Osaid

It seems like your body has a very balanced testosterone/estrogen, so to speak, and any idealized thoughts about your childhood experience tips it towards estrogen (desire to be dominated), and then physical activity like exercise tips it towards testosterone (desire to dominate). So your experience of sexual desires is fluid and influenced very easily. Whether this is good or bad is up to you, really. I say testosterone/estrogen kind of metaphorically here to refer to masculinity/femininity, but it could also literally be the case that you can change the levels of these chemicals in your body very drastically somehow. Everyone is different, after all. It could be a thin balance between the two.

Lol epic Nahm's answer is legit. The dog doesn't deal with lust or boredom, it's kind of enlightened in that sense. So the entire thread is an anthropomorphization of the dog which says "Oh, my dog is probably craving sex just like me, I don't want him to suffer." Physical pleasure is real of course. But the entire thread is actually less about that, more of some moral or ethical intention or contention which does not exist for the dog, because it's just a dog. Well that's my personal answer at least, don't want to further derail this thread into dog sex

Oh yeah if I remember correctly wasn't it started by Leo haha. Love his open-mindedness. Or actually maybe it was his response to some post about it. Not sure. Sorry Leo if you never did that and I'm misremembering lmao

Lmao

This is an interesting contention which I have sort of been contemplating. Although the removal of suffering is a great achievement, I find it to be more of a "side-effect" of just perfect clarity of perception. I also find that people who skip this "removal of suffering" or "enlightenment" tend to be very confused in their spiritual journey, lost and worrying about all sorts of stories. So, for me, it's kind of a must now. They will kind of strawman it and say "Oh, but truth isn't about reducing suffering! That's just some relative human ideal! So, I don't need to reach whatever state these guys are talking about, I'll just explore my metaphysics over here, despite all my pain and suffering." But the reason this is a strawman is because that removal of suffering is just a SIDE EFFECT of perfect clarity of perception. Clarity of perception is EQUAL to lack of suffering. So, in other words, what this strawman is really saying is: "Oh, truth isn't about perceiving clearly!", which is wrong. But, yes, all the juicy metaphysics are great and I love them. But, when they come from someone who is not enlightened, there's a lot of human baggage to scrub through, and it can confuse people or be harmful. What I'm saying is that it's not just about removing suffering, but like your view of reality will just be completely inaccurate all the time unless you reach it. So, this is more important than just suffering, I think. Your lack of enlightenment will bleed into your journey of exploring metaphysics, or literally anything you do in life. Although, psychedelics CAN force you into temporary states of enlightenment. But, you can't really bring it back, because you become an unenlightened human again. The human that comes back just has to operate off the memory of it, then it gets slightly corrupted or whatever. Which is still massively useful, obviously, because what you remember was still pretty damn important and amazing. But finding that clarity for yourself is still way better and more important, because you don't have to operate off of memory, and so it skims off any potential delusions that can generate from memory.

? Doesn't HAVE to be through Buddhism. But yeah this is 100% accurate. Any method that works will work. Buddhism is one of them. It's just a singular phenomenon that occurs that is always the same thing across all of history. Also love the signature hahahahaha

Yes, I achieved ACTUAL enlightenment 4 days ago. This is a good question. Not really. Actually, you can't and you don't want to. Because you recognize the previous state as useless and delusional. But, even beyond that, you see that there is nothing to really go back to. If you are in the middle of reaching enlightenment, you might have some thought like "Oh, it kind of feels weird. Can I go back?" But, this is not enlightenment. Close to it, maybe. But not it. Before enlightenment, there are "degrees." You might untangle SOME thoughts. You might improve your mental health SOMEWHAT. Enlightenment is like the peak of all of this "mental improvement", and it's like a switch that permanently flips inside your head that just permanently removes any mental illness forever. It's the end of fearing thoughts, FOREVER. You couldn't fear it even if you wanted to. It's like looking at a picture of Spongebob and trying to convince yourself "Be scared!" It just doesn't work. It is a single recontextualization, which permanently neutralizes all thoughts and unnecessary suffering, by virtue of the recontextualization.

Yeah there is, it's called enlightenment or self-realization. Relatively speaking, it's a psychological switch that flips, then your direct experience is permanently recontextualized and you literally become unable to feel negative emotions ever again. (To clarify a bit more, you still feel physical symptoms, like your heart racing fast for example, or even physical pain, but this is recontextualized as a biological sensation which is neither negative or positive, just physically uncomfortable perhaps).

