trenton

@Basman this is brilliant. Yes. I have been conditioned with the belief that I should be happy and I should love myself. I have had this seared into my brain since I was a young child. I felt that the fact that I was unable to love myself because of these things were further proof of my failure and inadequacy. This is also likely why I put purpose on a pedestal as it has to do with being self made and successful as if it would make me happy. I never actually managed to undo these kinds of beliefs and dispositions. I guess I can try to talk about these more openly as they tie into some of my existential problems and questions which ultimately led me to actualized.org. Why do I believe I need to be happy? Why do I believe unhappiness makes me inadequate? What does success mean to me? Why do I believe being successful will make me adequate? Starting out, the belief that I needed to be happy seems to have started when I went to the doctor with my mom as a young child. The doctors started asking me if I was happy. I didn't know why they were asking these questions. Apparently they knew I was at a higher risk of suicide because of my father abandoning me. When asked these questions I would pause and seem confused. I wasn't sure what it meant to be happy. Part of me felt deeply uncomfortable and didn't want to tell them no. Therefore I ended up just smiling and laughing and then saying "well I'm happy now. So now what?" They ended up accepting this answer. Now that I think about it, they were completely full of shit because it should be obvious that something is up here if the child is hesitant and unclear as to what is meant by happiness. Basically they were teaching me to mask. At the same time it made me think along the lines of them wanting me to feel satisfied in life in general, but they never told me what that would look like. They probably didn't want to tell me that satisfaction in life would be having a loving and present father along with my mother. That would make me happy in life, but I never had that. At the same time I got the impression like I was supposed to be happy because they wanted me to. They never told me what I should be looking for in a happy life. It left me with this sense that being unhappy was somehow unacceptable but they never told me why they suspected I would be unhappy, so I was deeply confused by this. I never had the experience of a present and loving father, so how would I know that that is what I wanted and needed? I thought it was normal for fathers to abandon their kids and leave them with single mothers given the example I saw in my parents. But the belief that I should be happy seemed to stem from this. It was a means of denying my misery of my father's abandonment. They knew from the beginning that I was a higher risk of suicide but did not tell me anything about what they were getting at, leaving me lost and confused as to what happiness means. To me happiness means having present and loving parents who respect each other and set a good example for their children so I can grow up to be like them rather than being lost in life by being forced to figure out everything myself. I had no real guidance and I am so fucking tired of trying to figure out everything myself without the guidance of a close decent human being who I can trust. This would then tie into why I think unhappiness makes me inadequate. I was left with the impression that my mom wanted me to happy and that it was somehow wrong if I was unhappy. They never told me why though. It was likely because they knew I would be more likely to die by suicide because of this. Therefore, the reason I cannot be unhappy is because it means that I would have no reason to live and I would be suffering to the point that I would be better off dying by suicide. Unhappiness to me means suicidal depression. I think it is fair to say that I don't want to live my life with this depression and unhappiness. This would be unacceptable to my mother because it would make her unhappy which in turn might make her angry with me leading to punishment or negative consequences. At the same time, the reality is that I cannot have happiness in the form of a loving family to be present for me. Therefore I need to invent some other form of happiness that doesn't involve my family. I was also afraid of starting a family because I felt that I was unworthy of existence and people would not love me if they knew who I was on the inside. I was afraid that my mother might abandon me as well like my father. To me I start to crave intimacy and connection but I simultaneously avoid it because I feel that I would not be wanted. I repeated the inappropriate sexual behavior my uncle did with children when I was six with my sister once I was exposed to it and I felt it made me unworthy of love as my mom thought I was an irredeemable bastard. I felt I was stupid for not knowing better and repeating this behavior. I felt that I was fundamentally a bad person who needed redemption even though it was already decided to be impossible. I can never be happy in life because I am not wanted. To this day I want a romantic partner who will be there for me and see me for who I am. However I doubt I would be wanted because of my mental health problems like bipolar disorder, PTSD, and others. I now lost my job and struggle to maintain consistent income. I tried getting medical help but the medical system exploited me with ineffective treatment and drained my money. I try to redeem myself through life purpose but it is impossible. Therefore I want to kill myself. What are your thoughts?

@theleelajoker I'm looking for help in processing sexual abuse. My ability to cope was overwhelmed no matter what I tried. I don't know that people here would have any advice other than therapy. The problem is that I am unable to access my therapist at this time so I needed to find some other why to handle this kind of material. One of the things that stuck with me was the twisted and perverted smiles of such creeps. Any advice for processing these things outside of try to endure the unbearable while waiting for therapy?

I don't think you did anything wrong even if it wasn't well received. You are somebody who needs help and sometimes it is coming out even if others might not want to hear it. You may be reacting to internalized shame from trauma itself. Although logic cannot overcome mental health problems, I hope that you can one day reach security in yourself to a point that you don't need to hide things from yourself as well the teachers. You were likely looking for some kind of connection or the hopes of relating to someone and finding compassion that you may desperately need. In my experience, I have often been deeply embarrassed by so much as an unpleasant thought. You likely do not deserve to carry this level of shame and it may be disproportionate to the situation. That said, I don't know how to take the shame away through words alone. You may have been conditioned over several years to see yourself in this way and it now feels like reality. I never really had any luck trying to erase memories. I ended up doing the opposite and creating an identity based around traumatic events that would always come back into my mind. What do you think this interaction you had says about you? Do you think it reveals something like your stupidity or the fact that you are weak or too easily hurt? What exactly is embarrassing about this and what is your psyche telling you about yourself because of this embarrassment? I don't think these things of you, but it might help to articulate what exactly your psyche is trying to say about you and how it is characterizing you. Bear in mind that the mind's evaluation of itself is often wrong even if it feels natural to think this way and completely instinctual. What ever it takes, I hope you will not have to live your life with such shame.

I consider myself solipsistic. Since I was a child I had this sense that I could be so deeply self deceived as to hallucinate this entire experience and imagine other human beings with whom I would have relationships that were illusory. It was very destabilizing and I didn't know how to deal with it. Eventually I accepted not knowing because I realized that no intellectual framework no matter how sophisticated could distinguish between real knowledge and dream knowledge. I found peace in not knowing if any of this was real or not while holding both possibilities and operating within both simultaneously.

