trenton

I am coming to the realization that my seeking of truth is fundamentally a self-deception designed to prevent me from true self discovery. This is common in people with trauma who try to find meaning, purpose, and healing through truth, God, love, and spirituality. So long as the pursuit of truth is a compensatory value based on trauma, it is not my genuine value. This kind of behavior started when I was six. What happened was my mom accused me of sexually abusing my sister. I lied badly. This led to a cascading effect of trauma responses. This included my fear of self-deception which was rooted in my mother making me feel like a terrible person in addition to lying. The trauma was so severe that it undermined my entire sense of reality. This is when I created a persona which revolved around seeking higher purpose and truth. These were not intrinsic values because they were imposed with the intent to rebuild a sense of self worth. In this process I isolated myself from others, convincing myself that love, connection, and relationships were either of low value or something that would fail to demonstrate the value of my existence. As I operated under the sense of valuing truth, I ended up creating a lot of defenses through intellectualization. This included the rationalizations for why incest is okay. I actually made countless intellectualizations designed to shield myself from underlying pain. Over the years this developed into using spirituality and philosophy as a source of further intellectualization. Therefore, although the point of spirituality is to discover the true self, for me these philosophies only served to obscure any genuine self discovery. This is likely the reason why people can work on this stuff for decades and get nowhere. I started to think about what my values might be if they were not truth, intelligence, God, or things of that nature. My intellectualization was never about truth. I know before the trauma I used to value love and connection. I felt that having a deep connection to someone gave me meaning and maybe it in a way validates my existence. I also held money as a high value. This makes sense because if I had 5 million dollars, then I would be free from the job I don't like which is sucking my life away. It makes sense then, that I can be looking for something that will make me money. I came to these realizations as I did a deeper dive into biology and its implications in psychology. What I discovered is that in a freeing, liberating sense, I am a normal human being. It helps me to view myself and others through a more compassionate lens, seeing how my struggle shaped me along with the realization that I suffer in a similar way through similar challenges to a lot of other normal people. The desire to prove myself exceptional or special was also a source of seeking self worth, which is also very human and normal. My mind continues to get more and more peaceful as I understand myself at deeper and deeper levels. In a sense the intellectual side of me was extremely helpful in driving me to seek this understanding. It drove me to research so much about a variety of topics in seeking freedom from my own inner chaos. I may continue to educate as needed, but I feel my mind slowing down significantly after processing this trauma linked to the beginning of my truth seeking. Perhaps true self discovery can finally begin for me. As it stands I have a lot of possible exploration in terms of what could fulfill me. Currently, I don't really know, but my childhood values points to the possibility of love being a source of fulfillment.

I finished watching the video. I agree that most of the arguments are bad, but there are a couple I find compelling. First, the perennial argument that points to many different cultures and religions. This argument was the reason I took spirituality and the possibility of God seriously. There was a lot of overlap between different cultures and it suggests that there is truth to it, but does not guarantee it. As I investigated spirituality, I learned about mystical experiences which also seems compelling. I did some consciousness work through different spiritual books and it triggered different states of consciousness. if my degree of consciousness had this much of an impact on how I see the universe, then it suggests that a radical degree of consciousness could show me absolute truth. Again, I am following the trail of bread crumbs. These arguments do not guarantee God from my point of view, but it makes it plausible enough to warrant investigation into consciousness work. As it stands God is a possibility to me and my intuition says God is real, but this comes without having had experiences of radical degrees of consciousness which I am pointing to.

