Going Meta

About: going meta: on the pleasures and perils of higher consciousness | mindreaders dictionary

Michael Hall et al. describe some NLP processes with this term. Looking at looking at & other daytime leisure activities such as studying being (ontology) & experiencing experience is the name of the game. Another related game is trying to figure out whether another person is telling the truth; also an NLP-like skill.
I like this picture from the about line website"

& perhaps this one on beeing:

Comments

C says

Here is the link to Stanford's The Metaphysics Research Lab . It has lots to ponder for example there is something about Computational Metaphysics which may relate to the aim of Cybermind:

source: ...

Computational metaphysics, as we practice it, is the implementation and investigation of formal, axiomatic metaphysics (i.e., the study of metaphysics using formally represented axioms and premises to derive conclusions) in an automated reasoning environment. As our axiomatic metaphysics, we work within the axiomatic theory of abstract objects developed at the Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University.

The basic idea is to represent the axioms and definitions of abstract object theory in the syntax of an automated reasoning system. Once this is done, arbitrary propositions in the language of object theory can either be proved or shown to be independent of the basic axioms and definitions. In the past, we have used PROVER9 (and its accompanying model-finding program, MACE4), as our automated reasoning system. (PROVER9 is the successor to OTTER.) This meant representing things in the syntax of PROVER9. For examples, see the links to our work on the theory of forms and the theory of possible worlds.

... with pointers to software. Like predicate calculus, these may be beyond the nice simplicity of CyEnglish.

Seth says

Very interesting ... and a big lol

on your choice of a "beeing icon" !

Today i have started to work out an ontology and/or personal mind map ... bearing in mind that yours will be different and that this is in no way an attempt on my part to specify or classify where things fit in for everybody ... just myself. So jut for the record this is what i have come up with for myself ...

source: seth's personal working paper
dualities ...

good/evil ... right/wrong ... good/bad ... (judgement,morality)
true/false ... fact/fiction ... (logic,semiotics)
positive/negative ... increase/decrease (?)
above/beneath ... (hierarchy)
habitual / spontaneous... restrained/free ... expected,regular/surprising,novel ...
intention,planning / submission,victimization ... intentional/unintentional ... (???)
creative ... artistic ... expressive ... desire ... jaded ... ????
flexible/brittle ... ???
hesitation/fluid movement ... ???
me/other ... my behavior/ others behavior ...
tolerant/manipulative ...
love/hate ...
interested/disinterested
coincidence
private/public
distraction/focus
meta/being

parts of human behavior ...

thought, reason, logic, sign
feeling, heart, sensation
will, action, movement, change

physical reality

time
space
location
event
process ... continuum
mass

... After reading your item here i added the meta/being duality ... thanks your posting was very timely. Unfortunately this is all a distraction from the focus i need to accomplish today otherwise i would study your about link in detail. Anyway this is where the study that started on 14346 has moved for me.

Mark de LA says

The Tai Shu Commentary for today's hex (in Paradise) I think is pertinent here:
~

P.2441 Hex #7,1 79-7-4-26-16-4-THU (31.06 years agi)

" ... Dai yot yao gih #7, Fire of Lingam or Geburah of Daath; regulations in complete accord with the seasons thus nourishing all things! Yes innocence & instinctive goodness shall no doubt protect us from all evil attacks! Whether a movement be clumsy or graceful depends on the feeling in the eye of the observer! In Intuition one is completely translated consciously into the object just as in atavism but with full & exact cognition; words which describe Samadhi of course cannot be other than symbolical! "

~
Two things stand out. One is the feeling in the eye which I located for myself & till now was not aware. Up to that time I just thought of rubbing my eyes or the pain of something in them.
The second is the whole of the last sentence.

C says

seth 2010-09-29 11:13:00 14147

I gave this some thought and bearing in mind that to gorck something i must make it my own and reinterperte it in terms of my own ontology ... so your mielage will vary ... so this is what i have come away from this item concluding. Meta and Being are a duality. The picture to the left depicts that conclusion and relates it to the semiotic triangle. Words and even their interpertation in your mind and their meaning to you are all "meta" in relation to the beings itself.

Interestingly enough that also applies to you (me too). In other words you (and i too) are real beings, even to ourselves, just like the cat is. But whatever we say or think about the cat, or ourselves, is still meta to the being (ourselves in this case) itself.

Now, Mark, is that what you call being?

Not exactly. What I think you are saying with your diagram is similar to classic duality: the thing-in-itself vs the percept & concept of it. In a Universe such as GW's where every ultimate particle has consciousness there is a distinction of the thing-in-itself-for-itself in it's own consciousness; however dim or exalted that consciousness might be compared to our own.

