Cathal

for me and i'm aware this is not everyone, psychedelics are useful when you realize you no longer need to do them, if you have a desire and want to trip you should keep tripping until you realize that

spiritual advice is really retarded for people who are experiencing the actual experience of truly wanting to do it's really a question of finding relief and working on getting yourself to a point would you say that shit to a suicidal person in real life? no you would just help them find relief immediatly, you're just comfortable and able to project whatever you want because you're not able to feel confronted find relief, do drugs, eat a shit load of food, find someone to talk to, cry, cut yourself, get relief so you can get into the headspace of actually making changes and not needlessly suffering

i agree with what hes saying

https://breathworkonline.com/try-a-free-online-breathwork-session/ might be nice, i had one intense experience i'll never forget

@Flowerfaeiry i think its really important to discover what you need and the funny thing is it's probably really simple change drastically day to day life far more than all this self-help bullshit because if you can realize what it is then the only thing left to do is take action to fulfill it despite how you feel about it - there is so much resistance around making ourselves vunerable to fulfill our needs but if you can see the inaction in itself is the action of avoidance (desperation, worry, addiction) then you can see that you cause yourself so much pain by avoiding than taking action, it's really only fear then really truly just feel the fear and youll see the reason its so heavy and scary is it has become multiplied so much because you avoid it, the moment you sink into it just dissipates and you feel so good getting that shit out of you

So i'm wondering for those of you who are aware of certain needs, emotional, social, intimacy, esteem, purpose etc how are they finding expression right now if they aren't being met? Specifically if they are not being met, are you aware? if so, have you noticed how it causes you pain and how it seeks expression? Mine is through a deep feeling of emptiness, a painful cold feeling in my chest, constant dream and thought rumination etc. Most dominant is the self-judgment activity happening all the time, my mind constantly needs to behave in a way that it learned as a child to get a need met but even now it's still doing that because I have failed to fulfill certain things. Also, if you have felt this emptiness before and you fulfilled it, how did you do that and what did it feel like once you felt that fulfilment? Thanks

do something despite how you feel, do something you are absolutely terrified of and embrace the fear - you will feel alive

it's simple but it took me a long time, i done just about anything you can think of to 'heal myself' but in reality it's simple. psychedelics don't really change you, meditation won't change you, diet, supplements, people, whatever you can think of. great insight tools and coming to a healthy place of homeostatis but i'm talking about day to day emotional transformation, truly letting go and feeling alive without trying just like how you did as a child. it is my belief until you resolve your emotional issues that you cannot truly surrender to spirituality. suffering does not seek god, it just seeks relief. there is fear because there is an attachment to the hurt in your past that you took personally because of what you were identified as, if you keep going on and on identifying with (mainly your worldview that developed from early childhood) that fear will always return you to the prison of coping mechanisms it built and keep you drowning in shame and self-pity and the seeking or relief. the fear is change, ego does not want to change because ego feels like it is benefiting by protecting itself - it doesnt give a shit how you feel as the experiencer of it, it's literally just trying to survive. and so the resistance, another thing you need to really stop identifying with even though it can feel so painfully real you just have to keep this idea of taking action despite how you feel but you are experiencing a lot of suffering and getting caught up in the actions of relief rather than the transformation. once you realize you are not your fear and i mean you can only realize it when you do something while feeling terrified or nervous, anxious as fuck, you have an inner knowing what the right thing to do is. because you may eventually just surrender to the fact nothing works except doing what you are terrified of. the more and more you do that, it kind of creates a massive surge of motivation and without even trying pulls you towards more and more right action. this is the mostself-loving acts you can do imo. the ones that feel the worst. keeping the ball rolling is important! you can't just do something once bask in the pride and wait until you feel shit again, it's too slow man. this is right action, not just action. taking right action means despite the anxiety, fear, depression you do what needs to be done, the procrastination is just more fear. you probably know exactly what to do but you need kind of distill it into an action you can take in reality and not your head. visualize yourself actually doing it and then... actually doing it. there is absolutely no other to way dissolve all the shame, anxiety etc inside of you. if you aren't on this page yet, basically you have to show your body through action that it's time to change because the body is stuck in what happened in your past that it never truly moved on from, that's why you can't really enjoy or experience what's happening in the now. until you get it, you'll keep trying to secure your insecurities, you'll never really feel confident and you will keep seeking your approval and needs from others and aaaallll of the cancerous things that came from our conditioning. besides exposing it and feeling it and letting it go. nothing else will work, and until you do that shit it will just sit inside relentlessly making you suffer for absolutely 0 reason and there is nothing that is excluded here, no matter how complex your mental issue is it's just a matter of how developed your awareness is around what you are experiencing through your perception. just some thoughts about getting out of that stuckness, heaviness, feeling like nothing works, desperation etc

here's a great 3 minute video you need to first understand why you can't accept yourself through reflection and contemplation, you are trying way to hard to accept yourself because the lack of understanding. until you get to the point of just realizing the truth behind it you just start accepting. regardless of how you feel, the negative feelings are the resistance from your identity that was conditioned to be something that you're not that you're trying to break free from right now that's locking you up in the loneliness and seperation, so if you go on identifying with the feelings you are just doing this to yourself for an eternity until you accept yourself for what you. you literally cannot be anything other than what you are, see the futility in struggling with this its just developing awareness around what you are and what you are not. despite your emotional state, you have to try your best given your energy. in despair unable to feel for anyone? write and journal for example. feeling okay, kind of decent? walking outside, just saying hi to a few people walking by. listenting to people without judgment, practicing forgiving yourself. feeling hopeful/willing to change? finding a therapist, finding a way to make money to get a therapist etc etc you should go into what happened to you that caused you to close yourself off from everyone with someone like a therapist/healer if you want to actually process some of the emotional turmoil you're going through but the reason it feels impossible is the same as previous text, you experienced pain being yourself > you create an identity that is not you to avoid future pain > you realize this isn't you > now you're trying to let go so the anxiety, the submissive behaviours, the loneliness, seperation - there are all actual logical reasons behind them that you need to understand because it takes a long time to truly understand why you closed yourself off from others and see yourself being compassionate for them, seeing we all suffer and project to the external all the time. but of course if you'd like to share here, feel free to and we can try to go into figuring it out and helping you through this and also when it comes to loving yourself, this can be really hit or miss at least from what i read. self-love is about taking action with what is aligned with your intuition, your heart, your knowing, your true understanding of right and wrong to allow yourself to let go of all the emotional trash trauma you're clinging onto to protect yourself. there is usually working through much fear, anxiety, depression and the heaviness of resistance to which you can always get caught up in avoiding and returning to your prison of comfort which you will always hate.

man this is really like the raid boss for me. so basically as a 5 year old child i saw my very angry father who projected all his trash onto me and i vowed never to be angry more or less or rather the absolute opposite of him, haha yeah... this strategy did not work i have so much repressed rage that i really cannot tap into, anytime i felt threatened or in danger i immediatly suppressed it and acted like nothing bothered me, i have a really hard time understanding what to do about it, the consequence of avoiding my anger is inaction, adopting nice guy shit and also i believe my hypervigilance. the hypervigilance is because my ego just sees everything as a threat and it's just a really hard thing to unwind, it is really a burden. being a guy who never got angry i basically became a massive slippery slope, i had also rejected love from my mother because i blamed her for not doing enough as a child. so i was this person who everyone bullied and i was also so desperate to be liked by literally anyone i kind of abandoned myself just for the hope that someone will love me, this was already happening by the age of 10 or some shit any time i got close with a girl i either completely avoid them or i feel suicidal, any time i felt anger i actually feel a deep fear that i would be like my father. i put myself in a fucking rut to say the least now i've been working on stuff for a while and i know a building a new healthy relationship with anger is vital but yeah more or less it feels like very futile to try to be angry or to surface it up, i cannot even provoke it. i guess a part of me logically thinks i can maybe feel powerlessness but not anger and to instead work on feeling powerless and perhaps its a doorway into anger but man i really don't know. l people say punch a bag, scream etc but it's like im playing an act or acting. nothing happens if anyone could point me out to anything that would be cool and i can elaborate on anything or give more context if it helps

@Flowerfaeiry thankz

@TripleFly hmm i have thought it would be good to experience the fire for once, just to understand it you know? i don't want to play with fire because i already understand the futility of it but i would at least like the experience of being to feel angry. because the thing is the gateways i've created for myself just to feel it are the source of many of my problems if that makes sense, i want to feel anger and experience it so i can learn about it and understand it and let it go. it feels like i'm out of touch with my masculinity in many ways, although i kind of fell victim to instead of dealing with coming into touch with my shadows i instead became extremely independant thinking that would solve it but of coures nah. at my core i am really sensitive to life and i always felt very feminine and loving or something but i've come to see without the full yin and yang i'll never be able to really express the loving part of me until i've become apart of my darker parts

