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Actualizing in a Psych Ward Part 4: I am Here, I am Present Despite the shocking circumstance I have been placed in, I have tried to remain as present as possible. I found being present and in the moment a necessity especially given my anxiety, both about being in the psych ward and what I need to do after. Every time I caught my mind wandering into a spiral of what am I going to do about school, I tried to bring myself back to the present moment. There isn't anything that is school related I could do right at that moment. I didn't have access to any of my materials, a computer, internet, or means to contact my professors. There is no use in worrying about it right now. The only thing thinking about this will do is that it will take me away from the now and into a state of anxiety and helplessness. It's counterproductive and irresponsible when it comes to getting better to say the least. I also tried to journal about my thoughts and feelings during my time in the ward since it is a lot to process. A lot of the content of those entries have been summarized in the previous posts. While it is a lot to process and a lot of that processing can be dealt with by being present, after being in the psych ward for five days, I still needed time to let out all of my emotions regarding the situation. I feel that there is only so much you can process when your primary objective is to survive. Sometimes you get so caught up in surviving and saving your ass that you don't have enough time or energy to take everything in. And that's fine. After anything like this it's important to keep yourself in check and be gentle with yourself for a while. During that time I decided to meditate as much as possible and to note down any of my insights. I have explained some of them including my own shadow work and my evaluation of the mental health system I was dropped into. There will be more to come in future sections. This video does explain pretty well about how the place was like. While I didn't have the experience of being tied up and given medication against my will, it felt as if I was being punished for having issues rather than getting help. There is a lot of critiques that can be made in how we approach mental health and suicidal tendencies. It is definitely an over kill for a large chunk of the people who have a lot of issues with depression. In this video I believe she does say that after people get released from the psych ward, there is a period of about 3 months where that person is at more risk of suicide and self harm. Given my experience I can see how that can be the case. While I didn't have the urge to do anything reckless upon leaving, I felt really shaken up by the experience to where I decided to take time off of school. There is no way I can makeup 2 tests, 2 3 hour long discussions, and a term paper in a state like this. Again, it's a lot to process. Going off of the stats of how people feel for about 3 months after the visit, I think it is absolutely insane to be put in a facility for wanting to kill yourself only to want to kill yourself more after the stay!?!?!?! That makes for not only an ineffective system but a counterproductive one.

Yeah it’s practically suicide to not love yourself enough to meditate for at least 20 minutes a day.

Just suffer through it and don't entertain any thoughts of suicide. You will come out fine in a few weeks. It's just a temporary chemical low. It will lift rather quickly.

Stage blue on gender: This culture has turned its back on Jesus. This is what we were warned about in 2 Timothy, where people are unholy and ungrateful in the end times. Where "men can be women" and "women can be men". God gave you a body that was perfectly designed for you and your soul. This generation is idolatary; it's created a religion from this gender theory - did you know that the founder of gender theory caused two brothers to commit suicide? - and they say it's about compassion, but really they just hate God. They only want to spite him. So sad, Jesus better be coming soon.

Good points, but I have to disagree with the above ones. Unless we are saying that ISIS suicide bombers are spiritual masters. They sure are confident.

I don't reckon gore videos are good for this sort of thing. I don't think they're helpful or important. But I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it. Gore videos are mostly like watching a mindless horror event. Putting aside the gore videos involving intentional violence, with murder and suicide. Maybe it invokes something positive from you when you watch someone dying in an accident going about their day to day life. Doesn't really invoke that in me. There isn't any emotionality and sentiment to a gore video. Maybe if it was a documentary or news report combined, talking about who the person was and giving it context, I think it would be meaningful. Otherwise you're just seeing blood and violence (accidental violence) where there's no soft emotional impact to it. It's just a gross video.

