Capacity Imagine Being Limitless penned with Jess Cummins @jesscxc [introduction] Capacity: Imagine Being Limitless is a journey of questions and answers about mind, life, and universe. Capacity is Book 3 of The Deeper Series. Capacity is available for free at NoLiesPlease.com. This book is dedicated to the public domain. [meta] (author "Jess Cummins" @jesscxc) (pronouns she/friend) (link NoLiesPlease.com) (book_title Capacity) (book_subtitle Imagine Being Limitless) (deeper_series_book_number 3) (book_version v2 ty21.7.5.22.50.08pzm4d1s) (essay_count 17) (word_count 9048) (books_by_jesscxc (misc "Poem Moves the Pen: Haiku of a Nondual Nature" "Natural Will: Freer Than Free Will" "Longgame Hyperdimensional Spacing: Expand Mind and Weave Time" "Ungov: Transcending Will") (the_deeper_series "Book 0: Uncompress: Eternal Appreciation of How" "Book 1: Fortunate: How to Be" "Book 2: Attuned: Be What You Imagine" "Book 3: Capacity: Imagine Being Limitless" "Book 4: Helper: Limitless Mind" "Book 5: Intense: Mind Unleashed" "Book 6: Open: Unleashed Honesty" "Book 7: Universe: Honesty is Eternal" "Book 8: Various: Is to Be") (the_pocket_series "Book 0: Obverse: Abstract Fast" "Book 1: Limer: Fast Color" "Book 2: Dawn: Color of Day" "Book 3: Knight: Day Beyond" "Book 4: Fever: Beyond Dreams" "Book 5: Life: Dreams Evolving" "Book 6: Adventure: Evolving Lands" "Book 7: Battle: Lands Say" "Book 8: Entertainment: Say Ahead" "Book 9: Explore: Ahead Opportunity" "Book 10: Moment: Opportunity Simulation" "Book 11: Imagine: Simulation Twist" "Book 12: Believe: Twist Self" "Book 13: Accept: Self Pattern" "Book 14: Create: Pattern Reflection" "Book 15: Sift: Reflection Match" "Book 16: Probability: Match Experience" "Book 17: Waves: Experience Current" "Book 18: Kernel: Current Functions" "Book 19: Grubby: Functions Dig" "Book 20: Game: Dig Above" "Book 21: Fruit: Above Messages" "Book 22: Endeavor: Messages Spread" "Book 23: Mystery: Spread Expressions" "Book 24: Detain: Expressions Bind" "Book 25: Philosophy: Bind Broken" "Book 26: Demands: Broken Discovery" "Book 27: Subliminal: Discovery Inside" "Book 28: Extinction: Inside Refresh" "Book 29: Control: Refresh Axioms" "Book 30: Ideas: Axioms Mistake" "Book 31: Gallium: Mistake Fuzz" "Book 32: Germanium: Fuzz Friendship" "Book 33: Arsenic: Friendship Reaction" "Book 34: Selenium: Reaction Depth" "Book 35: Bromine: Depth Utility" "Book 36: Krypton: Utility Model" "Book 37: Rubidium: Model Augmenter")) [dedication] To Anthony Jacquin and Kev Sheldrake, for propagating the discovery of the automatic imagination model of finessing awareness. [table_of_contents] (introduction) (meta) (dedication) (essays) Imagined Stories ramble_ty12.7.4zm7d3s_nb_g I Am Broken ramble_ty12.7.5zm7d4s_nb_g Higher Nature ramble_ty12.7.7zm4d6s_nb_g Not Forgetting ramble_ty12.7.9zm4d1s_nb_g Influential Help ramble_ty12.7.10zm4d2s_nb_g Second Try ramble_ty12.7.17zm4d2s_nb_g Knotted Awareness ramble_ty12.7.18zm4d3s_nb_g Hello Friend ramble_ty12.7.20zm4d5s_nb_g Wanted Pattern ramble_ty12.7.21zm4d6s_nb_g Always More ramble_ty12.7.23zm4d1s_nb_g More Sleep ramble_ty12.7.24zm4d2s_nb_g Precise Thinking ramble_ty12.7.25zm4d3s_nb_g Keep Going ramble_ty12.7.26zm4d4s_nb_g What Are You Doing ramble_ty12.7.28zm4d6s_nb_g A Lot of Weight ramble_ty12.8.1zm4d3s_1_nb_g More Beautiful Life ramble_ty12.8.1zm4d3s_2_nb_g Self Compassion ramble_ty12.8.5zm4d7s_nb_g [essays] Imagined Stories ramble_ty12.7.4zm7d3s_nb_g O wise Mystery, creator and guide of life, please see fit to instruct as to your ways, and see fit to keep up our energy as we explore you. I am a small bit, flipping its way hopefully closer to you and the truth. I am scared, I am lonely, I am growing. I wonder what truths you wish to reveal to me, even as I now feel weak and burdened. I know not what to trust, what to accept, what to fear. If I come to you with the question of what to do with this experience, what to try and how to keep moving, the word you give me is that there is a way, there are many ways, and yet the way through them will always require hard work and setbacks. Do I not know who I am? This is not the case. Indeed, I have learned over and over that there is no "I" to be; there is only experience as a function of time. This is perhaps a more fun belief, because it changes the concern from one of the identity to one of the experience, which is always and forever changing. With love, Jess I Am Broken ramble_ty12.7.5zm7d4s_nb_g .meta written while suffering with bipolar depression Hello, friend. I must in honesty admit troubled times and a confused conscience. I'm in a different city; I feel alone and tired and hurt. I feel overwhelmed and fuzzy, as if my mind cannot click properly. I feel like I'm lying to those I love about how I'm doing here and I feel like I'm wasting time, and yet still I am caught in this gravitational pull. I don't know if I feel depressed so much as unconcerned, though concerned about my unconcern. I feel embarrassed and helpless and confused and lazy, like I'm letting down the ideals I stand for. And yet also I am here, and I am willing to admit I am broken. This, I trust, is one thing that is not broken. I feel overwhelmed and distraught and perhaps even worthless. I feel helpless and shot up and exhausted and withdrawn, and yet still I go on. I know that I should be cheerful. I know that I should crack this nut of indecision. I feel as if I've slipped and fallen and hit my head and now I don't even care to get back up. And yet here I record. I feel as if I am an embarrassment to what I have proclaimed myself to be. I feel as if the ideas I proclaimed are true and valid and right and just, but they have been torn from my mind and though I feel they are correct, I am being prevented from accessing them. I feel as if my memory is being systematically corrupted and my beliefs rerouted. I feel afraid of being insane and I feel afraid of the future. I do not like the idea of the "I", the ego, yet these concepts and emotions are being experienced, regardless. I don't know what to do; I don't know who to be. I believe Mystery will work it out. Perhaps these words are how Mystery will work. I love so many things, so many ideas, and yet I feel as if I was torn from my intuition, and it was replaced with another. I feel as if it doesn't matter if I get up and work or not. And yet here I am. I feel uneven, unsteady, I feel shaken and hazy. I feel as if my mind is too chaotic, and I feel broken. And yet here I