Any time questions like these arise to my own mind I have two things I always remind myself about:
All is possible.
How would this work in one of my lucid dreams?
So with respect to both 1 and 2 I personally don’t see any issue with the probability magick. Do I ever play dice? Of course I do. Every time I play one of my favorite genre games, their game worlds are probalistically generated by a dungeon generation engine. It’s done that way so that each time I replay the same game it seems new and fresh at least in some respects, because at least the dungeon layouts and the item placements are going to be different from game to game, so I cannot just memorize how to handle the various obstacles but instead must rely on tactics and strategies over rote memorization. If so much is possible in some measly computer game, what so say of the big dream? And then playing with probability magic would be similar to a game designer re-adjusting the probabilities in the game, which happens all the time when a game designer is in the process of balancing the game to present an interesting challenge as opposed to being trivially easy or impossibly difficult. This is just one of many ways one could conceive of probability.
I know in my lucid dreams I do not in fact consciously script every element. I just know I am dreaming and I also know I can change anything. But other than that, I can still be surprised by something that happens in such a dream. I would have to enter a no-surprises state of mind to preclude the possibility of a surprise in a lucid dream, which is also possible, but it wouldn’t be a default state of mind for me. I’d have to switch to it first. Even if I think all the elements of my dream meaningfully relate to whatever I know, I also know nothing needs to be specifically that way, because the space of all possible meaningfully relevant dreams is infinite.
But in fairness to what you said, everything in a lucid dream really does appear to me thoroughly fake and illusory, albeit extremely realistic-looking, but I know it’s all fake as a result of being lucid, which is also why I feel justified in modifying those contents.
The more “real” something seems, the less justified you’ll feel in modifying it, right? At the very least, the reality of your will and prerogative has to be at a level much higher than whatever you modify. If a painter thought that each canvas was precisely produced by their will, would they still paint? They might worry about tarnishing the purity and inherent perfection of those blank canvasses. Hahaha. And so what happens if you see your entire life as a canvas? Or how about painters changing their minds and redrawing a detail or two later? This happens too.
And then what about the things that you do already change and adjust day to day? Were those things not precisely produced by your will? Why the double standard?
One way to resolve this is to think whatever manifests belongs to your old precision and your current precision takes precedence over the old. You don’t have to respect the old decisions. This is similar to a painter who changes their mind and decides to redraw a feature later.
Edit: I finished editing this post at the 11 min mark.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-06 09:08:05 (dl7wqcw)
Ok, so I get what you’re saying here and I mostly agree and sympathize. Here’s what I’m saying: whenever I’m conscious of SI, and when I go to say a forest. When I encounter a tree I tend to think that I am discovering the tree that was already being maintained in my subconscious. So yes the world is generated by my mind, but this view would suggest that this was done at birth, or even before birth, and that it remains mostly the same unless I use magic. In that case, when I interact with the world I am discovering hidden detailed aspects of my subconscious. So I can use induction/science too on my own subconscious to figure out patterns and laws and facts about specific details of my own subconscious mind/world. This stable view of the world helps to ensure that every time I go somewhere it’s the same place and the same people (more or less) and that my mind doesn’t generate a whole new landscape every time I go to the forest or city.
This makes probability magic tougher, I think, because probabilities in this view are due to actually maintained subconscious facts about the world. I can be right or wrong about those probabilities and I discover them by observing my subconscious mostly. So, to increase my probability of getting a job I’d have to access my deep subconscious maintenance of specific buildings and employers and directly alter their location or needs or whatever.
On the other hand, if the world is just a gooey vagueness and only becomes something specific when I look at it and then returns to goo when I look away, and re-concretizes when I look again based on probabilities in my subconscious, then that, of course, leaves room for probability magic. But then there is no sense of a building or people or anything that has a stable reality outside my specific experience at any given time.
Like, in the first view presumably there is a nefandi out there in my dream world who did such and such specific activity last night, and so I could discover that. In the latter view presumably nefandi last night is just this cloud of possibilities and that I don’t discover what you did (because there is no single “what you did” at first), I generate what you did when I find out about it. But that is a very fake, gooey kind of experience of the world.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-07 01:09:06 (dl8pw9w)
When I encounter a tree I tend to think that I am discovering the tree that was already being maintained in my subconscious. So yes the world is generated by my mind, but this view would suggest that this was done at birth, or even before birth, and that it remains mostly the same unless I use magic. In that case, when I interact with the world I am discovering hidden detailed aspects of my subconscious. So I can use induction/science too on my own subconscious to figure out patterns and laws and facts about specific details of my own subconscious mind/world.
You’d have to hold your subconscious mind stably enough to allow the method of science to work. Which is a matter of course for any physicalists and recent ex-physicalists.
This stable view of the world helps to ensure that every time I go somewhere it’s the same place and the same people (more or less) and that my mind doesn’t generate a whole new landscape every time I go to the forest or city.
Right. And yet nothing is 100% the same either. Even a piece of metal that’s “just laying there” is said to be accumulating some fatigue under its own weight.
So the world is stable enough to contain recognizable recurring patterns, but not so stable as to freeze change. This creates enough wiggle room for probability magick.
This makes probability magic tougher, I think, because probabilities in this view are due to actually maintained subconscious facts about the world. I can be right or wrong about those probabilities and I discover them by observing my subconscious mostly. So, to increase my probability of getting a job I’d have to access my deep subconscious maintenance of specific buildings and employers and directly alter their location or needs or whatever.
Sort of. But it would help if you didn’t think of your subconscious mind as something far away from you. You “accessing” your subconscious mind can be as simple as knowing about it and intending it. I’m not saying it’s necessarily that simple. I am saying it can be.
The trick is to feel like your expectation has genuinely changed, but this isn’t something that can happen overnight if you’re accustomed to your expectations resting on something you conceive to be very solid all the time.
On the other hand, if the world is just a gooey vagueness and only becomes something specific when I look at it and then returns to goo when I look away, and re-concretizes when I look again based on probabilities in my subconscious, then that, of course, leaves room for probability magic. But then there is no sense of a building or people or anything that has a stable reality outside my specific experience at any given time.
It’s not all or nothing. You can selectively give any degree of stability to any feature of your conceived world.
In the latter view presumably nefandi last night is just this cloud of possibilities and that I don’t discover what you did (because there is no single “what you did” at first), I generate what you did when I find out about it.
Exactly this. And this is the view of the empty nature of Nefandi, as Mahayana Buddhists would say it.
But that is a very fake, gooey kind of experience of the world.
In this explanation think of “teapot” and “cup” as concepts instead of as objects. And think of “you” as the entire world. You can pour the water of the world into the various concepts, and you’ll get the behavior that accords to those concepts. In this you have all kinds of freedom.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-07 08:54:12 (dl9bouf)
I think we can fuse the two opposing poles together in a way as you have suggested. Basically, you can hold the world as varying probability-possibility clouds that render when you experience those parts of the world, and de-render when you walk away, with your experience itself adjusting the probability-possibility clouds of the things experienced (by narrowing them to more specific limited ranges – in normal/conventional circumstances). This does take away from the ‘reality’ of the world some, but also allows for a somewhat more flexible sort of magic. I’m not sure if I’m 100% on board with this idea personally (v. the idea of having the whole world subconsciously fleshed out already in a detailed way), but I want to work with it right now and see how I like it v. the other.
