Well, to start with, the question of whether “falling in love” exists and whether it’s got any value are very different questions.
If you were unconvinced about there being any such thing as “falling in love” (having, let us suppose, never experienced it yourself, and perhaps even being aromantic), I would start by pointing you to various descriptions of the experience, from a wide variety of different cultures, eras, etc. I would then point out that these descriptions come in two types: first, phenomenal accounts, “from the inside”, of what it feels like to fall in love; and second, observational accounts, of what behavioral changes may be observed in people who have supposedly fallen in love. I would point to the great consistency of the former sort of account amongst various instances thereof, likewise the latter, and finally to the clear correspondences and links between the two types of account.
Clearly—I would point out—there is something that sometimes happens to humans, in a certain class of situations, which alters their behavior in certain remarkably consistent ways, and the experience of which they report on (both at the time and after the fact) in remarkably consistent ways. That there is something there, is not disputable.
(This would suffice to establish the reality of the phenomenon, of course. However, I could also add some considerations from evolutionary psychology, pointing to reasons why “falling in love” should exist; and, likewise, findings from biology, neurology, etc., pointing to physiological underpinnings and manifestations of “falling in love”.)
To establish the value of falling in love would be another matter entirely.
My first observation would be to note that the point may well be moot. “If someday you fall in love,” I might say, “you won’t have any choice in the matter—it’ll simply happen to you, whether you think it’s got any value or not. Indeed, you may even find the experience unpleasant (although that is not the way I’d bet, given the experiences of most of humanity before you). But either way, your brain won’t ask for your opinion or permission—you’ll just be in love, and that’ll be that.”
You might ask, however, whether you ought to seek out situations which increase the likelihood that “falling in love” will happen to you. (After all, being in terror of your life is also an involuntary response, yet it makes sense to ask after its value, the better to decide whether or not to seek out tiger pits to climb into.)
Substantive answers to the question are likely to take two sorts of forms.
First, I could say that the experience of falling into (and being in) love is, itself, joyful, exciting, etc., in ways distinct from, and to a degree unmatched by, other human experiences. In other words, I could say that falling in love is worthwhile for its own sake. Of course, there isn’t any way I could convince you of that, but that’s not unusual; the same applies to the experience of eating ice cream, etc. This boils down to “try it; you’ll like it!”.
Second, I could say that falling in love is a necessary and inextricable part of being in love, which itself is intimately connected to having a deep and rewarding romantic/intimate relationship with another human being—in other words, that falling in love is just the first part of a process which (summed across all instances over a person’s lifetime) is likely to account for a significant chunk of the happiness, life satisfaction, joy, pleasure, etc., that one experiences in one’s lifetime.
The evidence for this, of course, is the experiences of other people. Much has been written on this, and I don’t know that I can add anything that isn’t trite… one thing I might say is that of those of my friends who’ve fallen in love, and entered into (and stayed in) long-term term relationships on the basis of that love, seem to be much happier than they were previously, and in particular, seem to make one another happy, in ways observable in ordinary, everyday interactions. (Of course one can have experiences and observe things that point to the opposite conclusion—but, again, this is too well-trod a topic to productively re-tread here.)
Now, all of that having been said, here’s a counter-question, before we get to kenshō: can you provide an analogous sort of answer, for “having a paranoid delusion” in place of “falling in love”? Does it exist? Does it have any value?
Now, all of that having been said, here’s a counter-question, before we get to kenshō: can you provide an analogous sort of answer, for “having a paranoid delusion” in place of “falling in love”? Does it exist? Does it have any value?
How on Earth is this relevant? I’m really not following you here. What do you hope to gain by having me try to grapple with this weird thing?
Maybe you’re trying to… I don’t know, get even with me for asking something you find absurd? Trying to defeat me in some kind of dual where you think I issued the first challenge? I really don’t know.
