Si - how to discover it

[Myst]

Si is a contamination of the pure visual experience of the environment. Normally I don't separate these things, but by forcing myself to see the environment purely visually (things, colors, stuff), i realize that there is a contamination. Si itself is not visual, but it comes together with the visual experience. It gives a certain character to the things we see that is hard to describe.

This is only about the visual experience, but it works the same way with comfort etc.

I don't know if the pure visual experience is not contaminated anyway : P of visual illusions, distortions and the like. But ofc as long as it's in parallel enough with the actual environment it's good enough and we can call it objective enough.

Your whatever characterisation of things sounds like umm, are you like, mixing it with memories of other feelings and similar experiences? Or like focusing on just the feeling of enjoying it (or on disliking it)? I think I do the latter more.

I guess in my identification of things when I'm familiar with something my having experienced it previously plays a heavy role for me with handling stuff more efficiently/faster/more effortlessly. But for me that's neither of the above two options (as mentioned by me). More like I just absorbed the thing and so now I'm familiar with it so it speeds up things. It's not very conscious but I guess I could isolate this layer from the pure objective perception and identification of things. At the same time there's that objective one too, though. That's unrelated to that absorption.

And imagine that's the same for everyone...

Though for me I'm not so aware of the former layer but I am if I try to look a little harder at how I experience stuff. Then I see how fundamental a role it plays. But until them I'm like hey isn't it natural to see the environment around you objectively I mean it'll always be impossible for me to imagine how it wouldn't be like that for some people. I get it some people are very absent-minded and pay less attention or whatever bc they tune out here and there but that's all I can imagine. I can't imagine your thingy about the certain character of objects. Other than I guess spatial arrangement that helps with navigation and knowing objects and whatever, but other than that no.

Try this:
I look at the world around me, (houses, trees, the road outside my window etc), and I just try to see it as what it is purely visually, that is only as shapes, colors, objects. Like looking at a technical drawing basically.

And then I notice, this is not how I really see things. The Si component is missing. The "depth" and the "organic" feeling of the objects around me. That I am normally constantly in tune with, without even reflecting upon it.

This also kind of sounds like you removed focus from personal feelings and you just try to see things in a technical & clinical & impersonal way. Like things are no longer animate but just inanimate. (My default)

One could apply the same method and contrast the sensation of comfort/pleasure with the pure physical sensation of the water. I try doing this also. Like last night in my bed I feel the comfort sensation of my body against the sheet. And then I try to disregard this comfort and just focus on the pure physical sensation of the sheets.

I think I do both easily, comfort sensation vs pure physical sensation (as far as it can be pure and objective). The former is what makes me fall asleep fast.

But I'd dislike it if I were to approach everything like that during the day..... it'd be the antithesis of me. (And probably of most people's. : p) I mean, yeah, I sometimes want to, but then for a pretty large amount of the time I don't want to, bc I want to instead focus on the task or goal I'm doing and for that I'll want discipline and being unaffected by the environment beyond a point. Like, I prefer to just stay in control of the feelings and sensations, I'll put them in their place (where I want to put them), disable them, diminish them, etc., instead of following them.

If I just look at things as objects or just, objectively, that helps me with that and helps for the goal plus it's just normal and natural for me. But then yeah the focus on comfort or whatever pleasure is also just normal and natural when I want that. It would be pretty bad if I just sensed food in the objective way lol. Or my position for the chair I'm sitting in. And so on, there's many little things where I do want to have more than just objectively registering things. I would imagine this is the same for everyone though some people would want to do it more than others maybe sure.

The thing with the jacuzzi is that when in it, I'm able to let go of thoughts and feelings, especially when I turn the bubbles on. The feeling of comfort is not so much arrived at because of the sensation of bubbling water against your body, but of you yourself 'becoming part of the water', so to speak, there no longer seems to be much of a 'self'. I guess it works like a sort of regression to the womb. It is different from, e.g. being massaged: when you receive a massage, it feels good too, but you do not become one with the massage therapist. At least I don't ;-)

I personally don't pay attention for long to the sensation of the water - I imagine most people don't bc of the sensation becoming habituated and just simply the person getting bored with focusing on one type of sensation - and I'd be soon pretty bored sitting in there. I'd try and start to have thoughts to pass the time when I normally don't have them But I'd be better off not staying in there too long bc all that extra thinking or more like scattered thoughts coming up is just draining too mentally. I.e. if there are too many clouds on the sky (clear sky: thought-less, empty mind, cloud = thought). A few little fleeting clouds is okay, more is draining.

That would be me disliking the Default mode network so to speak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network - this is also what deals with the "self".

Funny for you it's the opposite, i.e. it turns off and then you are able to immerse in whatever sensation of being in that "womb". Oh and I'd be bored of that sensation too pretty soon even if I managed to feel that way.

My SEI GF and I visited her brother (ILE) and his GF (SLE) in Ibiza two weeks ago. So my GF cooked dinner, and the SLE woman asks my GF questions on how my GF cooks, and somewhere in that discussion my GF says she never tastes the food while cooking, to the bewilderment of the SLE, for how can one cook without tasting now and then? To which my GF replied that she knows how it tastes. It's not that my GF follows recipes to the letter, or something, she rather improvises at it, it's all in the wrist, so the speak. It's the same phenomenon Tallmo is talking about, but then applied to food and flavors, instead of e.g. colors and textures.

I also prefer to cook without tasting it too often, I guess if I'm really unsure I'll do that but otherwise not. And often I don't need to go outside or even really open the window to know how to dress for the weather. I sometimes do go check the outside (open the window / look at temperature/humidity reports) when I really need to but usually don't have to. And stuff like that. Doubt this is truly type related though lol. But it does seem like a skill, not everyone seems to have it.