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Leo mentioned he didn't study the topic of mental illness a lot. I would like to give insight to him and to you all how my mental illness that was masked as spirituality destroyed me. I lived a life without much value I didn't work as I should have and didn't use the potential I was capable of. If this text gives just a glimpse of meaning and value to anyone I will be grateful. How a false sense of ''spirituality'' destroyed my life and gave me dementia in my 33 years I am doing this for you because I love you and because I want you to live life as I wanted to live it. Before I die, I have to try to leave something behind as a warning and advice for people in similar situations. This won’t be a text that is well written because my cognitive abilities are drastically reduced as well as my vocabulary after 3 months of rapid dementia. But I want you to try to understand my point and the urgency of my insights that may save somebodies life. I am not a doctor and I can only speak from my own experience about the severe trauma I was living with. It completely controlled my life without me even realizing it. I will share with you how I analyzed the behavior of my mental illness and how it manifested itself in my mind and body. Insanity and trauma are the most cunning things in the world. It is not a joke and should never be underestimated. Apart from physical disability or illness that is honest and straightforward insanity is not as clear and it operates by deceiving the mind and leading it to destruction. If you are lazy beyond the norm and refuse to work, if you refuse to educate yourself and think success is not for you, you might be traumatized. If you think you are spiritual and have spiritual ‘’symptoms’’ that are not aligned with life and living, by being constantly exhausted, depressed brain fogged, you might be experienced anything but spirituality, but a manifestation of trauma symptoms. As malicious and occult as it may sound trauma can present itself as a living entity that is sucking the life force from you, leading you ultimately to your demise. Insanity as I was living with it, completely gripped the essence of my thought process and kept me in delusion for 15 years. I not only believed the thoughts I was having but was convinced beyond any doubt, with body, mind and soul that there has to be truth to them. My emotions, my intuition, even my heart was driven and aligned with the schizophrenic doctrine my mind created due to childhood trauma. As you can see unfortunately this means that when somebody is insane the whole psycho physical, mind and body can serve to deceive a person. Its more than the typical hallucinations, hearing voices, and having conspiracy theories that we see in movies that make somebody insane. A person can be partly insane and be completely convinced they are normal, just following a higher path that nobody understands, just like I thought I was. If the thoughts do not support life and living normally then a person should try to question if there is truth to them. There is nothing wrong with being normal and ordinary and earning an honest living. Loving life and being grateful for what it is and not searching for some fantastical worlds that don’t exist. I never realized what enlightenment is and I don’t care about it at all. All I wish for is a healthy brain but that won’t come now. I would have lived so much differently. My ideology was belief that there is no such thing as work or human will, that those things are illusions and that they are ultimately not important for realizing the truth about the world. I was aspiring to be a homeless bum, living as a fool for Christ in divine truth and bliss. I believed in the force of undoing or unworking and that it is like a black whole that devours everything and extinguishes everything, and ultimately when we experience this black nothingness, we see truth. I had many instances where I did work and tried to persist in my endeavors but believing I was spiritual undervalued my efforts, and the very meaning of work and success. Voices told me that work and knowledge are not important and that I was beyond them. That I don’t need it to be happy and enlightened. So, I was willingly retarding myself and regressing unconsciously while thinking this is a good thing. After dementia arouse and started desecrating my brain, this illusion collapsed and I realized that such thoughts came because of an extreme sense of worthlessness. Which I was living with and considered normal. When a person is traumatized, they live with extreme and abnormal feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness, that they consider normal because they learned these things and didn’t feel anything else. A glimpse of power and true value feels almost like death to their sick sense of self. And they might even fear it because their whole identity is challenged and shaken to the core. This is why work; knowledge, creativity and education are transformative tools for somebody living with trauma. They were the only cure for me except I realized this too late. The human will and will to work, and create, and love, and enjoy the successes it brings is a divine force, not at all to be undervalued like most spiritual teachers suggest, by saying do nothing or let go of effort. When people have trauma work is the only salvation they have to live a normal life. So, if you refuse to work and think its something spiritual moving you in this direction seriously consider you might be wrong. Now I will share some of my childhood story and how dementia happened. My story begins by me being born with a physical disability called artogriphosis. I had bent arms and legs which could not be stretched, kind of like a baby is positioned in the stomach curled up, that’s how I was when I got out. However devastating this situation seemed at first, there was hope, because by exercising diligently I could walk and eventually stretch my arms half way. I had all the function and potential of a normal child. The problem came while doing the very exercises because they were invasive, complicated and painful. I slept with plasters every night and all this lasted for the first 12 years of my life. My parents while doing a remarkable job of straightening my body didn’t consider that I could be emotionally damaged by the process. And thus, they convinced themselves and me that I was completely normal, which I wasn’t. Those painful exercises created severe trauma that was left untreated and considered normal. In my 19 year I developed ‘’out of nowhere’’ a severe debilitating anxiety towards life and work. I had constant feelings of subconscious terror, which were relentless and constant every day all day. I tried many things to help myself and gave full attention to my psychological problem, which was paradoxically, a huge mistake. In the 15 years of living with this anxiety I learned to live with it and considered it a normal part of me. The only problem was I wasn’t productive and didn’t work and live independently. So, I read psychological books and all sorts of stuff and came across spirituality and eventually developed the doctrine I mentioned before. In my opinion symptoms of