I am In Awe of Myself

There are roughly three feeling-relations which link one object - an organism - with another object - something in the external world.

These are: Fun, Care, and Awe.

The practice of black magic is fundamentally the practice of being in awe - of ones own self. A phase shift in biological functioning may follow.

Pharaoh, king of Egypt, Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, or Whatshisname, chief of sum-primitive-tribe, share something special in common: they are in awe-of-their-power.

Instead of Nature being the object which enlivens them into a deeper state of union, it is themselves, which, in their view, means that they are above nature.

It is indeed a bizarre phenomenon. Awe constitutes a phase shift, and in its fundamentally a function of enrapturement vis-à-vis a perception of...GRANDEUR. Greatness pours into ones mind, and ones affective being, and all the cells of ones body, begin to resonate with the external object.

The Awe which occurs naturally is deeply intertwined with the feeling and perception of Beauty. It is also permeated by a feeling of Love.

The Awe which the psychopomp experiences is a Terrifying Power. It's in their voice; in the effect of himself on the Others. Indeed, the psychopomp, is dynamically akin to a balloon where all the other has been pushed into one side of it. The "We" system has been artificially polarized through social exploitation; and so a single individual comes to experience himself as a God - capitalized because, frankly, one can only imagine how entrancing such an experience could be for the person who experiences himself as the object of such a aggrandizing feeling.

Some people have felt those feelings i.e. feeling in awe of themselves; but there is an intensity which is crossed which constitutes a legitimate phase transition in biological functioning, where the Whole - the Universe from its singularity in the big bang - is felt to be present in the Part - the Self.

At such a point, matter, via the Higgs boson (the God Particle) instantiates ones will, which is to say, materialization, levitation, teleportation, etc etc, move from imaginative exercises to material realities. The practice of visualization of course is relevant to this transformative process, but it is fundamentally linked, or tethered to, an extremely grandiose self-estimation, where the Self, as object, is that which induces awe.

Why have I written about this? Perhaps because some people really don't understand how the world we live in can work the way it does - and how the human being, contrary to being an accident of nature, is really an emergent property of Natures Natural Becoming...According to the law of symmetry.

Symmetries underlie everything that we are, and every particle and cell in the biosphere plays some minor part in the construction of our human being, and within our own physiological being, the 'shadow of the Other' appears in our brainstem, our midbrain functioning, so that the semiosis of our relations to the world always replay, or re-enact, the fundamental meanings of our own neurological development as a self-embedded-in-the-other, of the mind-embedded-in-a-feeling-body, and a 'being-embedded-in-the-world'.

Power is quite real. Power is important. But true power, the power that wont ultimately destroy every last bit of you, is a power-based-in-Love-and-kindness-For-the-Other

a reply to: Astrocyte

Not to nitpick...

But there are exactly 7 different interactions on each side of the Tapestry that can define your interaction with anything else, 14 in total.

There is no such thing as inanimate.

Instead of Nature being the object which enlivens them into a deeper state of union, it is themselves, which, in their view, means that they are above nature.

That is a rather constipated way of thinking and is below the Tapestry.

If you wish a deeper state of union within your mortal constrains, you should not seek to be above above nature, but a deeper part of it.

If you wish to rise above your mortal constraints, you do not rise above nature.

You become it.

"Magic" is the balancing between the upper and the lower, balancing one of the same upper and lower aspects so that you can exert a force upon your place on the Tapestry.

Which is essentially the reality you are currently living in, defined by the interaction between your consciousness, your subconscious, your physical existence in time and the tether between the three and the Tapestry.

Which is the representation of everything.

Perfection is balancing all 14 aspects, thus mastering the Tapestry.

An opinion...

a reply to: Astrocyte

I'm confused. Can you answer some binary questions?

1) Is black magic good or bad?

2) Is the Awe which the Psychopomp experiences a good or bad?

3) Are Psychopomps good or bad?

4) Do Psychopomps help people or destroy people?

5) Should people accept Psychopomps or should they fear, despise, and cast them out?

a reply to: pthena

You can gather a few negative aspects together and influence our world.

You can gather a few positive aspects together and influence our world.

A negative aspect is, by most social definitions, evil... the opposite of good.

To change your own personal reality, you need to find the balance between a lower and upper aspect to change your own world.

Sorry that I am being (existential?) tonight, but I am doing a webinar about the subject tonight to NA friends and was posting between questions on ATS while visiting with little Grandfather.

