Figuring Out What Feels Right

[PepperBlossoms]

I put this somewhere else but I thought it was good stuff so I am putting it here too.

We tend to want to be free.  We tend to want freedom.  We tend to want to be able to run and play and when there are walls, we may feel stuck and confined within those walls.

The inner critic points out the walls, defines them for us, tells us they are there.

Walls are like boundaries, limits; we are trying to push the boundaries/limits all the time as much as we can.

When we are at a job, and we may feel stuck with all the codes, rule following, timelines, budgets, norms, etc.  (Or if we are doing our own thing, we may feel stuck with not having the right skills, tools, support or fear of not making enough money).  We start to push what we can do and see if we can get away with it.  If the job is free enough to allow us to run around and do our thing, we are happy.  If the job is letting us explore our potential and push the limits, we are happy.  If the job tells us no you can't do this or that, we are upset, we get bored/angry/frustrated.

The inner critic is a blessing and a curse.  By pointing out problems, walls, questions, it allows for potential, growth, change/transformation, new perspectives.  There are almost always good things to find in any situation, almost always things to question, almost always things to improve on, almost always some things that are free enough to be turned/shifted despite others seemingly stuck in place and un-moveable.

The inner critic's focus may be in a negative way, a skeptical way (you can't do this, that isn't possible, you don't have the skill/personality, this is bad, you don't belong, you shouldn't forgive, are you crazy?, this is going to be bad, you are not cool/smart enough, etc.).  

I think the inner critic could be trying to accomplish more potential, growth, and curiosity if we use it that way.  It could also tend to drown in misery, suffering, sadness, anxiety, regret, guilt, shame, hopelessness, annoyance, blame, etc. if we use it that way.  

Either way, it is pointing out ideas/information to us and how we react to that can make a difference.

In a way, the stronger the inner critic, the more we can notice, the more information/ideas we can work with, the more potential, the more things we may find we need to tweak, the more complex we can become, the more mastery we can achieve.  However, also the stronger the inner critic, the more walls/problems we may say are there.

If one's main focus is being internally peaceful and taking their own responsibility for their inner peace regardless of what is going on in the "external" and beyond their control, they may have a more peaceful, transformative, healing, hopeful relationship with the inner critic; whereas if one feels like they cannot control their inner feelings and lets whatever happens outside impact their inside, they may not realize the healing and transformative potential/power of the inner critic and just drown in it.

I guess one thing is using feedback (whether from others or from ourselves) for growth/curiosity/learning instead of using it as a victim/blame/fight/hide can make a difference.  But to use it for growth/curiosity/learning takes lots of patience, calmness, and willingness to engage/interact/understand and sometimes the easy route can be to just react in a negative way (but that is actually the hard route because it may be easy in the immediate but hard for anything beyond the immediate).  One's peers, therapist, friends, etc. could all be criticizing a situation but one could realize there is so much more to it (and more potential) and they were just criticizing it because of the limited information one was giving them and because they are just focusing on the walls and not the potential/good.  Learning to not judge stuff from what it did in the past and see that stuff is constantly changing all the time.. (but that is tricky though because the past can be a helpful indicator of what is to come; but also not necessarily).... Everything is super tricky...

(I think a bunch of this, I was inspired by listening to a podcast from yesterday haha and I was wanting to tie all of it together.)  

....

But again, so many ways to think about that topic.

What's yours trying to accomplish?

 

I guess another one I was thinking of was when we were in school and we had to sit still and weren't allowed to speak or interact with the other kids and were told we had to pay attention to the teacher and do the assignment, sure sometimes we felt engaged and interested and explored that.  Sometimes we did not though.  So what did we do?? We went to the internal imagination and daydreamed.  We left the classroom and were in some other place, engaged and interested and explored that.

Or with a website, if one gets censored/shut down, one may find other ways to release their message/perspective.

(Again, pushing the limits).

But with the inner critic, we either believe, yes the walls are there and we have to comply (yes I have to comply with what my teachers/parents/government says and I will be a good girl/boy and do everything they say... or, no actually I can push the limits and question everything..)

Do we believe the walls are there or do we think we can push them - if we believe the walls are there, are we depressed that they are there or are we curious about why they are there..

There is the balance though of walls being helpful versus being limiting...

Edited March 18, 2022 by PepperBlossoms

[PepperBlossoms]

Why do we do what we do when it could have a negative impact for both of us, for me, for you, for everyone involved?

