LastThursday

I feel you. My sympathies. I'm glad you made the better choice. I'm loath to give any sort of reply as it's only my ego speaking and your reply is marvellous. Anyway, to unpack my answer a bit, as I'm prone to being terse: 1. I'd like to turn into a goat... : Of course I can't. Free will, if it exists, is very (very) circumscribed, even if my ego wants outlandish things badly. 2. I'm going to make a coffee instead : At least I (the ego) have the illusion of choice. 3. I wonder what made me think of coffee? : Where did the thought originate? Isn't wholly dependent on a zillion bits of context, such as my upbringing, culture, emotions, addiction, in fact probably the whole of reality up until that point. The ego is ignorant and greedy and will take ownership for anything. 4. I'm chosing not to have coffee : Despite the ego reasserting itself, the outcome is that nothing happened, I neither turned into a goat or made a coffee. The free will was an illusion in this instance, because nothing came of it. Just thoughts, whirring round. 5. I'm not a robot zombie : The ego tries to console itself. The fact is we are all robot zombies, albeit very amazing ones. My view on it, is that it's ok throw the ego a bone and to pretend to have free will. But I realise it requires a certain level of conciousness to play that game and not get sucked back in.

I'd like to turn into a goat... Nope. That didn't work. Ok, let's try something easier. I'm going to make a coffee instead. Oh, I wonder what made me think of coffee? Was it that advert I just saw? Was it my addiction? I DO HAVE FREE WILL. I'm chosing not to have coffee, I'm not a robot zombie.

Which 'i' is that? Then listen to the other 'i'. It's clearly got it's head screwed on. Given the choice between a punch to the face or a kiss on the cheek, I know which one I would take.

By definition, nothing is what's left when you remove everything. So it is still something, but only relative to what's been removed. So in a dualistic sense, nothing is the ground for everything. In a non-dualistic sense, nothing is actually everything, because it's not possible to remove anything; removal is a process which fragments. So in a non-dualistic universe everything can come out of nothing, because they are in fact the same. In a dualistic universe, nothing is the ground of everything. Both are equally as pleasing.

Why not ground yourself in some personal rules to get past the frustration and allow yourself to grow? Here are some of mine: Lead by example not by instruction. Don't present a gift, if the receiver is not ready for it. If a person's actions make you 'feel' a certain way, that tells you more about yourself than it does about them. Change yourself first before you decide to change the world. Let the world get on with it, it's big enough and ugly enough to carry on all by itself.

The one that turned it around for me and made me realise I was a hypochrite. And very relevant to our Western orange societies today:

@fabriciom what you should aim for is full awareness of what the mind is. It's slippery to grasp, but the grasping is the problem. There are two sides to it. Firstly, the mind has a concept of itself which it calls 'the mind'. With this is makes up all sorts of stories and ideas about what it is and how it operates and how it should 'quieten itself' to be free of itself. This is the self referential aspect of it. It creates itself out of itself. It traps itself in itself. Secondly, is the real mind. This is the observance that the mind exists. In other words there is a 'thing' which is outside or beyond the mind that can observe the mind in action. The 'thing' is emphatically not the mind - the 'thing' is you in all your glory. But the mind exists nonetheless, i.e. it is real. If you want a metaphor it's like this: Imagine you are riding the subway in a big city. You undestand the layout of the lines, where to change, and you can read all the station names. It is no effort at all to travel around it. You are part of it and it is part of you. You don't understand how it could be any different. You try by standing still on a platform and closing your eyes and hoping that it 'goes away' and that you can finally reveal the real you. Then you are suddenly transported to another big city in a different country on a different subway. You don't understand a damn thing, you can't read the local language, you don't know the layout, you can't get around. But you finally realise what a 'subway' is and the fact that you've been trapped in one and that a subway is not part of you. Ok, it's a lame metaphor, but hopefully you get the idea.

@Primentex thoughts of suicide are just a distraction. Suffering comes in many forms, small and large, simple and complicated. But all mental suffering occurs because you want to force 'reality' to your will. And when 'reality' doesn't do what you want it to, you suffer. All distraction is just suffering in disguise; you distract yourself because you do not like reality and you do not like reality because it's not happening the way you want it to. Step away from the suicide. Step away from the distraction. Embrace reality as it is.

