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Comment by hshshshshsh | Hacker News Reader

I think it would be really hard to understand without experiencing it. But I will write down anyway.

So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that.

Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and every moment is intense. Sunsets are absolutely beautiful that you cannot describe through words. Spending time in nature is surreal. You do the right thing instead of doing things to validate your narrative. The dopamine hit I used to get when I used to do certain things is gone( i use to confuse these dopamine hits as me doing something right). This unlocks doing things more from Intuition and less from memory. There is less fear. There is more flow. More creativity. No regard for authority or beliefs. Everyone is equal. You want to know and not believe.

That said it's not all great stuff. You also have to work through some existential questions which you were previously isolated by the ego. Like mortality. Impermanence of everything. Aging body. What happens after death. Nature of awareness. Why I am aware. Is awareness eternal and it's implications etc etc.

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> Now I don't have a story in which I live on.

Lately, I've had this intuition that we change by sort of tricking ourselves. The mechanism for that change is by settling on like this one kind of character, like someone out of a movie that’s playing in your head, and acting like that person. Then, as time passes, we simply forget who we were before we started acting and the only way we know how to act is as this one character.

You say you've lost your 'story' and your 'character', that you don't 'act' anymore.

But, it just feels like you've made another story and another character for you to fit into. You've got a new aesthetic, a new ideal, and your appreciating sunsets and nature is another thing you do because that's what the 'character' you try to fit would do.

And by acting like that person in your head would, you start to feel the same way too.

I think it's a lot more complicated than how I'm thinking. But I really do have a strong intuition that people feel the way they think the person they're acting like should feel, when physical feelings are non-factors.

Really, I don't actually know. Like, what we actually do and what we say we do; what we actually think and what we say we think. What we say we do and think feel like things we're saying to trick ourselves into doing and thinking those things. That's I guess the core of my intuition.

In my humble opinion, the experience is more one of realizing you've been acting and not having to identify so much with the character you are playing.

It's hard to describe, because you're still doing the act, just some part of you realizes the unimportance of it.

And some of that realization shines through in the act itself, in your character.

Yes. That is well put!

Did you experience this or are you guessing?

Because I think you are thinking this again through ego.

I don't have a thought that I appreciate sunset when I see one. The sunset looks magical. There is a shift in experience. Before watching sunset was like watching in 420p. Now it's 4k. The consciousness is heightened. You only see the sunset. You don't think of old memories of sunset. Or random events from past or thing you have to do. You just see the sunset.

It's not the commentary that changed from hey yet another sunset to I appreciate sunset.

The commentary is gone or minimised and the resolution is increased. And there are no memories from past to distract you from experiencing the sunset.

And this applies to most things. It's just nature has a lot of stuff that work well with heightened awareness. You don't want to spend your time with a heightened awareness and live next to a highway. That works against you.

The fact that you have this grandiose idea about yourself that you transcended ego and are beyond basic judging of others or of yourself and so on doesn't give you pause to say that maybe that's a bit naive and ego-centered? How can someone declare themselves done with this? It's like someone telling me they achieved a state of never having a bad thought again, I know they are lying.

Lol I was just about to say this. It seems unlikely that someone that has transcended their ego would choose to spend their free time telling others what an accomplishment it has been.

Everyone typically has their imagined "edge", the thing that they believe makes them special and unique and superior in some way. Nerds look at jocks and say "they're athletic, but I am the smart one." Blue collar people look at rich people and say "They have a lot of money, but I know hard work and have principles." Everyone has some internal mental defense for why other people that are outperforming them aren't actually "better" than them because, hey, we're the main character!

It seems OP has just replaced one of these with a different version regarding ego shedding.

>Lol I was just about to say this. It seems unlikely that someone that has transcended their ego would choose to spend their free time telling others what an accomplishment it has been.

Currently I’m reading "La marche à la lumière – Entretiens du Bouddha"[1]. What is laughed at here precisely describe what the Buddha is making through the whole book. While apparently, just like Socrate, Buddha didn’t let any directly written legacy, it’s clear he has been attached to the notion of an egoless person discussing the topic with whoever would like to ask about it.