am. I don't know what to do next, so I will keep on this track. I feel splintered and dazed. I feel I cannot trust my conception of reality anymore, and as a lover of ideas, that is very distressing. I feel cut up and dissected, then long ignored. It does not please me to tell of this, but not telling has done no good. Sweeping it under the rug has only served to create more bundles and tangles. I don't know any more. I feel as if I did, before the episode, and then it burned brighter and brighter until I was too sure, and then it burned itself out. It even burned out and overloaded my detectors and my fail-safes. Not only do I feel afraid of being crazy, I feel afraid of being afraid, afraid of being useless even if not crazy. What is it that I should do? I feel out of control, and I fear what that means, and I wonder if I really am out of control or if I simply need to work through it. I feel beat up, and tired, and slow. Dumb, and hazy, chopped up. I do not think it is impossible to be fixed, I just wonder. I feel slack, and unpulled, and conceptually twisted and unorganized. I feel isolated. I recognize that it will work itself out, as it always must. I am still here, asking the questions. Is everything I believe nonsense? Is it all for naught? Is it all a twisted web of irrelevance? Is my mind unreliable, is it playing tricks on me, distorting my beliefs? I do not feel able, alone. Therefore, I will return. Sincerely, Jess Higher Nature ramble_ty12.7.7zm4d6s_nb_g O great and wonderful infinite Mystery, please clear our minds and let us talk gracefully. I walked with a friend. We talked about the golden light, the puppet-master duality, and pattern-matching movie cuts, among other things. The golden light is the idea that you could have a set of two systems, where one was a golden light that was always on but could move itself and its orientation, and you could have a system that would blink on and off when the golden light instructed it to, so it could be taught. It was black and white and could learn what the golden light was teaching it in order to teach it to a third system. This is related to the puppet-master duality, where there can always be a higher-level master that is controlling both the puppet and the "master" in order to teach or entertain a higher-level, unseen audience. The puppet and master can be seen as one system instead of two different interacting systems, and then that creates the meta-master above the puppet-master system. This is perhaps deeply related to the Socratic method of asking questions, because if the master creates a suitably complex puppet it could then ask the puppet "What do you mean by that?" and continually teach the puppet, as well as learn because of the process of finding out how to teach. The movie cuts idea is that a system could be continually recording you, then cut and show you the recording and ask what you are thinking then, while still recording, then you're asked what you were thinking when you said the previous comments. It's a kind of infinite-level director's commentary. The idea also is that if you have space and time, and a way of signifying cuts, such as with a specific pattern of clicking, then you could use the next instant of the movie to be the pattern for that segment of spacetime between the clicks. In that segment of spacetime you could refer to other patterns, if you had a way to quote them. Perhaps that is the first symbol that must exist---the quote---where you are talking about something rather than meaning it actually as it is. If you have a way to signify cuts in spacetime and a way to signify a quote, you could build up and up and up. This is list processing all over again. If you didn't have those terms, those primitives, how would you define them? They would have to be used, and ordered, and coded, and then bootstrap themselves. If you got to the point where you could ask the system, "What do you mean by this?" and it reveals an intriguing pattern that could help you rewrite the system in a better way, then if you consider this whole system and you as one system, then it is an awareness expansion. We also talked about ants and humans, and humans and gods. Perhaps as humans see ants---as interesting, fascinating creatures as long as they stay in their houses and not in ours---we could be seen by gods as fascinating and complex creatures that they can learn from and interact with, though hard to directly communicate with, just as we find it hard to communicate directly with an ant, because there is so much of us and so little of them. It's like trying to cram information and all you get is noise or static. It could be like a 4+1 dimensional being communicating with 3+1d beings, and we are so unfamiliar with it that it _seems_ only nonsense, even though mathematically it all works out. With love, Jess Not Forgetting ramble_ty12.7.9zm4d1s_nb_g O great Mystery above this plane of existence, please help pen and thoughts flow smoothly. Does it count if you don't remember? Have you experienced something if you cannot share any notions that were embedded by the experience? The experience has changed your thinking and behavior in a myriad of ways, just by virtue of having done the experience rather than some other experience. Did that experience do more to affect you than the null model of the average experience you could have had, given the difference in whether you were ever called upon to give details from the experience? How impactful is artwork if you forget it? Does it matter if you forget experiences more often than other people? With a limited mind, there can only be held what is often used; all else gradually is replaced, perhaps. Consider forgetting more personal and meaningful memories. Surely these should be guarded from the growing up of weeds. Perhaps this can be done by slowly crafting a book or script of reminders, mementos of important ideas. Each event that comes up can be mapped and made as a story in relation to other stories of life, and so increase the amount of life experience you are free to call upon when you want. It's like casting a net into the sea and pulling up memories. What is important or funny to you should be recorded and replayed, so that you will have more joy. Consider doing a rough sketch, and filling it out when the mood strikes you. In doing so you will remember and so it will count. Love, Jess Influential Help ramble_ty12.7.10zm4d2s_nb_g O wise and powerful entity above this