trenton

@Leo Gura what are your standards for who should be considered an adult? How would they need to think and behave? What is maturity? I think 18 years old is just an older child. Age is a poor way to determine adulthood.

Ever since I was child I felt like I had been on this earth thousands of times already. I have no way of knowing for sure if past lives are real because I lose my memories when I die. I am currently exploring this possibility while writing a story about this dream. in one of my dreams I was asleep and I saw a lone tribesmen. He was the sole survivor of a genocide And the only on in the world who knew his language. He spent the rest of his life meditating in a cave with nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish. When his tongue was dead he saw that which had no opposite as emptiness filled his entire experience. Perhaps he was another Buddha who was never discovered or had a religion around him. The story I have in mind gets incredibly sad when the sole survivor of the genocide gives a funeral to his son while singing in soothing tune and in words only he understands. I think if the idea makes me cry then it is probably a good story. I doubt I can write it that good though. It won't stop me from trying. As for my past lives, my dreams imply that I was the survivor, his murdered son, and the warrior who murdered him. Is there a way to tell if past lives are real? There is This sense that I am every being who ever lived, yet I have no memory of it. It is like I am every separate being each with separate memories and I don't have access to all of them. It is like I am one yet I am all. I hesitate to say these feelings point to the truth because it seems like mere beliefs that I can't prove. Nevertheless, there is this feeling that I'm everything, but simultaneously limited to the perspective of this mind and body with a spirit which has seen countless lives, but which has no immediate access to the memories of these lives.

I have been researching this topic and I discovered something very confusing. The bible spears to have many references to astrology and the zodiac such as the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 disciples of Jesus, Jesus being associated with the sun, the sun, moon, and stars bowing to Joseph, the star guiding the three wise men to Jesus and so on. One the other hand astrology used to be accepted in various religions but isn't anymore. This creates a major contradiction when the bible condemns fortune tellers and star gamers (which is suspect because there are various biased translations of holy texts) , but also many Christians can be seen making prophesies. How else are prophesies made aside from using astrology? For some reason astrology seems to be condemned yet the bible makes many references to the zodiac. Holy texts are based on prophecy constantly yet astrology is condemned. I don't understand why the shift interpretation happened because there used to be a broader acceptance of the zodiac but now there isn't. Can somebody explain this discrepancy? Is this a contradiction or a biased translation? It looks like religion is unknowingly condemning itself by refusing to recognize validity in the worldviews on which it is based.

@integral yes Religion can exist at any stage of development. Purple has a form of spirituality, red can make a god of war, blue can go to church, orange can be a Satanist, green can be more open to acknowledging validity in other religions than blue, yellow and turquoise I'm not sure because they are rare, but they are still possible. Where would you place Martin Luther King jr? He was a liberation Christian. Other sects of Christianity include liberal, environmental, progressive and others who admit the bible is scientifically fallible, but they look for poetic meaning. Blue is more prone to literal interpretation and will reject skepticism constantly.

@VeganAwake what I find interesting is that if the stories have been passed down for so long, what was the true meaning of it? Maybe the modern translations are nothing like the original holy texts yet they are held as if they were. What if Jesus never said "forgive them father for they know not what they do" but rather be said something like "let me go you *blank*". There were also some sects of Christianity which interpreted the religion through a polytheistic lens. They argued that the old and new testaments were incompatible because one is about wrath and punishment while the other is about love and forgiveness. This lead to the idea of a righteous and punishing father and a loving and forgiving mother. These were the two gods of Christianity in this interpretation. I find this fascinating and it demonstrates that we may never know what religion meant when it was originally written.

I think this is very far from the truth. Leo argues that spiral dynamics over estimates the development of mankind. In Mexico there is a struggle to get the drug cartels under control, in America half of the nation fell for trumps election lies, it is very unlikely that a liberal president will be elected any time soon and a world government is unlikely to emerge. Even so he remains optimistic about the development of mankind. What could make you think that Leo is like this? Optimism is far from any utopia. As for the scenario, one Europe is reducing its dependence on Russian gas and oil. This will have an impact on climate change as they switch to green energy. We could say that Putin's effort to control the gas and oil reserves in Ukraine unintentionally pushed mankind further away from fossil fuels which would help the planet. This is bad for the Russian economy because their main source of geopolitical power is control over gas and oil and the ability to sell or transfer this oil throughout Europe which is heavily powered by Russia.