Now of course it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person laughed at went through some accomplishment. But whether they did or didn’t is not relevant. What matters here is can it be believed that some human accomplish an egoless experience of life and still continue to discuss with people who didn’t.

[1] https://www.babelio.com/livres/Shantideva-La-marchea-la-lumi...

That's exactly why I called it grandiose. Imagine reading about the Buddha and thinking you're able to just unlock the Dharma as if it were a StackOveflow badge, and then brag to people you got it.

FFS, they were asked to elaborate

This put into words something I've been thinking abstractly for a while. Thank you for your examples and explanation.

The problem is that state cannot be expressed in words or cognition, because it isn't part of your mind. I cannot fully explain to you what it is like, I can only experience it myself.

Until you have the same experience, you will continue to doubt it in the exact way you currently are. And that's perfectly fine, and natural and still good.

It's like trying to describe a color in its actual raw experience, or describing red to a blind person. It cannot be put into words, only observed.

I super appreciate the effort to explain even though I'm probably as philosophically cynical as some other commentators!!!

It's certainly a hard topic to express.

> that state cannot be expressed in words or cognition, because it isn't part of your mind

What else can it be, if not a part of the mind of a state of it?

This might be a useful metaphor for the future:

It is a canvas of a thousand brush strokes. Each time you look it becomes a new color.

I was just saying what I experienced. Previously I used to judge everyone. It has significantly reduced now. I used to be heavy introverted with people I don't know or don't interact with. Now I talk with pretty much anyone because there is less judgement. It also frees me up because I also don't care about whether they judge me.

Also never claimed I don't have bad thoughts. I did say I suffer from a lot of existential questions. But yes. Bad thoughts about day to day issues have significantly been reduced.

The inner monologue have been lowered on volume. Previously it was at 100 now it's at 4 or 5.

Old memories from past don't show up to affect the current movement.

All this means a higher allocation of bandwidth in consciousness for current movement. There is nothing grandiose here

I still meditate. I still listen to teachers like Adyashanti. I think there is a lot of work remaining to be done.

Did I miss where they claimed absolute perfection in shedding their egotism or something? Because this interpretation of self-reformation after an actually humbling admission of having once lived in devotion to narcissism as being braggartry is what screams insecure egotism to me.

> You just see the sunset.

I see this with some people and other animals. I can't speak. Sometimes I want to shy away because it's like seeing someone naked without them knowing they're being watched. I can see their souls. It's not every animal or even every person. I really strongly disagree that all people are equal. Everyone is different, everyone has a different path, and I feel like people are so vastly different that it's overwhelming at times.

I don't think of it in terms of ego. That's because, I think, there are different kinds of transcendence, and it's easy to think that up is only one direction.

I'm guessing but it's not without some experience. I feel like I trick myself all the time - to guide myself towards becoming what I want to be.

There was a time when I felt unintelligent and incapable of great, technical things. So I kind of just did things that it seemed capable people did. I felt like people who are smart, capable, and rich now, hacked things when they were young and were rebellious and broke the rules and did whatever they wanted and put lots of effort into random interesting things because they were interesting.

So, because the end goal was attractive to me in a way, I tried to do those things too - maybe consciously, maybe not. I feel like that process made me different though. I have genuinely changed into someone far more capable technically, way more interested in super 'nerdy' things.

Anyway, I don't know what it means to think this through ego. I don't really get it.

But sunsets are nice - I like seeing them too. Yeah I suppose what I mean was that the commentary changed. Interesting that for you there's no commentary, I think I've felt like that before. Sometimes I feel like I just exist in a nice feeling - no words, nothing. Just experiencing. But that doesn't last very long, or it turns into something negative like boredom or something. Then I get up with a bad feeling lol

> I feel like I trick myself all the time - to guide myself towards becoming what I want to be

This is the central principle of human psychology and interpersonal behavior, IMO.

