Where do my desires lead me?

Where do my desires lead me?
Lust leads me to faking myself.
Jealousy leads me to hating myself.
Fear leads me to stress and worry.
Desire for freedom leads me to feel stuck.
It may be premature to say all desires are bad, but so far it seems like it.

Motivated by Shame

I envy computers. They don't stress over false beliefs and processes. Sure, bugs in software will make a computer produce results that are not very useful, but they don't suffer from self-criticism in the face of useless results. When we humans make a mistake, it is worse than a useless result; it can be experienced as shameful failure.

On the other hand, without shame or guilt, a computer has no impetus to change itself and no criterion to judge whether a change is in the right direction. But who judges the judge? How do we know shame is an appropriate motivator?

We're all one

From reading Ouspensky's "Tertium Organum", I've been thinking about how everything is all one being and, in particular, all human beings and animals are like branches of the same tree.

To begin understanding this, we must consider time. Actually, all future and past events may exist simultaneously. The reason we see ourselves travelling at a constant rate in time is because our sensory apparatus is peculiar. The past is foggy and the future is even foggier. We only pay attention to the present moment. (And we don't even do that well.)

Just like a flat plane is a slice of a solid 3 dimensional object, our 3 dimensional world is a slice of a 4 dimensional one. A plane being can only see 2D, his 3rd dimension appearing as time. Things on one side, say below him, are the past, and things on the other side are the future. In a similar way, 3D "slices" in front of us are the future and 3D slices behind us are the past.

If you dip 4 fingers pointing downward into a bowl of water, ovals appear on the surface where your fingers go through it. To a plane being living on and seeing only things on the water's surface, the ovals appear to be separate objects.

Assume again that above the surface means the future and below means the past. Say your fingers are spread out. As you dip down further (and create the illusion of time passing by for the plane being), the ovals move closer together. Some time later, they suddenly merge into a single long oval, which is in fact your palm. This is pretty bewildering for our flat friend who not only

• sees an illusion, which he calls motion (you were not wiggling your fingers, just dipping your hand) but also...
• sees separate objects merging into one (your fingers were never separate to begin with).

What if what we see as motion in our 3D world is really our senses, being limited to perceiving only 3D sections of a 4D world, fooling us into imagining separate entities dancing around in x, y, and z coordinates? What if those separate entities are just fingers of a 4D hand that is still as a rock, but we're only perceiving it slice by slice? You and your brother are one being if you trace your past (3D sections "behind" the present) back to the same mother.

Mitosis is a branch coming off of 4D tree. All of life is one being. Motionless. Timeless. When you attack another person physically or with harsh thoughts, you are denying your absolutely solid connection with that person in the 4th dimension of time. Also when you do something regrettable, you bet against the possibility that action is a fixed connection between the present moment and future consequences.

Who knows, our conscious intention may be the only thing existing outside of time and space able to direct our limited senses around the maze of 4 or more dimensional metageometry. We attribute to randomness things that seem out of our control much like the past generations attributed things out of their control to capricious gods. Finally we are coming back to the ancient view, except this time, we find our own consciousness to be the capricious god steering the ship of our experience through intention and attention.

Imagination Practice

Imagination is key to changing the subconscious mind, which is the part of the mind that's really in charge. The conscious part is mostly an agitated spectator wasting a lot of energy kicking and screaming at the subconscious part to quit bad habits. The reason telling yourself change rarely works for most people is that the subconscious mind essentially speaks in terms of sensation rather than concepts. The perceived or imagined sensations of hot, cold, bright, smooth, fragrant, giddiness, melancholy, etc. are easier for the subconscious to understand than ideas like "I should be hot/cold/happy" because the grammar of such thoughts makes them less immediate. Basically we have a dog in the mind that needs to be trained like a dog using more primal communication. Trying to reason with the subconscious is as useless as trying to reason with a dog.

Instead, we must use sensation imagery. By imagery, I don't necessarily mean visual pictures in the mind; any of the 5+ senses will do, e.g. imagining running your hands over fur. Knowing that imagination is so useful in communicating with the subconscious mind, how do we hone that skill?

• Read fiction, and get lost in it.
  
• Write fiction, and get lost in it.
• Take mental snapshots of interesting experiences during the day and relive them later that day.
• When reliving, use as many senses as possible, and try to make it feel as real as possible.
• TV is generally imagination-cheating. It talks to the subconscious almost directly, training your conscious mind to be lazy in imagining.
  

Imagination practice is not an excuse to ignore your current perceptions. As bad as things may seem in the present, it is important to experience them deeply. Alternate between the feeling things as they are and things as you want them to be.

Problem: Solution

Challenges: I am capable.

• If you can't solve a problem by thinking in steps 1, 2, 3, dance instead. Shout. Use your whole body. There are other ways to think.
• Use your expanded potentials to solve social problems.
• Don't believe what people say. Don't believe yourself.
  

Congested: Clear your head.

• Be generous and grateful.
• Let someone close to you be completely herself for an entire day.

Rejected, ignored, misunderstood: I can always try again, differently.

• Try something different. Repetition may frustrate the other person.

Attack thoughts: See no evil.

• There is no single absolute reality. There are multiple realities playing with each other. Even the entire game cannot be the ultimate reality because it becomes another single reality among many upon being named.
• There is no evil except being infected by another's ignorance.
  
• Evil comes into existence when you give it independence from you by blaming something external to you.
  
• A double blind studies the collective unconscious by obscuring the conscious.
• Indifference is willed ignorance habituated.
  

How to overcome stubbornness

1. Set a timer or watch to countdown for 15 minutes.
2. Do something for those 15 minutes, e.g. write a thank you card for a friend.
   
3. Write down the activity or product of your activity, e.g. "Thank you card".

Repeat steps 1-3 for the rest of the day, doing something different every 15 minutes. If something takes longer than 15 minutes to complete, come back to it after you do something else. You may notice the following:

• You can let go of emotions more easily. Letting go of activities trains you to let go in general, and that includes emotions.
  
• You learn to break activities down into manageable (15 minute or so) chunks.
• Hence, fewer projects will seem overwhelming.
• You wake up to an alarm more easily as you let go of the stubbornness of sleepiness.

Though we tend to think they happen to us or we just have them, emotions are activities we perform. So are the beliefs that lead to the emotions. By practicing letting go of behaviors, we indirectly practice letting go of emotions. (It is advisable to practice letting go of emotions directly, too.)

Defamation

Dalai Lama under attack: video.

No matter how beautiful a person seems, there will always be people who will notice his or her mistakes and amplify them to the boost his own sense of being good.

Two nights ago, I was up all night reading criticisms of Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle, some spiritual mentors I have a lot of respect for. I felt pretty shitty going to bed after all that. That's how I came to my aforementioned conclusion: People will go to great lengths to prove they are better than others, even to the point of defaming others who are overall positive manifestations of love. They do so waving the banner of truth, but the anger and hatred is fairly evident in their voices and choice of words.

The question then becomes, how is my frustration toward these defamers affecting my mental, emotional, and physical state?