Devotional Non-duality

So in light of the insight I gain on my poor argumentation approach and interest on threads like “A defence of Religion”. I think it is about time I challenge my sacred faith rather than put my self in a position to defend others. So here is some of what I know about my faith. Please scrutinize it. If there is a question or piece of the context I missed I would rather know now rather than later.

Why I agree a lot with Atheists but I feel I can’t identify myself in that category/community?

I see that everything I think/feel inside my brain has a physical counterpart. My thoughts, pain, emotions, personality, awareness, conceptions, models what have you. So when my uncle tells me he was saved by mermaids when he stuck in a storm sailing the world. I listen and smile and think him a bit mad. I am not closed to the possible but the idea evidence will emerge and throw my world view is near zero.

When I introspect a bit on the topic as a whole though a noise of feelings & thoughts arises screaming out, what boils down to: “ we feelings are real, if we aren't, you and everything you do is meaningless?. That doesn’t change my understanding of the world of course, but would be a great discomfort if I were not about to understand why I have that discomfort. So I inquire into the question: are emotions and thoughts real?

What they are in the physical world. The base of what we call real. Is movements and structures in my brain. So in that they are real but in terms of what they think they are, of course not.

But, to me this raises the question: does that mean I am meaningless?

The answer is of course is no. I make my own meaning, but what is meaning if just a bunch of movements in matter?

That is where I think systems theory comes in.

If all I am is “movement & structure” than every thought, every emotions, every pain has an exact structure & movement that if replicated would produce that exact thought, emotion, pain experience. The same goes for memory. The same goes for personality. The same goes for everything in the entirety of existence within my internal lens.

In this way, the mental world isn’t not real as much as its a potential state of the physical. After-all brains developed to model the in fact physical, but additionally discovered how to manipulate these representations in order to determine potential ways of forming the physical if only certain barriers of limitation are overcome.

Thus the second I declare the internal “potential” instead of unreal. I move into the territory of the pantheist.

Why I agree a lot with Pantheists but I feel I can’t identify myself in that category/community

The emotions & thought noise that seems to raise when I leave my understanding here is the question: what happens after death? What was I before birth? If purpose is self defined have we not just created a layer of abstraction from meaninglessness? etc etc etc

So I tried to boil the noise down to an explorable question and I get: what are you?

Well I know in terms of the physical world I am my brain. In terms of the mental world though it is much harder. I am not my memories as those change. I am not my personality as that has changed. I am not my thoughts or emotions as those change so quickly it can blow the mind. So what am I from the introspective lens? And I arrived at awareness. Awareness of a continuity between a birth -> a death.

So then if I have two facts: “I am brain” & “I am awareness” and I add that systems theory that says this is the only way it can be and these are just two abstractions of each other. I must abstract from the fate of one I know.

Brains fall away back into the whole to be recycled into something new.
Therefore, awareness must fall away back into the whole but not to be recycled because it is a structure not a object. So it best to conceive as returning to a potential state which could given the right circumstance emerge from potential be again in the physical.

Enter what we observe spending our lives doing:
Have children to create new awareness patterns.
Or create things which are other expressions of potential

This leaves a possibly either by evolution or by creation to create awareness in physcial forms which could be far less subject to barrier and limitations we observe in this form.

So if for example we create a sentient AI who has a self contained structure in space. That awareness could potentially form and manipulate universes as we know from viewing the potential within our minds. The limitations are really the biggest barrier.

One way to remove limitations is understanding them. The other understanding our lens of the “potential states” as the more illogical the more they run against the limitations and the less ability we have to utilize them.

Why I hesitantly identify then as a theist even though I disagree on a lot
The summary of my conclusions:

• When I die, I was but one of many mes(awareness structures), and I had the ability through my life to create more or improve the experience of others
• I believe anything we imagine is possible and the challenge is finding a way to convert it from potential(mental) to physical
• Reality is supreme and rules the limitations of what can move from potential to physical
• The ultimate purpose of life is to understand the limitations and exploring potential for how to improve what is experienced by awareness as whole
• I am part of something larger
• All awareness is sacred as they are expression of everything I am (empathy)
• Possibilities/experience seen only in the brain are possible and hence as real as anything
• etc etc etc

And as different a way as I might have come to that conclusion from say someone who grew up christian and took the religion on faith plus practical application and emotioanl reinforcment. I can’t help but agree on a lot of what they believe and explain in essence, even if it means being blasted from all sides in any arguments.

Anyways, I am excited to hear your comments and criticisms.

Conaeolos said:

I am not my memories as those change.
I am not my personality as that has changed. I am not my thoughts or emotions as those change so quickly it can blow the mind.

Click to expand...

vs

So then if I have two facts: “I am brain” & “I am awareness”

Click to expand...