@ShardMare Yes I enjoy the different states of consciousness. This is what I enjoy the most about chess. I can enter a state of flow. I become so peaceful that nothing else in the universe bothers me. I love it. I am most able to achieve this state while in tournaments against strong players. I don't concentrate as much against weaker opponents. It is this enhanced consciousness that creates a cognitive dissonance within me. Should I pursue consciousness or chess? I know how to pursue chess. It is less clear to me how to pursue consciousness, but I have a few ideas in mind that I'm trying instead of memorization.

As a chess player I would like to weigh in on this topic. My journey began when I was 7. My grandpa taught me how to play. After beating me in 11 moves I was mad but pretended to be a good sport. I started practicing against a computer hoping to one day best him. After 30 tries I finally won against the computer and then I beat grandpa. This is a discouraging truth I have to face as a chess player. World class players nowadays had a high level coach, potentially a grandmaster starting from a young age. I did not have the opportunity to get a coach until after college and I never played in any tournaments until I was in high school where I showed promising results. Maybe I would have been better off if my family wasn't full of drug addicts with a father who fled the state to avoid paying child support. This makes it much more difficult to become a grandmaster while it is easy to become a grandmaster if Carlsen has a father who is a decent coach or the polgar sisters have a father who is a decent coach and they all become grandmasters. I'm sure it's still possible, so I don't turn it into a limiting belief. The argument here is that chess is mostly memorization. This is why Fischer quit chess. In my experience memorization is a huge part of chess in sharp openings. This happens because there is often a computer refutation to even the slightest mistake. One cannot afford any error And must memorize the moves. In quiet openings memorization is not as critical, but if you play them enough times then you will memorize the moves eventually. As an amateur player I played against another amateur player in a recent tournament. We both memorized the first 20 moves of the Sicilian najdorf with 6.Bg5 and 10.Bd3. we played on the same level as the world champion up to that point. Meanwhile, players must also memorize some endgame theory. If the average chess game is about 40 moves, then in the case of sharp openings chess is at least 50% memorization and amateurs can easily play on a level equal to world champions. To make matters worse, memorization remains important even for grandmasters. It started before computers with players like Alekhine making extensive opening preparation and it continued from there. Computers made it even more the case after Kasparov lost to deep blue. By the 1980's Kasparov, the world class calculator began to tell the importance of memorization in the poisoned pawn variation. Kasparov said "you know or you die." Embarrassingly, there was a world champion who said "I lost because I didn't leave the computer running long enough". I even had a lesson from grandmaster Anish Giri who is rated over 2700. In reference to the 18th black move g6, he said "I didn't even try to explain that move it just has to be memorized." On the bright side, my little brother used to get very discouraged because he lost against me easily. I taught my brother how to theoretically force a draw with white against the najdorf. he just needed to memorize 23 moves to play on a level equal to grandmasters. At least he has a mild feeling of accomplishment from this. Sometimes we have fun mapping out theoretical draws. 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 Be7 8. Qf3 Qc7 9. O-O-O Nbd7 10. g4 b5 11. Bxf6 Nxf6 12. g5 Nd7 13. f5 O-O 14. Qh5 b4 15. Rd3 bxc3 16. Rxc3 Qb6 17. Nc6 Bf6 18. e5 g6 19. Qh4 Bxe5 20. Ne7+ Kh8 21. fxg6 fxg6 22. Nxg6+ Kg8 23. Ne7+ Kh8 = The basic strategy of the modern grandmaster is to prepare side variations And hope the opponent does not know the moves. If he can't figure it out over the board then you win. This is how chess games are determined before they begin. The best players in the world commonly have a gifted memory. If you think about it, chess has been around for over a thousand years. Surely by now humanity can come up with better board games. Some games I like are shogi and go. I do dabble in other games occasionally because I like the radically different way of thinking required to play them well. I still mainly play chess to help me win tournaments. I also got a game called cowboy checkers. When I first played cowboy checkers at first my sisters were playing better than me. They had an early advantage, but I turned it around in the middle game and won. By the time I played it a second time I had mapped out all kinds of patterns and quickly started outperforming everyone. By the third game I started mapping out theoretical best moves, but by that point everybody had already quit. I think laser chess is an interesting idea. Although the concept is interesting, the problem with board games in general is that all of them can be broken down by computer analysis sooner or later. Artificial intelligence has broken shogi and go already. One reason I like board games is because they minimize the amount of luck needed and mostly require skill, but nowadays the only skill seems to be memorization. It is the creativity skill that I enjoy the most, but it is often lacking. We need a board game that requires skill, but can't be broken so easily by computers. The idea behind Fischer random is that so long as the starting position is different every time it prevents in depth analysis. I'm sure this can be done with new board games as well. Meanwhile, I don't mind a little bit of luck and playing with the hand you were dealt like In life. This uncertainty should make a skill based game more interesting. Another idea I have is instead of chess simuls in which a grandmaster plays 30 people at once, we should have board game simuls. The player will be required to outperform 30 players in 30 different board games all at once. One board is chess, another shogi, another go, another go fish, another laser chess, and so on. What new board games do you have in mind? Maybe tournaments should be based on random board games only announced at the tournament.

