undeather

Pharmaceuticals are one of the chemically most clean substances commercially available while also heavily regulated & controlled. You know exactly what you get and in general dont need to worry about contaminations or toxins. That said, most drugs contain a complex matrix of excipients, some of them are proven to be biologically active and maybe even harmful in larger quantities. If you look at mouse studies, most of those fillers only start causing trouble at insanely high dosages, so I personally dont really worry about it at all. From an integral/complexity medicine perspective, it's not really an issue either. If you suffer from headache, popping an Ibuprofen is perfectly fine if there are no other contraindications. Even if you need to go on a long-term medication, it's propably not a thing to worry about. People love to give themselves a nocebo-effect with stuff like that. Any chemical can be harmful if overused or not indicated. I have seen other members mentioning herbal remidies/ supplements. Please notice that those are not nearly as regulated as pharmaceuticals. I have done a pretty deep dive into the supplement world and I am kinda shocked how much contamination there is on average. There are many good ones but they they getting dwarfed by the sheer amount of bullshit companies selling cheap, highly concentrated snake oils made from substandard substrate. Even if its labled "organic" - exponentiation of certain agents will always cause a certain accumulation of toxins in the end product. Good companies go out of their way to test their product.

If you are looking for a framework to heal yourself, understand patho-dynamics a bit better or just interested in holistic health in general - Then this is a must watch introduction on how to think about disease and integrative treatment approaches. No bullshit, complex & epistemiologically robust. This is one of the fundamental paradigms my daily routine as a doctor is build upon - a real gamechanger and highly effective. Enjoy.

Can confirm those 2. I cut out the natural gas because there are millions of "natural" gases and all of them act differently when inhaled. Gas stove gas or propane is generally safe when not inhaled directly. The rest sounds like outlandish conspiracy bullshit with zero adequate evidence and a lot of bro-science. I am all for integrative medicine and expanding our current medical paradigm but this is just complete nonsense.

Do you see any red flags with the claims he makes Eugene?

If your symptoms become less frequent during movement, then a heart issue is basically off the table. I have seen many young patients with weird chest-aches in my career and in 99,9% of cases, it's nothing serious at all. Mostly musculoskeletal issues (Ribcage or spine) or gastrointestinal stessors. Blood clots in the lung are for the most part not related to heart issues. Its mosly the result of a venous thrombosis in the lower extremities and the risk factors for that are diverse and super, super rare in males your age. There are some cases where it could origin in the heart, but this would show highly prominent in your EKG , which was fine. Again, dont worry about it. Dont freak yourself out, you are fine! You dont have a heart attack. It just doesnt fit your description at all. Yes, they should have tested your blood, thats true. No, you dont have high blood pressure. 140/90 in the ER is completely fine and that's not high enough to cause symptoms. Everyone has a higher value during stressful situations. A normal 120/80 in the ER is super rare. If you feel uncertain about this, buy yourself a cuff from amazon and measure your blood pressure at home, when at rest. Also, again - it doesnt fit your case since your symptoms tend to get better during movement. Also, you are in your mid 20's and even if you blood pressure was elevated - your arteries and heart would propably deal with it just fine for now. PLEASE, when it comes to acute medical questions like these - dont ask this forum. People dont have experience with medicine and they will freak you out even more. This is an issue that has to be dealt with on the ground with a qualified professional. Visit your general practitioner as soon as possible. You should definitely get a checkup, just to be safe. Most of these cases will just get better on their own - thats why they send you home with pain medication. Dont hesitate to call 9/11 if it gets unbearable. PM me if you have further questions Cheers

I recently discovered this amusing fact about the origin of materialism - so keep it in mind for the next you have a discussion about it. In August of 1619, a retreating Habsburg army camped in Ulm, which is a small city in the south of germany. They were retreating from a campaign against Prague, where they had successfully deposed the wintered king and queen - and among this group of several thousand troops was a young french adventurer, a soldier of fortune. There was nothing special about him up to this point, but in the night of august the 12th, a mild and cozy summer night, this young individual went to sleep and had 3 subsequent dreams where an angel appeared to him and said:"Conquest of nature is to be achieved through number and measure". This young man's name was René Descartes, the originator of the cartesian heuristic — one of mechanics, formulae and material. Now, Descartes himself was a substance dualist - but his thought is the foundation of what we call "cartesian materialism" in modern philosophy. It's the idea that at some place (or places) in the brain, there is some set of information that directly corresponds to our conscious experience. It's the idea that is held by most of the mainstream scientists and philosophers in todays world. It's what Daniel Denett or Anil Seith believe in. It's ubiquitous. Now, take all this into account and think about the punchline: Modern science and the materialistic worldview were created at the behest of an engelic entity I guess they wont teach this at our universities....

