BipolarGrowth

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  1. This is a dream. This is reality. This is illusion. This is truth. This is God. This is consciousness. This is life. This is hell. This is heaven. At the end of the day, this is simply this. Any further view layered upon this is something you are fabricating. When THIS has to be described or equated to a concept, folly has already occurred. When you add layers of meaning, it is like adding a condom between you and This/God/whatever other name you want. Regardless, there’s nothing wrong with playing these mind games with yourself.
  2. This is quite similar to an example I’ve heard a few times pointing to non-self. We all know what a pile of sand is. We all know what a grain of sand is, but when does a collection of grains of sand become a pile? I wouldn’t consider two grains of sand to be a pile. 10 grains of sand is still quite small. 10,000 appears to be a pile by most people’s view. Where in the chain from 1 to 10,000 does the sand become a pile? There’s of course no objective answer to this. We make a subjective judgement as to what we deem to be a pile or not a pile. A similar question could be asked about a human body. Where does the body end? Is it at the skin? What about the heart’s electromagnetic field which extends a number of feet past the skin? Do bacteria count as the body? If there are roughly 10 cells of bacteria to every 1 human cell, which of those are considered part of the human body? I would imagine a human body without a single cell of bacteria would not survive. Are good bacteria necessary to the function of the human body part of a human body? If you have your appendix removed, at what point is that no longer “your body?” If we say the instant it was removed, what if it were a different organ necessary for your survival? As you see the necessary organ being pulled from your body, would you not cry out “that’s mine?” Is the more abstract notion of space part of a body? What is a body without space?
  3. This is a good source for learning more on modern geopolitics as well as some history thrown in at relevant times. This is a great source to learn about medicine and human body functioning from a medical doctor presented in a rather entertaining way. Brian Greene has some great book on physics that are written to be understood by the general population. https://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/039333810X I could keep finding some recommendations, but I think the most important thing would be to find things you are naturally interested in. Reading some dense, boring books to become more knowledgeable can work, but how serious are you about gaining more general knowledge? Unless it’s one of your main life goals, I’d lean toward sticking with sources you enjoy or find entertaining. When learning naturally becomes a pastime for you, it’s going to most likely create more long term results for you than trying to brute force learning. My first impression on reading this is that you might be overplaying the role of ADHD. I could be totally wrong on this of course, as it is your life we’re talking about after all. I say this because I think limiting beliefs resulting from clinical diagnoses can do a lot of harm. I’ve also been diagnosed with ADHD. Maybe it is difficult for you to stay focused on one topic for a sustained period of time. This doesn’t mean you can’t become quite knowledgeable. If you have a lot of different sources to learn from, I’d think it’s fine to hop around rather than sticking to one. If you spend small spurts of time on learning from different sources, in a few years, you’ll probably have a pretty good general knowledge base. Find ways to make learning fun.
  4. What do you suggest I do instead? Am I not the sort of person that you’d have in mind while giving disclaimers against psychedelic use? I know full well that you wouldn’t consider these people Awake.
  5. Edit: The whole point of this post was to show that trying to dissolve suffering is not the way suffering actually is transcended. It is far more about equanimity rather than aversion to suffering. Aversion to suffering is not what brings any success in a reduction of suffering. Aversion = suffering. Resistance = suffering. I’d never quote this as some amazing quote on the description of awakening. From jan_kasimi on Reddit: “The point is not to be fully free of dukkha, it's to be free of trying to be free of dukkha. As long as one is trying to be free, there is still the conception of a self which in turn causes dukkha. For non-liberated beings, trying to avoid dukkha is what drives their actions. Liberated beings have no goals of their own because they (realize they) don't exist separate from the world. Kennet Folk writes about his final realization: One day, walking under a pepper tree in the desert, I gave myself permission to be enlightened. I had been practicing obsessively for twenty-two years, including a cumulative three years on intensive retreat. I thought of myself as a professional yogi. On this day in New Mexico, reflecting on the question “have I suffered enough?” I gave myself permission to be done. I was acutely aware of everything around me — the sights and sounds of the desert, the feeling of heat on my skin, the warm breeze on my face, the pulsing in my veins. It suddenly occurred to me that I was done. [...] I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, clicking her heels three times, and then waking up to find that she’d been home in her own bed the whole time, safe and sound. I called my mother the next day and told her what had happened. “I think I’ve just wasted twenty-two years of my life. The ride is over and nothing much has changed. But I have never been happier. There is peace.” The essential realization that comes from this process is that there isn’t anyone here to get enlightened. You work tirelessly for years to get enlightened, only to find out that you couldn’t possibly get enlightened, because there isn’t anybody here for it to happen to. Contemplative development, in its purest sense, is learning to see yourself as process.”
  6. No, I’ve actually been a lot more stable than before. I had a couple hospitalizations/psych ward stays last summer and was out of work for a few months, but it used to be a lot worse. I haven’t used psychedelics since the summer of 2021. This has made my mental health far more predictable and easier to manage. I used to resist the side effects of psychiatric medications, eventually coming off of them and usually taking psychedelics around that time which ended up putting me in the psych ward several times each year. I had a craving for mystical experiences and insight which I couldn’t experience that well without psychedelics, but my baseline consciousness rose substantially after a few events/“attainments” in 2021. This higher baseline now means that I can fulfill my spiritual desires much easier without the need of substances. The higher baseline consciousness also combats a lot of the side effects of psychiatric medications that used to make me feel sort of lifeless.
