SeaMonster

It was a good dialogue, but you basically badgered ChatGPT into a solipsistic perspective. The problem with that is that you didn't go far enough and deconstruct solipsism itself. Solipsism requires an EXPERIENCER. If you deconstruct it, all you have is EXPERIENCING. (In other words, you took the existence of the self for granted, without probing it. Asking similar kind of questions about it as you did about sensory-cognitive experiences in relation to the supposed external world would deconstruct the self in addition to the external world.) For the TL;DR crowd. Deconstructing the external world is solipsism. Deconstructing the internal world (the personal "I" narrative) is spiritual enlightenment. Congratulations -- Leo can stop making videos permanently. School's out. The ultimate nature of reality is EXPERIENCING.

Your ego-identified parts (I like to have everything figured out in my life, and have control over everything) are more important to you right now than good outcomes. Sounds crazy, right? But that's how the ego rolls. Faith isn't to be "understood." That's the whole point.

I would shitcan gurus, politics and most books and spend more time socializing with people your age so you can get some experience. Learning without experience/application is garbage anyway, probably worse for you than not learning.

OK. First bit of advice is, your family is giving you bullshit cope advice. Secondly (this was already touched on above by others), it doesn't appear as if you're running actual game. Asking a girl to dinner when no vibe has been established and she has not reciprocated interest does not work. You're not getting her excited about you. You're probably running "nice guy game" or something of that sort. If you don't know how to get a girl excited about you, you are going to fail repeatedly and wonder why it's not working for you. Forget about socially conventional crap like "dates." (Inviting her to dinner was basically a sneaky date attempt.) Figure out how to flirt and get girls excited about you.

When you're a kid, God is virtually indistinguishable from Santa Claus. You want something from him. When you're an adult, God is simply what TRULY IS, and it's in your best interest to align yourself with that.

Cool. I define "cat" as a four-legged animal that barks and is excellent at fetching the ball. Who cares how Razard defines it? Are we all so special that we get our own private lexicon now? GTFOH. This confident ignorance shit really irks me.

The internal dialogue is epiphenomenal to the ego (in other words, it is an outgrowth or a consequence of it.) First you need that identification (the I-thought) then something to identify with (some part(s) of the psyche) which produce kind of a fictitious relationship with "the world"/"others" due to psychological processes like repression, projection, etc. The internal dialogue -- the narrative -- is generated as a result of this. So yeah, it is a serious mental illness but at the root of it is that psychic split between the accepted and rejected parts.

In the language of spirituality, that's not what the ego is, no matter how many times you repeat this. The drive to survive is independent of identification. Animals have a drive to survive, but they don't have an ego as we use the term (identifying as a separate self.) Same for the trans as the pre: enlightened people have a drive to survive but they don't have an ego, i.e. an "I" thought.

It's not fear in general, it's a very specific kind of fear of which fear of rejection can be an important instance. You can't and shouldn't get rid of fear in general because it is indispensible in certain situations. Namely, it's a fear of certain parts of yourself that have been deemed invalid or wrong. This is the ego's function: to create this divide between some parts of yourself which are accepted and some which are rejected. This creates suffering because then the rejected parts of you are met as external obstacles, sufferings, all sorts of "negative" phenomena due to the psychological processes of repression, projection, etc. Getting rid of the ego (in other words to stop identifying with only those parts of yourself which are accepted due to biosociological factors) creates a space for you to reintegrate the rejected parts in order to create a psychosynthesis (a healing of the psyche.) The reason why people have so much trouble with the word "ego" on this forum is that they are very much in their ego and cannot conceive of the idea that identification/clinging is not content. When they think "I" they automatically associate this identification with a bunch of biosociologically inherited baggage. So of course it's extremely threatening to hear verbiage like "destroying the ego." They think it means destroying a large chunk of their psyche, while in reality it is destroying the limiting identification with that chunk.

