Got me thinking

My last post got me thinking about other ways I have actively willed my body to change. I was going through my notebooks from the past few years and found mention of my eyes.

Early in my experimenting with "mental body mod," my eyesight was rapidly worsening. I was getting new prescriptions for glasses twice a year, even three times one year. I started to regularly (several times a day, for 15-45 minutes, every day) take off my glasses and intently try to focus on something just barely beyond my range of focus, usually a pen or other handy object. When I was able to successfully focus on it (which was rarely, at first) I tried different methods of inducing physical pleasure. The more intense, the better. I incorporated everything from chocolate to orgasm for this part. Within a few months, I visited my optomitrist. He did the regular checks, and then did them again. He was delighted to tell me that, not only had my eyesight not worsened, but he wrote me a new prescription that was weaker than before (telling me not to get new glasses unless I started having headaches). Another six months, another appointment: no change from previous prescription (no improvement or decline). One more time, a year after I started doing the exercises (although I hadn't been doing it as often) my eyesight was stable. I had been expecting to be legally blind by that point. Now, several years later, still no significant change to my prescription!

Again, there's nothing solid to say that I didn't simply mature and my eyes stopped changing of their own accord. There's also nothing to say that I did not affect physical change based on my mental will.

Think about it. Try it (not just once, make it nearly habit!) and let me know whether you have more situational evidence!

Cheers!


--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Something practical

I have spent a lot of words here talking about head-in-the-clouds philosophical approaching-dogmatic largely useless stuff. I've had a very practical, down-to-earth day, and feel like sharing that!

About a month ago I injured my shoulder. It was a whole lesson in godhood. (And being home hopped up on pain killers was the perfect time to start blogging!) I could have avoided the injury, but I doubted myself! I know this sounds fluffy again, but that's what happened. I have, through study and practice of martial arts, taught my body how to do some precise physical motions, including several styles of rolls. These are useful for everything from escaping from someone attempting to hurt you to cracking that one tight spot in your spine. I had one such spot in my back from work, and began to fall intothe roll. At the last second, I thought, "that's not how you do it..." and made a conscious adjustment to my body placement. Suddenly, all of the momentum that wa supposed to be horizontal, parallel to the ground, was redirected straight into the ground. I knew before I even hit the ground that it was all wrong, but neither my body nor my mind was quick enough to make the correct readjustment. I knew by feel the right way, but had not practiced how to recover from doing it the wrong way.

This isn't quite all. I immediately stood up, thinking that that hurt a whole lot, but it'd stop hurting soon. And I executed another roll, perfectly. Flawlessly!

And then I sat down on the mossy area nearby and, until I tried to move, thought the my shoulder was going to just be badly bruised and very very sore. Then I went to stand up... I stopped short of even moving my arms to balance myself.

I did get up, very carefully. And I went to bed, lying very very still. I knew that when I woke up, I'd be fine.

That being said, when I woke up I had tears in my eyes and I started to sit up, but the shift in position shot paralyzing pain from my shoulder to every other inch in my body. It's not quite the worst pain I've felt, but it wasn't good.

I woke up my love and asked him to see if it looked like I'd dislocated it. Nope. But it wa rather swollen. He insisted on taking me to the doctor, where they did x-rays and gave me good pain meds. Turns out I had managed to separate the three bones that make up the shoulder so that there was an extra inch in every direction. They told me that it could take months to heal and be fully useful.

Today, I painlessly and strongly shoveled several tons of gravel and manually moved large stones. And the doc says I'm healing up nice and solidly, much faster than expected.

I have been using my body awareness, self-massage, and meditation techniques to will extra blood circulation to the area, will swelling to stay down. I used several different techniques to focus on minimizing swelling, encourage the bones to migrate and the muscles to tone. It's only situational evidence that any of that works, but it gave me belief in my godhood out of one of my least godly acts recently.

--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Me, you, us, god, identity, power, and control.

As a god, you must realize something.  You are in control.  If you don't do something about it, then no one is in control.

One of the fears coming down through generations is a god who created the world, and then forgot about us or died or is for some reason absent, powerless, or disinterested in the world.

