OrpheusNovum

The thing to remember about DaVinci is that he wasn't some head-in the clouds romantic. Not by any shot of the imagination. He was the kind of man who had corpses shipped to his house to dig through their guts. He decided he was going to learn about the world hands-on and at any cost. He captured beauty and ingenuity on a visual level. He was masculine in his drive, with an outwardly feminine essence. There was no path cut for him, just an inner calling. Ego is a tool, a child's toy we get too caught up playing with - something I'm extremely guilty of on a daily basis. It tells us our needs and helps us survive. We become so dependent on it, we think we can't function without it. Write down what your needs in life are, then trace back the reasoning. And realize the reasoning is going to seem stupid to your logical mind. It's also best if you're not too rigid with this. Our animal mind prefers intuitive abstraction. Logic is cool, but we're the only species to evolve it. If it was that great, it would be intrinsic to far more than just human beings. Intuitive abstraction is also the best way to work towards developing any sort of psychic potential you may have laying dormant. Think the weirdest, dumbest, craziest thought you can think and go full force. If it's ridiculous, embrace the irony and laugh at it. It will be painful, because you risk being shamed simply because our society has become so rigid that we repress and deny our animal. Shame occurs when we operate or are pushed outside the expectations and standards of a given social value system. Embrace crazy. If you need better communication and relationship with your body, try things like Tai Chi, Taoist philosophy and improv theater.

I should add, I've actively stopped dating for the last two years for the sake of contemplation. I think the biggest problem is that I started watching porn when I was like 9 or 10, and between that and my parent's fucked up relationship, I've been in a fog. I kind of already knew the things you guys were saying, but maybe I just want a way to be accountable?

You need to consider that your analysis of someone's behavior is always subject to your egoic projections .

So, I used to be 450 pounds, and I dropped 150 over the last 2-3 years, but I'm at a plateau. Can anyone share their tips, tricks and tools?

There's a company called Orpheus Self-Care entertainment (no affiliation) making VR Consciousness hacking software! Thought you all might be interested in looking into it. Might be a cool way to trip. https://www.orpheus-selfcare.com/

Metaphysics is where LIFE awaits! I'm not in the best spot to talk right now, but holy fuck do I get excited when I think about what's coming in the next few years. For example, there's a company operating under my namesake - Orpheus Self-care entertainment - creating VR tripping. Technodelics! Growth isn't slowing down, it's accelerating. What we want you to get to is from subsistence to being. Aristotle once called Metaphysics "The being of being". It's as good a place as any to start. Also, Clarke's third law states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Give it 20-30 years. Under pressure from climate change, we're gonna start seeing some awesome shit.

I've always been a very inquisitive person. Asking "what if" has become somewhat of an art form for me, an easy segway into metaphor. One of the things that infinitely fascinates me that seems to go unnoticed by the masses is the Teleology of language. Take for example, the term "Homo Sapiens", latin for "Wise Man". I would posit that given the nature of evolution (especially as it pertains to enlightenment), it is inevitable that at some point, we should outgrow this definition. But how? Will subjectivity itself begin to dissolve, revealing clearly and evidently beyond any doubt the metaphysical structure of existence, rendering biology inadequate as a field of research? Or will we simply see the need to change definitions and adhere to our understandings as they evolve with us? I'm always excited by the radical implications of Clarke's Third Law - any sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic. Or perhaps you could say that any sufficiently grounded magic can manifest through science, which is the position I take. My reasoning is simple - for any idea to become a manifest scientific truth, it must first exist within concept, which is innately magical and unbound. If you threw a smartphone back to 1500, it would look pretty goddamn magical, because there would be systems predicating its existence that will not have had existed "yet". I wonder if, and to some extent presume that space-time itself - beginnings, ends, timelines - are all wrong interpretations bound by gnostic sensory experiences. Time only moves linear to the extent we perceive it to, and I imagine that there are likely many timelines that run through our reality, with different expressions of what reality is down to the minutia of its basest functions.

Wow, I relate to this a lot. I'm really angry with myself lately because my mom's trust has been funding my lifestyle, and most of my family members just do everything for me. It's completely emasculating when all the major decisions in my life were made for me. I think what we can look at is where this comes from. For my example, I think it's a mix of egos. There is my own, as well as my family's. I may be meeting my own survival needs, but ultimately hindering those of the group. Shame is a biological message that says "I am operating outside of the value system of the group". I would trace the string back, see how it sources these suicidal tendencies, then make an attempt to communicate with the individuals at the heart of its source. That way, they know what you're doing to change things, your mind isn't racked with anxiety over debt, and you can focus all your energy on just picking yourself up and moving along.

Realization: Getting high on anger is a form of addiction and antisocial escapism.

This will be a poetic collection of my daily struggles seeing through my own bullshit. I failed to see for a long time just how much anger rules my life. I find myself between two cliffs, the Scylla above and Charybdis below. The Scylla is my fear, anxiety, rage, shame, loneliness and tendency to overthink everything. Charybdis is the vacuum created by my feelings of hopelessness, seeking more with each downward drain of the crashing waves within my soul to drag me down, ever deeper, into my own underworld of nightmare. I was a lotus-eater, maddened into a Dionysian frenzy of ego, seeing nothing beyond my pleasure seeking, the screen of euphoria covering my eyes, seeing all as against me, like a Maenad on a binge of wine and blood.

I sort of had an epiphany while letting out my anger in a more productive way. Yesterday, my argument with Leo caused some stir. Today, I think I gained the ability to get at the heart of what he's saying, and it's pretty interesting. What happens, even with words, is that created words are unconscious ego-projections of perceived meanings that create a sort of gnostic stacking system. The more people stack knowledge upon knowledge within this system, the more believable the system becomes, and the more vivid the illusion. After all, it all sits and stacks on a projective fabrication of something that does not exist! Science itself as a concept is an ego fragment of someone's perceived angle of illusion of "what is". Using words invokes and projects the perceived meanings of the fabricator of these concepts. What does this mean? The fuck if I know. But color me intrigued.

You know, I've had really powerful empathic experiences before, but I've always explained it through psychology. It freaks me out, and then I feel ashamed because I feel like I'm violating people's space for something I can't control.

Zenner cards?

What kind of pushback?

Is this what self-deception looks like?

Honestly, my whole family dynamic is based on Jim Carrey jokes. My siblings and I will call each other up just to fling around quotes from Ace Ventura. Liar Liar was my favorite movie when I was 6 years old. It was the hardest my mother and I had laughed together. She hated him before that, but it brought us closer.

I'm starting to get a rush of poetic flow, this is exciting! How has science deepened since your enlightenment?

I wear masks, my good man! A tragedian of sorts, and of many trades. Singing, poetry, comedy and acting. Time to paint the mask and put it at the bottom of my trunk as a memento. Time for heart to shine through.

Which is not to say that I haven't found and understood some of the tricks and traps along the way, but that many of them have been ignored for the sake of performance. The show must go on, as they say.

Ahhh, so here I am with the root of my problem. I'm a performing artist with the belief that my work only operates smoothly and as it should as long as I carry the need for attention. My attack was the result of the belief that I can't have my life purpose without ego, because method acting is the process of ADOPTING ego to convey truth. I guess I should stop practicing method, and look for another way.

I guess my frustration comes from my understanding of this being "all action is ego, therefore don't act", which contradicts taking massive action to change your life. How am I supposed to get anything done?

Can you elaborate?

HAHA. Fair enough.

Thanks for the perspective. I think I'd like to let this thread die if I can, no need to embarrass myself further. Keeping a journal starting here: