thedoorsareopen

Hope I'm not barging in, but as a counterpoint, I wanted to input my experience at a Saudi-funded elementary school in southern California, that I attended from preschool to 6th grade. At this school I was taught American mandated history, alongside a highly political ideology that was taught as spirituality and religion. Wahaabiist Islam. I was taught that my faith in God equaled waging holy jihad against the American government. I was taught explicitly that the most noble goal I could have in life was to study hard and ascend as high as I could into American government at the state or federal level and help subvert American democracy. I was taught explicitly to work to turn the American government into a Muslim institution. This is the difference between these two sides. The main component of Islam, salat, is performed five times a day, and as a method of prayer, essentially amounts to a method of self-hypnosis that if I'd gone through with it, would have driven this political ideology into the deepest part of my mind and soul. As it stood, it was the work of decades for me to deprogram and decondition my mind from this ideology masquerading as a spiritual discipline. Even though I never consciously agreed to it, I found it incredibly difficult to shake and feel as though my mind was colonized by this ideology. The only reason I didn't get completely mind controlled by it was because I have American family and as corny as it sounds, it was literally the power of love that held me apart from this ideology. I support the cause of Israel, and I support Israel becoming a more democratic, more equitable nation. I hope this war ends as soon as possible, and Israelis can manage to hold Netanyahu accountable for the crimes he was under investigation for before the war started. Whenever I see people resort to both-sides-ism on the Israel Palestine conflict, it rings so hollow to me. There would be peace if the Palestinians had agreed to the negotiated terms decades ago. And who has always been the broker for peace between these two? The supposedly warmongering US. I know for a fact that Joe Biden spent more days and hours stressing over the plight of the Palestinians in the past year than the billionaire leaders of Hamas.

My point is that as a leader, whether of a country, a company, or just a work team, to a large extent, the medium is the message. A large part of a leader's job is the messaging they engage in, and to some extent there is no "inside" on that. You are messaging outwardly and presenting an outward persona that sets the tone for the millions of people and organizations within and outside the US, and other people make decisions based on that messaging. Leadership is how large groups of humans operate quickly and efficiently, and to a meaningful extent, a leader's messaging is the content of their leadership. Especially in a role like the presidency, where the people being affected will never meet that president personally. This is why I value Kamala's choice of message, and why I consider Donald's so dangerous. This is also why, even if Kamala's messaging is measured and worked on with her staff, I don't consider that a negative. She's not writing a personal journal. Competent presidents work with large speechwriting teams to convey their agenda thoughtfully, and with nuance a single person may not be able to bring to bear in such a busy position. I'm not looking for Kamala to have a heart to heart with me, but the fact that the thesis of her message is one of dignity and opportunity, regardless of how genuine you think that is, shows that she recognizes the immense soft power the role of the presidency carries. It's not just about the policies of this institution known as the federal government, it's about what side of this nation, and the larger world, she is able to invoke merely through her word choice. Her inspiring choice of words shows she has an understanding of the gravity her prospective position holds, and that's what I make hiring decisions on as a voter.

I'm going to ignore the lazy both-sides-ism latent in this comment so I can point out that the words a leader uses are important. The tone a leader sets through their words, how they handle and channel emotions, and the message they convey to those who follow them, is what defines a leader. Listen to Kamala's rally speeches, she is a truly inspiring and unifying leader. She speaks of dignity, opportunity, and lifting all people up. Dismissing that out of hand as mere "lip service" is about as disingenuous as seeing Donald praising Hitler and instead of criticizing him, you get mad at the people pointing out his fascist, Nazi-baiting tendencies. The tone a leader sets defines the kind of leadership they employ. Part of the reason we are criticizing Trump's authoritarian ways is because most of us DO NOT WANT an authoritarian government. We want our country to become more democratic and representative, not less. This fascist playbook is un-American, and you show the lack of respect you have for the collective shared heritage of our society's institutions by supporting this self-serving sleazeball. For fuck's sake people, didn't any of you see the Star Wars prequels? The Blues Brothers? V for Vendetta? This is basic ass shit. When a conman politician comes along using hateful rhetoric and promising to shred the institutions of our society, we as educated and engaged citizens use the power of our voice and our vote to knock him back. This election cycle has shredded my impression of this forum as an enlightened place. Yall took some psychs and think you're geniuses as you sip the conservative koolaid.

