Heightened senses

There’s that old saying—you know the one—about how if you lose your sight, your other senses somehow sharpen up to make up for it.

But honestly, I feel like that works both ways... losing one sense might just dial up the volume on everything else. So, I'm curious—has anyone else here actually experienced something like that?

Look, my sense of smell is basically non-existent at this point, but I’m still pretty much blind and deaf too—not to mention struggling with these arthritic cramps... and honestly, my libido isn't what it used to be either.

But you should probably ask Daredevil about that...

Don't know what my deal is, but my sense of smell is pretty damn sharp. I can pick up on blood from a mile away, even if you can't see it, just by the scent. Plus, my long-distance vision is solid... but once stuff gets too close to my face, everything starts getting blurry. 🤷

In principle, sensory compensation only really kicks in when there's a loss of sight, because unlike other senses, losing vision is a massive hurdle to overcome. Here is an interesting example of how people repurpose their sense of hearing for entirely different functions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
It’s amazing what can be achieved by "training" your senses 🙂

Harold King6 said:Don't know what my deal is, but my sense of smell is pretty damn sharp. I can pick up on blood from a mile away, even if you can't see it, just by the scent. Plus, my long-distance vision is solid... but once stuff gets too close to my face, everything starts getting blurry. 🤷

I would say you have a vision problem rather than heightened senses.😁

Angela Lewis2 said:In principle, sensory compensation only really kicks in when there's a loss of sight, because unlike other senses, losing vision is a massive hurdle to overcome. Here is an interesting example of how people repurpose their sense of hearing for entirely different functions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
It’s amazing what can be achieved by "training" your senses 🙂

I would say you have a vision problem rather than heightened senses.😁

but my hearing isn't great either... mostly from when things got blurry after having meningitis, if you even know what that is...

Let’s say my kid is blind, but their hearing is totally fine, and suddenly they start picking up on three different things at once.
A doctor told me that this doesn't necessarily mean their hearing has actually improved, but rather that they've just started relying on it more heavily.

People who can see will always lean on their vision first, and then eventually turn to their hearing...

you know what finally happened after all these years
can't see squat anymore, and my hearing's been shot forever too
calling it "honing skills" is a stretch, but hey, now I've got reflexes... it's fine, it's fine😉

Just some thoughts
My vision actually got sharper after my hearing dropped by maybe 35%—all thanks to those wild chemical experiments I used to run back in the day.
I was obsessed with chemistry, so I’d pull off little loud explosions here and there.

As they say, "experience comes at a price."
In my case, the cost was losing part of my hearing.
Which, honestly, isn't all bad since I occasionally miss out on a ton of the stupid stuff people blather on about... 🤣
Now that I'm hitting my 40s, I'm seeing even smaller letters than what you'd see on an eye exam in a doctor's office.

I should also add something that might be interesting to some, but it's huge for me. I've always been a researcher at heart, so
I've noticed how my racing mind just... quiets down. It's like this hyperactive mental noise fades away, replaced by this sharp, raw sense of just experiencing everyday life. Everything feels way more fluid and easier to navigate without overthinking everything.
You end up thinking just enough to get things done.

It seems like we've become way too addicted to over-analyzing the world. We rely so heavily on constant thinking, analyzing, and trying to calculate the perfect move for every single moment.
The "sense of thinking" is totally overrated these days, and it's ironic how much that "sense" is responsible for giving us such a distorted view of reality.

That overrated "thinking sense" has such a strong grip on our vision that it can "see" things that aren't even there. Plus, instead of seeing fifty shades of light, it tends to perceive fifty shades of gray... 🤔

It’s honestly amazing how much fuller and fresher life feels when you stop mentally interpreting everything you experience.

You just experience the moment itself, rather than mostly experiencing your own thoughts *about* the moment.

Maybe we really should dial back our mental processing a bit... dampen that overactive "thinking sense" to sharpen our ability to directly experience life, so we can live more fully and feel more fulfilled.

William Roberts3 said:Just some thoughts
My vision actually got sharper after my hearing dropped by maybe 35%—all thanks to those wild chemical experiments I used to run back in the day.
I was obsessed with chemistry, so I’d pull off little loud explosions here and there.

As they say, "experience comes at a price."
In my case, the cost was losing part of my hearing.
Which, honestly, isn't all bad since I occasionally miss out on a ton of the stupid stuff people blather on about... 🤣
Now that I'm hitting my 40s, I'm seeing even smaller letters than what you'd see on an eye exam in a doctor's office.

I should also add something that might be interesting to some, but it's huge for me. I've always been a researcher at heart, so
I've noticed how my racing mind just... quiets down. It's like this hyperactive mental noise fades away, replaced by this sharp, raw sense of just experiencing everyday life. Everything feels way more fluid and easier to navigate without overthinking everything.
You end up thinking just enough to get things done.

