tatsumaru

I have to admit that I quite resonate with the notion that I am making an enemy out of my own experience through positioning it as a means to an end in my mind. I can see how that would lead to a gradual build up of resistance that would eventually overcome my willpower and the whole effort will collapse and I will have to start from scratch when I restore my willpower. However this realization alone doesn't seem to be sufficient for me to start enjoying a strict routine. The way I feel like right now is that I don't really want to do any of these things and that I am doing them only because I don't like where my life is going when I am not doing them. So I am not sure how to like them when I feel that they are fundamentally not pleasant to do. I am not sure it's just the perspective, otherwise I would be able to convince myself that anything even stabbing myself is also enjoyable no? Isn't there some sort of inherent unlikeability to chores and routines?

I get that it's the journey not the destination, however I am not sure I really want the experience of going to bed early every night, what I really want is feeling refreshed in the morning and having less mood swings due to a tired and irritable brain. But I also want to go to bed when I feel like it, not when the clock says 22:00.

I had a conversation with a taxi driver who was sharing with me his beliefs about how the government ruined his life or how getting Covid-19 is all about luck/fate and so I asked him "Why do you think that?" and this guy was almost shocked. The way he reacted to this question looked like I triggered some cluster of neurons in his brain that hadn't been lit for millennia. In my experience the "Why?" question is one of the cornerstones of free thought and wisdom. Asking oneself why one's doing the things one's doing or why's one behaving in the way one's behaving can be incredibly transformational. And yet for whatever reason asking 'Why?" isn't popular at all. Instead a mindless, unexamined life, rich in ignorance and automation seems to be prevalent. And I can't help but wonder where Why in a person's life come from? What is the trigger to start examining and becoming self-aware that most seem to miss. How can it be such a luxury to think? I don't get it. Why aren't more people asking why? Where's all that ignorance and lack of self-awareness coming from? Thanks.

Forget about that god nonsense for a bit. I don't know when that new religion of identifying with oneness and the universe became so popular, but it is just the latest version of religious group think manifesting as pseudospirituality. Why do you have to put beliefs between yourself and your direct experience. Just allow life to be what it is - did you ever prove there was a god anywhere? The word god means something very specific. Currently everyone is hijacking this word and using it to mean "that which is not in our experience" or "that which we don't understand" or "oneness" or "energy" or "the universe" or whatever. It's lost its meaning long time ago. Now it's an homonym that allows everyone to label their own belief systems as god which helps people think that we are all on the same page and have all realized the same truths about life. Nonsense! As for your loneliness. Ask yourself what loneliness implies. It basically means you feel incomplete. If you were truly everything, how would you ever be incomplete? This is likely a result of identifying with something that you are not.

There are so many assumptions and beliefs in that paragraph that it's almost not saying anything worth reading. Pay attention whenever you are making a statement that's based on an assumption or a belief instead of experience - these have no value for either you or humankind, they are just noise. "There is no real meaning" - Just a belief "There was no reason for our existence, because there's no proof" That's not logic, it's just a fallacy - absence of proof isn't proof of absence. "We can't prove meaning" - Just a belief. "There's no objective meaning" - That's like saying that if you throw a coin long enough there's only one side. You are failing to account for the experiential side of reality. Meaning is not a concept nor a configuration of energy that's to be discovered under some rock. That's like saying there's no love because we can't prove it. That's not even how science works. Regardless, glorification of empirical evidence by Priests of Science encourages a potentially incurable neurosis for humanity. Nothing wrong with empirical evidence if understood in its proper place, that is, empiricism is based on objects that ultimately do not exist.

That's not entirely correct. While the world may be a dream that doesn't guarantee that the world is all there is and that everything is a dream. So it's not enough to only believe the world is a dream but you also need to identify with the dream as well for nihilism to work.

Nihilism often happens to people who've become disillusioned with religion or some sort of belief system. They used to believe in god and realized it was just a belief and that they could change their beliefs if they wanted to and there was nothing true about it. So now all they see is how everyone believes in their own thing which is also a bunch of horse and can't help but feel everything is nonsense. Disenchanted with their previous religions Nihilists often feel like they need to shift the pendulum toward absolute rationality to protect themselves from believing in things that don't matter again and in the process they become disconnected with their feelings and their direct experience of life. Before I continue further, it's a good place to inject this brief video to further elaborate my argument: Even though belief systems/religions offer a sort of psychological shelter, a solace of sorts which can result in temporary feelings of peace and happiness and even inspiration, religions must not be equated to those feelings. Nihilism in this case is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bath water, of throwing away the feelings that were caused by the religion and discarding them as unreliable when in effect they are quite reliable when one is honest. You see religions are simulations of life. Our brains are not so great at discerning between fantasies and the so called reality so believing there's a god may carry some of the benefits at least to a degree of actually experiencing there's a god. So in that sense feelings that arise out of beliefs can't be trusted because they are the result of self-trickery, of a simulation that replaced the actual experience. It's tempting to think that nihilism is a good substitute for religious thought, however nihilism just like religions is a belief system that has at its core an implicit belief that everything is a belief and that all beliefs don't matter and therefore nothing matters. Any sort of belief system serves to limit your understanding of the world not to broaden it. If it has an -ism at the end that implies that you need to hold some core assumption about life regardless of your experience and try to subdue your logic to that core belief. Nihilism is no different. Why would you make a premature conclusion like that about life if you don't know what the actual answer is? There must be some mental pay-off, same like with religion. One of the big payoffs is that if nothing matters then you don't have to do anything anymore or that you can do whatever you want and it wouldn't matter. Ego loves nihilism because it means you can rape and plunder and it wouldn't matter. Ego loves nihilism because it means you can play games for the rest of your life and it wouldn't matter. Ego loves nihilism because it means you can kill yourself and it wouldn't matter. For years and years god said don't do this, don't do that, parents said don't do this, don't do that, but finally you've realized that nothing matters so we can do whatever you want. You would think that nihilism would result in some sort of freedom and happiness, yet all that it causes is debauchery, addictions, chaos, recklessness and mediocrity. One particularly nasty side effect of nihilism is that as you lose a belief in a higher power all that you have left is to look to your neighbors for inspiration which makes nihilists often the most boring, uncreative, uninspired, self-destructive and risk-averse people there are. Fear replaces inspiration, selfishness replaces humanism, envy replaces wisdom, mediocrity replaces creativity, luck replaces agency and victimhood replaces herohood. Yet it's the beginning of something beautiful. Certainly in the beginning it is bitter. A person who realized their beliefs are false has now uncovered the holes all those beliefs were filling up and they exist in a state of meaningless confusion trying to deal with their lack of values, wisdom and direct experience of life. However little by little we turn those holes into opportunities. Opportunities to drop nihilism and become honest. Honest about the fact that certain things do matter to us, that our inspiration matters to us, that our happiness matters to us, that our friends matter to us, that our family matters to us, that our wisdom matters to us and so on and so forth. And once that happens one develops certain appetites that are more mature than the simple abdication of responsibility that nihilism offers. One starts paying attention to life as it is rather to try and filter one's experience through the lenses of one of the -isms. And that is when the Hero's Journey begins. And that is when the process of self-actualization begins. That is when the uncovering of the authentic self becomes a possibility and maybe even inevitability. That is when we give ourselves permission to get in touch with our feelings again and not blame them any longer for the fallacies of belief itself. That is when we can finally start living a life that matters.

Why are you announcing this anyway? If you want to go, just go. If you want to stay, just stay. No need to turn everything into a show.

For the last 10 years or so I've lived with this painful sense of urgency. It's like this constant awareness that my short life will be over soon and there's something critical that I need to accomplish before that or else my mission here would have been a failure. I don't know what that something is, maybe it's enlightenment, or a specific experience or some sort of realization about the nature of reality or maybe I just need to prove to myself that I am not a loser. Regardless I've been mostly unable to relax because of this feeling and have had to rely on substances like weed or just watching TV shows in order to be able to slow down a little bit. There is a Buddhist story about Naropa and Tilopa called Tilopa's shoe. Basically it's about Naropa doing an evil deed out of spite and then a dakini appears in front of him and tells him that unless he finds Tilopa and achieves enlightenment, he will not be able to avoid the karma of his bad deed and he will be doomed. So he becomes incredibly anxious and starts looking for this Tilopa everywhere. Finally he finds Tilopa and after a long and excruciating set of lessons he finally becomes realized. So I feel a little bit like this Naropa guy - that if I don't find this in time I am doomed. That if I don't wake up or create my soul in time I am doomed. There are all kinds of negative consequences of that because when you believe something like that everyone else who is not on a journey like this seems like an alien to you. You see some village people peacefully tending to their garden and you think to yourself - look at these simpletons they've never even read one book and have no clue about spirituality. They are clueless and doomed. Also I've noticed that this feeling makes me take life too seriously and I've lost my ability to joke and enjoy the present. It's always do or die. It's always "I will relax when I am done.". So I want to understand what this feeling is and where it comes from. Obviously this is some sort of "destination-type" thinking rather than enjoying the journey, but that realization alone is not enough to transcend it or understand it. What is this sense of urgency, what is this calling? This is the quote that I resonate most with in regards to this situation: "Blessed is he who has a soul, blessed is he who has none, but woe and grief to him who has it in embryo." - Gurdjieff. P.S. Or as one spiritual teacher suggested it could simply be an issue of not having enough sex...

