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Member Since May 2020
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 46
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#1
Medication Lost, and the sleepless speedy rush was lightning for the mind. But headaches and dizziness. Paranoid thoughts. Kaleidoscoping light shows and mandela overlays. Everything glows, like in heaven. Nothing real is real. But non-real things are too real. Wonder how that works? Itching, prickling skin. Empty staring thoughts. Dread-headed depression. Inky shapes like apparitions fly here and everywhere.
Was the medication lost? No. Denounced. Withheld maybe. There's a word I'm searching for. It'll come. For now though, questions. Questions for the humans out there. The ones who are real. Not sure I'm real, or whether I can ever know if I'm real. I could be a character in a simulation based around someone else's reality, and I'm just an artificial intelligence programmed to think it's real to ensure I behave as such. Or this could all be a dream. I could never know the truth. Nothing can logically convince. Anyhow, wandering. Questions: 1. Anyone ever seen a kind of... how to describe... grey vapour-like stuff everywhere in the dark? It kind of rises like a slow smoke off of everything if you're inside and the air is still. Outside it is blown by the breeze. I've wondered what it is for a lifetime. Latest theory is that my eyes are slightly sensitive to the spectral wavelengths associated with heat. Not always though, just sometimes. Looks like what you would call the spirit world, with ghostly tendrils and wafting things. 2. Can normal people remember happy things? Not "those were the good old days" generalised memories about kinds of events, but memories of specific happy/pleasant experiences. I can't. Not for the life of me. 3. When you remember something, are you rooted in who you are now as you recall the thing, or are you teleported into the memory to experience it as the person you were when it happened? Hard to put into words... Does the memory subsume your experience to the point where it replaces this reality with the memory reality? 4. Are you able to think and have emotions at the same time? Actually, I should change that: are you able to be conscious of thought and emotion at the same time? Kind of related: if you're listening to music, can you feel the emotions and understand the meaning of the words at the same time? 5. If you focus on an emotion, does it get immediately amplified to the point where you feel like you're suffocating? Or if you focus on a pain/itch somewhere on your body, does it get amplified to the point where you can't handle it? When you think of your heart (or whatever body part), does it become enormous in your mind as if that's all that exists, as if you were transported to your heart as a tiny point of consciousness? 6. Can you feel love when you are around another human, or can you only feel it alone? This echoes the feel or think split I experience. Being around another person means I have to be in think mode because I have to be able to understand what they say and respond appropriately. So I can't feel any kind of warmth/love/etc around another human. But when I'm alone I feel emotions for people and wish I could be there and express them in person... A lifetime of experience has proven I can't though. Even if I try I get shifted from feel mode to think mode and the words become hollow and detached from the truth they are trying to convey. 7. Do you know who you are? If possible, dig deep before answering this. I am nobody, and have never been anybody, and the idea that others truly know who they are seems... I don't know, magical. Mystical. Maybe delusional? Feels like people think they know, but if you dig deep enough they would realise they're nobody like me. 8. Can you read other people's thoughts? This might attract joke answers, but I'm being serious. I suspect everyone reads everyone else's thoughts all the time, but no one wants to admit it. When I say thoughts I don't necessarily mean words. Thoughts are what words express, but thoughts exist on a deeper level. These pure thoughts are what we read, not the words above them. 9. If you close your eyes in the dark, then put a pillow over your face, can you still the rudimentary images of the room's contents? Just very low resolution edges and rough shapes in speckled grey? 10. Have you had an MRI brain scan? If you answered yes to two or more of the above questions and have an MRI would you mind checking the cross-sectional area of a region called the Anterior Commissure in the midline Sagittal plane? It should be a pea-sized artifact anterior to the anterior-inferior corner of the thalamus. I'm missing this region altogether. Pretty sure it's why I experience the world different o everyone else. 11. Can you imagine a happy future? I literally cannot. It's not an unwillingness. It's as if there is some cog missing. When I try I just go blank, as if the intention was meant to turn some mechanism but there's no mechanism there and nothing happens. Since I can't imagine a pleasant/happy future the only things that can motivate me are avoidant things. I lack true motivation and only ever try to avoid pain. 12. Do you feel as if other people's thoughts can change you, and you can change others with your thoughts? I know that sounds like a normal symptom of psychosis, but I swear it's real. It's not dramatic, but subtle. It's the reason everyone is so worried about what others think of them - because their thoughts will change you, and if they have negative thoughts their thoughts will change you in a negative way. I suspect everyone subconsciously knows thoughts influence the world around them, but no one speaks openly about it. Reason I put all this in the schizophrenia thread (besides me not knowing where else to put it) is that studies have shown schizophrenics often have less anterior commissure fibers, and also tend to experience problems with lack of pleasant memories and motivations. I think the two things are related given that studies have indicated the following: >The anterior commissure connects (among other things) the amygdalae across the midline. Interestingly the amygdalae process different emotions according to hemisphere, with the left processing happy/pleasant experiences. >Happy/pleasant experiences have experimentally been shown to involve the left amygdala and the right prefrontal cortex (as well as some other regions). The most direct signal path between the left amygdala and the right prefrontal cortex is likely the anterior commissure, which means any reductions in commissural volume may impact the prefrontal experience/awareness of pleasant emotions and thereby disrupt any future ability to consciously recollect a happy experience in the future. If you cannot remember happy things you will have no material from which to imagine a happy future either. Thanks for reading, and if you answer the questions, thank you. |
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Grand Magnate
Member Since Jan 2020
Location: USA
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#2
Hi SnappingRope.