This thread is how I know you guys don't go outside. This is literally NOT A THING. "LGBT restrooms." This is the only way you can make arguments in favor of red hat guy, you gotta come up with complete strawmen and argue them ignorantly and in bad faith.

Kamala has done so many podcasts. To say nothing of all the media appearances she's made in the MSM that Trump was too chickenshit to show up for. Kamala Harris - Courageous Leadership and Winning - Brene Brown Kamala Harris on Club Shay Shay Kamala Harris - Bret Baier Podcast Kamala Harris - All the Smoke Podcast Kamala Harris - Call Her Daddy Podcast Full list of Kamala Harris podcast appearances

Yeah, I don't know what country you're in, but this is what bothers me about Trumpism. It's not just raw materials and goods, it's not even just the systems and institutions. There is a collective shared ethos, a spirit, that we unconsciously rely upon every time we walk into a library, a post office, a courthouse or a state building. Every time we watch the fireworks on July 4th, or participate in elections. It's ephemeral, and it was developed through the collective shared history of the people of this country. And even having this jackass as a credible candidate for a major party cheapens that. It's not both sides man, it's just not, if you can't see that I don't know what to tell you. There was a big difference between your John McCains and Mitt Romneys, and this guy. People fought and died for this country, regardless of how cynical we are about it now. 12 generations of Americans lived through something like 14 billion manyears to deliver the country I was born into. They invented technology and social systems, fought wars and upheld principles. And by the time I was born, they'd perfected a standard of living the richest kings of yesteryear would have envied. Literally the only way we can fuck it up is by destroying ourselves. Over what? The number at the supermarket went up? Well I don't know where you've been but the number on my paycheck went waaaay up too. I made $7.15 an hour my first job. Now I see Panda Express paying $22/hr to start. It's hard to believe it all comes down to a matter of vibes within something called the "manosphere."

I support Kamala and oppose Trump because I believe a leader can choose to foster and nurture the system they lead, and that has a lot of benefits. I have a hard time believing that people really can’t see the difference between Trump and Harris, or Trump and Biden, in character. Whatever you want to say about policies, the example Trump set as a leader was pretty dark and a lot more people in this world were scared when he was in office. Biden is definitely aged, but whenever I’ve listened to him speak beyond a sound byte, whether in speeches or interviews, he’s genuinely inspired me with how he’s talking about lifting people up, or his relatable family background. He genuinely respects the spirit of America, and I do too. Everything about Trump is so cynical, from the fact that his main motivation to get back in office is to save his own ass from prison, to the way that when he was in office, the general feeling in this country was far more divided and self-interested. He is like some kind of human personification of realpolitik, but if you look at the way other presidents have governed, it’s with a sense of the dignity, respect, and solemnity of being a leader, not just of a government or an organization, but of a large group of people. Harris and Biden’s life journeys make true on the idea that we ARE a shared nation with shared goals and interests, while Trump’s life journey comes with the message of “tough shit, should been born rich enough for the rules not to apply to you.” My grandpa served in WW2, and back then they told themselves they were fighting to keep the world safe for democracy. I respect that service a lot. Whether you believe that’s naive, or that the US is a flawed democracy or that democracy isn’t worth it, you have to admit that the most ignominious way it could end is by a felon upending democracy and the rule of law simply to save his own ass from prison.

When Rust Cohle said "time is a flat circle," he was missing a dimension. The spiral is literally how you transcend that circle.

Doing acid at Burning Man a couple months ago felt like reaching into some high SD stage -- reality became a dynamically generated eternal now manifesting directly from my thoughts, or blurring the lines between "my" thoughts and just psychically absorbing into the thought space around me. I.e. did I really manifest that neon elephant art car, or did I psychically sense it a moment before subjectively becoming aware of the thought in my head? It really was at levels of -- wave my hands and create exactly what I'm thinking about right out of the dust, on the fly, moment to moment. Hungry? A nearby group hands me a grilled cheese. Wanna dance? A dance floor materializes out of the dust just by turning my head. Feeling ecstatic? Someone suddenly appears next to me and gives me a hug. But most of the time when I'm sober I'm still mostly stage Green, some stage Orange, even 5 years after learning about SD. I'm reaching towards Yellow but all the Yellow people I'm aware of are deep thinkers I can't meet in my daily life, and it seems that Yellow social structures don't exist yet, or maybe you can consider they exist on the internet only for now.

"If you're not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 50, you have no brain."

Actually I did the math again, and turns out you're right, you don't exist. Pack it up, boys.