I have been doing more research into the decline of empires like the US. I thought it was bad because of the corporate capture and the deficit crisis. However, the situation appears to be even worse than I thought. I believe that the US government has been captured by its own military which now holds permanent undue influence over the entire political process. The current governmental, military, and corporate apparatus that runs our politics appears to be irreversible and irreformable. I see no way for America to escape this deeply corrupted system without complete collapse caused by our imperial overreach and deficit crisis. I have done research into the origins of the Military Industrial Complex, how it came to be, and how it came to capture the government of the America for its own agenda regardless of public dissent. As I have been doing this research, I understand that most of the time conspiracy theories are ungrounded in reality and completely baseless. However, there have been various conspiracy theories about our government that proved correct about deep corruption. These theories include COINTELPRO, MK-Ultra, NSA mass surveillance, Operation Northwoods, Iran-Contra Affair, and others. I would like to be cautious in the certainty placed in the conclusions presented here because of the incomplete information that is being worked with. However, the evidence seems compelling and I would like to discuss what I have discovered and its implications. It is possible that I am about to highlight one of the rare times a conspiracy theory holds legitimate weight. Even if the theory is not true, there are still other aspects of it which explain the current state of American politics. Throughout human history governments have formed militaries designed for their protection. However, on some occasions their military goes rogue and accumulates so much power that they cannot be controlled by their own government. This can lead to military leaders hijacking the government though capturing the democratic processes and institutions while occasionally carrying out assassinations of their own political leaders. The Late Roman Empire had cases in which the Praetorian Guard were supposed to protect the emperor, but repeatedly assassinated leaders who did not serve their interests. In the Ottoman Empire Janissaries controlled sultans and blocked various reforms that went against their interests. In Imperial Japan their own military factions controlled civilian government, contributing to overexpansion. The list goes on and it is possible that the US military industrial complex is no exception. This system has amassed great power and control over the government regardless of which party is in power. Our military has demonstrated a willingness to carry out terrorist attacks against US civilians as false flag operations designed to provoke wars with other nations like Cuba. Our military seems to have no legal boundary it is not willing to cross to serve its own interests. Therefore, the system claiming to serve our national security appears to be the greatest threat to our national security. What would America do if its own military decided it wanted to turn against us and install whatever government it wanted? It has already done this to many other countries throughout history, and the US itself may not be an exception. President Eisenhower and later Kennedy showed great resistance to the expansion of military power. Eisenhower appeared to be somewhat successful. Meanwhile Kennedy was successful at first until his assassination after which Johnson was put in power. Johnson immediately reversed Kennedy's decisions even though his peaceful policies were showing promise. Kennedy had resisted escalating the war in Vietnam as he also sought peaceful resolutions with Cuba. Furthermore, as soon as Kennedy was assassinated, the previous government workers which he had fired for their terrorist plots were immediately put back in power under Johnson. The government proceeded to butcher every step of the investigation into the Presidential assassination so systematically, that it is hard to attribute all of these failures to mere incompetence. In fact sometimes governments use the cover of incompetence as a cover for calculated decisions as they did during WWII by "appeasing the bully." The cover pattern of the investigation included repairing the car, thus tampering with evidence, allowing the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, a key witness, and the CIA practice of destroying sensitive documents to ensure they are never leaked, including Kennedy files. The initial cover story was that Cuba was behind the assassination. However, the official narrative does not hold under scrutiny because if Kennedy was seeking peace with Cuba and was largely successful, then it does not make sense for Cuba to assassinate him. Once again, the military industrial complex has a more clear motive for assassinating the President because he was preventing the expansion of perpetual military spending while preventing the military from carrying out terrorist attacks on Americans by firing key government officials. Furthermore, the later investigation of the assassination yielded limited findings, claiming it was a conspiracy rather than Oswald being a lone actor as initially reported. You would think that if a Presidential assassination were so serious, then it would warrant a thorough investigation, but this never came. The behavior I am describing suggests an institutional cover-up by the CIA. There have also been recent revelations that the CIA had been lying for decades about officer George Joannides who worked with anti-Castro groups that publicized Oswald's pro-Castro activities after his assassination, suggesting a coordinated attempt to start war with Cuba similar to the other terrorist plots like Operation Northwoods which Kennedy prevented. Although we may never know who was truly behind this conspiracy, the impact of this assassination is clear. The military industrial complex immediately captured the US government and installed a system that would forever serve their interests. It created a system of perpetual military spending and endless wars. Every President following Kennedy's assassination has been far more hawkish. Even those that were initially peaceful eventually had to flip. It appears that the military industrial complex has captured the democratic apparatus and made peaceful foreign policy practically impossible because the system in place perpetually funds new weapons systems as the military constantly looks for and creates new threats to justify intervention. This kind of dynamic has created a policy lock in system that has made it impossible for the US to stop its imperial overreach even when it is clearly destructive like in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Moving forward, this historical analysis explains why it is impossible to change American foreign policy. The democratic apparatus is being run by the military industrial complex who benefit from perpetual war and endless deficit spending. I see no means to challenge this kind of system. I believe the only way out of this broken government is to leave the US and let the economy implode due to endless US imperial overreach, leading to the decline of empires throughout history as demonstrated in Dalio's model. I see no movement within this system that could overcome this level of corruption, not to mention to financial capture of other massive corporations which also block any reform that does not benefit them. Our government is inflexible and irreformable, and there is no politician we can elect that can overcome this kind of corruption. The system is completely entrenched and the entire government itself has become a tool for this corruption. Of course there is more evidence we could discuss regarding the assassination. To this day the military industrial complex continues to run rogue. There are various covert operations being carried out without the oversight of Congress. This exposed operations include assassination plots, government coups, mind control, and many other covert operations that have gone rogue from the government. It is clear that the military has become too powerful for our own government to control as it now takes in more money than the next ten countries combined. This is unsustainable and clearly destructive, but there is likely nothing we can do to change our course from inevitable destruction.

The way I see it is that satanism is a reaction to the excesses of mainstream religion. It includes a coalition to prevent religious ideologues from having their religion be the only ones who get their religion taught in schools. They are part of the reason why Christians haven't already taken over the educational system because they constantly stop them with legal battles. They also reject things like purity culture, wallpapering over doubts, and many other things. They interpret Satan as a symbolic figure rather than a literal figure as most of them are atheists. I have an overall positive opinion of satanists compared to mainstream Christianity in America and what it stands for. They are preventing the take over of the church.

