[this is a “refinement” conversation, and falls under the heading of special/preliminary/auxiliary practices, separate from a main, workhorse practice/crank. this person already has a strong, mainline practice (and we have a large, shared context) and the below is looking for ways to accelerate progress.]
[…] 6:47 PM
@Mark how fraught do you think “listening to your gut” is?
Mark 6:51 PM
will mean a billion different things to a billion different people
but usually comes up when like it’s not the only voice?
like “gut” will be in context of “inner conflict”?
which will also mean a billion different things to a billion different people
i think generally if no obvious repercussions, should generally just listen and go get data. can sometimes reinforce bad stuff, but that’s fine in context of a regular transformative practice.
can also try to guess if it’s a temporary surge, but no hard rules. sometimes go with it sometimes wait for it to recede, partly depending on whether it’s just going to come back stronger, but patterns can be complex again especially in context of a regular transformative practice.
i think generally should just listen to lowest [currently lowest+loudest] chakra, all things equal, if no permanent [unfixable] dangers. and always keep meditating blah blah (edited)
if “real risks” then generally have to work through the conflict or titrate data or get external/oblique perspective/input/data to point of something but again no hard rules (edited)
Mark 7:03 PM
general thing is that external action/behavior, as it were, is complexly cued/caused by complex and massively parallel phenomenologically-participating, conceptually-participating feedback loops throughout entire experiential field. and everybody does it differently, though some ways of doing it are better and worse, all things equal, and transformative practice will nonmonotonically converge towards a relatively general better way.
at beginning and middle of the journey, will be rules of thumb like trust self, trust feelings, trust gut, trust lower chakras, if-feels-wrong-is-wrong but only rules of thumb [bc people are set up differently and will interpret the words and mental actions differently and use different internal checks and balances]. [so can sometimes] lead to drama, bridge-burning, lost-opportunities, non-cumulativity, self-justifying/closed-off epistemics/behavior, stuff like that.
not knowing what to do, and it hurts right now, and it hurts to try to figure out what to do is like X% of the whole game yay (edited)
helpful?
[…] 7:14 PM
yes yes very helpful
not knowing what to do, and it hurts right now, and it hurts to try to figure out what to do is like X% of the whole game yay (edited)
yup yup yup
story of my lyfe
Mark 7:15 PM
i know the feeling
fwiw:
the below are in no particular order [and i’m probably leaving some out] but can sort of line them up in some order from perineum to crown along centerline of the body and check in with them:
(a) …wishing, wanting, liking, feeling, hoping, longing, desiring, hungering, lusting, loving, [thirsting, craving, ]
(a/b??) …urging, impulse/impulsion, …
(b) …hating, fearing, disgust, aversion…
eventually symphonic or singing the same song, wholehearted, whole-everything or doing fast, friendly, perfect baton-passing handoffs in time (edited)
[…] 7:16 PM
check in with the individual items in (a) or (b)?
like for each item find corresponding spot on the center line?
Mark 7:17 PM
as like a potential bootstrap, yeah
[…] 7:17 PM
which will be consistentish over time? like wishing is usually in Y location?
Mark 7:17 PM
mayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyybe
[…] 7:17 PM
ok wasnt sure if that’s what you were suggesting
Mark 7:18 PM
and if specific go/no-go, can do pros/cons for each of go and no-go, so four columns total. or for two “go’s” can have like eight columns total, when including a no-go for each go.
bootstraps
but often no clear ontology so then can always fall back to meditation.
[…] 7:19 PM
yeah very interested in bootstraps as i am here “beginning and middle of the journey, will be rules of thumb” (edited)
Mark 7:20 PM
u r not so beginning but rules of thumb r good
if i may say so
[…] 7:20 PM
you may 🙂
hmmmm
Mark 7:20 PM
wayfinding in seeming internal chaos
when u r also chaos
[…] 7:21 PM
if a “feeling/emotion/thingy” is at a particular place or near a particular chakra, you’re saying that that matters, right?
like fear further down is distinct from fear further up?
and not just blanket fear
or like, location adds extra info? (edited)
Mark 7:25 PM
kinda kinda, it’s all significant. i think nothing will truly localize. no boundaries. and blah blah be careful re narrowing attention as it were. like, these are all provisional commitments: the (a) and (b) lists above, time, space, body, location, attention–want to be careful not to inappropriately reify, careful of relying to much on ontological commitments. every movement of mind is sort of a tacit ontological commitment until it’s not
[…] 7:26 PM
inappropriately reify, careful of relying to much on ontological commitments.
emphatically noted (edited)
been there. now am looking for rafts to cross the river with etc
Mark 7:27 PM
“how might these words be useful, how might taking this as real, temporarily unreflectively falling into thinking about it this way be useful”
yup
“or not, or in part”
[…] 7:27 PM
cf how are the instructions helping? how are they getting in the way?
Mark 7:27 PM
yeah
[…] 7:29 PM
yeah struggle as of late has been trying to distinguish something something “wise” gut aversion from misplaced misguided childhood fear or something (edited)
Mark 7:30 PM
maybe a way to “take it all seriously”, like a “commitment to exhaustivity” giving 110% of it a fair hearing? it’ll be finite, like 10,000 hours absolute, absolute, absolute max, probably. :slightly_smiling_face:
more likely 2000-6000
[…] 7:46 PM
maybe a way to “take it all seriously”, like a “commitment to exhaustivity” giving 110% of it a fair hearing? it’ll be finite, like 10,000 hours absolute, absolute, absolute max, probably.
yeah this is interesting
like whole strategy can change when zoomed out / big-pictured
hmmm
i haven’t thought too much about stuff in that direction yet but seems really useful
maybe a way to “take it all seriously”, like a “commitment to exhaustivity” giving 110% of it a fair hearing?
as in, (try to) honor everything? take all the concerns seriously? and collect data, repeat
* asked while being very careful not to reify your answer * (edited)
Mark 7:49 PM
doesn’t have to be heavyweight question-asking or even liminally verbal, though it can be. more like an attitude, a stance, a commitment, an expectation to parallel-ly/linearly/serially/everything-ly honor 110% of the system
all concerns, all confusions, all conflicts
down the planck scale, leaving absolutely nothing out
[…] 7:50 PM
ahh my “asked” was referring to me asking you the question
Mark 7:50 PM
gotcha. i think same answer still
[…] 7:50 PM
yup yup
hmm and in the case of conflict it’s like, how to honor the conflict while forging ahead? and perhaps that’s where the heuristics come in while “listening”, collecting data, and diligently refining/improving them and ultimately aiming to move beyond them (edited)
Mark 7:59 PM
general rule of thumb is to treat live conflicts as bottlenecks or not to be bypassed, but may have to go far afield to get the tools to resolve the conflict. but want to do that in a way that doesn’t ignore, suppress, paper-over, or hide the conflict.
so it’s sort of recursive, depth-first search problem solving.
but ultimately bare-metal, nonverbal, bootstrapped wayfinding, eventually with extraordinary skill and finesse.
sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of
[…] 8:01 PM
may have to go far afield to get the tools to resolve the conflict
ok now we’re talking 🙂
Mark 8:01 PM
ok :slightly_smiling_face:
[…] 8:02 PM
or like, was making reference to importance of actually resolving the conflict(s) (edited)
Mark 8:02 PM
oh yeah, they ALL have to get resolved by exquisite non-force
[…] 8:02 PM
not necessarily the going-far-afield-ness
Mark 8:02 PM
they all WILL be resolved
in ways that HAVE to be incrementally acceptable in every femtosecond to all stakeholdingness in the system
the system is like saran-wrapped liquid steel all twisted up and have to untwist things so all the liquid steel can become one big ball. [sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of] but it’s still steel. totally unforgiving in some sense. cannot force it, trick it, bypass it, indefinitely
can thin it out to molecular-thin layer but it will not go away and will eventually have to come back for it so like try not to do that. [sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of]
nothing of possible […] will allow itself to be lost until exhaustively examined in some sense [sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of]
[…] 8:19 PM
hmmmmmmmm
Another pattern I imagine seems to be
a) there’s inner conflict X that’s live and eating up resources
but
b) even though inner conflict X is live and eating up resources it’s resolution has dependencies that are nowhere near ready to be resolved
i’d expect this to mostly be the case, and i’m curious if you agree
like the order in which problems are encountered and causing suffering is not equal to the order in which problems are ready to be solved (edited)
well i guess that’s not totally true. […] is evidence that it’s not.
Mark 8:29 PM
yes, and it sucks. have to sometimes do hard, long-range stuff with pencil-thin resources sometimes for months.
best case you can draw resources/suggestions/solutions from written content or smart, helpful people. for some fraction of things, because too idiosyncratic or can’t trust other resources, have to do it on own.
can get boosts and resource-free-ups, some [quasi-]arbitrary-order interventions from bodyworkers [shamans, therapists], etc., and can be huge, sometimes, but will still eventually have to do cleanup (edited)
[worth it if can find trustworthy people. can sometimes tangle you up further or cause subtle, really bad problems, and/or net good but at a cost.]
[…] 8:41 PM
I mean, I’ll pose the question that’s in my head that I have some partial answers to, and not necessarily posing expecting like an (exhaustive) answer because afaict the answer is like the thing
but the question is
what is entailed in figuring stuff out?
will yet again say more later
Mark 8:42 PM
k
my knee-jerk answer is:
“either it is or it isn’t [figured out]”
[…] 8:42 PM
or like entailed in the process of figuring stuff out, if that wasn’t clear
like the actual figuring
Mark 8:43 PM
i know. just sort of establishing the measure or feedback loop which is X% of the thing
[…] 8:43 PM
: o
gotcha
Mark 8:43 PM
if it either is or isn’t figured out then you sort of always know where you are at least on that dimension
[…] 8:44 PM
ok that is helpful
Mark 8:44 PM
and then sort of all that’s left is like a tower-of-hanoi problem with nebulous ontology
where sometimes moving forward looks like moving backwards for a long time, or not, but there’s always a true forward
and knowing where you are and what to do next, wayfinding, is the skill that develops over time
[…] 1 minute ago
where sometimes moving forward looks like moving backwards for a long time, or not, but there’s always a true forward
I wonder if I’ve been interpreting this line too narrowly in the past
Like I usually hear in the context of like what’s happening when one meditates
Mark < 1 minute ago
it’s the whole X-thousand hour thing
[…] < 1 minute ago
And now I’m hearing also possibly in the context of one’s life/plan
Mark < 1 minute ago
yeah i guess that too for sure
[…] < 1 minute ago
Hehe
***
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***
Check it out, some people have been hilariously half-assing the application, and, so far, it’s been adequate for making a call on self-safety and other-safety. I wanted to set a high bar and then step it down, for signaling/learning/resource constraints, but I didn’t mean for it to be a gross, bro-code, guess-the-norms, guess-the-password thing. I’ll clean it up as soon as I have enough data for that to make sense. I’m sorry if I somehow made the stakes too high, please take a chance, throw something together, and apply:
https://meditationstuff.wordpress.com/2019/06/18/applications-for-working-notes-access-are-soft-open/