@Yarco I went through the list and found a lot of crazy things. I confirmed most of them except the polio vaccines causing cancer and I don't know what the weird rituals were the rich people were doing. I could add to the list operation freak out and others from the church of Scientology. They were legally harassing authors who were critical of them. This operation and others were exposed after operation snow white was exposed. Covert operation after covert operation was unravelled and now a lot of people don't like the church of Scientology And don't always know why. Just vaguely that they are crazy. Maybe they have spiritual trauma from a past life in which they witnessed the insanity of Scientology. This would be the ultimate plot twist if they were right about past lives. I find it a little strange that the fbi is responsible for some conspiracies yet it is because of the fbi that we know about some of these conspiracies. The tools with which we fight corruption are themselves corrupt.

I think this is a critical topic for understanding governmental corruption, conspiracy theories, and survival. There is another dimension to politics which is largely unseen by most people. The cia has a history of many cover ups and covert operations without telling congress while using the excuse of national security to hide corruption. How can we navigate this issue without getting sucked into speculation, while bringing out the truth? There is a reason why this topic invites so many conspiracy theorists given the several controversies the cia has hidden and continues to hide. I have been doing a lot of research into ufos lately. Although the United States spends a lot of money on the military, it is not only because of the wars in the Middle East. The military is involved in multiple programs to reverse engineer ufos because they outclass every machine they have. They have been recorded moving faster than 13000 mph, whereas the fastest military jet travels at a max speed of 5000 mph. Ufos can move in ways thought to be physically impossible, which draws into question everything we hold as true about physics and engineering. This is another factor in the massive military spending of the United States. The issue becomes very suspicious when you piece together the lies of the cia. In 1997 the cia admitted to lying about the roswell incident of 1947. The cia also has a history of manipulating Wikipedia pages related to the Iraq War. Meanwhile the Wikipedia pages on the roswell incident still echos the same lies the cia said before 1997. The implications are very incriminating. As a result there are countless conspiracy theories surrounding the topic of cia cover ups. Other issues include manufactured consent, overthrowing democratically elected leaders as in operation condor, funding terrorists in Afghanistan during operation cyclone, lying to congress about operations like these and there could be more covert operations, domestic wiretapping, and much more. How can we get to the truth of these issues while maintaining epistemic responsibility? There is a list of cia controversies on Wikipedia. What other controversies do you know about? I think conspiracy theories seem inevitable when considering issues like these because people are trying to figure out what is being hidden from us through the lie of national security. This issue is at the heart of governmental corruption. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CIA_controversies

