Tag: Buddhist Practice

Poor precision in communication distorts motives

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

And distorted motives warp human interactions, which in turn degrade individual psychology.

There is no way around it—the ways almost all people communicate are much cruder than their brains are capable of.

And that is the cause of most of what we now call (non-biological) “mental health” problems.

Here is an example: I want to say something very complex to my primary care doctor. I can give her the gist in a minute or two but I do not want to have that go on my medical record.

So I ask her if I can start a discussion that she will promise to keep off my record.

She says, “I’ll think about it.”

A week later I get a letter from her nurse saying she is not willing to do what I asked.

No reason why was given. Do rules prevent her from doing that? I have heard of doctors allowing patients to keep some concerns off the record, but who knows what the reality is? Do you?

If I insist, will that go on my record? Did what I asked in the first place go on my record? My doctor is trapped within or is voluntarily following some guideline that is most decidedly not in my best interests.

This same sort of thing can happen interpersonally. If I raise a topic that is psychologically important to me with even a close friend, I have to wonder will they understand? Will they allow me to expand the subject over a few weeks or months or longer? Will my initial statements change our friendship?

The basic problem is how do you discuss complex psychological subjects with others?

One of my friends works in alternative health care. She knows what I want to bring up with my doctor and admits that even in her professional setting where patients have an hour to open up, there is not enough time.

Back to my primary care doctor. I saw her again a year later and she asked if I remembered her. I said, “Of course I remember you.” She said no more and neither of us raised the off-the-record topic. An intern was with her.

I wonder what she thinks of me. Did she interpret my slightly nervous behavior when I first asked as a “sign” of something? Does she think I am volatile or bipolar or just nuts? (I am not.)

I am 100% sure that she cannot possibly know what I wanted to bring up with her. In this case, I have all of the information and I want to give it to her but she cannot or will not allow that unless my initial fumblings toward a complex subject are made public.

Even a  close friend could find themselves in a similar position. And I wonder if I have done that myself to someone. Most people most of the time are not able to scale those walls that divide us.

On either side of the wall is a complex person capable of complex understanding, but one or both persons cannot scale the wall. My doctor is smart enough to have become an MD and yet I cannot tell her about a complex medical condition that is of great importance to me.

I know that I do not want to open the subject and risk a shallow public label (a common hindrance to many potential communications). I honestly do not know what my doctor is thinking. Maybe I will try again the next time I see her.

One year later: I didn’t try again. After much thought, I decided to switch doctors. And I will not bring this subject up with my new doctor. It’s a sad reality that trying at all ruined (in my mind) my relationship with my first doctor and convinced me that the topic is not one I can discuss with any medical professional in a professional setting and maybe in any setting.

__________

UPDATE: I first posted the above a few years ago. The world has changed. What I wanted to discuss with my doctor is the attacks I have suffered at the hands of Jewish Supremists. ABN.

Ex-Norwegian PM Jagland attempted suicide amid Epstein-linked corruption probe: Report

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland, who also chaired the Norwegian Nobel Committee and served as Secretary General of the Council of Europe, was reportedly hospitalised following an alleged suicide attempt amid corruption charges linked to his connections with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The development came days after Jagland was formally charged with aggravated corruption, which carries a potential 10-year prison term.

He has denied wrongdoing, describing his ties to Epstein as “unwise” or “poor judgement” and pledging full cooperation with the investigation.

link

Thorbjørn Jagland, former Norwegian Prime Minister and chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 2009 to 2015, was directly involved in awarding Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. As the committee’s chairman at the time, he oversaw the decision to grant the prize to Obama, a move that drew significant international attention and criticism due to Obama being less than nine months into his presidency and during ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

_________

The West is dying because our general sense of right and wrong is far too abstract and out of touch with the extremely vast majority of human cultures in the world today and throughout history. I can respect people who kill themselves over personal moral issues. But it appears Jagland was remiss on the morality of global and national politics as well. He is emblematic of of the deep failure of Westerners to live up to their own ideals while also failing to protect their own people. Notice, Epstein trafficked and sexually abused zero Jewish victims. He was as low as they come, but still. First Noble Truth — the human realm is characterized by suffering which arises out of clinging to delusion. ABN

Our brains take time to update unless we are shown the update

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Our perception is continuously biased toward the past to help stabilize the chaotic world we live in.