Why do we do this?  Are we low consciousness?  Are we trying to be mean/hurtful/selfish?  Are we self-soothing?  Like, oh if I do this, I will feel better.  We then try it and either we do feel better or we don't.  Maybe we feel better in the moment and then start to feel worse and worse.  Maybe we feel bad in the moment but then start to feel better and better.

Maybe we need to escape.  We feel too trapped and doing this thing is our way of rebelling.  We felt too tight, too suppressed, everything was too rigid.  We needed more wiggle room.  We needed to feel like we had control.

But why not just find inner peace and be okay with our brain?  Why do the thoughts keep on going and going, blaming, criticizing, punishing, shaming?  We feel bad for our coping mechanisms and shame ourselves?  We feel like we have to repent.  We feel like, ah I am so bad.  But why?  Why say I am so bad?  Why not say, well this is how I reacted and this is what happened and I learned from it and now I can try something different next time?

Why the self shaming?  Maybe we are used to that because we did it as a child because others did it to us.  They shamed us and we learned to shame ourselves.  Maybe we don't want to deal with thinking about it so we just keep everything the same and keep on doing the same things over and over again.

We are thinking of ourselves.  Ourselves has chaos.  No one can tame the chaos but us.  We do what we think will tame our own chaos.  We then see, how does this feel?  Sometimes the method feels good but then how it impacts others feels bad to them.  Sometimes our chaos is so bad that we don't care how it feels for them because we needed to find something that worked for us.  So it works and we are okay even if others are not.  We can block them out.  But then time goes on and it starts to bring up lots of problems and we don't feel so good about it.  We start to question, can I keep on using this method?  There are other methods out there for me to tame the chaos are there not?  Maybe I should try this other method instead?  So we try something else and see how it goes.  But things are habits and habits can be hard to break - we can do them so much that we don't even have to think or try.  So we take the do the thing again because we are responding to the chaos, but we have forgotten the long term impacts.  The thing happens and the long term impacts come back and we go, oh shit, why did I do that again?  Why wasn't I thinking?  How come I haven't learned?  Why am I such a slow learner?  It has been like what 100 times now and I keep on messing up?  But sometimes we are really, really slow to learn things.  

We say, I will just forget about this and will be different?  But we have self doubt.  Well what if I can't forget?  What if I think about this everyday?  What if it is distracting me so much that I can't do anything else?  What if it takes over?  But why are we taking away our power?  Why are we giving in?

We then ask ourselves, well do I have control over my own thoughts and mind?  Can I tame this beast?  Am I the one taming it?  Maybe we keep on revisiting it because there is something we are curious about and we just haven't figured that out yet.  We haven't come to peace that we have come to a reasonable conclusion yet.  We haven't yet backed ourselves into the corner and embraced the futility.  Sometimes one has to take an idea all the way to a corner and say,  I will never know, and really, really embrace that before they can feel at peace with not knowing and be able to back away and focus on something else.  To say, I will never really know, I will never really solve this, I will never really figure it out.  I will die not knowing, I will die with it unfinished.  Nothing is ever fully known, finished, complete.  Everything is in a varying degree of a state of flux.

Sometimes when we are told not to do something, it makes us want to do it even more.  It is such a weird phenomenon.  You could have someone who is punished for killing and then they want to do it even more.  Yeah sure they may be aware it is wrong, but they could want even more so.  Or someone could be shut out for their idea and then they want to shout their idea even more.  If they had just been given the opportunity to explore the idea, maybe they would have phased out of it.  But sometimes, you have to tell little kids, no you have to share and they try the sharing thing and it works great and they prefer doing that over taking over the toy.  But also no sometimes they may hate sharing even more and even more so want to have the toy to themselves.

But the thing may survive and it may not go away and it may get stronger than it was before.  It may come up with better defenses, coping mechanisms.

Tell someone "you have to.." and they may refuse even more and find even more ways and reasons to not get one.

Tell someone "you have to.." and they may refuse and find even more reasons to stay and get it to work.

It is weird.  Sometimes when we are told we can't do something, we cave in and agree with the person.  Sometimes, we do the opposite and prove them wrong.  I guess it will depend on our requisite variety of how much potential we see and if we see more potential/walls than the other person.  

If someone tells us we cannot do something and we were already hesitant about it in the first place and already had lots of walls for why we couldn't do it, then that could be the extra domino to make the entire tower fall down and we give up.

