tsuki

You would be surprised. What outwardly looks like narcissism is internally lack of self-esteem. This is a fact.

As a philosopher, Hubert Dreyfus is best known for his studies on Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was working with Ontology, the study of being.

This is an amazing channel that talks about research into safety concerning general artificial intelligence. What I like about it is that it avoids fear mongering and shows various quirks of optimization that tie well with spiritual topics presented by Leo. For example, the author shows how self-preservation, deception and reward hacking spontaneously arise when all the agent cares about is reward maximization.

Either you are deeply ignorant, or indulging in some sort of fantasy. Good luck in finding someone more appropriate to give you advice than me.

What does it mean to you? What are the symptoms of "too much empathy"? Also, how old are you and where are you from?

Hi, it's been a while. My mind found a way back here to this journal after I finally landed a visit with a rheumatologist. Not sure if I ever shared this here, but a lot of painful memories from my childhood have to do with many hospitalizations I had due to a mysterious disease in the ballpark of juvenilie idiopathic arthritis. After I came of age and was discharged from hospitals, I decided that I needed no medical care and started living as if nothing was wrong. Looking back, it was a necessary period to take care of my mental health and get my life in order, or rather: to allow myself to be messy. Now, I feel strong enough to go back and tackle this issue again because I've grown to understand that mind is not, in fact, over matter. The visit to the hospital was pretty taxing on my psychology because it revived all sorts of mental states dating way back. Walking the hallways felt strangely home-ish, but at the same time, triggered abandonment fears and all sorts of helplessnesses. I walked into the office pretty broken down and regressed, and the doctor seemed distant and detached, which felt familiar and strangely reassuring. Facing her conjured a mix of fear of my symptoms being ridiculed, with feelings of deep dependency upon her. Now that I'm writing this, I realize that I must have tried to form attachment to doctors when I was alone in hospitals. I think so because the feelings I had towards the doctor are very reminiscent of what I feel towards my mother. Thankfully, she wasn't my mother and she was gradually opening up as I was describing my history and symptoms. The most difficult part was plainly speaking about the connections I saw between my psychological state and the pain in my body afterwards. I was sure that she would dismiss it as me being a hypochondriac, so I made sure to stress beforehand that I was 6 years in therapy after I left hospitals. Thankfully, she didn't ridicule it and I felt brave enough to tactfully share my suspicions about fibromyalgia. When I said it, she opened up even more and said that it was also her first instinct, but we need to run tests to rule out other diseases first. I know that there are no tests for fibro and this is the standard way of proceeding. I even opened up enough to share that I used to do LSD but had to stop once I learned experimentally that it aggravates autoimmune disorders. The following days were pretty difficult because the stress increased inflammation in my body so I'm in pain as I'm writing this post. My wife accompanied me to the hospital because she knew how difficult it was for me, but failed to consider her own traumas. She learned to be codependent on her mother and took a hard hit when her mother was hospitalized with kidney problems when she was about 10. Back then, she sympathetically fell very sick with fever and her father whom she hated had to take care of her. The hospital visit was the first time when she was fully exposed to the extent of my illness and went through several panic attacks during night. I did my best to support her, and after some convincing, she finally gave in to call her mother during the night so that she would soothe her. We only understood the connection between her childhood trauma and my visit to rheumatologist today morning, so this story is linear only in retrospect. As it was happening, it was very chaotic, but I'm proud that we did not jump to each other's throats in times of stress, but supported each other. Yesterday I decided to ask the Sage to cure my illness and I developed hexagram 47/33 changing lines 2,3,6. As usual, it points to my father as being the source of autoimmune disorders in my family and his materialistic thinking that demonizes the body. This time, however, I'm starting to see the programs that I inherited in this regard, but it's still very murky. Will introspect with RTCM for the next few days. ------------------- I would like to thank @Preety_India for pointing me towards the right direction. Your input in the other thread was invaluable. Thank you!

As always, enjoying your posts. Thank you for sharing.

I highly suggest watching the whole movie "Man for all seasons". It is specifically about integrity. If you are not afraid of spoilers, here is the climactic scene:

Terrible idea for your mental health. You are not supposed to deatch from your emotions, but from the constant abstract chatter of your think-box.

I'd say that important component of mastery is tied with competition. It's not much of a mastery if you are the only person in the world doing something, nor is it when you only think that you are a master. In this sense, putting your work out there for people to consume it is crucial, but not all-encompassing of mastery. Think of it more in terms of testing yourself, but remember of Goodhart's law (When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.)

More often than not, a catch-22 is a by-product of a constrained perspective trying to squeeze/frame a broader perspective into itself. For example, if you frame understanding as an emergent property of language, then you cannot explain how communication occurs. That is because within this perspective, language had to be communicated to you when you were learning it. Similarly, if you view your limited self as your true self, then you must fear and defend yourself, thus reinforce separation. The only way out of this is to experience death and view knowledge from not-knowing.

Your values are not a mental construct that is built on a whim with reasoning. They are ingrained into your being as your schemas and patterns and reinforced via repetition over years. "Values" in this sense is a reverse-engineered description of what you stand for as a person. If you truly understood that masturbation was wrong for you, you wouldn't do it. It has to serve a purpose in your life, like for example, blowing the steam off after a stressful day, but you can't admit that to yourself for some reason. Do not underestimate your patterns. Generally speaking, the less you involve moral judgments into self-improvement, the smoother it goes, so stop moralizing at yourself and learn to respect your history.