@Emerald it was Carl Jung that said that. I have been reading about him to learn more about self love. In terms of the unlived life of my father and his father, they told me a lot about being good. My grandpa carried intense guilt and trauma because of his former involvement with gangs and his son ended up getting involved in gangs as well. When my grandpa told me to be good he was trying to steer me away from the path he went down which locked him out of many opportunities in life. My grandpa later stopped his life of crime but my father never stopped. The narrative they told me was one about redemption and breaking the cycle of criminality. This narrative holds parallels with how I think about life purpose. A big part of me seeking purpose has to do with redemption and what I believe is my fundamental lack of self worth. This is why I'm writing about self love. I automatically judge myself as evil despite having tons of evidence to the contrary. I'm trying to find a way to think about life purpose that does not involve redeeming myself for being inherently unworthy of love, and instead is built upon things that bring me joy. I am pretty much lost as to what that might be. For now the best I know is to keep seeking self knowledge and understanding. This serves to create inner harmony and self acceptance. I am also trying to undo the entire protective identity I formed in response to trauma. It likely masks my authentic values and the authentic self that was lost in the chaos. As for the unlived life of my mother I'm not sure what burden I might be carrying. She had children as a result of statutory rape from my father and had to drop out of high school. She said that raising kids forced her to think about someone other than herself. My mother is what I believe to be the source of my redemption narrative. She was the one who accused me of sexually abusing my sister when I was six which made me feel unworthy of love. This is when I started taking things like life purpose seriously to justify my existence rather than kill myself. Purpose is redemption in this context. I don't know what my mom most wanted out of life. Whatever it was it was probably sacrificed in favor of having kids and raising them as a single mother. She also struggled with bipolar disorder.

I had an important discovery recently that helped me recover from past relational trauma. I used to be mad at myself and see myself as weak and flawed because I loved my father. My father was a gangster involved in countless crimes including drug deals, extortion, and the sexual exploitation of minors. I blamed myself because I didn't turn him into the police which could have prevent him and his gang from hurting other people. Part of this is due to survivor's guilt from sex trafficking. Part of me says I somehow could have protected the innocent. I recently discovered that I had no conscious control over my love for my father. Bonding is based on many underlying biological processes which in turn strongly influence our surface feelings and thoughts. This is by design because evolution required children to form strong bonds with caretakers regardless of the immoral behavior involved. The result is that I easily rationalized that it was for the best that I don't turn my father into the police. This entire process was the result of unconscious forces beyond my control. It is therefore not fair to judge my moral character based on these factors. This helped me to stop the inner conflict I had with myself around loving someone evil. My new goal is now not to avoid loving other people for fear of exploitation. It is instead to design a more resilient form of love which does not blind me to the dark side of someone I love. This is hard to do because this is a fundamental tension between human biology and moral integrity. It is hard to not be compromised by these unconscious forces into aiding in evil even if inadvertently. This kind of phenomena can be seen not just in my relationship with my father but also in cases of domestic violence in which the victim loves the abuser too much and thus tolerates clear devilry. As I seek to build a more resilient from of love, I would like to better understand the biology behind different types of bonds. This includes men and women in romantic relationships, parents, fathers and their sons or daughters, mothers and their sons or daughters, siblings, humans and pets, and humans and objects. I want to know how these bonds are different based on the type of relationship and what kind of feelings and thoughts are likely to emerge as a consequence of biology. As I understand how bonds are formed I want to use this information to form more resilient love that is resistant to manipulation and evil. How do you resolve this fundamental tension between biology and morality? How should you handle the situation when someone you love is evil but your mind instinctively rationalizes and defends them as if they are extensions of yourself?

I am currently working on a book about self love. I finished my first draft for chapter 1 but I'm going to expand on the artworks and metaphors behind them. This chapter discusses how the mind constructs illusions through meaning, stories, emotional attachment, and so on. It ends with practical techniques for recognizing and breaking out of illusions. The first painting I used was " the treachery of images. " it is famous for "this is not a pipe." The metaphor behind it as understood in this chapter is that the mind creates images and models of reality but then mistakes those models for reality itself . In the context of self love this can be applied to what you believe about yourself, who you are, and what you are capable of. Your thoughts about what reality is ultimately blinds you so long as you are attached to a model, thought, or perspective. The mind gets lost in itself and its illusions. I have a drawing I'm going to make for this chapter to expand on this metaphor. I wanted to draw a hand reaching out of a black abyss and through a chaotic sea and into a white light in which the hand disappears and fades. This is how I think of the mind in terms of grappling with truth. There are many layers of meaning behind this image I want to make. Part of the meaning behind it is that seeking truth behind the domain of relativity leads to the mechanism by which truth is sought being deconstructed for it itself is a construction. The mind creates various lies and stories to try to grasp truth, but all of them ultimately collapse into nothing. The truth is too profound to be grasped through conventional thought and sense making. The ego is seeking freedom from itself and it is using mind to get there only for all of its illusions to fall apart. Do you know any other paintings or artworks that symbolize how the mind works and how it constructs illusions? There are many perspectives I could I use to expand on this and it should become a very interesting chapter. Thanks for any help.