Self-actualization is not possible without great hormones. I replace all of them. I am a medical student and replace ALL of my hormones. my energy levels went from the 5th percentile to the 95th percentile. In early twenties my life was starting to go down the gutter. My life started to fall apart in every domain, basically at the brink of suicide. I was severely depressed. At one point I considered suicide. I found out that multiple of my hormones were very low. I started multiple hormone replacement. Whereas before my life was a nightmare, it has been a dream ever since. I have been doing this for some years now. I started to dream again. I found purpose. Something I want to contribute. Now I also have the energy, mood and health to keep working on my dreams, to enjoy working on my dreams. If you are interested I wrote about my story here. How my life went to shits and how multiple hormone replacement gradually turned it around. My dream is to live in a world where no one is held back from living an at least decent life the way I was. Even though not my fault, it is my life. And thus my responsibility. Without accepting and acting on that I just don´t know where I would be today. For sure I wouldn´t be writing this. Biological vitality is the single most important condition in my life. In your life. Vitality determines to a large extent the way our lives turn out, not just our outer lives, but our inner lives as well.I experienced how a reduction in biological vitality can send you on a relentless downward spiral. The stronger the decrease in your vitality the steeper the slope. In its wake over months to years my life, the only life I can be sure of having, went to shits. Many people are unsuspecting. Unaware of these invisible forces exerting their power relentlessly every single day. "Living life to the fullest" is just not possible without great hormones.:Life is like poker—you can get a good hand, play it perfectly, but still end up with a bad outcome. A great vitality is the ass in your poker game of life. Even with an immaculate vitality you can screw up the game, but chances are you do so much less likely. The two most important factors determining your vitality are genetics and hormones, the latter you can negotiate. Why do I post all this? Trying to provide value: My purpose is to raise awareness. People need to know that there are biological shackles many of us carry. Shackles which make it much harder to live a life we like. Because it does just cost me a little time but perhaps can help others out a lot. Had I known what I know now, it would have saved me lots of money, happiness, effort, researching, experimenting. And suffering. What I take. But what works for me might not work for others. Everyone is different, but the target range I aim for is in the upper tertile of the youthful reference range. Just falling somewhere within the reference range is not “optimal”. The reference range covers 95% of the population. Certainly more than 5% of the population have hormones bad enough to warrant intervention. TRT: Test Cyp (50mg subQ 2x/week), HcG (250iu subQ 2x/week), anastrozole (0.25mg 1x/week), dutasteride 0.5mg 1x/week (as my androgens are high I don´t need the DHT). cortisol: cortisone acetate (20mg/d HC equivalent) (split into 4 daily doses) thyroid: 1.5 grains NDT GH: 1 iu genotropin pfizer (aiming for IGF1 of 250) prebed fludrocortisone 01.mg/d morning melatonin: 0.25mg sublingual prebed Other stuff I do: keto/paleo, HIIT, weekly rapamycin, a bunch of supplements (all of them together less worth than a slight alteration in hormones), some exercise every day, sleep around 6h (wake up refreshed without alarm -before HRT I needed 8+). You can´t outdrug/outbiohack/outlifestyle a bad hormonal profile. For more practical stuff I wrote a guide Here. It took 1000s of hours to figure out. Hopefully some of you will find value in it. Many of you guys will say that I am screwing myself. Well, to them I say that I am aware that this is uncharted territory. I am aware of the risks. But to me the cost-benefit analysis is a no-brainer. If I had to, I would sign a contract to rather live 10 more years with my new vitality and then die instead of living to one hundred with the dreadful state I was in before. Life is about filling time and not passing it. What does this mean for you? My guess is that around 1-2 out of 5 of you has a hormonal imbalance/deficiency severe enough to warrant intervention. Hormones have an INSANE connection to depression. Unfortunately they are VERY neglected. If you have been depressed for a long time it might be worth looking into your hormones. ANY hormone deficiency (GH/IGF1, sex hormones, thyroid, cortisol) will cause brain fog, subpar cognition, lethargy, anhedonia, low motivation, low mood -> all of which over time evolve into depression. Certainly you don´t have the necessary energy/mood/motivation/health to be improving yourself to the best of your ability. Please consider getting a blood test done. The risk and opportunity cost of not doing it is huge.

@blankisomeone Many a poetic, emotional and thoughtful people have committed suicide. If you felt your life was reaching an end or conclusion, anyone would become existential and emotional. Often times the people who are most disturbed and in suffering are the most existential and romantic. (Careful not to draw an arrow of causality there) You see, there's one big romance all humans invariably have. And that's the ego. Deep down, we are in love with our life story and our own journey. We don't find anything as interesting as ourselves. And this is universally a source of emotion, poetic ramblings, etc.

Teachers are in the dream. There isn’t actually a dream though. Any “enlightened” teacher is only appearing to teach. There are no teachers. Ramana never taught anything. Have you ever performed self inquiry to its end? Just how many people do you think went through that ordeal? Not many. Anyone who actually did it was going to do it anyway, even if via literal suicide by gunshot to the head, which people do all the time. God would never stop the rape of a child, because there is only infinite everything. Infinity doesn’t just put things into perspective, it destroys any pretense of separation.

It seems to me that essentially what you are asking here is "How do I know what's true?" aka "What can I truly trust?". As the oracle said "It is a pickle, no doubt about it..." This pursuit of truth has puzzled most western philosophers, led countless people to commit suicide or become paranoid and resulted in a ton of weird literature without much to offer for all that effort in return. And yet the answer was always there within you hiding in plain sight. Let's see if I can help you notice the little bugger that's been causing all that needless suffering. First a bit of context is needed... There exists a parallel world of words that was created by you and resides in your memory that your ego's been using to play tricks on you. Words are just noises that you store in your memory warehouse for the purposes of communicating your experiences. They are not really our world, they are just useful. The only reason we are asking a question like "How do I know this glass really exists?" is because we have created the concept of glass in the first place. What you are referring to as a glass is actually just you experiencing something that's denser at that location. The glass is no more separate from its environment than your hair is separate from your head. Why is this important? Because understanding this collapses the whole need to answer the question of whether the glass is real or not, because there was never a glass to begin with. This in turn frees you from doubting your senses because your senses never really told you there was a glass there, that was just a belief you were taught to tell yourself, and the price of every belief is doubt. Doubt is really just a reminder that this is something you made up in your mind. So the first thing to do to free yourself from this issue is to ask yourself - are you having doubts about your experiences or about the stories that you are running in your head regarding those experiences? Very quickly you will realize that doubting experiences doesn't make sense because even doubting your experiences is an experience. Doubt belongs to the parallel world of beliefs. Truth however is to be found within the real world of experience... Next time you have some feeling become aware of that feeling, don't distract yourself with thoughts. Then observe what's the difference between feeling a feeling and thinking about a feeling. This will restore the proper split between the real world of experience and the parallel world of concepts which is just your own creation. As you pay more and more attention to your feelings, observe how certain experiences don't make sense to you and feel meaningless and how other experiences make sense to you and feel meaningful and attract you. This is your inner compass. It's always been there for you but you were taught to ignore or suppress it by the collective ego. The ego tries to convince your heart (which btw is impossible) that this may not feel meaningful now but it will start making sense once some bs goal is reached. Once you reach that goal, there might be a slight sense of accomplishment but essentially it won't change anything - that's why a lot of people when they get rich - they become more depressed because they have no more stories left to fool themselves with and the unaddressed existential crisis that was suppressed for a lifetime finally starts to re-surface again at full power. The reason why the ego is doing that is because it maintains itself through struggle if there's no struggle it will be gone, so it better try to convince you that struggling makes sense. It better try to convince you to doubt your heart... And finally the key... You say "since our minds are so malleable and under great external influence." In order for somebody to be in integrity he or she needs to know who he or she is, because integrity is to be true to one's self. The unaware person is indeed volatile for they don't have any standard to be in integrity with. Yesterday it was trendy to become a doctor, the unaware person signed up at the medical university. The day after that someone said software engineering is the best career to have, a bunch of unaware people started signing up for that. Only to realize they hate it and they suck at it too. Our minds are not really malleable or under great external influence because feelings are not choices. You can't be convinced to feel love or happiness, I dare you to try it. What you can be convinced to do is to ignore your feelings because you are the captain of your ship, the feelings are there to guide you. Now I bet you won't date a person you aren't attracted to, right? It never works out. So why "date" any other thing in life that you are not attracted to? Realize that attraction is not a choice and you will reclaim your trusty inner compass again. After that - follow your inspiration without hesitation or you will end following your hesitation without inspiration. Cheers.