Any word I say would be equally as descriptive as any other word

Boredom is the desire for something that doesn't exist. When enlightened, you see that there is no point in chasing anything, because if you're chasing something, it doesn't exist. Thus, no boredom. There's nothing that can make you bored, it doesn't exist. The idea that "there are other things to get to" IS boredom. This sentence I just quoted is literally what boredom is. Boredom is not a feeling or emotion, it is a negative interpretation of feeling or emotion based on the idea that something which does not exist does exist. When someone says "I feel bored because I'm stuck in class", this is actually an inaccurate perception. Boredom is LITERALLY just the thought or desire that says "I want to go somewhere that isn't class." The boredom appears because of a failure to recognize that the class is all that exists, thus there is no "other experience" to go to. The "other experience" is just a thought form that you cling on to.

You are accessing something from the present right now, which is "death." But this thing you access is not death, because you are always present. It is just a description of some thing called "death" that YOU made up. It's based in nothing. You will never experience the future. Yes, It's complete fantasy. Experience is not concept or any idea you have of death, it is just the entirety of experience itself, whatever that is. You are interpreting things from experience which do not exist. There is absolutely nothing to interpret in experience. Experience is just experience. The color red is just the color red, it can't be anything else, and you can't interpret it as anything else. Death is just a fantasy humans made up, and you adopted it. Kind of like believing in Santa. I am saying that the entire medium of "death" is an inaccurate tool for accessing reality. It needs to be dropped. It's just a concept. It won't let you access reality. Instead you should describe what is experienced presently, rather than making up future events. When you want to realize reality, you don't make up things like "death", you just look in front of you and describe it. It's like this: A kid looks at presents under his chimney and infers >>> Oh, that means I will meet Santa in the future! You are doing the same exact thing, you see someone's physical body get injured and infer >>> Oh, that means I will experience death in the future! In both cases, you've made something up that isn't the actual thing itself and never will be. It never will be, because the medium of concept/imagination can never touch reality or actually be real, ever. Although, you're welcome to prove me wrong, let me know when you do manage to experience the future.

Yeah, I think so. I am saying that I LITERALLY cannot fear death right now, no matter how hard I try, because there is no "death" in my experience. My state right now is just glued to the present moment. "Death" is just words on my screen right now, and then maybe some images of someone getting injured in my head. That's it. That's literally all it is. It's just thoughts and concepts and words. Death only exists as a concept. Literally. Your experience won't be your imagination of death. So there's nothing to fear. It's something you experience. You can't imagine experience. You're imagining some time in the future right now where you die, but it's just imagination. Anytime you think of the future it's completely useless to fear it because it is just a thought form. But also, death specifically is always an idea. It's just an idea you came up with to try and estimate some experience. It doesn't even point to anything real or substantial. Death is not physical pain. Death is not sensation or experience. It is literally just some human concept that says "Hmm, maybe my consciousness will disappear when my physical body dies?" <<< this question/concept is LITERALLY all that death is! This is death! The reason you are confused about death is because you are not experiencing it. If you were experiencing it, there would be no confusion. Now, I ask, how are you fearing something that you do not know or experience? There's literally nothing to fear! I'm not playing semantics, this is not hopeful thinking, there is existentially absolutely nothing for you to fear right now. You are just imagining a description of "death" in the form of thought, and then using that as a proxy to invoke fear. It is just thought.

Yeah, me. I'm not experiencing "death" right now, so I can't fear it. Most people operate this way actually, until they THINK about death, but most people are not enlightened and they are stuck to their self-image, so then this brings up a fear in them that feels very real. Experience can't die. It just changes a lot. The physical body might stop operating at some point, but of course, that is not my experience right now, and even if it was, that would not be death either. It would just be physical pain or something. Whatever idea you have about death, is not death, so you worry about something that is not, and probably never will be. To put it more succinctly, you need enlightenment or some drug-induced state to transcend the fear of death, probably. But the latter is temporary.

Yes, exactly! That is the true intended purpose of that emotion, before it is co-opted by thoughts about yourself. By the way, thoughts are always ABOUT yourself, they are not your ACTUAL self, which is your entire physical experience. Thoughts are just thoughts. You are you (not thoughts). What I said actually applies to ALL negative emotions in ALL situations. So, if you extrapolate this method to your entire experience in general, your life might blossom into something really beautiful, you might even achieve enlightenment or something.