I have recently learned that my sister plans to attend family therapy with me and my mom. This causes me such extreme fear and anxiety that it causes me nightmares, horrific sleep paralysis episodes, and a return of suicidal thoughts. I struggled to find ways to cope, resulting in me jumping between laughter and screaming while banging on objects. Once again I decided against cutting myself even though I was tempted to cut myself without suicidal intent. For the past several weeks I had a great peace of mind. I was preparing to move out and so was my sister. I had hope that for at least most of my life, I would not have to fear contact with her. My peace of mind depends on the news about my sister and her future relationship with me. Ideally I want to be in a position where I don't need her for anything and I can be free from her. My biggest fear about therapy is that not only am I going to have to talk about my emotions, but I also have to worry about my sister lying about past abuse to manipulate the situation. My mother and sister often put me in an impossible situation. On the surface they say they want me to open up about my feelings, but when I do it is met with backlash like a lot of yelling and cussing. When I stay silent they treat me like I'm the problem for not being willing to just talk things out. My sister then calls me childish for avoiding conflict even though she is not capable of handling conflict by just talking things out. They force me to bottle up intense emotions and then act like I'm the problem even when my trauma has been weaponized against me. The field of medicine and therapy have failed me. They told me that when I was ruminating on my family problems, it was a sign that something was wrong with me. They started giving me anti psychotic medicine which not only didn't work but also damaged my liver resulting in further medical complications. I have been doing everything I could to work on myself and be the best I could be despite my trauma. I took responsibility wherever I could and I have seen this approach to relationships with my sister backfire on me. My desire to be the better person will be capitalized on and exploited. The hospital failed to recognize the trauma responses and treated me as if I had mental disorders. My relationship with my family has significantly impacted my medical situation and my major life decisions. Unfortunately, the institutions I went to made me go back to living with them due to past suicidal thoughts. I want to protect myself from future harm. I fear that everything I say will be used against me and trigger retaliation like it previously has. There are so many potential problems with these meetings that need to be addressed. Any idea on how to handle this? Do you think trying to tough this out for the next few months will destabilize me further? I feel perfectly peaceful so long as I don't have to worry about my sister.

@Letho you have some good insights. Thank you. I guess I need to maintain that I don't want to talk to my sister even if the entire family treats me like I'm the problem for shutting down and not wanting to talk. They don't see her manipulation tactics so they tell me to forgive her even if she is not sorry and refuses to take responsibility.

I tried ifs buddy. I had some good insights. In this case we discussed the protector and I am now looking for other family members.

@Ulax I think I would like to try that with claude. I already had good results from analyzing my trauma responses. I have gained some excellent psychological insights by combining my ideas and art about self love with the knowledge of the ai. If I can't do it with claude, I will try ifschatbuddy if it's free.

@puporing I have a hard time with this Stockholm syndrome case with my father. He mixed abuse and manipulation with seemingly genuine care. It makes it hard for me to tell if he was a predatory psychopath or a bad father who actually did love me though. In this case my father was responsible for countless crimes including drug deals, gang violence, child support evasion, and the sexual exploitation of minors including my mom. He threatened to disown me if I told anybody about his crimes, thus manipulating me into becoming an accessory to crime. During this time he also put up a front of being deeply religious and moral, claiming the father son bond was sacred. He told me false stories about my grandpa before he died. This allowed my father to manipulate me through grief. The narrative he pushed was one of me breaking the cycle of criminality and carrying on the Hamann name. I could tell in many ways he was fake. This makes me question was his love also fake. In this case he wanted me to tell him about my mom's crimes so he could use that in court against her. Hence he told me I could always talk to him about anything that bothered me. This kind of behavior matches a psychopath. My father sometimes took me to deals with him including a sex trafficking deal. This is where his gang member offered dad money for me to spend the night with him. I was disturbed by being exposed to sexual predators but dad played it off as a joke after declining the deal. While all of this was going on I loved my father too much to turn him into the police. The happy memories I shared with him, if he were a psychopath, would be a strategy of long term grooming for exploitation. My love for my father therefore makes me weak and unable to protect myself and others. The reason I don't like my sister is because she intentionally weaponized this trauma around my father against me. During her outrage she told me all about how sad was loving and caring like a father according to my cousin. All of this was irrelevant and clearly with the intent to cause emotional harm. She now normalized this by making passing comments in casual conversation about dad while hiding behind layers of plausible deniability. This in turn allows her to triangulate other family members against me. I want nothing to do with my sister because of covert narcissistic abuse. @Letho you are right about my struggle with boundaries. I don't know how to handle this situation because any attempt I make will only cause more problems due to my sister's manipulation tactics. @puporing Do you think my love for my father could be Stockholm syndrome?