dementia can come at any age if a person lives with extreme psychological burden. It starts the cognitive decline gradually and very gently as years go by so the sufferer can forget the pain. It introduces a wide variety of symptoms that mimic so many of the ‘’spiritual symptoms’’ I read about over the years. Brain fog, constant tiredness, sleepiness, a sense of peace, beingness and bliss that comes in doing nothing and sleep and rest. So all these ‘’positive’’ symptoms were actually dementia in my case, mistaken and confused for spirituality. In my opinion anything that reduces one’s abilities and qualities of life should be discarded whether it be ‘’spiritual’’ or not. The pain never ended and I was just becoming dumber and dumber and more tired, and unable to concentrate for longer periods. In my confusion I mistook these sensations as positive and even advisable which kept me in massive delusion. Even efforts to work and keep my passion alive were diminished by an unnatural exhaustion that came over me as time went by. And then I thought work truly must not exist as I am truly unable to sustain my will towards it, this otherworldly tiredness is keeping me from it. It must be a sign that the force of undoing(dementia) is the true reality. That tiredness came from dementia and it was just an illusion and breakable by sustaining the effort. It might be unlikely, but if anyone identifies with my experience, my advice is to keep going and resist the exhaustion for it is a lie trying to keep you asleep. There is nothing spiritual and worthwhile in death and dementia. Life is a force to be lived, not spent asleep and tired all the time. The final straw happened 3 months ago, when I took ciprofloxacin ear drops for mild noise induced hearing loss. I overdosed by mistake using them for 14 days instead of 7 as prescribed. Even though it was a relatively low dose of 2 drops each day, the final day my system collapsed. Perhaps due to my already overloaded brain, and combined with this poisonous medication I finally enraged and triggered dementia. Now the decline that was very slow and would have kept going on for 30 years or more, has accelerated 10000 times. I presume I have about 5 years of very unfulfilling life left. I will never experience the success I could have had. The love and joy of life I could have had. It was overshadowed by constant feelings of ungratefulness and arrogance. Believing I was beyond this world and its preciousness I was watching it go by me, waiting for my spiritual revelation which never came. I was very arrogant and ungrateful thinking that things cannot possibly be worse due to my anxiety. Incredibly, things can be 10000 worse than they are. Now I have dementia. The only right way forward for me was to accept the anxiety and reconcile that I have to live with it like any other handicap. And do everything in my power to work and live independently. Work is the ultimate expression of value and love towards oneself which trauma cannot endure, that’s why it does everything in its power to resist it. So, this is it. I talked about my life choices and some spiritual traps that people might fall into. I feel very vulnerable writing this and even a bit stupid, wondering who on earth will want to read this depressive story, but honestly id give anything if somebody told me in the right moment how wrong I was. For years nothing could sway me from my stubborn convictions. The world is getting increasingly more insane as we can witness. Spiritually can be the source of massive confusion as well, and by me interpreting it the wrong way, or actually falling for its lies I ended up like this. I wish I had never read anything about it. You might argue that its not my fault for getting these severe side effects from that drug. In a way you would be right but its the life choices and ideology that led to this. My unwillingness to educate myself and work left me underdeveloped. I didn’t know that antibiotic in topical form is still dangerous, I didn’t follow the prescription, I didn’t research the side effects properly, so all these mistakes led to this. The ideology of undoing and not knowing, that false spirituality that I had so much faith in and surrendered completely to, destroyed me in the end. It was insanity and trauma and dementia taking form of something incredibly valuable to me. Farewell friends or enemies, I do hope this gives some value to anyone and people can at least learn from my mistakes. Some key points: Work, knowledge and creativity is more than means to an end. It can transform our life and destroy trauma and mental illness. Because they represent love and support life. They are life. Perfectionism and working eternally on your issues, waiting to first solve them and then return to the world, is trauma keeping you enslaved in eternal rumination which leads to nowhere. The only way is to ignore it. Work, be creative, learn about history, geography, economy medicine, science... each day enrich your mind little by little. Keep dementia away, keep ignorance away. Massive suffering can naturally create symptoms of dementia like brain fog, forgetfulness and a false sense of peace that comes from oblivion, as well as sleepiness. Don’t satisfy yourself by thinking this as a spiritual symptom. Enlightenment if it exists might require force and enormous willpower contrary to much of the gurus say. Not surrendering helplessly to the void and waiting for things to change. Wake up by force, resist the antilife forces of the world. Insanity can take form of some of our most precious values and ideas like spirituality, love, religion, trust, hope, etc. It can trick and turn them against us. Sometimes you can’t trust your own mind, your emotions, your intuition, even your body that can create feelings of exhaustion. Especially if it tells you to be homeless and renounce the world like it told me. Its more than just a thought that keeps us in delusion. Some chronic traumas only get worse over time, it won’t solve by itself no matter how long your ‘’spiritual process’’ lasts. And if you are destined to live with it, live the best and most fulfilling life you can. Live now. Don’t sleep and rely on dementia to take you. If you don’t work or know anything, and you depend on somebody to work and provide for you, you still won’t survive. Because such a lifestyle attracts natural catastrophes and disasters in form of disease, dementia, insanity or disability. You are never safe by being stupid. It can cost you your life like it did me. Love and Gratitude is most important. Learning from ‘’ordinary’’ people enjoying their company respecting and appreciating them. Just being normal is the best thing in the world, and not being narcissistic. I unconsciously thought I was better than everyone. Now I see ‘’enlightenment’’ in everyone. We are just great as we are, trying our best to go by and nothing more is ever needed. I’m sorry. You can’t imagine how sorry I am. I wasted my life for an illusion. I was insane, I was misled. May God forgive me, may You forgive me, may the world forgive me. I failed to live. I was confused and alone, marked by misfortune. If there is another life, I will never make the same mistake again. Be well and farewell Phillip