In case it’s not clear, the reason I asked you about the “falling in love” thing was to better understand what kind of thing “cake” as you mean it might even look like. It really does land as a type error to me. But if you could say “Oh, for falling in love, thus-and-such would be ‘cake’”, then I could go “Oh! Okay. Cool! So I think the analogy for kenshō might be XYZ. Does that work for you?” Then we could communicate.
The feel — and I could easily be misreading you here — but the feel I get from you here is like intellectual one-upmanship. Mental fencing.
If that’s the case, please understand that I’m just not available for that. I will not engage with you at that level anymore.
If I’ve misread you, then please clarify what you’re doing. I don’t know how to orient to your tone here. If you meant it collaboratively, then please help me see how. I’d very much like to.
How on Earth is this relevant? I’m really not following you here. What do you hope to gain by having me try to grapple with this weird thing?
Well, if the relevance isn’t obvious, I think it will likely become obvious in the process of answering it. But, if not, I will certainly explain (what I see as) the relevance afterwards, in response to your answer.
In case it’s not clear, the reason I asked you about the “falling in love” thing was to better understand what kind of thing “cake” as you mean it might even look like.
Indeed, that is also why I asked my counter-question; both to explain, and to understand.
Maybe you’re trying to… I don’t know, get even with me for asking something you find absurd? Trying to defeat me in some kind of dual where you think I issued the first challenge? I really don’t know.
(ETA: I certainly don’t think that your question was absurd. If I did, I’d’ve said so, and not spent effort answering it!)
The feel — and I could easily be misreading you here — but the feel I get from you here is like intellectual one-upmanship. Mental fencing.
If that’s the case, please understand that I’m just not available for that. I will not engage with you at that level anymore.
I really don’t know what you mean by any of this (especially the “anymore” part, but really all of it).
If I’ve misread you, then please clarify what you’re doing. I don’t know how to orient to your tone here.
As I said—the point is to make clear what we’re talking about.
(I don’t think that it’s necessary to “orient to my tone”? In any case, generally speaking, if you assume that I mean just what I say, you won’t go far wrong.)
I really don’t know what you mean by any of this (especially the “anymore” part, but really all of it).
…
(I don’t think that it’s necessary to “orient to my tone”? In any case, generally speaking, if you assume that I mean just what I say, you won’t go far wrong.)
This is actually really clarifying. Thank you.
I now suspect there’s a dimension of communication that’s hyper-salient for me but invisible to you.
I won’t try to convey that maybe invisible-to-you dimension here. I don’t think that’d be helpful.
Instead I’ll try to assume you have no idea what you’re “saying” on that frequency. Basically that you probably don’t mean things they way they implicitly land for me, and that you almost certainly don’t consciously hold the tone I read in what you’re saying.
That’s as close as I can get to assuming that you “mean just what [you] say”. Hopefully that’ll smooth things out between us!
(ETA: I certainly don’t think that your question was absurd. If I did, I’d’ve said so, and not spent effort answering it!)
Okay, cool. Thanks for saying this!
> In case it’s not clear, the reason I asked you about the “falling in love” thing was to better understand what kind of thing “cake” as you mean it might even look like.
Indeed, that is also why I asked my counter-question; both to explain, and to understand.
I have to admit, I find this very confusing. I’m trying to understand what you mean by “cake”. Maybe you were hoping to go “Here’s ‘cake’ for falling in love. Now you try on this other topic, so I can thumbs-up or thumbs-down that you’ve understood what I mean by ‘cake’.” Is that it?
The thing is, I think I could provide a similar analysis, but I don’t think it’d help me understand at all what you mean by “cake”. That makes me pretty hesitant to spend the time and cognitive effort on producing that kind of matching analysis.
I now suspect there’s a dimension of communication that’s hyper-salient for me but invisible to you.
I won’t try to convey that maybe invisible-to-you dimension here. I don’t think that’d be helpful.
Instead I’ll try to assume you have no idea what you’re “saying” on that frequency. Basically that you probably don’t mean things they way they implicitly land for me, and that you almost certainly don’t consciously hold the tone I read in what you’re saying.