There is no visual experience of tree AND cat, because you are referring to TWO visual experiences (as you have separated tree and cat). There is one visual experience, which has tree and cat. You separate it and abstract the experience through thought. The difference you're experiencing is not distinction. When you say "difference" you are referring to visual perception. Distinction is you splicing up the visual perception through thought. A flower has no capability of distinguishing itself into something else, because when it distinguishes itself, it's not a flower anymore, it's a thought/distinction. Anything that exists cannot reduce itself down further. Experience cannot "distinguish itself", it can only create a THOUGHT (which isn't experience) that imagines a distinction. The letters are experienced differently but they exist at the same time as everything else in your experience, so it can't be distinguished as "a letter" or "B" or "A" until you think of it first. Everything in your experience exists at the same time as eachother, so therefore distinctions of "a cat", "a tree" or "a letter" are not accurate to what you are experiencing (because you're separating experience with labels) and therefore they are NOT the experience itself. Sure. Sure, but that's just a human conception (which is created through words, thoughts, and other methods of communication). The concept is never the actual thing itself, it's just a method of communicating or describing experience. Maybe, but distinction is just a specific type of thought which describes an abstraction of experience. It's just a thought. It might seem like I'm saying the same thing over and over again, so I'll try to bite at the main contention. You're saying the actual physical experience, or any aspect of actual experience, IS distinction, which is wrong. Distinction is just thought ABOUT experience, not the actual experience it is describing. Experience is infinite and one. If you look at a painting of Mona Lisa, the entire painting is one thing, although you are still experiencing SOMETHING (the painting). But, this SOMETHING you're experiencing is still one and it has no distinctions. Then, your thoughts come and say "Mona Lisa", "human", "background", which then creates a subtraction of experience through thought. Experience can never actually subtract itself, so it has to create a simulation of a subtracted experience through thought, but then that is always ONLY just thought, not the experience itself that it describes. A thought always ONLY factually exists as a thought. Nothing else. It doesn't matter how amazing or descriptive it is, it is never smarter than any other thought, it is never more intelligent than any other thought, because they're ALL JUST THOUGHTS. They are never the qualities of "intelligence" and "smartness" itself. When you say "human mind" here I'm just gonna assume you're talking about "human experience" or "the experience of being human" for lack of better words, correct me if this is a wrong interpretation of the term though. No, the human mind is just the human mind. Not two things. Not human mind + distinction. Just human mind. The distinction is just a sensory perception WITHIN human mind that it describes, and so it not the whole thing itself, and so it is not human mind itself. What you're doing from a metaphysical perspective is this: You're taking human mind, which is infinite and one, then you're subtracting a part of it through thought, focusing on that subtracted thought form, and then saying: "Human mind IS this subtracted thought form (distinction)" Really try to understand this: IF existence, at least theoretically, is one and infinite. I mean, you can try proving it, for example, try to point to the edge of your vision. But yes, IF existence is one and infinite, then "a cat" or "a tree" CANNOT exist, because all of these are just subtracted FORMS of existence and they only exist INSIDE existence. Existence is not JUST "a cat". Existence is not JUST "a tree". Existence is always the entirety of existence itself. And then any "distinguished" part of existence cannot be existence itself, because it's just a distinction/thought, not the entire thing itself.

Nothing. Thought forms. Things that aren't you and can't touch you. Fear is just paranoia of what doesn't exist. Paranoia is following "threatening" thought patterns, but of course, thoughts cannot threaten anything. Paranoia is just a radical and noticeable degree of fear. "Normal" and "functional" paranoia is just called fear or survival, but it is still ultimately paranoid, because it never makes contact with what actually exists. Fear is a negative emotion. It's a combination of two things, "negative" and "emotion." The "negative" part comes from thoughts. "Emotion" is just actual physical sensation. You can separate the two. The physical symptoms associated with fear are real, but they are simply things like adrenaline, heartbeat, excitement, etc. So, they can actually exist without the thought. It becomes negative when you associate it with thought, and then that's how fear is created. Otherwise, it's just a physical symptom, nothing negative or positive about it. It just motivates you to avoid danger, without any reference to future or past selves. Fear is just a personification of physical symptoms, and then that personification just exists as a thought form, which is ultimately not describing anything real or physical.