The catch is that these probability clouds would have to be able to move in their degree of consciousness. So the probability that I will manifest a little old lady working her garden outside her house when I visit a new neighborhood while walking the dog is set in my subconscious mostly and I’m not fully aware of it. Currently, there is no ‘what is the case’ about the neighborhood other than some general guidelines limiting the range of the probability-possibility cloud for the neighborhood. Once I see a house there, that probability cloud get a little narrower, as now I expect it to be highly likely that I see that house there again next time I walk by.
I think this is really interesting, that smaller house-potential-cloud is now more fixed and much harder to adjust (at least for someone with a bit of physicalist hangover) than it would have been to adjust BEFORE I went out and experienced it. It’s like this view gives you much more power over those things which you don’t know or haven’t yet experienced, and the less you know about or have experienced the thing the more easily you can have power over it (of course you always have ultimate power, but, to use an example, when you haven’t seen the house it violates our sense of a stable world less to influence what color the house will be than changing the color with your will after you’ve already seen it/while you look at it).
Adjusting these general expectations/probabilities is something that results from practice just like with my imagination magic. In fact, I would strongly argue that adjusting your probability-expectations is exactly a form of imagination magic, just like healing a headache or something. The thing is, we have a natural habit in our head to keep manifesting and remanifesting the pain, so we have to practice to embed a new cognitive/intentional structure in place of the old painful one and there’s some work involved. Similarly with building the likelihood of getting a mundane job or something. So that’s one problem I have with the spell magic idea (other than the slight jarring idea of not imagining the world as in a specific mode already). You cast this spell and you use your imagination one time to try to adjust your expectations or experience, and then you just let it go and it changes automatically? How? Either from your conscious will, or by some subconscious force. If it’s your conscious will then you’re going to have to be practicing to change it – manual mode. If it’s from some subconscious force, then we’re talking about an ‘other’ that mediates between your symbolic action and the transformation as a technology or servant – automatic mode. You seem to be discussing it as automatic, but then rejecting that it’s operated by an apparent other. I think to be automatic is to be other in this circumstance. Like a bird automatically flies away when a predator gets close. Or a rock automatically falls when nothing is in the way. Or a friend automatically helps you when you need it. You don’t have to manually intervene to make these happen, generally, beyond the initial action (scaring the bird, knocking over a table, asking a friend for help). They are programmed (more or less intelligent) automatic subconscious systems. So maybe there’s a god listening to your prayers. Or spirits that obey your commands. Or a great subconscious force/being that obeys your commands and can communicate back with you. That’s how the spell magic model sounds to me, unless we’re basically talking about regularly practicing a different set of beliefs/probability-expectations (v. a one time pop-off spell).
From the probability-cloud view, I guess you could make sense of probability magic and allow for it in an otherwise stable world as long as you viewed it as an exception to the otherwise stable rules/laws governing phenomena, just like how healing magic over my body is an exception to the otherwise stable rule/law governing people’s body’s health and tendencies to heal naturally.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-08 03:04:14 (dlagkzm)
The catch is that these probability clouds would have to be able to move in their degree of consciousness. So the probability that I will manifest a little old lady working her garden outside her house when I visit a new neighborhood while walking the dog is set in my subconscious mostly and I’m not fully aware of it. Currently, there is no ‘what is the case’ about the neighborhood other than some general guidelines limiting the range of the probability-possibility cloud for the neighborhood. Once I see a house there, that probability cloud get a little narrower, as now I expect it to be highly likely that I see that house there again next time I walk by.
This is because we have a strong tendency to take appearances as informative instead of as suggestive.
Training oneself in the idea that no appearance is actually informative (basically it means evidence-based thinking is ultimately wrong) is part of the process of loosening up one’s own mind.
Otherwise as soon as you see something a certain way, it gets “nailed down” as it were, because you take yourself to have been informed about the state of some immutable “thing” “out there.” From this frame of mind you don’t even have the authority or permission to modify that thing, since it is thought not to fall within the scope of your volition. That’s a very important aspect of physicalistic thinking.
In fact, I would strongly argue that adjusting your probability-expectations is exactly a form of imagination magic, just like healing a headache or something.
Of course! Of course it’s exactly the same. Only the form is different and how we talk about it is different, but not the inner meaning. In the truest sense all magick reduces to the same thing: an adjustment of your volitional state. Breaking magick up into this or that category is done for flavor and maybe to make it easier to think about certain activities, because maybe different ways of applying one’s will produce somewhat different types of concerns that should be addressed somewhat differently.
This is also how we talk about mind as something that can be usefully examined from the side of knowing, or from the side of willing, or from the side of experiencing, but it doesn’t mean the mind literally has three sides. The mind is singularly indivisible, and there is no knowing without willing and experiencing, and no willing without knowing and experiencing, and no experiencing without willing and knowing.
So in the same way spell magick is not literally distinct from imagination magick. The distinction is mostly nominal or stylistic.
The thing is, we have a natural habit in our head to keep manifesting and remanifesting the pain, so we have to practice to embed a new cognitive/intentional structure in place of the old painful one and there’s some work involved.
Exactly this. Exactly. I’ve done a lot of (successful) work with pain and this is right on.
It’s important to address both the symptoms and the causes. Addressing the symptom is what we do in an emergency. Addressing the cause is the “real” long term solution. And there is more than one way to conceptualize a workable framework of causes too. So “addressing the cause” doesn’t refer to some objective cause in subjective idealism. It only refers to what you sincerely, in your best mind so to speak, believe/intend the cause to be. In this, metaphysical and meta structures can be important too. So by metaphysical I mean ideas about the rules of the world. And by meta I mean ideas about the nature, scope, and power of ideas.
Causes often have deep and layered conditionality to them. It’s like if you wanted to make a certain leaf wilt, you could cut the branch, or you could cut the trunk, or you could pull the tree up by the root. All of those would qualify as “addressing the cause” but obviously they’re not equally deep causes. However, you may not want to pull the tree up by the root, because maybe you actually like all the other leaves and maybe the root is important for you to keep. This makes finding the right way to conceive of a cause very important.
Similarly with building the likelihood of getting a mundane job or something.
You can make getting a job more likely, but you can, if not careful, inadvertently strengthen the dynamic of capitalism and the need in the future to rely on jobs. Be careful what you wish for.
You cast this spell and you use your imagination one time to try to adjust your expectations or experience, and then you just let it go and it changes automatically?
When you “let it go” you’re still left with an expectation of a result. In other words, even when you’re not actively imagining a result, the state of your mind with regard to an expected result has been lastingly changed. You’re in a state of mind where, assuming I know what you’ve done, if I ask you, “Have you done such and such ritual?” a sincere answer is likely “yes,” and then if I ask you “Do you still mean it? Do you still stand behind the ritual’s intent?” again you’d sincerely have to answer “yes” (unless you really did change your mind later).
Also you have to realize that when people cast spells, they’re not creating new desires or new intentionality. They’re taking something they already intend to have happen and embolden it. So strictly speaking spell magick doesn’t introduce anything radically new into your own mindstream. It takes something that’s been “growing” in your own mind for some time and just gives it more boost, possibly eliminating or weakening some obstacles as well. When I talk about obstacles I am of course talking about your own self-sabotaging intentionality which is often entwined with the process of othering. (So some very small degree of self-sabotage may be necessary to keep othering in a subjectively believable and subjectively useful state.)
