trenton

@Leo Gura At the moment I am laughing my ass off because of how confused my penis is over my transgender male cousin. I'll do the exercise anyway though. If I remember correctly, you eventually start talking about how if someone experienced non-dual states of consciousness, then you realize that nobody hurt you. Psychologically, you can heal the wounds somewhat by seeing the similarities we have in others, but this is far removed from realizing all is one. I know not to abuse the exercises like a woman in an abusive relationship.

Update: I did some writing with the intention of sharing it with my family. My back, shoulders, and neck are less tense then it previously was and it feels good. I previously had some problems with getting an erection, but it is starting to get easier again. I could masturbate, but I don't need to. I am now hyper active and I struggle to sit down and focus. I noticed that I had also been suppressing my inner child. I am actually very emotionally sensitive and I feel tempted to use it toward selfish ends by being a crybaby to get what I want. I was afraid of this because I know there are people who use the excuse of autism to try to get away with selfishness, and the thought of doing that terrified me. I would be hurting other people in the process. I noticed that my suicidal thoughts were simply a cover for guilt. I never acted on the belief that I hated myself because deep down I love myself and I don't want myself to do something that I would regret. The facade of self hatred has lifted along with my suicidal thoughts. If a person discovers that suicidal thoughts are masking guilt, then this may trigger the insight that you actually love yourself. This is when the suicidal thoughts let go of you. Furthermore, I have a cousin who is a transgender male. I don't want to be rude so I use the pronouns he/him. Sometimes I feel conflicted because I see feminine qualities in his face and in his voice. I start thinking like he is she. I then start to think that he is cute. There is a slight sexual desire resulting from this like with my sister. Although I am hyper active, waking up early, and maintaining this energy throughout the day, I am not assuming it is all over. There is probably more to what will happen to me after this episode of hyper activity. I slept easily last night, but woke up around 4. I think a helpful technique I started doing is writing out prayers. It sounds religious, but I what I am doing is writing out what I want. I wrote how who I wanted to be and how I wanted to change as well as what I wanted for my family and for the world. It is about becoming happier in my body and mind it is working. Of course there is a bunch of minor trauma, but I won't post it here. Is anybody familiar with the phenomenon I'm experiencing? What should I expect in this process?

@Leo Gura Yes, I actually did do something with my sister. I was pretty young and so was she. We ended up in a ton of trouble with mom. After the fact I started telling myself it was just a nightmare, but I was aware of the self deception. We put our private parts in each other's faces. Ever since I had tons of issues with self trust, anxiety, and more. For some reason I hated myself and I felt a ton of weight from that event for pretty much the rest of my life up until this point. I spent some of yesterday just laying in bed crying over everything that happened. I am doing my best to trust myself and stop doubting myself. The constant anxiety and underlying depression is painful and I don't want it to translate into suicidal thoughts which it often did. My therapist knew about all of this, but for some reason we never discussed it, so I probably need a different therapist. After I was done crying, I felt better for a moment and then suddenly thought of all of this. This was my younger sister. My older sister is the one I sometimes think about having sex with, but I never bring it up because that would make everything worse. I started thinking I should kill myself for a moment again. So, yes I want to fuck my sister.

I have been struggling with anxiety for years. It feels like a surge running up my spine and into my brain. It is painful and causes my brain to start shaking. I started doing some kind of exercise of mind and body awareness. I combined this with writing prayers and I started generating fewer surges throughout my body. I started to feel very tired and I no longer had the same energy that I usually have for walking. As I relaxed I started experiencing intense feelings of indifference and sadness. My mind started getting much quieter, until I started having suicidal thoughts. I sat in bed for hours wanting to kill myself. I started looking at the suicide hot line site. I probably should have called them a long time ago, but I still haven't. It is partially because I am back to happy and sometimes I feel amazing. I should probably mention that. Eventually, I found a tool on the site for thinking traps commonly associated with depression. I took a test for depression and I got moderately severe. I took one in the past and I thought I had mild depression. I took one with a psychiatrist and she told me I was depressed. I'm not sure how depressed I am. Here's the tool for reframing negative thoughts. I am critical of the percentages assigned to the think traps, so you might have to scroll. I think writing my own reframes is the most effective. https://screening.mhanational.org/changing-thoughts-with-an-ai-assistant/ I hope this makes you happier.

