Osaid

You might be onto something. I think the tendency to think of sexuality as something that can be pushed into rigid boxes or labels can also push people into behaviors that don't entirely suit them. For example, in the case of your friend, he might be pushed to dress or look as a guy or girl so that he can be perceived as and operate as a guy or girl throughout society. If there isn't an easy way to identify someone's gender, they will probably be misunderstood and misclassified, so there is definitely a push to exaggerate how they look and act in society. And also, the idea of gender always being some rigid category can lead people to assume that they should fit themselves into that rigid category even if it isn't entirely accurate to them. Sexist behavior could be a significant factor, but I'm not sure if it's the root. The root seems to be confusion around identity and interests and just how sexuality works in general. You're right, hormones and surgery seem to be an objectively bad route for the most part, I see it as akin to getting radical plastic surgery to change how your body looks. It just leads to a lot of health complications, and in a lot of cases, regret. It seems to be a very crude materialistic approach. If there was actually some magical way to properly sexual organs and hormones with no complications or health effects or whatever that would be nice, but doesn't seem reasonable, that's just not how things are. Also what do you do if after you've transitioned you realize you're genderfluid or something and that you wanna switch back, that would be tough. Life doesn't seem to like being black and white, so I can't say what the "answer" is, but I can definitely say it involves deep contemplation around sexuality and identity and such things, and these are things that basically no one in society nowadays really understands so it will be challenging. And my intuition tells me radical surgery and hormone therapy is probably not the way to go, that seems to be a rabbit hole which might lead to more confusion in the long run, it reminds me of that guy who keeps getting surgery in order to look like his favorite K-pop idol. I think the key might be dropping the overreliance on gender labels though. Yeah see, traditional gender labels can't account for nuances like this. What gender is "likes being straight but occasionally likes to wear dresses and paint nails sometimes" lol. There might be some gender labels that can potentially account for this, like genderflux, but they are too abstract and non-specific to really be useful. Or you could say he's a femboy, but that's about as useful as calling someone a tomboy, yeah it hints at their traits but still doesn't say much.

I think you just have to be constantly re-examining and re-contextualizing your experience to fit those insights in. Like for example, we know that Santa Claus exists only in imagination, that's a good first step, but now ask yourself what else exists in imagination? Is "anxiety" or "your neighbour" similar to Santa Claus in the sense that it might be imagined? What are the differences? You gotta really zone in on it. Compare your awareness of "Santa Claus" to your awareness of "anxiety." It helps when you have actual experience to practice with, like for example working in some customer service job or something. Pay attention to the experiences where you feel that resistance and scrutinize it, and also pay attention when something you assumed to be correct or projected onto something ended up being wrong, those are valuable experiences. It's good to know "it's all just me judging myself", but you have to actually be able to manually spot that insight in very specific situations that pertain to your ego identity. For example, if you feel bad because someone called you an idiot, you have to be able to pinpoint "oh ok, this insight fits here somehow", and then move on from there. And then naturally that will lead to more and more insights, and most importantly, direct experience of those insights in your own personal life. And then the habit of projection will slowly undo itself.

@Someone here https://forum.rebootnation.org/index.php?threads/4590/

I did Are you referring to that one post of that guy talking about the olive oil fleshlight?

You got any sources showing how olive oil could potentially help? never heard of that

I have similar experiences. Whenever I have an inquiry which muddles my identity as a human ego, it gets kind of scary. I wonder how scared I'll be during a full-on awakening experience, I feel like I'm way too scared for whatever reason. Life is just too unpredictable. I feel like I could easily get transported to some hell dimension without reason and just be stuck there forever, if I took a psychedelic or something. It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility with all the crazy shit that the universe dreams up.