I am very sorry to hear that, Jake. As a practicing doctor, accompanying patients on their "last" journey is part of my daily business. The dying process itself is not scary, so don't worry. In fact, more often than not, there is a certain peacefullnes about it. Don't hesitate to alleviate certain discomforts or pains through adequate pharmaceuticals. Take care of unfinished business - personal and worldly. Have deep & meaningful conversations with your loved ones before you go. Maybe even take psychodelics if this is what you want. The psychological aspect is the most challenging part by far - but what I can surmise from your post is that you seem like a very centered young guy who made peace with his destiny. Well done, brother! Now, what will happen to "you" afterwards? You will hear a lot of noise and opinions from everyone and their mom, especially here on this forum. I would advice you to ignore them all, including my take. Even if someone would draw up the exact, accurate truth about dying & becoming - how would you know? See the issue? Embrace the mystery to it's fullest and go into it with as much conciousness & courage as possible. It's going to happen in it's own way anyway, no matter what "we" think. That said: You can find solace in the fact that conciousness or "experience" won't end. I think that's clear. It's also factual that God=Love - so it doesn't really matter what the process involves, you will be fine. This is very important - YOU will be fine. Reincarnation seems to be part of this game. So is a sort of between-life experience. If you collect as much data as possible, so everything from reincarnation-studies, near-death experiences, OBEs, psychodelic insights and what have you.. then a picture of some sort of cosmic game with a certain telos emerges from it. It's remarkebly consistent throughout history and between reports. I think this is the closest we can get if we dont want to overly rely on "our own experiences", which is limited. But please, as I mentioned, take this with a grain of salt.

I know myself pretty well. In fact, my nature is one of being extremely introspective, almost painfully so. You have no idea how much experiences I have gathered in my life, you dont know me at all. I just disagree with your whole premise and I layed out the argument in my previous post. By saying that "I just need more experience" you are begging the question, which is when you use the point you're trying to prove as an argument to prove that very same point. Rather than proving the conclusion is true, it assumes it. That's a bias. Again, there is a core of truth in what you say - but you seem to be quiet an absolutist:"If you understand yourself, you can understand other peopel". I would meet you when you would change it to "It's easier to understand other people if you understand yourself". The rape victim analogy is also very partial. There is well known phenomenon in psychologoy that some rape victims actually enjoyed it, which can make the healing process even more difficult. Do you see the issues of absolute relateability and emotional grief in that example? Yes, Socrates did say it and I never said otherwise. Many greek philosophers used this phrase. I said it ORIGINATED from the Oracle of Delphi and the context you used it for was not Socratian in nature.

"Character flaw" - lol. I think your heuristic around "becoming wise" is a bit off. Reeves is full of bias and it's painfully obvious once you have a real conversation with him. He is not interested in truth. He is interested in getting people to agree with his paradigm, that's all. There is no humility in him. Even if you come up with a really good counter-argument, he wont give you an INCH if it contradicts his worldview. I remember a certain individual getting banned from his deathproof-forum because he disagreed with TJ on a core subject . But then, instead of being aloof about it, he made a 90 minute long video SHITTING on that guy in the worst ways possible. Calling him names. Calling him an "ugly loser". A "Jewish Rothschild-scum". This was in 2020 and he did the same to Leo. Is that how a wise person would act in your estimation? Sadly he deleted all his youtube-videos some time ago. Because otherwise, I could show you all the double standards, lies and outrageous promises he made in the past - of course non of them became reality: 1) He once claimed he invented a "helmet" that could raise IQ, never delivered anything (even though you could pay a ridicolous sum of money to get into the alpha-phase) 2) He lied about his education 3) His self help course never released ..and so on He is the perfect example of why a large quantity of experiences won't make you wise per se. It's the integration and the contextualisation that matters. TJ scores very low at those and I am afraid that he will never make the jump. He too far gone. As Carl Jung said:"Beware of unearned wisdom" - and I think he hit the nail on it's head there. I would never consider myself wise because that's exactly this self-elevating behaviour which contradicts the premise in it's essence. I try my best to not fall into my flaws and biases and so far, my life has been pretty amazing. Now, he seems to have a fulfilling family life (I am still friends with him on facebook) and that's great. I don't wish him any ill. Maybe he grew up and came back to reality a bit since his daughter was born.