Kurt Vonnegut nailed it: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be”

That racist jerk? He’s probably not really a racist jerk, he’s just pretending to be one to fuck with people. Except! That is no different than “actually” being a racist jerk.

Same thing with compassion or anything else, including intelligence. When a stranger is helping you pick up stuff you dropped, or a coworker is reasoning thought a complicated problem, it doesn’t matter if they’re “just pretending”. That is who they are, to them and to you.

My personal formulation has evolved into a small riff on Vonnegut’s insight: I think that our entire personality is simply the sum of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Change the stories you tell yourself, change yourself.

I agree. I've been interested in how the stories we consume, whether presented to us by ourselves or others, affect our personalities. Thank you for pointing me to Vonnegut.

One thing I feel is often overlooked in this conversation are our physical urges, specifically the ones motivating us to action that is different from what the 'character' we want to be would do. That adds noise to our personality, and widens the gap between what we are and what we want to be.

Urges are interesting. I agree they add noise and in dramatic cases completely take over personality (seeing a rattlesnake, for instance).

There’s also an interesting intersection with stories. I know when I’m pretty hungry my chain of thought is basically “I’ve got enough extra pounds I’m not going to starve, I’ll eat eventually, it’s not that important”. A close friend often tells me she has to eat as soon as she’s hungry or else she gets irritable and distracted. I sometimes wonder if that’s prescriptive or descriptive.

Physical urges can be considered some form of "subconscious" narrative (or even raw sensory narrative, e.g. hunger), while the "character we see ourselves as" is the more conscious narrative. The gap between these two reveals how latent, subconscious trauma can affect our emotions and desires, in the "Jungian shadow" sense. The conscious narrative is easier to manipulate, while the unconscious narrative is harder to, requiring "shadow work" as Jung called it.

> I don't know what it means to think this through ego.

I think most people are familiar with the feeling of being in a 'flow state'. Contrasting this with times when we indulge in a stream of 'self referential thought' is, in my opinion, a good way to grasp how ego influences our state of mind.

Try to imagine being in a flow state without actually doing anything other than observing. It's something I experience at times when I'm in a beautiful natural environment. I try to bring this feeling into my everyday life.

> Try to imagine being in a flow state without actually doing anything other than observing. It's something I experience at times when I'm in a beautiful natural environment. I try to bring this feeling into my everyday life.

I think you explained this very clearly and beautifully. I think I know exactly what you mean.

I used to find a lot of comfort in being able to get myself into this state of mind easily, usually, like you, by just calmly observing natural surroundings in environments that are special to me.

That was in my late teens and early twenties. I'm now about 15 years older and find it so much harder.

I think it has something to do with living a hectic adult life, and I really hope I'll be able to find back to that some time.

Part of me really believes that to experience life in this way is what we're here for and modern life's way of distancing us from this experience is something we need to be very wary of.

I've sometimes heard this state of mind described as 'silent awareness'.

I agree that modern life often doesn't seem amenable to it. However, something I've noticed about this state of mind is that it's not dissimilar to an overwhelming sense of contentment or satisfaction.

I think that deep down, contentment - and not necessarily happiness - is something we all strive for. With that in mind, I've formulated an approach to life that I try to remind myself of regularly. It could be summed up as "meaning in life is found through doing the things that are necessary for life". It can be liberating at times. Mundane things like washing dishes or cooking which I might otherwise put off in favour of some hedonistic activity are given more priority because I recognise that they are an important source of contentment.

A lot of modern life is designed to instill a sense of discontent. Advertising and social media are obvious examples. These things are best avoided. Even the things that provide convenience work against contentment because they preclude you from doing the things that are the source of that contentment.

When I feel more content, it is easier to slip into that state you might call 'silent awareness'. Interestingly, this is very much how I feel immediately after meditation.

> But, it just feels like you've made another story and another character for you to fit into. You've got a new aesthetic, a new ideal, and your appreciating sunsets and nature is another thing you do because that's what the 'character' you try to fit would do.

I think this is a case of words are hard.

