tatsumaru

In case you don't know this already - relieving symptoms and curing diseases isn't the same thing. When your foot is broken and you get morphine to dull the pain does that make your foot whole again? PPIs work in the same way. They suppress all the acid you are producing and that's why you don't feel the reflux burn. However the pathogenic microbes increase more and more because your primary defense against foodborne microbes (STOMACH ACID) gets disabled. Coincidentally the action of PPIs on H.Pylori is not related to its ability to suppress acid production. Instead PPIs inhibit the ability of H.Pylori to produce urease, which is what H.Pylori is using to produce ammonia in order to raise the pH of the stomach (pathogens thrive in alkaline environments) which is why PPIs are used in the classic triple-therapy (PPI + 2 antibiotics) when treating H.Pylori. Now, I am going to share with you a few resources regarding your gut health problems that you need to read in order to educate yourself so that you can heal yourself and ask better questions. Right now the questions you are asking aren't good and as a result we are wasting time explaining the super basics when there are already books that have this information. It is very likely that by reading these resources you will actually get all the answers to your questions and you will be able to heal yourself. If you are not willing to commit to educating yourself then you aren't really serious about healing yourself. Read this book to understand how stomach acid works: Why stomach acid is good for you - Jonathan Wright : https://www.amazon.com/Why-Stomach-Acid-Good-You/dp/0871319314/ Read this book to understand how digestion works: Digestive Wellness 5th edition - Elizabeth Lipski: https://www.amazon.com/Digestive-Wellness-Strengthen-Prevent-Digestion/dp/126001939X/ Read this book to understand how to identify and address gut diseases (includes information about SIBO/SIFO/IBS/IBD/H.Pylori and why PPIs ruin your health): The Gut Health Protocol - John Herron: https://www.amazon.com/Gut-Health-Protocol-Nutritional-Intestinal-ebook/dp/B00VCP5PKW/ Read this book to learn how to eat a healthful low-carb diet: The Keto Reset Diet - Mark Sisson: https://www.amazon.com/Keto-Reset-Diet-Metabolism-Forever-ebook/dp/B06Y56VD6P/ Bonus: This book might be helpful for bloating but I've not read it: The Bloated Belly Whisperer - Tamara Freuman: https://www.amazon.com/Bloated-Belly-Whisperer-Digestive-Distress-ebook/dp/B07CWS59NK/ Do not waste time begging people on the forum to be your doctor. I've already given you everything you need to solve this. Now it's up to you sit down and educate yourself. If you don't want to educate yourself, then check out John Brisson's gut health coaching service. If you don't want to do that either and you want to get different results by continuing to the same, no one can help you. After you read the books, if you still have questions I will be glad to help, but not if you are lazy. Good luck!

