mdlbear | Landmarks, Roadmaps, and Rivers

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Landmarks, Roadmaps, and Rivers

So now that (in their terminology) I've chosen not to be a Landmark user, what now?

(Just as an aside, the "perfect and absolute blank" map from The Hunting of the Snark is still particularly appropriate: it has no landmarks.)

In this post, I'm not going to discuss what was useful to me in L (I've done that, at least in a sketchy way, in this post), and I'm not going to discuss why it's neither ethical nor safe for me to continue to try and get more tools from them -- that's covered pretty well here.

I'm going to talk about where I am now, ...

Unlike some people, I don't think L gave me anything I didn't have going in except some practice using mental tools and a very intense peak experience. It clarified some things. But I'm going to make a list, even though we both know it's incomplete:

Scripts: The human mind is a computer. It runs scripts that get set up early on; as time goes on they get less and less relevant, and interfere more and more with your life. They can be debugged or uninstalled.
Narrative: What I am is a point of view. I'm the self-aware part of the computer, watching the tape go by. Scripts in the computer generate annotations and interpretations and add them to the tape, but I am just the self-awareness. Once this is clearly understood, I can start to influence the direction the narrative is taking, by making informed choices.
Meaning: Meaning is a property of symbols: it's the mapping from the symbol to something else, either another symbol or something "out there" in the universe. Symbols and meanings is what computers deal with.
Reality: The universe is what it is, and I have to accept it for what it is. It's bigger than I am, and doesn't give a damn what I think about it or want it to be. The only meaning anything in the universe has is the identity mapping: it is what it is. Any other meaning I think it has is something I... think...

Now let's get into some core values:

Clarity: I can't deal properly with either yourself or the universe if I don't see it clearly, i.e., for what it is.
Acceptance: This is related to clarity: it consists of recognizing that the universe is what it is. Right now. Maybe it will change in the future; maybe I can even help change it. Right now, what it is is what I have to work with.
Openness: I have to be open to new information, new friends, new experiences.
Presence: In dealing with anything in the universe, and especially with other people, I have to be present. I can't be distracted by other parts of the universe, or by what interpretations my scripts are putting on it. I can't be distracted by the past -- that's over. I have to be in the narrative, right now, and not just re-reading the good parts.
Caring: I have to give a damn about other people. Period.
Engagement: I can't make any changes in the universe if I don't do anything. I have to make choices and take action.
Love and Friendship: These are closely related, but I don't think they're the same. This is one of the things I'll have to explore later further upstream. Right now let's go with love being mostly acceptance and caring, and friendship being mostly openness and engagement.

Finally, let's get into states of being.

Being Unconscious: This is what I am most of the time. The scripts are running, my awareness is wandering around re-reading old parts of the tape, and I'm on full automatic. Things happen to me.
Being Conscious: This is where I was last weekend: aware of the scripts, but reading the tape while it was being written, and able to make choices. Present, open, accepting, clear, and maybe caring.
Being In Flow: This is a state the organization I spent last weekend doesn't seem to know about, but it's where I work. It's the state in which I write programs and songs. It's a state of such total presence and engagement that I'm not there. There's a task, it's getting done, choices are being made, but I don't even notice that the tape is running.

... and where I go from here.

Last week I wrote a song called "The River". It was all about love, friendship, and flow.

That is what I want to work on. It's going to be a process, a journey down that river. It's going to pull in things from the Tao Te Ching, The Art of Loving, The Art of Computer Programming, and who knows what else.

If you choose to walk with me, I'll be glad of the company. I think I can promise you some interesting discussions and perhaps some interesting scenery, if nothing else.

Thank you, friends. All of you.

(Final aside: future posts ~~on this topic~~ in this journey will not be friends-locked unless absolutely necessary; they may be cut-tagged if they get long. They will not mention L by name. You'll find them under the tag river; the next one will probably be a refined version of this one without the back-references.)

Questions? Comments?

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This sounds very interesting. I wish there was a way for me to get the tools you got without getting caught up in the whole Landmark/cult thing.

I'm especially curious about how to recognize a script that's changing my perceptions as it's running, how to recognize that it is unhelpful, and how to debug or uninstall it. That sounds very useful.

I'm also still interested in flow and how to get into it.

I wish you the best of luck on your journey and will read with interest what you choose to tell us about it.

Thanks. It's looking like a fascinating project.

One of the goals along the way is definitely to acquire some tools that we can use. I noticed, as early as Sunday evening, that many of the concepts and insights that L spends three days hammering into your head are ones that most SF fans already have. So we can get to the same place by a much more direct, and much safer, route.

"But it takes a long time, and the light bulb has to really want to change."

