Mmm, I’m a little confused about what exactly your question is. I think you’re trying to ask how my use of “Look” here relates to the kind of “Look” I refer to in my post on kenshō. I’ll try to answer that question — but if that’s not the question you meant, please let me know!
I claim that there is just one core skill, which I’m calling “Looking”. But once one knows how to Look, there are lots of things to Look at. I don’t know what you mean when you ask whether the example is “archetypical” — it certainly doesn’t strike me as being an archetypal image — but it’s definitely an example of applying the skill I was pointing at in Kenshō.
In the cell phone analogy, this would be that once someone knows how to look up at all, it becomes possible to point out different kinds of things that they can use “looking up” for. They can go look at cell towers, or watch pedestrian traffic flow directly, or lock eyes with someone else who’s looking up. They’re all different applications, but they all pivot on the same core skill.
For a sillier analogy: in the roleplaying game Mage: the Ascension, a mage’s magical power comes from their degree of enlightenment, which is measured by the trait called Arete; but what they can use their magical power on is determined by what bodies of knowledge and practice they’ve mastered, called Spheres. If we are analogous to (potential) mages, then Looking is analogous to using Arete, and different worthwhile things to Look at and come to understand deeply are analogous to the domains governed by Spheres.
Your first two paragraphs mostly answered my question – I’m mostly trying to get a clearer sense of what you mean by Look, and whether it always refers to the same thing.
A different question to circumambulate. :P
Can you describe briefly (nevermind about me necessarily “getting it” in full), 2-3 examples of you Looking at something, and 2-3 examples of you doing something I might mistake for Looking but which is not the same thing, or only superficially similar?
Can you describe briefly (nevermind about me necessarily “getting it” in full), 2-3 examples of you Looking at something, and 2-3 examples of you doing something I might mistake for Looking but which is not the same thing, or only superficially similar?
Oh man. I really like this question! Happy to oblige… though that second part is going to be super tricky. I can give lots of non-examples, but you’re asking for non-examples that I think you might think are examples. I’m less confident I can do that well. But I’ll try!
Some positive examples (briefly, without trying to explain in full):
Sometimes in conversations I’ve noticed that my mind has started moving quickly, and I feel a bit anxious, and when I try to think about why I get a mental fog or I forget what I was thinking about. This is a signal to me that I’m probably running some subconscious strategy. So sometimes I’ll pause, and Look behind the wall of fog or forgetfulness, and hold that whole section of my mind as object. Often it tries to squirm out of reach, but I can See where it’s squirming, and why, and just trace it to its root.
A while back I was interacting with a friend of a friend (distant from this community). His demeanor was very forceful as he pushed on wanting feedback about how to make himself more productive. I felt funny about the situation and a little disoriented, so I Looked at him. My sense of him as an experiencing being deepened, and I started noticing sensations in my own body/emotion system that were tagged as “resonant” (which is something I’ve picked up mostly from Circling). I also could clearly see the social dynamics he was playing at. When my mind put the pieces together, I got an impression of a person whose social strategies had his inner emotional world hurting a lot but also suppressed below his own conscious awareness. This gave me some things to test out that panned out pretty on-the-nose.
I noticed a few weeks ago in a conversation that I was feeling drained in a way I’ve come to associate with my position in the local web of Berkeley rationalists (via previous Looking). So, I Looked at the role I was falling into and what the local web was doing immediately around me, and noticed a particular way of thinking that my “character” was donning in order to fit in that was fitting with getting fatigued. I could also See how I was pouring… hmm, I just want to say “energy” here, but please understand I mean it zero out of ten as something woo. I was pouring energy into a particular role, and I Saw how to redirect that energy to a different role that would just work as long as the web didn’t… ripple too much in response to my trying.
Okay, so now for my attempt at I-think-you’d-misinterpret-as-positive negative examples:
Againstness-type counters is a general category. More concretely, a few days ago I was practicing kung fu in a park, and a homeless man came up to me and started talking about his past from decades ago as a drug runner for the mafia. I felt my body become a little more alert, like I might have to physically defend myself against this guy. But I thought about it and recognized that wasn’t likely and that I didn’t need to be quite that anxious about it, so I took a breath and relaxed my muscles and calmed down a bit. That didn’t involve any particularly intentional application of Looking on my part.
