Osaid

@Rilles Acknowledge that social anxiety is created in your thoughts because you fear how others perceive your ego (you). Social anxiety is not a tangible thing, there are no situations that cause social anxiety, reality is neutral. Other people's perceptions of you will always be that - a perception. You will never be able to live up to the version of you that they imagine in their head, so there is no point in trying to correct it. What they think of you is a fantasy. The version of you that they think of will never be correct to who you really are. It also helped me to realize that everyone is me, in a sense. I still struggle with social anxiety, but this stuff personally helped quite a bit. Hopefully this makes it a bit easier for you.

@electroBeam Some seriously enlightening stuff here. Thanks.

@DanoDMano Calgary here.

I've had a paranormal experience where an object seemingly teleported into a different location. No one was in the house when this happened. I was just walking around my living room doing my own thing when I noticed a pen on the floor beside a table. I thought to myself, I'll pick it up later when I can get back to it. I come back about 10 seconds later and the pen on the floor is gone. Ok. Maybe I imagined it. Then I look to the table, and the EXACT pen I seemingly imagined to myself was sitting on the table, as if it were picked up for me. I never even glimpsed at the table, yet I apparently imagined the same pen that was sitting there? Am I just crazy? Any insight would be nice. Also, the view of the pen was blocked by some other objects on the table, so theres no way i saw or knew it was there beforehand.

@sausagehead I think "staying present" and meditating are the same thing. But, there are different methods for meditating. I don't think doing it while you're driving or doing your daily activities is an efficient way of going about it if you're looking to seriously expand your consciousness. It is definitely not a bad thing either, It's good to be mindful of everything. But, if you're looking to get serious exponential work done around your awareness, you should designate time to just be still and meditate. Look up Leo's videos on meditation methods, they're super easy to get into and help a lot with guiding you into meditation.

@Derek White Yeah most of those types of mainstream videos are mind-numbing for me to watch, I can't watch Pewdiepie anymore. But that's how it has to be if they wanna entertain the large masses. Cooking videos are surprisingly relaxing and fun for me to watch (Quang Tran is one of my favorites. If you want something more relaxing, HANSE is also a good food channel). I also sometimes watch Youtubers I like play interesting video games. It really all comes down to your personal preference, lots of unique stuff out there. Maybe scroll through recommended and see what catches your interest. Hopefully this at least helps a little bit.

@Derek White Music is great. Also, YouTube has basically every category of video imaginable, so I wouldn't characterize all of it as bad.

@Rahul yadav Nice to see a fellow Runescape player haha

@pluto What exactly is a 'soul'? I assume it is just another way of saying consciousness/awareness. Also, it's true some people are restricted to carnivore diets and that it actually makes them feel better than if they ate plants (I'm not sure about the statistics on what amount of people are like this). These are all just thoughts arising in my head, I haven't actually tried a raw diet yet, mostly because I don't have much financial control (I live with my parents).

Sleep paralysis has been a topic of great interest to me. What exactly is it? I haven't encountered any spiritual teachers talking about the subject, I would love it if Leo made a video on sleep or something. But anyways, people who have sleep paralysis have reported seeing and encountering the exact same phenomenon within the paralysis worldwide, such as seeing "shadow beings." I have encountered one before, it looks like a human silhouette but very real and physical, like a person made of shadow. There is also another shared phenomena i experienced where i had another person's voice repeating exactly what I was thinking to myself in my head. Very trippy. It seems quite similar to a psychedelic trip to me, but much scarier and darker, and less random in terms of hallucinations (I have never had a psychedelic trip, i'm just going off of what I've heard about them). Anyways, I have become very good at dealing with it since i have experienced it around 20 times. I've learned to control it pretty well, so it doesn't bother me too much anymore. Why does it seem like the phenomena experienced in sleep paralysis is connected worldwide? Would be nice to get some insight on it, thanks.

@Gnosis Sleep paralysis is essentially like being awake, but unable to move, so I think makes sense for the stimuli to be clearer or more realistic. In your dreams you are much deeper in sleep and consequently more unconscious, so the experiences are more muddled.

@Gnosis That's true that you can move your head, never really noticed that. In fact I don't think I could notice much of this since I'm usually in such a panic, I'm just good at knowing how to escape lol. For me, the voice started out as very clear, like my inner monologue was completely replaced by someone else's voice, then as it kept talking the voice duplicated itself and started drowning itself out and it created a sort of echo effect. I guess the main question now is why do we lose our inner monologue during sleep paralysis? Now that I think of it, for all dreams its pretty similar. I don't recall having inner monologues during dreams. If you think of something bad during a dream, something bad will appear, and vice versa. Perhaps its something about our state of consciousness that doesn't allow us to have coherent thoughts and internal monologue? That would be my guess, because in dreams logic seems to be thrown out the window. I've had dreams where I ran around cutting people with a knife and I didn't think anything of it.

