Bazooka Jesus

How about you stop listening to whatever stories others are telling you and simply become aware of direct experience, right here, right now? just shared this over at my Simply Always Awake thread, but it seems useful here too:

This guy truly is an expert of cutting through all of the conceptual noise and showing how incredibly simple it all really is.

By definition, non-existence does not exist. So existence can never dissappear, it can only change form. And what you call "me" (or "others", or any other conceptual label) is simply existence. There is nothing else.

@Someone here Death is not the end of life. It is a part of it. That which we call death is simply change of form... nothing more, nothing less. So you are actually dying and being reborn in every single moment.

Fair enough. The thing is that words are often very deceptive... they can easily trick you into mistaking the finger that points to the moon for the moon, as they say in Zen. Anything that can be put into words - even the most simple ones - is always just an interpretation of reality, not reality itself. And every -ism is a story which says "this story is the only true story, all other stories are false"... which ironically automatically invalidates it, because from an absolute standpoint, no story is any more true or untrue true than any other.

Very wise. While I was living in Barcelona, I was smoking pot like a goddamn chimney for a while... pure 100% percent Sativa out of a glass pipe every. single. evening. Not exactly the healthiest lifestyle, lol. Nearly fried my brain with that stuff! Nothing wrong with smoking occasionally, but it can become a crutch very quickly. Even though I can't deny that I had some goooood times with it, hehe.

Like I said in my recent thread on the subject of Infinity In Music, the best spiritual pointers are often musical ones. It is the art form that is best suited for conveying that which cannot be put into words. Which doesn't mean that the musicians / composers themselves cannot be horrible sons of b!tches, lol.

Do you need to hold on to this or any other belief? If yes, what for? What if you let go of all beliefs? What remains?

Aaaaaaaaaahahaha, I knew there was something fishy - or should I say trippy - going on when you wrote that. Weed plus alcohol? Yeah, that explains it! Just be careful with these kinds of "peeks". They can be as enlightening as they can be misleading... but they are certainly always entertaining, lol.

Does this answer your question?

All of life is one big spiritual experience. The trick is to recognize it as such. When you do, the dirt under your fingernails will be the perfect representation of Infinity. Other than that, I like music.

This life is heaven, hell and purgatory all rolled into one. What you prefer to call it is really just a matter of perspective. But chances are that if you drop out before having completed this current level, you will eventually have to repeat it. It's like pushing the pause button while playing a video game... sure, you'll get a bit of a breather and be able to go to the toilet, walk over to the fridge and grab a drink, but eventually you will have to pick it up again from where you left off. Nobody who ever played Super Mario skipped ahead ten levels just by taking a break, right? But hey, it is your decision. Nobody can make it for you.

Which is why I always say that you need to find the right kind of therapy as well as the right therapist. The problem is not that therapy doesn't work. The problem is that there are incredibly effective forms of therapy that people simply don't know about. In a sane society, there would be extensive education on this subject instead of just leaving people to their own devices and letting them stumble around in the dark, not to mention free mental health care. Hopefully human society will make significant progress in that regard over the next decades. "Internal" and "external" are arbitrary categories. Part of the healing process is to learn to trust others and allow them to help you. By rejecting others and their help, you reject yourself. That's kind of like saying that it is useless to take your car to the mechanic when it's broken because the mechanic doesn't know how to make it fly. Of course you will never fully "untangle" the trauma/karma. If you ever managed to completely dissolve it, you would dissolve reality itself. But you can definitely make it lighter, less dense, more transparent up to the point where you actually start to love and appreciate the adventurous entanglement which is (human) life.

Beware of spiritual bypassing. If you suffer from serious trauma/depression/suicidal ideation, you should get proper therapy. Nothing wrong with pursuing spirituality while simultaneously taking care of your mental and physical health, but don't mistake the former for a means to achieve the latter. Doing so can seriously derail your life.

Music for the ages. Thanks, Hildy.

Exactly. It seems that way. Existence = That which seems to be existing.

Can you post a link to that thread you are talking about? I'd sure like to see it.

Read your own post again. Notice any contradiction between the first and the third sentence? Duality = appearance. Without duality, experience would not be possible.

In order to eat grass, the cow needs to be able to detect grass. Which would be impossible without focussed tunnel vision. These are all relative concepts. Exactly. And this distinction is by definition relative. Yup, thanks for reiterating what I said. But they undenieably exist. Otherwise we would not be talking about them right now. And you don't gain clarity by denying the existence of that which is the case. You gain clarity by recognizing it for what it is.

Good on you, my man. Yeah, the worst thing you can possibly do is to needlessly overcomplicate all this stuff. Trial an error is the name of the game. Just go out, try stuff, play around and have fun with it. If you keep at it, there is no way in hell that you're not going to make progress and see results. ✊️

...which is of course a relative notion, like anything that can be put into words. Can't out-trick the great Trickster himself.

Let go of your stories. Just keep going. You are already there. THIS IS IT. 🕉

Well, from what I've heard Dr. Peterson has undergone a couple of therapeutically assisted high dose mushroom trip sessions a while back, and he has gradually ramped up the crazy-meter ever since... and of course, Connor Murphy also had his fair share of fanboys who were gleefully cheering him on all along the way. All some people care about is their regular supply of online panem et circenses, real life consequences be damned. So yeah, I would say that there are quite a few parallels between Connor and Jordan. And to the smug "sanity shmanity bruh" crowd on here I will say this: You all take your (relative) mental stability way too much for granted. It's easy to act all glib and relativistic as long as your rational faculties are still more or less intact; but I can assure you that a full blown psychotic break with reality is no joke. I have experienced such states during high dose acid trips, and being perpetually stuck in these kinds of torturous mental hell realms is something that I would not wish on my worst enemy. It is literally hell on earth. So you better show some appreciation for whatever sanity you (still) have left, dipshits.

That's not solipsism. This is solipsism. And it's just as much a mental story as "you are separate from the rest of reality". One story is not more or less true than the other. I rest my case. Have fun, kids.

Pssssst, don't disclose all of my dirty tricks!! Anyway, my signature is not only aimed at others but also a reminder to myself to never take myself too seriously. Someone once said that whatever you tell/teach others is usually the stuff that you yourself need to hear first and foremost... I think it was Mark Manson (the self help book author) who said that. And at the risk of sounding suspiciously like a, um, err, you know, *cough*solipsist*cough*, I wholeheartedly agree. Teaching others = teaching yourself. I'm serious.