trenton

@Denial I can relate to this. I started getting waves of depression around the time I was in late middle school and early high school. It was around that time that I started having more suicidal thoughts and I felt that I was unable to control my emotional suffering. I first want to steer you away from your attitude toward death in spirituality. It is easy for the ego mind to twist these things in a selfish way. In this case, death is being twisted in a way that it leads you toward harming the body. This does not come from self love, it comes from hatred and apathy. This is not what spirituality is meant to teach us. One the topic of OCD, I am curious about your locker situation. When I had a locker at school, I never left it unlocked. I still would double check and sometimes even triple check, but then I walk away thinking "did I lock my locker?". I often had the same attitude toward my backpack. I would look in my backpack repeatedly to make sure I was not missing something. There was only one or two times I actually forgot something ever. If I thought I was missing something, I would start panicking only to realize I had what I needed in another pocket. I was never told that I needed to face the emotions from not doing the action. As for being a control freak, I think focusing on meditation is a good way to ease anxiety and paranoia. My mental health has improved because of consciousness work. Because emotional mastery is critical for us, we should run through the emotional mastery play list on actualized to see if it helps unsure your neurotic personality. Childhood vows is one of the most practical episodes in the site. This may not cure your entire condition, but at least it will makes many small but significant improvements to your psyche. All of these small issues could be contributing to suicidal thoughts. I want to tell you that I feared going insane for a long time. When we don't socialize with people enough, our minds can tell us anything even if it is depressing. People with autism don't socialize as much as most people, and my psychologist is trying to get me to do this more. I have a younger brother in high school and we are studying emotional mastery together. I try to cope with my inner conflicts by keeping myself productive. My mind could be focusing on a chess game for example. Once I get into a state of flow and analyze the complexity of a tough game, my life becomes much more enjoyable. If you could find ways to stay productive, it can help you avoid these situations in which you get paranoid because you are busy doing something else you enjoy. There is no need to be a control freak in these cases. One of my observations for my thoughts was that if I am thinking of my thoughts as bad and I get afraid of them, this will make the thoughts worse. This can contribute to racing thoughts and over thinking. Consciousness work helped me to recognize this. In your case the fear of losing control is doing this to you. In my experience I called this an inner devil's advocate. There are ways to ease this. I can expand upon this with shoulds and should nots. Sometimes I have destructive curiosity. This can include pulling the fire alarm. If you recognize that there is a line between your thoughts and behaviors, it can ease your fears of acting on these thoughts that contribute to moral anxiety. Acknowledging curiosity is a more effective way to deal with certain kinds of thoughts when compared to fearing your thoughts about doing something stupid. This includes thoughts about randomly breaking things, morbid curiosity that contributes to suicidal thoughts, or even sexual fantasies that we could get paranoid about. I am currently at the part where you feel in control of life when apathetic. I can expand on this after my appointment with my psychologist. I hope you find parts of this useful so far.

Although I watched many spiritual videos, deep down I still believe that this is just philosophy and science is still more objective. I may understand some criticisms on an intellectual level, but I still hold science as true anyway. I would like to describe my experience in this forum. If I don't seriously question science, then philosophy can quickly be degraded into mental masturbation, preventing me from gaining real benefit from it. This idea that science is objective has real consequences for me and it prevents me from taking this seriously. Growing up, I was curious about how it is that I exist. I never had an answer to these things and I felt isolated and alone. It seems everybody is caught in minor human activities and don't even question what we are doing here. I didn't socialize much with others and this left me to making many theories about reality. It was rare for people to share this interest as I often flew over other people's heads. In this process I created a philosophical or spiritual ego. I didn't really care about truth, and other people could see through the bullshit. This is why in my experience rationalism was often more honest than my pseudo spirituality. Sometimes I still made metaphors about how everything is connected, but I felt delusional and it looked like philosophy was doomed to be mental masturbation for me. How could I take intellectualizing seriously if questioning the obvious was only to make me look cool? How should I approach spirituality given this kind of background? Are there others in this forum like me who still hold science as true and spirituality as a mask or facade we put on? I am currently trying to open myself to more serious questioning because without it, my growth is limited and I am fundamentally locked in the materialist paradigm because of rationalists calling out my bullshit.