I was once led through a meditation where I laid down, imagined a light coming out of my forehead, and then followed that light to travel to the future to get advice from the ideal ten-years-from-now version of myself. That felt pleasant, and it felt like my dreaming mind came up with interesting insights during the visualization. I also think this didn’t involve basically any Looking.
Sometimes a TAP fires in the middle of a conversation and I’ll pause and think “Wait, this feels like we’re drifting away from the point.” Like… about a week ago, I was in a discussion with a friend who was trying to think about some social modeling stuff, and after I’d given a model that X happens because of Y, he started trying to object based on the claim that people shouldn’t do Y. That felt like the conversation had slipped sideways, so I popped meta and pointed out the conversation arc, and he agreed and we got back on track. That didn’t involve any Looking from what I can tell.
Yup, quite good. I’ll have to think on it a bit but was exactly the sort of answer I was looking for.
I’d hadn’t meant to force you do a more-cognitively-intense “model me modeling Looking” thing, and maybe an easier question might have been “what’s something you think a past, less experienced version of you might have thought was looking” or “what’s a common mistaken impression you might think people might make” or “when people ask you to explain Looking, what’s your surprise-o-meter expecting to come across wrong?”
Like, in the kensho post it was clear that you were afraid of falling into the “I am looking higher on my screen” trap, so it seemed like you had some kind of notion of what that would non-metaphorically look like, which is what I was trying to get at.
Like, in the kensho post it was clear that you were afraid of falling into the “I am looking higher on my screen” trap, so it seemed like you had some kind of notion of what that would non-metaphorically look like, which is what I was trying to get at.
Oh! Oh jeez. That makes a lot of sense. I can give tons of examples of that! That’s a very different thing in my mind.
Heh, although, I should warn that giving examples of this is prone to starting arguments. Just tag all of this as “Val’s interpretations of the world” and we’re good. :-)
So with that, here’s a few:
For a few months before my kenshō, ialdabaoth kept telling me that I had a social strategy that was being really annoying to him, something something sexual competition something something. I kept listening to what he was saying and thinking carefully about it, and I tried to do focusing on it, but it felt weird and I kept thinking that he was probably wrong (but as a general policy I kept in mind that I might just be deluded). This contrasts with right after the kenshō: one of the first things I Looked at was my sexual strategy system. If I remember right, I laughed and said something like, “Oh, that poor Valentine creature! It’s like a leg that twitches until it fucks!” I ended up apologizing to ialdabaoth because I could clearly See what he was talking about now. We’ve been great on that dimension ever since. But yeah, I think it’d be fair to say he was trying to get me to Look and I was doing something that seemed perfectly sensible to me in response to that, but it sure wasn’t Looking.
Sometimes I try to convey something one could loosely tag as “sovereignty” but is really about Seeing one’s own existence and what that implies. A downstream effect of it is that there’s now a meaningful difference in my mind between a “decision” that’s about navigating the social web, versus a dedication that will in fact not even flinch in the face of temptation. I totally used to conflate those two, and I now think that most folk around me do too most of the time. I end up saying “No, really, choose. It’s okay.” And what I get back is… someone trying to sound confident or assertive as they strongly say one option, but it’s really obvious that they haven’t done anything different internally and are going to keep doubting themselves.
There’s a tendency in authentic relating practices, or in Circling, where folk will make eye contact and often end up holding it for long periods of time. Many, many times, I’ve seen people then try to don a “loving look”. Sometimes this is sincere, but sometimes it’s something that folk have picked up from the culture as “what ya do, ya know?” I and others who know how to See the relevant thing here sometimes try to point out to such folk that e.g. the point is to attend to their experience rather than to have an effect on the other person. Sometimes they adjust in a seemingly useful way… and sometimes they just switch the strategy they’re using to come across well, seeming to think that they’re following the instruction.
Hopefully that clarifies rather than confuses. It’s just that… in my mind, things you’re likely to see me doing that you’d mistake for Looking is a really different category from things that people are likely to mistake for Looking in themselves.
