This came to mind after I finished a sweep in recapitulation yesterday. I felt the sense I've felt when I don't want to do something that could be good for me because it makes me uncomfortable. I turned on the lights, grabbed my notebook and started writing.
Going into it, my internal chatter was "this won't take long, I know all of the things I do in a day" and I remembered recent internal chatter where I told myself, and imaginary conversations, at how busy I was working on various aims.
Turns out I was deluding myself with how much time and effort I really put in. I try to minimize the time of runaway thoughts, but their frequency adds up to a lot of wasted effort.
I reached almost 100 entries before I got to a single thing I would consider productive. Everything before that was a flavor of "lament about X, regret X, check X". A bunch of pointless wishing and fantasizing.
I don't know how I could turn every one of those micro distractions into something "productive", but I think I want to stop the bleeding and quit wasting time thinking without a purpose. Looking at my repetitive Iterating over and over again made me feel very stupid, realizing I've been acting in a way I would consider neurotic if I saw it in someone else.
23 Comments
During exam season before I even knew there was such a thing as this subreddit, I would spend my time either studying, doing necessary tasks for living, or what i knew then as staring at the ceiling, but now i know is gazing. It's possible, it's just hard.
P.S. I got on the Dean's List in accounting despite failing out of my first attempt at university in a pit of drunkenness.
recap if done right will help with this more than a list reminiscent of Victor Sanchez’s false practices…
Find a petty tyrant.
You intend by intending; change by changing.
If the self tells you to fast and pray, it's but a trickster hatching a plot against you.
Either give yourself no other option or stop listening to yourself—including writing useless information down.
I'm going to give an appendice to what I wrote—since the moderators shit on my comment.
LOL--whatever.
There is a very specific reason I never give self-help advice, because it doesn't matter how much you psychologically manipulate yourself into better outcomes if it doesn't actively address the root cause of the miasma—hypnotism is one example, because people with such an ability can thereby manipulate not only others but themselves into better after-effects—and yet it is all for naught.
It's funny how something so useful can end up being so useless in the overall development of a human being.
I do not subscribe to the notion that silence alone will change you, due to the fact that even if you practice for 3 hours a day, you will usually still return to the same moron for the remainder of eight or so—and unless you are a monk or under the unfortunate circumstances of a "petty" tyrant locking you inside a box to practice for eight hours a day, it is largely a misaligned perspective.
The goal of sorcery isn't necessarily to be a high-functioning human being—but I consider it an auxiliary practice due to it being, in a strictly aesthetic sense, a far more pleasing and fulfilling existence than the alternative.
The dis-identification with self and sole focus on objective outcomes is a far superior procedure for achieving this end; since it is both universally applicable and consequently sorcery-adjacent in methodology.
Nature gives everyone her weapons—to forfeit the use of irrationality on the basis of it being "not approved by society" stems only from cowardice.
Cowards don't win wars.
For some reason, the system is automatically removing your comments and not giving a reason why.
It must be an issue with your account…
It doesn't really bother me—plus, I have no further use for the messaging or chat functionality anyway.
It took me a little while to digest this—so pardon the double reply.
Did you know pirates used to laugh, sing, and mock their captors before they were hung?
LOL—even the modern justice system promotes pity and remorse in terms oflenient sentencing.
Live by the sword; die by the sword—they lived that ideal better than the actual Christians, considering their violent history and constant appeals to the whole "born again," shtick.
A person has to be psychologically worthy of their crime, which is incredibly controversial considering how everything is set up.
Dostoevsky—who was Christian—even found kinship amongst ruthless criminals for this exact same reason.
I disagree with you about "promotes pity and remorse". It's designed as a distraction on how you're getting robbed daily. One Bengladeshi person I knew said that if people were getting their wages stolen, they would chop the owner's heads off, and that Canada is too "peaceful".
Yes, but a person who knows the aforementioned risks and does it anyway is operating on a completely different psychological level than the average person.
Raskolnikov, for example, was Dostoevsky's literary rendition of what a failed criminal looks like—while within his more semi-autobiographical novels exploring his time in Siberian prison camps, he has a very differing opinion, often even exalting the criminal over the common man.
I bring it up because it is a Christian making these observations.
Yeah... I also disagree with you on your silence comment that it can't change people.
>Yes, but a person who knows the aforementioned risks and does it anyway is operating on a completely different psychological level than the average person.
This was me, prior to finding Castaneda, I was behaving in an almost criminal manner on a daily basis, and committing violent "self-defense" monthly.
I'm just not finding anything too much of value here from all this discussion.
Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.
You can change without silence—it is not necessarily a measure of progress.
