been doing for years:

I tend to consider multiplayer videogames, to some degree, "more valid" than singleplayer games. If deciding which videogame to play, I'm often inclined to give more weight to the notion of playing a multiplayer game -- but for no very specific reason. The universe in which a multiplayer game takes place seems to possess some degree of validation by virtue of it being a shared, social space. There's a subtle sense in which the time I spend playing a singleplayer game feels "wasted" by its ultimate irrelevancy to the world outside of it. But time spent playing a multiplayer game suffers no such sense of invalidity. My actions and the time spent on them can be seen by other people and therefore possesses a level of realness that is absent in the single-player game.

As I came to understand that, the word realness resonated with me. The truth is that there isn't a super rational, logcial reason to feel that my time is better spent playing one game than the other just because it's multiplayer. But that is absolutely not how I feel! Multiplayer games provide a feeling of credibility and legitimacy to the experience of playing them. Not merely because the existence of Others means that the world is unpredictable and surprising but because of something far more subtle. There's a hard-to-put-into-words sense of sharedness, in that even though I'm not always directly interacting with other people, I could be, and that no matter how far I push the world around me, it will continue to exist for me and for others.

If I know everything that exists is finite, ultimately, and constrained to a certain program, beyond which the game doesn't continue to exist, the game can be a great experience, but it can never be a world unto itself. For a game to feel like a valid world in-and-of itself, it has to feel close to infinite. It can't feel contained. It must accommodate any reasonable scrutiny. And for communicating beings like ourselves, the scrutiny of being able to interact with the world through language and receive responses reflective of vivid personalities is vital. It validates, to some degree, a game world.

The conventional, waking world is just like an extraordinarily advanced video game world. It can withstand ridiculous, nearly-infinite amount of scrutiny. You can use tools to look at smaller and smaller, or farther and farther objects and the universe will persist to appear coherently (this theoretically has a limit, like videogames do, but much, much greater). You can interact with a massive variety of complex personalities through an extraordinarily intricate amount of communication. It's the ultimate, infinitely-HD, fully-virtual sandbox world. And we like it that way and we're very, very comfortable with it that way.

Following this path will eventually take you to a place, if it hasn't already, where a sense of the existence of Others will evaporate, or at least become distinctly agnostic. Following this path will eventually take you to a place where you begin stressing the limits of the conventional world and, with intense-enough scrutiny, begin to notice that the world has taken on a hue of illegitimacy or invalidity. When you encounter these experiences, and others like them, they can appear as obstacles. They can potentially appear as obstacles larger and more daunting than any conventional obstacle could. Your mind has latent preferences about how it likes its reality to be. You'll naturally push yourself away from important insights because of the fear you have, even (especially!) at a subconscious level, for the implications. Your mind won't go where it isn't conditioned to want to be. It's like a wild horse. It's like a backwards magnet. It'll just keep pushing away. It'll push away with all of its force and the experience for you will be one of fear.

I don't necessarily have an alternative for you. I have no, "When faced with your deeply-rooted desire for a social, shared world and a world which can be highly scrutinized, here's what you should consider instead:". Short of renunciation, the traditional and obvious solution (to which I assume the reader is not open, but which I advocate to anyone who is) I don't have a good method for overcoming these tendencies and rebuilding latent desires, nor for overcoming metaphysical lightning bolts of fear. But I do think it's very important to acknowledge their existence and influence, because they can pass us by entirely undetected.

Recently I’ve been wrestling with the concept of Self and making little headway. I’m hoping that by writing this out I’ll generate some insights – but apologies in advance if there’s rambling along the way. I’m not sure quite where this is headed yet.

I’ll start with an experience I had recently. Years ago I used to suffer from sleep paralysis regularly. I say “suffer” because, back then, I didn’t understand SP, or realise it could be used to generate lucid dreams. I wasn’t frightened – just found it deeply uncomfortable.

Cut forward several years and I became interested in LDs and learnt about the connection between SP and LDs. For a while it was great. SP still hit me spontaneously and I could also purposely induce it and, from there, slip into LDs. Gradually, though, SP became harder and harder to produce – and eventually impossible.