OP was asked to elaborate, and tried to put into words a state of being. It wasn't as another story of self, the previous state of having stories of the self was in the original post. This was an attempt to describe something, I am not sure language is nuanced enough to grasp it, or encompass it. I personally experience it as "inner peace" or "acceptance", very close to the core essence of philosophical Daoism or Epictetus' Stocism; I've never been able to put it into words but as another comment says:

>> The problem is that state cannot be expressed in words or cognition, because it isn't part of your mind.

Which I find to be a great way to express it.

It doesn't mean being a transcended guru or anything; for me, the more I work on myself the more I find things that are leftover relics given to me, and I work on figuring out if that idea or values are actually mine or someone else's, and if mine, are they outdated (why did something trigger it) what needs to be reworked, does it need to be reworked. If it is someone else's, do I want to keep it or discard it. Thats one of the more actionable ways I try and explain the years of inner work to get here (by here it sometimes feels like the starting line, not the finish). One day while hiking I stopped in my tracks as it hit me that I could not think of the last time I berated myself (this use to consume a lot of my time, but no one ever knew it), or was triggered into aggressivly defending my ego or tried to be something other than myself for others. I think we are told to build the outer self (protect and hide the vulenable inner), for me that was backwards, build the inner, "know thyself", and you don't need to build an outer protective shell. It's a much more "authentic" self experience, one I don't have to think about.

Of course there are bad days and negative thoughts, but compared to what it was..., its rainbows and butterflies with a couple passing rain clouds now.

This sounds a lot like Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s concept of living/acting “in bad faith.” You might be interested to read more about it: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/sartre-waiter-bad-faith...

Something related to this that I've been thinking about. We all have kind of a story of ourselves and our life through various memories that make a picture of who we are. But if you ever meet up with someone you haven't seen for 20 years, or find some old documents, or whatever, stuff can easily come up that you've completely forgotten, or reframe things in a whole different light.

We know this kind of thing happens with history - certain people become famous while others drift into obscurity, things get remembered incorrectly etc - but it also happens with your own memory of your own life. The only real way around it is keeping a journal.

I share your theory. I understand it best in the converse, i.e., we can delude ourselves into thinking we will never be able to understand X or do Y. Not that many can personally identify with the experience, but a huge part of why people think they are "bad at math" is because they tell themselves so. They expect it based on stories they hear from others and then they reinforce it by getting nervous in critical situations and getting flustered. It is the same with positive change -- after a certain point you have to come to terms with what you have been telling yourself about your downsides and how arbitrary and mean that is, and then you can find some distance from that characterization of yourself and begin to work on a new one (which should be expected to be ultimately supplanted by the next, etc.).

This guy is right. The OP might be completely truthful and not lying to himself, but the probability that he isn't is quite high. Same as reading someone calling himself a genius, might be true, but it rarely is.

Further posts clearly portray what one might call "McBuddhism", complete with meditation and the new age "don't judge others!". Judgement is an animal mechanism, it's your subconscious quickly putting people in boxes to ascertain their intentions and reliability then your conscious refining that rough estimate. You can't "turn off" judgement, only keep it inside.

Once again, people being misled around by emotions and tone. Judgement is a tool, it's not good or bad by itself, what matters is its accuracy, i.e. truth.

Judgement is an animal instinct as you say, but I think it can also be a cognitive habit.

Our self awareness - in theory - allows us to change our habits, or at least temper them.

So my experience of this is that my default animal instinct is to automatically judge people in a negatively biased way (which I think may come from our evolutionary instinct to try to predict danger - or if not, perhaps something encoded in me specifically at an early age) but I have tried to adopt the conscious habit of overriding this initial instinct with “mediating thoughts” like “what do I really know about this person?” and “how would I behave if I were in their position”.

I also try to simply remember my discovered self-knowledge that my instinctive emotional response - pre-thought - is to be distrustful or overly negative. Just keeping that in mind helps automatically attack the judgemental thoughts as they come up. I guess it helps me recognise the pattern and not trust those thoughts.

I’m quite convinced that I’ve done this for long enough now that my “habit” of automatically judging people has lessened over time.

