Forestluv

For me, crying is several evolutionary levels higher than peeing.

That would qualify as ‘outrageous’ !!

I’d take a video with Leo and the Amazon delivery guy at this point ?

Apparently my refresh button doesn’t accelerate YT upload speed. . .

I don’t think I’d want to be able to turn crying on or off, that would cheapen the experience for me. I’d like to cry as part of a holistic expression. That experience can be sadness, joy, appreciation or awe. A few things that helped me was to decondition all the anti-crying conditioning I got from my parents and society. Also, holotropic breathing and the afterglow of psychedelics helped open doors. Also watching certain movies, when I got really immersed into the characters. These weren’t always sad scenes. Quite often, they were very beautiful scenes that were so touching. One that comes to mind is the movie The Notebook. I watched in on a plane. I got so immersed into the characters and storyline. I didn’t even realize I was crying until a flight attendant came over and asked me if I was ok. I looked at myself on my phone and I was a mess. I looked like I just lost a loved one. Yet this wasn’t like going to the gym and lifting weights or learning how to solve a puzzle. These were meaningful experiences in which the crying was within a larger experience.

Actualizers: fasten your seatbelts. . .

It depends on the person’s metabolism. You would need to do this experiment on yourself. For me, a tolerance reset after a 50ug trip would be about 7-8 days.

@Yonkon Tolerance reset is correlated with dosage. If you take small to medium doses, the tolerance reset is shorter. Most people can reset off a mini dose in three days and a moderate dose in seven days. Yet you will have to do your own experimentation to find out what the specific doses for your mind-body. It varies from person to person.

@UnconsciousHuman You seem to be judging outcome without considering process. . . Imagine that I dedicated five years to exploring a forest. I spent 10s of thousands of hours within that forest investigating. The process involves lots of uncertainty, confusion and frustration. It is a messy process. . . Then after 30,000 hours of explorations and observations, I’ve got a sense of the forest and I want to communicate my understanding to others. You’ve never been in the forest before and I try to communicate what the forest is like in a clear manner. You then say “You seem too certain”. Of course I will seem certain, I’ve spent 30,000 hours in that forest!!! If someone has not undergone the messy process of investigation and exploration, s/he may perceive those that have as being overly certain.

Yes, I’ve experienced this as well. To me, it seems like two sides of the same coin. As Love enters and fills me, it feels like expansive wholeness. When love leaves, it feels like an gap of emptiness. For me, trying to fill that gap can be limiting. When I experience that gap, it is as if a knife is carving that gap deeper and broader. This creates more space and capacity to love. Then the space is refilled with even more love, deeper love. And when that love leaves, there is a larger gap. If I sit with the gap, it gets carved and expands. . . The subjective experience is that the filling feels like love and the emptying + carving is sadness and longing. I used to look for external things to avoid the experience of emptying and carving. Yet I’ve learned, its all Love. The filling, emptying, carving, refilling. The entire process is Love. One of my favorite poems in this area is “Love and Sorrow” by Kahlil Gibran.

This reminds me of balance of dualities. Love and Sorrow ; Form and Formless ; Permanence and Impermanence. There is a dance between the two within the duality as well as a collapse of the duality in which Love is Sorrow and Sorrow is Love. . . I used to eye gaze with a woman I dated. We would both go empty and gaze into each other’s eyes for 5 min. or so. Time and space dissolved. All sorts of stuff would appear from the emptiness. One time an essence of Love / Sorrow appeared., It was so deeply Love and so deeply Sorrowful. I couldn’t tell the difference between the two. It was like we lived a whole life together with both Love and Sorrow. Yet the Love was also Sorrow and the Sorrow was also Love.

How do you know this is true? Did someone tell you that you would stop suffering if you commit to enlightenment? Is that something your mind created? And what is this thing you call “enlightenment”. If you haven’t realized enlightenment how do you know what it is? Or if it even exists? Be aware if you are giving away your higher authority to hold the beliefs and theories others have constructed. For all you know, raising global awareness IS enlightenment. To me it sounds like you have a curious mind , interests and passions - yet are also creating rules and categories that are restrictive.

