WeCome1

There is this common piece of health advice going around that "you should stay hydrated", "drink more water", "8 oz / 1 glass per hour for the first 10 hours of your waking time", "2 liters per day" and on and on it goes. It's been pointed out to me many times that "I don't seem to drink water at all"; however, between my morning and evening tea, fruits and vegetables and an occasional glass or two of water when and if I feel like it - I calculate somewhere around 1.5 liters of daily water intake and don't really feel like I'm missing something. The whole "forcing myself to drink more" seems like a fad to me. Do you have experience when purposefully drinking more water has led to any significant improvements (or problems, maybe?..)? Or maybe you can suggest some credible sources of information on this topic?

I believe @RMQualtrough has pointed out the very core of the paradigm shift that is so hard to "get" quite elegantly:

Yes, absolutely sure. It was in a video lecture I saw some years ago, can't remember exactly which. If I manage to find it I'll send it to you.

One of the words Tantra uses to describe Brahman is "Abhinava": abhi (always/ever) + nava (new/fresh). I wonder, why might that be?.. You should really try some spirituality one day, you might like it.

It's been real quiet in here for the last 8 days...

@Schizophonia IMHO, "Love" is the capacity to appreciate something - be it separate phenomena or life as a whole; the more you grow, the more you come to appreciate new aspects, intricacies, connections, beauty; as well as appreciate things you previously didn't - and to do so to an ever greater degree of depth, which probably doesn't have any upper limit. On a bad day, you just drink your cup of tea mechanically, without any enjoyment; on a good day - you enjoy it a whole lot; a tea sommelier is probably capable of even more subtle degrees of enjoyment; Leo on the peak of his trip - even more so; a saint - even more... and on and on it goes. As for the "Self-" part, it's probably to do with the fact that nothing else exists; in which case the "Self-Love" is simply a more metaphysical spin on [just] "Love". To summarize, it's learning to enjoy and make the most of what reality has to offer: it's an "all you can eat buffet" here - so it's up to you how much of it you are capable to process. As for the popular counter-examples like war, torture and rape - the point is not in "enjoying" them, but precisely appreciating them for what they are, how they came about, what's their place in the grand scheme of things, and how exquisitely balanced the whole setup is. Which is a step in the direction of realizing "how God allows such horrors if it's, supposedly, pure Love?" Something like that.

Here you go.

Wellp, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that. I did not mean my previous post as an offence or a personal attack on anybody - I've just seen some next level discipline, competence and dedication in this domain and the tangible results it brings - as well as the danger. Yet here we are, enabling BojackHorseman, who is obviously clueless about all of this, to "just take it slow". Oh well, everybody needs a hobby, I suppose.

Nope. Once again: everything that's "safe" - is placebo, and so isn't worth the time at all; and everything that "works" - is such a Russian roulette that the risk/return ratio also makes it not worth the time; if it gave the guys I mentioned above a hard time - then nobody on this forum simply doesn't stand a chance in case things go south. Besides, it was always beyond my comprehension why tf would anybody even bother with magic - when Self-realization path is known and widely available - I mean, it is literally trading a mountain of gold for seashells. So, you see, any way you spin it - it's a waste of time.

Oh boy have I waited for this topic to come up. Basically, there are two types of ritualistic magic - one is placebo and the other one is that works. And, as soon as you come across anything that even remotely appears to work - you fucking STOP right this very second and never come back to this again, okay? Way back in the day, I used to be in a group of extremely dedicated practitioners who took Carlos Castaneda's work as a literal manual (which it is, but that's besides the point). During those years, I got to know all kinds of weird people who practiced the second kind of magic (traditional folk magic, shamanism, occult, you name it) as well as guys with some really impressive supernatural abilities which I've witnessed first-hand. The most important thing I learned from those interactions is that this stuff never comes for free. There is very little "impressive" magic stuff that you can do using only "your own" resources, and those usually drain very quickly, and your health/psyche gets damaged. What is usually the case is that you ask some external forces/entities to "do the work" or "lend you energy", in which case sky is the limit. BUT what folks rarely take into account is that those forces and entities are 1) predatory and 2) several orders of magnitude more intelligent and cunning than you can process. They are basically "energetic loan sharks" - and people enter into implicit contracts with them simply by practicing the rituals, and never read the fine print. There is all sorts of inorganic "wildlife" living around us "ready to help" or just passively feeding of the energy we are wasting. So, what happens when you become "indebted" to those guys? Well, I've seen a guy's body getting possessed not by one, not by two, but by NINE entities simultaneously (they interacted with his family and went to the uni, while he himself was taking a backseat - and nobody noticed for some weeks). Another guy was tortured in his sleep for more than a year every single time - and it was one of the best lucid dreamers I've come across, but still couldn't do shit about that. Another one's body aged for 10-15 years in a span of a week and got a heart disease. Never mind all those "witches" who wanted to see the future to help people and are now cursed with the Cassandra's complex, I've known like three of those. Man, I could probably write a book on this topic. So, basically - DON'T. Ritualistic magic is like a shitty closed-source software: it will own your ass and you will not even know it. Yeah, ultimately it's all just You/God playing pranks on itself, but good luck doing the liberation practices when "the relative you" is grabbed by the balls...

