From: "Jeffrey E." <[email protected]> To: Joscha Bach Subject: Re: Update Date: Wed, 30 May 2018 17:52:32 +0000 no sky falling On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 1:37 PM Joscha Bach Dear Jeffrey, I hope this finds you well. > wrote: I have not yet discovered the ideal medication, but I think I am making progress on spending more time in a lucid state. Thank you for the patience that you had with me so far. The underlying issue might be related to my inability to obey. There is a misunderstanding buried in my mind that obedience requires letting others make your decisions, which compromises integrity. Disobedience follows from the assumption that other people have less of a chance of knowing what they are doing than yourself. Unfortunately, a reasonably smart child with parents that don't know what they are doing does not have much difficulty to find evidence in support of that theory. Giving up autonomy feels impossibly hard. On the other hand, obedience naturally follows from the insight that doing the right thing beats doing the thing one wants (which may not be the right thing, i.e. work out as intended), and for any reasonably complex definition of "the right thing", there are going to be people that have a better understanding of the issues than myself. Thus, obedience is not letting other people make my decisions, but the competence to decide when other people's decisions are better than mine. This does not only translate to interactions with other people, but also with myself. Instead of doing what I can recognize as being the right thing (say, doing the first edition of my tax return as soon as I have the documentation available and an open time slot), I am attempting to compromise between doing the right thing (i.e. what the world wants) and the thing I want, which aims at being "good enough", and is often insufficient. I find that a lucid state makes dealing with this straightforward. Speaking of which: Should I continue to prod the hig