Forestluv

Asking for a friend ? @Jo96 It depends on how you define “enlightenment”.

You can change your relationship with what it. The mind-body can perceive something as threatening, activate the sympathetic nervous system and go into fight or flight. Another mind-body may perceive it as safe, activate the parasympathetic system and go into deep peace and bliss. Another mind-body could relate as pure experience, fascination or infinity. You mention “obviously, this scared me”. Yet that is an assumption of conditioning. I’d let go of that belief. It doesn’t have to be that way. Sometimes breakdowns occur prior to breakthroughs, if so that’s how it is and roll with it. Yet we also don’t want to overly stress the mind-body. Perhaps let the mind and body know this is safe. Condition the mind-body to relax into “strain”, such that it isn’t “strain” - and the body can relax as the parasympathetic system is operative. For me, good practices are yin yoga, breathwork and moderate doses of psychedelics. With each, discomfort can arise and relaxing into it helps release and re-condition the mind-body. When I first did shamanic breathing, my hands and face would clench up with tetany. My hands would be curled up like a lobster claw. It was painful and my body resisted. I tried to push through the discomfort and that just made it worse. Yet I’ve learned to be completely relaxed with the tetany. I actually enjoy it now. Of course this is a more mild example than than a psychedelic sub-ego-death zone. Yet it may help to learn how to relax the mind-body in moderately stressful environments. Or maybe not. You get to experiment with what works for you.

Please tone down debunked conspiracy theories and racist rhetoric. It is against forum guidelines.

Trump’s own department of justice, over 60 judges (including Trump appointees), election officials (including republicans) have all ruled there is no evidence of widespread fraud. That is 100% of investigators, officials and judges. To believe there is widespread fraud, one must believe there is a massive fraud conspiracy that includes Trump’s own officials and judges!

So liberating and beautiful.

The one I joined is via zoom. I kinda like it because I can do it every night from the comfort of my home and they are led by trained facilitators (and it’s free). I can send you a DM if you are interested.

Breathwork goes deeper and broader than I originally imagined. I now see it as a key aspect of integrated consciousness. I also realized that I’m just scratching the surface of it and there is much more to explore. I had another insightful breathing session tonight. It wasn’t any type of emotional release, yet more of an experience of mind and body. One thing I absolutely love about breathwork is that it subdues the thinking mind. I’m curious about the neuroscience of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the DMN gets uncoupled. The thinking mind slows down and thinking patterns of become in the background. Then the relationship to those thought constructs can be altered or let go of. And I like the control. I can let go of control or regain control. I can now relax into intense tingling and tetanus. I actually kinda like it. That is the zone in which mind-body experience is more prominent than thinking. I now know how to boost myself up there and ride it. It’s a place of Now and experience, that is really hard to describe. It feels right to the mind and body. Yet as the breathing slows down, the thinking mind returns. One encouraging sign is that the nightly breathwork zones are starting to feel more normal. I’d love to have those states be more prevalent in my daily life.

@EmptyVase Beautiful. Are you interested in breathwork as a practice in life? There are some breathwork communities popping up. There is also a power win breathing with a group.

@Nyseto Overall, I would consider Canada more evolved at a Orange-green level. The U.S. is about a stage lower, on average, imo. Yet this does not mean EVERY Canadian is higher evolved than EVERY American. That is the whole point of averages. For example, men on average are taller than women. Yet of course we can find a woman talker than a man.

Depends on context. In one context they exist, in another they don’t. Yet anti-germers have it wrong in one context (although aspects of their argument is true). Everything I write is both true and false, depending on context. If I say the ear is the elephant, I don’t mean to say the tail is not the e,phantom. Yet it would be incorrect to say the ear is the tail.

I didn’t say Venezuela lacks value or is irrelevant. I’m saying it has nothing to do with what I’m advocating for. Yet I can imagine how seeing suffering in Venezuela would condition someone with a strong aversion to that system of government - of which I do not advocate. Yes, Canada and Scandinavia are more evolved than the U.S. That is the direction I’d like to move.

@Scholar It’s similar to those that deny microbes exist. I just don’t have the time or patience to deconstruct bs. Thanks for posting the link.