I know someone with ESP. I visited my grandma's house and her friend came over. I would have to ask her for the name. When I walked out in front of this woman she looked at me quietly for a moment. She then told my family that I either had or still have a girlfriend and I think about her all the time. I was a bit depressed over it. I didn't want to say who it was. The rest of my family was shocked because they didn't know I had a girlfriend. Suddenly, the woman started saying the letter A. My grandma then started saying who is it? Abby? Abigail? I didn't say. The psychic said that I was hard to read, but I either have or had a girlfriend whose name started with A. I turned around and walked downstairs. About a half hour passed and suddenly, the psychic said the letters A, L, I. The psychic went downstairs with my grandma. She said that although the front of my head is hard it read, she can see it in the back of my mind. When she saw the back of my head it allowed her to see A, L, I. My grandma was excited. She asked is it Alicen? I told them that it was Alice. So yes, super natural powers are real. As for developing them, a woman mentioned it to me on a ghost tour. She had a friend who has psychic abilities and could feel the presence of spirits. Apparently, it is possible to develop the ability, but she was unable to do it.

I want to argue against a common mistranslations in the bible. First of all, the term "homosexual" never existed in biblical times and nobody thought like this back then. In fact homosexuality was broadly accepted. The word "homosexual" had to be added later because The word did not exist in Hebrew. The preacher used the term "sodomite" as he condemned gay people. In fact this term was intended to refer to gay people, but rather 'sellouts.' That is priests of false gods. Female priests were referred to as harlots. Because the meaning of the words we use change over time, a literal word for word translation of holy texts will inevitably lead to falsehood in that the intended words do not carry the intended thought. The word 'sodomite ' carries the thought 'homosexual' but should mean false priest or sell out. Furthermore, although Leviticus is the most commonly sited, the Hebrew text from which it originates is in fact very obscure. The translations of the passage very significantly. A German version of the bible interprets it as shrine prostitution and therefore reads "men shall not lie with youth" rather than "men shall not lie with men." Shrine prostitution explains most of the examples which are interpreted as homosexuality. In my opinion, the hardest part of the bible to argue with on the grounds of translation issues is Romans chapter 1 in which Paul appears to condemn women having sex with women and men having sex with men. I could not find the Hebrew text for this section of the bible, so the best I can find is Greek. An alternative explanation is that Paul is condemning sex in a temple, and not homosexuality in general. Of course I don't believe in the bible, but I find it interesting to read into some of this anyway. What do you think of Romans chapter 1? Is this a clear condemnation of homosexuality or not? Specifically 1:26-27.

@Hibahere The common position you see on this forum may be a consequence of men who fear losing autonomy and freedom through commitment. Being okay with cheating appears to give these men more freedom. I understand that most people feel betrayed because of cheating, and I would respect these feelings. That said, I see the limits of this mindset. First of all, I don't need to hold onto these morals to stop me from cheating. I would have to be an idiot to leave a happy relationship just for the thrill. I see no need to deceive my partner at all. Secondly, the socially conditioned rule that we should not cheat commonly leads to violence. It removes the possibility of unconditional love by allowing your ex to live more happily. There are countless stories of murder and rape that resulted from cheating or the belief that there was cheating. This paranoia alone already rots a relationship because of the lack of trust. There are healthier ways to deal with cheating, but the insistence on such morals backfires horrendously.