You just answered your own question. If my highest priority is the journey of discovering truth, then happiness has no more relevance than sadness, anger, frustration etc. If I start off a truth journey with an idea that truth is only to be found within happiness, then I have already failed, because I am not open to searching for truth within sadness, anger, frustration etc. I’ve failed before the journey has even begun. Someone that seeks happiness, security and comfort is not oriented for a journey and exploration of the totality of truth. It’s great to be so open-minded to be willing to search for truth in eternal hell, yet I would be cautious about setting up a limited construct. Above, we’ve already made an assumption that society imprints false beliefs upon us. We have therefore blocked ourselves off from seeking truth within societal imprints. Perhaps there is truth to be found in both hell and societal imprints.

The idea of “better” is relative to a particular intention and goal. If I want to get in shape, it’s better to go running than plant flowers. If I want to create a beautiful garden, it’s better to plant flowers than to go running. To create a “better”, one must create some type of value or goal to provide contrast for better and worse. Then, one can experiment on their own and seek advise from others. For example, if I value physical fitness and have a goal of running a marathon, I can then experiment with different training programs. I can also ask experienced marathon runners about the *best* methods for injury prevention, the *best* stretches and the *best* lactate threshold workouts. All of these *bests* are relative to the goal of increasing my physical fitness and completing a marathon. Within the process of training, there will be times I’m “in the zone” while running. There are times I will genuinely want to run and it’s blissful. As well, there will be times I don’t feel like running, yet know I “should” run. There will be times I don’t want to stretch, yet I know it’s *better* to do some stretching. There are times I will want to eat a half gallon of ice cream, yet know this isn’t *best*. All of these *betters* are relative to the goal of physical fitness and the marathon. That is a value relative to a goal. We could also say it’s best to do whatever I feel like right now. If I feel like running, I will. If I feel like eating a half gallon of ice cream, I will. We could say that this is best in this moment, yet not best for the longer term goal. It is a balance between the journey and the destination. For me, the process of journeying is of more value than the outcome of destination. Yet other people are oriented differently. All of the above assumes clarity of one’s personal values. A problem enters when society imposes what is “best” for us. I grew up in a fundamental Catholic home and it was *best* to attend church everyday. It was *best* to not have sex before marriage. I was conditioned with other people’s *bests* and I was filled with thoughts and feelings that I “should” be doing things relative to other peoples *bests* that were imposed upon me. Then I went to a University and learned that religion was irrational and a whole new set of *bests* were imposed upon me. And then I spent years doing things I “should” do to achieve other people’s *bests*. To gain clarity, I had to do a lot of introspection and come to know my values, dreams and passions. Then I could construct activities relative to those values, dreams and passions. And then I can have a balance between living in the moment and living in accordance with the process of journeying toward dreams. This has involved both being “in the zone” with what I love doing in the moment as well as doing some work that feels uncomfortable - as part of the process of a longer-term dream.

I wasn’t referring to you or your OP. The thread was turning toward discussion of “deep state” and the W.H.O., which has been a recent hotbed of conspiracy theories on the forum.

Don’t forget about the beautiful creature Simulans dragonis (aka the Blue morph dragon butterfly). It was discovered in a jungle in Belize in 1974 by the Ecuadorian ecologist Dr. Luis Bandera. Unfortunately, this awesome creature is likely extinct. Yet fortunately, Luis preserved a tissue sample. More than two decades after it’s discovery, the advent of DNA sequencing and genomic analysis allows a deeper exploration into this fascinating organism. Interestingly a dendrogram, based on sequence homology of both invariant rRNA gene sequences and highly variant simple tandem repeats (STRs), did not group the Blue morph dragon butterfly in the same clad as arthropod insects. Guess which clad showed highest evolutionary homology? Wait for it. . . . Drumroll. . . Yep, reptiles!! And not just any reptile, prehistoric reptiles. This is consistent with the facts that the dragon butterfly is partially cold blooded, has an exoskeleton composed of alpha-keratin and cannot produce viable offspring with traditional butterflies. As well, it’s been said that one of Luis’ students, Alejandro Lopez, witnessed the dragon butterfly breath out a wisp of smoke. However, this was never confirmed by photographic evidence and Luis himself said in a 1975 interview that the dragon butterfly was unable to breath fire (not even a micro flame). Sadly, Luis passed away in 1986 before the exciting genetic discoveries were made. Yet we know he is looking down on this with a big smile. His colleagues and students fondly called him “Doc Lu” and he was well known for saying “There are 100 million years of evolution underneath every smile”. ?