Seth says

C 2010-09-29 12:36:05 14147

seth 2010-09-29 11:13:00 14147

I don't understand what you are saying here. I would put consciousness on the meta side of the relationship. A person is, or is not, conscious of something. I would say that consciousness is the relationship of (awareness of) one being to another being ... and that also includes the special case where the being is aware of itself. Thing is you are only aware of your own conciousness ... or at least of that consciousness in which you are part of the process. So if your not part of the cosciousness of some rock on the ground, well then you will not be aware its counsciousness at all even though i suppose you could speculate about it. Me, i have a strong concept called "otherness" ... that rocks conciousness were it to exist is totally otherness to me ... my consciousness, and i assure you it exists, is otherness to you.

Are you saying that being and consciousness are the same thing to you? How, in your mind, is what you said about consciousness related to how i was trying to point to being?

Mark de LA says

Seth above re the diagram: ...

... I disagree with your 2nd sentence - consciousness is not meta. What you do with what is in your consciousness, like conceptualize, that's the meta. Consciousness is basically awareness -itself, but a discussion of it would be meta. Look into your son's eyes & you might question whether you can only be aware of your own consciousness - it's not all otherness at the human being level. Being & consciousness are not the same thing. Classic duality says that there are things out there & then there is my perception-concept of the things & that the twain shall never meet. Meta is more a third dimension which examines that whole duality. Being is more akin to what's beyond your sense of I or Ego - it's what causes you to sense something there.

Mark de LA says

IMHO, if you put being inside the cat spelled all in lower case in polarity to Being which represents the Cosmic All then you would approach what some zen masters describe. OTOH, meta is not part of the vocabulary. I think you are confusing meta with mind - meta is like mind examining mind per se. The item itself describes meta accurately. Yeah, Meta s/b Mind in your diagram.

Seth says

I'll respond to your last comment in several trains so that we can focus.

First i was not trying to apply logic to attention, rather i was trying to make sure that we are talking about the same thing when we were using words. For example we are now using the term "attention", so now i assume that what we call consciousness is just the same thing as what we call "attention" ... corrected of course for the slight syntactic variation. So when i say i am conscious of x, that is the same thing as me saying that i am paying attention to x. Can we agree on that?

Then too the word "conscious" is frequently used

C says

seth 2010-10-04 15:12:58 14147

I'll respond to your last comment in several trains so that we can focus.

First i was not trying to apply logic to attention, rather i was trying to make sure that we are talking about the same thing when we were using words. For example we are now using the term "attention", so now i assume that what we call consciousness is just the same thing as what we call "attention" ... corrected of course for the slight syntactic variation. So when i say i am conscious of x, that is the same thing as me saying that i am paying attention to x. Can we agree on that?

Then too the word "conscious" is frequently used

The stuff in bold is essentially current usage, but attention & consciousness are different. You can have consciousness without any particular attention or focus. If you really wanted to be on the same page, you would do the exercises as has been suggested many times. If you want to escape your mind you need more than semantics, reasoning or quibbling about who said what & who means what.

If you don't like the word being then use the coin IS-ing & see where you get with it.

Mark de LA says

seth 2010-10-04 07:44:31 14147

Well i think there is still a lot of what i call semantic confusion going on here. By that i mean when you use a term are you using the term to point to the same thing that i point to when i use that term. So here is my attempt to sort out some of that confusion.

Awareness: Things that are talked about in the form {A is aware of X} where A is some human and X is anything that person is aware of. Note that when we talk about these type (1) relationships, it must be implicit that there is an A and that there is an X.
Self Awareness: A special case of (1) where X == A.
A special case of (1) where { A is aware of {A is aware of X} }
A special case of (3) where X == A.
Qualia: talked about in the form { A feels θ as {A awareOf X} }. Here we use a greek letter to distinguish what it feels like to be aware of something. This does introduce another dimension to the consideration of consciousness.

This perhaps needs some work and there might need to be some logic considered. When does it hold that {A is aware of X } precudes {A is aware of Y}.

Now getting back to some of the things you said, like "Being which represents the Cosmic All" , where is that "Being" in terms of the equations above?

I do not hold that "Being" is in the domain/realm accessible by logic. I hold what you are doing with your "logic" above is similar to pursuing the task of proving that God exists. Nevertheless it is interesting from a couple of points. Wikipedia Qualia is confusing at best & mostly a lot of words. PR uses the term feeling attention in some similar contexts. For example you could put your feeling attention on who you are & follow the steps of contemplation & probably get to your own beingness or "is-ness" or "is-ing". Step 4 or 5 in your statements above get you to the door of being or Being then you have to leave behind logic, reason & concept-ing & go for experience with your feeling-attention & see what shows up. As I have mentioned before, the concept & all the reasoning about/with something is not the experience of the thing. It's just an experience of your own mind.

