trenton

May 5, 2020 For most of the day I was at home playing chess. I am 10 points shy of being in the top 200 lichess. I still lose often against opponents rated more than 100 points higher than me. One strong opponent told me that I was not taking all of my options into account, and I was left with a false choice as to what was the best move. I continued reading the book of not knowing and I found it confusing in the analogies it tried to draw. Apart from this it can be said that my growth is limited by following a routine that when I try to shake makes me suffer if I don't allow natural evolution. I feel like I somewhat have a sense of how I work and I have been trying to figure this out for years. How to work optimally might be a nice goal. Getting comfortable does not work for me. I feel like I'm starting to slack and I don't want that. One small helpful insight was that my only problem is that I suggest that there is something wrong or bad about me. This creates a lot of my problems because of how I react and judge myself thus creating more problems. This would otherwise one minimized. Love you.

May 4, 2020 First, I went to work where for much of the day I was in a distant world. This serves a function of helping me pass time. I wondered what would happen if I let it go and acted differently. I noticed my bursts of energy again which might be what allows people to figure out I have autism. I try not to worry about controlling all of these behaviors because the harder I try the more painful it becomes. I gradually change little by little as I slowly become less socially awkward. When I got home I continued helping a man online research the stone wall Dutch in chess. I used the strategy I found to win a game against a decent opponent and shared it with the man I was helping. It was also my brother's birthday. His cake was good, but I get used to birthday celebrations and they no longer seem super awesome. I am now realizing that I may not appear to be living my life in the best way possible. The problem is trying too hard to change does not always work for me. If I don't force myself to change and allow it naturally, my chances of living a good life are better. Good luck.

May 3, 2020 I first woke up at about five to go to work and was exhausted. I continued self reflection later in the day after being sucked into the internet for hours on toughty2 videos. I noticed that I am strongly run by my emotions and it is an obstacle to doing something like writing a book. I may not always feel like reading and writing, thus I don't. I noticed that I tend to self reflect with lenses that do not for my typical life story, yet I am not close minded to them and I still manage to integrate them even if they feel untrue to my pre-existing web of beliefs. It is hard to remember what this insight was, and there were several like these, but they are brief. I then continued reading the book of not knowing and learned more about the real self. It is too much to explain here, but the self is conceptual and being is without concept. I further let go of my conceptual identity to be more aligned with actuality. All of the beliefs and unravelled are too numerous, but I brings me closer to peace as I recognize that the idea of the false self feels false to me because it goes against my pre existing beliefs. Finally for chess, I was strongly focused and had chances, but unfortunately blundered against an opponent rated 2400. I felt mad, but I reflected in how effective anger is for advancing my agenda. It usually backfires and does not help. When it does work, I feel dirty about my success. One example of what happened in the past is too complicated for now. I will go to bed, I'm tired. Love you

May 2, 2020 I visited my grandmother so my sister and I could give her a gift of 100 dollars each to help pay for the funeral. She had received over 1000 dollars in donations on Facebook, but scammers are copying her name and trying to get people to donate to them. They are being investigated and I reported the fake account as well. While visiting I went on a walk and crashed a party. There was a musician in the road singing and I walked up and started dancing. This made the experience awesome for everyone. I then played videogames with my brother until we left. My sisters started fighting in the way home, and I could not do anything to stop it. I sometimes can't tell if I make the situation better or worse. At least my opinion influences how are conversations are moving. I notice that I am becoming more social as I become more authentic. I usually trap my self in my room away from everyone and stay away. I would be very quiet and sometimes socially awkward. Sometimes I say stupid things that don't help, but I am not afraid of looking stupid so long as I realize it and grow. I think as my mind and worldview begin to have a louder voice in the conversations, I can ultimately reduce the suffering of my family. I am saying I love you more often to my family. Perhaps In am gradually transferring the deeper wisdom to them, but my constant self reflection is needed. I used to be very shy and withdrawn, this is an interesting development. If I limit my love to me, it is limited and insincere. As I expand, the more authentic I can be. One challenge is that I am constantly misinterpreted and misunderstood when we make assumptions about each other's knowledge and motives. Sometimes they start to seem stubborn, but then I just kind of give up on trying to convince them to see my perspective. My love expands.