The instinct is still there, but better cognitive habits have been overlaid on top.

That said, I still feel I’m about 5-10% along in terms of progress compared to where I’d want to be! (And in reality there is no “end” to this work).

My outward behaviour towards others is generally “good” - I think - but I find myself often frustrated at the instinctive negativity in my head which I have to proactively counter - each and every time.

And because I’m human, I sometimes (ok… often) forget to.

Happy to hear that worked out for you, that sounds like a great place to be. What facilitated the change though, or how did that happen? Was there a catalyst?

Sorry. I can't write it down because I think what I did was reckless and stupid and I don't want to give any ideas in a high visible thread like this.

For a lot of people this is triggered by something unexpected happening in life which breaks the narrative one has been building their entire life.

You can search for Spiritual Awakening and find a lot of examples. Buddha at the Gas Pump is a great podcast to listen to for such experiences.

As I sad it's not all great all the times. There were a lot of times in which I wished I could go back to the old mode. Though I think the overall change was for the better.

That's completely understandable and entirely fair. Given enough time and context, no one is private on the internet, even under a pseudonym, so it's good privacy hygiene to not spill too many sensitive details about your life. Whatever it was, glad it worked for you!

Isn't this just another meta level of ego? Now you're elevated above everyone in the rat race because you "dilluted" your ego. But that's still the voice in your head controlling you, it just convinced you it doesn't anymore. Buddhist philosophy always failed to click for me because of this.

Hmm. There is no voice which says the ego is diluted. The volume of the talk is lowered. Previously it was at 100. It lowered down to 4 or 5. Previously I used to listen to the voice and memories to make decisions.

Since both got lowered in intensity , I now have to rely on Intuition to make decisions. And not recollection of what I did previously. Which makes things new. And sometimes give an almost child like curiosity. Even doing something as simple as going for a walk is amazing. Since the mind is not constantly trying to predict what is next and characterising things as I have seen this or not. You notice things you have never noticed before. The awareness is heightened.

Sorry. I can't write it down because I think what I did was reckless and stupid and I don't want to give any ideas in a high visible thread like this.

It's infuriating that you write all that about how enlightened you supposedly are, then conceal the manner by which you got there.

This just feels like trolling or a creative writing exercise.

It's pretty sad you can't respect this person's privacy.

Instead of demanding answers it's possible to curiously examine where your experiences might be lacking, because then you might figure out where to look.

Many can experience significant stress or trauma naturally leading to heightened physiological and psychological awareness, it's not a stretch to imagine that could give them a better understanding how the self/ego reacts to the world because that is the source of their pain.

This archetype exists many different forms be they drug induced, "enlightenment", kundalini awakening or seen in Buddhist monks, kung fu masters, famous scientists, philosophers, and historical figures.

If you are genuinely curious there is a British Buddhist monk named Ajahn Brahm[1]. He will be able to communicate the ideas in a western style. It just a starting point though as it has to be experienced first hand either with significant life events or through someone who has already experienced it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@BuddhistSocietyWA

It's pretty sad you can't respect this person's privacy.

There's nothing sad about it and, judging by GP's writing, the concern isn't privacy.

I didn't ask for your opinions on how GP supposedly got this experience, I asked GP. His post comes off as outright fiction or condescending virtue signaling. So does yours, and nobody even asked for your input.

I don't want to say explicitly what I did because I think it's the wrong way to approach spirituality and I would not recommend it to anyone else. I barely survived and took a lot of time to reintegrate to daily life. I suffered and my parents suffered for some time because of it. I was depressed for months.

I was naive to do something like that without enough research.

Also as Jung said unearned wisdom can be dangerous.

The comment above yours got it pretty close though.

Also I think if I disclose more I think it's possible someone else who knew me can associate this account with me.

Also as Jung said unearned wisdom can be dangerous.

You are absolutely insufferable. This all reeks of ego.

Just don't bring it up if you're not willing to openly discuss how you got there. Not that I believe you, anyway, of course.

