Osaid

I had a very cool nightmare today. From a structural standpoint, it's up there with that one time I had a lucid dream while inside of another dream. The characters involved are a group of popular animators i've seen on Youtube (so I guess this is how my subconscious decides to represent the dream), and they are all friends, and they were just bantering and fooling around with eachother, working on animations, like those simple cartoony ones you see on Youtube all the time. For some reason, I am present to witness this conversation with them as a dream character, I am also part of their friend group. One of them made a joke about how one of them is actually sadistic, and how he actually tortures people while they're sleeping. An animated funny video plays of this guy fucking with some guy while hes sleeping and the animator being like "you're dying wake up you're dying." The animators seem to be aware that they are in a dream and conversing in a dream, and they are just making fun of their friend and how their friend could potentially torture any of them while they are dreaming. So the dream characters are kind of self aware. (dark humor) Now, that "joke" starts happening to me! It's not a joke anymore! I start feeling invisible hands all over my body fondling me and the animator's voice saying "wake up you're dying im killing you in real life wake up" and so I panic and do my best to actually wake myself up, and so I do, and the nightmare ends. It felt like a genuine threat to my life and my real body, though. Talk about a mindfuck, a meta fucking nightmare, holy shit. The dream character played a fucking prank on me which translated into the waking state. It was a real prank. What the hell lmao. You might be thinking that this is a weird plot, and "why are there are animators?" And yes, I agree. It doesn't matter that they are animators. But that's just how dreams are. The actual structure of the "prank" being pulled on me is all that really matters. Basically, the dream character started fondling my body (which I could feel, kind of like a cross between sleep paralysis and the dream state) and started threatening me saying that I need to wake up because he is killing me and torturing my real body. Of course, nothing was there when I woke up, so I got pranked by a dream character. Such is life. Hope this made some semblance of sense, it was actually hard to articulate because of the nonsensical nature of dreams.

Interesting, caffeinated? I find the cold and carbonated nature of soda to be very neutral, and at times causing bloating and burping (although I haven't had it in a very long time). Something like tea is generally very warming, makes my body itself produce lots of warmth, and makes the digestion feel smoother. I also find that if you consume soda alongside something else, you will pretty much always feel it "interacting" or "fighting" with whatever you just consumed, whereas tea seems to just seamlessly combine itself with most foods (but definitely not all, depending on what tea or food you consume). I find that any warm beverage like tea or coffee tends to speed up digestion and make it much more smoother and efficient. Coffee, in particular, has very potent energetic effects, which are completely unrelated to just caffeine. For example, it is proven to significantly increase ketones for those practicing ketosis. But, your body might actually just be different. I mean, in my case, caffeine doesn't have much of an effect on me. I also heard that carbonation (CO2) can actually have certain health benefits, so yeah, test it yourself.

Find foods that are simultaneously all of what I list below: -Filling -Comforting -Nutritious Foods with fiber will keep you satisfied for longer. Also, REALLY pay attention to how food makes you feel. Seriously weigh out what IS and ISN'T worth eating. Certain foods will make your stomach feel heavy and agitated (if they are overly spicy or low quality). Like, if you pay attention, certain foods will LITERALLY taint your consciousness. It will make your conscious experience, and thus, your conscious reality, dull and agitated. This should be taken very seriously. Pay genuine attention to HOW bad food is ACTUALLY bad, don't just intellectually tell yourself "oh this is bad because my doctor told me" or something of the sort. Notice how it is bad in your own experience for yourself. On the other hand, certain foods will taste really good and make you feel full at the same time. Really, if you just master your diet and health, you won't need to spend anything for comfort, easier said than done of course, but I've kind of given you basic and practical ideas as to how to start doing that quickly.

This was one of the few experiences where it was frightening but also cool enough to balance out the fear if that makes any sense. Dunno, kind of like being on a rollercoaster I guess. Might be an acquired taste, cause I love analyzing dream metaphysics, or metaphysics in general.