This process started with an increase in false awakenings during LDs. I’d be in the midst of an LD and undergo a false awakening which would end my lucidity. It felt like my mind was literally kicking me out of LDs, as though it/I disapproved of them on some level.

For a while I could almost induce SP; I’d start to experience vibrations and auditory phenomena, but they’d peter out to nothing. For years now I haven’t been able to get even to that stage, either intentionally or unintentionally. I still have semi-lucid dreams on occasion, but they occur randomly, not through any agency on my part. I’ve wondered occasionally why this change should have come about but never gave it too much thought. While I welcome LDs, and while they’ve helped to shape my interpretation of reality, they’ve never been my end goal, so I wasn’t too concerned.

Cut to a fortnight ago. For the first time in a long time I’m on the verge of a spontaneous SP and I use all my old tricks to encourage it along. But the vibrations fade to nothing and I suddenly realise that it’s my fault. There’s an unpleasant sensation associated with the SP this time, which I think can best be described as something like descent. In the past, SP may have been accompanied by an initial feeling of physical heaviness, but there was also a sense of mental lightness – like a part of me was lifting up or being vibrated outwards. This time the feeling of mental heaviness was oppressive.

I’ve never undergone full anaesthesia before, but I think the sensation I was experiencing must be similar, though more unpleasantly drawn out. It was like being unwillingly dragged towards oblivion and a loss of self-awareness. Quite unlike gently drifting into sleep/dreams - or being hurled into them, which is how SP>>LD usually feels to me.

Anyway – even as I was trying to encourage the SP I was simultaneously fighting it because of the dragging sensation, which effectively killed the SP.

So now I’ve been more intensively contemplating this experience, along with the general decline of SP in my life, and it occurs to me that it might all be connected to some of the problems I’ve been wrestling with regarding what Self is.

I know that in this sub /u/mindseal has previously defined mind as a threefold capacity to know, will and experience, which I wouldn’t dispute.

But for me there’s a gap, in that I can’t express how a concept of self in the form of consistent (or inconsistent) personality or character fits into this model.

I suppose what I’m driving at is - in order for the mind to will anything, there has to be an impulse or desire “behind” that will. To attempt a metaphor, if will is a gun, there still has to be a someone who decides what to point it at and when to shoot.

So who is that? How “real” am I/that person? Am I just a habit, like the laws of physics, or am I more intrinsic and essential? How enduring am “I”? How inconstant?

These questions strike me as vital if a person pursues subjective idealism with a view to effecting change. I’ve experienced dreams where this entire lifetime of experiences has been wiped from my memory. I find those dreams disconcerting – but I’d argue that even in those dreams I retain core properties which persist even in the absence of memories of this lifetime. My moral code, my sense of humour, my emotional reactions and – sorry, things are about to get fluffy but I lack words to adequately describe this - a sort of observing self-aware knowingness which seems to sit permanently at the back of my mind. I also feel like these qualities have been with me in this lifetime for as far back as I can remember.

I’m not saying that I haven’t been altered at all by this life, but I think that those properties have, by and large, been central to my existence - to what I will, to how I interpret experience - and they have not changed substantially. Sometimes, as an intellectual exercise, I’ve sat down, played devil’s advocate with myself, and tried to change them, with no success.

But how does any of this connect to the decline of SP/LD in my life? I think the connection lies in my attachment to my concept of my self/my personality, to the me behind the scenes who Knows, Wills and Experiences – and a fear of losing that self.

This may seem counterintuitive. If anything, you are surely more likely to lose sight of yourself in non-lucid dreams. Except that non-lucid dreams perhaps present less of a challenge to a physicalist mindset. And I’ve recently realised that I may be erroneously attaching my concept of Self/personality to the waking world and its qualities. In other words, I've been mentally attaching my personality to the physicalist experience, even though I wouldn’t actually describe myself as a physicalist.

So – if I lucid dream, and if I turn the laws of physics/nature as they appear in the waking world on their head, it’s an indication that this world isn’t real/doesn’t have an immutable existence separate to me.

Well… we all know that. That’s why we’re here, right? But it’s quite one thing to know this and another altogether to really live it.