@Preety_India have you went into any catharsis recently? the thing is with these traumas you had as child, it's actually really hard to get into the pain buried underneath the hollowness because there really is some deep deep raw emotions that are incredibly intense, you still really resent and blame your family. i feel like you are very disconnected from your inner child and you are experiencing a big chunk of feeling present with yourself. it's like you look around and there's a lonely silence in your experience of life or something, that's what it feels like for me. https://www.youtube.com/c/TanjaWindegger i really recommend to browse this channel, she's really good some good content on what you're experiencing. what you describe is really like how i grew up, well the most useful thing for me have been to see that how i feel right now is entirely my responability, being a victim of my family, society, conditioning and the fragmentation of my being was no ones fault, all of this pain you're carrying is your parents pain, it's societies traumas, it's really a very holistic understanding there is literally no one to blame and nothing to project onto, a constant reminder the outside world is a complete illusion and your repressed trash is finding ways to project. mdma and psychedelics have been powerful tools of insight. it's just as you keep working on yourself and trying to understand you gain insight and then you come to see things just as they are through resolving traumas you notice a subtle connection to the present moment, it takes a long time. but it's the only thing really left to do, is to surrender, express your will to go into your pain and process it despite the fear, experience catharsis, let go of it all and glue yourself to the emotion > feeling alive and more like you're really here

@Nahm exactly what this guy wrote just watch the rushing is just repressed unconscious arousal trash playing itself out, basically other people are triggering thing inside of yourself that you lack awareness to understand and work on, but just fully realize they are triggering a part of you that when you're by yourself, this isn't activated. basically if you imagine everyone as a mirror, when you're alone you're comfortable because there's no mirrors to reflect what is repressed, when we come into contact with people it triggers things and we assume it's the people we often project onto the people because we lack the awareness we are doing it to ourselves. by projecting we keep the trigger persisting instead of taking responability and looking inside of yourself to understand why in certain social contexts, the way certain people look and act trigger parts of you and make you feel really aroused and uncomfortable. this is what you have to do, and shadow work is a good concept to go into to understand this if you struggle so much being yourself is because you haven't really accepted yourself yet, you get too identified with the emotions arising when you want to express yourself through your heart and not the prison in your mind only with awareness and expressing will to take action knowing the right thing to do despite your emotional state VS aversion to uncomfortable emotions surfacing from triggers that you identify with and believe it's you so you take the course of action's based on how you feel

@Flowerfaeiry hey i've done TRE a few times but i haven't really had any experiences, can you explain if you had an experience after one or two times or you had to build it up after a lot of sessions? i actually really have a gut feeling this could do something for me but when i've done it, it never really gets out of the hip shaking

@LeoX8 .

a big blockade for me is reintegrating into a group of people, a community, family or whatever you wanna call it. when i say reintergrating i mean i carry a heavy kind of complex trauma of slowly being ostracized from when i was a teenager until i chose to leave my family and town behind and move to a new country when i was 21. still, this wound cuts very deep, it seems i have to find a group or community to be comfortable with expressing myself exactly as i want otherwise i don't think i can clean this particular dirt off my lenses. the image that i got caught up has a the core of building my personality around behaving in a way that people will be attracted to me and avoid being bullied anymore and not really expressing what i want, and repressing all the right ways of living i want to be aligned with yet i am turmoil of how to find a community. it's really difficult to find a community that would not judged me, since i basically isolated myself for the past 10 years i am really incompetent with people and get trapped in the knee jerk social reactions and often mess up myself even more, it's a kind of heavy self-judgment that even watched from a point of not being identified with it its like you're at the receiving end of heavy negative emotions, what is a good way to find a group of people could help soothe the patterns of avoidance anxiety and fear that is engrained into me? i can't really find what i'm looking for, perhaps it's too fantasy like and perfect but i really do think i could comeby people in similiar positions to me, who just don't give a fuck as long as we are all understanding judging eachother is pointless

hmm can you elaborate on the 'But this will be useless if you won't heal your wounds first because you will still continue to have fear/anger/emotional reactions out of those social interactions.'? i had thought to myself that by even, with the intense fear of vunreability and al that shit that if I can get into social interaction this is the way to heal the wounds, that perhaps if i keep doing it it won't be so intense or something, how to do it to yourself without going into more social interaction?