I am exploring this question because I have felt very alone for a long time. I often felt as if I were essentially invisible and I mattered very little if at all. What I see right now is that what my family showed me is not connection. It involves things like saying "I love you" out of social conditioning while selectively invoking family values at my expense. I also received messages that both asked me to be more open about my feelings while simultaneously being punished if I expressed sorrow or anger. Connection seems to be essentially impossible in a narcissistic family system because the narcissistic identity is built on lies and thus requires constant deception. It creates a situation where I am wanted not for who I am but rather for the role I would be forced to play as the scapegoat who is too honest and truthful. I started with loving myself and I seem to have made significant progress. Self-love often involves unconditional acceptance of all aspects of myself which may be tempting to condemn. Sometimes it is temporarily unpleasant to admit harsh truths about myself, but the key is that it ultimately leads to greater inner harmony without different parts fighting each other. I noticed that my primary ego defense mechanism is "othering." It leads to disassociating and limiting my identity to what I believe I should be. I did this with other people such as those who were engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior in order to distance myself from them as a consequence of trauma. I also do this within parts of my own psyche. There might be something undesirable that threatens my dominate ego identity so it fragments and tries to separate itself. This gradually leads to increasing chaos because such an identity is based on the lie of separation. The division between myself and all of these other parts is imaginary and conceptual because I already am one with all of them. This was an idea I learned from spirituality and it likely extends to human beings who I othered. It makes sense that this pattern is happening as love is the realization that you are everything and that you were one with everything from the beginning, hence "you are already enlightened." So, connection within myself involves unconditional acceptance and expanding my sense of self to include all parts which may have been deemed unacceptable. The key is that this behavior is inherently extrinsically motivated as the values being imposed necessarily reject my intrinsic and authentic desires. That said, I would imagine that loving another person and forming a connection to them is likely similar to unconditional acceptance regardless how their content may be seen or expressed. This would manifest as being very present and conscious with a clear focus and sense of engagement. I did this with someone like my Aunt. She has limitations in terms of the things about me that can be accepted, but when I sit with her I kind of just accept this alternate reality bubble she is describing as I see the world from that angle without fighting or trying to correct. If I do try to correct it then one sentence might lead to a tirade, so it becomes kind of one-side as I cannot express my view of reality. In fact my view of reality is either seen as too complex or I will be met with anti-intellectualism as is the case with my mother. This seems to be part of the dynamic I live with where love and connection is completely one-sided leaving me isolated even as others insist that they love me while they seem to have little interest in who I am. If connection needs to be mutual in order for all parties to be felt and seen, then I might need to think of what it would be like if another human being loved me. I noticed that apparent love often takes the form of "you can tell me anything." The problem is that sometimes this is said with an agenda to manipulate myself or others while weaponizing my vulnerabilities as in the case of my father or sister. When love seems hollow, manipulative, or meaningless it might contribute to the "I want to kill myself" attitude. It seems that the problem is that apparent love is what love would actually be if not for the fact that it was a lie to achieve some other goal. In such a situation the false connection reveals that deep down you truly are alone and you are not loved. When I think of somebody who loved me very deeply, I might think of my grandpa. He seemed to be invested in ensuring that I grew up to be a decent human being despite the family dysfunction. He wanted me to be good unlike my father who broke my grandpa's heart through his criminal acts. This became similar to how my internal world worked. I would have an identity around being good but I would then have thoughts and desires that seemed bad. Ultimately my identity is not limited to being good because this identity was formed partially in defiance to the behavior I witnessed. From this point of view, my grandpa's love served a purpose, but it can become restrictive if the moral compass is too strict in what is considered bad. My regret became that I did not realize how much he meant to me until it was too late, causing me to feel that I did not reciprocate the love he intended for me. I cannot imagine anybody loving me in this kind of manner, so I may need to look for love in another form. I know that I experience connection through teaching. I might teach people different board games that I learned to master and we can have fun interactions in the process as they improve. I enjoy the mutual enthusiasm, but most of the time I seem to be the one with the most enthusiasm. I also like sharing my findings in research with others and I especially like it when others engage in the exploratory process without needing to rigidly defend any particular position. It becomes a learning experience and a method of self-discovery. I do the same thing with all kinds of modes for understanding myself and the world. I could do it with religion, science, philosophy, politics, psychology, and many other fields. Given the fact that I invest so much in self-discovery it might implicate that I cannot receive love because I do not who I am and what exactly needs to be seen and loved. If I fundamentally lack a cohesive identity, then what exactly needs to be shared? Apparently, I am supposed to come up with intrinsic values, but I seem to be in the process of discovering those. Open-mindedness and exploration seem to be a couple of them which never changed at any point in my life. It seems that purpose was a value imposed on myself to compensate my worth. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to love someone and actually mean it. In the case of my grandpa he seemed to value my well-being whereas other family members would dismiss me, make me feel invisible, and weaponize my depression against me. I take a similar approach to my grandpa by valuing the well-being of others and finding ways to support them even if I myself have nothing to gain from them. It is often through sharing important wisdom that allows them to navigate intense suffering as my grandpa would do. I don't know if this is why I'm drawn to teaching or not. I do find it kind of odd that I also am committed to open-mindedness like my grandpa was as he was also constantly learning through various fields. It is starting to sound like my values mirror my grandpa in many ways because that is the purest expression of love I ever experienced, hence it becomes what love means to me, hence it becomes my identity and how I act. I don't really know what else love would be because that is love as I have experienced it. At the end of the day I am stumped. If I speak with another human being seeking connection and love, then what exactly am I to expect or look for? Maybe I will need to ask people what exactly love means to them, how they express it, and what it would look like if someone loved them unconditionally. That might be the beginning of connection. What do you think?

My understanding of spirituality has shifted my perspective on many aspects of relationships, but I'm not sure about break ups specifically. The closest thing I have found is that being is love and it does not necessarily require the presence of another human being to be felt. We have a lot of beliefs around what it means to love, but when we are wrapped up in these ideas it becomes performing love rather than being love. From this point of view love can be like my inner world giving a hug to a wounded child and allowing him to cry without trying to change it. Love seems to include the acceptance of pain rather than the avoidance and denial of it. This would mean that love is part of the grieving process and it is not actually absent even though it seems that way during a breakup. This would fit with things like unconditional love including letting go rather than clinging. It would still be more of a felt experience rather than an idea and an act about what we think love should be. Does this help?

