Thought Droplets

 Conversation with Copilot from Microsoft [Me]: summarize the real life political context in which Rurouni Kenshin takes place in [Copilot]: Rurouni Kenshin is set during the Bakumatsu and Meiji eras of Japan, a time of significant political and social upheaval. The Bakumatsu period (1853–1867) marked the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a feudal military government that had ruled Japan for over two centuries. This era saw intense conflict between factions supporting the shogunate and those advocating for the restoration of imperial rule under the emperor2. The Meiji Restoration (1868) followed, ushering in a new era of modernization and Westernization. The samurai class, which had been central to Japanese society, faced decline as the country transitioned to a more centralized government and embraced industrialization2. These changes created tensions between traditionalists and reformists, a theme explored in the series through its characters and their struggles. The protagonist, Hi...

Challenge: situations where a satisfactory solution has not been achieved bullying boredom lack of focus lack of motivation loneliness worry substance abuse Solution: A DSS (Dynamic Situation Strategist) What does it do? Takes a situation and defines goals to improve it changes rules to achieve the goals evaluates the situation under the new rules If the goal was not met, creates different rules and reevaluates If the goal was met, defines new goals to be mastered while keeping the previously obtained mastery, and reevaluates What other ways of solving the challenging situations are used when a DSS is not around? No change Psychologist Mindfulness, acceptance Unstructured socialization What makes a DSS different from other ways of solving challenging situations? I nternally They have too ls for quickly assessing the situation finding goals to consider selecting valuable goals finding rules to consider selecting valuable rules assessing if the situation has improved They have a personal...

We are thinking that by debating a topic we can find a better solution. That if we talk with someone with an opposing view than ours, they will remind us of variables we weren't considering before, which we need to in order to determine the best path forward. But what very frequently happens is that people get nervous and can't think as logically as they intended to. - Maybe they don't accept that the other person is against them, which keeps them stuck, repeatedly thinking about that situation, - or they start imagining the future and getting worried about their imagination They end up creating an infinite number of ways to connect where they are right now to the only solution they are able to think about at that time. For example, the current list of logical fallacies in Wikipedia is substantial and seems to have the tendency to keep growing as intellect grows. This process ignores the fact that one is feeling unpleasant and wants to stop feeling so. We can do better. Whe...

The document where I explain this can be found here: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AjCyLREhVUTLgYMn0kgnp2kTds12fw?e=Bfeba6 A snapshot of the same information will be placed below here, later.

My desire to share what is in me has burst open for a while now. I’ll somehow verbalize it. Some of the lessons that I apply most frequently or the experiences that opened me up the most are: 1) Whatever situation I may face, it can feel as normal, expected or unavoidable that I react in a certain manner to it (sadness, anger, fear, guilt, lust, envy, shame, superiority). Or I may not even be aware a different response is possible. What helps is to, without any expectation, start opening myself to ways of being that defy what my limited logic can grasp. Or to start noticing that thinking might be interesting and engaging, but it can get tiring to use it to determine something complex or it may even mislead me. When I react a certain way it’s as if I am telling the world I'm certain that I’ve analyzed the situation and that’s the proper response. But I notice more and more than my capacities (to, for example, analyze how to react) are extremely limited. 2) Living each moment as if i...

By being open-ended in what my morning practice's quiet time focuses on, like relaxing,  feeling pleasantness,  body scanning,  visualizations,  breathing exercises,  and processing thoughts my morning practice can easily take well over an hour. I should probably eventually have more structure, suggested from good sources.

The following document tries to help answer the questions: in which dimensions can activities be considered in? And, how does X activity (existing or being planned) fall in all possible dimensions that it could be considered in?  An activity can be anything a being does. It can be eating, watching something, playing a game, interacting with something. Dimension is a qualitative measure of how well an activity fits a certain classification. There's not an objective values for each. No direction/polarity in these dimensions is inherently better than another (e.g. one shouldn't necessarily think that one should always provide as much feedback as possible, as opposed to not providing much feedback) but each direction is better suited for certain objectives, so it could be useful to consider many directions. The benefits of considering these are that a person can more easily consider the benefits of improving a certain activity on certain dimensions (or make it supply a different ne...

Breathing is almost ideal. Still waking up tired and needing sleep in the mornings. Only changes I can think of to make are to return to eating chicken since I haven’t eaten it in more than 2 weeks and to fix my eating times since it is really bad. Morning  Sadhana going well. In this morning’s meditation I was distracted about the thought of what should be the objective of my morning meditation, since I don’t really have one. I concluded that, at least for the moment, it should be to just relax and have no purpose. To just be. 

In keeping with the idea of coming to meditation with an "I do nothing, I want nothing, and I am nothing" intention (as I saw in a short video), I've concluded that I should probably do a relaxation meditation in which I don't try to control the pace or depth of my breath, but rather just observe it, naturally letting my body tell me what is a more natural calmness for meditation, and, by extension, for life. When I do it I notice I start feeling heavier and more grounded more promptly. I've been getting a little bit more energy. Guess I just needed to exercise more. Breathing is getting better, as usual. I actually felt the simple sun salutation that was recommended to me by some Ayurveda doctors to open my chest and produce breathing that flowed more easily, whose sound came from deeper and had a little bit more energy.

I was invited to a 21-day exercise to bring abundance to life. I noticed I was ashamed of some of the terminology so I just decided to let go and accept whatever was suggested. I was challenged to notice abundance near me, and as a retort, I thought about how abundance might depend on my actions, but then I remember that is true but more deeply it is the nature of reality to create abundance so even if I forego abundance and suffer for it, it will come back in nature. I learned that it is not that miracles don't exist but that the classical miracles have little to no consequence in the world, and might be done just for show. Miracles like not being angry and letting go of all attachments are more needed right now. As usual, I keep wondering how to guide myself. I'm not even sure what I want to guide myself to. When asked about how to pray (considering there are some things that maybe one shouldn't pray for) my mother told me that while there might be stricter forms to appro...