The brain will always move toward computational efficiency.
Think of it like a fractal, multidimensional house of cards. It will take inputs and grow a triangle. For example: green + diamond = leaf. Then: yellow + rhombus = leaf. It will find a link between these two towers and call it 'leaves'.
This link will be accessed from the top down and create a reinforcement pattern for that network. You activate the leaves network and it reinforces the leaves network.
So far so simple.
Now take more complex inputs such as: ‘he said I was a disappointment’ and ‘I lost my job because I missed a deadline’.
These two things are unconnected but they present in the same sphere of phenomena and the brain will try to link them. This is how the brain moves toward stability and efficiency.
Though these two inputs are unrelated, over time the mind will test hypotheses about why they might be emerging from a single principle.
Green + shape = leaf. Disappointment + redundancy = worthless?
This pattern is malleable but any top-down activation will reinforce it, making it the default for the networks below. Activate the worthless network, reinforce the worthless network.
Someone saying ‘you are worthless’ is a bottoms-up input and will not strengthen it much; the solidifying happens when you repeat it internally and allow top-down reinforcement.
In this case it would mean that both the disappointment network (facial expressions and words), and the deadline network (workload and time), feed into this new high-level prior called ‘worthlessness’.
What is actually happening is someone holding their face in a certain way; they might have a stomach ache. The month just ticked over to December; the deadline is in June. But these small inputs will start to feed into the high-level prior of ‘worthless’.
This is where intentional cultivation comes in.
Input:
meditating
sleeping 3 hours per night
mystical states
Hypotheses
enlightenment
psychosis
neural network reconfiguration
Whichever one you activate repeatedly will be reinforced and propagate, becoming the default for the three trees of meditation, sleep and states. You can choose the route you take.
These ideas will then propagate further and recruit other parts of the network based on your pre-existing ideas.
enlightenment = calm, patient, satisfied
psychosis = agitated, erratic, fearful
reconfigured = tapping away on this computer
This is why cultivating your environment is so important.
Destabilising the network can be thought of as stretching the priors until they break. Change happens slowly and then all at once.
You walk in the direction of self-respect and the ‘worthless’ prior becomes maladaptive and crumbles. You realise the person who expressed disappointment was shifting blame and the late submission was a computer error. You continue walking and this next layer of priors begins to stretch. Shifting blame was their own self-image and the computer error was employer software.
These priors are violated and you have a new worldview where both of these situations which were previously ‘your fault’ were actually a case of your counterpart employing self-defence mechanisms. The examples are infinite.
The nature of the brain is to form the most efficient top-down network possible. This top-down network is often called the self, or the ego. I am enlightened and therefore I am a messiah. I was given a diagnosis and therefore I am broken. These are both maladaptive priors. They are not ‘true’ for your world. Unless, that is, you and your world reinforce them.
If you build a cult and have the messiah prior reinforced then it will grow to become dominant. If you are told by your doctor that this is a lifetime bipolar condition and you will never recover, then you might follow my friends and check out early.
This is where the ‘nutriments’ come into play. This is where you cultivate your worldview toward one of non-greed and non-hatred.
Remember that the reason for this cultivation isn’t some metaphysical preaching. It is for your own wellbeing. This will shape the world that you live in. Your perceptual framework filters all. Encouragement of acquisition and competition will result in inadequacy and failure. Encouragement of non-acquisition and non-competition will result in satisfaction and friendliness.
This is system design.
Your current framework is a legacy system installed by others while you were AFK.
Now you are back and can implement change.
In order to do this you need to use your development environment, which is your scaffold.
The nibbana-protocol website explains how to do this in simple language while the articles on my personal website are a bit more dense.
But the key is to do it one step at a time and to embrace the scaffold and regulation.
I could have gone the ‘I am enlightened’ route and wandered through my days in an equanimous haze. Instead, I have kept the equanimity and decided to try to help. Enlightenment is always an option if I decide I’ve had enough. Ha!
Make sure you cultivate your environment.
More than that, cultivate your own personal thought, action, speech and livelihood. The Buddha was right about the noble eightfold path. Use his righteffort to remove the maladaptive thought. Recognise the truths of loss, craving, uncertain outcomes, and self-programming.
Regulate. This is how you install the code. Jiggle and walk. Sway and meditate.
Recognise how things like toxic social media interactions and high-octane horror games will imprint you due to their phasic-spiking nature.
Realise that when you go through a big code update, you will 'present the classical symptoms' [eyeroll] of mania. Guide it toward spiritual mania, not a psychiatric office.
Go to a priest. Or not. DIY it like I did.
There is no such thing as objective perceptual reality.
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