I want to tell you that you are not alone. Suicide rates are high for people with autism. The disorder is misunderstood and people can feel like outsiders to the neuro typical world. I work with a psychologist because of my suicidal thoughts. I have a cycle of feeling happy before it crashes into a depressing outlook on life. I am on anxiety medication, but it is becoming less effective as I use meditation because this is more effective. Sometimes the cycle gets repetitive to the point that it can seem hopeless when there is no obvious cause of me hating life. Do you mind me asking how long this has been going on? There could be all kinds of trauma for you to work through, but it may not be the case that any particular event caused you to be this way. At least your ego could be a little bit healthier if there is obvious trauma you could work through. I have a very neurotic personality as well, and it demonstrates clearly the importance of emotional mastery. Your school did not reach you this so you should buy the book list if you have not already. Emotional mastery is the highest priority which can be helped if you read the right books. I'm reading one of these books right now. These have been more helpful to me than anything else. If you have autism, then the high suicide rate makes it that much more critical that you study this. I want to tell you that I think I am overly critical of myself. I criticize myself for my obsessive mind when it is over anything. This is not really a problem If you frame it as you are passionate about something and eager to learn more. Recognize the strengths in the apparent weaknesses. If you think of yourself as a bad person for any of this, then that is not true. People with autism are doing the best they can, but the way we act does not make sense to most people. We can still be very effective in any field of interest. Narrow interests can make you obsessive, but it can help you become excellent. Excellence can only come about when we are passionate about what we do. The goal of our self criticism is to improve ourselves. This can be used to tear ourselves down again and again. I would like a different approach to this. I have told others on this forum about this before and they said that if we realize we are already enough of can stop us from turning personal development into something neurotic. One thing I noticed is that improvement can be chased forever and it can be used to manipulate myself forever if I think I am not good enough. There is no point at which I would be good enough of self improvement becomes chasing. This might be the reason why harsh self criticism does not work for me. I will mention that I find going for walks helpful. I also enjoy writing music and poetry just for fun. I wrote a song called "you have been to the bar.". I will be your friend and we can give each other more information on how we could approach these cycles of depression.

@Adamq8 I like how you pointed out that materialism can't be falsified of it is assumed that all perception is false even though it is the only thing experienced. I started reading into the hard problem of consciousness. The problem is that consciousness is greater than the sum of the parts. Reductionism assumes that things can be taken apart and reverse engineered to be understood. I did not watch the episodes on holons and holistic thinking yet. That might help.

@Consilience I never heard of "the hard problem of consciousness" until this thread. I should probably check it out. I would like to know how the materialist paradigm effects people outside of spirituality. I can see that it is creating a limitation on spiritual growth, but how else does it affect people? If I can see this from outside a spiritual perspective, it would help me to take it more seriously. In this case I mean the belief that there is a material reality beyond perception. How does this affect people when it is held to the equivalent of religious indoctrination? The first affect is the fear response to questioning the underlying paradigm of science. This is because reality seems less real when there is only perception and no material matter beneath it. In this way it is not rational to reject this questioning, it is emotional. Are there other affects? One reason I don't take this contemplation seriously is because I don't see the significance of these materialistic beliefs. What would society look like without them?

I would like to mention that I have one objection to science which is the same as religion and politics. The reason I don't want to convert to any religion in particular is because it limits me to a narrow perspective and prevents me from seeing reality from many angles. This leaves me locked in a belief box forever until I die. Life is more interesting when viewed from many angles. One reason I don't like science is that it is hyper specialized. This can lead me to locking myself into a narrow perspective with the rest of reality being unknown. If I want to explore life enough for me to enjoy it to the fullest, hyper specialization is not the way to it because it is too limited. One reason I dislike politics is because I lock myself into a narrow perspective and often assume it to be true or the best. In this way I can see a pattern continuing. No matter what method I use to approach life, I don't want it to be strict, narrow, and limiting. This will lead to me feeling incomplete because I hold a part of reality as if it is all of reality. A narrow perspective can't solve reality. In this way I can tell it is untrue and limiting because of how closed it is. How can I approach life from many angles if science of materialism does not let me do that?

