Carl-Richard

I've observed in somebody I know who lost somebody close to them when they were little that they're extremely "death-like" in their behavior, in the sense that they're hyper-masculine, judging, reducing, conclusion-oriented (Shiva the destroyer). For example, they're really quick at throwing things away, like fresh leftover food. They're blunt and often rude, especially to service workers who are slow and generally not up to their standards. They're constantly in a rush, rash in their movements, often hurt themselves from not being careful. They're unable to sit still and relax without doing anything, and they're not very interested in abstract things. Maybe facing death in this way can make you hyper-masculine. You can see this more generally when growing up and starting to interact with the world, where time and resources are limited and you have to choose which actions to take. For example, I started writing this in-between my sets at the gym, which is very challenging because I'm timing my breaks and they're very short. I used to not time my breaks, but I started to do it to save time and focus more on my studies. I feel I write the best immediately after getting an idea, and I get a lot of joy out if it, and I used to do it all the time at the gym, but now it's often too exhausting, so I tend to sacrifice it for my other goals. Is it worth it? Life fundamentally requires death to some extent, but you must not forget to actually live. It's hard to hold on to authentic self-expression when faced with the world, but it's absolutely crucial that you do so. It's the very life force, the Shakti, that brings you forward, that gives you inspiration, intelligence and joy. It's at the core of who you truly are and your evolutionary imperative. I personally see that I have some areas where I could bring back some life. Generally, we need less dead people in the world, more people who are driven by the energy from the bottom of their being, by divine inspiration. Your biggest gift to the world is yourself, and only you know who you are.

Could you not lose weight and maintain a healthy microbiome by eating a lot of whole foods and veggies without cutting out meat?

"It's thick".

I think you should consider doing it. This is a really good oppurtunity for you. Don't worry about "filling your mind with dogma". You're already doing that with university (and everything else). You'll run into dogma anywhere you go.

Yes, partially, but mainly because I simply didn't want it. I tried very hard to make it go away; constantly, every moment of my life, until it became habitual and subconscious. If I had wanted it (or rather accepted it), it would probably have been a very different story. Also, to say I "stopped meditating" is funny, because when I "stopped meditating", I couldn't stop meditating. The moment I let go of feeling the need to meditate, it became my default state. I had to actively fight it to stop meditating. It's radical in its own radical way. I've been in states of supreme ego dissolution with psychedelics, like to the point where my memory blacks out, and they're absolutely amazing. But there is something completely unique about when it happens completely by itself, seemingly without any external trigger or intention, and it just sucks you in and you can't escape without begging for your life.

Not as a life form on Earth that breathes.

It gradually stopped over the years, although it still happens from time to time. It's an interesting parallell with this topic though, because after running into "psychological death", I became extremely driven to do things in the world, to choose some things over others. You become the environment. There is no distinction.

I think thinking you're God could apply here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiose_delusions But I think if you explained to the psychologist that you subscribe to notions like pantheism or panentheism (which means that the psychologist is also God and that everybody is God), then you probably won't get a diagnosis. If you on the other hand tell them that you're God and they have a hard time understanding how that is possible, then you're more likely to be labeled with a delusional disorder.

There are many ways to react to trauma, but becoming aware of morality in this way is known to make you "grow up" quite quickly. Bernardo Kastrup experienced the same thing (his dad died when he was 12) and describes this. Maybe it's more the case when you're already quite masculine, but I think there is a general effect as well. When you're young, you're naive about the world, and you're more fine with how things are. You're less discerning, and you sort of let things happen. When somebody dies, you're not fine with how things are. You start to discern good things from bad things, and you feel compelled to make good things happen. In other words, you choose the good things over the bad things, and you let the bad things die. The feminine is about letting all things grow, giving things their space to exist, to be all-inclusive and welcoming. The masculine says "no, you're not welcome here; only this is allowed to exist". Physical death is one big "no" (and the masculine says "no" to it, wanting to kill it 😆).

While I say that, I think JP is mostly the shit. There is a lot of depth to his personal development stuff (and psychological and religious stuff). Just because something seems simple on the surface, doesn't mean it's not deep. Just because something is foundational, doesn't mean it's not important. A huge trap is to neglect the foundational by mistaking it as not important. That is why sayings like "make your bed" or "walk with your shoulders upright" can be worth hammering in, certainly in a culture that regularly trivializes the foundational.

The West is spiritually dead and any glimmer of meaning in the darkness is celebrated as the new God.