Just wanted to note that I really like the phrasing of your question and think it’s a quality move for circumambulating Valentine’s position. (I’m also very interested in the response)
Mmm, I’m a little confused about what exactly your question is. I think you’re trying to ask how my use of “Look” here relates to the kind of “Look” I refer to in my post on kenshō. I’ll try to answer that question — but if that’s not the question you meant, please let me know!
I claim that there is just one core skill, which I’m calling “Looking”. But once one knows how to Look, there are lots of things to Look at. I don’t know what you mean when you ask whether the example is “archetypical” — it certainly doesn’t strike me as being an archetypal image — but it’s definitely an example of applying the skill I was pointing at in Kenshō.
In the cell phone analogy, this would be that once someone knows how to look up at all, it becomes possible to point out different kinds of things that they can use “looking up” for. They can go look at cell towers, or watch pedestrian traffic flow directly, or lock eyes with someone else who’s looking up. They’re all different applications, but they all pivot on the same core skill.
For a sillier analogy: in the roleplaying game Mage: the Ascension, a mage’s magical power comes from their degree of enlightenment, which is measured by the trait called Arete; but what they can use their magical power on is determined by what bodies of knowledge and practice they’ve mastered, called Spheres. If we are analogous to (potential) mages, then Looking is analogous to using Arete, and different worthwhile things to Look at and come to understand deeply are analogous to the domains governed by Spheres.
Your first two paragraphs mostly answered my question – I’m mostly trying to get a clearer sense of what you mean by Look, and whether it always refers to the same thing.
A different question to circumambulate. :P
Can you describe briefly (nevermind about me necessarily “getting it” in full), 2-3 examples of you Looking at something, and 2-3 examples of you doing something I might mistake for Looking but which is not the same thing, or only superficially similar?
Oh man. I really like this question! Happy to oblige… though that second part is going to be super tricky. I can give lots of non-examples, but you’re asking for non-examples that I think you might think are examples. I’m less confident I can do that well. But I’ll try!
Some positive examples (briefly, without trying to explain in full):
Sometimes in conversations I’ve noticed that my mind has started moving quickly, and I feel a bit anxious, and when I try to think about why I get a mental fog or I forget what I was thinking about. This is a signal to me that I’m probably running some subconscious strategy. So sometimes I’ll pause, and Look behind the wall of fog or forgetfulness, and hold that whole section of my mind as object. Often it tries to squirm out of reach, but I can See where it’s squirming, and why, and just trace it to its root.
A while back I was interacting with a friend of a friend (distant from this community). His demeanor was very forceful as he pushed on wanting feedback about how to make himself more productive. I felt funny about the situation and a little disoriented, so I Looked at him. My sense of him as an experiencing being deepened, and I started noticing sensations in my own body/emotion system that were tagged as “resonant” (which is something I’ve picked up mostly from Circling). I also could clearly see the social dynamics he was playing at. When my mind put the pieces together, I got an impression of a person whose social strategies had his inner emotional world hurting a lot but also suppressed below his own conscious awareness. This gave me some things to test out that panned out pretty on-the-nose.
I noticed a few weeks ago in a conversation that I was feeling drained in a way I’ve come to associate with my position in the local web of Berkeley rationalists (via previous Looking). So, I Looked at the role I was falling into and what the local web was doing immediately around me, and noticed a particular way of thinking that my “character” was donning in order to fit in that was fitting with getting fatigued. I could also See how I was pouring… hmm, I just want to say “energy” here, but please understand I mean it zero out of ten as something woo. I was pouring energy into a particular role, and I Saw how to redirect that energy to a different role that would just work as long as the web didn’t… ripple too much in response to my trying.
Okay, so now for my attempt at I-think-you’d-misinterpret-as-positive negative examples:
Againstness-type counters is a general category. More concretely, a few days ago I was practicing kung fu in a park, and a homeless man came up to me and started talking about his past from decades ago as a drug runner for the mafia. I felt my body become a little more alert, like I might have to physically defend myself against this guy. But I thought about it and recognized that wasn’t likely and that I didn’t need to be quite that anxious about it, so I took a breath and relaxed my muscles and calmed down a bit. That didn’t involve any particularly intentional application of Looking on my part.
