jjer94

movie characters poop too! Movie characters do exciting stuff on film. Their lives seem eventful. Their failures are short-lived and success falls into their laps. All of their practice sessions are compressed into montages as if someone can master a skill in just a few minutes. They never film the parts where the characters are pooping, peeing, eating, sleeping, studying, looking out at the countryside, meditating, talking gibberish with friends, or doing deep work. Makes sense, considering movies have a time limit and the show must go on. All the stuff that’s not crucial to the plot is omitted. But leaving out the mundane gives us a distorted view of the character’s life. Watching movies gives us a false expectation of how exceptional our lives should be. Life is really 10% what the movie characters do on-screen and 90% of the off-screen stuff. Learn to enjoy the off-screen activities. Enjoy a slow, steady sunrise. Enjoy a simple breakfast with a piping hot cup of coffee. Enjoy the time you spend with your friends. Enjoy the painstaking hours spent mastering a craft. Enjoy the subtle sound of a low-rider fart that comes twenty-four hours after eating black beans. You can enjoy those 10% exceptional moments too. Just remember that they too will blow away in the sands of time and merge with the extra ordinary.

Here's another issue to consider...

You're not showing off. You're just being you! It's okay to be you. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Ouch! That's gotta hurt. Even so, our toughest moments are usually blessings in disguise, as I'm sure you discovered. Cheers from the USA.

@Lai Okay, I'll address the elephant in the room. You're freakin' gorgeous. Now that that's out of the way, how did you plan a vagabonding expedition like that? Do you have any resources you could share?

