Dabidoe

There was a good series on mental health with Paul Conti and Andrew Huberman where Paul stated that the subconsciouss makes up 95% of who we really are. That rang true to me given that so much of my life has had confusing, logically unexplainable events that can only really be explained by motivations driven by my subconscious. So on an abstract level I can understand all of that. I have a specific DNA, epigenetic triggers, life experiences that influence the fabric of my existence. The structure of my subconscious mind seems to be affected by all of that. Does the "subconscious" in any way relate to the "cosmic conscious" mind that they speak of in spirituality? Is the self (sub + conscious) just a different interface/ or "mask" for the cosmic consciousness?

How can we really tell what a false belief or identity is? I like to think I try to be a good person, reject group think etc... but I'm seeing that a lot of people feel that way are doing awful things in the world. I get angry at people who say bad things, but other people probably would get angry at me for my beliefs. Are there universal truths that are "more good than bad"? I think religion seems like a stabilizing and unifying force on some levels (spiral dynamics blue > red) but there's also so many examples of hate and division within religion. So... should we just accept that the world's an imperfect place filled with hate as best we can?

I think a lot of people put the cart before the horse with this spiritual work. You need to have a solid foundation as a human being before you should attempt to go out into the world and make change. Jesus was a carpenter first after all...

I've had some very strange insights on this I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. From a scientific perspective is the "one who listens" the deeper self and the "one who talks" just an operating system? On some level we're all just a collection of 37 Trillion cells or whatever. So is consciousness just an operating system a "GUI" if you will? I've listened to enough actualized/deepak/others to agree with it in concept but wanted to think about it for myself. I can't help but think (and had some insights meditating/psychedellics) that there is a silent controlling force to the entire world (maybe even elementary particles?) which would make logical sense given that we're technically all relatives of a big ball of matter that just popped into the universe in a trillionth of a second (big bang.)

Ad block extensions are worth their weight in gold! Youtube claims they're going to stop them but there are ways around this. Hoes are precious! Completely agree, just parroting other people's opinions is not going to give you any insights into the nature of yourself, only a member of a different group. Then again, not everyone's cut out for independent thought (maybe just due to conditioning, but seems like there are alot of dumbdumbs out there.) I don't agree with Leo about everything but I respect that he is speaking from within himself as opposed to just using a bunch of spiritual group think buzz words or trying to sell us some supplements.

@Hugo Oliveira Sent! @DianaFr Thank you for your great advice... I recently stopped smoking pot (was doing at work ) which has helped but I can see there's a lot of room for improvement in terms of both self discipline and self care. @MarkKol? I have a girlfriend, she has a job I have a job... Also man no offense but I wasn't making this post to argue about religion. Jewish culture is thousands of years old and by definition has some backwards elements. While I think the subject is very nuanced you do have a point about the Middle East being a far more "Spiral Dynamics Red" type mentality. It is what it is... That said Tel Aviv is a very culturally advanced metropolitan place and everyone I met there was amazing. Jewish people might be kinda dickish and rude (some guy bumped into me and said "EXCUSE YOU!" lol) but they were far less spiritually dead and far more inclusive and communal as a culture than America. When I came back I was in Penn Station room full of nearly a hundred people all silently looking at their phone, a stark contrast to bright loud social Israel.

I have been having a fucking hard time focusing on work (video editing, building my video production business) working alone in my studio. I keep wasting time on reddit and twitter because I am so emotionally triggered by what's going on in the world. I know that it's my fault, that I have agency, that I can just log out... but my emotions are fucking with me. I have friends in Israel (I'm jewish went there on birthright) and I am sickened by the amount of hatred I'm seeing for my people (the punch a nazi crowd is stunningly silent - people are literally saying "hitlers bad but... had some points.") I respect anyone's right to criticize the actions of the Israeli government, violence against civilians and genuinely feel horrible for the Palestinians. Does that mean my friends lives are meaningless, that we jews are beyond redemption? Anyway back to the point. Does anyone have any suggestions for powering through negative emotions working alone?

People have to realize it's a muddy line - but Israel goes off a good metric "would Nazis have killed you for associating you as a jew?" It's kind of pointless to argue ancestry of a 5,700 year old tribe (genetic drift much?) but if you adopt the culture, convert then you are technically a jew. You are also technically a jew if one of your grandparents were genetically Ashkenazi/Saphardic (or Ethiopian) even if your athiest/different religion. I wish people who knew jack shit on the subject would stop flying off at the mouth about it, but that's pretty hard to avoid on any topic on the internet.

The US defied international law and killed over half a million civilians in our war directly, and even more indirectly in our "wars" that went on for 20 years, and nobody made a fucking peep about it. We literally left 30,000 people who risked their lives for decades to help us in the middle of the night to be brutally raped and beheaded. The hypocrisy of the argument that Israel is uniquely bad in their methods of killing terrorists seem to be largely aligned with the general consensus that "evil jew do bad." That said they've gone way too far. I agree that they've definitely overstepped their bounds and are not "reading the room" that they need to slow the fuck down and form a new plan. Jocko Willink discussed it and said "even though it's gonna suck to sacrifice your own people to try and protect terrorists (like we did) you have to go out of your way to show you're trying to save lives to prove your side is worth fighting for." I have friends there on the ground and all of them are scared and angry, which is a horrible place to make tactical and strategic decisions. Netanyahu is a plague on that country...

