Carl-Richard

I'm tempted to post a video of Jan Esmann showing you exactly what kundalini energy is, but I believe kundalini is so real that it would be like assault to do so.

To hammer home the point: I think if you were to describe what you mean by "classical non-dualist", you would actually describe a contemporary type of non-dualist, inspired by different religious traditions but not married to a single one, i.e. New Age . "Classical" non-duality is found in "classical" religions.

Yup. Most New Agers don't like the term. That's partially why I like to call them that 😂 (also because it's correct). What do you mean by "woo woo stuff"? Crystals? Astrology? Tarot readings? That's just one type of New Age. New Age is when you get inspiration from religious traditions without being married to a single tradition. It's when you want to be religious (spiritual) while also fully living in the modern world. A general rule is whenever somebody from the West (or who identifies as such) calls themselves "spiritual", or whenever somebody calls themselves "spiritual but not religious", it's New Age.

New Age* I used to be a militant atheist when I was a teenager, which is essentially the same phenomena as you're talking about. So I can understand how it is to believe you're right and all else "go to hell" and that it simply happened to be what I was born into. But you said you used to be muslim like them, so what are you not understanding? Were you somehow different?

And that is to be expected

Yeah, there is probably some other guy camouflaged in the woods who is high as a kite on LSD and looks at OP on his nature walks and thinks "man, this guy is so stuck in his routines, he is not even dropping psychedelics on his nature walks; I'm getting so irritated watching him do this every day" (must be a microdose I guess). Meanwhile, there is a second guy travelling through the woods in astral form, thinking "man, these people are so stuck inside their bodies, it's so irritating watching them do this every day". Then you have the mystic sitting under a tree thinking "bruh, these guys spend so much time engaging in forms, they don't even know about the formless" and then goes back to the void. Then you have the Buddha at the gas pump eating a hot dog.

The more I socialize with people, the more I think about what I might be missing in terms of insight, perspective or mere perception that they are tuned into and which I am not.

I've been revisiting Linkin Park the last couple of days for the massive dose of nostalgia. The band is literally the sound of my generation; truly iconic, innovative and talented, especially Chester (RIP). My first CD my dad gave me that I had wished for, was Linkin Park. It was a live concert CD to my surprise, but it didn't really matter (pun intended). It was from 2008, and I think I got it the same year: Back then, my favorite song from that album was for some reason "No More Sorrow". It was probably the metal-y buildup. Today, I find especially "Crawling" and "What I've Done" much more impacting, lending much to how I now realize how they were an authentic reflection of Chester's suffering. Those two songs made me emotional when I heard them again. Again, great band, famous for a reason, or I'm just molded in their image.

I prefer summing up everything that has been said here in one phrase: "absolute vs. relative". But maybe I'll fall in love with talking about it all day again some day.

Can a person ever be deluded about what is real?

My unconscious biases are not real? 🤔

That's called pursuing a goal.

Nobody cares about an unembedded link 👎

"Law of Attraction" is an unfortunate name. It should be called the "Law of Attention". Anything you pay attention to or dedicate time to, either intentionally or compulsively, will grow in your mind in some way, and what grows in your mind will manifest in your life in some way. It can be positive or negative relative to any goal or standard you might have. But, especially for the intentional part, the particular way it happens is not so straightforward. That is mostly up to you and how much intelligence you're willing to put into it.

When the awakening experience keeps seeping into your experience more and more until you can no longer seem to hold it back, then you're closing in on enlightenment, but even then, it's not actually enlightenment before you let go into that. Until then, it's a highly unstable, fluctuating and conflicting phenomena, like a moth circling the flame. Jump in the fire.

Technically, anything is basically possible, but statistically (and granted the theory is valid), you will follow the steps chronologically (granted a Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic population). I'm actually not sure about the empirical rigor for SD specifically at this point. The most it has going for it is the correlation with almost any other linear stage theory in psychology. Coral has not been described by the creators of SD in any meaningful detail as far as I know.

😂

Because you're not actually letting go. Awakening is when your ego gets nudged, then it gets scared or excited, and then you start asking questions and doubting again. Enlightenment is when the ego lets go.

That's true.

Be skeptical of technology (whether it's writing electronically or the act of writing itself), but be skeptical about being skeptical about technology 😉

Maybe read the story I wrote. It's not impossible. You can define "poison" in a myriad of different ways that has nothing to do with neurotoxicity. Besides, the effect on the hippocampus that I referred to earlier has actually been shown in people with recent cannabis use. I don't know if you could define it as neurotoxic or just harmful in that case, but both could fall under a definition of poison. Besides, I was using it mostly in a flippant and colloquial way. Most people know what I mean when I say I got poisoned with THC.