INTRO. I took LSD yesterday, and I'm integrating the insights today. Here's what I learned. Disclaimer: These insights are from my perspective. They're not absolute. But I think a lot of you will resonate. KNOW THYSELF. An hour after popping the tab, I didn't know who I was. Literally, I did not know. There was nothing to define me. I was nothing, had nothing, and everything was leftover. I felt like I had arrived, which is the feeling I've been looking for my entire life without realizing. Death didn't matter, because the distinction between death and life didn't apply. When there's nothing to hold onto, what dies? I laughed and cried. "Thank you for my life" cannot even come close to the level of gratitude I felt. ACCEPT THYSELF. I agree with Freud when he says that societies are fundamentally neurotic. Civilization is full of "should's". It needs to be in order for things to run smoothly. We forget, however, that humans are animals, and to moralize an animal is to cage it. The zookeeper, the thing that keeps the human animal in its cage, is often called the ego or the lower self. I like to call it the Guardian. The human animal has no knowledge of death, but the Guardian does. He thinks he has the animal's best interests in mind by protecting it from the Darkness, by keeping it in a cage, by not allowing it to get hurt. Sure, he allows the animal to survive, but he doesn't allow it to live. The human animal has a primal urge to connect. To share. To give freely without taking. To feel. To be naked and vulnerable. To have wild and crazy sex. To look someone in the eye and acknowledge that they're here together on a leaky boat in a shoreless sea. I realized that my Guardian has been using spiritual ideas to deny these things. Leo has revolutionized my life; I thank him dearly. But his prioritizing of spirituality/truth has also convinced me that spending time with friends is useless. That connecting with other people is a waste of time. That I should instead work endlessly on self-actualization alone. Stack that on top of the spiritual purification idea, that sex is somehow bad, that you shouldn't feel anger or sadness. Then watch all of those Rupert Spira/Mooji videos to see how peaceful they look, and then to try to be that way all the time. It's ironic how I've used the very tools for uncaging the human animal, to cage it even more. I've been isolating myself. Avoiding social interaction. Reading books for mental masturbation. Masturbating to porn, using one hand to block the view of my other hand. This is the Guardian, sedating the caged animal before it gets stir-crazy again. For as long as I can remember, I've had little to no circulation from my waist downwards. Cold feet. Premature ejaculation. Constipation issues. It's like the bottom half of my body's been lifeless and I've been "full of shit." But once the LSD kicked in, the Guardian was obliterated, and the human animal escaped its cage. Circulation came back to my bottom half. I could actually breathe again for the first time in years. I felt relaxed. I felt my primal urge to connect, to give freely, to be horny and beastly. I was alive! When this happened, I started growling and walking around on all fours. I did somersaults, something I only did in my childhood. I took all my clothes off and went in an ice bath. I laughed and cried and smiled. I took a walk outside and laughed that I had to wear clothes. I felt like a chimpanzee in a tuxedo. Looking at other humans was the most fascinating spectacle. This place is just a massive costume party. I realized that I take my costume way too seriously. Leo talks a lot about holism, about accounting for all of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now I see the value in that. Focus too much on spirituality, and it becomes a sedative for the caged human animal. FORGIVE THYSELF. This bit is more personal, but I figure I'd share. In my journal, I mentioned that my friend killed himself a couple years ago. What I didn't mention was that I felt it was my fault. No matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, I felt guilty. I recently discovered that this guilt runs deeper than his suicide. It's been a constant theme all throughout my life. "You don't deserve to be alive. There's something wrong with you. Go away and hide. You're defective. You don't deserve anyone's time and attention." At some point in the trip, this guilt hit me like a freight train. I was writhing on my bed, sobbing like a child. I couldn't stop saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Here's the weird part. I split into two personalities. There was that one, the child, and there was the mother. The mother let the child sob while she comforted him. I put my hand on my leg and started rubbing it with my thumb, the way my mom used to do it. "It's okay, it's okay." the mother said. Then, something snapped. I forgave myself. The tears washed the guilt away. It felt nice to not need anyone else but me to... LOVE THYSELF. That's right. I said it. I'm not a new agey kind of guy, and I think it's an overused word. But now I understand the meaning of "self-love." It can't be half-assed. It can't be faked. It can't be put into an affirmation. You need to feel it in your innermost being. It's easy to forget. Civilization conditioned us to believe that love comes from outside sources. We spend all of this time seeking a girlfriend/boyfriend, achievement, success, enlightenment, and other things because we think they will provide us with the love we so desperately need. But these are finite resources, and as with anything finite, we fight to keep them. We get competitive, greedy, self-centered in order to keep the love we think comes from these sources. The masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation because they believe love is scarce. But we are all sadly mistaken. After I forgave myself, love was gushing out of me like an unclogged hose. It was endless. I loved my body, my legs, my personality. I loved my voice, my hair, my dick. The love couldn't contain itself. I loved the bed I was lying on, the ceiling, the sheets. I loved the trees outside, the sky, the water. Then I realized...wait for it...ALL is love. There's no difference between life and love. Go ahead. Laugh it up. Then I realized that the only obstruction to this abundance of love was...wait for it. Fear. We accept the love we think we deserve. Fear is the Guardian. When the Guardian is obliterated, love remains. Thus, in a paradoxical sort of way, love = death = life = God. In the state of love, every second is an extra second. A privilege, not a right. Life is a heavenly epilogue to a melodramatic farce. Life is God's masturbatorium. God just wants to jerk Himself off with his own love. All you want to do, is share it. There was so much love to give that I didn't know what to do with myself. So I took that walk outside, called my brother for once (I don't normally reach out to people). I complimented a girl in a shop. I looked all of the passers-by in the eye, hoping that they would at least receive some of the love I was trying to share. Most of the time, they looked away in a split second. But it didn't matter to me. I didn't need anyone to love me. I WAS love itself. OTHER NOTES. LSD is a very cerebral psychedelic. There weren't as many visualizations as shrooms. I was mostly in my head. I consider myself fairly creative, but this drug multiplies your creative capacity by 1000. I couldn't stop writing and talking. Insights were spewing out of me at a million miles an hour. LSD is an opportunity to ask yourself deep questions, especially about your psychological issues. Here's a sample of some of the questions I asked myself: What do I want? Why do I isolate myself? What purpose does my constipation serve? What am I so afraid of? And so on. You ever see the movie Limitless, with Bradley Cooper? It kind of felt like that. The trip lasted more than twelve hours. I popped the tab at 10 AM, and I was still tripping at 1 in the morning. The Guardian is back. Circulation to my bottom half is cut off again. But at least now I know what I can work towards. This song was the theme to my trip. I listened to it more than 15 times: OUTRO. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Words can only do so much justice. I can write for hours about this trip and it would have 1/100th of the impact compared to actually taking LSD. My suggestion? Give it a try. Just know what you're getting into. Do the research. Be meticulous. And, most importantly, enjoy. Cheers, Brett

