Cloudscape

While order gets us to what we try to get, chaos gets us to what we wouldn't have tried otherwise. When things don't happen as we thought they should, it makes room for things to happen in other ways we didn't think of before, allowing us to improvise and, by doing so, to learn. Therefore, whenever things go wrong, we should look out for opportunities it gives us to set things right in some other way which may in some ways turn out to be better.

The more we know each other the better we know each other's problems and the more we want to solve them, so that we can therefore better work together better other in friendships than in professions, as friendships start out with needs and try to find the best way of working toward them, while professions start out with work and try to find out what it can be used for. As the Internet connects small, closed groups of friends into large and open group of friends, there will be a time when we will depend on each other not through professional but social networks. Even now, what difference we make is that which we make through friendship rather than work, as what we can do in work depends on the group we work with, but what we can do in friendship depends only on ourselves. Working in social rather than professional networks would give us the freedom to do any kind of work whenever we want, and by learning from every kind of work, in this way we could also become better at what we do. Moreover, because social networks are more interconnected than professional networks, there would be far less need for organization, and the organization that would be done would be shared among everyone who takes part.

All emotions are driven by desire, and desire is what makes up our choices, so that we always feel whatever we choose, and choose whatever we feel. In this not only do we always have a choice as to what we feel, but our feelings themselves are our choice, and when we seem not to, it is because our mind is dissociated from our heart.

We can’t change others’ viewpoints, because whatever we would tell them they would only perceive through the same viewpoints we’d try to change. Thinking that we can change others’ viewpoints is at the basis of authority, and only once we can let others viewpoints be can we cease to take part in it.

Thought processes keep interchanging between the conscious and unconscious, like dolphins tumbling in and out of the water, as the mind interchanges between more rational processes during concentration, and more intuitive processes during relaxation. When we become self-conscious of our thoughts, we may try to hold on to them, but by doing so, instead of going on with the thought process we try to retain the part of our thoughts in process at the time, causing thought blocking. This happens whenever we think we are unable to understand something.

By using augmented reality, we could easily create 3D artwork all around us through sensors on our body. In this way, drawing could also be combined with dancing. With the whole body as interface, we could then also easily direct any number of digital manipulations of that artwork, and cameras used in augmented reality could be used to apply textures from the environment. These wouldn’t need to be based on movements we would actually need to remember, but could actually be based on the expressions of our emotions in our body. Color could be based on the blood circulation of nearby body parts, texture could be based on their muscle tone, and brightness on their speed, and structure on body language. Higher blood circulation would create warmer colors, higher muscle tone would create rougher texture, higher speed would create higher brightness, and outward body language would create outward curves between the sensors. A stereoscopic camera could make sensors unnecessary and textures could instead be created along every part of the body as it moves.

Knowing only part of the truth may be more dangerous than ignorance, but more dangerous still is a lie, for the only reason that part of the truth may be dangerous at all is because it may become a lie. As our minds will be certain to stumble upon truth, our only choice is between a lie and part of the truth. With no way to go back, the only right way to go is towards more parts of the truth.

Creativity is not something we have or don’t have, nor is it something we need to get from others: it is something the germs of which we each already have inside us, and all we need to do to let them grow is to let them unfold in their own way.

Concentric contraction, which goes along the movement of our body parts, causes the quantity of their movement, while eccentric contraction, which goes against the movement of our body parts, causes the quality of their movement. Exercise can cause strain only when there is not enough focus on quality and too much on quantity, although it is not actually the quantity but the lack of quality that causes it. This is especially likely to happen when we become tired and our muscles relax, so that as we try to keep them moving as fast as before, they cut out any contraction unneeded to do so. If we make sure to use all muscles needed in each movement, we can keep moving as long as we want without causing strain.

As long as the art of other people fills our unconscious, it keeps us from creating our own. Therefore, as people each become more creative, at some point we will actually keep from focussing on the same art for too long and instead let it become one with our own in our unconscious, so that all art will make place for new art until all art turns into a flux where the art there is becomes but a transition to the art there is to be, just as every other aspect of our consciousness. As our unconscious gets more space to create art wholly of its own, it will become ever more beautiful, so that while much beauty will go lost in the process, we will open ourselves to ever greater beauty as we do so. This transition will begin with a unification first of all genres and then of all styles of art.