Seth says

C 2010-10-04 16:16:48 14147

seth 2010-10-04 15:12:58 14147

I'll respond to your last comment in several trains so that we can focus.

First i was not trying to apply logic to attention, rather i was trying to make sure that we are talking about the same thing when we were using words. For example we are now using the term "attention", so now i assume that what we call consciousness is just the same thing as what we call "attention" ... corrected of course for the slight syntactic variation. So when i say i am conscious of x, that is the same thing as me saying that i am paying attention to x. Can we agree on that?

Then too the word "conscious" is frequently used

If you don't like the word being then use the coin IS-ing & see where you get with it.

Is it too much to ask that if we use words back and forth that we at least agree what they refer to. I am not quibbling, Mark, i am clarifying. I actually think that us not being on the same page is mostly due to sloppy usage of words and not befing precise enough in what we are talking about.

Actually i had not finished my comment but posted it in error because of a hardware malfunction. I was getting to the case where consciousness might not have an object. This is where we need to talk about qualia ... what it feels like to be conscious of something. If there were no feeling that accompanied consciousness, then we would not even be talking about it here, would we? So we all have feelings of consciousness ... how it feels to be conscious of this and that ... perhaps if you train yourself to avoid consciousness of anything, you can get at just the feeling itself sans the awareness of the objects. You seem to have assigned some meta meaning to that feeling ... but then you will probably claim that is is not even a feeling, but that it is some other grand thing which carries its own meaning into your lefe. Now i'm going to be honest with you ... i experience a feeling of consciousness too ... but my consciousness without some particular object feels kind of like an echo ... and i don't ascribe any particular value or meaning to it at all ... in fact it feels kind of starry-eyed and i tend to avoid it. But then that's just me ... i'm sure your experience with its accompanying emotional content and the meaning you ascribe to that experience are quit valid and valuable within the context of your life.

Btw, i don't remember any specific exercises that were described in sufficient detail that were actually described anywhere on fastblogit. Of course i know about ZaZen and practice it. If you want, please be specific and detailed.

Mark de LA says

(Seth above): ... Btw, i don't remember any specific exercises that were described in sufficient detail that were actually described anywhere on fastblogit. Of course i know about ZaZen and practice it. If you want, please be specific and detailed.

... [your: item 14275] 12th comment (mine) refers to BofNK steps to contemplation. "Get into NOW" was the first step. It requires some of the same discipline as za-zen &/or RS's meditation & the like, but focuses upon seeking an answer to a question continuously.

Mark de LA says

Waking up in the morning, I have consciousness & either a sea of objects in my consciousness or vague feeling. When I begin to cognize things I become self-aware & then I wake up. Consciousness is like being awake & has that texture. Do the exercise if you want to go from awareness of an object to awareness of awareness (meta - ibid).

The Wikipedia has consciousness, categories, category of being & lots of goodies in those topics for whatever they are worth. GW holds consciousness as a fundamental category. I hold the categories like I hold a mathematical axiom. It is something that is either self-evident or can't be refined much further.

P.2693 84-5-4-28-14-3-MON (26/1/16 ago or 26.13 yrs from this writing)

".... The question of illative force is controversial in some minds. In our book every Ultimate Particle has Consciousness, a Category concomitant with others such as Unity, Extension, Persistence, Motion i.e. each UP has an Ego, whose function is JUDGEMENT, which is expresses as a "statement" or "equation" properly quantified & qualified. Note that not the statement but its MEANING is what FORCES you to assent, i.e., if you are a reasonable person. Speech & Reasoning are equivalent: See what I mean when I say "Look Jane see Dick" - two levels. "

Mark de LA says

Meta to the question "Who Am I?" is the question "What is a WHO?" or "What does WHO mean?"

Mark de LA says

Awareness has many things in it. There is a sea of objects & perceptions, the last object I looked at, the object I am currently looking at, etc. It's somewhat of a signal to noise thingy.

Seth says

Ok so you are referring to this procedure ...

source: Marks comment on 14275
Guided by the methodology expressed in BofNK I practice an inquiry thus: (para 21:58) paraphrased to generality as it was tailored for the subject of my awareness itself.

Get into NOW - aware of this moment
Locate the subject or clarify exactly what you want to contemplate [the subject]
Create the possibility of becoming conscious of the true nature of what you are contemplating
Right now, intend to become conscious of the true nature of what you are contemplating
Allow yourself to not-know what it really is & open up to the possibility of experiencing something beyond what you are experiencing right now, or something different in what you are experiencing now. [this is the part where you shed your assumptions, past and other things you think you know about the subject]
Keep your attention focused on the subject without distraction or break. If you lose your focus, continually return your attention to the presence of what you are contemplating.
Truly wonder as you ask the question: "What is ....."

