Forestluv

A yellow meta view Racism is a super nuanced topic.

I would put “humanism” in green. Orange is more about individualism.

@Carl-Richard Nice list. . . It has some crossover, yet I might add “collectivism” to green. Also, moral relativism. And a wider/deeper relativism for yellow.

♥️ ?

Arguing for one’s position is a form of control. When you say “Ok” and let it go, you are surrendering one form of control and gaining another form of control.

There is no “cheating” in spiritual pursuits since it is not a competition. Whatever works for you. One of my best mediations was a double shot of espresso before entering a sensory deprivation tank. For others, this would not have been a good combination. . .

Ime, a low dose of psychedelics can make a social event more interesting, yet they don’t reduce my social anxiety. Sometimes, I need to work myself out of mild anxiety into a fun zone. Yet for others, psychedelics make them giggle and more social. It just depends on the person. You could also try a low dose of cannabis edible. In the bigger picture, I’d say solo trips have helped with my social anxiety. During solo trips, one’s personality construct and social dynamics can get deconstructed and dissolved. Afterwards, there can be a realization that it doesn’t really make sense to have social anxiety anymore, even while sober. I’m much more chill now in social groups than I used to be because I’m not as concerned about not being good enough and how I’m being perceived by others.

I’ve found a tendency to get sucked back into the regular way of being after a trip. Back to getting immersed into the previous character. One thing I’ve found helpful is to spend some time outside of those re-enforcing inputs. I like to reflect in nature or take a long drive in the countryside. It relaxes the mind and allows insights and connections to appear. As well, taking a mini-dose as a boost to bridge the gap can help. For me, a 30ug mini-dose can help - I’m still mostly sober yet lucid enough to grab hold of some of the higher realizations and hold onto them as I return to fully sober.

Thanks for that insight. That was a great video. Now I’ve been contemplating the “sameness vs difference” between the empathic dynamics I’ve been exploring and the “sameness vs difference” video. There is some sameness and some difference. It’s fun to explore.

Haha. Yes. That’s a good way of looking at what I described. ? ?

You asked “what’s your worth”. I stated my approximate worth ?

Seven belly laughs, Six bitcoins, Five golden rings, Four tear-inducing moments, Three cups of Mocha Java, Two rare Orchids and a partridge in a pear tree. . .

I could be wrong. . .

I’m pretty sure that psyche has been revealed. . .

You assume incorrectly. You could be a FoxNews contributor. They love that kinda stuff.

Ime, that is super hard for me to convince myself to be attracted to someone I’m not naturally attracted to. I’ve dated lots of women that we were very good together, yet the attraction wasn’t there and I couldn’t make myself be attracted to her even though I genuinely wanted to. I’ve also been on the flip side. I’ve been attracted to women that were very unhealthy and I wanted to convince myself not to be attracted to them and couldn’t do it. With that said, the women I’m attracted to today are very different than the woman I was attracted to 10 years ago. So, attraction isn’t necessarily static, it can be dynamic. Yet, it seems to evolve on it’s own as I evolve. I’ve never been able to make myself attracted to a woman I was I attracted to or make myself be I attracted to a woman I was attracted to.

This desire can be a good source of motivation, yet it can also be a major block since it is still a self-seeking orientation. The self desires for itself to be free of discomfort and to experience bliss. The problem with this is that the self will be repulsed by any experiences it perceives as suffering or leading to suffering. It will contract itself and cut itself off from certain realizations and embodiment. For example, if I am oriented toward being free of all my suffering, how can I learn and embody the love with the experience of anxiety and despair? I won’t be open to those lessons and expansions.