Working in customer service has helped, but very slowly. I'm still in the process of unravelling it. I still feel like people are secretly angry or annoyed by me when I talk with them or do some tiny thing wrong. I think when it comes to irrational fears like this, the problem is lack of experience. Your mind tries to make up for that lack of experience through its imagination, it imagines what the experience could possibly be, and imagination can be very faulty and fantastical, which leads to irrational fears. Not to mention, your imagination also likes to cherry-pick past situations, so be careful of that. I guess the key is to stop delegating experience to imagination, and to start creating the actual experience. So in a less-wordy way, exposure therapy. When you gain experience you start to realize that no one really cares, and also that the people you compare yourself to also have their demons in the closet as well. You will often run into a situation where you're like "OMG that guy totally hates me" but then he does something completely opposite to that, betraying your imagination, those are the moments to cherish and be aware of, because they break the illusion. In general, you should prioritize your emotional well-being above all. If you're having thoughts which are causing anxiety, you should immediately ground yourself and alleviate it. Do a body check, are you being attacked by someone? Is there a fire occurring somewhere in your experience? Then where is the anxiety coming from? There is no possible situation where having anxiety is necessarily beneficial or practical, it's just extra suffering on top of the experience. Overall it seems to come down to projections and lack of experience. Become aware of how you project in social situations. Someone won't even say anything, yet you'll already assume they're thinking bad of you. Can you see how exhausting this is in the long-term, thinking of all these elaborate scenarios when you meet people? Just drop it, be open-minded, don't assume, live in that moment and in that interaction. It is also possible to become non-reactive to the elaborate scenarios that you imagine, this happens when you realize them to simply be thoughts and not reality, this is probably the best way to go about it. Notice that, in actuality, you have never experienced someone thinking badly of you outside of your imagination. That experience is always imagined, unless you somehow entered someone's head. That's how powerful your imagination is, become aware of it.

Yeah, go start a timer for 5 minutes and do nothing but stare at the seconds going up/down for 5 minutes. It will be the longest 5 minutes of your life, lol. You can also do the opposite, focus on enjoying your present experience and not worrying about time or what will occur in the future, and you will experience a timeless flow state, until you start thinking about time again. I think the key to warping time is becoming conscious of the fact that your only way to measure time is through your faulty imagination. When you lose track of time, realize that in your current direct experience there is literally no way to measure or perceive time aside from your imagination. That will really make time start to lose its rigidity. I'm telling you, a 9-5 is a really good training ground for this, I've literally trained myself to make those working hours go by in a flash. It helps to avoid looking at the time or anything related to time, although it makes it hard to tell when my shift is over sometimes.

The less you pay attention to time, the less time itself will exist. Our imagination is very faulty, and time depends on imagination. When you lose track of time, this breaks the illusion and perception of time. Without any clocks to count on, you cannot accurately gauge how much time has elapsed, the responsibility of measuring time is delegated to your imagination, and thus you are stuck in a warped sense of time, where time can seem to move much faster or slower than normal. The feeling of time moving "fast" or "slow" is just a consequence of the inability of your mind to imagine time in a consistent manner. Time will seem to move fastest when you are completely present in the moment, which is why people tend to say "time goes by fast when you're having fun". If you're checking the clock all the time, time will be much more substantial. If you are present in the moment without any thoughts relating to time, time will cease to exist for as long as you can maintain that level of perception. I actually learned a lot about how time works from working in a 9-5. The shift goes much slower or faster depending on how you conduct yourself. Your perception of time can also indirectly be hindered by how well you feel in your own body. For example, if your arm hurts, it may lead you to think more thoughts related to time such as "how long is my arm going to hurt for". So, having good energy levels and a healthy body can help you feel more present, because you will feel amazing in your body, and this feeling of being amazing actually pulls you into the present moment.

Take a shower. Showers are underrated. It will wipe away all the thoughts and stories you accumulated throughout the day, and it pulls you into the present moment. It's an instant increase in consciousness.