TJ is capable but definitely not wise. I was part of his deathproof-university curriculum couple of years ago. He is a textbook narcissist. Can't handle criticism. Banned everyone who disagreed with him. It was the worst and most unreflected meeting place for EVERY conspiracy theory imaginable. He believed in EVERYTHING. He even split up with his closest ingroup because of some ridicolous argument. I was banned because I questioned his 5G-Covid "proof" - I wasn't even combative, just asking critical questions. This guy is utterly insane - smart, but maniacle. Great case for how far some charisma can bring you in this world. Undeniably conscientious when it came to working hard, but far - FAR from being a person of wisdom.

Yeah..but that's exactly what I said. Read my previous post. You CAN to some extent intuit what a person is like - but it's also pretty unreliable in many cases. A ruthless but charming psychopath will appear extremely likeable/charismatic to most - even though the actual intent might be completely different. No amount of self-knowledge will help you in this case. Just look at Ted Bundy for example - lured his victims with his personality. Dictators are no different. The more I know about somebodies life, the more I can estimate the level of integrity displayed by a certain individual. 5 years ago we renvovated our bathroom and found an offer which was almost to good to be true - we met the guy in charge and there was nothing off about him in general. Seemed like a solid dude with his own artisan-startup - nothing shady, very knowledgeable and straight to the point. Before I signed the contract, I decided to google his name - and it was then when I found out that this guy has been scamming people left and right. He had multiple charges against him and was basically already in prison. Lesson learned: Sometimes you just cant make positive OR negative claims about someone based on the limited information or intuition you are percieving.

Human beings are NOT simple. Thats a gross oversimplification. The brain in vat, acting out calculated expressions of an emergent psyche is a well known but largely disproven hypothesis from oldschool behvaiourism-folks like B.F. Skinner. In fact, one of the main arguments in the last century of psychology-reserach was exactly what you are trying to say here: You can predict how people operate based on a very limiting set of drives/fears and similar factors. It failed spectecularly. Human beings, so it seems, are just way more complex than we thought - if not to say - combinatorially explosive. Now, I am not going to deny that there is a certain element of truth in that. There are definitely patterns which we can kind of intuit and it's directly correlated with the amount of self-knowledge we have gained up to this point. I understand the essence of your point but it's not nearly as reliable as you think it is. FBI negotiators are terrible at predicting human behaviour. This is a well established subject. Despite the popular appeal of body language or vocal queues, no study has uncovered any single behavior that accurately reflects whether a person is for example lying. Again, there is some truth to the negotiator who free's hostages throguh smart arguments - there is psychology which can influence odds, but it's again - just not very successful overall. The phrase “Know thyself” is not originally from Socrates. It is a quote inscribed on the frontispiece of the Temple of Delphi and has very little to do with how other individuals operate. First and firemost it's a process of understanding the self, development of the same and society for the overall benefit of the individual and others. If Socrates was here today, he would use some sort of socratian dialogue to sort out this situation - not some semi-deductive heuristic you are proposing.