You don't say?.. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/life-expectancy-globally-since-1770.svg

Nah, it really isn't, I just bought a Vedic cookbook from local Krishnaites and experimented with replacing/removing the diary products; that, and the supplements. Never ever felt unsatiated or lacking energy. Then again, people tend to say that I eat "too little", oh well, people say a lot of things. Cronometer averaged at about 2200 Kcal, but that was only a month or so worth of data, so I'm not sure if it's representative in any way. I was mostly concerned with aminoacids and minerals as a beginner vegan enthusiast. I don't know what to say, man. I mean, it's usually something like 40% carbs (potatoes, pasta, rice etc) + 30% some kind of a stew with legumes and what not + 30% fresh salad. I can thoroughly recommend the cookbook, though - Krishnaites know what they're doing when it comes to healthy and delicious cooking: Адираджа Дас - Ведическое Кулинарное Искусство; it's available to download for free online. I'd like to once again stress the importance of not being fanatical about your eating schedule (or even strict veganism from the very start, but that's a whole another can of worms). If 1 meal seems to not be working, 2 smaller ones with a 4h interval are still pretty good.

I've adhered to OMAD in the past for approximately 2 years, mostly vegetarian, but there was a purely vegan period - and it worked just fine; now it's either 2 meals or 1 + some fruits instead of a lunch (I never eat breakfast). The only potential downside I see is that OMAD can conflict with your workout schedule - I hear that the common advice is to load up after the training; but I don't work out, so. Other than that, yeah, exactly like you said: lightness, clarity and focus most of the day. You don't have to adhere to OMAD schedule religiously to benefit from it.

What hate are you talking about? Weren't you the one who started accusing me of inability to read after I merely pointed out that a functionally identical thread exists? Be careful with your projections.

Yes, but it obviously has naturally transformed into a general discussion of all things related to the war in Ukraine. You yourself participated in that discussion. Anyway, if you feel that a separate topic is needed - who am I to judge? It's the job of the moderators. Cheers!

Ok, explain the difference which I failed to see?

No, it never triggered me in any way. It is good and important that you see and understand the irrationality of this problem. This removes the need to clear up the intellectual confusion and makes it a pure psychological problem. Unfortunately, I am in no position to give advice in this domain (except for what I said in my first post). Have you considered consulting a professional psychotherapist about this? This kind of obsessing over irrational ideas is a well-studied subject, I believe.

Or did it?..

@Display_Name I think you may find the concept of "Roko's Basilisk" interesting. If you study carefully the argument and its possible refutations, this could bring you some peace of mind.

This sounds super-duper-healthy. To constantly deepen the appreciation of THIS as it is + to serve out of the feeling of inner abundance = sounds a whole lot like Self-Love, innit. Happy for you, hope this sticks.

Honesty and clarity about what it is that you REALLY want. The logic here is as follows. Value and Purpose are functions of Survival (some argue that Meaning is as well, but I'm more of the opinion that it is rather a function of Appreciation and Love; but that's besides the point here) and so only apply in our relative domain. But, in this relative domain, they ALWAYS do apply: you always feel (and, indeed, are) incomplete in some sense - and deep down you know in which. So, there is ALWAYS something that you REALLY want. Apathy or laziness i.e. "the lack of willpower", as some wise man once defined it, is "a means of protecting oneself from useless labor". We usually want more than one thing, and sometimes those things are partially conflicting. This, along with the lack of clarity about your priorities (what you want the most) may result in the paralysis by analysis, when the mind doesn't see the clear and obvious course of action - and so protects itself from potentially wasteful activity. Leo's Life Purpose course is heavily based on the idea of really looking inside and feeling what you truly, deeply authentically want. Not some ideas about what's good and what's not which someone else imposed on you - but truly your own. If you think about it, this IS the last resort and the ultimate authority. There is also this simple technique from a somewhat popular psychologist Mikhail Labkovsky that amounts to strictly observing the Principles: 1) Do only what you DO want; 2) Don't do what you DO NOT want; 3) Say explicitly and at once if you do not like something. There are 3 more principles to the method, but they are unrelated here. If you follow this diligently for some time, you will develop a feel of what you want authentically, and what you previously wanted neurotically; once this distinction is clear enough, the questions of "motivation" sort themselves out. There is also the hormonal aspect to willpower; I'm sure @Schizophonia will tell you all about it if you ask nicely, he is the Walter White of the forum. Or Andrew Huberman: Link 1, Link 2. Or, heck, even Alex Becker: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4 (especially). Those are actually the good ones, no business mindset or nofap talk, straight to the core.

The concept of "Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink:

Here is a good OM: LINK (YouTube doesn't allow embedding). Soham Shivoham (I am That): Adi Shakti (the best version, in my opinion): And some songs: