tsuki

White knight mentality is hurtful to everyone, but to say that standing up for women is equal to standing down to men is hurtful as well. I'd say that his biggest value is motivating incels to actually talk to women and get their shit straight. Once they start growing, they may quickly realize that they are following a low-level teacher and graduate. EDIT: Oh look! OP said just that, how insightful of me to post this response!

@How to be wise You're right. We have to meet people where they are at.

@dimitri You're doing great. Don't get too attached to any unconventional phenomenon that occurs during meditation. They can be pleasant or unpleasant. Bliss, or suffering. What's important is non-attachment without being attached to non-attachment.

Beliefs are irrelevant. Enlightenment is not-knowing and is not attained through "correct" solution to any given dichotomy.

Liberation comes from equanimous mind that is free from opposites. Dichotomies are the expression of the egoic mind. These are aspects of enlightenment because you can integrate good with evil and yes with no. Morality in the conventional sense has nothing to do with enlightenment. It is a path to follow only in so far that it minimizes suffering and makes the ego less reactive and calm. Many self-realized seekers will confirm that suffering is not something to avoid for yourself though.

@Moreira https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Epictetus

@CelticQueen17 A good starting point to enlighten yourself would be to honestly try to answer the question: what are my extents? By extents I mean physical (like body, skin, etc), psychological (personality, knowledge, belief), professional (work ethic, interconnectedness) etc. Can you really find a single solid boundary between you and anything else?

❤️

The distinction your discussion revolves around is the word 'you'. What is the you that is, or isn't going to die? There are many answers to this question and some of them point to the fact that you will die and some to the fact that you won't. The body is going to die. The psyche is going to die. Your relatives are going to die. Humanity is going to die. Nature is going to die. Earth is going to die. The universe is going to die. Your country will die. The sun is going to die. Bacteria in your gut are constantly dying. The food you put on your table died and became you. All of these things are and are not you, depending on how you look at them.

@now is forever I've been to Germany recently on a business trip and what struck me the most are your graffiti. When a polish hooligan writes something with a spray, it's probably his favorite sports club, or just plain old fuck police. In Germany, you write fuck Nazis. (Actually, you're not even this rude - you write 'No Nazis'). It makes me think that you are so ashamed of your past that you can't even talk to each other about it. This is why it surfaces on your buildings when a tortured soul rebels against its conditioning with a spray can. If I could, I would hug the heart of Germany. This is the worst thing about fighting in my experience. After we're done and we realize how pointless it all was - there is nobody to talk to because everyone is too busy licking their own wounds. We're just too short-sighted when we feel like we've been hurt. Today I'm just chaos. I look at my body and I see the big bang. I look at my psyche and I see the Second World War. I'm nowhere to be found. There is absolutely nothing about me that makes me special, except for this realization. Given this opportunity, I came up with the characteristics of Chaos: It obeys its own rules The rules of chaos are incomprehensible If Chaos had human mentality - calling it random would be an insult. The closest thing that comes to understanding it is appreciation of its raw beauty that manifests as terror.

This is how my mind feels like today:

@now is forever You know, I'm flattered by your presence and attention, but I can clearly see the you are trying to defend my mother. There is no oppressor here. These memories are not personal and I do not bear resentment towards my mother. She is not evil, but hurt. I do not know the exact circumstances of her suffering, but I know that her brother used to bully her and she was always at odds with her male peers since early childhood. Her father was a high ranking officer of MO, probably lowkey alcoholic, and I heard that there was violence between him and his wife. I'm not sure of severity of it though. I also know that a catholic priest attempted to molest my mother. I'm not surprised at all that she ended up in the police herself, chasing sexual offenders. She had quite a career. Hmm, I'm starting to feel a little bit disgusted by how banal this become. It feels like a low budget polish reality-like movie of drunkards, abusers and sex. I'm sure that I don't know 99% of the story, so it's not like I'm condoning or condemning anybody. Life simply happens to people and expecting them to understand it is too much in most cases. This is why I don't treat it personally. Chaos is not random. It's just structured beyond our comprehension and it's precisely what's terrifying.

@PetarKa For most people, helping others is a way to defend their self-image, or their self-righteous view of 'how the world should be'. This mode of helping is actually a hidden plea for help that the helper is not able to express explicitly. To actually meet another person where he/she is, requires enormous sensitivity and maturity that most people lack. It has to come from a place of abundance - simply because there is nothing better to do.

@kodanope I tripped once and it was a very challenging experience. Since I have no reference point, I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad trip, but I can imagine that it could leave some people deeply scarred. The benefit is that it taught me the experience of deep, infant-like vulnerability, which was lost somewhere during my life as a man. It allowed me to work on my sensitivity on a whole different level and I see a very rapid growth in my relationships and general attitude towards life. Not to mention the increase in baseline consciousness that I see accelerating for almost a month. Even if you have a bad trip, it is a valuable experience because it shows you the areas you neglected or repressed. In my opinion, tripping should be challenging and you should respect the substance. At the very least so that it does not become an escape from your problems.