Thanks for posting this. It's so disheartening reading all these comments that completely justify barbarism... barbarism that literally is counter productive to their stated goals. I wish people would realize that the solution to war is not more war, but alas. God bless this man for having the courage to speak out.

Is it safe for those with bipolar disorder to try psychedelics? I had a relatively small amount of mushrooms on an empty stomach and seemed to have a manic burst followed by a dark paranoid/depressive crash (that very quickly ended after a BM) a decade ago and haven't tried since. Anyone have any information on this subject?

Does embracing and appreciating negativity help or does my intuition that it simply "fades away" once I decide to commit to improving my mental and physical health?

There is a lot of turmoil, mental illness and general chaos breaking out throughout the world. What started off fairly optimistic this year took a turn for the worse. Issues in my personal life compounded by being affected emotionally by the external world (recession, ukraine, culture wars/political divide etc.) I have had a few manic/depressive swings and felt waves optimism and confidence come crashing down to depression and hopelessness in matter of days. How do you stand against the waves of internal and external chaos? What "in the moment" techniques (breathing, yoga etc) and more broadly perspective shift / change of routine/actions has helped you most?

That's awesome, good to hear! I'm in the middle of some pretty heavy stress so sleep has been bad, kinda overwhelmed. Mania is at bay which is nice.

Ideology is the new religion. People are dogmatic about their world views: a popular new one with young people is the planet is doomed, society is evil and we should all go to war with people we deem evil. Personally I think philosophy is more important than "religion", you can follow the lessons and teachings of any religion and gain more insight than tying yourself down to worshiping figures. A more universal concept of god allows you to dip and out of religions, see their value without judging them as "right or wrong."

I would love to go back read transcriptions of your episodes, Youtube lets you download caption files in a text document.

Failed is a stretch but homelessness is out of control in SF & LA. There is a lot of suffering and despair that make a lot of initiatives fall flat. The real problem is governance that refuses to address the problem for reasons of supposed "compassion" that conveniently take them off the hook from actually putting in the work. It's a disservice to the homeless and the depth of their problems to simply reduce the complex problem to "affordable housing" which is only one factor. There are plenty of people who've fallen on hard times and can bounce back with affordable housing and job opportunities but it's silly to think that will solve the problem when billions of dollars have been wasted on such programs. You can't afford affordable housing if you don't have a way to make money because you've been out of the work force too long, suffer from hopelessness, addiction and mental illness stuck living on the streets. Conservatives want to "sweep" them away, Liberals want to ignore the problem with bullshit half measures. Not enough people are trying to solve the root problem which is get these people some real help, and give them a path to a positive future.

Trying to piece together the whacky new world we're living in where both parties political values seem to have evolved and devolved. While we've reached stage Green in many respects, stage orange seems disregulated (chrony capitalism, corporatism), the resurgance of red (tea party, trumpism) and the counter of "liberal" blue orthodoxy downshifting to "stamp out hate." During Obama the explosion of the internet into mainstream society blue was kind of panned as old hatas the country more rapidly embraced green cultural norms. Orange was not properly incorporated and a lot of people downshifted to blue and red. The internet echo chambers allowed people to "find their crowd" and magnified their stage and exposed them to new ideas & echo chambers to either upshift or downshift. Conservatives forked grew towards orange or back to red. Red = tea party, orange = megachurches/slow abandoning of "christian values" in exchange for consumerism. Liberals grew further into green but also reverted to blue (censorship, repressive ideology) and in some cases red ("punch a Nazi".) Trump was able to harness the unaddressed bitter anti-establishment victim complex of "pesecuted white christians" red for his base and then broaden it with his "orange" mass appeal and faux pandering to conservative blue/blue-orange ("religious"). This accelerated the blue revival on the left as a response to the Trump red revival. Things like "wokeism" "metoo" are very green-blue in response to the country's orange red. So this new "revival of censorship" in many ways is the birth of a new ideology attempting to quell the red uprising that occurred during Trump, trying to use blue authoritarianism to instill green values (because they've skipped orange's lesson of mutual self interest & tolerance.) Many of the Bush era authoritarian policies such as the Patriot act are being embraced by the left and utilized by tech conglomerates (literally using anti-terrorism databases set up for combatting ISIS are now being repurposed for political agendas broadening definition of "domestic terrorism".) Perhaps the biggest problem is the simple agreement on facts & objective reality. We all have our own "spins" on the truth to bolster our ideology.

Reframe the monster as part of you that you have to accept, confront and move beyond. It's damn near impossible to get rid of bad thoughts but you can replace them with good thoughts. Maybe you need to visualize a guardian, something more powerful than the monster.

