Thanks for calling me normie lol. Looking back I think my particular case was a little more extreme than the average normie that stumbles upon relativism
When I first realized the true nature of meaning, value, and purpose, it felt as if the very foundation of my reality had collapsed. Meditation already had begun this process, but your video on understanding these concepts burst my bubble in an aggressive and blunt way. Something which was definitely not the right time for or something that I was looking for at that moment, but I already was aware that curiosity kills the cat when I went down that rabbithole.
It was as if knocking over the first domino led to the rapid, uncontrollable, unstoppable collapse of my entire conceptual framework of reality. Once I realized that certain things were mere social, cultural, linguistic or human constructs, it didn’t take long for me to question EVERYTHING ELSE in my life or that I was capable of thinking of, leaving me with a profound sense of absolute groundlessness, and a freedom SO VAST that it was ABSOLUTELY TERRYFING.
One of the most insidious aspects of this relativism was how my ego hijacked it for self-serving purposes. When nothing holds inherent meaning, the ego can rationalize any behavior, no matter how destructive or self-defeating. I found myself trapped in this mindset, using relativism to justify my fears, addictions, and self-destructive habits. Even though I knew, on some level, that judgments, rejection, and failure "shouldn't matter," I remained paralyzed by these fears. The ego thrived on the infinite double standards relativism allowed, twisting logic to maintain its grip. I would rationalize that personal development was pointless, meaningless, and biased, making no sense to pursue.
Growing up, I was deeply absorbed in video games. 10+ years of WoW. 5 years of LoL , besides of dozens of other videogames. The stories, quests, currencies, characters, competition, victories, defeats within those games were incredibly real to me, not just pixels on a screen. They provided real sense of progress, purpose and achievement. Realizing that these experiences were mere constructions was painful. It shattered the illusion I had built around them and took away a lot of enjoyment and escapism.
Some realizations like that my parents gave me my name, and that it could have been anything else, as of today seems so obvious and a surface level insight, but it's actually not obvious. I bet more than 3/4 of the human population is not aware of that and truly belives their name is real and belongs to them. I realized that things don't have names, that we create them with arbitrary sounds and symbols and concepts, and that different things are called different ways in different languages, and we just use this system for comunication. It's not truth.
I realized that morality, ethics, manners , good or bad are relative, that the law is groundless and relative ( and why it exists ) , that possessions aren't real but social and mental constructs, that countries don't exist, money is a construct, that time is subjective and age doesn't really exist. These realizations only worsened my sense of confusion and disorientation at the time.
I was 21 years old and had just started living on my own for the first time, fresh out of school. The world of meanings that had defined my life—exams, grades and worrying about what my classmates thought of me—crumbled away. Academia and the sense of safety it provided revealed themselves to be nothing more than a game and an illusion. The importance I had placed on these things disintegrated, leaving me feeling utterly groundless and foolish, like I had wasted all that time.
As this process unfolded, I came to a realization that no matter what happens, everything is "absolutely okay." This insight led me to stop inhibiting my impulses, which inevitably pulled me toward distractions, addictions, and comfort.
Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months as time flew by, and I found myself increasingly detached from any sense of purpose or direction. I stopped judging and moralizing my actions, instead choosing to simply observe whatever I was doing and go with it. This approach dissolved much of the internal resistance I once felt and allowed me to sink deeper into the present moment, for better or worse, which ended up just leading me to seek out comfort and pleasure while avoiding discomfort and pain. For weeks, I would lie in bed, utterly unmotivated and aimless. The female attention and aprooval I once craved stopped being meaningful. I convinced myself that day and night didn’t truly exist, so there was no reason to wake up at any specific time. I saw no point in maintaining basic hygiene or even wearing clothes the "right" way. I would go to the supermarket unshowered, wearing dirty clothes, messy hair and shirts backwards and inside out , rationalizing that there was no right or wrong way to dress. When I had a part time job at a restaurant, I remember letting some customers walk away without paying because in my mind it didn't matter.
My sense of self-importance crumbled as well. I realized I was no more significant than a fly or a cockroach, and this realization left me feeling profoundly insignificant and purposeless. Even ending my own life literally didn't make sense, something I never considered seriously.
