r0ckyreed

It’s going to vary for each individual but the basics of handling immediate trauma are: 1. Establish physical safety first. Do whatever you can do to cover physical safety. Take back control over your environment and change it so you can feel safe. 2. Grounding skills - Techniques you can do to calm your nervous system and facilitate present-moment awareness. - meditation - sensory grounding (essential to engage the senses) - nature exposure - self-hypnosis - physical anchoring (moving your body to bring awareness to your body and give mind temporary relief) 3. Distraction techniques when emotions become too intense. This is where your Tetris or other games come in. The goal is to redirect attention to something neutral or non-threatening to let your nervous system recover. 4. Social support and professional services 5. Good Self-Care rituals - gym, meditation, diet, sleep, sauna, nature exposure, gratitude journaling, etc. 6. Self-Compassion, positive thought-looping, reframing, etc. 7. Allowing yourself to mindfully reflect and contemplate. I recommend doing this step last because most people spiral instead of reflecting. If reflecting is too intense, then go back to mastering previous steps.

Thats right. You’re taxing your working memory, which allows the brain to process the trauma. This is how EMDR works. Tax the working memory and multiple brief exposure therapy like flipping back and worth through the pages of a book until the distress goes down. Tetris alone is a distraction technique, which is good to deal with uncontrollable emotions, but it isn’t quite enough to fully process trauma. It’s a cope.

I am an EMDR Therapist and find trauma fascinating. Trauma is sneaky. It doesn’t have to necessarily bother you. The mind is very clever in suppression and dissociation. The key is whether your today is being negatively influenced by the past. Trauma affects our choices, attraction, cognition, epistemology/philosophy, communication skills, attachment styles, etc. It doesn’t have to cause distress to be trauma. This is why not all people with a trauma history have PTSD. This is the distinction. It is possible to go through something traumatic and it not having or no longer negatively impacting your today.

There is a difference between Big T Trauma and little t trauma. Everyone has little t trauma but not everyone has T Trauma. Little trauma is like heartbreak, a rude comment someone made to you that hurt you, close calls, being made fun of, etc. Big T Trauma is life threatening or close encounters with death or violence such as a car wreck, sexual assault, being robbed, etc. It is not really the events that matter but really your reaction when you look back at the close encounters or small encounters. If they still hold weight on you today, it is T/t/rauma. A good example for me was being berated for calling someone by the wrong pronouns. Everytime I approach that person, I approached with caution and anxiety. This is trauma and is different than Trauma.

You are correct. As long as I am human, I will never be in full God Consciousness. The most Awakened being can never be fully God while they are human. Full God is Death. So I wouldn’t say I’m bypassing. I’m acknowledging my human biases, as well as Ultimate Existence. I’m just saying that from the perspective of God, there is no ugly. To the Devil (which is me), there is. Just because I am conscious of God right now doesn’t mean I inhabit that state 24/7. I would claim that no human can. Anyone that says they are in full God Consciousness 24/7 is kidding themselves. Ask them how conscious they are of God when they are sick, dying of cancer, watching genocide or scrolling on social media.

God sees Absolute Beauty everywhere, even in a dog turd. If you can’t see war, ignorance, corruption as Absolute Perfection, then you are in Devil Consciousness not God Consciousness.

I disagree with quote #412. Ugliness doesn’t exist. Ignorance, war, greed, corruption, etc. isn’t ugly, it is Absolute Beauty. How can reality be Absolute Good if there’s ugliness? Ugliness is also Absolutely Good and Beautiful. But nothing is inherently ugly, it is always inherently Beauty and Good. Perfection, God, Good, and Beauty go together. Ugliness is finite perception. Beauty/Perfection is baked into Reality.

One thing I notice in Leo’s communication that could be improved is his tendency to overgeneralize science and assume the worst in scientists. For instance, Leo critiques science as if science is just a stagnate methodology that isn’t improving itself. Science is constantly improving and the domain of science is so vast that it is difficult to criticize the whole thing. Newton looking through a telescope and testing his observations is science. Science doesn’t have to be done in a group or within the domain of academia. Me sitting in my armchair contemplating and testing my observations and insights is as much science as academia. Academia science may be more rigorous than an Ethnography or philosophical contemplation but it’s still science. Leo tends to assume scientists are lazy, biased, atheistic, and dogmatic. This may be true of a lot of academic scientists. But it’s still a big generalization full of assumptions about a group of people. There is never any mention of a Tier 2 scientists. I am sure there are more great scientists out there than Leo may acknowledge. Leo assumes scientists don’t account for relativism or don’t take philosophy seriously, but I don’t think this is true. I bet there are a lot of scientists that think deeply about philosophy. I understand Leo’s critiques and have seen the dogma myself but have also seen the opposite. I just notice this bias to reduce science down or assume the worst. But there are probably great truth-seeking awakened scientists in the world today. Why couldn’t an awakened person be a scientist? What even counts as a scientist? A true capital S Scientist is one who cares relentlessly about Truth. So in a way, all of Leo’s critiques of science are of small s science and not capital S Science. Edit: How is me taking psychedelics and noting/testing my observations and insights any different from Newton looking through a telescope and noting/testing his observations/insights? They are both science. I still enjoyed the episode. Much love. 🙏

Chairs do NOT exist!!!!

Death and Truth are identical. When you kill every belief, burn away all tradition, all your attachments, what are you left with? Truth!! Truth is the only thing that survives Death. Buddhism and chakras can’t be Truth because there was a time when they didn’t exist. There was a reality without Buddhism, without meditation. These are all human endeavors. No model of reality is Truth. Burn it all down. Let it die and look at what remains. Any belief you cling to is delusion. If you aren’t willing to let it go, then it is not Truth you hold but Maya.