In my opinion everyone has ingenuity 'built in'. How else do you explain the fact that a baby learns to walk without being told or explicitly shown how to do it? The same with picking up language. It takes ingenuity to cordinate the movements of the rib cage, tongue, larynx, jaw, lips and other facial muscles - all without being told explictly how to do it. So how do you direct the ingenuity? One way is to have mastery of the field you want to be ingenious in. Not to be too cheesy, you have to learn to walk before you can run a marathon. You have to run many marathons before you can use your ingenuity - maybe you invent a new running style or way of breathing that nobody else thought of before. Another way is to constantly force yourself to think outside the box. To be a mismatcher - some people are natural at this, others not. But it can be learnt. This allows you to be free to make connections between things that are not normally connected to each other, i.e. ingenuity. Problem solving of any type is conducive to ingenuity. Build a problem solving habit! Lastly plain old inspiration. Kekule and his benzene dream, Einsten riding a beam of light, Newton and his apple. The stuff that plain comes out of nowhere.

Social situations have rules of engagement. These are mostly to aid smooth communication and non-hostile behaviour. Some of these rules are very subtle. Awkwardness occurs when one of the people in a conversation breaks a rule. For example take eye contact. If you don't make eye contact at all that is breaking a rule, as you should make eye contact with the person you are speaking to. If you don't, the other person may feel uncomfortable or awkard. On the other hand too much eye contact may be seen as aggression or sexual interest, which may be inappropriate for the situation - a rule is broken and again 'awkwardness'. Most people will naturally know how much eye contact is acceptible and thus avoid awkardness. Some people may not be so good at this and are seen as 'socially awkward'. Having good strategies is hard, there are very many rules to adhere to and you have to apply them in 'real time', there is generally no time to think in a flowing conversation. Your only two friends a practice and lots of it, and being very aware. But use any 'awkwardness' as a sign that you or the other person has broken a rule and learn from those mistakes.

It is a judgement you have to weigh. Is the suffering you are feeling by trying to get back into the group and not succeeding, worse than the suffering of not being in the group? The leader of the group may also want to maintain her control and power and status quo. She may perceive that having you there may make it more difficult for her to do that - whether that is right or wrong. Not getting closure can be a very difficult thing to manage. Usually we feel this intensely, with people, situation and things we are strongly emotionally attached to. Sometimes, what it takes is a line drawn in the sand and to say enough is enough it ends here. That can then allow you to start the grieving process and slowly come to terms with letting go of the emotional attachment. It may also help, but it's up to you, to carry out some sort of personal ceremony (something meaningful to you) at this point, so you can formally say 'goodbye', even if you can't do it in person. I can personally say that I have a number of people in my life who I will probably never see again, and who I didn't say 'goodbye' to. It can still hurt occasionally, but actually, they made me the man I am today, and for that I'm grateful.

I hasten to add. I love science and I love Enlightenment and I'm probably weird, but hey, I really don't care. People often blame themselves for not living up to a certain ideal. But who is setting that ideal? We get pressured from our friends and family to be a certain way, when your 'real self' doesn't match that. In time you will understand you can't read other people's minds and you should just give up doing that, because it wastes a lot of mental energy you can use for other things. Also you may eventually realise that you're telling yourself a story about being 'socially awkward', when in fact you are probably not at all. Your whole mind and body may be screaming 'socially awkward', but your mind and body (a.k.a ego) can lie to you. It sounds like you're on the right track and you will get to where you want to be. Keep learning about yourself. Keep up the good work.

Which people specifically (be honest)? Is being weird a problem for you? And do you think you'll ever find people to talk about science or Enlightenment with who won't think you're weird?

That's an interesting turn of phrase. What do you mean by that exactly?

Nothing will change. Leo will seem the same - because our level of conciousness is too low to recognise anything higher.

@Sahil Pandit Who is listening to the voice? And what is asking the question?

We need people like we need food and air; that is being human. But unlike eating and breathing it takes great skill to bond with others - a certain level of mastery is required and you really never stop learning. But with anything worth mastering - the path to enlightenment included - it needs real determination and stamina. So don't put yourself down or give up before you've really started, it's early days. My two tips are: Learn to be confident by knowing yourself well. Be vulnerable and open up to others, not for pity, but for sharing your wonderful self.