Oh fuck, now that you mention it, this exact same thing always used to happen to me with my mom as a character as well. I wouldn't get any friends or other people, just her and me. I believe it is called a "false awakening", which is when you think you wake up but you are still dreaming. But yeah, I would keep getting tricked into thinking I was awake, and then the realization would creep in "oh fuck I'm still in a nightmare aren't I", and then my mom would transform into some monster or something, and then the cycle would repeat. It wasn't too long though, maybe about 3 or 5 cycles of it until I finally forced myself awake. When I was really young, I had a lucid dream, and there was some monster in there that kept telling me "you're never leaving this dream, you're trapped here forever", and then the rest of the dream was just me trying desperately to wake up, lmao. Unrelated, but I also had this weird reoccuring dream that would pop up from time to time, but it doesn't happen anymore (perhaps I've dealt with it subconsciously or something). But, it basically involved me being chased by a bunch of bees and having to avoid bees in general. Like, I would always be in some area where it's literally ALL covered in bees, and I have to meticulously watch where I'm stepping or else I would step on one and they would get angry. So yeah, reoccuring bee-related dreams. Odd.

No, but I guess the mechanism is somewhat similar, in that it is caused by an awkward or unique sleeping routine. All of this was probably brought on by my poor sleep. I've been having trouble sleeping lately. When your sleep quality is disturbed, you tend to get very odd and vivid dreams. Back when I was in junior high, my sleep schedule was so awkward and bad that I would get sleep paralysis with an 80% success rate if I kept following that schedule.

From purely a perspective of "How high quality is the education?", I would say it sucks really bad (by my standards at least), and any decent education you get from it will probably depend on purely subjective and unenforced factors such as the type of teacher you get and what their teaching style is. Not everyone learns the same, but the education system has not accommodated for this fundamental fact yet. You have to be motivated enough to learn everything on your own if the teacher is bad at teaching. If I had to pick something, I would prefer a shorter and more focused course that focuses entirely on writing, with a decent reputation to prove its quality. Not something like university which forces you to do a bunch of extra unecessary courses on top of what you are already trying to do, among other things. In other words, something practical. At the very least, you will get some sort of credential from it, and it will be in a much shorter time period than a university, probably. Aside from the quality of education, there are other factors like cost, time, location, practicality, which you can probably figure out for yourself. Above all, you should be taking responsibility for your education and asking questions like: Do I learn well in this environment? How can I learn better? Does my brain learn differently? What works for me? Is this practical for me? How well did I learn in my previous educational environments? And, for practicality, you should also be looking at it from a marketing perspective: How did other writers get their foot in the door? How does getting a job in the field look, practically? How can I build a portfolio? You could probably find stories and groups online of aspiring writers like yourself. And yeah, caveat, certain very technical fields like becoming a lawyer and doctor will require credentials from universities. This is obviously not the case with writing, which is very artistic.

Oh man, I've had multiple dreams where I developed an entire crush on a dream character and then I felt withdrawals when I woke up lmao. Stupid brain.