This quote on the forum is a great example of an empathic bias: “A woman doesn't even understand what fear is until she's experienced what it's like for a guy to cold approach a hot girl and try to attract her.” This is highly empathically biased. It comes from a male that has a lot of experience with the fear of cold approaching hot girls. While it is true that many women may not truly understand exactly what this is like, it is absurd to suggest that they cannot empathize with what this is like. This comes from a mindset with a very limited empathic range. It is biasing one’s own empathic experience as separate from yours. As well, the mind creates so much distance such that you would be unable to understand it. This Is a low level of empathic awareness and empathic skills. What would a higher level of empathic skills look like? Are women really incapable of getting a sense of what the fear of rejection for men cold calling women would be like? Parts of it would be difficult to grasp. For example, males have higher testosterone levels and have biological and social conditioning to compete for females - just like thousands of other animal species. This would be difficult for a woman to understand. Since men are conditioned to be “masculine” and a lot of their perceived physical and social worth is based on their ability to attract women. Women don’t have this form of social worth conditioning, yet women also have a type of conditioning regarding their social worth regarding being attractive to men. Based on this, they can get a sense of what that would be like for men. As well, many women have been in situations in which they liked a guy and wanted to attract him and had an intense fear of rejection. It’s not exactly the same, yet there is a lot of overlap. . . As well, woman have all sorts of fear that are on par with a male’s fear of cold approaching an attractive woman. It’s absurd to distance woman away from saying “you don’t know what fear is until you’ve experienced what it’s like for a guy”. . . This destroys bridges, rather than construct bridges. . . Bridge construction would be to reach out in an effort to connect. Something like “Imagine you were in situation like xyz. It’s kinda like that”. As well, I am a male and I have experienced the intense fear of cold approaching a hot girl and trying to attract her”. And I think it’s absurd for one male to speak for all males. Based on my actual experience of this as a male and my discussions with women, I think they can get a sense of what it’s like. The same person reveals the flip-side when he writes: ”While it's true that women have fears of sexual assault and so-on that men do not, it's absurd to say that women fear more than men.” This too is at a basic level with empathic bias. At least there is the awareness and acknowledgement that women have fears of sexual assault that men do not. However, it creates an empathic duality of “women have their forms of fear that men cannot understand and men have their forms of fear that women cannot understand”. Yet this empathic duality breaks down upon further inspection. While it is true a male cannot literally become a female and truly understand a fear of sexual assault from the perspective of a female, it’s absurd to say a male cannot get a sense of this, especially if they are open to learning about it. I’ve contemplated this very thing many times. For example, while walking alone in nature preserves I’ve contemplated “What would it feel like to be a women right now with a background fear of sexual assault risk”. With imagination, there can be an arising. I can get a sense of what it feels like to be vulnerable. I can imagine walking in a nature preserve in which their are bandits in the area. I have experience of this as a tourist. I’ve been out in nature in foreign countries in which their is risk of bandit assault. . . I wasn’t in immediate danger, yet the risk level was heightened and the fear / stress level was higher. And as dusk approaches and it gets dark, the anxiety starts to rise. I can imagine not knowing if a male will jump out of the bushes up ahead. I just want to get out of their and be safe. . . Then I see a woman walking in the nature preserve with a dog and it makes total sense. Yes, I wish I had a dog right now. Is this exactly how it is for a woman? Of course not. Yet I’ve also had many conversations with women about what it’s like and they tell me “yea, that kinda what it’s like. Pretty close”. Creating dualistic empathic dualities of “you don’t know what my experience is like and I don’t know what your experience is like” is a major block from developing empathic understanding of what it’s like.

Imagine you were a deep sea diver and figured out a way to go super deep. You put your own health on the line and are willing to be the first through the door. You explore a depth that no one around you is describing or has described. . . Some personalities want to share this with their fellow humans. There can be a desire to say “Whoa. . . I just dove to depths that almost killed me. I don’t think anyone has described this before. Check this out guys. . . “. Indicating to others that a new area has been explored can be helpful to others. It would be inaccurate and misleading to tell people that I just explored the same stuff that others have. That can actually be unhelpful to others. However, egoic dynamics can enter and start to claim ownership, identity and superiority. This mental dynamic would have energetics of “I just dove deeper into the sea than any other diver. And I did it on a solo dive. Those other divers that claim to be masters haven’t been to this level. They are punk ass divers”. . . This would be unhelpful in the context of altruistic sharing and exploration, because it introduces personality dynamics, competition and conflict.