"Flow" is, I think, concentration on something you love. There are a number of practices which address these matters in a non-coercive way; some Buddhist groups, and various other sorts groups seem to. Generally, however, these are slow practices, often (though not always) monastic. In general, the material seems to me rather warmed-over Buddhism; you might try going to the source, though it's hard for a beginner to tell the useful from the dangerous, which is after all the problem that Mandelbear is having. R.A.MacAvoy, in her "Lens of the World" books, addresses some of it; you might take a look at those.

Zen and Quaker meditation come closest to what Landmark is getting at; it's not flow, though, it's being attentive in the present, but not active.

Flow involves getting so wrapped up in a task that you're *not* present anymore.

I'm sorry; I wasn't clear. As far as I know "flow" is distinct from any psychological practice I am aware of, though some probably facilitate it. There are multiple psychological practices with multiple purposes in Buddhism (and Zen is only one sort of Buddhism), not just stereotypical meditation.

Interesting. The scripts, narrative, meaning and reality concepts is all stuff I worked through in my magical/metaphysical journey. Different terms, but same concepts. Same with the core values and states of being.

Some schools of psychology call scripts "tapes", but the idea is the same - routines that you have developed in the past for dealing with certain classes of events that may not be applicable or useful currently. Habits are tapes. Pavlov's dog has a strong interrupt trigger on his bell->salivate tape. I like the term scripts better - it appeals to the perl hacker in me.

Narrative - syslog + top. Definitely PoV driven.

Meaning. Man is a symbol driven being. That's how our brains work. A lot of art is what I call "cascades" of complex symbols, many are subtle and not apparent to the conscious eye.

Reality. I've said for a long time that you can trust anyone completely - to do what they perceive is in their best interests. Regardless of whether it is or not. Reality is like that. Yes, you can "tweak" reality around you, with the right force applied at the right place, but that is an art. Reality is like an infinity mass in motion - it is impossible to stop it, or change its direction very much.

Power. The root of a lot of this is realizing that a) the only thing you truly have the power to change is you, and b) you actually do have the power to change yourself.

However, there is a small caveat that they leave out: the amount of effort required to change a factor about yourself is directly related to the intensity of effort and time (or genetics) that went into making it be that way in the first place. If it's wedged deep in your core self, driven there with a sledgehammer of repeated experiences and your very nature, good luck deleting or changing it. It has become a core module in your kernel. Better to repurpose a few system calls than try to eliminate it.

I could blather at length about all of this, but I shant bore you more.

Sounds like that interesting journey we all are constantly making and re-making.
I'm currently reading up on Kabbalah (the Real Thing, not the commercial thing). Being Jewish, it just rings with my roots better. It's also nice because you just go reading books that interest you. No Expensive Teachers required. Though I have gone to one workshop at the SVJCC which was cheap and informative.
And I've just done the Reiki Attunements which have taught me about the energy of the Universe and helped me to align with it. This could be expensive, but God knew, and found me a Master who would help me for free.
And there a lots more ways out there, some cheap, some free, some expensive.
Finding the path that works for you is the most important. Even if it is just posting here in LJ which has the advantage of being FREE (or relatively free since you have already paid for account).

* Scripts: The human mind is a computer. It runs scripts that get set up early on; as time goes on they get less and less relevant, and interfere more and more with your life. They can be debugged or uninstalled.
* Narrative: What I am is a point of view. I'm the self-aware part of the computer, watching the tape go by. Scripts in the computer generate annotations and interpretations and add them to the tape, but I am just the self-awareness. Once this is clearly understood, I can start to influence the direction the narrative is taking, by making informed choices.

*wryly* Of course, if they took any philosophy of mind, they'd know that not everyone would agree with this. The relation of mind to brain is a fairly hot topic. This is one approach (pretty much a functionalist approach) but not the only one.

I'd also disagree that you are the self-aware part of the computer. You're the whole damned thing. It's disingenuous to pretend that you aren't also the rest of the computer too. The parts you can't control are just as much a part of you as the parts you can. We don't necessarily like thinking about the stuff we can't control, but that doesn't make it less a part of us.

For instance, I'm not happy about living every day in pain, but I argued vociferously against a friend who explained that in heaven God would take all your pain away. Pain is part of who I am; I can't have that just taken away and remain me. I might be able to find some kind of relief and remain me, but pushing a button won't do it. I can't control it, but it's very much a part of who I am.

* Meaning: Meaning is a property of symbols: it's the mapping from the symbol to something else, either another symbol or something "out there" in the universe. Symbols and meanings is what computers deal with.

This seems obviously true, although they are hardly only things used by computers.

* Reality: The universe is what it is, and I have to accept it for what it is. It's bigger than I am, and doesn't give a damn what I think about it or want it to be. The only meaning anything in the universe has is the identity mapping: it is what it is. Any other meaning I think it has is something I... think...

I would say that this is clearly false. (Well, the first two sentences are true - I'm objecting to the latter two.) From an objective standpoint, a necklace may simply be a necklace. From my standpoint, however, a necklace may have meaning or sentimental value because my mother gave it to me. Assuming that all meanings are objective is strange.