Hey @machiavelli, I am a nutritionist with deep knowledge of gut health and I've healed myself successfully from terrible gut problems including bloating. A probiotic is very unlikely to cure it, and might actually cause more harm. Bloating issues can have very complex and resistant causes. It can be SIBO/SIFO/LIBO/LIFO/IBD/IBS/H.Pylori etc. I don't want to scare you but I am extremely concerned about the fact that you've been taking PPIs long-term. PPIs were originally designed for short-term treatment of reflux disease and have been known to dramatically worsen gut health if taken long-term. PPI's are drugs that can actually cause SIBO by reducing stomach acid to the point where pathogenic microbes survive the trip through the stomach and take up shop in the small intestine. This can turn a small heartburn problem into a major SIBO problem (or worse). You will also be much more susceptible to food-borne illnesses and major pathogens like c.diff and h.pylori while on PPIs and other antacids. PPI use can lead to magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc and vitamin B12 deficiency. They can also lead to depression, IBS, and more (possibly due to these vitamin/mineral deficiencies). Research also shows that PPI's can lead to a dangerous overgrowth of intestinal Clostridia bacteria. Proton Pump Inhibitors were approved by the FDA to be taken for no more than 12 weeks. However, doctors have discretion over how to prescribe already approved drugs, and many doctors leave people on PPIs forever! Long-term PPI use is also correlated with gastritis, ulcer and stomach cancer. PPIs are not your friends in the long-term and as usual our misguided medical system is causing more harm than good. Most doctors do not know much about actual gut health and will not be able to help you. For starters understand that the majority of the bloating is probably caused by pathogenic bacteria which is fermenting the carbs in your diet and as a result producing various types of gas. Therefore the first thing you should consider is dramatically decreasing the amount of carbs in your diet, especially starchy carbs such as potatoes, rice, bananas but really you should start by minimizing all carbs including wheat and corn. This should ease your suffering a bit although it's not going to solve it, it will simply remove the pathogenic bacteria's favorite fuel from your system, but it's a great start. If this works for you consider asking your doctor to completely go off of the PPIs for the reasons I stated above. Even though the situation may seem dire people have fully recovered from worse as long as they were approaching the problem the right way. You will have to educate yourself on gut health and your best starting point is John Herron's Book "The Gut Health Protocol". It's not an easy read, but your alternative is to keep allowing misguided doctors to hurt you with their ignorance. Important: After you read the book you will realize that reflux disease isn't caused by too much acid, but by too little. What ends up happening is that due to not producing enough stomach acid in the first place, various pathogenic microbes including h.pylori overgrow in your stomach and when you eat carbs they produce a lot of gas which elevates the little acid you are producing up towards your esophagus. As a result you feel like you are overfilled with acid but actually you have too little and that's why these microbes are thriving down where the acid is most needed and they are pushing it away. PPIs make this situation significantly worse as they remove the little acid you've left and help even more microbes take home in your stomach. You actually need more acid not less, however you need it where the microbes are, not up in your esophagus where it's causing damage. You might actually have to supplement stomach acid (aka HCL) to solve this. However the first thing you should try is to remove the carbs from your diet as I said previously. As an experiment try eating a meal that consists of meat only (maybe just a steak, nothing else). If the bloating is much less then it's very likely that the situation is exactly as I am describing it. If that works, keep the low-carb diet and gradually wean yourself off of PPIs (with the help of your doctor). Alternatively you could work with a gut health coach. John Brisson of Fix Your Gut is quite good in my opinion. Let me know if you have any questions I'd be glad to answer any.

It's not a matter of logic. It's a matter of identity. Notice how you don't feel the need to ask "why should I help my best friend". This is because you identify with your friendship circle and feel a natural need to protect your identity. Or notice how mothers don't feel the need to ask "why should I love my baby". Once you become aware of all the blocks you create against inclusiveness and expansion you will understand that it's not a choice you are making. You are simply surrendering into your expansion. Caring arises out of feeling, not out of logic.

No difference between belief and faith. Trust is just the permission you give yourself to be vulnerable, nothing more. It has nothing to do with expectation or outcome. Beliefs have no place in spirituality. You can believe whatever you want. In all my years of spirituality it's always the priests and the pseudogurus who ask you to believe and have faith, because they simply don't know what's going on.

@Leo Gura I watched your video about "Why reality can't be a simulation" and I resonate deeply with your message of consciousness being everything. Not from a belief or wishful thinking perspective but simply due to having experienced for myself that the conceptual worlds we create in our minds in order to communicate are actually imaginary and that once they reach a certain level of complexity they can fool us into suspending disbelief and thinking that they are alive and real and can become a major distraction from direct experience. Same way once movies reach a certain threshold (24fps) we forget that it's just moving pixels and start thinking the people are actually there in front of us. When you say that science is as real as fiction, I know exactly or at least partially what you mean. However what puzzles me in that whole scenario is, if everything is just pure potential and creativity, then why does physics work so reliably and consistently? Why isn't it changing and morphing all the time? As far as we have experienced there are certain natural laws that have never ever changed even the slightest bit, such as the law of conservation of energy or the laws of thermodynamics. I understand that these laws are just made up shit, but they seem to work nevertheless. Are there actually some principles to creation and destruction, some actual laws that govern the formation and dissolution of this dream that is the interplay of form and emptiness? Thank you

Lol, I may end up becoming a Sith Lord eventually. After all "Only a Sith deals in absolutes". @Mu_ If the topic of surrendering your senses resonates with you, you may want to check out a book on Amazon called "Just Because Club". It's a secret gem for penetrating the veil of the matrix. I am still mustering the courage to try the exercises in it.