That wasn't the context of my statement (i.e. the provision of material goods or services.) I mean, I could go into other means of providing these (such as community or church charity and all that) but that's not really the point and I don't want to take the discussion there on this thread. My point was that actually believing current progressive ideology is bad for individual people psychologically. It is stacked almost entirely on the side of nurture or "social construction" as opposed to nature/biology. Being brainwashed or compelled to believe things that are observably untrue (or even to outwardly profess and defend such beliefs) makes for unhappy people.

Well, he is a pickup guru, so when you're a hammer the whole world is a nail and all that. I would say stuff like ending the porn habit would be the more important self-improvement habit for young men, along with working out/athletics and having direction as far as profession/business. Why cold approach when you can warm approach, though? Do that many guys have trouble recognizing when women WANT THEM to approach? It's kind of obvious. Then the only filtering is whether you find HER attractive. Maybe I have this weird pride thing where if a woman is not obviously attracted/interested in me I won't stoop to trying to win her over or something, but it just seems like swimming against the current or something. I would say recognizing signs of interest from women is more important than cold approach. They may be subtle to some guys, idk, but the subtle signs seems pretty obvious to me. Cold approach is no big deal. I've done it and rejection is no big deal. It's just kinda dumb pickup.

Unhappiness is the gap between reality and expectations. It's easier to lower one's expectations than to achtualize them. Gratitude is an underrated factor in any spiritual awakening process. In the very least, with such a mindset, progress becomes icing on the cake.

Let me illustrate my point by referring to an example you can relate to. Leo's recent "apology" post. Leo basically had an epiphany that he has been uncaring towards the forumites. This is the "rejected/unconscious" part of one's psyche that I'm referring to above. We ALL have something like that in our psyches. The more we deign to recognize and integrate such parts, the more whole we become. Spirituality is ultimately a process to facilitate this by removing the stubborn clinging to only certain preferred parts of ourselves (i.e. "surrendering the ego.")

The problem here is semantic confusion. Not everything you posted is incorrect. You misinterpreted spiritual terminology which has very specific meanings which initially caused you to act in a self-defeating manner. This seems to be becoming contagious on this forum because it's a bit of an echo chamber. The problem is that you didn't really resolve the problem but put a band-aid over it. You have some correct intuitions about what is GOOD to do, you just don't have a clear understanding of the connection between spiritual awakening, enlightenment and its facilitation of what is GOOD to do. All these terms like "ego" and "surrender" have very different meanings than the most crass kind of interpretation that one would expect a typical young person to make. The "ego" means "I" in Latin. It doesn't mean "I am this", it just means "I" -- it is identification itself, not the content of identification. The content of identification can be a serious problem due to the fact that it is LIMITING, and can divide oneself, in essence putting parts of oneself at war with other parts (conscious vs. unconscious, accepted vs. rejected, etc.) The reason "ego" is "bad" is not because the parts of you that are IDENTIFIED WITH are bad. "Ego" is "bad" because it creates division and war within oneself, causing suffering (anxiety, depression, paranoia, etc.) Ceasing to identify with only some parts of yourself can kickstart the process of healing, reconciliation and integration -- in other words WHOLENESS. So your instincts are correct -- of course your desires or ambitions aren't "BAD." It's just that they can also create suffering if other parts of yourself are rejected and unintegrated. They are perfectly fine in balance with the WHOLE you. This is tough for many people to swallow, because until that identification is surrendered, one clings to that limited conception of who one is for dear life. But it ultimately is what also causes the suffering in one's life.

I should add "orderly" to that.

Being on the phone all day is LITERALLY THE WORST THING if you have DP. You want to minimize that. Those are good goals, but also add in all the self-care stuff I mentioned above as well as cooking healthy meals for yourself, cleaning up regularly, etc. Basically a schedule that communicates to you "I am a worthy, capable and productive individual."

No. All that will show you is exactly what I said. Delete bad habits, add good habits. If it didn't work (noticeable improvement) that means you didn't go far enough with it. Ultimately, DP is rumination. You need to constantly be doing things that keep you present and grounded. If you don't believe me, go ahead and describe your day in detail and I will explain why it's not working.