My family was also annoyed at the fact that I was asking a lot of questions. I think I discovered a lot of new dimensions of reality. I learned about psychic powers that people use to talk to ghosts. Apparently, it is a skill that can be developed, but the guide at the tour never figured out how to do it. She knows some people who can talk to ghosts though. During the time a the hotel I did a lot of research on ufos. My sister was very interested in the evidence I used to show the CIA was lying. The CIA has a history of manipulating Wikipedia pages like on the Iraq was of 2003. The CIA also admitted to lying about the Roswell incident of 1947 back in 1997. The Wikipedia pages on the Roswell incident still characterize the issue as a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. These are the same lies from before 1997. It looks like the CIA is still lying about ufos And manipulating Wikipedia pages. My brother laughed at me at first thinking the idea of ufos is crazy. After a lot of research the evidence becomes overwhelming. This opens up a ton of questions about modern science because it demonstrates how trivial our understanding of reality is. So many of the physical laws of the universe are being clearly violated by the ufos. They have been recorded traveling at 13,000 mph whereas the fastest military jet can only fly 5,000 mph. There are scientists who struggle a lot trying to reverse engineer these things because everything we thought we knew about reality is in question and is clearly a very tiny portion of what there is to know. Some of the tour guides talked about big foot. It sounded crazy to me at first, but then again who knows? If ghosts and ufos turned out to be real, what other secrets could reality be hiding? What is the most convincing evidence you have of big foot? Are ghosts, ufos, astrology, big foot, and so on somehow related? Maybe the aliens know how to tap into spiritual energy and combine it with engineering to make these kind blowing machines. Maybe they look like chupacabras, big foot, little men wearing silver masks that are used as a translator as some eye witnesses reported and they also have very soft bodies. It would not surprise me in the slightest if aliens knew how to talk to ghosts more effectively and manipulate them in all kinds of ways including animal sacrifices like the mutilation of cattle. It blows my mind when I look at how many dimensions there are to reality and there are so many possibilities opening up that I didn't think of before. I think I'll look into religion and how the prophecies were shaped by astrology and the zodiac. The bible uses the number 12 a lot and it seems interesting.

I am back from my vacation to the rocky mountains. I think my family has developed spiritually which is fantastic news. First we went into the mountains. On one of these hikes I sat on a rock and started meditating. My sister has the picture of me, but it was a very peaceful position. I could hear a bird and a calming wind. It was a pretty good spot but I don't have the picture. Secondly, we went on a ghost tour. I was looking for the most convincing evidence that ghosts are real. I think around 90% of the time the photo can be rationally explained or it is fake. But on some rare occasions there images which defy all explanation. The tour guide showed me pictures of orbs, faces, squiggly lights, videos which twisted themselves, but most convincingly an image of a woman who wasn't even there. I think these are the most difficult to explain away when an entire person appears but nobody was there. She is in the bottom left corner. Thirdly we went to the church of cannabis. There was a light show designed to mimic the effects of psychedelics so I treated like the closest thing I had to practice. They talked about religious dogmatism and how we should be more interested in questions rather than answers. I also played Galaga on the arcade machine downstairs and got about 170000 points. I'm not a world class player though because there was a strategy I didn't know about. Also I hurt my wrist. Finally, my mom bought some cannabis based pills over the counter. I was worried at first because if she was caught taking it over state lines then she could end up in prison, but she was successful. It looks like the rest of my family will have a reduced stigma and close mindedness toward psychedelics because both my sisters want to try the cannabis. There were many limiting factors on this vacation. Firstly, my mom and sister were fighting very badly. Mom said some very twisted things like "if I get out of this car and end up murdered It will be on you! Live with that shit!" They both yelled "fuck you" at each other. The fights were so bad that my family asked me to sit in between the two during the service at the cannabis church. At this point I refused and laid down on the floor anyway to mimic the effects of psychedelics to the best of my abilities. Thankfully, they stopped in response this refusal and my sister joined me. Spirituality is too important to be held down by these petty fights. Maybe they knew by my behavior on the mountains that Spirituality is pretty valuable. Secondly, when picking out which cannabis based pills we should try my family was adamantly against me getting the kind which enhanced creativity and perception. They insisted that I got the pills which improved sleep. This was lame because I already have ocd pills with a side effect of drowsiness making sleeping pills redundant. I also understood that cannabis is already very weak compared to lsd, mushrooms, and dmt for spiritual purposes. If it doesn't enhance creativity and perception, then this is probably the weakest of all cannabis based products for spiritual purposes. Although my family is afraid of me becoming too creative, at least they have somewhat reduced the stigma of drugs given this behavior. Their curiosity was too strong as well. The position will inevitably become "all drugs are bad unless it is a drug I use." This already is the case with alcohol and nicotine which are terrible and kill hundreds of thousands, but cannabis can be added to the list. Some of my family justifies their close mindedness to research on psychedelics, but not all of them. There were a couple of other problems as well, but I think higher consciousness is gradually winning out and My family is becoming a little bit more open to these topics. I don't know what it would take for my mom and sister to get along.

