BipolarGrowth

@softlyblossoming This does a much better job of explaining it than I can currently. To put it simply, one’s state is much more holistic and impactful than one’s mood. The first image should be the second in the order, but I don’t know how to fix this.

You could try to find a healthy “addiction” that’s more rewarding than your current addiction. You go to behavior that you know is in ways detrimental because you are lacking something in some area. Having a healthy way to relieve this lack could be a more likely solution than trying to reverse your psychology drastically. Another thing could be to systematically work to reduce anything which might create this sort of lack feeling that leads you to use your addictive substance/behavior. You can apply a concept Leo uses at times which he calls requisite variety to this situation. There is a solution to your addiction. You simply have not tried the right thing, or more likely the right combination of a number of things, to overcome this yet. If you try enough solutions in an intelligent way, the likelihood that you come out on top of this is pretty high.

I don’t think anything about this. There’s not enough information for me, so it’s foolish to come up with stories. But the question I asked is meant to point you back toward the point you had where you were seemingly a “fresh incarnation”. If you didn’t retain knowledge at that point, why would you expect to retain it in a future incarnation if this is the only “solid” information you have in a certain sense? The past is just as imagined as the future, yet it does seem to feel more certain for most people. I will say that I had the thought that there was no possibility that any others had experience as I did around age 5-7. This is one of my first vivid memories that I still have access to. It was certainly at least a mystical experience to a degree, obviously completely sober. I find it quite improbable that I was around anyone talking about solipsism at that age judging off of how my family was/is. This makes me wonder where this intuitive realization came from. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible that it was from a “previous life”, but this would of course take a good amount of speculation to arrive at that conclusion. Really, I just see the past and future as a mystery. It’s not here. It’s not “real” in a sense. I prefer to just focus on things now rather than spend time on imponderables, even though I used to love theorizing in the past. Once you really start to sense what this is, it has a way of making you not care too much about these imagined possibilities, at least that’s how it worked for me.

Not the same.

If you wanna go deep into Buddhism, here’s a hidden gem.

I have been unstable, suicidal, depressed, and manic many times, but spirituality is what helped me have better “mastery” over my psyche than anything else ever has. Nothing else comes close for me tbh.

Then just develop yourself where your interests lie when you have the time rather than forcing “normal” activities which are unfulfilling. Eventually, you’ll probably exhaust the interest in spirituality to a degree and normal stuff might be more appealing again. At least that’s what happened for me.

No way to tell, but there is a question to ask. Did you know anything about enlightenment in your first memories?

Go find an interest. It’s really that simple, but it can feel hard in that state. If you look hard and long enough, you will find something that makes you feel alive. That’s pretty much guaranteed unless you die unexpectedly. Go try some new things. Or go do something you used to like/love.

Basic needs being met will make happiness easier in theory. You can be happy in plenty of bad circumstances, but that ability might be harder to develop if survival needs take too much of your time.

@mivafofa just to be clear, I was suggesting that you likely do not have bipolar disorder. If you think ADHD is covering the full picture, there’s a good chance that’s more accurate than bipolar disorder.

@Muhammad Jawad you take a shit in the middle of the carpet. Rather than saying, God took a shit in the middle of the carpet, therefore I don’t have to respond to this at all, you say, oh fuck, the relative appearance of I took a shit in the middle of the carpet. Perhaps the relative appearance of an I might be best served and best serve the relative appearance of others by cleaning up the shit. This is not rocket science. If you think it’s the Absolute doing everything which in turn makes responsibility obsolete, do an experiment of taking little to no responsibility in a relative sense and see if you’re more satisfied by taking little to no responsibility. Edit: Also, there’s no separation or difference between the “illusory you” and “God/Life” if we want to be technical. There’s not even a singular thing. There’s not even a lack of a singular thing. There are no labels that truly work for the “Absolute”. There are no classifications for it, even the classification that there are no classifications for it.

Funnily enough in the context of this thread, I actually have ADHD and bipolar disorder both clinically diagnosed in rather foolproof ways. You used to see yourself as having a gift. That’s how it actually was for you. Now, you discover that that same gift lines up with something people typically call a disorder. Now, you start to feel worse about yourself. The gift is still there just as much as ever. Now you just realize that is a double edged sword in a sense. ADHD can be beneficial in certain ways for sure, and it can also be detrimental in certain ways. All this really means is your brain is a bit different than most people’s. Now that you have a bit more context, you can do things to try to keep the advantages and work on the disadvantages. The result could be a much “better” you. This is actually a lucky opportunity in a sense. You have the potential to understand aspects of yourself in a new way. If 95% of the population had ADHD, a normal brain to us now would quite likely be called a disorder. When I was first taking a computer test facilitated by my therapist to test for ADHD after scoring as having ADHD on a questionnaire he gave me, I tested far worse than most people in regards to attention/reaction time. After trying the test on ADHD medication, I scored far better than neurotypical people. The scores were something like -3.5 and 7.2. A score of zero is average or normal. The first time I showed a significant deficiency, the second time I showed an advantage over twice further off the norm in the positive direction. People with ADHD have a bias toward more stimulation whereas people without ADHD often do better with less. It’s not really a disorder in a sense. It’s just that our world is built for neurotypical people. I’d imagine you likely have the ability to hyper-focus on things you are interested in compared to people who are neurotypical if you do in fact have ADHD. One of the best things that’s worked for me is to structure my life in a way that I get to use this hyper-focus as an advantage. It’s as simple as structuring your life around stuff you actually care about and enjoy doing which is generally beneficial whether someone is neurotypical or not. There is certainly an overlap in certain symptoms in regard to bipolar disorder and ADHD. The chance that you have bipolar disorder type 1 is likely quite low. You would’ve been hospitalized for it by 30+ years old in almost all cases. There’s a chance you could have bipolar disorder type 2 (which is characterized by less severe/intense manic episodes), but I wouldn’t worry much about this unless you notice a number of large state changes in yourself. Bipolar disorder is not really much about moods. It’s about states. A state change is far more significant than a mood shift. There are plenty of people who experience tumultuous mood shifts that are rather neurotypical, at least at the genetic level. There are hardly no people who experience manic or hypomanic state changes naturally who do not have a “disorder”. If you and others around you do not notice significant changes in your expression moving from hypomanic/manic to depressive, the chance that you have bipolar disorder is quite low. I’d recommend getting tested for ADHD as soon as is reasonable, and if you still feel there’s something more not explaining the full picture, you can try getting evaluated for other factors. I recommend doing the test sooner rather than later as it will open the door to the use of medication if necessary which has positively transformed many people’s lives. Also, keep in mind that if you do go to consider medication there are ADHD medications that are not stimulants which work well for some. Hope this helps.