I have been told by spiritual masters that the greatest wisdom and enlightenment is accessible not by seeking it but through a complete surrender of all hopes, ideas, beliefs and even the senses. I've been reflecting on the following quotes for the last 10 years to no avail: “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you” -Lao Tzu. Darryl Anka (Bashar) said, “There are many definitions regarding the word “surrender.” Many label this as a loss of some sort or a lack of control of some sort…and this is not the case. Surrender is actually the acceptance of your total self. It is not in that sense the forsaking of your total self as many of you have been led to believe through the definitions that your world has provided you with. Definitions such as those only serve to limit you. Surrender is the letting go of the concept of who you think you’re supposed to be and actually being who you are because who you are is unlimited possibilities. When you allow yourself to surrender all ideas, all hopes, then the physical reality which is only a mirror can then reflect those unlimited possibilities back to you.” “As long as your shallow worldly ambitions exist (aka: hopes, beliefs, attachments to traditions, the seeking of energy) the door will not open”- Lao Tzu. I just can't seem to realize what's the point of being alive if my participation in life is not needed. If everything is perfect as it is what's the point of evolution and learning or even spirituality? To simply sit and watch the trees until you run out of food and die - I don't understand it. How can I completely surrender and let go of goals and hopes but also seek to benefit humankind and develop myself? How can I surrender my expectations when I know that I am surrendering in order to transcend the ego - that's already a goal. What's the point of my true nature being unlimited possibilities if all desire to express myself is a distraction. If nothing is lacking then why am I not aware of my light, surely at least this awareness is lacking. I don't know something feels off with that last step that is required to penetrate the veil and directly experience truth. It's like you have to commit psychological suicide on the off-chance that something might come of it. But then that's already hope/belief so again back to square 1. At the very least I enjoy this world and want to play with it, I don't want to be some miserable yogi in a cave who renounced everything because some doctrine said something about it. What's the point of being human if all of our senses are an impediment to waking up. What's the point of this world, this life if its only purpose is to be an illusion, a prison for our minds. I am fucking tired of these games. I am so frustrated. I am tired of this burden and seeking this secret door that never opens...

Eckhart Tolle was somewhat helpful on my journey and I even bought the book for my mom afterwards. However the method of Eckhart Tolle is somewhat like a meditation in that you don't get any clarity or answers out of it, just a tool to relax, which isn't nothing, but I don't feel like it is the answer for me. I seek understanding, wisdom, and clarity more than I seek psychological survival.

According to a number of studies 80% of Americans suffer from Magnesium deficiency. One of the symptoms of that can be a dysfunctional parasympathetic nervous system (the one that's in charge of relaxing the body). As a nutritionist I've recommended magnesium supplementation to a number of people and they've all reported a good outcome - better sleep, less tension or disappearance of chronic pain or vertigo symptoms, lower blood pressure etc. Since magnesium is responsible for the production of 300+ enzymes in the body, a deficiency can be extremely detrimental to the quality of life. Most people would do good to supplement 400mg/day magnesium citrate or magnesium glycinate regardless of symptoms. Magnesium is dirt cheap and is safe (unless your kidneys are failing). It is estimated that our ancient ancestors consumed about 700mg/day from food. Nowadays due to irresponsible farming and bad diets, most Americans total intake is around 200-250mg/day. Even the RDA which is quite conservative is set at 400mg/day so you know it's a real problem. You might want to give it a try and see how you feel in 2-3 weeks. For me magnesium solved terrible vertigo symptoms, lessened my anxiety (when I still had those issues) and improved my sleep. Good luck.

Nonsense. Meaning arises out of harmony the same way attraction does. It's not a choice. There aren't really any units because the stone isn't separate from the rest of reality and isn't a static object either. When we say 1,2,3 (aka set theory) that's useful but not really representative of the soup we swim in. Poincare said "Geometry is advantageous, it's not real." so math is invented not discovered. It helps to communicate, but it's not real. There are no halves and there are no infinities. The only thing that happens as you keep dividing the so called stone (which is just a piece of the soup that's denser for reasons that are frankly not yet known to me) is that at some point it becomes too small for you to be able to deal with it. It's also possible that beyond a certain size it ceases to exist completely.