I will never do that again... LOL

I've splattered strange thoughts all around the threads tonight.

Sorry!!!!

a reply to: Lumenari

Sounds like a multi-tasking issue to me.

To explain: Remember the tragic romance story that I was thinking of putting into your World framework?

I had finally decided to make a fairy tale out of it. Two Psychopomps separated by 800 years, brought together by a sprite or spriggan if you will. I came up with names for the characters, then remembered the geas pronounced upon the birth of the Girl in Blue, "The night that your only friend dies will be the night he pronounces your name."

I accidently wrote a name down for the Girl in Blue, so now I need a loop-hole, "The name I wrote is not her real name, it is the name that people used for her during her short lonely life."

We shall see if the Tapestry is satisfied by my sophistry or not.

Notice I wrote Tapestry without mention of the Weaver.
Ummm, I probably shouldn't have written that.

a reply to: Astrocyte

In Chaos Magic, we simply help the Second Law of Thermodynamics along. Intention may order a system for a time, but you have to feed that system with energy in order to sustain it. This is the fundamental difference between black/white/grey. It is easier to destroy than it is to build. And once something is established, it is easier to undermine than to maintain.

So, by all means, pass beyond the Veil. Just remember that, as you do, I am still right here causing problems. Discordians are not fond of people playing with things they do not understand. Even if they do understand, we tend to err on the side of opposition to the black/white paradigm.

Now, if I may be excused, I have to go solo my BLU in FFXIV

originally posted by: Astrocyte
There are roughly three feeling-relations which link one object - an organism - with another object - something in the external world.

These are: Fun, Care, and Awe.

The practice of black magic is fundamentally the practice of being in awe - of ones own self. A phase shift in biological functioning may follow.

Pharaoh, king of Egypt, Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, or Whatshisname, chief of sum-primitive-tribe, share something special in common: they are in awe-of-their-power.

Instead of Nature being the object which enlivens them into a deeper state of union, it is themselves, which, in their view, means that they are above nature.

It is indeed a bizarre phenomenon. Awe constitutes a phase shift, and in its fundamentally a function of enrapturement vis-à-vis a perception of...GRANDEUR. Greatness pours into ones mind, and ones affective being, and all the cells of ones body, begin to resonate with the external object.

The Awe which occurs naturally is deeply intertwined with the feeling and perception of Beauty. It is also permeated by a feeling of Love.

The Awe which the psychopomp experiences is a Terrifying Power. It's in their voice; in the effect of himself on the Others. Indeed, the psychopomp, is dynamically akin to a balloon where all the other has been pushed into one side of it. The "We" system has been artificially polarized through social exploitation; and so a single individual comes to experience himself as a God - capitalized because, frankly, one can only imagine how entrancing such an experience could be for the person who experiences himself as the object of such a aggrandizing feeling.

Some people have felt those feelings i.e. feeling in awe of themselves; but there is an intensity which is crossed which constitutes a legitimate phase transition in biological functioning, where the Whole - the Universe from its singularity in the big bang - is felt to be present in the Part - the Self.

At such a point, matter, via the Higgs boson (the God Particle) instantiates ones will, which is to say, materialization, levitation, teleportation, etc etc, move from imaginative exercises to material realities. The practice of visualization of course is relevant to this transformative process, but it is fundamentally linked, or tethered to, an extremely grandiose self-estimation, where the Self, as object, is that which induces awe.

Why have I written about this? Perhaps because some people really don't understand how the world we live in can work the way it does - and how the human being, contrary to being an accident of nature, is really an emergent property of Natures Natural Becoming...According to the law of symmetry.

Symmetries underlie everything that we are, and every particle and cell in the biosphere plays some minor part in the construction of our human being, and within our own physiological being, the 'shadow of the Other' appears in our brainstem, our midbrain functioning, so that the semiosis of our relations to the world always replay, or re-enact, the fundamental meanings of our own neurological development as a self-embedded-in-the-other, of the mind-embedded-in-a-feeling-body, and a 'being-embedded-in-the-world'.

Power is quite real. Power is important. But true power, the power that wont ultimately destroy every last bit of you, is a power-based-in-Love-and-kindness-For-the-Other

Pride before the fall.

a reply to: Astrocyte

For you it's very easy to achieve.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Psychopomp is it? I can see why you would be in awe of yourself, you who contrive word salads even the well educated struggle to pick apart to discern their meaning. You who deem yourself above debating or even replying to other members on here, yet take the time with your OPs to wax eloquently on your convoluted thoughts.