I have experienced two break ups in my life. The first one definitely hit hardest. The second one I was more relieved then anything because that second girl was a thorn in my side and she broke up with me because I refused to give into her emotional blackmail. My first romantic relationship is from when I was five and I met Alice. We wanted to get married, but we were separated because her parents moved and I had no way of contacting her. I used to be happy with her even though the other kids would make fun of me for having a girlfriend. I felt like I would be willing to die for her no matter what the other kids did to me. However I discovered that although no amount of suffering would ever make me regret being with her, once she was taken away my suffering became meaningless. It was like a void was placed inside of me the moment I realized that I would never see her again. I never really cried outwardly. I just told myself that I have to just get used to her being gone. Outwardly I would act normally, but on the inside I would quietly morn what could have been. This void never went away and often times I found myself hoping that she would one day come back or I would see her again. Imagining seeing her again often made me feel happy but I would eventually remember this is a lie. It seems that deep down I want this void inside of me to either go away or be filled. I have been looking for ways to fill this void nearly my entire life. To me it feels like this void is permanent and I just live with it. I never really cried about Alice though even though sometimes I feel happy imagining seeing her again. There is still part of me wishing to see her again even though my rational mind says that is never going to happen. in fact I would prefer to look forward to dating other women in the hopes that one day someone will be able to see me for who I am. Ultimately I would like a hug after being seen and heard rather than left to the sound of silence in the void. Occasionally my mind still goes to these crazy 1 in a million of seeing her again. This occasionally feels disruptive as it doesn't let me focus on more realistic probabilities. It seems that my coping mechanism largely involves fantasy and false hope. It still makes me feel happy even though part of me says it's not true.

I remember I built confidence for chess tournaments. Before the tournament I would review my best winning games against strong opponents. Keeping these memories fresh reminds me of my strength and competence as a player. I feel like a winner walking into the chess tournament. The director already sees that I will win the tournament because I have a certain determined look in my eyes. Before the game I might sit in silence in a calm meditation to get in touch with presence and focus. Finally, I sit down at my table and I'm ready to play at my best.

I've had a tense conflict within myself for a long time. Due to a dysfunctional childhood, I rejected my parents' way of life and developed a strict sense of morality in opposition to their criminal behavior. This strict moral compass included the domain of sexuality as well as I witnessed inappropriate behavior from other kids at school such as sexual assault. However, although I rejected these morally problematic behaviors, I still had part of me that would have intrusive fantasies including sexual assault fantasies after being assaulted myself and being confused by the pleasure with which the perpetrator acted. It was like part of me had some kind of desire to act out and do something impulsive that is thought to be improper. This is a tension that has been well known in philosophy and religion for a long time, but it has never been resolved in a healthy way. I started my investigation by looking at the history of how lust was understood in religion. I remembered that in ancient Christianity, lust was not just sexual desire, but it included other desires. I found that originally what we now call lust was supposed to mean any compulsive or obsessive desire that overrides better judgement. For example, in the case of sexual assault, it is not just sexual gratification, but it is mainly transgression seeking. Transgression seeking seems to be the source of much of this temptation. A serious problem in both religion and in schools is that they often have very uptight and strict moral codes. This uptightness creates what is called the forbidden fruit effect. When certain actions become so strongly condemned, it paradoxically adds to the temptation to actually make that transgression. This is why when religion strongly condemns sexual desires and lust as immoral, it creates purity culture which backfires by creating an environment in which many people in the church are now struggling with intrusive sexual fantasies. A similar problem happens in school. Kids don't want to be there and they are bored. The outcome of this environment is that the class clown will start violating social norms, gaining a lot of attention and laughs in the process. These are both examples of how strict moral rules and uptightness can end up creating the very problems they are trying to solve. So, it seems that these desires for transgression cannot be stopped with more morality. There needs to be someway to balance morality with this human desire for transgression that cannot be disciplined away. I started looking at people like comedians. Often times they make various sexual jokes. These sexual jokes are often very funny because they trigger the human desire for transgression, but do it in a way that is awkward, absurd, and satirized. For example, when I went to a comedy club and watched a comedian, he made jokes along the following lines. "Oh, hey I'm going to Starbucks." "why are you going to Starbucks?" "Oh, I'm not going to Starbucks to get coffee. I am going to Starbucks because there is a hole in the wall behind the counter that I use for my pleasure. Why did you think I was going to Starbucks?" The reason people find these sorts of jokes funny is because it takes our desire for transgression against social norms and satirizes them into absurdity. The fact that transgression seeking often takes a sexual form is almost incidental as there are various humorous ways to transgress social norms. The implications are that perhaps the tension we have around these social norms can be alleviated through humor, but it needs to be done in a way that does not cause harm to others. For example, a more problematic way of using sexual humor might be something like cat calling. There might be a group of men who start drawing attention to a woman's butt or breasts. This is much more likely to be offensive because the joke is directed at the woman. The difference between this example and the comedian is that the sexual joke was not directed at anyone in particular, but rather it was in an isolated situation that was satirized. This is why some ways of seeking transgression might be more acceptable than others. This makes is seem that our temptation and our desire for transgression can be channeled into harmless humor by poking fun at social norms. I have done this myself in various ways. For example, sometimes people would call me weird because my autistic behaviors. I would respond to this with something like "from my point of view everybody else is weird and I'm the only normal person in the room." Most people didn't seem to find this funny though. The reason I found it funny is because I was making fun of the relativity of normalcy. Normalcy is whatever the local group just happens to agree upon. This is why people in ancient Egypt would think we are bizarre because we are not worshipping animal headed Gods. Likewise, as someone with autism, my behavior feels natural and normal to me even if others might find it odd. In a group full of people with autism, my behavior would like seem much more acceptable and normal in that context. I did find a way to transgress social norms in a way that humorous, but not harmful. In this case I was in the hospital getting blood work done. I was stuck with a needle, but the doctor did not give me a lollypop. I started complaining about how I didn't get any candy in front of others despite being a grown adult. I complained that this was outrageous and unfair because I had a boo boo and nothing to show for it. Others seemed to find this very funny. The reason this is funny is because I am violating a commonly assumed social norm that adults should not receive candy, but children should receive candy. I started raising questions about why adults can't have candy. Is it because once I turn 18 it isn't manly enough to eat a box of chocolates so I have to smoke cigarettes instead? That isn't any healthier. This kind of social norm creates an air of professionalism, but it isn't actually morally necessary to not give adults candy. This kind of joke seemed to be well received because I was making fun of institutional norms rather than directing my joke at any particular person. Sometimes these norms are arbitrary and ultimately have no necessary moral basis for existing. A similar example would be something like the arbitrary social tension when getting in an elevator. Everybody stays quiet and it becomes artificially tense. This obviously opens the door for fart jokes that break the silence. The reason fart jokes are funny is because it breaks silent tension through basic bodily functions. Another example I found is when people ask me "how are you?" People don't expect a serious answer when they ask this, so I give an absurd answer instead. I tell them "I am like a flaming eagle eating a summer hot dog on the fourth of July." There are a wide range of absurd answers you could give to these kinds of questions that are not harmful to others. This kind of self-exploration has led me to a creative project in humor. I am trying to identify different social norms that can be safely violated without harming others. An interesting paradox is that if balanced correctly, this kind of non-harmful humor could lead more moral behavior by loosening up and releasing the uptightness around morality which itself is the source of strong temptation, creating a lack of inner harmony. However, it becomes risky if the joke is directed at a specific person, as this often becomes sexual harassment. This kind of behavior then does not get taken seriously because it is dismissed as just a joke or boys being boys when it actually is harmful. In such cases this kind of transgression seeking is not being properly channeled and it indeed does lead to morally problematic behavior. I also recognize that transgression seeking is common in issues like political correctness with conservatives being more likely to use racial slurs or dead name transgender people simply because it is that easy to cause an uproar by the leftist snowflakes. Once again, this is humor at someone else's expense which makes it morally problematic. What do you think about these reflections on morality, temptation, and humor? Are you able to identify any social norms that can safely be violated in a humorous way without harming others?