I have had a few friends who were atheists. I never really argued with them and instead preferred to listen to their perspective. Given the most charitable view of atheism, I would say it is simply a reaction to the dogmatism of religion. My friend Noah hated his name. He was raised in a close-minded family that made him go to Sunday school and they were very controlling. Atheism is an expression of the frustration people especially if they are rebelling against their parents who want you to agree with them on everything. Atheism is deeply emotional and circumstantial. Atheism is a simple consequence of basic skepticism. The church commonly condemns skepticism because it undermines the Christian ideology. Atheists want to have the freedom to be who they want to be and they are frustrated with the indoctrination that is pushed under the guise of religious freedom while actively undermining it. Some atheists are open to spiral dynamics and I have used it to explain that there are more developed forms of spirituality than what their parents taught them. Because many atheists are ignorant of these different levels of development, they are prone to the pre-trans fallacy. Instead they see the excesses of religion and they are unable to see a higher level of development than what they are currently at. Atheists are almost universally skeptical of the fairy tales in religious texts. They question every little issue and throw the baby out with the bath water because they are resisting religious dogmatism. God is commonly compared to Santa Claus. Noah's brother forced himself not to masturbate because he thought it was a sin. Atheists are skeptical of religious morality because it is obvious to them that humans are inventing morality. From my point of view atheism is a logically flawed ideology because it makes no sense to assert that there is no God when you haven't explored the entire universe. I have felt that the agnostic perspective was the most open, humble, and wise since I was a child. It seems to me that "I don't know" should be the default position of any existential investigation and then you seek the truth , what ever it may be. Simply put, atheism is a reaction to religious dogmatism and depending on your life circumstances, it is easy to create an entire identity around the pseudo rational belief that there is no God.

The book of Ezekiel has more insights. They didn't have internet back then, so they used paintings for porn. Such artists made a ton of money. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans portrayed in red, with belts around their waists and flowing turbans on their heads; all of them looked like Babylonian chariot officers, natives of Chaldea As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 23:19 continues Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.

I have been reading the bible, and it inspired to make this post. I found a weird sex scene in which a lot of old and obscure compliments were used. It is making me wonder what other wierd, obscure, and ancient pick up lines there are across history and across cultures. Here are a few I found so far. According to Song of Songs, How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are doves. Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from the hills of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn, coming up from the washing. Each has its twin; not one of them is alone. Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon; your mouth is lovely. Your temples behind your veil are like the halves of a pomegranate. Your neck is like the tower of David, built with courses of stone on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors. Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies. (This one was inspiring.) How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice! Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride; milk and honey are under your tongue The entire chapter is like this. People will probably seem very thrown off and confused if you give them These kinds of compliments. They might even sound like insults. I wonder how they would react if they knew the reference. Do you know obscure pick up lines like these?

I would like to discuss my least favorite thing about the criminal justice system. It seems ludicrously unfair. It has to do with labels like 'felon' or 'sex offender.' When a person is found guilty of a crime they might have these labels put on them. Sometimes a person is later found innocent and their criminal record may be expunged. However, the label cannot be removed causing innocent people to live the rest of their lives labeled a felon or a sex offender. Being registered like this makes it hard to get a job because although you are innocent the label will always implicate you. To me it seems like a reason to commit suicide if I have to live the rest of my life as if I am a felon or a sex offender and people will constantly treat me harshly throughout the rest of my life for something I never did. I bring this up because my friend is a registered sex offender. He claims it was a case of mistaken identity, but he had to go to jail anyway. I find it unfair that a person has to carry the label 'sex offender' forever even in cases of mistaken identity because you look similar to someone who did commit the crime. Furthermore, anger damns the innocent. Although the natural reaction to a false rape accusation might be to get angry and defensive, the appearance of being belligerent will make people think you are guilty anyway. Being calm is seen as a sign of innocence even though the opposite is often true. Even professionals mix this up. The solution seems obvious to me. Innocent people who have their records expunged should also have the label expunged. Why is this simple fix so difficult? What am I missing? Is there something I don't understand? This just seems completely stupid that our society treats innocent people like trash and not giving them a chance to defend themselves. Even if someone was guilty in the past, maybe they could change through rehabilitation. If someone carries a label like that forever, then that could easily serve to mess them up even more leading to recitivism. I profoundly disagree with this permanent punishment. Jail or prison is one thing, but to live the rest of your life like this is asinine. I would rather die than carry a label like these for the rest of my life.