That’s as close as I can get to assuming that you “mean just what [you] say”. Hopefully that’ll smooth things out between us!
Okay, this is perhaps a complete side note, but this feels like a very precise pinpointing of what things like reduced affect and other of the most mysterious autistic communication difficulties can look like from the other (allistic, hyperfocused on emotional expressiveness, or otherwise very sensitive to affect) side.
From the perspective of folk with reduced affect, talking to people who rely strongly on affect, the experience strongly resembles that people they are interacting with are effectively listening to a random word generator rather than what they are saying. It is quite baffling and frustrating; especially since the explicit communication is often very carefully selected to communicate what they are trying to communicate.
So, basically, it’s really good to recognize that this channel of communication can indeed hold random noise sometimes, and be aware of the extent to which you’re focusing on it and the failure modes. (Presumably some of the times people have indeed corrected your perception of them.)
I don’t think reduced affect necessarily corresponds (though might correlate) with an inability to discern things like emotional tone in other people, but it might be a bit trickier depending how much processing mirror neurons tend to handle. (I don’t think anyone knows that, currently.)
I have to admit, I find this very confusing. I’m trying to understand what you mean by “cake”. Maybe you were hoping to go “Here’s ‘cake’ for falling in love. Now you try on this other topic, so I can thumbs-up or thumbs-down that you’ve understood what I mean by ‘cake’.” Is that it?
That would be a side benefit, certainly.
The thing is, I think I could provide a similar analysis, but I don’t think it’d help me understand at all what you mean by “cake”. That makes me pretty hesitant to spend the time and cognitive effort on producing that kind of matching analysis.
It need hardly be much effort. Not even as much as you’ve already spent on the last 2–3 comments in this thread, I’d say!
But if you could say “Oh, for falling in love, thus-and-such would be ‘cake’”
The grandparent provides 700 words of this.
What do you hope to gain by having me try to grapple with this weird thing?
I read it as a warm-up question. Said provided what he considers a cake-like explanation of “falling in love.” The obvious next step would be for him to ask you for an analogous explanation of kenshō. But if that were expected to go poorly, one might be tempted to try asking about something else, like “having a paranoid delusion”, to exercise (or test) your ability to provide cake-like concreteness.
This confirms I’m very thoroughly confused about what “cake” means to you here!
I thought you were looking for tangible proof of benefits, or something you could concretely try, or something like that. But now I know I have no idea what you’re looking for!
I’ll give examples to highlight my confusion. In your “cake” for falling in love, you say:
I could say that falling in love is worthwhile for its own sake. Of course, there isn’t any way I could convince you of that, but that’s not unusual; the same applies to the experience of eating ice cream, etc. This boils down to “try it; you’ll like it!”.
I seem to recall saying very similar things about kenshō. That there’s something of deep importance, that this “insight” amounts to acknowledging it, that this is something you’d be super grateful for if it were to happen for you, and that there’s not really much of a way for me to convince you of any of this. It’s just a “Take a look and see for yourself” kind of thing.
That doesn’t seem to have satisfied you. You still asked for “cake”.
In particular, what you say here sounds to me like what I’d guess “assurances of having cake” would be.
In your second paragraph of “cake” you say:
falling in love is just the first part of a process which (summed across all instances over a person’s lifetime) is likely to account for a significant chunk of the happiness, life satisfaction, joy, pleasure, etc., that one experiences in one’s lifetime.
I could say something very similar about kenshō. I suspect I did in that monster thread five years ago. That if & when this flash of clarity comes online, there’ll be a sense of something like “Oh holy fuck, I’ve been just living on autopilot! I haven’t been alive here! I’ve been ignoring what actually goddamned matters just to tell myself some stories and live in fantasy! Whoa!!!” And it’s very much just a beginning.
(There’s a quote that goes something like “You have two lives. Your second life begins when you realize you have only one life.” Kenshō is about beginning your second life.)
But again, this doesn’t seem to have satisfied your need for “cake”.