@Someone here I feel as if the human mind simply can’t grasp the full scope, once you reach that level of understanding your state of consciousness matches it. The immense joy you get feeling that you are everything and everyone is something your human ego cannot fathom. It will always try to make you demonize it because it is it’s total destruction. Ultimately you are complete therefore how can you feel alone? Only when you frame it in your human mind. In Gods mind it’s total and complete. Bliss, ecstasy, union. If you don’t feel any of those, you still need to completely deconstruct the ego, it’s a stubborn beast.

Wait 13 months? I only had bliss for 2 weeks!!! Lol I couldn't handle it after awhile it started to hurt so I started doing grounding exercises...now I miss it lol. But I wouldn't be able to function since my job involves dealing with people and it made me too energy sensitive. I literally could merge with the energy people put out when they speak. So if you were energetically unstable....I could match it and become one with your energy and feel your emotions. I call it energy empathy.

I've had up to 13 months or more. All the negative 'psychosis' was worth it for that 13 months of bliss.

Looool. I have no answer to that ? But i was not talking about this kind of delusional bliss of believing in some god or goddes avatar. I was talking about bliss that comes from samadhi and self realization. That thing can't be faked.

@Salvijus @Salvijus Did you saw my link on YouTube where a fake Guru can blow 1000 people into bliss? Sadghuru has no time for meditating, he is ruling an ashram. Otherwise He would still Do his yoga /meditation exercises

@Salvijus haha of course you can blow 1000 people into bliss and can still be fake. Psychologe of the mass Go to Minute 20 where you can exactly see that everyone can Do that. https://youtu.be/hTfKpAWkgJY

@Salvijus Idealization of others has many forms. "Bliss" is one of them. Sai Baba had millions of followers, many still follow him today and they were also "blown into samadhi". I don't believe in any of this "avatars" and "gurus".