Science must be a subset of philosophy because of the philosophies of rationalism and logical positivism. If I don't what I am, then this does not negate the fact that experience is still happening. How do I know if any observations are real? I could use the naked eye, a radar, an X-Ray, a microscope, and much more. Which perspective is the most accurate representation of reality? If all of them are perceptions, then none of them can be truer than another. To argue that X-Ray is truer than radar would be silly. I know observation is real because it is happening, and can come in many forms. In this case I am using observation, experience, and perception interchangeably. All observations must be equally real because they exist. What is objectivity is a good question. Who gets to say what is objective? If we favor one point of view over another, then this is already subjective. If I say that objectivity exists, then this is pure conjecture because it can't be proven if all experience is subjective. I am thinking that my direct experience is proof that existence exists. If there are things outside of my experience, then existence is bigger than me. This would mean that I am this awareness and this experience, but I am only a part of existence. If I assume that I am separate from this experience, then this is emotion and conjecture because there is no proof that I am the awareness of the experience, but not the experience. I am interested in neuroscience because it suggests that reality is a hallucination. The hallucination is happening within me, and I would have to imagine that there is an objective reality outside of this hallucination. If I am hallucinating reality, then how can I be separate from it? If I am hallucinating this experience, then all experience is happening within me, not outside of me. I think I am that which is hallucinating reality. I have been using the scientific method on spirituality. I tried meditation and it has eased my anxiety to the point that anxiety medication is becoming ineffective on me and making no difference. I also tried the guided meditation that I am God multiple times. The experience gets deeper and more intense each time I do it. If I do this exercise 30 times will I experience God? This is a scientific hypothesis that I am testing now. In the back of my mind I often assume that I am being misguided and the people who buy into materialism are not. Why do I assume this? It is easy to pick up the assertion that materialistic science is objective again.

@Carl-Richard Sorry I can't remove the other quote. One of the challenges I have that is limiting me is the constant background that doubts efforts like these. Without this background paradigm nagging at me, I could ground myself in direct experience. Now on the question "can thoughts be true?" Thoughts can be true from a certain point of view. For example, I can say the door is white. There are other ways to look at the door, but I am describing my experience of the door rather than through an X-Ray for example. I could more accurately say that there is a perception that the door is white. Taking into account all other perspectives, my thoughts are not really 100% true. All thoughts can be doubted because they are true from a limited perspective. This leads to bias in that I could prefer one view over another. Thoughts are true from a narrow perspective, but false from a broad, multi perspective view. I am wondering about a perspective that can account for all perspectives in reality without any bias whatsoever. Without a method to determine what is true or false, I would not hold one view as higher than another because all of them are imaginary. If I have no method to determine what is true or false, then I am left with present experience. Everything else is concept and imagination because there is a bias toward which method should be used and who created the method. If I only have this experience and the rest is concept, then I must be imagining that there is anything beyond direct experience. There is this perception and to add anything beyond it is concept and theory.

I have autism. I have a mix of strengths and weaknesses in spirituality because of this condition. Starting with some strengths, people with autism often have narrow interests. Narrow interests can be good for developing excellence in a given field. If spirituality is one of your interests, it can make you persistent in growing your consciousness. This is also one of the biggest weaknesses of autism because you can't always find people who appreciate your niche abilities. One of my narrow interests is chess. I enjoy the state of flow created when I am absorbed in what I am doing. This is potentially a strength in that chess is a form of meditation. It is potentially a weakness if my hobby becomes a distraction. I have some autistic traits that I often try to hide from other people. Sometimes I like to turn on music on my tablet and bounce up and down clapping while laughing. This makes me look like the child my grandma takes care of who also has autism. This could be a strength in that I am very playful in which case I have nothing to be ashamed of. One of my traits is that I am a perfectionist. This makes me very critical of myself because I want to grow as much as I can. Perfectionism is common in autism and it can lead to turning self help into something neurotic. This leads to me shoulding myself a lot. This become an obstacle if it is not helping me to excel. So far I have found the most help out of emotional mastery. Although the problems you describe are similar to other people, I think there are different degrees. For example guilt can be more intense and autism can be related to other mood disorders like anxiety which leads to racing thoughts. In this way I am able to let go hyper rationalism for personal development. I can still use logic as a tool in other areas of life. This is a good example of autistic traits I let go of. I wish there were some courses on emotional mastery because my personality is very neurotic. I become full of negative values when trying to become acceptable other people and it clouds my most genuine values. This has made the life purpose course more difficult. I would like to point out that you think you blame your problems on health conditions. You are trying to be good by not using autism as an excuse to gain some kind of social advantage of to excuse for devilry. The term "blame" indicates that you have a defense mechanism against this potential to exploit other people. Make sure that you don't use this to deny immutable differences because the defense mechanism could come with guilt to replace things which could be explained with autism. There is a balance in this case, so don't swing the pendulum too far in one direction. I swing the pendulum a lot. I'm sure there is more I can add, but this is a start. I hope it helps.

When I first started following actualized.org, I pushed myself with a self deception. This was the self deception that the truth is important even though I knew it to be meaningless to me. This seemed necessary at some point as I was attempting to point to something that I struggle to point to and articulate. This leads to many mistakes when I am trying to express the one thing I am drawn to, but can't grasp it. If you push yourself to seek the truth, it creates a corrupting influence if you do not actually care about truth. This leads to creating a false identity which leads to more suffering. This identity will then be maintained by pretending I know things I don't. This leads to ideology, dogma, religion, bigotry, and violence. I think it is worth understanding how this trap works because it is a very popular trap for humanity to fall into. When I more clearly explained what the trap is that makes me drawn to religion and politics, I was much more peaceful. I still struggle to articulate what is the thing that I am interested in. The closest I can get to explaining it is by describing what it is not.