There has been a shift in consciousness. Something is being recognized that wasn't being recognized before. It is something fundamental to existence. There is direct experience, interpretation of direct experience, imagination, and God. This thread will discuss what was seen and realized. Try to start off by recognizing the extent to which interpretation and imagination shape the experienced relationship with reality. Notice the extent of these interpretations and how they are often held as true or as reality. There is an interpretation that there is trueness in these interpretations and that they are reality without being recognized as imagination. For example, get in touch with this direct experience. Notice that in this direct experience there may be an interpretation that there is a you, a human being, experiencing this experience. Recognize that that is imagination being held as reality, but it is actually an interpretation of this experience. Try to focus consciousness on this recognition that you are a story being imagined within this is experience. There is reality, and then there is the interpretation that there is a you which is being held as true. It seems that this forum speaks of this a lot, but do you really see it? Part of your feelings and thoughts may look at these words and interpret it as mere philosophy. There is a deeply held interpretation that you are still a human being in this reality rather than reality itself, but it is so deeply held as real that just saying these things might not be enough to see it rather than merely believe it. Try to notice that you are imagining that you are a human being, and try to notice how this interpretation of reality might feel true and real. It actually isn't real. That is a story that you are a human being. Try to notice that you are imagining this. Of course there is also the imagination that there are others separate from me. This is an interpretation of direct experience such that the imagination is held as true reality. It starts to seem that perhaps the root of all evil is that fundamentally I feel that I am the only thing real in the universe. I never experience anything outside of me, yet I imagine that such things exist. The trick is that although the human being Trenton may not be omniscient, the universe is omniscient. The information travels around and may come across this human being Trenton, but the universe was never actually separate. Try to notice that there is an interpretation that things are separate from you rather than being you, and notice that this is imagination being held as reality. A source of confusion may be that awakening involves some crazy radical experience. This sets the wrong expectation. What is happening is nothing radical, but rather a subtle shift in consciousness which has radical implications. This subtle shift in consciousness is to recognize that your imagination and interpretations for what they are while getting in touch with direct experience. Try to see who you are without this conceptual overlay and the stories. It almost seems as if survival instincts drive one into imagination, stories, and falsehoods, making it difficult to see these stories for what they are. Actualized.org is founded on this one insight. All the other videos are exploring the implications of this one insight. This includes oneness, relativity, love, truth, deconstruction, spirituality, and so on and so forth. It appears that Leo is explaining what God is like. Recognize the Leo is also a story being imagined to be separate from you. It is almost like reality is being constructed through imagination, but the imagination does not recognize itself as imagination. This is what the spiritual teachings try to point out, but they become very abstract and then devolve into dogma and ideology. They may say that this is not about belief and ideology, but just hearing that does not allow you to notice the imagination that is held as reality. It is not enough to hear the talking. The shift in consciousness is what reveals what is being pointed to. There are many who have tried to point to this and put it into words. The words often cause more confusion because of the assumptions embedded in language which imply separation. Notice these assumptions being held in language that seem to imply that things are separate. There is a snuck premise or snuck interpretation that there really is a you and that there are separate others. The result is that trying to describe God might backfire because it is hard to notice this subtle difference in consciousness, hence the same old assumptions are held as reality and this as mere philosophy. Do you see it? Do you see that you are God imagining all of these stories which seem convincing and seem like reality? Are you absorbed in these stories so thoroughly that it is hard to see this subtle shift? Where is the you absorbed in these stories? Is that not more imagination and interpretations of experiences, feelings, and thoughts? Are these words still implying that there is a me separate from you, and thus causing confusion? The existence of you is a story being interpreted as real and as reality. That is imagination and only one particular way of experiencing reality. Try to notice suffering. Try to notice that the story that there is a you suffering exacerbates suffering because of this belief. What else to say? This is God and God is the only thing that is real. This kind of flips everything on its head when God is no longer held as a mere belief or idea that is not reality. The interpretation then becomes dominant leading to confusion. It becomes hard to see what is being pointed to. I am reality. I am God.

Yep words are part of the problem. Hence it leads to confusion. The separation is the snuck premise in language.