Indeed you are in awe of yourself, yet there is little so vexing as the pomp and grandiose lecturing of one who considers themselves of superior quality to that which they stoop to enlighten.

You talk about “the other” a lot, but when you finally realise you and the other are in fact one and the same, then you will know wisdom.

I'm sometimes in awe of myself when I play my guitar. I've been playing for decades now, and sometimes when I'm warming up and jamming to a beat, my fingers and pick move so fast and with such innovation that I can actually separate myself into both player and listener, and damned if the listener (me) doesn't sometimes say, "Wow. How did he (me) do that?" It's gotten so I have been driven to record my noodling digitally so that a lot of this fantastic (in my opinion) trans-conscious stuff isn't just lost to the ether.

Fun stuff.

a reply to: Astrocyte
Awe or being in Awe, is the precursor to confidence. And what is confidence you ask? Well confidence is that thing you feel before you truly and fully understand the situation.

All the kings and demigods and even gods of old, were in awe of themselves. Which is why you don't seem them around anymore. They did not fully and truly understand the situation they were in.

But such is life in all its intricacies, here one day, gone the next.

a reply to: MisterMcKill
Oh wow! A discordian. I have not seen one of those in ages, they used to be more prevalent on the intenets it seemed, now only there cousins the overly political remain on the internet to sow discord.

I at one time even thought to look in a museum for one, but turns out all they have there is just old junk people found laying around in mud. Though it makes sense they would all be playing ffxiv or some other mmo.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Narcissism.

originally posted by: Astrocyte

But true power, the power that wont ultimately destroy every last bit of you, is a power-based-in-Love-and-kindness-For-the-Other

I don't know if this was your intention (it probably wasn't), but saying “I am in awe of myself” makes you sound rather full of yourself (“puffed up”). Paul warned: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1) No, there is nothing wrong with accurate knowledge. The problem is with us. If the balancing influence of love is missing, knowledge could make a person puffed up, leading to inordinate self-esteem (pride), an unreasonable feeling of superiority as to one’s talents, beauty, wealth, rank, and so forth; which in turn can lead to disdainful behavior or treatment; insolence or arrogance of demeanor; a haughty bearing (all things that also fall under the definition of pride). That will not happen if he is basically motivated by love. “Love . . . does not brag, does not get puffed up.” (1 Corinthians 13:4) A person who is motivated by love does not become proud, even if he acquires a deep knowledge. Love keeps him humble and prevents him from wanting to make a name for himself.​—Psalm 138:6; James 4:6.

The American author Edgar Allan Poe had just finished reading his new story to some friends. They jokingly said that he had used the hero’s name too often. How did Poe react? One friend recalled: “His proud spirit would not stand such open rebuke, so in a fit of anger, before his friends could prevent him, he had flung every sheet into a blazing fire.” Lost was a story “intensely amusing, entirely free from his usual . . . gloom.” Humility might have saved it.

Though pride makes people do unwise things, it is rampant in the world. But God's true servants are to be different. They must wear the well-designed garment of humility (not really something that can be said of most of those who claim to serve or worship God, in particular and often those who take the lead in organized religion).

The apostle Paul alluded to the beautiful Christian garment of humility when he wrote to fellow believers in the ancient city of Colossae. He urged: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and loved, clothe yourselves with the tender affections of compassion, kindness, lowliness of mind, mildness, and long-suffering.”​—Colossians 3:12.

Yes, humility is “lowliness of mind.” It is “humbleness of mind; lack of pride; meekness.” A humble person is “modest in spirit; not proud.” He is “deeply or courteously respectful.” (The World Book Dictionary, Volume I, page 1030) Humility is not cowardice or weakness. Actually, pride reflects weakness, whereas displaying humility often calls for courage and strength.