I am not going to preach or claim anything in this post, I am simply going to share two radically different perspectives on what reality is because I am curious about people's experience of going further than Oneness/God/Universe. I've noticed that a lot of spiritual teachings talk about merging with universe, oneness with everyTHING, union, god-unity, losing borders between internal external and so on, essentially all the Advaita stuff I've read is about this belief that identifying with the universe instead of your body is enlightenment or that somehow the goal is to mix yin with yang, day with night, life with death, inner with outer and achieve some enlightenment soup out of this which never made any sense to me. Not only it didn't lead to any understanding of any sort but also it didn't seem to match any of what the Buddha described as the Buddha-nature in his teachings (a reality beyond coming and going). On the other hand if you go to the more advanced Buddhist and Taoist stuff there are multiple warnings against this Oneness mentality. For example: "A Buddha said, identifying with anything, even the universe at large, is an ego illusion." Lao Tzu said, “The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to yin and yang. Yin and yang give birth to all things.” (Notice how Oneness/Union which is synonymous with God/Brahman isn't the ultimate truth) Theravada Buddhism suggests that maya (Oneness + Yin/Yang) is a distortion, rather than an illusion; whereas in Vajrayana, the perceived reality of maya is considered literally unreal, while Mahayana Buddhists see the universe as a manifestation of Avidya or ignorance. Theravada is an offshoot of the earlier teachings of the Buddha while Mahayana is based on the later teachings with the Heart sutra being one of its core texts. So I am curious if anyone has actually surrendered to or directly experienced a reality beyond the magic show of oneness and maya, beyond gods and heavens, beyond unity. If so I'd love to hear about their experience

I think this might be similar to how boys in the third grade pull girls hair and call them names when they like them and don't know how to express it. Probably a bunch of people just secretly want to (*& you. Not easy being a girl in an ocean of frustrated and lost men.

Feels like his soul left the game and his biological suit was left alone and soulless to roam around and be slave to its compulsions.

Notice how the ancient masters came up with all kinds of stuff as a result of their spiritual journeys - they invented yoga, qigong, ayurveda, shamanism, druidry or look at the renaissance art, or look at Rumi's poetry or look at what the legends about the ancient Buddhas say - flying in the sky, turning fish into birds (Tilopa), changing from male to female (Guan Yin), Becoming light (Gautama Buddha)... And for some reason all we have to show for our journeys is noticing that we are alive. Not only that but it doesn't really solve our ignorance/suffering either it simply offers a place to rest in. I don't know, I just feel like I am missing something, that more has to be surrendered. A spiritual friend of mine suggested a long time ago that even the 5 senses are deceivers and believing them also needs to be surrendered in order to penetrate truth. I feel like a painter who just stares at the blank canvas and wonders if that's the perfect painting.

Because most of the times it's the girls that are doing the rejection not the guys therefore the involuntary part falls on males most of the time. Also notice that it's way more likely to die a virgin as a guy than as a female. This is because we live in a society where a small portion of men date the majority of the women and also because it is the guys who have to do the approaching. It is considered desperate for a girl to be doing the approaching unless the guy is super high-class or whatever. Also from my personal experience with women, women aren't so insanely, moment-to-moment obsessed with sex as guys are. Not saying that women aren't sexual beings, they definitely are, but guys are just ridiculous, sex is 50%-90% of male thought probably even with intellectuals. Most girls masturbate way less often than guys do and watch way less porn than guys do. And when guys start watching porn to relieve their anxiety, eventually they get complacent and stop chasing the real thing because the porn fries their dopamine circuits and their brains don't work properly anymore and they become like neutered animals. Also IIRC incel is a particular type of man who's not only not getting laid but also quite resentful/hateful of women which is only pointing to the fact that he's in a lot of pain and super frustrated because he's aware that other men are getting laid and it is just him that's not getting laid so he's turning his frustration into hate towards women. And certainly some women can be cruel bitches, but still, great men don't blame the world for their problems.