@Gnosis Thanks for all this information. Kinda crazy how our brains can create random voices we've never heard before and make them speak to us, but I think I'll believe your explanation since it was basically just an inner monologue, just in someone else's voice and more creepy (it echoed itself when it spoke). I think perhaps the reason sleep paralysis has gained such a negative connotation is because you are paralyzed when it happens, so almost always people are already scared as soon as they experience it, which then creates scary illusions. I am aware the beings are "hallucinatory", but they feel completely real, which is why it's so hard to not be scared. It's hard for me to imagine sleep paralysis as pleasant, as soon as i get in there it just feels frightening. Maybe that's just my body's automatic response now. I've learned how to use it in order to create lucid dreams, but since i'm always too scared to open my eyes, I've never experimented with going into an out-of-body state. Also you're right about this information not being written anywhere, I never thought I would get some of this stuff elaborated on. So thanks again.

@TrynaBeTurquoise I never get them anymore, but i'm kinda glad since it can be so scary.

@Einsteinonacid Don't let those "shitstains" have such substantial control over your life. Remember this feeling of "wanting to prove them wrong" is all created by your thoughts and beliefs. Let go and be free. Maybe try meditation.

@CMacD I had short bursts of extreme heart palpitations when it came to dreaming but it was independent of sleep paralysis. Nothing other than that though, no chest pain or anything. Never really questioned it, weird thing is I didn't even see anything really scary but it seems my body perceived it as scary which is why the heart racing ensued. It almost felt like I was being sucked into the thing I was seeing? Not really sure what that's about. Also, whenever this happens the dream stops and fades away.

@RickyBalboa Its true that it is pretty hard to get up from sleep when you awake from sleep paralysis, but opening your eyes just leaves you vulnerable to all the visual stimuli which could (and usually always) appear. That bull thing is pretty interesting, I think I would be too scared to make that realization when there's a giant monster on top of me though. Maybe the monsters we see in sleep paralysis are strictly manifested by how we perceive the things in our room? Honestly that could explain shadow people, since everyone sleeps in the dark. That thing about hearing voices in our head and all the auditory illusions though, I have no idea.

@RickyBalboa Yep, exactly. If you are scared or think about monsters then the monsters will become more prominent. That's how dreams usually work. It's still hard for me to stay completely calm after what I experienced, but just putting my best effort to move and thinking about happy and calming things is what almost always gets me out now. Also, make sure to always keep your eyes closed in sleep paralysis. Always. Sleep paralysis can also be used as a gateway for lucid dreaming (Keep your eyes closed, do your best to move and imagine any situation you want to get up and move towards).

What is personality? Is it an aspect of the ego? The answer seems obvious but I just can't wrap my head around it, so clarification would be nice.

@Billy Shears Seems pretty accurate. You're lucky you didn't see any monsters or anything on top of being paralyzed.

@rNOW Very nice explanation. I think the fact that we have so many different personalities (ex: How we act at home, how we act online, how we act alone, etc) is just a testament to how fragile and fake it can be. Your example of being shy and confident at the same time helped me see this. And yeah you're right it does hurt the ego a lot, which is why I think I had so much difficulty understanding it.

@TrynaBeTurquoise Yea I've also felt that evil presence thing, it's like you can feel that there is some malicious being watching you. I noticed that i would pretty much always get sleep paralysis when i had a very irregular sleep schedule. I would sleep at around 6pm, wake up at 12pm, then sleep again at around 3am. This would pretty much always trigger it for me. (If you're wondering why my schedule was so weird, it was cause of school). But yeah, it is generally said to be caused by stress and bad sleep hygiene as you said.

I very vividly remember an experience from when I was just a baby, I don't even think I was able to talk at this point. The reason I remember it to this day is because of how out of the ordinary it was. I saw a blue figure of some sort standing at my door when i was being fed through a bottle. It looked like a child that had a blue glow around it. I wasn't really scared of it at all, because I was just a baby. I just looked at it and thought it was fascinating. When we are younger is our level of consciousness just naturally higher? I am very curious in finding out what it was that I saw and why it happened. No, I am not mistaking this for a dream. I am very sure I was completely awake. I even remember looking around to make sure it wasn't a dream when it happened. Any insight would be great, thanks.

This is called sleep paralysis. Pretty interesting phenomena, should look into it.