I’m sure that comes into it, but it does not feel like the crucial element. It feels more like a perception of myself that I’m working with here.
Hmm…both your and @Baphomet ‘s comments give some helpful inspirations. I just needed to translate them into my own terms.
envisioning (I.e. visualization) a plan with pragmatic steps that can get me to the place I’m trying to reach.
possibly working a bit with limit destroyer as I follow the steps of my plan
A good first step is Establishing Proximity
The context for Vocation, Wealth-Generation, and even Empire Building (to some extent) is society.
Society is nothing more than the sum total of all interpersonal interactions (including this interaction right here—my typing of this post and someone else reading it or potentially reading it).
In this world of 7.77 billion people, there are numerous (literally, billions) of interpersonal interactions taking place, and numerous contexts for interaction. And we continue to interact with ideas and processes introduced by the people who have already died and passed on. (Ever gone to a church or temple? How about a university?) This raises the number of social contributors to approximately 108 billion. (108 billion)
The point? There are a vast number of contexts for interaction, and, once again, interaction forms the context of Wealth, Vocation, Empire Building. Particularly Wealth essentially comes down to interactions and exchanges of Value. (Value is symbolically represented desire.)
So, on to the practical
As a person who seeks to establish and strengthen Vocation, Wealth-Generation, and Building of Lifestyle-Empire; establishing proximity to relevant, facilitative social contexts is a powerful initial step.
Imagine an immense club with 1000 rooms. Each room has its own unique combinations of music, lighting, activities, noise level, decor, etc. Originally, you have lingered around 2 or 3 of those rooms because your parents, your schoolmates, and a couple of random events pushed you to be around those two rooms. But you’re not particularly enjoying them.
So, the next step would be to find a way to explore what is happening in the other rooms. When you find one with music or activities, etc., that are exciting, appealing, or that feel right to you, you move closer to it. Start to go in and get comfortable with it. Then gradually you start to get more involved.
(Time to go. May continue this thought-experiment later.)
Yes, I can see it now. We’re talking about more or less the same thing.
I simply fixated on the term ‘visualization problem’. (Internally, it probably reminded me too much of the idea of ‘positive thinking’, and turned me off.)
But I think it’s also a bit more than that. I’m involved in a planning phase right now. So apart from imagining just generally reaching my goals or desired conditions, I’m trying to deliberately define and choose practical steps that will get me there. I know the ‘best laid plans of mice and men’ and such, so I don’t expect that my plan will just unfold without any changes or deviations, but the point is to have that plan and that vision so that whatever does happen, you still have ideas of how to keep moving.
I believe you need to be happy in the now and be excited of the future to give you the right momentum. And having a clear line to the next best baby step is the way to go. Want to start an online business? Buy a domain name first etc.
Keeping that in check and learning from it vs being too outcome focused seems to be the way to go.
If you subscribe to Reality Transurfing - this is reducing importance.
Confidence
To believe in and try (and to invest in) your ideas.
useful quote. Especially ‘the pressure to do so…’.
Don’t have a definite purpose for this post. Just want to update my journal.
I do not have much to report at the moment. I’ve been experiencing a curious mixture of urgency and inertia.
One of my go-to ideas is: Successful people focus more on entrance strategies than on exit strategies.
If you’re mainly focused on what you want to get away from, that is not a good sign. Instead, concentrate on what you want more of or on what you want to move towards. If you don’t know what that is, then that’s probably the real problem; not whatever you’re thinking you want to get away from.
So, I’m challenging myself to further develop my own entrance strategy.
Don’t trust easy answers from people who don’t know you.
So I’m not alone in this realization. I also discovered this. A remnant of trauma I think and coping strategies that were developed to escape. When your life is centered more around preventing bad things vs experiencing good ones.
It’s an easy trap to fall into. It also characterizes the medical and mental health fields where health is often conceptualized as the ‘absence of disease’ rather than as the presence of wellness and fitness.
Does make you wonder right? What message are we sending the subconscious? Funny little story related to that on a smaller scale.
When I was growing up as a kid my dad always told me something along the lines of, “you don’t want to do what I do every day, getting up at 3am, working at a job that’s unfulfilling”. Almost like a lullaby before I went to bed at night as he was exhausted from the day. His heart was in the right place, but man if that didn’t immediately fill my head fully of the worst future possible that I then drifted off to sleep with and sent right into my subconscious.
Fast forward a good 15 or so years I was struggling with finding employment and took a job at UPS. What did I do? Got up at 3AM every day, dealt with the biggest assholes, and dealt with the worst depression in my entire life. I wish I could say the next part was more epic, but it wasn’t. All I remember was I was on a sorting line and I had this sudden epiphany that I was doing everything my Dad told me not to do. I was in a probation period so I thought I’d ride it out to build character or prove to myself it could be done (in hindsight almost entirely based on my insecurity of not being good enough, I should have just left on the spot). But yeah, scary how some of this stuff manifests itself without you realizing sometimes.
