PepperBlossoms

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?

I thought I would share my "enlightenment" experience that I had over the weekend while taking some stuff**. I had the theme idea of concepts after seeing flames on a mailbox - the flames are a concept, I am a concept, relationships are a concept, your job is a concept, etc. Another thought was that you can't reject anyone because everyone is the same thing. At the beginning, the voice in my head said - "You fool - you fell for enlightenment. We banned the psychedelics and we introduced religion and you went around both to try to become enlightened. Religion is a blessing so that you don't have to get enlightened. There is nothing to see at enlightenment." I was thinking that the voice (or ego or consciousness) was evil and male and then I realized that it wouldn't be male and remembered (forgot) that I was a female and then I thought it could be unisex. I then thought it wasn't necessarily evil and I was just saying it was. I felt that everything is of the same thing - the snow, the trees, the air, other people. I became terrified to look at the other person with me or touch the snow - for if it was the same thing. The other person kept saying "you" and the word "you" was bothering me. The architecture of the world became all one consciousness. (or it seemed to compress visually? or something that gave me that idea...?) I had the thought that the universe is using me to experience itself (I started crying because I felt used) and I am using the universe to experience it- but I am not separate from the universe. If everything is all one consciousness - then there possibly could be things that are conscious of when we are more conscious and try to interact with us as such. (I could be wrong- I just heard lots of different birds chirping and was wondering if any of them could have been the consciousness part of consciousness talking to me or if they are all just chirping like usual) For a while I felt like I was observing myself with no control but that at the same time seemed wrong because I think I had control the whole time and just told myself I didn't. However - I feel like I was influenced by books/other people and I can't tell if I was delusional or not. I went from crying to laughing to crying to laughing (pretty loudly and not holding back) like maybe 100 times back and forth and I was spitting out constantly but then realized that I was spitting "myself" out but then kept doing it anyway. Crying and laughing seemed to be the same thing. I looked at my hands and they looked like alien hands and I looked at my legs and they looked like hairy animal legs (hadn't shaved in like 2+ months). As a side note, the trees looked like those miniature train track trees with snow on them, the snow had rainbow sparkles in it, and the trees would try to shake off the snow and it sounded like someone shaking a blanket. I started to tell myself "okay" over and over again.

A desire for a new desire to desire.

Social system dynamics Power system dynamics Asymmetry/symmetry/balance system Authority system Thoughts system Data storage system System as an organization; system as steps; system as parts; system as a bunch of codes/rules/laws Mathematics as a system College system; school system; learning system Ideology systems Computer software systems Engineering systems Ecosystem Library/internet system News systems Voting systems Sleep cycle system water/wastewater/stormwater/gas/electric system Testing systems Identity/perspective systems consciousness systems systems of different realities Industry systems - food/entertainment/hospitality/maintenance family unit as a system hierarchies as a system - in the workplace; predator and prey; young and old; weak and strong; rich and poor; small and large; simple and complex; one part within another part ranges as a system - color system, light to dark, "good to evil", unit system - numbers/metric/imperial, rankings, grades, money, qualification, standards, honors system, frat/sorority system, intermurals/varsity/jv system, challenge system, classification systems, definitions, spiral dynamics, stages, egos development, fame, age, quantity; quality level forces as a system - gravity, electromagnetic, nuclear Solid/liquid/gas system - particle properties; molecular and atomic systems; evolution system feeling systems music system/movie systems - sound systems, smell systems, sight systems time, length, velocity, acceleration, temperature, gravity, magnetism, reflection, transparency, density, mass systems water cycle, reproduction, cell division, replication, photosynthesis logistics psychology poopering lazy population immune system, defense/offense system; intelligence system duality, nonduality reliability, credit, trustworthy criminal justice system "the system" attractiveness, compatibility species naming system; periodic table system; dress code; grade levels in school; days of the week/calendars/years/minutes/seconds/hours; clocks, watches weather systems, temperature, wind, sun, humidity, moisture, fire, earthquake security system, surveillance system

@trenton Not saying to or not to - just saying that the government has info on harassment too - https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/what-you-should-know-what-do-if-you-believe-you-have-been-harassed-work#:~:text=You have a right to,to complain about the harassment. @Average Investor Nice advice. My boyfriend had similar issues when working at a nursery for basically minimum wage as well. They told him to interact with customers and he is pretty shy and likes to keep to himself so he kept doing the other tasks like watering plants and they sent him home. I think bosses with mindsets like the above want a specific personality and if someone doesn't fit or fake that personality - they try to get rid of them.

