I am doing Byron Katie’s Work for a class and I thought I’d share:

Judge-Your-Neighbor

1. Who angers, confuses, saddens or disappoints you, and why? What is it about them that you don’t like?

I don’t like her because she refuses to connect with me, has no remorse for what happened with him, acts like a sneaky witch every time I see her, continues to pursue him, and is mean to my friend. I am confused about why she is hanging around OneTaste. I am disappointed that she won’t be vulnerable enough for us to get some closure around this. I am angry that she makes me angry.

2. How do you want them to change? What do you want them to do?

I want her to sincerely apologize for her actions. I want her to stop pursuing him. I want her to be nicer to my friend. I want her to stop sleeping with every guy she meets. I want her to disappear from OneTaste forever. I want her to stop being my shadow.

3. What is it that they should or shouldn’t do, be, think, or feel? What advice could you offer?

She should stop being a sneaky bitch. She should stop acting like a remorseless skank. She should feel compassion for the people whose lives she is effing with. She should think I am way better than her and that she could never steal him away. She shouldn’t think she has a prayer at Teacher Training. She should be afraid of me and try to make me like her.

4. Do you need anything from them? What do they need to do in order for you to be happy?

I need her to stay the hell away from him. I need for her to make even the slightest effort to be my friend. I need for her to stop being sneaky. I need for her to stop creating conflict in order to get attention. I need for all of my friends to hate her.

5. What do you think of them? Make a list.

She is sneaky. She is a slut. She is worthless. She is a bitch. She is not trustworthy. She is a coward. She preys on people in weak positions. She is a complete bum. She is fake.

6. What is it that you don’t want to experience with that person again?

I don’t want to feel dirty when I look her in the eye. I don’t want to feel like she is an unpredictable psychotic snake. I don’t want to feel like I’m not good enough if she is with him. I don’t want to feel like a fool. I don’t want to feel like she doesn’t give a shit about herself or anyone else.

Inquiry: I don’t like her because she refuses to connect with me.

1. Is it true?

I don’t know. I tell myself it is true. I tell myself that if she would make an effort to open up, I would see something good in her and start to like her. I’m not sure that is true. I think I don’t like her because she is terrible in every way and it baffles me that anyone would like her or that he would be stupid enough to be with her so then I feel like I am not good enough. Like if my friends can like a wench like her, they clearly have terrible judgment and so their approval is worthless in propping up my ego. That’s just great. Good heavens.

2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true?

No. I have no idea why I hate her so much. It is irrational and confusing.

3. How do I react when I think the thought?

I feel like I am trying too hard and I’m embarrassed. I feel self-righteous, like everything is her fault. I feel smug because I am such a gracious connector to stoop to her level and try to be friends. I feel safe because I know she will not try to connect with me. I feel popular because this story is very useful in making my friends like me better than her. I feel sneaky because I am not being totally honest with anyone and it is all for my personal gain.

4. Who would I be without that thought?

I would be more honest and genuine. I would be closer to my truth. I would not be tricking my friends. I would not be so concerned with other people’s approval. I would be more free. I would take responsibility for my own refusal to connect with her.

5. Turn it around.

I don’t like myself because she refuses to connect with me.

I don’t like her because I refuse to connect with her.

I do like her because she refuses to connect with me.

I don’t like myself because I refuse to connect with her.

I don’t like myself because I refuse to connect with myself.

My brain seems to have coalesced enough to share the tale of my Tuesday night.

I’ve been in a very existential, unstable mood lately. On Tuesday night things came to a head. I was lying in bed when all of a sudden I started convulsing. It started in my back. I could not control it. It was as if I had let go and my body had taken on a life of it’s own. Then my hands stared moving on their own, my face, my shoulder, my legs, everything was twitching in turn. Then noises began to arise from my throat. The noises began to form words and even sentences! There I am watching this whole thing, totally unable to control it.

This was both scary and exciting. At one point I started growling “I’ll f-ing kill you.” Very Linda Blair. At another point my hips very shaking to a beat and I was singing, “I am dancing, I am dancing.” All kinds of crazy things arose. This went on for two hours!

My friend D is into Adyashanti and his true meditation practice. D has been having experiences like mine for over a year. He says it’s a normal part of awakening. I don’t know. All I know is that something in my consciouness has been nudged and all sorts of strangeness is manifesting because of it.

If anyone else has had this experience PLEASE contact me.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, that the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own… That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.

- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Boy oh boy, he wasn’t kidding. I moved in to OneTaste yesterday. My life is falling apart at the seams. I don’t care about anything. Everything seems totally ridiculous. Something that seemed like the biggest, craziest deal on Sunday is almost totally uninteresting to me today. I don’t even know where my edges are anymore, they seem to be crumbling so quickly.