In the Scriptures a Hebrew word rendered “humble yourself” literally means “stamp yourself down.” Thus, the wise writer of Proverbs counseled: “My son, . . . if you have been caught by the sayings of your mouth, . . . deliver yourself, for you have come into the palm of your fellowman: Go humble yourself [stamp yourself down] and storm your fellowman with importunities.” (Proverbs 6:1-3)

However, not all people who seem humble have genuine humility. Some seemingly humble individuals may actually be proud and will stop at nothing to get their own way. Then there are those who use the cloak of false humility to impress others. For instance, the apostle Paul encountered some who displayed “mock humility,” and he indicated that anyone doing this was actually “puffed up without proper cause by his fleshly frame of mind.” Such an individual wrongly thought that having God’s favor depended on whether he ate, drank, or touched certain things or observed religious days or not. True, he might have seemed pious and humble, but his false humility was worthless. (Colossians 2:18, 23) In fact, it led him to think that the prize of life was awarded to those who renounced material things. It also spawned a subtle form of materialism because ascetic prohibitions focused attention on material things that he professed to despise. For example, Gnostics in the 2nd century and later believed that spiritual things are good and that all matter is evil. Reasoning that all flesh is evil, they rejected marriage and procreation, claiming that Satan originated these. Some of them believed that since only that which pertains to the spirit is good, it does not matter what a man does with his physical body. Such viewpoints resulted in extreme life-styles, either asceticism or fleshly indulgence. The Gnostic claim that salvation came only from mystical Gnosticism, or self-knowledge, left no room for the truth of God’s Word.

On the other hand, genuine humility restrains a person from manifesting self-importance in dress, grooming, and life-style. (1 John 2:15-17) An individual clothed with the garment of humility does not draw undue attention to himself or his abilities.

Coming back to Gnosticism for a moment...

Gnosticism got its name from the Greek word gnoʹsis, meaning “knowledge.” Gnostic groups contended that salvation is dependent upon special mystical knowledge of deep things unknown to ordinary Christians. They felt that possessing this knowledge enabled them to teach, as The Encyclopedia of Religion says, “the inner truth revealed by Jesus.”

The origins of Gnostic thought were many. From Babylon, Gnostics took the practice of attributing hidden meanings to Bible numbers, which supposedly revealed mystical truths. Gnostics also taught that whereas the spirit is good, all matter is inherently evil. “This is the same chain of reasoning,” says German author Karl Frick, “that was already found in Persian dualism and in the Far East in China’s ‘yin’ and ‘yang.’” The “Christianity” presented by Gnostic writings is definitely based on non-Christian sources. So how could it be “the inner truth revealed by Jesus”?

Scholar R. E. O. White calls Gnosticism a combination of “philosophic speculation, superstition, semi-magical rites, and sometimes a fanatical and even obscene cultus.” Andrew M. Greeley of the University of Arizona says: “The Jesus of the Gnostics is sometimes incoherent, sometimes unintelligible, and sometimes more than a little creepy.”

Moving on to ascetics...

In the book For the Sake of the World—The Spirit of Buddhist and Christian Monasticism, the authors explain that “ever since the time of Socrates (fifth century B.C.E.) at least, it had been widely understood that a life stripped down to essentials, unencumbered with sensual and material luxuries, was a precondition for genuine wisdom.” Ascetics thought that the mortification of the body would heighten their spiritual sensibility and lead to true enlightenment.

Among the philosophies that have given rise to asceticism is the idea that material things and physical pleasures are bad in themselves and hence barriers to spiritual progress. Another concept that opens the way for asceticism is the widely accepted belief that a human is composed of a body and a soul. Ascetics believe that the material body is the soul’s prison and that flesh is its enemy.

However, the Bible clearly teaches that man, created from the dust and made of flesh, is a soul. The Scriptures support neither the notion that the soul is some kind of immaterial and immortal entity bound up inside the physical body nor the idea that somehow the flesh prevents one from having a close relationship with God.—Genesis 2:7.

originally posted by: Astrocyte

...the practice of being in awe - of ones own self. ...
...the Self.
...an extremely grandiose self-estimation, where the Self...is that which induces awe.
...But true power, the power that wont ultimately destroy every last bit of you, is a power-based-in-Love-and-kindness-For-the-Other

At 2 Timothy 3:1-5, we read that in “the last days,” people in general would be obsessed with self, money, and pleasures. They would be arrogant (“haughty”) and fierce. Families would lack natural affection, and children would be disobedient to parents. Religious hypocrisy would be commonplace. Being obsessed with self, or being “lovers of themselves” and “self-assuming” as Paul puts it there with that implied extended meaning given the context, tends to get in the way of loving others and can lead to choosing to act in your own best interest as opposed to that of others. However: “Love* [Greek: a·gaʹpe] . . . does not look for its own interests.” (1 Corinthians 13:4,5) Note that the term a·gaʹpe is not used in the expression “lovers of themselves” at 2 Tim 3:1-5.

