Natasha Tori Maru

I suppose the thread title is also a misnomer - no one needs to be fixed. No one is broken. We are all valid as we are, without having to prove it, fit in. Or show worth...

How come we cannot accept ourselves without a label/concept/idea ? Perhaps we look too much to society to tell us what is right, rather than within.

Rofl Prescribed shrubs

Do you prefer practical in-camera effects during filming (SFX) or digital effects post-production (VFX)? I understand many like both - but this is about what you prefer Might be interesting to add your age too! For demographics. VFX examples: CGI creatures CGI/Digital environments Green/Blue screen compositing De-aging actors/adding makeup Blending Motion Capture SFX examples: Explosions (controlled pyrotechnics on location Weather effects on-set Animatronics/puppets Stunts Stop Motion animation There is a bit of overlap with stop motion/motion capture as both effects require SFX & VFX to pull off. I consider stop motion animation to be more SFX though.

@PolyPeter You may enjoy a lot of Peter Ralston (if you have not already heard of him). His delivery is forceful, emotive, passionate and earnest. Candid. Some cannot get past that. But if you can, he has a lot to say about beliefs. It is an asset to be able to make a distinction between a truth and a belief. Regardless, both are an asset/have use. In my opinion

Oh wow thank you - this is additional context that changes a lot! Will think on this. Other users might find your addition above useful also

How balanced his outlook is for an Olympia BB winner. You often hear these extremist '1%' Rich Piana mentality types who blast test and ruin their bodies. Dorian was meticulous. His emphasis is on REST over endless training. But when he was IN the gym he went incredibly hard for the small time he was there. He took extensive notes of all his workouts, compiled them, and analysed them over time to create a protocol. I think it was rather pioneering as there was not as much information as widely available regarding the sport as there is today. In the later phases of his life, he went to a balanced quality/longevity type health approach. He wanted to win - but not at any cost. I admire his drive, commitment, single minded ambition, but also the balance and spiritual work he does. The most intriguing parts for me, in terms of what was presented as new information in this particular interview, were his comments on consciousness work! He has taken a lot of psychedelics for this purpose. I believe it is timestamped. But from his words, emphasis and realizations - he sounds God realised!

The problem with humans is we can detect/interocept acute, subjective issues and reasonably isolate them well. The contrast in state is immediate and obvious. Holy fuck my arm is broken. The insidious nature of low level, chronic creep of lowered quality of life means we cannot as easily use this contrast in state to deduct its origin, or when it became so bad. Something something frogs in boiling water. The only way to answer if one is under stress due to chronic/habitual use, is to try eliminating it. Experience is the greatest teacher.

@Shermaningeorgia where did I say you cannot express yourself? Outside forum guidelines. And to be clear, that is the guidelines speaking. Quote please You can challenge me all you like, it doesn't bother me and there is no rule against it. I never said you could not. Present a quote.

It plays a big part, in my experience. There is a dark night of the soul that often smacks you about for a bit prior to the process taking over. Many people stop there.

To end unnecessary suffering. Peace. It feels natural. No force. No neuroticism like with 'self improvement'. Open, in attached exploration and questioning without conditioned beliefs. The process just resolves itself as we go. Experience no longer feels localised - it is just happening. Without the construction of the 'I am the experiencer' as a result of subject/object collapse, the egoic reactions seems to resolve themselves in a (to me) surprising way! I think it is really important to have meta awareness of our thoughts through mindfulness/meditation. You can begin to reverse engineer a feeling from a thought, and assess if the thought is a belief. Resolve the belief (if it no longer serves) and the feeling lessons to the point we can respond over react. Requires being deeply in touch with feelings and thinking. See clearly when a feeling or emotion is in response to survival, an egoic manifestation, or even completely false originating from fantasising about a future event that doesn't exist. The feelings all point to something. I think it is my job to figure that out, to reduce unnecessary mind chatter and suffering. Meditation helped me so much. Diving into thought and feeling, equally.