Is this the world in which you want to live?  Those things of which you choose to be aware are the things of which god is aware (whether you buy wholesale my ads about you being god, and me too).  If you choose to ignore something, you have removed god's awareness of that, and god can not act on it.  Try and become what you already are.

In the great words of Christopher Robin, "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

The day you believe that is when you realize infinity.  Once you do that, and I do that, then We are God.  Each person who chooses to identify Self with Other is one more aspect of God.  If the identity is true and sincere, this god may be wrathful, and may be merciful, and may not make any sense sometimes, but it is a god I can get behind and worship with my whole self, knowing that this god has my best interests, and the best interests of every creature and thing there is in all of existence...


ok, sorry, off the soap box now. 


What do you think?  Any reasons you want to tell me I'm totally off my rocker?  Or can I do anything to help you to believe that belief is a tool that you control, and if you don't control it, then it will control you (and, transitively, control god)?  Any comments, questions, concerns, insults, compliments, flames, or non-sequitors?

Long line of folks...

The following is from a conversation transcript with a friend while we were discussing godhood. Some of the content is repeated, but I kind of like the way I put stuff.

I follow a long line of folks claiming to be god, so far I have been neither executed nor institutionalized. I also don't deny the possibility that anyone else can be god, simultaneously, nor do I doubt that many others already do. In fact, my beliefs on this matter seem to align very closely with atheist claims about godhood. I simply reverse it into a spiritual context (god = anyone who wants to work to claim godhood) rather than a nonspiritual one (god is no one). I also don't hold it rationally inconsistent that both of these are simultaneously true. Along with many other prima facie contradictions.

Now you've got me rambling. In the same way that you might feel badly for doing something, even though you don't think you've done anything wrong per se... I identify, as a god, with everything and everyone I encounter. I am equal, identical, with my car, as well as the squirrel I ran over. A wrong done by accident is a wrong to my own person. I identify with people who inspire nothing but disgust in me... A wrong to a despised person equals a wrong to my own person.

Considering this identity alongside Rawls' veil of ignorance... If I can truely manifest godhood within myself, I have neatly attained the position of ignorance that Rawls' believed to be tantamount to ethical behavior. In this case, though, I don't have to consider the theoretical matter of "what if I didn't know who I was in the situation?" because I don't. My awareness may be centered in this body, but my consciousness is not centralized.

Anything conscious of it's own being is identical to me and my consciousness, though awareness may differ. "whatever you did not do for the least among you, you did not do for me"

Looking at different religions' scriptures is fun from this perspective too. Considering my perceived distinction between things indistinct, the christian trinity is interesting... The Everything, the aware creature with corporeal body, and the nothing. Father, son, ghost. Mind, body, "spirit".

If you want something interesting to do for a day, a weekend, or the rest of your life: try suspending your belief that you are not god... keep in mind what you've learned so far in life, and don't completely disregard those lessons (you shouldn't sit in traffic and expect the car not to harm you, etc). But forget that you're not god, don't just pretend you believe, use the tool of belief and be god. If the belief is not useful to you, discard it and try something else.


--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Identity vs. Equivalence

Equality does not necessitate identity. Things not the same can be equal, or equivalent. Perhaps equivalence is greater still than true equality.

Sometimes double standards are not only acceptable, but good and necessary.


--
Consider yourself god and you gain dominion over your world.

Prescription.

The majority of our actions can be traced back to a subconscious desire (for freedom) in conflict with habit, an obedience to inherent fatalism which hangs on "good and bad" actions already committed (in past existence) against a preserved morality and whose reaction gives expression as spontaneity, involuntariness, autonomy, the deliberate, etc., as the chance arises.
-Spare

Austin Spare, Jacob Moreno, Robert Wilson, the cabbage/robot fallacy, the archer's target fallacy, Apple's advertising (if not their policy), Jesus, the Dalai Lama, etc. All suggesting that maybe, perhaps, sponteneity (breaking habit, think different, desire for freedom, and so on) plays a key role in improving the quality of life among individuals and groups. All hinting that the things we believe (and for what reason? because we haven't been taught to believe any other way) need to be examined.

Think about everything you DON'T think about. This is what you do habitually while you're thinking about other things. Everything from how you sit, through the tone in your voice when you speak, what brand of toothpaste you buy, who you seek for legal of medical advice, to what you accomplish in your dreams, and what you do for your livelihood. Of all of these things you do, how many of them were intentionally created by you? How many did you accidentally create through not-considering? How many were intentionally created by someone else?