Your third paragraph includes:
those of my friends who’ve fallen in love, and entered into (and stayed in) long-term term relationships on the basis of that love, seem to be much happier than they were previously, and in particular, seem to make one another happy, in ways observable in ordinary, everyday interactions. (Of course one can have experiences and observe things that point to the opposite conclusion—but, again, this is too well-trod a topic to productively re-tread here.)
So, on this regarding kenshō I’ve been maybe too vague. Very attuned to the ability of folk to point at evidence of the opposite conclusion.
But if I can make a similar caveat as you’ve made here, I think I can point pretty clearly at this.
The people I know who are on the other side of this are alive. Engaged. Interesting. They’re themselves much more deeply. More interested in really playing the game of life. Less willing to tolerate bullshit, especially in their for-fun social interactions.
They also almost all have war stories involving the collapse after awakening. A lot of lies people live can’t work once they admit to themselves that they’re lies. And it’s hard not to admit stuff like that in the midst of an explosion of Light, at least in my experience. Breakups, financial collapse, and physical illness are not uncommon. It’s usually temporary and most of them say that they totally wouldn’t have it any other way — at least once they’re through the other side. Some do get stuck. And there’s a potential survivorship bias here in my account.
It’d be weird to call that a benefit. It’s more like an attribute I notice over and over again. I totally had that. Arguably I still do: it feels like a deep existential allergy to all lies and bullshit turned on deep in my core, and now I’m on a lifelong journey for total and ever-perfecting alignment with… well, truth.
But as things go in terms of “What can we see this actually doing in the world?”, here are a few attributes. The Dark Night stuff can be awful to go through, but it’s like the vomiting part of food poisoning. It’s not like the point of that is to be enjoyable, but you still want to have done it.
Now, if my saying all that still doesn’t count for you as “cake”… then I have no idea how to proceed. You’re going to have to define what you’re looking for differently if you want me to have any chance of answering you on this point.
If you were trying to convey this whole “falling in love” thing to me, while I’m suspicious about whether it exists or that if it exists that it has any value, and I were pressing you for “cake” about “falling in love”, what would you offer?
This is a reasonable enough question, as I said, but it does bear noting that it’s not like I’ve actually written any posts about how great “falling in love” is and how people should try doing it, etc. (I’m not even sure I would actually advocate for falling in love, if you asked me whether I think that you should try to do it, and were skeptical about it!)
Now, you asked what I’d offer if I were trying to convey “falling in love” and were asked for “cake” (i.e., answers to “what’s it good for?”), and I answered “here’s what I’d offer”. That response wasn’t very substantive! To abuse the metaphor somewhat, if we imagine our metaphorical cake as, say, tiramisu, my response would be, perhaps, a single ladyfinger dipped in coffee liqueur, with a dollop of whipped cream on it—not really a whole cake, with all the ingredients in place, fully assembled and finished with all the details, but more like a proof-of-concept, establishing that the basic idea works and is essentially sensible. (You could also call it a sketch rather than a finished portrait, or use any number of similar metaphors.)
That having been said, let’s move to the non-metaphorical object level:
I thought you were looking for tangible proof of benefits, or something you could concretely try, or something like that. But now I know I have no idea what you’re looking for!
Tangible proof of benefits is good, but concrete description of benefits is the thing that’s got to come first. Otherwise, what’s being proven?
As far as “something to concretely try”, please note that this is basically of no value unless either (a) I can have some reasonable expectations for what sort of thing I’ll get if I try it, or (b) trying is costless or close to it. Otherwise, it’s little more than a bluff.
I could say that falling in love is worthwhile for its own sake. Of course, there isn’t any way I could convince you of that, but that’s not unusual; the same applies to the experience of eating ice cream, etc. This boils down to “try it; you’ll like it!”.
I seem to recall saying very similar things about kenshō. That there’s something of deep importance, that this “insight” amounts to acknowledging it, that this is something you’d be super grateful for if it were to happen for you, and that there’s not really much of a way for me to convince you of any of this. It’s just a “Take a look and see for yourself” kind of thing.
