Carl-Richard

Moderator
  • Content count

    14,188
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Carl-Richard

  1. Meditation. I was completely taken off guard because Leo said that everybody sucks at meditation in the beginning ? My notion of awakening was pretty shallow, so I thought it was some other thing. It felt like I was going to disappear forever and never come back, so I jumped up in fear and stopped the meditation.
  2. I want a test that tests the reliability of your own self-assessments. Strange loop
  3. Rational Ability = 40 / 50 Rational Engagement = 49 / 50 Experiential Ability = 43 / 50 Experiential Engagement = 37 / 50
  4. You don't become less spiritual by writing walls of text ?
  5. @funcool Don't need caffeine for that
  6. That is not very concrete. Here is an example: How does a car move? 1. By burning fuel. 2. By the oxidation of hydrocarbons. 3. By converting the potential chemical energy of gasoline into kinetic energy at the wheels. 4. When gasoline is injected into the cylinder and mixed with air and ignited, it produces an explosion that rapidly expands the gases in the confined cylinder. Thus the four-stroke process is compression, ignition, power, exhaust. The piston is consequently driven downward by the expanding gases in the power stroke which exit the cylinder through an exhaust manifold in the side of the cylinder. The movement of the piston drives the crank shaft down, and this drives another piston up in its cylinder, where it repeats the process of compression, ignition, power and exhaust. The spinning crank shaft turns the heavy flywheel at the rear of the engine. The flywheel is cut with teeth so the starter motor can turn it over and start the engine. The flywheel is connected directly to the gear box which enables the driver to select the ratio of the engine speed to the drive speed. The gear box then connects to the bar of the drive shaft, which spins according to the speed of the selected gears, which in turn is connected to a split differential that allows the driving power to drive the rear axle. The rear wheels, or in the case of front-wheel drive cars, the front wheels, are driven by the rotation of the axle. The turning wheels in turn move the car. Which explanation is detailed enough? If 4, why does that satisfy you? What if I said there exists a 5th explanation?
  7. How detailed of an explanation do you have in mind?
  8. It's ironically enough a very Christian interpretation of karma, equating it with sin (that there is an objective moral code whereby you're judged by an ultimate authority). Karma as conceived by the Hindus is much more subtle than that. It's more akin to a law of nature, like cause and effect, than a mystical scoreboard for good and bad actions. Now, it can still explain why so-called bad things happen to bad people. For instance, repeating an action many times makes it more likely that you'll do it in the future (strengthening of synapses, cognitive schemas etc.), so doing more bad stuff will make you more bad over time, and this influences how you respond to events and how other people respond to you (which also tends to be bad).
  9. What do you think karma is specifically?
  10. My dad is, which means I was born with a 15-30% chance of getting it. But if you don't get it before you turn 20, you'll most likely never get it, so I think I'm in the clear ?
  11. I'm sure you would turn from a man into a piece of pasta dough pretty fast
  12. This was back in the day when I still had thoughts. Now it's so quiet up here
  13. For me, weed always made my thoughts go 500 miles an hour, unless I was doing something like watching a show. That's probably my Bipolar genes kicking in
  14. I felt pretty exhausted the day after my second trip, but I wouldn't call it a comedown. It was probably just a combination of sleep deprivation and feeling a bit spaced out. I remember saying "I feel mentally corrupt". One of my acid buddies sometimes did acid in the middle of the week in high school, and he used to take a couple days off afterwards, but I wouldn't attribute that to the typical comedown effect seen in other types of drugs. The pharmacology of psychedelics is very atypical.
  15. No, because he didn't ask you which cognitive functions you would like on your pizza
  16. My mind works best when it's completely sober. Caffeine makes it go faster, but there is a loss of subtlety.
  17. Religious people score higher on various measures of health than non-religious people. Apparently, going to church correlates with decreased blood pressure. Religion provides community and meaning, which can cover deficit needs (safety, belonging and esteem) and sometimes growth needs (self-actualization and self-transcendence) when the mystical experience is involved. Feeling that your life has direction and that you have answers for your existential questions is certainly conducive to health.
  18. A holon is simultaneously a part and a whole.