It seems like we've become way too addicted to over-analyzing the world. We rely so heavily on constant thinking, analyzing, and trying to calculate the perfect move for every single moment.
The "sense of thinking" is totally overrated these days, and it's ironic how much that "sense" is responsible for giving us such a distorted view of reality.

That overrated "thinking sense" has such a strong grip on our vision that it can "see" things that aren't even there. Plus, instead of seeing fifty shades of light, it tends to perceive fifty shades of gray... 🤔

It’s honestly amazing how much fuller and fresher life feels when you stop mentally interpreting everything you experience.

You just experience the moment itself, rather than mostly experiencing your own thoughts *about* the moment.

Maybe we really should dial back our mental processing a bit... dampen that overactive "thinking sense" to sharpen our ability to directly experience life, so we can live more fully and feel more fulfilled.

Failed attempts at destroying humanity😢😁

William Roberts3 said:Just some thoughts
My vision actually got sharper after my hearing dropped by maybe 35%—all thanks to those wild chemical experiments I used to run back in the day.
I was obsessed with chemistry, so I’d pull off little loud explosions here and there.

As they say, "experience comes at a price."
In my case, the cost was losing part of my hearing.
Which, honestly, isn't all bad since I occasionally miss out on a ton of the stupid stuff people blather on about... 🤣
Now that I'm hitting my 40s, I'm seeing even smaller letters than what you'd see on an eye exam in a doctor's office.

I should also add something that might be interesting to some, but it's huge for me. I've always been a researcher at heart, so
I've noticed how my racing mind just... quiets down. It's like this hyperactive mental noise fades away, replaced by this sharp, raw sense of just experiencing everyday life. Everything feels way more fluid and easier to navigate without overthinking everything.
You end up thinking just enough to get things done.

It seems like we've become way too addicted to over-analyzing the world. We rely so heavily on constant thinking, analyzing, and trying to calculate the perfect move for every single moment.
The "sense of thinking" is totally overrated these days, and it's ironic how much that "sense" is responsible for giving us such a distorted view of reality.

That overrated "thinking sense" has such a strong grip on our vision that it can "see" things that aren't even there. Plus, instead of seeing fifty shades of light, it tends to perceive fifty shades of gray... 🤔

It’s honestly amazing how much fuller and fresher life feels when you stop mentally interpreting everything you experience.

You just experience the moment itself, rather than mostly experiencing your own thoughts *about* the moment.

Maybe we really should dial back our mental processing a bit... dampen that overactive "thinking sense" to sharpen our ability to directly experience life, so we can live more fully and feel more fulfilled.

Without that same "sense"... there is no world, no vision, no recognizing yourself, no understanding yourself within any "it"... there's no cause, no effect, no distorted or undistorted image. There's nothing. It's something primary... or maybe even... impossible to categorize as "overrated."

You know..
When I first started out working up in New York, there was this 3-year-old boy.
Parents brought him into the hospital. A routine operation.
But the anesthetist made a mistake.
Little boy ended up deaf, dumb, blind.. and paralyzed.
For good. Think of it?
Think when that little boy first regained consciousness.
In the dark. You'd be frightened, wouldn’t you?
You'd be frightened in the kind of a way that you know the fear is going to end.
Has to. Must.
Your parents couldn't be too far away.
They'll come to your rescue.
They'll turn the light on.
They'll talk to you.
But.. think of it.
Nobody comes to rescue you.
No light is turned on.
You are in the dark.
You try to speak.. but you can't.
You try to move.. but you can't.
You try to cry out.
But you are unable to hear your own screams.
You are entombed within your own body.
Howling with terror..

What the fuck?
Why the fuck would you tell me a story like that?

No reason.

William Roberts3 said:Just some thoughts
My vision actually got sharper after my hearing dropped by maybe 35%—all thanks to those wild chemical experiments I used to run back in the day.
I was obsessed with chemistry, so I’d pull off little loud explosions here and there.

As they say, "experience comes at a price."
In my case, the cost was losing part of my hearing.
Which, honestly, isn't all bad since I occasionally miss out on a ton of the stupid stuff people blather on about... 🤣
Now that I'm hitting my 40s, I'm seeing even smaller letters than what you'd see on an eye exam in a doctor's office.

I should also add something that might be interesting to some, but it's huge for me. I've always been a researcher at heart, so
I've noticed how my racing mind just... quiets down. It's like this hyperactive mental noise fades away, replaced by this sharp, raw sense of just experiencing everyday life. Everything feels way more fluid and easier to navigate without overthinking everything.
You end up thinking just enough to get things done.

It seems like we've become way too addicted to over-analyzing the world. We rely so heavily on constant thinking, analyzing, and trying to calculate the perfect move for every single moment.
The "sense of thinking" is totally overrated these days, and it's ironic how much that "sense" is responsible for giving us such a distorted view of reality.

