I attended a silent meditation retreat from Friday to Friday. I spent Friday and Saturday adjusting mentally and physically. Sunday I was ready to listen to the teachers' talks. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were productive in terms of contemplation. By Thursday I was ready to leave, and Friday was spent leaving.
Sunday
Temporal spectrum: future (plans), now, past (memory)
Emotional spectrum: aversion, neutral, desire
Future desire = fantasy
Aim for neutral-now. Bored is a good indicator
Recognize, allow, investigate, nurture
To feel self compassion
1) be here now
2) feel your heart sensation
3) feel the pain
4) self compassion
Fear + helplessness = trauma
Evolution has imprinted the limbic brain with a desire to be in a hierarchy and form groups
Monday
When I am in the presence of other people, I feel the need to figure out what the normal conventions are for that environment. This understanding better enables me to interact and know how much I can deviate from convention. This tolerance is important for two reasons: I want to be myself while also avoiding rejection. I want to connect and engage other people, on my terms.
I seek connection (emotional bond) and fear rejection (being ostracized). The conditions are subjective and dynamic.
Many other people likely feel similarly. Though I am unwilling to generalize to "all people."
I am also unwilling to use the label "unconditional love," because of pathological/edge cases.
Unconditional and conditional are unnecessary modifiers for love. Love is simply a sensation.
I am engineering a life of ease. My work is my entertainment and also enables my life of ease.
Tuesday
I have chosen, engineered, and been born into a life of ease. I accept this and work to continue my lifestyle.
The act of killing living creatures is biologically necessary. Humans kill bacteria and virii. Humans kill plants and animals for nutrition and competition for resources and cleanliness. In this killing, is the act intentional, needed, and carried out with minimal suffering?
"Needed" is the slipperiest
Overeat because
* big plates
* I will be hungry later, though I am not currently
* I already paid, so I want to get value
As a consequence of the halting problem, every action and decision I make has a physiological basis. The physical response is a response due to either evolution or conditioning. Humans add another layer by rationalizing. Further, humans occasionally (but not consistently) account for future feelings.
That doesn't mean the outcome is deterministic. (Deterministic implies predictability and repeatability; human decision making is neither.)
Physics, chemistry, and biology tell us about the constraints of our environment, not what we can or should do.
I am choosing a life of ease
I accept myself and few others. Beyond sharing biology, in terms of goals, lifestyle, desired behavior, and undesired behavior, I feel little kinship with other people. I don't accept other people. Nor do I seek approval of other people.
How can I accept other people who make poor decisions, spread false information (intentionally or unintentionally), don't act rationally, and don't even act in their own self interest [see behavioral economics]?
I do all that, I accept myself, but I am unwilling to accept that in other people.
Perhaps it's safest not to attempt to generalize. Treat each person as an individual. Perhaps the goal of loving and accepting all people is misguided
Wednesday
I recognize that a societal norm (in the statistical sense) exists. I don't accept the norm, as that feels like consent to it being right and good. I don't think the norm is correct or beneficial.
I think there is value in understanding the norm. I think I can live a better life by cooperating with people who do not share my values, rather than me try to exist in isolation.
As a result, I want to engage with some other people, but not all the time on all issues. My engagement happens on my terms, rather than accept by default the terms of the group.
In addition to large scale society, this analysis applies to small social groups.
I seek emotional bond with other people on my terms. People I don't have a desire to bond with are negative, make unhealthy life choices. Both of those criteria are subjective.
I fear being ostracized from society and my local relationships based on my desires and behaviors.
Although I don't accept other people or agree with them, I can feel kindness towards them
I reject others before they have a chance to reject me. People I choose to interact with are exceptions
There is much suffering and violence, most of it is outside my ability to alter.
It is not my goal to eliminate or reduce suffering. A trivial way to accomplish these goals would be to eliminate humans.
My goal is to enable individuals (who want to) to self actualize in a way that does not cause others to suffer.
If your self actualization prevents someone else from self actualizing, or causes someone else to suffer, then I do not support your self actualization.
Thursday
I don't like
* Waking to an alarm
* following someone else's schedule
* not sleeping enough
* not working out
* not cooking
* not having sex
* shared bathroom
* not masturbating
Citing a reference is distinct from objectively measuring reality
Measurements get labels, and humans gain knowledge.
Objective description of reality helps me feel more secure. One person's subjective experience is no more valid than anyone else's. And that does not enable progress.
Progress enables more people to self actualize?
The consequence of subjective experience is that each person is unique
Being around most other people causes cognitive dissonance in my perception. To decrease that dissonance, I don't socialize generally.
What I want is to authentic emotional engagement. Either {people don't know how to, there's nothing to present (no depth), the rate of increasing depth is slower than I find reasonable, past interactions have yielded rejection}
I want to enjoy my life. I also want to create conditions that are sustainable for 1000 years.
My 1000 year perspective is how I evaluate some consequences of decisions made by myself and other people.
This 1000 year view is not widely held, though some other people occasionally do think beyond their lifespan.
This expectation for sustainability is rarely met, so I am mostly disappointed by other people.
I reject the "just be here now" perspective. Some planning is required to survive.
What is the integration of planning and being?