Let's just say a person I know bought a THC vape and decided it was a funny idea (while they were high of course) to prank me by breathing a THC vape cloud through the toilet door. Their intention was not to get me high but simply make me smell the vape cloud (which is basically odorless) and see my reaction (which is absolutely stupid if you know anything about pure THC, but hey, he was high and also in general not very knowledgeable about these things). They have done similar things before with a nicotine vape, and he probably expected a similar reaction, which was an aversive one but not very serious. Let me also be clear that I had told the person when they bought the vape to not do such a thing with THC (at least implicitly by saying "don't use it inside the house"), because it's very different than nicotine, but in their stoned stupor, they must have forgotten that. Another fun contextual fact is that this happened exactly one week before my last graded exam for my Master's, and I had planned to read like a maniac for that week (which I still ended up doing), but I did of course have some problems with that. It's not a big deal though because I got a good grade, but anyways, it could've gone pretty bad if I had gotten higher than I did. So how high did I get? Not very (I'm speaking as an ex-stoner here). The cloud was sprayed through the crack of a closed door just above my head, and the cloud must have spread out from there and entered my lungs. Of course, I was in a compromised position as well, taking a dump and being realistically unable to escape when I had gotten the information from the pranker. I had probably breathed in the majority of the cloud before I had gotten the information anyway. What I did notice was that reading the following days became not exactly difficult, but different. It was as if a large chunk of my long-term memories were locked away in a black box in my mind and I was reading the text while being unable to access these memories, effectively seeing things from a new perspective. I found this effect not productive at all for interpreting what I was reading. The only thing I think it could've been productive for would be to review some piece of text that I had written myself and maybe write down some new ideas or see new connections. However, the reading speed was somehow quite enhanced, but again, it doesn't really help much when your interpretation of the text is not so enhanced (or enhanced for that particular purpose: connecting what you're reading with prior knowledge). This can be described as some of the "dissociative" effects of THC, in that dissociation involves blocking access to some parts of your mind (in this case some of my long-term memories). My short-term memory was also definitely affected, but it was not really as much of a problem in comparison. The irony of it all was that I had just started reading about neurotransmission and neuropsychopharmacology (the course I was taking was biological psychology), and eventually, I reached the part about cannabis. It made me more curious about how the THC could be affecting me negatively, particularly memory consolidation (which is central to learning and retaining new knowledge). THC is known to reduce or even eliminate REM sleep, and REM sleep is central to the formation of new memories. I did in fact notice some weird reduction in vividness of dreams, but I did still dream, so I must have gotten some REM sleep. Another issue is how THC increases cortisol, and increased cortisol (especially chronic increase, i.e. over a long time period) has been shown to damage (or reduce the functioning of) the hippocampus, which is of course involved with memories. THC is a nasty substance in this sense as it goes into all your lipid membranes, all your fat stores — basically anywhere where there is fatty stuff, which causes the long elimination half-life (how long it takes for the drug to exit your body). I landed on an elimination half-life of 24 hours as a guideline for myself to track my progress and to frankly cope with the situation. By this estimation: after 24 hours, or 1 day, you'll have 50% of your initial THC left in your body; after 2 days, 25%; 3 days – 12.5%; 4 days – 7.25%; 5 days – 3.625% 6 days – 1.8125% and finally 7 days, on exam day – 0.90625%. So being high on exam day was not really an issue. And I wasn't. However, the additional psychological stress from being poisoned with a substance that could potentially jeopardize the exam, as well as the physiological stress from the increased cortisol from the THC, probably increased the usual fatigue associated with reading heavily (exam stress in the sense of worrying about the exam was not really an issue), so it definitely did impact how much and how well I could read and thus my performance on the exam. But again, it didn't matter that much after getting the grade (although I also value learning things well, which was, again, decently impaired). The aftermath or long-term effects are more interesting and is the reason I wanted to write this thing. Maybe one hour ago, I was riding an el-scooter home from the gym and I rode past a group of people smoking a joint while walking down the street. I only did a little sniff to see if it was actually weed, and indeed, it was weed. And I kid you not, that tiny sniff made me slightly high. It's not at all the same strength as when I was poisoned, but I could definitely notice a difference. I was listening to music while riding and suddenly the music became considerably more immersive, colors became slightly brighter, time slowed down a tad bit; you know — all those weed-y effects. Now, is this just make-believe or could there be actual pharmacological action going on? Well, it's a bit ironic again, but as I was reading for the exam about drug tolerance vs. drug sensitization, I learned that it's (especially) possible to get sensitized to a drug if the drug is administered multiple times but infrequently. In fact, drugs usually don't have a strong effect before you administer them multiple times and you get sensitized to them (which explains phenomena like people not getting high their first time). As an ex-stoner, I had definitely gone through that process of sensitization before, and maybe when I got poisoned, I got sensitized even further. So now, maybe my brain is like a THC smoke detector. Merely a few molecules might be able to trigger an alarm-type response. It could also be a kind of post-traumatic stress reaction, as you could qualify the process of getting poisoned in this way as a trauma, especially when you consider how PTSD is most reliably acquired when it's by the hands of a malevolent actor, often involving a lack of control and a break of trust. So will I forever be doomed by merely the smell of weed (I highly value my sober state of mind), in a world where weed is experiencing more and more public acceptance, or will it wash over some day? We know that PTSD sometimes goes over by itself (I'm not saying I actually have PTSD, but you get the point), so maybe that's a good sign. Anyways, I think I've written more than enough about this. Any takeaways? For me: maybe I need to become much clearer about communicating my boundaries to people. Then again, never underestimate stupidity. For you: don't prank people with drugs.

I wouldn't compare something that mimics purine nucleoside neurotransmitters with something that mimics fatty acid neurotransmitters. The Octanol/water partition coefficient in log P for caffeine is -0.07 while it's between 3.78 and 6.95 for THC. They're miles apart: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329157090_Emerging_techniques_for_cell_disruption_and_extraction_of_valuable_bio-molecules_of_microalgae_Nannochloropsis_sp Caffeine is closer to water than it is to THC.

My boss. Jk. Nope.