I know haha. Sometimes the dreams get VERY creative. They really stretch the boundaries of what you assume they are capable of, as you can see. As for the other lucid dream I was talking about at the beginning but didn't bother to elaborate on: I had a dream once, where I fell asleep in the dream, and then started lucid dreaming while inside of this dream, but this lucid dream I was experiencing was STILL nested inside the context of the "previous" dream, where I was NOT lucid. Then, I woke up again, but I was still inside of the "previous" dream that I fell asleep in, and this made me stop lucid dreaming, but I was STILL inside of a dream. It basically tricked me into thinking that I actually woke up and WASN'T dreaming, but in actuality I only woke up back into the previous dream. And then, inevitably, I woke up AGAIN to actual reality, and then I realized, "ohhh, that was a dream as well." So, to reiterate, I fell asleep in the dream, and then started lucid dreaming while in the new dream which was inside that dream. Then, when I woke up inside the dream, I stopped lucid dreaming. And then, I woke up again to actual reality. So, I "woke up" twice, one was into the initial non-lucid dream, and another was into the waking state. Basically, in this dream, my lucidity depends entirely on this idea of "I fell asleep", but this idea is connected to the events of the "previous" dream where I am NOT lucid. So, the dream is capable of achieving lucidity by imagining itself to fall asleep, and it is capable of removing that lucidity by imagining that wakes up. But, all of this happens in one dream. My lucid dream depended on this idea that "I am having this lucid dream because I fell asleep", BUT, this thought is referring to me falling asleep inside of the non-lucid dream, so now this lucid dream is connected to the non-lucid dream. I will also clarify, I had no recollection of the "previous" non-lucid dream DURING the lucid dream, it only appeared when I "woke up" again into the initial non-lucid dream. So yes, experientially, it was a 100% legit lucid dream. So it was like, a lucid dream but also not a lucid dream at the same time. Hope that made a little bit of sense hahaha

Just experiencing or being conscious of something. Not just humans. Doesn't have to be a human phenomenon. Furthermore, there are many humans who actually constrict their understanding, and their love for what they understand. (their identity is based on a lack of understanding) For example, a pizza chef only focuses mainly on understanding pizzas, because they are a pizza chef Or, a religious person who is scared to watch a video which goes against their religion, because they are religious. There is also a survival incentive. You cannot survive without understanding. Understanding shapes survival. Why do we want to do a colonoscopy? I will answer this with another question: What else is there to do? What is the alternative? Trying to become conscious of something you are not conscious of.

Not gonna watch the video, but... You can judge anything without trying it. Judging has never had anything to do with direct experience, inherently. It's not just a martial arts thing, I mean, it's the structure of the act of judging itself. Judging is never factual, it's a subjective interpretation or conclusion. I have not directly experienced the video myself, though.

It's just an idea, so don't worry. There isn't a thing which can lack consciousness. This is a contradiction. Furthermore, "nothing", or "nothingness", is very conscious and alive, by necessity. Anything that exists or is experienced is enmeshed in a conscious experience. Everything is as conscious as you are, unless you imagine it isn't. This is a human bias to interpret "nothingness" as some soulless void. Your ego is simply co-opting whatever you experienced and misinterpreting it into some ideology. Consciousness is capable of all sorts of wacky and ephemeral states, but they are not now. You are neurotically clinging to those states. There is nothing special about that state, it is equally as valid as what you experience now. Can consciousness imagine everyone as a robot? Probably. Can consciousness UNIMAGINE all of that and turn everyone into a real person? Yes! Of course! You were doing exactly that before. But, NOW, your ego is stepping in and saying "But...it's not real!! Stop imagining that! You're not allowed to imagine people anymore, remember what you saw?? Stop imagining! Stop connecting with people!! Wahhhh" You can intuitively feel that reality is not dumb enough to limit itself to just some mindless robots, but the intellectual ego in you clings to the ideology, and so resistance is created inside of you. You are just trying to live some intellectual theory you crafted from some experience you had. You have not thoroughly explored all the possibilities. Mental resistance always just comes from ego in the end. That's a big indicator.

I would pick No Boundary. On first glance, the other one seems rather dogmatic, clinging to the Buddhist "nothingness." It looks like someone who had their first awakening wrote it, kind of rudimentary, if that makes sense. You could find many books talking about nothingness, and so it lacks uniqueness as well. Or you could go for both, why not.

Hmm, I like drifting off into sleep through audiobooks or podcasts. Books are nice, but for me, impractical when trying to go to sleep, although still a viable avenue of course A book about God? I heard Conversations with God is good. The Book of Not Knowing I have also heard good things about. You can also look into certain genres yourself, I think finding a book you personally sought after has its own appeal as well. I don't read books that much, so I wish I had some personal recommendations I could list and recommend to you. I should really start reading some as well, though, so thanks for reminding me.

