PepperBlossoms

I feel trapped. Trapped in this body. Trapped in the ideas. Trapped at work. Can only do xyz and have to do it like xyz. Trapped in schedule. Trapped in having to work 8-5. Trapped in having to look at computer screen. Trapped in having to speak language. Trapped in having to behave a certain way, say certain things, think certain things, move in specific ways. There are only so many options and choices and freedom. We are slaves to where we see the boundary is. Trapped in emotion. Trapped in sadness. Trapped in lack of motivation. Trapped in lack of ideas. Trapped in rules. Trapped in shoulds. Trapped. It is claustrophobic. Trapped in how people move around. Trapped in bodily pain. Trapped in money system. Trapped in how/where you can go. Stuck on the ground. Walk on the sidewalk. Drive between the lines. Sleep during night. Trapped in job system. Cannot take positions you are not qualified for. Cannot piss people off. Trapped in doing "what you are supposed to do". Everyone is copying off of everyone for how to act/be and it is claustrophobic. If I am everyone, I am contributing to the collective claustrophobia if I go along. I die as an individual body if I step outside. It is painful.

Sleep has been bad on some days, okay on others. Sure I could say that all the rules are made up and we don't have to go by them - but yet gravity isn't gonna go away any time soon. Sure I could say that I am part of everyone and whatever I do benefits the other me's and all these things we have are from other me's. I appreciate all the technology and plants and stuff that other me's have created but yet it feels pretty constraining. Looking at blood cells and how they are constrained in only doing certain things. Water droplets constrained in that they rumble in the water and go up in the sky and then fall back down. Words constrained in that stuck on a piece of paper. I didn't ask to be here - I am just here. Even if this bodily self/perspective goes away, the other self could still be here. Even if I leave - the other me's are similarly to varying degrees constrained as well. Spiders constrained, fish constrained, vapor constrained. Sure I could try to make things better for the other me's but not sure what that would be. It seems like a waste of time to improve stuff on Earth when the planet won't last forever anyway nor will the stuff on it. We are seemingly going to die regardless (of our bodily perspective) so its so weird. How to make it so that I help all the me's.. not sure. I think my job has had a bunch of toxicity and that made things worse but will still be constrained regardless of toxicity at other jobs. Would be nice if we lifted more constraints - easier to switch careers/countries. food/shelter taken care of by the collective. I disagree in making people "illegal" from other countries. we have no more right than them to be here. but then there is the potential issue of too many people and overcrowding and not enough adequate infrastructure.

some subjects that are easy to talk about and others hard some people easy to talk with and some hard some tasks easy and some hard we see what we struggle with and then wonder what to do about it - me included

Work is so claustrophobic. Have to do all of these tasks. Trapped in that you have to do them and they have to be done a certain way and by a certain time. Trapped in that you can't just say - I don't want to do these tasks - well you can - by quitting - yes we can speak out and say we don't want to do them and to have someone else do them

Because your parents ridiculed you and your siblings over and over again; your teachers ridiculed you and your classmates over and over again; you grew up with a religion that ridiculed you over and over again You are around it so much it is normal so you pick up on it and do it too Other kids didn't have that environment so they don't do it Environment too strict. Person gets insecurity for stresses/pressure/being unable to "stay in line" constantly. Constrained. Claustrophobic. Person finds security in finding others that seem to be worse off than them.

and yet we sometimes take it so darn serious and get caught in emotion/pain hells the constant forgetting that it is just a game/dream pain hurts.

Interesting post. I find that I tell myself I am too tired to work and then I stop trying or that I am not good enough to win the tennis match and so I stop trying or that I am too shy to be around the group of people and so I run away from them. Yeah good point. I would say noticing the upper limit problem is a first step and then seeing different ways to think about it and what you can do about it... and then make it so that it is not a limit anymore or that the limit is higher up and that you don't quit as easily - like making the limit further than where it currently is. Tips - keep trying or returning to the issue and ask why you are saying it is a limit; look at what you want to accomplish.

I find that my attention goes to what is stimulating. Things on the internet, smoking weed, and swimming can be a lot more stimulating than studying. Depending on how the college class is taught, it could be that it is super unstimulating - especially the lecture ones where you have to read the book and memorize parts of it for a test. School can be unstimulating, work can be unstimulating, sometimes social interactions can be too. It is sad how society pushes us to focus on one thing for a career for our entire lives - we can do it only for so long and then some of us get burnt out and need breaks - like me I feel disconnected from like 99% of people so you are not alone. I guess when you say you don't connect, ask - what about it is not connecting? Writing stuff down can help with coping and processing so if writing it in the form of a book is something you want to try - I say go for it. Can think more about the degree/classes you are doing and ask about how that will help you with where you are trying to go (but who really knows?) life is not perfect and we will just die anyway so it is okay to have some imperfect stuff good luck mate