Well in all honesty the whole notion of enlightenment is just something I heard from somewhere. Essentially I have no idea what it even means or if its a real thing, its just a noise in my head. If I had to guess it has to do something with light. But if we remove all ideologies and beliefs all I feel is this strain, this search to understand what is going on. Honestly if we drop the whole act, the jobs, the marriages, the scientific research, the philosophies and all other layers of noise we have created and accumulated I am just a piece of being that has no clue what's going on. I don't remember where I came from and why, and I have no clue where I am going. If I had to define enlightenment myself it be for me to figure out what's going on. I mean obviously I know a little bit from direct experience such as love, harmony, awareness etc but I still have no clue what's going on, I don't even know who I am, what I am and when I am. I do not resonate with spiritual teachings which suggest that enlightenment is to simply accept this state and that's it. There's this nagging sense in the background that's screaming "JOURNEY INCOMPLETE". And of course there are certain desires related to the so-called dream, but there is this arch-desire to figure out what's going on that trumps and saturates them all and often makes them feel irrelevant. If there was a button that I could press to trade everything to figure out what's happening I would press it without hesitation. Mostly because I feel that life's whole point is that anyway. As for the knowing/knower I am not sure. It feels like it's synonymous with thinking. I'd say that it comes and goes too although it feels more dense than usual mental masturbation/rationalization. If regular thinking is water, this is like honey. This has been my experience as well. After all the Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. I do not always enjoy the excruciatingly slow pace of unfolding though. Sometimes it takes 10 years for a tiny insight and breakthrough. What I meant was that I can't simply accept that I am everything when I feel relative. And I've been asked by spiritual teachers to realize that I am everything simply because I don't conceptualize borders in the naked awareness state. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”. - Carl Jung However I try to shine the light of awareness on everything that I do and thus I don't relate to the life of a cassette tape and that's why I don't think it's a good analogy for someone who is actually on the spiritual journey. I could be more conditioned than I think however.

I do not perceive myself or my experience as enlightened, therefore I wish to go further and I am investigating in what ways I am blocking/preventing realization and possible transcendence. You could of course ask me how would I recognize enlightenment when it happens and I guess my answer is that there would be some sort of certainty for some sort of non-belief reason that there's no going further than that. When Leo pointed out my unexamined belief in space I had a tiny moment like this one from the Matrix where Neo realized that the air he was breathing was a belief: I contemplated if my perception of space is illusory. Realized that I am not sure what the 'there' that the eyes are perceiving is. No further insights evolved out of this inquiry. The only reason there's definition I think is because I am trying to communicate my direct experience of awareness to you. I think that I am aware of the uncovering of the unknown that you are speaking of. However I still equate this with the so called 'silent aware' that is peaceful and still but doesn't provide any clarity by itself. Sure, I am breathing air and I am not separate from air. And from that perspective it seems like I do not exist independently which I most likely don't. Regardless I am only conscious of the air that I am breathing, not all the air everywhere even though I am connected with it by breathing it. Something is making it that I am not the awareness of the whole earth or the whole cosmos but simply the awareness of my own bubble so to speak. No matter what analogies are given I can't escape from the direct experience of not being conscious or aware of everything. I thought the analogies in your example weren't that great though, why would compare a human being to some recording. This is not about logic it's about direct experience. If you don't have an explanation for it don't fill the gap with beliefs. That's fine. By the way the Rumi quote in your signature made me cry tears of appreciation.

I am not sure what the difference between experiencing and a self is. In terms of where (whatever that means) in experience the sense of self comes, I would say that it feels like it's equivalent to the sensation of awareness. If one can observe the coming and going of so-called self then clearly there's something that's observing this coming and going, something which facilitates the coming and going of the self. I do not perceive awareness to be coming and going, feels to me like it's always silently projecting light in the background and the only thing I can do is to either notice it or be distracted and identify with something from the magic show. It's like there's a choice between watching the movie or noticing the light of the projector. Could it be that you are equating self and desire? That doesn't make any sense. If part of your experience is that there's separation and another that there isn't then this feels more like some sort of delusion than an actual realization. "This separate body isn't separate". Not resonating with this.

I think this happens when a person begins their transitioning form seeking external validation towards self-actualization. The first identity is saying I need to make sure I "fit" the second one is saying "what do you want to create?" "I want to let go of everything that isn't me". In time a person realizes that no one really fits and the whole notion of normalcy is just a conspiracy for mediocrity. Everyone suppresses their authentic personality and gifts out of fear to be labeled an outsider and banished from the tribe. Paradoxically this is one of the sources of their greatest suffering because this way they abandon their humanity and submit to all kinds of resistances and neuroses, they never uncover their gifts and they never contribute anything to humanity. Their lives are reduced to echoing the trends that are set by visionaries, leaders or often lunatics. Notice how a lot of PUA teachers teach you how to look LIKE someone who is confident, valuable and in tune with their purpose by learning some scripts consisting of things that some ACTUALLY actualized people said somewhere. And notice how actualized people realizing they no longer need external approval or consensus will act confidently naturally and will say the right things without studying any scripts. This is moving from being an actor to being yourself.

