The function of a narrative is to control your surprisability. If you're always surprised or never surprised, you have a broken narrative
Conversation
From a decision-making perspective, a good personal narrative is one that leaves you surprised by 1-2 out of every 5 unpredicted events
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"Good" enlightenment allows you to tune the "surprisability" of your narrative. "Bad" enlightenment breaks control over surprisability
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People who claim "enlightenment" (and sincerely convinced of it based on inner experiences) are often indistinguishable from clueless, why?
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Greater verbal precision = picking right word better than others. Emotional sensitivity = picking what to feel more precisely than others
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This is a trainable. Most people think caring/not-caring is something they have no control over. Just a behavioral precondition. Not true.
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By learning how to care at increasingly fine-grained levels, you can control your surprisability at increasingly fine-grained levels.
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Most people think in passive broad strokes about caring, "I care about tech, I don't care about sports." Pattern of care directs attention
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To get to control over caring, attention needs to come ahead of caring and direct it. Care/don't care decisions go lower and lower.
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Replying to
this requires though monk-level detachment from desires and drives.
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Replying to
Not so much detachment from desires and drives as detachment from attachment to desires and drives. The extra level of indirection is key
Ie there's a difference between desiring a cookie and desiring the capacity to desire cookies
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