And nothing to do but wring my hands standing there amidst the rubble wondering: what’s next?

Go read this LA Times interview with CalTech physicist Sean Carroll on entropy, time and the multiverse.

Mr. Carroll is saying that time is irreversible and therefore directional; our world has some type of order, a thrust forward. He also says that this order is highly unlikely to arise on its own and would almost certainly have to have come from some previous set of affairs or other universe:

So you think the way the universe began is unnatural?

Low-entropy configurations are rare.

If you take a deck of cards and you open it up, it’s true that they’re in order. But if you randomly chose a configuration of a deck of cards it would be very, very unlikely that they would be in perfect order.

That’s exactly low entropy versus high entropy.

The universe is more than what we see?

The reason why you are not surprised when you open a deck of cards and it’s in perfect order is not because it’s just easy and natural to find it in perfect order, it’s because the deck of cards is not a closed system. It came from a bigger system in which there is a card factory somewhere that arranged it. So I think there is a previous universe somewhere that made us and we came out.

We’re part of a bigger structure.

This is exactly what I have been thinking about lately. The reality that we are able to perceive is something. It has meaning and direction. However, our world arises from and exists in something else. We don’t know what it is, maybe we are some alien child’s science fair project. Even if that is the case, the alien child’s world exists in something which exists in something etc. Turtles all the way down.

But what do the turtles exist in? If you started two points at zero on a number line and sent one up the positives and one down the negatives at the same pace, they would both keep going towards infinity, but their sum would always be zero, right? So regardless of the turtles, alien science projects, or any other nonsense we can think up the answer is always zero, always nothing, always void.

Maybe?

Here is a super interesting post from Overcoming Bias on whether or not morality is just a result of personal preference. Best quote:

“Your strange beliefs about the nature of morality have destroyed your soul.  I don’t even believe in souls, and I’m saying that.”

Ha!

So is there truth or isn’t there? Something or nothing? All questions seem to be boiling down to this for me lately.

I’m off to Spain and Morocco for a couple weeks with my sister. See you in July!

Man oh man. Crazy day yesterday. Let me tell you all about it.

After a day of reluctant Tao-following, I had a particularly intense and upsetting conversation about the Universe with my friend D. I had a whole story running around my brain about how I had betrayed someone and made them feel bad. Lots of guilt. So in the course of trying to show me how feeling guilty is totally unnecessary for an infinite being, D starts in on the Universe being meaningless and it’s meaningless that it’s meaningless, etc. Ug.

I don’t do well with meaningless meaninglessness or nothing-nothing. Meaning vs. meaninglessness or nothing vs. something, I can deal with. Nothing-nothing is a very unpleasant place for me. (Yeah yeah, welcome to the non-dual, I know…)

I’m freaking out about this, literally bracing myself against the car repeating, “There is something, there is something…” Coupled with my guilt inducing story of betrayal, not a happy evening.

I finally get out of the car and in this ugly haze get home to see A, the person I supposedly betrayed. Come to find out, the Universe took care of him too. He had not been waiting around for me, but was out with his friend having a great time. Upon finding this out, something snapped into view for me and I could see exactly how the Universe orchestrated the entire day. There was something but that fact was nothing in and of itself. It was nothing for there to be something. Or something…

My body freaked out at this point. I sort of went limp and A had to hold me in his lap for a few minutes. Then I was getting ready to cry over the whole thing but as I started to sob a giggle came out instead. I started laughing uncontrollably and laughing hard. I could barely breathe. It felt like I was melting away. A sort of put his legs across me to ground me. I could feel currents of energy running through my body and out my hands. I kept putting them near his face and cackling, “Can you feel it? Can you feel the energy?” It was completely insane.

Finally I came down and was able to function and talk. I’m still feeling a bit giddy over the whole thing today. Pretty neat.

Was it a “peak experience“? I’m inclined to say yes mainly because of the context, the suddenness with which it arose, and the intensity. Man, I love this spiritual growth stuff some days.

Yesterday at OneTaste were talking about why we come together in community. It got me thinking about the One and the Many.

The One is Source or Non-Being. It is the Void from which the material realm arises. The Many is this material realm. It is the individuation of the One. We are the Many. You and I are tiny points of infinity made manifest in matter. As such we are not only connected to Source, we are Source. We are made of it, it courses through us, through us Creation creates.

Imagine you have a finger puppet on each finger. There is a rabbit and a monkey and a bear and whatever else you’d like. It looks like five distinct creatures going about their business, but take off the puppets and look: one hand, made of distinct but connected fingers, each with a role to play. The One and the Many, hand and finger puppets.

Community feels good because as we join with others, we gain a broader picture of the One. The more inclusive view we can take of the Many, the closer we are to seeing the One. I am one unique bit of infinity (and so infinite myself, but that’s a post for another day). When I join with others, suddenly I see more perspectives, more ways of being, more of the One. As I am able to take on those perspectives, I expand toward infinity myself. Community feels warm and vibrant because we are taking each of our limited views and creating a bigger picture.