@supremeyingyang the reason Christianity like many religions struggle to reform is because they conflate belief and truth. Questioning these beliefs and threatening the survival of the church is commonly lumped together with killing God. In fact people have been killed over questioning religion and to this day atheism is punishable by death in the middle East. Religion is deeply problematic in that it is a paradigm lock that keeps people from seeing the world from many perspectives. This leads to many misconceptions about other religions which in turn leads to persecution due to Christians learning about Islam from a biased source like their church. If people were taught the philosophy of other religions, not to subscribe to them but just to understand them, then this would be the key to preventing persecution through clearing up our misconceptions. So long as the many religions are at stakes with each other by placing the survival of an ideology over truth they will never reach God. A start would be to recognize validity in other religions to see the deep similarities they share. If Christianity for example is close minded to other religions because they are taught that those ideologies are evil, then they will never explore Satanism. Most Christians assume that Satanists are literal devil worshippers. In fact most Satanists are atheists and they use Satan as a symbol of man as an animal. Satanic cults are far from representative of this worldview. Childhood imprinting and indoctrination can hold people back for their entire lives when they are taught an absolutistic morality that demonizes other world views. Religions certainly do change, but it is a long, slow, and brutal process that takes hundreds of years. Nevertheless some progress is being made. Here are two examples. 1. More divisions of Christianity are embracing same sex marriage. Although most Christians are against homosexuality, some churches integrate scientific knowledge. This includes prenatal hormones which are linked to sexual orientation. Homosexuality can't be a sin if this is how people are born. Furthermore, when the bible says "sodomites" it is not condemning homosexuals, but rather false priests Who are sell outs to other Gods. This is a common misconception that is unfair to gay people because the KJV and NKJV use a misleading term for false priest. 2. More divisions of Christianity are allowing priests to marry. In light of the sex scandals, some Christians are trying to replace unhealthy expressions of sexuality with something healthy, for example sex in marriage rather than shrine prostitution. Some Christians are becoming more open to sexuality because treating it like a sin in practice backfires in many ways. Sometimes it even leads mass shooters to killing a dozen women because they were tempted to have sex with them. Purity culture is deeply problematic because you can't repress sex forever. Your body could not exist if not for sex. Maybe there are others, but I don't remember off the top of my head.

I learned about this from TLDR news. They cover several countries and major global events. First of all, I think BREXIT is a disaster and it seems most people are starting to realize the economic flaws. This is made worse by political corruption among the conservative party. The people of the UK are not electing new leaders because the corrupt leaders are being replaced by other corrupt leaders with winning the vote. Secondly, I would be very annoyed by the broad and encompassing laws that are commonly passed. Not only is there legal uncertainty due to the repealing of many EU laws, but there are also annoying restrictions on freedom of speech. For example, people get thrown in jail because they held up a sign which was "likely to cause distress." It does not even have to cause distress. Some of the laws are kind of annoying because they are way too broad. On the other hand, here in America freedom of speech, the press, religion, and the right to bear arms are all common bad faith smokescreens used to pander to uneducated voters while distracting from the corruption of our conservative party. Consider the right to bear arms. We deal with a lot of gun violence here, and when people from the UK start challenging us on our obviously stupid laws that endanger people it makes us look like fools. Politicians are more concerned about things like hunting for fun while schools are the grounds of mass killings. A common argument is that there are a bunch of knives in London. I am not convinced by this argument because If you have a gun, then you kill people faster without needing to get close. I would rather be in Vegas with a man holding a knife than with a man with an assault rifle killing 50 people in a matter of minutes. If spiral dynamics were applied to the political climate in the US, then I would see the drama of moving from stage orange and blue to green. It could be the case that the UK is going through something similar to the US. For example, there are some who want to abolish the monarchy. These values come into conflict with traditional values even if some members of the monarchy are racist. Maybe the UK is also a conflict between blue, orange, and green.

