weirdway

OK, but this conversation is coming out of the context of how to deal with multiple magical/divine/psychic beings with conflicting intent in your realm. Instead of any specific limitation that generally applied to all, you proposed that you would simply never see anyone do anything you don’t like with their magical abilities. i.e. they would simply never manifest in your realm. In order to maintain such a principle, you must strip yourself of the idea that individual beings are in any sense free or independent. They are not even ostensibly other in a significant degree if they don’t have the ability to think and want and act in ways contrary to your desires. That implies a dramatic removal of power from apparent others, all apparent others – either they can only use magic when it pleases you (so, interestingly, it would put everyone else in a position of having to pray/placate to you or your subconscious in order to perform magic, much like the Christian/Hermetic/Jewish ceremonial magic that calls upon the angels of god to request magical service), or they can use magic to do whatever they please, but what they please is always pre-structured to match the way you want them to think and feel and intend.

That's one way to think about it. Another way is like this:

Each intent produces a corresponding result.

If I hold an intent that I have a pleasant experience then that's what happens. Then what about an intent that I don't have a pleasant experience? Such an intent is also possible. But they're not both possible at the same time, since they are in conflict. So if we grant true otherness to others, then axiomatically they can never be suppressed or ended, because they are true existences. Instead what would happen is that because of their divergent intents, they wouldn't be resolved into the same world as me. From their perspectives all their intents succeed. From my own, the same is true. If all of us are true existences, then the meaning of this is that we each exist in separate universes which have the option of overlapping or interpenetrating and each can control the degree and the quality of this overlap as well.

So you described the possibility where others never had any independent existence to begin with. In your scenario they were subconsciously mine to control all along, and it's just that I can control them consciously now. So in this scenario others don't lose anything at all, because they never had anything to begin with. They never had independence or even something called "life" or "will" to begin with, and if they never had it to begin with, how can they lose it?

On the other hand, if they have wills, their wills should follow the principle of willing, and thus their wills should be as complete and as mysterious as my own, because even if a little bit of this mysteriousness and power were missing, my will wouldn't be called "will." In that case, they along with their universes diverge if their shenanigans go outside the level I agree to resolve into my experience.

We see small instances of this with dreaming. People who are dreaming leave their bodies "here" but their minds experience a world that isn't compatible with this world. However, since they retain the memory and the impulse of this world, they can return back, and that's when they wake up.

There is no middle ground here, because if others are not truly other, then at most I can play-pretend that they are, but this would be me engaging in what is essentially a lie and the one I am lying to is myself. I would have to deceive myself.

Part of the problem as I see it, is that you don't allow arbitrary creation of different spaces, and I do. So since you are thinking only in terms of a single space, then the conflicts have to be resolved. But since I allow arbitrary creation of different spaces, conflicts never have to be resolved. They can be, but never have to be. Every conceived possibility exists in potential. There is a situation where conflicts have to be resolved and a situation where they do not have to be resolved, because I can conceive of both scenarios. There is a situation where many different experiential spaces exist in a non-intersecting manner and for all intents and purposes those other spaces are possibly not even myths from all points of view outside those spaces.

By becoming more conscious of that aspect of my will, it’s going to be adjusted a lot more and much more flexible.

I don't agree. You'll be doing all the same things then and now, but the difference is that you'll become conscious of them and begin taking responsibility.

And yes, stability is a feature of your own will, not the world. You're projecting what is really your feature onto the world. Regardless of how you manipulate anything, you are always stable because that is your nature. However, when stability is not owned, it doesn't seem that way. When stability is disowned the possibility of gaining and losing stability appears real.

Basically stability is your ability to always succeed. It has nothing to do with the rate of change. Stability simply means your plans cannot be shaken. Of course when you project so much onto the world, almost all your plans are involved with the world at that time. In that case you may be unable to distinguish between the world as a specific optional vision and your will in general.

I mean, if you eliminate the potential for people or the environment to be set up in ways that you don’t like you eliminate the ‘aliveness’ or ‘contrariness’, as well as I expect disrupting some of the continuity (like there are situations where what I want to have happen most right now cannot be continuous with the past without completely abandoning all sense of there being a world that follows consistent, stable rules).

This isn't an all or nothing. Explain why is it that I don't lack a sense of aliveness in my lucid dream while at the same time always having an amenable experience without fail?

There are interesting disagreements and boring disagreements. There are stupid challenges and fascinating challenges.

Why do you think convention should be tolerant scientific physicalism?

I don't have any sentimental attachment to it, but simply, it's because in the past I was a physicalist, so this convention seems like a friendly platform from which to jump off, in a sense. Once my powers develop sufficiently enough I may no longer want such a convention anymore.

Why not have a convention with some degree of magic (or potentially a lot of magic?)?

I don't lack things to do or think about, so why should I think about this? If I avoid something it is not necessarily me rejecting that thing. I may have a certain order in mind. For example I have potatoes and strawberries and I first eat potatoes and then strawberries. When I am eating potatoes I don't have it in my mind that I am rejecting strawberries, but at the same time, I am also not yet eating them.

When for me it is the right time to think about magickal conventions, I will of course naturally know that. Until then, I also know what to think about and do.

I mean, do you not want to encourage/help other people to become gods themselves? To spread this idea?

