Carl-Richard

A mix between New Age and traditionally religious person And I mean that quite seriously. I'm not married to a single tradition (historically defined "tradition", e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam), but I'm also wary of the possible pitfalls of picking and choosing between different traditions in a way that gives you a malnourished or incomplete framework. In other words, I would want a New Age religion that is rich in its content, with multiple dimensions (mystical, intellectual, institutional, communal, ritual, aesthetic, law and ethic) and that is firmly integrated into the culture and larger society. Why? Because I don't believe my introduction to New Age was at all safe, responsible, grounded or healthy. The lack of social nets, the lack of people to go to for help, is probably the biggest lack that New Age currently has. Other than that, the rampant anti-intellectualism, skepticism to ethics, narcissism and generally disorganized and lonely nature of the movement are important aspects as well.

You experience being the author of your actions, but you also experience things being outside of your control, and these things influence your actions, and your actions influence these things. Hence compatibilism: determinism and a certain type of free will are compatible.

My first trip gave me a hard lesson in the first of the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering. I was grasping so hard, wanting to have a fun experience on the substance, while the grasping itself became the only thing I could focus on, and it left me feeling more empty and hollow than I had ever felt before. That kick-started my search for "something more" (which ironically involves the end of looking for something more).

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.