themarkacosta

Hi all. Im Mark, 31 m and doing the van life. Until a few months ago I was dealing with dozens of chronic illnesses over the past decade that were rooted in psychosomatic mechanisms. Now those are all gone from obsessive research and experimentation; I found my answers, but those answers led me to Joe Dispenza. For me, Joe Dispenza formed an even more robust scientific idea about those conditions and even further, setting your intention on potential futures and allowing life to carry you to them. Since starting Joe Dispenza's books it APPEARS that my life is providing me curated experiences. Some of those experiences are instantly gratifying like trying to make someone or something appear now instead of having to wait and become emotional. And what I have done to make those manifestations is decide that my emotions werent serving my best interests and meditated instead. Other experiences are more obscured and I may be connecting dots that shouldn't be connected, however, all of the experiences have been somewhat curated and perfect for what I needed at the time. There are also the other 95% of things that I saw or did that didn't turn into a manifestation.As a result of these 2 weeks listening to Joe, I am not even remotely the same person I was 2 weeks ago in regards to what I am open to and how to better unlock my potential. I have been spending time with a friend going through a divorce while traveling and I set the intention to help plant a seed that will grow within him and help him with his mental health and life. He seems to be improving compared to baseline when I arrived and we've done a lot of spiritual work together but I don't know how to fully help. I don't know when I should leave him. I don't know a lot of things about this situation and I tried to put faith in my belief that I can manifest help for others around me. I think now I have set an expectation that I can manifest things and am looking for it all the time though. Examples of looking for manifestations: - My odometer had an odd pattern of numbers and then trying to figure out what its supposed to mean - These 2 stores have names that seem to be telling me to stop in this parking lot so I stop and just wander around waiting for the message - Trying to envision my friend back with his wife and happy and setting that mental intention as though I can help him with his problems via visualizing it and being God's instrument I also realize theoretically that I am God, I am the universe and the universe is curated for me by myself but I still don't practically understand that or how to emotionally / logically relate to it. Honestly, I feel a little like im making stuff up and a little overly confident in myself too. I am not taking huge risks but I am acting in alignment with the belief that im manifesting. I am asking for some grounding, or more dangerously, encouragement. I don't want to be taken off guard by an experience and have a setback. I don't want to get lost looking in the wrong area for answers when someone might be able to guide me better than I can guide myself. Im very capable of self deception and therefore am heavily skeptical. Thanks for reading if you've made it this far . Please let me know your thoughts if you have any on the matter.

Hey I appreciate you too. That means a lot. I will make use of this life either way but gonna keep truckin. <3

I am a 30 yr old male who was diagnosed with gastritis when he was 20. It appeared stress induced. I thought for the past 10 years I had chronic anxiety because when I used to put any pressure on myself socially, my stomach would respond sharply. I have done a lot of psychological and consciousness work and my thoughts are much less provoking nowadays but when I close my eyes to meditate, I feel like I am under attack since my attention is now on my bodily sensations. My breath becomes a trigger for my stomach, especially on the out breaths and before my mind relaxes I have already provoked my stomach which obliterates my mood and attention. I am doing a bland diet and supplements to try to heal it but meditation, exercise and breathing exercise all appear to make it worse but all seem necessary to achieve relaxing states. I can't do anything visual for meditation bc my eyes have floaters and its very distracting. I may be changing my breathing patterns too aggressively. Typically I take short shallow breaths when I am not focused on my breath. But when I focus on short rapid breaths, my brain is followed a pretty chaotic breathing pattern and not sure what to focus on. I am trying to figure out what to do. I feel like I am trapped in a paradox which will keep me low consciousness and emotionally unstable. I am so ready to make a positive impact and chase my goals but this paradox is preventing me from finding the way. Any help out there?

I totally get that. I have some days where my eyes are more inflamed than others and I am more focused on them. At that point the floaters are my worst enemy but then other days where I finally accept them and realize I can view the scenery behind the floaters. There is no case where my floaters are not swirling around my vision if there's light sources but my relationship to them is a variable. I don't even feel the need to get rid of them anymore as long as I am practicing mental health techniques such as this. Thank you I will look into this resource.

I am open to it. Thank you. Do you have a resource you like on the matter?

@undeather Thank you very much for your time. You hit a lot of nails on the head and this was helpful as hell. - Adapt 180 has been a joke imo. They have made things worse at times and provided nothing useful besides diagnostic testing. I have told them off a couple times respectfully. - There seems to be something wrong in me that is precipitating all of these issues and I am hopeful to find it one day. Either through a good diagnostician or maybe a handful of mushrooms. It seems like a well-hidden chicken / egg problem and wouldn't be surprised if it were all physical or all psychological at this point. I will try to figure out what a good diagnostician is. I spend all day researching and trying to find similar experiences and the best I have right now is bland diets for stomach and spirituality for psychology. My doctor at Adapt 180 is also sending me Low Dose Naltrexone which is an opiate antagonist which seems like side-effect extravaganza from what I read so that's exciting. - I'll get allergy testing but not sure what to do with that information because im already so careful with air filters and food products. I do take Claritin at night per the recommendation for suspected MCAS - SIBO protocol sounds good (Rifaximin). I tried an elemental shake and the nausea was unreal. I will let you know if something comes up in any screenings. Please let me know if you have any diagnostician recommendations or tips. I will start looking for one asap.