The term “self-assuming” also relates to the other terms mentioned in my previous comment: “inordinate self-esteem (pride), an unreasonable feeling of superiority as to one’s talents, beauty, wealth, rank, and so forth.” For example, an unreasonable “extremely grandiose self-estimation.” It gets in the way of recognizing flaws in one's behaviour and thinking*, and doing something about it (including the will to do someting about it, make positive improvements). *: for example those behavioural and thinking patterns described early in my previous comment just after what I just quoted again. I also used some philosophical and historical examples in that comment regarding people's thinking and philosophizing about these matters and how it affected their behaviour and attitudes.

On the other hand, what would be really part of being loving and kind toward others (or as you put it: “Love-and-kindness-For-the-Other”)? Just like Paul, the Bible writer Peter encouraged: “But all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the haughty ones, but he gives undeserved kindness to the humble ones.” (1 Peter 5:5) Which (in particular the bolded part) brings us back to the statement that: “Love . . . does not look for its own interests.” (1 Corinthians 13:4,5) And what has become known as the Golden Rule.

Some other things the Bible teaches and that are beneficial to keep in mind regarding inordinate pride and an overestimation of self becoming a barrier to accurate beneficial knowledge, true love for others and acknowledging one's own faults and accepting counsel and thus benefiting from much loving help, Paul said: “Now we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that have been kindly given us by God.” (1 Cor. 2:12) “The spirit of the world” is the impelling force that influences human society made up of those who are not servants of God, causing such people to say and do things according to a characteristic pattern. Although people act on individual preferences, those who manifest the spirit of the world give evidence of certain basic attitudes, ways of doing things, and aims in life that are common to the present system of things of which Satan is ruler and god. If the spirit of the world takes root in a person’s thinking and desires, its fruitage is soon seen in actions that manifest that spirit. So, breaking free from the spirit of the world requires not only avoiding unchristian activities and excesses but also getting to the root of the matter by cultivating attitudes that reflect God’s spirit and genuine love for his ways. This you should keep in mind as you consider the following manifestations of the spirit of the world.

- Doing what a person wants to do, without regard for the will of God

Satan urged Eve to decide for herself what was good and what was bad. (Gen. 3:3-5; in contrast see Proverbs 3:5, 6.) Many who follow Eve’s course do not know what God’s will for mankind is, nor are they interested in finding out. They just “do their own thing,” as they say.

- Reacting to situations on the basis of pride

It was Satan who first allowed an overestimation of self to corrupt his heart. (Compare Ezekiel 28:17; Proverbs 16:5.) Pride is a divisive force in the world of which he is ruler, often causing people to consider themselves better than those of other races, nations, language groups, and social or economic status. Pride is also one of his main tools to play on. It is often the most glaring manifestation of “the spirit of the world”. Those who demonstrate to have been effectively played in this regards, sometimes even copy or pick-up the behaviour of playing on the emotions related to pride, having a snowball-effect in society regarding particular popular philosophies/ideas and supposed “knowledge/science”; usually things that contradict or oppose the teachings in the Bible and obscure or downplay its warnings. Even though feelings might be irrelevant when it comes to factual claims or the logic of an argument, they play a crucial role in persuasion. Emotional appeals are fabricated by practiced publicists, who play on feelings as skillfully as a virtuoso plays the piano. Some propagandists play on pride. Often we can spot appeals to pride by looking for such key phrases as: “Any intelligent person knows that . . .“ or, “A person with your education can’t help but see that . . .” A reverse appeal to pride plays on our fear of seeming stupid. Professionals in persuasion are well aware of that. So that reverse appeal to pride plays on 2 main emotions at once. The propagandist makes sure that his message appears to be the right and moral one and that it gives you a sense of importance and belonging if you follow it. You are one of the smart ones, you are not alone, you are comfortable and secure—so they say. All of these tools are also used and promoted by the Master Propagandist described in the Bible as “Satan”. Which brings us to the next manifestation of the spirit of the world.

