“[Intuitive self-models] 6. Awakening / Enlightenment / PNSE” by Steven Byrnes
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** 6.1 Post summary / Table of contents** This is the 6th of a series of 8 blog posts, which I’m serializing weekly. (Or email or DM me if you want to read the whole thing right now.) I do have meditation experience—in my lifetime, I have probably logged as much as several hours of total time spent meditating! And I was keeping up my meditation practice until as recently as 2007! OK fine, obviously I won’t be speaking from personal experience here. But I will offer some opinions anyway, with pretty low confidence all around. In §4.2 I talked about how hard it is to change an intuitive self-model. Well, look to the hardcore meditators if you want to find a bunch of people willing to pour thousands of hours into sculpting their intuitive self-models, like Bernini on clay. My impression is that a whole zoo of different intuitive [...]

Outline:

(00:07) 6.1 Post summary / Table of contents

(07:19) 6.2 Apology / explanation for using the term “intuitive self-model” here

(07:35) 6.2.1 “It's not ‘an intuitive model’! It's ‘seeing the true nature of things’!”

(09:19) 6.2.2 “It's not ‘an intuitive self-model’—the absence of ‘self’ is, like, one of its most salient features! It's called anattā! C’mon!”

(10:58) 6.3 PNSE discards the homunculus and its “vitalistic force” and “wanting”

(11:05) 6.3.1 Brief recap of relevant takeaways from Post 3

(14:16) 6.3.2 Back to PNSE

(15:48) 6.3.3 Some first-person descriptions along with my commentary

(15:55) 6.3.3.1 A discussion of insight meditation

(17:23) 6.3.3.2 “Trying” to get into PNSE can be counterproductive (in the moment)

(18:21) 6.3.4 Removing the “vitalistic force” intuition doesn’t imply what it might seem to imply

(19:32) 6.3.4.1 The Parable of Caesar and Lightning

(21:20) 6.4 PNSE breaks the association between “awareness” and other self-reflective concepts

(21:28) 6.4.1 Basic explanation

(23:12) 6.4.2 Some first-person descriptions along with my commentary

(23:19) 6.4.2.1 Relation to one's body

(25:03) 6.4.2.2 The location of “awareness”

(27:24) 6.4.3 A deeper explanation: the intrinsically-attention-grabbing nature of the homunculus

(29:29) 6.5 Why do pain, anxiety, etc., seem less aversive in PNSE than in the Conventional Intuitive Self-Model?

(29:54) 6.5.1 PNSE makes S(anxious feeling) undermine, rather than reinforce and stabilize, the anxious feeling itself

(34:07) 6.5.2 Is this a good or a bad thing?

(34:13) 6.5.2.1 What is aversiveness good for anyway?

(37:58) 6.5.2.2 Back to PNSE

(38:52) 6.6 Explaining other practical impacts of PNSE

(38:58) 6.6.1 Quieting of self-reflective (i.e. S(⋯)) thoughts

(39:42) 6.6.2 Memory issues

(41:57) 6.6.3 Other things

(42:45) 6.7 Conclusion

The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

First published: October 22nd, 2024

Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GvJe6WQ3jbynyhjxm/intuitive-self-models-6-awakening-enlightenment-pnse)

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