When I was a kid I thought gender was meaningless. But the masculine/feminine polarity is an interesting distinction to draw. I find it interesting from a metaphysical perspective that this is one of the polarities of our existence. I mean, on one level it's the difference between "I am everything," and "I am something."

"You," as in the arbitrary conglomeration of mind identifications that you're currently feeling in your nervous system, doesn't really exist in a coherent way. But life is a paradox, a strange loop. "You" don't exist, and yet, you exist! Here you are! This thing is happening! Heart is beating, lungs are breathing, a physical location is seen. And the most fundamental truth that can be apprehended is, "I am." Don't fall for the neo-Advaita stuff. That is a very naive understanding. Who believes he doesn't exist?

I was born in California and raised by a white lady. I believe in American values even if they're an illusion. I was beaten and brainwashed by Muslims as a kid and have spent my entire life unraveling that experience. First I tried to go to college, get a job, etc. But every day I lived in a dark hole of loneliness because everyone in my world told me I was Arab. I'm half Egyptian genetically, but I grew up with American friends. I visited relatives in Egypt a couple times, but they were basically like full burka foreign Trump voters, it was very alienating. Okay, well, all my worldly plans blew up as I got older and the loneliness and self-alienation engulfed me. By the time I was 30, I was drinking 30 beers a day or a handle of vodka a day, but still I couldn't even die. So then I got into nonduality and learned virtually everything I could about comparative religion and spiritual practice. I can induce a nondual state at will now. And still, I am constantly inundated with inexplicable references to the Middle East wherever I go. I left the Muslim school I attended in 1996, and spent the next couple years being beaten and abused by my Egyptian dad. It got bad enough that I was put in foster care and my parents divorced. So he wasn't in the house anymore, which was a relief. But then 9/11 happened. So then Muslim violence was the topic of the news for the next 15 years. My dad remarried an Egyptian woman and had another family. But I was still kind of in contact because my full brother still lived there. He's pretty American, but plays into a lot of narc abuse dynamics with my dad, so I finally just cut them all off. Then Oct 7 happened. I just went to Burning Man, which should have been the height of free American hedonism, and instead it was plastered in tributes to the poor Palestinians. By the middle of the week, a Muslim guy camped right next to me. I fully believe reality is an illusion. The thing I don't get though, is like, if Muslims have God on their side, if this transcendent force of creation is rubbing these people in my face for a reason, why are Muslims generally stupider than Americans? Like, when I was a kid I was still brainwashed by the school I went to, which told me that Americans were evil, decadent and stupid. So I spent many years wondering if that could be true, and contemplating different value systems trying to determine look, is America really evil? It's no more evil than anywhere else in this human world, in the end. But Americans are generally smarter, savvier, and FOR SURE more in touch with their humanity. I feel that way, sometimes. When the constant references to the Middle East in my life aren't flaring up my alienation. I could go talk to any stranger on a bus and experience more genuine connection than I felt with my estranged Egyptian relatives. And man, those people did nothing but disrespect, abuse and marginalize me when I was still around them. I've been trying to move on, but if this is how reality is, I'm not sure how that would be possible. I live on the western edge of a continent on the other side of the earth from these people. By any rational accounting of things, there should just not be this much presence of that energy in my life. I never liked their culture, even when I was a little kid I thought of Islam like IngSoc from 1984. I thought I was doing the right thing fighting authority. But somehow I live in this middle place where Middle Easterners think I'm an asshole for rejecting their culture, and Americans think I'm racist for criticizing that culture. I feel completely alone in the universe. I thought nonduality, meditation, samadhi, forgiveness, fucking SOMETHING, would end this, but I forgive and forgive and it doesn't really change. I wouldn't feel so upset if they would just get the fuck off my nuts for a while. They were always trying to brainwash me, bind me, abuse me, demean me, degrade me, capture me, intimidate me. Like if they were just chill, it would be chill. I fucking WISH that heritage was worth a damn. But they're so miserable. I'm at the end of anything that could be termed a spiritual search. There's no more new information. I've read everything, practiced everything, experienced all the insights and awakenings. This fundamental karmic balance never seems to change.