When I was in Highschool, I had a dream in which I met Jesus Christ. This being a dream means that all of this happening is me, so Jesus was me. I walked with Jesus through heaven until we came to a black abyss. Jesus told me that the abyss had within it unimaginable suffering. The suffering was so great that it would make me feel as though God had forsaken me when in fact he has not. Believing it would transform me for the better, I jumped into the abyss and embraced unimaginable suffering. Sometimes I make artwork inspired by this dream. I am including some of this art in my book about self love. Here is one of the pictures I was analyzing. https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipNqB9aGdpP_DsPS3D6cI-3KhgBWQwnrtbasTR0 I started writing about what the symbolism depicted in this picture was. It included a combination of psychological and spiritual symbols. I asked an AI how it would interpret this art and it suggested that there was a lot of similarities to Carl Jung. This is when I started reading about various concepts by Jung, and it recontextualized many of my deeply held beliefs about who I was. This reframing of my inner struggles and who I was may not be the God realization Leo talks about, but it does help with self love. Rather than seeing the abyss as a prison full of relentless suffering, I came to see the abyss as the unconscious. By attempting to escape from or defeat the monsters in it, I entrench myself in suffering. This creates a shadow and psychological wounds. Ultimately I am the abyss and all things in it. Jung also distinguishes between the ego and the self. When I tried to identify a sense of self, I usually identified with my present consciousness. This does not include the unconscious which included things which I was conflicted with. I think I have found a way to disidentify with the ego in a way that helps me love myself more. I just expanded how I define myself. It seems minor, but it is actually helpful. In addition to the abyss there is also a chaotic sea and a storm which represents what Jung called The Night Sea Journey. As the unconscious becomes conscious there is a chaotic period in which present structures within consciousness are dissolved so new ones can be built. At the end of the journey a more integrated self is discovered in the light which embraces the shadow rather than fights it. What do you think of this artwork and the symbolism behind it?

@Sincerity try this link. https://photos.app.goo.gl/apsMvaLmeCuqMkC58

I am making my own artwork that could be used to describe the mind. I tend to use a combination of Psychological and Spiritual symbolism often involving an abyss, blood, chaos, and a divine light. https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipNqB9aGdpP_DsPS3D6cI-3KhgBWQwnrtbasTR0 I can't get the picture posted in here directly, but here is the link. There are several layers of meaning behind it. Part of it is that the ego is seeking freedom from its own inner chaos and wounds. I tried to symbolize the domain of relativity and the domain of absolute, but it seems to be more strongly leaning on the psychological side rather than spiritual side. I'm not sure how else to draw relative and absolute truth. What do you think of this attempt?

@LastThursday thank you for the pictures. I will definitely want to read about the background behind these.

@LastThursday that sounds good. Do you know the names of any particular pieces or can you find the images?

@MsNobody thanks for saying what I was thinking. I just got done listening to Trump supporting go on for over an hour about various conspiracy theories including claims that January 6th was faked by the FBI. She isn't bothered that nobody elected Elon Musk to hijack all the government agencies, but she is bothered that the employees were not elected. She was adamant that illegal immigrants are horrible people raping and killing us. It's simply impossible to have a high quality and reasonable conversation about politics with these kinds of people.

