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Answers for a German reader

Date: 4-Apr-2012

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A German reader wrote me and asked a few questions about my interpretation and opinions of my experience. I thought I'd share my answers here. Here's a summary of what she wrote:
I'm struck by the fact that we're trapped in a physical world where we can only move in three dimensions and only interact with what's directly around us. It seems so overly restricted to me. Like Conway's Game of Life. I don't have an answer though, and I might not even have a question that makes a lot of sense. But being stuck in this space-time-continuum seems like a ridiculous challenge to me.
(However, I believe in the laws of physics very strongly, and I am skeptical of New Age hogwash. So I'm just confused and wondering at this point.)
What do you think is up with the "law of attraction" (the self-help book claim that positive thinking can create life-changing results such as increased wealth, health, and happiness), but maybe it is nothing but a modified adaptation of Smithian protestantism that says material goods are a proof that you're doing it right - and that's not true.
If what you say is true and you've taken the red pill, you're the second real connector I've met so far. My question would be.... what stage of perception, or realization, do you see yourself at?
Do you have any question that you still can't answer?
Here's a summary of my response(s):
My feeling is that "Law of Mechanism" trumps "Law of Attraction". Here's one of my essays on that topic:
You ask what "stage" I see myself as being at. Tough to say. Perhaps it's the All-The-World's-a-Stage Stage...?
Before I was very obsessed with the idea of getting proof to my historical peers that I was interacting with something real. My current phase is more resigned to appreciating analogies and puzzles, and showing instead of just telling. Leading horses to water without pushing their heads under so they panic. Or something.
You remarked we can only move in three dimensions and interact with what's directly around us. Yet you convey that in a message sent over pipes and wires halfway across a continent. It all depends on what you consider a "dimension", which is a selective construction in the first place. We don't actually see in three dimensions except with our minds anyhow. Babies will sit for months in cribs marveling at the constant changes of a colorful mobile...until they realize it's a pattern as "simple" as rotation.
New senses open all the time; something we do with effort, that later becomes involuntary. When does your "reading sense" come online, such that a letter you once had a hard time distinguishing as an "a" vs an "e" goes from wavering between possibilities to a strong signal? When does hunt-and-peck typing turn into something where your focus leaves your hands, and words telepathically appear on the screen? We think of these perceptions as "derivative" because we developed them in terms of prior understandings. But an electrode could come and stimulate the word-perception neural network that develops and directly feed your "word sense" on its own.
I don't know if you've seen the movie Limitless, but I found it enjoyable and points to some of the dangers of trying to take short-cuts to deepening our perceptual map:
It reminded me of this other video that I always liked:
But with drugs, it's like opening an executable file from an email attachment. You never know quite what you're getting. It's better to practice and learn at a safe pace, letting the natural course of what we call "neurons" rewire so we get new plugins that can process new mediums.
So I'm not sure if this has completely answered your question of my assessment of my own "level". One area I've improved in is dealing with the transition of being heralded as a genius as a child into being considered as someone who is crazy as an older adult. That isn't technically the same thing as calling me stupid--but it is still close in its dismissiveness. Especially hard to handle coming from the groups from which I drew my initial self-worth for being so "smart"...
But now I see many of them as being in a state of arrested development. Waxing Matrix philosophical again, the Morpheus speech walking down the street is good to re-watch from time to time:
Compared to a decade and a half ago...I have new senses, and new forces of communication. Yet I realize that what I come to via these channels is not inherently true. Not any more than everything I read was true when I learned to read English, or every picture on the computer is "real" just because the JPEG decoder can display it.
The key is always discernment. I can't help you there other than by trying to--as best possible--stick to sharing ideas that I feel pass the hogwash test.
I can answer absolutely any question. It's just that my answers aren't necessarily correct. If my journal proves anything, it's that there's a heck of a lot I don't know. There are plenty of questions I wish I (or some dream entity) could answer. Instead I get back responses telling me to focus on... other things:
(Can't say I know. But I've narrowed the field a bit to where I'm pretty sure it involves mushrooms and cheese, and is most likely served on an English Muffin.)
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The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction —in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?