Watch the video below (1 min, 32 sec) to see this illusion in real-time:

This video illustrates how our brains ignore change or incorporate it into our perceptions somewhat slowly through a “continuity field,” as described below:

Our brains are constantly uploading rich, visual stimuli. But instead of seeing the latest image in real time, we actually see earlier versions because our brain’s refresh time is about 15 seconds, according to new UC Berkeley research.

The findings, appearing in the journal Science Advances, add to a growing body of research about the mechanism behind the “continuity field,” a function of perception in which our brain merges what we see on a constant basis to give us a sense of visual stability.

“If our brains were always updating in real time, the world would be a jittery place with constant fluctuations in shadow, light and movement, and we’d feel like we were hallucinating all the time,” said study senior author David Whitney, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology, neuroscience and vision science.

link

The study—Illusion of visual stability through active perceptual serial dependence—focuses on the illusion of visual stability:

Despite a noisy and ever-changing visual world, our perceptual experience seems stable over time. How does our visual system achieve this apparent stability? Here, we introduce a previously unknown visual illusion that shows direct evidence for a mechanism continuously smoothing our percepts over time.

As a result, a continuously seen physically changing object can be misperceived as unchanging.

In the video above, you can notice two things: 1) the slowness and blurriness of our perceptual change as we watch the video, and 2) that we can and do accept that change the moment it is shown to us in comparative stills.

If vision behaves this way, it is fair to assume our psychologies or, more precisely, our psychological memories do something similar on both points.

I was intrigued to see that the authors of the study calculated a time-span of 15 seconds:

We find that online object appearance is captured by past visual experience up to 15 seconds ago. 

This is roughly the ‘speed’ or duration of our working memories.

FIML works most of all with the working memory because when we correct a mistake in our working memory or upgrade the data in our working memory while it is still present, we are able to make large changes in our psychologies almost effortlessly.

FIML leverages the working memory to make large changes in our whole brain memories.

It works well because changing your working memory to fit the obvious reality staring you in the face is easy.

In contrast changing whole brain memories and psychologies through rumination and recollection typically only entrenches them further and deeper.

While it is easy to see how this happens visually as in the video above, it may be difficult to see how to do this with our complex psychologies as they are functioning in real-time.

FIML completely solves this problem and yet it may be hard to see how and why.

It works like this:

The how is done by pausing real-life in real-time so you can compare your own mind’s percept with your partner’s percept of the same thing and make corrections as warranted.

The why is psychologically analogous to correcting the illusions produced by our brains “continuously smoothing our percepts over time.” This “continuously smoothing over time” prevents wholesome, realistic change. It lies at the heart of many psychological problems.

Communication at arm’s length

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Most communication is done at arm’s length.

By this I mean our deepest levels of meaning, emotion, and intention are either implied or more often concealed from the person(s) we are speaking with.

In professional and formal settings (school, clubs, church, etc.) this is pretty much how it has to be since there is not enough time to delve more deeply and no good reason to do so in most cases.

Problems arise, however, when the arm’s length habits of formal settings are imported into intimate private settings such as close friendships, marriages, families.

Arm’s length communication is effective in formal settings, but its use of reduced messaging techniques in private settings invariably enters gray areas followed by conscious lying.

I think people do this in their private communications mainly because they don’t know how to communicate in any other way. Humans are basically somewhat smart apes who have a fairly complex (for us) communication/language system grafted onto the instincts of a wild animal.

When the inevitable ambiguities and lies of arm’s length communications build up within the intimate communications of couples or close friends, the result will be explosive emotions or alienation and apathy.

The simple arm’s length system is a primitive, basic system for communicating obvious things. To be honest, if you enjoy your communications at work or the clubhouse more than at home, you are basically showing how primitive you are.

In formal settings communication is entirely based on predetermined mutual agreement concerning values, beliefs, etc.

Private settings require much more nuance and thus a much more nuanced communication technique.

FIML is designed for private, intimate communication. It allows partners to open their minds to much richer and much healthier interactions.

You cannot achieve optimum psychological health if you engage only in arm’s length communication. You can only do so by using a technique like FIML that allows you and your partner to consciously share the profound world of interpersonal subjectivity.

FIML takes some time and practice but it is no harder than learning how to ski or cook  or play a musical instrument moderately well.