I want to discuss Leo's approach to discussing things like selfishness. I see how his framework around spirituality might ultimately hold people back by perpetuating their suffering. This isn't just a problem with Leo, but potentially other spiritual teachers as well. Leo discusses selfishness frequently in his spiritual framework. It carries a negative connotation because it is closely related with how he describes evil or the devil. Although there may be some truth to the framework, the framework itself is still a problem which prevents people from ultimately letting of selfishness and ego. In fact framing selfishness as being closely related to evil can reinforce that which we are trying to transcend. For example, if I recognize that I am selfish in any context, the idea of selfishness itself carries with it the connotation which in turn carries judgement which in turn is more ego and selfishness. Seeing selfishness or the devil in this way places you in a war with yourself which is ultimately counter to higher consciousness. You might think that reducing selfishness requires removing judgement of selfishness and evil, but if this attempt itself is coming from a place of needing to fix to avoid being selfish, then it implies a problem or undesirability which still implies judgement. I'm having a hard time finding the right words to describe this situation. Although true that selfishness can keep someone stuck in lower levels of consciousness, the point of view that this is evil, devilry, or in some way undesirable, sets connotations associated with selfishness which in turn implies judgement which comes from a place of ego which therefore reinforces ego and maintains the illusion rather than dissolves it. Of course if these teachings involve people with mental illness or already terrible self esteem problems, then I imagine that the problem would be even worse for them despite their efforts to find any way possible to heal. I think there needs to be a different framework for spirituality besides technically correct frameworks which themselves serve to maintain unconsciousness through implied judgements. Maybe this can be amended through Leo's other teachings which have implications of traps in other teachings. For example, in the episode about being wrong he points out that beating yourself up for being wrong is itself wrong. Similarly, he mentioned things like excessive guilt which is not a resourceful emotion and can hold you back from actualizing your highest self. I would suppose the implied teaching is that to see yourself as evil for being selfish is a trap which maintains unconsciousness, but I see selfishness and evil being closely related in his framework. The reason I am discussing this is because I am writing a book about self-love and this paradox came up. So long as any form of spirituality comes from a place of fixing something that is wrong, then it ultimately withholds self-love by requiring being different. I am currently seeing spirituality as a process of discovery. It is as if having insights about external phenomenon is ultimately learning about myself. Perhaps it is because the mind tends to immediately contextualize information in terms of what it means for me. It is as if I change when look at things in a new way. Of course none of this is a license to murder people just to be clear.

@Breakingthewall This still sounds like the idea that one day selfish and evil people will get what they deserve like the just world fallacy. My father used to preach to me about how evil people would one day get what was coming to them as he read the bible to me. I'm not convinced that these types of people are horrified at what they have become. My understanding of karma is much more nuanced than the fancy dressed up way of saying selfish people will ultimately fail. I see karma as multi dimensional and not just as a moral calculus. I see it as multi generational with extremely complex consequences which cannot be clearly calculated. For example there can be karma from my family of criminals which created intergenerational trauma by creating a chaotic environment. Of course I ended up being hurt deeply without asking for any of this. Me being hurt without any fault of my own is a consequence of karma spanning across generations. It is not wrong or evil. Karma is impersonal even if it means innocent people get hurt because of it. Here is how my father described karma. "I am a good, honest drug dealer. I don't mix my drugs with rat poison. My crack is so good that my customers constantly come back looking for more. I end up making even more money off of this. This is a sign sent from God that I am a good person and what goes around comes around. God is rewarding me with more money and customers for this crack. I don't really believe in the devil, but I do believed that evil people will get what's coming to them."

@Leo Gura I think you might be making a mistake here. Can you walk me through how a 12 year old is supposed to protect himself from his father and his gang of sexual predators armed with guns? I'm not saying you should tolerate this abuse from others. I'm saying that some people are powerless and are forced to endure these sorts of things like being born into slavery for instance or being an infant abandoned by your mother as you die in a dumpster for being a rape baby. Perhaps you are referring to my silence which enabled this to continue. In my case it might sound shocking, but I loved my parents too much to turn them into the police. Sometimes I end up angry with myself for loving them which enabled several layers of complex manipulation. I find that I am able to forgive my father, but I am not able to forgive myself. Is this the sort of behavior you are referring to? Is it my selfishness of not caring enough about the other children to ensure the gang was brought to justice?