Im just very conviced probably. And I've developed certain trust in his word over the years. He's very convincing if u attend his programs like bhava spandana or samyama where he blows 1000s of people into bliss and samadhi. Many things he does are very convincing how inhuman he is. How he runs his organization is alone enough to tell he's beyond human limitations. U just need eyes to see. It's plain obvious.

I'm not sure. In the Advaita Vedanta school, truth IS bliss. I've had experiences of pure emptiness being blissful, but this bliss is very different than the types of bliss from kundalini, feelings of love/energy. The bliss of truth is always present. But kundalini, feelings of love, energy and bliss, for sure can be side effects from this work.

That's true - when I experienced the highest bliss reality was One. The feeling of I was in the air, in the cabinets, etc.. I didn't make the connection the way you explained it. Need to trip more.. That was very helpful, thank you!

Doesn't contradict what I said. The love/bliss states you get on psychedelics are a consequence of your consciousness expanding to recognize the absolute truth of metaphysical Oneness. The psychedelics are not giving you good feelings. The psychedelics are raising your conscious high enough to where you can see metaphysical Oneness, and this seeing then produces good feelings which you confuse for love. It's not the feeling which is Love, it's the metaphysical Oneness.

@Leo Gura But what about those extremely blissful states on psychedelics? I thought that is what you truly are when you merge back into yourself fully. Those states where there is no longer a body, just pure bliss and beautiful fractals/mandalas. Isn't that God at it's fullest?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIZfqWAPrHg Now I had a near death experience (not like how most other NDE's mine was basically a loose attachment to my body) which the result lasted for 2 weeks. That along with a kundalini awakening showed me that your true nature in the present is Blissful. But now that my attachment to my body has become strong again (what we would consider normal existence) when I focus on the now I feel peace, but the blissful feeling that is naturally generated is no longer felt. Now I can think or focus on loving thoughts and gratitude and feel momentary bliss, but my prior experience was that my natural feeling without those actions was blissful. So while I hear what Spira is saying, most people aren't looking for that peace, they want that bliss. The only way it seems to me to attain that as a natural state is to clear through your traumas, so the blockages in the body can open up and you can attain that state as a default state. Until then....you will only feel peace. Peace isn't bad but it doesn't compare to bliss.

@Razard86 Maybe I misinterpreted what you were describing but if the bliss is gone now, or if the bliss was a qualitative experience in any way shape or form, it’s not your true nature. And your true nature was what you were talking about.