When I was younger, I had an alcohol addiction to the point it almost killed me. I was able to quit and haven’t had a drink in over 27 years. I spent over 20 years working with alcoholics, trying to help them recover. There were times in which I worked with non-alcoholic psychologists to build models of what alcoholism is. Why alcoholics continue to drink despite the consequences. Why the stick around in their addiction, what they are getting out of it. These are intellectual-based views, with some intuitive nuggets of insight. . . It has some value. . . And then I go into a room of fellow recovering alcoholics and we laugh our asses off because the psychologist has no clue what it’s actually like to be an alcoholic, yet he thinks he does. I can gain the trust of a fellow alcoholic in five minutes, because I am one. I know what it’s like. I speak that language. A non-alcoholic psychologist has value, yet they wouldn’t be able to enter that space because they don’t know what it’s like. Unless. . . The psychologist has high empathic skills. For example, Gabor Mate is a psychologist with both empathic and intellectual abilities. He has never had substance abuse addictions, yet he had a hardcore shopping addiction. Due to Gabor’s empathy skills, he is able to transverse into what addiction is sorta like for an alcoholic. He gets it in some areas and he can relate to alcoholics and drug addicts in a way few psychologists can.

Being willing to be the first to walk through the door. For those that want to develop empathic skills, observe how you are an empath to yourself. This is a very basic level of empathy to become aware of and build a foundation. What does it mean to be an empath to one’s self? Simple. Reflect on a unique experience you’ve had. Something that most people haven’t experienced it and wouldn’t know what it’s like. Perhaps skydiving or giving birth. If you have done sky diving, do you know what sky diving is like? Of course! You are an empath to yourself. If you have given birth, do you know what giving birth is like? Of course! You are being an empath to yourself. . . You are reflecting on a prior experience and you know what it’s like. Now. . . Would someone with limited experience have a narrower or wider range of being empathic to itself? Narrower of course. Imagine a child raised in a rural farm without internet. He grows up to be a farmer and farms everyday. He goes to the local tractor supply store on occasion. This is a very limited range of experience. Clearly, he will not what it’s like to be a farmer, what it’s like to work long, hot days in the field. What it’s like to have a unique relationship with the weather, since his livelihood is inter-twined with the weather. He can easily be empathic to himself and empathic to other farmers with similar experience. Yet his empathy potential is highly limited due to limited experience. .. . Now imagine someone who had experience as a farmer and then they moved to the city. He worked as a taxi driver, waiter, grade-school teacher and politician. This person now has a wider range of experiences and has a wider empathic range, in relation to himself and others with similar experiences. Now imagine we have a townhall meeting with rural farmers and urban taxi drivers, waiters, grade-school teachers and politicians. Which individual will be able to empathically relate to the widest range of individuals? The person who was a farmer or the person who has experience as the farmer as well as experiencing all those other careers. Of course the person with the wider experience. And it’s not just intellectual. The theoretical