I just realized that this is also how racism works. People will take statistics about groups they don't like and use it to make judgements about who they are. A common example is correlation between certain crimes and blackness. We could say that this is the modern attempt of framing black people as if their intelligence is closer to that of an animal. In both the context of today and yesterday these judgements failed to see the bigger picture of what social factors were actual causing these issues. This is why I am careful of people who call their girlfriend a bitch because it reinforces the stereotype that women are unreasonable and thus not worth listening to. This is part of what contributes to abusive relationships. You can also see this happening in among some climate skeptics who point out how terrified people can be to the point of eating their children. Sometimes our fears are overblown but not unfounded. There are likely many more connections that can be made from the fact that unreasonable minorities are used to straw man the bigger group who are trying to get to the truth based off of the evidence they have. This is how humans justify being cruel to particular groups as they fail to understand the real points being made. This is why I am skeptical of perspectives which are intended to demonize a group. At the same time I am finding a paradox in that incriminating evidence seems to demonize the cia, but that is not the goal, I want to get to the truth.

I noticed that in my research about ufos. The cia intentionally stigmatized the topic by cherry picking the most insane people who believed in ufos. The goal was to minimize coverage of the topic while ensuring that anybody who believed in ufos would be painted as an idiot. Even said sahdguru is aware of this and he is afraid to say that aliens are real because he will not seem rational if he does. He instead says that the universe is too big for us to be alone. The ufo crowd was constantly laughed at and called a gay marriage movement. Alternatively you could look at the overwhelming amount of evidence with an open mind. It is hard to get people to do this when they take their cultures programming for granted. Even my brother laughed about this topic for a while because he didn't want to believe it was true. Perhaps he was worried that people would think he was crazy. Eventually I started sharing all the evidence with my family and they find the lies of the cia very suspect. This could easily happen for many other issues as well like psychedelics, ghosts, mystical experiences, powers, or even religion. Religion is often associated with dogmatism and black and white thinking which causes people to miss the deeper truths being pointed to. This isn't intentional like attacking conspiracy theorists, but it is a similar example of missing the truth because of a group of unreasonable people. I do see people doing this all the time in politics though when we cherry pick the most unreasonable people in order to make generalizations about how we are superior to the other side. This is why anytime someone is destroyed in a debate we need to understand that there is very little truth to that debate. It could mean that this person either made poor arguments on this particular issue or had a hard time communicating the truth because of the environment. A debate barely tells you anything from this point of view. In the case of psychedelics you will be lumped together with a hopeless drug addict who people laugh at because they don't even understand addiction to hard drugs either. They only have this stigma from thr war on drugs and we need to question how these stigmas are manufactured.

I have been doing some self observation and noticed that judgemental perspectives although not completely wrong can be painful if my mind gets stuck on them. Lower perspectives often have lazy criticisms which focus on the ill intentions of a person or group of people. Higher perspectives tend to be more nuanced and see the good intentions of people while providing a vehicle with which to improve. Because it can be painful to hold more judgemental perspectives I think that I would be happier and have a greater peace of mind if I let them go. I can give some examples from science and religion. A lazy criticism of religion would be to focus on the sex scandals. The point of this criticism is that religion is deeply hypocritical because it is corrupted by the very selfishness that it hopes to transcend. There are sex scandals in the military, business, and so on, so it's not like sex scandal equals religion bad. With science I could argue about the profit motive, but this does not require a more sophisticated understanding of science. A better criticism would be that although science attempts to understand reality by breaking it up and studying various aspects in different fields, in so doing it becomes hyperspecialized and therefore incapable of a holistic understanding of reality. This results in miscommunication between the different branches of science. You can do the same thing with any world view. Should we drop the lower perspectives because they are painful? Or should we try to reconcile the paradox created between higher and lower perspectives? I think I would benefit from writing out a list of my more judgemental perspectives and strive to develop fewer of them with more nuanced perspectives taking their place while seeing the good in others. Seeing the good in others is more truthful anyway. In practice I don't say my judgements out loud to other people. Instead I suspend my disbelief to see if I can learn something new. I spoke with a woman who believed in the zodiac signs and the Bible. She told me that the 12 disciples of Jesus were connected to the 12 signs of the zodiac. The Bible uses the number 12 a lot as in the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 sons of Jacob. This makes sense because astrology has been used for understanding reality for a long time. Christians probably make predictions and prophesies based on the stars as well. Maybe this is how they predicted the birth of christ. I told my family about these connections and they were fascinated. My sister criticized Christians for believing in crazy things while she believed in the zodiac. If the two are connected, then I have helped my sister to make peace with Christians. In this way the fact that I suspend my disbelief is so powerful that it can make my family happier as well as myself.

