Someone here

The number one reason I smoke cigarettes is stress-management.

There is a part of me that wants a better world , a better universe. With all my wishes fulfilled. there is a part of me that won’t get fulfilled even with that and infinitely more. there is a part of me that sees the infinite beauty of this universe . there is a part of me that is deeply sad . there is a part of me that is confused . there is a part of me that knows everything is nothing.

I think one of the most important things on a spiritual path is learning to make a clear distinction between genuine spiritual insight and spiritual escapism. The two can sometimes look almost identical from the outside, and even internally they can be difficult to distinguish. A profound insight can genuinely change the way you relate to life, but the mind can also take spiritual ideas that contain some truth and turn them into a way of avoiding whatever feels difficult or uncomfortable about practical life . For example, the idea that “nothing ultimately matters” feels incredibly liberating. The idea that no external achievement, relationship, possession, or experience can ever provide permanent fulfillment can also feel deeply true and resonates with our “soul “.And there is something very appealing about the possibility of simply withdrawing from the noise of the world, sitting in silence, and discovering that happiness does not depend on anything outside of oneself. Or living like Ramana Maharishi ,just fully vulnerable and present hanging out naked in an ashram barely covering my penis and ass. But precisely because these perspectives are so appealing, they can be self-deceptions. Is it genuinely a realization that nothing external can provide lasting fulfillment? Or is the mind using that insight as a justification for not engaging with life? Is the desire to sit alone in silence coming from freedom and clarity, or is it partly coming from fear, or an unwillingness to deal with the complexity of relationships and society? The social dimension of life is difficult . Always has been ,always will be . Relationships, friendships, work, family, social expectations, communication, conflict, rejection, intimacy, responsibility, and simply being around other people can create enormous amounts of stress. It can therefore be extremely tempting to arrive at a spiritual conclusion that seems to solve the entire problem: “None of this really matters. I don’t need any of it. I can just be alone, meditate, and be perfectly content.” Maybe there is genuine wisdom in recognizing that none of these things can provide ultimate fulfillment. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that withdrawing from them is automatically an expression of spiritual freedom. There is a difference between realizing that you do not need something for your fundamental well-being and deciding that you therefore should have nothing to do with it. There is also a possibility that both things can be happening simultaneously. Maybe there really are genuine spiritual insights present, while at the same time those insights are being used, consciously or unconsciously, as a form of escapism i could genuinely understand that external circumstances cannot give me permanent fulfillment while also secretly enjoying the idea because it gives me permission to avoid confronting certain aspects of life. I could genuinely experience the peace of solitude while also using solitude to protect myself from the difficulties of human interactions .i could genuinely see through certain forms of worldly attachment while simultaneously using spirituality to avoid responsibilities or experiences that make me uncomfortable At the same time, the opposite can also become a trap. We shouldn’t automatically dismiss an insight simply because it makes us less interested in certain conventional pursuits. Sometimes genuine spiritual understanding really does change one’s priorities. Perhaps certain ambitions genuinely lose their importance. Perhaps solitude really is more fulfilling than constant stimulation. Perhaps one genuinely discovers that happiness does not depend on acquiring more experiences, possessions, attention, or validation. The challenge is determining whether that movement is coming from freedom or avoidance. Maybe one useful test is to ask: If I were completely unafraid of life, would I still choose this? If I had no fear of rejection, conflict, judgment, intimacy, failure, uncertainty, or social discomfort, would I still want to live a very solitary life? If the answer is yes, that tells me something. But if the desire for solitude becomes dramatically weaker when I imagine myself completely at ease with other people, then perhaps there is an element of avoidance mixed into my spiritual reasoning.

Pinning topics to contemplate so that I don’t forget : - deep sleep . - decision making . -boredom . - exercising. -conflating spirituality with survival . -juggling different perspectives simultaneously.