Yeah there might be something more fundamental going on, which is just that people are attracted to highly dramatic and emotionally stimulating and unique characters. Same reason why someone would watch a drama. Such traits come easy to a narcissist. They subvert past your conscious standards with their charisma and passion.

Lol, you guys can't send half-quotes when it comes to arguments about enlightenment ? It's like deciphering hieroglyphs, all the details matter

Only high EQ can pick up on high EQ, maybe

Dogs are actually pretty amazing. Like, really amazing. Some serious EQ here. I will not take dogs for granted again.

misdogthropy

Explanation = conclusion = limitation Reality = infinite = the source of explanations Explanation will always amount to perspective. Not anything "for reality", because by definition it is not reality, just a compartmentalized and limited map of reality, which is never reality itself, just a map. Not to take away from your explanation or invalidate it at all. I do not want minds to get stuck to explanations, is all. So this is just lubrication to prevent your mind from getting stuck, if anyone needs it. The beauty and utility of explanations is found in the fact it is limited. That is what makes it. It becomes a mess if you interpret it as something that is not limited, but all-encompassing.

This is basically Descartes' evil demon, but with the theme of christianity, or so I intuit. Popular philosophical conundrum. There is nothing literal about your interpretation of "666". I could put up "666" on my wall right now and it wouldn't mean I'm a follower of Satan. YOU could put up "666" on your wall, and it would mean nothing. Your local christian pastor could put "666" on his wall and it would mean nothing. But, you fear these numbers because of dogma and fantastical thinking. Actually, the extent of this thinking reminds me of schizophrenia, although I understand it has probably been drilled into you through no fault of your own. Ultimately, you don't know. You're just assuming. And, you can assume anything you want, even things that make you really fearful and paranoid. Such is the nature of mind. Anyways, my advice to you is to just build a really good and solid epistemology by watching Leo's videos. Your epistemology is like a firewall that screens out maladaptive ideologies. You need to be able to accurately discern what is ideological bullshit and what isn't. You need to create a genuine inquiry: What do I know for sure? What do I know that is 100% true? Latch on to that. FOLLOW THROUGH WITH ALL YOUR QUESTIONS: What if Satan is powerful? What if he ISN'T powerful? How do I know Satan even exists? What does it even mean for something to exist? How do I know something doesn't exist? Why am I assuming the worst scenario? <<< Like this

I don't find it that weird or suspicious. He has a history of weird outbursts, and has previously been warned many times for spamming threads with multiple posts in the same fashion.

Ralston is just being very picky about his words, as he always is. He is saying that a relative phenomenon like psychedelics has no direct relation to enlightenment or truth. Ralston tends to be anal about such things. He never levels with you on your relativity. He always speaks very strictly, with this sort of autistically hyper-Absolute perspective, so to speak. He's very careful about saying things like "psychedelics will lead you to enlightenment" or "everything is love" or "enlightenment is full of love and bliss." He doesn't want to lead people on with ideas. He is very careful about this. Admittedly, he does feel a bit standoffish when it comes to talking about psychedelics. He could offer more nuance so that he is not misunderstood as this entire thread misunderstands him. But, I do believe it is a misunderstanding, as he says at the end "it is possible to have direct consciousness while on some drug." Maybe this is just his teaching style and it works well in his workshops. I don't like it either, though.

Unless you unimagine that you ever took DMT*

Narcissists control and gaslight people all the time, and they also like to isolate people into their own "virtual reality" or "bubble." Cults are often started by narcissists. Common cult mind control technique is isolating you from friends and family. Cult dynamics are very similar to the narcissist dynamics on a small scale, it's just on a bigger scale, and so it leads to a cult. I have suspicions that the War Room is a cult, at the higher echelons at least.