understanding is just one component. There is also an empathic understanding component from the direct experience. As the farmer argues from his perspective, the guy can say “I get it” (not just intellectually, also from experience). He will be able to empathetically talk to the farmer and the farmer would be like “yea, you get it”. Similarly, the taxi driver may say “But wait a minute, what about xyz”. The person who has been both a farmer AND taxi driver can also communicate with the taxi driver on both intellectual and empathic levels. The taxi driver will be like “yea, you get it”. One to the features of the Big Five personalities as the trait of wanting to experience new things. Like really new things. For example, a lawyer who lives in a upper-middle class area in America wanting to spend three months living in a poor village in Honduras to experience what that is like. People with this personality type will have a wider range of empathic understanding to their own experience and people with similar experience. Yet this is still limited to ‘knowing’ one’s own experience. For those who want to venture into the highest levels of empathetic knowing, there comes a time in which your start learning ‘what it’s like’ without having to actually spend years and thousands of dollars actually experiencing what it’s like. Yet as I’ve written, I’m starting to see how some people do not have this ability, or it is a very weak ability. I think some people have a higher innate ability / gift for empathetic and intuitive knowing. Yet I also think their is a developmental component. For example, someone may start off with a 2/10 baseline level of empathic potential due to genetics, past lives, early childhood conditioning etc. Yet, if they can personally develop and transcend attachments to their own conditioned beliefs and conditioning, they may be able to develop up to a 6/10 level of empathy. Yet they just don’t have the innate abilities to go higher. Similar to how a people have upper potential limits such as with height. Personally, I would say I started with a baseline level of around 6/10 - slightly higher than average. Yet my potential abilities were repressed for various reasons. Often, I operated at around a 3/10 level, yet at times I would reach 6/10 and even have quick glimpses of 8/10. So, the question now is how I can my development go? What is the upper limit of my potential? Is there an upper limit? Once realizations and awareness appeared, clarity began and it became super easy to get grounded in the 6/10 zone. Once outside influences and noise is removed, the natural resting state is 6/10 for me. Anything under 6/10 is actually discomfort for me. When I was repressed and living in a forced 3/10 zone, it was miserable. Yet once awareness of that arises, those chains are removed. Once can now go from a 6/10 baseline level and develop upward. Yet in some respects, the higher one goes, the harder it gets. Getting up to 7/10 wasn’t so hard. Yet going higher has challenges. There just aren’t many role models in the 8+ zones of mature ability. To pull one up. Thus, there is a lot of self-exploration. This brings up trust. How can you trust yourself to become the first master in an area? How can you trust yourself to enter and explore high levels of empathy and intuition? How do you develop the confidence and trust to be the first one to walk through the door? That is a trait of a true explorer and leader. To be willing to be the first one to walk through the door. And then to report to others by creating models and teachings of what lies on the other side of that door.