I don't want to spread this idea at all. At the same time, I believe some people are destined to encounter this idea not because of anything I am doing, but due to their own volitional states. In that case, I and what I do can be an accessory from their POV on their path.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-09-23 09:34:55 (dndmdvn)

I don’t think that just seeking solitude in the normal use of the expression is the always the same as the above. There’s seeking meditative, contemplative, introspective, imaginative, alone time to cultivate or maintain wisdom. And then there’s wanting to be alone because you think masturbating is more fun than sex or solitaire is more fun than poker. Just because you are alone doesn’t mean you are going to become any wiser or better at thinking for yourself if you’re not using that solitude in productive ways. So there’s solitude for fun, and there’s solitude for wisdom (and in some individuals these may have some overlap).

But where does your idea of "wisdom" come from? Is it your own, or is it a social construct? Would you have the same idea of wisdom if you were left to think about it without the social pressure and social charm (using a magickal sense of the word "charm" here, as in, when you're "charmed" you're under someone's spell, a thrall, in this case society's thrall).

You should know what your own idea of wisdom would look like.

Secondly, wisdom and fun are not two different ends of the same spectrum. I frankly worry about people for whom wisdom and fun do not overlap. If anything, I think there is a strong positive correlation between fun and wisdom. I don't think fun is the same thing as wisdom, but certainly fun is not an antagonistic quality to wisdom.

By "fun" I refer to any experience of enjoyment, joy, bliss, release, but also ongoing well-being, a sense of rightness and competency within your own life, etc.

You could just manifest new music directly without potentially having to negotiate with unpleasant personalities in order to get their art from them.

I've done that. My point was something else. I was saying even if I am left to generate my own music, I can make myself hear better music than Bach and Mozart but it's not better by all that much. In other words, in some sense the best music of this plane is some ways already into the heavenly realm. Whereas other things are not so good. For example, I could teleport, or I could make a house that's huge inside and tiny on the outside and so on. People cannot make such things for me. I have to be the one to allow such things in my mind. Indeed, whatever people "make" is whatever I have allowed that they could make. In other words, before other people can make something I have to make way for them in my own mind. So if I made way for people to be able to contort space, they'd be able to do so eventually. I have to be the one to open that door. If you notice how physics has evolved to a more perspectival and subjective science? It's not an accident from my own POV. Of course physics cannot truly catch up to me, but it still follows me like a shadow. When I conceive of a new way of seeing things, physics follows along eventually.

So long time ago I have conceived that space can be pushed against. That's going to happen too. There are already some signs of this happening, but I have conceived of this looong before any articles like that appeared. Why have I conceived that? Because I think that's how we'll travel to other stars. I realized that spewing gas is not the way to go. Instead energy must be extracted from space itself and be used to push against the space. Then you don't have fuel constraints and you can accelerate endlessly. There will probably also be a need to phase into a different space, because you don't want to be colliding with the various debris in conventional space at high speeds. But physicists think they're just discovering whatever is "there" whereas I think I want this and that experience, now let's make it happen, and then physics come in line with whatever I actually want to be doing. On top of that if I want to make myself an exception from physics, I can do that as well. The sky's the limit.

As an aside, could you discuss what you mean by no longer needing others to think and no longer living ‘through’ others? What does it mean to think for yourself, to you?

Do you realize that any time you disagree with someone you don't actually think for yourself? That's because your disagreement is anchored to an idea someone else has expressed. So while you diverge from that idea, you're still mentally centering on the idea you're disagreeing with for so long as you're considering it in disagreement.

On top of that, it's not even that easy to move away from this even when the conditions are right. Let me explain. For example, I'll hear something on reddit and I disagree with it, then I go for a walk. So ostensibly I am lone. Then the idea comes up again and I disagree again. I think it's not even interesting and I should be thinking about something else entirely, and I do, when suddenly 5 minutes later that dumb ass idea comes up again, like it didn't go very far to begin with. And bam, I am back to thinking how I disagree with that idea and while I think that, I am not thinking about what I really wanted to think about.

So other people inside a conventional mentality (like say one of a fairly recent ex-physicalist) have a huge amount of gravity. That gravity is very deceptive because it doesn't look like much. People love to think they have figured stuff out on their own and that they think independently, but the reality is not like that. Even the so-called "independent" thinkers are hardly independent. At most they have some quasi-independent streak.

To really develop independent thinking it would help to isolate oneself at least mentally for say 6 months or better yet 5 years. 20 years is actually much better. In 20 years of reduced contact and reduced social obligations you'd start to see huge differences in how you think. You'd realize that there is absolutely no way you'd be able to think like that had you remained involved in conventional goings on. Of course I am only suggesting this to you. It's true in my experience.

When I realize what is precious to me and what has set me back, I cannot help but think 90% of what's precious to me came from my own mind, whereas 90% of what has set me back has come from someone else "out there."

In particular you must watch out for people who are very confident. They're the worst ones. And watch out for people who claim they used to be like you and then they "grew up" and whatnot. All that is poison. Naturally I even worry that even me speaking here like this is problematic for others. But at least you don't have to read this space all that much, or at all.

If I raise a finger in the air, and people see it, whether they like it or not, agree or not, their minds will be anchored to my finger, unless one of those people is an unparalleled saint with superlative self-control and beyond-conventional wisdom in full bloom.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-09-16 15:04:46 (dn2oq9j)