Yeah. It's not about the story. I've untangled so much trauma, but it seems what is distressing me now is the earliest of it. Pre-verbal, and when that gets triggered, I have had no success finding equanimity because it's just, completely irrational. It's emotional and primal. I like the advice to get busy with something passionate. I guess from where I'm at I feel hopeless that worldly appearances could ever really occupy me anymore, but that's probably just incel vibes filtered thru what I think I know about awakening. I guess I need to stop engaging with the mind story and just up my morning meditation. Do the work. I recently did a Vipassana retreat and left early when I started hearing Arabic words. I never spoke Arabic. It's distressing to feel like my mind and body are totally porous to this thing I hate so much. After all this time, all the struggle, and it's just coming in from inside my mind. Must I really reckon with this? Is there no escape?

Thanks for the kind words, I'm actually surprised. I am such good friends with the splinters of my inner child. I learned a lot from getting to know them. But again, I am at the end of that. ACT, EFT, DBT, CBT, Inner Child Work, IFS, schema therapy, body scan meditation, somatic experiencing, yoga... I have fully mapped out my mind and body and the traumas in it. I'm like Charlie from It's Always Sunny talking about Pepe Silvia over here with this shit. I did a lot of healing work and learned some amazing things about the nature of humanity. But I just want to stop resonating with those people and be the fucking Californian I have always been. Maybe I'll go back to trying to manifest a Cadillac.

You make a good point. If someone were to realize themselves in the 1500s, they'd probably only have a life of indentured servitude to fall back to. We get to ride helicopters! Heh or any of the other thousand novel things going on in this time and space.

My favorite part of American Psycho the book was the long brand name descriptions of each item of clothing and accessories the characters were wearing. I seem to remember they went on and on to the point where you wondered if they were wearing 3 outfits all on top of each other, which fit the surreal vibe of the book. The discussion on sincerity vs irony reminds me of a discussion in another thread recently about how western society is stuck in post-modern thinking. Everyone knows you can't just sincerely like something, there's a personality trend to have some cynical detachment about things. But it's like people forgot why that attitude originally was valuable, and it's arguable that the downfall of western society is in being unable to make that leap to the next paradigm where irony and criticism can be used in service of actually improving culture and society, rather than just being a pose.

I don't see many people reading metaphysical things into Nolan, it's clear most of his fans are more secular and that stuff goes over their heads. But, he clearly knows what he's doing, or at the very least is an artistic vessel for truthful ideas.

If you're interested in nonduality, but don't follow an organized religion, how important is the concept of faith to you? I'm curious because for a couple of years I grooved on nonduality, meditating on oneness, and reading about Brahman. I thought I lived in an impersonal universe. Turned out I didn't read far enough ahead. Earlier this year, Ishvara, or just something more akin to infinite intelligence, or a more traditional idea of God has been revealing itself to me. I'm never exactly sure what I'm perceiving, all I really know is that I know nothing, right. But I've been surprised the last few months how resistant, resentful and unsettled I am that an all-powerful and aware transcendent intelligence really has been watching me this whole time (hey God!)... I'm still really resentful about the religious school I attended as a kid, and it's a severe mindfuck that there is something more than just the base, ineffable substrate of the universe. You mean you were watching the whole time? I feel like I'm right back to being a kid, struggling with free will vs fate, and really struggling with humility. The way I feel by default is very resentful about this, but I know that's not very skillful or helpful. I have been paralyzed in terms of returning to the world in much of a meaningful way since discovering nonduality, because I feel like I simply don't know where I stand. It kinda helped my emotional health a little bit, I was severely suicidal, depressed and dysfunctional leading up to that discovery, and since then I've been kinda limping along, thinking maybe one day I would figure out how to motivate myself to do things like socialize, start a business, try to get a job that isn't near minimum wage, but I feel like if there's an intelligence watching me, and I have already befallen the many struggles and crises and just overall complete and utter psychological and spiritual dysfunction I've felt in my life, and that intelligence oversaw all that suffering, I don't have much hope for the future. I literally had more hope when I believed God didn't exist, and I'm kinda not sure how to proceed now. I've just been defaulting to Vipassana meditation and gratitude practice, but it's kinda like once the high vibe wears off after a couple hours, I'm just back in the ego mind, which feels absolutely hopeless, and of course is conditioned to be fearful and is not at all welcoming of the "good news" that I am surrounded by intelligent Love. I seem to be vacillating between being high on meditation and prayer practices that cause me to believe in delusional love and light stuff, then being busted back down to depression sadness when I try to make contact with the world. I am kinda surprised that all these years of trauma recovery and study of spiritual practice and the human psyche have not really afforded me any confidence in the relative world. I'm not really sure how to project my intentions into the world or into the future. I was kinda curious what you consciousness explorers make of the concept of faith, if you're coming from a specifically NON-religious paradigm. I'm kinda thinking this whole nonduality trip was just a cul-de-sac of spiritual masturbation designed to turn an agnostic into a believer, and when I'm filled up with gratitude or samadi, I feel hopeful. But the hunk of meat that makes up my human mind is fucking disgusted and sad, I guess I'd always hoped that the ultimate real truth was something completely different from just... "magical irrational God just arbitrarily fucking with me by teaching me bullshit 'lessons.'" Even after all this meditation I'm struggling to place my faith in that. I guess I was deluding myself with nonduality that maybe I, the little me, was really "it," but it's becoming clear that I'm not. It's not that I thought I was that great, I guess I just thought if I lived in a cold, uncaring universe at least that meant that it really was all my fault, and I could do something about it with my merit, and instead it seems there's forces beyond my control after all, and it makes me feel sad and powerless.