This seems to be a good way of creating unnecessary worry and anxiety. I would not recommend it. I think focusing on what’s good in the moment is a better approach as far as mental health goes. It’s helped me quite a bit. Dhammarato has a lot of videos on YouTube about wholesome thinking resulting in the lack of suffering. Supposedly, this is a large part of the basics that the Buddha taught to get out of suffering, at least according to someone who was a monk for 2-3 decades and is probably the happiest old man I’ve ever met.

I think this could be helpful. At the very least, if people want to use a common word in a different way than it is generally understood, they can clarify that they are using the word with a different meaning. I’ve had a number of conversations here where it feels like we’re lightly arguing/debating when at the end of the exchange it is discovered we were essentially talking about a very similar point although our definitions were different which caused us to appear to be in disagreement.

Taking personal responsibility will likely improve your life whether it’s your fault or not.

Came here to say essentially the same thing. They cannot be separated.

This work has at times lost me friendships and romantic relationships. It also has given me many higher quality friendships than I ever had before. I find pursuing a romantic relationship to be not worth the trouble unless the person was a truly good fit or things happened rather naturally now. I think this might actually be quite good for me personally as I used to be a romantic love addict to a degree. I think the main thing to keep in mind is that you’re differentiating yourself with this work. This naturally can lead to some isolation from people with certain perspectives simply because there might not be enough overlapping interests to create a good foundation for a friendship or romantic relationship. I would say that this process has brought me to the depth of friendships and relationships I wanted though at times. I have many friends, pretty much exclusively online, who I can discuss this work with, and this has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. If you want to create good friendships and relationships, it can be beneficial to try to make those connections in places where people share similar interests. Best of luck.

This is essentially my perspective which I was waiting to post until I was done seeing what else has been said. I think that Nahm’s teaching has a good value for certain people at a certain point in their practice, but I think he was far too detached from the needs of who he was commonly communicating with. The demonization of thought or “that’s just a thought” is just a thought, lol. The whole teaching style ultimately deconstructs its own usefulness, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It can take people to a good place. Regardless, thought is not separate from Being. Anyone with the impression that there is a separation has created an unnecessary gap which fragments experience in counterproductive ways when done to extremes. Thought is one of the best tools for the spiritual path when used in effective ways. Of course, most people come to spirituality with thought causing them countless issues, but the entire teaching should not be to be anti-thought forever. This will not bring people the best experience/life they are capable of, but it is a necessary step to create some gaps between thought at times for this work. I appreciate Nahm and have mostly appreciated his presence here, but it has come to be problematic. I also would guess that we’re not going to see a change in communication and are more likely to see him gone for at least a while. I say this in part because I noticed a trend where he started moderately trolling Leo and his teachings lately. What Nahm pointed out about Leo’s teachings was in many ways accurate from a certain perspective, but as a mod especially, I think he was taking it too far and setting a bad example at least in the past week or two. I find his stuff to not be that hard to understand for the most part, but I see it as too simplistic and attached to a singular perspective oftentimes which was one of the faults I saw with it. If it were a normal member and not the most active mod on the forum, I don’t think this would be much of an issue.

I think it’s probably foolish to assume Leo’s course would not prioritize psychedelics to likely a high degree.

You are already omniscient and omnipotent, and this has nothing to do with one aspect of experience being able to teleport into Winnie the Pooh’s porn collection at will. You are omniscient and omnipotent because you are everything. Creating everything. Everything is done through you with no action taken at all. You just happen to believe you are only a part of what you actually are. Even the idea that you are creating everything is a rudimentary expression of what is actually the case. It’s simply a stepping stone to a deeper truth. Everything that can be known is known right now as there is only right now as it appears. Appearances of a lack of knowledge are just one of the things you perceive which is illusory in the way it impacts your beliefs of what is. You think there is a moment in the future in which more can be known when in truth there is no such moment. You think there is a moment in the past in which less was known when in truth there is no such moment. The same goes for power, except there is the addition that you think that your power means the power of the human appearance to enact its will upon reality which is confused as the human appearance is only a tiny sliver of what you are.

Is it possible to see as it’s not?

You can most certainly achieve no body sensation. Otherwise we would not have so many people talking about formless jhana. I was having minor surgery on my toe in the middle of an extremely painful allergic reaction to a numbing agent when all bodily sensations first disappeared for me. No body sensations alone is not the same as cessation though, but there are no bodily sensations or perception in cessation.

Read MCTB (completely free online): https://www.mctb.org/ Specific information about the jhanas can be found by going to the table of contents. Watch Dhammarato’s YouTube channel. This is an episode where he describes the foundations of the first jhana to me. Bhikkhu Candana’s YouTube channel is a great resource for Buddhist meditation. Here’s his video on the Ānāpānasati Sutta which is possibly the most important for understanding how to meditate using Buddhist techniques: