Forestluv

@Javfly33 Sounds like some nice expansion/depth through direct experience. A good example to us all. Nice work.

@Javfly33 Sounds like you got a good look. There’s lots more. ?☺️

It sounds like you went a lot deeper than you previously have. I wouldn't try to contextualize it too much or try to make sense of out through thinking. For me, trying to make sense of it and figure it out can be counter-productive. I find it better to relax the mind and do things like yoga or walk in nature. Insights will arise in their own. Often insights related to the trip. I wouldn’t pursue the line of thinking “If I had only let go, maybe it would have been a blissful experience”. That is my mind trying to steer the experience. “Maybe if I let go, a blissful state will arise”. I can only steer at experiences at lower doses. Higher up, I lose all control. Could be blissful, could be madness. Who knows?

@mandyjw I agree. I was exploring another area, yet I didn't present my ideas very well. Thank you for your thoughts.

It’s an aspect of nonduality/infinity/strange loops. All thought/imagery is eventually circular. To me, it’s only annoying when my mind is attached to it and does some weird ocd thing. Yet is usually a sign that the mind is still trying to control the narrative. A loop of that’s a thought and that’s a thought of a thought etc”sounds like a mind working through the illusory nature of thought, yet still wants to ground itself in thoughts as real. My mind usually takes it to Infinty/Nothing/Emptiness Poof!!

This is a reason I spend a lot of time in nature or alone. It’s a lot harder to transcend attachment/identification when a mind is surrounded by people and things re-enforcing that attachment/identification. . . Out in nature, my mind may be playing thoughts about work or bills I need to pay, yet the river, chipmunks and birds aren’t reenforcing my personal identification. As long as I can let go, I’m free - and it’s a lot easier to do in nature or at home alone, ime

@StarStruck If you already have this dynamic playing out n the mind and body, I would be careful with high doses of psychedelics without experience. A high dose can take one into breakthrough zones that is smooth sailing. I’ve also been in some insanity zones that took a long time to recover from. At a transcendent level it’s fine, yet it can be traumatic to the mind and body.

I had thought about it like this before. I’m trying to imagine the criteria Western society would use to describe a “successful relationship”. Here are some things I think many people in society might think is to be a successful relationship. — How long together. A lot of people value commitment and longevity. If a couple was together 50 years, I think a lot of people would consider that successful. — Absence of internal problems. Things like cheating, excessive arguing, domestic violence, couples therapy, separations would be seen as unsuccessful. —- Overcoming external problems together. Things like working through financial difficulties , death of a child, miscarriage, overcoming cancer would be generally seen as success. — Creating something big together. Things like creating a business together, starting a nonprofit, creating a family. — Doing a lot of things together. Traveling on trips together, going to the symphony, concerts, community events, taking dancing lessons together etc. — Keeping the passion alive. Couples that have been together for years and still have chemistry - they still make each other laugh, are playful, regular sex, have passion and look like they want to be together and are enjoying their time together. — Mutual growth and support. How much did the couple grow and evolve together? Did they make each other better? Did they challenge each other to grow and support each other during that growth. An example of this might be during an achievement award. The person being honored may tell everyone how this was only possible with the help of their partner. That they wouldn’t be the person they are today without their partner. — They genuinely care about each other’s welfare.

I would be careful with personal subjective experience. They can lead to an idea of what “it” should look or feel like. . . . If an alien visited earth and asked you “Do you feel yourself as Now? What does Now feel like?”. It would be an odd frame and hard to answer. At a personal level, it is more direct to answer “Do you feel yourself as Everything?”. Well. . . If I am perceiving/identifying as a self, that self needs to be relative to not-self”. If my subjective experience is me as my mind and body, then I am not experiencing myself as a tuna sandwich, a pencil, you, a tree etc. If an essence of Being Everything arises, there is Nothing to contrast it to. There is no self to compare itself to. Me, a tuna sandwich, pencil, tree etc is all the same One Everything. In terms of personal memories, I don’t have any sense of “me” and an god external to “me”. Myself (1) as god (2) is separation. The closest I’d say I get to this is a sense of “forgetting” and “remembering”. Its like I am playing in a virtual reality game and I am playing being a cow. At first, it’s obvious who I really am. Obviously, I’m a human person just temporarily playing a cow. Who cares if I fall off a cliff. It’s just a game. I’m not really the cow. . . Yet what if I was in this state for years? I would start identifying as the cow. What if I was in this state for many generations over millions of years. Eventually, there would be complete identification as the cow and the energetic motivation would be to survive as this cow. It’s no longer a game, it’s serious business. Now the cliff becomes a major threat. I perceive everything in terms of my survival and well being. . . . Yet it’s possible that there is a small crack and a little light seeps through. Perhaps a glitch in the virtual reality game. There is a pause and a sense of “Am I really this cow? What/who am I?”. There can be a sense that I, the cow, have forgotten my true essence. Yet it’s been so long. The memory isn’t high resolution clarity. I don’t spontaneous realize “oh yea. I’m a person that lives in New York and I’m at the Farmer’s Arcade playing a cow in a virtual reality game. It starts off much lower resolution. Like I may have been some other being. Perhaps in a previous life. I can’t put my finger on it, yet I get the sense I have forgotten something and can’t quite remember-. . . And of course, to fully become the cow, one would need to fully forget they are not a cow. I think what you are asking is “yea, but how does the cow feel? Does the cow feel blissful?”. This only matters from the identification of the cow. The higher transcendent answer is it doesn’t really matter anymore. The cow is just an illusory image. Yet I would say at the cow level, the realization would induce distress at first, yet with realization the cow would settle down and be able to let go of a lot. Once their is realization I’m not a cow, there is an energetic shift. It doesn’t make sense to hold n to cow things. Like grudges against the other cows. So a lot is released at this level.

If I answer “yes” it’s a lie. If I answer “no” it’s a lie. And of corse both answers are also true and partially true. Such is the case with dualistic constructs. Consider the infinite relativity in this question. What is meant by “awakened”. What is meant by “absolutely”. What is meant by “you”. Any definition would also be relative, with another underlying relativity.

Yesterday, I saw the phrase: “I am nothing. God is everything”. Such a simple phrase and so many different contexts of meaning. I think the most common usage would be with religions. Here, the “I” is my personal identity. The “nothing” doesn’t mean a transcendal Nothing by which the illusory self is seen as nonexistent. N this context “I am nothing” means there really is a me, yet I have no real meaning or purpose without god. The “God is everything”, means an external god separate from me. “Everything”, means everything good and worthwhile. “Everything” means everything humans should aspire to. This includes things like love, honesty and kindness. There are also transcendent understandings of the above phrase, yet getting there requires an expansion that often causes an internal conflict - which can cause immense suffering for a being - often seen on the forum. Transitioning from the religious frame to the transcendent frame involves questions like “How could god allow things like torture, child abuse and suffering”. This adding in a condition to the above phrase to form “God is Everything except bad things like torture, child abuse and suffering”. A temporary bandaid to stop the bleeding is adding in personal “free will” and a god vs. devil construct. Now, god is everything, except for those bad things that are personal free will (or the devil). Yet this is temporary grounding. If a person digs deeper, they will encounter a dilemma with the existence of personal free will. . . . The other side of “I am nothing” also has transcendence. Here a being transitions fro m the context of “I have no purpose, meaning or worth without god” to realizing the illusory construct of “I”. Here, the “I” is seen to be nothing - in the context of an illusory non-existent structure”. This transition can also cause immense mind-body distress and send a mind swirling into battles of nilhism or solipsism. The transition also involves an enormous amount of conflation which causes confusion, frustration and suffering. I am Nothing = God is Everything. . . I = God. . . . Nothing = Everything. . . I = Everything . . . God = Nothing. However: i isn’t god or God. . . . nothing isn’t everything. There is a ton of fluidity in here and it will be extremely confusing for a being attached/identified to dualistic constructs that allow a sense of comfort and grounding. Transitioning higher involves instability and groundedlessness. It takes years to clear up clouds, untangle knots and release karmic attachments. . . . Lots of thoughts and questions will arise like “how dare you say that you are god! you are crazy!!”. (A conflation of personal and transpersonal “you”. Or “If I am god, why can’t I make unicorns appear?”. If I am Everything, why don’t I experience someone else? Why don’t I know everything?”. If i am everything that means I’m a torturer and child abuser. And god is also a torturer and child abuser. Does god just allow this, or does god enjoy it?. . . These are all conflations and need to get worked through over years. Few beings get close to clarity, many beings partially clarify, and many beings don’t clarify at al, in their lifetime. As said many times, the most important energetic orientations for transcendence - is a desire for truth for its own sake, curiosity, open-mindedness, willingness and letting go. This increases a beings chances 1000X. Yet it still seems to take so much time and effort. One of my hopes is that in the future there will be an integration of mysticism, energetics and science that can promote transcendence and clarifying. @Zigzag Idiot Thank you for your kind words and thoughts. These days, many of my insights spontaneously appear. They don’t come through books or previous philosophers, mystics or scientists. I’ll be walking through nature and it just spontaneously appears out of nowhere. It feels like I am the first to realize it. This can be exciting, yet also sad. Quite often, I am unable to communicate and share it to others. I spend a lot of time thinking about “How can I put this into words and images?”. Most of the time, I can’t quite do it and communicate it. This can feel lonely at times. . . . So it’s super cool when someone comes along and says “yea, I’ve had a similar realization and so did this guy 150 years ago”. . . . I’m like whaaaat??!!”. Then it’s cool to see how they tried to express it. There are so many different forms. I don’t know if anyone has read Lewis Thomas. He was a biologist that observed nature in really interesting ways. He could integrate, cellular, organismal and population levels. And he could write beautiful imagery. He would be walking in nature and see a huge mound of ants and see a whole world within that mound of ants - and write beautiful stories about it. . . . I’m approaching the last stages of my life and sometimes I wonder what my last chapters should be like. Sometimes I think of trying to integrate things like reiki and neuroscience. Other times I want to sit in nature and observe everything in all sorts of levels. I’m trained as a molecular biologist, yet teach all the way up to evolution and ecology - I can “see” many levels - molecular, cellular, organism system, populations, ecosystem, mystical, energetics, spirits, mysticism. I love to observe and write. Yet would this make a contribution? Would anyone care? . . . I don’t need to make money off it, it’s more about contribution now and in the future after I pass away.