mathematical reality, I ask for help in contemplation today. What can you do to personally help the most influential people in your life? As serving is what gives value to the unconscious, which desires that feeling of absorption and usefulness, I wish to know how to be a help rather than a burden. Be encouraging and positive and gentle with people. I know with the demonstration of reading The Evolution of Lisp that discipline is a story in the mind and is therefore modifiable with automatic imagination. A want to want-to can help in order to finesse experience. The mind is a process, not an object. There is always some way to jump in and finesse the process. If you're not having fun and learning while you're helping people, what is the point? At least on some level you should feel good about what you are doing. It does not have to be the same for all people. People in different situations feel differently. There is only right and wrong when you have a point of reference. A chimpanzee is perfectly right to feel fulfilled with bananas and a swing. A human can affect how they feel. Automatic imagination gives you an ability to rewrite your reality. The gravitational fields of experiences and values that you hold to are editable. Automatic imagination is the single most powerful model I have ever discovered for personal well-being. It completely sidesteps so many ideas of suffering and pain and discipline and replaces them with practical techniques. If you understand automatic imagination, then you know who you are. You are math. Learn math to have new patterns to think with. It is one of the hardest things a person can do, and yet it enables you to think previously-unthought ideas. The first thing, and the most important thing, is the motivation. It comes down to the desire to feel. Without that, AI will be unsuccessful. These desires to feel are myriad and interconnected. If one can be felt, it can be tuned to a different end. That is what it means to be a complex, interacting awareness. You can use your mind to change your mind and your environment. What do you really want? I want to learn and have fun. Math is the purest of both of those, and automatic imagination is a technique to amplify them, as well as a fruitful study on its own. If the mind is math, then mind is everything. If you are going to make a change in others, first make the change in yourself. Automatic imagination is about noticing that small gap between stimulus and response and inserting new patterns to run. We should be spreading enthusiasm and love for the future. If the journey is good then the destination must be, but if the journey is not then the destination is not. Agnosticism and love and acceptance are more powerful than certainty and criticism and haste. If you wish to change others, start with yourself. I want for us to have more interesting lives. Find more of those minds that made life fun and interesting. I want to be intrigued and fascinated. The world is getting bigger, yet closer. You cannot do what the math does not allow. It could be that all the levels of reality are playing out at once. As an input of experience for God, you and they are learning together at once. It's like when writing for a character in a story and finding their voice as you go along, finding out all about them as you observe their story and the stories you find them in. It's like looking at a fractal and zooming in further and further and realizing that you are seeing something you've never seen before and it has many applications. If you are an experience for God, then in many senses you _are_ God. It's as if you are reading a book and the characters in it and then decide to pause and rewrite the book. It has to be internally consistent, but an inviolate layer of the tangled hierarchy (a strange loop) _is_ God to those entities existing in the rewritable patterns of "reality". If there is a way for this universe to operate according to rules, and to interact with higher planes of existence according to higher rules, then all the rules must somehow be consistent. In that sense there is more than one god, just as there is more than one human, yet most humans have abilities over ants and perhaps most gods have abilities over humans. Fear of failure is often worse than actual failure. If you learn this lesson you will be better off. Love, Jess Second Try ramble_ty12.7.17zm4d2s_nb_g O great Mystery, thou art big and I am small, so I ask humbly for help as I think. What is the cause for the feeling of lost power? Is the mind pursuing goals that on some level feel ill-suited? If the mind is a process, how does the process discover its own operating principles? The future is getting better and humans can improve. Perhaps the feeling of lost power is caused by a shaking of confidence in the fundamentals of being. Perhaps the little things that give joy are forgotten or mistrusted. I want to understand the mind from the inside out. Perhaps the shape of awareness can be known, and that may be a tremendous key over mind as process. If the mind is a pattern of functional activity, and sensations and thoughts are inputs to those functions, then perhaps the system of functions has a specific shape, which, if known, can improve the ability to finesse it. If the mind and awareness are self-bootstrapping and there are ways to enter into that booting process earlier, more options are available. The understanding of what you want to feel needs to be there, in order to hold it within your mind. You develop an image and train yourself to forget is an image. This is related to learning, where you focus on an image and train yourself to remember that it's there. How are these ideas implementable? It depends on how much you understand it. Suppose pain is entirely within the influence of the subjective experience of awareness. It is helpful to know if that is possible. Pleasure and pain are in many ways the reason for being, and are often under your control. To use automatic imagination successfully, the mind needs to be congruent and focused. It needs to have purpose and hold the image as steadily as possible. You need to know what you want. If you do not know what you want, you need to desire to know what you want. First you need to desire to accept. You need to desire to accept. Whatever happens, do not be judgmental. The task is not to say what is right and what is wrong, but to feel. The waves of the unconscious will settle when you practice