Overall this was a beautiful trip PRE-TRIP I was actually pretty nervous the day before I tripped. I wasn't sure if it was the right decision but ultimately I made the decision and it was definitely the correct one THOUGHTS DURING THE TRIP < > = post trip elaboration 10:30am: ate 2g dried mushrooms 10:39: I have a lot to offer. I love who I am. I am a gift to the world 10:53: head feels... lighter? Like I can tell something is different. Slight urge to throw up, but not really 11:05: it's a gradual onset. Right now everything feels like... slow a bit. I sort of saw the patterns on my bed moving a bit. And I just saw the letters on this piece of paper flowing back and forth like grass in the wind. My body feels a bit weak. I think because I need to eat. 11:14: It's boredom but I have to create the interest. What am I passionate about? Also I am a bit sleepy. Low energy right now. there's nothing I feel like doing. What do I do? Sleep lmao. love In spite of how I feel, I have to keep going I'm much more asleep <metaphysical sense> than I thought **Life is literally whatever you make it <I then began to dance to some music I put on> 11:27: who is in control? continue to read but don't forget to stay in touch with whatever this is haha <idk what I was saying here> What is reality? I feel like this psychedelic is exposing me because I say I'm into personal development but I have nothing to show for it. What do I need to do? **I feel like I've been trying to put off an image to people, instead of being me 11:37: I get tempted to look at spiritual video <I wanted to watch one of Leo's videos I think> I see why not everybody has a deep trip every time they take mushrooms. It's because its literally whatever you make it. If you don't have that intent then the mushrooms won't show you 12:40pm: Life feels like a story that I'm creating but I have no idea how deep the story goes 12:50: sat at piano <I just played one note, and it was so magical, it felt like being a child again but even better> 12:59: I have the urge to talk to other people 1:00: Toilets are funny 1:04: Most I see why mushrooms are twisty <I can't explain it in words, but it almost felt like I was going into an infinite loop> **There's a contour to the mushrooms that's so beautiful. Like they could have been created any other way but they weren't I feel like I've been slackin <with personal development> Who am I? almost don't even <incomplete sentence> What is existence? **Failure is beautiful 1:22: time slows. I don't know shit <began entering profound state of not-knowing, but didn't quite get there> What is art? How deep does art go? 1:28: My arms and legs feel so funny. I could sit here and question everything 1:30: What's the point of life?* Life feels very magical rn. These candles also smell really good. **I need to trip more often. Not cause it feels good but I want to understand wtf is going on. I created other people?? Sounds crazy af What is time? <I then stared at the time, and it changed from 1:47 --> 1:48, but time didn't... move? I kind of felt the illusion of time but didn't go too deep into it> What is confidence? I'm looking at it. INSIGHTS & THOUGHTS COMING DOWN 1. I am creating reality 2. I contemplated about what confidence is too. And almost immediately I got my answer. I’m looking at it. Confidence is whatever you see in front of you. If it has the will to exist, it is confident. So what this means is that in order to be more confident, you just have to be it. You can't have any shame either from 3. During the come down of the trip, I felt like a little stressed actually because... life is constantly unfolding. It’s like we are in an infinitely unraveling story, and I want the story to be perfect. But it’s not perfect. And that’s ok! In fact, it’s precisely the imperfection that makes it perfect. Very counterintuitive. 4. I’ll admit it is nice to be back in the dream. I notice I adopted this negative connotation to “life as a dream,” like that’s a bad thing. Like coming back down from the trip is a bad thing or something, and I think that created a little anxiety and stress on my come down. But this is where half of the work is, at the human-level of consciousness. Whether it is a dream or not, why does that even matter? It’s all there is. Speaking of the come down, I noticed my vision was a little bit weird, as if I was looking at a computer all day and I could still see the lines. 5. One thing the psychedelics taught me is that I love story telling. Another facet to my life purpose. The only thing is how do I want to tell stories? Side note also I made it important not to look at my computer during the trip, but consequently I only wrote things down with pen and paper, which is much slower than typing. Painfully slow. So I did miss having that. I think text time I will allow myself to type so I can get my thoughts down faster. 6. Leo I applaud you for your work here. I had a conversation after the trip with one of my friends, and trying to communicate this stuff with others is so challenging, but you’ve come as close as anyone I’ve ever seen to articulating it so well. Like psychedelics makes me admire your work even more, and I’ve been following you for 6 years. It’s very inspiring. During my trip I thought about your blogpost, the only question is why, the only answer is love. Life should just end right there ahaha but of course it doesn’t. That’s the short answer, and everything in life is just the long answer to the question, but ultimately it always goes back to love. 7. Oddly enough, I just got a sex insight. I have a girlfriend, and in the bedroom I could be doing a lot more teasing and foreplay. We tend to just get right to it, and I think that’s why it’s been feeling a little boring or “vanilla”. 