I don’t really understand the extent of the hype surrounding this girl. She is a pornstar, an OnlyFans creator, and an Instagram model, and there’s no denying that she is extremely attractive. She has a beautiful face, a curvy body, and, objectively speaking, an incredibly attractive overall appearance. If someone considers her a 10/10, I can understand that. What I don’t understand is why so many of her fans describe her as “the most gorgeous girl in the world.” That, to me, is clearly an exaggeration. I’ve seen plenty of women :American, European, Turkish, Lebanese, and others who are at a comparable level of attractiveness, if not more attractive. Beauty is subjective, after all, and there are countless women who could reasonably be considered just as beautiful. That said, I do think there is something genuinely distinctive about her content. Her porn is quite different from mainstream porn and even from a lot of amateur content. The storylines, role-playing, attention to presentation, and the way she constantly changes her hairstyles, makeup, outfits, and overall aesthetic give her content a different flavor. She has clearly put effort into creating a recognizable persona and a more elaborate experience than simply producing conventional porn. So I can understand why she has developed such a dedicated fanbase. What I don’t understand is the tendency to turn that admiration into claims that she is somehow the most beautiful woman alive. At some point, repeated exposure, personal attraction, and the emotional or sexual attachment people develop toward a performer can probably make their perception of her beauty even stronger. She can be exceptionally beautiful without being objectively “the most gorgeous girl in the world.” Those are two very different claims.

Understanding & dealing with the restless mind . Will add more ..

https://www.actualized.org/insights/ai-makes-you-less-creative

https://www.actualized.org/insights/work-is-not-happiness

I understand what you mean . And you understand what I meant .

There are two types of “noise “ :External noise like the sounds of cars and dogs and loud music . And internal noise which is the monkey mind thinking thoughts nonstop . You can’t stop external noise by stopping internal noise . But it’s helpful to stop external noise if you want to stop internal noise .

If you really inquired and thought about this and investigated it directly and experientially ,you are going to have a serious insight into literally the answer to the question “ who am I ?” . you are NOT a person who lives inside a world , at least not ultimately or essentially.You are the pure infinite eternal awareness inside of which everything occur. i benefited a lot from these videos . Contemplating sleep and consciousness is deeply insightful in spiritual enlightenment work .