Oh, they are perhaps even better for that purpose. You can use psychedelics to accomplish some crazy deep healing of psychological trauma and wounds. Not long ago I had this crazy experience where I became my own father and healed some deep baggage from my childhood which simply would not be possible otherwise or through any kind of talk therapy. I never had a lot of trauma so I mostly don't use psychedelics for that. But many people would benefit enormously from it. It could save hundreds of thousands of people from depression, rage, self-hate, abuse, and suicide. Once you're able to access states of infinite love, the healing potential for psychological trauma is unmatched. If psychedelics were widely available, talk therapists would be out of a job. So would gurus.

What is worth doing and what isn't worth doing depends totally on what kind of person you are and what your goal in life is. People dedicate their lives to many things, for example some find gaming a waste of time (especially on self-help forums like this), while others make a career out of it. For the first person there are a set of different values and priorities, that's why he or she might find gaming a distraction from those values, for example if the said person finds value in studying and taking courses or maintaining high grades in a university setting. Then gaming will mean distraction and loss of valuable time that could've been used for studying. For the second person, if he or she games more, that's just more experience for his or her gaming career, so it's a win for them. So you see, it totally depends what your likes, dislikes, values and principles in life are. And even if the person is pursuing a different goal than becoming a professional gamer or a professional beatboxer, like you mentioned, or a singer.. doing things even for fun can have value in it. Like you see many professional people in all areas of life, some of them will take up a hobby like an instrument, singing, beatboxing, gaming, sports, etc. Because we are human, not work-robots or money-making machines, in the end. Things can be valuable for different reasons. Sometimes just as raw and basic value like part of survival (you're gaming after a long day of work to ease stress, or else you'd go insane or even commit suicide, without something to calm you and take the stress away), other times as complex as providing value for society in various ways or leaving behind knowledge for the coming ages (for people spending hours a days on Quora, forums, blogs/vlogs, people making free courses, people who share their knowledge, people who volunteer as listeners to people in emotional crisis). Or taking walks in nature for your well-being. Or making art for therapeutic purposes, or just because you simply like it. There's no need to be always a serious reason behind the things you do. Things you enjoy doing are usually not a waste of time. It's helpful to know the deep reasons behind your actions if you want to hold yourself accountable and to not lose time on less important things when there needs to be more focus on the important ones. Most of the things you do will be survival related, but that's okay. It still helps to be conscious of them. And other times things you do will be for purely the sake of happiness it brings. High values are usually: responsibility, discipline, perfection, ambition, hard-work. But you can also find value in recreational activities and connection with others, that's why people sing, dance and create art without making money from it. If every time you beatboxed you had to do it for money, would it have the same value and meaning to you? Some things cannot be measured by money and they're still valuable. For example if you want a good relationship, you might invest money in it (relationship therapy, gifts, vacations, traveling, creating a home for you two), but the relationship itself doesn't have a monetary value. Your girlfriend won't have a price because she is not an object. And you cannot buy a relationship, it just doesn't work that way. Nor does the relationship bring money to you (or at least it shouldn't), yet you find value in going out on dates. Neither can you buy health. You can buy things to improve your health, but most things to maintain your health are free, like exercise and good sleep. You cannot buy sleep, you cannot buy health if you destroyed it with smoking or fast food. Health doesn't have a monetary price, yet it's very valuable, if not the most valuable thing. Health is not money, yet you pursue activities to maintain your health. You cannot buy reputation, yet it is valuable and you make actions to be viewed as a good person. You cannot buy talent, but it has value. Friends are not money, yet you may find value in friendship. And so on... Yes, you need a career and you need to make a living, but you cannot base your whole life on only pursuing money. Maybe you're in a phase of life when you are working towards a career and that's why now money and success is the most important thing. Being financially independent is a very fundamental thing and you should work towards it very early in life. Just don't neglect other things you find valuable either. Because you'll never be happy by only pursuing money and fame. And the best way to earn money is through your passions, but only if they are realistic. So I think pursuing your passions, working towards financial independence and hanging out with friends, having a relationship, etc. and hobbies are all worth pursuing. And things that are unrealistic, are bad to your reputation, or your health or are making you lazy are not worth pursuing.