We can abstract this to something silly like "heart."
Within the tone appearances are all that matters—I am not contradicting my consequentialism; only making a very important distinction.
There are good people with impure hearts, and there are not so good people with pure hearts.
Intent is the only thing that can possibly know—for certain—your intentions.
You do not need to be a good person to purify your "heart." You can even go in the exact opposite direction if it required it.
Who says anything about me casting out my demon. I know it is still trivial for me to punch someone in the throat, I just don't feel a burning drive to fulfill my egotism...
You want to wage a war against ego? Be so horrible everyone hates you—bring shame to your family; stop showering; become a rascal; humiliate yourself. Never hide your horribleness.
Commit fully, and try not to hurt other people.
That is what a war against egotism looks like—not this saint; look like a Buddha; become a leader so people look up to me shit.
Anybody that follows through—even temporarily—will become a sorcerer, because it will give you no other choice.
"I have no ego because everyone likes me, and "that" person has an ego because he is attention seeking or problematic," is a false dichotomy.
Go full "emperor's new clothes."
Like I said, appearances are deceiving.
If you are afraid, it's the ego talking.
The only argument against this methodology is that it is unnecessary.
You can't sell it either.
This will definitely clean your link to intent, alongside all the other practices.
"Pure heart," and all that.
Why are you continuing to offer me advice that has no bearing on me? You don't subscribe to the notion that silence will change you, well I do. You have some perspective on the justice system that I fundamentally disagree with, you have an opinion on my practice when you don't know me at all.
I didn't ask a question of you, I just disagree with you on these matters, take it or leave it.
I love pissed off people!
Are you going to punch me next?
Is this your way of playing "ruthless," along with the fact that you bring up that you used to fight every comment?
You also seem to brag a lot too.
You are the one that responded to me.
How's the silence working out? You are very transparent--so it's not helping you there.
Here, but I like you; that's why I'm giving you the time.
But I'm not upset at all? You are speaking like you have some monolith behind you, as if what you say goes. I just compared what you said to my experience, and all it is, is that I disagree with your advice. I always give it a listen, and then decide for myself. I disagree with Dan on plenty as well...
My silence is perfectly fine, nothing hampered me in any way during my practice today after our talk.
[removed]
It's likely impossible to do what you just said.
"I want to stop the bleeding and quit wasting time thinking without a purpose."
Because the part of you that "wants" to do that, is the part that knows nothing but your internal dialogue.
In fact, even "you" were basically formed from it. And also from the pain of being stuck in a flesh body when there's other things available to us. Such as shrinking the tonal almost permanently.
But that's another topic.
So if you can't do what you suggested, how do we change our behavior?
We can't...
You'll always suck... nothing can be done about that now. We're "all finished" growing up.
But, we can learn to focus our beam of awareness on "something else".
It's pretty hard to fuss and fume, when you're gazing at magical portals, videos in the air, and messages from infinity, anytime you look for them.
So the way to change "yourself" is to leave it alone, and look in another direction.
It still doesn't hurt to make a list like you did, but the main purpose of that is likely to motivate you to be so disgusted with the endless repetitions, that you sincerely seek to find a different direction in which to focus your awareness.
At first, I think I disagree with you, I'm thinking it's possible to change behaviors. For example when someone starts going to bed 30 minutes earlier instead of watching Netflix, to wake up and workout, or focus on their craft - I think this is a shift from purposeless thinking to purposeful.
But I think you're saying that all aspects of the tonal - the purposeful ones included - are still parts of the "river of shit", being part of the same internal dialogue?
If that's the case, I don't get this. I've made at least an intellectual peace with the idea that sorcery can completely disrupt what I thought I "wanted out of life" - by totally changing my perceptions so I don't even consider myself the same me. I don't think that means I should abandon the needs of the 1st attention - I don't want to starve, and while I'm at it I think I should try to enjoy it and not subject myself to further stupidity. Maybe this relates to don Juan's comment about unhappy people being more motivated to learn sorcery than someone content. So I guess there, even in my 1st attention doings, I should never be "content", even with success - so I'm able to "look in another direction"?
No, that would be pretending. Which is tied to the internal dialogue.
But yes, you can alter your routine.
It'll just be the same old crappy you until you reach at least the orange zone.
Even making it to the red zone doesn't change your basic personality.
In fact, some sorcerers got trapped by the power of the red zone, and never moved past it.
Witches can end up in that situation.
They have power, but are still "themselves".
Thanks for explaining
From my experience, what you are dealing with is completely normal, BUT there is no need to overdo it.
Knowing how to fly over it with ease, not to deal with it too much.
Aim a little further, “intent” is your support…
[removed]