Joshe

@UnbornTao - As to not derail the other thread: I’ve started seeing enlightenment as mostly just a terror-management strategy + hedonism for the intellectually inclined. Seeking insight provides its own kind of high and pursuing "the ultimate" is a terror mgmt/meaning-making strategy. It's the pursuit of meaning, relief, beauty, and excitement through insight. I can get very excited from insight myself, and I’ve used this same meaning-making strategy before. But when I started questioning why I wanted it so much, I found it was because I wanted my life to mean something and I wanted escape from raw reality. Is it really that important and the only thing that matters? Presumably, the fruits of enlightenment cease at death. So at best, it seems a transient luxury. Not to trivialize or downplay it, but ultimately, I don't see much of a difference in a life of relative ease and a life of suffering. The enlightened monk with all their hard-won insights will end up as dust - indistinct from the dust of a drunkard. The entire field of experience: joy, pain, enlightenment, ignorance, it's all the same. All transient, all impermanent, including our knowing and insights. Maybe enlightenment is only “the highest thing” if the absence of suffering is your definition of highest. But if suffering is held similarly as happiness, how could it be the highest thing? Maybe exploring the depths of beauty and love? But again, those experiences would be transient. It seems it's just another way to spend your finite time, but not necessarily "the absolute ultimate" way to spend your time. I could be wrong, since I haven’t seriously pursued enlightenment as many here, but when I project forward using my experience, all the information, models, and anecdotes - I can't help but to see it as just another terror-management/meaning-making strategy, conveniently checking all the boxes that saves us from what ails us + providing psychic hedonism (joy from deriving insight). My main point is there is pathology involved with the majority of enlightenment seekers. White-knuckling their way through it like they're escaping a burning building, even though they live in relative ease. Telling themselves they must acquire it because it’s the only thing that matters. "There's something deeply ironic about suffering in pursuit of the end of suffering, when you're not actually suffering that much to begin with. It reveals that it's not really about relief - it's about achievement, specialness, distraction from death, and being one of the few people who "got it." This is the pathology or ego trap that drove me in my 20s, and I suspect it’s common and worth knowing about at some point.

That’s the most common strategy early on - avoidance. I believe virtually all humans, at all times, are implementing strategies to keep the “worm at the core (great book)” at bay. If I were dying, I might say “Quick, let me get enlightened before I die”, which would be an attempt to give my life meaning. Someone else might fully embrace religion, and someone else might embrace unconscious hedonism, traveling, etc. @cetus 9 years ago, my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer with brain metastasis. She had tumors in her lung and brain. The one in her brain was the size of a golf ball. Doctors surgically removed all tumors, did targeted radiation and chemo. When we first found out, I remember sitting in the ER and seeing the CT scans, the first thing I did was look up the survival rate for stage 4 lung w/ brain metastasis. The 5-year rate was 2.5%. I’m a realist, so I just broke into tears. I just knew it was over. Each time I would take her for her quarterly scans, I just knew the bad news was coming, but it never did. It’s now going on 10 years and no sign of cancer. I now take her for yearly scans. I think they’re getting much better at curing cancer relative to cure rates 15 years ago. Congrats on making it this far.

The split/separation will always exist in the background. When two people hold strong opposing views of reality, I don't think it can work. You can try not to talk about it, but it will come up. Also, the fact that she would wake up and one of the first things on her mind was "I wish my man was Christian", is unfortunately, IMO, all you need to know it's not going to work long-term. She's not going to be able to let that go. She's always going to have her ideal man in her head and since you aren't it, she will have to push down the feelings of wanting someone different. Those can only be pushed down for a while. As you've already seen - they started bubbling up on wake and manifested this breakup. After a breakup, it's so easy to get back together because you love each other and your system is missing the homeostasis you developed, but that will pass. Either route you take will be a good learning experience. I took my exes back multiple times. Each time I knew it was a mistake but did it anyway - from a position of foolishness made possible by weakness. One thing about breakups though, is that the girls don't actually come back loving you more. They might appear to at first, but after your first big fight, they go back to the psychological checkpoint they were at when you split last time, and they remind themselves "I knew I shouldn't have gotten back with him", and they dislike you even more. They'll always have a place in their heart for you, if you treated them well, but sooner or later, they'll have the strength and courage to move on. Also, in this phase of them knowing and accepting you aren't their ideal, they're often secretly making themselves available to other men, often unconsciously. Also, she's probably going to be scheming on how to turn you into a Christian. Waiting, hoping, that one of these Sunday's when you go to church with her, the good lord is going to touch you and you will see the light. She might use this hope to carry her along. So, don't cave bro! lol. This is actually a huge reason why people become Christian - to appease others in their lives who they seek to maintain harmony with. Just some things I've been through that might be worth considering.