That doesn’t seem to have satisfied you. You still asked for “cake”.
Well, indeed. As I said, there isn’t any way I could convince you that love is worthwhile for its own sake if you didn’t already believe it. Nor should you be convinced! You would be quite right to disbelieve me! (Especially because if you didn’t believe that there’s any value to falling in love, that would be evidence that you are the the sort of person for whom there isn’t any value to falling in love.)
There’s two things to note here.
One is that you’ve certainly claimed all sorts of benefits to kenshō, so “worthwhile for its own sake” isn’t all that’s being claimed; if it were, we’d have had (and would be having) a very different conversation.
The other is that the ice cream example is illustrative. Trying ice cream is something you can do for trivial amounts of money and effort, and which has basically no downsides (assuming you’ve checked the ice cream’s ingredients for known allergens you’re sensitive to, etc.). Notice that most people (quite reasonably) still don’t try everything that they could try with comparably little effort/cost expenditure, simply because there’s so many such things! But if a thing in this category is brought to your attention, by someone whose word you have at least some minimal reason not to distrust—well, why not, right? It’s costs so little.
It hardly needs pointing out that this is absolutely not the case for falling in love… and still less so for kenshō.
falling in love is just the first part of a process which (summed across all instances over a person’s lifetime) is likely to account for a significant chunk of the happiness, life satisfaction, joy, pleasure, etc., that one experiences in one’s lifetime.
Just so! Which is why my answer was a sketch of the sorts of things I would say if I were trying to convince you of the value of “falling in love”. If I were trying to construct the finished portrait, so to speak, I’d have to go into considerably more detail, offer actual examples and specific accounts, etc., etc.
And that’s the problem with the rest of what you write here: it’s “allusions to…”, but where are the specifics?
Here’s another approach: on the old Kensho post, our discussion broke off with a couple of my comments having been left unanswered. One very relevant comment was this one, where I ask for specifics about a number of vague things you wrote in a previous comment. Perhaps you could give those specifics now?
Well, to start with, the question of whether “falling in love” exists and whether it’s got any value are very different questions.
If you were unconvinced about there being any such thing as “falling in love” (having, let us suppose, never experienced it yourself, and perhaps even being aromantic), I would start by pointing you to various descriptions of the experience, from a wide variety of different cultures, eras, etc. I would then point out that these descriptions come in two types: first, phenomenal accounts, “from the inside”, of what it feels like to fall in love; and second, observational accounts, of what behavioral changes may be observed in people who have supposedly fallen in love. I would point to the great consistency of the former sort of account amongst various instances thereof, likewise the latter, and finally to the clear correspondences and links between the two types of account.
Clearly—I would point out—there is something that sometimes happens to humans, in a certain class of situations, which alters their behavior in certain remarkably consistent ways, and the experience of which they report on (both at the time and after the fact) in remarkably consistent ways. That there is something there, is not disputable.
(This would suffice to establish the reality of the phenomenon, of course. However, I could also add some considerations from evolutionary psychology, pointing to reasons why “falling in love” should exist; and, likewise, findings from biology, neurology, etc., pointing to physiological underpinnings and manifestations of “falling in love”.)
To establish the value of falling in love would be another matter entirely.
My first observation would be to note that the point may well be moot. “If someday you fall in love,” I might say, “you won’t have any choice in the matter—it’ll simply happen to you, whether you think it’s got any value or not. Indeed, you may even find the experience unpleasant (although that is not the way I’d bet, given the experiences of most of humanity before you). But either way, your brain won’t ask for your opinion or permission—you’ll just be in love, and that’ll be that.”
You might ask, however, whether you ought to seek out situations which increase the likelihood that “falling in love” will happen to you. (After all, being in terror of your life is also an involuntary response, yet it makes sense to ask after its value, the better to decide whether or not to seek out tiger pits to climb into.)