  7. I know precisely the kind of unholy mess I might wind up in if I don’t tread lightly with this stuff. Maybe it’s not that much of a surprise that obtaining unearned wisdom over and over again and dealing with the consequences is actually a path to wisdom. But yeah, if you aren’t prepared to lose $100,000, get a criminal charge, be contained in a psychiatric ward against your will, sully your reputation, lose friends, and strain family relationships, you should listen to @Bazooka Jesus
  8. Doctors in psych wards have been some of the most “stage orange” people I’ve ever met. The medical model functions as anti-religious and anti-spiritual. In their eyes, any state of consciousness you’re experiencing cannot be due to spirituality or spiritual practice, it’s always due to mental illness
  9. @Water by the River I read Majjhima Nikāya 121 (Cūļasuññata Sutta - The Shorter Discourse on Voidness/Emptiness) the other day, and it seems to cover the “solipsism” concept fairly well. I wonder what your take is on this. “…There I heard and learned this in the presence of the Buddha: ‘Ānanda, these days I usually practice the meditation on emptiness.’ I trust I properly heard, learned, applied the mind, and remembered that from the Buddha?” “Indeed, Ānanda, you properly heard, learned, applied the mind, and remembered that. Now, as before, I usually practice the meditation on emptiness. Consider this stilt longhouse of Migāra’s mother. It’s empty of elephants, cows, horses, and mares; of gold and money; and of gatherings of men and women. There is only this that is not emptiness, namely, the oneness dependent on the mendicant Saṅgha. In the same way, a mendicant—ignoring the perception of the village and the perception of people—focuses on the oneness dependent on the perception of wilderness. Their mind becomes secure, confident, settled, and decided in that perception of wilderness. They understand: ‘Here there is no stress due to the perception of village or the perception of people. There is only this modicum of stress, namely the oneness dependent on the perception of wilderness.’ They understand: ‘This field of perception is empty of the perception of the village. It is empty of the perception of people. There is only this that is not emptiness, namely the oneness dependent on the perception of wilderness.’ And so they regard it as empty of what is not there, but as to what remains they understand that it is present. That’s how emptiness is born in them—genuine, undistorted, and pure…”
  10. The main course of Nonduality just ain’t as tasty without the appetizer of Duality. Not to mention the dessert of “no one did all that seeking to go absolutely nowhere.”
  11. Try listening to this translation/audiobook if you haven’t yet: It always seemed to give me great results. I loved listening to it in depressed states just lying in my bed in the dark not moving. It allowed me to resist the moment less. I’ve listened through this over 100 times. The more the better I would think. Listening one time leaves a lot more room for the ego to freak out and try to take control again. I like to meditate alongside listening to these, raising mindfulness and looking more into my True Nature. Here are some other audiobooks I’ve gotten a lot out of:
  12. Well, it seems like you are the expert on this, so who am I to say differently? I’ll give my take on what you said, and if you want, you can clear things up for me further. Are you saying that raising Consciousness and God Realization have no relationship whatsoever with suffering? From videos and teachings you’ve given in the past on this topic, it seems like God Realization and awakening tend to bring about states of intense bliss and lessened suffering. This is going quite a ways back, but if we consider your video on 30 days of back to back 5-MeO, you seemed to be reporting awakening that was closer to peak bliss and further from suffering than prior awakenings. Whenever I have seen you report a new depth of awakening, it appears to me to in part be you seeing this new level as more awesome and profound which I would think comes in part from you resisting Consciousness less and allowing yourself to sync up even more fully to God. Also, avoidance of suffering sounds like a form of aversion to consciousness. The path to less suffering is about becoming less averse to suffering to actually reduce it. Resistance felt to be coming from an individual ego self seems to rather predictably create states of lower consciousness rather than higher consciousness to me. I think of it in this sense: less aversion to what consciousness is appearing as in a moment and less desire for consciousness to be something other that what it is currently presenting itself as ends up lessening the illusion of an ego which in turn allows God to see God as God without a fake personality trying to break up the union of God with God which is already the case yet less noticeable with an ego in the way. Bliss can relax the ego so it can be seen through easier and more fully.
  13. Buddhism is all about getting out of suffering through awakening. Leo might critique this saying that getting out of suffering isn’t the highest goal. Well what is the peak of God-Realization or really any spiritual goal? You can desire to get out of sin to experience salvation. You can desire to get out of illusion to know truth. You can desire to get out of the hell of being a temporary self with temporary pleasures to instead see the heaven that there is no self who could lose anything. Suffering is the primary catalyst for awakening in my experience. You can say you want pure understanding and that is your goal. Why do you want pure understanding? Because you’ve found that you dislike a lack of understanding. You want to move away from what you dislike to what you enjoy, value, and experience as positive. And what is more enjoyable than a peak transcendental moment of awakening? As humans, we’re all caught in wanting to go from something deemed lower to another state deemed higher or better. The beauty of awakening is that you can see how nothing needs to be done in that moment. The goal is reached. No further engineering of existence to fit what you want is needed because you have seen that the highest possible thing you could ever want is already in the palm of your hand. The moment my spiritual journey really began was when the suffering and depression of self repression through crippling social anxiety led me to make the decision to be 100% authentic for just one day. This triggered my first manic episode, and from then on awakening became the way to transcend my mental illness and actually feel good for once. We just want to feel good. We can throw whatever justifications or intellectualization on top of that base truth that we want, but this basic truth remains regardless. People who suffer cause more suffering for themselves and others. People who feel content and at peace are able to help those lost in the miseries of life and offer their abundance of positive emotion generously.
  14. If most people aren’t making themselves feel better, and you are? Who is in the wrong? The saying goes “hurt people hurt people.”
  15. If humans keep an idea, philosophy, mode of being, practice, teaching, or activity for thousands of years, humans probably find that thing valuable.