@Leo Gura I have three questions about your views on selfishness. First of all, you mention that excessive selfishness is self-defeating and only works in the short term. However, there are extremely devilish psychopaths like my father and his gang who often get away with their crimes and harming others for their own gain. For some of them they completely get away with things like molesting children by preying on the child's shame and silence. Some of them go their entire lives without any consequences. Therefore, when you say selfishness only works in the short term and ultimately fails because reality is fundamentally selfless, it starts to sound like a perversion of karma and the just world fallacy. What do you mean exactly when you say selfishness is short term and self-defeating if not that one day psychopaths will not be able to get away with horrific devilry? You probably mean something more nuanced than what I'm describing. Furthermore, if I must be selfish in order to survive at all, then does that mean that my existence is self-defeating because survival is temporary game? thirdly, I have a scenario I want you to consider. I want to see how you would apply your level of consciousness to this situation. Suppose your psychopathic father took you with him to make a deal with his gang. When you arrived a group of men started offering your father money to have you spend the night with them in exchange for sexual favors. In this situation you are a child and these men are sexually exploiting other minors. When I was in this situation I was terrified of these men and I thought they were evil. I ended up staying silent. How would you apply your level of consciousness if your father sold you to these sex traffickers in exchange for 600 dollars, allowing them to gang rape you?

If Cthulu does this to everyone, I think we could all gang up on him and threaten him back. We have the force of every military on the planet and the world leaders aren't going to sit ideally by as this monster terrorizes the entire globe with impending doom. Maybe I'm taking it too literally.