Location is just a mathematical idea that is useful but doesn't really mean anything from a direct experience point of view. To conflate direct experience with mathematics is in my opinion a fallacy. I have never experienced a location directly so I can't tell you where it is located. From my perspective I am always where I am and there's never a location except here. Although I can conceptualize what 'there' is I never get to experience it. And since there's no there, there's probably no here either. The direct experience of this 'I amness' is simply awareness which is not unlimited (e.g. I don't feel the ants crawling on the tree's bark and I don't feel the pain of a dog kicked in China). The closest thing I can compare to what my direct experience feels like is this black hole gif: Moving but going nowhere. The planet is like a treadmill.

Above everything else respect yourself enough to not hold on to grudges and maintain 'poor me' stories in your mind. You are not punishing anyone else but yourself with your resentment. Don't worry about revenge, ignorant people are already punishing themselves all the time with anger, jealousy, pettiness, regrets, greed all the time. The only reason this exists is because you are identifying with the 'poor me' movie running in your mind and you think happiness lies in fixing the movie. Movie's already ended, get out of the cinema before they close or at least choose a better movie to watch. If you can in 10000% honesty forgive and move on without going to the funeral then you don't need to go, but make sure you are not fooling yourself just to hide from your fears.

Someone's been watching too much Death Note... You were ignorant once too. Should you have been killed for it. Monkeys had less potential than humans once, should they have been killed? Evolution doesn't start with perfection. Instead of killing ignorant people, find a way to share your light with them in an appropriate way. We are all on our journey from the jungles to the mountain tops. A lot of people became ignorant because they were taught and brought up by other ignorant people.

If your main goal is to be perceived as nice then definitely don't do it. That's just nonsense theatrics. I personally hate weddings and funerals and avoid most of them because they are unbearably boring and nonsensical to me (funerals less so than weddings). However trying to hide from your past might be worse for you than confronting it. You can just go not to pay your respects but to simply forgive, let go and move on. And you will have the bonus of proving you are not a coward. Or else your past will haunt you and every time someone mentions their grandmother you will remember how you are scared by your past and cringe. Only petty people hold eternal grudges. Forgive, let go and move on. But don't play the theatrics, it's lame as fuck and it only teaches you to not be authentic.

Nothing wrong with peace. In fact it's likely a prerequisite for spiritual progress. Without being grounded in awareness, madness is a likely outcome when social constructs start falling apart on the journey. My intuition is that I haven't solved the awareness puzzle completely either so further inquiry could still yield benefits. I have taken a note to book a call with you in the future. Interesting. I just realized how I was thinking of it in terms of a 'here' and 'there'. How can I surrender my center?