@effy01 You aren’t ‘wrong’ to feel this way. You aren’t ‘wrong’ to feel any way you feel. Whatever feelings arise are perfectly arising as the should be. I would be genuine and true to those feelings. There have been times I went too hard to fast and my mind and body said “Whoa!! Slow your roll”. Similar to when I learned how to ski. At times I was skiing downhill too fast and my mind-body told me to slow down. . . . There have been times it felt right to take a break and get involved with other things. Start a new project or hobby. This has been very helpful to me. What I’ve found is that if spiritual and personal development work is my genuine interest and passion, it will call me back eventually. There have been times I’ve taken a year or two off. At one point, I was learning a foreign language and traveling through foreign countries. After a while, I felt a calling to get back involved with spiritual work. I found that I had a new perspective and a new zest for it. I was no longer burned out. Other times, I’ve found it helpful to simply reduce the amount of time or find new “spiritual” pursuits. If I am doing spiritual practices that I can’t stand because “I should” or “I have to”, I won’t get much out of it. For example, there was a time I was doing sitting meditation everyday and it became dreadful. I was just going through the motions and getting nothing out of it. Yet I thought it was what I was “supposed to do”. Then I got into long distance running and entered a new spiritual realm of discovery. My passion was lit up. I could barely sit in meditation for 10 minutes, yet I could run through nature “in the zone” for two hours straight. My deepest realizations during this era of my life appeared during those solo runs in the woods (not during meditation).

I agree. I just would have titled it to indicate it was learning about adverse implications of vaccines. Generally when I write I don’t like putting the reader in a position to figure out assumptions or make inferences - unless it’s totally obvious. Yet I’m a stickler for that type of thing since I do a lot of work in this area.

