The Rainmaker

It's a hard pill to swallow but it's true.

Next you're going to tell me that there are witches controlling the men behind the scenes. Lol get real

I'm sure I could imagine pixies or unicorns on LSD as well by putting enough intention into it. That doesn't mean it's anything other than a fairytale.

Explain that.

When it comes to something like LSD, I would just focus on having a recreational experience rather than holding out hope for some woo-woo mystical schmystical nonsense.

The short answer is: no, they didn't. Sounds like you had the equivalent of a bad dream.

So, by that logic, you think that the Ancient Greeks or the Ancient Romans or something have more credibility just because their ideas have been passed down in the form of written language? How do you even know that modern scholars haven't purposely mistranslated all of their writings as they have seen fit? Don't you think it's just as much of a shot in the dark to assume that our decipherings of ancient languages are correct as it is to assume that oral traditions haven't been muddled by time?

You haven't gone far enough if you're still chained to these things.

It's all relative to you and what you're trying to get out of the experience.

Absolutely. It has the power to help or hinder depending on mindset, outlook, framework, etc. I mean, hell, I'm of the belief, as it says in Midnight Gospel, that "there are no good or bad drugs-- it's the human relationship with drugs that are bad." Of course, looking at life as one big conspiracy is potentially very counterintuitive and is the type of thing that can lead to psychosis. But believe it or not, sometimes people are keeping secrets from you that could really change your life. I found out only a couple months ago that my brain damage was from an accident when I was one that required emergency brain surgery. Up until that point, I was always told that my brain damage was congenital. I even found out that there were two severe medical incidents where I sustained more brain damage while I was drunk that were kept from me because doctors thought I'd be unable to handle it. You cannot imagine the extent to which this changed my perspective. This information was so liberating that it's helped me to completely kick alcohol from my life and it's helped me to control tantrums of PTSD that were previously basically uncontrollable. Sometimes, you need to face the murky things in life in order to overcome your issues. You can't have a rainbow without the rain.

Things like autism and schizophrenia as well as PTSD and OCD are most commonly reflections of brain damage. And which do you think is a better alternative for treating brain damage? Is it alcohol, which further damages the brain and gets people into situations where they're more likely to endure trauma like violence and sexual assault? Or is it meditation and psychedelics, which are hailed for their powers of neuroplasticity? This is a no-brainer. Saying that spirituality is only for people who don't have mental illness is like saying chemotherapy is only for people who don't have cancer. If there's nothing wrong with your brain then why would you need neuroplasticity? I'm starting to think that some of you just do this for fun and games. And no, spirituality will not cure autism on its own, but it has the capacity to if you have the willpower to face the music. It's just that such a thing is an absolutely brutal endeavor. I'm not just saying this as a theoretical either. My brain damage was so bad that I could hardly make eye contact (literally, there was something wrong on a neuro-ocular level). I had communicative issues to the point of basically being selectively mute-- that's why I liked alcohol to begin with, because it helped me come out of my shell. Now, I have overcome so many biological barriers that it literally spooks the people around me. This kind of stuff we're talking about catalyzes medical miracles. Facing trauma is often necessary for the pure reasoning that memory is a vital function of the brain.

This is completely wrong. Spirituality is actually the most beneficial for those with brain damage and mental illness. It's just that you need to have commitment. This guy's problem is 100% that he still drinks alcohol and smokes nicotine, not that he has mental illness. I had brain damage from multiple accidents that manifested in the form of suicidal ideations, autism, OCD, and most particularly PTSD as well, and spirituality allowed me to rise from certain death, a situation where people in my life were beginning to think it'd be more humane to just let me drink myself to death than to force me to face the music. Trust me, this guy needs to flush out the toxins he's putting into his body and things will start going a lot better for him, I say that as somebody reaping in limitless rewards from only three months of sobriety from these aforementioned toxins.

He did end up saying it freaks him out less to hear think that other people don't exist rather than that they do, so in that case, and also knowing that you PMed him, I obviously retract that line of reasoning. But it just sounds like he's gotten to the point of destructive nihilism.

@The0Self A true Buddha teaches all of his students accordingly to the spiritual level they're at. I think this guy needs to be more grounded in the mundane right now. That doesn't mean I don't agree with you because I do. It's just that someone who's battling for his life because of concepts like solipsism doesn't need to get twisted into more metaphysical word games.

I know how hopeless it feels because I've been there. Like I said, I got brain damage when I was 1 and even more of it from my years of alcohol and drugs and getting into violent mischief at parties. Trying to cure such a thing is never going to be an easy endeavor. It's going to be a day-in-and-day-out affair until you're better again. But when you do get better again, it will be such a holy moment that you'll weep and kiss the ground you walk on. Do you have a daily meditation habit? Do you use psilocybin? How about nootropics like lion's mane mushrooms? Have you experimented with legal herbs like mugwort and kava and yarrow? Have you gotten an MRI? You're not permafried. The nature of everything is to change, including the brain. There aren't many things that I consider objective truths, but the fact that medical miracles exist is a hard fact. I've been at death's door from brain damage and I've conquered it to such an extent that it spooks the people around me out.