This is is a trap dynamic that can arise with psychedelics, yet I wouldn’t call it an “awakening trap”. I think calling it a mystical experience trap would be more accurate. When I first used psychedelics, it was like being rocketed to a higher conscious state. Some states were pleasurable, some were not - yet they were all mystical experiences that revealed insights and new abilities. It was like having the greatest enlightened teacher or being able to travel to different realms. There was an energetic shift from figuring things out and reading literature and spiritual teachers - to the actual direct experience - and they only way to get there was through psychedelics, which created a cycle of expansion and contraction. The more blissful the experience, the higher likelihood of experience chasing. Ram Dass explains this cycle well in the below article. . . For me, some of my trips were very unpleasant. I entered anxiety and insanity zones that would take me days or weeks to recover from. This reduced the blissful experience chasing. For me, there was attraction, yet also trepidation with trips. Part of me didn’t want to revisit those uncomfortable places and there was some resistance/trepidation when approaching a new trip. At a personal level, one thing with psychedelics is that one’s baseline conscious level increases. When I was a newbie before my first Ayahuasca ceremony, I was asking the guy next to me a bunch of questions. I saw reality as if there is my normal sober state and a higher psychedelic state. One thing he told me was “those two worlds gradually come together”. In a way this was intriguing. In another way, this was scary. I couldn’t imagine it at the time, yet I now know what he meant. I’ve been through cycles of psychedelic states - not so much to escape a sober reality - more so to gain new access to high states. For a while it was like psychedelics gave me a magic wand. I got new super powers of hyper empathy, omniscience and extremely high level imagination and integration. And there came a time, I wanted to be able to do it without psyches. I would go hiking in the woods and everything felt bland - I couldn’t communicate with trees, wind and birds. I couldn’t become the creator of the forest. It was like I didn’t have my magic cape. A couple things I would keep in mind. The way you talk about psychedelics and how amazing they are does not sound like an awakening dynamic. It sounds like a mindstate/experience dynamic to me. There is an attachment/identification that psychedelic states are “amazing” relative to sober states. And there is a seeking to leave sober states and enter psychedelic states. The larger the bad to good distance in the cycle, the stronger the seeking. As the two world grow closer together, the intensity of this seeking declines. For example, I started experiencing amazing psychedelic-like states while sober and experienced crappy sober-like states tripping. As I would go into the woods, it didn’t really matter if I took a psychedelic or not. I felt like I was already half-tripping and I thought “I kinda like the present moment as it is. Why try to change it?”. There would then be months that went by without tripping. I was neither grasping or pushing it away. The present moment is the present moment, whether it is sober or a psychedelic. It’s both ISness. Psychedelic and sober mindstaes - both ISness. And what is psychedelic or sober starts to break down. Experiential states can be very insightful, yet it is not awakening. An awakened state vs an unawakened state is a duality. Absolute Awake is unconditional. It is not dependent on any mind state. It is eternally present Here and Now. In the essay below, Ram Dass talks about the cycle of chasing blissful psychedelic states and associating “there” with a psychedelic state. Ime, this is certainly a dynamic with psychedelics and I think he explains it well. Yet I would say he over-generalizes that this is the only relationship with psychedelics. What he describes is just one dynamic, there are many others with psychedelics and I’m a bit surprised Ram Dass never experienced outside this dynamic. He did a lot of psychedelics, yet stayed within this dynamic. Each of us has our own resonance and relationship with psyches, yet it’s still perplexing. It is like someone living in Australia for years and only talking about the dangers of the Australian outback. While that is certainly true, there is much more - The Sydney Opera House, kangaroos, koala bears, the coral reef etc. And for someone to travel around Australia for years and never see this other stuff is a real head-scratcher for me. At any rate, he does describe the cycle of bliss chasing well, imo. https://www.ramdass.org/the-trap-of-psychedelic-experiences/

