Carl-Richard

Then of course, self-improvement does produce significantly improved individuals as well where you notice a significant difference, as you've rightly intuited. However, those individuals are probably relatively rare. Most self-improvement people have either just started their journey and experienced little to medium progress, or merely show interest in it, or even wear it as an egoic garment. And again, all these people were probably a little more neurotic (conflicted) than the average person on the street when they started. So all in all, you probably shouldn't expect a big difference in either direction.

We're suddenly counting words now?

Now I know why I always loved this song <3

The safest bet is to not do it, but the next safest is to try very small doses in the beginning. It's usually the larger doses that trigger acute psychosis, but smaller doses can increase the chance of psychosis developing over time. Be aware that also meditation can make you respond differently to psychedelics than other people.

Who left the carrots out? 😮‍💨🐇🥕

Hedonism vs. eudaimonia. Don't do more of the same things: do the right things, at the right place, at the right time, in the right way. That is what virtue is, what balance is; flexibility, functionality, health. The trick is that eudaimonia requires facing your skeletons head on, tracing every step your mind makes to justify its behavior, and catch it before it escapes into its addictive cycles again. That requires some awareness, deliberation and repeated experience of seeing how the hedonism strategy fails. But until then, it might seem like it's Easier To Run: (I'm in love with this song. It's probably not the last time I'll be quoting Linkin Park songs btw).

You just described remote viewing.

In that case, if you want to fix yourself, don't you first have to be broken? 😉

I've gotten the habit of opening way too many tabs at once because I see something that I don't want to miss, and then I feel compelled to finish them all. It takes way too much time and feels like a chore, so I've decided to implement a three-tab rule (max. three tabs at once). That would also force me to watch higher quality videos. That said, I only really watch videos while eating, and I go for a walk after eating (and I feel like I have to when my blood sugar is rising), so that's a good way to break the spell. This curiously only started happening after I started with brain training and cardiovascular training (more blood flow to the brain). I guess a faster brain can be a curse 😂

An open forum is not much different from people on the street. Not much to contemplate there, unless you got some burning insights like you seem to be implying 🤐

"Demons", "entities", "energies", are frames to make sense of your experience, and often less fortunate ones at that. They assume some sort of malevolent force or agent that is involved, which may not be the case and which can complicate and magnify the traumatic response (which is a more appropriate frame imo). Traumas happen quite easily without involving malevolent agents, and when they are involved, they tend to be worse. So be cautious about invoking such notions after a traumatic experience, especially when the reason to do so is not clear. Have you ever seen a demon with your own eyes? Have you ever seen a demon that you for sure knew was personally invested in inflicting harm on you? If not, what use does that frame have? Is it not enough to say you underwent a traumatic experience and that you felt that it left a mark on you?

😂

I'll echo the title for this video 😂:

I didn't watch it yet. Maybe I'll do that today.

It's time for my bimonthly Destiny post: The context is Dan critiquing Dr. K's affiliation with Ayurveda (which he equates to homeopathy, which is a mistake in itself, but not the biggest one). The big mistake is when Dan critiques homeopathy by mixing theoretical claims with empirical claims, and Destiny does a decent job at pushing back. His argument is essentially "homeopathy is 100% bullshit, because it's not supported by current theories of pharmacology". Even though current theories of pharmacology don't jibe well with homeopathy, that doesn't mean we can't find significant effects in a study or that we can't get new theories in the future. 38:23 - 50:03 Notice how he later capitulates to "I trust the experts" when he gets cornered (I know it's a funny "jab" at one of Destiny's arguments for supporting COVID vaccines, but at the same time, it seems like he meant it). That's the dogmatism. The problem is that no expert would agree with what he just said. There were also some factual errors about the placebo effect (it doesn't just affect pain, but all kinds of psychological and physical conditions) and probably some other things (Destiny misdefining the Nocebo effect was hilarious). As if it needs to be said, I would be careful taking medical or scientific advice from these guys.

I already somewhat touched on it with how no expert would agree with what he just said, but another mistake (which also goes back to mixing theoretical claims with empirical claims) is when Dan implicitly equates Destiny appealing to experts for evaluating the empirical state of COVID vaccines with Dan appealing to theoretical claims of experts when he should actually be appealing to their evaluation of the empirical research. Those are two different things. One involves admitting the limitations of one's knowledge, the other involves fundamentally misunderstanding the scientific process.

I was so close to stopping the video because of too much cringe, but I somehow persisted. At some point, it just becomes self-harm, like intentionally ingesting poision (like homeopathy) 😆

I think this is what you think the law states (which I mostly agree that it should state and which warrants a different and more suitable name), but I think most people have a more flowery conception of it, hence I was referring to the "usual conception" of it.

The problem is that taking DXM produces a state reminiscent of dementia, so that defeats the purpose 😂

When you put it like that, it's less accurate, but not invalid, because it's more general. If everything functions according to attraction, then you're describing a more general phenomena. The usual conception has the opposite problem: it's too specific, and unreasonably so (because given the option, you would probably not use it, imo). It says you attract things that you intend to attract, but it misses that you sometimes attract things that you don't intend to attract but which you're inadvertedly paying attention to. But these are really trivial knitpicking points. You can use whatever words you like

Masturbate more, overeat nutritious foods (proper ratio of carbs, fats, proteins), avoid strong daylight when possible, learn to adopt sub-optimal hunched-over postures, perpetually tighten the left side of your abdomen (even when falling asleep), constantly distract yourself with your phone or conceptual thinking, sleep on your stomach. Your goal is to reinstate a suitable level of contracted energy in all of your daily behaviors.

Life is a distraction.

I think there is a saying that goes like "tripping is like holding up a mirror"

This is one reason why I think it's healthy to reclaim the word "religion" and not use the word "spirituality" as some "better than you" ("holier than thou") shield for ironically protecting your own dogma. It's simply the case that your idea of spirituality (most likely New Age for people here) is a set of beliefs and practices just like traditional religion. To constantly fixate on the ways which your idea of spirituality is not that (i.e. the mystical dimension), can be a definite source of self-deception. What we need more of is to fixate on the dimensions that New Age lacks, which is everything else than the mystical dimension (at least in this place).