entirely AI-generated .outlining the key points of these videos on understanding sleep: In deep sleep, the experienced world disappears. We no longer perceive our body, surroundings, thoughts, or other people. Yet we continue to exist. When we wake up, we say, “I slept well” or “I knew nothing while I was asleep.” This suggests that there was still some continuity of awareness/existence even when ordinary mental activity was absent. The world we experience depends on the mind. During waking, the mind creates our experience of a world containing objects, people, time, space, pleasure, and suffering. When the mind becomes inactive in deep sleep, that experienced world also disappears. The question is: where did the world go? It did not necessarily disappear in an absolute sense; rather, our experience and perception of it disappeared because the mind that was experiencing it was temporarily inactive. Deep sleep is used as an example to question our ordinary idea of reality. If the world seems completely absent during sleep but appears again when we wake, then perhaps our everyday experience of the world is more dependent on consciousness than we normally realize. According to Advaita Vedanta, the body and mind are not the ultimate Self. They appear and disappear through the states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. The deeper question is: what remains through all three states? The waking person changes into the dreamer and then into the deep sleeper, but there is something that provides continuity through these changing experiences. That underlying reality is consciousness—the Self (Atman). Shankaracharya’s teaching points toward the idea that consciousness is fundamental, while the changing experiences of waking, dreaming, and sleeping are temporary appearances. Deep sleep therefore becomes a philosophical clue. It gives us an everyday experience in which the world, the body, and the mind disappear from experience, yet on waking we recognize that we have continued to exist. The ultimate inquiry is not “Where does the world go?” but “Who is the one to whom the world appears?” This shifts the investigation from the external world toward the nature of consciousness and the Self. The body sleeps, but does the Self sleep? The video questions whether the thing we truly call “I” becomes unconscious when the physical body enters sleep. We normally identify ourselves with the body and mind. When the body is awake, we say “I am awake”; when it sleeps, we say “I was asleep.” Advaita asks whether the Self is actually the body that undergoes these changing states. The mind also becomes inactive in deep sleep. Thoughts, memories, desires, perceptions, and the sense of an external world temporarily disappear. Yet something remains. After waking, we can say, “I slept” or “I knew nothing.” This raises the question of how we can speak about an experience that occurred when the ordinary mind was inactive. Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep are changing states. The person you experience yourself as in waking, the dreamer in dreams, and the experiencer of deep sleep are different states—but there is a continuity of “I” through them. The Self is therefore considered different from the body and mind. In Advaita Vedanta, the body changes and the mind changes, but the underlying consciousness—the Atman/Self—is not itself subject to these changes. The waking world may be comparable to a dream. In a dream, we experience people, places, events, emotions, and even a sense of time as completely real while the dream is happening. When we wake up, the dream is recognized as a mental appearance. Advaita asks us to consider whether something similar happens when we move from one state of consciousness to another. A dream feels real while we are dreaming. We don’t normally think, “This is only a dream” while inside it. The same may be true of waking life: we take the waking experience to be absolutely real because we are immersed in it. Both waking and dreaming are temporary states. They arise, remain for some time, and eventually disappear. What appears to be an entire world in a dream can vanish in an instant when we wake. The important question is not simply whether the world is real or unreal. Advaita asks: What is the reality behind the changing experiences? The body and mind are constantly changing. Our body changes with age, our thoughts change, our emotions change, and our perceptions change. Yet we continue to have the feeling that there is a continuous “I.” The Self is the witness of these changing states. Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep come and go, but consciousness is understood as that in whose presence these states are experienced. You are not merely the character appearing in the experience. Just as the dream character is part of the dream, Advaita suggests that the person we normally identify as “me” is also an appearance within consciousness. This does not mean that everyday life has no practical reality. Rather, Advaita distinguishes between what is temporarily experienced and what is ultimately unchanging. The deeper realization is that consciousness is more fundamental than the objects appearing in consciousness. The world, body, thoughts, and experiences change, while the underlying awareness is regarded as constant. The purpose of this teaching is self-inquiry. Instead of asking only “Is this world real?”, the more fundamental question becomes: “Who am I, the one who experiences this world?” The Advaita conclusion: the ultimate Self, or Atman, is not merely a person living inside the world. It is consciousness itself, and in Advaita this Self is ultimately identified with Brahman, the fundamental reality. In one sentence: The central idea is that waking life may be like a dream in the sense that both are changing experiences appearing in consciousness; the deeper reality is the unchanging awareness in which both appear and disappear.

I’m getting increasingly dependent on coffee to regulate my mood and even to erase that after-sleep drowsiness that I feel when I wake up. It has reached a point where I’m not just addicted to cigarettes, but also addicted to coffee. Without my morning coffee, I feel like I can’t properly start the day or get myself into the right state of mind. I increasingly rely on that first cup of coffee to feel awake, functional, and ready to face the day. What worries me is how much I’ve started depending on it,not simply because I enjoy coffee, but because I feel like I need it to regulate how I feel and to get rid of the tiredness that remains after sleeping.

A note on Islam: it is arguably the religion that speaks most extensively and rigorously about the oneness and attributes of God .His omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence, and so on. it contains what I consider to be one of the closest descriptions of God to the way Leo explained Him (it) That said, as a belief system and a source of moral and social rules, I think many aspects of Islam are outdated and cannot be straightforwardly applied to the modern world.

I’ve been dealing with two things for the past two weeks: I’ve slipped back into smoking a lot of cigarettes, and I still can’t seem to fall asleep until sunrise. The cigarettes have left me with a dull sense of taste and a constant bitterness in my mouth, which then makes me crave sugar. And honestly, what a terrible combo that is , sugar and nicotine. Today, I’m going to do my best not to smoke a single cigarette.