If you are in fact free from suffering, ignore this: Enlightenment = shame so intense that it dissolves into cosmic suicide. Insanely terrible. But how can “you” know what’s true if there is no you? “Tricky” as Leo says, doesn’t cut it. Experience is delusion? Is delusion bad? Of course not. Because neither is death. There is only “is.” What is liberation? And for whom? There is only happiness. Maybe I’m coming from a different perspective. For me, sadness is the most transcendent form of happiness. Literally, I’m weird. Unless somehow the actual emotion of sadness has been completely hidden from me. I love nothing more than sadness, and also gratitude. What could be more beautiful than sadness?

No, but they are more enlightened then someone higher up the spiral. Enlightenment is basically just returning to where you began. So in my opinion the spiral starts at enlightenment and as you go up you are getting further away from enlightenment, but ultimately circling around back to enlightenment. I suspect that is why people become enlightened period. I don't think any human has actually gone all the way up the spiral and come back to enlightenment yet. The people who become enlightened are because they fall so low on the spiral by some freak accident they flip to the other side. For example Eckhart Tolle talked about how he was basically on the verge of suicide from the meaningless and apathy he felt when his experience happened. True apathy is the lowest a human can go, if you go lower then it you may find out you don't exist at all. That could also be why meditation and silencing the mind leads to enlightenment, because you are almost tricking yourself into not existing by not thinking. Stage blue or stage red people can seem primitive but a lot of the time they are actually more connected to the stillness and acceptance than say a stage orange or green person from what I've seen.

Suicide was created by ego for long term survival. Since we are conscious enough to understand that now, and at present have enough technology within and outside to overcome suffering, suicide should no longer be an option.

Depends on what you mean by enlightened states. Jhana 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and the unfabricated (nirvana; end of time) might aptly be called enlightened states. Unity consciousness, when experienced, will pretty much invariably be assumed to be the goal of the spiritual path when it is made lasting (it pretty much never lasts). Same with jhana 3 and higher, oftentimes. What I mean by enlightenment is the complete collapse of the real sense of here/there, now/then, I/you, distance, good/bad, personal doer-ship, and reality in any sense whatsoever, to the point where it is inconceivable that any self that is separate from everything could "come back," because it's recognized it wasn't actually ever there -- the only thing that seems to be able to bring this about is absolute egoic suicide. Perhaps there is a pleasant path that somehow leads to it, but it would only be pleasant by virtue of doing extremely pleasant things in meditation, etc. The enlightenment would happen completely in spite of the pleasantness. The pleasantness only serving to make the process less painful. I can imagine some may not only get enlightened pain free, but filled with bliss -- that would be due to profound meditation skill. No idea if it's true though. And of course, no one gets enlightenment.

The premise of this thread is a complete misunderstanding. Near-enlightenment is like a lucid dream, but instead of running around excitedly, there's just a role and there's the absolute obviousness that anything behind that role (a person) is completely full of shit, because there is no person. Ever felt a peculiar trustworthiness and unthreatened-ness when spending time around someone who seems to experience shame a lot? It's because they are nearer to enlightenment than the average person. Enlightenment, for many, is when that feeling of being full of shit gets so all-encompassing it completely collapses. Basically cosmic suicide. No person would seek enlightenment if they knew what is was. It's the utterly complete end of good and bad, and the beginning of "is." Sound good? It actually will to some. It did to me. It actually makes sense superficially that "the end of good and bad" could somehow be "good" but of course, that's a most obvious contradiction and impossibility. I'd recommend love and consciousness. I would never recommend enlightenment. Not that enlightenment is bad, it's just not good, and therefore it's both pointless to recommend, and just altogether pointless. Nothing changes.