So what if lucid dreams really force me up against subjective idealism and I feel, by extension, that the Self I identify with is similarly mutable and substanceless? What if, by pursuing this path, I lose my self? I’m not saying I won’t exist – I am emphatically not one of those “there is no self” types. But perhaps I will become changed beyond recognition, just as I hope to change the world beyond recognition.

This is the roadblock I’ve been hitting and, now that I’ve typed it out in black and white, I think it’s wrong-headed. Evidently I like my personality as is (which, hey, is a bonus nice realisation) and I’m not keen on drastic alteration of my self. But I’ve been erroneously linking my self to the "outer" world instead of linking it to… my self.

And I think that the dragging/oblivion feeling I experienced in that aborted SP was a manifestation of that fear, just as the decline in SP/LDing in my life is probably a result of that fear. And I also suspect my regular dreams have been less rich, less far reaching for the same reason – I’ve unconsciously been keeping this grip on a world which, by and large, I detest.

So. Evidently I’ve identified a fear in myself of mental drifting and losing sight of the me who I feel that I am. And to counteract that I’ve been anchoring myself to this substandard existence. What I should have been doing was making my self my anchor – because then the world experience is less important and can flow/change more readily.

And perhaps in the end it doesn’t matter how mutable or permanent your personality/self can be, but how mutable you want it to be.

Talk more casually about SI here without having to make a formal post.

We may sometimes encounter frightening experiences if we explore what is beyond convention, and the quote takes a very inner/subjective perspective on fear.

It's known as "Litany against Fear."

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

I am always so moved when I think of this litany.

And by the way, what do Bene Gesserit practice? It's the Weirding Way. ;) Nice. This is not entirely unrelated to us.

I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I thought about death in the context of convention, but that didn't seem too relevant to this subreddit. I also thought about death in the context of freedom, which seemed totally relevant. Here's my mostly unedited thoughts. I welcome other thoughts and criticisms of my ideas.

What is it that dies? The body dies. What is it for a body to die? It is a change in state, from motion to non-motion, from sentient utility to uselessness. The conditions that are necessary to keep the body alive and able to move are no longer fulfilled.

Death is something that happens to bodies. A mind is not a body. Minds cognize bodies. Minds experience bodies. A body dying is an experience and cognition that a mind can have.

People worry that their mind is tied to their body, and that when their body dies, their mind will also die. Specifically, this is rooted today in a belief in the brain being the origin of the mind.

This belief arises largely from the fact that, in the conventional world, affecting a brain is related to changes in that person's mind. So, for example, brain damage is associated with changes in mental state. Similarly, chemical drugs that are believed to interact with the brain are associated with changes in mental state.

There are two reasons why this does not mean that the brain is the origin of the mind.

First, the eye is related to changes in a person's mind. If one or both eyes experience any sort of change of state or damage, then there will be an associated change in that person's mental state. Their visual experience and beliefs will be different. Similarly for the ears, the skin, the tongue, the nose. None of these are the origin of a person's mind although altering them can affect a person's way of cognizing.

They are all sense organs. They are objects which are believed to affect cognition, and thus they do. The brain is the same. It is another organ which is believed to affect cognition, and thus it does.

Secondly, in a dream it is possible for there to be a relationship between a dream brain and dream cognition. A person can have dreams where certain dream drugs affect their perception, for example. Thus, the ability of drugs to affect one's state of mind in the dream is rooted in one's state of mind. So it can also be during waking.

So, when the brain is thoroughly damaged and the body dies, what happens?

Despite the demonstrations above, one response might be, 'when the body dies, the mind stops manifesting and experiencing altogether. The mind will stop existing.' However, upon further consideration, this idea is nonsensical. The mind doesn't start existing or stop existing. The mind is the infinite capacity of possible experiences and manifestations. Experiencing nothing is one possible state of mind. Even when the perspective of nothingness is what is experienced and made manifest, there is always the potential for experiencing another perspective (a perspective of something).

So, a person might then say that when the brain and body die, a person's mind forever experiences nothingness. Since the mind believes that a brain and body in a physical world are necessary for perception of things, the absence of a functioning brain and body would result in the manifestation of nothingness.

There is a problem with this way of thinking.