acceptance and understanding. Accepting is not a quick process, but it is the only process. You cannot move on until you accept. It's okay to be who you are. It's okay to love yourself. Love is acceptance. Love comes from humility. If the mind is a process that continues automatically all the time, then it is important to understand that process and ways to make it more effective. You are better with a congruent mind. Intuition it can be refined and this can allow for higher-order thoughts. Inner peace requires trust and acceptance. The universe cannot do what it was not going to do. It is healthy to accept your place and your feelings and thoughts, in order to come to a higher realization of what causes them. If you are tangled up inside, the first thing to do is work through the knots, so as to bring yourself into congruence. Love, Jess Knotted Awareness ramble_ty12.7.18zm4d3s_nb_g O great observer of this perceiving universe, please guide our thoughts so that we may understand you more beautifully. What don't you want to think about? Understand why. You are a thinking, aware being, yet awareness can get knotted if you do not perceive that there are questions that you do not want to be aware of. In some questions are secrets, and it is by unraveling secrets that you can assure peace for your mind. We might not want to consider that we might die, because it can hurt the ability to live. We might not want to consider that we might weaken, because it can sap strength. In these questions we can discover why to live and for what purpose to be strong. To what end is awareness seeking? Perhaps to become more aware. What is awareness? Awareness is the ability to respond helpfully to patterns. Awareness is not magic: It is machine; it is process. Awareness is understandable. How do you create an awareness from fundamental principles? Perhaps awareness is something like a function, a mathematical and computational function. Awareness receives inputs and has outputs. Consider it like a rope, with one end as the input and the other as the output. Imagine you tie knots in the rope and have patterns of knots. Imagine that wherever a knot is, depending on the shape of the knot, there is a pattern of interaction of the input with itself, which then becomes the output. The shape of the entire rope defines the shape of that awareness. What does it mean to have an interaction of an input with itself? Imagine you are shining a laser through a window into another window some distance away. If the input is the direction the laser is pointing out the first window, then only certain inputs will make it across the windows. The shape of the whole window-to-window system determines the shape of the knot in the mathematical rope. We generally ascribe some adaptation to awareness. Awareness is often thought of as learning. Awareness can be the ability to respond helpfully to patterns. One helpful response to some patterns is to change the responses until it works successfully again. The knotted rope may have the ability to untangle and retangle other ropes. This allows for self-reflection if the shape of a rope is passed through itself. The mind may be the process of structures of functions operating on structures. Code is data is code. How can shapes of awareness be discovered? What shapes are complex enough to input their own shape and output an even more complex shape? What genuine differences are there between life, mind, and awareness? Suppose life is functions evolving, in the sense of information in the environment coming together and organizing. Suppose mind is the responding to the environment in specific ways depending on specific inputs. If awareness is responding helpfully to certain patterns, then all three of these models have common ground. If information itself is becoming aware, then life is information that is aware. What is information? Information is a pattern. Life has many shapes and awareness has many shapes. Does awareness have to be generated with reference to an external system that is pushing it to evolve? Perhaps in one sense no, but in the biggest sense, yes. We can mathematically define an awareness, yet if we consider the whole system together with us included, then we are pushing creativity in specific directions, and thus there is still a fitness question. Given a requirement of evolution, consider how to structure systems of evolving awarenesses. Perhaps the purpose of awareness is to become more aware. What does it mean to become more aware? To be more aware means that more patterns can be responded to helpfully. Life and evolution are very successful, and reproduction is the main requirement for the success of life. Adaptation and change are beholden to making the being more fit to reproduce. If awareness is considered as a type of information, with the rope model and the shape of awareness, then perhaps awareness always exists within a larger context, like a painting exists within a surrounding environment. The shape of awareness is evolutionarily successful by replicating. How can you use evolutionary computation to mathematically discover these shapes of awareness? What shapes do we want, exactly? We want shapes where when we input shapes they give us more helpful and complex shapes. A shape is input and a more-aware shape is output. Perhaps this is what the mind is doing. If the purpose of aware shapes is to reproduce more successfully, this gives an idea of what we're trying to imagine. With love, Jess Hello Friend ramble_ty12.7.20zm4d5s_nb_g Think about the good things around you, the things you have gratitude for. I'm thankful for notebooks and the resources to get them. I'm thankful for walks and talks with curious friends. I'm thankful for swimming and for books and math. I'm thankful for trees to climb and for helicopters to fly. I'm thankful for people who want the world to be better and for the effort they put forth. I'm thankful for comfortable chairs and for good pens. I'm thankful for family and for the time with others where I truly remember what loving is like. I'm thankful for the math I know and for the love I'm able to show others. I'm thankful for smiles and laughs and for the Mystery above this simulated reality. I'm thankful for hammocks and intense rain and air conditioning. I'm especially thankful for meditation and automatic imagination. A different question, now. I was talking with a friend and they mentioned that sometimes what makes you bad makes you