Asayake

What's the difference between saying it's all mental or physical? Those two examples seems to me to be just a difference in bias and not much different. They both reduce reality down to the physical realm or the mental realm. Does Leo really frame it in that way? To me recognizing both the physical and mental realms seem more balanced

It's interesting you say they synergize each other, do you mind explaining what you mean by that? I have the booklist and have read a few of the books on there but haven't dug deep into it yet, might give it another shot if more people vouch for seeing improvements from the books on that list.

As the title indicates, I'm curious about your experiences with reading books as I'm conflicted about whether the books I've read have paid off or not, I haven't read many books and considering whether I should. A few questions come to mind where I think it would be insightful to see others experiences on here, namely: Have/do you read many books, about what frequency per year? Have you noticed positive effects from reading, if so which, in which domains of your life? Do you find reading books to be a worthwhile endeavour, do you think reading more than you currently do would improve your life? Have you had letdowns or periods where you felt reading wasn't contributing much to your life, potentially leading to breaks from reading or a disillusionment with the value of books?

Too many different goals, too divided focus as a result. In other words lack of commitment to any one path. Which is understandable because he seems to be moreso trying to figure out what he wants to do. He's picking up different skills along the way which is good but if you try a bunch of different things you cant expect to reach many of your goals short term. The real prize he can hope for if continuing on his current path is to eventually find something he wants to do, or to find himself in a position where he could combine the different skills he's picking up to create something unique to his skillset. Another point is potentially lacking practicality which is something I can relate to personally. For example, if he wants to reach his goals such as becoming a movie director. He cant expect to get there fast if he spends most of his time reading comparative mythology and Jung. Knowledge about these topics could add to a filmmaker but it's not the foundation of his chosen craft. In order to become a filmmaker a more pragmatic path might be getting himself involved with indie movie scene, taking on different roles, getting some elbow grease into the film industry, creating contacts, learning different skills useful in movie making such as writing, filming, editing, dialogue editing.

His political stance can't be pinpointed based on that. But sure it could be seen as an indication. But people change their political views and beliefs radically sometimes and given he just tried to kill Trump I don't think it's a far shot that his political views are quite different from when he voted for Trump in 2016.

I have had the same what if experience as I used to make videos on how to improve your computer when I was 12-13 and YouTube was new. Those videos had like 5k views and I thought wow.. imagine if I would have continued down that path. Btw, Runescape absolutely rules, the best game of all time. I enjoyed your moral reflections on it.

Saying meditation increases IQ is partly true, partly not. The long term effect, I think is likely to increase IQ. The short term effect could bring up different things one has to work through, this could be distracting as it would cause a temporary worsened focus. The mind is more tricky than linear progression sometimes, just pointing it out there. Things that improve your IQ.. probably logical, problem solving kind of tasks and practicing them rigorously such as mathematics, physics & computer programming. These would train the mind to become faster att seeing logical pattern and solving problems. Other than that Im in agreement that diet plays a big role. For example there has been studies done that show better test performance for people if they ingest something light which gives them blood sugar spike when writing a test, such as orange juice. Deficiencys can also play a part. If you suffer from nutritional deficiencys that might affect brain performance especially B vitamins.

In my experience not really anything, sadly. It's an experience like any other. An anxious person learns to handle their anxiety through becoming familiar with it, it then becomes less threatening and they learn to accept it even if it's uncomfortable. The same needs to happen with overwhelming psychedelic experience. It's a novel experience that seems overwhelming and it's because of the novelty of it. You cant use a shortcut to tolerate intense novel states, it's a matter of experience and learning to trust yourself. There are distractions and techniques that will sometimes work. You can see people on youtube talking about it, like changing environment etc. These kind of things can work but ultimately the most Intense experiences will have you floored regardless of where you are and what you're trying to focus on. Distractions & shortcuts work until shit hits the fan, then only experience works, in my experience Edit: sorry for double posting, I cant multiquote on my phone because it's an old Huawei

Yes, thats well put and what I was trying to get at! Being aware of your breath doesnt make the situation worse but being aware of your breath as an attempt to escape will. And if you're experiencing something intense & scary you'll use anything to try escape including observing your breath, which just makes it worse.

Because they're attempts of controlling the situation and you're trying to run away from the experience using a coping mechanism. That works with milder emotional challenges but with something as intense as this you can not try to run away, that ll just give you more anxiety. You need to face it head on. It's like a person with a panic attack disorder avoiding crowds to feel better, that just makes it worse. They have to face the crowd and learn to deal with their disorder heads on before they start getting panic attacks about getting panic attacks rather than by being in crowds

Dinving deeper into power imbalance. Just because there's a power imbalance doesn't neccesarily make it evil. It's when there's a power imbalance that's being used in a malicious way where it becomes evil. For example you work in a high up position in a company and offer a better career path if she sleeps with you. You work as a Guru and have brainwashed girls to think you're a good person and they idealize you as a result, and you use that power position to get sex from them. There are many examples where a power imbalance can be used in an evil way. But power imbalance doesn't neccsarily mean it has to be evil, it could be as simple as the girl having a lower income/eduction/being less experienced/younger age than the guy. Those things are common and don't have to be evil.

Cinema Paradiso Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind High and Low The Prestige Hour of the Wolf

You clearly have personal negative experience with veganism, which makes you likely to be biased. I have a personal bias of the opposite kind since my dad used to eat a diet high in saturated fat( a keto style diet) and almost died of pulmonary embolism when I was 14. After that my parents started eating more beans & carbohydrates & fish and less meat and they're doing good on that kind of diet. So I think it can vary from individual to individual what works. But our cases are both anecdotal, you can never know what would have happened if your sister just kept eating meat, you cant even know for certain that veganism caused all her issues, and I can't know for sure that keto caused my dads issues or if my dad would have been better off without keto. Things could have gone both better or worse, life is complex. With that being said modern day science doesn't exactly seem to support veganism as the optimal diet but it does seem to support a diet closer to the vegan diet than most people eat, with less meat and saturated fats, less eggs, butter, bacon & red meat. More fish, legumes, grains, vegetables. Most vegans don't eat close to that but they tend to eat things like fake meats & a lot of processed junk and those diets are not healthy just because they're vegan. I think it's not entirely fair to call vegan an identity disorder. Veganism is an ideology and any ideology can be latched onto by people with identity crisis, such as I bet many on this forum have latched onto a spiritual identity in an attempt to forge a new indentity and start fresh. If you make the case that being vegan is an identity disorder, then to be coherent I think you have to claim that identification with any belief system whatsoever is an identity disorder. With that being said there are surely people with idenitity disorder who are vegans, but the same can be said for carnivore, keto, or even people who eat a normal diet but define their identiy in other ways, such as being anti-vegan for example.

I thought about this today too. I think it is crazy behavior regardless of the reasoning. But that it's normal for people to have a decent amount of crazy behaviour(imagine a human being behaving entirely normal always, no quirks, now that's really crazy)! I think all people behave like crazy, sometimes. It's when a persons entire identity starts consisting of too much crazy things so that the person stands out from the crowd to an extreme degree that most people will perceive that person as crazy. I think being truly crazy is a statistical matter. If you do a lot of crazy things compared to most you'll be perceived as crazy because it stands out from the norm. But people can do pretty crazy things when they're alone because then there's no one there to judge or perceive them. And people need to let loose and do weird things sometimes as the norms and societal structures sometimes are too confining, since we all in reality are, a bit crazy.

So true. It doesnt matter which philosophy you subscribe to, whether George Leonard or anything else. If your philosophy doesn't result in action it's useless.