I see that education could have a massive impact on the future of mankind. I have many ideas for courses in mind, but I am not sure how to implement them. I may have to build schools in order to make these ideas real. Here are a few ideas for courses in schools and colleges. emotional mastery and meditation Developmental psychology How to distinguish between real news and fake news. (Already starting and we need more of this.). Other courses focused on the philosophy of logic and epistemology can be included. Religious philosophy. This is interesting and useful for understanding many worldviews, but controversial because some religions want only one religion to be taught, but Satanists argue that all religions should be taught. I agree with the Satanist because it helps people learn critical thinking by comparing different belief systems. This unlikely to happen in today's society because of close mindedness toward Satanism. The history of white washing history. This includes slavery, holocaust denial, and one day it will include January 6th. It studies the way in which historical narratives are cherry picked or completely ignored in order to help people gain political power or to avoid accountability. White washing history can lead to future genocides of the previous genocide is denied or blamed on the same group. How to learn. This would be a game changer for education. One of the goals of these kinds of courses is to address our overly secularized society in which emotional mastery and spirituality are underestimated. This backfires on mankind in many ways including suicide rates which could be reduced through meditation and emotional mastery. Other ideas for reforming education include improving access to online education in rural areas of developed country and introducing this technology to under developed countries. This can be combined with reduced classroom sizes to improve the quality of education. How else should education be changed? What courses should be included? How do we make these ideas reality? Do we have to build our own schools in order to make this possible?

@Raze this is a good post that I can relate to. As a teen, I was diagnosed with depression. It is very rare to grow up with a functional family. Fatherlessness is Very high, and it leads to all kinds of psychological illnesses. Men are commonly pushed aside unfairly during child custody fights because of the assumption that women are better parents due to men being more likely to be criminals. In my case, my father really was a horrible person. He was a drug dealer who fled the state to avoid paying child support. Even so, a good father and a functioning family is necessary to avoid all kinds of mental illness, yet 1 in 4 Americans grow up without a father. I would imagine that for orphans this is even worse. Oftentimes women are not ready to have a child. This can certainly lead to dysfunctional families. For example, a woman could be a single mother due to unfortunate circumstances, yet she is not allowed to have an abortion. Sometimes this leads a child to constant hunger and the threat of homelessness. I would imagine that this child would have many psychological issues. The opioid crisis is another huge factor. Not only was my dad a drug dealer, but my mom was a drug addict as well. Sometimes mom would start falling asleep while standing up and picking at her skin. Very often she would get into fights with my step father causing destruction throughout the house. A rise in opioid addiction would certainly cause children a wide range of mental health issues. Alcoholism is certainly another factor. My depression started when I was very young and I was unhappy with life in general. I often wondered how it was that I existed at all. I didn't believe in religion because it was too constraining and holds people back from viewing life from many different perspectives. These underlying existential issues lead to a sense of meaninglessness and often suicidal thoughts. This is a big factor in widespread mental illness. It coincides with the decline of religion due to things like the sex scandals. As more and more people become divorced from religion, they may lose various psychological benefits which were provided through religion. If the psychological benefits of religion are good enough to prevent some people from committing suicide (which it is), then it makes sense that suicide rates would rising. As someone with autism, I felt like a social outcast when I failed to act the way everyone wanted me too. I felt like it was my fault for following my natural impulses that make me happy. This reinforced that belief that I do not deserve to be happy. People with autism have very high suicide rates, and the same is true for other neuro divergents like maybe schizophrenia or transgender people. Persecution against the mentally ill existed in all human civilizations since the dawn of time and it leads to things like insane asylums. Don't forget about heavy metals, pfas, and micro plastics. Our food and water is polluted and it is causing people brain damage. Sometimes people start wanting to shoot up a school, but when the brain damage is corrected, they lose this desire. Heavy metals are poorly understood, the epa and fda guidelines are severely outdated and there are carcinogens in our food, and the American standard diet is horrible anyway. This causes all kinds of mental and physical illnesses. As others mention, social media is certainly a huge factor. It messes with our brain chemistry and is addicting like crack. There have been studies done on things like porn addiction as well. It coincides with a sense of meaninglessness. America is a mentally ill nation. Just one of the things I mentioned above is enough to cause people depression, yet many of these are wrapped up into one for nearly everybody. Do not be surprised when so many people are committing suicide and we constantly feel socially isolated. It is no wonder that America is in the current state that it is. Maybe if you are referring to social media. This idea does not account for opioid addiction and fatherlessness.

