Someone here

Not sure .but I don't feel like it's the right thing for me to do .maybe I built fap phobia because I was addicted to it in the past and I don't know what would happen if I would go back .maybe I will become addicted again.

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In some contemporary spiritual teachings, there is a belief that the self is illusory. To become enlightened, or “realised” means to let go of the illusion of being someone. When this happens, our sense of personal identity disappears. There’s no longer a doer who performs actions; actions are just performed through us. There’s no longer an “I” who experiences things; experience just flows through us. According to these teachings, all of our problems stem from our sense of being someone, so when we let go of this idea, then our problems cease as well. But in my view, these teachings are based on a misunderstanding. One metaphor sometimes used to describe spiritual awakening is that of the wave and the ocean. In our normal unawakened state, we perceive ourselves as individual waves, separate to the whole ocean. But when we wake up, we realize our oneness with the ocean, that we are the ocean, that we’ve emerged from it and are always part of it. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we lose our identity as a wave. We can have an identity as a wave at the same time as being part of the ocean—at the same time as being the ocean. We can still function as individuals, with some degree of autonomy and identity, at the same time as being one with the whole universe. One way to look at this is to see spiritual awakening not as a dissolution of self but as an expansion of self. In our sleep state, our identity is constricted, more or less confined to our own mind and body. But as we wake up, our identity opens up, expands outward. It incorporates and encompasses wider realities. It expands into other people, other living beings, the natural world, the earth itself, until eventually it encompasses the whole cosmos. In conceptual terms, this expresses itself as a movement beyond a narrow egocentric outlook (with a strong sense of group identity) toward a global, universal perspective, with a concern for overriding global issues and a sense of oneness with all human beings, irrespective of superficial differences of nationality or ethnicity.

I have come to the conclusion that fapping is the worst part .not porn .I can watch porn every now and then without any problems. Only the fapping is what creates the problem.

The funny and ironic thing is I don't feel bad about it. I actually enjoyed myself and I'm happy afterwards. I begin to think that fapping is the unhealthy part .i don't expect any damage from just watching naked peeps fucking each other.

I can't delete them. I can't do it . I'm so attached to it .I think I can control this thing and not let it spiral out of sight. No fap is still intact. Just watching a little porn here and there is no big deal, right ? I have no problem with wet dreams .if they happen I don't consider it a relapse .

If we live in a multiverse that indicates eternal inflation, does it mean we actually live over and over again the same life? Do all matter and particles that makes ''me'' me, fall in the same chronological order which will indicate that I am indeed a product of eternal and infinite energy? This frightens me, mostly because we are not able to control whether we actually want to exist or not. We are just a product of eternal inflation that always existed and will continue to exist for eternity, thus making us eternal beings. Another issue I have is, if we live in multiverse where all possible outcomes are actually possible, then it means that there are infinite amount copies of me, and some copies are presidents, doctors, criminals etc. Now, with that said, what are your opinion on , me living again after I die on this earth? Will I eventually be born again and live same life again, or will I cease to exist, because there are infinite number of ''me'' out there, so it wouldn't break any mathematic number? What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' @Leo Gura would like to hear your thoughts on this .as you mentioned something similar in this video Thanks.

Yes .I agree .but you need to tell that to these teachers that I'm referring to .although they are so stuck in their perspective that they will never even accept any reference to a 'personal story'. These teachers, of course, no longer ‘tell stories’ (well, except the gigantic story that all stories are a sign of ignorance…). They imply that they themselves exist in some sort of mystical state beyond the personal, or that they have entered into a kind of space where the personal no longer has any meaning, relevance or interest. They don’t have a past or future, they don’t have ‘personal relationships’ (who is there to have a relationship with?), and they certainly never suffer (because all suffering is an illusion, right?) And so you end up feeling inferior to these people (or non-people, or nobodies, or absences, or whatever they are calling themselves today) and terribly guilty and narcissistic for still having interest in your personal story. Liberation or enlightenment obviously hasn’t happened for you yet! And so you wait and wait for liberation to happen. And although these teachers say there is nothing you can do to reach liberation, and nobody there who can do anything anyway, you carry on going to their meetings and reading their books, in the vain hope that it will happen one day. Although there’s no ‘you’ it can happen to. And no ‘one day’….

Neo-Advaita types. Like Jim Newman and Tony parsons . If you listen to certain nonduality/Advaita teachers who are on the scene at the moment, you may get the impression that there is something terribly wrong with having a personal ‘story’. Having a thought-created story about yourself, your past experiences, your relationships, your feelings, your desires and hopes and fears, and so on – in other words, being a living, breathing human being – is a clear sign of delusion and duality. And you need to wake up from this mess! If you go to a public meeting held by a teacher of ‘radical Advaita’, and they invite questions, and you start talking about something personal – for example, the death of a loved one, an addiction you have, a painful event that happened in your past – they will tell you that you are ‘stuck in your story’, or ‘lost in the dream of time and space’ or they will simply say you are ‘still a person’ and ‘haven’t woken up yet’. The fact that you ‘told a story’ shows that you are still coming from duality – you are still identified as a seeker, stuck in the personal. Once you ‘get it’, you will no longer tell personal stories. You will exist in the eternal Now, and know nothing of your past.

@axiom thank you . I will contemplate on that .

Unfortunately I don't have any access to psychedelics .they are illegal in my country. My main concern is If time is shaped like a doughnut and therefore repeats with the exact events over and over, would I be the same ‘me’, consciously or not?

@Reciprocality sorry its hard for me to understand your posts. Could you explain it in a simpler way ?

