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sirhinojo
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everything is neurohacking

hello dudes!

Let me tell you where I have been.  It has been a few months since I came here to NH.

I got lost in the world of Buddhism again.  This time I read and listened to buddhist scholarship voraciously and meditated a lot. Of course, there is way way way a lot of scholarship and it is pretty varied.  And all the practices are polemic too. 

Nevertheless, as usual with me, I burnt rubber through this Buddhist landscape and came away with a lot of Information.  And as usual, at first I got a wonderfully confidence giving Religious Fervour but as usual with me by the end I burned even through that and landed again into the familiar nihilistic, too relativistic world I usually inhabit.  Now I am again in this strange space.  I got mesmerized with an online discussion on Realist Non-Buddhist Lacanian Radical Marxism. A lot of very strong ideological raging happens there on this blog at times!  It is really unbelievable though, really almost very entertaining the style of high language the guys that write this stuff use. 
All very impressive. 

Now I am burned out and do not know what to think or what to think about thinking or if I should think that my thoughts are not from my "subject" but more just Radio signals from some amorphous Symbolic/Linguistic World.  And actually that idea really can make sense in a way.  But then again not. 

Anyway, if you check out the Posts in speculativenonbuddhist.com you might also tell me what you think. 

Now since I have been away I kept thinking along my journey that in the end what the mystics say and a lot of what the continental philosophers say is compatible with NH.  I mean this in the sense of all the ideas in these schools of thought are encapsulated within NH theory.  No essential self, just choices that are in touch with reality.  But what I appreciate the most about NH is that it never flares up.  The theory of NH is immediately put into practice by just participating according to the core conditions.  This is probably why it is so quiet because no-body wants to fight here, and so that isnt so dramatically entertaining, I guess.  ; )   

But then I am left with this strong ideallogical desire and pain to just have absolutely no suffering!  I hate it so much! 

Tomorrow I will wake up and still not know, but nevertheless, I will go out into the world and interact.  And I will meditate and not know why.  Am I cleaning up Karma?  Am I preparing for the inevitable chaos of rebirth?  Am I wasting my time to see the pointlessness of it all?   Am I Training a skill just to make more Money?  Am I looking at something magical called the Mind?  Blah. 

Whatever. You guys and a lot of other People are telling me that logic is very important.  There is a realiy and we can know when we are in-tune with it because when we are in tune with it we do not suffer.  Is that it?  And I help make that reality reality by practicing it?  In the end all I can make of this is that I have to remember that this is all a performance.  Whether you are adapting to the world or you are looking for another world.  You are just pretending.  I just get kind of tired of feeling like I am always doing some technique or other.  But when I am on stage, I do like it.  Manipulating the audience by using techniques on myself. But is my whole life going to always be a big pretending?

I know you guys are going to say that LIFE is pretending and then I will say "there is still suffering".     

looking Forward to the semantics stuff.

anyways, let me know if you know of a Magic pill!  : )))

greetings sirhinojo



Edited By:  sirhinojo
Jun-19-13 06:49:27

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Alex
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Re: everything is neurohacking

Hi dude,

Sounds like you get caught up in things, but also sounds like you have fun zooming around a subject in this way until you find yourself under a mountain of (sometimes conflicting?) data  :  )  We've probably all been there...  exploration turns into introspection and that's all very well for a short time but its not productive unless we do something creative with it. It turns into an experience described in the Police song lyrics: “Too much information, running through my brain!!”

I don't know how you experience this but for me its very similar to not being able to make decisions; -not being able to step out of 'open mode' (creative though it may be) into 'closed mode' where we stay on the target area and perform the procedures or come to the conclusions necessary to affect change.

Not being able to do that can be a very confusing feeling, and in me can lead to snapback (which may have happened to you as well?)

Obviously what works for me may not work for you, but its worth a try: I temporarily increase ACh, then deliberately focus on asking myself exactly what I am trying to achieve in a journey/project, whether I have achieved it, and where to go next if I haven't. Relating what I'm doing to the big picture also helps me take decisions and get practical instead of theoretical, as I sometimes get stuck because although there's loads of data/experience it doesn't relate congruously to that bigger picture of what I'm doing overall and what specifically I'm trying to achieve in this bit.