To my memory, Leo appeared to treat this test as if it were proof that he was not a narcissist. According to my research on narcissism, he likely does have some narcissistic traits although it is hard to say to what degree and this test is not reliable. This also highlights to paradox of defensiveness where obviously a narcissist would not want to admit it because it seems undesirable, but at the same time there could be honest denial of exhibiting the traits to the extent that is claimed. At the end of the day, narcissistic traits do not make you a bad person because they are survival strategies that develop from dysfunctional families due to children not feeling loved or special. I understand that narcissistic traits typically come about from adverse childhood experiences, especially in dysfunctional families. If Leo's father was someone like a conman for example, then his father likely had some narcissistic behaviors. Children often learn these patterns of behavior from their parents in dysfunctional systems. A few narcissistic patterns seen in Leo in some cases might be things like holding his insights in a way that might make him seem special compared to others. This would be spiritual ego which happens automatically and beyond conscious control if it is rooted in a need to feel special. It is not something that can be consciously turned off if it is happening to you. That said, if Leo really is extremely conscious, then he probably has worked through a lot of shadow material which would be the root cause of narcissistic traits and behaviors. However, narcissism isn't something that can be eliminated entirely. It can be reduced or channeled in more productive ways, but it can't be eliminated completely. It seems to take a lot of unconditional self love and consciousness in order to allow these narcissistic patterns to be seen, understood, and accepted regardless of whether it is socially acceptable or not. Most narcissists fail at this because their self-esteem is too unstable to begin so they can't face this darkness within themselves. The result is that most narcissists never change and they continue with the same childhood survival strategy that will never bring them happiness and fulfillment because the entire complex is based on the lie that they are unworthy of love while they are trying to lie themselves into an alternate reality of grandiosity in which they appear to be loved, but it is still hollow.

@Hojo I did notice that problem when I took it. Some of the prompts were unclear and I could have plausibly picked either and it would make sense in my mind. This is the problem with self evaluation because we often misinterpret our own behaviors and why we do them. We make stories that seem plausible without seeing the unconscious material. That's why I sometimes felt that both could be true at the same time. This is kind of a paradox in self reflection because how do you know you can trust your thoughts about who you are? It was like certain insights could only emerge and become conscious once I cultivated unconditional self love regardless of any darkness I may harbor.

I think it may help if you frame the issue a little differently. The way I see it is that porn is a serious issue in that there are human traffickers who profit from exploiting the corruption and weaknesses within the porn industry. This might not be an issue inherent to porn itself, but rather how it is being used. Is this perspective acceptable to you? What if I say human trafficking is a serious issue instead of porn?

So far I am not finding anything on awakening within religion or Jesus. What I am finding is something different. It is the power of radical recontextualization, narrative rewrite, and the flexibility of identity. Basically, I am looking at different myths and seeing them in a way that they reflect my own life experiences. What I discovered is that I could potentially use a religious framework like the Bible to explain my entire life. This creates a fundamental shift in identity which often leads to conversion beyond surface level professing belief. This might be a necessary position of what we would call the true believer, but this carries its own problems with unfalsifiable positions. Similarly, I found that I could use various frameworks aside from religious ones to rewrite my entire life story. This opens up a broad range of possibilities in terms of meaning making. It is like I discovered the mechanisms behind conversion and I am finding ways to apply it to other forms of narrative rewrite. I am holding many perspectives simultaneously while seeing how they can be logically self consistent while seeing what they reveal or obscure. That said, I don't know if any of this leads to awakening. But it does seem to be an intriguing subject to explore as I use various myths, extract meaning and use them to reinterpret my life and who I am. This is how I use things like religion as a tool for self discovery a long with other myths. I have developed a system of multiple interpretations and it seems to carry staggering implications about what ego and identity is if it is truly so flexible and can be rewritten. It is worth exploring even if I don't discover God in the process.

I have been contemplating the religious themes that I saw in my dreams. There were various Christian themes such as seeing Jesus, a black abyss, a white light, and a sense of martyrdom in deep suffering intended to transform me. In the dream, I willing jumped into the abyss with confidence that although parts of me would break, there would be an unbroken essence which is my true nature. This true nature seems to be reflected in figures like Jesus, just like other spiritual masters who might point to it. In the case of Jesus and Christianity, there is this concept of "Christ in you." It would be Jesus living on in us through the holy spirit. This got me thinking that if Jesus is in me and Jesus is my true nature, then what does that mean? Apparently, Jesus is held as God within the Christian religion. So, if Jesus is God, then that would mean that God is my true nature. If God is my true nature, then it means that I was never separate from love, truth, and the light because they were within me the entire time. The separation from God would be the illusion because it is impossible to be anything separate from God if that is who I am. Right now I see how it would make sense to conclude that I am God, but I don't seem to fully understand the implications. It seems to include that I am intrinsically divine regardless of any external circumstances. It might be worth exploring what it means to be divine as well as other qualities of God if they are representative of my true nature. Do you think Christianity suggests that You are God? If so, why? If not, then what does it mean that God is my true nature, but I am not God?

The closest thing I can experience to who I am appears to just be consciousness. There does not seem to be any mind blowing God realization outside of neutral awareness on which there is content both pleasant and unpleasant. Presently, I don't see any Love, Truth, or non-dual awareness. I see the physical world and a deep not knowing and not needing. I have seen that there is no intellectual framework that can cover this deep uncertainty and I just sit with not knowing. Therefore, from my point of view I am experiencing something very mundane and as it stands everything I hear about God realization appears to be more stories.

@Leo Gura I am aware of this problem, and I seem to have trouble shaking it. The reason I believe in Jesus is because when I went to school, my history teacher told me that Jesus was a real person and historians generally agree on this. At the same time, I know that this is hearsay and I did not meet Jesus personally, although I now believe he was real. It seems hard to separate this entanglement within my psyche. That said, I do see how Jesus as he appeared in my dreams would be a fantasy rather than an actual person. I saw Jesus partially as a consequence of wanting redemption. This was primarily a psychological function as I also did not intellectually believe in the miracles Jesus was claimed to have been responsible for. Furthermore, Jesus appeared as a white man as depicted in church which supposedly was not real Jesus. The way I resolve this in my mind is that I conclude that Jesus from my point of view is based on stories about a guy I never met, assuming he was real. Thus even if Jesus was real, in my experience his appearance and the attributes I assign to him are fantasy. Is this good enough when I see the Jesus in my dreams as fantasy rather than actual Jesus?