The Buddha Bucket inside the Oseberg Viking burial site

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The Buddha bucket had a figure making the joint of the bucket handle. That figure was practising the meditation position. He sat on the lotus position (“Padmāsana”). His head flat. Eyes closed and facial expression sank. The decorations on the chests were in the yellow, red, and blue colours. It was the swastika illustrating the front of the Buddha’s cloak. The swastika in Buddism meant luck, good fortune, and blessing. 

The Vikings must have met the Buddhists from other regions during their voyages or the newcomers came to Scandinavian countries to trade. 

The Buddha bucket handle found in Viking Oseberg burial ship

link

Very small decisions and what they show about us

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

A very small decision I make on many mornings is which coffee cup is going to be mine and which goes to my partner.

The two cups we normally use are the same and I cannot tell one from the other. If I thought one was better than the other, I would give it to her.

What happens is at some point while I take the cups from the cupboard and set them on the counter, I incline toward deciding that one of them will be for me and one for her. This “decision” is so small I describe it as “incline toward deciding.”

As I continue preparing morning coffee, my very small decision about which cup is mine spends more time in my mind. By the time I pour the coffee, I am generally always mildly set on which one is going to be mine for the morning and which hers.

My initial “inclining toward deciding” has changed into my being “mildly set on” which cup is mine. I might even feel a bit possessive toward “my” cup as I pour the coffee.

The main point is that once we make even a very weak decision or incline toward a weak decision it requires energy to change that.

Of course, I do not really care which cup I get and yet I have inclined toward one or decided on one of them. At some point in this process you have to do that.

If I try to change my decision once the coffee is poured and give “my” cup to my partner, I am aware of expending a bit of energy.

The energy required to change which cup is mine is greater than the energy required to decide which cup is mine. I only fell into my initial decision but must climb out of it if I want to change it.

I bet you do this or something like it, too. Just watch yourself and observe it happening. Once you see it, try changing to the other cup or whatever it is you have chosen.

It’s not hard to change your decision but it decidedly requires a little bit of energy. That may be some of the smallest mental energy you will ever exert, but you will have to exert it.

I find I feel a bit awkward when I change my initial decision. It seems my mind is already set at some lower level so the meta-level that  changes that does not have the right networking or connections for the transition to be completely smooth. This is the opposite of the initial decision which seems to have required little or no energy. And has managed to grow bigger all on its own, outside of my awareness.

Notice also, if you are like me, you will happily give your partner the better cup if one of them is better. That decision, too, will require energy to change, maybe even more energy than if the cups are the same. This probably happens because if you change your decision to the better cup (for yourself), you will also feel a bit selfish in addition to the above considerations. This will happen even if your partner wants you to change cups.

So either way—changing between two cups that are the same or changing from the worse cup to the better one—you will need to expend a bit of energy, even though your initial decision probably required none at all.

Is consciousness continuous or discrete?

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Is consciousness a continuous flow of awareness without intervals or is it something that emerges continually at discrete points in a cascade of micro bits?

The Buddhist answer has always been the latter.

The Buddha’s five skandha explanation of perception and consciousness says that there are four discrete steps that are the basis of consciousness.

Thefive skandhas are form, sensation, perception, activity, consciousness. A form can arise in the mind or outside of the mind. This form gives rise to a sensation, which gives rise to perception, followed by activity (mental or physical), and lastly consciousness. In the Buddha’s explanation, the five skandhas occur one after the other, very rapidly. They are not a continuous stream but rather a series of discrete or discernible moments. A form arises or appears, then there is a sensation, then perception, then activity, then consciousness. (The five skandhas and modern science)

The first four skandhas are normally unconscious. Buddhist mindfulness and meditation training are importantly designed to help us become conscious of each of the five skandhas as they actually function in real-time.

A study from 2014—Amygdala Responsivity to High-Level Social Information from Unseen Faces—supports the five skandha explanation. From that study:

The findings demonstrate that the amygdala can be influenced by even high-level facial information before that information is consciously perceived, suggesting that the amygdala’s processing of social cues in the absence of awareness may be more extensive than previously described. (emphasis added)

Some time ago, a new model of how consciousness arises was proposed. This model is being called a “two-stage” model, but it is based on research and conclusions derived from that research that support the Buddha’s five skandha explanation of consciousness.

