active draft. a technical sketch. general, before special —alignment, before distraction

 

introduction

The project began simply enough – with an attempt to find a better way to describe the unusual phenomenological experiences of meditation practice ^[ For more on meditation practice, see: the exercise, foundations ] ^[ Meditation practice will initially refer to an idealised representation of meditation practice, specifically vipassana meditation practice ] ^[ Waking Up with Sam Harris will be used as a publicly-available reference implementation ].

meditation practice will initially refer to an idealised representation of meditation practice, specifically vipassana meditation practice

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Behind the intention to better describe meditation practice, were intuitions:

  1. However unusual, the experiences of meditation practice are probably all fundamentally normal; just differently presented, somehow
  2. The simplest explanation for meditation practice, might be framed by biological sensory function, and the circumstances in which those functions evolved, or now apply
  3. The simplest description, ought not require vague, esoteric, mysterious, mystic, and ambiguous notions ^[ For any two ideas, prefer that which is closer to a common, non-exotic understanding of our universe ] $$\ldots$$

so what’s the problem with the traditional descriptions of meditation practice, anyway?

—initial intuition, was that historical presentation and framing of meditation practice was an unnecessary obstacle, to objective scientific analysis, reasoned improvement, and broader adoption ^[ for a detailed discussion, see: the exercise, foundations ]

 

making better sense

making better sense by causal, contextual reconciliation

To make better sense of meditation practice, it was first necessary to make better sense of many other unusual universal phenomena.

an intuition, was that all phenomena participate causally in circumstances, such that unknown phenomena might be implicated by causal priors, or interrogated and revealed by the impact of unreconciled causal participation

The initial approach was to consider meditation practice contextually, by phenomenal priors and peers.

Unfortunately for meditation practice, both the material prior, and primary phenomenal peer, implicated the phenomena of consciousness –which is also an anomaly. So the context for reconciliation grew, to include more phenomena, as necessary, to establish sufficient insight.

The method did proved useful: one phenomena lead to another, and another. Until, to get enough insight to make better sense of meditation practice, the scope of the project grown to include nearly everything in the universe:

—phenomena can be explained by the circumstances in which they arise, and understood by the circumstances in which they participate

Meditation practice, as we recognise it, only exists because consciousness evolved in a particular way, which only exists because biology evolved the way it did, and back through matter and energy, each step forward one of a finite space of possible, generally, and specifically, shaped by immediate local circumstances.

“if you wish to make meditation practice from scratch, you must first invent the universe” - Carl Sagan’t

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A rough sketch:

  1. Meditation practice
  2. Metacognition
  3. Consciousness
  4. Maps of territory
  5. Philosophical understandings of mind
  6. Understand, principles for reasoning
  7. Evolution
  8. Biology
  9. Chemistry
  10. Physics
  11. The universe
  12. All universal phenomena
  13. Common things
  14. The nature of consilience
  15. Spaces, planes, graphs, geometries, tiles
  16. The scientific endeavour, paradigm, anomaly
  17. Principles of truth
  18. Compositional mechanics all the things
  19. Map of maps, of territory

see: the exercise

 

 

tbc

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