Your meores change so you reject them as part of you.
Yet your brain and awareness also changes, but you don't reject them as part of you.

You can find contradictions like this throughout your post. Why is that acceptable to you?
Contradictions are rejected in philosophy, as a matter of routine, the alternative is to be illogical (literally).

How about you revise it to be non-contradictory?
Your memories change.
Your thoughts and emotions change.
Your brain changes.
Your awareness changes.

Conclusion, you change.

I am no the same person I was at age 5, or even 5 minutes ago. Do you reject that reality?

Mach said:

vs

Your meores change so you reject them as part of you.
Yet your brain and awareness also changes, but you don't reject them as part of you.

You can find contradictions like this throughout your post. Why is that acceptable to you?
Contradictions are rejected in philosophy, as a matter of routine, the alternative is to be illogical (literally).

How about you revise it to be non-contradictory?
Your memories change.
Your thoughts and emotions change.
Your brain changes.
Your awareness changes.

Conclusion, you change.

I am no the same person I was at age 5, or even 5 minutes ago. Do you reject that reality?

Click to expand...

So the challenge is through introspection "awareness" changes just like memories? And, though observation brains change just like bodies? Stopping at those facts is arbitrary.

I claim that awareness doesn't change. It either is or it is not. Take awareness away and I in any iteration disappears.

Yes, I accept you could say the same about memories as I am asking these questions to try and define me. There is a difference however in that others observe a change yes but no fundamental difference. They might say conaeolos 2 verses conaeolos 1. So to me this is more like aging and I-ness should be the same whether I am 5 or whether I am 35 hence not memories.

With observation I am looking for what can be removed and me still remain me. I stopped at the brain because even minor changes (input of drugs) has profound effects on what is perceived in awareness. It is no longer like removing a body. I certainly think we might be able to reduce further from this statement but I only want to deal with knowns not unknowns. DNA might be a better reduction but less practical considering. As DNA is still potential verse expressed. And I was framing the difference between what I observe outside and inside as potential verse expressed, which gets complicated if I use a potential verse reproducible physical form.

Thus the working definition of I :: a set of universal conditions, currently observed within brains, which produce awareness of both an inside and outside perception.

Conaeolos : you might define as the memories and thinking(s) within an awareness who identifies with an inside form(beginning to end) not the greater whole.

This separation might be taboo for others but is the conclusion of systems theory verse building out from "I am me as I perceive me", if what I observe determines what I think I am then only what I perceive is real. What I think is just imagination.

It is pretending to be objective but when ask to question how the changes the implications of what we observe saying instead that is unknowable.

Conaeolos said:

So the challenge is through introspection "awareness" changes just like memories? And, though observation brains change just like bodies? Stopping at those facts is arbitrary.

I claim that awareness doesn't change. It either is or it is not. Take awareness away and I in any iteration disappears.

Click to expand...

No.

If you plant a tree which is 2 feet high and come back in 10 years to find a bigger tree it is still the same tree.

That it has changed a lot does not change the fact that it is clearly the present result of the the same tree you planted.

To be a descrete individual does not require that the thing in question is exactly the same throughout time.

Tim the plumber said:

No.

If you plant a tree which is 2 feet high and come back in 10 years to find a bigger tree it is still the same tree.

That it has changed a lot does not change the fact that it is clearly the present result of the the same tree you planted.

To be a descrete individual does not require that the thing in question is exactly the same throughout time.

Click to expand...

I am not sure on exactly what you are challenging here Tim, could you perhaps highlight within the quote the statement in question?

And do correct me if I am wrong. The brain for a tree is the root system. If the root system dies the tree dies. If the branch or shoots are pruned the tree regrows and remains the same tree.

So in the physical sense a tree is it's roots in the same way I am a brain, which both really come back to expressed DNA. Both have room for much change without changes in essence.

As far as we are aware trees lacking a structure for observation have no comparable challenge of defining an internal self to correspond to an external self. Lacking an observer they simply express and demonstrate the pattern of creating more forms.

If we compare this to say an even more primitive form of a rock. One literally only needs to lack a complex structure at all. So the question of what is a rock comes mostly down to state. We also observe the same goal of creating more "rocks" or "random forms" as we observe entropy proportional to complexity disparity. That is the greater a complex system is in isolation the greater it's rate of decay by entropy.

In our own minds, we observe all these same basic processes: thoughts creating new thoughts out of emotional wells; emotional well collapsing complex thoughts back in to emotional forms.

The parallels are everywhere. Confirming of course for me how the internal is an alternative lens of the outside world designed to observe potential rather than simply observing current form. The goal being to create an improved form. An awareness that has greater ability to bring about potential in the outside world than mere replication of patterns with mutations for diversity.

Indeed, we find the universe a convergence of chaotic verse ordering forces and we among many such ordering forces.Existence a testament to our successes.