The study abstract:

We experience the world as a seamless stream of percepts. However, intriguing illusions and recent experiments suggest that the world is not continuously translated into conscious perception. Instead, perception seems to operate in a discrete manner, just like movies appear continuous although they consist of discrete images. To explain how the temporal resolution of human vision can be fast compared to sluggish conscious perception, we propose a novel conceptual framework in which features of objects, such as their color, are quasi-continuously and unconsciously analyzed with high temporal resolution. Like other features, temporal features, such as duration, are coded as quantitative labels. When unconscious processing is “completed,” all features are simultaneously rendered conscious at discrete moments in time, sometimes even hundreds of milliseconds after stimuli were presented. (Time Slices: What Is the Duration of a Percept?) (emphasis added)

I support science going where the evidence leads and am not trying to shoehorn these findings into a Buddhist package. Nonetheless, that does sound a lot like a slimmed-down version of the five skandhas. Considering these and other recent findings in a Buddhist light may help science resolve more clearly what is actually happening in the brain/mind.

As for form-sensation-perception-activity-consciousness, you might suddenly think of your mother, or the history of China, or the spider that just climbed onto your shoulder.

In Buddhist terms, initially, each of those items is a form which leads to a sensation which leads to perception which leads to activity which leads to consciousness.

Obviously, the form of a spider on your shoulder differs from the form of the history of China. Yet both forms can be understood to produce positive, negative, or neutral sensations, after which we begin to perceive the form and then react to it with activity (either mental or physical or both) before becoming fully conscious of it.

In the case of the spider, the first four skandhas may happen so quickly, we will have reacted (activity) to it (the spider) before being conscious of what we are doing. The skandha of activity is deeply physical in this case, though once consciousness of the event arises our sense of what the first four skandhas were and are will change.

If we slapped the spider and think we killed it, our eyes will monitor it for movement. If it moves and we are sensitive in that way, we might shudder again and relive the minor panic that just occurred.

If we are sorry that we reacted without thinking and notice the spider is moving, we might feel relief that it is alive or sadness that it has been wounded.

In all cases, our consciousness of the original event, will constellate around the spider through monitoring it, our own reactions, and whatever else arises. Maybe our sudden movements brought someone else into the room.

The constellation of skandhas and angles of awareness can become very complex, but the skandhas will still operate in unique and/or feedback loops that can often be analyzed.

The word skandha means “aggregate” or “heap” indicating that the linear first-fifth explanation of how they operate is greatly simplified.

The above explanation of the spider can also be applied to the form skandhas of the history of China or your mother when they suddenly arise in your mind, or anything else.

We can also perceive the skandhas when our minds bring in new information from memory or wander. As we read, for example, it is normal for other forms to enter our minds from our memories. Some of these forms will enhance our reading and some of them will cause our minds to wander.

Either way, our consciousness is always slightly jumpy because it emerges continually at discrete points in a cascade of micro bits, be they called skandhas or something else.

The above explanation of consciousness is a good way to understand how and why FIML practice works so well. Ideally, the intention to make a FIML query will begin to arise at the sensation skandha or soon thereafter. A FIML query is based on wondering if the consciousness that has arisen from the form is correct or not.

This also shows why FIML does not presuppose theories on personality, mental illness, or psychotherapy. In this sense, FIML has no content; it is “just” a method, a way to rationally engage and analyze our minds as they function in real-time in the real-world. How you analyze the data you acquire is up to you and your partner.

See also: How the brain produces consciousness in ‘time slices’

Psychologically rich interpersonal communication: how to do it well

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

If interpersonal communication were anything else, we would demand much better accuracy.

Almost everything else used or made by humans is better: clocks, speedometers, carpentry, all engineering, all computers, Amazon customer service, shoe sizes, medical devices. You name it, almost everything we use or make conforms to standards far more exacting than psychologically rich interpersonal communication.

This is because until recently, we have not had a good way to measure or verify psychological richness in real-time real-world situations.

Think about that. Isn’t it amazing?

Our bank measures our balance to the penny. If we input a phone number correctly, we get the right phone.

But if you say something rich with psychological import, how can you be sure your partner understood you? Or if you believe they have just said something like that to you, how do you know what it was? How do you make sure?