We have become so indebted that the only thing we can still do about recession is to spend less, but the less money is spent, the less money is earned, which causes further recession. As people are focussing on spending less rather than earning more, this begins a new era in which the recession, rather than growth, becomes the new standard of our economy. It means that while the crisis is coming to an end, the recession has only just begun. The recession is itself caused by an increased efficiency of our economy, and will continue to involve such an increase in efficiency as our culture shifts from the “more is better” of modernism to the “less is more” of minimalism.

Positive emotions aren't always pleasurable and negative emotions always painful: rather, positive emotions are about what there is, and negative emotions about what there isn’t.

“Narcissism” may refer to either of two syndromes which are actually each other’s opposites: egotism, in which the self is seen as so separate from everything else that it cannot empathize with it, and egocentrism, in which the self is seen as so connected with everything else that everything is seen as a reference to the self. The first is caused by an overly integrated ego, as seen in psychopathy, while the latter is caused by an overly disintegrated ego, as seen in schizophrenia, and while the former is a narcissistic trait, the latter is actually a paranoid one.

When a problem causes enough stress, the mind will focus itself entirely on trying to think of a solution. There are two ways it can do this: one is to increase the concentration with which it thinks of the problem until it thinks of nothing else, causing depression, and another is to increase the imagination with which it tries to think of solutions until it thinks of anything at all, causing psychosis. In most cases mental illness is not actually a problem in itself, but a natural process to get us through crises. The actual problem is that we don’t let it happen naturally, which is also why it causes so much stress.

The easiest way to stay aware while falling asleep is to think about getting up up to the point one falls asleep. To actually try to get up there must be a reason to do so, however, but not enough of a reason to actually get up. This is easiest early in the morning on a free day, when there is a conflict between the conscious desire to get up early into wakeful life and the subconscious desire to get back into the dream life, which is also a conflict between the wakeful and dreaming self. This conflict connects the two, and this connection is what induces lucid dreams, so this conflict must be balanced just right: there must be an equal desire to fall asleep and to get back up at the same time.

If survival is to remain in the same form, evolution does not happen to increase chances of survival because it actually decreases it, as the more evolved a species is the less likely it is to survive. Evolution happens when something is born with an unlikely change that is likely to die again, but yet finds an unlikely way to survive anyway. However, the only way it can deal with the problem is with the same thing that caused it, through further change, and as most change is deadly, it only becomes less viable the more it evolves, but it may still survive for a while if it is viable enough. Evolution is not the survival of the fittest but the survival of the fittest freaks of nature, though the freaks of nature themselves may be quite unfit.

Life arises through growth and growth is change. All change is a risk, therefore life is made up of risks, and without risk there is no life. Fear is not meant to keep is from taking risks, but to guide us through them.

When we seek for meaning in existence we seek for one aspect of existence that is somehow the only valuable aspect in existence, yet all the aspects of existence are connected to one whole, so that if any has value, all must have value. The search for meaning is a search to separate one aspect of existence from all others. In Buddhism, that separation from the rest of existence is would be called selfhood, the cause of all suffering, whereas the connection with all of existence would be called enlightenment, the cause of all happiness. If we are to find happiness, we must therefore let go of meaning.

The law of accelerating returns shows that the rate of evolution appears constant over the long term but changeable on the short term. The reason for this is that evolution happens in an cycle of life and death, in which all death makes place for new life. Life is negentropy, or work, and death entropy, or potential, and the sum of the two always increases at a constant rate.

Babies have not yet formed an ego, so that without someone else's ego to hold on to, to be a baby is a little bit like having severe schizophrenia. Until they've formed an ego of their own, they should not be left alone.

Meditation is a word that is more associated with the future rather than the current, the current being but a means to the future end of nirvana. A meditation for which the current is the end in its own sake may just be called enjoyment, and rather than a transcendence of it, it is our natural state that ultimately drives all life. Animals, being more authentic than humans, are in this state a lot more than humans, and in this, much like kung fu, meditation could take an example from animals. As soon as you want to meditate for its own sake, this means you've already achieved enlightenment, and all that's left for you to do is to enjoy the enlightenment that's already there.

The more surreal a thought, the deeper it comes from within the unconscious mind. By trying to come up with as surreal thoughts as possible and then analyzing what they could mean, we can therefore create a better connection with our unconscious mind, which can be useful to find out what we really feel at the time.