I noticed that the possibility of me being a millionaire feels unrealistic to me because I currently have an associate degree from a community in college in general studies. My direct experience tells me that right now I am working at a grocery store for very low pay. One reason I would want to become a millionaire is so that I can afford all of these retreats, travel around the world, or see if psychedelics actually do verify the existence of God where they are legal. I am not attached to money, but my growth is seriously limited if my life is limited to my local area. It is limiting my happiness and fulfillment, which is why money is a resource I may need to leverage in order seek truth. Travelling is one of the major things I want to be able to do, but I can't realistically save enough by bagging groceries. What sources would you use?

May 2, 2020 So far today, I am more strongly noticing how my mind gets sucked into a thought. I love it as it arises, and let it go. This was a lesson mentioned somewhere, but I did not see the lesson. This is part of becoming an emotional conductor and a thought conductor. My awareness and relationship to thought is changing. I am still a little embarrassed about yesterday, but I am not paralyzed. I may type more later today. I will not limit love to myself. I love beyond myself.

May 1, 2020 Sorry for not writing this last night, I was paralyzed by my embarrassment, and my mind could not move after typing it. Basically, I woke up yesterday morning with my head in the gutter. I could not focus on anything else for a while. I could not read or play chess because when I did I blew a game against what would have been my highest rated victory. My mind froze when I tried to continue typing. Telling the truth heals and grows me. I have nothing else to lose with brutal honesty. The rest of the day was better. I realized that unconditional love must apply to all of existence or it becomes relative love. Relative love feels dirty to me because it is limited and self serving. I may surrender this to understand unconditional love. This includes good and bad. One paradox is that I have a harder time engaging in relative love when it feels dishonest and inauthentic. What moved me away from what happened this morning is that it gradually was revealed as more inauthentic and the mask was unstuck. I also questioned conformity. I realized that my inquiry is often structured in a way that it makes me feel that I am conforming to other enlightened people. This was an implicit motive that limited my growth. It became a source of ideology because it holds the enlightened perspective as a higher good. I don't care what my results are or what kind of person I end up being. If I have a goal of being like somebody else, then I will never be authentic. I must drop any idols I have if I want to be authentic. Another example of conformity is the fact that all of my political positions focus on the United States. This focus is caused by the culture. Because many people around me talked about the government when I was a child, it made me feel that I would be more important if I were President. This became an expression of ego, but it leads to dreaming about unrealistic goals that keep me stuck. In order to be more authentic my inquire should have no goal for me to be any particular way. The fact that I am focusing on dissolving ego suggests that I assumed truth in spirituality, but I do not know that it is true. Finally, at the end of the day, my brother for info trouble for a comment which could be interpreted as racist. He emphasized the fact the a group of people were Mexican and seemed to be talking down. I was looking out for his best interest and I encouraged him to stop talking like that. We got into a long discussions about political correctness. I was unable to describe the complexity of the issue in a few sentences at a time. I would have to write everything down to avoid being taken the wrong way. My family said they would not read it because I include too much in my effort to be impartial. To say "I love you" creates a limitation because what I call real love is not limited to me. I accept reality as it is unconditionally.

April 30, 2020 First the bad news that I prepared for was that my father passed away because of abdominal cancer. I am continuing to observe myself for any sense of grief so that I may release it. Maybe this can make me more effective at helping the rest of the family to heal as well. I did not let this get me down too much, and I continued with self actualization work. Most people probably would not like that I do this, but I don't have to be afraid of their opinion. I found a job opportunity for chess.com. I would have a remote job preparing videos for kids to help them learn. I filled out a request for the position with many questions because it is a full time job and I might have to compromise with my old job at Kroger. I would like this job more. So far I noticed some annoying features that kids probably like, and I will probably have to include them. From my self reflection I learned how to be more authentic. First, a funny example is how when Justin Bieber first became popular, all the men hated him. My culture thus taught me that this is proper, and I conformed to the behavior. Actually, I am not really threatened by love songs and boy bands and I have no serious issues with them. I don't care and they are not even as bad as my culture says. This little example could have big implications for all of your preferences and how your culture taught them to you. Ask yourself "is this really a problem or am I just being a conformist?" similarly, I wrote a letter for my father before he passed away. In this letter I forgave him for everything he ever did that the family judges him and hated for. I loved him unconditionally. This revealed the fact that I lie to myself to make myself more upset with people for their wrongs. I don't really hate those people as much as I say or act especially if I build up a sense of righteousness. I am actually more loving then I say or act like I am. It is painful for me to hate people for their actions, and it seems like a very common assumption in all of human culture. The same applies for the man who punched my mom in the face. I did not hate him as much as I acted because ultimately I sensed that I was lying to myself, but I was not as conscious of self deception and how to deal with it. My culture also taught me to demonize terrorists, but I don't hate them really. I'm just scared of what my culture would do if I actually said that to 100 Americans. As I become more authentic, I become more loving. My family thinks this is crazy, but I do this because I love them. I'm glad that I became authentic enough to forgive my father. The only regret is that I did not love him more years before when I did not develop a higher form of love and honesty. I still need work because we are deeply inauthentic. I love you.