For someone oriented toward and depth and long term, a few suggestions: With this mindset, it’s easy to get into a job interview vibe, which generally isn’t good. Questions like “Do you want kids? How many? Why did you get divorced? Would I get along with her family?”. That vibe can kill an easy going atmosphere of that allows actually enjoying your time together. You will know if you get along and have long term potential compatibility without interrogating each other. If she straight up asks a question like “Do you want kids?”, I would answer the question, yet would avoid going into an interrogation / interview - things shouldn’t get too serious on a first date. With a long term mindset, on a first date I would get a sense of how we get along. Do we communicate well? We might talk about common interests and experiences. If she is going on and on about an ex-boyfriend that did he wrong, that’s not good. If she is complaining a lot about her boss at work and family members, not good. I get a much better feel when we are talking about things like our shared travels and movies we like. If things are going well and I’m interested, I may expand the field. We may be talking about music and she says she loves live jazz music. I may reply “omigosh, I do too. I saw an awesome show at the cafe last we, we should to a show sometime”. If she responds positively, a new door opens. I would also get a feel for chemistry. There is a certain type of chemistry that is either there or not from the get go. I would be aware of that. Whatevever the flow is. The conversation may get a bit intellectual, which is fine. Yet also like a bit of playfulness and silliness - in the right context. Are we joking and laughing with each other? Are we flirting? Is there an underlying sexual energy? Or does it feel like I’m with a sister or co-worker. One thing that can be good is to have an option of doing something that is not conversation heavy. For example, we may start out with conversation in a cafe. If things are going well, continue on to a fun activity. One gal and I were hitting it off and decided to go to an 80s arcade. It’s not something I would normally do, yet we seemed to be playful. And we had so much fun in the arcade. Dry little conversation - lots of energy flow. Smiles, laughter, flirting, light touching etc. Yet it’s dependent on your chemistry. My last date had a different feel and an arcade didn’t fit. We continued the date in an art gallery, which was also awesome. Even here, there was space for flirting to see if we had chemistry. Some of the artwork had sexual context which helped to reveal some of our sexual chemistry. Yet the vibe and context is super important. A comment with a sexual innuendo can ignite some chemistry in one context and the exact same comment can come across as creepy and offensive in another context.

I agree. I wouldn’t say speaking three languages fluently is inherently better than speaking 20 languages at a surface level. Which is better depends on context. I’m seeing a lot of men in this thread and subforum with surface level volume experience. That is fine in the context of having sex at a surface level of engagement. Yet that surface level experience does not translate to depth of experience. In this context, someone who has approached 1000d of women with a lay count of 100+ is a newbie. There will be aspects of attraction and connection he is blind to due to lacking a form of direct experience - yet he would likely deny this (as seen by the men on the forum denying this). Similarly, a man with five deep relationships lasting six years each has deeper experience and understanding within a relationship. This will shape his perspective of how to connect with women. If the goal became increasing volume and his lay count, this person would be a newbie.