I will be quoting Leo from the maga riot mega thread. "Honestly, that split already happened 4 years ago with intelligent conservatives like David Frum, Bill Krystal, Nichol Wallace, Joe Scarborough. They knew right off the bat that Trump was an imposter conservative and they opposed him early on." David Frum said: "when this is all over, nobody will admit to having supported it." These are conservatives worth checking out because they demonstrated integrity. I watched one of them a couple of months ago. In healthy conservative views there is more to it than making your audience afraid of the left. These healthy conservative views are very different from mainstream republicans who are embracing trumpism.

I notice that repeated exposure to left wing views creates an echo chamber. I think it is smart to avoid this because I can still be very easily mislead. I find it far too easy to demonize republicans for voter suppression and lawlessness. I think this forum would do well to ease the echo chamber effect of the strong left wing bias, by including a mega thread of healthy conservatives. This would be perfect for seeing diverse perspectives, while giving ourselves a more nuanced understanding of politics. Should we make this kind of a mega thread?

That would probably be easier. I think I should try Leo's guided meditation about how I am God a few more times while I am in the woods. Right now it is Easter and I am too busy to do that, but I have plans. In a sense none of the thoughts about me are right if they are representations. This is a good point you're making because I get very absorbed in thoughts and self judgement.

@soularlight I can see strength in vulnerability. What was called strength before was succumbing to shame. This leads to denial and the idea that I'm not good enough. This also leads to staying stuck in the same cycle of suppression and judgement until collapse. In this case I am over compensating because I don't want to fall into the trap of using my identity as vulnerable victim to manipulate people into doing what I want. In this case vulnerability comes from honesty which comes from strength. Similarly there is intelligence in admitting mistakes. The mistake is to deny the mistake. This demonstrates humility and creates a foundation for growth which uses self honesty rather than self destruction. As for needing to be better, I get this a lot. There are several reasons why I hurt myself and try to use fear to change my behavior. This includes, my job at Kroger, my lack of a vision, my lack of reading, my lack of work ethic that prevents me from typing a book, how I'm not making enough money, and so on. I constantly feel like I need to change, but this approach is not working. This leads to guilt caused by failures to live up to better ideals and it is miserable. I am open to the idea that I am good enough now because of my experience that I will otherwise never be good enough if I always have to be better. The bar can keep getting higher forever as a way to push myself to make desirable outcomes, but it does not work in many cases. I'm not sure what we would be playing. Whatever we play, always trying to win makes me more tense and it takes fun out of the game. This leads to the meta game. What does wisdom want me to know now? Probably that there is nothing wrong with me. This would help with the anxiety medicine. At least I won't paralyze myself with high levels of anxiety. This would also mean that I am perfect. This sounds unbelievable, but it is logically true of there is nothing wrong with me. The same probably applies to everyone and everything. This would mean that wrong is imaginary and can only exist through giving it authority and power. This means that from one point of view the problem is that the idea of wrong creates a problem, but the problem does not exist if nothing is wrong. If there is no wrong, then there is only what is. I was open to this possibility for a moment, but started closing again. If it can be easy rather than hard, this makes me more open. If I wish I were open in the future, then that is not going to work because it implies that I'm not good enough. It would have to be now. I don't feel open right now, and that is okay. In this case the motive is to avoid denial which would keep me stuck, rather than to use self acceptance to keep oneself stuck. This all would still mean that I am perfect though. That does not change.

I am open to this possibility. I hesitate to type about how making things harder is supposed to be an example of strength. It is a very perplexing thought. This creates misery and does not really develop emotional muscles outside of suppression which is unhealthy in the long run. It may have to do with pride in overcoming difficult challenges which actually don't have to exist. Anyway I also believed that solving complex puzzles was a sign of genius. If I create puzzles that don't need to exist, then this creates games. I think my resistance to making this way easier stems from a confused understanding of strength. This can physical, emotional, or mental. The result is that I repeatedly crush myself thinking that a better me will emerge when in fact it just leads to misery. This can lead to many emotional problems, thus creating weakness in the ability to focus as well as my body falls apart through filling it with bad foods. I am not sure what an alternative definition of strength would be, but the old one hurts a lot. Especially since suppression is seen as strength. I was embarrassed to the point that I hesitated to type all of this. After typing this I can be a little bit more open to the possibility of making this easier.