You seem to be discussing it as automatic, but then rejecting that it’s operated by an apparent other.
Exactly, because othering is not literally true. Othering is ultimately an illusion. It’s nominal. It’s stylistic.
It would really help if you had an experience with a lucid dream and you were able to freely modify the contents of that dream. Then you’d have an easier time understanding how something can be “othered” and still be fully determined by you in the end. You’d have yourself a practical demonstration of that understanding in action.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-08 08:27:51 (dlaynhy)
This is because we have a strong tendency to take appearances as informative instead of as suggestive.
Training oneself in the idea that no appearance is actually informative (basically it means evidence-based thinking is ultimately wrong) is part of the process of loosening up one’s own mind.
Otherwise as soon as you see something a certain way, it gets “nailed down” as it were, because you take yourself to have been informed about the state of some immutable “thing” “out there.” From this frame of mind you don’t even have the authority or permission to modify that thing, since it is thought not to fall within the scope of your volition. That’s a very important aspect of physicalistic thinking.
I don’t fully agree with you here, at least if I were to take what you said too seriously. I don’t like how you say that evidence-based thinking is wrong. I think what you call evidence-based thinking is one optional mode of thought (and it’s also on a continuum of more evidentialist v. less evidentialist). I think evidence-based thinking goes along with wanting a stable world to experience. Even if you occassionally make magical exceptions, if you want to live in a ‘world’ then you would want a generally evidentialist approach, otherwise there is no world at all. Things would just constantly morph and change according to your whims and there would be no stability or consistency or inertia to the world – nothing would be othered. So we can have a sort of “evidentialism” inside of SI as long as we know it’s us habitually narrowing the conception down based on our experiences and that we can make exceptions. The more evidentialist a SIist is the more subconscious and othered their world is. And vice versa. The less evidentialist a SIist is the more conscious and selfed their world is. That’s how I see it.
When you “let it go” you’re still left with an expectation of a result. In other words, even when you’re not actively imagining a result, the state of your mind with regard to an expected result has been lastingly changed. You’re in a state of mind where, assuming I know what you’ve done, if I ask you, “Have you done such and such ritual?” a sincere answer is likely “yes,” and then if I ask you “Do you still mean it? Do you still stand behind the ritual’s intent?” again you’d sincerely have to answer “yes” (unless you really did change your mind later).
Right so let’s apply this to the healing a headache idea. You decide to expect your headache to go away on its own. Assuming now that you can just automatically easily expect this (which is something on its own I doubt given that this expectation violates for most people deeper beliefs about how headaches usually work) instead of having to gradually practice and habituate this expectation, you’re saying you’ll just go about your life and the headache will be healed on its own with no conscious application or practice by you. So then why do the direct sensation-work with the headache ever? Why not do all magic as a spell just expecting things to happen for you without any practice or work?
I actually don’t even think that’s how it would work, either. This expectation is a form of conscious magical intent. Not much different than directly playing with and manipulating your present experience to be healed. So you can expect it to heal in exactly 3 days. But that’s you intending to heal it consciously in exactly 3 days. If you can’t do the play-with-and-manipulate-experience healing, then you won’t be about to consciously gradually or suddenly heal your headache at that 3-day mark. You have to be creating it at a very conscious level because you’re going against such a deep habituated subconscious tendency. That’s how I think it would work. In both cases the only way such an action could happen easily is if you kept your headache-beliefs and intentions close to the conscious surface of your mind, which definitely isn’t the case for most of us here who are still mostly humans. But definitely one could work to make headache control more conscious. One could also make gravity more conscious. The more conscious it gets the less it happens on its own though and the more things stop happening when you don’t make them happen, so to speak. The more conscious you make it, the less that thing is othered.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-08 12:31:19 (dlba3uw)
The reason why evidence-based thinking is ultimately false, is because it doesn’t deliver on its promise. The promise of evidence is that it will relay some information about an external state of affairs. But how can this happen? How can a state of affairs be truly external and yet puncture the boundary of your mind with evidence? If you look into the problems associated with thinking that information arrives from outside one’s mind, you’ll realize such a scenario is impossible.
The lie of evidence is that behind appearances there are true and enduring objects that are self-so, and that you’re merely discovering them instead of creating them on the go, or instead of meddling with the very thing you’re trying to perceive, thus not actually perceiving the thing-in-itself at all.
If you try to take any bit of information and look for some sturdy objective ground from which this information might emanate, upon final analysis there can be no such ground even in principle, because if such a ground existed, it would contradict the way the world actually works. Namely such a ground would prevent fluidity and change.
In practice you shouldn’t buy fruit that look rotten, so judging fruit by its appearance is evidence-based thinking. At the same time, you know some meat packers use CO packing to artifically improve the freshness-appearance of meat to fool your eyes. So you damn well know you cannot trust what you see. So even when you rely on evidence, you cannot rely on it too much. There is no practical way to close the evidence-gathering process either, because no matter how deeply you have examined something, you can always examine that same thing even deeper, via more methods and under even more circumstances, and so on. So at some arbitrary point you decide to cut off your evidence gathering process and call it “good enough.” So the whole process is essentially fraud, in the final analysis. It’s arbitrary and it stands upon a tall heap of air. It doesn’t mean you won’t do it, but from SI POV, it’s important to recognize any evidence-type thinking as in-game thinking that is not strictly true or best all-around type of thinking.
Non-magickal people don’t need to worry about any of this. What I am talking about with regard to evidence-based thinking being ultimately false is specifically important for anyone who wants to attain to the highest truth and wants to eventually practice heavy magick.
Right so let’s apply this to the healing a headache idea. You decide to expect your headache to go away on its own. Assuming now that you can just automatically easily expect this (which is something on its own I doubt given that this expectation violates for most people deeper beliefs about how headaches usually work)
Of course. All magick becomes better when you don’t have contravening intentionality lurking somewhere in your own mind. The more coherent your mind, the better. This is true for any kind of magick. Spell magick is not special in this regard.
If your mindset is physicalist and you expect the moon to fall, then you can expect until you’re blue in the face, and it won’t fall. That’s because you have a 1000 times stronger expectation that the laws of physics are supreme and are inviolable and there is no likely way you can expect your way against that prior expectation.
This is why magick in the beginning can only be small and “it’s almost possible anyway” kind of stuff. And that’s also why in the long term it’s essential to rid one’s mind of physicalism, if your goal is to lead a heavily magickal life.
But there is also a difference allowing expectations to work over a long period of time and trying to “fix” some experience in the moment. This also has to do with prior expectations. In physics we would say power is work done over some time. So time is an important aspect in generating power at least in physicalist thinking. Then as you’re coming off physicalism, as an ex-physicalist, it will still be important for some time. So having something work over time in the background is advantageous and is sometimes superior to in-the-moment imagining.
That said, of course doing the more in-the-moment kind of transformation is also an important practice because it will give you confidence and help you understand your own mind. So it’s not wasted or “wrong” and I don’t think you’d really always want to do this or that style of magick. It’s like saying blue is such a pretty color, I will only paint in blue. That’s not likely. Even if for only aesthetic reasons I find a strong need to practice many different types of magick. Even if I could always do the spell style magick it doesn’t mean I want to.
