#mind identification

[thinkingandthonking]

The Endless Game

There is a species on a planet where almost everyone plays a game. Here's how to play:

Secrecy - Discussing the game (like this) is taboo! They take it VERY seriously, the game is like life itself to them! Everyone plays on their own, or occasionally with partners or groups in secret that they're allowed to share with. Talking about the game openly is seen at best as weakness, as whining and inability to win, or at worst as weirdness, insanity, or lying.

Rewards - It used to have a point, something about increasing survival and procreation, but they already figured that stuff out. Now it's just played out of habit and prestige. Play to win, and keep winning!

Goals - Every player gets their own unique Goal. They're often similar, but each player should really consider their Goal special, personal, something important to THEM, that no one else can understand. Their key to Happiness. A part of who they are. The Goal can be given by more veteran players that brought them into the game, or at times it just appears in the player's mind after hearing about it or seeing it - and if the player doesn't reject that appearance, The Goal is set.

Conditions - The Goals are arbitrary, they don't actually do anything usually, but each player wires their internal circuitry so that achieving or getting near the goal activates the Happiness Engine inside them (Releasing feelings of joy, love, satisfaction, peace, success, energy, openness, hope, etc) And being far from the goal or failing at steps towards it activates the Suffering Engine inside the player (Releasing feelings of shame, anger, sadness, fear, disappointment, craving, loss, pain, numbness, etc)

Gameplay - Thanks to the conditions, the player always knows where he's at in the game and where to go! Always chasing the positive, and running from the negative. The goal of course has nothing to do with the internal engines, they're inside and always available, but interacting with them directly instead of through the game is also taboo.

Post-Victory - Once the goal is reached, The Happiness Engine is active for a while and there may be a rest period, or a period of desperately clinging to the Happiness and trying to keep it there forever. Then, a new goal is selected and the game starts anew with the Suffering Engine pushing the player forward.

Endless Content - Existence becomes a loop of fluctuating discontent, from mild craving and discomfort to abject misery and torture (All as a motivating force to reach The Goal), with brief periods of joy and happiness to reward persisting in the game and winning a Goal. Don't stop for too long, keep playing!

Difficulty - For some people, each goal gets harder and harder to achieve, as they are very dedicated to keep winning forever. Others get tired of the game and don't play it as seriously after a few wins, and so the intensity of the engines may lessen, or their goals may not be as important to them anymore.

Last Rule - Every player must forget that they are playing a game, and must treat it as objective reality. Even if they find out that the goals are meaningless and the engines are internal, they must come up with reasons to keep playing! (Examples: Because they must, because everyone is playing so it must be real, because the engines can't be touched besides by the Goals, because they've already invested so much into The Game, because there MUST be a way to REALLY win, because there can't possibly be a way out of the game, because if all of this has been a game all along then all the suffering was for nothing - and isn't that scarier than just playing some more? What if THIS TIME we win for good?)

Oh, and Sign-ups are automatic and non-consensual! We're already playing, what's the next Goal that'll make you Happy?

(Warning: If a player somehow finds out about the game and quits, they can start rewiring the engines (Reducing Suffering, increasing Happiness) without any external goal to chase.

Afterwards, it's possible to play in Creative / Casual mode, moving towards goals without the promise of temporary happiness (It's already available, why chase it?) or the threat of suffering (It doesn't need to move you when you're already where you need to be), or all that "seriousness and intensity" of the normal, Competitive mode.

But isn't that cheating? Where's the sense of pride and accomplishment?)

Go play, have fun, triumph over adversity, and keep winning!