I will try to answer the questions you posed . . . 1. I've never seen that. 2. I do remember specific happy things from my past and in a lot of detail. 3. I don't lose myself in the memory except a little bit. 4. Yes and yes. 5. No and no to those questions. 6. I can feel love both around another person and when I am alone. 7. Deep question. Not sure I can answer. I think I know a lot about myself but not everything. 8. I can often sense people's thoughts from observing their face or behavior. Sometimes I am right and sometimes wrong. I cannot infallibly know what others are thinking. It's more like hints which can be interpreted or misinterpreted. 9. My memory is not so good these days. I am not at good at this as I used to be. 10. No to the MRI brain scan. 11. I can imagine a happy future at times. At other times, not so much. 12. I don't know for sure, but I feel I can be influenced by others and can influence others, but don't feel trapped or locked into it. Sorry if my responses are not helpful. Wish I knew what else to say. |
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Member
Member Since May 2020
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 46
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#3
Thanks for your answers. They are helpful.
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Veteran Member
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#4
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Member
Member Since May 2020
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 46
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#5
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I've never heard of the who am I meditation. Did you discover you are an individual, or that you are One with all things after completing it? It seems significant that you answered yes to the questions about memory teleportation and focal amplification. I suspect the two are related - if what you focus on becomes amplified then memories will swell into consciousness in a way that displaces the you you are now and replaces it entirely with memory. The coloured blobs you see with eyes closed used to be the same for me until I got some brain damage. Now not so much. If I cleared my mind of everything and passively watched those lava-lamp colours after a while I would emerge into another world. I figure it was my mind being overly starved of stimulation and producing its own as a temporary solution, or maybe I was in some waking dream-like REM state. Not sure. It was pretty hard to get there and stay there though because any kind of intention or desire or emotion or anything at all that wasn't just passive observation kicked me out of it. As for seeing the room's contents with eyes closed, I didn't explain that well. The easiest way to get started with it is to wave your hand in front of your face with your eyes closed in the dark. I can see it move. It's not a defined shape, and I wouldn't be able to count fingers, but it's unmistakable, even if I also put a pillow over my head. For a long time I thought this was some part of my mind that kept tabs on where my body was and produced a low-resolution mental projection of it even in the absence of light, but then I noticed I saw general shapes also, like the line where the roof abuts the wall and where the doorway is. Thanks again for replying. |