This extreme relativism led me to a state of profound laziness but also access to unconditional happiness. I found that I could lie in bed for months, feeling ecstatic, almost like what I imagine being high on heroin is like, without needing to do anything to achieve this happiness. This was an absolute ambition killer. The sense of meaninglessness was so deeply embedded in my mind that any attempt to take action felt like a distraction, causing emotional resistance. It was as if taking any step away from doing nothing would shatter the fragile peace I had found in this state of inaction.
I didn't know who or what I was anymore. I realized that identity, what you yourself identify as, is absolutely groundless and are just meaningless or self-constructed labels. The one thing that didn't crumble was my sexuality. I considered that if absolute relativity is true then everyone is in actuality pansexuaI. But in practice I was just not attracted to men. Period. I didn't need identify as a man , adult or human for the validity truthfulness of my feelings of attraction and preference to whatever I perceived as an attractive female.
This shift also marked a clear and sharp transition from analytical thinking to a primarily intuitive approach to life. Intuition gradually became my core mode of operation, guiding my decisions and shaping my reality. I began to connect with and respect my emotions in a way I hadn’t before. Emotions became central to my experience, driving my choices and dictating how I engaged with the world. At that time, this intuitive, emotion-driven way of living was deeply ingrained in me, and emotions, feelings, and intuition were the only ground I could rely on.
The descent into relativism also isolated me from others, as I saw them as characters in a game - NPCs, unaware of the constructed nature of their realities. It was a lonely existence, like living in a "Truman Show" where everyone else was oblivious to the truth. Every person I encountered was locked into their own paradigm of understanding the world, unconscious of the constructed nature of their reality. No one would understand me. I couldn't relate to anyone and actually people would judge me and reject me for thinking or talking in these ways. People said I was depressed, when actually I felt more sane than them but confused.
This descent into nihilism and relativism eventually pushed me toward "mysticism". As I understood the nature of meaning, language, and concepts, I also deeply understood I didn’t know what anything was anymore; I faced deep not-knowing. I intuitively began practicing "neti neti" meditation and "actuality meditation," which led to temporary heightened states of consciousness and experiences of non-symbolic awareness. These practices helped me trascend the conceptual limits of the mind and connect with a reality beyond words, thoughts and even perception, leading to things like seeing the ox' tail with what I think is a samaddhi experience ( this entire " perception bubble" is made out of the" same stuff" , even "me", the observer, is made out of the same " stuff ") , the insight that thoughts literally APPEAR INTO EXISTENCE from pure nothingness in the most direct way possible, and later some accidental astral projection. I also realized that non-duallity is so non dual it entails duallity, which just mindf*cked me again, and that I was engaging in spiritual bypasing.
Eventually, though the pass of time, the school of hard knocks, awareness , trial and error and tremendous amounts of confusion and needless suffering, , I began to see that while all things might be meaningless, there is a universal law of cause and effect. Both cause and effect are meaningless in themselves, but they have real consequences nevertheless, and I personally have real preferences toward certain consequences over others. To deny that would be self-deception. It's obvious but it did not make sense for so long. For instance, I would rather be free than in jail. This is a child-mind level insight I had to re-learn.
I realized that being bummed out by meaninglesness is a mental fallacy. Meaninglesness is meaninglessness, not negative.
These realizations helped me begin to rebuild my life by recognizing that life itself operates with a deeper intelligence that transcends these constructs, with inherent logic and rules that we discover through trial and error and direct experience. I realized that relativism doesn’t hold up in the practical world; it’s only a limitation of the mind, logic, conceptual frameworks, and language. Being locked in this experience and perspective of being · an alive human being · comes with specific biases and preferences. Something obvious but aparently, not so obvious.
This going full cirlcle understanding allowed me to see the limits of Relativism and Nihilism : They overlook nature's nature.
Not just the ground of reality, but all of reality.
Not all questions. But many.
Many questions are poorly formed or simply irrelevant.
Well, that's something you could inquire into. Whether you will ever get an answer is unclear.
Any psychedelics could potentially do it. 5-MeO and DMT are of course two of the most powerful ones and have a good chance to give you more insight into the ultimate nature of reality.
By the time you reach the necessary level of liberation you will no longer exist as a human self.
So it's a bit like curing cancer by shooting yourself in the head.
To keep you alive.