@trenton I actually notice a similar sense of pushing when I play competitive games. I act like winning is more important than it actually is. I end up making things harder on myself when I pretend that I have to win even though it is not as important as I act like it is. This again leads to leave by letting go of results.

Yes I think that is possible. I don't think it is necessary to have any prevailing thought about it. This leads to silence and inner peace. It looks like the most effective way to approach this and extra effort ends up making it harder than it needs to be.

I currently work at a Kroger grocery store. I have worked there for about 3 years. I have been a good employee. I nearly always showed up early and I did very well in nearly every part of the job as a front end associate. The only part I did poorly on was socializing with customers. The managers tell me to step to the side and say "hi thanks for coming in.". If I don't do this, then they might fire me. Sometimes the managers stand behind for five orders straight waiting for me to forget to greet the customer so they can threaten to fire me. I am not going to tolerate this. It is annoying and I am leaving because of this. I think they are focusing on employees who are most likely to fail to greet the customers. I received a significant warning for my actions. I think the company is making a poor policy decision that is making it annoying to work at Kroger. I tried talking to the store management and I called corporate Kroger, but it looks like nothing is going to change. Kroger is over stressing the importance of politeness to the point that it is causing more harm than help. I tried to discuss moving me to a role that would not require as much socializing. This could be linked to autism, but there is nothing Kroger plans to do for any autism program. There is no way for Kroger to nurture any of my abilities and no role they can offer me. I will not be working on customer service because these kinds of relationships with work are not sustainable. I am purchasing a car to help me move to jobs further away. This gives me more options than I previously had. I still have an associate degree in general studies from a community college. This also limits my options. 1. Do you know what kind I would be better suited for? 2. Does what I described qualify as harassment? I am scared to make this call and I don't know what will happen to me if I make this kind of complaint.

I think Richard Nixon had some valuable things to say about environmental protection. Unfortunately he was later impeached for the Watergate scandal. If not for this corruption, Nixon could be a great example healthy conservatism when it comes to responsible use of the environment. Here is the history of the epa. https://www.epa.gov/history/origins-epa

@universe I forgot to add that during this pandemic I learned that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I would have to be out of mind to allow this kind of life. I still feel pretty lost sometimes as to what I should be doing on a regular basis.

@universe I would be absolutely miserable working staying in customer service forever until I die. Sometimes I think I should go back to college for a business degree or education degree. The point would be to build a chess school. If not just a chess school, it could include other board games and teach people to master them. I am interested in chess programs that help people born in low income families because I think poverty is a waste of talent. Wasting talent is miserable and customer service is one way to do it. Changing my job is only a temporary stepping stone unless I do something way better than what I am currently doing. How did you discover your talents?

@Danioover9000 I understand that the ideologies you mentioned are problematic, and conservatives can easily be sucked into the dangers of traditionalism. If I were to give a healthy example of conservatism, it would be calling out some of the unsustainable policy changes pushed by the radical left. The problem is that this can easily be used to turn the left into a socialist boogey man. A healthy conservative may improve upon hyper radicalism through demonstrating that slower evolution would be more sustainable. Without fear mongering, conservatives could argue that "no boarders, no wall, no USA at all" is too far. Conservatives could try to give a more accurate picture of how much time we have to stop climate change. There is biased science on both sides, and this would help us to become less paranoid and less absorbed in an environmentalist ideology. Stage blue and orange don't usually take environmental concerns seriously, so this could be hard to come by.

I am looking for other places to get a job. I found some better jobs that offer 18-20 dollars an hour, but are still customer service jobs. This would be better than Kroger paying me 13 dollars an hour, but it would not be a job I'm happy with. One of my biggest problems with working with Kroger is that it is unable to use my strengths to the fullest. The default is that my weaknesses come up time and time again, leading to long term misery. I would like to work somewhere that uses my strengths. My strengths come out best when I am in a state of flow. This can happen during chess tournaments and I had success with teaching chess in the past. This is a narrow interest, and I need to find out what are my key strengths. Would the life purpose course help?

I should probably do that. I like having my thought process formalized so I can make my best thinking system habitual. By offering my best to the people learning from me it pushes me to improve myself enough to compete with very strong players.

@integral I have been getting advice from other chess coaches. They said that I could make a pay pal account and I could use some kind of video chat to teach individual students. I can ask coaches in chess.com for more information. This will be a great way to get me more experience in what I want to do. One challenge is that I am not clear that I will make enough money and I may need another job.