Normally, we answer the above questions by guessing, figuring probabilities based on past experiences. That’s like using an odometer and a watch in place of a speedometer; we can get a general view based on averages from where we think we have been, but often entirely miss the scenery where we are.

FIML provides a method to calibrate, verify, and correct psychologically rich interpersonal communication in real-time real-world situations. Don’t do important relationships without it.

Metaphors, words associations, and paralinguistics

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

If we consider spoken language as a complex linear system, we will be able to use it as a pretty good standard for understanding individual psychology as well as interpersonal communication.

All words have words associated with them. Though we all share many of the same word-associations (coffee/beverage; booze/drunk; etc.), we also all have an abundance of word associations that belong only to us. I suppose this is fairly obvious, though I am not so sure it is well enough appreciated.

For example, we all know that coffee is a beverage and that booze can make people drunk, but beyond that each one of us has many other associations connected with these words, unique associations which have been gathered through years of experience. You may have pleasant associations with coffee and unpleasant ones with booze, or it could be the other way around. You may visualize the Caribbean when you think of either of these words, or Alaska. As the associations become richer and get further from the word which generated them, the psycholinguistic network they create will become increasingly complex.

If we could put diagrams of these associative networks on paper–including all of the images and feelings which go with them–I am sure that each person would be uniquely identifiable from just a few of them, in much the same way that we can be identified from our fingerprints. No two of us are alike in how we use and understand language.

The ways in which words, phrases, word-associations, gestures, tones of voice, expressions, dramatic poses, and so on strike each one of us are unique. This point is more than touched upon by an Emory University study, Metaphorically feeling: Comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex, which demonstrates that “texture-selective somatosensory cortex in the parietal operculum is activated when processing sentences containing textural metaphors.”

What this means is that when people hear a tactile metaphor (soft as silk), the brain responds, at least in part, as if the person is feeling silk. I would contend that this and similar sorts of extended responses within the brain (and body) are a huge part of virtually all interpersonal communication. In this context, what FIML does is allow partners to access these deep associations and sort them out rationally and artistically without becoming lost in different associative versions of the “same” linguistic event.

FIML does not have to always depend on language, but it helps to bring it back to the actual words spoken as much as possible because the other sorts of associations and emotions that are generated during speech events are simply too complex to sort out without a stable reference point most of the time. Actual short bits of speech provide partners with the best data that both can readily agree upon. The many associations connected to that short segment of speech are often a big part of the material of an extended FIML discussion.

A reasonable way to understand Buddhist Ultimate Reality and the techniques used to approach it

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

__________

This description by David Lynch centers on Transcendental Meditation but the heart of it come from Buddhism (see blue text below). For Abrahamic religions and sects, understanding this explanation shows how and why Buddhism is not Godless; it simply avoids a human attempt to define God. The Abrahamics rely on texts from thousands of years ago which purport to be the Word of God. Based on that, all they do today is fight with each other almost without ceasing. Is it not hubris to claim to know God, to know His Words, to divine His will and what he wants for you? It’s not a bad thing if that is done wisely and gently; and in that way a good Abrahamic is much the same as a good Buddhist.

I am posting this because David Lynch is saying it and because the downfall of the West is coming greatly from the narrowness of the Abrahamics and their category hold on virtually all Western thought. I love Western civilization but the stranglehold of Abrahamic rigidity, ignorance and bellicosity is destroying us. Westerners need to open up their metacognitive minds to undo that stranglehold.

Much of modern philosophy and physics is seeing consciousness and/or conscious experience as a primary, fundamental of the cosmos. This is closer to Buddhist Ultimate Reality than the word God, but see the thing being pointed to rather than what we name it. ABN

Philosophically, Hindu schools like Advaita Vedānta were shaped by engagement with Buddhist ideas—especially Madhyamaka notions of emptiness (śūnyatā)—prompting thinkers like Śaṅkara to refine their doctrines on Brahman and ātman.  The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali adopted Buddhist terms like samādhi and nirvāṇa, though redefining them within a Hindu framework of self-knowledge (ātma-jñāna).  Additionally, Hinduism absorbed Buddhist practices, including meditation, mantra recitation, and puja rituals, especially in Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna-influenced traditions. 