There is no doubt in my mind that Tate is or was involved in many shady/unethical business enterprises over the years and there is an appropriate amount of criticism to be dealt there. However, reality is just more nuanced than that and it's quiet astonishing how fast some individuals recoil to their tribalistic, black or whtie tendencies as soon as his name gets mentioned. To be clear, I personally DON'T think that Tate is a valid role model for younger generations. I have criticized him before, his views on women are regressive and his take on mental health is, if not complteley wrong, then highly partial at minimum. The fact is that none of you know him. You dont know his "real" intentions. You just dont. You might think you do, but you dont. If you cant see this, then you need to work on your sensemaking ecology. All you have are clips, some long form podcast episodes and a tiny amount of objectifiable facts. Everything else is filled by your projection and lack of critical thinking/research. Now if you judge him from the limited amount of information we have, then you can't come to either concluson. There is shady shit but also likeable stuff. He could be a dark triad narcissist OR he is just stuck at a certain level of conciousness which he acts out coherently. It's funny to me that Leo, a guy who has to deal with constant misrepresentation all over the internet, cant quiet grasp the scope of the situation. If you comb through all the accusations against Tate in the last months - anything from rape, human trafficking, misoginy or simply being an asshole, then none of them really hold up to scrutiny. It's mostly exaggerated, taken out of context or made up completely. In fact, there are reports of women AND men who have met or even worked for him - and you know what...almost unanimously they paint a picture of a man who acts respectful and generous among his fellow human beings. I get this impression too to be honest - he doesn't seem like a very hateful man. He does not act agressive when challenged. He seems to be a man of integrity. Now let's get to "Hustler's university" - it's cringe to be honest. All those "get rich"-courses kinda are. But is it a scam? I really dont think so. There is content on there and if you are a complete noob at this kind of stuff, then you might get some decent value out of it. 50$ a month for a course is definitely not a scam - I mean just look at all those proclaimed self-help gurusor "coaches" popping up all over the internet right now. 997$ for a course, 300$ for a two hour coaching session, 5000$ for the whole package..... by whom? Mostly nobodies. I cant believe I have to defend Tate - but most discussions about him are just incredibly one sided and that's wrong. Throughout the last week, I silently observed and read through some posts and this forum and reddit - it's just so obvious that both sides, the haters & the fanboys, mostly act from a emotionally hijacked paradigm. He is heavily centered around a stage orange/blue level of conciousness - and if you want to criticise his views, then this is where to meet him.

Mineral sunscreen (zinc oxide/titanium) > chemical sunscreen solutions (which are most) I personally love La Roche Posay Anthelios, although it's a quiet expensive product.

This is an excellent question. Dont' let any anthropologized conception of "dreaming" dictate what is or isn't possible. The notion of dreams inside dreams has been one of the most consistent metaphysical axiom in many of our renownded mystical traditions and teachings. There are no impossibilities in the infinite dream. I think the most integral point of view is that there is SOME cosmic game going on which includes seperation to a certain point of conciousness, reincarnation, between-lifes and a general telos, Of course you can never prove this but there is preliminary data from OBE's, NDE's & reincarnation studies. If you are interested, I can recommend the book "LSD and the Mind of the Universe" to you. It's an ridicolously interesting piece of literature which goes into these question in a honest & smart way.

Former actualized.org admin and spiritual teacher who mainly focused on neo-advaita/no-self teachings Leo demoted him because he lost touch with reality: https://imgur.com/3WKAELm He then quit the forum and started his own

I am not going to write a lengthy response again because this discussion is hopeless anyway.- Look, if you find peace in that teaching - then I feel sincerely happy for you. From what I have read so far, you seem like a person who went through enormous suffering in his life and I can empathize with that. As I already outlined before, neo-advaita and other hardcore no-self paradigms are of course valid in that particualr sense, but also lack the necessary nuance and anti-reductionistic element which is so crucial for a higher order persepective. Again, I already outlined this before so I wont repeat myself. Peace brother