@Emerald I think this is a key point. I’m seeing most of the men in this thread at a surface level. Success is defined as getting laid and things like “having fun” and “getting to know each other” are secondary. All surface level. Tome, it seems clear they lack experience in developing deep relationships with a woman at spiritual, mental, emotional and physical levels. I’m talking about years of monogamy together with a commitment of growing together and developing deep connections. This is a very different type of love that comes through direct experience. It is not a love of chemistry in a sexual fling and it is not absolute love - it is a love that develops through time, practice, mutual work and growth. It cannot be figured out. . . When a guy showcases his experience that he has approached 1000s of women and has a lay count of 100 women, that is still at a surface level in an important context. I want to know how many of those women were committed monogamous relationships in which the two of you practiced and worked together continuously for years and reach deep levels - spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. And it’s pretty clear to me that none of the pu men in this thread have this direct experience. The direct experience would broaden and deepen their understanding and energetic relationship to approaching and interacting with women. Yet lack of awareness of this deficiency is filled with assumptions and often correcting others from below, not from above. It is like someone puffing out their chest and saying “I speak 15 foreign languages”. But then when you actually try to speak with them you realize it’s a very surface level. They don’t have any depth in going deep into any one language. When someone with actual direct experience of depth points this out, the person corrects them - yet does so from below , not from above. There is a certain direct experience that comes from depth due to years of practice and committed work. In this context, not years of practice of surface level dating. Rather, years of practice within a committed monogamous relationship of mutual work and growth of spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. There is no short-cut, substitute or thinking it through. Men without this direct experience will be at a surface level and immature in this context - even if they have approached 1000+ women and have a lay count of 100+. In this context, that type of volume becomes counter-productive. I appreciate all the time and effort you put into helping men expand. Sometimes it seems a cognitive perspective shift can be helpful. Other times, it seems to be a lack of deep experience within relationships.