An individual dreams every night and the dreamer can know that in this particular dreamworld their dream cognition depends upon the survival of their dream brain and body. And the dreamer will either create a new dream or wake up if their dream brain or body are destroyed. Similarly, when living and waking we believe that our living cognition depends upon the survival of our living brain and body. Thus, we cannot conclude that simply believing, in the context of the living, waking world, that our brains and bodies are necessary for living, waking cognition means that this living, waking brain and body are necessary for non-living, non-waking cognition. After all, there's no way to discern the difference between a dreaming experience and a waking experience using evidence – the only difference is in what you believe about experience. Similarly between living experience and dead experience.

So, we have no reason to conclude that our minds will manifest nothingness after our bodies die. At this point, we are left wondering what we might experience when we die. It is unclear. This is where we can start looking at intent and commitments.

What a mind believes and experiences is intentional. A mind's reality is a mind's will manifesting. So, having a given set of interests is intentional. Having a certain sort of personality is intentional. Having a specific job and living in a specific country is intentional. Having a human body and living among humans according to their norms is intentional. Living on Earth in this universe is intentional. The laws of physics in the universe are intentional.

Most humans are laser-focused on their ordinary human lives with their ordinary human concerns. They believe their experience definitely takes the form of waking and dreaming cycles (with specifics varying from individual to individual), and don't think about the broader nature of these things at all and are instead concerned with controlling events taking place within these states of mind.

As such, they habitually think about controlling the details and never look at the bigger picture. They don't pay attention to and have forgotten about the bigger picture. It may even feel totally outside of their control (even though it isn't). These people are deeply committed to the general intentional structures that make up a world like this that allow them to interact with the specific details of this world they like. Because of this, most people's dreams reflect these intentions as well.

We might consider an individual who is so focused on being successful in their career that they never think about the optionality of their career. Their career is voluntary and intentional and they are always free to disengage. Their identity is so caught up in living a lifestyle to impress their peers, sucking up to the boss, learning the things necessary to succeed in their industry, that they basically never think outside of this commitment.

Let's imagine that this person then loses their job. This person is now confronted with their freedom more directly. Here they are, unemployed, free to find a new career or remain unemployed and learn to live a whole new lifestyle. Assuming that this person maintains the same motivations that got them and kept them in the old career, and assuming that this person never considered or prepared for unemployment or other careers, it is probable that being unemployed is terrifying and embarrassing. This person will want to get a new career as soon as possible to continue pursuing their visions of wealth and success.

Depending on this person's skill and know-how regarding finding a new place of employment, they may end up in a terrible line of work like fast food (if they don't know what they're doing and are really scared and their last career was just luck), something moderate like low-level office work (if they at least remember or can discover the basics of job-finding and be patient), or maybe with skill and some nepotism they will end up in the same industry with another good career.

If we imagine that the living world is intentional in the same way as a career, only more abstract, then we can draw certain parallels. The more attached and focused a person is to the specifics of the living, material world of convention (with little thought of its unreality and intentionality and consideration of options), the more we can expect that person to in some way desperately seek to re-enter a living, waking, material world of convention – that is, to re-manifest a life in a world.

When a person dies, their entire perception is ripped out of its ordinary and conventional material context. Suddenly, such a person finds themselves confronted with the world of the dead – not a place where ghosts reside necessarily, but a world where manifestation and experience are wholly free of ordinary constraints. This is very similar to an individual losing their job and becoming unemployed. Yes, you can live this way and don't need to return to your old lifestyle, but it is probable that the individual had a reason to live within the constraints of the old lifestyle – something they were seeking, and thus a motivation to return to the life of working or a motivation to return to the life of living, waking, material convention.

It would make sense to conclude that individuals who enter this state (death) thoughtlessly and accidentally after being wholly focused on the living, waking world will be so panicked and confused that they may not make the best decision or use the most skill in selecting/manifesting a new life. Similarly, individuals who are more aware and have prepared and practiced are more likely to be able to deal with the situation and make a skillful and controlled decision. This is not a discrete situation, but is rather a continuum.

I find it hard to say much more specifically about the intermediate state between lives, the state of being dead.

What do you think?

I've been thinking a lot about Buddhism lately, because my early practice in this life was heavily characterized by Buddhism, and Buddhism is what's responsible for my interest in unraveling reality which eventually led me toward subjective idealism a few years ago. I'd be surprised if I was the only one on this sub for whom that was the case.