Substantive answers to the question are likely to take two sorts of forms.
First, I could say that the experience of falling into (and being in) love is, itself, joyful, exciting, etc., in ways distinct from, and to a degree unmatched by, other human experiences. In other words, I could say that falling in love is worthwhile for its own sake. Of course, there isn’t any way I could convince you of that, but that’s not unusual; the same applies to the experience of eating ice cream, etc. This boils down to “try it; you’ll like it!”.
Second, I could say that falling in love is a necessary and inextricable part of being in love, which itself is intimately connected to having a deep and rewarding romantic/intimate relationship with another human being—in other words, that falling in love is just the first part of a process which (summed across all instances over a person’s lifetime) is likely to account for a significant chunk of the happiness, life satisfaction, joy, pleasure, etc., that one experiences in one’s lifetime.
The evidence for this, of course, is the experiences of other people. Much has been written on this, and I don’t know that I can add anything that isn’t trite… one thing I might say is that of those of my friends who’ve fallen in love, and entered into (and stayed in) long-term term relationships on the basis of that love, seem to be much happier than they were previously, and in particular, seem to make one another happy, in ways observable in ordinary, everyday interactions. (Of course one can have experiences and observe things that point to the opposite conclusion—but, again, this is too well-trod a topic to productively re-tread here.)
Now, all of that having been said, here’s a counter-question, before we get to kenshō: can you provide an analogous sort of answer, for “having a paranoid delusion” in place of “falling in love”? Does it exist? Does it have any value?
How on Earth is this relevant? I’m really not following you here. What do you hope to gain by having me try to grapple with this weird thing?
Maybe you’re trying to… I don’t know, get even with me for asking something you find absurd? Trying to defeat me in some kind of dual where you think I issued the first challenge? I really don’t know.
In case it’s not clear, the reason I asked you about the “falling in love” thing was to better understand what kind of thing “cake” as you mean it might even look like. It really does land as a type error to me. But if you could say “Oh, for falling in love, thus-and-such would be ‘cake’”, then I could go “Oh! Okay. Cool! So I think the analogy for kenshō might be XYZ. Does that work for you?” Then we could communicate.
The feel — and I could easily be misreading you here — but the feel I get from you here is like intellectual one-upmanship. Mental fencing.
If that’s the case, please understand that I’m just not available for that. I will not engage with you at that level anymore.
If I’ve misread you, then please clarify what you’re doing. I don’t know how to orient to your tone here. If you meant it collaboratively, then please help me see how. I’d very much like to.
Well, if the relevance isn’t obvious, I think it will likely become obvious in the process of answering it. But, if not, I will certainly explain (what I see as) the relevance afterwards, in response to your answer.
Indeed, that is also why I asked my counter-question; both to explain, and to understand.
(ETA: I certainly don’t think that your question was absurd. If I did, I’d’ve said so, and not spent effort answering it!)
I really don’t know what you mean by any of this (especially the “anymore” part, but really all of it).
As I said—the point is to make clear what we’re talking about.
(I don’t think that it’s necessary to “orient to my tone”? In any case, generally speaking, if you assume that I mean just what I say, you won’t go far wrong.)
This is actually really clarifying. Thank you.
I now suspect there’s a dimension of communication that’s hyper-salient for me but invisible to you.
I won’t try to convey that maybe invisible-to-you dimension here. I don’t think that’d be helpful.
Instead I’ll try to assume you have no idea what you’re “saying” on that frequency. Basically that you probably don’t mean things they way they implicitly land for me, and that you almost certainly don’t consciously hold the tone I read in what you’re saying.
That’s as close as I can get to assuming that you “mean just what [you] say”. Hopefully that’ll smooth things out between us!
Okay, cool. Thanks for saying this!
I have to admit, I find this very confusing. I’m trying to understand what you mean by “cake”. Maybe you were hoping to go “Here’s ‘cake’ for falling in love. Now you try on this other topic, so I can thumbs-up or thumbs-down that you’ve understood what I mean by ‘cake’.” Is that it?