When we get into the deeper levels of empathic understanding, the question of “what is knowing” arises. If someone ‘seems’ to experience the experience of another, do they actually ‘know’ what the other person experienced?. . . Yes and no. This gets into the seeping levels of empathic knowing in which distinctions can be made. As an example: one evening during a laying meditative state, there was a ‘clearing’ and no ‘me’. What arose was a past traumatic experience that ‘I’ never experienced. However, there was no ‘I’ at the time so this didn’t matter at that time. This memory of a traumatic form of abuse arose and there was a re-experience of it. There was a spiraling down period in which I wanted to get out, yet I couldn’t. I couldn’t make it stop and it was like it was happening again. The past episode was being experienced again. There was observation as well as experiencing. It was very stressful to the mind and body. Afterwards during re-grounding there was a realization that appeared “That is what a dynamic of PTSD is like”. There is a form of knowing. It is not an intellectual knowing by reading theory from a textbook or trying to figure it out. It is an experiential knowing. The question is: Do I actually know what it’s like? This gets into deep levels of memory, experience, imagination and reality. This isn’t theory creating the ISness of the experience. This is the ISness of the experience trying to express itself through theory. . . Can I know walk around and claim that I had this traumatic abusive experience in my life, a PTSD flashback and that I know what it’s like? Not quite. It would be extremely misleading to state this others, because I never went through the actual abusive traumatic episode. During my empathic development, a ‘teacher’ came that intensely reprimanded me for making this claim and showed me how I don’t ‘know what it’s like’ from one aspect of actuality. I felt awful for doing this and was brought to tears for claiming I knew what certain experiences were like without ever having that actual direct experience. I later came to realize, that this is one dimension of experiential ‘knowing’ and that there is another dimension of experiential ‘knowing’. When I get grounded in this dimension of experiential ‘knowing’, I can deeply relate with someone who has had abusive trauma and PTSD flashbacks. It is an empathic connection that opens a channel of communication. From another perspective: you wouldn’t ‘know’ what it’s like to experience your own experiences. This may seem absurd. “Of course I know what is was like to experience what I actually experienced!!!”. Yet ‘experience’ is a contextualization occurring now. The ideas of what I experienced is not the same as what was experienced. The person who underwent the experience is not the same person that is reflecting on the experience “I” had. This is one reason PTSD flashbacks can be so intense. It is not merely someone reflecting or remembering the experience - it is the stored ISness of an aspect of the experience. As well, contextualized memories can also be very different than the actual experience. In this context, my person ‘now’ does not truly know what the experience is like form my previous person. . . For example, suppose I underwent back surgery and was hospitalized for weeks. Obviously, I can claim I know what it’s like to undergo back surgery and be hospitalized for weeks. In one context, this is true. Yet consider another context. . . Studies have shown that people in serious hospital treatment will contextualize and remember *what is was like* disproportionally based on what the ending of the experience was like. There were studies that looked at people’s scores of pain during a hospital stay and how they later remember it. People remember the experience disproportionately based on the last few days. For example, a person that had a series of intense 7,8,9 pain days that ended the stay with some mild 2 and 3 pain days (with some loving care and laughter the final few days”, tends to remember the experience based on the last few days. They will say “Oh, back surgery isn’t so bad.”. The final 2/3 days are preferentially remembered over the series of 7-9 days. The flip also occurs. Someone could be receiving proper pain medication and loving care from nurses and have a series of 2/3 pain days. Yet the last few days, some overworked nurses may rotate in, take him off the pain meds and be dismissive of him. This may be remembered as 7-9 pain days. This person will have a tendency to remember the overall experience as being really bad and think “Back surgery is awful”. . . So. . . Does this person actually ‘know’ what their own experience was like? Imagine the person who says “Oh, back surgery wasn’t so bad” due to selective memory of the final 2/3 pain days. Imagine he visits his earlIer self during the initial 7-9 pain days. His previous self undergoing 7-9 pain days would tell him “You don’t know what it’s like to have back surgery”, even though it’s the same person!! This highlights that there isn’t the ‘same’ person because the ‘person’ is a construct, as are experiential memories of a ‘person’ over time. I speculate, and propose, that a mind that operates in a binary mode will have a tendency of remembering the experience as either “It wasn’t so bad” or “It was really bad”. It’s how they perceive the world. Their mind does not contextualize in mosaics, nuances and degrees. How might this mind contextualize the back surgery experience? More like “The first week was mostly roughly days. Some were more intense than others. When they were weaning me off the meds, there were some spots that were more uncomfortable than others. Yet even within my worst days of pain, there were some bright spots. There was one nurse that came in a couple times a day and could make me laugh. Even during the most painful days, he could inject humor and make me feel good for a brief moment”. This memory portrait is a much higher resolution. It can include 2/3 moments within 7-9 pain days. It’s not either all bad or all good. That is a low resolution memory portrait. However, a binary mindset may have been perceiving either / or during the time. It could have perceived the entire hospital stay as awful during the stay and filter things out like the friendly nurse because the friendly nurse is inconsistent with the binary mindset that it’s all awful. The awful filter will filter out non-awful.