No, it's exactly not yourself. Fear is a subset of reality, not reality. You are reality.

No. Visual experience is not equal to distinction, which is thought. The experience of vision is infinite.

No. You can't point to something that is infinite. It's just one thing. You cannot point to the edge of your vision, for example. It proves that you're talking, ABOUT something. Anything you talk about isn't what you're actually talking about. It's always AROUND the thing. It exists as a thought. You are interpreting thought as something that you should connect to something that isn't thought (your experience), and so it seems like it is not just a thought, but it is. Yes, the thought is one and part of experience, but, in your experience, you are connecting this sensory perception (thought) to things that are not thought, and you are mistaking it for those things.

It's not the worst place ever on the internet. There's Twitter.

I mean, I'm fine. Don't know about you guys.

I think their diet advice is in the right direction. Very intuitive. I find most people's diets nowadays to be logical rather than physical. That's because their junk food is super spicy and oily and tasty, and there is like no knowledge on health there, this applies to a lot of these less developed countries. What happens is, you'll have their traditional healthy whole food, like lentils or whatever. But then you also have the more unhealthy stuff that they love to snack on. Most indian people do not really care about diet at all, they aren't taught about it, it's not really enforced there. So, lentils are indian food. But then also, some ball of dough fried in week old frying oil is ALSO indian food. So there's the disparity. Then, you'll have candy and imported western products, which they know absolutely nothing about, and they just indiscriminately eat all of it or put it all in their food. They just don't care, and the doctors don't really care either (they just perscribe pills), and they're never really taught much about diet. So, ultimately, I think it's bad to judge something more secular like Ayurveda on this. But also, you will never know until you personally try. Just my two cents. Might have some biases and assumptions of my own in there, but I've lived in similar areas and seen what it's like. I would also say, the pollution of the country is probably unrelated to diet. I don't know why you would consider that as a factor. I mean, India brought many enlightened people as well, despite being poluted, since you like correlations.

You can't talk or think of an "actual tree" or "actual car." So, no, you aren't. These are just abstractions of the actual experiences. The medium that you are perceiving these differences in is literally wrong, and it is not reality itself, it is just a thought. A tree is your experience. A car is your experience. The experience can't point to itself or reduce itself further, so you separate it with thought and say "the tree is different from a cat, and vice versa." Experience cannot separate itself, you can only create a simulation of separation through thought. So, the distinction is just a thought, and then the actual experience does not have distinction. Note that you say "make" a distinction, meaning that this distinction did not exist previously before you "made" it. This previous state which existed before you made the distinction is not a distinction, it is the real experience itself, and it contains no distinctions, because experience cannot separate itself or point to itself. It can only create a simulation/description of "pointing to itself" through the medium of thought. It's just a thought. There is perception, but perception is not distinction. Perception is experience. Distinction is not something that magically embeds itself in reality, it is just a very descriptive thought. That's literally all it is. Just a thought. Just as an analogy, you might think that your experience includes: "A human being, a chair, a table, a computer, the sun, the sky, sounds, etc." But no, it's redundant to create those distinctions and separate them in a list like that, it's more like your experience is just "your experience", and then "your experience" experience includes humans, chairs, tables, computers, etc. There's no need to create the separations "A human being, a chair, a table, etc." because it's all included in "your experience." It is all your experience, and it is literally YOU. This might be confusing, so let's imagine you're playing a game of Mario. Notice that, when you play Mario, even though you are controlling Mario, you are still experiencing the entire game, including Bowser, the goombas, Princess Peach, etc. These are all included inside of the experience of Mario. The game isn't JUST a guy named Mario, in the same way that your life isn't JUST a human being. Your life includes other human beings, it involves food, it involves music, etc. So, it's the entire experience of being a human, rather than just this secluded distinction of "I am a human." Ultimately, these distinctions are just abstractions of you and your experience, not the actual experience itself.

It's limited. You will have to transcend it eventually, IF you wanna progress forward after a certain point. Reality and truth is not a book. Book just points towards things.

You might need something more practical and grounded. Some more objective perspectives on your matter. Talk with someone. Talk with an online therapist or something. Heck, even just talk with AI, they're super understanding and insightful.