Just to pick on one thing you said, I hope I'm not being too harsh: So - you invented a story for yourself that logic equates to suicide? You should ask yourself some deep questions about that statement. Firstly. Why did you invent this story about suicide? What was the purpose for you exactly? Was it for attention, or self satisfaction, or to make yourself feel bad, or you think it will end suffering, or some other set of reasons? Meditate on that, question the hell out of it. Secondly. What is your definition of logic? To me logic is where you start from a set of assumptions, then through a step by step process you reach a conclusion. What assumptions are you starting from? For example is it: life = meaningless = suffering = negative, death = meaning = peace = positive, therefore death is prefereable to life? Thirdly. Have you ever been dead yourself? If not, then how do you know that death is peace or preferable to life? You don't. And lastly. Suicide is not a thing or an object, it is a process. It has a beginning, a middle and sometimes an end. So what exactly does this process mean to you? Does it always end in death? Or is it possible it could end in life full of misery instead? You should really be asking yourself: 'I will keep asking myself if I can really use logic to justify starting a process called committing suicide which may go very wrong and end in a miserable life instead?'

Ah... limerance. There is only one way out. Cut off the source of the obsession, or in other words cold turkey, absolute zero contact. Eventually, sanity returns and you are yourself again. If you can master this approach to addiction, it gets easier the next time with other addictions - the learning carries over. But there is something very useful about the limerence experience. It makes you very aware that you construct your reality - and that also you have some control over it. And if you really take that idea to the bitter end, there are no 'other people' and there is no 'you', it's a fabrication.

@Leo Gura you're a star. You've absolutely battered my ego, but I like it, keep up the good work man.

@Leo Gura Thanks. There are known knowns, and known unknowns. My ego is large, my curiosity larger, my humility even larger than that.

@UDT I have a similar problem with 5-MeO DMT but from a different perspective. If you read the following sentence: "You are feeling sleepy." Maybe you will have start having thoughts of going to bed or chilling out or whatever. What's so special about this sentence that has that effect? Not much, other than it's written in English in words you understand. The letters themselves and their arrangement are abritary and have no intrinsic effect in of themselves. But the effect is to modulate your experience in some way. And this only works because your mind casts an 'English' net over the symbols. Now what if I talk about Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen and Oxygen, the letters of biological chemistry? The same applies. If you arrange and combine just these elements you get very different substances (materialism, humour me). For example Melatonin (C13H16N2O2) also makes you sleepy. It also modulates your experience. This time, your body interprets the chemical words by casting a 'Human Chemistry' net over the symbols. 5-MeO DMT (C13H18N2O) is just another chemical word very very similar to Melotonin, but with a drastically different modulation (effect) of experience - the difference between 'sleepy' and 'absolute infinity'. If I said there was a sentence in English that would induce 'absolute infinity', you'd say I was misguided at least. The only thing that could be happening here is that experience is being so extremely modulated that it's unrecognisable to everyday experience. But then again, I haven't actually taken the stuff, so what do I know, maybe I'll end up eating my words?

If an enlightened Zen master is walking in the forest and afterwards tells you a tree fell, did it make a sound? Every perception 'this' is aware of, is always second-hand - except the perception of 'this'.

I sympathise. Even if I try to broach the sniff of a hint of non-duality with my friends or family or co-workers, they'll think I'm a lunatic. It is indeed very unnerving when you meet someone who will even contemplate it. Thankfully, I had this experience in a pub in Eire with a life coach. I didn't know her too well, but the drinks were flowing and the music was playing. The long and short of it, was that she well understood what non-duality was getting at, she even suggested I try mushrooms. Which I look forward to some time. My retort was that she had work to do on herself. She was bitching about people she didn't get on with, so I suggested she herself 'take on' a behaviour she particularly disliked and tried that behaviour out for herself for a day. She was perplexed, until I said 'the behaviour is not "out there', it's inside you, come to terms with it.' Now there's life coaching in action! And probably some semblance of non-duality.

@egoless Of course, you should lead by example (?). Do it! Don't assert. BE it. My personal mission is to keep re-iterating till I'm blue in the face, STOP HOLDING ON TO YOUR PET IDEAS, reality is smarter than you.