Sometimes the conclusion is that there's not enough data after all, sometimes some of the data turns out to be dodgy, sometimes there's too much distracting information and the focus of exploration needs to be narrowed down, often my mind was just tired of the same subject and needed a change of activity (or some sleep and proper food) for things to defrag and 'fit together'. ...Dunno if any of this is any use, but feel free to experiment!


Re: Now since I have been away I kept thinking along my journey that in the end what the mystics say and a lot of what the continental philosophers say is compatible with NH.

Yeh...It looks like “what the mystics say” can be roughly translated as “What the dudes say who interpret unconscious awareness with a mystical-context model”  :  )


Re: But then I am left with this strong ideallogical desire and pain to just have absolutely no suffering!  I hate it so much! 

...Now that's not true, is it? Because if we really did wake up unable to feel pain of any kind, we'd be at constant serious risk of injury and would be unable to tell when we had many infections. People with this sort of condition in real life have a very hard time of it, and it's Very Good that we notice the pain of every sting, bite, inflammation and accident, otherwise we'd more than likely be dead.

Your closing paragraphs imply that you're practising activities without any clear reason and that's a waste of time! You're the Captain; decide what you like to do, enjoy doing, desire to do, are inspired by doing...and concentrate on doing it. Nobody is gonna interrogate you on why you did it; and even if they did you have the best reason in the world -fun and learning. That's what free will is all about; having the freedom for fun, learning and interaction.


Re:You guys and a lot of other People are telling me that logic is very important.

I can only speak for me, but I don't recall anyone here ever telling anyone that logic is important. I recall quoting Spock's “Logic is just the beginning of wisdom”, but that's not at all the same thing.


Re: I know you guys are going to say that LIFE is pretending and then I will say "there is still suffering".

...I have a memory of discussing this somewhere else...my interpretation of research here leads me to observe the opposite : Reality is what happens all by itself when people stop pretending. When they stop imagining a pretend universe and start imagining the real one.

In the pretend universe, god/s made everything and politics/religion/society's laws is how god intends us to run things. The conscious mind knows all about these things and forgets that some other human made them all up, once upon a time.

In the real universe, there are the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics. The unconscious mind knows all about these things and forgets the conscious mind may not listen to it.

Life is not 'pretending'; life is about as seriously real as anything can get. Sure it is full of complex behavior and even performance -where performance is relevant to the process of life (for example in mating display behaviors) -but this is not pretending. The dancing bird of paradise doesn't pretend to want a female -he genuinely does want one.

All behavior is 'acting' in the sense of performing a task, but there's obviously a difference in 'acting out' a series of steps to achieve something like typing this message, and 'acting' (in which I could be filmed hitting any keys on an unplugged computer and pretending to type this message). I think it's probably really important to understand this, because it's the crux of the difference between real self (no pretending) and society's ideal self; the person most folks pretend to be.

At root, the 'honesty' core condition demands we drop all pretense*. Okay, purists could say that wearing clothes is a pretense -it's hiding what we really look like, but conversely we could say we'd rather be honest about how cold we are, and if we really like each other a lot, the clothes do come off  :  )
Best,
AR

*...someone's gonna ask about placebos in relation to this, I bet  :  )


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sirhinojo
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Re: everything is neurohacking

hi alex, 

i read your reply with great interest.  but then i felt quite dumbfounded as to how i should reply back.  I found myself reading your book again.  This time with more attention and concentration.  Needless to say it is fascinating.  I know I have glossed only this site.  I think its time I get a bit more clear on what all exactly you are expressing here.  I do wonder how you can put so much apparent effort into interacting here with me without really knowing if I grasp where exactly you are coming from.  But it does seem "altruistc" of you.  Or is it really enjoyable?  I wonder to meet you and see if I would feel anxious around you, because in your book you speak of this effect you can have on people stuck in matrix and sentiment.  Meeting you could be a way to measure my progress??  ; )

Ok, I am not continuing the conversation I started.  It really was just a rant of someone in need of soothing interaction.  So I will get on with action now, and neurohack!

cheers
sirhinojo


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Alex
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Re: everything is neurohacking

Hi dude,
To be clear we should remember that ICMM is pretty old and a great deal more has been discovered since it was written (both by science generally and me personally)  :  )

Interacting with people is one of my favorite things to do, because I know it's one of the fastest ways to develop our brains and those of others (it's also in our favor if we're surrounded by intelligent allies, right?) So I take every opportunity to do some of it.