If what shows up isn't expressible in words - so be it! Contemplating "Who am I?" is such an endeavor so far. Maybe it is possible some day to put it into words. I don't know. Are there assumptions in the above methodology? The only ones I know about are the ones that assume you can do the process suggested with honesty & not the bias, assumptions & all the other shit which begins to show up once you start! The book is 581 pages - not easy to digest in a comment. So far I have been fairly successful every time I genuinely try it.

... I'll need to try this. What i get from your procedure is simply to open your mind, expect to grock the subject, and focus on the subject, with an attitude of openness and wonder. Did i miss anything essential?

I find nothing in the procedure that sheds any light on how to deal with the special case where the subject is the attention itself, nor wgeb the the subject is what is paying the attention. I've always thought that the question "Who am I?" is more a political question who's answer would be found by examining my driver's license or birth certificate ... "What am I?" ... or perhaps "What is my nature?" is more to my likeing. One quesion i continually ask myself is variations on "What is this for?" ... in other words why am i stuggling here ... "What am i stuggling for?" ... "I am doing this thing, for WHAT?". Here is a specific question of that form ... "I am writing this comment for what?" ... the answer in that case is "you" ... but in a larger sense i am commenting here to clarify my thinking on these kind of questions, so then perhaps a better answer would be "i am comminting to clarify my thinking about asking deep questions ... err for myself".

C says

Do all of the steps - you left out NOW (being present to the current moment gets you away from memories & conceptualization - if something shows up it will be NOW!). I applied this technique specifically to the question "What is awareness, itself?" - it has many answers. There is specific guidance for that particular exercise in BofNK.

Mark de LA says

seth 2010-10-06 16:11:48 14147

C 2010-10-06 15:24:35 14147

Nothing I have discovered so far precludes a human being from becoming anything it wants - the pertinent physical laws & spiritual laws being observed.

That is a bit broad and over-sweeping for my tastes. I doubt that any human being can become a juniper bush, a Gemelli noodle, a scorpion, or the Mississippi river ... or even another human being ... i cannot become Mark Russell, Barrack Obama, or Kelly Klarkson. I rather prefer a healthy respect for otherness to lend a touch of humility to my powers.

WOW! that's why I put in the "pertinent physical & spiritual laws" into the statement. You probably won't be able to fly without some kind of contrivance that allows you to do so, either. I wrote it a 2nd time because I left out the word law .

Seth says

Well i've been toying with the meditation of who i am. Starting off i wasn't making any progress because i have always defined who i am but what i do. I still do. That is my choice in life. That is an assumption that i don't want to give up, just as you have made the opposite assumption that you are not what you do. But then that is all meta ... it is about me ... i still wanted to find that thingy that you found. So it kind of dawned on me according to how you have been characterizing this thingey that it is what i have been characterizing as the starry-eyed feeling ... or sometimes i have refered to it as a buzz. It is always there and it always participates in all of my experiences. It is what hurts when i hurt. It is what loves when i love. Hates when i hate. Is anxious or irritated when i am anxious or irritated. It's what jumps for joy when i discover something or can do something unusually fun. It is the spark that i live for.

Is that the thingey that you call your self?

Mark de LA says

seth 2010-10-08 09:11:56 14147

Well i've been toying with the meditation of who i am. Starting off i wasn't making any progress because i have always defined who i am but what i do. I still do. That is my choice in life. That is an assumption that i don't want to give up, just as you have made the opposite assumption that you are not what you do. But then that is all meta ... it is about me ... i still wanted to find that thingy that you found. So it kind of dawned on me according to how you have been characterizing this thingey that it is what i have been characterizing as the starry-eyed feeling ... or sometimes i have referred to it as a buzz. It is always there and it always participates in all of my experiences. It is what hurts when i hurt. It is what loves when i love. Hates when i hate. Is anxious or irritated when i am anxious or irritated. It's what jumps for joy when i discover something or can do something unusually fun. It is the spark that i live for.

Is that the thingey that you call your self?

You are getting very, very warm! You do exist without the vulgar words you describe "it" with. You answered more the question "What am I?" rather than "Who am I?". The self is more like what you describe as the personality: "i have always defined who i am but what i do" - the thingy conditioned by environment, experience & genetics. The "Who am I?" inquiry goes deeper & deeper. I don't associate to a starry-eyed buzz much, but then I never went "up there where it wiggles"! Yeah, I suppose I can find the buzz if I look around! As to being, which you didn't mention, you can probably declare whom you choose to be & do & act congruent (integrity - "I am my word") with the same guided by the buzz. Are you currently declaring yourself to be "a plastic habit or experiment"? You can also move that buzz around & project it into/from the heart,head, & other places. The bolded red phrase in your statement is inaccurate.

Going Meta

About: going meta: on the pleasures and perils of higher consciousness | mindreaders dictionary

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