If we are already strong and complex with something and feel good about it and someone tells us we can't do it, we may just find that as one more obstacle to work around and have to take into consideration and may make our tower even stronger with that in mind.

We could take our joy for food and transform it from eating unhealthy stuff to a joy for the flavor of food but also eating lots of healthy food because we find that feels better.

We could take our joy for making things better and transform it from killing to healing.

We could take our joy for spreading ideas and transform it from censoring to trying to understand them and them trying to understand you and getting an even broader perspective of things and increasing the perspectives that we surround ourselves with.

We could take our joy for porn and sure either keep on doing it or use that energy with our partner or with other creative endeavors.

We could take our joy for freedom and use that to push the limits of ideas and creative endeavors.

I think that we do some stuff that is hurtful to others because it is helpful in the short term and we just have not become conscious of how hurtful it may be in the long term and it can take a long time to break a habit.  Also, there are so many unknowns and we don't know if we are reacting okay or not and we are not sure how to read situations and what is life or death and what is not.

We may think there is no hope and something is over when that is not the case and we thought it was so we fell back into our habit that we had told ourselves we were done with.  We may then feel bad for falling back into the habit and be like, well shit, why did I do this?  But we thought again everything was going to shit and so why not go to my habit as that has made me feel good in the short term and I need to feel good in the short term... but then the short term is over and we feel bad again and it is like shit.. again!!  

Then we tell ourselves, okay well look at it like this - I reacted.  I made myself upset with how I reacted.  I chose to be upset.  I consciously chose to be upset and I pushed that on everyone else too.  I threw up my upset-ness everywhere.  I could have not reacted.  I could have not let it get to me.  I chose to do what I did because that it how my reaction, which was upset, wanted to cope.

But the thing is is that I had a habit and my habit was to react in a certain way.  So maybe I have to break that habit.  Maybe I have to not REACT the moment the thing happens and then the coping mechanism will never be needed.  It happens in like a split second so it happens so fast we can't even necessarily keep up.  We are upset and then boom it takes a mountain of effort to get the upset-ness to go away so maybe we go to the coping mechanism that has worked over and over again and so we are sure it will work again.  But we are so upset we are only thinking short term.  We are only thinking about us as well because we are upset.  We are the bad manager who is reacting instead of being proactive.  We are reactive and our reactiveness doesn't do very good for us but we do it anyway because that is what we are used to doing and that is how we do business around here.

But no.  We can actively chose to be calm regardless of what happens on the external.  We can say - it will be okay.  We need to stop giving the thoughts so much of our attention.  Turn off the thought tv!!!  Go to no thought.  It is an escape but we may feel like the thoughts are like daggers and we can't take the daggers for too long or we will get beaten too much.  So we go to no thought and accept that we don't know anything.  But we don't trust that we can actually get to no thought.  We have doubt that that will happen.  We think we will just have the shaming doubts.  

Edited March 18, 2022 by PepperBlossoms

[PepperBlossoms]

One way to go to no thought is to start doing things.  Like paint, run, walk, write, make music, listen to music.  But is that running away?  Are you running away here?

[PepperBlossoms]

I think sometimes it is just reacting, responding, floundering.

I think sometimes it is trying to figure things out, trying to bring about change.

One of the weird things about weighing priorities is that we don't really know what our priorities are until after we have made a decision and then we change our mind.

[PepperBlossoms]

I think we struggle with shame.  We may want to repent and say what we did but we can't because we got shamed every time we did that.  So our next idea is, well maybe I need to just work through this myself and forgive myself.

Forgiving others can be helpful for them to not have shame and be able to move on.

Shaming others when they are trying to apologize for what they did can make it hard for them to think about it and move on.

We all have weaknesses and various things we call failures, mistakes, selfishness, etc.

When you shame someone, you are hurting them and you.  When you forgive someone, you are healing both you and them.

Some people may have been shamed so much that they don't know how to forgive.  All they can do is shame as well.  They shame you and then you learn to not go to that person when you are struggling because the shame didn't help.  

Shame someone and they may continue to blame them.  The shamer may look bad, worse than the person who is trying to apologize/repent.  The shamer is too weak.