Also, setting things down to explain them to others often makes the 'big picture' clearer for me; it helps me to defrag faster, remember things better, and make associations faster than working on my own.
You dudes inspire a lot of stuff I write, and because of you I solve puzzles quicker, learn faster  and notice what concepts are hardest to grasp sooner, not to mention better ways of explaining things. So there's a great deal in it for me  :  )

Entelechy is where I aim to be coming from (and going to) personally, so in communication interaction is the aim; wherever I fail it's because I fail to understand someone or something, I've found from experience so far. Often they fail to understand me too, but that's the other side of it and it always takes at least two people wanting to build a bridge, to build a bridge.

The effect I used to have on people stuck in sentiment is no longer the case unless I need it to be, happily I've matured in at least one area there...I know more hacks to help people (and me) feel at ease  :  )

You have already met me; we are talking to each other (I hope we are or I've started talking to myself*  LOL  :  )  I know you mean IRL. But if we did meet IRL, what you experienced would be up to you, not me...

Wow that sounds way too Yoda for this time of night...  :  )
Stay cool,
AR

*Talking to yourself: Only a problem in wetware. AIs doing it won't be a malfunction. Computers have to do it all the time; it's not because they're nuts.


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Mnemo
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Re: everything is neurohacking

The smile hack just cleared up my hicups :D


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Re: everything is neurohacking

Hey, sirhinojo,

With respect to the mountain of Buddhist scholarship, it may be helpful to keep in mind what the Zen dudes say: when someone points a finger at the moon, don't get obsessed with the finger, look at the moon. (Advice doesn't apply if you actually want to learn something about the finger =)

The Pali Canon ended up becoming the main source of my own theory of mind and meditation techniques, but I only understood it reasonably well after spending several hours observing how the mind works in meditation without a care for theories.

Managed to cure a bunch of disorders (mine and others') and promote self-development well beyond that with the knowledge and practices I got from a hardcore retreat after a few months of reading.

If I had to start over, I'd probably be able to reconstruct nearly everything by reading this: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka … .than.html and this: http://www.beatrice.com/TAO.pdf and going on a meditation binge again. =]

See ya,
Meta


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sirhinojo
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Re: everything is neurohacking

Meta,

I just now saw your post, or usually I would respond sooner.  Thanks for the insight into what sort of path within Buddhism you are treading.  Your statement about coming to your own conclusions about meditation through your own introspection is very interesting.  I have tried that througout the years as well and with varying accompanying tech as well.  My conclusion is that I come always to different conclusions, and this sits well with my seeing that there all sorts of cognitive biases happening all the time which lead to these different conclusions.  And as to curing things, I still put less faith on the technique itself, and more on the wonderful placebo effect.  That is to say, that if something works, what you did to make it work might just be correlative and not directly causal.  You know what I mean?

best,

rico


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Re: everything is neurohacking

Hello, sirhinojo,

How does CBT work? Why isn't it more effective? By answering these two questions, it's not hard to come up with meditation techniques of your own that yield far better results.

My methodology is divided in two stages. The first is meant for the acquisition of self-knowledge (why is it necessary and important? what are its impediments in therapy and otherwise?). The second stage is about reprogramming the mind. Here's where your placebo comment may apply, but only to the extent that "Behave as though it’s happening and the brain will think it’s happening" is true, and there's no self-deception involved, you just overwrite undesirable patterns with better ones until they become habitual.

It's been used successfully to cure severe disorders and get rid of the common sources of frustration most people face. It's not a formalist practice where you just follow a certain protocol blindly, albeit one is used with special emphasis in the beginning.

See ya,
Meta


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