In terms of our emotional/feeling responses reactivity I agree with you there. That initial whip-crack feeling is usually correct, if we are grounded and relatively whole within our truth. I think the key takeaway is widening the gap between the trigger and the choice to take action, when it is an egoic/small-self responce. But there are elements of our survival and base nature that require a fast response. Fear as in example. To run from danger. This is why I think our emotional/feeling responses are more intelligent that our minds/thoughts. You see a tiger; your fear prompts you to fucken MOVE faster than a thought can do that. There is some nuance to this topic I need to think on further. Good one for contemplation!

This is a question for you, a good inquiry one. It isn't so intentional (not for me, anyway) - awareness just slowly and naturally cleans it up after awakening. Neurotic for me, implies overthinking. There isn't so much thinking involved in that way because you don't enter the cleanup phase with and end goal in mind. It ends up being a process of life. Something to be engaged with in the absence of 'completion'. Observation, realisation - maybe I can change this and see what happens? - exploration of experienced results. I think there isn't a goal or intention. Awareness begins the cleanup when you see through the illusion; the illusion sort of breaks its tight grip once you see through the ego self. I think this is the initial rock pulled away that can lead to little avalanches of change. You react, but you aren't taken away into the grip of it so as to feel out of control. There is peace in non-reactivity. You respond, not react. And the responding carries less attachment than the reacting. I feel it in my body differently - the responding feels deliverate, grounded, slower, cleaner, aligned. Not about winning. Like I am pausing, choosing my words and reacting on values/principal. Prior to this I would react and feel it as automatic, emotion led and fast/sloppy/defensive. It felt like it happened outside of my control. In both reaction/response there is a body grounded feeling, but the response does not carry all the weighty attachments of the ego. In no way was it about being better by not reacting. I feel that is a fantasy. Responding feels like it widens the gap between trigger and choice. The flavour of feeling, being, emotion is DEFINITELY still here. Feeling and emotion should NEVER be deleted in the spiritual process. Something is very very wrong if it is.

Do you think there is a possibility you are too focused on yourself and this 'character' when out and interacting with the world? I ask as your paragraph leads me to think you are quite concerned with how you are perceived by others. This can lead to us crafting an appearance in an attempt to control others reactions toward us. Naturally this will stunt authenticity. People are very sharp at intuiting when others are repressing. It might be worth digging into what could be underlying unconscious belief or thought. Is it so bad, if people do not like us? Does that say anything about us, or more about them? We cannot please everyone. Cannot be liked by everyone. Obviously there are some habits and ways of being that are offensive; abuse, racism etc. But if we are just talking about general character, often we are looking too much for external approval. Maybe some more context might help - is this inquiry relating to romantic relations/social/family/professional?

I stopped randomly one day. Never touched it again. It was holding me back, I outgrew it. All that was left was a strange habit/compulsion without any need for its mind altering effects. And a vaguely lingering attachment to the plant. Without it - my spiritual practice sharpened. My presence and being deepened. My business became easier, work is no stress. Resistance lessoned. Clarity increased. Emotional regulation enhanced - a big one. Weed use generally leads to the inability to regulate and deal with emotions in the sober state. You are familiar with the happy blunting while stoned. So when sober, typically users (especially chronic ones) are emotionally volatile. I think it can act as a false meditative state. If you cannot drop into a state of being/presence in the absence of thought, it can help with this. At the end of the day, if you prioritise clear awareness - it has to go.

It doesn't delete it - but it shows you it is conditioning. External. You see through the conditioning. You see through the illusions. And that does not delete anything, it lessons the grip and hold these previously believed immutable thoughts had. Then the work of awareness begins to clean these things up and help dissolve unnecessary stuff. Sort of like - you went your whole life assuming certain traits you had (IE reacting to slight) were fixed. Someone is mean - you get angry! Then something reveals to you that you were actually choosing to react. So with this new awareness, you slowly begin to catch yourself when you react, and learn how to stop the response. It is a slow process. It can be done. Your nervous system stops responding in the way it did as a response. Wake up, clean up. Not my saying, but a very, very frequent one in seasoned spiritual process.