Great question - is welfare a net positive or net negative? I would say welfare can be a net positive IF DONE RIGHT. IF. You are going to want to have the welfare money be enough for food/water/shelter/electricity (to survive) but still be much lower than what minimum wage would make to incentivize people to work in order to have more flexibility with their spending and buy things that they want to experience with. Minimum wage needs to be high enough that people can live off of it without having to go onto welfare - as the community is basically subsidizing the companies who are not paying their employees enough. If a company says it can't afford to pay their employees a livable wage, it shouldn't be in business then. Getting people's needs met will reduce crime, violence, and anxiety and improve mental and physical health. The economics behind the welfare will have to be looked at. Can the economy AFFORD to have this kind of welfare? Is it reasonable and feasible? Taxes, money supply, spending, etc. need to be looked at to ensure that it is sustainable. Is the economy padded enough to offer welfare or can it only survive if absolutely everyone works? It depends. We could say that the welfare could be available to anyone who needed it regardless of need - whether that is from being sick, disabled, elderly, young, keep on getting fired, no desire to work, no one willing to hire you, needing to take care of family members, wanting to take a break from work, having gotten laid off of work, wanting to try out a new business idea, wanting to take care of a newborn child, etc. Again, the welfare will need to be lower than the minimum wage so that people are incentivized to not stay on welfare and to move to the working world when they are ready and willing - - but yet by providing the welfare, it is improving the quality of life for the society as a whole and takes pressure off of someone - to know that if everything goes to shit, I won't starve to death because the government refused my welfare application and I won't have to start stealing from the neighbors just to buy food. Minimum wage needs to go up and keep up with inflation. We could argue that we could try to get rid of minimum wage jobs anyway but there can be unskilled people who have no interest in getting skills that are fine with minimum wage jobs and companies are fine to offer and utilize them and need them as part of the services they offer. If someone can't get a job because they keep on getting fired, have a criminal record and can't seem to find work, no one is hiring, whatever - if they get poor enough - they will start to resort to stealing, crime, violence, etc. to stay alive --- so by having that extra padding and not having embarrassment about it - such as if the welfare just went to everyone - then it would reduce crime and improve the quality of life of everyone. Some people will have no desire to work - but we may need to support them even if at the bare minimum - to keep the overall community quality of life up - not everyone will be like that and just because a parent has no desire to work doesn't mean that the kid will want the same lifestyle for themselves. I think welfare produces a net positive. It moves the responsibility to take care of the sick/disabled/elderly from the individual to the community. But it also gives the community more flexibility and have a back up plan.

If nothing is happening and we are in a dream, imagining a past, how do we even have memory?? or an illusion of having memory??? Just like how when we wake up from a dream and see that the people/place/events were a dream, this very thing could be the same - taking up no space/no time/not happening. I can see that to experience what we are experiencing, we have to have a memory otherwise the experience wouldn't work. Could it be that we are looking around and we are constantly making up a story about ourselves/past (and that looking around includes not just what we see with our eyes but what we see in our mind). If there is no absolute separation from inside/outside a house and apply that to inside/outside the body and inside/outside the mind - then the stuff happening in the internal is just as much reality as the external - but there is no where to divide the line between internal and external?? - so the "memory" isn't just in the head but also in the environment?? (Idk lol) So the "memory" IS "reality" But reality constantly changes so the memory constantly changes too? And memory is tied to time but time is a concept and memory is a concept.. the memory isn't over there in the brain, just like reality isn't some other place - reality is right here. memory is right here too.? -- consciousness has access to everything so it can see everything - but it has no memory so it can't take something from one moment to the next - there is no absolute dividing line between one moment to the next and between conciousness and moments - so the moments are consciousness - there are not several moments - just one (no time). the consciousness sees what is in front of it as an appearance - but it is imagining what it sees?

Is the "present moment" imagination too? If our imagination is strong enough, can we imagine anything into existence?

@RMQualtrough do all the pages already exist? is there no happening that makes a new page? or are we making new pages?

Graceful, lovely, beautiful love; boundless, giving, caring. You see it in someone and are gifted to be in their presence and may say "wow" and feel inspired to be loving. I have started to notice love (positivity) and negativity. You can see it in the way someone talks about something, smiles for a photo, interacts, writes, walks. The love is so great. Negativity is like a shell that blocks out love and it sees negativity (itself) in the love. Negativity complains and criticizes constantly over and over again. Love is giving and kind and hopeful. The negativity is like a weight that gets dragged around and tries to infect everything around it. Even religion, which I have previously disliked, can have members who are very, very full of beautiful love. Like spiral dynamics and ego development, I am wondering if there exists stages of love development. Love awareness, love giving, seeing it in ways you haven't before. Has anyone else thought about this? Yes sure we may have to work through things that bother us and see our reality through a different filter than currently in order to be more loving than we are currently.