I can sit. But I have to engage in thoughts to keep distracted. Often I will pour over the phenomena of life or think about my direct surroundings and the materials that made it and their lifecycles. I understand its not supposed to be stressful, I just have no idea what to do to make it not stressful since my stomach starts burning. That burning causes my stomach to tighten and then im physically uncomfortable for the rest of it. If I sit there long enough, I will become less stressed as my mind stops dancing around looking for stimulus to attach to but by then, my stomach is already irritated and this sets back healing. It happens off and on throughout the day without meditation, my brain thinks about my feelings and there's a fear response that I can't figure out yet. For the most part, I cannot feel happiness as a physical sensation, nor peace. Usually its just either discomfort or fear but mentally I can sort out some things. Sleep has been my main challenge for a long time because of this phenomena. I often go weeks without a full night of sleep. I have found certain thoughts and dietary routines to keep it at bay at night like telling my mind to stop thinking about all the physical things happening to me and accepting it. Also not getting frustrated that I can't sleep, and instead allowing myself as much time as I need to drift off. I still wake up in the night many times and have to repeat the process.

It does seem that light attention is much less aggravating then forceful attention. That's a good tip. I find that trying to focus my mind on any repetitive task can cause the issue so counting numbers or counted breaths are a no go. I wish I could take your advice. People are so nice for trying to help. The weird thing is at one point, meditation was super effective for my anxiety, beliefs and thought patterns because I was forcing it to focus solely on my breath and follow it closely with an intense breathing practice where I pursed my lips and forced air in and out at a normal pace but greater air flow. The sensation on my lips was the focal point. I actually forgot about that being how I started meditating for the first bit. I guess I could try it. The noise from the breathing and the stimulus were louder. Much less focus on "belly breathing".

@Michael569 @undeather I can definitely provide more information. I am grateful for you taking the time to try and help. First and only endoscopy was 10 years ago to test for celiac disease and was diagnosed with gastritis at that time. I didn't know gastritis was important and I was very compelled at that time to fix my anxiety / depression issues that developed earlier in that year. At the same time that my "anxiety" started, I realized that some thoughts were creating a strong sharp nervous system jolt from my stomach and I thought it was a normal response to anxiety. Fast forward many years of trying to treat mental illness instead of gastritis, I ended up finding spirituality and observing that my stomach is reacting independently of my thoughts but still reacting to certain thought patterns. - Type: gastritis type unknown, going back for a scope within a couple weeks. symptoms include burning / sharp sensations that jolts my whole awareness. very jarring sensation. - Diagnosis procedure: diagnosis process involved a scope and biopsy. no ulcers at the time but this was 10 years ago. recently I have it responding positively to dietary changes / supplementation and keeping away from healthy routines which makes my stress worse such as running, breathing exercises, meditation or folding my body in ways that puts pressure on the abdomen. - Treatment: Too many to count but specifically for gastritis, has primarily been the past ~6 months. - Checkups: Working with Adapt 180 (Chris Kresser) but I find their help to be lackluster. My experience with medical doctors is always take a PPI which I did briefly at first and felt I had side effects to all of them at the time but wasn't too worried about fixing it then. - Diet: I cannot steer away from this very restrictive diet at all. - Overnight rolled oats with Three Trees nut/seed milks, hemp hearts, manuka honey and raisins all blended. - Rice lightly salted with some boiled veggies - Potatoes maybe, not sweet potatoes though Supplementation: I make great money and am constantly broke because all I do is research, purchase, experiment. There's not a supplement on the market I haven't tried that I am aware of. I even have mucosta shipping from the Czech Republic. I had some success with cabbage juice but the goitrogens jacked up my thyroid so now I take a supplement called Gastrazyme and blend it into my oatmeal. I really want to like slippery elm and DGL licorice for coating but something is causing me occipital neuralgia and I find I am better off just going minimal supplements. Most of them have seemed to make things worse or do nothing. I also was taking a bile binder called GI Detox which seemed to improve my sleep but may have been the cause of the neuralgia. Test Results: (taken very recently) - GI MAP: some mucous degrading bacteria are high and some promoters are low. H pylori detected in insignificant levels with no virulence factors - SIBO: appears to be hydrogen SIBO positive - Dutch Adrenal Hormones: low cortisone crashes midday roughly - Bloodwork: low vitamin D, could use more vitamin B, IGa elevated although my pantry is gluten free I have been pretty deep meditatively and have had many successful meditations in the past where I navigate to a more relaxed state but somehow its changed for me. Trying to tell my mind to focus on a stimulus is a recipe for chaos and pain. On one hand, I do expect to achieve the reliable state of a clear mind afterwards which I always can if I sit long enough but on the other hand, I am not expecting anything of the practice itself. Just trying to still my mind. I have tried just sitting there without any forceful thoughts or focus but it still happens. My mind will notice my breathing happening and once that happens, its game over. Being aware of my breathing makes my stomach flare up. Sometimes at the bottom or top of a breath I will pause or panic. If I try to count breaths, if I try to slow breaths, if I try to belly breathe, it all leads to the same result which is more stomach pain and never making it to mental relaxation. I am really trying to put my finger on what is happening and I am usually very self aware. To me its almost like an invisible tripwire related to controlling my attention. I have resolved to fix my stomach first before attempting to raise my consciousness again or exercise at all but I have had psychosomatic chronic pain before (lumbar discs, tennis elbow and carpel tunnel in both arms, hip labrum) and I fear that if I don't practice, it may never go away because my stomach is reacting to my lower conscious state.