When I first encountered Buddhism, I encountered it with a very different understanding than I have now and many of the ideas were (as I think they generally are) very easily misunderstood. Buddhism deals with some very basic and fundamental concepts which are just bound to be understood incorrectly by someone operating in the wrong paradigm. I wrongly interpreted things that I encountered in Buddhism, I believe, because my understanding was poor and one with poor understanding misinterprets everything axiomatically.

So I've been interested in re-approaching some early Buddhism, some Pali canon fundamental type stuff, to see if investigating it at this point in my practice I'll find it much more useful than I did when I last contemplated it.

I spent some time with the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path today and wrote an interpretation of it "in my own words", for myself, as a practice of better understanding (I find things more accessible when I convey them than when they're conveyed to me). It is not explicitly canon and not directly in-line with Buddhism in a few places (the two most glaring ones I've pointed out with footnotes) but it, I think, carries on the spirit of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path into subjective idealist terms.

You are currently, consciously aware that you are undergoing certain experiences. That these experiences, also called phenomena, are presently occurring within your consciousness is one of the only things you can be certain of.

Amongst the phenomena that are arising within your conscious experience, one of them is called "suffering". Even when it is not apparent, as it may not be in this moment, suffering exists latently at a very high level, as an easily realized potential, just below the surface, which permeates your current type of experience. The potentiality of suffering arising is generally high at any given moment.

This phenomena of suffering does not arise independently within your conscious experience, of course. Many other phenomena arise, and suffering is but one among them. However, like each of them, suffering arises within the context of, in relation to, and causally interconnected with other phenomena. Suffering is but one segment of a vast web of experiences that you're currently undergoing.

The good news is that the causality which provokes suffering to arise within your conscious experience can be circumvented and the conscious experience can be transformed into one in which there is no suffering. The method to cultivating such a suffering-free experience is done by utilizing your will to change your conscious experience, your capacity to interact with reality intentionally.

You must be wise. You must have the right view, perspective, or understanding about the nature of reality. One cannot begin the path with a conventional understanding of the nature of reality. One can only begin the path to the release of suffering if one has first understood that reality is not as it appears, and does not exist as a physical and objective realm.^1 One must recognize the path before one can walk the path.

You must also have the right intention and the right aspiration to achieve this goal. According to one's right view or perspective, one must aspire to proceed in such a way that is progressive. One must walk toward the end of the path if one wishes to arrive at the end of the path. You must aspire in the direction of removing limitations, sufferings, and ignorance from yourself and from other beings. This intention must be a persistent feature of one's experience and reflecting often on the intention is important if one is to avoid straying from the path toward the release of suffering.

Proceeding with right intention, you must act in accordance with it. A path cannot be traveled if one will not walk it. One must act in such a way that moves along the path to the release of suffering. How does one do this? When you utilize your capacity to speak, to convey thought, do so rightly. When you utilize your capacity to act with the body, act only rightly. When you occupy the body in daily affairs, occupy it toward right ends. What is it to speak, to act, or to occupy the body only rightly? It is when speech, action, or occupation are done when the behavior is internally ethical and done with awareness. One who acts in such a way acts virtuously. One who acts in ways which are not internally ethical and not done with awareness does not act rightly. To act in such a way is synonymous with walking the path toward the release of suffering.^2

You must also have the right resolve, the right determination, the right will to pursue this goal. The process toward the release of suffering is not easy, simple, or brief for most people. Rather than a gradient of increased happiness, the path is dynamic and subjective, and the obstacles one faces can be extraordinarily difficult. Only with a great amount of effort can such a task be accomplished. One must be constantly vigilant about discarding wrong understanding, acquiring right understanding, and behaving ethically. Only one who proceeds by making such an effort can be rid of suffering.

You must also be sharp. You must be keenly aware of your current experience, without falling into assumptions, misunderstandings, or convention. You must be sincerely present to the actual conscious experience, the phenomena which presently exist. You must not slip into inattentiveness or forgetfulness lest you stray from acting in accordance with the path toward the release from suffering. Only one who remains ardently on the path, with a correct understanding of the nature of reality, with a correct intention toward that reality, who acts ethically, and who has the right determination can expect to progress on the path toward the cessation of suffering.