Just to let you know beforehand - this post is written by hardcore full-time seeker - 14 hours of consciousness work daily for past 5 years with 150 psychedelic GOD awakenings and Infinite Love awakenings on 5-MeO-DMT and others. I do not expect any advice from you for my situation - because I came to conclusion that no advice of the "internet gurus" has ever worked for me. I wrote this post just so you could show some empathy to people like me - seekers who are STUCK in the middle, in the dead zone - between the Matrix and Liberation. And being stuck in the middle of those two for years/lifetime creates MORE suffering than average human life spent as an average unconscious Joe. My life is actually worse than Leo's life according to his health video in his Insights Blog (https://www.actualized.org/insights/my-health-situation) . I am in pain, experiencing many psychological and physical illnesses since my childhood. Everybody should realize that Life is massive Suffering even after many awakenings. Like many of you, I came into the spirituality because I wanted to ease my suffering AND have less thoughts OR at least stop being identified with them AND be "immune" to pain AND to know my true nature AND to experience experience Unconditional Love in everyday life - not just in psychedelic trips. 5 years of hardcore spirituality later, my suffering has actually increased AND number of thoughts has actually increased AND identification with thoughts is pretty much the same AND my sensitivity to pain has dramatically increased AND I have had only 2 sober spontaneous experiences of Unconditional Love which lasted only 1 minute. After many of my temporary awakenings I came to conclusion that I am the GOD IDIOT, here's why: My life in a nutshell: 0.006 % Gods Divine Love 1 % pleasure from orgasm, eating 99 % suffering in boredom/meaninglessness, suffering from thoughts, personality disorders, anxiety, depression, inner-conflicts, needs, desires, pain, work, insomnia, extreme noise sensitivity etc. I am a God Idiot because after 5 years of full time consciousness work I was not able to cure any of my disorders. I am powerless god. Hopeless God. God is LIMITED idiot because he can't switch off useless "pain signals" in the body. OF COURSE pain signals were useful in caveman days, but nowadays they have outlived their usefulness YET there is NO WAY to turn them off (I am a highly sensitive person - I feel pain 5x stronger than average human) The GOD is RENDERING this creation and that is pretty much the ONLY thing that's doing great! God is UNLIMITED when it comes to rendering stuff. Rendering feelings etc... Rendering this colorful 4D scene. BRAVO! He is doing that perfectly. His mechanism of "no-mechanism" is PERFECT. But the scene is full of suffering. The Mind is actually Alpha version pre-realesed too early and most of human perspectives are in suffering mode thanks to shitloads of inner conflicts created by inner beings/thoughts or "external" stimuli. God is the biggest idiot out there - Since in this day and age more than 98% of human perspectives are led by ego-identity and for most of them THERE IS NO WAY OUT (remember - I have tried to get out for 5 years full-time) There's NO WAY OUT because there are infinite lives... So suicide is not an option - my idiotic creation is made the way that I will be always reborn into suffering again and again. Life IS. And this statement implies suffering in it. NO WAY OUT. Life is and always will be. Whatever IS - is prone to suffer. I am a God idiot - because THERE IS NO "SAFETY VALVE" Impermanence is actually not "SAFETY VALVE", it's not a positive feature like Leo said in impermanence video. Impermanence IS an "error", because God is idiot who wasn't capable of creating creation with 100 percent SOBER divine love without colors, feelings, thoughts and without the need for using psychedelics to remember himself in trip just for few seconds. OF COURSE I used to be a 5-MeO-HERO who experienced Gods Divine Love 150 times on psychedelic only to forget it few minutes later. Why? Because this Creation is created by Me God Idiot, who is NOT IN CONTROL of making use of those divine insights into everyday reality ... Remember there is no control and no one in control. And no one in control of liberating from suffering into "awakened state" !!! It's based on pure luck... It is a lottery. The Grand God Idiot's Lottery! That's why there are actually life-long seekers who seeks liberation from suffering but how many actually get liberated? How many of the seekers get enlightened? 3 percent? So this hell creation is punishment for myself. Why? Just cause! I do not know... God is idiot because there is NO WARRANTY that evolution will make humans more happy. What if people 5000 years ago were a lot more happy than today's industrial society? There is no warranty for better future. YES there are channeled books from higher beings in higher dimensions who say that there is some thing called ascension and in 1000000 years you will ascend higher or whatever, but what if that is just a dogma? You can't be sure of that. I am LIMITED crippled God because I have NO CONTROL over the creation - I can't "dream" stuff or positive emotions into existence and maintain them 24/7 and I am very VERY limited in manipulating reality - maybe even totally powerless - because I have no control over my thoughts, hormones, disorders, life experiences, brain chemicals etc... LoA people are proof of that. Under any LoA video on youtube there are comments like: I can manifest ANYTHING!!! - yeah right, those "omnipotent" fools who say they can manifest anything only to find out they have a tumor year later and die. I have personally known 2 of those people. To intelligent person it's obvious that they can only manifest themselves stuff like cars and money, which is normal part of life and working hard. No need to call that woo-woo Law Of Attraction. All of them say you are God and can manifest anything - so why their life is suffering? Why are they still working at McDonald's? Why they have incurable illnesses? Why those fools don't make themselves live up to 200 years of age full of wealth and health? Or feed all starving children in Africa. Or heal ALL corona patients in one day ... They're a joke. And anyone who believes that "You are Creator of your own reality" is a joke. You have very limited - I would say Zero control over the reality. Just contemplate "What is a decision" and observe your experience carefully. I am a GOD IDIOT because I have Zero control over my thoughts. I have ZERO control of: WHAT my next thought gonna be WHEN my next thought gonna be AND I have ZERO control of decision made based on thought content. I am God idiot because my alpha-version buggy Mind (thoughts) is prone to be stuck in loops of negative thinking FULL OF INTERNAL CONFLICTS between inner archetypes. Not just thought loops. I know people stuck in depressive, anxiety, OCD loops for their whole life. No techniques or medications work for them. I am God idiot who is not in control of his "level of vibration" ... God is idiot because his creation is CHAOS. Chaos implies suffering. Some say that reality is not suffering, but my interpretation of reality creates suffering. Oh man believe me I HAVE TRIED... Full-time... God is limited idiot because any psychedelic or other "peak experience" won't last more than few minutes AND there's a tolerance or harmful addiction or basically "The higher you fly, the harder you fall". In conclusion - Experiences of God's divine love actually made my everyday life more miserable - they showed me something I'm incapable to experience on sober daily basis. My 5-MeO Omnipotence experiences are totally useless AND those experiences gave me a false hopes / false HEALING hopes for my illnesses... Nothing good came out of them... BTW I wanted to teach spirituality... Like Leo, I wanted to wake people up from their illusions... Praising 5-MeO as well. Like Leo I have read almost all spiritual books under the sun. Like Leo - I became "Insight Hunter" ... Only to find out later that insights/peak psychedelic experiences actually made my life worse. Revealing "secrets" of existence is making everyday life "negatively" meaningless. YES - meaninglessness that I experience is not neutral, it's negative. Massive contemplative lifestyle stripped my life of compulsory illusions. Human NEEDS his illusions to live normal life... To be able to relate to other people in the matrix, to be social... To enjoy entertainment in the matrix... You won't be happy watching a movie constantly being reminded it's staged... I realized that stripping illusions off reality is actually fools way to live a life. I, like many, am a depressed spiritual loner full of head knowledge and spiritual ego. That's why most of philosophers were unhappy. And because only 3 % of seekers get liberated - average seeker gets actually stuck "in the middle"... I as a God am incapable of surrendering the ego identity... Believe me, I have tried... Shitloads of times... But of course surrender isn't something you could do willingly. I am still waiting for some paradigm-shattering insight or whatever... Til now no luck... OF COURSE this post is full of limiting beliefs. OF COURSE this could be understood as a victim mentality thinking. But realize - I am doing my best... Full time... Everybody is doing their best. I have tried everything... So please do not spit any pseudo-advises like "practice acceptance" or other BS... Your words have no use in some Gods perspectives like This One that is writing this useless post. You won't help me and you won't cure Leo's thyroid illness. OF COURSE reality is 100% imagination and I have tried to make a massive leap and transform this imagination into positive one by brute-force OR at least manifest "accepted imagination" to see creation as accepted/neutral. Did not work. Many "souls" are in the "massive suffering mode" multiple lives in a row. Just read this book: "Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss" ... It's about a woman who tapped into her past lives and 95 out of 100 her past lives were FULL OF suffering and illnesses... BTW in her past lives she has been a monk in monastery many times. Being monk is useless in therms of "progress" or whatever. So, I hope you finally understand. You can enlighten yourself however you want in this life, in your next life thanks to memory wipe out + upbringing by egoic parents and egoic society you will fall back to illusion again. You will suffer in your next life in spite of your awakenings in this life. I am DELUDED LIMITED CRIPPLED GOD. Totally lost in his creation. NO WAY OUT for 99,999 percent of people including me. Gods creation is Hell Realm - This Colorful Creation is Hell Realm. Thanks for your time. You will experience my life someday. Don't worry "internet gurus" :-D tl;dr: Have compassion for suffering of others. And just 2 more quotes for you:

There are a lot of bad reasons to be anti-lockdown and against mandatory masking. Conspiracy theories, bad science, "muh freedoms", etc etc. However, I feel like there could be some reasonable logic behind the thinking of some people who are opposed too. Unicef warns lockdown could kill more than Covid-19 as model predicts 1.2 million child deaths There's some good evidence to suggest that more people will commit suicide or die of an overdose as a result of covid lockdowns than from covid itself. The world economy got basically shut down for months, many businesses are still recovering or already went bankrupt. A deeper recession or even depression possibly looming when it all catches up with us. It's certainly hard to put a value on human life, but I feel like at some point we must, when it threatens to bring our economy to its knees to accomodate. 20%+ increase in domestic violence in most places during lockdown Depriving kids of a year or more of their childhood General quality of life decrease and isolation for everyone else in lockdown. Interruption to regular hobbies, activities, etc. I feel like it's a very Stage Green thing to do everything in our power to try and save everyone. People make emotional appeals saying that it's selfish to not wear a mask for other people's sake, you're killing grandmas, etc. Shaming people into it. But I feel like a Stage Yellow person might look at the bigger picture. It's unreasonable to think that we can save everyone. So we should take a utilitarian approach and maximize the happiness and well-being for as many people as possible. The elderly and immunocompromised are going to get an unfair deal either way... but it seems far easier to quarantine the old and sick in their homes and let everyone else go about their lives, instead of trying to quarantine the entire population. The old and sick will already have poor quality of life regardless, but now we're negatively impacting the lives of all young healthy people too in an attempt to save a few more of them. I think this is a pretty logical and rational position to take, and it shouldn't be too controversial. But when I try to explain this to people, they basically call me a sociopath. I'm curious what people here think. I'm open-minded to the fact that I might be wrong about this, and interested to hear any opposing viewpoints.

@LossIf you like the life purpose course by Gura might be the very thing you need at this time, just to get your attention focused on that 1 thing. Again, if you take that path my advice is don't make it into a big deal, rather just make a deal with yourself that you're going to stick with it through the high's and low's and at the sacrifice of other things. But at the same time, acting like a suicide bomber or a high school shooter when it comes to your life purpose has real measurable positive effects when it comes to achieving the results you want in life. So its a paradox, there's this absoluteness to it and then there's this complete non-attachment, but if you imagine that dynamic as a mixing of shades of black and white there's a unique geometry to it that you don't want to mess too much with, its easy to miss it, but once you understand it and recognise it for what it is, you can use that kind of powerful force in your endeavour basically like no other

1. I mean I don't know the specifics of Biden's policies, but the fact that Trump still has not proposed an alternative to Obamacare after 3 years is a pretty clear indictment for me that he is not very smart policy-wise. 2. The performance of US economy was strong before the lockdown if you look at the stock market for sure. But be aware that while his tax cuts (which benefited the super rich for the most part) did help to boost the employment rates, the US historical data show that drastic cuts in taxes only work for a short period of time before the economic fatigue kicks in, and fundamental problems such as lack of funding to poor communities and public schools start to appear. And I am sure most people would not have blamed Trump for the GDP going down because of COVID. 3. I don't think I understand your point here. 4. Well his peace treaties might turn out well or not, but I think that getting out of the Iran deal is pretty stupid to say the least, and not very peaceful of him. 5. There is not any signs that the Democrats can do anything to the 2nd amendment. It's a political suicide if they try to touch that. At most, they might try to pass policies like better gun training or more strict background checks on a federal level. 6. I get what you mean by school choice, but the underlying problem here is that public schools are not getting the funds that they need. 7. Well as someone who grew up in China, I can assure you that most people do not even have the time to think about attacking other countries because life is busy. They are just happy that the country is stable enough to have a decent life. Sure, most chinese want to have a more cultural impact in the world (soft power), but hardly any of them are plotting the destruction of the rest of the world. Obviously, we all have to be vigilant against the CCP, but international politics is a lot more complicated than simply us versus them. 8.That is a really stretched argument to start with (fallacy of false correlations, and it is also funny that Trump inherited the booming economy of the Obama's administration and actually made it worse in many respects. 9. If by big tech censorship you mean banning conspiracy groups like Q then I don't know what to say. A reminder that these tech companies are private corporations who have absolute control over what are posted on their platforms. Last thing: And of course mainstream media reporting in general is biased because they are pushing certain narratives, but you have to also see through the hypocrisy of Fox News and far-right alternative medias. If you can't do that, then you are just as hypocritical as the medias you don't like.

Thank you all for so many amazing replies! I look forward to experimenting with the techniques & methods that people have recommended. I also would like to apologise for such a late reply to my own thread. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @Fran11 1. I plan to do a deep exploration of the world of energy work, thanks! Any advice on places to start? Books, meta-sources? 2. Do you have any practical advice for dis-identifying with the I-thought? Would it look something like a mindfulness-based 'if-then' habit, i.e.: thought arises, such as a pre-verbal judgement or something with the word 'me'/'I' in it, & as soon as I notice it, I think this thought: 'this is not me/this is just an impersonal phenomena' & try to notice that e.g. by forcing myself to feel more like a listener of it rather than the active participant in thinking it? If my interpretation is misguided, how would it look like to dis-identify from the I-thought, moment-to-moment? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @Moksha I will investigate all of these. I loved your explanation of Karma Yoga, it's about time I included more of this than just basic morality practices. Makes sense that if I'm going to do anything, it might as well be what I would do if I was identified with the whole. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @RedLine Not yet. I'm brainstorming methods & trying to predict which will be the most effective. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @RendHeaven Firstly, thank you so much for this amazing reply & for taking the time to point out so much of the self-deception going on in my current thinking. I have only ever had one ego-death/enlightenment experience on psychedelics, which was terrifying, so I am still a novice in this area. I like this idea of personifying the psychedelics. In my next trip, I will take on the attitude that I am dealing with an alive teacher, as opposed to my previous/current more materialistic approach, where I only consider them as inanimate chemicals causing changes to my brain for the purpose of assisting me with MY motives, exactly like you said. No doubt, if I took such an attitude to learning with a human master, they probably wouldn't want to work with me at all. Makes me wonder if this old attitude contributed to me having such a challenging trip. I have contemplated this on many occasions since my first ego-death experience. Sometimes I like to do a thought experiment where I imagine that someone has a gun to my head & is about to pull the trigger. I try to make it as vivid as possible, to try to convince myself that it's really happening, then I try to accept my fate or imagine what I might actually do in this situation. Sometimes I think I can accept it, but usually, if I'm self-honest, I'm shit-scared & would try to do anything I could to escape physical death. I would never commit suicide (kill the body). What have you realized from contemplating this yourself? But how will I be able to make progress if I'm distracted by my thinking? Surely the rejection of certain parts of reality is necessary for any of this to work? Isn't doing this the lesser of two self-deceptions, with thinking/monkey-mind being the greater? Further, isn't the thinking that I wish to silence, ITSELF a form of self-rejection/rejection of the present-moment? When my mind is silent & I am in deep jhana, it feels like I can appreciate [everything] far more than when I am following along with some train of thought about the past or future, solving my problems, etc. I understand that I am acting hypocritical & unenlightened by choosing to silence the mind at the expense of other phenomena, but isn't this the lesser of two evils? You're 100% correct here, I am in pain & I see enlightenment as a way out, this is my main/strongest motivation in this work. Me no like suffering! P.s. Yes, the lords of the earth & sky bit was intended as comedic. Finally: What do you suggest I do instead? What has worked well for you? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @electroBeam What happened when you tried this? Do you have any theories as to what went wrong/why it didn't work? What's your story, Mr. Beam? Also, what do you do now instead that's more effective? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @SirVladimir Very cool reply & thanks for the headsup. It's true, I do goal-ify enlightenment probably more than I should. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @Jonty I like this practice too, very relaxing