That's what I thought too...until I took this psychedelic. You're not receiving 10000 orgasms a minute when you take it. You feel pretty much the same...except for one thing. The part of your thought-system that CONSTRAINS, that PROTECTS...is gone. You feel so ALIVE and FREE that you wonder how you've been able to live your whole life in that somnambulistic state. Sure, God/enlightenment/truth/whatever is right here, right now. But this is not a God thing. It's a human thing. Do you want a good dream or a bad dream? Do you want to be a half-alive, borderline depressive hermit? Or do you want to take advantage of this human body? Do you want to be fully alive in this no-stakes open-world sandbox game? In a sense, the journey is the destination. This is it, but there is always work to be done in the human realm. Taking a psychedelic will instantly reveal this fact to you. If it feels real, it is real. Sure, you can tell a depressed person that depression just a bunch of thoughts and feelings. But to the one actually having depression, it feels very real, and it's not pleasant. To that person, feeling happy would matter a lot. Illusion may not be true, but it is real. Be careful not to spin these spiritual/nihilistic/Jed McKenna things you've read into an excuse for inaction. Just another sedative for the human animal. Like I said before, illusion is not true, but it is real. Death feels very real to the body/mind experiencing it, even though life and death are pretty much the same thing on an existential level. Again, it goes back to whether you want a good dream or a bad dream... and there's no choice in the matter. This is all paradoxical stuff. But you'll understand what I mean if you ever decide to take the psychedelic plunge.

@Echoes Forgot to mention that. One tab is...I believe somewhere around 100-125µg? I'm a lightweight, so it was plenty for blastoff.

the pressure to be extraordinary. One of the reasons I created this journal was to be extraordinary. Ever since my friend killed himself, it feels like I will scorch my ass if I sit down and do nothing for too long. Peeking behind the abyssal curtain of mortality has made me neurotic. I create stuff to deny guilt, self-hatred, and life's vanity. I went on an overachieving rampage. I thought, I'll show him how to live. I picked up my acoustic guitar after an eight-year hiatus, started writing music, and taught myself how to mix recordings. I graduated early and began a journey of self-education and discovery. I started writing. One hundred songs and sixty blog posts later, here I am. But even after accumulating all of this uniqueness, it's not enough. No matter how hard I try to be extraordinary, I will never live up to my mind's expectations. The desire for extraordinariness implies that I lack it. Self-help raises the pressure to be extraordinary. The Tim Ferriss digital-nomad brigade, Tony Robbins high-energy-extroverts, and self-actualization junkies urge you to live an extraordinary life. They tell you do adopt this practice, drink this tea, move to Thailand, become a life coach even though you have no life experience, and, well... start a blog. They cater to people like me who feel a sense of lack, who don't like themselves as they are, who want to stick out to compensate. So we do those things, thinking they will fill the void. But they only make it bigger.

What am I? What is inside? What is outside? What is the difference between color and seeing? What is the difference between form and seeing? What is the difference between sound and hearing? Where is the seer? Hearer? Toucher? Taster? Or is there only seeing? Hearing? Touching? Tasting? Etc? What is matter? What is here? What is there? Where is the 'me' supposed to be located? What is absent/absence? What is an object? Who 'owns' this experience?

...That escalated quickly. Either way...thank you for the insights. This is one of the issues I'm working through.