Happiness is belonging, which is the feeling we are connected, for which everything must also connect in our life, and for every opposite to fully connect there must be enough of each, for which they must be in balance, so that happiness can only be found in balance, and happiness is also the only way to know we are in balance. Therefore, the best way to seek balance and so mental and physical health is to enjoy life, which means both to enjoy what we find and seek out what we can already enjoy. When we enjoy life in all its aspects for ourselves, we will also enjoy bringing enjoyment to others'. The only thing we should do, then, is to enjoy life and, once we do so, share whatever causes us enjoyment with others.

To ourselves, others are part of our own consciousness and to them, we are part of theirs. Love is a connection of consciousness, through which others' consciousness can become part of our own and ours can become part of theirs. To love others is therefore a way to love ourselves, and to love ourselves is a way to love others. To have love to give to others we must love ourselves, and to have love to give to love ourselves and we must also love others. Consciousness is itself made up of connections and therefore is itself love, and it is but by connecting both to ourselves and to each other that we can connect our consciousness and therefore become conscious and therefore loving, as through ourselves we connect to others and through others to ourselves. As everything we do is done from consciousness, it is only through it that we can even know how to do something loving to ourselves and others, and to become more conscious we must be loving both to ourselves and to others.

When you are about to write something, our thoughts will at first not be thoughts of what to write next but about what you are writing. Trying to think only of what to write next puts a limitation on what thoughts we can come up with for what we are writing. Therefore, if we don't know how to begin writing, we should begin by writing about what we want to write until we come up with different parts we can use in it, after which we can then piece them together. Creativity begins from intuition rather than reason and therefore begins in a nonlinear way, so that we should not always try to write in a linear way.

Nothing can ever arise in any way but evolution, as everything can only arise from that which is already there, so that everything can only change in and of itself, and nothing can change in the place of something else. We can’t change ourselves or each other because the only way we can change is in and of ourselves, but to do so, we must accept ourselves and each other as we already are so that we can also accept how we evolve. We must be ourselves to evolve because it is the only way we can learn. Evolution is a choice that no one else can make for us, for choice is made from consciousness, and as we are but a very small part of others’ consciousness, we have but a very small part in their evolution. In this we are always on our own in our own evolution, and even a God could not make us evolve. If anything, by trying to control each other to evolve in a particular way we can only keep each other from choosing to evolve in their own way. What little we can do to make others evolve is to accept them as they already are so that they would also accept themselves and how they already evolve. The more we try to make others to evolve, the less they will, and people evolve only when they are no longer controlled and no longer control each other. If they’re dominant, they won’t want to do things in any way but their own, so that they cannot change to any other, and if they’re submissive, they won’t want to do things in their own way, so that they cannot change their own way. The balance between submission and dominance is authenticity, and it is therefore only through authenticity that evolution can happen.

Beginning an activity takes a lot more energy than sustaining it. Music can be a way to achieve that threshold of energy needed to begin an activity.

Mind the small things, for through a chain of events they are likely to cause bigger things, and the more complex the system in which they happen, the more likely they are to do so. In systems as complex as our own body and mind, they are almost certain to do so if they happen often enough.

Because the mind is more complex, it is harder to balance than the body, and imbalance of the mind can cause imbalance of the body. Therefore, as it can’t make our mind fully healthy, our ego tries to make any parts of our mind it doesn’t need to keep the body healthy unconscious. This is why mentally ill people are sometimes more conscious, as, if we were to be more conscious, we would all find some mental illness in our unconscious. The best way to become more conscious is therefore to make our minds healthier. To do so, however, we first need to find out what mental illness there is in our unconscious, which can be done through dreams, hypnosis, and psychedelics.

The Beast is a symbol of chaos and the emotions of our id and the Lord of order and the reason of our ego, and Christianity is a repression by the ego of the id. The id is more connected to intuition and the ego more connected to reason, which is how Christianity began the imbalance between the two, which had earlier been balanced as Dionysus and Apollo. Since men are more rational and women more intuitive, this also began an imbalance between men and women. Heaven and hell are a symbol of our unconscious mind, where our emotions are turned into angels through acceptance, and into demons through repression. This is why our emotions were repressed as long as we believed in the Lord, and why, once no longer did, all our emotions became excessive.