That overrated "thinking sense" has such a strong grip on our vision that it can "see" things that aren't even there. Plus, instead of seeing fifty shades of light, it tends to perceive fifty shades of gray... 🤔

It’s honestly amazing how much fuller and fresher life feels when you stop mentally interpreting everything you experience.

You just experience the moment itself, rather than mostly experiencing your own thoughts *about* the moment.

Maybe we really should dial back our mental processing a bit... dampen that overactive "thinking sense" to sharpen our ability to directly experience life, so we can live more fully and feel more fulfilled.

On a perfect summer day, taking a deep breath of the surroundings, of life, just letting go of holding onto... thoughts that drift off into some quiet corner of the "brain, soul, mind"... feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin.. that perfect, harmonious, rhythmic, pulsing symphony; the play, the unity of wind, birds, insects... standing barefoot, feeling the safety, the belonging to the earth...... merging with the moment.. would actually allow the environment to become invisible, where a rabid fox, unnoticed just two feet away, is all hunkered down, focused solely on its bite—not as its own character, but as pure madness, which is now just the vehicle for its existence.

From this "safe" corner of being.. which we've shaped through all the traumas (that require attention and premature contemplation of possibilities, based on non-personal insights) nature has thrown at us.. we've become (I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.)... making it possible.. alongside those survivalist need for ruminations about all kinds of rabid foxes during this conformist, safe moment.. to "fantasize" about "zen, harmony.....".

Life isn't the miracle here. It's this "thinking sense." Without it, a person could spend days just sniffing the air for food... never actually realizing, or even knowing, that they need to "eat via this sensory exploration of the surroundings." The senses are just the vehicle—the dashboard, the controls, the tactile way we perceive being... "No reason." But without that "thinking sense"... man, you're just an animalistic, biological capsule perfectly synced with nature, nothing more. "Spirit, mind, soul, ego, self..." acting like some kind of informational intruder... a "cosmic" traveler, a "well-meaning" passerby... riding inside the experience of biological perception. Life is just a safari.

Maybe the problem is that this "cosmic traveler, well-meaning guy"... because of some poorly advertised, overpriced promo for the safari and the booking process... wants to experience things the primal way... exactly how it was pitched. Total absence of the "self." He can't wrap his head around the fact that to actually grasp the self, he has to move beyond basic animal instinct—that mechanical, simultaneous, symbiotic, kinetic stuff. You have to maintain at least the basic functions of perception (observing, noticing, cause-and-effect, contemplation, rumination, ego...)... you need those baseline models of the "thinking sense" to gather perception and experience into a coherent model of life... a way to actually understand it. Maybe he wasn't cheated, maybe he didn't overpay. But as a consumer... he's still a consumer.....

@ironrider11
🙂 I didn't say the "thinking sense" was bad, I just said it’s overrated...

Stress, annoying mothers-in-law, headaches, money troubles, jitters, ringing ears, mosquito bites... none of those are the actual problem—it's the thoughts and how you process them that really matter.

Maybe this sounds weird to you because you approach everything so purely intellectual, but hey—it's all about intuition.

There’s actually this one disorder that might give you a little hint as to what I'm really talking about.

Congenial Analgesia, caused by an SCN9A gene mutation that basically cuts off brain signals.

People with that mutation can't feel physical pain from outside stimuli. They'll snap their own bones, chip teeth, bite their tongues, or even cut themselves without their body even realizing it, because there's just no pain signal. Obviously, that's super dangerous and a huge downside for them.

*The fact that they lack the thoughts/signals that would tell them something is wrong makes it life-threatening for them. But that "overrated" lack of signals? For us "normal" people, it's actually a total blessing.*

Now go back to the start of this post and read it again up until the part between the asterisks. Let it sink in...

I'll get to that whole thing about your angry fox on a perfect summer day some other time. 😉

Don't get lost in non-dualism, man, because you're still firmly in dualism. The nature of things is way simpler and more practical than that.

William Roberts3 said:@ironrider11
🙂 I didn't say the "thinking sense" was bad, I just said it’s overrated...

Stress, annoying mothers-in-law, headaches, money troubles, jitters, ringing ears, mosquito bites... none of those are the actual problem—it's the thoughts and how you process them that really matter.

Maybe this sounds weird to you because you approach everything so purely intellectual, but hey—it's all about intuition.

There’s actually this one disorder that might give you a little hint as to what I'm really talking about.

Congenial Analgesia, caused by an SCN9A gene mutation that basically cuts off brain signals.

People with that mutation can't feel physical pain from outside stimuli. They'll snap their own bones, chip teeth, bite their tongues, or even cut themselves without their body even realizing it, because there's just no pain signal. Obviously, that's super dangerous and a huge downside for them.

