Carl-Richard

If you grow up in a certain society/culture, you will tend to be pulled up to that level. If you're already an adult when arriving or if you're culturally segregated, it's less likely to happen.

Here is one difference: spiritual gains, or more generally personal development gains, are generally more conducive to growth and tend to produce a deeper and richer feeling over time. With material gains, at least after a certain point, the feeling is mostly a temporary high, and it's shallow and without much meaning. That is why money only correlates with happiness up to a certain point (just after your basic needs are met). After that, it's mostly a temporary high, unless it somehow feeds into your personal development gains (for example certain forms of technology).

I don't know, but it's something about him honestly and calmly describing the absolute monster that is inside of him and the "broken" aspects of himself that feels like listening to an exciting and terrifying bedtime story. It's also very interesting from a pharmacological perspective. For example, I had never thought that steroids could cause anxiety (people usually associate it with aggression and dominance), but I guess it makes sense. 1:58:28

Well, not so much when you have the full-blown symptoms, but the stages before that can be difficult to pin down.

My dad has bipolar type 1 and my uncle had schizoaffective disorder. I've done LSD a dozen times and didn't land in a psych ward (although I was probably close at one point, but it was probably more due to my general life situation and other drug use, not any single LSD trip). There are some very general early signs from birth like reduced cognitive functioning, but those aren't very good predictors. You don't really get good predictors before the prodromal phase, which lasts anywhere from weeks to years before the "real" symptoms occur. Examples of prodromal symptoms can be depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, difficulties concentrating.

The usual answer is therapy, but medication can also help.

Medicine and therapy can help rebuild your brain which has been damaged from constant stress, get you back on your feet again, develop some desire for life again and create a foundation of vitality where you can build a meaningful vision that will sustain you into the future. How you view things right now is not necessarily how you have to view them, and you are able to change. All you need is a little push to get the ball rolling. Looking for outside help, whatever help you can find, is one of the best things you can do. We're not made to sit with our problems alone.

Hell yes. I use YouTube probably more than anything else, so why not get the best experience?

Because you're caveating by saying it's the "feeling" that is the same.

The point you're trying to make: desire is desire, whether it's for spirituality or materialism. The equivocation you're trying to avoid: there is no difference between spirituality and materialism.

@MarkKol It's a profound waste of time... if you have an exercise pill. That's the context of that video.

Does your car exist when it's in the garage and you're in your house?

I used to be able to change it back and forth, but now I only see it clockwise, so right-brain 🤭 Maybe it's because I'm tired.

I sometimes want to look at a tree just feel rage. Jk that's horrible.

Your values might change, so you might become less effective in the way you're defining it, but not less empathetic, and certainly not less effective in a more general sense. Whatever you're doing, in my experience, you will unequivocally do it better from a baseline state of happiness. And being happy makes you less self-concerned and more concerned about others in a big way. Frankly, unhappiness is basically synonymous with self-concern.

I just see those as two slightly different ways of viewing a problem. Finding out what you ultimately want to do is sort of orthogonal to any model and simply requires an inner sense. There are 100s of ways to model the psyche, and most of them are very similar, just like the two you mentioned. So in the end, it doesn't really matter that much which one you choose to focus on. All of them provide you some tools for structured sensemaking and a sense of direction. Even if they're sort of bad and lead you astray, you'll learn and grow anyway, and your inner sense will keep taking you where you want to go.

How are they contradictory?

That's a continuous work in progress, unless you're enlightened (actually it's even true for enlightened people, but in a more subtle way). I don't think anyone has "maxed out" their peace and tranquility while still in human form.

Lust in itself isn't really a problem. Getting stuck on it like it's the only solution to your life is more like a problem.

What does that look like to you?

He got stuck in one of the dimensions 😁

It ignites and opens up your experience of the world. It pushes you and guides you. It emboldens you and enlightens you. There are some theoretical definitions of meaning. Here is one with four components: Purpose is about goal-oriented behavior; setting goals, making plans, finding a purpose to strive towards. It gives you a sense of direction, progression and growth. You can strive to become something better, something more valuable. That is why having a life purpose is a great source of meaning. Significance is when something is intrinsically valuable. Flow states, pleasurable experiences, virtues and ideals: things that you do for their own sake, things that valuable in and of themselves; be it eating ice cream, playing football or reading fiction, be it seeking wisdom or spiritual enlightenment. Coherence is when something makes sense; when there is an orderliness to things and things are understandable. Logic and rationality are big sources of coherence; theoretical frameworks, heuristics, maps (Spiral Dynamics is an example); stories, narratives, language itself. Coherence is a big reason why reading fiction (or reading any thing at all, even dry scientific articles) can be experienced as meaningful. Mattering is when you do something of value to others, when it matters to something outside yourself. You want to make society a better place, you want other people to wake up, you want people to suffer less, to become more aware, less ignorant, more wise. Being a part of a community, a family or an organization is therefore a big source of meaning which is also routinely neglected in Western society.

I remember seeing this my first times on LSD (100-150 mcg range) and I've always been mystified about why it happens: I've also gotten it from MDMA, especially on the comedown (the metabolite MDA has substantial 5HT2A activity), and also very slightly from weed (CB1 circuits with 5HT2A activity). Even nowadays while fully sober, I can get mesmerized by looking at simple textures on the ground or any grainy surface, although I don't see the overtly symmetrical textures. Curiously, this amplified quite a lot after I reduced my fluoride exposure (flouride is known to cause eye problems and dampens brain activity in general).

If you come across a problem in your life where you currently see no optimal outcome, you will probably think a lot of negative thoughts, but you'll also become very creative in trying to find that optimal outcome. However, there eventually comes a point where the negative thinking becomes too much of a burden and hinders your ability to find an optimal outcome, and then you need to come to terms with what is, and that requires accepting the situation and moving forward. Accepting the situation might involve reframing what is an optimal outcome and seeing the positive sides in a situation, i.e. positive thinking. It might also require a radical leap in how you fundamentally approach your own values, or even a leap in the very way you think, hopefully towards a place of more complexity and nuance (an evolution) and not a place of more simplicity and black-and-white thinking (a de-evolution).

You're missing out because you're spending 1 hr at the gym a couple of times a week and 0.5-1 hr to cook every day? Man, you must be a busy person. I can admit I started working out because of looks (and because my mom wanted me to be healthy lol). But what kept me working out is that it feels too good not to. It's like a drug without any side effects (roughly speaking), and it makes you more functional in virtually all domains (bodily, cognitively, energy levels, etc.). But it's not like I stopped caring about looks either. The times I have gotten an injury where I had to slow down my training, I felt dysphoria, like I was not in the right body. But when I'm in peak shape, I feel pretty fine about my body. People with body dysmorphia basically never feel fine about their bodies, and that can definitely be a problem.