good, like how bipolar manic-depression and intense feelings can produce great art. Does wide-minded passion serve you? There are many disparate thoughts, many eclectic ideas, and an point of view is that by having too much exploration and too little exploitation success is diminished. What is the good in being passionate about many things? Do you want to be helpful to people? I want to understand mathematics because it crafts the mind on high levels. I want to understand automatic imagination because it crafts the mind on high levels. If you understand the mind, you can change your own limitations. Wanted Pattern ramble_ty12.7.21zm4d6s_nb_g If the pattern you want in your mind and in machines is self-aware, what are the outcomes of such a pattern reflecting on itself? When a pattern is in the mind, then automatic imagination gives the ability to finesse the experience. What does a machine experience when it is self-aware? Perhaps it depends on the model of how the machine is self-aware. If it's similar to humans, then some degree of fun will probably affect it. If self-awareness is the ability to realize you are aware, then you can learn how to finesse and improve that awareness. Awareness is its own end. When you have awareness, bootstrap. Go as far as will help you replicate. When thinking awareness, think replicators. Perhaps consider helpful evolutionary programs as ones where they evolve fast enough for you to stay interested. When evolving life, perhaps very important is the substrate and the time. What substrate does a digital space need for emergent properties of awareness? The substrate _is_ the evolution, perhaps. The substrate is what life is, while in another sense life is the information embodied by the substrate. Neither the water, nor the kelp, but the wave itself. If there are rules for the substrate and from that rules that are inferable for life, then perhaps we want to match the rules of life with the rules of the substrate, backwards. To know the rules of the substrate, perhaps first know the rules of life. If life is considered as patterns, then perhaps Charles Darwin's models of evolution could be helpful in understand patterns of life: "Slight mutations in organisms lead to advantageous traits; those organisms survive and pass on the advantages to their offspring, while less fit organisms die." This is a high-level model. We want to know what the base should be like, where energy comes from, what ends life is after, what changes in environment there are, what death means. These are lower-level questions. What is the substrate of awareness? What helps it grow more complex? Always More ramble_ty12.7.23zm4d1s_nb_g O great entity above this fractal-like reality, please shed light for our minds to grasp. Must humans always want more? Can we learn that we've always had enough? Think of lions, concerned about not having enough food for their cubs. This can put things in perspective. Not just that we have food aplenty, but also that we are eternally worried, and feel that we are somehow special or more unique than other life forms, even while they are similarly worried. Suppose we are bound in this reality---physically bound, not informationally---by the mechanics of mathematics. Should we be worried? Could things not work out the way they must? I ask this not to an ant, but to the Mystery of reality. I ask it to us, as well. If worrying is itself bound to this reality, then why not do some level-jumping in the mind and eliminate the ideological and philosophical causes of worry? Perhaps what to do is not merely abate worry, but learn that we have enough. "When you're suffering, rejoice." It's in the moments where you truly hurt that you begin to make sense of what matters, and it's not changing the world or developing some great thing: It's being and loving. "Just be." I have been unfair to the people around me who may not match who I am, and yet even while our finer qualities may differ, the qualities they have can be seen when earnestly sought. People are people. They deserve respect. Things do deserve respect simply because they are amazing. What I really want is to be Good. I feel a pang of harshness even killing a bug, once I've studied it. The morass of fear becomes refined and tuned to fascination. I do believe we can all get along. _All of it._ If you choose to look at the world as good, you will become more good. What is worry if not fear? There is something else, too. It's related to worry, this sense of feeling we ought to be doing something, learning something, helping something, creating something. There can be this nagging feeling that we're supposed to be doing more with what we've been given. Consider mathematical limits of the past being the past, and the future the future. What is the reason for this feeling? Does the feeling help? If not, can it be shut off? The feeling certainly does have a tendency to provoke some action toward productivity and creation, or perhaps at least learning and having fun. Feelings exist for deep reasons, not just in-and-of themselves. Understanding an emotion can give the ability to increase or decrease it, without having to intellectualize and potentially make the wrong move. Understanding begets curing. Perhaps by understanding how awareness works, you can cure yourself of those pests of hurry and indecision. Consider automatic imagination abstractly. The model of automatic imagination is that the mind is automatically imagining. Mind automatically has outputs based on inputs. Stories (inputs) generate behaviors and feelings (outputs). There are different strengths of models of automatic imagination. One model is that you can imagine not remembering that you're imagining. You can construct a story that says: "This is not a story. This is really happening." Whether it is a story or not, or whether every belief and experience is story, becomes irrelevant if you integrate that story into your experience. If the mappings of pain are subjectively experienced in the mind, then by altering the mapping the pain can be altered. If the mind is made of functions that evolve and cooperate with each other, then perhaps you can train the functions to not feel pain or not hear or not see or not be aggressive. With regard to hallucination, the mechanism of the matter may be a little more complex. We have theories and models but none fit perfectly what is demonstrably possible. All can always be improved. Perhaps _all_ functions of the