This confirms I’m very thoroughly confused about what “cake” means to you here!
I thought you were looking for tangible proof of benefits, or something you could concretely try, or something like that. But now I know I have no idea what you’re looking for!
I’ll give examples to highlight my confusion. In your “cake” for falling in love, you say:
I could say that falling in love is worthwhile for its own sake. Of course, there isn’t any way I could convince you of that, but that’s not unusual; the same applies to the experience of eating ice cream, etc. This boils down to “try it; you’ll like it!”.
I seem to recall saying very similar things about kenshō. That there’s something of deep importance, that this “insight” amounts to acknowledging it, that this is something you’d be super grateful for if it were to happen for you, and that there’s not really much of a way for me to convince you of any of this. It’s just a “Take a look and see for yourself” kind of thing.
That doesn’t seem to have satisfied you. You still asked for “cake”.
In particular, what you say here sounds to me like what I’d guess “assurances of having cake” would be.
In your second paragraph of “cake” you say:
falling in love is just the first part of a process which (summed across all instances over a person’s lifetime) is likely to account for a significant chunk of the happiness, life satisfaction, joy, pleasure, etc., that one experiences in one’s lifetime.
I could say something very similar about kenshō. I suspect I did in that monster thread five years ago. That if & when this flash of clarity comes online, there’ll be a sense of something like “Oh holy fuck, I’ve been just living on autopilot! I haven’t been alive here! I’ve been ignoring what actually goddamned matters just to tell myself some stories and live in fantasy! Whoa!!!” And it’s very much just a beginning.
(There’s a quote that goes something like “You have two lives. Your second life begins when you realize you have only one life.” Kenshō is about beginning your second life.)
But again, this doesn’t seem to have satisfied your need for “cake”.
Your third paragraph includes:
those of my friends who’ve fallen in love, and entered into (and stayed in) long-term term relationships on the basis of that love, seem to be much happier than they were previously, and in particular, seem to make one another happy, in ways observable in ordinary, everyday interactions. (Of course one can have experiences and observe things that point to the opposite conclusion—but, again, this is too well-trod a topic to productively re-tread here.)
So, on this regarding kenshō I’ve been maybe too vague. Very attuned to the ability of folk to point at evidence of the opposite conclusion.
But if I can make a similar caveat as you’ve made here, I think I can point pretty clearly at this.
The people I know who are on the other side of this are alive. Engaged. Interesting. They’re themselves much more deeply. More interested in really playing the game of life. Less willing to tolerate bullshit, especially in their for-fun social interactions.
They also almost all have war stories involving the collapse after awakening. A lot of lies people live can’t work once they admit to themselves that they’re lies. And it’s hard not to admit stuff like that in the midst of an explosion of Light, at least in my experience. Breakups, financial collapse, and physical illness are not uncommon. It’s usually temporary and most of them say that they totally wouldn’t have it any other way — at least once they’re through the other side. Some do get stuck. And there’s a potential survivorship bias here in my account.
It’d be weird to call that a benefit. It’s more like an attribute I notice over and over again. I totally had that. Arguably I still do: it feels like a deep existential allergy to all lies and bullshit turned on deep in my core, and now I’m on a lifelong journey for total and ever-perfecting alignment with… well, truth.
But as things go in terms of “What can we see this actually doing in the world?”, here are a few attributes. The Dark Night stuff can be awful to go through, but it’s like the vomiting part of food poisoning. It’s not like the point of that is to be enjoyable, but you still want to have done it.
Now, if my saying all that still doesn’t count for you as “cake”… then I have no idea how to proceed. You’re going to have to define what you’re looking for differently if you want me to have any chance of answering you on this point.
If you were trying to convey this whole “falling in love” thing to me, while I’m suspicious about whether it exists or that if it exists that it has any value, and I were pressing you for “cake” about “falling in love”, what would you offer?
This is a reasonable enough question, as I said, but it does bear noting that it’s not like I’ve actually written any posts about how great “falling in love” is and how people should try doing it, etc. (I’m not even sure I would actually advocate for falling in love, if you asked me whether I think that you should try to do it, and were skeptical about it!)
Now, you asked what I’d offer if I were trying to convey “falling in love” and were asked for “cake” (i.e., answers to “what’s it good for?”), and I answered “here’s what I’d offer”. That response wasn’t very substantive! To abuse the metaphor somewhat, if we imagine our metaphorical cake as, say, tiramisu, my response would be, perhaps, a single ladyfinger dipped in coffee liqueur, with a dollop of whipped cream on it—not really a whole cake, with all the ingredients in place, fully assembled and finished with all the details, but more like a proof-of-concept, establishing that the basic idea works and is essentially sensible. (You could also call it a sketch rather than a finished portrait, or use any number of similar metaphors.)