I was once led through a meditation where I laid down, imagined a light coming out of my forehead, and then followed that light to travel to the future to get advice from the ideal ten-years-from-now version of myself. That felt pleasant, and it felt like my dreaming mind came up with interesting insights during the visualization. I also think this didn’t involve basically any Looking.
Sometimes a TAP fires in the middle of a conversation and I’ll pause and think “Wait, this feels like we’re drifting away from the point.” Like… about a week ago, I was in a discussion with a friend who was trying to think about some social modeling stuff, and after I’d given a model that X happens because of Y, he started trying to object based on the claim that people shouldn’t do Y. That felt like the conversation had slipped sideways, so I popped meta and pointed out the conversation arc, and he agreed and we got back on track. That didn’t involve any Looking from what I can tell.
¿Is good?
Yup, quite good. I’ll have to think on it a bit but was exactly the sort of answer I was looking for.
I’d hadn’t meant to force you do a more-cognitively-intense “model me modeling Looking” thing, and maybe an easier question might have been “what’s something you think a past, less experienced version of you might have thought was looking” or “what’s a common mistaken impression you might think people might make” or “when people ask you to explain Looking, what’s your surprise-o-meter expecting to come across wrong?”
Like, in the kensho post it was clear that you were afraid of falling into the “I am looking higher on my screen” trap, so it seemed like you had some kind of notion of what that would non-metaphorically look like, which is what I was trying to get at.
Oh! Oh jeez. That makes a lot of sense. I can give tons of examples of that! That’s a very different thing in my mind.
Heh, although, I should warn that giving examples of this is prone to starting arguments. Just tag all of this as “Val’s interpretations of the world” and we’re good. :-)
So with that, here’s a few:
For a few months before my kenshō, ialdabaoth kept telling me that I had a social strategy that was being really annoying to him, something something sexual competition something something. I kept listening to what he was saying and thinking carefully about it, and I tried to do focusing on it, but it felt weird and I kept thinking that he was probably wrong (but as a general policy I kept in mind that I might just be deluded). This contrasts with right after the kenshō: one of the first things I Looked at was my sexual strategy system. If I remember right, I laughed and said something like, “Oh, that poor Valentine creature! It’s like a leg that twitches until it fucks!” I ended up apologizing to ialdabaoth because I could clearly See what he was talking about now. We’ve been great on that dimension ever since. But yeah, I think it’d be fair to say he was trying to get me to Look and I was doing something that seemed perfectly sensible to me in response to that, but it sure wasn’t Looking.
Sometimes I try to convey something one could loosely tag as “sovereignty” but is really about Seeing one’s own existence and what that implies. A downstream effect of it is that there’s now a meaningful difference in my mind between a “decision” that’s about navigating the social web, versus a dedication that will in fact not even flinch in the face of temptation. I totally used to conflate those two, and I now think that most folk around me do too most of the time. I end up saying “No, really, choose. It’s okay.” And what I get back is… someone trying to sound confident or assertive as they strongly say one option, but it’s really obvious that they haven’t done anything different internally and are going to keep doubting themselves.
There’s a tendency in authentic relating practices, or in Circling, where folk will make eye contact and often end up holding it for long periods of time. Many, many times, I’ve seen people then try to don a “loving look”. Sometimes this is sincere, but sometimes it’s something that folk have picked up from the culture as “what ya do, ya know?” I and others who know how to See the relevant thing here sometimes try to point out to such folk that e.g. the point is to attend to their experience rather than to have an effect on the other person. Sometimes they adjust in a seemingly useful way… and sometimes they just switch the strategy they’re using to come across well, seeming to think that they’re following the instruction.
Hopefully that clarifies rather than confuses. It’s just that… in my mind, things you’re likely to see me doing that you’d mistake for Looking is a really different category from things that people are likely to mistake for Looking in themselves.
Just wanted to note that I really like the phrasing of your question and think it’s a quality move for circumambulating Valentine’s position. (I’m also very interested in the response)
thanks!