Awake: Chapter 10 Notes

let’s just say I don’t recommend doing that

BS alert.

To be unaware of our own suffering and the suffering of others around us is true unconsciousness

Highlighted without note. Truth.

Our ability to run off into thoughts and stories that used to offer us false comfort in the form of distraction is now waning.

Highlighted without note.

I've found this true, but also there seems to be less need to distract myself. , maybe not, I think just distract myself differently than I used to.

In realization this

START_HERE I flagged multiple pages as there was an entire section that seemed really useful.

There is no way that things actually are.

I disagree, but only sort of.

There is a way that things actually are, but we can never know what it is because knowing it would mean knowing the entire universe and we're stuck on our little rock without access to most of it. Plus our sensory apparatus doesn't let us experience things except in limited ways. And, the way things actually are is in constant motion, it's not static, so even if our little monkey brains could get it, it would immediately change.

So the statement is more accurate if you say “Effectively, there is no way that things actually are, because it's vast and ineffable and also a moving target.”

An analogy I sometimes use is this.

Highlighted without note. It's a pretty good analogy, as is the one from LessWrong about the guy who thinks his phone is the whole world and you're telling him to look up but he won't go beyond the boundaries of the phone.

Here and gone, here and gone

FINISH_HERE This is the last of the pages I flagged.