One major benefit of avoiding all stimulants and fast sugars

[Carl-Richard]

Imagine that you're an archer trying to hit a target. You're trying to stand as still as possible to get a good aim, because a moving target is harder to hit.

Now, apply this same principle to everyday life and your state of consciousness. If your state of consciousness is constantly changing; for example when recovering from a spike in blood sugar from drinking a glass of orange juice, or taking a stimulant like caffeine that slowly loses its effects over a couple of hours; all the targets you're trying to hit in everyday life will become harder to hit in some way, because the targets are moving.

This applies to everything; from basic bodily movements, to following a line of thought, to your intuition; everything is impacted by these changes in state. Your ability to engage in various activities depends on your attunement to them, and changing your state will make you constantly recalibrate your attunement rather than refine it.

This is probably partially why meditation increases functioning at virtually all levels, because you're removing yourself from the ever-changing nature of daily life and focusing on something that is constant (the ever-present field of consciousness), effectively practicing the act of attunement itself, making all the targets of everyday life more still and easier to hit.

So if you want to experience what I'm talking about, try to eliminate all these things that cause excess fluctuation in your state: keep your blood sugar stable by avoiding fast sugars, avoid stimulants like caffeine or just all psychoactive substances that are not essential for your health. See if your experience of reality becomes more clear, more stable, more coherent.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Schizophonia]

Sugar is not a stimulant, it is only an energy substrate.

Btw, orange juice does not have a high glycemic index.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Schizophonia said:

Sugar is not a stimulant, it is only an energy substrate.

It causes a drastic short-term change in state.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

Btw, orange juice does not have a high glycemic index.

I've seen estimates between 48-76 depending on the source. It's anyway up there with soft drinks and sucrose.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[tuku747]

All food, drugs, and diseases are catalysts for your spiritual evolution.

Just as you'd expect, they may induce a state of imbalance, which will also simultaneously signal to you the direction of the balance. By balancing high with low, low with high, you will become more skilled at maintaining balance. This is a potential benefit of taking psychedelics: to balance the mind in an otherwise volatile state of consciousness such that this skill is maintained into sober consciousness.

Say you eat a bowl of deep fried chicken. Like the magic mushroom, it induces a state of imbalance in your consciousness.
This change in consciousness may (or may not) be experienced as inflammation, lethargy, or self-loathing.

But, how does one know they are inflammed? How does one know they feel lethargic?
These are appearances in consciousness, in exactly the same way grief or anxiety can be brought upon by a mushroom.

Balance the mental sensations by becoming aware of their nature and their balancing counterpart. (acceptance, breath)
Balance the physical sensations by becoming aware of their nature and their balancing counterpart. (acceptance, breath)

The end to any meditation practice results in balance of mind, body, spirit.
It is in this way you can begin to unravel the illusion of the body as imagination.

Edited July 24, 2023 by tuku747

[Carl-Richard]

On 24.7.2023 at 4:24 AM, tuku747 said:

All food, drugs, and diseases are catalysts for your spiritual evolution.

Just as you'd expect, they may induce a state of imbalance, which will also simultaneously signal to you the direction of the balance. By balancing high with low, low with high, you will become more skilled at maintaining balance. This is a potential benefit of taking psychedelics: to balance the mind in an otherwise volatile state of consciousness such that this skill is maintained into sober consciousness.

Say you eat a bowl of deep fried chicken. Like the magic mushroom, it induces a state of imbalance in your consciousness.
This change in consciousness may (or may not) be experienced as inflammation, lethargy, or self-loathing.

But, how does one know they are inflammed? How does one know they feel lethargic?
These are appearances in consciousness, in exactly the same way grief or anxiety can be brought upon by a mushroom.

Balance the mental sensations by becoming aware of their nature and their balancing counterpart. (acceptance, breath)
Balance the physical sensations by becoming aware of their nature and their balancing counterpart. (acceptance, breath)

The end to any meditation practice results in balance of mind, body, spirit.
It is in this way you can begin to unravel the illusion of the body as imagination.

Fasting until you're on the brink of death, or sitting in a dark cave unmoving for days at a time while bugs are eating at your flesh, or experiencing a car crash, can all be catalysts for a spiritual awakening. They're disruptive practices: they create a contrast to your normal state which lets you become aware of unconscious patterns that keep you asleep. But when you return to your normal state and want to integrate your awakening into it, you should do things that optimize your normal state, because that is where you exist most of the time. You don't want to be dependent on disruption for awakening. You eventually want the awakening to blossom naturally from the inside, not from some outside practice.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Nilsi]

On 23.7.2023 at 5:36 PM, Carl-Richard said:

Imagine that you're an archer trying to hit a target. You're trying to stand as still as possible to get a good aim, because a moving target is harder to hit.

Now, apply this same principle to everyday life and your state of consciousness. If your state of consciousness is constantly changing; for example when recovering from a spike in blood sugar from drinking a glass of orange juice, or taking a stimulant like caffeine that slowly loses its effects over a couple of hours; all the targets you're trying to hit in everyday life will become harder to hit in some way, because the targets are moving.

This applies to everything; from basic bodily movements, to following a line of thought, to your intuition; everything is impacted by these changes in state. Your ability to engage in various activities depends on your attunement to them, and changing your state will make you constantly recalibrate your attunement rather than refine it.

This is probably partially why meditation increases functioning at virtually all levels, because you're removing yourself from the ever-changing nature of daily life and focusing on something that is constant (the ever-present field of consciousness), effectively practicing the act of attunement itself, making all the targets of everyday life more still and easier to hit.