The thing is, I think I could provide a similar analysis, but I don’t think it’d help me understand at all what you mean by “cake”. That makes me pretty hesitant to spend the time and cognitive effort on producing that kind of matching analysis.
Okay, this is perhaps a complete side note, but this feels like a very precise pinpointing of what things like reduced affect and other of the most mysterious autistic communication difficulties can look like from the other (allistic, hyperfocused on emotional expressiveness, or otherwise very sensitive to affect) side.
From the perspective of folk with reduced affect, talking to people who rely strongly on affect, the experience strongly resembles that people they are interacting with are effectively listening to a random word generator rather than what they are saying. It is quite baffling and frustrating; especially since the explicit communication is often very carefully selected to communicate what they are trying to communicate.
So, basically, it’s really good to recognize that this channel of communication can indeed hold random noise sometimes, and be aware of the extent to which you’re focusing on it and the failure modes. (Presumably some of the times people have indeed corrected your perception of them.)
I don’t think reduced affect necessarily corresponds (though might correlate) with an inability to discern things like emotional tone in other people, but it might be a bit trickier depending how much processing mirror neurons tend to handle. (I don’t think anyone knows that, currently.)
That would be a side benefit, certainly.
It need hardly be much effort. Not even as much as you’ve already spent on the last 2–3 comments in this thread, I’d say!
The grandparent provides 700 words of this.
I read it as a warm-up question. Said provided what he considers a cake-like explanation of “falling in love.” The obvious next step would be for him to ask you for an analogous explanation of kenshō. But if that were expected to go poorly, one might be tempted to try asking about something else, like “having a paranoid delusion”, to exercise (or test) your ability to provide cake-like concreteness.
What part of this do you consider to be having “given me cake”?
The three paragraphs following “Substantive answers to the question are likely to take two sorts of forms.”
Okay! Great, thank you.
This confirms I’m very thoroughly confused about what “cake” means to you here!
I thought you were looking for tangible proof of benefits, or something you could concretely try, or something like that. But now I know I have no idea what you’re looking for!
I’ll give examples to highlight my confusion. In your “cake” for falling in love, you say:
I seem to recall saying very similar things about kenshō. That there’s something of deep importance, that this “insight” amounts to acknowledging it, that this is something you’d be super grateful for if it were to happen for you, and that there’s not really much of a way for me to convince you of any of this. It’s just a “Take a look and see for yourself” kind of thing.
That doesn’t seem to have satisfied you. You still asked for “cake”.
In particular, what you say here sounds to me like what I’d guess “assurances of having cake” would be.
In your second paragraph of “cake” you say:
This lands for me as what I’d guess “allusions to kinds of cake” would be.
I could say something very similar about kenshō. I suspect I did in that monster thread five years ago. That if & when this flash of clarity comes online, there’ll be a sense of something like “Oh holy fuck, I’ve been just living on autopilot! I haven’t been alive here! I’ve been ignoring what actually goddamned matters just to tell myself some stories and live in fantasy! Whoa!!!” And it’s very much just a beginning.
(There’s a quote that goes something like “You have two lives. Your second life begins when you realize you have only one life.” Kenshō is about beginning your second life.)
But again, this doesn’t seem to have satisfied your need for “cake”.
Your third paragraph includes:
So, on this regarding kenshō I’ve been maybe too vague. Very attuned to the ability of folk to point at evidence of the opposite conclusion.
But if I can make a similar caveat as you’ve made here, I think I can point pretty clearly at this.
The people I know who are on the other side of this are alive. Engaged. Interesting. They’re themselves much more deeply. More interested in really playing the game of life. Less willing to tolerate bullshit, especially in their for-fun social interactions.
They also almost all have war stories involving the collapse after awakening. A lot of lies people live can’t work once they admit to themselves that they’re lies. And it’s hard not to admit stuff like that in the midst of an explosion of Light, at least in my experience. Breakups, financial collapse, and physical illness are not uncommon. It’s usually temporary and most of them say that they totally wouldn’t have it any other way — at least once they’re through the other side. Some do get stuck. And there’s a potential survivorship bias here in my account.