I understand. I don't need Jesus to be God so I don't need to depend on this other person.

The military did studies on this and they found that people who were allegedly psychic correctly predicted phenomenon that they should have no prior knowledge of. They made predictions that were more accurate than random chance would suggest when looking at the statistics and results. They often made detailed descriptions that were too great to be dismissed as mere coincidence. They also made predictions that would be about one in a million based on random chance. Although these psychics were not perfect, they were correct a statistically significant portion of the time that challenges mere coincidence. However, the military concluded that it was still not reliable enough to give commands to their soldiers in terms of war maneuvers. I also met a psychic personally. She clearly demonstrated knowledge about me that she couldn't have known. She told me about a girl I loved whose name started with 'Ali.' it was Alice. The implications are wild and demonstrate that the materialist paradigm is very limiting. I would agree that remote viewing and psychic powers are real and they may involve consciousness being more fundamental than material form such that all things are one and connected allowing for things like psychic viewing. The military also demonstrated other insane paranormal phenomenon under controlled studies over the course of 50 years. Basically materialism is definitely baloney and it is logically incoherent.

I have been journaling about this situation lately. Several aspects of my identity have fallen apart and I am trying to create new organizing principles for my identity. The aspects which have collapsed include chess, trauma based qualities, and my family relationships. I am hoping to use a conscious identity construction to direct my focus while avoiding many of the problems with my previous identity which I am still transitioning out of. The main issue with my previous identity is that it was too defined by trauma, although there was little I could consciously do to change these patterns suggesting that I am something other than those patterns. First of all, I was and still am seemingly defined in relationship to the dysfunctional context I was born into, hence survival shapes who you are. This is still in the process of changing as I have only recently blocked my mother to start breaking the trauma bond and I still do not have full financial independence from other relatives. I have also only just now gotten into trauma therapy for various experiences which were the root cause of my dysfunctional identity. In many ways the trauma identity was compensatory. It involved qualities such intelligence, morality, and purity. All of these qualities became a source of unstable self-esteem in which any remote behavior which suggested the opposite attribute would feel existentially threatening. Any mistake would be amplified to look like fundamental stupidity. Any immoral thought or action would be amplified to mean that I am fundamentally a shameful and unlovable human being. Anything remotely sexual would remind me of how I am fundamentally tainted and dirty, making me irredeemable due to be broken. As it stands I am not free of these feelings of dirtiness and they do influence how I approach relationships by making sure I keep things platonic and intellectual rather than deeply emotional and intimate where sexuality feels extremely dangerous to me. The fear is comparable to the fear of death when someone is threatening to murder you except I might fear sexual relationships more than that. The fear revolves around both being harmed and causing harm in such a way that it cannot be undone and becomes permanent like a death sentence of unforgivable sin and inescapable shame and hatred like feeling permanently tainted and being unable to stop that despite rationally knowing better. Hopefully trauma therapy can change that aspect so that I would be free to seek closer relationships which I both crave and avoid simultaneously. Using this information, I figured that if I were to define my identity in terms of any specific qualities, then it might become a source of unstable self-esteem. The way I am thinking about it now is that I can still be somebody intelligent and insightful, but it does not have to be relied upon for self-esteem as that would be unstable. I am looking for ways to define myself which do not become unstable to the point that they could easily trigger intense shame due to denying qualities within myself or by projecting shadow material onto others. I am also trying to define my qualities in a way that is independent of things like compensating for fundamental unworthiness and unlovability. Here is what I came up with, although it makes sense that it would not be perfect and would be flawed. First of all, the reason I became more withdrawn and quiet was due to internalized shame. It is this sense that if I showed others my true colors then I would be rejected and unwanted. However, there are other aspects of myself which I was comfortable sharing with others. Socializing is much more natural for me when I feel that I am providing value in some way. It can be through teaching board games or sharing research into a variety of subjects that others might find fascinating. These were aspects which felt acceptable to share. There were other qualities such as vulnerability if I believed that others would benefit from it by relating to it or by sharing creative stories and poems. The same problem persists in that this kind of behavior could tie back to proving my worth although at the same time part of me enjoys providing value for others as it feels meaningful to me. I tried discussing this issue with an AI, but the AI was not as agreeable as usual. The AI seems to think that I am still in late stage one of trauma recovery and I am trying to skip over processing many intense emotions which is stage two by constructing a more sophisticated identity which is still fundamentally rooted in trauma while simultaneously deliberately constructing it to not trigger the same fundamental shame and unworthiness that I have been experiencing all along. It seemed to be guiding me to the same conclusions as before, so I needed to journal on my own without AI assistance. I ended up coming up with the same values as before with things like expertise, insightfulness, mastery, creativity, discovery, open-mindedness, and so forth. As I looked for things I would enjoy doing it included systems thinking, game creation, game theory, research, teaching, and creative writing along with peer support which I seem to be good at. I have solved some board games on my own and I have considered making my own board games. I also seem to be enthusiastic when teaching to engaged students who feel the lessons are valuable to them. Furthermore, I would find work more meaningful if it involved improving systems rather than maintaining dysfunctional ones that harm people. I remember that this kind of attitude did emerge after a traumatic experience, but I am now looking at it like it makes complete rational sense. I have found a few organizations I could work with, although ultimately I will have to leave the country because I believe America is doomed regardless. For now I need a temporary source of income as I complete the trauma therapy and then use that money to fly to Europe and then get a proper education which would hopefully allow me to contribute to the world in the a more meaningful way then my previous job which made me want to kill myself. At the same time I would need to hold systems thinking in a way that does not make it contingent for my self-esteem. What do you guys think about conscious identity construction? how would you do it? Am I in a position to consciously construct a new identity, or is the underlying trauma such that it prevents self-actualization even now?