Today I went to see my parents to chat and drink some coffee like every week. I used to have a cat, but my wife is allergic to them and they are his keeper since our wedding. They also have a female cat and they don't really get along too well. He's unsure of his position and tries to dominate the other cat by periodically hunting her. They aren't exactly fighting full-force, just a pat or two with him leaving with his nose scratched. This repeats every day, 3-4 times. Of course, my mother defends the female cat, having no sympathy for the male. That's because she's just a poor little female that's scared. That doesn't stop her however from scaring the male when he's sneaking to hunt her, or even throwing a slipper at him. Isn't he just a poor little male that's scared of a new place and a cat that bullied him when he was little? They have a reverse history of her hunting him and guess what? Strangely enough - my mother didn't mind that in the past. He's always been a laughingstock for her for not being able to stand up for himself. Now on the other hand, he's being ridiculed for not learning the lesson that he's going to lose every fight. It doesn't convince her when I'm saying that she's just perpetuating the victim-oppressor cycle by scaring him and hugging her. They have to set their hierarchy straight by themselves, or she has to change the environment so that both cats feel safe. I can't help but project the family dynamic that was going on between me and my sister. Thankfully, I came to my senses and she seems to have forgiven me.

Here's another one that came up after I was moved when posting the previous one: It was late evening. We were after a (verbal) fight. I wanted to get back at my parents. They were sitting by the table in the living room, I went to the kitchen and took a long knife. I went back the the corridor and stood with my side facing towards them. I called them and when they turned towards me I pretended to stick the knife through my chest. Of course, it went under my armpit like in a cartoon. My mother disarmed me very quickly. I remember that she cried. This one was particularly difficult to share/shed because I had a lot of shame associated with it. I was a young teenager at the time. Probably 10-13. What's strange is that I actually thought for a very long time that I was blessed with a very good childhood. I think that during the first memory (with the rotary swing), the thing that was born was my ability to power through emotions by disowning them.

Here's another traumatic one featuring women: My grandmother was looking over me during my mother's absence. I had an attitude that day and didn't respect her. I don't remember the particular time when she actually hit me, but I remember telling her that: she has no right to hit me because she's not my mother. I remember that it shocked her (my grandmother was a sassy woman, things just didn't shock her). Later that day she talked to my mother and they both came to me and my mother said: I, as your mother, give the right to hit you to your grandmother. They were both laughing. I brushed that off at the time. Just recently came to me why was my grandmother so shocked. That's because a kid thought that his mother had the right to hit him.

The over-arching themes of my memories are about power, responsibility, denial and hurting innocence. All of them feature women as: a victim, an oppressor and a responsible, but incompetent person. The first memory is about using power for personal gains and hurting innocent people. I wanted to impress my childhood friend and gain her favor and it ended up in a catastrophe. The second memory is about being punished for wanting to play. Being in the company of other people and ignoring warning signs of approaching disaster. The third memory is about taking responsibility for other people. Using power for my own amusement and hurting innocent person that was under somebody else's care. All of these tropes fit very well to my various relationships.

There are two other childhood memories that keep returning to me. I was playing with kids outside. We lived at the 10th floor and my mother called me out of the window. She kept calling me, but I kept ignoring it. We went to play to the school grounds and I didn't hear her anymore. When I came back, she was angry. It was the only time I was hit with a belt. One hit for each call that I ignored. The second memory takes place on the same playground but at a different time. It was a holiday and I remember the weather to be 'golden' like this: I was playing with a swing again, and there was a mother and a child nearby. The child was so young that it was struggling to walk. I was standing beside the swing and swinging it while it was empty. The kid was curious and wanted to see what I was doing. The mother was busy. I saw the kid as it approached and kept swinging the swing. The child did not stop and it wandered straight into its path. Again, it was hit in the back of his head. Guess what I did? I ran away and denied the reality of this situation.

The childhood memory that involves a little girl happened when I was around 10. During holidays I used to leave with my parents to a small town near my home where we would borrow a summer house from my uncle. This town had a lake with a beach and I had a female childhood friend that lived next door. One day, her relative came by and she hanged out with her. She was much younger than both of us - the little girl. I remember that didn't like her that much for some reason. I think that she had an attitude and tried to boss us around. I'm not sure. I remember that she had blonde curly hair and looked very innocently. The three of us went to a playground nearby and played with a rotary swing like this: The little girl sat in one of the seats and I started pushing. I wanted to impress my childhood friend, so I gave my best. The little girl protested, but I didn't listen. I always thought that she fell off, but now that I think of it - she may have wanted to get off on her own. She fell out/got out and the next seat hit her hard in the back of her head. I ran away and left the two on their own. I just denied the realness of what I did. I think that something may have been born that day. I met that girl several years later and she tried to blackmail me into submission. She threatened that would tell my mother what happened if I didn't do what she said. By that time I knew to not negotiate with terrorists, so I just said: go ahead. She went ahead and my mother was very upset. The girl had major health problems because of that accident, but I never inquired into that. Now seems like a good opportunity.

@now is forever No, she definitely slipped through. From my point of view, she definitely knew about me and that the alarm was off. She was just masterfully pretending to be innocent. The key to this dream is the ambiguity of whether she was really the witch or not. It plays into vulnerability that I'm learning recently. A little girl is a symbol of it.

Beautiful sky greeted me today. I also had an important dream, but I don't have enough time to dissect it properly, so I'll just post it. There was a witch masquerading as a little girl. She had seduced me before. I was a watchman in a military base, standing in the middle, atop of a watchtower. I was appointed to look out for danger and I saw her talking to other men. She was sitting on a sunbed by the pool in a two-piece swimsuit and I saw her through a glass ceiling. I raised the alarm, red lights and sirens turned on. The guards did not know how she looked like, so they drew everyone's blood and tested it. I was pointing my finger at her and yelling, but they couldn't hear me. She kept talking to men ignoring the alarm and I knew that she was looking at me with her cold eyes. She let her blood be drawn calmly and the test was negative, so the guards missed her. As the guards were passing by her, she gave me one last mocking* look and the dream ended. Note to self: a strong connection to a traumatic childhood memory. * - I read it as if she mocked me, but she may have simply been looking.