I think in general it’s a really good idea to operate one’s mind in many different ways, because the more ways you can do things, the more you understand how flexible your mind can really be.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-08 15:05:03 (dlbgb89)
The reason why evidence-based thinking is ultimately false, is because it doesn’t deliver on its promise. The promise of evidence is that it will relay some information about an external state of affairs. But how can this happen? How can a state of affairs be truly external and yet puncture the boundary of your mind with evidence? If you look into the problems associated with thinking that information arrives from outside one’s mind, you’ll realize such a scenario is impossible.
Unless we take evidence-based thinking to mean that we take an appearance and narrow our expectations of future appearances based on that appearance. Not because this is a true or right way to do things, but just as an approach.
Further, there is certainly some sense in the idea that we have mostly subconscious habits in our mind and that by observing the appearances we can become more conscious of how our subconscious habits are working (which we have the choice to change or not – but if we aren’t sure we want to throw the whole thing away then this evidentialist approach to our own subconscious habits can be beneficial). There is some sense in saying that we don’t fully understand our own intent and that by paying attention we can become more conscious of it.
Unless you want to say that this isn’t true. That our own intent is actually itself a probability-possibility-cloud whenever we aren’t conscious of it and that there are no ‘actual’ automatic subconscious habits and tendencies to discover or become conscious of, only ones we generate. That would mean that there are no subconscious complex tendencies to physicalize experience (or to do anything in particular), whether waking or dreaming, to discover. When you’re not conscious of doing you’re not doing it. There’s not automation or othering, just a vague cloud of what-you-might-be-doing, which is really just how-things-will-look-and-act-when-I-am-looking. Normally we think that breathing is usually unconscious and you can reprogram it by making it conscious and practicing new ways of breathing. This anti-subconscious view would suggest that ‘unconscious-breathing’ is non-breathing. It’s a blank to be filled in later when you go looking for it. But then how unconscious breathing habits could impact your life seems like nonsense. This is just one example. Most of life is lived subconsciously/habitually and edited with conscious practice when necessary.
The lie of evidence is that behind appearances there are true and enduring objects that are self-so, and that you’re merely discovering them instead of creating them on the go, or instead of meddling with the very thing you’re trying to perceive, thus not actually perceiving the thing-in-itself at all.
So you don’t think there’s a thing-in-itself that is your intent (especially your subconscious intent)? You don’t think you can discover your intent?
If you try to take any bit of information and look for some sturdy objective ground from which this information might emanate, upon final analysis there can be no such ground even in principle, because if such a ground existed, it would contradict the way the world actually works. Namely such a ground would prevent fluidity and change.
So the mind isn’t the ground of your reality/experience in your view?
It’s arbitrary and it stands upon a tall heap of air. It doesn’t mean you won’t do it, but from SI POV, it’s important to recognize any evidence-type thinking as in-game thinking that is not strictly true or best all-around type of thinking.
As long as you think you can be wildly surprised in your experiences because you may or may not fully understand their causes (i.e. the full subconscious complexity of your intent), then it’s definitely a good way of thinking imo.
Do you think there’s a way you are that’s deeper than your conscious understanding of yourself that you can discover, or is that deeper (habitual/subconscious) self just a possibility cloud that you generate when you go looking? If the latter, then why go looking instead of just changing everything to the way you want it. There is no self-realization in that view. There’s nothing to come to terms with within yourself, it seems. So do you think there can be deep subconscious tendencies that you are unaware of that interfere with your attempts at conscious magic to change your experience?
But there is also a difference allowing expectations to work over a long period of time and trying to “fix” some experience in the moment. This also has to do with prior expectations. In physics we would say power is work done over some time. So time is an important aspect in generating power at least in physicalist thinking. Then as you’re coming off physicalism, as an ex-physicalist, it will still be important for some time. So having something work over time in the background is advantageous and is sometimes superior to in-the-moment imagining.
Working in the background? So there is a background where something is unconsciously working to create and maintain people’s personalities. Or to create and maintain forests. Or to gradually edit the facts of the world when you command it to? So there’s a sort of entity here that is doing the work for you here in the background, your subconscious. I think, if I was to sum up this belief you’re suggesting here myself, I think it must be something like “there’s an aspect of my subconscious that always works to transform the world it automatically manifests according to my desires”. And maybe something else like “I can announce some of my desires loudly to my subconscious and it will work toward those even more than the others.” But the second would imply a kind of intelligence to listen and understand and differentiate and select that the first doesn’t imply. If it can listen and understand, then why wouldn’t it be able to communicate back?
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-10 02:54:15 (dldwoy4)
Unless we take evidence-based thinking to mean that we take an appearance and narrow our expectations of future appearances based on that appearance. Not because this is a true or right way to do things, but just as an approach.
I agree, but this isn’t how the term “evidence” is understood conventionally.
Further, there is certainly some sense in the idea that we have mostly subconscious habits in our mind and that by observing the appearances we can become more conscious of how our subconscious habits are working (which we have the choice to change or not – but if we aren’t sure we want to throw the whole thing away then this evidentialist approach to our own subconscious habits can be beneficial). There is some sense in saying that we don’t fully understand our own intent and that by paying attention we can become more conscious of it.
I agree with this as well, but once again, conventionally people don’t take the experience of the world to be a message from their own subconscious mind to themselves.
When I have spoken before I have used a standard understanding/meaning of the term “evidence.”
That said, even with what you’re saying, evidence doesn’t work as one would typically expect, because while it may reveal something of your own will to you, it doesn’t keep your will there, so it doesn’t actually force meanings into your life. Normally when people think about “evidence” they think some inviolable meaning is forced into their life from appearances. But in this new interpretation it’s not like that anymore. Since it’s your own will, it’s not a meaning that’s inviolable, but rather, it’s a meaning you can change.
That our own intent is actually itself a probability-possibility-cloud whenever we aren’t conscious of it and that there are no ‘actual’ automatic subconscious habits and tendencies to discover or become conscious of, only ones we generate.
One’s will can in principle be in a committed or in a flexible state, and anywhere in between. The sky is the limit, so to speak.
It’s possible to start out with a heavily structured and steady commitment in one’s will and then to gradually relax that commitment later. So one’s condition of will can start with what you appear to have assumed it to be, and then end up with this latter description through your own purpose, if that is your purpose, of course.
Whatever you can conceive of, you can act on. You can intend whatever you conceive of.
Since you’re able to conceive of will this way, you can make your will resemble that conception.
There’s not automation or othering, just a vague cloud of what-you-might-be-doing, which is really just how-things-will-look-and-act-when-I-am-looking. Normally we think that breathing is usually unconscious and you can reprogram it by making it conscious and practicing new ways of breathing. This anti-subconscious view would suggest that ‘unconscious-breathing’ is non-breathing. It’s a blank to be filled in later when you go looking for it. But then how unconscious breathing habits could impact your life seems like nonsense. This is just one example. Most of life is lived subconsciously/habitually and edited with conscious practice when necessary.
I once had a mystical experience where I was suffocating and couldn’t breathe, and then it felt like my breathing snapped like a dry twig, like it broke as if it were a thing that could break, and then I felt no urge to breathe anymore. I wasn’t breathing and felt no need to breathe either. That experience is very much in line with what you describe here.