I’m thinking about the concept of ‘seeds being planted in the subconscious mind’.
In some schools of Buddhist psychology and cosmology, there is the concept of the Alaya consciousness, a deep level of mind where the processes are generated that will eventually mature and develop into experiential reality.
The ‘seeds’ that exist at the level of the alaya consciousness can be strengthened or attenuated depending on how we engage our minds, attentionally, decisionally, etc. (Quite familiar. This is fairly similar to our little folk theories here about the role of action in manifesting our desired results.)’
I’m also reflecting on the role of correspondence in manifesting conditions in our lives. This (as I mean it here) is basically the idea that when the proper external conditions correspond with the proper internal conditions then a particular phenomenon is able to manifest.
You may have developed tactical genius in football coaching, but if there’s no team around you awaiting your plans, then your genius will not be properly expressed at this time. If you have the team, but there are no games, it will also not be expressed. Internal and External.
It would be very odd to spend $650 on a brand new fishing pole, only to then sit in your living room looking at it and complaining that ‘It has not yet caught any fish!’ The Internal capabilities must meet the External conditions. There’s nothing strange or difficult about that notion.
Subliminals work most directly with Internal conditions. They help to make you ready and capable. But it’s your own choice whether or not to actually go fishing.
This is not a Blame point, it’s a Logistics point. You may have perfectly good reasons not to go fishing at this time. The point is to just not be mystified as to why your fishing pole doesn’t seem to be working. (Entendre away if you wish).
Ramit Sethi has just released his Earnable course. Essentially a mentored program in starting your own business. It probably requires an investment of 5 hours per week over a several month period. He is dependable and has, in my estimation, a good track record. The course requires an investment of $1997.
This opportunity came before me in the past 2 weeks. First, Ramit Sethi was re-introduced to me. And then it turned out that this was the precise moment that he was preparing to release his latest program.
Inner Circle? Yes.
I’m choosing not to participate at this time. I do not feel the focus or the readiness to do it right now. I feel that it will be right for me in about a year. And I feel that there are a number of smaller, doable steps that are available to me right now, but about which I am dragging my feet. So, I’ve decided not to jump in yet. This is my choice.
My meditation/supercharger practice has changed.
On January 10, I bought and used The Commander for the first time. I was impressed by the initial experience and decided to use it as part of my daily meditation. As mentioned somewhere above, Commander + Subliminal + Commander = 65 minutes. A perfect amount of time.
I used that daily from 11 January until 20 March.
Then on 21 March, I began to use Commander - Subliminal (Ecstasy of Gold) - Elixir.
That’s my new meditation stack. 64 minutes. Pretty much the same.
But what has changed is that after 2 months doing the Commander visualization, I’m now moving back to a primarily meditative awareness practice. So, I’m not actively ‘efforting’ to follow the visualization instructions of the superchargers. Instead, I’m using my normal meditative object; and allowing my mind to do what it will with the guided visualizations.
I basically just felt a natural pull in this direction, so I’m doing it.
As for my ‘usual meditative object’? It is the neural generation of sensate-perceptual experience. Actually pretty straightforward since that covers all experience. It’s more about the frame for regarding it than anything else. In that regard, the meditation practice is more of a remembering and an orienting than a ‘pursuit’ or a ‘search’.
High Sensitivity
This insight is relatively hard-won for me.
There are so many concepts floating around among us humans. And there’s nothing the human ape loves better than a shiny new concept (or a favorite old one) to wield.
There’s a lot of static and noise to wade through. And the trickiest part is: it’s extremely easy and common to use ‘true’ concepts to distract people or oneself from other truths. This is the most effective form of misdirection, because it appears utterly legitimate. If I deceive you by way of truths, then you are less likely to recognize the deception.
It is not only ‘truth’ that people need. Sometimes not even truth at all. But rather, Relevant, Timely, Salient concepts. And to make matters even more complicated, relevance, timeliness, and salience can be quite subjective.
So a good policy: don’t trust anyone who tells you s/he has ‘the answer’. But welcome those who are willing to share good questions, and possible answers (plural).
On the other hand, if a truck is speeding towards you, get up and get out the fucking road. You can deal with the philosophical import later while you’re still breathing.
Anyway, all of this is to say: High Sensitivity. The concept pioneered by Dr. Elaine Aron. She did not invent it, but she’s championed it.
Over years of reflection, of successes and failures, and of experiences, I believe that this phenomenon is an extremely consistent through-line and explanatory factor in my experiences.
