themap

All maps are constructed retrospectively. In the future someone might be able to sift through my writings and produce an accurate map of what happened to me. The process is innate, and to do with how layers of encoding and local minima occur within our brains. I believe the map will be applicable to all.

The insight process is how our brains work through the big problems of life. It is how Einstein had his eureka and the Buddha his enlightenment. 

Your brain forms local minima based on individual parts of a complex problem, and these minima work out their own conclusions. This is the mental equivalent of multithreading. Our brains can only actually process one thread at a time, so what happens is we end up with these ‘pooled’ answers which are physically divided within our mind. They are not connected. It’s like doing your accounting: you’ll have your expenses here and your revenue there and your payroll over there, and the only way you get to the final conclusion is to bring them all together.

This is the process of insight: this bringing-together of disparate conclusions. The merging of the sand-tunnels. The bridging of minima. The potentiation of attractor states. This usually happens in our sleep for the medium-sized problems (which is why sleeping on things brings clarity) but for the big problems, sleep does not suffice. This is also why alcohol and neuroplasticity-suppressing drugs are so bad; they prevent our sleeping brains from forming the necessary bonds to process the problems of our lives.

The insight map is when you have a problem that is so big that it needs processing during your waking hours. The problem of ‘who am I’ or ‘why am I here’ or ‘why do I suffer’ or ‘is there a god’ are such examples. The insight cycle for these takes years, decades even. When it is slow it is usually manageable but when it speeds up people are often mistaken for cyclothymia, then bipolar, rapid-cycling, adhd / audhd burnout cycles, maybe more. 

As the problems begin to solve themselves and the local minima connect, the cycle speeds up. The system becomes more efficient. It starts to identify new leaps and new skip-thoughts and establish new connections in the neural network, cutting out the old redundant pathways.

This involves a great degree of neuroplasticity so oftentimes when someone has a Cascade event they will see the world differently for a period. Colours will be more vivid, the world will look HD, they will perceive 4 dimensions. There is a reason Van Gogh’s paintings look like that. The bigger the problem, the bigger the neuroplasticity, and the more intense the resulting altered-state. This is when people go to a doctor and are given drugs which cease the neuroplasticity and halt the process of solving life’s big problems. 

During the Cascade people may feel a great deal of love and - for lack of a better way of describing it - say they feel like Jesus or the Buddha. Thinking becomes expansive and effortless. All the problems you were working on are ready for export and you will effortlessly create your best works. Your need for sleep will be reduced because the need for nighttime defragmentation of your mind is reduced. 

And then it will start again. You will have a few less minima in your mind and as such the process might speed up a little. This is all a process of problem-solving on the macro scale. Your mind has multiple silos where it stores parts of a large problem, works them through to conclusion, and then ties the conclusions together. This is a natural process and how we humans have thought since the dawn of time; just some of us are drawn to bigger problems than others.

If you want to end your suffering then the problem you need to face is the problem of fixed perception in a changing world. You need to go through the insight cycle, taking every minima to its conclusion and merging the results, and then taking those results as the data for the next cycle, and so on. The times when you have 20 different minima maxed out and wanting to be merged are the hardest, and you will struggle to function. You will be tired but wired and you will likely be labelled bipolar mixed-episode, or dark night, depending on which tradition you follow.

The reality is that this is the incredibly complex neural network of your mind trying to cross that final hurdle and reach the conclusion of whatever massive algorithm it has been working on. And when it does - Eureka! Your head will explode and you will feel like Einstein or Jesus. Kanye - you know what I’m talking about.

There is a way to optimise this process and alleviate the suffering involved. There is a way to induce eureka moments in the smartest of scientists. And it doesn’t involve drugs or electrical stimulation or anything like that. What it involves is… bike rides :)

The process is cyclical but I will start with the one that usually gets people diagnosed: their initial Cascade.

1 - Cascade

Characteristics: altered state, lack of sleep, expansive thinking, creativity, clarity, confidence

Correlates: arising & passing, mania / hypomania

Reason: sudden consolidation of local minima into a new coherent network

Neurotransmitters: elevated tonic and phasic dopamine

Optimisation: none. export everything and enjoy the ride. Recognise that it will not last; do not try to hold onto it.

