Decoding

Suffering is thought-based, a mental activity and therefore unnecessary. I suffer because it placates my anxiety about letting go and moving on. Pain, by contrast, is not optional. The body wants my attention.

Body problems

For as long as I do not know myself, for as long as I think I’m a body, I will be fretful and problem plagued. If I know myself, I have no problems.

How to stop thinking (3)

The world is more noise-polluted than it’s ever been. Likewise, the racket in our heads. The average person thinks 60,000 thoughts per day. These thoughts are mostly negative. They are also, by one estimate, 97 percent repetitive. This is the cause of tremendous suffering; And all of it is completely unnecessary. The mind wants you to feel badly about this. Don’t. No one does this on purpose. Clarity is charity.

Reality bites

Scientists are touting the benefits of disembodiment as a way to relieve suffering. The process involves uploading a patient’s whole brain onto a computer and then running scans on it. Another colony of scientists holds the view that we are a simulation of reality, that we have no intrinsic realness. A harmonizing Elon Musk says the odds that we’re real are one in billions.

Subject/object split

Fear exists in the head as thoughts. Thoughts are projected onto individuals or groups in the way that a movie is projected onto a screen. People who are ‘different’ know how this works.