If one has done all of these things, one need only to concentrate rightly. One who, having done these things, concentrates rightly, achieving Samadhi and one-pointedness, has no barriers between themselves and ultimate understanding. They are truly virtuous and may become free of the experience of suffering.

^1. This is an intensification of traditional Buddhist rhetoric. Buddhism, being more welcoming than not to all levels of spiritual development, doesn't set the bar so high here and doesn't require one to drop physicalism to adopt Buddhist practices. For our purposes on this sub, I think physicalism being thrown out is fundamental to right view.

^2. 'Ethical conduct' has different implications depending on the way one interprets it. Being kind, talking kindly, and working at a job where you don't manufacture guns or slaughter livestock is the conventional interpretation, emphasis on "conventional". For this sub, consider the ethical obligation to the furthering of one's practice to be the ultimate obligation, with conventional morality and ethics being of secondary (but non-zero) importance. Being friendly rather than unfriendly is of benefit to you and other beings and removes the seeds of would-be hindrances and latent mental stress -- but of more glaring importance is that you remain devoted to your highest ideals, which have little to do with the dreaming world.

Thanks to mindseal for some well-advised clarifications on differences between my interpretation and Buddhist canon.

The proverb in the title is a berry. In my digestion of it I have learned two deep simplicities.

1. A proverb is not something to explain to the contemplative mind. Digestion is individual.
2. To recognize this proverb as a proverb is to glimpse the subsurface of proverbial depth.

Meanings go deep.
The depths can be searched.
Perhaps there is a bottom.
It would be something foundational.

Here I have brought you a single berry on a big white plate and I have cut it into pieces.

Flowers are beautiful.

We may sometimes encounter frightening experiences if we explore what is beyond convention, and the quote takes a very inner/subjective perspective on fear.

It's known as "Litany against Fear."

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

I am always so moved when I think of this litany.

And by the way, what do Bene Gesserit practice? It's the Weirding Way. ;) Nice. This is not entirely unrelated to us.

I've been thinking a lot about Buddhism lately, because my early practice in this life was heavily characterized by Buddhism, and Buddhism is what's responsible for my interest in unraveling reality which eventually led me toward subjective idealism a few years ago. I'd be surprised if I was the only one on this sub for whom that was the case.

When I first encountered Buddhism, I encountered it with a very different understanding than I have now and many of the ideas were (as I think they generally are) very easily misunderstood. Buddhism deals with some very basic and fundamental concepts which are just bound to be understood incorrectly by someone operating in the wrong paradigm. I wrongly interpreted things that I encountered in Buddhism, I believe, because my understanding was poor and one with poor understanding misinterprets everything axiomatically.

So I've been interested in re-approaching some early Buddhism, some Pali canon fundamental type stuff, to see if investigating it at this point in my practice I'll find it much more useful than I did when I last contemplated it.

I spent some time with the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path today and wrote an interpretation of it "in my own words", for myself, as a practice of better understanding (I find things more accessible when I convey them than when they're conveyed to me). It is not explicitly canon and not directly in-line with Buddhism in a few places (the two most glaring ones I've pointed out with footnotes) but it, I think, carries on the spirit of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path into subjective idealist terms.

You are currently, consciously aware that you are undergoing certain experiences. That these experiences, also called phenomena, are presently occurring within your consciousness is one of the only things you can be certain of.

Amongst the phenomena that are arising within your conscious experience, one of them is called "suffering". Even when it is not apparent, as it may not be in this moment, suffering exists latently at a very high level, as an easily realized potential, just below the surface, which permeates your current type of experience. The potentiality of suffering arising is generally high at any given moment.

This phenomena of suffering does not arise independently within your conscious experience, of course. Many other phenomena arise, and suffering is but one among them. However, like each of them, suffering arises within the context of, in relation to, and causally interconnected with other phenomena. Suffering is but one segment of a vast web of experiences that you're currently undergoing.

The good news is that the causality which provokes suffering to arise within your conscious experience can be circumvented and the conscious experience can be transformed into one in which there is no suffering. The method to cultivating such a suffering-free experience is done by utilizing your will to change your conscious experience, your capacity to interact with reality intentionally.