It’d be weird to call that a benefit. It’s more like an attribute I notice over and over again. I totally had that. Arguably I still do: it feels like a deep existential allergy to all lies and bullshit turned on deep in my core, and now I’m on a lifelong journey for total and ever-perfecting alignment with… well, truth.
But as things go in terms of “What can we see this actually doing in the world?”, here are a few attributes. The Dark Night stuff can be awful to go through, but it’s like the vomiting part of food poisoning. It’s not like the point of that is to be enjoyable, but you still want to have done it.
Now, if my saying all that still doesn’t count for you as “cake”… then I have no idea how to proceed. You’re going to have to define what you’re looking for differently if you want me to have any chance of answering you on this point.
Well, let’s recap a bit. You wrote:
This is a reasonable enough question, as I said, but it does bear noting that it’s not like I’ve actually written any posts about how great “falling in love” is and how people should try doing it, etc. (I’m not even sure I would actually advocate for falling in love, if you asked me whether I think that you should try to do it, and were skeptical about it!)
Now, you asked what I’d offer if I were trying to convey “falling in love” and were asked for “cake” (i.e., answers to “what’s it good for?”), and I answered “here’s what I’d offer”. That response wasn’t very substantive! To abuse the metaphor somewhat, if we imagine our metaphorical cake as, say, tiramisu, my response would be, perhaps, a single ladyfinger dipped in coffee liqueur, with a dollop of whipped cream on it—not really a whole cake, with all the ingredients in place, fully assembled and finished with all the details, but more like a proof-of-concept, establishing that the basic idea works and is essentially sensible. (You could also call it a sketch rather than a finished portrait, or use any number of similar metaphors.)
That having been said, let’s move to the non-metaphorical object level:
Tangible proof of benefits is good, but concrete description of benefits is the thing that’s got to come first. Otherwise, what’s being proven?
As far as “something to concretely try”, please note that this is basically of no value unless either (a) I can have some reasonable expectations for what sort of thing I’ll get if I try it, or (b) trying is costless or close to it. Otherwise, it’s little more than a bluff.
Well, indeed. As I said, there isn’t any way I could convince you that love is worthwhile for its own sake if you didn’t already believe it. Nor should you be convinced! You would be quite right to disbelieve me! (Especially because if you didn’t believe that there’s any value to falling in love, that would be evidence that you are the the sort of person for whom there isn’t any value to falling in love.)
There’s two things to note here.
One is that you’ve certainly claimed all sorts of benefits to kenshō, so “worthwhile for its own sake” isn’t all that’s being claimed; if it were, we’d have had (and would be having) a very different conversation.
The other is that the ice cream example is illustrative. Trying ice cream is something you can do for trivial amounts of money and effort, and which has basically no downsides (assuming you’ve checked the ice cream’s ingredients for known allergens you’re sensitive to, etc.). Notice that most people (quite reasonably) still don’t try everything that they could try with comparably little effort/cost expenditure, simply because there’s so many such things! But if a thing in this category is brought to your attention, by someone whose word you have at least some minimal reason not to distrust—well, why not, right? It’s costs so little.
It hardly needs pointing out that this is absolutely not the case for falling in love… and still less so for kenshō.
Just so! Which is why my answer was a sketch of the sorts of things I would say if I were trying to convince you of the value of “falling in love”. If I were trying to construct the finished portrait, so to speak, I’d have to go into considerably more detail, offer actual examples and specific accounts, etc., etc.
And that’s the problem with the rest of what you write here: it’s “allusions to…”, but where are the specifics?
Here’s another approach: on the old Kensho post, our discussion broke off with a couple of my comments having been left unanswered. One very relevant comment was this one, where I ask for specifics about a number of vague things you wrote in a previous comment. Perhaps you could give those specifics now?