Chakras and full lotus is BS. You don’t even need to sit to meditate. You don’t need a fancy chair nor an ass mat. Y’all are getting lost in the Maya. Meditation is a lifestyle not just one act. The only meditation you need is reflecting on one question: “How conscious am I of Truth right now?” Thats it. Anything else is a distraction. Counting your breaths, counting your beads, mandalas, chakras, pranayama, supreme fire, Wim Hof, etc. is just mindless conformity until you recognize it as Truth. Nothing will get you closer to Truth than directly meditating on Truth. Don’t meditate on the breath. Meditate on Truth. Just be honest with yourself, any other “meditation” is taking your eye off of Truth. Contemplate Truth and rest in Truth. That’s it.

Ask him about the nature of solipsism, time, external world, advice on relationships/sex, masculinity, discipline vs blissipline, contentment vs ambition, understanding the feminine, etc. @BlessedLion

I think I’m missing why the relationship ended in the first place. If you don’t resolve that, then you might make the same mistake in the next one. We repeat what we don’t repair.

I am planning my first solo vacation. I am going to California and doing a road trip in June. I am going to Lake Tahoe - San Francisco - Big Sur - Yosemite. My intention for this trip is meditation/contemplation and adventure. I plan to spend a lot of time contemplating while driving, at the beach, and on a trail. If I have any insights or anything worth sharing, I will post it. Anybody have any suggestions on things to see?

Wow! Thanks. I’ll check it out.

Nice. I’m thinking of going to Muir Woods about 1 hr from SFC

Very insightful trip. Never knew cough medicine could be a psychedelic. I will stick to more reliable substances for now (aka shrooms, LSD, etc.).

While y’all are arguing about Ralston, I’m sitting on my couch contemplating reality, self, and mind. Ralston seems like a good guy, but Ralston cannot awaken you. Idolatry is a distraction. Every person on the planet carries truth and falsehood in their worldview. Everyone. Including myself. I’ve been wrong about many things I thought I was right about. Nobody is above me nor you. Is Love just an animal emotion? No. You aren’t getting it because for an animal to have any emotion whatsoever requires Love to make that happen. Love is Connection, Unity, Oneness that contains within itself division and separation. But you couldn’t have division/separation without Unity in the first place. Love isn’t the same thing as happy bliss. Love also includes evil. Love is a tick on your nuts.

Does Non-Existence exist? Does Nothingness really exist? If Existence/Consciousness is the foundation of reality, then what is Nothingness or Non-Existence? We cannot talk about non-existence or Nothingness without first discussing what Existence is. What I mean by existence is everything that you experience within your consciousness. If you cannot see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, taste it, or think it, it does not exist. I would say that Nothingness and Non-existence are different. Non-Existence points to something that no longer exists or has never existed and Nothingness points to something that exists but has either no attributes or infinite attributes -- Think of a blank canvas or the emptiness of space. With non-existence, there is not even blankness or emptiness of space. Space = Nothingness and Space = Non-existent are two different ideas. Here are some examples of Non-Existence: 1. Being a virgin (sex is non-existent for you, you have had 0 sex) 2. Your dead great-great-grandparents (they are literally physically non-existent) 3. A Purple Elephant native to Earth (maybe there is one on a different planet but none native to earth). 4. Santa Clause (Santa is an idea in your mind that points to something that does not actually exist) 5. Bertrand Russell's Celestial Teapot 6. A memory/dream that you forgotten 7. Your childhood/youth (your health/vitality will one day be non-existent) 8. Death (this is a tricky one depending on how you look at it. Death can be seen as Non-existent or as Nothingness.) Here are some examples of Nothingness: 1. Empty Consciousness (no thought, no mind) 2. Ego (The ego's reality is nothingness, it is made out of thought made out of nothing, it's not made out of anything) 3. Thought (its not made out of anything) 4. The empty space that holds all objects in existence 5. The substance of anything is made out of Nothingness. Even science tells us that objects are made out of emptiness. 6. State of Consciousness during sleep and during pre-birth. 6. Death (this is a tricky one depending on how you look at it. Death can be seen as Non-existent or as Nothingness.) What are your thoughts? Does Nothingness and Non-existence exist? When we say Consciousness or Existence is the foundation of reality, do we mean that the foundation of Infinity/Existence is Nothingness? How does Existence relate to Non-Existence?

Tell me, what’s so profound about Moby’s Dick? Give me your best argument.

Great share!

Yes, good.

Yeah. But I mean just me shooting a gun without all that culture nonsense. Me going to the gun range to shoot my Glock is not out of conformity, but I see other shooters with all their gear and stuff and getting gung-ho about it. Using a fork to eat food could be considered conformity or even the way you hold it. I remember as a kid, I got in trouble for using my hands instead of a fork, so I conformed. I also remember my parents trying to get me to hold the fork "the right way". To this stay, I still eat with a fork the way I want to. Some cultures eat with their hands or chopsticks. But the act of me holding a fork or using a fork I would say is not conformity unless you are doing it because others told you. This is getting very tricky!!

Yes. I got that. But there appears to be non-existent things such as Santa and Death. These are existent ideas that point to things that do not exist. The reality of Santa and Death is non-existent. If Santa and Death are not non-existent, then what reality do they have?

List of things that aren’t conformity: 1. Breathing 2. Contemplation 3. Drinking water 4. Walking through the forest 5. Cancer 6. Death 7. Truth 8. Consciousness 9. Shooting a gun 10. Genuine Kindness