Structure

I took on a lifestyle of heavy work and heavy travel. For a while, this was my limit. But since then, my bandwidth has increased, and as a result, I have created a gap that needed to be filled. It was mostly split between reading and games naturally, but it was becoming an issue. So, I am back. With my increased bandwidth, I have begun to rewrite on the thoughts about human psychology that I was working on previously.

I visited my mate who I have always investigated these topics with. The challenge was to explain the concept to the point that we were both satisfied. Having done this, I was able to identify various gaps and leaps. However, my friend has always been on the verge on enlightenment, so once the appropriate definitions were in place, the concept was known to him.

This leads me to structure. I’m attempting to structure my thoughts in a way that is more easily communicated. Let’s see…

Day off

I had to break my gaming habit this day. I was in a state where I could not meditate due to the frantic lifestyle of London and my work.

I began by meditating. It took about 15 minutes before I stopped fidgeting, then all was calm, I was stable. This was significant, my first true meditative moments in over a month.

Once the meditation dam had been broken, meditating at will had become an option, and I began to engage heavily almost immediately.

I regained my sensitivity to energy, and was once again able to reduce and condense my self, or my aura, or whatever. Seeing when my energy state was escalating out of control, meditating, and increasing my strength.

I just had a meeting with a head in the company, we had a moment where the path of conversation was lost. I asked “How did we get here?” He asserted “You asked me ___”. I agreed, paused, allowed my mind to work whilst simultaneously condensing my aura, “I was discussing ____”, an earlier topic in the chain, at which point I was able to make my point.

This details an achievement I very much doubt I would have been capable of the days prior to my magnificent day off.

The child and the monkey brain are the same!

Evidence of this claim is in my last post regarding ‘Illness recovery’ and the concept of “timeouts”.

There is no difference between a child’s upset mind in terms of brain structure and the adult’s upset mind brain structure, which I term the monkey-brain (I realise that this is sort of already used, monkey-mind, being the part that wants us to keep doing things). But given this correlation, we can now speak of behavioural modification more!

What works with reprimanding children? Screaming at them, kind of, but that doesn’t have positive long-term effects; beating them, probably worse than the screaming option; controlled timeouts, not so effective because you cannot get inside the childs head to make them stop thinking about something; distraction, probably as effective in the short-term as anything else, probably as good as anything else in the long-term.

However, if you could control the childs mind during timeouts (or teach them how to do it) then you could eliminate all stimuli and prevent them from torturing themselves too.

As an adult, you can do this, you can control your thoughts and eliminate stimuli both external and internal. Creating the most dramatic change in structure.

Illness recovery

When I’m sick, I am doing things without reprimand, since I’m in the depths of hedonism. Usually the game playing network will switch on.

Following the illness. The gaming network is usually back up and running, when I am well, I have to exert the effort to decimate the network. Ignoring the network is never as good as eliminating it entirely.

Meditation is the same as “timeout”, the punishment dealt to kids to modify their monkey brained behaviour. This is the most effective way to chastise the monkey brain that I have found. MUCH better than distraction for modifying behaviour. Distraction utilises a different but similar structure, but timeout causes a complete frying of the circuitry in the behavioural area of the brain. I’m claiming that area is central to the DMN throughout childhood and adulthood, and sits near the seratonin pathways, communicating with the post-brain via the <forgotten the name – please reasearch and add this later*>.

*Septal nuclei, MFB, somewhere in there (above/beside amygdala, going from hind to fore)

Excellent talk regarding this. It doesn’t discuss the structure, just the validity.

Sickly Halloween

First halloween in England. The amazing Janet invited me out.

A kind offer refused.

A rationalisation, I cannot, I’m sick. Certainly this is only a half truth. Although I sit here coughing and spluttering.

I had recalled the Regi (I think) case. Napping pre-out, this was common practice when I was at my peak, end of Aus, start of the USA. When I was tired, I would sleep. My aim was to have fun! And fun could not be had without a brief rest. The case of Regi. I encouraged the nap, she did so, then when trying to rouse her after 20mins, she was not willing to move. I informed her that she would feel better once she was up, however, she was not to budge. Very shortly, after the ship had sailed, she was able to identify her error.

My behaviour tonight, although I identified it as such in the moment, was very similar. I was sleepy, and did not wish to venture. However, to add to the wait of immediate and misguided want, I am actually ill. I did not grace the office today due to this very reason.

Now, the invite. Meeting Janet’s friends. I was honestly greatly looking forward to tonight. All the new people I would meet. However, the stress of my job has knocked me down. That and London being fucked; of course. I can take stress so long as I can eat a ton, without food and with high stress with no reprieve, my health will come undone.

Boring facts of health aside. I have a genuine FOMO reaction now… It is an acute anxiety, and the only escape is a kind of melancholy; says the unenlightened man…

Poker

I have played a couple of games recently. It has shown me that my old method of gaming was completely flawed; it was akin to how I approached work and life in general. I didn’t aim to just apply the methods of those before me, I would try to envision my own.

It was some degree of pride (or something) that prevented me from realising that the game is simply algorithmic. This is why I got worse the longer I played. I am smart, but I fail to convert the things I work out into a method to be executed robotically.

The worst thing about having no set style is that it violates the scientific principles by which one should be experimenting in complex systems. Since I was constantly changing style, there was no way to improve.

Steering the ship.

Most things don’t need a direction, as they will happen, or not. Ie. Shopping in Brussels. The opportunity will appear. Other things require a rudder.

Under this framework, what is the function of life goals? Not to form behaviour, as traditionally seen. But to provide an objective measure for decision making without irrational feedback loops confusing things. Feeling is the read, it is how we gather information about the world around us. It isn’t useful when appraising internal deep thoughts when it causes an amygdala hijack. Goals make the feeling information objectively usable and workable. If there are feelings when decision making, it may be a guide that something is missing. Meditation becomes imperative at this moment, to connect the monkey to the mind.

Goals may be illicited through dreams.

It helps to have only one core goal. Mine is the interesting story. I say it helps because then you don’t get caught trying to optimise between two actions that will best satisfy two simultaneous life goals.

Enlightenment

Your intellectual brain spends all day feeding your egotistical monkey brain. Enlightenment results when the monkey is no longer being fed. Your intellect is then only concerned with what’s happening present in the world, rather than presently in your monkey brain.

Society’s fear of displaying compassion

Even now, I avoid compassion towards some as I feel like it “sends the wrong signals.”

This is highly presumptuous of me, which is a personal trait, but it is also a reflection that people are only compassionate towards few or none, and I believe this is most likely driven by lust/desire.

Annoying continuous random sound

I had an annoying intermittent repeated clicking sound coming from system sounds. I went to the system sound settings and found the offensive sound to be a ‘Start Navigation’ sound. A quick google to find out what the hell that is lead to this amazing find!

http://www.sevenforums.com/sound-audio/186955-how-fix-continuous-start-navigation-clicking-sound.html

Now it is just a matter of following the instructions! Here I go…

It’s just explorer… Having explorer browsers open does it… they just like… Refresh or something. I am disabling the annoying sound.