I am curious about this topic. When we learn history, we learn about successful movements and humanity's greatest achievements. I doubt that this paints the true picture of history. The full story can only be told through the long list of well meaning individuals and groups who failed when they were the lone voice of reason. If you look at history more completely, you realize that being a hero often boils down to dumb luck. 1. Claudette Colvin This woman is not very well known. She is Rosa Parks before Rosa Parks. She refused to give up her seat to a white man, but was labeled a trouble maker and didn't accomplish anything with this stand against racial discrimination. This has implications for police brutality. George Floyd was the example that got attention. There were many more forgotten victims of police brutality, but it is not until an injustice receives a lot of attention that it begins to be corrected. There are likely many forgotten victims who suffered a similar fate. 2. Jan Hus This is the Martin Luther before Martin Luther. I am referring to the protestant reformation in response to church corruption concerning indulgences. Basically, you give the pope money to be forgiven for your sins. Jan Hus and many others stood against this corrupt practice for over 100 years. This man and others like him were executed for the attempted reformation. It was not until Martin Luther wrote 95 theses and it actually worked. There were 100 years worth of failure before that. 3. The Maji Maji rebellion This was a rebellion triggered by German colonialism in Africa. Ngwale was the leader of the rebellion and he gave his followers magic water, hoping it would protect them from bullets. The limits of magical thinking were demonstrated brutally through several massacres. The failed rebellion against slavery ended in widespread famine. In fact there were two similar rebellions prior to this that I didn't know about. The Abushiri revolt of 1888–1889 and the Wahehe Rebellion of 1891–1898 ended in a similar catastrophe. 4. History written by the losers Any victory in history is simultaneously a defeat. Any war won is also a war lost. Any movement that succeeds does so often because it triumphed over its opposition. Life is a zero sum game. 5. Environmental concerns In many cases environmental movements fail brutally. There are examples with oil companies taking over governments in Africa and South America through lobbying and then suppressing environmental movements even more effectively then they do in America. Many countries have horrible birth defects and widespread illness due to pollution caused by these companies. For example, Chevron owes about 50 billion dollars but refuses to pay. I wouldn't say that this movement failed yet, but there are failed heroes in jail on false charges when they confront the corruption of oil companies across the globe. Other issues like ocean pollution and climate change may realistically end up in examples of failed movements. Water wars are already happening due to climate change induced droughts and it is only going to get worse. I think humanity will survive, but the global population is projected to decline. Water wars will be the biggest tragedy of the 21st century and potentially the greatest catastrophe in human history and they seem inevitable. In my opinion this is the greatest threat to humanity and we need better management of global resources to ensure that as few countries collapse as possible. More issues like the drought of the Colorado river will only become more common. Will someone attempt to ease my fears concerning water wars, or is my assessment correct? If you can tell me about other failed heroes and movements, then that would be great. This is interesting to learn about. Thank you.