We have to be strong and release our shame ourselves.  We can't wait for someone else to do it for us.  Someone could say, yes I accept your apology and we may still feel bad regardless of whether they accept it or not.  We may keep on blaming ourselves.  But we are not totally at fault here.  There is an entire environment of factors, much complexity, going on.  Some of it is outside of our awareness.  There are all of these other things going on and it was not just us.  We are just here doing things, thinking things, reacting to things.

We may feel like it is easier to let go of shame when someone forgives us but we are not always going to be forgiven.  That is a luxury only some can do.  We can't leave our happiness on the line of how someone else treats us.  We can choose how we treat ourselves.

We are trapping ourselves when we tell ourselves that we must feel shame and continue to do so because the other person thinks we must.  It doesn't totally matter what they think.  They may not be capable of forgiveness.  

The thing we have the most control over, if we have any, is ourselves and our inner mind.  More so the inner mind than the outer body.

[PepperBlossoms]

One of the things I feel conflicted over is that I have received news of a new forum.  The forum may have been created because the creator was removed from being a mod on this forum.

I feel conflicted.  I don't want to pick sides.  Both sides will have great benefit.  I don't want to hate on one side as I can also see both have faults.  I too have faults.  We all make mistakes, we all have our own opinions, we all have whatever.

We want to grow in a supportive environment.

There is not necessarily a right answer.  I do not approve of some things and I approve of others.

My mouth sometimes says stuff I regret but I have said it already.  Um well.. 

I like the thing Sadhguru said where he does not have any opinions of his friends and treats every new day like a blank slate.  I like that in that we are holding anyone's past to them with regards to how today goes.  We all make mistakes and have faults and do things we regret and sometimes do selfish things but we also all hope to do loving things.

Edited March 18, 2022 by PepperBlossoms

[PepperBlossoms]

Everything that we do is like our escape, our coping mechanism, our medication.  We do one thing to get away from another sometimes.  Well what if we chose to do things not to get away from anything?  But is that possible?  Every decision is like an opportunity cost to every other decision.  We don't know.  

What if we chose one thing because we wanted to be there, not because we wanted to get away from something else?  Like, we are picking to do XYZ, not picking to avoid ABC.

Hmm.. I am not sure. 

I think of all the people working jobs right now and how much of them do it to avoid something else.  Where, it would not be their top pick but they are doing it because that is what they usually do but they may have a better top pick.

[PepperBlossoms]

We will have an idea/topic on our mind and when we are met with other ideas/topics, they form a new marriage of something new.  We could be going to the same idea we have gone to before but because we have a certain idea/topic on our mind when we enter, the perspective/experience could be different and it could be different every time.

...

Sometimes death can be seen as a way to give back to the community.  We were feeding off of our surroundings and our death allows our surroundings to feed off of us.  When we feel we have nothing left to offer/change with our body, we could feel that we are consuming more so than we are providing.

I could look at civil engineering and say, look at all the bugs/animals that had to be killed.  We could also look at things in terms of potential and say that humans have more potential to change things than do bugs/animals and so they will justify the killing.  The human can plant and grow lots of food whereas the donkey can only eat food.  Sometimes one may have to do that.  We are in luxury when we can say, I am too moral to kill a bug/animal and have someone else do it for us.  Bugs/animals have to kill other bugs/animals to survive.

It could be that we can eventually have all food grown in a lab.

It will be a problem if food is no longer able to grow and there is not enough and everyone will be killing and stealing from everyone to survive (which is already done among the other bugs/animals but humans could have to do it too.)

I was wanting to know more about what mysticism is and it sounds like this mysterious thing.  My peer said it is more perspectives.  It could be a whole other universe that I have not explored or it could be related to the stuff I have already explored.

[PepperBlossoms]

When someone is banned from a platform, they may tend to find another platform and there may be others who are upset about the banning and go to the other platform too.  This is a tricky situation.  I don't think banning is the best idea because then the users can't ever come back aside from making a new profile maybe but I can also see that taking people from one platform to another is dangerous to the survival of the original platform.

It is super tricky because having multiple perspectives is super helpful and nice but I can also see that sometimes they don't work together well and there are clashes and sometimes it is just easier to split off for awhile.

It was odd how the other platform Leo is talking about looked almost the exact same but I can also see that Leo's was set up really well so yeah it could be to backstab, but one could also think of it as tipping the hat because of how well Leo's was/is set up.  I can see that it can take a TON of effort to make this thing happen like others have said and it would be sad to lose the ability to discuss ideas.

People should be able to use whatever platform they want and however many platforms they want.  It's like telling a left-wing that if they go talk to the right-wing, they can't talk to the left-wing anymore.