No shit, Sherlock! You've gotta look in the right places. You better not be looking on WebMD. They probably say that at your level of GERD, you'll contract five different cancers and die of a heart attack within this year. I have mild GERD and esophageal issues. Here's a few practical things you can do right now: Get professional help. Western doctor, eastern doctor, acupuncture, holistic medicine; try em all. A forum will confuse you. Drink apple cider vinegar. Lots of it. Before and after meals. Put a tablespoon or two in your water. Even better, grate some ginger in there. Cut out all processed foods. Buy foods only along the outer edges of the grocery store. Don't buy food in the aisles. Breathe. Relax. You're still alive, so that's cool at least. That should get you started.

Sounds like you're stuck in the past. It's done. You can't change it. No point in thinking those events shouldn't have happened. You know what those thoughts are? Suffering. This is coming from a fellow people pleaser, by the way. You know how some people say that your worst moments are your best teachers? Let's say these "faults" of yours happened so that you could learn from them, as you're doing now. You're dealing with a decades-long neurosis here. Be gentle and patient. Awareness is the first step. You're doing great. I think it would be a good idea for you to reframe your neuroses as protection mechanisms rather than ailments. I wrote about that here. Cheers!

life is high school meatballs. Life is messy. It's like that sloppy meatball dish you ate every Wednesday in high school. A lot of unknown ingredients went into those meatballs. You weren't sure if it was made from animal parts or cretaceous dinosaur meat. The top layer was always slimy. Some of the marinara sauce would make it onto the crotch of your pants. Your classmates would ask if you're on your period as you'd run to the bathroom to wash off the spot. In spite of this, you ate it anyway. And oddly enough, it was enjoyable. You secretly looked forward to pasta Wednesdays. The game of life wouldn't be fun if everything were perfect, certain, and easy. The game is fun precisely because it is imperfect, uncertain, and difficult. Like high school meatballs, you can enjoy life in spite of how messy it is. And really, that's the only way you can enjoy it.

Hi there. You already have Not really. In my experience, neuroses work like whack-a-mole. One will pop up, another will go back into its hole. Whack 'em whenever they come up in your life. It depends on your circumstances. For a college sophomore, I say focus on people skills/relationships, especially if you have anxiety. Why not join a few clubs? You're in the perfect place to do so. Ehh....in my experience, not really. I go by the following rule: introduce at most one new habit per month. You don't want to end up like one of those new years resolution people who says they will work out two hours per day, and then cancels their gym membership two weeks later. You only have so much willpower. Start small. A great habit to start is meditation. Start with two minutes per day. Then next week, up it by another 2. And another two. And so on. Of course! Ideally, new habits will work to resolve them. You're doing great. Just relax. It's not a race. Your mom may have made you an overachiever, but you're off the clock now. Cheers.

One of my biggest fears is... throwing up. Also known as emetophobia. Ever since upchucking in front of everyone at a camp cookout when I was 9, I've been deathly afraid to vomit. When the fear was really bad, I ate until I was not-hungry, not until I was full. I carried around TUMS and ate a couple every day. I got really, really skinny. Any time I was nauseous, I lied down and moaned my way through the pain. I fought not to throw up. Almost a decade after the cookout event, I finally did the technicolor yawn. Twice while I was drunk, once while I was sober. I realized that throwing up is not the problem. The problem is my shame that's linked to vomiting. The problem is surrendering control. The problem is the anticipation. The problem is the feeling that part of me will die. Fortunately, the fear is nearly gone. A couple of practical things that have helped me, in case any fellow emetophobes are reading this: Just surrender. The ultimate solution. If you're nauseous, let yourself throw up. It feels like death at first. But afterwards, you'll feel more alive. Eat good food. Preferably whole foods. Foods that work with your digestive system, not against it. They will settle your stomach. Practice gagging in the morning. This one's weird, but hear me out. When you're stomach's empty in the morning, stick your toothbrush into the gag reflex. Try not to vocalize your gag. Don't worry, you won't vomit. It actually feels pretty good once you get used to it.