So if you want to experience what I'm talking about, try to eliminate all these things that cause excess fluctuation in your state: keep your blood sugar stable by avoiding fast sugars, avoid stimulants like caffeine or just all psychoactive substances that are not essential for your health. See if your experience of reality becomes more clear, more stable, more coherent.

To me it's an aesthetic choice. What kind of life do you want to live? If you are optimizing for peak performance for example, you want that huge spike, even if it only lasts a few hours per day.

I have a coworker who literally works 1 day a month, high as a kite on phenibut and caffeine, calls up some billionaire CEO and closes him on a few 100k -- every single time. I'm not shitting you.

If I was a scholar like you (if you allow), I would do the same thing - but in a hypercompetitive environment, this kind of sobriety is deadly.

Any time the vikings went into battle, they underwent an elaborate ritual of chanting, dancing, channeling animal spirits and getting high on alcohol and hallucinogenics -- and they absolutely smashed their competition.

 

Also, with things like caffeine, sugar, nicotine, etc. you can just keep redosing. I never built up any major tolerance to these stimulants. If you want to be extra carerful, just cycle them.

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by Nilsi

[Rigel]

Do you consider green tea a stimulant?

[Schizophonia]

If a glass of orange juice is enough to influence you to this point, there is a problem with your metabolism.

[Carl-Richard]

11 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

If a glass of orange juice is enough to influence you to this point, there is a problem with your metabolism.

Maybe. Some of the context for why I made this topic is that I went to the gym like I usually do, but I forgot my orange (or the equivalent amount of sweet fruit that I've been accustomed to eating at the tail end of my workout ?). The only thing that I could buy at the nearby store was a small 250 ml carton of orange juice. I drank maybe half of it at the usual point of the workout and planned to drink the other half later, and man, I felt like a wreck 20-30 minutes later. Maybe it was too small of an amount to do anything but fuck with my metabolism, but it was drastically different from eating an actual orange.

Now, the tail end of a workout is of course an extreme situation where you're maybe extra sensitive to these things (and you should be careful with judging things based on one-time subjective reports), but I still notice the same effects when consuming other sources of fast carbs without an adequate balance of fibre or other foods. There is also a video that comes to mind of Tom Campell (an experienced 1st person consciousness researcher, author or "My Big TOE") echoing the same findings: fast sugar fogs up your consciousness.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, Rigel said:

Do you consider green tea a stimulant?

Caffeine, L-theanine and all the other major psychoactive components of green tea, contribute to a short-term boom and bust effect on your consciousness. Whether it's a stimulant or a depressant is really beside the point.

Edited July 29, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[caspex]

Same goes with sexual activities like masturbation and sex, with or without porn in the mix. I have only realized what you said recently when I left masturbation and other forms of food that causes drastic changes in state. Without all of these things that change your state you actually feel much lighter at your baseline and contemplation is much easier. States of sober awakening are also much more stable. Personally, it's much easier to generate pleasant feelings in the body and the mind.

[Carl-Richard]

17 hours ago, Nilsi said:

To me it's an aesthetic choice. What kind of life do you want to live? If you are optimizing for peak performance for example, you want that huge spike, even if it only lasts a few hours per day.

I have a coworker who literally works 1 day a month, high as a kite on phenibut and caffeine, calls up some billionaire CEO and closes him on a few 100k -- every single time. I'm not shitting you.

If I was a scholar like you (if you allow), I would do the same thing - but in a hypercompetitive environment, this kind of sobriety is deadly.

Any time the vikings went into battle, they underwent an elaborate ritual of chanting, dancing, channeling animal spirits and getting high on alcohol and hallucinogenics -- and they absolutely smashed their competition.

 

Also, with things like caffeine, sugar, nicotine, etc. you can just keep redosing. I never built up any major tolerance to these stimulants. If you want to be extra carerful, just cycle them.

I completely agree that it depends on your goals if this is something you would want to pursue. There are pros to having a spike that changes your functioning for a while, even if you're a scholar (it can open you up to new insights — "disruptive practices"). I've just presented one con to having that spike. And I can definitely see that having a "sensitive" approach can actually be a detriment in a highly competitive environment.

My mom just got engaged to this super-efficient business CEO guy. He is highly energetic, just inherently (drinks caffeine too, of course), and he literally cannot sit still and just relax (it's like he is in constant pain if he is not actively doing something that demands full effort and attention). He often gets these dumb injuries from not being mindful enough, is really impatient with waiters, etc., and he is of course highly successful at his job. There are definitely aspects of him that I want to integrate in some areas of my life, but I'm again also very aware of the cons to that mode of being.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Nilsi]

10 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

There are definitely aspects of him that I want to integrate in some areas of my life, but I'm again also very aware of the cons to that mode of being.

Do you think there is some synergistic satisfier that would allow you to integrate this mode of being, or are they polymorphic and mutually exclusive?

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Do you think there is some synergistic satisfier that would allow you to integrate this mode of being, or are they polymorphic and mutually exclusive?

Well, things like being highly time efficient in what you're doing can actually be conducive to a flow state. The flow state also requires some kind of feminine finesse or sensitivity, so that could be an example of a synergy of the two modes. If you're too focused on efficiency and trying to push the gas pedal through the floor, that is where you'll lose some of that finesse and you're more prone to making mistakes (and get injuries lol). Masculinity in its purest form is high risk, unrefined, raw, thunderous rage. Flow is a state of perfect balance. So what I see in my mom's fiance is a lot of masculinity and maybe a lack of balance. Now, what happens if you're overly feminine is that you become a bit of a slug: smooth but low energy movements. I think I've been a bit of a slug in some places more than what is optimal.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Carl-Richard