@Someone here good questions. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this. First of all, the global population is much higher and we are using our resources faster. Secondly, as societies evolved we became more dependent on various energy sources. Thirdly, climate change induced droughts are causing wars and there are likely to be many more of these water wars in the future. Humans used to rely on wood for energy much more often. It wasn't until much later that we started using oil. As technology evolved so too did the resources we were using. This opened more doors and allowed us to burn through more resources for more time. We are now predicted to run out of oil in about 40 years, maybe sooner. Jevons paradox played a role in the increased consumption of oil. Check it out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I have a story to share. I am taking pills for racing thoughts before I go to bed. The pills are designed for schizophrenia. The reason for the prescription is that they slow down my racing thoughts while helping me sleep. I have slowly been having a more difficult time sleeping at night and it gradually built up through my life. So when I first ran out of pills, I started having a hard time sleeping. I lied awake for over an hour with intense suicidal thoughts. I felt very heated on the inside and wanted to kill myself over various imaginary scenarios in which I made minor mistakes which built up into bigger mistakes. My attitude was along the lines of "I don't fucking care, I want to die." One of the aspects of this was the fact that I put my private parts in my sister's face when I was around seven or eight and mom was not happy about it. Logic such as I don't deserve to face the continuous harsh judgement does not make the attitude to away. I have been analyzing myself for a long time attempting to get to the psychological root of this whole thing. I spoke with a psychologist and didn't feel that it helped much. I have been allowing all kinds of memories to resurface as I realized the trauma that each of the memories held. They influenced my emotional system in many different ways, including the way in which I withhold happiness and excitement for fear of placing th expectations too high. I didn't want to let myself be happy for various reasons. I haven't yet considered the possibility that it is because I think I don't deserve to be happy. After sleeping for two to three hours, I woke up again with many intense feelings. After rolling around trying to sleep to no avail, I suddenly had some insights. These insights lead to a sense of inner peace, joy, and happiness. First of all, just because something didn't work doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. There are plenty of reasons why something may not work. It could be the context in which any thought of action occurred or it could be the execution of an attempted action. These childhood vows have some overlap with how I play chess. When I played a strategy that backfired it is often the case that the strategy is good, but not the best for a certain situation due to concrete reasons. It is easy for me to accept mistakes in a chess game, but it is hard to accept real mistakes because the consequences are much more substantial. If only I could change my attitude toward making mistakes. In fact the failure to admit our mistakes could have an even bigger impact as well. for instance, in a chess game it is better to admit a mistake than to justify it. Imagine I joined a cult and refused to admit it for my entire life. This denial is much more damaging than in a chess game as well. Very often we take a narrow lesson away from childhood trauma but these lessons Are often limited or wrong. This changes my relationship with many beliefs because there are many possible different lessons which could be taken away from one thing. This opens a lot of doors and helps to heal through open mindedness. I made sure to take a minute to write about gratitude for the peace and joy I felt. For the rest of the day I was very happy, energetic, and peaceful. Now that I am writing about this I am starting to feel anxious and heated again. I often have temporary insights with Grant me inner peace, but the temporary rise in conscious often fluctuates. I am paying attention to how my previous conclusions may lead to an upper limit problem in which I assume my downfall is soon to come due to things going too well. I hope you got something out of this and can give some nice input. I am grateful for this forum and this particular section. It has helped me with a lot of over the years. The core issue is what I have described just now. There are many tangents that help a little in healing, but it would be nice to some how heal what ever THIS is. I am not sure of a better way to refer to this situation other than THIS.

@John Paul I did a bit of digging. Apparently, attendance is linked to school funding. ADA funding exists in Texas and seven other States. https://www.mytexaspublicschool.org/the-school-system/funding.aspx#:~:text=ADA is a key number in a formula,funding a student with perfect attendance would generate. This site has a few videos you might want to look at. https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/an-overview-of-the-funding-of-public-schools#:~:text=According to Education Week%2C public school funding comes,the property taxes of homeowners in the area.

