Thanks!
You know how some software is meant to be understood, like example code in documentation, while other pieces are meant to "just work", like this forum? It feels to me like you're looking at the forum how sample code is written to be looked at, in your approach to MMM. There's nothing wrong with this, and in fact analyzing production systems for education can yield greater education, but it seems worth making sure we're on the same page that this is one of those things where trying to understand every detail is absolutely hard mode compared to just using it.
The goal is using that forum. But I end up instead trying to understand the code because the buttons aren't clearly labelled, because some features seem useless to me even though I know many people use them, etc.
But it's a general tendency for me to put more effort into understanding than utilizing.
The other thing worth noting when discussing Chaos Magic/k is that, if life was a card game, Chaos would be a "discard your hand and re-draw" type of move. If you have existing systems and beliefs that are working great for you and you don't want to throw them out or reduce their prevalence in your life, not all Chaos practices will necessarily be appropriate to fit those desires.
Not all is working great, but I don't know how to apply the techniques to those things that aren't. I don't want to discard my whole hand but only some specific cards but I don't know when I'll be drawing others.
My 2c on this one is that focusing on a significant object is vastly easier than focusing on an insignificant one, because it allows a gentle segue into focusing on the *significance* instead of the *object*. Someone could stare at their wedding ring all day, because they'd distract and entertain themself by pondering the meaning and history of the ring rather than *the actual ring*. In short, the mind has a far easier time wandering off and ending the useful portion of the exercise when using a meaningful object, which might be exactly what you mean about getting distracted by it.
Yes, that's basically what I meant. But I would get distracted by a "meaningless" thing no less than by one with a personal significance. If I'd stare at a ring with no significance to me, I'd start thinking about its color, its shape, its texture, what other things look similar, what rings symbolise, which things contain rings, etc. Just staring at it without thinking about it is difficult. Or are you saying that its color, shape and texture would be something one is "allowed" to focus on?
When you wash your dishes after eating, do you set them to dry at the near or far side of the space for that purpose? When preparing a drink, in what order do you assemble its components? When you sleep, on what side of the bed do you place the things you'll want the next morning or through the night? Even in constrained situations, these default habits can be mixed up for a while with no significant increase of inconvenience other than the inherent struggle of rolling the brain's path away from its well-worn ruts.
I don't have fixed habits about these things, except for when there is only one real option, or when I have reasons: I do tend to put specific things on one side of the bed, and specific other things on the other, but mainly due to space restrictions and which side's closer to the door and yoga mat or to the computer, respectively, and some things end up at either end depending on circumstances. Yet which things I put next to my bed and whether they end up there or somewhere else (in my bag, by the shoes, on the floor,...) changes often.
So it's hard to find something I do the same way every day since a significant amount of time and that it wouldn't be inconvenient to change. Also, if something does fulfill these criteria, it's likely to be so subconscious that it doesn't fit the other criterion of being easy to change. But thanks for the examples, perhaps they'll make it easier to find something. If I need to - based on that description I seem to be using that technique anyway unintentionally.
Banishing rituals: Have you ever been really worried about something and then experienced a change in attitude about it to realize it was actually unimportant, and ceased being bothered about it? Banishing is an attempt to flip that same switch. Or have you ever had a friend get way too obsessed with something for awhile, and been like "dude, chill, it's not really that big of a deal"? Banishing is like doing that but for yourself.
Doesn't seem familiar to me. I stop worrying when I found reasons why my worries are unfounded, not because of some change in attitude. I can get myself out of the more severe forms of the emotional aspect of worrying (i.e. anxiety attacks) by focusing on how everything in the world is of no importance, but it doesn't really change my attitude in regards to the importance of things relative to each other. My main worries are about health, and there it's not easy to have an attitude of it not being important.
And I usually let people be with their obsessions.
But thanks for explaining, I wouldn't have gotten the impression that that's what that technique is supposed to do.
Sigil stuff: I'm curious what your existing beliefs about how sigils work might be?
The few times I tried, they didn't seem to have any beneficial effects. But that was quite a while ago.
There's a couple theories I have encountered:
- they make you more confident about the likelihood of the outcome you wish, so that you behave slightly differently in a way that makes that outcome more likely, or that makes it more likely for you to accept a similar outcome as being that outcome you wished
- they make you file away your wish as something you don't need to work on, leading you to either completely forget about it or only notice it again when it happened to be fulfilled by chance
- they instruct your subconscious of what you wish exactly, so that it knows what to work on (with or without it using supernatural means for achieving that goal)
- they subtly remind you to actually work on your wish
Sigils as a technique for getting out of your own way and ceasing to waste a bunch of mental energy ruminating on something so you can go do something more useful is, like, one of the most common explanations of their effectiveness that I see to this day.
That might be why they didn't have an effect on me - you need something stronger than that to stop me from ruminating. Only reason why I do get on with things is because I can also do the job while ruminating.
Also, I most often ruminate on how to tackle things in the near future that I can't do something about right now but will soon, in order to be prepared for that, or things where I first need to decide which of several options to take. Or, when I am involved in a conversation (like this) or just had one, I ruminate through what I said or just wrote in order to find inconsistencies. Reminds me a bit of what Carroll writes in regards to questioning one's own arguments, but I just do that instinctively all the time. I certainly don't find all flaws in them, but just looking out for them doesn't do the trick for that.
One phenomenon with sigils that Carroll touches on lightly in his explanation of them is how keeping a desire in the front of the mind for too long causes one to think more about why forces outside one's control prevent one from attaining it, or why it might not be so bad to never attain it, and both those types of change to one's thinking tend to reduce one's odds of getting the desired result.
Hm yes, I sometimes end up being stopped from achieving something by not finding a way how to or by deciding it's not worth it. But why would sigils help against that?
Also, based on my experience, I start believing that I can't achieve something or that it's better not to achieve it if I don't spend much time thinking about it - the more I think about it, the more I tend to take these barriers apart.
And one's main problems, those for which one has the largest motivation to tackle them, also tend to be problems one thinks about the most. So there automatically is a high correlation between putting much thought and putting much other effort into solving a problem.
One approach is to attempt to perfect the introductory exercises as one interprets them before moving on. Another approach is to practice the introductory exercises until one understands their subjective effects, then attempt work which builds on them, and return to the earlier exercises to strengthen one's weakest skills in them at whatever time those weaknesses hinder further growth. Depending on the particular baggage and skills you've picked up from other practices, you may need more or less work in each area than the author tends to assume. For instance, an extensive background in meditation may have caused some readers to have already been practicing several of the exercises for many years before even finding the book.
If I were to try and perfect them based on my interpretation, I'd just give up. And I'm familiar with some of the exercises from general meditation practice. The problem is that I don't see much subjective effects on me from any of them, they seem like skills necessary for performing other skills (albeit I'm not sure how necessary actually) but I haven't seen any benefit in them themselves beyond exploring one's mental faculties.
For the "no movement" thing in particular, I read it as "do not instruct the body to move". A literal "no change in position may be permitted" would be unattainable, as we exist on a moving planet and bodies require a certain amount of internal motion to prevent cellular damage. But explaining the task as "do not move except the ways in which you must", while more accurate, would also lead to a lot of new students fidgeting about at the slightest itch because they "must" scratch their noses or "must" alleviate a burning desire to wiggle the toes or whatever.
I suspect that's how he must have meant it. I just wonder why that's considered to be that hard - I often do that unintentionally outside of meditation, ignoring such desires as to e.g. stretch or adopt a more comfortable posture because I'm too focused on something in my mind and/or on a screen and end up ignoring my body and then wondering why I'm getting back pain etc.
Also, he says no blinking, which to me would mean, also no unintentional movements. He can't really mean no blinking, though, (unless he means, no opening of the eyes) because keeping the eyes open without blinking would be really unhealthy. For me, my eyes tend to open and close unintentionally when I'm meditating (when I start out with eyes closed). I can suppress it when I focus on it, but I'm not sure whether that's the point.
If you have any prior practices that involve holding apparent opposites in mind concurrently, you might find it helpful to pick them back up. Especially if they involve balancing opposites, recognizing the ways in which those opposites are actually the same, and then finding a third thing that's opposite to the initial pair. That's the basic philosophical gesture, if we can call it such, which I find most useful in turning the words of authors like Carroll into things that feel like useful insights.
I may not have any prior practices in this regard because I don't know what you're talking about exactly.
I continued reading Liber Lux, and I guess I can't get out of looking at the source code

For most things mentioned there, I'm either like "how is that going to do what it's supposed to?" or "I have no idea which problem that could help with and it's too dangerous to pursue for its own sake" or "why would that be the case?". E.g., what do you need no-mind for?
The section on Gnosis clarified a misunderstanding I had. I assumed by no-mind or not-thinking the author means the absolute non-existence of any thought, emotion or sensation that you get in the few moments of successful void meditation. But he's talking about single-mindedness.
That's what I meant by it being hard to understand the text when I don't understand how the basics are meant.
And the way described for invoking the augoeides looks to me like it works by strengthening one's pattern-recognition faculties, making one see significance in any random occurrence. Because I see without even trying to which psychological mechanism this works on, I can't really unsee that and actually believe in it.
Well, with some of the things suggested I should probably just try it out, at least those that don't seem highly risky. But I often have no idea how to.
Writing a diary of coincidences seems like something I could start with. That might help me ease into the mindset for some of the other practices. But I'm finding it hard to decide whether something counts. The bunch of coincidences I encountered thus far today were things like, there was a cat outside when I was looking out the window, it looked roughly into my direction at that moment, and when I wondered whether that counts it looked into my direction again. If I'd count things like that it'd just make it easy to dismiss the majority as not being unlikely occurrences.
It might be helpful to use that term Kia for referring to awareness per se. When I say awareness or consciousness or self, people often think I'm talking about the mind or the ego. I don't think that term is widely enough known, though, to facilitate communication significantly. And based on the Wikipedia summary of the term, Carroll's usage of Kia is different from Spare's and Grant's...
Just to clarify, I don't disagree with everything I read thus far in this book. But those things I agree with don't teach me anything new.