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"What we mean by "understanding" is seeing how parts fit into a whole and also realizing that the whole is not composed of parts but /has/ no separate parts." ("The" Understanding)

"If a barren tree were seen in the winter you might assume it is not a fruit tree. But come summer when it bears fruit you must concede that it was a fruit tree all along.

"If a billion years ago aliens visited the earth and assumed it was just a bunch of rocks, they too would need to concede that it was a people-bearing-rock from the start"

"The brain creates the universe just as the universe creates the brain. We have been obsessed with a false humility where we see ourselves as mere creatures or blind flukes but have lacked the real humility of recognizing our part in the universe."

(The reason this is false humility is b/c it labels God as the Cosmic Idiot, no better than a million monkeys on a million typewriters. A common "rationalist" stance.)

(To untangle the brain-creates-universe it's similar to how the description of the part requires description of the whole above. It's *not* that reality is frustum culled like a game)https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1331750845432565761 …

"For a society that defines one so separately cannot persuade him to behave as if he really belonged. Thus he fells chronic guilt and the makes the most heroic efforts to placate his conscience."

"For if you know what you want you can be trusted to be content with it but if you do not know, your desires are greedily limitless and no once can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment. Happiness can only be spread by the happy."

"Saints declared themselves as abject sinners as their aspirations to be saintly are motivated by the worse of sins, spiritual pride, the desire to admire oneself as a supreme success in the art of love and unselfishness."

"But to try and will yourself to resolve this paradox, to experience this is self defeating. Only by accepting the absurdity of the ego can it be dispelled, not through will."

"When you go to museums for culture you gain nothing. When you meditate for spiritual awakening you get nothing. It is only in the frustration of these attempts that you realize their absurdity. When you realize that the game is a paradox of rules you see it is not worth playing"

"If you ask how to get beyond the ego feeling you must ask why. The honest answer is a desire for higher spiritual status. The ego is speaking! The most cunning of disguises. Tear off every disguise and every layer and there is nothing left."

"Tear through this and you may play the "I-can't-help-myself" game. The ego has receded into frustrated observation, retaining the identity of watcher. This nears the final showdown. A line of separation is drawn between everything that happens to "me" and the "witness". "

"Yet in this moment, when you feel like you are about to become a total zombie controlled entirely by fate you realize there is no fate unless there is something to be fated. There is no trap without someone to be caught. There is no compulsion unless there is also freedom"

"This lack of freedom is what points to the existence of freedom. The fact that there is something at all always must point to its opposite. We watched helpless at the shadow before realizing that we do not only control the shadow but that we *are* the shadow."

(The above 2 are a bit woo. Taking a bit from The Elephant in the Brain, the unfree "self" can be thought of as the rationalization engine. It's an involuntary reaction to the environment. The shadow is "trapped" but the person is free.)

"To play to be relaxed for work is not to play, and so to work in order to play is not work. No work is done well unless it too is play."

"Though playing is trivial as in playing with toys, it is also sincere, when playing an instrument. To want love to be sincere is better than to want it to be serious."

"Anyone who brags about knowing this doesn't understand it and is a veiled ego using it in the game of spiritual one-upmanship."

"It is also deeply offensive to those who do not understand and who honestly believe themselves to be lonely spirits as you've created an in/out dynamic. "You're not good enough to be 'in', follow my teachings and you will be."

"Sages are not models of virtue, they come with all their human flaws. But involved as you may be in conflicts, you can no longer see the enemy as something to be eliminated but a partner in a game."

"This will give you the priceless ability to contain conflicts and the willingness to compromise and adapt. This "honor among thieves" is far less dangerous than those who do not recognize the they are thieves."

"Life must be lived as a game --- must not as a command, but as a requirement, for a life forced to be lived is not a life. To love your enemies is to love them as enemies."

"To goal of action is always contemplation --- knowing and being rather than seeking and becoming. As it is, we are gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in. This infinite hunger for an infinite future."

"To say something is to define and limit, to set boundaries, to compare and contrast. But just as no one should seek to find news in a dictionary, no one should use speaking and thinking to find out what cannot be spoken or thought. "

""What is everything?" has no meaning, even though it is profound, for it cannot be answered. Words are too slow and clumsy to describe how we think and how we exist, yet we still know how to think, how to walk, how to see, etc..."