Yeah Claude does! The user said ChatGPT - so I assumed just that LLM was being engaged with. ChatGPT always tries to revert to sycophantic shit though - even with my programming. Meta-awareness is a skill very difficult to learn. Massive asset. I didn't become aware of this skill until my 30s! The blindspot amplification is REAL

That is my opinion, not an argument - and since you chose to condescend here: Which I raised earlier, I have not actually engaged you with your question, or attempted to answer it. This may have been missed. I do not have to engage in explaining why - you may ask of course - but I may just choose not answer. If you want to engage properly, you will need to define transhumanism. And present your arguments against it. Not for. I am not really interested in engaging with you regardless - as you are quite condescending to members on this forum when your ideas, opinions/beliefs are challenged. This is not an isolated incident either. I have witnessed you do this numerous times. Thought attachment. I think you have some good views and things to say. I just do not like your condescension.

Keep in mind that it is answering based on the opinions, data, and language of the internet. In terms of medical advices, I would always refer to a trained professional. You never know if the language bot is giving you advice from some random forum posts from 10 years ago in an effort to maintain your engagement. And this leads to the next issue; ChatGPT is sycophantic, and modelled to keep your attention, awareness and engagement. You attention is your most priceless asset. Other than that, I have had many people close to me use it for therapeutic advice and claim excellent results. The one thing I will raise is that, without having thought process awareness (ie meta-thought) the bot will not be able to tell you where your cognitive bias is. Usually you need a trained therapist to be able to dig into your thinking patterns and challenge you to break them; ChatGPT won't challenge you in this way. It has its pros and cons

My statements refer to your cybernetic transhumanism. I think it is hype and dreams. I largely agree with your post. Further to this; the actual experiments done on monkeys with it are a feral abomination of human behaviour.

Ha ha ha, legacy of millennial fashion I think they are unflattering and never wore them. Bootcut, flares and wide legs all the way!

@Carl-Richard Carl... are you flirting with me? You bloody telepathic devil! I laughed out loud at this

It sounds like you both desire a break, or change, in the name of more life experience (from your own descriptions of conversation). But the fear of change and loss is immobilizing you; almost as if you have FOMO in both directions - fear of missing out on experience as a single person, and fear of missing out on a deeper and longer connection with your SO/fear of separation. With breakups such as these, when you are young, and love is newer (as in, you have not been through breakups, and do not yet know if you can trust your ability to recover and love again) it can feel earth shattering. Your whole world feels like it is ending, as typically, first loves are very enmeshed. We can feel some dissolution of ourselves in this enmeshment; making our wants and desires less clear. And when you do break up, no matter on what terms, you will grieve. Because it is the death of a way of life as you knew it; it totally ends. This you need to be prepared for, if you do break it off. If nothing about this relationship changed, no improvements, no breakthroughs & no decline either, would you choose this life five years from now, freely, not out of fear, guilt, or loyalty? Sometimes with first loves, first experiences, we are choosing a life before we have chosen ourself yet - because we haven't experienced enough to KNOW ourselves yet. You are at a very difficult crossroads. You do not want to harbour resentment - this is the death of love. I have a lot of compassion for your situation. I have been there. And it is not easy. I chose to sit with how I felt, regarding the above question in bold. Free of guilt, fear, or loyalty - what feeling comes up if you were to choose to leave?

Pretty much why I do not like to use these terms outside of clinical use; normally a formal diagnosis stipulates the individual has to be unable to function in a normal/standard way to qualify (or are significantly impacted day to day). While the label can help in understanding where we lie on a spectrum, I do not like to label myself with anything at all. In addition, terms and labels are always loaded with context from others; language is so nebulous, I can say one thing, and another person can derive or understand something COMPLETELY different. All the more reason to stick with formal diagnosis rather than self assessment.

@Joshe Thanks for the input - you probably have a decent profile of me, considering our ongoing dialogue and your general interest in personality types No problem with that on my end, definitely a function of my upbringing. Crazy alcoholic artist raising me really impressed individualism to an extreme. Could also be nature - I think I can be, shall we say... headstrong? (I say this over stubborn lol). I do raise it is a process though, and there were some aspects of myself I struggled to accept. But not ND related - gender/sex related, believe it or not! Yep, I guessed you would have clocked that also. I do think there is a neurologically adaptive component. This conversation has made me put neurodivergence on the list of 'hours of reading literature, ten thousand internet tabs & coffee'