@jse

We have a lot in common, friend. We are not as much afraid of people as we are afraid of rejection. Rejection reflects back to us deep inner feelings of deficiency. You know that deep-seated feeling that something is wrong with you? It's a bad feeling. We people-pleasers don't like to feel it. So we avoid those feelings by trying to get everyone to like us. It's tiring work, isn't it? Kind of makes you want to...slink away to the computer? I wrote a couple snippets here and here that may relate to your issues. As for practical advice, I'd say this: Don't fight it. Learn to understand it first. It's not a problem; it's a protection mechanism. Be gentle. Journaling helped me. Sneak up behind it. Instead of approaching it like a new-years-resolutioner would (I'm going to hit the gym three hours per day and eat super healthy!), make it a second priority. First priority is doing things that you actually want to do. Friends will come as a side effect. Start small. Whatever skills you're trying to master, keep going. Join clubs related to those skills. Maybe there's a zen/meditation group around town you can join? You'd meet lots of people there. Socializing becomes a lot less terrifying when you have something in common with the other person. It'll be a safer environment to work on your people-pleasing. Then, take the leap! Anyone you find genuinely interesting, ask them to hang out. Ask yourself what you want from the other person. Social anxiety is due to wanting a certain social outcome. What do you want from the other person? It's best to ask this while you're conversing. Your answer may not even come in words. Be PATIENT. This is a decades-long neurosis you're dealing with. Join an improv class. I did this recently. It's one of the best decisions I've made. You don't have to be a social butterfly. We're still introverts. We still prefer solitude. Don't let anybody tell you that you have to be social a certain number of times per week. The last thing I want to say is a reminder. I know your culture may tell you otherwise, but it's okay to be you. Cheers!

How do you feel infinity for a finite second?

@99th_monkey Whoa! A reader! Thank you

@abgespaced That's...depressingly poetic. I think if you dig down even deeper than "the deepest point where all things are equally lifeless," you'll surprise yourself. You may have to wade through some bad feelings though. I wrote a thought experiment on my blog that may help answer your question. I'll paste it here: what if you were the omega man? In The Omega Man, Neville (played by Charlton Heston) is presumably the last man on earth, defending himself against vampires at night. Otherwise, he does whatever he wants during the day. What if you were the omega man? What if the world were your oyster? What if nothing were at stake? What if there were no reason to do anything? What if there were no audience? What would you do to pass the time? Write songs? Paint? Play chess with yourself? Answer these questions honestly, and you reveal your authentic creative interests. Then ask yourself: What if the world is already your oyster? What if nothing is at stake? What if you already have no reason to do anything? What if an audience is unnecessary? Then what would you do to pass the time? And why aren’t you doing it?

Paradoxically, trying to make the feeling 'last' is what brings you out of the feeling. You can't hold onto any thing. Meditation helps you realize this. The less you hold on or "maintain", the more you realize the effortless stillness that's always there. It's the default.

Nice video. It reminds me of this story: Once upon a time, there was a very hungry jackass. He had to choose between two bales of hay. He wanted both so badly but couldn't decide on which one to eat first. As a result, he starved himself to death. The moral: one thing at a time. Even so, I work on two separate creative ventures. When my momentum lulls in one, I switch over to the other. It keeps things fresh and prevents backsliding.

a word about Gnosis: it ain't gonna buy the groceries.

I don't really see that. Anyway, thanks for sharing! Dayum, I've got to see Book of Eli now. That looks badass. You're making me want to do the same and recite that in the morning...

the emotional fortress of agape. Every night before dinner, I say grace. It’s not your typical Christian grace. I’m not religious, nor am I on very good terms with Jesus. Instead, it’s an informal grace based on a line of dialogue from the movie Joe Versus The Volcano: “Dear God, whose name I do not know. Thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG… Thank you. Thank you for my life.” Upon saying this aloud with gusto, I revisit the emotional fortress of agape. It’s a place overflowing with gratitude, love, and awe for the grand mystery that is life. A positively hopeless place where I know deep down, this is it. A place where there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to be. A place where I can say, “If I died right now, that would be okay.” Then I push out a ceremonial fart on demand and proceed to devour my dinner.