@KatiesKarma It does sound an awful lot like Depersonalization Disorder. The LAST THING you want to be doing with that is LIVING IN YOUR HEAD. You want to do a lot of physical exercise, draw, play music, etc. Activities where you need to be in the moment. What keeps DP going is rumination. You need to shitcan all the existential/cosmology bullshit that creates abstract concepts you dwell on. Also, you need to spend a lot of time doing self-care. Grooming, dressing well, looking and feeling good. The IFS stuff is good, but all that will show in the end is not to neglect your needs or abuse yourself, and you already know what your bad habits are. The bottom line is: delete bad habits/coping strategies, add good ones.

Let me settle this once and for all, because the error is becoming annoying (probably thanks in part to Razard's blustery foolishness and insistence that he knows wtf he's talking about.) The ego, as understood in spiritual parlance, is not awareness, the intellect, the body, the impulses, the desires, the feelings, the personality traits. All those phenomena exist independently of the ego. The ego is the PROCESS OF IDENTIFICATION -- i.e. the thought "I" grafted onto all those aforementioned phenomena. The whole point of spirituality is that the PROCESS OF IDENTIFYING with these things is superfluous and actually a prison of sorts, as the narrative around identification with all these phenomena generates considerable unnecessary suffering. This is why e.g. Ramana Maharshi calls enlightenment in its completed form Sahaja Samadhi -- The Natural State. Things happen naturally without false identification needed. Awareness, the intellect, the body, the impulses, the desires, the feelings, the personality traits are there, but there is no longer a false separate self narrative around them. Please, let's stop the low IQ posting around this topic. It's frankly embarassing shit.

You are coping so hard it's scary. The simpler explanation is that Republicans are more in touch with their biological natures, so they experience less cognitive dissonance and psychological conflict, i.e. "women agreed these beliefs are demeaning and sexist, but they are still attracted to them." Because progressive ideology literally denies biology, it is based on the idea that reality is socially constructed. Progressive ideology not only makes people in marriage more unhappy, it makes people in general more unhappy. For the same freakin' reasons -- denial of reality. Young males on average have 15 times more testosterone than young females. This one fact alone would make a joke out of progressive ideology for anyone who would care to be honest.

@Andrea Bianca no problem

Everyone has loveable and unlovable traits. That's just reality. "Everybody" is delusional if they think they can find someone with solely lovable traits.

@Andrea Bianca Well...assuming what you said is correct, and that it is indeed your ego that wants to eat healthy and your shadow that wants to eat donuts, here's how I look at it. I don't think your shadow wants you to eat donuts ALL THE TIME. What might be the situation in that case is that you are so scrupulous in your diet that you go overboard and don't even allow yourself the occasional treat, which wouldn't harm you. So eating the occasional donut would be ok, and a healthy balance. As far as love and hate, they are such loaded words that I want to bring them down to something more workable and practical here. Let's call 'love' what attracts you and 'hate' what repels you. In that case, 'loving' something harmful to you is not a good thing for obvious reasons, and 'hating' it is no vice if it keeps you away from harm. Those are feelings that motivate your actions. If you're not twisted or self-destructive, e.g. you would love and hate appropriate things in that context. Even in a relationship with some person -- you don't LOVE AND HATE the person. You love the lovable things about them and hate the loathsome things about them.

In essence, what you're saying is that spirituality cannot be divorced or compartmentalized from LIFE in the broadest sense. It has to be life-affirming. So of course it has to be grounded in a life-affirming daily routine. It's not ascetism or mental fapping; it's just not.

It is a cope mechanism, an extreme one at that. The trickery in that line of reasoning is that you're going from "consciousness is the only thing that exists" (fine) to YOUR consciousness is the only thing that exists. In other words you're begging the question as far as the separate self concept being real, as opposed to a conditioned perception. That only works on people who haven't seen past the separate self illusion.