I am interested in improving the quality of my thinking process. Learning how to ask better questions, be more aware of fallacies, be aware of more effective and productive paradigms and of more radical/novel ideas that might not be particularly popular. List some of your favorite books on thinking. Thanks.

Well, I am interested in anything that could improve the quality of my thought. I don't care if it comes from Zen or Socrates. In my opinion systems thinking has one foot in spirituality and one foot in rationality so I don't mind being inclusive of alternative paradigms.

It's actually moving even from a scientific point of view, just not in the way that your eyes are perceiving it. No component that allows you to experience this image on your screen is static or fixed. It's all oscillating waves and vibrating particles. I would say that seeing it as static is an illusion as well.

Boethius, you are assuming that your 5 basic senses are actually providing you with a direct experience.

Not sure if parasites are driven by happiness motives but even if they are I can bet the kid's it's happening to isn't that happy.

Many spiritual doctrines including Buddhism and Taoism either hint at or directly state that Feminine (Yin) is the door to spirituality/emptiness/wave where the Masculine energy (Yang) is related to form/matter/particle. In my experience Ego is a byproduct of the paradigm of survival and body-identification. So if masculine is about form/matter/particle does that mean that masculine-centric society will also be more primitive/survivalist/fear-centric/ego-centric while a feminine-centric society would be more spiritual/heart-centric? Or is that masculine/form/particle is actually independent of ego/survival and simply serves a function without directly influencing ego-centrism? Thanks.

Hey Annatar1693, Google something called "chronotype". If you are forcing yourself to go earlier to bed than you actually need to you might be disrupting your circadian rhythm. Also make sure to expose yourself to some sunlight in the morning to reinforce your circadian rhythm. Best way is if you live in a house to take your laptop in the garden and do some of your work outside.

Consider the following paradigm shift - survival is a tool not a goal. Survival belongs to the realm of relativity, which means it's really just a temporary systemic phenomenon which is just a fancy way of saying an illusion and illusions can't be worthwhile goals. Allow yourself to directly experience how you function as a being when you identify with the body and make survival your goal. Now allow yourself to directly experience how you function as a being when you identify with awareness and inspiration and you see survival/body as a tool which is useful and important for your journey, but losing it isn't fatal. First experience = risk-aversion, fear, clingyness,mediocrity, contraction, scarcity-mentality, ego-centrism, plotting, scheming, hoarding, exclusiveness Second experience = the only risk becomes the risk of living a meaningless/purposeless life, appreciation, clarity, inspiration, expansion, plentitude-mentality, heart-centrism, sharing, inclusiveness With the second experience survival feels advantageous, but not real. With the first experience survival feels both impossible and mandatory which leads to a constant cognitive dissonance. Survival is a tool to help you uncover your self and bestow your gift to humanity, once you are done you no longer need it. "We are all here to do what we are all here to do." - The Oracle to Neo

Technically speaking, it is moving, however we don't seem to be able to experience that. According to Buddhism we have more than our 5 senses and the 5 basic senses are incapable of penetrating reality, and we actually have a total of 9 senses with the last 3 actually being able to penetrate into the heart of things. Whether you believe that or not is irrelevant, but it could be a nice thought exercise to consider that we are not functioning at our maximum due to an obsession with scientism/materialism/objectivism/rationalism. Modern science is beginning to become less and less interested in actual facts and more and more infatuates with gambling (probability theory). This is a complete neurosis that is of service to no one.