8. Also I realized in my interactions with people, I tend to approach it from the perspective that there is always something to learn from the other person. Good, right? Well, I see how it can backfire because that can make it seem like the other person holds all the value, and I completely ignore the value that I can provide the other person. I think this has led to me undermining or completely neglecting the value that I can provide to others. I hold value that I am keeping from other people by not sharing it with others. PS: God is the ultimate jokster, and I love God for it Leo’s video, Humanity is the bullshitting animal, is spot on 9. Also, reality is so amazing. I’m honestly just so happy to have “experienced” everything I have so far on psychedelics. Everything else from here is like icing on the cake for me. I feel a lot of bliss. 10. I was also aware of something else. Psychedelics usually only last 3-6 hours. But I was aware that it could literally last for infinity if I wanted it to. The 3-6 hours is just a safety net for us so that we don’t go mad. It’s literally just an excuse we created but a wise excuse. Then I thought about it. Is the point of taking more and more psychedelics to stretch our capacity to be in that higher state of consciousness for longer, while also maintaining survival? So in other words, psychedelics is the bridge between higher consciousness and baseline human survival consciousness, and the goal is to slowly strengthen the bridge so that we can come from a more loving place in mundane life? Not sure if that makes sense but I like the analogy of psychedelics being a bridge between God and humans, and the more psychedelics you take (with the right intentions of course), it slowly blurs the boundary between God and Human, until finally it comes together. I haven’t experienced that yet, but I am very open to the experience. I’m in no rush to see God but am very excited at the thought of it 11. Also language. I think it’s interesting how much language has to do with understanding reality. I think a big part of Leo’s work is mastering language, and being able to use the right words in order to convey all the advanced topics, but of course the words themselves are second order to the actual thing that is being talked about. So I wonder how the future of humanity will deal with that issue, what kind of new language could emerge in order to integrate higher consciousness? 12. I had the intention “to be creative & to learn how to love myself and others more.” But in retrospect, the secret intention I had was to learn “how am I creating reality?” and I definitely got a little taste of it. But I have yet to go fully down that rabbit hole. TAKEAWAYS FOR FUTURE TRIPS > I think if I take 2.5, I will be biting off more than I can chew. I think I want to just take 1.5 or 2 again and see the similarities/differences in experience before I move up to 2.5g. Also I think I will need a more grounded, genuine intention before I up the dose so I have a strong anchor to fall on if I need it. > Also I realized not to underestimate the power of a good affirmation. I am going to start saying affirmations every day because something I became aware of during the psychedelic is the link between your thoughts and reality, namely how thoughts literally manifest within reality. Given time (and other factors im not aware of currenlty). I don’t understand the full depths of this yet but the connection is definitely there. Simply changing your thoughts can change the whole trajectory of one’s life. And an easy way to do that with little investment is saying affirmations everyday, but actually believing it when you say it, not just saying it mechanically like a robot. And if you don’t believe it, you gotta just fake it til you make it, and eventually you will start to believe it, then it will become your reality. > Also I did this trip solo, and I think I like to keep it that way. Having other people really is distracting and counterproductive to the experience. Unless said person is very aligned with you in some way. Like the only person I would want to do psychedelics with is my girlfriend, I think that would be a beautiful experience, and on a lower dose like 1g or 1.5 at the most. There’s no need to go higher than that. I’m not gonna be questioning reality too deeply with her, more so just basking in it so I wouldn’t want the dose to be too high. > I need to read more books, and also I have been too conservative with psychedelics. I have been sort of protecting the experience a lot if that makes sense, but I am ready to do psychedelics a little more often, and I am still going to be wise when deciding when I do them. But I think it would be beneficial for me to take a psychedelic again (1.5g most likely) in maybe one month, instead of waiting 3 or more months. > I need to create more magic in my life. I have to insert the magic into life myself though, I can't expect life to hand me magical shit on a silver platter