I have been researching this topic lately. I am aware that you can mix cornstarch in a kiddie pool and run across it. What I am more interested in is the dead sea where allegedly Jesus walked on water. Firstly, dead sea water is high in salinity making it easy to float. Walking is thought to be unlikely because it is difficult to maintain balance on a Newtonian liquid. Perhaps there is a technique for maintaining balance. Secondly, if the dead sea is very dense and people from 2000 years ago used to be shorter and weighed less, then how little would somebody have to weigh and distribute their weight? It is also known that given proper weight distribution it is possible for animals to walk on water. For example, it is known that spiders can walk on water because they weigh very little and are effective at weight distribution. For humans it is much more challenging to do. Maybe science could make a machine similar to spider legs that could be used to help humans distribute their weight and walk on water that way, but I am looking for walking on water bare foot. I looked for experiments done on this topic, and I did not find any attempts to use young children as test subjects. Children normally start walking between 8-20 months of age and the average weight of an 8 month old girl is 18.1 pounds. If a very young girl between the ages of 8-12 months were able to walk on land, than by this age the child could theoretically practice walking on water. It would be challenging to maintain balance as can be demonstrated by putting objects in a pool of mercury. But if there were somehow a technique to balance oneself especially at a very young age if practiced very early on, then is it scientifically plausible to walk on dead sea water or is it only a myth?

I want to start off by saying that I work at a grocery and I have a hobby as a chess player. I have recently made gains in my rating of over 150 points in tournaments. I know I can go far, but I need to find a way to have the energy to work 8 hours a day and still be productive in studying. Firstly, when people recommend working out, I think there is an assumption that I don't match. Do people with very active jobs need to work out? I am more active than most employees even in this fast paced environment because I spend at least 3 hours pushing carts in and I am more efficient than the rest of the employees at this. Now that I think of it, I should be worth more and paid more than the employees who slack off at work. I get a lot of sun in the process and thirst becomes an issue. The cooler has water that tastes disgusting so I try to take extra filtered water to work, but it still isn't enough. It is close to enough and would be enough if I had bigger bottles. Anyway, does a person like me need to work out? I get a lot of exercise as is and I lack physical energy at the end of the day. Secondly, I could look to my diet. One of the reasons I don't eat a lot of vegetables is because they don't sustain me and I get hungry fast. I did snack on some vegetables while watching some videos after work, but it isn't a lot. It looks like tuna and eggs seem to be better at giving sustained energy. I am also prone to sugar cravings after work. Maybe the fact that I am constantly moving is linked to these cravings for immediate energy. I notice that bread and bagels last a bit longer than cereal and oatmeal. I could have a bowl of each and be a little hungry. I also get very annoyed when my family talks about how I eat too much. I can try fruit smoothies which give me the energy I need because of the nutrients in them. I still feel hungry despite having a full stomach though. It is a weird experience. Maybe after a couple of hours when my stomach is empty of smoothies, I could then go for the eggs and tuna to stop the hunger and have the energy I need. I believe diet is the main root of my energy problems. If I want to somehow become a chess master and work at an exhausting job, then I need to budget 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work, and I need to figure out how to spend the remaining 8 hours on these days. I am missing out on so much productivity in my life from this situation. I think the fact that I am noticing the effects of food on my body and energy is good start. I can thank consciousness work for that.