Surprised there's not more Nolan love here, his movies took on a totally new meaning for me after learning about nonduality and metaphysics. If Nolan isn't an awakened person (I don't really know anything about him personally), his films at least act as conduits for those ideas. There's tons of metaphysical resonance in his films: The writing's clunky, but in Interstellar he's clearly talking about Love as the ultimate force behind everything. Plus the Tesseract and higher dimensional thinking. There's a huge theme in his films, including Interstellar, of our future selves helping us. Obviously Tenet touches that too. Tenet is basically a story of a guy who initially thinks he's a random person being swept up by incomprehensible events, to realizing that he's literally the protagonist of a story he was directing all along, from his subjective future. It's a story of awakening. There's a line in Oppenheimer that got me... "It is a new way to understand reality. Einstein's opened the door, now we are peering through. Seeing a world inside our world. A world of energy and paradox that not everyone can accept."

I just wanted to say that your opinion initially comes off as extreme, but I feel where you're coming from. Yeah I don't have to imagine that. That was my experience. It has been such a mindfuck to realize how far from reality that really is. I literally spent my childhood unsure if I was going to grow up to fight in a holy war. It really makes you wonder if like... are incoming souls just booting up Call of Duty? Is it just an FPS and I'm the asshole who keeps trying to Mr. Rogers this shit? Is God just the server admin for a cosmic CS:GO instance?

I know this isn't the spirituality forum, but one of the whole challenges of being human is from the perspective of Love, there are a million things to be grateful for in literally every second, it's just that our survival-oriented brains exclude those from its narrative because it's oriented towards identifying problems to solve. It's closer to the metaphysical truth to become aware that every single thing that goes right is like a miracle, honestly. It's one of the reasons gratitude feels like an emotional cheat code, because you could always express more gratitude. Obviously we need to be critical of government, but it's like we all get up every day just continuing to grind the axe, and after a while, if those are the only thoughts you register about the government, that it's bad, corrupt, etc, you create that. My personal thoughts about the American government are like yeah, sure, there are a 100 bad things you can cite that were just never resolved, and represent ongoing threats to the rights of the individual. CIA plots, Patriot Act, drone bombing, whatever. But despite that, the government (and the society) delivers a certain high level of personal freedom and autonomy. It works. The government's not personally going to solve all your problems or make you a millionaire with a check in the mail, but eh, I've been in worse reality premises. It's something I can work with. But yeah ultimately it's up to us to create the realities we want. And I suppose if I'd befallen a serious problem like sickness, or being unable to work, those are pathways in our society that still need a lot of fixing to prevent people from falling through the cracks. It ain't perfect by a long shot, and as a citizen I hope I can help to see those problems move towards a real resolution. But despite the common tropes in our society, I never had problems at the DMV, or getting services when I was unemployed. I even dealt with the legal system once, and expected that the legal process would be very unfair. It wasn't. It legitimately rehabilitated me, and I had a lot of respect for how every step of the process was handled. There was a lot of effort put forth to impress upon me that it was in the best interests of the state, and the society in which I live, for me to be a happy healthy human. I was surprised. I'm just saying, there's the bumper stickers we repeat to ourselves every day. Life's a drag, politicians are crooks, this country's going down the tubes. But take a look, put your meditation hat on. Is that really what you're experiencing?

Nothin to do but get on with it.

Well, I mean it's "me," in terms of some bullshit language games. But the dude waking up here didn't invent the universe and seems to have very little influence over the course of events.