[my-name-is-apollo]

Speaking of coins, I think it's neat that we have a trinity of Apollos with uncommon characteristics:

Apollo Karneios with ram horns and ram ears, Apollo Soranus with a star diadem and a pick-axe and Apollo Vejovis with winged head, a trident and a dagger. (The last two are the results of his syncretism with Roman deities)

What's more fun about the coins of Apollo-Vejovis is that some of them put a thunderbolt under his bust or straight up show him holding it:

And I can't help but think of this being equivalent to a girl wearing her mom's makeup for the photo day

[rachedurst]

anyways i love you people that are both gay and straight, in whatever way that presents. being nonbinary often can mean a complicated relationship to sexuality and how one perceives it within the societal restrictions of homo and heterosexual, and i think bridging those definitions and having "contradictory" labels like lesboy or whatever is really cool. i support and stan he/him lesbians or butch lesbians or she/her gay men or femme gays or she/he pronoun users and whatever else, be it cis or trans or both. if you feel like youre both cis and trans that also rocks. dont let people force you back into a binary within the queer community, stay strong!

[kiunlo]

sooo i saw two new buggies today!!!! and with the help of the aussie lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) website that @mysticmothworld showed me the last time i was trying to identify a bunch of moths, I think i may have actually identified these bugs correctly! i think!! i hope!!

The first bug is a big ass butterfly called the Papilio Aegus, which I'm like 98% sure is the correct identification because the only other butterfly that looks similar is the Papilio Anactus which is just. like. way too small based on images I saw of people holding the butterfly. and according to wikipedia the Papilio Aegus can have a wingspan of 4.7 inches if male and like 5.5 inches if female, which is a big ass butterfly, and the butterfly i saw was indeed a big ass butterfly, so i think it's correct. also apparently the males and females look different? which most likely makes the above butterfly a female. super awesome!!!

the second bug is one i am less sure of, but i've not found a better identification for it, and it is called a Cephonodes Australis. As I type this the moth is still right outside my window and I was able to get a VERY close up look with just my eyeballs, and having looked through a crap ton of moth photos, both of the Cephonodes Australis and other moths, I think this might be the correct identification. The picture above is a screenshot from a video I took, and looking through the other frames, I believe the wings are clear, which matches the identification of the Cephonodes Australis, as well as the green on the top, the yellow underneath, the white stripes, and the VERY dark red (basically almost black) stripe on the body. I also watched the moth in flight and saw it's weird little lobster tail change from being very wide to very thin, constantly changing the shape and angle of the tail and i thought that was SO cool. probably uses it's tail like a rudder or something! idk how flight works though because i'm a human and don't have wings LMAO. I'm only like 78% sure that this is the right moth, but I really don't have any other options so I think this is probably right. anyways. I like to identify moths and butterflies now! not just birds! but i do still love birds! i just didn't know we had such a big variety of moths and stuff and these silly little guys enamor me so much.

[fisheito]

I am currently going thru every chapter from the beginning so i can gather screenshots of everyone's emotions

Even tho i BET one of u hyperfixators already has an entire library all cleaned and ready for use

But i'm gettin some fun outta reliving the old days so who am i to deprive myself of some choice🤌👌nostalgia

[seaofreverie]

You ever finish a drawing that you really like and then you spend the next three days randomly looking at it for minutes at a time like that could make it possible for you to absorb its alluring and magnetic essence with your eyes

[falsenote]

looking at almost human 1974 in my watchlist

[o-wild-west-wind]

in my Stede Bonnet era (ignoring my responsibilities & fucking off to the waterside to sit with a cup of tea and my old sailing manual ft. my new best friend, Dryocampa rubicunda)

[thehappiestgolucky]

Biggest reason I am speedrunning Unmoored Arisen Swap save (other than its fine? similar to the Everfall in DD:DA that I just kinda end up getting what i want and dipping) is so I can make it the other Canon Post Game save (along with my alt with Odessa as the main)

I have the hair dye ready for her to match Odessa (the third) and Fe'gahl canonically becomes Mage and Magick Archer in Post Game but it does mean that the only arisen swap stuff is art. Which is fine I really wanna write and draw more about both timelines anyway-

[thinkingandthonking]

Self-inquiry - Who Am I? (Part 2)

Wrote about what we identify or disidentify with regarding the [Body and Mind here]

What do we really identify with?

Mind identification (identifiying with our personality, thoughts, beliefs, memories) is strong, much stronger than identification with the body. But with meditation, with questioning and inquiring into it, it may start to appear a little bit illusory, not entirely right.

What is ESSENTIAL to the core of who we are, undeniable and unchangeable? (since if it were to change, it would no longer be us)

If we had amnesia, fully forgetting our past, our preferences & identity - only the same body remaining - would we consider the 'person' us? Or is it a "new" me, a second individual I identify with? And when the memories return, do these separate "me"s merge? Does one die and replace the other? What happened to the first "me" during the amnesia, was it just hidden?

When a thought says "I am x, I am not y" - what is it really pointing at, if not the body or the mind? What is that "I"? Where is it?

WHO ARE YOU, right here, right now?

Is our sense of self always the same? Or does the "I" itself change even without dramatic transformations like growing older or changing lifestyles and beliefs? When we're deep in artistic or physical activity, when we're talking with friends, when we're with nature or animals, when we're lost in media - Is it always the same feeling of "I"?

There's so much more to ask about, so much to consider, but so often we don't REALLY inquire and look into this. Into the borders of what we consider ourselves. We have some assumption / belief about who we are, and we live with it, sometimes until we die - without realizing how much that assumption could be full of holes, harming us over and over. So let's skip to the actual practice.

The short, direct, and simple approach

Meditation lets us meet this approach simply by experiencing it, sitting in observation and noticing experience and attention itself. Self-inquiry (my favorite method), lets us ask it directly:

Do you exist right now? Is that at least one thing you can be certain of?

Before your next thought appears, and after the next thought passes, do you exist? Even if that thought did not appear, you would still exist, it doesn't "alter" or affect your existence in any way, right?

Then who are you, right now, without referring to any thought or idea? Without any past or future to describe it? What is the "I" in your direct, immediate experience?

Thoughts will arise. Conclusions, descriptions based on knowledge and past ideas. Who or what is the one experiencing those thoughts? What is the "I" that exists in between them? If you look and wait for the next thought to appear, who are you during that waiting?

Can we just sit, as intimately and closely as possible, being and feeling and observing just the "I" itself, letting the thoughts arise and pass harmlessly, noticing what notices them, where it is that they appear, without worrying about their content? No conclusion needed, only observation, curiosity, deepening attention.

Can we DIRECTLY, EXPERIENTIALLY, "be with our SELVES", pay close attention to what it really is that we consider "me"? Just stay with it, look deeper into it? Turn attention in on itself?

What comes up when you do this? What feels the most "sticky", either right or wrong, troubling or wondrous, anything at all that arises from this exploration? What is it? An emotion, an idea, a memory, a description? Is that really "you"?

I'd really love to see more perspectives on this!

[brechtian]

The Waves - Virginia Woolf

[aformlessspirituality]

When a thought 💭 arises 🌊 rather than identify 🪪 with it, witness🫥 without attaching attention to it.

[femboyfertility]

Every day I think about becoming a mindless fucktoy so that I can enjoy carnal pleasures all the better... if only someone would actually break it. </3

[silverwhittlingknife]

superboy: the man of tomorrow 1 spoilers

(it's just one panel but below the cut just in case)

memory identification: go!

[aideshou]

Allure

[foxdies]

People I Wanna Know Better Tag Meme

tagged by @pinkwesker mwah. im terrible at tagging other ppl so just steal from me

Last song?

wallowa lake monster - sufjan stevens

Favorite color?

black, blue, gold, red

Currently watching?

nothing el oh el. i dont really watch tv. i guess the x-men 90s cartoon

Last movie?

i cannot remember

Sweet/Spicy/Savory?

all three are core to a full flavor profile

Relationship status?

single

Current Obsessions

rgg has got me in a vice grip again esp with infinite wealth releasing

Last Thing You Googled

sperm whale

Selfie or another pic you took?

foggy