@Michael569 I wanted to thank you for this solid advice. I didn't know vegetables behaved in that way. I like adding a mix of vegetables to a lot of different meals so that should be fine. One problem is that I usually go for whatever is convenient and quick to prepare. This is how I end up eating a lot of junk. If I find healthy meals that are quick and convenient, then that would be great so I should look out for that.

@Mason Riggle I think you summed it up very well. Even when I am struggling there is some sense of nobility in the struggle. In this sense I desire to be in conflict with myself. This happens with people who criticize themselves a lot considering it a virtue. From this point of view that everything I do is what I desire, all reasons that I can't do something are self imposed so that I can stay in the desired status quo.

I noticed that there are different types of wanting. One form of wanting is coming from a place of lack. This kind of wanting clings and feels painful as we insist that we need something. It could be money, a spouse, a new job, or anything else. In my case I feel stuck in life because I am telling myself to live up to my full potential by getting a better job than the one at the grocery store. This desire is coming from a negative judgement of my self image. The other form of desire is one that comes from a place of gratitude or abundance. A simple example is how I have been finding a lot of loose change lately. You could say that this is a little bit like the law of attraction, but I think something much more profound is happening. The universe can sense my true desires and it manifests itself accordingly. I call this intelligence. An example would be how I wanted to wish people good luck knowing that there were many factors beyond our control that could influence where we go in life. The thought I had was "may the force be with you" because I was referring to intuition as something almost magical. About an hour later a woman came up to me at work and said "may the force be with you." Some people would call this a coincidence even though this never happened before in my life. The way I interpret these things is that our minds our connected and ultimately one. The universe then speaks to me through other people in response to sensing my desires. It could also mean I am the universe. What are your thoughts on the types of desires? Are there others? In my experience desires from gratitude and hope seem to be much more powerful than ones from lack as I should myself.

@BipolarGrowth I didn't clarify my body type. I am actually thin compared to others in my family. In fact my sister body shames me for being thin. If I flex you can feel my six pack. This has always been my body type for as long as I can remember and I'm 23 now. My legs are buff and my arms are thin. Thank you for highlighting the concrete benefits of taking health seriously. I can't become a chess master like this. In fact the world champion is a vegetarian.

@Mason Riggle I'm confused about something other than human desires. It seems like the will of the universe is all motion. For humans that could mean shifting into different states of consciousness. Our desires are included in what the universe wants. I think you got it exactly with suffering and desire being two sides of the same coin. My main desire in life is for effortlessness rather than being in conflict with my own thoughts and emotions. I have been journaling about these things for a few years while reading books on emotional mastery. One paradox is the fact that I am in conflict, granted to a much lesser extent, but I want to be peaceful. It is a bit tricky to resolve this paradox because the desire for peace carries the seeds of chaos.

@Razard86 Very Powerful idea. I notice a lot of pain in my ideals of who I should be. It is almost like I am trying to force myself to be something I am not and as a result I end up being stuck in life with a lot of resistance. Pain is telling me that I could be something much greater than I think I am. For example, when I was younger I had the idea that I could think whatever I want because nobody could hear my cruel thoughts. The pain is in the falsehood that I am the ego mind and I am separate from the rest of reality. There are many other applications of this as well. Good message.

If you are a Zelda fan, then you will be thrilled to discover that speed runners have used a combination of glitches to access data only previously available in beta ocarina of time. The triforce was originally intended to be obtainable, but the idea was scrapped. Speed runners are using these glitches not to destroy the game, but rather to make it even more complete. Enjoy!

I am prone to making random noises. They are typically in response to thoughts which would be embarrassing or stupid if said to other people. Sometimes my mind gets stuck on one word and then starts to all of a sudden repeat it out loud. My typical reaction is "I need to hide." I don't want other people to see what I am like because I could easily be hurt. I don't think many people go through this sort of thing. I probably need to talk to someone. Other thoughts include "I'm a monster." This kind of behavior made me fear that I was going insane. I know these thoughts are not really true and suicide is not a problem. I have an abnormal brain development with autism, but I seem to have a hard time taking embarrassment. I plan on talking with a professional about this.