I know exactly how you feel. Around 6 years ago I suffered from terrible anxiety. It was so bad that I thought my brain wouldn't be able to handle it and I will descend into madness, which of course only made me more afraid because I didn't want to go mad. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't work, I couldn't talk to people it was hell. At one point it got so bad that I was more afraid of the anxiety than of actually dying so I contemplated suicide to stop the fear. I think this is the moment when I slowly started to realize that this wasn't really about survival but about my mind trying to figure out what's the absolute worst thing that can happen so that I could give it permission to rest. So I kept getting better and better and producing horror movies in my head. What if this, what if that. But how do I know this, how do I know that. How can I trust my senses, how can I trust my thoughts, what to trust bla bla bla. Absolute paranoia... Suffice it to say that this period of my life left me with hardcore trauma that I am still recovering from (successfully). The good news is that the anxiety is gone completely and guess what I am still alive. I don't remember the exact journey I had to go through to solve this but I remember a few cornerstone events which dissolved the problem. 1. I started taking magnesium and ashwagandha (this doesn't address the cause of the problem but helps the brain calm down as you work through your issues - it really works) 2. I met this psychotherapist/spiritual teacher and I told him how I am completely uncertain of what's real and what's not and how I can't stop doubting everything and he told me this: "If you are going to doubt everything you should also doubt your doubting as well." This was the first Eureka moment I had. I had been so immersed in my doubting that I had become incapable of actually observing what I was doing in my mind. It was now doubting for doubting sake. I had convinced myself that just because I am capable of conceptualizing a doubt in my mind this must be somehow valuable, but this was no longer rooted in my direct experience of reality, it was just me creating horror movies in my mind. His advice was so powerful to me that I felt instant relief. 3. I realized that doubts are simply the byproducts of beliefs. Whenever we adopt a certain worldview that's not based on our direct and honest experience but on some belief system, doubt starts creeping in because deep down we know we have never experienced that particular information that we've put there and we become afraid that we might be delusional. As we start letting go of those core beliefs, the corresponding doubts fade away as well. You see doubts aren't really capable of proving the belief true, only experience is. Doubts are just alarms that something is "fishy" in our world view. At the time I was a big Buddhist nerd and I had filled my head with all kinds of beliefs about what reality is, what the senses are, what experience is, what the mind is yada yada yada, but it was all doctrine not experience but I was clinging to it because I had invested so much time researching it that I didn't want to let it go. One day I just got sick and tired of believing shit that wasn't in my experience and I started letting go of that whole nonsense. I decided that I am no longer interested in other people telling me what the world is, but instead I was interested in directly experiencing what the world is for myself through honest inquiry based on experience, not fantasies, concepts and belief systems. I completely let Buddhism go and released another layer of mental instability. 4. I decided I wanted to visit this spiritual master in India that I had resonated with, so I did. I went on a solo trip to India for 40 days. We did satsang every day except for weekends. It was a direct experience inquiry as you go method that allowed me to uncover the awareness behind the thoughts and feelings - something many people report to have discovered after long years of meditation. Essentially I experienced this facet of my mind that was always the same regarding of what else was happening - whether I was afraid, or depressed, whether I was happy or sad it didn't really matter, there was this "silent awareness" place in my mind where thoughts and emotions had no foothold. It wasn't nothingness either, it was simply awareness. And it provided massive relief for me because the experience of it was of something really healthy, really stable, really reliable as opposed to the volatile storm of doubts, fears and madness that the lower facets of mind were. I could go there whenever I wanted and knowing that I no longer had to be a slave of my thoughts this alone deleted a massive portion of my anxiety. Once I came back home from India my mom said I was a completely transformed person. And I knew it because I never had a panic attack since then, and trust me it wasn't for lack of problems in my life. 5. Transcendental meditation - A really simple technique that you do twice a day that allows you to release stress, restore a harmonious state of mind, and give yourself a break. This teaches you that you don't need a reason to give yourself permission to let go and relax which is one of the reasons why we are so attached to fear - the belief that we need something else to give us permission to let it go. Don't cling to logic, logic is just a tool. You are more than your logic you can give yourself permission to relax for no reason, don't diminish yourself to just one of your faculties. 6. Watch Sadhguru and Eckhart Tolle on YouTube, They are cool guys who will gently guide you to a more harmonious state of mind which transcends this fear based living. So to summarize - I am still capable of fear but I never have generalized anxiety or panic attacks anymore. The good healthy fear somehow knows when to come on its own and protect me when I need protection - it doesn't require me bringing it up through my thoughts. I am not too concerned with survival either because I am not even sure that's a thing to be honest. I have discovered higher dimensions of experience such as inspiration and purpose which have become more important to me than survival. Ironically enough I am not acting in any reckless or self-destructive ways at all. I am embracing harmony in everything that I do and that's way more effective than being afraid. Don't resist the fear, don't resist the anxiety allow yourself to feel the fully. If you are afraid you will die, don't resist it, don't try to hide from it or suppress it, just be afraid you will die and see what happens it just flows through you like a jolt of electricity and disappears into the nothingness it came from. You realize it was never substantial, just some radio noise your brain picks up and lets go. It's liberating in fact it even becomes exhilarating the fear of death is completely transmuted into a little bit of excitement that flows through you. If you are really stuck in madness right now, don't despair, no matter how bleak it seems it really is you causing it, no matter how much you want to believe that your situation in life justifies your suffering it's really you causing it. Keep at it and soon you will transcend the need to hurt yourself this way. And most importantly remember this: Just because you have a thought, doesn't mean you have to believe it. You are the master not the slave. Cheers and good luck.

Are you trying to tell me that parasites that hatch their eggs in your brain and then eat you from the inside alive aren't God's love? How dare you!

You might be onto something here. Have we created a system that breaks our minds?