@Raptorsin7 Thank you. I try to make it easier for the rest of my family to cope because they take it harder. I could offer some money to pitch in.for the service and continue offering hugs when possible. Maybe there are other methods that I do not know about and I may research them.

April 29, 2020 Lately I have noticed a general trend in my energy. As I get more and more burnt out, my mind becomes less and less focused. This is preventing me from becoming as conscious as I could. It decreases my capacity for self acceptance as I become less self reflective. I have one more early day at work tomorrow after which I have some time off finally. Personal development becomes more and more neurotic as I try to push myself to the level of working double when burning out, so this does not yet work for me. In theory a more powerful vision could change that. Meanwhile, the chess master I played a few days ago offered to help me learn chess in exchange for me helping him learn English. If I can get a hold of him, this will be my first chess coach, so I will not ignore this opportunity. Finally, my father is unable to speak. He can barely move and is expected to die some time tomorrow. I decided to keep what I wrote for dad away from the rest of the family. I should probably stay silent for the funeral to avoid bugging people. I have small amounts of grief for the situation, but my grandmother is much more distraught. A better focus would be to comfort her. I love you to my fullest capacity. You need rest.

April 28, 2020 I had an interesting day today. I started a topic about becoming a millionaire, and it seems to be getting a lot of attention. I also noticed that when I get too caught up in what goes on in the forum or in politics, my mind becomes very jumpy and stimulated. This prevents me from focusing my time and energy on the most effective way possible. My mind becomes very vulnerable to being sucked into debate as my mind gets attached to the ideology it created. this is a psychological pattern that is rooted all the way back when I was in school. My teachers would often call me out for being too stuck in Trenton land to focus on school. In this way my imagination creates a very compelling form of happiness strong enough for me to not care about the consequences. When I try to let this go, I notice how sometimes I start to swing the pendulum toward depression. I am rising above this extreme because it has no chance of improving the quality of my life. one vision I can create for myself is that I could be missing out on an even higher form of happiness that is different from my constant excitement. I understand that my excitement can be very helpful for getting me through a long day at Kroger while minimizing stress, but what if I could have a new even higher form of happiness? This is the question that needs to be answered to break myself out of his current worldview. My alternative is constant mental stimulation, that leaves me in my same patterns. I don't intend to threaten myself by questioning this paradigm, but I become more open when I imagine this new possibility. I also started to become more aware of how Leo's followers and I have created spiritual ideologies that inhibit our growth. I also further recognized the limitations of true beliefs and how being right is not everything. Being right can leave you unfulfilled with vacuous truth because you have limited yourself to a paradigm and in a sense trapped yourself. The first example is using spiritual truths to argue against the pursuit of a goal. I could start telling myself nothing matters, which although true can be used in a way that disempowers you, and limits your curiosity with which to explore life. Spirituality thus contradicts itself by being used to prevent you from taking responsibility for your life, and finding a life purpose. I realize there is no need to do these things, but it does not mean I should limit myself from them. We followers of actualized.org are unconscious that we are holding spirituality as a high good, and it causes us to think less of other paradigms and options, forgetting about relativism. Another example comes from politics which is how my mind for sucked into ideology on another front. There are true beliefs about the obstacles to becoming a millionaire. For example, but corporations lobby in order to skew the economy to their advantage. Although the belief is true, it can again be used to lock me in a powerless paradigm. This also prevents me from focusing on what is within my immediate control. One of the biggest caused of my wishful thinking stems from politics. I get fixated on how great it would be if lobbying were banned, but this could take decades. In this sense all of my political positions are meaningless and they can be used in a way to paradigm lock me or become a fruitless distraction with empty promise in terms of the gains which would be nice if they were true and we had the means. I remember I constructed this political identity out of self importance, and some of it may be a genuine concern for mankind, but I don't want it to stop me from writing a book. Finally, I notice that my mind is pulled by many goals. The book of not knowing, spirituality, God, psychology, writing a book, chess mastery, and many other things. I am becoming too broad to be effective, and I need to temporarily divide and combine to manage this complicated self mastery, which is what all of these goals fundamentally are. I notice my tone with myself is very judgemental. I am shifting into a paradigm of high performance, and I feel lost and confused about how to think, but my clarity is growing. When I rest it may become more clear over the next few days. I know it is hard, and it does not feel true now, but I will not hold you back. My behavior and jihad against myself is ultimately out of love. I love you.