@Tovius That is beautiful! Thank you for that. For absolute love, everything is loving enough. It sees itself, love, in everything else - including negativity, death, killing, ego, etc.

Imagine - instead of seeing Christian billboards you see spiritual ones. "Life is a dream." "You are the air you breathe." Bumper stickers Politicians People on the street chanting about spirituality and trying to get you to join their belief system Facebook spiritual quotes (It could be that this is already a thing and I never looked for it - it just seems that Christianity dominates the sphere - I was wondering when Spirituality would take over if ever).

Another one I thought of is "life being hard itself" may prevent suicide in that we find some joy to conquering how hard it is. We find joy in overcoming things that we didn't think we could overcome. As leo has said in one of his recent videos, if life was easy, it would be too boring. although it could be so hard that it is hard to find joy in anything so I can see that it would be tough. The happy medium of not being too hard nor too easy is one to strive for. Too easy - too bored. Too hard - don't want to participate anymore. When we see it is a game though - we may want to back out of the game but see that that would hurt our friends who are in the game and we have attachment to them. There is also that once left the game, you are gone from it forever and that kinda doesn't let you explore the game anymore.

Various methods that have helped me -telling my mind to go silent - like you did -saying that life is all a game and if I am getting upset, I am getting upset with the game and I can be as involved/engaged or not with the game as I chose -writing in a blog my thoughts - helps to not hold onto an idea - to digest the idea and "poop" it out of my system so that I can move on and think new thoughts -have someone to talk to -cleaning the house; doing various chores that need to get done -taking a break -listening to happy music -eating food, getting sleep, getting exercise -thinking about thoughts and trying to piece things together -cry really loud and obnoxiously - get the urge to cry and feel sad out of my system by letting myself do that

the oneness shapeshifter

I had this idea earlier today - we care so much about religion/ideology/values/identity/story because they are the context we set for the character "skin" of our reality. If there was no "skin", there would be nothing to see/interact with - nothingness. but is there something or nothing?

@Muhammad Jawad @SoonHei I am so sorry for your loss. That must be very tough and painful. Take the time you need to mourn. I hope you can find some new friends @Muhammad Jawad but knowing that the new ones won't be the same. I hope your family, the wife, and the children will be okay @SoonHei.

Nice post. Man laziness is tough - I've been struggling with it towards work. Maybe it also has to do with what we are saying we are lazy to do. Maybe we are lazy when we know that what we are doing doesn't matter all that much and we don't really care about it or value it - - we know that the version of us as a human is temporary and is going to "die" and the stuff we are working on, if we don't keep it up, will just go bad if not addressed but also mother nature will just ruin it too - so why spend all this time working on it when it will just go bad anyway? There could be more drive to work on stuff that has the ability to last past our death and last more towards infinity... I don't know - just a guess. So the spiritual work - maybe it is easier to work on because it seems like we could use it in a way that could last for infinity in some way. If it is not significant enough, we have a hard time doing it?? we have to tell ourselves that the task is significant to want to do it in the first place (or that the consequences of not doing it are worth avoiding)

it feels uncomfortable and awkward around positive people; we don't know how to act around them or with them; the chemistries do not work. We do not feel inclined to hang out with them. We feel a pressure to put on a positive fascade when we are not an overly positive person ourselves and do not want to have to do that. We feel more comfortable being around people that we do not have to act positive around. We feel that being overly positive would be fake for us because that is not who we are or how we are feeling

Great post. Hmm.. maybe lots of things - the unpositive/neutral are jealous of the positive; the positive seem shallow; it may be hard to take the positive person seriously; it is weird to see a happy person because it is like, why are you so happy? what are you so positive about? the viewer does not identify as positive and based on their identity, they react negatively to a positive person because that is how their identity would respond, etc. they do not trust the positive person - maybe there is some taking advantage of the situation in a seemingly unfair way; maybe there is something unfair about the situation positive people can be annoying; they are a source of attention; the positive person's positivity is distracting

How do you tell if you are compatible with your partner? How do you tell if it is going to work out or not? What do you want the relationship to be like? What do you want it to have? Does your relationship have "love" and what is that to you?

I feel like when I am responding, I am saying the first thing that comes to my head and it ends up being offensive even if it is a legit comment. Or I don't respond correctly or enough and then that is offensive because my response was not what the other person wanted. I then feel bad about the entire conversation or the other person hates me for my responses. How to not have this happen?