Think of community as a stained glass window. How much light can enter through one tiny pane alone? Together not only can a whole room be lit, but a beautiful mosaic arises.

I’m in an uncharacteristically collectivist mood right now. For the first time I’m seeing the value of the group, not just individual participants. It’s a refreshing change for me.

From Catherin Ingram’s Dharma Dialogues via our new friend at An Expedition to Find the Edge of the Earth:

Question:

You say that this divine is playing itself out, but let’s look at the suffering on this planet. For instance, there is an ecological destruction that is creating a living hell for people and other beings who are not awake in this dream, as we can easily see here in India. We are creating a desert of this Earth and poisoning our land, waters, and air. Many more people will face starvation and live in degraded circumstances. Worldwide tensions will increase, and so on. People who are primarily interested in spiritual matters, at this particular point in history, are sometimes accused of being selfish. What do you feel about rendering service to the world, and from where does the passion arise for service if this manifestation is seen as a dream?

Answer by Poonja:
Having known the supreme state, our own Self, from inside there arises compassion. Automatically we are compelled. It’s not service. Service has to do with somebody else. When the command is compassion, there’s no one doing any service for anybody else, as when you are hungry you eat. You are not in service to the stomach, nor are the hands the servant when they are putting food into the mouth. Like this we should live in the world. Service is the responsibility of the Self. Otherwise who is doing this service? When the action is coming from the ego, there is hypocrisy, jealousy, crisis. When the doer is not there, then compassion arises. If a person is realized, then all his actions are beautiful. (Formatting mine.)

Laura and I have a lot of animosity towards Peace Corps. I will speak for myself in saying that my motivation for service was exactly as Poonja describes. There was very little compassion in it, but plenty of hypocrisy, jealousy and crisis. I’d say this is common among Peace Corps volunteers and in the organization itself.

Although it’s relevant to our time in Peace Corps, I’m actually posting this in response to a conversation that Laura and I had yesterday. The difference between service and compassion is the difference between why I joined the Peace Corps and why I helped a friend figure out some tough personal issues this weekend. For me Peace Corps was all about sacrifice, helping my friend was about abundance. Service is sacrifice, a reassignment of deficits. Compassion is abundance, an overflowing of love and understanding. Service is a battle to vanquish suffering, compassion is a channel for life to heal itself.

It’s time for a Singularity post! IEEE Spectrum has dedicated their latest issue to the Singularity. Let’s check out the highlights…

Vernor Vinge breaks it down:

In that event, I expect the singularity will come as some combination of the following:

The AI Scenario: We create superhuman artificial intelligence (AI) in computers.

The IA Scenario: We enhance human intelligence through human-to-computer interfaces—that is, we achieve intelligence amplification (IA).

The Biomedical Scenario: We directly increase our intelligence by improving the neurological operation of our brains.

The Internet Scenario: Humanity, its networks, computers, and databases become sufficiently effective to be considered a superhuman being.

The Digital Gaia Scenario: The network of embedded microprocessors becomes sufficiently effective to be considered a superhuman being.

A PDF who’s who of the Singularity. (There’s my crush, Eliezer!)

Christof Koch and Giulo Tononi contributed a very interesting article on the nature of consciousness. It explains:

To be conscious, then, you need to be a single integrated entity with a large repertoire of states. Let’s take this one step further: your level of consciousness has to do with how much integrated information you can generate. That’s why you have a higher level of consciousness than a tree frog or a supercomputer.

In suggesting that there are levels of consciousness (cue Mr. Wilber), we can conclude not only that something like AI or the Internet could take on human or higher consciousness, but that humans experience a range of consciousness and can expand it. Singularity research will help us understand what consciousness is and how it can be increased.

In general, a machine passes a Turing Test when it can convince a human that it too is human. This usually involves a high level of adaptability of response. For example, my pocket calculator can figure out square roots much more quickly than I can but it can’t make toast. It doesn’t even know what toast is. True intelligence requires not only depth of knowledge (which computers are very good at) but also breadth. Does higher intelligence equal higher consciousness? Does greater range of experience lead to greater consciousness? I think so. Expanding my comfort zone and pushing my edges feels like gaining greater consciousness. Every time I break through an edge I feel like a bigger, more inclusive being. Greater range is good for us and for computers as we all evolve towards higher understanding.

Note: Eliezer called this “IEEE Spectrum’s sad little attempt at Singularity coverage” so the articles might not be very interesting to those of you are big Singularity nerds. However, I think the idea was to acquaint a broader audience with the Singularity rather than hash out the nitty-gritty of Singularity theory.