The important thing to remember is to not think “it’s like this because it isn’t like that.” All the possibilities should be included. If you can conceive of it, it’s possible and it should be included in one’s ultimate consideration, but one shouldn’t think of it as an “is.” It can be, but not is.
It’s precisely because appearances tell us of what can be and not what is that they cannot function as evidence in the conventional sense of “evidence.” Remember your post about appearances being purely hypothetical?
So you don’t think there’s a thing-in-itself that is your intent (especially your subconscious intent)?
Because whatever I discover is conditioned on my ongoing consent, it isn’t self-so, so not a thing-in-itself, no. “Thing-in-itself” is a thing on thing’s own terms, but that doesn’t exist and cannot be. I can only ever, even in principle, know things on my terms, and not on “thing’s” terms.
So the mind isn’t the ground of your reality/experience in your view?
It is, but it is neither objective nor fixated despite itself. If there is a fixation it can only exist so long as I consent to it. Once I become aware of my own fixations I can change them. What’s missing is a guarantee of stability. Stability is an option, but not a guarantee. However evidence-based thinking, as it is conventionally understood, leads one to believe one lives in a world with heavy guarantees that operate despite oneself, whether one likes these guarantees or not.
As long as you think you can be wildly surprised in your experiences because you may or may not fully understand their causes (i.e. the full subconscious complexity of your intent), then it’s definitely a good way of thinking imo.
If you say so. :) I mean, if you don’t see flaws in evidence-based thinking, then keep using it.
For me, personally, I see how evidence-based thinking is getting in the way of my most powerful magick. So I use evidence-based thinking as a kind of a game, without buying into it too much. I know “evidence” is a convention of the world, but I don’t let that convention stick very strongly to my heart and I always leave myself plenty of room to question the meanings of any and all appearances. This gives my own will much more room to work than it would otherwise have.
Do you think there’s a way you are that’s deeper than your conscious understanding of yourself that you can discover, or is that deeper (habitual/subconscious) self just a possibility cloud that you generate when you go looking? If the latter, then why go looking instead of just changing everything to the way you want it.
I can be temporarily overlooking something I am doing/intending. So I can be engaged in something and not realize I am engaged in that way, because it’s a matter of course, it is tacit. However, this condition isn’t permanent or inflexible or unintentional. Once I decide I don’t want to have dark subconscious areas in my mind, they gradually “float” (not literally) back up to conscious awareness.
So there is a background where something is unconsciously working to create and maintain people’s personalities.
That “something” is ultimately you. Othering is not real in the final analysis. It’s only nominal. You can relate to that “something” as not you, but it cannot be anything else, because there isn’t anything else like that and couldn’t be, even in principle. If there were something truly foreign (as opposed to nominally foreign), there’d be no way to gather information about it and interact with it.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-10 09:39:28 (dlej59r)
I like to think of the term “othering” as a sort of auto-pilot.
For example, let’s say I’m trying to find certain objects. I don’t know exactly what they are, but I’ll know I’ve found one when I come across one. So in that case when I’m trying to create this experience I’d focus on asserting emotions, feelings, or a certain state of mind, and maybe some other sensory aspects but not the thing itself. So I’m not actively shaping it, I’m just letting it happen on it’s own, or putting that function into auto-pilot. Kind of like punching in the coordinates and letting the ship do the flying
Originally commented by u/WrongStar on 2017-08-08 10:57:05 (dlb5q9v)
Any time questions like these arise to my own mind I have two things I always remind myself about:
All is possible.
How would this work in one of my lucid dreams?
So with respect to both 1 and 2 I personally don’t see any issue with the probability magick. Do I ever play dice? Of course I do. Every time I play one of my favorite genre games, their game worlds are probalistically generated by a dungeon generation engine. It’s done that way so that each time I replay the same game it seems new and fresh at least in some respects, because at least the dungeon layouts and the item placements are going to be different from game to game, so I cannot just memorize how to handle the various obstacles but instead must rely on tactics and strategies over rote memorization. If so much is possible in some measly computer game, what so say of the big dream? And then playing with probability magic would be similar to a game designer re-adjusting the probabilities in the game, which happens all the time when a game designer is in the process of balancing the game to present an interesting challenge as opposed to being trivially easy or impossibly difficult. This is just one of many ways one could conceive of probability.
I know in my lucid dreams I do not in fact consciously script every element. I just know I am dreaming and I also know I can change anything. But other than that, I can still be surprised by something that happens in such a dream. I would have to enter a no-surprises state of mind to preclude the possibility of a surprise in a lucid dream, which is also possible, but it wouldn’t be a default state of mind for me. I’d have to switch to it first. Even if I think all the elements of my dream meaningfully relate to whatever I know, I also know nothing needs to be specifically that way, because the space of all possible meaningfully relevant dreams is infinite.
But in fairness to what you said, everything in a lucid dream really does appear to me thoroughly fake and illusory, albeit extremely realistic-looking, but I know it’s all fake as a result of being lucid, which is also why I feel justified in modifying those contents.
The more “real” something seems, the less justified you’ll feel in modifying it, right? At the very least, the reality of your will and prerogative has to be at a level much higher than whatever you modify. If a painter thought that each canvas was precisely produced by their will, would they still paint? They might worry about tarnishing the purity and inherent perfection of those blank canvasses. Hahaha. And so what happens if you see your entire life as a canvas? Or how about painters changing their minds and redrawing a detail or two later? This happens too.
And then what about the things that you do already change and adjust day to day? Were those things not precisely produced by your will? Why the double standard?
One way to resolve this is to think whatever manifests belongs to your old precision and your current precision takes precedence over the old. You don’t have to respect the old decisions. This is similar to a painter who changes their mind and decides to redraw a feature later.
Edit: I finished editing this post at the 11 min mark.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-06 09:08:05 (dl7wqcw)
Damn it I just accidentally deleted my post. I’m frustrated now. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-06 13:27:14 (dl86wm4)
I’ve been there before. :( Sorry Aesir. I hope things go better tomorrow. Take it easy. :)
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-06 14:59:25 (dl8a4tw)
Ok, so I get what you’re saying here and I mostly agree and sympathize. Here’s what I’m saying: whenever I’m conscious of SI, and when I go to say a forest. When I encounter a tree I tend to think that I am discovering the tree that was already being maintained in my subconscious. So yes the world is generated by my mind, but this view would suggest that this was done at birth, or even before birth, and that it remains mostly the same unless I use magic. In that case, when I interact with the world I am discovering hidden detailed aspects of my subconscious. So I can use induction/science too on my own subconscious to figure out patterns and laws and facts about specific details of my own subconscious mind/world. This stable view of the world helps to ensure that every time I go somewhere it’s the same place and the same people (more or less) and that my mind doesn’t generate a whole new landscape every time I go to the forest or city.
This makes probability magic tougher, I think, because probabilities in this view are due to actually maintained subconscious facts about the world. I can be right or wrong about those probabilities and I discover them by observing my subconscious mostly. So, to increase my probability of getting a job I’d have to access my deep subconscious maintenance of specific buildings and employers and directly alter their location or needs or whatever.
On the other hand, if the world is just a gooey vagueness and only becomes something specific when I look at it and then returns to goo when I look away, and re-concretizes when I look again based on probabilities in my subconscious, then that, of course, leaves room for probability magic. But then there is no sense of a building or people or anything that has a stable reality outside my specific experience at any given time.