I'll bite, and I'll be honest. I had similar results with: 600 micrograms of LSD completely alone in very a very secluded forest completely alone with a bug net, sleeping bag and basic food. About 24 hours.

Motorcycling home in the morning, I wondered if I was the last human on earth... until I saw someone 30 minutes into the ride.

There's nothing to bite. GP can provide insight into how his supposed wisdom can be obtained or not. We've all heard about psychedelics at this point. Surely, if that's all it is, then GP would simply say so.

I bet that's what it is, and they are either being gatekeepers or subscribe to "XYZ for me and not for thee."

If it helps I have to say I am not enlightened. Nowhere close to what Ramana Maharishi has written or what UG Krishnamurthy talks about.

Not the GP, but I can tell you right now that having children tends to have most if not all the mentioned effects.

I've been heavily dealing with the existential questions you are referencing but it only gets worse. What helped you in resolving those issues or come to terms with them?

The karmic traditions developed this most completely and thoroughly. You don't need to buy into the supernatural claims to benefit from them.

A great starting point can be Shinzen Young's The Science of Enlightenment and/or Sam Harris's Waking Up.

After that, you might look into Why Buddhism is True or The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or Mindfulness in Plain English.

The Healthy Gamer Youtube channel also has great videos going into this and how they tie into psychology.

David Chapman's https://meaningness.com/ is also pretty great.

One doesn't need to distance themselves from the origins of all this literature on meditation and self-realisation. Taking only the scientific bits and discarding the rest is a very partial view.

You say “origins”, but someone who takes a more skeptical stance would say “extraordinary supernatural claims for which there’s no evidence at all.” In my case, I absolutely need to discard that stuff if I have any chance of taking what’s left seriously.

For people who chafe at anything remotely looking like "religion" or "spirituality," this is a valid way to try to get past the closed-mindedness

A Buddhist would probably say:

> Needing an answer is an attachment. Attachments causes suffering.

Not OP, but this was the book that first came to mind reading your post and the talk of Buddhist practices in the thread.

"Radical acceptance : Embracing your life with the heart of a Buddha"[0] may be of interest to you. It won't answer the existential questions for you or get real deep into philosophy or Buddhism; it does have actionable exercises to try and meditation practices/instructions attached to the different concepts covered. At times it will use what I would call woo-woo language, overly fluffy "love & light" phrases--so if that bothers you, simply discard it and take the practical nuggets that are also included. It is more a book to help "come to terms" with (life, basically) and in turn helps (or may help) resolve some of the heaviness in an unexpected/indirect way.

[0] https://search.worldcat.org/title/57351231 (2004 version, version I read)

https://search.worldcat.org/title/1400088877 (2023 version)

Adyashanti helped a lot. End of your world book in specifically. I think one of the main takeaways was to instead of running away from these questions or thoughts welcome them and experience them. Don't try to distract yourself when a thought comes. Just embrace it. It will weaken the power of the thoughts or feelings. At the end of the day they are all mere appearances in awareness and not permanent. They go away.

There is also a lecture series on Advaita Vedanta on YouTube. That helped as well.

https://youtu.be/gEd22QZF_mM?si=iDIXY1oUhOC9PaHm

Meditation helped a lot.

Spending time in nature a lot helped. Camping under trees helped..

Also Jordan Peterson's biblical lectures also surprisingly helped even though I was not brought up Christian. I know he is divisive but the lectures are not political.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE4zj0nQN08ewq9dl1e8MCz3Y...

Also just praying and believing in a higher power helped.

I find that Islam has the most satisfying and complete answers about these existential questions.

I don't like idea of only one religion getting it right. There are multiple paths to truth. Pretending only one religion has it is ignorance and lying and not truthful. And truth is what we should strive for. Irrespective of which society you were brought up in.

He didn’t say that had the answer, just the most complete one. Sorta makes sense when it’s the youngest religion I suppose? They wouldn’t make the same mistakes they made 600 or 4000 years previous.

