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Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:05 am
by AshvinP
ParadoxZone wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 2:35 am Ashvin,

No need to do any of this on my behalf anymore. I've found what I needed from here in terms of imaginative exercises (and forgot to catalogue them for others, next iteration I'll do that).

In terms of bus stops and busy streets, I'm finding little nuggets here that can be kept in mind without losing any alertness (increasing it actually) about what's going on around me. The latest was from you yesterday about evil being truth out of season, so I'll stick with that for a few days anyway.

Cheers.

Got it. To be honest... I completely forgot :?

Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 6:25 pm
by Brad Walker
Bernardo had a productive, responsible fling with psilocybin. With similar good intent (including set and setting), Delta-9-THC is nonaddictive and productive, post-psychedelics.

Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 6:33 pm
by findingblanks
Hi Paradox,

You mentioned interest in the kind of exercise that can be done on a busy street.

You can notice somebody walking on the other side and try to think very clearly what can be inferred by what you perceive...You'll want to think very slowly. It's fine if you only take one step of though as long as you are concentrated and noticing if your inference has a clear grounding in logic. The goal isn't to be right but to make your thinking as conscious as possible.

Back in the day when it took web pages a long time to load, I would use that time to do pure perception exercises in the vein of Khulewind's work.

I actually got to talk to Khulewind about possible adaptations to his exercises when he came to lecture at RSC for a weekend in 98. He was....fascinating.

Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 8:57 pm
by ParadoxZone
Hi Brad and FB,

Thanks for the suggestions. I've already decided to stay away from psychedelics - that decision was more or less made before discussion here about bad trips. I had been considering over a long period and had made some tentative enquiries locally.

Yes, figuring out what's going around, even on a busy street, would be most helpful if it can be 100% accurately done, no matter how slowly.

One thing I have noticed is something happening after waking from (restful) sleep. Noticing the things around me (let's call them percepts, why not) has been accompanied by a sort of "whooshing" emanating from me, a sense of the things themselves being filled in. I wouldn't characterise this sensation as a feeling but again am not in a hurry to categorise it at all.

I mention that because of a stark contrast to what seems like a lifetime ago, when waking up from restful sleep happened something like this : firstly a very short duration of having the thought "oh things seem to be okay, calm" followed by everything falling apart instantly. This kept happening, so the contrast is fascinating to me.

Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2021 5:30 pm
by findingblanks
Paradox,

Definitely sounds like there is some delicate and cool 'restructuring' going on in your experiencing. Thanks for sharing that. By the way, I use 'experiencing' in this context as a way to sort of get at what you got at; there are 'inner' events that any word we choose fails to cover: you call it a 'feeling' and, nope, that leaves out that there is this cognitive element, but you call it 'cognitive' and that leaves out that it isn't really 'saying' anything and on and on. For some of us, 'experiencing' can be used in a general way that doesn't pin it down to quickly. Again, thanks for sharing those details. I like 'the things themselves being filled it.'

Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 1:53 am
by idlecuriosity
I have no idea if this approximates the intended meaning of the original poster's inquiry but I sort of specialize in trying to push the mind's limitations for endeavours of competition or self control. And, I use the term specialize loosely as I'm inferring that I'm a student of my own incomplete craft, which itself is poised at helping practitioners of other crafts simply learn whatever it is they want faster. But a big basis of my idea is that I try to boil and distill things down to nuggets of information that can be memorized in small sentences. I won't talk about that aspect here at length but there's another I do for mental exercises when learning a new skill or craft;

It's a little daft but I like to 'play pretend.' Yes, that's right. If you simply rehearse a skill or practice and start by pretending you can do that thing and imitate the muscle memory required crudely, it will beget you a foundation for learning it. From there you can sort of 'scribble out' a rough idea of the structure and concept of what you're trying to learn by honing them in isolation. If you just get in the habit of doing a thing and take it easy you can be surprised by how sturdy the beginnings you lay can be; I'm a firm believer in the 'conservation' of energy, in gentle sequence by sequence action, in being willing to lose an exchange or give up fast in any sort of competitive activity if your current objective is refinement of a skill and not to risk over exerting or injuring yourself. I don't find humans are well disposed to the difficult, concentration heavy methodologies that most people intuitively gravitate to; I think we are better at taking things easy and thinking elaborately instead of focusing hard (at least at any level where you aren't the absolute cream of the crop concerning your craft...)

I'm still reading through a lot of Cleric's posts so I can't place where my general idea of how to handle things sits in relation to that but I definitely see merit in being able to separate your internal struggles from all the surrounding and discordant turns of misfortune that threaten to discombobulate you from making the right choices and, since pragmatism is chief among all of my concerns (concerns of spirituality or how cunning I can make myself, I don't mind which), that's probably going to be really important to acclimate to since we're a very emotionally vulnerable species. The opinions of others can grotesquely mislead us... And I fear most people will only ever harbour a semblance of the solidarity the minds here postulate one day achieving and instead substitute their ego with a big follower count or base squalor, if they manage even that, which of course renders them susceptible when they lose traction.

It makes me envious of Bernard's strength of mind in throwing caution to the wind and backhanding Sam over his perceived philosophical ineptitude (justified or not), as that betrays a lack of care for the internet landscape or consequences of it, and in turn that his priorities are beyond a lot of the vain materialism of our time. Or, maybe it's just a reflection of it... Who's to say?