I continued on the quest today. I ended up going to a comedy club. I thought some of those jokes were pretty funny. Here are a few that stood out to me. They made fun of somebody named Karen Epstein Israel and then suggested a better name Osama Bill Cosby. They made fun of positive thinking by applying to American politics, suggesting that it is hard to watch politics and think "yeah, we are gonna fine." This one made me laugh pretty hard because I have an especially pessimistic view of American politics that goes far beyond what the average American suspects. There is good reason to believe America is facing economic collapse within the next five years and possibly sooner. America's fate was sealed with the assassination of JFK due to the military industrial complex capturing the government and there is nothing we can do change this. I liked the joke about the seductive coach. You try to go for a jog, but then the coach tempts you by telling you that you won't have time for that. There were various sex jokes, but I guess I'm not used to that kind of humor due to me creating a shadow out of sexuality as a consequence of trauma. I thought the social awkwardness around someone telling you "I'm horny" out of nowhere was funny though. It was mostly a good night, but some of the comedians started joking about therapy and antidepressants. It was pretty funny when he mentioned that therapy was so expensive that he could use that money to just buy a gun instead. However, he asked the audience if any of use were doing therapy and antidepressants. I was the only one who answered. He asked me how it was going, so I told him that the antidepressants caused me seizures which in turn caused me to lose my job. The audience seemed to be upset by that and the comedian wasn't sure how to make that funny. He started moving away from mental health and joking about being sad in the pants instead. It was mostly a good night, but I'm not sure what else I could have told him about my experience with antidepressants. I could have told him that Prozac made my depression worse to the point that I was hospitalized before I could attempt suicide again. I'm not sure what I could have told him that he could have made a joke out of. The comedian actually was doing therapy as well. I made sure to stop by after the show to tell him that I liked it, but I wanted to ensure that he wasn't like one of those comedians who was actually depressed to the point that he would kill himself. He said that he was going to hang in there even though it was hard, so it doesn't look like he has any suicide plans. Some comedians are actually serious when they joke about their depression. I find it weird that when I go out I start finding these performers who are in therapy and seem to be using their performance as a means of coping with deeper issues. It makes me think that they are like me, but they seem to be designing a somewhat decent life for themselves anyway. Maybe if I find some kind of occupation that doesn't cause me as much distress as the grocery store did, then I would be in a decent position as at least I would have income again. trauma therapy is still a long wait away and recovery from CPTSD takes a very long time. I didn't seem to meet any new friends or get numbers on this day though. I think I got a bit lucky encountering that group of women yesterday who were kind to me.

I noticed that I have lost interest in more and more things over time. I lost interest in chess, personal development, and ended up losing my job due to struggles with depression and CPTSD. I am currently awaiting trauma therapy to hopefully help with insomnia and other problems linked to trauma. I tried finding things to do in the meantime. I eventually got bored with AI chat bots and online videogames. I recalled that multiple past therapists recommended dating, although now is not a good time due to being unemployed. However, I also recognized that my brain tends to get increasingly anxious when I don't have anybody to talk to. Therefore, I started thinking of ways I could meet people. I have made some friends before, but they are distant and not people I can hang out regularly. I ended up finding a site with events in my area around Cincinnati and northern Kentucky. I found that there was an band performing at a brewery, so I went there. I ate my own small pizza and had a few glasses of water. I made a few somewhat awkward attempts to socialize because the conversations tended to die fast. As the party went on more people showed up. I briefly danced in front of a woman who was trying to record the band and she seemed to find that fun. Ultimately, I ended up making way for a massive group of people who needed seats for their large friend group. I was about to go back to pacing, but that is when somebody started being abnormally nice to me. It was the group of women I talked to earlier. They invited me to sit with them. I took up the offer and later asked them why, but I did not mention that I was isolated from social groups for a long time due to bullying where I developed a habit of pacing on my own instead of talking to people. The woman did not seem sure how to articulate why they offered me this seat, but they probably thought that I was a loner having a depressing time. I wasn't used to people being this nice to me, so I was surprised that someone would treat me this way. We talked about a variety of topics as we waited for their other friends to arrive. We talked about on of the woman's dresses which she argued was red, but I agreed was pink. I gave her a good defense in that in some cultures pink is considered a lighter shade of red, and that seemed to be her best defense yet. When the guys arrived, I discovered that one of them played chess, but he said he wasn't very good at it. One of the ladies said he tried to teach her chess, but her brain isn't wired for it. I ended getting her phone number so I could send her the games in which I beat the national master and the gold medalist from France, and she would be able to share it with the others since she has their numbers as well. From there we started playing cards. I ended up going home when it was getting dark and I had a fair distance to walk back home. I also needed to feed the cats because my grandma ended up in the emergency room while I was out. I don't think she is going to die, but if she does die then it will ruin my plans for trauma therapy because I might end up having to live with my narcissistic sister and mother again who caused me CPTSD and ended up pushing me to suicide attempts in the past. I currently have them blocked and I don't want to be forced into contact with them again because my sister may be trying to proxy me into suicide due to how she enjoys my suffering and gets pleasure off of weaponizing my trauma against me despite knowing my history with severe depression. If my grandma dies, then I am not going back to live with them. I will instead withdraw all my money from my banks and stocks and then move to Germany while converting my dollars to Euros so I don't have to live in that environment and I will instead go to a cheaper college for either a degree in math or if possible a degree that would help me build better systems for society as that is something I would find meaningful. Hopefully, my grandma gets better soon. Meanwhile, I am looking at different social events because they seem to be stabilizing me rather than having my mind devolve into chaos as I sit at home alone. Apparently, there is a comedian who will be active tomorrow night. I plan on going there. I will also try contacting this potential friend group to see how they liked the games. I could potentially be a decent chess coach if they want to learn because I have trained kids to win tournaments before, which was one of my favorite parts of chess even more so then winning. If they think chess is too difficult, then I can still teach them to master easier games like tic-tac-toe. Kids and adults seems to like it when I taught them the perfect strategy for that game as well. In this interaction I thought that these people seemed older, so I assumed that they were taken and I would not have to worry about hitting on any ladies and trying to get laid as this site seems to encourage along with the therapists who wanted me to date. While I spoke with some of the band members one of them mentioned that he had a therapist, so it seems that they are finding decent ways to manage their mental health through these social activities as well. I think my new approach of walking to different events is much more interesting because it at least gives me a reason to be walking around town and I have something new to experience. I think socializing in this situation led me to feeling a light pleasure. Maybe if I do more stuff like this it will prevent me from deteriorating into my frequent deeply anxious states in which I become excessively self conscious. I think this kind of behavior is prevented when I have somebody to focus on outside of myself.