Glossary
Anesthetization: An attempt to stop feeling emotions believed to be “bad” or contrary to “spiritual progress”; an effort to suppress emotions like anger or envy.
Authenticity: The practice of not lying to oneself; a prerequisite for introspection and dismantling stories.
Benevolence: Wishing and acting for the “good” of another sentient being; synonymous with authentic love.
Conditioning: A direct, reactive, and immediate reference to a single past moment that dictates a present response, similar to a reflex.
Conscious: Being aware of the consequences of one’s actions on oneself and others.
Curiosity: The primary, neutral motivational force that remains after stories are dismantled; the drive to explore without being attached to a specific goal.
Desire: An impulse that is inherited and not deliberately chosen, in direct contrast to the intentional and deliberate nature of want/will. It acts as a distraction/obstacle towards your deliberate intentions.
Doing the Right Thing: A subjective, internal sense that guides an individual’s action in the immediacy of the present, independent of external moral codes or social norms.
Effort
Related to introspection:
“Good” effort is the deliberate focus to observe our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions, and also refraining from certain desires in order to achieve our actual want/will.
“Bad” effort is forcing ourselves to do something for the “wrong” reasons; usually “stories” or ego. This is done through pretending.
In the context of sacrifice: Something that is costly in terms of, for instance, energy and/or money, but that you still want to do because of some “higher” want.
Ego: The collection of “identity” stories an individual believes themselves to be – and that makes them feel “special.”
Emulation: Imitating the external actions or behaviors of another (e.g., an “enlightened” person) without having had the underlying realization; a form of “pretending.”
Enlightenment: The process of removing/dismantling unfounded stories and beliefs in order to see reality with less distortion; it is a process of realization and removal, not of “transformation” or addition.
Expanded Causality: The superstitious belief that more things influence reality than actually do (e.g., believing a statue prevents car accidents).
Healthy Faith: An “educated guess” about what is currently unknown or unknowable, which must remain open to reevaluation as reason and information expand.
Illusion: The belief that there is something we perceive which does not actually exist. However, illusion is also part of reality because, by definition, reality is everything that exists, excluding only what does not exist. And since we can perceive “illusion” to some extent, “illusion” must be part of reality.
Individuality/Individual: A sentient being recognized for their own unique subjective feelings and agency, as opposed to an “object”.
Introspection: The process of observing one’s own thoughts and feelings without judgment in order to uncover possible contradictions in the stories we tell ourselves, and then to dismantle unfounded stories; also, uncovering one’s own intentions and motivations.
Kernel: The ultimate essence of a sentient being; the “thing” that ultimately feels and has no specific qualities.
Mental Maps: Personalized, simplified representations of Reality that individuals use to navigate life, encoded with stories.
Moral Compensation: The “selfish” accounting practice of using past “good” deeds as credit to justify current “bad” or harmful actions.
Non-attachment:
Healthy: Not being attached to “should” stories or identity stories, including the story of being non-attached.
Unhealthy: Being attached to the story of being non-attached (inflating the ego) or “pretending” to be non-attached through forced effort.
Object-tool: A way of perceiving others solely for their usefulness or as interchangeable units, ignoring their subjectivity and feelings.
Pain and suffering:
Pain (“first dart”) is what we feel when what happens in life goes against our preferences. It is often the result of poor decisions that themselves result from reduced discernment, which is caused by distorted mental maps.
Suffering (“second dart”) is a form of mental stress that comes from believing that there is something wrong with what has happened. Suffering is mostly caused by “should stories” and “ego stories.”
Popping: The origin-cause of a thought or decision; the process where an idea suddenly appears in the mind without an apparent prior cause.
Pretending: Action without understanding.
Reality (Capital R): Reality is everything that exists excluding only what does not exist.
Realization: The internal “transformation” that occurs when one realizes a previously held belief was unfounded or understands a new logical truth; it is the only driver of permanent “change.”
Reification: The mistake of treating an abstract concept or mental construct (e.g., story or belief) as if it were a tangible element of Reality.
Respect: Seeing every individual as “another you” and as a subject-agent, resulting in non-exploitation.
Reward-stories: The “indirect” and speculative belief that “good” actions will result in personal payoffs from the universe, such as “karma” (during and after this life) or a place in “heaven” (after life).
Sentience (Consciousness): The subjective feeling of perceiving something such as thoughts, feelings, or anything else; a pre-existing property of ultimate Reality.
Shell: All the qualities and characteristics of a person (personality, intelligence, wealth, appearance) as opposed to the “kernel,” which is the “thing” that ultimately feels.
Spiritual: The belief that there are multiple, separate realities, one being material and one being spiritual, instead of a single reality.
Stories: Abstract mental constructs used to encode mental maps, which are then used to interpret reality; they are “unfounded” when they do not correspond to Reality; internal contradictions are symptoms of “unfounded” stories.
Emergence:
Strong emergence is the appearance of a completely new property that is not pre-existing in the underlying elements; for example, water emerging from metal gears.
Weak emergence is the appearance of a behavior from the combination of the underlying elements, such as Lego bricks being assembled into a boat with the emergent behavior of floating in water.
Transformation: Related to “ego trap,” where an individual believes they are “evolving” or “improving,” which usually only results in just inflating or renaming the ego.
Truth (Capital T): The total, precise representation of Reality in its entirety, which can be known only in theory – and thus requires the creation of mental maps to simplify it.
Want/will: Your primary intention. It is what you ultimately want and have chosen deliberately.