Its interesting how you just said some stuff that didn't pertain to what I said. I see alot of this on the forums. Again when my attachment was loosed from my body, my natural state was bliss, esctasy, overwhelming. It was non-stop, in fact it started to become painful and too much. As my attachment started to tighten back to my body, because my body had healed I lost access to this state. I was in this state for 2 weeks. So it wasn't transitory and what it showed was the body blocks you from your natural state of blissful awareness. This bliss is orgasmic as well and it never stops. It just keeps going. But you didn't notice that...because you didn't read to comprehend and just read to respond. So you responded...to what wasn't there.

Do you see it as equally true that fundamentally our "true nature" is also all blissful feelings, mind states and everything related to perception/experience/qualia? I see how the feeling of bliss is not the same as recognizing ones true nature, but fundamentally it seems to me that all those feelings are appearances in and as true nature.

If the bliss you discovered is transitory, it is not the bliss Rupert is talking about when he describes our true nature as bliss. Any blissful feelings, mind states, or anything related to perception/experience/qualia is not our true nature. Yet what you’re describing is certainly possible as a default *state* through rigorous practice, but don’t confuse this with your true nature.

To clear your traumas-yes... and to retain 4 your sins... confess them, apologize, repair the damage if possible... no need to be religious (but yes we could), I think sins like traumas are blocked energies, and the way to release them from your conscience is as described... many sins are basically also just lies, so not the truth, to be in peace and bliss you need brutal honesty and truth...

Here’s an insight I just had on a run and it’s this. If you aren’t frustrated with yourself for being mediocre then you’re doing it wrong. If you are happy with being mediocre then you are reinforcing mediocrity in your life. The Buddha is wrong the goal is not to eliminate suffering, it is to learn how to bear it with it and use it to grow yourself to success. Think about it if you were completely happy and didn’t suffer and weren’t frustrated with being mediocre then you would be mediocre. You will become whatever you are content with. If you are satisfied with playing video games all day and don’t feel anything wrong with that, then you will never level up. Without suffering there could be no growth and no success. Think of any person you think is highly developed. David Goggins, Sadhguru, Alan Watts, Leo Gura, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or whoever. The common theme is they are all not content with being mediocre. If they followed the teachings of Buddha or Christ to be satisfied with themselves, then they would have never leveled up in life. This comes from my personal experience. I excel at anything I really care about whether that’s tennis, trumpet, or whatever. With caring comes suffering. But suffering is good. Attachment is good. It is good to be attached to things that deeply matter such as your vision for your life. If I followed the Buddha, I would have never excelled at anything. Yes, I got mad at myself for failure, yes I suffered, but what is a good life without suffering? It’s counterintuitive. The good life isn’t infinite bliss, it is falling in love with life, which means to set challenges for yourself, fail, and to suffer. The good life is falling in love with suffering, not trying to get rid of it. That’s the key point. I could not be attached, not care about my results, but the fact is, you aren’t going to enjoy your life if you don’t care about it or the results. Your life is always happening now. Fall in love with the Now always because that is where you live, but that is no excuse to not care, not plan, and not have a vision. It is paradox to be in the Now while also being a Visionary. You have to know the right balance for you to be at your 100%. If you aren’t at 100%, it is okay to not be satisfied. Always love yourself, but never be satisfied if you aren’t living up to your fullest. That is also a paradox as well. How do I love myself if you are telling me to not be satisfied with myself for being mediocre? Because the highest love you can give yourself is your fullest creative potential. Being dissatisfied and angry is good because that is a sign that you are acknowledging some area of your life is unacceptable to you. That is good. If you are satisfied doing drugs then you will never stop doing them. Real change comes with you being real to yourself. At some point you have to admit that your poison is unacceptable. Your highest love is to not be satisfied with everything in your life (particular that which doesn’t serve you; mediocrity), it is rather to strive to be satisfied with yourself now with a vision to be in alignment with your higher-self. Hope this is helpful. This was a big trap for me. It is easy to take teachings to limit your growth. The key takeaway is to allow yourself to be angry with things that don’t go your way. If you are a happy Buddha with everything, then you are signaling to the Universe that you are also okay with being mediocre. You will manifest what you accept. Contemplate what improvement really means and entails. If I am satisfied with how fast I run, then can you see how that would hinder me from improving? Improvement requires a big change in your mentality to always strive to get better. There is no finish line. Whatever you are satisfied with, that is what you’ll get.

One way to synthesize the two outlooks of stay discontent (or improvement) and be content (or acceptance) is to acknowledge and improve imperfection while letting go of suffering and appreciating enjoyment, basically to practice both To embody the improvement aspect, you acknowledge the discontent in your experience not because you force yourself to be discontent, but because there always exists imperfection. Whether its imperfection in the level of your state of consciousness (which can go infinitely high), an imperfection in the level of your fulfillment (which can go infinitely high) or imperfection in the level of your pleasure (which can go infinitely high). Unless you have absolutely everything you want, meaning you're, at minimum, living in beyond infinite perfect bliss, then you aren't even at level 0 in the infinite race, and there exists imperfection for you. Even if you reach relative, total, complete perfection, you aren't at absolutely infinite perfection. That would be like getting a 100% on an exam, while you still have infinite more exams, courses, and degrees to go. The grade is always incomplete in this university of perfection. So continuously advance in your never-ending journey toward perfection. To embody the acceptance aspect, you let go of suffering in your experience, and appreciate enjoyment in your experience. You don't force yourself to be unhappy due to the present suffering existing and absent enjoyment, but you make best with what you got, the value already in your experience. Without letting go of suffering, you are needlessly perpetuating your own pain. Without appreciating enjoyment, you are needlessly letting your pleasure go to waste. You let go and appreciate, suffering and enjoyment, respectively.

