OrpheusNovum

Take a chance, it's something to throw dice over. BAM. GURA REMIX'D, BOI. Also worth saying (somewhat in my relation to my derpishness) playfulness stops being acceptable as an adult. We learn best when we're enjoying the learning process. That's the whole point of those TV shows for toddlers that DRIVE YOU FUCKING NUTS as an adult with their drawn-out songs about how to take a shit, or whatever. Learning becomes increasingly reductionistic. Stan Lee used to write in science concepts to his comics, hoping people would look for answers themselves. Look how many visionaries he inspired!

SCHEDULE Friday- Arrival and signing in begins after 4:00 pm. There will be a light dinner for all incoming participants. Saturday and Sunday- The morning begins with an hour of running, stretching and Kung Fu basics (1hr). Once finished, participants are served breakfast (1hr). After breakfast, participants are taught Qi Gong (1hr) and Tai Chi (1hr). Thereafter, participants are served lunch (1hr). After lunch is a 1hr break. Once break is over, participants are taught Kung Fu (2hrs.). After Kung Fu, participants are served dinner (1hr.). The rest of the day is allotted to free time. Monday- Morning exercises; breakfast; review of all disciplines; certificate ceremony and a light lunch. Sounds like a lot of information and hard work. As much as Leo advocates for yoga, I have found Tai Chi far more suited to my experience. I think it's something about digging into the egoic functions of the fight reflex and unwiring the stress response by slowing down your motions as you project that energy outwards. Mindful fighting. It's far more difficult than it looks, and always brings tears to my eyes when I see it.

As a writer it infuriates me to work so hard only to see that everything I produce is derivative, even if only in very nuanced ways.

I just found this, and I had to share! For $500, you get lodging and food in upstate New York where you get to learn Kung Fu from a Shaolin master for 3 days! I can't afford it this year, but this just moved to the top of my self-development bucket list! So much better of an investment than ideological programs from guys like Elliot Hulse and Dan Peña that can cost $4000-6000 a pop! https://www.usashaolintemple.com/shaolin-warrior-monk-retreat-2019/

Your attachment to the things that happened to you is derivative of your unwillingness to love that pain as you, and for what it showed you about Truth. I had the shit knocked out of me for 3 1/2 years, a year in my mom died. I'm still working on loving that for what it was along with all the childhood baggage that led up to it. That's why this is so hard. In the face of trying to love these things, bitterness and materialism will call back to you in the guise of truth. Listen at your peril.

Hey Jeremy, and welcome to a new paradigm! This work is not just really difficult, but in fact I can guarantee that it will be the most difficult thing you will ever do in your life. It takes extreme patience, focus and love to advance on the path of wisdom, which should always be your first priority. Knowledge, power, money, sex and even family or love can vanish in an instant without the wisdom to maintain these things. One of the biggest challenges I can here is that (likely all) knowledge as you know it now is fundamentally reductionist, or broken down from what it is as an eternal whole. Your movement from a fragmented or materialist paradigm to a spiritual paradigm is going to take a few things: Critical thinking to put the pieces together The ability to look at that which you "hate" and love it as yourself. The ability to forgive others and especially yourself as you realize there is no "other" A journal, to be filled with your insights (I'm still getting better at this one) A place to meditate daily (aaaaand this one) The realization that success is non-linear and stepping backwards is sometimes necessary. Besides, some paintings look better from afar than they do up close. Also, think back through your life and see if you can pinpoint a moment where everything seemed clear, or the realization "all is one" came to you with a sense of profundity (haha. Profundity. Funny word.) Other than that, I recommend never, ever drinking again ever, period. I have never known any serious spiritual teachers that drink even a drop of alcohol. It isn't worth it, and always leads you and those around you to a painful life.

From what I've seen, you shouldn't do Ayahuasca alone. There are retreats you can take where you'll be exposed to it gradually over the course of a few days by people who know what they're doing. Of course, I can't imagine how you'd get it from your everyday dealer, but it's worth saying.

That being said on Ayahuasca, throwing up has also been attributed to emotional purging. It can be a positive.

I wanna add personally, this has been a lot of my resistance to self-actualizing. I've had moments where I can see people's feelings clearly, or even know what it is they're going to say before they say it. There's a sort of guilt that follows, as though I've violated someone or done something wrong, so I immediately run back to ego and start making rationalizations again to cope. It's not that it's scary so much as it's a conflict of paradigms. Moving from the state of self-perceiving, or egoic states to an understanding of oneness. @Serotoninluv your comment about peeing on the table was pretty on the nose. Any tips on how to stop running from this?

If you're taking any mind altering substance in any capacity you should be doing far more thorough research than just asking on the forums. You can pull up those answers with google and webMD, dude.

@bmcnicho If I may add, and it may not be pertinent to your situation in particular, but it's always super important to question things, especially medical diagnoses relative to what it might mean for your particular lifestyle: I myself was diagnosed Autistic at 13, something pushed by my mother especially. What I realized eventually was that it was the result of trauma and cognitive dissonance (brain trying to move in two opposite directions at once) because my mother would tell me to behave one way, and I would mirror her behavior which was rife with victim dynamics. I've noticed that a lot of people diagnosed with Autism enter a freeze state in certain situations - mostly social - due to a split in cognitive processing. Tyler (or Owen, whatever he calls himself) from Real Social Dynamics had the same experience and talks about it a lot. It can be different for everyone due to a varying degree of environmental factors, so you'll have to look at it as it applies to you. The reason I say this is because I was able to deconstruct the factors that were causing the behavior, and I think it's been sloppy work at the hands of various psychiatric institutions to put labels on the behaviors when we haven't had the metrics to understand the causes up until the last 10 years. True Autism is caused by a synaptic overgrowth - usually at about age 2 or 3, humans undergo a pruning of synapses to reduce sensory intake. Those whose brains either don't undergo this process or have it stunted will live with the increased sensory input. That of course being said, sensory input can seriously work to your advantage if you're truly Autistic. I mean like one in a million special. Not to mention if you self-actualize with this increased input, you'll probably encounter things others won't, and quicker. Self-inquire about the roots of the behavior, or get a CT scan if possible. Either way, you'll find more to yourself than you bargained for. If you ever want to reach out, I've read a lot about Autism over the last 13 years. Feel free to inbox me.

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj You were the laugh I needed, but not the laugh I deserved.

Self-reflecting about porn, and why I started watching it so young. I found porn when I was 10, and got curious about it from that moment onwards. For a long time I've used it as a coping mechanism to provide a false sense of desirability and self-love. I know I need to commit to nofap, and I often make the excuse that it's hard. I think that along with cleaning up my diet and committing to not drinking anymore, I will be a new man.

Took a nap and had a pretty vivid dream. It would seem that someone somewhere wants me to understand something about myself in this world. I'll post the story as follows. I'm in a car with a man I knew somehow. His daughter is missing, presumed dead by fault of wild animal. He's angry - understandably - enough to bring his shotgun with him. He drives down a dead end. It was a small peninsula by a lake, and a wolf comes out of its den by under a tree and walks over to the side of the car. The man takes a few shots, but somehow misses (odd for a shotgun, but hey, it's a dream). I get out of the car, and I must have had something like a heavy stick or something to beat the wolf to death with. I back up onto a ledge and start thinking about how to take this thing out when I start to realize that the wolf has been relatively calm through the whole process. Out of eyesight of the man still sitting in his car, the wolf looks at me, almost lovingly as the emotion wells up within my body. I know in that moment I want no part in killing the wolf, and the dream ends as I wake up.