I’m not interested in discussing Venezuela any more than I am discussing covid hoax conspiracy theories. The Venezuela government is a red herring relative to what I advocate for. If you would like to discuss how Canadian and Scandinavian systems are more advanced than the U.S., sure. That is the direction I want to move. You seem to have an endless supply of distractions from addressing underlying issues such as systemic racism, animal cruelty, toxic capitalism, beneficial social programs etc.

No, I’m not. I see it as a ridiculous absurd point that has zero relevance to what I’m talking about. It would be like you saying “we can’t deal with the covid crisis because microbes don’t exist”. I would laugh that you pulled the covid hoax card. If you think I’m advocating for a Venezuelan system of government, you are so far from what I’m actually talking about that we can’t have a discussion. I’ve given over a dozen points about toxic capitalism and how shifting some toxic capitalism toward social programs would be beneficial. Yet you don’t seem to want to discuss the issues.

Did you really pull the Venezuela card? ? That is nowhere near what I’m advocating for and the U.S. has a very different history, structural systems, wealth and power dynamics than Venezuela. The U.S. is a mixture of socialism and capitalism. It’s not binary of 100% capitalist or 100% socialist. The U.S. is not going to become a purely socialist or communist country. That is a strawman. The question is wether the U.S. is too far shifted toward capitalism or socialism. To me, the U.S. is glaringly shifted toward capitalism to the point of toxic capitalism. Look at the military industrial complex, the most inefficient healthcare system in the developed world, for-profit prison system, lobbyists, election funding, wealth inequality, opioid crisis etc. I would advocate for a shift that disempowers toxic capitalism and empowers healthy socialism. Yet this is a shift, within a hybrid system. I would say Denmark is an example. I think the best we can hope for at this point is regulated capitalism with a strong social net. Countries with such systems consistently rank highest is wellness.

No election will be 100% free of fraud. Going from 99.5% to 100% fraud free would take an astronomical work force, time and budget in an election with millions of ballots. A country would need millions of trained workers, massive surveillance technology and trillions of dollars to ensure there is not a single case of fraud. Yet if the rate of error and fraud is 0.1%, a candidate wins by 0.5% and a recount confirms the initial count, there comes a time in which it is good enough. No one is claiming that there was not a single case of fraud. Pennsylvania and Georgia together found three cases of someone trying to vote for a dead person. Yet this is among tens of millions of ballots and victory margins of tens to hundreds of thousands. The argument is that there wasn’t massive fraud on the scale to shift an election. If a state has a few dozen cases of fraud, yet Biden won by 50k votes, they aren’t on the same scale. At this point, there has been evidence of isolated incidents of fraud, yet no evidence of massive fraud. Even Republican judges have said this. There was a case in Pennsylvania in which someone tried to vote for a deceased relative. (He voted for Trump). Yet that was one vote among millions.

Then why on earth are you focused to perpetuate unfair competitive systems and the power devils that pull those levers? Why undercut movements and policies that increase playing fields. Giving access to universal education and medical care would massively empower people and equalize playing fields. Why not be focused on that, rather than side issue obscurities?

I agree that increased consciousness is of value, yet humans and cultures are not going to suddenly wake up en mass and jump from red to yellow. Wishing that a sudden jump in consciousness will eradicate systemic racism is overly idealistic, imo. There is 150+ years of racism baked into our systems and it’s going to take time and effort to purify and eradicate it. At the personal level, it would be like someone saying “If I awaken, all of my neurosis will dissolve”. This just isn’t the case, even after awakening, conditioned patterns and neuroses continue to appear. There is still a lot of work to purify the human mind-body and heal. Same for a social level. There is a lot of work to heal society. And once an individual heals themself, they can better help others in society to heal. If we were on a city council and had a 1 million dollar budget to reduce injustices in our city, I would be ok allocating 100k or so into education to increase consciousness, yet not the whole thing. As well, there would be intense resistance to any education trying to increase consciousness.