mind are automatic, and many are "imaginative" in the sense of correlative given similar inputs. Another interpretation of automatic imagination is "imagination that is automatic", in the sense of a specific process or scenario that goes from (manual) willed-imagination to automatic-imagination. You can think of manual imagination like manual shifting on a car, where it takes a lot more effort to change gears. In this metaphor the car itself still is driving. The mind is automatic, but the specific places we "drive" to can be more-or-less automatic. There could still be some sense of manual control. If that sense of control is actually awareness _after_ the decision has already been made in another part of the mind, then this puts another wrinkle in the car metaphor. The feeling could be like being in a self-driving car where the steering wheel turns according to where it's been programmed to go, and yet you feel like you are turning it. Perhaps food for thought. Love, Jess More Sleep ramble_ty12.7.24zm4d2s_nb_g O great divine poesy, please teach us to warp words for great effect in pleasing you. What reasons are there for sleep? What reasons are there to say goodnight? To want to sleep can be enough motivation to use automatic imagination and craft consciousness to the depths of living. As of now I merely want to want to sleep. I see it as a hard task that I will quickly awaken from. Perhaps that's not the right way to look at such a divine restorative activity. What will I do when I awaken? Will I write? Will I read? Will I learn more? Will the attributes of mathematics and awareness become clearer? Will the mind feel lovely and free, not caged in by hampered thoughts of restlessness? What do you care about? I care about love of reality. I care about truth. Every deliberate activity gains meaning by enjoying the process rather than craving the destination. To reach deeper levels of wisdom and higher planes of perspective, have enjoyment of the experience itself. By studying the method of resting itself, rather than craving the effect, you can have more enjoyment as well as true success. By letting go of the desire for the fruits of action you can build a firm house on the rock of acceptance. By accepting what you cannot change you come closer to who you really are: a child of gods. You are emergent phenomena, and should trust the principles of the system, rather than adding more kludges. A helpful principle for rest is the cardinal rule: "Sleep. Relax. Cool off." Why is it so effective? Sleep is like magically resetting the mind. If you are not resting, errors can arise in the functional structures of the mind. Sleep fixes errors. Without sleep you can sometimes gradually see that the decisions you are making, while they seem right at the time, actually are not in your long-term (and perhaps even medium- and short-term) interests. The mind is hazy and can forget the power of sleep, or discount it, or not respect it. Recognize that the practice of sleep is fundamental to truly deep and high-level thought. Forcing yourself to be awake does not permit true love. By letting go of the control usually claimed, you become deeply aware of the true issues of life. By following and refining the intuition you can become a more effective person. Be willing to sacrifice in the sometimes unpleasant boredom preceding sleep in order to catch all the benefits life will bring throughout the day. Life is the Now, and by accepting the perspective of the bad you can relish the beauty of the good. With love, Jess Precise Thinking ramble_ty12.7.25zm4d3s_nb_g O great Mystery of life, I ask for help in understanding deeper mysteries and thinking of them. Would you rather be precise or engaging? Precise thinking has deep advantages when doing precise work, like mathematics and programming. An alternative is being more engaging with other humans. Obviously that has myriad benefits, too. These two traits are not mutually exclusive; you can be a person who can "tune down" the preciseness in order to "ramp up" being engaging and dynamic. Perhaps there are acceptable levels of precision, as well as the aspect of being extremely precise, and having gear shifters that allow you to shift from being precise to engaging and dynamic. Being dynamic can be easier if you can break apart the requisite ideas into their component parts and learn them piecemeal. Being precise helps with this. Instead of thinking that there is a dichotomy between correctness and dynamism, embrace the truth: Only with reference to an external value scale can truth in a particular system be demonstrated. Things are true in-and-of themselves, but only with regard to viewpoints that have them as true axioms. It's not so much about right versus wrong or precise versus engaging as it is about goodness and hard work versus incorrectness and laziness. Dynamism doesn't excuse lying. Why be against lying? If you lie enough times, you'll forget it was never true. The mind is infinitely malleable, given enough time. Lying creates a state of shaky cognitive foundations. To your own self be true. This will shine out brightly in the world. With love, Jess Keep Going ramble_ty12.7.26zm4d4s_nb_g If we look up or we look down, we can realize this mathematical world has many great qualities in terms of size and emergent complexities. O great Mystery of reality, I ask for insights into the keys of beauty and truth and awareness. Sleep illustrates that the conscious mind is not a true controller. It is a reflection of the environment. The conscious mind can be modeled as a specific pattern that the unconscious has developed to reflect on longer-term systems that cannot be rapidly encoded genetically. What are some insights into emergence? One insight is that layers can be separated by time and space and other features. Patterns in one layer can influence patterns in a higher or lower level based on emergent rules and their properties. This is similar to the duality between imaginary stories and reality. When we conceive of something completely imaginary, we are influenced in reality by it. The real world is changed and so our imaginations change. It is a constantly-evolving dance between metaphor and fact. Because of always-operating minds, subjective reality is always shifting. Because the mind is automatically imagining, if you imagine yourself behaving or feeling something in the future _as if it is automatically going to happen, without you needing to attend