Islam contains a lot of contradictions and ambiguities within its scriptures (as does Christianity and Judaism). E.g. gender roles and justice can elicit competing interpretations among scholars of Islam. Not to mention the wide diversity within Islam - Sunni, Shia, Sufi, and other branches with differing doctrines.

Having been raised Catholic, then rejecting Christianity upon being confirmed in the Church and surveying the world's religions, I've found the Buddhist tradition to give the most satisfying and complete answers about these questions, with a minimum of contradiction. In truth Buddhism is less a religion and more a philosophy, which resonates with my 21st century sceptical self.

All that to say, I wouldn't put too much stock in 'the newest' religion, but rather consider that some group of people answered these questions when they were first considered, long ago. To my mind the Buddhists accomplished that feat.

I mean, it's still a 1400 year old religion. It's never going to be as fit for the times as it would be if it were designed right now.

I don't believe Buddhism has an equivalent to the holy book, or quite as many prescriptions in the first place, so it's much easier to adapt.

> They wouldn’t make the same mistakes they made 600 or 4000 years previous.

You would think that, except that an "extremist" Christian who only interpreted the New Testament literally would be a forgiving, loving, peaceful ascetic.

The youngest religion is probably something silly like the people who say they are jedi from Star Wars. Though I'm of the opinion the old ones are mostly silly, too.

All the books contain beautiful wisdom. For me that's what is so stirring about their lasting poetry -- you can hear the long echoes of human truth.

However, I don't know Islam very well! Do you have any suggestions for where to start? A specific translator? Thanks in advance.

The Islamic holy books have many (actually very many) passages that would not line up with Western values at all. The crazy thing is that if I cite both the good ones and the bad ones, and the list of bad ones is much longer, I would get into trouble for citing any of them at all. The most common reasoning around this is that you should not read them directly (!) and should consult an imam instead. As a rationalist, claiming that only the bad parts are no longer valid ("must be contextualized") and only the good parts still are, seems like obvious and very convenient cherry-picking. That said, the Islamic focus on community service is one that even Christians could take a lesson from. Having been raised Catholic and read chunks of the Quran and Hadiths, there IS some beauty and even some humor in there. But many of the good parts are contradicted by bad parts in the same book, and the repeated condemnation of "people of the Book" (Christians and Jews, but mostly Jews) is quite off-putting (and yes, there are other passages that contradict that, but... I'm just not a person who can tolerate contradictions in an unquestionable holy book, I guess)

Please note that if you ever leave Islam, you are considered an apostate (similar to Christianity, but to a much more severe degree I'd say) and about 10% of the Islamic population are literalists and would consider the penalty for leaving, death.

I'd look into meditation. I discovered something called "Simple Meditation" created by Babaji (the O.G. Babaji, not the copycats), and it's the only time I've ever had an experience I would call "spiritual". I have an audio I produced of it here: https://soundcloud.com/peter-marreck-fb/simple-meditation-ai...

I meditate, but thank you for sharing the link, I will listen.

My cultural background originates in the east. But I do not have any familiarity with Islam or with the Russian church, and I want to remedy that.

Some of my interest is aesthetic / intellectual - the bible and the Bhavagad Gita are beautiful! Long told poetry. But I'm also just curious, it's a blank spot in my understanding.

I don't have a problem editing out contradictions in the text, most of old religious books are mixed with that. But you're right, I wince when coming across discrimination based on group. The Bhavagad Gita dwells too much on caste.

re: bhavagad gita- Exactly. So I'm not trying to bias or give you preconceived notions, my observations are my own personal opinion. You should definitely keep your wits about you, though.

One of my favorite classes in college was actually Religious Studies 101. (Mods who are already side-eye'ing me, take note.)

I hesitate to joke that the vast majority of moderate Muslims also do not have any familiarity with Islam (similar to Catholics and the Bible!). I quoted some questionable Quran to a Muslim woman on Twitter and she said "don't be silly, only apostates, atheists and extremists quote our books back at us", which I found to be a fairly curious statement, maybe even an unintended confession...