This is the distinction from criticizing from above or criticizing from below. Jordan Peterson does this a lot. He says he is pro-environment, lgbtq or gender equality and then 99% of his view becomes criticizing the environmental movement, lgbtq or women in in a way that pulls down into the status quo rather than pulling up to higher consciousness. If some was at a high conscious level and wanted to progress toward greater equality, they would focus the vast amount of their attention toward solutions and moving toward greater equality, since they are sick of living with inequality and injustice. They may criticize components of the movement, yet there would be a very different orientation. For example, if our #1 goal was to decrease injustices and increase equality in our city and we are at a city hall meeting to design best strategy, we wouldn’t sit there all day cherry picking and complaining about aspects of Blm. In terms of our goal toward greater equality, we may bring up the issue of looting incidents in the context of how this impacts our strategy toward greater equality. Yet the vast amount of attention would be spent on addressing problems of injustice and solutions toward equality. And everyone with this goal would jump on the opportunity to discuss it.

This is a view from a binary lens of either significant or insignificant. Within such a binary construct, if the mind perceive’s a view on personal responsibility as not being significant, the mind considers the view as saying personal responsibility is insignificant. You said you are interested in nuances. A more sophisticated view would be that personal responsibility is along a spectrum as is social responsibility. In this more sophisticated model, responsibility is not simply direct one step cause-effect in which we attribute 100% responsibility to an individual. Yet with spectrums and variant inputs of causation, we also don’t give 0% responsibility to the individual. (This of course assumes a self entity. Higher models factor in the illusory nature of self and free will). Consider something like schizophrenia. This has many inputs of causation including dozens of different genes, neurite trimming in the pre-frontal cortex and epigenetics as well as one’s environment - both social inputs and personal choices. For example, parental neglect and childhood trauma are factors among many factors. A systemic view would consider a wide range of inputs. If we focused on one gene involved and extrapolated that to be responsible, it would be too zoomed in and create a distorted big picture image. If I said “the disc-1 gene is one of many factors in schizophrenia” and someone responded “you think the disc-1 gene is insignificant”, it would indicate that the person is using a small map and binary constructs. This can happen with neuroscientists that get locked into a zoomed in view, yet they can generally get pulled out by a systemic thinker. The challenge is when a mind gets attached to it’s point and is unable to let go. For example, a neuroscientist that is attached to his belief that the disc-1 gene causes schizophrenia. This is partially true, yet incomplete. Similarly, this often happens in regards to personal responsibility. A simple model of cause-effect and personal choice has value in size contexts, yet it is super simplistic. There are many other inputs and models to be considered. Again, I’m not saying your views are wrong, I’m saying they are partial truths within a larger system. It’s like you keep saying France is Europe and I keep trying to say France is within Europe and that Europe is more complex than France because Europe includes France. Yet you keep saying “But look at this map of France!”.

Being irresponsible/ignorant is a relative construct. Be aware of underlying assumptions of an external, objective, normative beliefs of “irresponsible/ignorant”. And you seem to be placing an enormous amount of emphasis on cherry picked incidents of personal responsibility at the expense of those being harmed both individually and socially. It’s like defending an abusive alcoholic father by saying, “don’t poke the bear or you deserve the consequences of his wrath”. In terms of SD models of consciousness, it is a mixture of blue and Orange. The bear not to poke is an authoritarian leader, father or god and should not be poked. Orange is the value of taking personal responsibility. It some contexts, personal responsibility has value - yet if we myopically view personal responsibility, it is a hyper simplistic naive view. For example, it would blame poor people and drug addicts as being “irresponsible”. This is true in one context, yet is hyper simplistic and doesn’t factor in social and systemic inputs. In terms of SD, yellow is about integrative systems - not myopically focusing on specific points with a bi art mindset.

Discover or create are two angles of perception - both involve subject-object. “I created (or discovered) a thing”. The difference being wether “I” brought the thing into existence or if it was already there and revealed to me. I think both mindsets can be fun to experience. Sometimes I like to walk in nature and discover, sometimes I like to create.

@Scholar Sam has a cogent perspective on Trumpism.

?‍♂️ You give very little weight to those treated injustly and place a huge amount of weight to cherry-picking instances that distract from the underlying injustices. Imagine that you knew someone was kidnapped and being tortured. There is a group trying to help that person and you keep distracting them by pointing out people that have slipped on ice. From the perspective of the one who is suffering, it’s a crappy thing to do.

This is one of the ageless ethical questions This highlights your point that distracting away from racial equality is a similar dynamic to distracting away from animal violence. And I hadn’t thought about it from the perspective of what fuels one’s attention. Part of it is internal, yet part seems to be driven by environment, such as media.