I have been playing a different board game. Apparently chess has more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe. Meanwhile, go has more possibilities than there are atoms raised to the power of the number of atoms. Go is much more mentally challenging and it isn't even close when compared to chess. So far I am doing my best to make sense of why stones are placed the way they are. It usually involves deep calculations of moves that I don't know to consider. In my practice games the computer indicates that I am 100% lost within 7-10 moves and I am unable to see why I am lost until 70-80 moves later at which point I finally resign. I will continue trying to understand this game. It pushes me to high levels of concentration as I make several bad moves anyway. I played one round with my sister, but she was too lazy to read the rule book. This alone demonstrates that the game is more challenging and complicated than chess. Now chess feels easy in the sense that I do not concentrate to the same degree yet I am in the top 1% of players on lichess.org. I wonder how good at chess I would be if I concentrated as much as I do While playing go. Apparently there are players trying to unify chess and go by bringing them both to certain clubs. The games teach very different ways of thinking and helps to expand our minds as much as possible. Right now I am working with a chess in school program, but if it somehow integrated other board games, then it would stretch our minds as much as possible. My mind is pretty worn out. At least this will help me appreciate how none of the strategies I use in chess are obvious at all. I see beginners making early flank expansions and rook moves all the time. I remember how differently I used to play chess. I used to move my rooks like that and it worked against my opponents. I was deeply concentrated yet making bad moves, but now I concentrate much less and make the "obvious" moves to win easily. It starts getting harder to push myself once I reach such a state of mind. My brain is doing the minimum effort and winning anyway. This is a sign of limited growth when I could be growing much more. I wonder if there is some way to integrate chess and go. What would it take to make me concentrate that much in chess? I notice that sometimes I find interesting moves that are not objectively best. Once I play into such lines, I go into the unknown. Usually it is dangerous and I might lose. Then again, it is my highest capacity for growth should I play in such a style. It is usually an interesting middle game decision that is playable but unusual. I will look into this in chess as well.

@John Paul I don't know about all of the laws of how schools are funded. But I do know that school funding is part of systemic racism. Teachers in private schools which were never forced to desegregate are given pensions. This puts teachers in public schools at a greater disadvantage and they often don't have all of the supplies they need. Public schools tend to have even more black children, and it sets them up to perpetuate economic inequality. All of this is reinforced by white flight and voluntary segregation in the suburbs following the civil rights era. This is part of what continues to perpetuate the imbalance in school funding.

In my opinion most of the propaganda comes from the history classroom. This is universal across all countries. The American narrative concerning slavery is wrong in many ways because it attempts to downplay the cruelty of slavery as well as the long term consequences of slowly fazing out slavery. It is presented as if the 13th amendment banned slavery immediately, but there are all kinds of problems with this narrative. Industrial violence is completely white washed. It would decimate the capitalist narrative if history text books included how many people were killed just so we could have a 40 hour work week. people were essentially trapped in indentured servitude, forcing them to live in massive construction sites forever with no economic mobility. People were shot for protesting, and this is an understatement. Democrats and republicans have a huge conflict of interest when controlling the American history narrative. This is an immediate red flag that we are not being told the truth. Slavery is still being white washed, especially by republicans who claim to love American history and want to present just the facts, but they are presenting just the lies. CIA scandals are never mentioned because this undermines the social matrix. In the 1970's America was the kind of place in which black people were given syphilis and denied the cure when it was available. This destroys the narrative they feed us in school. In fact many schools skip over the civil rights era entirely. Look up the Tuskegee experiments by the CIA. I could go on and on. North Korea is the exception. In North Korea all classes are propaganda, even the math textbooks. They have math problems like "853 American bastards attacked the lands of the great leader. The great leader killed 726 of the American bastards, but some were lucky and got away. How many American bastards are left over?"

@Majed Ulax makes a solid point. Many of your paradigms serve the survival of a self image. For example, if you condemn, demonize, or scapegoat other groups, then it is a sign that you are telling yourself "I am not like them" which therefore creates a shadow. Veganism is likely tied to a sense of morality if you are attached to it. You are telling yourself that you are a good person. The same can be done with actualization in that it boils down to being the best human being you can be. This is trying to be good in another regard. Sometimes people go about self actualization in a neurotic way such as "living up to my potential." This belief actually was linked to me losing sleep at night. I'm just now noticing you mentioned pick up. Of course that serves your survival.

@DocWatts that is some very solid advice. It is a meta paradigm about paradigms that ensures that you don't get locked in one. "Situationally appropriate" is the key to ensure that one paradigm is not the best absolutely. This is critical for avoiding the act of looking down on others for their worldview while championing our ideology as if it makes us superior. Tribalism is a common nightmare created through paradigm lock because of the failure to distinguish identity and belief.