How do you begin “hacking yourself?” My method is to push myself through a compiler (experiment on a premise that seems likely), record the results, and address trends (debug). This doesn’t sit well with a lot of people; most people want to believe that their actions aren’t the results of past experiences—they don’t want to think of themselves as a program with limited free will. Ironically, I’ve found that admitting that many of my troubles are due to obsolete programming—and then addressing them accordingly—seems to augment whatever free will I may or may not have. Also, with a bit of luck, perhaps one can save themselves the expense of gurus or therapists. Because in most cases, it seems that they aren’t being paid to tell you what you don’t already know; they’re being paid to fool/cajole/force you into confronting it.
Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha 
& exercise caution in the definition of “troubles” in the first place. Quantifying it initially makes establishing the parameters for exactly how to approach the system code a little more reliable. Some people find that they need to create the true-ego, e.g. ‘Kent’, and then the mild-mannered alter-ego for the rest of humanity to interact with and not run away screaming.
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Right. I think it’s kind of like how people will find certain jokes acceptable in movies but not in person; there is an innate agreement among us that we will tolerate more from entertainment than people we know.
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Good stuff, ‘Buddha. If people would get past their own egos and being so self-conscious of “their past”, it would be quite amazing how much better some folks would fare in this world.
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Yes indeed! Thank you Scott!
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Obsolete programming. I recall a study I did once when my kids were really young. It was about how things I learned as a kid are being passed on to mine, even if they were horrible things I didn’t want to pass on! We are programmed to act and do certain things and we follow that pattern. It was a study to help break patterns. Crazy! Not sure it worked, my kids nicknamed me the ‘Evil Momster’ at times….
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Hahaha! It’s hard to counteract stuff that gets hardwired into us when we’re little. And it’s also really uncomfortable because it’s formed the bedrock of our identities, and people will fight tooth and nail to preserve who they believe themselves to be, even at the expense of their life sometimes.
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Or their integrity. Absolutely crazy.
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Most interesting. It’s very difficult to undo that programming, though not impossible. You say it will save the individual money on counseling or therapy. But it’s hard to do it alone, and surely these things are there to do that very thing?
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Hopefully, although from personal anecdotes, they don’t seem to create lasting change. Honestly, the best results I’ve seen are from strategic use of psychedelics.
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To be one’s own guru. That is a worthy aim.
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Or to get to the point where everything/nothing is a guru. (I think that’s the same thing as what you said, but in different words)
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very well said sir. this is what i call Juju.
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Hahaha! I usually think of juju as magic.
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Go on a vision quest in the wilderness. Works for most neolithic cultures, so why not us?
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Some say it still works, some say we’re in a dark age.
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