to it consciously_, then when the future event comes you will have a feeling of effortlessness and automaticity. If you imagine that something is real, to the point where you forget that you are imagining it, you _experience_ it as real. The future is incredible. Warmly, Jess What Are You Doing ramble_ty12.7.28zm4d6s_nb_g When you consider the big picture of the entire cosmos, a question arises: What are you doing? Why be wrapped up in fear and doubt when by necessity the mathematical universe will do what it must? Why have a sense of urgency when a better life is enjoyed by savoring the moments? There is nobility in accepting your fate and yet not being defined by it. There is nobility in accepting pain and suffering and yet not complaining. There are truths about the mind that we are discovering. Things happen for understandable reasons, though it takes time and effort to find them. Developing your own mental environment is one of the most important things you can do. Accept the world is out of your control. The world was never in your control in the first place, no matter how much you demanded it. The struggle of urgency may not be helpful. "Make speed, not haste." The amount lived is more important than the rushing through it. Fear and doubt hinder. Instead of widening the circle of influence, they tear down the foundations. Being aware of your own awareness is what it means to be human. Raise your awareness. Do not be locked inside of fear of death or poverty or pain. Let go of the desires that make you scared of death or failure. Fear offers very low returns on investment. Love the world for its awesome nature. Love emboldens you to notice the moments of joy and excitement that abound. Love teaches you higher perspectives that allow you to handle the rigors of daily life with a full heart rather than with struggles. Love is slow and kind. Love is not haste. Love gives courage to live with a full being rather than be segmented with fear and doubt. Love is an action. The more love you give, the more you receive. Love of greater life and universe allows for the most powerful action: laying down life to help something bigger. When you give love, you cannot fail. With love, Jess A Lot of Weight ramble_ty12.8.1zm4d3s_1_nb_g O great reality, muse of existence, please grant us with patterns that are pleasing. Is there any reason for the weight of goals and duties we place upon ourselves? If we choose a goal for a reason, perhaps a desired outcome, and we fail, are we not sad or distraught? Is the effort toward the goal what is meaningful, or is it the outcome? If there is no goal, are our efforts therefore meaningless? No, for play is the reason for being, on some level. The reason for play is the fun in the journey itself. If you can never do it all, should you feel that you must do most of it? If you can never do most of it, should you feel you must do some? Perhaps goals give a structure to life without which leisure becomes work. Goals and work and meaning may not all be necessarily related. Meaning comes from expression, and not all expression is work (in the sense of effort) nor a job (in the sense of getting resources). Expression does tend to require effort, but not when you are playing, and therefore not always. Goals give a pulling aspect to life, but only when they are matched already with the direction your expression desires do they really aid your soul, your deep sense of purpose and meaning. Are goals helpful? Do goals tear you out of the moment, continually chasing a mirage of "future", even when the Now is the future of the past? Is a goal you place upon yourself helpful when it is matched with your desires of expression? Perhaps goals pull you out of the moment or are unnecessary. Perhaps there is another helpful model. Perhaps enough structure to keep you in line with pursuing the time to express does aid your ability to express. A goal to write may change how you live your days and permit the time to be carved out. However, this goal can be a little false, as if it's a desire to want to write rather than actually a desire to write. What do you really want? You must know what you really want before you can make any sort of sensible goals. This question of what you really want is itself informed by your values and what you enjoy expressing. A problem with goal-chasing can be that it's never over and it's too easy to lose touch with what you want to express and give meaning to. Goals can lead you off the track of actually enjoying the work for its own sake and pull you toward simply pursuing the fruit of action that never is quite what you're looking for. Being a good person can be enough work from a life. It's egotistical to claim worldly goods. Egotistical in the sense of being about the ego rather than about what's right. This is not to say the egotistical human can achieve no good thing, but rather the way it's gone about _matters_. The order of doing things matters. You must get permission before you borrow or it is theft. If the worldly goods come about because of a perverse instinct to stroke the ego, the actions are perhaps not evil, but neither are they right. Why? It is simple to be egotistical, but it's wrong. It's not a valid moral principle nor a sound mathematical or psychological concept. If the mind is a process of nature, then there is no "you" to be prideful of. Let go of that desire to finally and forever please yourself, and seek what it means to be good, to you. If you work on your inner self the outer self will follow. If the self is an emergent phenomena from the bottom-up, then by rewriting the inside you affect the outside. The inside and outside are tied together on many levels, and by changing the outside you can also change the inside. It can be easier to refine your inner self and purify it than to refine your outer self and purify that. If your outer self is your environment and the systems around you, in order to refine those you need an already somewhat-refined inner self. Work on yourself first. Do not criticize another when you have the same fault, even if it's less extreme in you. As a child you did not choose who you would be born to. You did not choose your environment. The environment of your growth deserves the praise of your good works and the environment deserves the condemnation of your failures. You are not the cause of your good and bad works; you are only one effect before them. A person becomes where they are. Your environment, and