"Drugs aren't the issue." --every drug addict ever Leo Gura is not arguing for solipsism in the posts you've included. Other beings do, in fact, exist. What he means is that, metaphorically speaking, we're all vessels filled with stardust from the same pitcher. Consider the story of "The Egg;" if you've never read it, you can easily find it on Google. You are not alone in this universe. If this is what spirituality is doing to you, then maybe you just need a break from it. What he means when he says that there are no others is that we're all one. He doesn't mean that nobody else is out there to interact with.

I am a former Adderall addict. I'm nearly 600 days sober. I am a recovering alcoholic as well. I have been involved in spirituality for about 2 years like you now, and ever since then, my alcohol habit has dramatically reduced, but it was only 3 months ago that I finally chucked it altogether. I know that it probably seems like a mountain to even consider dropping something like alcohol if you're addicted enough to it, but trust me, it's worth it to regain control of your life. Alcohol is complete poison that makes people miserable and discontent. Dropping nicotine will have the same value, but alcohol is just a whole 'nother animal.

@Iesu I'm sorry to hear that. I figured trauma would be the reason. Trauma can be absolutely terrifying, but if you're facing it, you're most likely doing the right thing for yourself. During my spiritual journey, I've had to confront the fact that I had to get brain surgery at the age of one after cracking my head open falling from a ten-foot+ drop. I had to face the fact that I received even more brain damage being beaten at a party, a night which I was so blackout drunk that I didn't even remember it until I unearthed the memories with psychedelics and nootropics. Essentially, I had to confront the fact that I had a disability, a fact that my ego cleverly hid from my entire life prior. "It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day. That's the hard part. But it does get easier." I've found enormous medical benefit, of course, in everything from prayer to meditation to psychedelics to herbs to dream journaling to manifestation. But what made me stronger than any of that was forgiving literally messaging the people who gave me the injuries and telling them that I forgive them. Once you do something like that, it's like an alchemical transmutation. Nothing will ever hurt you the same way again afterwards. I wish you the best of luck and if you want to talk to me about anything specific, shoot me a private message. I'm always willing to help.

Can you elaborate on that? Maybe I can offer some advice as to how to navigate through this into something more manageable. The truth is that you're not alone and that these early stages can be brutal for a lot of people. Can I ask first and foremost if you're a nicotine/tobacco and alcohol user?

Evil is real of course. But remember-- the divine prophecy foretold that one of Jesus's apostles would betray him and get him killed. So you can think of the nonduality between good and evil through the articulation of this strange loop: did Judas Iscariot have to betray God in order to follow him? Remember though: you are not Judas Iscariot. If anything, you are Jesus. You should strive to be the one forgiving the Romans while you roast on the cross, not the one getting innocent people killed. This philosophy does not grant you permission to do evil yourself. But without evil, there would be no forgiveness. God sees the lotus that grows in the mud and loves both equally because you cannot have one without the other.

@dropthehat Exactly that. Prayer and meditation on some level are just different words for the same thing. Both enhance the mind and open the doors of perception.

Everyone's just playing their part. There's a reason the spiritual teachers tell you to treat life like it's a game. The sooner you start doing that, the more you'll notice that everyone else is just playing a game too, even the "evil" people. Notice how I said "everyone's playing their part," not "doing their part." You can't have a rainbow without the rain. Good and evil exist on the same horseshoe.

There is definitely a huge amount of validity to the things people have been saying about never meeting your hero. The further you submerge into spirituality and awakening, the more you will outgrow your teachers and start to realize their own flaws. You will realize that everybody is human and that the ego never truly dissolves enough so to turn anyone into a complete and utter Buddha. However, a quote of Leo's from his conversation with Kurt from Theories of Everything comes to mind. "It's easy to love people when they're nice to you;" maybe I'm paraphrasing, I'm not going to go back and look for the quote. But you can't have a rainbow without the rain. It's a general rule in life that sometimes people have to be dicks in order to push others out of their comfort zone unfortunately. I grew up with a lot of special needs because I sustained brain damage as a kid and the more aware I become the more I realize that many doctors have actually been recommending the people around me to be crueler than they've actually been in order to supply me with agency. I don't know if I ever would have gotten to the point where the brain damage is mostly cured without being pushed. When somebody forces you to go a mile, sometimes you need to go two miles with them.

Think George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, or likewise consider the butterfly effect. You were always a necessary piece of this puzzle. The world could not have possibly existed without you, or else it wouldn't have been perfect.

When you awaken, you realize that everything you thought was real was a projection of your own mind. You essentially find the devil in the details. You notice the subtler intricacies of life. You realize how much other people just pretend and manipulate for the sake of their own illusions. That's what the dissolution of self entails. There was never a real you because you're just a single domino in an unlimited series.