@Raptorsin7 Thank you for your kind words. Currently my mind is used to being sporadic and unfocused. This becomes one of the reasons that my life remains the way it is, and my mind is great at making this happen. There is a sprawling issue of my psychology that is holding me back. I will explain in my next post. by "most rich people don't even love their loves" did you make a typo? What does it mean? Maybe their job is miserable. I will follow some advice. I can set the goal to type the book. I already have the book written and am putting it in Google docs. If I could type one chapter every time I have a day off, that would be incredible.

@UnconsciousHuman I recognize that pursuing money for the sake of money can become very empty and shallow. This seems to be what you are pointing to. In this case I am also recognizing that money is a resource that I can use in order to create the life experiences that I would like to create. For example, if you wanted to move to Sweden it could seem completely impossible if you do not have the resources to allow you to do that. Travelling can be a very fun experience, and you may enjoy your life more by doing this. I recognize that bliss is found in the present from another perspective, which means that I do not actually need to do this, but I would like to. The more I would like to do this, the more it inspires me to work.

So far I have received a lot of good information from this forum. I am recognizing that most people are locked in a paradigm that makes it impossible for them to be millionaire. The video about Kobe was painful, but very helpful. I recognized how my own psychology was making me trapped. I felt some shock waves coming up my spine, and much if felt mind bending, but very useful. Thanks to everyone so far.

I feel that on many occasions I am similar to a bullshitter. For example, I dream about things that would be nice if they were true, but have no realistic way of achieving them. This process is dangerous because it leaves me lost and I do not really have anything to do. I also have some qualities of a someone who is not a bullshitter. For example, if I love writing I can and have started typing parts of a book. If I love chess then I can and have studied it for hundreds of hours. What are some other traps that cause us to be bullshitters and how do we stop?

April 27, 2020 Today I opened my mind to the possibility that I could be a millionaire. I went about in completely the wrong way because I am vulnerable to wishful thinking. If I were able to overcome this, then I would have my life driven by a powerful vision, and I can let go of being lost in my thoughts and imagination of something I wish could be. This is what my life could become. Currently my job at Kroger has been painful. I had to wipe off carts for 7.5 hours. I was not happy with this. I might be happier with a book I can start writing now. I self reflected on love and realized that true love does not come from a place of lack of neediness which is why something felt off of about me saying I love you because I lacked love for myself and therefore wanted to love myself. I love you.

@fridjonk Thank you. I felt like I was doing something wrong, but I did not what. I love writing, and I could write book. I don't mean to be wrong, but I may not get to be a millionaire this way. The reason I love writing is because it helps me to understand myself. College courses don't really help me do that as much, but going back to major in business could be something I'm not really passionate about, but there is the pay off of I get used to it, and become passionate.

April 26, 2020 Today I maintained the typical attitude that I am constantly happy. Leo's video revealed that I was too attached to right and wrong, and thus overestimated how open minded I am. This is a skill that needs further development. The rest of the day was nothing special, and I notice myself losing interest in some of this work. I feel like I get sucked into my mind so much that I am run by many impulses. I have been getting a little bit better at listening to people, but I still slide. I am curious about what am I doing when I get thrown into my thoughts and chase and cling. This is often what it leads too. At the core of my thoughts, spirituality, God, Love and similar things are what my thoughts are about through most of any day. I am not clear if this is going astray, creating false growth, limiting me, or a sign of what I think is important. The meta problem may be monkey mind prior to any of the content. The challenging thing about my mind is that I am so happy that it leaves me unfocused. Is this true happiness? Is it a problem? My peers think it is weird that I am always happy, and I am not upset with them for thinking this. I often make them happy too because they do not understand how I am always happy. This is a recurring issue that I have not clarified or resolved. Nobody in my life has been as helpful as my own self reflection and this is how I intend to tackle this. I love you as far as I am capable.

