I’m afraid the stuff you bring up is very non-trivial to discuss.

For example, I’ve trained my vision in the past (and still train it a tiny bit here and there) and here’s what I’ve found for me. I’ve discovered firstly that I have something I refer to as “visual habit.” It’s the way my mind goes about to see things and when seeing things. In my specific case I have found two flaws in my visual habit (or three, if you count physicalism).

One flaw is that I tend to drill with my eyes (not literally of course, this is a subtle mental process I am trying to describe). It’s like I am trying to reach out to objects ‘out there’ because by habit I believe they’re outside, far away. This produces strain. Like when my eyes are open and I am looking around, there is a subtle strain, a subtle desire to want to get closer, and feeling like everything is too far away and I have to reach out to it, which I then compensate by drilling with my eyes, or reaching with my eyes, instead of just allowing the imagery to coalesce of “its own” accord. So there is a conception of separation involved here, I am here, and the stuff I want to see is out there. That’s the separation. And there is a lot more to it.

Like all my ideas about eyeballs and how I believe eyeballs work and what I expect from eyeballs and so on. All this can be termed “my physicalist hangover.” It means while I don’t really believe in physicalism anymore, but by habit, there is mental activity that corresponds to this old belief. This activity can be extremely subtle so that I might even retain some of the old physicalistic expectations unknowingly. So for example, if I believe something is “physically” wrong with my eyeball, I then have a reason to think that seeing properly is “just impossible.”

And another very important thing is my disinterest. I noticed that when I see things, I don’t take interest in them. For example, if I see a tree, I don’t dwell on the subtleties of the textures and shades and so on, I just note it as “a tree” and move on. And it’s like that isn’t just with a tree. It’s like this with almost every visual object and there are deep reasons for this. This isn’t accidental or arbitrary. So when I look I have a low degree of interest in what I see. Part of the reason for this is because I put so much emphasis on my inner world, but that’s not the whole story.

So when I train my vision I have to correct all these habits. Then my vision improves.

So habit 1 is corrected by the idea that what I see is not the world but my own will. Since what I observe is the state of my own volition, I don’t have to reach out. Everything I need to see anything is available without any attempt to reach across some space.

Habit 2 is corrected by constantly contemplating the superiority of subjective idealism and the shittiness of physicalism. Obviously this one is by no means a fast process. Switching my underlying metaphysics is a life long effort for me, because it means I change more or less everything about what I used to think was true.

Habit 3 is addressed by taking more interest in what I see and by developing curiosity and attentiveness, but to make this one stick, I’d have to develop this into a habit instead of just being curious for 5 minutes and then going back to my old ways.

OK, so do you see how in this kind of manifestation there is no talk of letting go, no talk of assuming any final state, etc. This is completely different in almost every way from what Neville talks about.

That’s because to a large extent advice like “live from your dreams” is a generic advice. It’s a hint. What to actually do is still something we have to figure out for ourselves. I seriously don’t think it’s possible to take any single advice and just implement it as a rote thing and have it work. That’s not how it works in the mind. This may work with something really simple, like for example, before putting your shoes on, use a shoehorn. That’s something you can just start doing immediately by rote, and every time from then on it will be easier to put your shoes on, cause now you use a shoehorn. But manifestation is not like putting one’s shoes on. It’s not whatsoever simple like that. Manifestation involves all that we believe, want, fear, various strange personal peculiarities, habits old and new, commitments old and new, etc. Plus all this is structured using concepts and the mental structures are incredibly involved at times and worse, they’re not even guaranteed to be the same from person to person. So for example, if I learn how to levitate in the air, my advice might be completely inapplicable or even backward for you, because the peculiarities that prevent flying for you might be very different from those I had to overcome to fly. I think the best we can do here is discuss subjective idealism and the core principles, but when it comes to details, people have to take responsibility and begin digging inside their own minds for answers. Of course by chance some people might share some of the specifics and it might sometimes be worth discussing those as well, but it can also be very misleading, because there is no guarantee, as I see it, why my hangups have to be shared by everyone else. So if I had to overcome this and that hangup, it doesn’t mean everyone else has to also overcome the same.

With regard to manifestation there are roughly two levels of it. One level is the world, and the other level is what you do in the world. So when you manifest your own world, this already includes ideas about what you think should be possible in that world. Your world can have built-in limitations, on purpose, so that you can make sense of it, or for any other reasons. I would even say if your world has no limitations then it’s not a world at all. A world has to have some regions, some stability, some repeatability. If there is a world you should be able to return to an old place you used to visit. That’s both stability and repeatability. You’re able to repeat a rough copy of an old experience. So for example, you can visit NYC many times, and while NYC will change each time, it will have some recognizable features that did not change and that will still give it a believable NYC character. Then in the world you can move around by relying on your body and do other things, perhaps without relying on your body, if you know how.

So something like moving your arm around is trivial and it fits into your idea of the world very neatly. On the other hand, if you want to grow a third arm from your body’s backside and learn to use that third arm, that’s not even slightly trivial. That conflicts with your ideas about humanity, about inheritance (as in, your mother and father didn’t have a 3rd arm, etc.), about your own mind and body interaction and so on. So something that massively “violates” a plethora of commitments, habits, is not simple. It’s not that it is inherently complex and complicated, no, but it’s complex and complicated because your old commitments and habits are there for a reason, and because those old mental patterns have huge surface areas, lots of structures, lots of moving parts, relationships, inter-dependencies, etc. You put these mental structures there for a reason (even if it’s a dumb reason, it’s still a reason, meaning, it’s not arbitrary but fulfills some kind of need for you). You cannot simultaneously go forward and backward. Choices have opportunity costs.

So roughly speaking there is quick manifestation and long range manifestation. Long range manifestation is changing what you want to be able to do in general. So for example, if you want, say, flying to become a regular ability for you, that’s a long range manifestation project. But then flying here and flying there is a quick manifestation because it simply replicates something you already assume you can do, which has been made possible via long range manifestation. So in other words, you cannot just assume you can fly. First you would have to assume you can fly but then you have to work with all your mentality to bring it in line with that idea in every possible way. That’s a massive project. It’s basically like world building. You’re building a world where flying is possible, and you’re carving this world out of your own will. Once you’re done carving it, then flying is not hard.

This is also comparable to say making a tea cup, which is hard, and then using that tea cup over and over to store water, which is easy. So you’d spend hours carving wood or shaping clay and firing your clay cup in an oven, and then filling it with water is only seconds and very easy, so long as you keep your cup. You’re making a reusable pattern basically.

So if you think the world is a pattern, first some space has to be opened up in that pattern to make room for new reusable patterns. Then those new reusable patterns have to be cultivated. Then you could use those new patterns on a whim. All this takes place entirely nowhere else but inside your own will. It’s all inside your mind, inside your private perspective.

There is more to say about it, but this I think is already way over the top. This is something that a person has to realize for themselves. Specifically why does the world seem so limited? And is that always a bad thing or does this have some upsides? How does it really work? How can limitation be tweaked? When those limitations are tweaked, is that a long term thing or short term? In other words, if I cancel the ability of a wall to hold me back, am I cancelling it just this once, or is it the case that from now on all the walls have subtly (or not so subtly) less ability to hold me back? The answer is, it depends. It all depends on what I intend.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-11-20 21:57:28 (dq3422t)