The question I feel is about determinism: if we believe that the Universe would have inevitably organized itself in the exact way that it is now, than what we do doesn’t matter. If we believe that we will come back again and again, and ask the same questions, get the same answers, do the same things, then we are not here.

@Gesundheit2 lol

If time is a line, and this line is not merely circular, but spirals, then each circling could be a lot like the one before. Who knows

Observing time passing is not the same thing as time passing, in this sense there is no time passing outside ourselves, just as there is no “COLOR" in physical light, only different wavelengths of force. We cannot-not-exist and this world is most likely doomed, meaning this universe is probably just one of infinite or many possible universes. And we are most likely not bound in our domain of existence.

@gettoefl Time is an abstract concept, not a physical object with geometry. We have been seriously misled about the nature of reality outside our minds by the terminology used by physicists in this regard. regarding eternal recurrence...Reality is repetitious but it never repeats exactly, because the infinity of sameness is exactly equal to the infinity of variety. All our life experiences are repetitious but not exact copies. So enjoy this version of “you” and your life experiences, they will not be repeated, not precisely, not exactly the same.

Why is time an illusion? What do you mean by time? And what do you mean by it being an illusion? Time exists. Sure. We even have a word for it. We are even talking about it right now. It's just like everything else.. What you think it is.... Isn't actually what it is. our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock. Even Albert Einstein’s relativistic space-time.. Which is supposed to be an elastic manifold that contorts so that local times differ depending on one’s relative speed or proximity to a mass is just a simplification. In other words the universe is like a movie.. All past presents and future are contained in the same place (for lack of better words). But that's none of your business as you are completely bought into the linearity of life. Better question be What is time? And good luck answering.

Yes I'm right now imagining these infinite incarnations. But are they gonna become actuality at some point in time ? The theory is basically that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a similar form, an infinite number of times. It is based on the philosophy of Predeterminism. People are predestined to continue repeating the same events over and over again. Nietzsche was merely riding on this cosmic abstraction to dramatize his philosophical musing.

@Inliytened1 yeah whatever. Death is really not the main topic of this thread what's your thoughts on eternal recurrence?

Lol.if only it was that simple. What if there is an afterlife? .bottom line is no one knows what happens after death .we could ascend to a different dimension with a different timeline. At some point or other, all of us will be faced with fears about death. After all, what happens when the light’s go out remains one of life’s biggest mysteries. Not only is it normal to fear the unknown but in these current uncertain times, we’re probably going to find our thoughts turning to our own mortality even more. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, contemplating death can spur us on to make important changes in our lives. It can make us question whether we’re living a life that’s based on our values – the things that are important to us.

The reason why Nietzsche's concept and theory of “eternal recurrence” can be depressing is because that it assumes that at some point in time (whether in either a decade or millennia, or even regardless of if the universe “lives forever” or “had gone through multiple life cycles”) any past event or experience (like one’s birthday or a natural disaster) were to eventually repeat in a “perfect” manner - if it was to happen, every “minute detail” (like the positioning of the candles on one’s birthday, or the minute events that define the natural disaster in question) of the experience must be exactly the same; no deviations, no variations, not even a single change. “Eternal recurrence” can be possible IF the current understanding of the laws of physics explicitly states that the “underlying elements” of the universe are discrete (and by discrete as per mathematical context, I MEAN FINITE, NOT INFINITE). Essentially, for the “observer” who is depressed because of that said concept and theory, this means that the universe has “finite possibilities or experiences”, and that the “observer” will assume that at some point in the near or far future (even considering the above timescale at the beginning of this post), the universe is “about to run out of new things to experience”. To sum this paragraph up - NO MORE NEW THINGS TO EVEN OCCUR ANYMORE; EVERYTHING WILL EVENTUALLY REPEAT. Also, many “observers” will assume that SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN if this eventuality were to ever occur; for them, in an artist’s words, to experience the same event atom for atom can be TANTAMOUNT to plagiarism whether intentional or accidental. In order for “eternal recurrence” to be non-existent (and in turn, cure the “dread” and angst” of the observer), there must be at least scientific or mathematical proof that any event, under any circumstances, must never repeat, exactly atom for atom - in plain English, there is always something new for the universe to occur, regardless of time (whether it’s either a decade, a century, a millennium, a civilization reset, a universal life cycle, or even multiple universal life cycles away). To date, there is STILL no credible scientific or mathematical proof that will put this theory (and in extension, the observer’s existential dread/angst/crisis) to rest. This concept and theory actually gave me an existential crisis

I share the same worry as you. Its giving me existential crisis

Life and the universe is an unending cycle, you will keep coming a countless number of times and when the universe becomes too old, it self destructs and begins afresh! Everything will start all over again. I read so. But I should be more concerned with the current life I have and not care about my next life, example, i have one beautiful gift now and I begin to worry about another gift which was planned to be presented to me soon, hence making me unable to enjoy my current gift. Whenever you find yourself alive, this world or the next or a thousandth, live it and make the best out of it, don't care about the one you don't have now!

Before Einstein came up with relativity, which entails a Big Bang beginning, scientists believed that the universe was largely unchanging, and of fixed size. In a universe of fixed size, Nietzsche theorized in his unpublished journals which became known as the Will to Power, everything will eventually return to its previous position, and re-enter into its previous relationships. Imagine, for instance, that the universe is a computer screen with the screen saver on. A ball bounces around this limited area and will eventually happen upon a path that it has already taken, given infinite time and no possibility of an expanding screen, the ball will eventually only take paths that it has taken before. In a universe of fixed size and infinite time where all is will to power and nothing else, things will settle into established patterns of existence.