April 25, 2020 My father has cancer and is expected to die in 2 or 3 days. He is so sick that he could not get out of bed. This was a chance for me to express the highest capacity for love that I could possibly imagine. I wrote him a letter, and made sure he knew that nothing mattered to me because I will always love him. I observed everything that happened to me and I was okay. I accepted all of my emotions and did not judge anyone for anything. It is like creating a peaceful circle within yourself where criticism is seen to pull you away from truth. Talking with other people does not really change how I react to the situation. We did not really do much except hang out with the family. Everything is fine.

April 24, 2020 Today felt pretty boring for several parts because I had nothing major to do, and I could not go far because of corona. I cut the grass and went on some walks. Hardly any people were out and about. As I walked I observed and reflected on what my thoughts and emotions were doing as usual. I noticed this self acceptance I experienced for the past few days started to become more anxiety ridden and toxic. It has been healing, but it is time to let it go. I may come back later if I wish, but this way of being was becoming more invasive, and it is time for it to die. The new status quo which conflicted with the previous status quo and it left me uncertain of which direction to go. I am starting to doubt that there is a direction to move in and it makes me uncomfortable. I played some chess and encountered a titled player ranked around 8800th in the world. I struggled to find good squares for my pieces, revealing the weaknesses in my positional understanding. His main advice was to make sure I study everything about chess. Anything that is useful at all. I was unable to equalize, and he beat me. I then was paired with a weaker opponent and won easily. As for the new course, I am enjoying the practical part where I am finding multiple solutions to the same position. Fischer made some interesting moves that felt unnatural to me, but they make sense. It helps me to improve my positional understanding. Later I read the book of not knowing and read about finding the real self. An interesting idea which might not be true that I have is the relation between self and reality. If reality cannot be gripped without lying, I am left with empty awareness. This makes my sense of reality similar to my sense of self. This makes me think maybe I am not a thing that can be gripped or I am reality. It does not feel true, probably because it is not the sort of thing I would naturally assume. You are okay.

I'm just curious if you guys ever feel this way. Over the past few days self reflection has been becoming deeper and more intense. I confronted my fear of losing my grip on reality because this fear is the cause of lying. I notice myself becoming less interested in other habits like chess because I am absorbed in self reflection changing my entire relation to reality. I become less interested in criticizing others, and many habits are happening to me automatically. I meditate and do yoga automatically while accepting everything more and more deeply. This brings me in closer alignment with what is. Do you guys ever feel like you are in some kind of hypnosis? Control is also being surrendered and I accept without fear my confusion and uncertainty.

April 23, 2020 Today I had a breakthrough in consciousness. I realized that the source of my self deception is my failure to accept that I cannot grip reality without lying. I knew this for a while, but I was finally accepting that no amount of ideology could save me from the groundlessness of reality. This is the reason relativism terrified me so much, but eventually my fear passed. I also recognized a limitation of spiritual teachings. I asked Leo why contradictory beliefs make me angry and he said it that I was lying to believe in reality. I knew this deep down, but I forgot and I turned relativism into an ideology in an attempt to ground myself in a sense of reality. I'm terms of other gurus, no matter how wide they seem, I ultimately don't know if what they are saying is true. Finally, I struggle to get answers from asking the forum or any other human beings who are too threatened to face a can of worms like this. From this experience I have further deconstructed authority as my own self reflection is as far as I can be conscious of anything the teachings describe. I am thinking to myself that maybe I should not tell people about these things because it might terrify people who are not ready to surrender to this. It could cause people an existential crisis. As the day passed I became sick to my stomach, and could not focus. I contemplated my rationalizing and how it lead to more lying. I would like to surrender this tendency to justify my beliefs and choices. Fundamentally none of it is true. I also noted yesterday and remembered today that philosophical mental masturbation is caused by using one's own truth seeking to build elaborate theories and actively avoid confronting truth out of selfishness. I'm sure there was a few more things I am not mentioning, but I accepted that my sickness was beyond my control, and it limited me from reflecting further. I surrendered to the pain which caused it to flow faster, but it felt like it hurt. I'm not yet sure about the idea "pain does not actually hurt". If this is true then pain is a very difficult and powerful illusion to see through. For now I found a way to make pain flow through me faster. I love you.