This dream was really complicated and detailed, so I won't be able to remember everything. It was like I was creating multiple dreams simultaneously and jumping between dreams while being aware that I was dreaming and that I was able to have conscious influence over the dreams. It started when I saw a monster that usually walks up to my bed during sleep paralysis, but this time it was a dream in which I was in bed, but not sleep paralysis. As the monster approached me and tried to grab me, the monster began to fade. I was able to see that that the monster was nothing. As I saw this more deeply, the monster eventually disappeared entirely. This is when a different nightmare started to emerge. I recognized that I didn't like whatever it was that emerged, but I don't remember what it was. I recognized that that was also nothing. This nightmare also faded away. This is when new dreams started taking the place of the nightmare. They were dreams about me being inside videogames. There was one cool videogame I never saw before and clearly wasn't star wars, but Darth Vader was a character anyway despite this video game being a totally separate universe from star wars. This was some kind of Sherlock Holmes investigation video game, but this time with Darth Vader. He used the force to push me through the floor of a tall building. I fell through several floors and didn't feel any pain despite being clearly wounded. At some point there was an unstable floor I landed on as a man yelled out for me to move. I didn't move because I felt lazy due to being asleep. The floor cracked and I fell through. I recognized that this was nothing and everything began to disappear. A new dream emerged. It was another videogame. This time it was actual star wars. It looked like a video game I saw before. It was like star wars battle front. I played as a regular storm trooper while everyone else on my team played as an imperial engineer. I guess the strategy was to endlessly heal each other, but the shotgun is terrible at long distances so I used a blaster and thermal detonators instead. For some reason I started shooting everyone on my team so that they were nearly dead. This was before I realized I was on the empire team instead of the rebel team. We spent most of the match just running from the rebels. I recognized that this was nothing and everything disappeared. Another dream emerged. This time I was in a Harry potter videogame. This was the goblet of fire and I was fighting Voldemort in the graveyard. It looks like it did in the actual videogame I beat. My sister played as Hermione who shouldn't be there, but she was there anyway. She was telling me that I was doing a crappy job of deflecting Voldemort's spells. I complained that this never happened last time I played this videogame. I eventually died and spawned at the previous checkpoint. My sister continued to tell me how much I sucked at this game. Eventually I tried again, doing much better this time as I defeated the skeletons rising from the graves. With Voldemort's defeat clear, I began to recognize this as nothing and it faded away too. Another dream emerged. This time I was back in the Sherlock Holmes investigation video game, but this time Darth Vader was nowhere to be seen. I was in an old house looking for clues. I followed a dark corridor leading to a room with a bed sitting against the back wall. I moved the bed and discovered a trap door underneath. I crawled down the chamber until I ended up in digon alley from Harry potter. I was in some kind of ruined shop. I started looking for clues about the culprit with the red light saber and discovered some charred wood, possible caused by the lightsaber blade. I took the evidence and crawled back through the chamber. I was back in the abandoned house. I took one last look through the other rooms before leaving the house. I recognized This as nothing and the dream disappeared. Another dream emerged. I was back in Harry potter. This time it was the prisoner of Azkaban and I was being chased by a hoard of dementors as I fled on a broomstick. This was not the Quiddach scene from the movie though. As they tried to steal my soul, I skillfully pressed the PlayStation buttons at just the right time to dodge them. I eventually ended up on the ground facing off against Malfoy outside of Hogwarts. We started having a wizard duel, but I ended up losing and had to respawn at the previous checkpoint. I did the dementor chase again, this time doing worse than last time, but I realized I was supposed to also charge magic and fight back while dodging them. I ended up at the Malfoy duel again. I recognized This as nothing and the dream disappeared. I ended up back at the Sherlock Holmes investigation in which I was fighting Darth Vader. Darth Vader pushed me through the same floor as he did before. I ended up at the part with the man yelling at me to move. This time I wasn't lazy and I started moving. The floor broke even more and I realized I would take more damage if I tried to move. I fell through the final floor and safely landed on the bottom with no pain. I found myself at the bottom floor of the badly damaged building. A red lightsaber ignited in the darkness as Darth Vader emerged from the shadows. I stood up defiantly prepared to face off in the final battle. Darth Vader stood up on a ledge and used the force to start throwing rubble at me. I started running around the room doing rolls and flips to dodge as I hid behind rocks. There was one final puzzle I needed to solve. I needed to find weaknesses in the building to cause a ton of rubble to fall on top of Darth Vader, defeating him. I looked for weak pillars, beams of wood, and rope that I could manipulate to collapse the ceiling. Luckily Darth Vader stood in the exact same spot the whole time rather than Chase me with the lightsaber, leaving him weak to these tactics like a videogame boss would do. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the end of this fight because it would have been epic. I recognized This as nothing and the dream faded. It would have been cool if Harry potter showed up at the last minute on the broomstick to fly me away from the collapsing building. I was back in my bed. I saw my grandma walking around my bedroom and taking things out of the closet. She was setting up all these board games and for some reason the instructions were glued to the ceiling. She took the board games and set them by my bedside. She then stood over my bedside and started smiling at me kind of like how people and monsters do to me during sleep paralysis and it gets creepy. I found that this wasn't sleep paralysis because I could move my body. I started calling out to her. She stood still silently. I started moving around and looking around the room. The instructions were still glued to the ceiling and my grandma was still standing there staring at me. I started sitting up completely as my grandma started fading away. This reminded me of some of my past hallucinations when I thought I saw my sister standing by my bedside smiling at me but actually it was a monster. I looked carefully as my grandma faded away and then all I saw was the curtain by my window. The instructions on the ceiling were gone and I was now awake with no more hallucinations. During the dreams I also tried to recognize that I was nothing and physical reality was a hallucination. It didn't work. It is easier to become conscious that dreams are illusions than it is to realize physical reality is a dream and I am God. It was worth a try though. I feel like I didn't sleep well and feel a bit groggy. I ended up laying in bed for a while before getting up to type this out. I hope you enjoy reading this.

@Human Mint I have a mixed relationship with videogames. The truth is that I love playing videogames and I'm really good at them. I played them a lot in my childhood. Once I was an adult and I started doing personal development, I then started thinking to myself that although videogames are fun they don't provide tangible value in terms of life purpose. I forced myself to stop playing videogames even though I loved them because I thought I was supposed to read all these self help books and build a compelling purpose. What ended up happening is I replaced videogames with social media. I watch a bunch of YouTube, look at this forum, and at some point porn which I also forced myself to stop watching and I had a journey with that. I ended up sinking a lot of hours into this stuff and I judged myself for not doing enough career building. At the same time I felt lost in life anyway no matter what I tried. I wanted to start playing videogames again, but I also have a book I'm working on. I am almost done with the introduction because I started it recently. It is a project for building around my life purpose. I'm not sure how I will balance these things once I add videogames.