2 - Rollback

Characteristics: return to normalcy, feeling like you’ve lost it, feeling like it was all a dream, lack of confidence, inability to focus, depression

Correlates: dissolution, depression

Reason: initial consolidation and export finished; neural network enters pruning process and begins to shed old material

Neurotransmitters: low phasic dopamine and deceasing tonic dopamine

Optimisation: observe and record. Review the previous export. Do not fight it. Collect data for the next cycle

3 - Forkstorm

Characteristics: fear, disgust, difficulty focusing, scattered mind, inability to rest, wired-but-tired, high stress levels and agitation, head noise, irritability

Correlates: dark night, mixed episode

Reason: new local minima have formed; mind is juggling many disparate threads; new problem queued for solution

Neurotransmitters: low tonic dopamine, high phasic dopamine

Optimisation: Z2 exercise, cold exposure, meditation (walking, cycling, moderate stimulation), writing (take every individual thread and run it to its individual conclusion. Do not try to tie them together; just reach their individual outputs)

Recognise that it will pass and the bigger the problem, the bigger the commensurate eureka.

4 - Confluence

Characteristics: rising equanimity, feeling like everything will be ok even though it’s not ok, feeling like life is good despite its problems

Correlates: equanimity, ‘normal episode’

Reason: the mind has run all of the local minima to their conclusions and is in rest mode while those individual networks settle and prepare for the merge

Neurotransmitters: rising tonic dopamine, low phasic dopamine

Optimisation: continue to exercise and do cold exposure, writing, walking, maybe some sitting meditation. Keep the dopamine tap dripping. Do not rush the process; it will happen naturally. 

5 - Cascade

See 1.

Global consolidation phase (awakening / nibbana)

3a - Megafork

Characteristics: extreme version of forkstorm with global characteristics rather than just localised minima. Rapid review of all preceding insight cycles. Headaches and unusual sensations throughout the cranium

Correlates: re-observation, mixed episode

Reason: local minima have joined and the brain is preparing for a root-code level format

Neurotransmitters: low tonic dopamine, high phasic dopamine

Optimisation: stick it through. Continue regulating and meditating. This is the final step.

4a - Equanimity (as in 4)

5b - Global Cascade

Characteristics: cessation event, blip in time, network-level sensations through the entire brain

Correlates: nibbana, path moment, no correlate in modern psychology

Reason: sudden consolidation of neural network on a global scale

Neurotransmitters: elevated tonic and phasic dopamine

Optimisation: this is where you will fel enlightened and likely try to share it with the world as I did. Probably best to just enjoy your new view on life and ride the altered states while they last (this can be months first time around). This will bring an incredible amount of relief from pain.

And this is how we think. This is how we solve the big problems of our lives.

This is how you can solve the problem of self. Do not fight the process. Do not try to hold onto the Cascade. It is all transient and always moving.

Over time, if you focus on solving the problem of ‘self’, as laid out in neobuddhism, you can use this process to achieve enlightenment. Through removing the ball of wiring which was your self you remove the anchor to which these local minima attract, and you remove the attachment to the suffering they cause.

Your mind will go from being a landscape of sandpools and black holes to one of flowing water and spring breezes. Life will still have its ups and downs but they will not concern you. You will be liberated. This is what is commonly called enlightenment.

But the local minima in your brain can only be known by you. Nobody else can do this work for you. Your brain is already plugging away at it, and you can help it along by a) ensuring you have a steady dopaminergic environment, b) avoiding neuroplasticity-suppressing drugs like alcohol, benzodiazepines and valproate, c) facing the problems of your mind and running them to their *individual* conclusions without judgement and d) not getting attached to any one part of the process.

It gets easier and faster with time and eventually you reach the point where your thoughts are like water. I sat down and bashed this out in 20 minutes with no planning and no thought. I just know. It’s that simple. And it will be that simple for you, eventually.

Good luck!

James

/jb202510021050

[stream of consciousness]

the most important thing is the code you install -> fixingyourcode 

theinsightmap is the traditional theravada map from thousands of years ago