Someone here

Happiness leads to narcissism and is mostly temporary, and not as important as we think but it is very good at making us do stuff we don’t need in order to feel good. What is important to the human is Meaning. Happiness is temporary and The truth is always out of reach and suffers the null hypothesis. The meaning we attach to things such as happiness or our perceived truth. Meaning is laden with bias. But we don’t like that paradox, and so we eat more than we should, belittle women and children unethically, buy more than we need, believe in things without doing the research. Anything to keep us happy and an illusion of understanding the truth. That’s why it’s called ‘retail therapy.’ We are the Eternal Child that refuses to grow up, as Dr Clive Bromhall would say.

@Nahm @Gesundheit2 @Kshantivadin @John Paul thank you guys Unfortunately though I'm replacing my smoking addiction with video games addiction. I'm getting hooked on gaming recently lol Well at least I won't get lungs cancer from gaming lol

To add to this, one of the major steps of awakening is to overcome the need to use delusion for comfort. This conflict between uncomfortable truths and happiness is actually at the core of the human condition. Logically, all truths enhance your wisdom and thus your ability to act and make decisions. You are always better off with truth. Delusion may make one happy, but it necessarily inhibits progress by essentially placing a bookend to that path "this is correct, therefore I will leave it as is". In the example given, the one lied to will never progress in what is lied about, and sometimes the progress not made can be quite dramatic. Now the problem arises, what if bad news makes you feel bad, and inhibits progress? Or worse, sets you back. Well, the degree and ability to which you overcome this obstacle will ultimately define your success.

Btw if anyone is struggling with smoking addiction just PM me and I can guide and help you guys and share what worked for me to quit . Cheers

@Medhansh ? thanks bro.

I'm not 100% straight. I sometimes feel attracted to men .especially handsome men .at first I was feeling ashamed of my self and disgusted for having such attraction. But I gotta admit i do like attractive men . I also like girls .I guess I'm bisexual after all .it takes balls to admit as a man that you like other men .however I'm not planning on dating a guy as that goes completely against the cultural norms. So I guess I'm suppressing that part of my sexuality .

Same and no shame ?

I take INVEGA and prozac Rivotril and Zyprexa ...my therapist prescribed them to me .and I'm taking them consistency since a month ago. However I still from time to time get anxious and experience panic attacks. How to deal with this ? Like what should I do at the moment when I get the panic? I tried breathing slowly but It doesn't work.. If anyone has experience with healing panic attacks then please share . Thanks.

I'm close to two months clean in my nofap journey and I'm planning on going the whole year. and I knew a lot of guys struggling with addiction to masturbation and porn. Hope these tips help you.... Following are the tips that worked for me. 1. Reduce the frequency If you are watching porn and masturbating, Do not stop it! Yes, don't stop it. You cannot stop it all of a sudden. Because trying to stop suddenly will not only does not work for sure but also makes you feel hopeless thinking that it is impossible to stop. It makes you feel even more depressed. To stop something like that suddenly, you need high energy to overcome the compulsive force or energy which is making you to watch porn and masturbate. Obviously for such a state you are in, you do not have such energy currently to counter act that compulsive force and energy. So recovery does not work that way. Tip : Let's say you are watching porn and masturbating let's say, daily. If you do it today skip tomorrow and Do it day after tomorrow. Again following day skip it.. and repeat this pattern for few days. After you become stable enough for some days skip for two days and do it the following day and repeat the new pattern. In this way you reduce the frequency of falling or increase the gap very slowly. You can come to a point where you will be okay fapping once in a month. In this process you gain sufficient energy where your swapping frequency can become as low as once in a year. After you develop enough stability rest is your wish. 2. Keep yourself busy all the time The mood to fap comes mostly when one is alone and feeling bored or not having any work to do. So keep yourself busy. Intentionally get yourself involved in things which can keep you busy all the time. Tip: Going out, travelling, talking to friends over phone etc... 3. Exercise or sport: I don't think physical fitness and mental fitness are different. Both are same. If you are fit physically then you are fit mentally as well. When one is fit physically its very rare that one gets addicted to fapping. As said sound body is a sound mind. You would not get such thoughts or urges. Even if one gets they are very minimal. So excercising is a good thing to do. Cheers

Let me clarify that I don't desire to be fucked by a guy .I'm top .not bottom. I just admire a handsome guy and feel deep love for him as I do with a beautiful girl. However I desire to have straight sex more.

Gottcha.

Guess I have to accept it. Love you Leo .

I really only desire to have sex with a girl . My attraction to men is more emotional than sexual. I like a handsome guy but I don't really wanna have sex with him .I guess my sexuality is confused. What does fapping and porn have to do with the subject at hand ?

I can't have sex with a guy .it's totally unacceptable in my society. What should I do to not suppress this part of my sexuality?

@Knowledge Hoarder good luck !?

@Knowledge Hoarder you gotta get extra serious about it .that's a bonus tip for ya

The truth is that no exterior condition or stimuli MAKES us happy or unhappy. Nothing MAKES us sad or joyful or angry or scared. The external stimuli is only what it is and our response to it is nothing but a process within ourselves. Are roller coasters fun or are they scary? We get different answers from different people but the truth is that it's just a damn roller coaster. Truth doesn't guarantee anything but freedom. Whether freedom results in our happiness is up to each individual. We choose our own internal state in every moment regardless of conditions. Once this truth is known to the core the resulting choice is usually some form of "happy".

Who said I'm unhappy? I'm happier than ever these days. Hope you too

Truth, fully awakening leads to everlasting happiness. The conditioned happiness is that of fleeting happiness obsessed with objects and getting these objects in order to be happy all bs. Those people you think are happy are sure "happy", but you attack their beliefs, attachments etc and they will turn into a miserable wreck most likely. This is about being as neutral as a tree and finding happiness within our own inherent perfect being.

Always? Some truths are a hard pill to swallow. Isn't that why you deleted the solipsism video ? Just some thoughts I had about happiness. I always thought happiness was the most important thing for everyone, and maybe it is. But then I thought about truth, and realized that truth is probably even more important to us. In fact, it seems to me that truth is all that matters to us. But we lose sight of it and forget what our goal was. When we say "I'd like to be happy", what we really mean is "I'd like the truth to be such that it makes me happy". If we're honest, we wouldn't want to be told a lie that makes us happy. We'd rather find out the truth and be unhappy. Of course, ideally, we'd want the truth to be such that it makes us happy. But we want the truth above all. I'm sure not everyone will agree with this, but imagine that people around you conspire to tell you a lie all your life in order to make you happy. One hour before your death, they admit that they lied to you all your life, but had you known the truth, you would have been unhappy. Will you die thinking that it's okay, all those years of happiness cannot be taken away from you, and that your life was a good one, even if it was because of a lie? Or will you be angry that they lied to you, and that your happiness was based on that lie, and that your life was pointless? Similarly, would you rather take a drug that instantly made you happy without bad consequences, or would you rather work hard and maybe even suffer throughout your life in order to get just an occasional bit of happiness here and there? I think most people choose the latter, because they are looking for something, even if they don't know what it is. It's not happiness. Why? Because no one really seeks happiness. We seek truth. We'd love to have both, but if we can only get one or the other, we'd choose truth over happiness. This means happiness is not our primary goal. Maybe this is a bit like food. We don't seek to be constantly eating our favorite dish. We just want to stay alive and avoid hunger, and in the mean time we sometimes eat good food which makes us happy temporarily. But the goal of food is not to make us happy — it's to keep us alive. Happiness is a sort of side effect that tells us we're on the right track, but it's not the goal.

Love this ❤

I’m more inclined to say that it is one’s journey [Life] having freedom [Liberty] discovering one’s truth [the pursuit of] resulting in joy [Happiness]. Hence, one’s innate unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness

There is a famous quote in sanskrit " Satyam Shivam Sundaram", which translates to Truth -Godliness- Beauty, but in life what I have experienced and heard from elderly people as well, Truth is the best path to adopt but we must be aware of the fact that truth will always be closer to Godliness but it will not be always beautiful. Both have a definite role in our life happiness and truth, but under some circumstance we may choose to deviate for a greater good.

Demanding higher quality of life is what causes lower birth rate among fertile couples. Information, knowledge, and accessibility are more important than education as far as lowering birthrate is concerned. The quality concern on potential child-bearing couples is extended to their offspring on education and nurture. Overcrowding in urbanization may only have marginal influence on birth rate. Witness the birth rate in Sweden, where no overcrowding occurs, and compare that with Hongkong. Incidentally, what a state and its economy want is often not satisfied by its people. Replacement birth-rate and that for a growing economy are ignored as a matter of course. One-child policy is doomed except by fiat in the short term. Incentive like bonus and public housing provision for large family causes no more ripple than a thrown stone on the pond. Thus it would be futile to urge or blame a government like Nigeria for not having an effective birth-rate control policy. Over-population is a debacle which we have to suffer long and patiently, but it will come, peak, and pass in due course. Can we afford to wait? We can take remedial measures, but wait we must.

The issues of the world being over-populated must have been on the mind of quite a few of us for some time. Some may contest that, given what we can do to mitigate, the world may not yet be over-populated. Some may argue that present over-population may not be detrimental if it can be overcome by upcoming technological advancement. Be that as it may, most of us hold the notion that abhorrent over-population is here to stay. Regional Distribution is a relevant issue to be tackled. If there are too many in Nigeria, but too few in Norway, is that not a problem since the density can be averaged out. No, it cannot because there are equally-important parallel issues involved. In this respect, a regional problem is a world problem at this point in time. But why now? Why cannot localized over-population not be solved locally without bothering those outside? Because we have reached the stage historically when one local problem cannot be kept under wraps without spilling over to the rest of the world around it. Witness the immigration wave suffered by Europe from the Middle East. I can see four factors in over-population: 1. Space Comfort Zone is a basic demand by all organism. Limited space imposes limit on the volume of accommodation. Technology can help to some extent, like layering by multi-story development, which will stress on resources below. 2. Resources Limited resources like nutrient and water can only sustain so many. Again, technology can help to increase resources, but such improvement cannot be allowed to outpace population increase. 3. Quality of life Overpopulation would be the case if it serves to lower the quality of life which you should reasonably expect, like peace and quiet, serenity, open space, no pollution, and so on. 4.Nature Natural disasters like forest fire, earthquake, drought, and so on have served as nature's rather cruel way to keep the balance. We cannot be blamed to improve our hygiene and medication to reduce early death, but in so doing we are also fighting against the balance, by counter-measures like birth-control.