Meaning is tied up with intentionality. The phrase "you never sing me slug songs any more" has one particular (very strange) meaning to most people. However, as a form of communication between me and my partner, it means something very different. That meaning is not false or nonexistent simply because it is restricted to our shared experiences. Not all meanings are literal.

Now, what people need to be careful about is assuming that their subjective valuation of the world and its objects are shared by all beings. Not everyone will attach the same subjective meanings to objects. But I think you're selling your consciousness short to claim that, since there's no objective meanings to things, any such thoughts of meaning are some kind of self-delusion.

This is very helpful. It's going to take a lot of work to disentangle last weekend's propaganda dump from other ways of looking at it.

Definitely a lot of cleanup needed.

I think my point under *Reality is that the meaning isn't out there in the universe, but in my head. Subjective, not objective, in other words. For anyone else, that necklace is just a necklace.

I probably phrased it carelessly, but we seem to be in violent agreement here.

That was my suspicion - I thought that you might be thinking that meanings exist subjectively. But the way you phrased it made it sound as if, hmm, you were just fooling yourself into think that it had meaning. Which I think is wrong; it does have meaning, it just doesnt' necessarily have that meaning for everyone. *grin*

Though, as Catalana pointed out above, there can be shared meanings, some which are just your own, some which you share with one or two people, some which you share with a small group (like a circle of friends who have in-jokes), some with a larger group (like phrases which are primarily used by fandom or gamers or actors or musicians), some which work for an entire language or culture (or at least the language from a certain period, if you're getting into conotations vs. denotations).

Then again, maybe I had to spend too much time discussing symbolism in Performance Theory or in Principles of Design. Or perhaps I just spent too much time back in Latin discussing why certain words are really not translatable from one language to another (or at least not easily translatable. It's not really helpful to have a single word or phrase which you translate with an entire paragraph.)

Shared meanings are what communication is all about, after all, and communication is definitely part of this picture.

The fact that meanings don't exist outside peoples' heads is what makes communication difficult.

* Narrative: I've never been a dualist, but I needed terminology to distinguish the self-awareness from the rest of the hardware and software machinery. Would "consciousness" be a better term? Or just "awareness"?

I'll echo Cat's comments and say that the premise itself sounds interesting, though I'm loath to get involved with a group that encourages such unethical recruiting.

And I'm glad you chose not to go forward. Big hugs from London.

*Hugs* In many cases, as soon as you phrase the question correctly, the answer becomes obvious. I did, with lots of help, and it did.

In reading these posts I was reminded of The Wizard of Oz and the ruby slippers, when Dorothy is told that she had the ability to go home all along. I'm glad that you have figured out these tools you already had and different ways of seeing how you can look at things but I'm glad you are not just trading in your original preconceptions for new ones belonging to this group. I think going forward on your own gives you a much larger potential of things to discover and learn about yourself, the world and your relationship to it.

Thanks. It's also a heck of a lot more fun.

A few notes:

I prefer to call the things the brain/body keeps doing over and over "habits".

In Aldous Huxley's novel, Island, I read about parrots who say "Here and now, boys!" as a reminder of the importance of presence. For years, I used the Island form of grace at meals, giving my full attention to the first bite of each sort of food in the meal. (I was delighted when L.A. fan Tony Tierny recognized what I was doing.)

I seem to have flow when doing art properly, songwriting, sometimes other things (drum circle, of course, but I've gone into flow in volleyball and canoeing, too). I've found the state on the edge of sleep very creative, but I don't know how it relates to flow.

There is a method that people keep rediscovering and re-naming, again and again and again. Most seem unaware of previous finders; and I've seen their books for many decades. I'm currently calling it intention-acceptance-providence. Theists sometimes use prayer-humility-grace, and thaumatergists will-fate-chance, and new-agers visualization-release-result. Or (being facetious here) accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and latch onto the affirmative.

Some people use an artificial dialect of English that avoids use of the verb "to be", as a reminder that no-one sees the universe clearly, or in the same way as anyone else. And that everything, every thing, continually changes, as part of the One Big Process (to name it as a thing), or "Hap" (to name it as a process).

the states of being might better be described as different points of view or states of awareness: aware of the past, aware of the present, aware of the task at hand.

Thanks for posting this. The discussion that's developed here is very interesting and, I think helpful to me.

You're welcome! Me, too.

I think you've been worked over very hard, and I'm glad to see you are bouncing back. I can't stress enough that this kind of coercive psychological environment can lead to false insights and understandings, and that it is important to examine these skeptically, after. Even if their core ideas are valid, and their teaching generally correct (which I doubt) the stress of that kind of intense presentation can lead to errors. It can also lead to people throwing the whole thing over. You might want to pursue some less coercive sort of practice if you want to learn more.

Planning to.

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Landmarks, Roadmaps, and Rivers

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You can't push the universe around, but you can dance with it.

Note to self:

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