@integration journey I wasn't trying to lucid dream and I didn't know there were techniques I was supposed to be using. I have had similar experiences before at my other house. I noticed in my previous lucid dream that I was also jumping between dreams. In those dreams I noticed I had some control over time and I could rewind the dream. That was also a very complicated lucid dream. It involved a cross over between Zelda, the Simpson's, and more sleep paralysis monsters. I'll try to describe that one too. at first I was in my bed and there was a monster standing by my bedside. This time the monster was my grandma and she was a vampire. I ignored it and instead closed my eyes, going back to full sleep from sleep paralysis. I then ended up in a dream where my bed started tilting up. I was able to reverse time before I finally let time carry on. The bed tilted up until I fell into a black hole that took me to a secret chamber. There were more skeletons and redeads from Zelda in there. I saw a bunch of statues in this long hallway. They looked like people paralyzed by the monsters. I became one of the frozen statues as I stood in the hallway. I stood "helplessly" as an elephant ran through the hallway and started crushing all the statues. It was obvious to me that all the statues would be crushed except me. That is what happened. The dream then disappeared. I ended up in a new dream where it looked like I was in the Simpson's. I was in an amusement park with lots of people having fun. I was not having fun though. I felt an uneasy sense of impending danger in the false safety. I went in an obstacle course with people jumping into these dark pits and dying but nobody paid much attention to that and just moved on. I finished the course until I ended up outside some kind of mansion. I laid out on one of those sunbathing chairs you are by pools. I silently looked to the sky contemplating what this fear and uneasy feelings might be coming from. Meanwhile other Simpson's characters observed me from the windows, but even Nelson decided to leave me alone. The Simpson's dream continued with some kind of ancient burial ground. There was a witch cackling as she formed a vortex that formed into another mansion. I once again started manipulating time, but eventually I let time proceed. eventually it all disappeared. I then woke up in a sleep paralysis episode again. This time I saw some kind of demonic symbol levitating above my body. I tried to cry out for help, but my vocal cords were weak due to the paralysis. Then someone came into my room. I thought it was my sister because she was the only one home. She started standing by my bedside smiling at me. I continued to make weak cries until the symbol disappeared. I noticed I could move and talk again. I looked at my sister and started thanking her. It was something like "hey Brieanna, thanks for helping! Brieanna! Brieanna!? Brieanna?" I sat up and the hallucination disappeared. I then realized that the hallucination looked more like a man than a woman. Apparently this kind of confusion is common in sleep paralysis. I used to sleep perfectly fine until the doctors started changing my medication. I now have more problems sleeping along with some withdraw affects. Maybe this is causing these complicated lucid dreams when I'm not even trying to have them.

@Thought Art I mean, in past elections there were republicans who openly admitted that they cannot win elections without cheating. This was mainly with things like gerrymandering meaning that if you live in a red state, there is a chance that it is actually supposed to be a blue state. Republicans already have cheated their way to power through these methods. I would not be surprised if Trump and the republicans cheated, but I don't know to what extent. Did they cheat enough to put an illegitimate President in office? I think it's possible considering the previous election. There were already republicans intentionally under counting Biden's votes and over counting Trump votes. If they did this again, then they probably would have been able to cheat more effectively than they cheated before. My only fear with discussing the evidence that Trump cheated is that it makes me look like maga did when they simply refused to accept reality despite all the court cases that proved Biden wasn't cheating. If you want to investigate this issue, then don't let Americans gaslight you into thinking you are exactly the same republicans. The difference is that we didn't have 100s of court cases, recounts, and repeated proofs only to deny reality anyway. We will accept reality given this level evidence which we were not given unlike maga. This is the double standard republicans are using to shut you up immediately. Unlike the Republican investigations and conspiracy theories there is actual proof that republicans cheated to steal elections.