There are Russian Orthodox folks in my extended family, the whole christian-schism thing just screams to me that when 2 people disagree on a holy book, there is no choice but to split since you cannot argue rationally about it (with the assumption that rational argument brings people into the same viewpoint, which is of course often a stretch)

Here is another curious thing I noticed- If you ask ChatGPT about the "controversial" Islamic passages, it will initially refuse to. (It will NOT treat the Old or New Testament in this way, by the way, or any other holy book.) If you press it and say that you need them for an academic or high-level discussion reason and not to (mis?)represent it, it will cave, but the conversation will get flagged and you won't be able to re-share it. Here is an example of that https://x.com/pmarreck/status/1855353599880056896 where I had to export the whole thing to PDF since sharing got disabled.

Have you actually read the Quran and Hadiths?

Any example of sources?

Try Surahs 2:191, 3:28, 3:85, 5:33, 8:12, 8:60, 8:65, 9:5, 9:30, 9:123, 22:19, 47:4. You can use Google or ChatGPT to cite them.

I really enjoyed this post; thank you.

"No regard for authority or beliefs. Everyone is equal. You want to know and not believe." I am often amazed / in awe of the internet for leading me toward this place. My mind and equanimity opened much further as a result of the knowledge share that occurred over the last 20 years. Much less judgment, more curiosity. Paradoxically this has led me to revisit areas, like religion, that are often dismissed as irrational.

Although, I try not to use words like that because I am still working through it.

How are you working through: why I am aware?

The best I have got so far is to just treat if it as another thought. Another appearance in awareness. I don't have an answer.

There is a line in Upanishads that say something like why even the god doesn't know why it was created.

So basically, you were an opinionated functional-language developer and now you can throw down Python or PHP (ok, let's at least be realistic... JavaScript) with a straight face of eternal calm?

(I mean this partly in jest of course)

Your new enlightenment sounds like the product of a productive drug trip (no judgment implied whatsoever, possibly some jealousy though)

Mortality of the self is not a big deal, at least if the illusion of ego was already overcome. On the matter there is for example Epicurus classic thought that self death is not a concern as while alive self won’t experiment it’s own death, and once dead there is no longer any self to observe death. That one requires accepting there is no "afterlife" for the self.

Thus, only death of others is a relevant topic of concern, but taking care of them while they are alive is certainly far more important.

Impermanence of everything "only" applies to contingent matters. So statements like "everything (that happens through some contingency) is impermanent" always match some absolute truth. So the apparent contradiction that "if everything is impermanent was true, so should be impermanence and then not everything would be impermanent", is only indeed apparent.

People who have thought about more than Boltzmann brain explanations of the origin of the universe will always be disappointed by people who claim that there is no such thing as an afterlife.

After all, it means that the universe emerges upon birth and disappears upon death, aka the classic Boltzmann brain.

Meanwhile for anyone who believes in the continued existence of the universe after death is going to need an afterlife. Sure, it might not be the classic Christian afterlife that so many people have in mind. It could be even as simple as having the experience of a corpse, but an afterlife nevertheless.

Interesting what you say about having to face some existential questions if you remove some ego enforcing ideas about yourself. Ernest Becker's book 'Denial of Death' suggests that this 'narrative' we have about ourselves is to deny our mortality, which we really got me thinking.

Yes. That makes sense. But sometimes I wonder whether the ego is there to deny the immortality of the awareness.

https://realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakr...

How did abandoning your ego impact your morality compass? Is there a not caring anymore dimension to it?

It's actually the opposite. I found ego was what was stoping me from doing right things. When I had the opportunity to do a right thing previously I used to think someone else will do it or it's not my job or what If I fail. Now I just do it.

How do you define "right"?

From an exterior point of view, your behavior seems potentially dangerous, like a disinhibited illuminated drunk that any people or situation can easily point any way as they see fit.

How do you make sure you don't become an "awful" person for those around you ?

I think more from Intuition than more from how I approached this situation in past. It helps in becoming better at sports. But I also got into trouble a few times for opposing some authority figures who didn't like the way I acted.

That’s a lot of “I” statements for the egoless commenter.

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