I am an HSP, a so-called highly sensitive person. This does not mean I’m a kind person. It means that certain aspects of my neural architecture process stimuli with a high degree of nuance relative to the population average. And that as a consequence I have been subject to experiences of overwhelm in contexts that would conventionally be viewed as ‘normal’ or ‘not overwhelming’.
Perceptual and processing sensitivities are not good or bad in and of themselves. They are simply characteristics to be understood and managed. Positioned appropriately. Cared for. And at best, harnessed for optimized performance.
This is not a very widely recognized notion and so, similar to many HSPs, my sensitivities were not handled well in my youth. I developed erroneous concepts and ideas about the parts of my life and my self that were associated with those sensitivities; often seeing them as flaws or limitations to be overcome (or that I repeatedly failed at overcoming).
Over time, I’ve improved in this area. But many of the obstacles or challenges I’ve faced or continue to face are related to it.
One of the important tasks is to learn to listen for and to hear your own inner process. To recognize what you really want. Particularly in the early part of life, it’s very common to pursue socially established goals and aspirations. If those extrinsic objectives match up somewhat with your intrinsic nature and motivations, then that dynamic can actually serve you. If, however, your needs and your nature differ significantly from the population average, then you’ll need to do a bit of extra learning, and (definitely in my case) a whole lot of reframing of social messages and cultural norms.
As a teenager, I took the shortcut of just saying ‘everything people say is wrong’. (Again, not uncommon at a time in life when individuation is really kicking in.) But babies and bathwater. In the end, it’s going to take a little more deliberate reflection than that.
Maybe my next few posts will be about integrating high sensitivity with my ongoing goals and projects.
For HSP-related reframing, stacking Rebirth would make sense.
Interesting. I relate to the HSP concept too. In fact the other day I ended up looking up information on how being HSP can result in possible PTSD like symptoms.
Do you feel as if you’ve become less reactive with subliminal usage? It’s a really complex thing because as you said society doesn’t understand it. So it’s a bit like walking around with an open wound and everyone jabbing their fingers in it. For me using the subs has taken away some of the past triggers that really would mess me up in day to day life. But as a whole I still feel there’s a core physical nature to it, one that I can’t just ignore.
Things grow out from themselves.
Orange trees grow out from orange trees.
Joy grows out from joy.
Value grows out from value.
Therefore, if there’s something of which you want more, find and connect with the parts of your life where it already is.
Parameters.
One of my mantras right now is: It’s not personal, just parameters.
and
It’s not punishment, just parameters.
First, learn the parameters you’re working with and then, strategize them.
I was thinking of it like this: Imagine a man who one day buys one Italian sports car and one thoroughbred horse. The next day, with good intentions, he goes to take care of these two high-speed treasures. He brings water and grain; and he also brings a tank of petrol.
So far, so good.
But, oops. Then things go left: he makes horse drink the gasoline, and he pours the water and grain into the gas tank of the sports car.
What’s going to happen next? The horse gets sick and maybe dies. The car will not move or even start. And there may be a bunch of engine damage.
In my view, that outcome is not a punishment for his immorality or poor intentions. That outcome is the result of his lack of knowledge about the parameters of the horse and the parameters of the car.
Pleasure and success are not rewards in my view. Pain and failure are not punishments. They are outcomes that flow causally from parameter-driven processes.
I think that’s why the big challenge in Buddhism is not ‘Evil’ but rather ‘Ignorance’. I’m on board with that perspective.
You didn’t ask about all this. But I guess it was something I wanted to express.
I was working on these issues long before I ever started using subliminals. I’ve been experiencing growth and setbacks around them for decades.
High Sensitivity is a parameter. One of many. I want to manage it, care for it, and strategize around it. I do not want to remove it. Any more than I want to remove my nose because I sometimes encounter things that smell bad.
I love my sensitivity level. It’s why I experienced reveries as a child, and why I’m so transported by fiction and music. It’s opened up a world of empathic learning. I am so grateful that i have it.
It’s true that society did not understand it particularly well. That’s been a pain in the ass. But then again, society is nothing more than all of the people here added up together. Societies are learning and f**king up just as individual human beings are.
More parameters. Got to look at them clearly, learn them, and then strategize. (And hope that you survive your own ignorance long enough to gain some insight and work out a better arrangement.)
In daily life, I experience winning and losing, ups and downs, like all people do. But on the cosmological, existential level, I fundamentally reject the tropes of tragedy and triumph. Those are just tiny little conventions that humans use to organize our emotional perceptions.
This also brings home to me that a subliminal by itself will always require a person’s own wisdom and self-awareness.
A highly sensitive Emperor would look quite different from a nomosensitive Emperor.