Like, in the first view presumably there is a nefandi out there in my dream world who did such and such specific activity last night, and so I could discover that. In the latter view presumably nefandi last night is just this cloud of possibilities and that I don’t discover what you did (because there is no single “what you did” at first), I generate what you did when I find out about it. But that is a very fake, gooey kind of experience of the world.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-07 01:09:06 (dl8pw9w)
You’d have to hold your subconscious mind stably enough to allow the method of science to work. Which is a matter of course for any physicalists and recent ex-physicalists.
Right. And yet nothing is 100% the same either. Even a piece of metal that’s “just laying there” is said to be accumulating some fatigue under its own weight.
So the world is stable enough to contain recognizable recurring patterns, but not so stable as to freeze change. This creates enough wiggle room for probability magick.
Sort of. But it would help if you didn’t think of your subconscious mind as something far away from you. You “accessing” your subconscious mind can be as simple as knowing about it and intending it. I’m not saying it’s necessarily that simple. I am saying it can be.
The trick is to feel like your expectation has genuinely changed, but this isn’t something that can happen overnight if you’re accustomed to your expectations resting on something you conceive to be very solid all the time.
It’s not all or nothing. You can selectively give any degree of stability to any feature of your conceived world.
Exactly this. And this is the view of the empty nature of Nefandi, as Mahayana Buddhists would say it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ
In this explanation think of “teapot” and “cup” as concepts instead of as objects. And think of “you” as the entire world. You can pour the water of the world into the various concepts, and you’ll get the behavior that accords to those concepts. In this you have all kinds of freedom.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-07 08:54:12 (dl9bouf)
I think we can fuse the two opposing poles together in a way as you have suggested. Basically, you can hold the world as varying probability-possibility clouds that render when you experience those parts of the world, and de-render when you walk away, with your experience itself adjusting the probability-possibility clouds of the things experienced (by narrowing them to more specific limited ranges – in normal/conventional circumstances). This does take away from the ‘reality’ of the world some, but also allows for a somewhat more flexible sort of magic. I’m not sure if I’m 100% on board with this idea personally (v. the idea of having the whole world subconsciously fleshed out already in a detailed way), but I want to work with it right now and see how I like it v. the other.
The catch is that these probability clouds would have to be able to move in their degree of consciousness. So the probability that I will manifest a little old lady working her garden outside her house when I visit a new neighborhood while walking the dog is set in my subconscious mostly and I’m not fully aware of it. Currently, there is no ‘what is the case’ about the neighborhood other than some general guidelines limiting the range of the probability-possibility cloud for the neighborhood. Once I see a house there, that probability cloud get a little narrower, as now I expect it to be highly likely that I see that house there again next time I walk by.
I think this is really interesting, that smaller house-potential-cloud is now more fixed and much harder to adjust (at least for someone with a bit of physicalist hangover) than it would have been to adjust BEFORE I went out and experienced it. It’s like this view gives you much more power over those things which you don’t know or haven’t yet experienced, and the less you know about or have experienced the thing the more easily you can have power over it (of course you always have ultimate power, but, to use an example, when you haven’t seen the house it violates our sense of a stable world less to influence what color the house will be than changing the color with your will after you’ve already seen it/while you look at it).
Adjusting these general expectations/probabilities is something that results from practice just like with my imagination magic. In fact, I would strongly argue that adjusting your probability-expectations is exactly a form of imagination magic, just like healing a headache or something. The thing is, we have a natural habit in our head to keep manifesting and remanifesting the pain, so we have to practice to embed a new cognitive/intentional structure in place of the old painful one and there’s some work involved. Similarly with building the likelihood of getting a mundane job or something. So that’s one problem I have with the spell magic idea (other than the slight jarring idea of not imagining the world as in a specific mode already). You cast this spell and you use your imagination one time to try to adjust your expectations or experience, and then you just let it go and it changes automatically? How? Either from your conscious will, or by some subconscious force. If it’s your conscious will then you’re going to have to be practicing to change it – manual mode. If it’s from some subconscious force, then we’re talking about an ‘other’ that mediates between your symbolic action and the transformation as a technology or servant – automatic mode. You seem to be discussing it as automatic, but then rejecting that it’s operated by an apparent other. I think to be automatic is to be other in this circumstance. Like a bird automatically flies away when a predator gets close. Or a rock automatically falls when nothing is in the way. Or a friend automatically helps you when you need it. You don’t have to manually intervene to make these happen, generally, beyond the initial action (scaring the bird, knocking over a table, asking a friend for help). They are programmed (more or less intelligent) automatic subconscious systems. So maybe there’s a god listening to your prayers. Or spirits that obey your commands. Or a great subconscious force/being that obeys your commands and can communicate back with you. That’s how the spell magic model sounds to me, unless we’re basically talking about regularly practicing a different set of beliefs/probability-expectations (v. a one time pop-off spell).
From the probability-cloud view, I guess you could make sense of probability magic and allow for it in an otherwise stable world as long as you viewed it as an exception to the otherwise stable rules/laws governing phenomena, just like how healing magic over my body is an exception to the otherwise stable rule/law governing people’s body’s health and tendencies to heal naturally.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-08 03:04:14 (dlagkzm)
This is because we have a strong tendency to take appearances as informative instead of as suggestive.
Training oneself in the idea that no appearance is actually informative (basically it means evidence-based thinking is ultimately wrong) is part of the process of loosening up one’s own mind.
Otherwise as soon as you see something a certain way, it gets “nailed down” as it were, because you take yourself to have been informed about the state of some immutable “thing” “out there.” From this frame of mind you don’t even have the authority or permission to modify that thing, since it is thought not to fall within the scope of your volition. That’s a very important aspect of physicalistic thinking.
Of course! Of course it’s exactly the same. Only the form is different and how we talk about it is different, but not the inner meaning. In the truest sense all magick reduces to the same thing: an adjustment of your volitional state. Breaking magick up into this or that category is done for flavor and maybe to make it easier to think about certain activities, because maybe different ways of applying one’s will produce somewhat different types of concerns that should be addressed somewhat differently.
This is also how we talk about mind as something that can be usefully examined from the side of knowing, or from the side of willing, or from the side of experiencing, but it doesn’t mean the mind literally has three sides. The mind is singularly indivisible, and there is no knowing without willing and experiencing, and no willing without knowing and experiencing, and no experiencing without willing and knowing.
So in the same way spell magick is not literally distinct from imagination magick. The distinction is mostly nominal or stylistic.
Exactly this. Exactly. I’ve done a lot of (successful) work with pain and this is right on.
It’s important to address both the symptoms and the causes. Addressing the symptom is what we do in an emergency. Addressing the cause is the “real” long term solution. And there is more than one way to conceptualize a workable framework of causes too. So “addressing the cause” doesn’t refer to some objective cause in subjective idealism. It only refers to what you sincerely, in your best mind so to speak, believe/intend the cause to be. In this, metaphysical and meta structures can be important too. So by metaphysical I mean ideas about the rules of the world. And by meta I mean ideas about the nature, scope, and power of ideas.