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Legendary
Member Since Dec 2014
Location: USA
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#6
1. No. I see little fragments of light particles, which I was concerned about as a kid, but learned everyone sees them.
2. Yes. Recalling the memories can also still make me feel happy too. 3. I’m probably recalling it as both, who I was then and who I am now. Not that I feel like two separate people, rather as younger me then; how I looked, dressed, felt and as older me now and how I’ve changed. 4. Yes. My emotions stem from the thoughts I am thinking. 5. Yes. I can get triggered to the point my emotions overtake me, overwhelmed by emotions, but only about certain relational things in a negative way. Yes, to thinking about an itch and not scratching it and it becomes intolerable. 6. Yes. I can feel and express love in-person. Honestly, this is everything and I highly recommend it. 7. Yes? I have struggled with thinking I have a shaky sense of identity, but I’m not so sure that’s true. When it comes down to it, I do know who I am, what I like, etc.. I am somebody, a person, an individual; not so different than all other humans, a unique being but still a typical person. 8. I can’t actually read other people’s thoughts, but I am very good at guessing them because I have had to be hyper vigilant. 9. When you shut the lights there are still residual fragments of light you see in the dark that then fade and change. I think everybody sees this. 10. Yes, but for other medical reasons. I was told by a psychiatrist who did not view my brain scan that I have brain damage in my amygdala from emotional abuse. 11. Yes, a happy future, a happy present moment, a happy past in spite of lots of unhappy times and knowing there will still be unhappiness together with happiness moving forward. 12. No, not their thoughts alone. But other people’s expressing their thoughts to me in their words can make me want to change myself. Oh how I wish my thoughts could change others. Much as I’ve tried with my words to change them, they didn’t change though they promised they would. __________________ "And don't say it hasn't been a little slice of heaven, 'cause it hasn't!" . About Me--T |
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Member
Member Since May 2020
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 46
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#7
Thanks for your answers. You recommend love, but I just can't. At least not in the presence of another person. That's not to say I don't love people - I do - but I can only think or feel, not both at once, and if I'm around another person I need to be in thinking mode to be able to communicate properly. I have to love people when I'm alone. It's always been that way.
To illustrate the think/feel split I experience: I'm 43 and I don't know the lyrics to any song, no matter how much I like them. In fact, the more I like them the less likely I will know the lyrics. As soon as I feel the music words no longer make sense. They just become noises devoid of semantic meaning. If I try to sing along with the lyrics on the screen as soon as I feel the music I can't even read anymore. The words become meaningless visual information. I play guitar, and as soon as I feel the music I forget the next chord, no matter how well I know the song. I just can't do both at once. I think I've used this split as a way to avoid dealing with hypersensitivity for a lifetime - all I need to do to avoid overwhelm is think, and I'm free. Problem is, that gets in the way of true introspection because I can't actually feel an emotion and think about it at the same time. Everything I "know" about myself is retrospective speculation based on experiences I can't directly access. |
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Crone
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#8
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__________________ Nammu …Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. …... Desiderata Max Ehrmann |
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Member
Member Since May 2020
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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#9
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"Happy" was probably the wrong word to use when I posted the questions. I aught to have asked "can you imagine a pleasant future experience for yourself?" or some such thing. Thanks again. |
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Legendary Wise Elder
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#10
1. No, I haven't seen that particularly. I see other things. I see people and animals, and shadows, and light.
2. I don't know if I am a "normal" person. I can remember some happy things--trips to Disneyland, riding a horse, holding my niece. But not a lot of things and not with a lot of detail. 3. I recall it with who I am now. 4. I'm not sure. I get thoughts and emotions mixed up! Sorry I can't be more helpful about this one! 5. No, not really. 6. Yes I can feel love when I am around another person. I can also feel love when I am alone. For example when I am missing someone. 7. I'm not sure. I know some things about myself. Like I am a child of God. But other things about me feel shrouded in mystery. I don't truly understand myself. It is one of my goals of therapy. 8. No, I am not able to do that. 9. No, I am not able to do that. I am not good at imagining either, or visualizing during mediations. 10. Never had an MRI. 11. I'm not sure. Sometimes. But I am fearful of the future as well. 12. Yes, at least I think other people's thoughts can change me. I don't know if my thoughts can change others. I hope this was helpful. I tried my best. __________________ Dum Spiro Spero IC XC NIKA |
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Member
Member Since May 2020
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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#11
Thanks Slumber kitty. I appreciate everyone answering. I was... I'm surprised to be honest. I though more people would be like me. Maybe I'm crazier than I half-suspected.