I hope to start learning meditation or how to manipulate my own anguished 'internal rhythm'. It sounds rather uplifting and useful, even if I run afoul of actually developing an attention span in the process!

Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:56 pm
by ParadoxZone
Hi IC,
idlecuriosity wrote:I have no idea if this approximates the intended meaning of the original poster's inquiry
Yes it does, thanks. I'll give some comments on what you wrote. I'm going to refer to the general approach as "fake it to make it* and if that's too general a description then please tell me.
idlecuriosity wrote:It's a little daft but I like to 'play pretend.' Yes, that's right. If you simply rehearse a skill or practice and start by pretending you can do that thing and imitate the muscle memory required crudely, it will beget you a foundation for learning it. From there you can sort of 'scribble out' a rough idea of the structure and concept of what you're trying to learn by honing them in isolation. If you just get in the habit of doing a thing and take it easy you can be surprised by how sturdy the beginnings you lay can be
This seems very useful, especially when the "it" that you are "faking" is 100% appropriate - in other words, when "it" is not going to be discombobulating in other, less integrating ways. If it's the wrong "it" though, more discombobulation may well follow.
idlecuriosity wrote:But a big basis of my idea is that I try to boil and distill things down to nuggets of information that can be memorized in small sentences.
Yes definitely agree with this - though maybe not memorisation. An example that I've come across here recently and have somewhat been holding in mind is the idea that "evil is truth out of season". It's been very useful. I'm probably just quibbling with a word here and that's not at all important for these purposes.
idlecuriosity wrote:And I fear most people will only ever harbour a semblance of the solidarity the minds here postulate one day achieving and instead substitute their ego with a big follower count or base squalor, if they manage even that, which of course renders them susceptible when they lose traction.
Oh yes, agree with this. And reminders about how the ego can appropriate everything else are always timely and helpful. And as for cream of the crop, yes point taken. I'd regard myself as homogenised milk in many areas rather than cream of the crop at anything in particular. Also, I don't think you'll find many people here who encouraging taking their conclusions at face value - quite the opposite.

As for Harris, yes you've touched on a contentious and fascinating topic - the role he and others plays in our psyches and the real world consequences of it all. For my part, I am beginning to regard him as a very fuzzy gestalt that appears, recedes and the comes back again, even fuzzier - I'm definitely not cream of that particular crop though so that might be a useless description for you.

Your post also reminded of something that's been on my mind - the need to find a space, with others, where I can be totally spontaneous. It may even be urgent for me but fun too. A "safe space".

Again, thanks for your post.

Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2021 1:37 am
by idlecuriosity
No, no, thank you. And the perspective of this entire forum. It helped alleviate my existential dread and validated my concept on seeking improvement and how to go about it, to smoke. If there was ever a poetic coalescence of disparate coincidences coming together 'spiritually' then it's definitely that I found Idealistic philosophy and had my pursuits understood within the same few days that I had joined here. I don't want to post excessively but I'm admittedly beside myself about all that

I'm sure you don't often get many pseudo ninjas with philosophical trauma and agonizing remorse stopping by for some alternatives to letting vengeful feelings or nihilistic paradoxes wrest control from them, but it takes all sorts. It's definitely an oasis to see people willing to play devil's advocate for things they don't agree with.

As for the memorization idea; Yeah, fair to you if you don't agree. I'll try to figure out how to explain how it works for me in case it helps elucidate you on what I meant any better or could possibly arm you with a new tool. I do not know if it'd work for everyone equally (not exempting myself from those concerns either) and it might require some more proof of concept on part of me field testing it in higher level competition or social settings, too, but I'll see

Re: Exercise Time (Thinking)

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2021 6:54 pm
by ParadoxZone
Hi again FB,

I did this today :
finding blanks wrote:You can notice somebody walking on the other side and try to think very clearly what can be inferred by what you perceive...You'll want to think very slowly. It's fine if you only take one step of though as long as you are concentrated and noticing if your inference has a clear grounding in logic. The goal isn't to be right but to make your thinking as conscious as possible.
There was something happening alright and it was curious, all about what I was bringing in interpretations to the scene before me.

There have been a few things recently about other threads that have seemed particularly relevant to me and where I'm at right now. Firstly, the thread with idlecuriosity was of intrigue to me, from a number of perspectives. For instance, the "fake it to make it" (my interpretation;of idle's words) has been revisited by me. Also, I'm intrigued by the nature of the download you refer to. (Edit; just realised I'm mixing up two threads here I'll leave it hare as an illustration how difficult it is for me to tie all these issues coherently.)

We left the twin psychics thread at a particular point of your choosing (it seems) - the few days have passed. I've found filling in that particular blank to be both confusing and some fun.

I've looked back at the "Philosophy Unbound" thread too, noticing points of departures. Ashvin and yourself have your own room to discuss your differences. I also came across a point of departure between the Cleric/Ashvin "line" and the Eugene/Ben "line" (this isn't entirely accurate- these are the people I've interacted with on this "issue"). I have no reason right now to say that either approach is "better than" the other - how could I if I can't precisely identify the point of departure? What fascinates me is how I made my choice at the time to "follow" the PoF route (which has been very productive to date) whenever I did . I'd like if you didn't respond to this particular paragraph yet - I need to read something there more closely before I can engage productively.

So if you're interested, could we progress these issues here? It seems appropriate, given that I started the thread. I don't mind if others join in if you don't.

Thanks.