My state (SC) runs a state lottery. Just saw a TV commercial the other day where a good ole boy walks into a mom and pop gas station and starts friendly banter with the clerk, where the customer and clerk are bantering over the state's prominent football team rival - clerk wearing a Clemson hat and customer wearing a Gamecocks hat. After the banter, the customer tells the clerk to give him a Clemson scratch-off ticket. lol It was designed to normalize a financially harmful behavior by wrapping it in community identity and working-class authenticity. Just a good ole friendly, hard-working, blue-collar South Carolinian on his way to work, stopping in for his morning coffee, doing what he does everyday - grabbing a scratch-off ticket. I see evolution at play. Those who continuously squander their survival resources (time, energy, money) are not fit for the current survival landscape. The more they chase dopamine, the more unfit they are for modern survival. It might take hundreds or even thousands of years before the collective gains enough consciousness to grow out of this. In the meantime, you'd have to rely on government to patch these exploits, because the individuals are largely not capable. When you're basically asleep - operating on robot-like autopilot - you can only hope that your environment doesn't cater to and nurture exploits, but that's not the world we live in, so most will be exploited. Without the independent ability (consciousness) to patch these exploits, their survival resources are unconsciously transferred to the exploiters, which daily increases the victim's karmic debt, as they are unconsciously complicit in the scheme. It seems the wolves are always one step ahead of the sheep. This is why life is serious. We need the sheep to not be sheep anymore. That's all I ever really wanted - for people to be liberated from exploitation, but awareness cannot be forced. This is our plight.

Yeah, that's rough. Many people get into Christianity and are just Christian in name and don't take it very seriously, but sooner or later, there's the very real risk that they incorporate it fully into their identity and lean into it all the way. That's when it becomes dangerous and near impossible for a non-Christian to be close to them for a length of time. They just untether from reality and you have to watch them drift further and further into delusion. It's hard to deal with and sad, really.

@Inliytened1 Sorry to hear about your breakup. That was a pretty long ride, I'm guessing?

Lol. My family is so afraid that I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity. That's why they think it's their duty. If I believed it, I would also feel obligated to save my loved ones. And they aren't interested at all in spirituality. Once you get them to go metacognitive with Christianity and tell them to truly lean into the spirituality of if it and avoid all the talk and professing and actually make spiritual change, they get scared shitless and say "that's not for me. Actually becoming like Jesus is impossible because we are sinners and he wasn't. He was perfect and we'll never be able to live up to him." Thus giving them permission to avoid the spiritual work of Christianity. And anytime spirituality does start to open for them, they think they're under attack be demons and the devil.

Sorry to hear that. Did their conversion start in prison/jail? Jail is a perfect place for indoctrination - an offering of hope and redemption to blot out the shame of it all. Religion is often an antidote to the shame and despair of the downtrodden. Rather than look their shame in the face, they run. I think it really just comes down to low consciousness and fear. For whatever reason, a minority of the population are born with sufficient courage to look reality in the face and call it what it is, and the majority aren't.

100%. And yeah, I’m sure healthier versions exist, but my only experience with it is that which you describe, so I’m not concerned with those healthier versions, the same as I’m not concerned with Buddhism. Toxic Christianity has been in my life since day 1. People who weren’t born into or close to it simply don’t have the direct experience to understand it.

Exactly like this in my part of the Bible Belt as well. Also, they’re very afraid of other kids “tainting” their own. They’re quick to demonize and hate in general, but you really notice it where their kids are involved. They’re so afraid that if they allow their kids basic freedoms and autonomy, both Lisa and Timmy will wind up sucking dick for smack. Lol. Trust and open dialogue isn’t something they consider with their kids. For them, it’s about dominance and control. I just saw a 16 year old Christian girl punished for having a harmless conversation with another teen on discord. She had to sneak to even download the app. Christianity is such a goddamn plague on humanity.

Maybe eating nothing but meat for nearly a decade has taken its toll.

Of course, and this is where the devil smuggles in and lays his justifications for you. How convenient is it that a game of social manipulation be taboo? So, so convenient.

IMO, pickup will hurt you in the long run because the very act betrays your integrity and authenticity. Sooner or later you will have to pay for the whole lot of corruption and self-betrayal you’ve engaged in - a reckoning which can only be avoided by doubling down into delusion. Secondary point: It feels dirty because it is dirty. If your family and friends call you while you’re on the way to “How to Be A Man - Hot Seat 2025” and ask “ so, what are you up to?”, would you feel comfortable telling them, or would you keep it a secret? What happens to your secret when you meet a girl and after dating for a while, you really start to like each other? You gonna try your best to burry the secret and hope she never discovers it or would you share with her freely all the time, money, blood, sweat, and tears you’ve poured into this project? If you have to hide something, that’s often a sign you’re breaking with your integrity.

Diddy will get out early on good behavior - just in time to simp for Trump 2028.