- Manifesting a rebellious attitude toward authority

Rebellion against God's sovereignty authority began with Satan, whose name means “Resister.” By his defiance of God, Nimrod, whose name may mean “Let Us Rebel,” demonstrated that he was a child of Satan. “The god of this system of things,” Satan the Devil, encourages all sorts of practices that misdirect man’s God-given inclination to accept God as ruler and arbiter of what is right and wrong rather than men. (2 Cor. 4:4) Because of that, instead, some rulers have been treated as gods. (Acts 12:21-23) Millions bow before idols. Millions more idolize actors and outstanding athletes. Celebrations frequently give undue honor to individual humans. Which describes another manifestation of the spirit of the world, but since there are quite a few to describe, I'll leave it at that. These are the ones that have the most bearing on the subject of pride and how it affects people's thinking, attitudes (spirit, not an immaterial part of man that continues its existence after one dies) and behaviour.

a reply to: Lumenari

And you think your description constitutes an ontologically infallible perspective?

Which is essentially the reality you are currently living in, defined by the interaction between your consciousness, your subconscious, your physical existence in time and the tether between the three and the Tapestry.

The empirical sciences would describe what you just wrote in the following way: your physical existence in time contains: your subconscious and your conscious mind.

You seem to think that your conscious mind is ever disconnected from the time-space transformations associated with the matter of your material brain as well as the material processes your material brain correlates with.

This habit of speaking of different substances is delusional. Your consciousness isn't so much 'in' your head as constituting that 'tensegrity' - or 'tensional integrity' - between the symmetry dynamics of your physical dissipative system (subject to entropy) and the material objects in the world around you which have left a semiotic trace on your physical-neurological structuring.

When I say that 'black magic' works by exploiting others, I'm also saying that black magic is an incoherent ontological mess insofar as how you relate you Other humans (and other living beings) is treated as ancillary to some imaginary self that is assumed to be identical with Nature.

You are a part of Nature. A part, by definition, can never become the Whole. So long as you are embodied, with a brain with its own history of traces giving rise to a particular semiosis, you can never escape the interpersonal experiences which have shaped your relational expectancies.

Herein comes the complicating theme of dissociative identity disorder and traumatic early life abuse. Some people may think its "loving" to abuse other people, but this is whats called 'an idealization': something a person posits - with like minded others subject to the same pressures which compel the same assertion - in order to regulate their feelings.

Idols are ontologically real so long as your living. But at death, they are 'rolled back' to the events which stand as the basis of your way-of-being. In other words, since the Third - your reflective mind, or consciousness - is a fundamentally selfless social function of self-other recognition dynamics - there is no vantage point that isn't based in love, and a love that is fundamentally subject to the changing conditions of the material environment around you.

Failure to respond with the changing environment comes with serious penalties. As Moses said: "Those who wont live by the law, will die by the law". Death needn't be strictly a physical death either; if you think your individual self is a sustainable and reproducible being - and not merely a sub-function of a higher selfless being which is the root of consciousness, and therefore your capacity as a self, and also emergent from a "We" system with a specific rhythmic back and forth recognition dynamic underlying its emergent logic - than you are going to be sorely disappointed with whatever metaphysical expectations I assume you have.

The problem is the problem of dissociated the horizontal or relational world which creates your mental experience - and hence, your feelings and motivations for acting - and the vertical consciousness which makes you feel like you can just posit anything you like willy-nilly, as if it weren't an illusion - logically - a self-protective function that grows out of ancient fight or flight mechanisms relating to predators.

In our human heads, we "fight" negative feelings (i.e. Nietzsche) or take "flight" from them (ala Nietzsche). We can develop a grandiose estimation of ourselves, and, since we are so attached to this image, feel like the momentum is too great for us to peddle back, or we can live in a totally mindless way - sort of like the "power of now" - which is just an escape mechanism the person uses wrongly assuming that the breakdown of meaning they impose on their brain-processing applies to the post-life situation (probably doesn't).

Or we can freeze, which is what happens eventually to many people who live a life devoted to dissociation i.e. alzheimers.

a reply to: pthena

1. Bad, although ignorance of how we work can make someone think it is good

2. Bad, although its an understandable trap which must feel unbelievably intoxicating.

3. Probably bad; they're liable to mistreat other people and then deny that they've done so

4. I think they believe they're helping people; but the science and ontology of human development says precisely the opposite.