Highest ratings does not necessarily reflect highest conscious level. In the 1850s, the news reporters with the highest ratings were pro-slavery.

If a person doesn’t have a sense of “what it’s like” to be another person, they will have a limited view and fall prey to extrapolating that. This causes distortion at the wider view, because it is not comprehensive. Imagine taking a 3 x 5 image and extrapolating it to an 8 x 10 image. What happens? It becomes distorted because limited pixels have been extrapolated into a larger image. To retain clarity, more pixels need to be added in - yet we cannot simply guess what those pixels are. We need to discover actual information we were missing and add that to the image. Similarly, if someone has a narrow view they cannot simply extrapolate that into a larger view. That will cause blur. To create a larger view that is clear, they need to go and find out what they were missing. However, with personal views, people don’t want to do that because they are attached and identified to the personal view. Many people feel like they would be wrong if they acknowledge they are missing some pixels. For example, many men believe that women in abusive relationships just say they don’t want to be in an abusive relationship, but they actually do want to be mistreated by an abusive boyfriend / husband. Why would they stick around in an abusive relationship when they can just leave? . . . From a narrow view, this has some truth to it. The problem is extrapolating this view into a wider truth. Without adding in more “pixels”, this extrapolated view is distorted. What are these “pixels” that are missing? . . . The above view doesn’t understand what it’s actually like to be in an abusive relationship and not being able to leave. This is where one’s own experience or empathic understanding comes into play. A person that lacks this experience or empathic understanding and believes that someone can simply leave an abusive relationship is not going to *get it* on multiple levels. A mind cannot cognitively think it’s way through this and think “yea, yea. I know women can be pressured to stay in a relationship”. Yet they don’t actually *get* what that actually is. I’ve been in an abusive relationship with a high level narcissist. I know what it’s like to be gaslighted and manipulated to the point where I cannot tell anyone what’s going on. I cannot tell a psychologist or any friends. I know what it feels like to be trapped with no way out. I know what it feels like to not even be aware that I am trapped and should be looking for a way out. I also spent years volunteering in a psychiatric ward and had hundreds of hours of conversations with people (nearly all women) entrapped within abusive relationships. There is an understanding that cannot be figured out intellectually. It’s got to come through either direct experience or an empathic awakening of “ooohhh, so that’s what it’s like. . . “. We can create intellectual constructs of why people stay in abusive relationships. We could say that even though they are trapped, they are sticking around for something they subconsciously want. This has some value and truth to it, yet it will be limited without the understanding of what it’s actually like. Does one need to be trapped and suffer within an abusive relationship to know what it’s actually like? Sadly, I’m coming to the realization that the answer is “yes” for cognitive, intellectual types. Even if they are well-intentioned, they are so immersed into creating intellectual constructs that they are unable to add in non-intellectual components, such as indirect empathy and intuition. They don’t have the imaginative abilities to indirectly *get* what the experience is like. For people with imaginative empathic skills, watching a documentary of women explaining what it’s like may be sufficient. I watched a documentary of a teenager / young woman who was kidnapped and abused. The guy kept her in a small box in which she couldn’t move. Sometimes 20+ hours a day. Or even consecutive days or weeks. This was used to punish her for disobedience and break her. He also psychologically brainwashed her and physically abused her. She came to believe that there was a larger group of men watching her every move and if she tried to escape, they would kill her and her family. They guy even created newspaper articles to this effect to brainwash her. After years of this, he could allow her to go outside on her own. She went for walks on her own and to the market. He even brought her to see her own family!! They actually spent an afternoon together with her family and she didn’t say a word. She made no effort to communicate that she is trapped and cannot leave. We could create all sorts of intellectual theories about why she didn’t reach out for help when she could have. These theories have value. Yet it is incomplete without the knowing of what it’s actually like. As I watched this documentary, I slipped into a non-intellectual space of what this would actually be like and from that knowing, it makes complete sense why someone would not try to leave. Yet this understanding isn’t an intellectual theory. It’s an “I get it”. Type of thing. From my observation, hyper-intellectuals have a very difficult time indirectly imaging what it’s actually like. Intellectually thinking about it is insufficient. Unfortunately, to get a sense of the actuality they would actually need to be entrapped in this way to the point in which they become that person and they themselves cannot leave when they have the opportunity. Then once free, they realize “Ooohhh, so that’s what it’s like”.

I didn’t say Orange or Green is 100% honest and accurate. I am pointing to the underlying values and potential harm dynamics. Toxic orange has immense harm potential. However, there are mosaics and degrees of corruption and harm. An average Mafia leader, average banker and average Yogi have different degrees of corruption and toxic shadows. Notice the assumption that I watch and trust news outlets such as CNN. This assumes immersion within content and unawareness of structure. This view does not take into account a meta view from above. As well, it is a binary view in which so-called MSM is to either be 100% trusted or 100% not trusted. This is a hyper-simplistic view. It is much more nuanced than that. News outlets like CNN are mosaics of various intentions and accuracies. And there are degrees. As well, there can be binary judgements to categorize others as someone who either watches and trusts MSM or doesn’t watch or trust MSM. This too is hyper-simplistic.