Causes often have deep and layered conditionality to them. It’s like if you wanted to make a certain leaf wilt, you could cut the branch, or you could cut the trunk, or you could pull the tree up by the root. All of those would qualify as “addressing the cause” but obviously they’re not equally deep causes. However, you may not want to pull the tree up by the root, because maybe you actually like all the other leaves and maybe the root is important for you to keep. This makes finding the right way to conceive of a cause very important.
You can make getting a job more likely, but you can, if not careful, inadvertently strengthen the dynamic of capitalism and the need in the future to rely on jobs. Be careful what you wish for.
When you “let it go” you’re still left with an expectation of a result. In other words, even when you’re not actively imagining a result, the state of your mind with regard to an expected result has been lastingly changed. You’re in a state of mind where, assuming I know what you’ve done, if I ask you, “Have you done such and such ritual?” a sincere answer is likely “yes,” and then if I ask you “Do you still mean it? Do you still stand behind the ritual’s intent?” again you’d sincerely have to answer “yes” (unless you really did change your mind later).
Also you have to realize that when people cast spells, they’re not creating new desires or new intentionality. They’re taking something they already intend to have happen and embolden it. So strictly speaking spell magick doesn’t introduce anything radically new into your own mindstream. It takes something that’s been “growing” in your own mind for some time and just gives it more boost, possibly eliminating or weakening some obstacles as well. When I talk about obstacles I am of course talking about your own self-sabotaging intentionality which is often entwined with the process of othering. (So some very small degree of self-sabotage may be necessary to keep othering in a subjectively believable and subjectively useful state.)
Exactly, because othering is not literally true. Othering is ultimately an illusion. It’s nominal. It’s stylistic.
It would really help if you had an experience with a lucid dream and you were able to freely modify the contents of that dream. Then you’d have an easier time understanding how something can be “othered” and still be fully determined by you in the end. You’d have yourself a practical demonstration of that understanding in action.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-08 08:27:51 (dlaynhy)
I don’t fully agree with you here, at least if I were to take what you said too seriously. I don’t like how you say that evidence-based thinking is wrong. I think what you call evidence-based thinking is one optional mode of thought (and it’s also on a continuum of more evidentialist v. less evidentialist). I think evidence-based thinking goes along with wanting a stable world to experience. Even if you occassionally make magical exceptions, if you want to live in a ‘world’ then you would want a generally evidentialist approach, otherwise there is no world at all. Things would just constantly morph and change according to your whims and there would be no stability or consistency or inertia to the world – nothing would be othered. So we can have a sort of “evidentialism” inside of SI as long as we know it’s us habitually narrowing the conception down based on our experiences and that we can make exceptions. The more evidentialist a SIist is the more subconscious and othered their world is. And vice versa. The less evidentialist a SIist is the more conscious and selfed their world is. That’s how I see it.
Right so let’s apply this to the healing a headache idea. You decide to expect your headache to go away on its own. Assuming now that you can just automatically easily expect this (which is something on its own I doubt given that this expectation violates for most people deeper beliefs about how headaches usually work) instead of having to gradually practice and habituate this expectation, you’re saying you’ll just go about your life and the headache will be healed on its own with no conscious application or practice by you. So then why do the direct sensation-work with the headache ever? Why not do all magic as a spell just expecting things to happen for you without any practice or work?
I actually don’t even think that’s how it would work, either. This expectation is a form of conscious magical intent. Not much different than directly playing with and manipulating your present experience to be healed. So you can expect it to heal in exactly 3 days. But that’s you intending to heal it consciously in exactly 3 days. If you can’t do the play-with-and-manipulate-experience healing, then you won’t be about to consciously gradually or suddenly heal your headache at that 3-day mark. You have to be creating it at a very conscious level because you’re going against such a deep habituated subconscious tendency. That’s how I think it would work. In both cases the only way such an action could happen easily is if you kept your headache-beliefs and intentions close to the conscious surface of your mind, which definitely isn’t the case for most of us here who are still mostly humans. But definitely one could work to make headache control more conscious. One could also make gravity more conscious. The more conscious it gets the less it happens on its own though and the more things stop happening when you don’t make them happen, so to speak. The more conscious you make it, the less that thing is othered.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-08 12:31:19 (dlba3uw)
The reason why evidence-based thinking is ultimately false, is because it doesn’t deliver on its promise. The promise of evidence is that it will relay some information about an external state of affairs. But how can this happen? How can a state of affairs be truly external and yet puncture the boundary of your mind with evidence? If you look into the problems associated with thinking that information arrives from outside one’s mind, you’ll realize such a scenario is impossible.
The lie of evidence is that behind appearances there are true and enduring objects that are self-so, and that you’re merely discovering them instead of creating them on the go, or instead of meddling with the very thing you’re trying to perceive, thus not actually perceiving the thing-in-itself at all.
If you try to take any bit of information and look for some sturdy objective ground from which this information might emanate, upon final analysis there can be no such ground even in principle, because if such a ground existed, it would contradict the way the world actually works. Namely such a ground would prevent fluidity and change.
In practice you shouldn’t buy fruit that look rotten, so judging fruit by its appearance is evidence-based thinking. At the same time, you know some meat packers use CO packing to artifically improve the freshness-appearance of meat to fool your eyes. So you damn well know you cannot trust what you see. So even when you rely on evidence, you cannot rely on it too much. There is no practical way to close the evidence-gathering process either, because no matter how deeply you have examined something, you can always examine that same thing even deeper, via more methods and under even more circumstances, and so on. So at some arbitrary point you decide to cut off your evidence gathering process and call it “good enough.” So the whole process is essentially fraud, in the final analysis. It’s arbitrary and it stands upon a tall heap of air. It doesn’t mean you won’t do it, but from SI POV, it’s important to recognize any evidence-type thinking as in-game thinking that is not strictly true or best all-around type of thinking.
Non-magickal people don’t need to worry about any of this. What I am talking about with regard to evidence-based thinking being ultimately false is specifically important for anyone who wants to attain to the highest truth and wants to eventually practice heavy magick.
Of course. All magick becomes better when you don’t have contravening intentionality lurking somewhere in your own mind. The more coherent your mind, the better. This is true for any kind of magick. Spell magick is not special in this regard.
If your mindset is physicalist and you expect the moon to fall, then you can expect until you’re blue in the face, and it won’t fall. That’s because you have a 1000 times stronger expectation that the laws of physics are supreme and are inviolable and there is no likely way you can expect your way against that prior expectation.
This is why magick in the beginning can only be small and “it’s almost possible anyway” kind of stuff. And that’s also why in the long term it’s essential to rid one’s mind of physicalism, if your goal is to lead a heavily magickal life.
But there is also a difference allowing expectations to work over a long period of time and trying to “fix” some experience in the moment. This also has to do with prior expectations. In physics we would say power is work done over some time. So time is an important aspect in generating power at least in physicalist thinking. Then as you’re coming off physicalism, as an ex-physicalist, it will still be important for some time. So having something work over time in the background is advantageous and is sometimes superior to in-the-moment imagining.
That said, of course doing the more in-the-moment kind of transformation is also an important practice because it will give you confidence and help you understand your own mind. So it’s not wasted or “wrong” and I don’t think you’d really always want to do this or that style of magick. It’s like saying blue is such a pretty color, I will only paint in blue. That’s not likely. Even if for only aesthetic reasons I find a strong need to practice many different types of magick. Even if I could always do the spell style magick it doesn’t mean I want to.