@mememe In many ways racism has gotten worse. We have shifted the conversation away from togetherness towards division on both sides of the political spectrum. The vast majority of people are opposed to racism while still endorsing racist beliefs also on both sides. When I say we need to steer away from the divisve conversation of race I'm not saying ignore it, but rather than just bitch bitch bitch about horrible the world is why not steer people towards the solution which is recognizing and respecting cultures as equals as well as treating people as individuals? Divisive issues are being used as political weapons by the right and the left. It's not solution oriented and in many ways is making the problem worse. I found what Whoopi said was deeply offensive to me and my dead ancestors but I completely forgive Whoopi for saying an ignorant comment because she's not purporting to be some fucking expert just sharing her opinion. We have to respect that she has had her own issues and said something that was ignorant because she was not well informed. We need to have the conversation about race without immediately jumping down eachothers throats taking things out of context to paint them as satan.

It's more empowering to think of your mental health as mental fitness, something that you have direct influence of as opposed to some terminal diagnosis. Now I'm not diminishing any major disorders (I have one myself after all) but just like someone bound to a wheelchair you can still exercise and make the best out of your situation as opposed to giving up, getting fat and feeling powerless to change or improve. The more I've delved into developmental psychology, philosophy, meditation (thanks leo!) the more I've come to the conclusion that mental health is kind of a misleading term. There are so many things you can do to change the state of your consciousness, memory, creativity, focus etc. that are action oriented - like exercising for the body. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had a traumatic childhood which left me fairly "unhealthy" mentally. Smoking a bunch of pot didn't help longterm (although it did push the pain away enough to avoid suicide which was a real concern for years.) These diagnosis or stories we tell ourselves "I have anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder" can turn into learned helplessness and limiting beliefs. Obviously depression and anxiety are different from conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar (which don't "go away" as easily) but kind of like type 1 vs. type 2 diabetic you will always have type 1. but you can manage your symptoms to the point where it's not a factor as opposed to type 2 which you can actually cure yourself of through diet and exercise (see Jason Fungs The Obesity Code.)

I hope I didn't come across as judgmental of mental illness or try to diminish the severity of the struggle. It absolutely needs to be treated like an illness to a certain degree but just wanted to share my reframe. Without medication, therapy, effort it's not something you can just snap yourself out of with a Tony Robbins book (the same way you can't just snap yourself back to walking if you've been paralyzed.) My main point was that for me at least reframing it as something I can put effort in to improve was more empowering than some dreadful fate I'm doomed to. When I heard about the statistics of bipolar people killing themselves (25%) I worried for almost a decade that I was going to kill myself. Thank god I eventually snapped out of that bullshit and realized that it was my choice to do so and I could simply "remove the option" as Leo said in one of his videos. It really bothers me today that so many people seem like they want to brag about their anxiety, OCD, ADD for some sort of weird cultural capital. On one hand it's healthy to be open about it and maybe it takes away some of it's power. It just rubs me the wrong way considering how judgmental people are of severe mental illness (ie: the guy on the corner babbling to himself is "Crazy") but everyday things people struggle with like bouts of anxiety and depression must be treated with the utmost sensitivity. Mental health is a huge problem spiraling out of control (doubt the internet, social media is helping) and I'm glad that people are treating it more seriously but alot of it is cloaked with doom, gloom and despair perpetuating learned helplesness and victim mentality.

"acting dumb" ≠ being dumb. Acting dumb shows that you have a sense of humor about yourself and are playful. It disarms the "this guy's an egotistical douche trying to impress me" defense. The wise man can play the fool but the fool cannot play the wise man

100% As a Russian Jew myself I get annoyed when people say things like it was "just the holocaust", you guys are doing fine. There have been centuries of oppression (see https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms, and more.) Whoopi getting 2 weeks off her daytime TV show for saying such offensive things is hardly being cancelled. I accept her apology (although still find her comments quite ignorant and have lost a great deal of respect for her) and don't think that people should be punished for saying stupid things - just disregarded and corrected. People really have to embody the ideals of tolerance and loving one another. Nobody should accept such ridiculous statements but that doesn't make Whoopi a bad person... after all Sister Act was hilarious! The real question we should be asking is "why the hell are they talking about the holocaust on the view?" seems ridiculous we have such an endless obsession on division and racial politics all day every day.

Trying to control what other people believe may be a waste of time. I write a satirical conspiracy blog called https://paranoidechochamber.com and my goal is to make fun of conspiracy theories (hence the name... paranoid echo chamber a joke on anyone who shares it without seeing obvious satire) while trying to steer people in the right direction (my "cure" for reptilian mind control is to love your neighbor.) Anytime you answer a flat earther you are giving them energy and attention. People who want to believe in the illuminati, flat earth, reptilians are all just misinformed people and you are definitely going to just convince them further. I think that all of this vaccine misinformation"pushback" is doing themselves a total disservice. If you want to persuade people to believe you you can't start off with demonizing them. That's going to have the opposite of the intended affect. If people calmly went through "the claims" and explained them better, without saying "This is the law! you are evil!" then you'd probably have a better chance of convincing them. This country is so fucked.