How many do you like?

None of these are necessarily wrong, mind you.

These are the things that are literally running your life while you're busy with other things.

I would suggest, as your lawyer, doctor, therapist and life coach, that you should think about these questions for no less than ten twenty minutes each. Then practice being different.

You are what you practice every day. -Ghandi

What is a god? What makes something deified?

What is a god? Seems like this is a question that any individual god ought to be able to answer, right?  Let's give it a shot, and see how I measure up.  Feel free to compare yourself, you may gain some insight into what makes you different from one of the many gods living amongst you and your kind.

The question of what constitutes a god is one of those with as many answers as there are individual consciousnesses which consider the question.  Let's try starting from common ground.
If we begin by consulting the Random House unabridged dictionary, we find:

God (n)
1. the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.
2. one of several deities, especially a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.
3. (often lowercase) a supreme being according to some particular conception: the god of mercy.
4. (lowercase) an image of a deity; an idol.
5. (lowercase) any deified person or object.

Noting the male connotation (and my disregard to sex or gender in the aspect of deification) I checked out goddess next.

Goddess (n)
1. a female god or deity.
2. a woman of extraordinary beauty and charm.
3. a greatly admired or adored woman.

Both of these use the word deity as part of their definition, and in the interest of a complete definition:

Deity (n)
1. a god or goddess.
2. divine character or nature, especially that of the Supreme Being; divinity.
3. the estate or rank of a god: The king attained deity after his death.
4. a person or thing revered as a god or goddess: a society in which money is the only deity.

Common threads:
1) Created or controls the world or some part of the world.
2) Extraordinary characteristics
3) Veneration, reverence, or adoration

Perhaps I'm egotistical.  I have power, control, and influence among everything I become aware of, if I so choose. I have many distinctly venerable qualities: beauty, humor, ingenuity, intelligence, etc.  I have a congregation numbering between one (myself: god, high priest, and supplicant) and the total number of people I have ever encountered, depending on how you ask the question.  There are even stories told about me, some of them nearly legend and told in a manner reminiscent of ritual retellings of cosmogonic stories.

Aside from the dictionary definitions, I have already noted that, as an autotheist, I identify with the universe, and each other inhabitant.  I also sometimes deny my own individual ego in order to serve my greater self, but it can not be denied that I do have an individual ego.  I remember when I realized that the christian doctrine of the holy trinity on which I had been raised supports of my personal claim to divinity! I identify with the holy father who exerts his magic power to wrap chaos in order, and to stir up stagnation.  I identify with the holy spirit, which some call the universal consciousness, or the cosmic spark, or whathaveyou, the bit which words have failed to describe despite being older and more consistent than language.  I identify with the wholly human animal, bound within a body and a perceived physical environment which may or may not obey my command.

Some time soon, I hope to have enough readers to have at least one comment of each of these types for every post: flame, "wow, you're like, smart and stuff", skeptical arguments, etc. I'm interested to see where this whole thing develops.

Belief

Belief is a tool.  What I choose to believe at any time may not be what I choose to believe at another time.  Belief is powerful, but it is also meaningless.  Use it when useful; disregard it's existence when it proves useless (or worse, detrimental).  This is the grain of salt I offer you.

I = god.

What am I talking about? Defining autotheism: I = god.
(Whoa! Sounds like a crazy one!)
In general, I don't habitually advertise this little fact about myself
because I can see I may be easily misunderstood. That being said: when
it comes up, if the conversation continues (intellectually), I
generally get asked about the morality of believing yourself a deity.
I pose a question, assuming I know the answer:
Have you ever felt badly about having acted in a manner that you do
not find in any way reprehensible? And you try to "fix" it anyway?

This is how autotheists have ultimate morality. The autotheists (and
some buddhists, and god knows who else) identify with everything and
everyone. A wrong done to a despised person equals a wrong to his own
person. Thus, artfully achieving the Rawls-ian veil of ignorance.
Common critique of Rawls' veil includes the impossibility of such a
creature.
In this case, I am on every side of the veil, simultaneously. I
achieve ignorance through attempting thorough understanding.