@Dylan Page That is a good example. For me, my father was in a grey area. He loved me in a way, yet he also caused me a lot of suffering. I had a lot of resentments against him. You mentioned empathy is a really important trait. We don’t have control over other people’s empathy, yet we can increase our own. For years, I carried resentments against my father. I tried therapy, books, forgiveness exercises, letting it go. Nothing worked. It was eating me alive and messing up my relationships. I was so afraid of my father I couldn’t approach him and tell him what he did to me. One day, I was sharing my problems with a friend and he suggested that I journal all the ways that I contributed to the bad relationship my father and all the resentment I had. I got so upset when he said this. I was just a kid, I had no part in it. How dare he suggest that I had a part in it. . . . Yet this stuck with me. I had written dozens of pages about what he had done to me, yet not a single sentence of my contribution. So I wrote. . . Then this guy had the audacity to suggest I go make amends to my father. He told me to only clean my side of the street and not to mention a single wrongdoing of my father. He said I had to do it in person. I thought this guy was out of his mind. No fucking way would I do this. I hadn’t spoken to my father for years and he lived 2,000 miles away. Like I’m going to fly from Denver to New Jersey to apologize to my dad. Yea right. . . . However, I was willing to call my parents for the first time in years, just to say “hi”. . . . My hands are shaking as I call. . . . My dad answers. . . A few minutes of small talk and then he says. . . . “I’m going on a business trip next week and I have a long layover in Denver”. . . . As the words come out of my mouth, I’m unable to pull them back in. “Would you like to meet?”. . . Then it was on and I knew what I had to do. I had a week to gather the courage to see him and make amends. . . . One of the things on my list of “my part” behavior. Was that I missed a lot of holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. I would forget my dad’s birthday or anniversary - I kinda didn’t care. I never felt quite right about that. So I went to a thrift shop and bought a stack of greeting cards. I filled out about a dozen cards. “Happy be-lated birthday Dad! Sorry I’m late”. “Happy Fathers Day Dad. I’m sorry I forgot”. . . Also, when I was 15 yrs old, I took my dad’s car to see a girl. I didn’t even have a drivers license. I totaled his car that night. I decided that I would pay for that car. I was waiting tables and broke, yet I didn’t care. I wanted to be free. . . When I saw him, I froze in fear. I was a little kid again unable to get away from him. Unable to make him stop. . . . I felt like I was going to throw up. . . I took a deep breath and said “I did some things when I was younger that I want to make amends for. It’s not the type of son or man I want to be”. . . I gave him a check for the first car payment and the stack of cards. I spoke about five minutes and I never felt so empowered in my life. This wasn’t about him, it was about me. I cleaned my side of the street and never mentioned a single thing I hated him for. He stood there stunned. I was done and ready to move on. It didn’t matter how he responded. Yet how he responded greatly increased my capacity for empathy and love. . . . I never really knew my father or wanted to - I wanted to get away from him. . . Then he starts opening up and talking from his heart. I didn’t even know he had a heart. . . . It turns out he grew up in a domestic violence home. His dad was alcoholic and abused him. His dad abandoned them when he was a teenager. His mom picked up the abuse. My dad was an only child and be home all alone hiding from his parents. As a survival strategy, my dad would dissociate by dreaming about having a family in a nice neighborhood and house. He dreamed of giving his son everything he never had. He would push his lawn mower through his rotten poor town miles into the next wealthy town - to the nicest neighborhood in that town and mow their lawns. And the whole day he would dream that he would raise a son in that neighborhood. He worked his ass off for 20 years. He worked multiple jobs and flipped our homes. And then he bought the nicest home in the nicest neighborhood. The home I grew up in. . . He told me how he always wanted the best for me and did the best he could, yet he made a lot of mistakes he wish he could take back. . . . I never knew any of this. I had no idea who he was deep down. I was stunned. . . . There was silence and then he asked “what happens now?”. I said “I don’t know. Maybe we should hug?”. . . That moment transformed me. Hate was transformed to love. Empathy, connection and understanding arose. Resentment dissolved. It totally transformed the way I saw him and I never felt resentment toward him again. . . . It also opened a door to do this with other people I don’t like. My dad was an alcoholic and I couldn’t love alcoholics, so I volunteered with alcoholics, got to know them and fell in love with them. I couldn’t love criminals so I volunteered in a prison system, got to know them and love them - even a pedophile. I love both the criminal and victim. It’s all interconnected. It’s all a cycle. . . . For me, I couldn’t think my way through it. I had to get in there and work through it via experience. That’s what worked for me, others may different.

It’s context dependent. Should I have announced to my students in class today that I masturbated after I woke up this morning? And what if I thought about one of the students while doing so. Should I be maximally honest and tell her? That context is different than if I have been stealing my gf’s money to pay for hookers and blow. These are two extremes. There are many gray area situations when it’s hard to know the best level of transparency.

@Dylan Page That situation is a really long putt. I’d start off with something within reach. Who is someone that is on the edge of being worthy of your love? They are close, yet not quite deserving of your love.

All logic is based on relativity. Notice how you created a god that only loves conditionally. How sad. Change your initial assumption to unconditional love and see what happens. Unconditional love is a higher level than conditional love.

You don’t recognize that your perspective is relative. You don’t get to define which of my experiences qualify as suffering and what my suffering means.

Here is the root of the dilemma. You believe in objective, universal morality. You will not find a satisfactory answer within that mindset. You would need to realize relativity.

Another way to look at it. Without contrast, there is nothing. If everything was joy, there is no longer joy. If everything was blue, there is no longer blue. And you don’t get to set the rules on what counts as “rational”. That is a mind trying to control the narrative.

As I said, based on your construct of pain and suffering, there is no justification. If I were to create a movie about how there is no justification for pain and suffering, I would ask you to be the lead actor. Of course you don’t care about the serial killer’s perspective, because in your reality he is the bad guy. And you want to maintain immersion in your reality. From the killer’s reality, pain and suffering is good. He asks “why did god create police officers that love to stop murderers?”. He is sitting in prison for doing good. That’s a dogshit situation if you ask him.

There is no need to justify your perspective that there is no justification for pain and suffering. Within the constraints of your relationship to reality, I can’t find a justification either. Last week, I watched a documentary on a serial killer. His perception about pan and suffering was very different than yours. In his relationship to reality, justification for pain and suffering wasn’t even necessary.

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this with us. I like how you are observing your thoughts/feelings and getting to know your thoughts/feelings. As well, you are trying out and exploring new things.