This isn't meant to validate anything, it's more like a campfire chat for me where everyone shares their stories and I wonder about it. It is my understanding that even if one achieves a perfect scholarly understanding of reality but hasn't experienced it that is still not enlightenment (if there's even such a thing) and I like to call it Ego enlightenment, like someone who knows everything about sex but hasn't had any. When I was in India with a teacher we did a simple mindfulness of awareness exercise where the teacher was pointing us toward that which is aware of happiness but isn't happy itself. She called it the 'silent aware' and claimed this to be enlightenment. Now whatever that is, awareness or whatever you want to call it, it's definitely something I had overlooked before and had never noticed that I don't have to identify with thoughts in order to exist. So in a way this trip brought me great peace because I recognized the ability to not be a slave of thoughts. It was very similar to Advaia/Ramana realization but I'd say it went a bit further because the teacher said "this isn't oneness, because there isn't oneness without a many". However what bothered me was that the teacher tried to extrapolate this realization in order to explain all of existence which I think a lot of people do in order to silence the burden of the search so they turn it into a belief system. They say stuff like - notice how there are no borders in your awareness, there's no me, there's no time etc so therefore this is eternity and complete enlightenment! - EEEEHHHRRR - wrong. I am simply not creating any concepts in this state and I am resting from conceptualization in my naked awareness, that is all. A lot of spiritual people even serious ones when they reach a major realization or breakthrough of some sort they decide that this the final realization and I've always wondered why people decide that this is IT and there's no more going further. And the fact that different people decide it at different levels always bothered me a bit because it seems that it's a belief and not actual realization for some of the participants. Another problem is that a lot of these people can't answer any actual questions about creation and the workings of the universe which they should be able to if they have arrived at the source from which everything is created and manifested. How can you be enlightened and still have zero clue what's going on. They fill the gaps with theories and concepts like chaos, randomness, playful universe, "nothing ever happened" etc, Just because the duality might not be real doesn't mean that there's no experience of the magic show and the fact that that person is clueless about "the director" of the magic show suggests that either enlightenment is some sort of incomplete wisdom or that there is further work to be done. I have heard from a spiritual friend that your beliefs might matter when you die. For example it is said that there is a dimension of experience which manifests your beliefs and you will meet the god you believe in there when you die, but not because it's real, more like because you were transported to the dimension of your imagination or something like this. He also suggested that if you really want to transcend all the way to the source you have to drop beliefs and surrender to what is without expecting to find gods and heavens and elves and buddhas and so on. I've been struggling with this surrender thing though, because I always expect for something to happen when I surrender. So I never surrender really.

I am aware of that perspective however I am suggesting that consciousness is still and never changed or morphed into anything and that which morphs is something else, possibly consciousness's desire to play manifesting in the form of maya. Do you feel like you can go further still? Seems to me that although you've achieved some realization if I asked you how anything works you wouldn't be able to say or you will give some cop out answer such as 'nothing ever happened' which might be true for the absolute Self, but it's not explaining how the absolute self manifests its desires into the form of a dream.

My understanding is that direct experience is direct experience, not anything else. I am not arguing that so called waking life is more real than the dream that occurs within that waking life. I am suggesting that all of this which is constantly morphing and transforming, regardless of its density or properties or relative verity or relative persistence is all a dream altogether - both falling asleep and waking up, life and death, beginning and end, here and there, time and space etc. However I am also saying that there is a further still. There's the actual still light of the projector projecting the movie that's beyond the universe and that the universe is the movie and that we are mistaking the movie for the light in a similar way we suspend our disbelief in the cinema so that the movie can make sense. So to say that direct experience equals the universe seems incorrect to me, why would you reduce direct experience to the universe? And if you say 'because there isn't anything else but the universe' or 'the universe is all there is' make sure this isn't a belief or a premature conclusion. How did you manage to surrender beyond the coming and going, beyond space and time? Did you transcend the 6 senses (5 sense + thinking)?

I went through a hellhole a few years ago. Pure torture. I thought my body would crumble apart from suffering. I wasn't sure I could actually bear all the pain I was feeling. I thought it was impossible for a person to feel worse. Pure suffering and despair on every level - health, wealth, sanity, spirituality, social life and all at once, couple that with panic attacks and clinical depression and extreme loneliness. I wanted to kill myself multiple times per day for 6 years straight but I was even afraid that this wouldn't help and I will be transported into an even worse hell which resulted in even more suffering, I thought I would just snap and break. I am only saying all this so that maybe you will trust me that I know what true suffering feels like. I am not sure why it happened and why I had to go through it, but I did solve it. There were many problems that I thought were 100% unsolvable in my life like for example all kinds of health symptoms that no doctor understood - all of them are gone now. Solving everything was excruciatingly hard and slow. Had to read many books, had to think myself almost to death, had to try countless supplements, had to talk to therapists, had to try all kinds of spiritual practices, had to unlearn millions of things, had to learn millions of things, had to change my mindset millions of times etc. Honestly I am not sure why the price was so high, I bet less than 0.01% of humanity goes through so much pain. Regardless, it is solvable if you really want to solve it. I super highly recommend that you supplement daily with 400mg magnesium citrate or magnesium glycinate as well as ashwagandha, they helped me so much to not completely fall apart during the toughest times, I think I would have died without them. If you need to talk to someone and discuss different problems and potential solutions, feel free to PM me. Good luck buddy, happiness is possible even for those stuck in the lowest pits of hell.

Which video are you referring to?