I think in general it’s a really good idea to operate one’s mind in many different ways, because the more ways you can do things, the more you understand how flexible your mind can really be.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-08 15:05:03 (dlbgb89)
Unless we take evidence-based thinking to mean that we take an appearance and narrow our expectations of future appearances based on that appearance. Not because this is a true or right way to do things, but just as an approach.
Further, there is certainly some sense in the idea that we have mostly subconscious habits in our mind and that by observing the appearances we can become more conscious of how our subconscious habits are working (which we have the choice to change or not – but if we aren’t sure we want to throw the whole thing away then this evidentialist approach to our own subconscious habits can be beneficial). There is some sense in saying that we don’t fully understand our own intent and that by paying attention we can become more conscious of it.
Unless you want to say that this isn’t true. That our own intent is actually itself a probability-possibility-cloud whenever we aren’t conscious of it and that there are no ‘actual’ automatic subconscious habits and tendencies to discover or become conscious of, only ones we generate. That would mean that there are no subconscious complex tendencies to physicalize experience (or to do anything in particular), whether waking or dreaming, to discover. When you’re not conscious of doing you’re not doing it. There’s not automation or othering, just a vague cloud of what-you-might-be-doing, which is really just how-things-will-look-and-act-when-I-am-looking. Normally we think that breathing is usually unconscious and you can reprogram it by making it conscious and practicing new ways of breathing. This anti-subconscious view would suggest that ‘unconscious-breathing’ is non-breathing. It’s a blank to be filled in later when you go looking for it. But then how unconscious breathing habits could impact your life seems like nonsense. This is just one example. Most of life is lived subconsciously/habitually and edited with conscious practice when necessary.
So you don’t think there’s a thing-in-itself that is your intent (especially your subconscious intent)? You don’t think you can discover your intent?
So the mind isn’t the ground of your reality/experience in your view?
As long as you think you can be wildly surprised in your experiences because you may or may not fully understand their causes (i.e. the full subconscious complexity of your intent), then it’s definitely a good way of thinking imo.
Do you think there’s a way you are that’s deeper than your conscious understanding of yourself that you can discover, or is that deeper (habitual/subconscious) self just a possibility cloud that you generate when you go looking? If the latter, then why go looking instead of just changing everything to the way you want it. There is no self-realization in that view. There’s nothing to come to terms with within yourself, it seems. So do you think there can be deep subconscious tendencies that you are unaware of that interfere with your attempts at conscious magic to change your experience?
Working in the background? So there is a background where something is unconsciously working to create and maintain people’s personalities. Or to create and maintain forests. Or to gradually edit the facts of the world when you command it to? So there’s a sort of entity here that is doing the work for you here in the background, your subconscious. I think, if I was to sum up this belief you’re suggesting here myself, I think it must be something like “there’s an aspect of my subconscious that always works to transform the world it automatically manifests according to my desires”. And maybe something else like “I can announce some of my desires loudly to my subconscious and it will work toward those even more than the others.” But the second would imply a kind of intelligence to listen and understand and differentiate and select that the first doesn’t imply. If it can listen and understand, then why wouldn’t it be able to communicate back?
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-10 02:54:15 (dldwoy4)
I agree, but this isn’t how the term “evidence” is understood conventionally.
I agree with this as well, but once again, conventionally people don’t take the experience of the world to be a message from their own subconscious mind to themselves.
When I have spoken before I have used a standard understanding/meaning of the term “evidence.”
That said, even with what you’re saying, evidence doesn’t work as one would typically expect, because while it may reveal something of your own will to you, it doesn’t keep your will there, so it doesn’t actually force meanings into your life. Normally when people think about “evidence” they think some inviolable meaning is forced into their life from appearances. But in this new interpretation it’s not like that anymore. Since it’s your own will, it’s not a meaning that’s inviolable, but rather, it’s a meaning you can change.
One’s will can in principle be in a committed or in a flexible state, and anywhere in between. The sky is the limit, so to speak.
It’s possible to start out with a heavily structured and steady commitment in one’s will and then to gradually relax that commitment later. So one’s condition of will can start with what you appear to have assumed it to be, and then end up with this latter description through your own purpose, if that is your purpose, of course.
Whatever you can conceive of, you can act on. You can intend whatever you conceive of.
Since you’re able to conceive of will this way, you can make your will resemble that conception.
I once had a mystical experience where I was suffocating and couldn’t breathe, and then it felt like my breathing snapped like a dry twig, like it broke as if it were a thing that could break, and then I felt no urge to breathe anymore. I wasn’t breathing and felt no need to breathe either. That experience is very much in line with what you describe here.
The important thing to remember is to not think “it’s like this because it isn’t like that.” All the possibilities should be included. If you can conceive of it, it’s possible and it should be included in one’s ultimate consideration, but one shouldn’t think of it as an “is.” It can be, but not is.
It’s precisely because appearances tell us of what can be and not what is that they cannot function as evidence in the conventional sense of “evidence.” Remember your post about appearances being purely hypothetical?
Because whatever I discover is conditioned on my ongoing consent, it isn’t self-so, so not a thing-in-itself, no. “Thing-in-itself” is a thing on thing’s own terms, but that doesn’t exist and cannot be. I can only ever, even in principle, know things on my terms, and not on “thing’s” terms.
It is, but it is neither objective nor fixated despite itself. If there is a fixation it can only exist so long as I consent to it. Once I become aware of my own fixations I can change them. What’s missing is a guarantee of stability. Stability is an option, but not a guarantee. However evidence-based thinking, as it is conventionally understood, leads one to believe one lives in a world with heavy guarantees that operate despite oneself, whether one likes these guarantees or not.
If you say so. :) I mean, if you don’t see flaws in evidence-based thinking, then keep using it.
For me, personally, I see how evidence-based thinking is getting in the way of my most powerful magick. So I use evidence-based thinking as a kind of a game, without buying into it too much. I know “evidence” is a convention of the world, but I don’t let that convention stick very strongly to my heart and I always leave myself plenty of room to question the meanings of any and all appearances. This gives my own will much more room to work than it would otherwise have.
I can be temporarily overlooking something I am doing/intending. So I can be engaged in something and not realize I am engaged in that way, because it’s a matter of course, it is tacit. However, this condition isn’t permanent or inflexible or unintentional. Once I decide I don’t want to have dark subconscious areas in my mind, they gradually “float” (not literally) back up to conscious awareness.
That “something” is ultimately you. Othering is not real in the final analysis. It’s only nominal. You can relate to that “something” as not you, but it cannot be anything else, because there isn’t anything else like that and couldn’t be, even in principle. If there were something truly foreign (as opposed to nominally foreign), there’d be no way to gather information about it and interact with it.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-10 09:39:28 (dlej59r)
I like to think of the term “othering” as a sort of auto-pilot.
For example, let’s say I’m trying to find certain objects. I don’t know exactly what they are, but I’ll know I’ve found one when I come across one. So in that case when I’m trying to create this experience I’d focus on asserting emotions, feelings, or a certain state of mind, and maybe some other sensory aspects but not the thing itself. So I’m not actively shaping it, I’m just letting it happen on it’s own, or putting that function into auto-pilot. Kind of like punching in the coordinates and letting the ship do the flying
Originally commented by u/WrongStar on 2017-08-08 10:57:05 (dlb5q9v)