That having been said, let’s move to the non-metaphorical object level:
I thought you were looking for tangible proof of benefits, or something you could concretely try, or something like that. But now I know I have no idea what you’re looking for!
Tangible proof of benefits is good, but concrete description of benefits is the thing that’s got to come first. Otherwise, what’s being proven?
As far as “something to concretely try”, please note that this is basically of no value unless either (a) I can have some reasonable expectations for what sort of thing I’ll get if I try it, or (b) trying is costless or close to it. Otherwise, it’s little more than a bluff.
I could say that falling in love is worthwhile for its own sake. Of course, there isn’t any way I could convince you of that, but that’s not unusual; the same applies to the experience of eating ice cream, etc. This boils down to “try it; you’ll like it!”.
I seem to recall saying very similar things about kenshō. That there’s something of deep importance, that this “insight” amounts to acknowledging it, that this is something you’d be super grateful for if it were to happen for you, and that there’s not really much of a way for me to convince you of any of this. It’s just a “Take a look and see for yourself” kind of thing.
That doesn’t seem to have satisfied you. You still asked for “cake”.
Well, indeed. As I said, there isn’t any way I could convince you that love is worthwhile for its own sake if you didn’t already believe it. Nor should you be convinced! You would be quite right to disbelieve me! (Especially because if you didn’t believe that there’s any value to falling in love, that would be evidence that you are the the sort of person for whom there isn’t any value to falling in love.)
There’s two things to note here.
One is that you’ve certainly claimed all sorts of benefits to kenshō, so “worthwhile for its own sake” isn’t all that’s being claimed; if it were, we’d have had (and would be having) a very different conversation.
The other is that the ice cream example is illustrative. Trying ice cream is something you can do for trivial amounts of money and effort, and which has basically no downsides (assuming you’ve checked the ice cream’s ingredients for known allergens you’re sensitive to, etc.). Notice that most people (quite reasonably) still don’t try everything that they could try with comparably little effort/cost expenditure, simply because there’s so many such things! But if a thing in this category is brought to your attention, by someone whose word you have at least some minimal reason not to distrust—well, why not, right? It’s costs so little.
It hardly needs pointing out that this is absolutely not the case for falling in love… and still less so for kenshō.
falling in love is just the first part of a process which (summed across all instances over a person’s lifetime) is likely to account for a significant chunk of the happiness, life satisfaction, joy, pleasure, etc., that one experiences in one’s lifetime.
Just so! Which is why my answer was a sketch of the sorts of things I would say if I were trying to convince you of the value of “falling in love”. If I were trying to construct the finished portrait, so to speak, I’d have to go into considerably more detail, offer actual examples and specific accounts, etc., etc.
And that’s the problem with the rest of what you write here: it’s “allusions to…”, but where are the specifics?
Here’s another approach: on the old Kensho post, our discussion broke off with a couple of my comments having been left unanswered. One very relevant comment was this one, where I ask for specifics about a number of vague things you wrote in a previous comment. Perhaps you could give those specifics now?
Okay! Great, thank you.
This confirms I’m very thoroughly confused about what “cake” means to you here!
I thought you were looking for tangible proof of benefits, or something you could concretely try, or something like that. But now I know I have no idea what you’re looking for!
I’ll give examples to highlight my confusion. In your “cake” for falling in love, you say:
I seem to recall saying very similar things about kenshō. That there’s something of deep importance, that this “insight” amounts to acknowledging it, that this is something you’d be super grateful for if it were to happen for you, and that there’s not really much of a way for me to convince you of any of this. It’s just a “Take a look and see for yourself” kind of thing.
That doesn’t seem to have satisfied you. You still asked for “cake”.
In particular, what you say here sounds to me like what I’d guess “assurances of having cake” would be.
In your second paragraph of “cake” you say:
This lands for me as what I’d guess “allusions to kinds of cake” would be.
I could say something very similar about kenshō. I suspect I did in that monster thread five years ago. That if & when this flash of clarity comes online, there’ll be a sense of something like “Oh holy fuck, I’ve been just living on autopilot! I haven’t been alive here! I’ve been ignoring what actually goddamned matters just to tell myself some stories and live in fantasy! Whoa!!!” And it’s very much just a beginning.
(There’s a quote that goes something like “You have two lives. Your second life begins when you realize you have only one life.” Kenshō is about beginning your second life.)
But again, this doesn’t seem to have satisfied your need for “cake”.
