Someone here

@snowyowl thanks. No I don't use alcohol or that much caffeine. My lifestyle is pretty stable. But I'm beginning to lose hope. I have severe anxiety and depression. Sometimes I go entire days feeling anxious.

What about "death"?

@Salvijus you mean meditation?

I had enough. I'm so tired of this anxiety. It keeps getting worse. I don't know if I can handle it any more. It's this burning sensation in my chest. I'm anxious all day long. I don't know what to do.

Totally accept whatever is arising.

@Blackhawk this is dangerous. If you are suicidal you should visit a therapist or take some medications.

I think that our ego is kind of this shitpile we have gathered, so to speak. We have gathered enormous amounts of different garbage and glued it into ourselves, forming the ego. This ego makes us act in different ways to various situations, but the decision is not an expression of free will, it's just our shitpile - the ego - reacting to stuff in various ways. How to break free from years of programming?

Form is empty. Emptiness is form.. Is what I mean. Again it can't be explained really. It's something you have to grasp directly.

Everything that exists in the universe at this instant, all matter, energy, fields, life forms, everything we perceive, imagine or do.... Are nothing.

Whether it's drugs.. Food.. Smoking.. Video games or anything else.. What's the one key point that one should understand and apply to quit addiction? Of course by one point won't be enough.. Quitting addiction is a complicated process and takes multiple steps.. Time and effort etc. But I'm not interested in detailed discussion here. If you can summarize it all in just one key piece of insight to quit any addiction.. What would it be?

By surrendering to the present moment.

@Mu_ will try to put this as simple as possible. This question comes up time & again: If there’s only One Thing (non-duality) how do you explain all the apparent ‘many things’ we see manifested? Our bodies? The hard solid ground? The water we can see.. feel and drink? The atoms.. quarks and other particles of apparently ‘real’ matter that make up water.. earth and bodies? (Apparently, indeed. Science has already confirmed all atoms are 99% space.. less than 1% “matter.”) Unfortunately.. You are asking for a mind-based.. mind-understandable answer.. on limiting the answer to something the dual.. subject/object-based mind can comprehend. Unfortunately it can't be explained explicitly. You either get it or you don't get it.

@Carl-Richard this is a serious insight lol

@Blackhawk are you suicidal these days?

Bumping this old thread of mine Instead of opening a new one. I want to learn more about dreams.

more from a metaphysical pov .not a psychological one. im not interested in how they are a manifestation of the unconscious mind. but the actual substance of the dream if that makes sense . what is it? where is it occurring? how is it possible? it is not obvious at all especially if you are not coming at it from the materialist paradigm . dreams are surely not happening "in the brain". your brain is maximum 15 cubic cm. how would a dream world that is sometimes cubic kilometers be couched inside this little brain ? and if you come across someone dreaming you do not see his dreams floating around his head. if we cut open his skull ...we merely find brain ..the dream as in the 3D world is surely not occurring inside the physical brain in a literal sense even if it( the brain) plays a role. so what the hell are dreams? and "where" are they occurring? and how they come about?

@EmptyVase Parts of me want to continue smoking despite the negative consequences. And other parts of me want to quit because I do care about my health. I don't know what to do. I'm split up.

@Blackhawk do you have suicidal thoughts?

Well I do want to smoke cigarettes like there's no tomorrow. But it's ruined my goddamn life.

@Nahm what if what I want is the something that I'm addicted to? Should one write "smoking cigarettes and playing video games" on his dreamboard?

To each his own, I guess. Relax. @Blackhawk

@Blackhawk I don't care what the Upanishads say. Truth must be mine. Can't borrow it from somewhere else. Then it becomes a belief.

No. I'm talking about a radical realization. You don't actually know what is going on here. All these ideas about "something will happen called death" are pure fantasy. But you are rather in a monkey mindish mode right now that you can't believe that. And that's OK. But just stay open to what I'm suggesting. That you actually don't and can't know if death is real.

1. That doesn't count. Sure you see "others" dying. But how do you know that you are going to die? Isn't it true that you are imagining death? How do you know that you are human? Isn't that just a thought? 2. Exactly. You "assume" that. It's just an assumption. 3. Doesn't count as evidence.

@Blackhawk So all you want is a gf? That's it? And you will be happy and enjoying life?