@TrynaBeTurquoise I looked over the first Wolff paper. Keep in mind that this was not conducted with the current coronavirus (sar-cov2). Coronavirus is a family of viral strains and this study looked at a different corona viral strain in 2017-2018. The study looked at viral interference - which is a phenomenon by which a cell infected by a viral strain develops cross immunity to a another strain, most likely due to release of interferon. The study subsequent viral infections between two groups that were previously vaccinated with flu shots or previously unvaccinated. The overall finding was that vaccines offered statistically significant cross protection for most viruses studied, no significant protection for some viruses, and slight (yet significant) decrease in resistance for a couple virus strains. This is consistent with the general view of vaccines. That vaccines offer very strong protection for specific virus, strong protection for some related viruses, no protection for some related viruses and greater susceptibility to a small minority of viruses. Overall, this data does not argue against vaccines. One would need to cherry pick data and misinterpret this study as arguing against vaccines. We’ve also got to be careful how statistics are interpreted, especially with studies involving many pairwise T-tests. Also, whether a statistically significant result is meaningful or not in degree. Quite often a statistically significant result shows efficacy, yet no efficiency. For example, there have been studies that showed flu medication statistically significantly reduced the duration someone suffers from the flu. A pharmaceutical company may declare “Our flu medication shows statistically significant reduction in flu duration!!!!. Yet upon closer inspection, the medication does shorten the duration, yet only by 1 hr. So, there are two things at play: significant efficacy (shorter duration), yet without effectiveness (it’s only shortened by 1 hr). Who cares if someone’s flu symptoms are reduced from 120hrs to 119hrs? . . . That is in play within this article. In terms of the statistical analysis, it looks like the did pairwise T-tests which become problematic when lots of pairwise tests are done (as in this study). A p value < 0.05 is considered statistically significant. A p value of 0.05 means that there is a 5% chance that the difference between to groups is due to randomness. However, if we do 20 pairwise T-tests and they all have a p value of 0.05, that does not mean every pairwise tests is significant. This is a common misinterpretation. 20 pairwise tests with each test having a p = 0.05 means that is likely one (or more) of those pairwise tests are actually not significant. This is why it’s important to do analyses, such as ANOVA, that have greater statistical power. It is one reason the authors concluded that overall, as a population of pairwise tests together, there was no effect. This needs to be considered when we examine individual pairwise tests. If we look at individual pairwise tests, most showed positive viral interference - which means people who get vaccines have higher cross resistance to related strains than unvaccinated people. Many of these showed very strong cross resistance. This is a benefit of vaccines. Not only do they protect the person from specific viral strains (within the vaccine cocktail), they also offer protection for related strains. For a couple viruses, they found very slight (yet significant increase in susceptibility). This is where the cherry picking and manipulation of statistics comes in. We need to look at the whole picture and degree., Consider the following scenario (I am making up these numbers to articulate the point): A vaccine offers: 99% resistance to 50 specific viral strains, 60% resistance to 32 viral strains and 2% higher susceptibility to 3 viral strains. If we say “Ah ha! Look vaccines are bad people are more susceptible to virus after getting vaccinated!!”. This is highly misleading - which people with agendas often do. It’s highly misleading. Overall, the vaccine offers STRONG (60-99% resistance) to 82 viral strains and a TINY (2%) susceptibility to 3 viruses. If we cherry pick only the three viruses that showed a tiny increased susceptibility and have a title that says “Vaccinations increase susceptibility to viral infections”, it is misleading and in some contexts, dishonest and unethical. There are two things I would say are misleading and lack integrity in how the data was presented by the fellow in your link. First, he cherry picked specific data and second his title only included efficacy and not efficiency. He did include a chart showing efficiency. However, the title is still misleading and it puts the burden on the reader to figure out efficiency within the histogram. This is a common slight of hand. . . These are two common misleading tactics that I find annoying.

Just a reminder that conspiracy theories are against forum guidelines. There has been an uptick in conspiracy theory activity on the forum since the coronavirus outbreak and we have been cracking down. There are many online other forums online to discuss conspiracy theories.

This is such a poor frame and misleading. They frame it as if there may be aborted fetal tissue in vaccines. As well, the second frame has an underlying assumption that aborted ‘babies’ are being screened for viruses and that aborted ‘babies’ are being used for vaccine development. This is highly misleading and disingenuous. In the 1960s cell culture lines were developed from two aborted fetuses. These cell lines have been maintained and some vaccine development uses these cells in cell culture. Aborted ‘babies’ are not being used to “find viruses to create vaccines” and vaccines do not contain fetal tissue. Here is a simple explanation: https://www.verywellhealth.com/do-vaccines-contain-aborted-fetal-tissue-260337 The other questions seem fair, yet nearly all are oriented toward vaccine risks. That has value, yet it would be nice to balance learning about potential risks with learning about benefits. To make a risk vs benefit analysis, we need all the information.

The difference is Putin is a competent dictator. Trump is an incompetent reality TV dictator. If Trump was competent, the US would be in much worse shap.

Talking about heroin and other addictive drugs is discouraged on the forum.

@davidluginbuehl I would say it depends on your intentions and motivations. You titled the thread “10 day loneliness retreat”, which to me sounds like the mind-body is pre-occupied with loneliness and boredom. What is the underlying energetic attraction to reading on the retreat: is it to escape loneliness and boredom? Or is it to integrate a variety of Beingness explorations. To get a sense of this is easy. Is reading just another appearance? Is the mind-body oriented such that it is ok observing the sounds of birds for the next hour, staring at a tree for the next hour or reading for the next hour? - such that it is fine doing any of those activities. That is a very different energetic orientation than a uncomfortable mind-body craving to read as relief from loneliness or boredom. In that energetic orientation, I would either sit and observe the discomfort or engage in something more “now”, such as yoga, drawing or walking in nature. Reading and theorizing can be like escape candy for a bored mind.