Some of these questions may not be worth answering, or may not be general enough, or only warrant short answers, or have already been answered and it's been too long since I re-watched The Dangers of Spiritual Work, or I didn't watch it closely enough. 1. What is Hell? Is it just causing a bunch of suffering for yourself in life and never waking up? Is it downgrading all of infinity into a joke on you by committing suicide or something? Is it some fiery place you go if you were a "terrible person"? or just a silly dogmatic belief? Cultural control mechanism? Helpful metaphor? What is Hell actualized? 2. Why me? Why do I, in this incarnation, have to literally be the next Christ and embody a life purpose to save the world / run for president / martyr for justice? (not me mikelyons, but just the "me" as whoever is asking this question, about what they think, they may be the only one who can do in this life to save creation/changetheworld) Is that just me being unwilling to quit whining? Is imagining life purpose that seems insurmountable or maybe is impossible just one of the dangers of spiritual work when you're not developed enough? 3. Is suicide only culturally disallowed? Is there any truth to society's aversion to it? Is having the courage to actualize life purpose the only real argument against it? Or is that also illusory and it's no better than any argument for or against anything? If infinity is infinite doesn't it include my suicide anyway? Infinite suicides? (no danger intended)

20 year old male here. 1 month ago one of my best friends from high school who I've known since I was 11 committed suicide. He was like a brother to me, so many good memories. School ended in 2018 for me, and we didn't stay in much contact with each other since then. We met a handful of times though, and every time I met him it was still great and amazing. My last proper encounter with him was a video call I had with him in June, for 3-4 hours. I ended up messaging him 2-3 days before he went missing and committed suicide, but the message was just me acknowledging that I saw him chilling on Spotify ( his account was online) and it was a very brief exchange. I regret not saying more or starting a conversation, and I regret not having been in contact with him more since school ended. He loved music a lot, was one of or his main hobby. Through his Spotify profile I can see the last few songs he probably ever listened to before killing himself. It haunts me in a way and makes me emotional. Thinking about his death, I feel very physically sick in my stomach and chest, sometimes cry. Today I managed to open myself a little more to the feeling in an honest/direct manner, turns out I have a lot of suppressed and conflicting emotions. I want to "move on" but I don't know what moving on means. And then I feel like if I "move on" too quickly, I would have killed or suppressed an important part of me. I'm also a hurt child throwing a tantrum, I want others to know the depth of my pain. Hence this thread. Any similar experiences here?

I am completely clouded by my emotions. My partner has complained about how I don't fully listen, and how I react emotionally when they try to speak objectively with me. This, although not at all a big deal, has been incredibly difficult, and has felt almost impossible for me to accept. I continue to deny and say, "that's not me", or cry profusely when they bring it up or get frustrated. This has a deeper meaning to my ego, as my partner has compared the behavior to his mother, which has lead him to wanting to commit suicide. Although he's admitted I am not to that extremity, it feels almost impossible for me to accept this criticism without an emotional reaction. I want to be nothing like his mother, however, the more emotionally attached I get, the less objective I become, therefore I play more into the behavior he despises. It also cycles back as it makes me incredibly worried when talking to him, (for fear of me not paying attention happening again) further clouding my head and making it more difficult to pay attention. I am also extremely attached to the beginning of our relationship, which he cites as me never behaving in this way before, and was actually one of the reasons we bonded in the first place (he enjoyed my objectivity, logical thinking, detachment from emotions clouding my thoughts, and how easy it was to talk and reason to me). This, ironically, makes me cry even more - as I feel I've completely lost that part of me, or he'll never see me in that light again. Or even worse, even if I do change the behavior, he'll always see me as an emotional wreck who can't handle objective conversation. I've brought up these concerns with him before, and he has stated that the more I repeat the positive behavior (listening more, not crying), the faster it'll all go away. He always reaffirms with me that I can fix this behavior, that it can all be a memory and won't impact my current character. But, this has been hard for my ego to believe - it always wants to tell me that I'm inadequate, not enough, and I've completely ruined everything. And I believe it. I'm just struggling with what exactly I need to do to stop this behavior. I was locked in my home with my very emotional, anxiety-run family for 6 months (they feared covid-19 to the point of self-quarantine), 2 months ago, I left to live with my father, out of being driven to near insanity. We both believe this lowered my IQ substantially, and made me way more emotional and irrational. Now, I'm still having trouble thinking clearly, or even narrowing down what exactly is bothering me. It feels my thoughts are behind a dim cloud. My rational feels completely obliterated, and I'm having trouble accepting this situation without attaching it to "you make him suicidal, you're too stupid to talk to, you've completely ruined everything.." etc. I can't accept the situation logically, without destroying myself and making myself miserable in the process. I compare myself to his ex's, to my past self, I think of false positives like "if I wear this shirt, I'll be more like my past self". I'm completely illogical. Even if I start to work on it, my mind will tell me "his ex never had to do this, you're so pathetic, he'll never love you like he loved her". If anyone has any tips on this, I would be really happy to hear. This behavior and cycle has been going on for about a year, and I'm sick of it. It's been making both of us miserable. I just really want to be able to accept that I'm a person who has made him miserable, without attaching it to feelings of inadequacy, never being enough, and always being stained by this past. Thank you so much.