@Nobody_Here I thought I may add - Thinking some more regarding the evil engineering company - Engineering has a code of ethics that engineers have to follow to keep their licensure. If you are out of Texas... and want to file a complaint - https://pels.texas.gov/complaint.htm Texas Board of Professional Engineers Rules - https://pels.texas.gov/downloads/lawrules.pdf (Other states will have their own or will use a national standard - NSPE - National Society of Professional Engineers). Page 83 of TBPE rules - §137.55 ENGINEERS SHALL PROTECT THE PUBLIC (a) Engineers shall be entrusted to protect the health, safety, property, and welfare of the public in the practice of their profession ". When, in an engineer’s judgment, any risk to the public remains unresolved, that engineer shall report any fraud, gross negligence, incompetence, misconduct, unethical or illegal conduct to the board or to proper civil or criminal authorities." I think one issue is that many "horrible" things are still considered "legal" - can see if the things that this company is doing is a violation of any of the ethics rules and then you have the entire company at risk for losing its engineering status/license to operate (unless this is one of the branches of engineering that gets to skip out on engineering licenses) - but will also depend on the perspective of the TBPE board or whoever the reviewer board is and how conservative/liberal they are. Could argue that the engineering boards that know about the evilness and don't do anything about it are evil themselves - despite having ethics rules...

@Nobody_Here Evil can be a relative term. What is evil to one may not be evil to another. If it is evil by stage green/yellow standards, most of the people who work there are probably low consciousness or have to numb/blind themselves to what they are contributing. Yes I can see that money can be a survival need and some of the evil companies pay more than others - I can see that the higher conscious/aware someone is, the less likely they will be able to tolerate or agree to working for evil. There are civil/mechanical/electrical engineering firms that do work in green energy, sustainability, addressing climate change, water/wastewater/stormwater/roadway infrastructure. There are firms that work to promote learning (and infrastructure) in undeveloped countries or just learning in general - schools. Research groups - public or private - will try to explore reality. It can be hard to keep up working on something that is taking advantage of others. I can see that that can be painful to have to do if one cares about others and basically requires people to tell themselves a story that it is okay to do what they are doing. Could try to raise the consciousness of coworkers? Would be an interesting experience. Hmm - wonder how one would get their own international firm to stop the evil and try to do good instead - may require law changes at government level as well as publicly known about the evilness (to get the company to stop doing that that way) The company may be stage red/orange and needs to become green/yellow (from perspective of green/orange) - although technically no absolute "need" to change as reality is just reality - despite however painful things are/seem. That's nice that your ex liked the philosophical stuff. Those are really cool conversations. Philosophical buddies are the best. Not sure of the situation and if the entire company knows about the evil or just the IT since they tend to get to talk to everyone and may know more things - if the entire company knew, would they allow that to keep on happening? Yeah there can be lots of blue/orange engineering companies but there will also be those that are green/yellow too that pay just as much. I'd say progressive CEOs make better companies than conservative ones do - as the CEO will tend to set the company culture/goals (from viewpoint of a progressive). Yeah those power outages and deaths in Texas were pretty upsetting - so sad. Yeah the new clothes thing was kinda a dumb idea but is sometimes refreshing. I've been wearing the same clothes for days straight since I don't have to see people with covid. I guess one thing I would recommend before putting in all the effort to do software engineering would be to ask -why am I doing this? What are all my problems and what are my options/choices? Why software engineering? Although yes will tend to pay well and can make some pretty cool stuff doing that so sounds cool - will also tend to have pretty smart coworkers - may suggest to pick a company that isn't doing evil for the next job :). Sorry about the situation. Sounds like you are already trying to work on solutions! Would be curious to know how the prestigious international engineering firm is evil - but do to privacy - probably don't share. I can make guesses - oil/gas collection/pipelines; some sort of AI or drone; using underpaid labor; taking and underpaying for resources from poor countries; bombs/fighter jets/guns/missiles/war; surveillance that infringes on privacy; cutting down rainforest; producing unhealthy food/chemicals; slaughterhouses; lobbying for conservative ideals; building private prisons; building military structures; some sort of slavery involvement- - some companies have high ethics policies - this company may not care about ethics - - if the future is stage green/yellow - the company may not last or be sustainable in its present form Can look at the company and learn from it - was it created to do evil in the first place, is it not aware of its evil impacts, or did it have to resort to evil to survive, etc. That's cool that your counselor/therapist is "stage green".