April 22, 2020 So much happened, but I struggle to remember it all. One of the challenges is that I often have more insights as I lay in bed after typing all of this. I can remember what happened last night. First, I recognized that I labeled some masks false self because of a state which I am attached to. It was partially motivated by truth when I used the label as well. In any case, I had a preference for inner peace and the absence of the masks. This leads to self deception because I am not that state. I had fear of regression into my previous lies as this pleasantness built upon lies unraveled. The duality of true vs. false self began to blur as the label false self became shaky. I also recognized another source of fear and an interesting paradox. If I cling to a certain state, then changing the state becomes a threat which thus prevents inner peace. Similarly, beliefs can be used to increase or decrease fear. This is problematic because changing my beliefs becomes a threat which I fear. I started to contemplate and observe fear as I recognized how I was creating it. I remembered how a marine could be trained to resist torture. This seems like an interesting way to overcome our fear. I considered my fear of sharp objects and imagined a sergeant who trained people to resist torture. He swung the knife around as I observed fear in this visualization exercise. I considered my fear of murdering other humans. I visualized myself holding a gun to the sergeant for a while. I felt moral anxiety about committing murder. I hesitated to pull the trigger, but I did and it turned out it was not really loaded. He also held me at gun point when I noticed I was more afraid of pain than death. I more deeply realized that murder is not wrong and it is an acceptable feature of reality. I use visualization exercises to observe my emotions, understand relativism, reduce bigotry, and sometimes to pass time in a productive way. You may question the fourth because if my goal is to understand myself, then a drawback is that I become absorbed in my imagination to the point that In start to identify with the scenarios and the person I imagine I am. This may not accurately represent me. Therefore, the fruits of such exercises may be minuscule. I think it works best for understanding relativism, like imagining what worldview you would have if you were born in ancient Egypt. In the exercise I did, moral relativism revealed that "murder is wrong" is not really true. A less related point is on the topic of spiritual ego. I noticed that this forum promotes the idea that spiritual ego should be frowned upon. This becomes moralizing. It can lead to repression of spiritual ego which is revealed through unconscious speech. I considered posting a critic of the forum that criticism of spiritual ego is itself spiritual ego. My criticism of the criticism is also spiritual ego. Ultimately I just let it go and did not need to organize the criticism. I felt that I was constraining myself by clinging to my spiritual ego, and it lead to lying and suffering. I noticed something difficult to describe. Letting go comes from acceptance even if it is acceptance of my clinging and suffering I experience. Accepting myself the way I am and loving myself for who I am allows me to change by letting go of the thing I was attached to. "I am who I am" became an ideology. I don't need the ideology, but "I don't need it" becomes ideology. The less I cling to these ideas, the more free and open I can become. The belief that it is better to be free of ideology is a problem should I judge the presence of ideology in myself. It is not wrong to be an ideologue. One of the challenges with this work is that it can be hard to relate to others when I experience things that are either only true for me, or so subtle that most people are not conscious that they experience these things, and they think I am wierd when I try to explain what it is like. I noticed that when I have an agenda such as walking to the park, I notice that I feel stressed when facing the opposite direction in order to do the opposite of my agenda. This causes me to feel like there are imaginary barriers or invisible walls which cause me to not walk or focus on that direction. Another instance of this is when I was viewed sexuality as immoral and distance myself from women whose sexual attraction made me uncomfortable getting close or talking to them. This barrier is being dissolved, but I still feel resistance to getting close and talking to them. I think the Zen master diary is peaceful music. One of the things I do with music is cause myself to be annoyed while getting it stuck in my head. I do this out of devil's advocacy to make my life more unpleasant than I need to make it. My resistance to suffering creates suffering in that I fear suffering. Do you think I write too much? It took me an hour and a half to write this. I love you for no reason.