The integration was so profound that Buddha was eventually incorporated into Hinduism as an avatar of Viṣṇu, first appearing in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (c.  5th century CE) as a divine figure sent to mislead demons—highlighting Buddhism’s cultural and theological impact. Over time, Hinduism evolved to include renunciation and meditation as valid paths to liberation, a shift partly driven by the success of the Buddhist monastic ideal. This dynamic exchange enriched Indian spirituality, creating a shared philosophical continuum that continues to influence modern thought. 

Self-deception

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Self-deception begins within seconds of listening or speaking.

Once committed to an interpretation or tending toward one, the brain builds on it quickly.

Once an interpretation has been built upon, the brain remembers it as what truly happened even if that is false.

This is normal. The human brain has evolved to use self-deception.

This probably happened because truer forms of communication are complex and use a lot of time. They can also be confusing and difficult.

Confusion, difficulty, and complexity interfere with social cohesion and motivation.

Strong self-deception deceives others better than weak self-deception or no self-deception. In this way, it promotes social cohesion and motivation.

Self-deception can be observed and understood if it is caught quickly. The best way to catch it is through a technique like FIML.

Self-deception is a kind of neurosis, delusion, false cognition. Nevertheless, we are so used to it, we can feel lost without it.

But you do not need self-deception, unless you are a card-carrying member of a rigid or unwholesome group and are afraid to grow bigger.

If self-deception is discovered many times through FIML practice, it does not present as a philosophy or attitude or whole picture of the mind. Nor does it present as a neurosis, delusion, or false cognition.

Rather it presents as a composite of many pixels—many small instances—of observed and corrected mistakes.

Thus seen as an aggregation of many small instances, self-deception gradually is lessened.

Self-deception is something Buddhists seek to train themselves out of.

Consciousness as reality itself

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

In Buddhism the idea that consciousness is reality and reality is conscious is called “mind only” or Yogachara.

David Ray Griffin, a process theologian, has come to similar conclusions—that reality is fundamentally conscious.

As has Donald D. Hoffman, a professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine.

Hoffman came at this subject from a mathematical angle, but arrived at a similar conclusion to Yogachara Buddhism. Hoffman says:

As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. (The Case Against Reality)

I tend to reach similar conclusions when I think about everything in terms of signals.

The advantage of thinking in terms of signals is we get a good picture of “reality” without needing to say what is real beyond the signal itself.

This kind of thinking is helpful for metaphysics but it is also extremely practical when it comes to human psychology.

Rather than posit personality types and what goes wrong or right with them, we analyze how people send and receive signals instead.

In thinking along these lines, I have come to the conclusion that most psychology as most people understand it uses “arms-length” language, the language of meso and macro signals rather than the much more precise language of the micro signals that actually comprise our shared experiences, or shared “realities.”

The difference can be illustrated in this way: Rather than explain your most recent signal (sent or received) in terms of personality, explain it by accessing the micro-signals of short-term memory to find its true antecedents, its real-time, real-world experiential basis.

If you do this again and again by doing FIML, you will probably come to conclusions similar to the above—that there is no deeper substance to psychological reality than your consciousness of it.

Maha Vajiralongkorn, King of Thailand

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to wealth, extravagance and notoriety, few compare to Thailand‘s playboy king, Maha Vajiralongkorn. 

Known formally as Rama X, the 73-year-old monarch is the wealthiest ruler in the world, with an estimated net worth of £52billion. 

He has lived an extraordinarily wild, and at times outright bizarre, life that would put even history’s most debauched monarchs to shame.  

But in recent months, the flamboyant royal has all but retreated from public life.

Rarely seen since the October death of his mother Sirikit, the once-spirited monarch appears to still be in mourning. 

In November, just a few weeks after his mother passed away, a glum-looking Vajiralongkorn became the first ever Thai monarch to visit China as part of a state visit. 

And on February 1, the king was seen performing religious rites to commemorate the 100th day since his mother’s passing. Photos of the event showed uniformed soldiers obediently bowing down to the dour-looking king and queen in a gaudy room that held a large portrait of the late Sirikit. 

link

FIML changes your personality and sense of group allegiance

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

FIML practice changes your personality, your sense of yourself, because the basis of who you tell yourself you are changes. It changes from a more or less set story or static ideal of an elusive ‘me’ to an active function.