I don't know if you want it from me but I'll offer you my experience on some of the things you're working on since you're helping me. This is my experience not my advice, I don't believe in following advice, I try to listen to my intuition. Unhealthy stuff, discipline, shame(seems tied to the former) What works for me is just going with it, it gets worse but it seems to teach you what you need to learn. The willpower thing for me prolongs the underlying issue, letting go of the belief(healthy, production, shame) happens when I let it hit me hard, sometimes going to rock bottom, then I'm no longer afraid of health, production, shame. When you're in it deep and then you get a glimmer of joy or bliss popping up spontaneously, it's like the beliefs just fall off like chains. You were the one chaining yourself to health and as counterintuitive as it seems, that causes you to be unhealthy. It seems like a self correcting mechanism in us for positive beliefs, yes they're positive and helpful in society, but they are still beliefs, and all beliefs are limiting.

Depression is the superlative case of repression. Repression = pushing away (emotional) pain. With each bit of pain that is repressed, a bit of your wholeness and sense of meaning and authentic desire goes with it. Therefore when there is too much to repress, you lose most of the sense of meaning and desire that is inherent to being an alive human. The way out of depression is to choose to feel more of what is repressed, thereby lifting the depression. Some depressed people are actually really angry, but unable to cope with that and process that fully, so hence they are depressed. Other common feelings are sadness, grief and hopelessness. The less you push these away, the more you will feel. The more you feel, the more emotional pain you feel, but also the less depressed you are. And after feeling the pain, bliss and insight follows. That's not to say that you can just make that decision from any situation. Repression is there for a reason. Are you currently in a condition to handle emotional pain? Is your life stable? Do you have the time, space and guidance needed? If not, then the first thing to do is to go get that. Set your life up in a way that makes it possible to process some repressed feelings in a safe way. If that means working a day less at your job, do that. If it means temporarily removing yourself from a toxic family system that doesn't accept and hold space for your feelings, cutting off contact and going to live on a friend's couch, do that. If it means getting a therapist, coach or mentor, do that. If it means reaching out to a friend even though it's hard, do that.

Assuming Buddha and Christ actually existed, I agree totally. My issue is that it is really easy to misunderstand the Buddha. If you interpret him as the goal being to eliminating all suffering, then you also eliminate all that is good about life as a natural consequence. That is what I was saying he was wrong about if in fact he meant it in the way I interpreted it. All I am saying is that I realized for myself is that it is okay to feel other emotions besides happiness. It is okay to let yourself feel frustrated when you don’t perform your best. In fact, I suggest that being happy with a poor performance in life is a reinforcer to repeat bad performances. If you are happy doing drugs, you will continue to do them, but if you are mad at yourself for doing them, that could be what you need to bring about a change in you. People can easily turn Buddhism into a trap where they want to let go of all their attachments, desires, and dreams, and strive to have no emotion other than happiness, contentment, and bliss. But the issue is that the Buddha’s teachings on attachment for instance and suffering, don’t seem to me like they apply to the majority of people today. I hear a lot of people say to me that if they followed the Buddha, they wouldn’t care, and that hit me because I realized that the reason why I studied philosophy, and why I excelled at all the things I excelled at were because I cared. I still loved myself and was loved what I did, but my perfectionism showed how much I cared about being good at the skills I cared about. Maybe this is my misunderstanding of Buddha’s teachings and if so, I guarantee I am not alone. For instance, I do agree with Buddha about striving to live in the Now, but the thing is that if you go all the way with any teaching, it will stunt you and become a trap. Living in the Now is always a reality for you whether you are thinking about future or not. All teachings need nuance. Meditation is good, but like I said, at some point you gotta get off the mat and learn how to meditate when you are in the moment of suffering. Suffering is eliminated not by avoiding it and emotional fakery and toxic positivity, but it is rather “eliminated” when you no longer perceive suffering as suffering. That is my take on it at this point anyways. I appreciate your all’s thoughts and feedback so far.