In today’s episode of Nothing Definitive, I talk about how we adopt different states of mind depending on what we’re doing. And not just in the short-term, but how over a length our mind adjusts to adopt the views and emotion of our surroundings. I give the personal example of how my involvement in eSports has led me to worry about petty and trivial things, even though I had spent 5 months meditating and enlightening my mind. But to my surprise, within 10 minutes of meditating one night I pulled myself back from the clutches of darkness and returned to a happy and content state. But it seems impossible to maintain this once you return to whatever it is you do on a daily basis. And what I realized was that some people may never understand this difference because they go from school, to college, to a full-time job, without ever just taking a moment to calm down, and find real happiness.
UPDATE 2016-02-04: Just to clarify further, the realization here is that, by never fully disengaging from typical societal patterns (or common social expectations), you may never realize that the mental states you’ve adopted, because of your surroundings, are more unhealthy than alternatives that might exist in close proximity if you would simply take the time (and risk) to explore.
Today I published a new video talking about my current theory regarding consciousness and how it relates to enlightenment. The theory arose over the course of a few meditation sessions and really struck me as an interesting way to think about things. Of course I could be wildly misinformed, not being a neuroscientist and all, but I love allowing my mind to just think in different directions and see what it tells me.
This theory talks primarily about “configuration states”, individual states of mind that have stats and attributes attached to them. When you’re sad or happy, a variety of different configurations are available that implement that emotional state, load related memories, and as a result alters your consciousness. There would undoubtedly be millions of these configurations with varying levels of intensity, illustrating why people react differently to the same stimuli. I would also imagine there are other factors involved too, like genetics and any chemicals currently inside your body (food, drugs, etc.).
The example I give to try and explain this view is: there are two identical androids with the exact same brains and memories, and operate indistinguishably from humans (at least from the abstract). With all their senses turned off, they are each asked the exact same question in the exact same way. Both retrieve the same answer because they are each within the exact same configuration state and thus the memory retrieved is identical. But then the scientist allows one of them to receive tactile feedback or turns on their eyes, and now their configuration state is altering rapidly to adjust to the new information. Their consciousness changes and now they retrieve a different answer (or memory) to the question.
The point I’m trying to make is that with this theory in mind, enlightenment is probably just the discovery of specific configurations. Enlightenment isn’t actually anything at all, it’s just the subjective best possible configurations you can find and maintain. If true, then you can begin to systematically figure out how to achieve enlightenment states by understanding what the configuration is comprised of. For instance, 10/10 happy, 8/10 contentment, 0/10 sadness, 2/10 patience, 4/10 energy, etc. And you could begin to detail what thoughts and activities allow you to reach your maximum potential.
UPDATE 2016-02-04: I wanted to quickly point out that X/10 is a simplistic way of expressing this idea and that in reality the complexity of configurations are probably beyond human comprehension. Instead you must rely on approximations and an acute awareness of self to predict and maintain mental states that positively impact your psyche (note ‘positive’ being a relative definition and not ’emotional positivity’ as that may not always be the most beneficial state of mind). This is undoubtedly a daunting task however and could require a lifetime of analysis and practice to achieve, if it’s even possible at all.
I’m watching “God Is In the Neurons” and “Athene’s Theory of Everything”. The video begins with a great explanation of how memories are formed by our experiences and how, as a result, talent and skills are formed. This is a great explanation for why people become good at something and why they are the ones that pioneer their fields and discover new things. Something to ponder: our consciousness is the current unity of actively firing neurons (whereas our subconsciousness is the collective of inactive neurons?). Could it also be said that mirror neurons are what create distinction or difference between each other person? That by viewing the lives of others were are subconsciously comparing and placing ourselves in society against them? Does this explain why we have a class based system for society?
I’m thinking about people being nothing more than the state of currently active neurons. For example, who I am when I am sitting at my computer is different from the person outside playing tennis. Although there must be a set of neurons that are almost always active that define traits of my personality. I don’t become an entirely new person, I simply shift the focus of parts of my active neurons to the ones that relate to tennis. What this makes me consider is the opportunity to control these patterns in your brain and utilizing the most relevant, productive, inspiring, motivated, etc. in every situation. By realizing this and focusing mental energy on activating these neurons, I could effectively become exactly the person I want to be?
UPDATE 2014-03-16: It’s strange to think that I learned this back then and trust it as a source for understanding the world. While it’s an incredibly compelling piece of entertainment, what belief structures have I built around interpreting reality this way? What if some element of it is wrong and thus an entire branch of my reasoning is poisoned by it? What if we discover that the mind works in an entirely different way than we thought? How would that effect my worldview and would I be able to adapt?
