I got into meditation and eastern philosophy over the past few years. Alan Watts, Joseph Goldstein, Sam Harris, along with some minor influences from various other sources have influenced and opened me up to this lifestyle and I don't really think I can go back.
Some of the concepts have stuck with me and still effect my behavior and beliefs today. I am a hard believer in determinism and do not believe in free will, I do not think there is a difference between conscious and unconscious activity. I do not believe in retribution or justice or "karma". I've learned that the ego is an illusion and exists solely as social construction for the sake of convenience. I've learned how to be empathetic, how to be compassionate for your worst enemies, and how to stop viewing yourself as separate from the environment and other people (essentially the opposite of solipsism). I've learned how to be spontaneous; how act without thinking beforehand. I've learned how to lose attachments to thoughts, feelings, desires, and attachments. A lot of these things can exist in tandem with red pill philosophy and can certainly help, although some of these behaviors may be perceived as "beta" or at least unmasculine.
Who here is into this and how many of you have found it overly beneficial for game?
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Here are some notes I took on this subject.
We are under an illusion that time exists as an "arrow", constantly moving from the past to the future. We think the past is real, that the present is but a hairline that you can't really grasp.
The human mind is essentially a linear scanning system. Like a spotlight in a room, we can only focus on specific things and cannot deal with more than a few things at a time. Our thoughts are symbols, numbers and words - but symbols have the same relation to the world that money has to wealth. So we confuse how something is with how it is described.
Our conception of ourselves is extremely limited and is essentially a caricature. Our conception of ourselves tells us nothing of our nervous system, our blood chemistry, our very complex relationships with the environment and people around us, and so on. Our idea of ourselves offers absolutely no insight about the billions of neuron cells in our brains and the vast web of synaptic connections between them.
Saying that you're going to get rid of your ego is like trying to search for a fugitive with a beating drum. The biggest ego trip is trying to get rid of the ego, because it doesn't exist. There is no ego, no I, no self, no spirit, no soul, no center. There is no "trying" to get enlightened, it just happens. You can't do anything about it because you don't exist. You cannot catch hold of it nor can you get rid of it. You can't control your thoughts and emotions, you are your thoughts and emotions. All methods to eliminate the ego only strengthen the ego, there is no method.
So some people will try to find enlightenment by not seeking it. Seeking non-seeking is still seeking. If you really understand what the self is, you will realize there is no method. If you realize you cannot transform yourself, it means that the main obstacle to enlightenment has collapsed. There is no controller. Are you growing your hair or nails? Do you pump your blood? Do you secret hormones from your glands? Do you digest your food? Is breathing something that you do? Is that you? They just happen. And all of these happenings are yourself. There is no I which brings them about.
Some people will believe you should reach a place of desirelessness, but that is just the same pattern; you are desiring to not desire. You think you are the desirer behind the desires, but there is only desire. What you took to be the thinker of thoughts was just a thought, what you took to be the feeler behind the feelings was just one of the feelings, what you took to be the experiencer of the experiences was just an experience. You think you are the knower of the knowledge, but there is just knowledge. When you say I am feeling what really mean is there is feeling. This illusion is a result of our language, which dictates there must be a subject-object relation. During a storm we will say "the lightning flashed!" as if there was was lightning which then flashed. We seem to forget that language is just symbols. Reality is beyond words, beyond description.
What is the self? What do we mean by the word I? It is a symbol of a person, a conception, it is just an idea. We think our center is a controller somewhere in the head, behind the eyes and between the ears. The self is the Universe centered on your particular living organism in a particular region of space and time. What you do is what the entire Universe is doing in your particular here and now. When you turn a steeling wheel are you pushing or pulling it? Neither, It's a push-pull. You are not a puppet that the environment pushes around, likewise you are not in separate from the environment. We act together in the same way, you could say it’s transactional.
Someone may say you're not being true to yourself because you're acting like someone else. We think we are separate from the Universe, that we came into this world. We did not come into this world, we came out of it, much like an apple comes out of a tree. We think we are original, separate, independent events, that set forth other original events. What is a whirlpool? A whirlpool is not a "thing" it is a behavior. It should be called a whirlpooling.
We think we are an intelligent fluke so in order to keep our status as an intelligent fluke we fight nature. But we don't realize that we go with our environment. The environment goes with you and you go with the environment, in the same way that a head goes with your body. We do not see heads existing sui generis, they always go with a body. Babies develop in the womb all over at the same time, it’s not like there’s first a head, then a body, then limbs sprout out. So in this sense, human beings go with our environment in the same way the head goes with the rest of the body. Think of a tree that is rooted to the ground; the only difference is people can move around, which creates this illusion of separateness. We think of the environment as fully automatic stupidity, and forget that we rely on it for our very existence. Intelligence emerges from a very complicated natural environment which could also be said to be intelligent.
We are not here on severance, on probation, we are not given a self by some otherworldly force. Our bodies are not vessels for some sort of soul or spirit that is the center of who we really are. We are the works, the whole Universe, everything there ever was and will be.
It's not too surprising that we find ourselves in a Universe the supports our existence. If it didn't support us, we wouldn't be here. It's that simple. But we are not a "result" of the Big Bang. We are the continuation of the process. W exist on the fringes of the Big Bang, not unlike the complicated patterns that exist on the edges of a blot of ink. Every single atom that makes up our body is constantly replaced and recycled, from our birth until long after our death. We are just a complex pattern of behavior formed from stardust.