i think if you were approaching this with the right understanding you wouldn't be still trying to stop fear. you're still expecting it to dissapear, you are impatient because you think it should have left by now with all this work you've done, but you still haven't surrendered fully to it yet just keep surrendering to it, keep doing right action

@SLuxy yeah i have had realized a lot of shit, i think that's a good idea to do some work that involves people but not directly, or going to an artificial environment solely for the purpose of talking to people but like an activity with others, actually good idea did i mention i am living in a country where i don't speak the fucking language ? lol anyways, yeah, just going to slip into probably what is comfortable but not too comfortable, i guess my impatience is playing up here for change but yeah i think i can start small, probably stick to online groups till i can find some english speakers thanks guys

@Roy yeah i have been away from group social interactions for a long time, so basically i would say my default perception of people is highly based on that period of time in which i was bullied hard and being sidelined for years, my own family kind of rejecting me and so on so basically it's a very hypervigilant awareness that is really hard to calm down, i can never really enjoy or get into a group when i look like a schizo maniac so yeah, i can reframe other people in my mind it's just i wonder if going into a group with less awareness of judgments and more likely to project will it futher traumatize the ego? because essentially what i have been doing is working as much on myself as possible but i feel i'm closing in on a point i need to come back into the world and feel present with others but yeah, i'm a bit anxious about well if i just get rejected again will it be endless negativity all over again or what is it i need to do to calm down this messed up kid inside me

the feeling of powerlessness is terrifying, like physically. if we sit here and think about what that means most of us can't relate consciously because the feeling itself is very very traumatizing it usually gets suppressed at the very moment it surfaces, so i would just say you need to keep working on going back to the event until there's no 'charge' behind the trauma and process it more and more when you can get into those safe places with a therapist or whoever and also start reframing why it is you felt powerless and unable to deal with the situation yourself because i can see in your inability to accept what happened you are dealing with some shame that you couldn't handle this situation yourself because you froze up. i think this shame is the key to letting go. was this the first time something traumatic happened and you were completely powerless?

and when this feeling comes up when you meet a girl or whenever it does just realize this is nothing to do with the girl and it's not your fault, it's very important to see that because you may project onto someone eventually or put yourself down because you blame yourself for feeling it but if you see it for what it is it's not anyones fault, there is no one to blame. but you do have to learn how to accept forgive and let go of that weight you're carrying because you just did not understand, you were powerless in the way you were conditioned you only have to see you're responsible for carrying it right now and having the awareness not to identify with it when you meet girls as 'my pain, my suffering, my feeling, what is and why won't it go away' its just there. it is just there, so when it comes up let it come up and be there and see other people are just shining a light on it but it's nothing to do with the peson. it's just a trauma that hasn't been let go because it is extremely painful not to be loved when you need tobe loved as a children and when we grow up we completely forget how painful it was.

yeah this is just one of these conditioned things you have to work on man because the thing is you will always unconsciously seek to have this need met that your mother didn't provide you because sounds like she was raised this way. she thinks is normal and doesn't have the awareness to see it as it is and she tried her best with you but since she was conditioned to be like this you also, if you want to think about it like this and how thich naht hahn refers to it as 'you are carrying her pain inside of you' it's like a generational trauma you inherited, like the colour of eyes - this pain is like your mother, the pain she probably has to deal with for most of her life. but now you, the next person of your parents, need to workout your parents trash they pushed on you - if that makes sense, you are not really an individual identity like you think more so a big enmeshment of conditioning that creates this identity, you'll likely spend your life working on letting it go like most of us here are. so do yourself a favour and get a therapist because you'll spend the next several years of your life in deep fear that this girls you meet will abandon you over and over again so you an actually have a real relationship because these aren't relationships, you are seeking to fulfill a deep wound in yourself. it's a good time to look into the inner child stuff, i have been working on it for the past 3 years and i've had some seriously deep cathartic realeses and connections to that part of me, it's the real deal and there's a looot of material to look into. the therapist can act like a mirror for the inner child to express its pain. its way more effective in my experience to do this than by yourself, because you can definitely get to a point alone but it's really so much better to do it with a person anyways that's just my thoughts good luck with that stuff bro