*The fact that they lack the thoughts/signals that would tell them something is wrong makes it life-threatening for them. But that "overrated" lack of signals? For us "normal" people, it's actually a total blessing.*

Now go back to the start of this post and read it again up until the part between the asterisks. Let it sink in...

I'll get to that whole thing about your angry fox on a perfect summer day some other time. 😉

Don't get lost in non-dualism, man, because you're still firmly in dualism. The nature of things is way simpler and more practical than that.

Those "trivial" mental distractions... they're really just side effects of being stuck in the social grind. If you're fully immersed in that system, reality feels that way. You can't just wish them away if your whole life is defined by being part of the machine. But there's also this "other space"... where you actually can tune out the trivial crap, like annoying people, credit card debt, or even just a spider in the attic. Yet, in that "other space"—the gritty, hard reality—that "thinking sense" always finds a way to kick in for self-preservation. It finds some way to stay sharp, alert, neurotic, and ready...

William Roberts3 said:@ironrider11
🙂 I didn't say the "thinking sense" was bad, I just said it’s overrated...

Stress, annoying mothers-in-law, headaches, money troubles, jitters, ringing ears, mosquito bites... none of those are the actual problem—it's the thoughts and how you process them that really matter.

Maybe this sounds weird to you because you approach everything so purely intellectual, but hey—it's all about intuition.

There’s actually this one disorder that might give you a little hint as to what I'm really talking about.

Congenial Analgesia, caused by an SCN9A gene mutation that basically cuts off brain signals.

People with that mutation can't feel physical pain from outside stimuli. They'll snap their own bones, chip teeth, bite their tongues, or even cut themselves without their body even realizing it, because there's just no pain signal. Obviously, that's super dangerous and a huge downside for them.

*The fact that they lack the thoughts/signals that would tell them something is wrong makes it life-threatening for them. But that "overrated" lack of signals? For us "normal" people, it's actually a total blessing.*

Now go back to the start of this post and read it again up until the part between the asterisks. Let it sink in...

I'll get to that whole thing about your angry fox on a perfect summer day some other time. 😉

Don't get lost in non-dualism, man, because you're still firmly in dualism. The nature of things is way simpler and more practical than that.

Doesn't matter how much perception you have or how advanced your emotional setup is (via processed Conditioner), everyone processes things "intellectually." Processing is the mental act itself. Emotion is just the drive behind it—the origin of why we need to make decisions and how we approach processing.

William Roberts3 said:@ironrider11
🙂 I didn't say the "thinking sense" was bad, I just said it’s overrated...

Stress, annoying mothers-in-law, headaches, money troubles, jitters, ringing ears, mosquito bites... none of those are the actual problem—it's the thoughts and how you process them that really matter.

Maybe this sounds weird to you because you approach everything so purely intellectual, but hey—it's all about intuition.

There’s actually this one disorder that might give you a little hint as to what I'm really talking about.

Congenial Analgesia, caused by an SCN9A gene mutation that basically cuts off brain signals.

People with that mutation can't feel physical pain from outside stimuli. They'll snap their own bones, chip teeth, bite their tongues, or even cut themselves without their body even realizing it, because there's just no pain signal. Obviously, that's super dangerous and a huge downside for them.

*The fact that they lack the thoughts/signals that would tell them something is wrong makes it life-threatening for them. But that "overrated" lack of signals? For us "normal" people, it's actually a total blessing.*

Now go back to the start of this post and read it again up until the part between the asterisks. Let it sink in...

I'll get to that whole thing about your angry fox on a perfect summer day some other time. 😉

Don't get lost in non-dualism, man, because you're still firmly in dualism. The nature of things is way simpler and more practical than that.

It doesn't matter where you are. Being lost is inevitable. Whether you can maintain stability or not, sooner or later, everyone gets hit by it. As people age, they deal with entropy as an unavoidable fact. They end up basically conditioning themselves to see "stability" as a memory, a relic of the past... while "being lost" starts feeling like the permanent state.

The nature of things is just matter. Simple, dualistic, and practical. Obsessing over the "nature of things" is just something people stuck in that practical social model do. Not that it matters... just a thought on how different perspectives work. Not my problem or my business...Consciousness is just part of nature... matter... stuff... though its "origins" are pretty questionable. "Altering the apparatus" (using a Conditioner to "sharpen the senses")... all to get a better grip on how "consciousness" aligns within—practically speaking—some dualistic measurement of fullness. For me, it’s not about tea or a cup... it's about that feeling of being lost. Altering the apparatus (meditation, introspection (moving back and forth with external tactile stimuli...), focusing on things that aren't primary or necessarily materialistic, chemical, or consumerist... "rewire") to grasp things like synesthesia... not just the sensation itself, but the whole perception that follows once you notice it happening... losing yourself to find yourself... nothing binary... sooner or later. Me?