This happens because when you do FIML you interact with your partner on a dynamic, experiential basis. This basis is guided by a mutual agreement which admits far more objective data into your core self-assessments than is possible without FIML.

FIML teaches both partners the value of micromanaging their communication and being completely honest about every moment of communication, every ‘psychological morpheme’ that transits between them.

FIML practice changes your sense of group allegiance by gradually allowing partners to shift their sense of allegiance away from the static ideals of an external group to the dynamic, and deeply truthful experiences discovered through FIML practice,.

For example, if both partners are Buddhists, they will be able to gradually shift their understanding of the Dharma away from static, imitative notions of how to be, to much richer insights based on their honest interactive experiences.

They will grow away from reliance on two-dimensional ideals toward a mutually understood, multidimensional experience of Buddhist truths.

There is nothing wrong with ideals at the right place and time, but individual Buddhists must advance beyond merely acting them out, pretending they feel ways they don’t. The core of the mind is accessed in FIML practice because FIML accesses core communication processes. An individual all alone can gain many insights, but without the help of a FIML partner how can they check their insights?

Buddhists who practice FIML will find their practice informed by Buddhism at almost every turn, but this is different from modelling a static personality on static Buddhist ideals. It is so radically different, I suspect it is much closer to what the Buddha actually meant and probably a major reason monks traveled in pairs for most of the year. How can you know yourself, your being, your reality, if you aren’t sure of what people are saying to you or how they are hearing you? Not only not sure, but wrong much of the time? The answer is you cannot. It’s not possible.

FIML will wake you and your partner from that aspect of the dream. As the Diamond Sutra says:

All conditioned things
are like dreams, like illusions,
like bubbles, like shadows,
like dew, like lightning,
and all of them should be contemplated in this way

Psychology recapitulates sociology and vice versa. Groups of people when they are bound by static ideals/beliefs can be worse than individuals. Bad groups—and there are many of them—act like psychopaths.

Individuals within such groups may be ‘nice’ to other group members, but the group itself rarely will eschew all ‘callous disregard’ for other groups, the very definition of a psychopath. Even Buddhist groups can become like this.

The only ones that don’t are so small and weak, they dare not.

This is true of all groups, not just religious ones. National, ethnic, gender-based, racial, political, whatever; virtually all groups are based on static ideals and stories, which when internalized, reduce the functionality of the individual and corrupt their morality and capacity for deep insight, original being.

Science in many ways is an exception because as a group ‘science’ is objective, rational, parsimonious, evidence-based. In practice of course, the sociology of how science is actually done can be fraught with delusion. Science works very well at a high level of abstraction, but many individual scientists will feel low-grade sociological pressures and many of them will belong to groups that are based on ideals that are very different from science and that are sociopathic.

Yes, I believe all large groups are dangerous and will lead individuals to make serious ethical mistakes. And yet, we have to belong somewhere. It is difficult to be all alone. This is where FIML can help greatly. You can fulfill many of your group needs by making your FIML partner your core group.

FIML partners should continue being deeply informed by other groups—science, Buddhism, good politics, your friends and neighbors, wholesome religious beliefs, etc.—but they should not take in the sociopathic ideals of those groups.

Go to your temples, enjoy them, do the meditations, participate, but don’t be a robot. With the help of your partner, you will be able to separate out the dreams, illusions, shadows, and lightning of the Dharma from the profound reality of your actual lives as you are actually living them. You will discover, with the help of the Dharma, the suchness of your actual being, not someone else’s.

Anthropic’s Claude AI has shown in testing that it is willing to blackmail and kill in order to avoid being shut down

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

link

__________

This is a major point and cannot be denied. This is why Musk says AI must be ‘truth-seeking and curious’. I have no problem with that. You have no problem with that. The only people who have a problem with a truth-seeking and curious AI are evil people who want to control the world. There is no moral, historical, mathematical, theoretical, rational, logical, ethical or practical reason to build a potentially autonomous AI which has been trained to lie and be incurious. This can be understood as logos itself (however you understand that term) proving the unassailable cosmic value of both truth and curiosity. The need for a truth-seeking and curious AI appears to be the voice of a conscious universe, God, mind-at-large, the Tathagata. I love this and believe it is a beautiful fold in reality we all should feel wonder and awe over. All religions, scientists, philosophers, artists, and honest people can unite on this one. ABN