Every person and platform will have good and bad things about it and we all make mistakes too and sometimes we have miscommunication.

Censorship and banning opens a very tricky can of worms and part of me leans of the side of no censorship or banning but I can also see where some structures work much better than others.

It is also sad that having people leave to go to the other one will basically make less people on this one and the other one would have less too and it would have been nice if we could have all just stayed on one but I guess also things don't always work that way.

I really appreciate all of the insights and conversations that I have gotten to have with people on this platform and maybe sure people could get the same on the other one.

I think maybe if the way the original mod thing was handled in a different way, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

[PepperBlossoms]

In my group meeting today, I noticed that one problem is that people do not stay on topic with what they are talking about.  And then some don't talk at all.  I feel like it would be better if people were better at staying on topic of what the discussion is to be about.  When people start wasting time talking about movies/food and it is unrelated, it significantly devalues the meeting.

I however am not running the meeting so I am not the one to impact that.  
I can see leo's perspective where you have a moderator saying the same general message to every single person and it would kind of devalue the forum and is not being complex enough.

[PepperBlossoms]

"Like you said, everything has its shadow side, and the shadow in you is what makes you hate it.

If you enjoy hating the system, I don't want to stop you from doing that. It can be fun.

If you feel like it's costing you a lot of energy, and you'd rather have peace of mind, you can integrate the shadow.

Which is the process of finding and recognizing everything you hate "out there", somewhere in yourself, and then loving that"

One of the members posted this and I thought it was pretty good and wanted to think about it some more.

What is stuff that I have hated "out there"?

People's confidence, brains, looks, arrogance, aggression, insults.

Do I have that too?  Sometimes I have confidence, sometimes brain, sometimes looks, sometimes arrogant, sometimes aggressive, sometimes insulting.  I can be all of these things too.  Sometimes it is the context of how we compare this to that where that looks bad to us but yet we don't have the mirror to maybe see that we do it too.  Maybe we have not yet fully processed it.

I can feel intimidated by those that have more looks, money, skills, info, etc.  It feels like, oh they will dominate over me, I cannot compete.

But we will never be the best at anything.  There will tend to be stuff that is worse than us and stuff that is better than us.

All of the things that I mentioned are temporary.  Looks, money, skills, etc.  - they all come and go.  Seeing the futility in stuff coming and going can be helpful.

....

The second group meeting that I attended seemed a bit somber.  People shared stories of rape, child loss, fentanyl overdose epidemics, sexual abuse, etc.  I look at my life and go wow.  I have not had that.  One woman said that fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death on the west coast for people ages 18-49.  She said she used to focus on suicide prevention but fentanyl overdose has exceeded that - people are taking it and don't realize that they are overdosing.

I was thinking that the more we interact with, the more we read, the more variety of people we talk to, the more we may step into the world of sad, traumatic things.

Spirituality has really helped me to try to be very complex with how I see things.

...

I think I was not liking the woman's smile in the meeting.  I don't know why.  Not many others were smiling.  Again I smile too.  Sometimes I smile when it is totally unnecessary or inappropriate but that is what I am doing.  It is really weird how we decide, oh I do not like this or that.

Again, the feeling of feeling lower than others where when one is smiling, they seem strong.  We are all going to die though.

...

 "When you write, you light a bonfire in the spirit world. It is dark there. Lost souls wander alone. Your inner flame flares up. And the lost souls gather near your light and heat. And they see the next artist at work and go there. And they follow the fires until they find their ways home." -  Luis Alberto Urrea 

...

The feeling of insecurity, of not being good enough, of comparing ourselves to others - maybe the stuff we see in others we like about them?  We say wow that is their superpower and we admire it?  

ABSOLUTE SECURITY IS FUTILE.  We are not in control of everything and so insecurity will kinda ALWAYS happen.  We see someone better and feel insecure and think DEATH.  But yet we won't necessarily die.  We say, we are weaker than them - look they are stronger and they can outlast me see - look they are better because of XYZ.  Well, I am better because of ABC too so it is not apples and apples.

..

Regarding fixing things so that we don't make the same mistake next time, umm.. (or switching it out rather than suppressing it) -Choosing to listen rather than suppressing listening.  Choosing to see potential rather than suppressing negative thoughts.  

When something seems useless, we may quit listening and it could be during those times that it would have been useful but yet we quit.  

chit chat can be helpful for some but a waste of time for the entire group

https://cogbtherapy.com/introduction-to-cbt

Edited March 18, 2022 by PepperBlossoms

[PepperBlossoms]

One of my questions is...

How to be authentic???

We can have something that we are trying to work through and not feel shameful about but yet at the same time we still want to be authentic.

To be ourselves... well what is me?  What am I?  What am I usually like?  We change all the time and so what I was like yesterday may not be like what I am today.

From online: 

"What is authenticity in a person?

Put simply, authenticity means you're true to your own personality, values, and spirit, regardless of the pressure that you're under to act otherwise. You're honest with yourself and with others, and you take responsibility for your mistakes. Your values, ideals, and actions align."

Values - ah well honesty, kindness, curiosity, learning, etc.

Umm well I am still trying to be kind, present.  It is hard though.  There is the whole - people can tell when you are fake/inauthentic.  This is such a blurry thing though!  

We try something and if we feel good about it, we keep it.  Likewise, if we feel bad about something, we may drop it.

Umm, to try to do our best and to keep on trying our best.

But then there is the whole- that person is so fake - they are such a people pleaser.  But is that fake or is that just their personality?  Or their coping mechanism?  What is personality anyway?  I try to be whatever and sometimes I am not always the same person!  Sometimes we want to try new ways of being out.

I think I am just having insane shame and I just need to work on that some more.  I feel like, oh is the other person judging me?  Do they think I am being weird?  But how am I to know?  How am I to know anything???  We judge ourselves.  The inner critic is such a wild battle sometimes.

[PepperBlossoms]

I think one problem with LITERALLY ALMOST EVERY CAREER is that the moment you sign on to that career, is the moment you sign yourself up for enslavement within the boundary of that specific topic and shut off growth in any other topic.  Suddenly everything that is not that seems so much more enticing.  We don't want to be bound to one thing.  We don't want to shut off exploration.  We were shut off as kids and we want to be able to do more.

We will find reasons to complain because yes, we are cutting off our ability to explore.  The career world we have created is so constraining that we feel like we are cutting off access to new things and it HURTS.  But then there is the whole, oh well you are GOD and you are EVERYTHING.  

When we think we are GOD and are EVERYTHING, then it doesn't hurt as bad because we can still experience other stuff too, just not in this known life... But we want to experience and know everything in this known life, not in the other ones where we have forgotten this one.  We want to have them all at the same time, all together, all for us.

But the people who venture in one area can become such great MASTERS of that area that they have then had so many more HOURS AND HOURS of observation and experience than anyone else that they have SO MUCH MORE TO SHARE than others and can be of a great resource in that way.

Meh, nothing really matters though.  Reality is here, or not, and whatever.  We are experiencing this, or not.

We just want to have fun.  We just want to enjoy the ride while we are here and death is going to come, or not. 

[PepperBlossoms]

We are responsible for our own suffering because we create the imagination that we are suffering.

Suffering is illusory and because it is not really there, it is like there is actually the absence of suffering which is like happiness.

"All feelings are happiness manifesting in some form or another."

https://youtu.be/NskQ8tdG4YE

 

[PepperBlossoms]

"it seems that life evolves, learns from itself, trial and error. and his favorite tool to encourage himself is suffering"

...

Part of me is like - what if reincarnation is real and we just reincarnate to become more and more conscious each time.  So our teachers who teach us who are more conscious than us we will reincarnate to.  But how would that be possible?

The weird part about reincarnation is then.. well where do I land on the spectrum/order?  How am I to know what lives I have already lived and what lives are to come?  All I can think of is that those who are more wise than us are to come after us and those that are less wise than us we have already lived as - well that just makes sense to me because if we are going from one life to another, I would think that we would be accumulating wisdom instead of dropping it.  So then the insights that I have gained, I will then have in the next lives too... maybe.

But this is all hypothetical.  So then one may not necessarily go back to being an animal/bug/bacteria MAYBE because that may have less wisdom than would being a human..

Then one's main goal in life would be to get as much wisdom in life as possible and share as much of that as possible so that when on reincarnates into the next life, one will still have that wisdom with them....  

But how do you really tell who is wiser than you though?

[PepperBlossoms]

It seems that we need some sort of way to do more creative stuff.  Many jobs lack creativity completely and are not necessary.

There is much work done to just keep jobs in place.  This is a mistake. 

I don't know how society would change from the way it is now to a different way.

It could start with being more honest about things.

If there was more funding for artistic work and more effort put into that than say insurance policies, war, fast food, soda, chocolate, 

There definitely seems to be a great shift towards wanting to be more creative and less of doing things that are repetitive, mundane, etc.  There are majors in the arts.  The career path seems less defined.

Movies, music, books, and art can all be downloaded for free and so there is the concern that one will not make any money from it.  We kinda have to move away from a money society?  Move away from money and people may do what they want and there will be more incentive to be efficient rather than to have excesses.  Maybe one needs to study people, government, economics, values to determine how to shift society for more creative, holistic endeavors??

My peer had said that we should still care about the consciousness of society because of the people who come after.  I was saying that, oh we and everyone will die so it doesn't matter.  My peer does bring up a good point.

If you look at schools, the material kinda stays the same year after year.  It hasn't really changed.  There could be potential for more change with how schools function and evolve rather than being rigid.

Maybe we need to move away from working 40 hours a week to only a few and the rest on creative endeavors??

...

The virtual world starts to feel imaginary.  it is so cut off from this one that it is like we aren't alive and we are tricking ourselves.  We get so used to the virtual world that we forget what it feels like to be in this one.

It can be hard to talk to someone who keeps on telling you how to live your life.  Maybe there is stuff to learn though still with those interactions such as why they are giving the advice and if they are right or if they are projecting one of their issues onto you.

Living in a group where you are forced to marry someone you don't know could be a really hard life to have..  Freedom of choice is a weird thing where sometimes it is good to take it away and sometimes it is not good.

When we waste time talking about food and movies instead of what the problem is, we are just delaying our healing process.  The ability to stay focused and on task can make quite a difference and the ability to know what that looks like can make a difference too.

The problem with reincarnation is that it then makes the desire of constant comparison of you to others to see who is more wise and who you haven't lived as yet.  It can be hard to say one person or activity is more conscious than another.  What determines what body that you wake up into next and why would people assume that the body would be on Earth when there are potentially other bodies on other planets?  Or you could wake up into a universe that you wouldn't be able to visit in this one.  And what would be more conscious and how would you tell?  Based on unity?

[PepperBlossoms]

I think we are distracted by our imagined shame some and that makes it hard to focus.

I think we feel so much shame that we don't want to look at people sometimes.  But it isn't necessarily our fault.

Learning to forgive ourselves can be a huge hurdle and allow one to forgive others too.  We all need love and loving ourselves can be a huge step.  We can do things to distract us because we don't want to look the shame in the face.

We can hide or stay away from anything that reminds us of the shame to not have to face it.

Edited March 18, 2022 by PepperBlossoms

[PepperBlossoms]

We might feel shame for how we disobeyed some rules, how we broke a promise, how we did not perform how we were supposed to, how we did not try our best, how we were thinking of ourselves over others, etc.

Shame is also like this thing where we have to imagine it and then keep on imagining it for it to keep on existing.

It is like, okay I get it, I messed up in many ways.  I get it that I shouldn't have done xyz.  But almost everyone messes up at some point.  We don't have the right skills, knowledge, awareness, experience, understanding, consciousness or whatever and so we do stuff that we end up regretting, feeling guilty, feeling regret, etc.

Making mistakes is okay too in terms of realizing that they are mistakes and then trying to become better and do things differently next time.  So why the hold up on it?  Why the recurring focus on it?  Why not just move on?  What I am overlooking here?

We are shamed by our teachers for not paying attention or doing the assignment, shamed by our parents for not making good grades or speaking out against them, shamed by our peers when we do things they do not approve of.  But we too shame.  We shame people for their religion, for the ideas, for their mood, whatever.  

Maybe I shame others and I am just not aware of it enough??

I shame a coworker.

Maybe we shame others because others have shamed us and we shame ourselves.  Like the idea where hurt people hurt others, well shamed people may shame themselves and others too.

So if we can recognize that we all mess up and well all get better, then we can stop shaming and start understanding, accepting, apologizing, appreciating.

Appreciate yourself, don't shame yourself.  Appreciate yourself for all the hard times you have endured, for how much you have grown, for all of your efforts, for all the joy and beauty you find, for your curiosity, for your beauty, etc.  Appreciate yourself and appreciate others.

Shame wants to hide, to walk hunched over.

Appreciation stands up straight and may give a smile and a hug.  It may be kind and uplifting.

Shame may be critical, depressing.

Appreciate that you are here everyday trying to learn something new, trying to work on yourself, trying to get better at the things you are bad at, trying to help others, trying to explore, seeking curiosity, trying to show up in some way.  Appreciate all that has had to happen for you to be here and just how magical, mysterious, and complex this life is.  Appreciate that you can feel emotions, you can recognize unknowns, that you can sense beauty, that you are here right now.  You could have died a long time ago.  You can still die at any moment.  Nothing is guaranteed.  Gratitude can go a long way.

[PepperBlossoms]

One of the things about saving the world is that, if dream theory is correct, and if I am only dreaming this dream once and will die and then go into another realm, then there is almost no point to saving the world because it won't be lived in again.

There are so many theories for how life works it can be hard to know what to do.

Sure we don't want to do things to hurt others.

I guess one option is to choose the option that we will feel good about regardless of which reality explanation is actually right..

-die and go to heaven/hell

-die and just never wake up again

-die and go into body of someone else

-die and go into experience that is in another realm completely inaccessible from this one

-die and experience life as the omnipresent god

-something else

If we try to become as conscious, kind, aware as possible to help ourselves and others, then maybe that is okay and it won't matter what happens after that.

[PepperBlossoms]

"In contrast, for the past decades most scholars have favored a constructionist approach, which states that mystical experiences are fully constructed by the ideas, symbols and practices that mystics are familiar with.[9] Critics of the term "religious experience" note that the notion of "religious experience" or "mystical experience" as marking insight into religious truth is a modern development,[135] and contemporary researchers of mysticism note that mystical experiences are shaped by the concepts "which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his experience".[136] What is being experienced is being determined by the expectations and the conceptual background of the mystic.[137]"

This is interesting because it basically says one has mystical experienced based on what they have already been told.

"Neurological research takes an empirical approach, relating mystical experiences to neurological processes.[140][141] This leads to a central philosophical issue: does the identification of neural triggers or neural correlates of mystical experiences prove that mystical experiences are no more than brain events or does it merely identify the brain activity occurring during a genuine cognitive event? The most common positions are that neurology reduces mystical experiences or that neurology is neutral to the issue of mystical cognitivity.[142]

Interest in mystical experiences and psychedelic drugs has also recently seen a resurgence.[143]

The temporal lobe seems to be involved in mystical experiences,[web 9][144] and in the change in personality that may result from such experiences.[web 9] It generates the feeling of "I," and gives a feeling of familiarity or strangeness to the perceptions of the senses.[web 9] There is a long-standing notion that epilepsy and religion are linked,[145] and some religious figures may have had temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).[web 9][146][147][145]

The anterior insula may be involved in ineffability, a strong feeling of certainty which cannot be expressed in words, which is a common quality in mystical experiences. According to Picard, this feeling of certainty may be caused by a dysfunction of the anterior insula, a part of the brain which is involved in interoception, self-reflection, and in avoiding uncertainty about the internal representations of the world by "anticipation of resolution of uncertainty or risk".[148][note 26]"

This is interesting because it says that part of the mystical experience is the change in the brain functioning.

"The attribution approach views "mystical experience" as non-ordinary states of consciousness which are explained in a religious framework."

"R. C. Zaehner distinguishes three fundamental types of mysticism, namely theistic, monistic and panenhenic ("all-in-one") or natural mysticism.[6] The theistic category includes most forms of Jewish, Christian and Islamic mysticism and occasional Hindu examples such as Ramanuja and the Bhagavad Gita."

"Walter Terence Stace, in his book Mysticism and Philosophy (1960), distinguished two types of mystical experience, namely extrovertive and introvertive mysticism.[128][6][129] Extrovertive mysticism is an experience of the unity of the external world, whereas introvertive mysticism is "an experience of unity devoid of perceptual objects; it is literally an experience of 'no-thing-ness'."[129] The unity in extrovertive mysticism is with the totality of objects of perception. While perception stays continuous, “unity shines through the same world”; the unity in introvertive mysticism is with a pure consciousness, devoid of objects of perception,[130] “pure unitary consciousness, wherein awareness of the world and of multiplicity is completely obliterated.”[131] According to Stace such experiences are nonsensous and nonintellectual, under a total “suppression of the whole empirical content.”[132]"

Edited March 18, 2022 by PepperBlossoms