For some reason I seem to revert to this routine whenever I get less than 8 hours of sleep

Sounds like it might be a more nuanced issue, then. My only advice is to start researching and paying attention to your body. I've heard certain psychedelics can make people nauseous, so maybe look into that, but look into it deeply. See what the actual mechanism is that psychedelics have which makes people nauseous. See if the symptoms are consistent or related to anything, was anything potentially different the times you weren't vomiting? And also, what are you vomiting out? What is the vomiting like, what does it look like? Really look deep into all the factors. Also, is a headache always present during the vomiting? That seems to be an interesting symptom, cause when I vomit I don't necessarily have a headache. You should also maybe look up what that indicates.

coffee, music, done

New Awakening: Infinity of Coffee Tables

I like waking up early, but suck at it. It's nice when it happens though. Otherwise it seems like I'm naturally drawn to just staying up late af. The vibe of being up at night is just different. Same for early mornings. The vibe in early morning and late night are similar, very peaceful and quiet and contemplative, that's why I don't mind either of them, but I'm more naturally drawn to the late night. I probably lost like 10 years of my lifespan from all the sleep deprivation I had to go through in school lol. "Might" is an understatement. In actuality these institutions and stuff don't really care about health, it's a second priority to them.

How to resolve the issue? Stop drinking so much, I guess. Seems like it's happening cause you're drinking, right? On the topic of releasing tension in the stomach, I have actually noticed that I unconsciously clench my stomach a lot. It might be the case that you are unconsciously preventing yourself from vomiting, and when you relax your stomach your body just takes its natural course, which is vomiting. On the topic of being scared of vomiting, yeah I hate vomiting as well, and I can relate to staying in bed and avoiding it. The feeling sucks. But the aftermath of vomiting, the process of letting that fear go and facing that toilet/garbage can and saying "ok lets get it over with I need to vomit" is very relaxing and therapeutic for sure. I have noticed that as well. You just gotta bite the bullet, realize that you're gonna vomit, and go all in, with the realization that everything will be all good and blissful right after. The resistance to vomiting just brings extra nausea and anxiety, so it's best you get it done with. Pay attention to how amazing you feel confronting the feeling of vomiting and being done with it, and then remember that the next time you feel like vomiting, and it should make the process more easier, awareness is curative as they say.

Do you have trouble noticing if someone is being sarcastic, or making a joke? Or maybe the latter, you can't tell when they aren't being sarcastic or not making a joke? Generally speaking, Occam's Razor should kick in and by a very quick process of elimination you should realize that the likelihood of her referring to your very literal idea of a power-plant are extremely slim. Imagining a literal power plant is one thing, but assuming that to genuinely be what is being talked about is also another thing. It seems to be a matter of being unable to read human emotions or intentions, or something of the like. I'm not sure. Also, I just realized your original question wasn't even to get to the bottom of why this is happening with you, but rather if it makes you smart or dumb, that's pretty funny. I don't like using the terms "smart" or "dumb" in a genuine conversation like this cause those terms aren't specific enough, but it is definitely creative. Coming up with puns is creative.

So basically you're faced with a word/term that could potentially have multiple meanings, and you don't know which meaning to choose because technically more than one of them could fit in the situation? Similar to how "sprite" could refer to the soda, but it can also refer to a fairy?

So basically, you genuinely thought she may have been talking about either a literal power plant as you imagined, or the energy-conserving type of power plant, and you didn't wanna ask which one cause it would look dumb? I'm having trouble reconciling the difference between "lack of knowledge" and "misunderstanding" here, so did I get that right?

If It doesn't make sense, or I have to come up with a scenario that doesn't make sense, I just immediately assume it is a term I don't know about and so I would ask "What's a power plant?" or "What do you mean by power plant?". Those questions should normally just naturally pop up in the conversation, I wouldn't assume a literal power plant and then keep the conversation going without asking, because that leads to misunderstanding. The weirdness or abnormality of the term "power-plant" should be an indicator to you so that you can question the term. Otherwise, I don't think imagining a literal power-plant is bad as long as you correct the assumption.

If someone followed this advice, it's a bit paradoxical, cause then they'll never be happy lol

I would say it depends on how attached you are to those thoughts. I can think of violent thoughts right now, but they don't garner any sort of emotional reaction or involvement from me. It's like watching a movie scene where the characters are fighting. Imagining a violent thought that you are emotionally invested in and want to act out would be different, and could be seen as "impure" because it indicates some sort of emotional problem. But also, "impure" itself is also a thought and judgement you are projecting on top of your thoughts, so be conscious of that.

Can't wait

Me when I have any free time at all haha. time to endlessly binge music and video games and youtube videos.

Living the dream