You must be wise. You must have the right view, perspective, or understanding about the nature of reality. One cannot begin the path with a conventional understanding of the nature of reality. One can only begin the path to the release of suffering if one has first understood that reality is not as it appears, and does not exist as a physical and objective realm.^1 One must recognize the path before one can walk the path.

You must also have the right intention and the right aspiration to achieve this goal. According to one's right view or perspective, one must aspire to proceed in such a way that is progressive. One must walk toward the end of the path if one wishes to arrive at the end of the path. You must aspire in the direction of removing limitations, sufferings, and ignorance from yourself and from other beings. This intention must be a persistent feature of one's experience and reflecting often on the intention is important if one is to avoid straying from the path toward the release of suffering.

Proceeding with right intention, you must act in accordance with it. A path cannot be traveled if one will not walk it. One must act in such a way that moves along the path to the release of suffering. How does one do this? When you utilize your capacity to speak, to convey thought, do so rightly. When you utilize your capacity to act with the body, act only rightly. When you occupy the body in daily affairs, occupy it toward right ends. What is it to speak, to act, or to occupy the body only rightly? It is when speech, action, or occupation are done when the behavior is internally ethical and done with awareness. One who acts in such a way acts virtuously. One who acts in ways which are not internally ethical and not done with awareness does not act rightly. To act in such a way is synonymous with walking the path toward the release of suffering.^2

You must also have the right resolve, the right determination, the right will to pursue this goal. The process toward the release of suffering is not easy, simple, or brief for most people. Rather than a gradient of increased happiness, the path is dynamic and subjective, and the obstacles one faces can be extraordinarily difficult. Only with a great amount of effort can such a task be accomplished. One must be constantly vigilant about discarding wrong understanding, acquiring right understanding, and behaving ethically. Only one who proceeds by making such an effort can be rid of suffering.

You must also be sharp. You must be keenly aware of your current experience, without falling into assumptions, misunderstandings, or convention. You must be sincerely present to the actual conscious experience, the phenomena which presently exist. You must not slip into inattentiveness or forgetfulness lest you stray from acting in accordance with the path toward the release from suffering. Only one who remains ardently on the path, with a correct understanding of the nature of reality, with a correct intention toward that reality, who acts ethically, and who has the right determination can expect to progress on the path toward the cessation of suffering.

If one has done all of these things, one need only to concentrate rightly. One who, having done these things, concentrates rightly, achieving Samadhi and one-pointedness, has no barriers between themselves and ultimate understanding. They are truly virtuous and may become free of the experience of suffering.

^1. This is an intensification of traditional Buddhist rhetoric. Buddhism, being more welcoming than not to all levels of spiritual development, doesn't set the bar so high here and doesn't require one to drop physicalism to adopt Buddhist practices. For our purposes on this sub, I think physicalism being thrown out is fundamental to right view.

^2. 'Ethical conduct' has different implications depending on the way one interprets it. Being kind, talking kindly, and working at a job where you don't manufacture guns or slaughter livestock is the conventional interpretation, emphasis on "conventional". For this sub, consider the ethical obligation to the furthering of one's practice to be the ultimate obligation, with conventional morality and ethics being of secondary (but non-zero) importance. Being friendly rather than unfriendly is of benefit to you and other beings and removes the seeds of would-be hindrances and latent mental stress -- but of more glaring importance is that you remain devoted to your highest ideals, which have little to do with the dreaming world.

Thanks to mindseal for some well-advised clarifications on differences between my interpretation and Buddhist canon.

This is just a thought experiment. I hope some of you find it as fun as I have this morning.

There is a common movie trope where the character becomes a ghost, and this is depicted when the character's body passes through the apparent objects of the world, and when nobody can hear and respond to the character, but the character can still see the apparent world with people in it.

Now here's the question.

What is the ghost here? Is the character the ghost? Or is the world the ghost? If you wanted to make a movie about the whole world becoming a ghost while the character remaining real, how would you depict it?

What's interesting is how well the movie trope works. I figure 99.99% of the viewers upon seeing a character's hand passing through the table conclude, instantly, the character is a ghost, but the world isn't one. This is evidence of bias.