ChimpBrain

Caffeine has a terribly negative effect on my meditation sessions personally. Nothing but 60 minutes of Monkey Mind lol.

You're right that 99% of us in the US are uniformed about the merits and drawbacks of different political systems. Myself included. What I "knew" before reading this was basically the politically biased mis/disinformation you noted in the article. I live in an extremely conservative-dominant area where socialism is a dirty word. What little positive I "knew" about socialism and the workings of Scandinavian countries government and economic systems came from the Bernie campaign, which was simplistic at best I now realize. So thanks for the education. Now I just wish I could remember all of it next time I'm presented with a closed minded anti-socialism argument from people in real life.

#1 I loved the article #2 I'm in no position to critique it other than 2 typos I spotted in paragraph #5. "believes" should be beliefs. And I *think* you meant "applauds" when you wrote applause. #3 thank you for trying to make a difference. I admire you and your writing abilities!

I feel fine honestly. The worst part was we stayed up until 2am when I'm used to getting to bed by like 10:30 so I'm super tired. If I experience any depression symptoms in the coming days I'll coma back here and say so just for complete honesty.

I can't speak to any experiences of infinity, but what I can almost guarantee is feelings of extreme gratitude, love, compassion, acceptance, etc. I've never taken it while alone FWIW. I think it's primary benefit as far as growth goes is how it changes your relationship to others, especially people you're close to, which I'm not sure you would fully recognize if you were alone. Although I'm sure you would still get some kind of benefits from it.

There's still a lot of that going on underground believe it or not. And MAPS is working on getting it approved for use in PTSD and eventually couples therapy. https://therooster.com/blog/illegal-mdma-being-used-doctors-treat-all-kinds-things

My wife has some bisexual leanings too. I've told her I'm totally open to her experiencing other women both physically and emotionally. I told her that a few years ago when the topic first came up and nothing ever came of it but I think that's about to change. She's met a gay girl she really vibes with and they've been hitting the gym together and going out for drinks occasionally. I still feel ok with the situation personally. I *would* have a harder time being so accepting if her desire was to be with other men because egos gonna ego lol. Although ideally we would work toward a space with enough trust, openness and honesty that men wouldn't be an issue either. I don't know why I'm posting this other than that I'm going through something similar and hope my openness to the reality that women are often bisexual will help you to be stop resisting it too. Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

Cool, thanks for posting it!

@Hamilcar I don't know what that is but it's not metal lol. This is my favorite current metal band. Gojira Quit moaning about fate and change Stand up on your feet and rise With every fall you get the pain, you learn the lesson Start now, open your eyes Dead bodies falling from the sky We are the ape with the vision of the killing A rain of shame that fills the mines No other blood in me but mine Time to open your eyes to this genocide When you clear your mind you see it all You’re receiving the gold of a better life When you change yourself, you change the world Your heart is pounding in the brain As they drag you naked in the mud A devil’s dancing in the rain How could you fall so low? No! we will never let go! Let us watch them die! Time to open your eyes to this genocide When you clear your mind you see it all You’re receiving the gold of a better life When you change yourself, you change the world

I visited Switzerland last summer and would move there in a heartbeat if it were feasible. And I think that yes, your environment definitely has an impact on your ability to self-actualize. A Yogananda quote comes to mind "Environment is stronger than will power. If you want to be spiritual, seek good company and don’t mix with those whose bad habits may wrongly influence you. Be always with people who inspire you; surround yourself with people who lift you up." This might be kind of hard to do in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, for example, but would be easier to do in places like India, Thailand, Nepal, Tibet, maybe even Northern Europe.

Do any of the parents out there have recommendations for high quality reading material aimed at kids? I have a 6yr old who learned to read early and is devouring 3rd - 4th grade books like crazy but I'm not finding a lot out there that I'd consider high quality and she's reading a lot of mindless crap. You know, books that are teaching her about her own psychology, important life lessons, critical thinking, etc. A few decent ones I have found over the past few years is I Once Was A Monkey, Planting Seeds, The Childrens Book of World Religions, Buddha, Master of Mindfulness, and Jocko Willink's two Warrior Kid books. That last one might be debatable depending on your particular beliefs/biases/taste. It's a little too on the Ra-Ra Murica side of things even for me but it's great for teaching discipline and the value of hard work, and she loves them. There don't seem to be many parents here but if you have suggestions, please post them. Maybe we can get a decent list going and all share ideas. Just post what age range the book is for along with it so people aren't researching a book for their 5 year old that's for middle schoolers. The ones I posted are probably geared toward the 5-10yr old range.