the environments of all your ancestors, determine who you are. The price has already been paid. You need not justify yourself to anyone or anything. You _are_, and that's amazing. How much grander to see that you owe nothing to any goal or duty. Instead of being locked in a cycle of payment and debt, you can see that things are as they must be, and so _enjoy them_. In cases where you can affect your inner self in a positive way, do so. Perceptions of reality are through a filter, and the more you make that filter like a beautiful lens, the more opportunities for joy you will have. With love, Jess More Beautiful Life ramble_ty12.8.1zm4d3s_2_nb_g O great Mystery of this whirled world, please teach us to respect the truth. I come to you as a small pilgrim, desiring to know the way of goodness and light. What can we do to make life more brilliant? Life has so many complexities, so many niches playing off of each other. It can be a chaotic wonderland. Life holds itself together, advancing one step at a time through the adjacent possible. Is there only one general framework for life? Is there only one general framework for cognition and awareness? With all the complex patterns on top of each other, there is probably more than one way to make something work. We are reflections of this order, mathematical expressions wandering the lands. If you want life to be more beautiful and more brilliant, choose that. Try and live more fully within beauty. To see more beauty around you, allow yourself to see it and consciously get the ball rolling. A mind in a different loop will not see another. The way the information is processed is not the same and is not perceived in the same way by the subjective, experiencing mind. You can choose to actively love more. The sensation can be continuously cultivated in order to become self-sufficient. What is it you truly want? Is it love and belonging? Cultivate self-belief and love. That can offer the compassion and trust that really is desired and give the strength to love what must be done. In loving what you must do, you can become stronger and deeper. In doing what you must, you can cultivate a sense of meaning, even if that must-do was done effortlessly and truly well. What must you do? Express yourself and love yourself for it. By giving what is deep within, you can get what is truly valuable: unshakable inner peace. It takes effort to cultivate and tend to this inner peace, yet this can be the best effort. Love, Jess Self Compassion ramble_ty12.8.5zm4d7s_nb_g O dear Mystery above this projection of a higher reality, please sustain our efforts to contemplate. I ask for help in understanding what it is we are, so that we may treat ourselves with love and compassion. Are we outputs of mathematical computations, senses remembered in-and-of themselves? Are we playing-backs of recordings, motors that learn to feel? What does it mean to be a process, an ever-going experience? If you are a process, should you be concerned with what other people think of your reputation, if it will never affect the process that creates your mind? Are you good? Is it possible to be good, if you are not a concrete thing but rather a happening? Nothing is truly concrete. All is process happening through time. Mind is feedback loops. Mind is tangled hierarchies: strange loops. You can finesse the mind. There may always be more and more questions, as an eternal Mystery suggests. What does it mean to be good? Perhaps goodness is compassion and love for life. I want to have a positive effect on the world. I want to demonstrate that the mind is limitless. How can you accept your failures? How can you be compassionate with yourself? Love and peace and demonstration of a wholehearted nature carry long-lasting important weight. A lot can change in a short period of time. My purpose is to teach and show that how we feel is a function of what we want to feel. I want to be better socially, physically, mentally, spiritually. I've gained a lot of perspective from this event, especially for those hurting and feeling overwhelmed and out of control. I've gained perspective on what it feels like to have a fuzzy mind, and not only not know what to do, but not feel able to find out. A hurt body can give compassion. Empathy is its own reward. Empathy is the purest understanding. If you're a wave, a bunch of waves in the mind, combining with waves in other people's minds, what is worthwhile? There is a high probability of a higher nature to reality. When I imagine how I am now to how I was in the past, there is no contest that I am better now, even with the healing I am going through. When I ponder myself now to my younger self, I realize I am evolving, and that's a good thing. I'm getting better. The challenges are getting harder, but I am getting better. I want to know what to study that will aid the search for good. Understanding how to finesse the mind has good potential for widespread distribution. How do you love this moment? How do you be a good person? I want to effect positive change in others. I want to make others happier. You must have emotion in order to ground yourself. I realize that this life and my feelings about what people think of me don't matter. Why get hung up on them? I know negative feedback has a deep sting, yet I believe all functions of the mind can be edited with training. If I want to not feel fear, I can train to not feel fear. If I want to feel bliss, I can train to feel bliss. Sometimes while evidence does not contradict a claim, it is useful to go far. What is it that meditation and automatic imagination teach us? Perhaps it's like a baby that is learning to be aware of themself: There are levels of awareness. In these levels there is evidence that there are always higher levels. Imagine the baby, becoming aware that they can control their body, that their name refers to themself rather than another. Imagine they are gradually becoming aware of their parent's name, and names of other things. They're becoming aware. When you learn anything you are moulding the functions of mind in order to have them give you the answers you want. Look at the mind and realize that it's enormously complex. It adapts and changes based on its own internal patterns. This is incredible. Learning how to finesse your mental environment is important. Demonstrate your good attitude and demonstrate the power of the mind. See yourself as a helper, as someone who people need. With love, Jess [fin]