How would you describe how you play the game?

Do you feel that you have developed an in-game strategy over time, and do you think it played into breaking through that initial tough spot?

Do Langan's CTMU.

Cool. What a coincidence that you commented here just now. I was just planning to post something in this topic about a new insight on strategy or more generally how working memory works. Working memory is often conceived through a quantitative lens in the sense that a better working memory means you can process more things and faster. But I've noticed there is also qualitative aspect that impacts your performance drastically, which I will call "subtlety of processing". It has to do with using the right amount of energy and attention in each action; essentially, elegance (which correlates a lot with mindfulness, which is another way that mindfulness could increase IQ, outside mere DMN de-activation). You can see this subtlety principle in other activities, like carrying heavy groceries, or sprint training or playing an instrument. If you hold your groceries just right, or if you have just the right sprint form, or if you hold your fingers just loose enough to move effortlessly but firm enough to hit the right notes, then your endurance and general performance will increase. What this looks like specifically in N-Back training is hard to explain, but it's something like the speed and softness with which you look at each block or rehearse each letter. Nevertheless, I think it's something that can be grasped intuitively, and just becoming aware of it can probably help increase your gains further. In a nutshell: there are different ways to encode and manipulate information that are more subtle or less subtle (and more or less conducive to optimal performance).

Only this forum or also other forums like it?

If it's a speech or presentation, practice like you have never practiced before; get it down to every word, every move, like you're an actor in a movie. That is what I did for my first presentation in many years back when I used to really fear presentations, and because I had practiced it so much, it went so much better than I had expected that it radically changed how I view presentations. I was actually excited to do more presentations after that. How is that possible? One explanation is that dopamine largely works like a prediction error (actual reward minus expected reward). For example, if you expect something to go really bad but it actually goes really well, you'll get a massive spike of dopamine. In other words, if the expected reward is much smaller or generally worse than the actual reward, you'll get a big dopamine release. So I expected my presentation to go really bad, but it actually went really good, so I got a massive dopamine spike, and dopamine reinforces behavior, which explains why I was suddenly excited to do more presentations.

*When you find a metaphor that sounds cool but really isn't that accurate, but you've spent so much time thinking about it that you're engaging in the sunk cost fallacy and cannot accept where you're wrong*

It's also in the human identity to be able to follow a higher moral impulse and suspend our lower impulses. That's not dysmorphia; that's what we are. You might feel attracted to eating meat on a primal level, but you can also realize that you don't have to eat meat. This is what makes us so incredible. You might feel compelled to beat a rude person into a pulp, or molest some innocent woman, but you can realize you don't have to do that. You're exactly not a crocodile. You're a human.

Imagine if you were scared of dogs.

I think you actually have to hop on gear to get past a normal BMI as a non-fat gym rat.

The moments leading up to cessation (while meditating eyes closed and seated in half-lotus position), I would describe as a progressive sense of stillness, both in the mind and in the body. The progressive unwinding of tension in the body that occurs in meditation starts coming to a conclusion, and your body becomes very still (close to zero movement). The tiny muscle twitches in your legs start to disappear and you can distinctly sense them relaxing at another level. The space between thoughts become wider, and the thoughts themselves become quicker and more subtle and faint. The very last moments leading up to cessation, I would describe as slowly getting injected with an anesthetic, where all your senses slowly dampen and "equalize", until you lose all sense of being in a body and having a mind. The visual static behind your eyes gets smoother and more clear, and the visual field expands and zooms out slightly. The now unmowing body starts losing its sensation (interoceptively as well as externally, like the pressures under your butt and the feelings in your face and head), and it feels like you're slowly fading out of existence. This loss of bodily sensation is maybe what is most reminiscent of anesthesia, and the sense of being headless is an experience all by itself. The sounds in the room get dimmer and slowly disappear. The mind is now essentially quiet. The moment of entering cessation itself, I would describe as entering an enormous "place" which has no sense of time, no sense of space, and you feel that it's a place that will last forever and has lasted forever. It existed before you were born and it will exist after you're gone. And it's a place of perfect stillness, tranquility and bliss. Of course, the main "attraction" or challenge of the experience is the sense that you're going to disappear forever and never come back, that your sense of identity is fundamentally collapsing and that you're being erased from existence. This can feel extremely terrifying, literally like you're dying, but this is only the last throes of the ego before it can choose to rest and you identify yourself with the larger identity of Consciousness.

What's a normal physique?

It's almost like "spirituality" is no different from religion...