So I've been having issues with anxiety for years. Also several other things that can be linked to microbiome dysbiosis like constant joint pain, insomnia, gas/bloating, acne, diarrhea, etc. I recently had a stool analysis done to see what I could find and I had some some bacteria too low, others too high, and a high measure of calprotectin which is an inflammatory marker in the bowel. I started a radical elimination diet similar to the carnivore diet on July 5th. I've eaten 4 foods for the past month, beef, eggs, coconut oil, and almond butter. I wanted to do the carnivore diet as it's planned but frankly it's god damned expensive to eat several pounds of grass fed beef a day so I had to have some supplemental sources of calories or my grocery bill would be ridiculous. The results were basically: all digestive issues stopped within 2-3 days, skin cleared up within a week, sleep has steadily improved the longer I've been on the diet, joint pain is radically reduced (I've had these nagging pains for years, this is no coincidence), I can't say that the anxiety is any better because it comes in phases and I simply haven't been on the diet long enough to get a good read on this particular symptom yet. The only downside I've found so far is bad breath, which comes along for the ride on any ketogenic diet. My plan now is to start some low dose probiotics and see how that goes, specifically lactobacillus and bifidobacterium which are specifically linked to helping with anxiety and depression. After that, assuming all goes well, I will start to reintroduce foods one at a time. My first choice will be green beans. I'll have a small serving of them with each meal for a few days and see how it goes. If I get no bad reactions I'll continue them. If I get a negative reaction, no more greenbeans in the future. Then I get to do this process over and over with each and every food I ever want to eat again lol

Really good point man, we have to teach critical thinking along with providing quality material. I'm working on this "don't trust any source of information 100%" mindset and have been since she could understand what I mean by that. Also when it comes to the big stuff like God and an afterlife I take the "I don't know and neither does anyone else, you'll have to figure it out for yourself" route. I do guard her pretty closely against religious nonsense though being in TX. @Zweistein I'm going to add the never ending story to the Amazon cart too, thanks for the recommendation!

I started a thread on here once called something like "things you want to post that don't justify having their own thread" for people to share miscellaneous stuff that they otherwise wouldn't make an entire thread about. Especially podcast, youtube videos, music, quotes, etc. Leo eventually shut it down after a few pages saying "Locking this topic because it's turning into a random hodgepodge of stuff. Not a good way to use this forum. If you have something worthwhile to share, take the effort to start your own topic. If it's not worth starting a topic, then it's probably not worth posting.", so I'm not sure he is on board with using the forum for games. Just posting my experience with trying to do something similar here, obviously I don't speak for Leo.

She has the Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends... I think she has all of the Shel Silverstein books actually and loves them. The Giving Tree damn near made me cry the first time I read it, seriously caught me off guard. Good suggestions! I'm going to start looking into some of the others you've suggested here and adding them to an Amazon wish list. Especially the longer form books because she's really proud that she can read "chapter books" now. She read the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe recently but I'm not sure how much she was able to take away from it. I think it was a little too advanced. That's something they had us reading in like 9th grade when I was in school.

The spiral dynamics labels might be a little too difficult/subjective to do much good, but obviously anyone can include any information they want. Yeah sure movies and songs would be good too. Pinocchio comes to mind as far as movies (thanks Jordan Peterson lol). A lot of the Disney stuff isn't half bad TBH, Lion King, Jungle Book, Little Mermaid, etc. Some other decent ones off the top of my head are Fern Gully, The Lorax, Wall-E, and Inside-Out.

@now is forever Thanks for the recommendations, I just added a few of the Astrid Lindgren books to my Amazon cart.

Same here. We called it space monkey. I passed out and smacked my head on the basketball court once. I had no awareness of it happening, was just told after the fact. Space monkey was immediately what I thought of when reading the OP too.