It seems like there are a few tentative patterns emerging though. The people who are able to think and feel at the same time seem also to be able to remember pleasant experiences. That's what I would expect: The part of the brain responsible for voluntarily retrieving memories must be 'wired' into the experience at the time it happened. Not only does there need to be contemporaneous activity, but it needs to be communicated between the two regions/networks. If I can't be conscious of my experiences in the moment* it makes sense I also wouldn't be able to recall them later. *I know, from a place of vague distance, that I can have happy/pleasant experiences, but I am never conscious of them in the moment. Instead the happiness kind of fills me to the point where there is no conscious me to be aware of it. Afterwards I come back to being conscious and only have residual clues hinting that something has happened. If you have no pleasant memories your mind has no materials with which to project a pleasant future. That's why I just draw a blank when I try. |
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SlumberKitty
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#12
Quote:
Quote:
But what you described might also be hypnagogia. Quote:
You're welcome; thank you for such a thought-provoking topic! |
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Member
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Location: Melbourne, Australia
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#13
Quote:
For me, I've never had a sense of self. To my mind much of what a self is can be distilled to a set of preferences: what you do/don't like and how you like to pursue/avoid those things. I think the reason I lack a sense of self is mostly due to my inability to remember pleasant things. Consider how much faster you develop a sense of self by choosing what you want rather than exuding what you don't: Imagine you were asked to choose a favourite marble from a bunch of a hundred. Choosing the one you innately prefer automatically and instantly excludes 99 others in one fell swoop, whereas choosing by excluding those you don't like requires 99 iterations until you only have one left. If I don't consciously experience or remember pleasant things, then I can't develop a self as fast as someone who can. That's my working hypothesis for now, but there are a lot of other factors. Quote:
It's hard to describe, but there is a will inside us that sits at the very centre. You cannot consciously get behind that will and look at it in the way you can get behind thoughts and emotions. That's because it is the very kernal of your being, way down in the old reptilian brain where consciousness can't go. But if you can place an intention there to hold still and watch while you clear everything else away until you are doing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, and just staring at the morphing colours, with energetic yet relaxed presence but without push or conscious intention... you're basically letting everything relax into near sleep except that intention to watch the colours, letting everything become hypnotized except that intentional part of your mind doing the watching. Don't focus on the colours in a tight way, but relax your mind such that you are passively staring. Then hold it, and after a while an image will begin to materialise from the centre of the morphing colours. It's important not to let excitement grip you, or to be compelled to focus on the image for a better look. If you do it will disappear and you'll need to start over. If you remain passively attentive the image will grow and eventually surround you. At that point your mind must kind of accept what it sees as the new reality because then you can look around without breaking the spell. The hardest part is getting there. Once there you are in a kind of mental spell. Maybe it's similar to being in a dream but you're more conscious. However, you can still kick yourself out by trying for a closer look at something, or by noticing something peculiar and having one of those "hmm, that's interesting" moments. Basically anything that sparks the other parts of your brain to become active again will kick you out. Thanks for the links and replies. Have a nice day. |
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SquarePegGuy
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#14
The process you described in your last paragraph (but not the last sentence) is precisely the way to meditate on the inner self. I definitely want to experience that, but right now my brain fog and spaciness isn't cooperating.
Just curious, why the reference to "AI" in the title? Are you training a psycho-bot therapist? |
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Member
Member Since May 2020
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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#15
Haha. An AI therapist would probably do a pretty good job. The title is because I can't shake the feeling this is all a simulation. If that turns out to be true, what reason have I got to suppose I'm not one of the AIs loaded into the program to facilitate interactions with the real players? In a simulation this realistic you'd have to make AIs that thought they were real in order for them to be convincing for the actual players to interact with. There's a pretty good chance I'm an AI with some buggy code going on.
Read your blog on the who am I meditation. Sounds similar to a realisation I had about the impossibility of truth or knowledge. Ask a question, any question. Then ask of the question "why?" and repeat the process for the answer. Eventually you will find that the foundation for what you believe to be knowledge rests on nothing at all. I'll give an example: Q: why do women sway their hips when they walk? A: because their hips are comparatively wider than males and in order to support the body's weight during a stride the hip above the foot making contact must move inward toward the centre of mass. Q: why do women have wide hips? A: to allow the passage of a child during birth. Q: why do women need to give birth? A: to facilitate the continuance of the species. Q: why is it important to continue the species? That question is essentially "why life?" or "why existence?". No one knows the answer to those questions, so you soon realise everything you think you know rests upon a foundation that rests upon a foundation that rests upon a gaping hole. All we think we know we know only by degrees of misplaced faith. There is no such thing as truth except this sentence. |
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SquarePegGuy
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