I know someone who volunteers for a spiritual emergency hotline and she once told us that a huge portion of their incomming requests are directly related to neo advaitan teachings and teachers. You get really angry when hear those stories and that's why I adopted a zero tolerance policy towards this ridicolous approach. There is this certain essence of being rhetorically disarming, a fundamentally built-in feature of the neo-advaitan paradigm - which makes it almost impossible for a spiritual novice to find the dents and shortcommings of the teaching at large. It really takes a shitton of relentless study, deep inquiry and personal experiences in the liminal n0-self space to find the higher order truths the more integral traditions have always been talking about. For someone who comes to a spiritual teacher to seek help with their immense existential suffering, there is just no chance. You either are lucky and get through, or you will end up more fucked up after the process. If you whole teaching can be summed up as:"You dont exist. There is no one experiecing anything. Nothing matters. Nothing to do. Nothing to know", then this should raise a red flag. And if someone comes around the corner with an actual, challenging question - then you can always came back with the good old "Who is asking the question?". It literally does not take more than this to become a teacher since EVERYTHING boils down to those "truths". Obviously there is truth in the paradigm, this is not what my critique is about. Clearly, there are many teachers who had incredibly awakenings in their life and this is just the way it manifested in a teaching. The pathology gets baked in when there you use your insights as some form of absolute truth claim and can't accept that "enlightenment" seems to be a more heterogenous process after all. This is so painfully obvious, yet somehow there still seems to be so much ego and personal investment involved in those teachers when you tell them.. (I wonder why ) Neo advaita is for me the jungian shadow of the tantric path to enlightenment. Alright, daily rant over!

Yes, you didnt research properly. Whats painfully obvious is that most teachers (especially eastern ones) will give sometimes contradicting views on free will, depending on which teaching you are looking at. This makes this whole issue even more problematique... Maharshi is a hard spiritual determinist but also teaches the path of jnana' (knowledge) for increasing your relative freedom - but then he also talks a lot about free actions and the resulting karma... Aurobindo says that free will of the individual is the co-creating force of spirit and therefore relatively real (You are not "different" from "it") - but he also says something different in other scriptures.. Yogananda: progressional (evolutionary) free will and absolute free will in the search of god - but also talks about you as an individual soul having free will.... Nagarjuna & buddhistic views in general: https://philarchive.org/archive/REPRBT Lainer: Multipolar levels of choice... https://www.marcgafni.com/a-model-of-integral-scholarship/ All this confusion everywhere and then my own insights from, for example, psychodelics - which defintiely tells me that there is a relative form of choice and that we are somehow responsible for our deeds & actions here in this existence ..but that at the same time, somehow, everthing is perfectly determined and fine as well... This all led me to the simple conclusion: Free will vs determinism is a dualistic concept, it's always both and neither - live is if and forget about this stupid question

To be clear, I never said that Veganawake is a bad person. He is clearly stuck in a certain paradigm, but without a doubt a lovely individual who wants the best for his peers.

The rhetoricical approach kinda reminds me of Nahm's downfall ..if you guys are familiar with him (at least Inliytened1 is)

Sure, bot those are some pretty famous ones whose teachings are quite easy to reserach.. ..which is an inherent premise of his question

Ramana Maharshi Adi Da Sri Aurobindo Rumi Paramahansa Yogananda Meister Eckhart Nāgārjuna Pythagoras Mordechai Lainer of Izbica Jesus Laozi Just to mention a few different masters from different traditions - and they all can not help but to disagree with each other This is why we should all show some epistemic humility when it comes to those questions.

So much of neo-advaita, as revealed by many of your quotes, can be seen as a stunted form of spiritual development in only emphasizing the deconstructive via negativa or "negating way." It's sophistry and suffers from a chronic compulsion to always absolutize everything onto an “ultimate” or “final” truth-level of discourse, From the standpoint of traditional vedanta, the goal is to realise the "self" in it's true essence, not to repulsively deny it. "I am that I am" is not a "believe system" - it's a direct experience. Precisely because the ego, the soul and the self can all be present simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of no-slf, a notion that has caused an inordinate amount of confusion. It does not mean the absence of a functional self (that’s a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer exclusively identified with that self (which is a function of mind). Believe systems dont affect but can definitely REFLECT reality. Every thought you ever experienced can be categorized as more or less true. You can think that you are the world best tennis player or an extraterrestrial entity from the far off planet Yonex19 and that would be wrong of course. However, the thought of "I am not my thought" or that "all seperations are fundamentally not really real" - is correct. True unity includes oneness and seperateness. You want to be nobody, everybody & somebody - nowhere, everywhere & somewhere. Everything else is just a finite lense you are looking through.