Like I mentioned in another thread about this, I like Firas but his denouncement of science appears to be primarily religiously motivated if you listen to some of his other interviews. Like his appearance on "the dean show"

Sorry if another section would be more appropriate for this but nothing jumped out at me as obviously being a better fit. This is going to be a somewhat embarrassing thing to talk about but here it goes. I have a 6yr old daughter, when I found out her mother (now my wife) was pregnant with her we had only been dating for 2 months (accidental, obviously) and there was a 10yr age gap between us. I was 29, she was 19. The realization that I was going to be a dad and the sole provider for a child and mother who was a full time student hit me hard. I went from easy-going, working just enough to pay my bills (30hrs a week maybe), partying every weekend, etc., to being a workaholic who was deeply afraid of not having enough money to support my family in about a weeks time. Money became my first priority and I started working 70+ hours a week and stressing like crazy. With this came erectile dysfunction, more specifically, a condition called pelvic floor dysfunction in which the muscles of the pelvic floor basically contract unconsciously, and even against your will when you try to consciously relax them. This is the literal physical manifestation of someone being "uptight", a "tight ass", or "anal retentive". I've also had a sort of dull tension in my entire body, especially my jaw and traps for years now. I got myself into a mode where I'm always in a rush, obsessed with efficiency, always multi-tasking, always thinking about what's next on the agenda, etc. Granted, the mental side of things is much better since I discovered Leo and meditation, cut my work hours down, and my wife graduated and got a job, but the physical symptoms haven't improved. I've been working with a chiropractor for over a year with no improvement, although he has fixed several posture related problems. And I've just recently started working with a physical therapist who's a published author on the subject of pelvic floor dysfunction in men. The problem is, she says this is primarily a mental phenomenon, not physical, and recommends meditation, journaling, seeing a sex therapist or a psychiatrist, hypnosis, and getting your gut health in order because of the relationship of the microbiome to the brain. I've been meditating and journaling for about 2.5yrs now, and just had a stool analysis done so we can assess the state of my gut and have radically altered my diet based on the results. So, I thought I might ask here since this is problem appears to be more psychological than physical, if before I throw down more money on therapists and testing, anyone here has some reliable ways to relieve tension in the body. Meditation helps some but it's not significant. I've tried guided yoga nidra sessions but I just fall asleep every time. That's another thing, sleep doesn't fix it either. The tension I mean. I've tried affirmations too. Again things like meditation, mindfulness, journaling, affirmations, etc, have improved my life tremendously but I still can't shake this one symptom. I've also tried drugs like alpha blockers, beta blockers, and benzos. These help for a matter of a few days and then everything goes back to "normal". Also viagra and cialis do help slightly, but it's maybe like a 10% improvement, doesn't get me anywhere close to a normal level of sexual function, and does nothing for the pelvic floor tension I deal with 24/7. Ok I feel like I'm rambling now. If you've read this far, thank you. If you have any methods you think might be useful in my situation, I'm all ears!

I did yoga once every day for a month straight and it did seem to have some positive effect, although nothing drastic. I was just doing 30 minutes of Sun salutations followed by a simply Kundalini routine though. Leo I've been using psychedelics for over 20yrs, although a lot of it recreationally, but I've never had the opportunity to try 5meo. I've only done shamanic breathing once at a retreat with Aubrey Marcus. It was a cool experience but had no effect on my symptoms. Maybe it'd be different trying it at home. I know the Wim Hoff breathing makes my symptoms worse, likely from the adrenaline release involved. I did 20 minutes of the bioenergetics workout last night and again this morning and it does seem to have some effect, although it goes away within a few minutes of stopping the routine. I'm going to continue it every day for 2wks and see what happens. If there are no noticeable results, I'll move on to Trauma releasing exercises. Thanks again everyone for the input and suggestions!

Be honest about what happened and why. Then deal with the "consequences" if that's what happens. At y'alls age this is likely to be a deal breaker. Even if not immediately, she'll probably not trust you going forward which will cause resentment on your part. But there's always a chance you'll stay together and grow from it. From a former serial cheater-- be honest, because if you don't, your bad deeds will likely be in the back of your mind forever causing all sorts of self doubts and criticism.

I think Leo specifically said "this is where the model starts to break down" in reference to such individuals.

Thank you all for the advice, support, and ideas! I'm going to start researching and experimenting with bioenergetics and trauma releasing exercises. I just tried about 10min of the bioenergetics and did get a diminishment of the tension, but it went back to normal within a few minutes of stopping the exercise. I'll experiment further when I have more time and if I find anything that works I'll be sure to report back. Thanks again!

I second @Girzo 's recommendation of the man who mistook his wife for a hat. Super entertaining book. I actually gave that as a Christmas gift to several family members who are in the medical field last year.