Your third paragraph includes:
So, on this regarding kenshō I’ve been maybe too vague. Very attuned to the ability of folk to point at evidence of the opposite conclusion.
But if I can make a similar caveat as you’ve made here, I think I can point pretty clearly at this.
The people I know who are on the other side of this are alive. Engaged. Interesting. They’re themselves much more deeply. More interested in really playing the game of life. Less willing to tolerate bullshit, especially in their for-fun social interactions.
They also almost all have war stories involving the collapse after awakening. A lot of lies people live can’t work once they admit to themselves that they’re lies. And it’s hard not to admit stuff like that in the midst of an explosion of Light, at least in my experience. Breakups, financial collapse, and physical illness are not uncommon. It’s usually temporary and most of them say that they totally wouldn’t have it any other way — at least once they’re through the other side. Some do get stuck. And there’s a potential survivorship bias here in my account.
It’d be weird to call that a benefit. It’s more like an attribute I notice over and over again. I totally had that. Arguably I still do: it feels like a deep existential allergy to all lies and bullshit turned on deep in my core, and now I’m on a lifelong journey for total and ever-perfecting alignment with… well, truth.
But as things go in terms of “What can we see this actually doing in the world?”, here are a few attributes. The Dark Night stuff can be awful to go through, but it’s like the vomiting part of food poisoning. It’s not like the point of that is to be enjoyable, but you still want to have done it.
Now, if my saying all that still doesn’t count for you as “cake”… then I have no idea how to proceed. You’re going to have to define what you’re looking for differently if you want me to have any chance of answering you on this point.
Well, let’s recap a bit. You wrote:
This is a reasonable enough question, as I said, but it does bear noting that it’s not like I’ve actually written any posts about how great “falling in love” is and how people should try doing it, etc. (I’m not even sure I would actually advocate for falling in love, if you asked me whether I think that you should try to do it, and were skeptical about it!)
Now, you asked what I’d offer if I were trying to convey “falling in love” and were asked for “cake” (i.e., answers to “what’s it good for?”), and I answered “here’s what I’d offer”. That response wasn’t very substantive! To abuse the metaphor somewhat, if we imagine our metaphorical cake as, say, tiramisu, my response would be, perhaps, a single ladyfinger dipped in coffee liqueur, with a dollop of whipped cream on it—not really a whole cake, with all the ingredients in place, fully assembled and finished with all the details, but more like a proof-of-concept, establishing that the basic idea works and is essentially sensible. (You could also call it a sketch rather than a finished portrait, or use any number of similar metaphors.)
That having been said, let’s move to the non-metaphorical object level:
Tangible proof of benefits is good, but concrete description of benefits is the thing that’s got to come first. Otherwise, what’s being proven?
As far as “something to concretely try”, please note that this is basically of no value unless either (a) I can have some reasonable expectations for what sort of thing I’ll get if I try it, or (b) trying is costless or close to it. Otherwise, it’s little more than a bluff.
Well, indeed. As I said, there isn’t any way I could convince you that love is worthwhile for its own sake if you didn’t already believe it. Nor should you be convinced! You would be quite right to disbelieve me! (Especially because if you didn’t believe that there’s any value to falling in love, that would be evidence that you are the the sort of person for whom there isn’t any value to falling in love.)
There’s two things to note here.
One is that you’ve certainly claimed all sorts of benefits to kenshō, so “worthwhile for its own sake” isn’t all that’s being claimed; if it were, we’d have had (and would be having) a very different conversation.
The other is that the ice cream example is illustrative. Trying ice cream is something you can do for trivial amounts of money and effort, and which has basically no downsides (assuming you’ve checked the ice cream’s ingredients for known allergens you’re sensitive to, etc.). Notice that most people (quite reasonably) still don’t try everything that they could try with comparably little effort/cost expenditure, simply because there’s so many such things! But if a thing in this category is brought to your attention, by someone whose word you have at least some minimal reason not to distrust—well, why not, right? It’s costs so little.
It hardly needs pointing out that this is absolutely not the case for falling in love… and still less so for kenshō.
Just so! Which is why my answer was a sketch of the sorts of things I would say if I were trying to convince you of the value of “falling in love”. If I were trying to construct the finished portrait, so to speak, I’d have to go into considerably more detail, offer actual examples and specific accounts, etc., etc.
And that’s the problem with the rest of what you write here: it’s “allusions to…”, but where are the specifics?
Here’s another approach: on the old Kensho post, our discussion broke off with a couple of my comments having been left unanswered. One very relevant comment was this one, where I ask for specifics about a number of vague things you wrote in a previous comment. Perhaps you could give those specifics now?