@LambChop I have a question for you. Before your hospitalization, did self-help material help you to get serious about your mental disorder, or did it rather contribute to your will to brush it off as being weak, or underdeveloped? Similarly, how did spiritual material influence your attitude towards your mental health?

This is a very good observation. Be mindful that cycles of domestic abuse are likely to create psychological trauma that can be maliciously triggered against you in court. If you can afford it, I strongly suggest to find professional help: a good lawyer and a good therapist. Strong support in these domains will be invaluable when things get nasty. Also, be mindful that any sort of spiritual teachings that teach you to sacrifice yourself for a greater good, or for moral reasons is simply false - plain and simple. Steer clear of such ideologies, at the very least until you win the custody battle for your children. You will have time to contemplate this in easier times.

WDYT? Is democratization of GAI research a bad idea? Sounds fishy to me. Haven't watched Elon's interview, but it seems like democratic access to GAI is a good idea.

Please do not confuse love in metaphysical/spiritual sense with love in relational sense. The primary role of anger is to tell you that your boundaries are being crossed and to mobilize you to action. If you eviscerate that, you will not be able to fight for yourself when you are being treated unjustly. Instead of trying to love your abuser, focus on loving your children and on loving yourself.

Don't sweat it. I'm sure that there are waaaaaaaay worse things about you that will scare her off if you tell her. Don't worry, you will tell her. Eventually .

There is no such thing as a "normal relationship". It is "normal" when it fits both of you and you are not afraid of bringing it up when something needs to change. Try bringing it up with him and see if he's able to respond to your needs. Chances are that he will and you will carry on.

Ahahahaha, the reframing in this thread is just glorious! Hahahahaha Great job @Karmadhi you got me there for a second .

Materialist metaphysics is empirically false. We were all dead before we were born and now we are alive. Why assume that something else will happen after this body is dead?

This observation right here is the key to your struggles. Being at the receiving end of someone's anger sucks ass. You are afraid and ashamed of being who you are and that is precisely why the other person gets angry in the first place. This is not a deliberate choice on their part, mind you - this is a schema they unconsciously developed because it was so effective in the past. This, however, gives them exactly zero rights to act this way towards you, especially if he is being abusive. If he is abusive, then you have zero obligation to explain yourself to him. Do a 180 turn and just flat-out ghost him. Being abusive includes: screaming, shaming, name-calling, gossip, physical threats and physical violence. If you can't tell whether he is abusive, or you are too sensitive, ask a friend to go on a date with the two of you. Now, if you actually are overreacting, then the first step is to stop acting in reaction to this feeling. Just stand there flabbergasted and feel it, looking stupid. That's it. The problem is that you do not allow yourself to feel this feeling. There probably is a deep-seated experience that caused it and expect it to surface. Perhaps one of your parents were emotionally explosive, or too overwhelmed with life to tolerate your "problems". If that is the case, then the correct way of proceeding is to develop: first empathy and then sympathy towards yourself. The latter starts when you actually screen people you hang out with and stop getting yourself involved with emotionally explosive people. This is called "setting boundaries" and is extremely difficult when you are afraid of making other people angry. See the self-reinforcing cycle? The bottom line is this: you gotta be on your own side. This doesn't mean that you ought to be a dick and push all people away. It means to stop attracting people who encroach onto your kindness. Saying "no" is a start.

Perhaps, this question also ties with the awareness/choice dilemma. The fact that you are not aware of making a choice does not mean that there weren't any. Sometimes, our environment (parents) choose our responses by raising us and instilling schemas within our behavior. In this sense, emotions are choices that were made for us. Practically speaking, the best we can do is to choose our responses to them, or stop feeding these schemas if they are unhelpful.

You need more finely grained distinctions to solve this question. Emotion as a change of the internal state is usually not a deliberate choice. You can talk yourself into feeling something, by remembering past experience, or imagining a probable outcome, but they usually work autonomously. Emotions in this mode carry information about the relationship between the self and external circumstances (whether the circumstances are beneficial, or not). When they act this way, they are very close to the core of my being and if I don't make space and inspect this information, I will give in in to them and let them guide my behavior. Sometimes, this is the correct way, sometimes, it is not, and it is up to the individual to decide on a per-context basis. More often than not, the choice in "how you feel" lies between the involuntary change of the internal state, and how you react in response to this change. Usually, we do not question whether the anger is in response to the actual circumstances, or in response to our story about it (and how it influences our desired outcomes). Sometimes, you can aikido the story and actually feel less angry. Sometimes, you need to talk to somebody about it to see that it is your own limited perspective about the matter. Sometimes, you should be angry and fight for yourself. Sometimes, however, emotions arise because the situation is similar to a past event that you have not processed properly and your psyche regresses to that event to "refresh" it. It takes some skill to identify these triggers as they happen and process the trauma that they are influenced by. In my experience, the more I inspect the root causes of emotions, the better I know myself and more willing I am to listen to them, as opposed to giving in to them. In my experience, emotions are never arbitrary, or stupid, but rather, coming from deep nooks and crannies of me that I rarely look into. They are a mode of intelligence that is not to be underestimated.

Try imagining it from the pov of the mother without framing her as a loveless monster. Try imagining that you understand that you have to do this, or else you will lose all the other children. Try imagining doing it and feeling that your heart breaks as you do it.