Some of the concepts have stuck with me and still effect my behavior and beliefs today. I am a hard believer in determinism and do not believe in free will, I do not think there is a difference between conscious and unconscious activity. I do not believe in retribution or justice or "karma". I've learned that the ego is an illusion and exists solely as social construction for the sake of convenience. I've learned how to be empathetic, how to be compassionate for your worst enemies, and how to stop viewing yourself as separate from the environment and other people (essentially the opposite of solipsism). I've learned how to be spontaneous; how act without thinking beforehand. I've learned how to lose attachments to thoughts, feelings, desires, and attachments. A lot of these things can exist in tandem with red pill philosophy and can certainly help, although some of these behaviors may be perceived as "beta" or at least unmasculine.
Who here is into this and how many of you have found it overly beneficial for game?
------------------------
Here are some notes I took on this subject.
We are under an illusion that time exists as an "arrow", constantly moving from the past to the future. We think the past is real, that the present is but a hairline that you can't really grasp.
The human mind is essentially a linear scanning system. Like a spotlight in a room, we can only focus on specific things and cannot deal with more than a few things at a time. Our thoughts are symbols, numbers and words - but symbols have the same relation to the world that money has to wealth. So we confuse how something is with how it is described.
Our conception of ourselves is extremely limited and is essentially a caricature. Our conception of ourselves tells us nothing of our nervous system, our blood chemistry, our very complex relationships with the environment and people around us, and so on. Our idea of ourselves offers absolutely no insight about the billions of neuron cells in our brains and the vast web of synaptic connections between them.
Saying that you're going to get rid of your ego is like trying to search for a fugitive with a beating drum. The biggest ego trip is trying to get rid of the ego, because it doesn't exist. There is no ego, no I, no self, no spirit, no soul, no center. There is no "trying" to get enlightened, it just happens. You can't do anything about it because you don't exist. You cannot catch hold of it nor can you get rid of it. You can't control your thoughts and emotions, you are your thoughts and emotions. All methods to eliminate the ego only strengthen the ego, there is no method.
So some people will try to find enlightenment by not seeking it. Seeking non-seeking is still seeking. If you really understand what the self is, you will realize there is no method. If you realize you cannot transform yourself, it means that the main obstacle to enlightenment has collapsed. There is no controller. Are you growing your hair or nails? Do you pump your blood? Do you secret hormones from your glands? Do you digest your food? Is breathing something that you do? Is that you? They just happen. And all of these happenings are yourself. There is no I which brings them about.
Some people will believe you should reach a place of desirelessness, but that is just the same pattern; you are desiring to not desire. You think you are the desirer behind the desires, but there is only desire. What you took to be the thinker of thoughts was just a thought, what you took to be the feeler behind the feelings was just one of the feelings, what you took to be the experiencer of the experiences was just an experience. You think you are the knower of the knowledge, but there is just knowledge. When you say I am feeling what really mean is there is feeling. This illusion is a result of our language, which dictates there must be a subject-object relation. During a storm we will say "the lightning flashed!" as if there was was lightning which then flashed. We seem to forget that language is just symbols. Reality is beyond words, beyond description.
What is the self? What do we mean by the word I? It is a symbol of a person, a conception, it is just an idea. We think our center is a controller somewhere in the head, behind the eyes and between the ears. The self is the Universe centered on your particular living organism in a particular region of space and time. What you do is what the entire Universe is doing in your particular here and now. When you turn a steeling wheel are you pushing or pulling it? Neither, It's a push-pull. You are not a puppet that the environment pushes around, likewise you are not in separate from the environment. We act together in the same way, you could say it’s transactional.
Someone may say you're not being true to yourself because you're acting like someone else. We think we are separate from the Universe, that we came into this world. We did not come into this world, we came out of it, much like an apple comes out of a tree. We think we are original, separate, independent events, that set forth other original events. What is a whirlpool? A whirlpool is not a "thing" it is a behavior. It should be called a whirlpooling.
We think we are an intelligent fluke so in order to keep our status as an intelligent fluke we fight nature. But we don't realize that we go with our environment. The environment goes with you and you go with the environment, in the same way that a head goes with your body. We do not see heads existing sui generis, they always go with a body. Babies develop in the womb all over at the same time, it’s not like there’s first a head, then a body, then limbs sprout out. So in this sense, human beings go with our environment in the same way the head goes with the rest of the body. Think of a tree that is rooted to the ground; the only difference is people can move around, which creates this illusion of separateness. We think of the environment as fully automatic stupidity, and forget that we rely on it for our very existence. Intelligence emerges from a very complicated natural environment which could also be said to be intelligent.
We are not here on severance, on probation, we are not given a self by some otherworldly force. Our bodies are not vessels for some sort of soul or spirit that is the center of who we really are. We are the works, the whole Universe, everything there ever was and will be.
It's not too surprising that we find ourselves in a Universe the supports our existence. If it didn't support us, we wouldn't be here. It's that simple. But we are not a "result" of the Big Bang. We are the continuation of the process. W exist on the fringes of the Big Bang, not unlike the complicated patterns that exist on the edges of a blot of ink. Every single atom that makes up our body is constantly replaced and recycled, from our birth until long after our death. We are just a complex pattern of behavior formed from stardust.