5. I don't like how you've put it. Do I sound like I'm demonizing the 'psychopomp', or rather, am I trying to understand the circumstances and contexts which have created them - and which perpetuate the narratives/cultures/rationales which sustain them? They should be neither accepted as psychopomps nor feared, despised, or cast out. The term is itself an idealization they've given themselves. In reality, they are human beings who have ignored and dissociated the fundamentally social-nature of their personal, individual minds. Since mistreating others and believing that "one must die" so that another can live, are correlated phenomena i.e. hurting people compels fantasies which operate as defense mechanisms to regulate shame-guilt feelings, it would be unfair to them to demonize them, but it would also be deeply and even more unfair to everyone else to ignore the suffering and pain they cause others.

a reply to: surfer_soul

Hello,

I can understand what you've written. It is true that I often ignore others peoples replies, and that this is probably very irritating to them, and would strike them - quite legitimately - as me being a hypocrite.

All I can really reply to this is that a) I'm an interdisciplinary researcher who spends the vast majority of his time reading and note-taking. and b) I try to share my recent thoughts on a typically random subject matter from time to time.

I do have a lack of respect for non-scientific fields of inquiry, and do consider those who subscribe to such views as a sort of cherry-picker who relies upon the social connotations of "esoteric" and "secret" and "mystical" as a baton to bat away any views which challenge their coherency systems.

It is not an easy thing trying to understand how physics - particle and cosmological - link up with origin of life research, and progress through biological evolution to produce our minds, without ever relying upon the god of the gaps argument. Symmetry means every last process that goes in your head has a contingent basis in something your physical system has interacted with in the past. The complexities of this claim are intense, and they do not skirt metaphysical systems of thought, nor do they deny the existence of what's called "paranormal" phenomena. But, as to the Other and myself being exactly the same, that in itself isn't true, and is an example of what I mean in criticizing contemporary and historical metaphysics: we are not exactly the same, because space-time conditions our bodies - which is our compass for forming meaning - in different ways.

When you write something like that, I cannot help but see intimations of hating the other, time, meaning and complexity itself, because you refuse to acknowledge the differences which matter, which affect how we respond to one another.

I've done exactly that by starting this post with acknowledging how irritatingly full-of-# I can be when I don't bother to respond to others. Its a bad habit. I shouldn't write threads without committing myself to respecting every person who responds to it. Its a profoundly disrespectful habit with a so-so rationale which nevertheless cannot be justified.

I don't know everything. I'm a being always cornered by the sheer magnitude of the physical Universe my being is borne and develops within. Do I know the "depth" of existence just as you do? Absolutely. But am I mindful enough not to ignore what my body communicates as a relevant meaning i.e. as the feelings I feel and the complex etiology which creates them? I try to be - as much as possible. Yet I can never exhaust such meaning, because my body only grants me a perspective - never the whole. I am always embedded - as are you. This means knowledge is always incomplete. The fact that love is the essence of things only gives me a point; it doesn't erase or undo the randomness which makes life interesting and even subjects what I may regard as a 'loving' or 'reasonable' act (since we always assume, if we believe ourselves as having a 'superior' knowledge, to be acting with love) to revision, as you've just made me recognize - very eloquently btw.

We will never be normal, or know what love is or capable of, so long as we exist in a world where a reasonable understanding of our embodied being remains dissociated or misaligned with the reflexive 'modes of being' or 'knowing the world' that our bodies reflexively cause us to enact. This is because we automatic before we are reflective. If we never acknowledge our capacity for error - as Gnosticism preaches - we arrest ourselves in a condition of disorder.

a reply to: MisterMcKill

Just remember that, as you do, I am still right here causing problems.

Do you ever wonder "what's my motivation for wanting to do that"?

To me, and to academic psychology, and the dynamic nature of reality, the only logic is fear based, even as you seem to take a wry pleasure in "helping the second law of thermodynamics along", why do you assume that you are different from the order which creates you - sustains you - makes you?

Could you imagine being a different person with different feelings of what "life means"? Or do you think your feelings are the only feelings? Do you also see your feelings as 'necessary' to create a world - the sort of world we have today? Or can you imagine a world without Discordians, without Satanists, without people motivated to play the part of the devil, and yet still have a world where fun exists, where individual identity exists, where amusement parks exist, space ships, and an internet-of-things (without the surveillance capitalism)?

I'm deeply skeptical of dichotomies because I think they represent a mind that can't tolerate complexity. On the other hand, I'm also contemptuous of people who think 'life is irrational' even though everything which exists is quite logically ordered, even if it is incredibly complex. Thus, complexity - as some abstract 'third' property between opposites that drive cognitive dissonance - should be sought, and our embodied responses should be challenged, and ancient belief systems borne in primitive mythological societies - i.e. ancient Greece, Egypt, Babylon, etc, should be rejected.