April 21, 2020 I had a massive shift in awareness today. I would like to credit Leo's recent video because I have recently become much more effective at self reflection, and I think he helped. Writing this journal also helped. To me an ego is defined as a mask I wear and act out. They can have various personalities, but I imagined them and I may cling to them as I confuse them for me. An ego death to me means when I am liberated from these masks by seeing how these masks are the false self. By these definitions I experienced multiple ego deaths today, and one yesterday I did not mention, but it is important. There are some masks within masks. When there is repetition in my thoughts, it indicates that there is some healing that has not yet been done. 1. Why am I drawn to the abortion issue so much? I came off as a bigot in my philosophy class because I attempted to spread my beliefs which is a form of ego. Ultimately I forgave myself and my mind began to quiet down. I accepted myself fully no matter what it is or how bad it weird it seems. 2. Why am I drawn to religion so much? Several years ago, I made myself neurotic and anxious by pretending to myself that I was crucial for mankind and I was the chosen one. I was never special, and this hit the ego at its core. I created a ton of suffering by lying to myself that I was special. 3. Why am I drawn to politics so much? The chain reaction began. I believed that I was special, and in order to reinforce this identity, I imagined myself as president, so I could feel important to all of mankind. Debating people over beliefs is pure ego, just like what happened with abortion. 4. Why do I act wise and philosophical? I can convince myself I am special by pretending I understand reality. This leads me to deluding myself through mental masturbation as I build elaborate theories and accept them as true. I do not care about if what I come up with is true or not, I am just addicted to my own thoughts. 5. Why do I want to create my own suffering? This is something I constantly tried to change about myself, and the fact that I did not accept the fact that I cause my own suffering was a source of suffering. I love even if you hurt yourself with self deception. I do not need to change, and this creates inner peace without suffering. Fundamentally, my suffering is caused by me pretending I am special. In the moments I start pretending, I start lying to myself, I become neurotic, and I cause myself to suffer. I am who I am, and if I deny these things to myself, I can't live myself, and I will not heal. My thoughts have finally slowed down, and this lead to me being and feeling more authentic then I have in years. I am much more peaceful and quiet, and more easily able to tell the truth, hence all of this writing. This is very liberating, and my sister picked up on one final mask because of how honest I was. 6. Why am I drawn to sex, masturbation, rape ect? This is sexual neuroticism caused by my identity as an innocent good boy. My sister discovered that I knew what a condom was. Throughout my school career people hit on me, but I often pretended not to understand because I wanted to leave a certain impression on them, and this was bullshit. This is the false self, and it creates moral anxiety in the form of all of these thoughts. My arguments for why I was fine with dying a virgin was to maintain this identity. I can accept myself regardless of how horny I am. Spirituality is changing my life and I am being more authentic. Thank you actualized.org for your help. Unconditional self acceptance reduces a lot of suffering and it leads to truth and honesty. I love you for no reason.

April 20, 2020 Today I felt thrilled and energetic all day. My mind bounced around frequently, but it seldom bothered me. Parts that do bother me sometimes is the devil's advocacy. For example, I know it's stupid to punch someone in the face or stare at a woman's chest, but my mind thinks about how terrible the consequences of doing such things would be. This is a process that makes me neurotic and it does not really accomplish anything, accept risky jokes that I never tell. Devil's advocacy does not keep my eye on the prize. This energy is great for getting through work each day, but at home it does not allow me to sit still. This leads to bring sucked into monkey mind with the inability to focus on reading and meditation. One of my biggest challenges is honing my emotions carefully and in distinct ways in order to obtain desired results. In this way, I am run by my emotions and I do not control them. This problem persists in chess games where sometimes I can't seem to focus as much as I would like. The more I let go of trying to control emotions, the more in control and in flow state I become. This paradox of control has not been fully surrendered to. I wonder what would happen if I could do it. Part of my chess journey has reached a landmark today. I achieved a peak lichess rating of 2203. The top 200 players are 2227 and up for rating. This journey has many ups and downs, but the longer time controls have helped a lot. I am questioning compulsive buying. Recently there was a 70% discount on chess courses. This made me feel an urge to find one. I am sure there is some value in it, but I have a ton of things to do already, and maybe this is not an effective way of building focus. Other players have told me about this and they prefer quality of quantity. I am soon to figure out if I made a mistake or not. I love you for no reason.