Judy2

@Ash55 thank you:)

Hey:) i don't want to be annoying but it would be nice if someone could help me calm down. this was sort of unexpected because i haven't really cried a lot or been super unwell in the past few months. i'm generally sensitive to noise and i have a new neighbour who is a musician and he's also generally quite noisy so i can sometimes hear him tidying up (not just for 20min but being noisy and basically rearranging furniture for 1h+, god knows why) in his apartment nextdoor. i'm also struggling with food and getting anxious when i don't know if people will be quiet in the hallway when i try to have my meals....and then i do need to eat but it feels bad if things aren't quiet around (eating disorder related). this afternoon i was supposed to keep working on my thesis (in itself an immense source of stress and it is difficult to manage myself in that area regardless of external circumstances) but given the circumstances i couldn't do my work and just tried to distract myself and watched YouTube videos....had already gone out for a long walk earlier today and at some point at night i do need to go to bed. and then i didn't really notice and thought it was just moderate anxiety but after several hours i felt so unsafe and vulnerable because of the constant tapping and singing that i just wanted to get up and get my razor and hurt myself a little because maybe that would make me feel safe....and then i didn't because before i got to get up i just started sobbing and hyperventilating for a few minutes. idk where to go because i haven't been with my family in 5 years and they're definitely not a safe environment, i could go to my grandma but that's also tricky at times, and staying here in the flat means i've got this constant source of noise (=anxiety) in the hallway which i don't seem to handle well. sorry if this is a mess.

@Carl-Richard thank you🙏🏻 @Jirh yes i go out for a long walk at least once a day...it's just that i need a safe space to live in as i can only go on walks for so many hours a day.

@Carl-Richard thank you for your reply:) can you recommend any specific noise-cancelling headphones? the ones i find online all look really expensive at a first glance. for music i've got in-ear headphones and they work fine for me, but they don't block out all noise even in the noise-cancelling mode. @Wilhelm44 thanks for the tip:)

@mmKay thank you for your response. it means a lot for me to be met with so much understanding and empathy:) i'm genuinely not sure if i'm the problem, so i'm trying to strike the right middle ground when talking about this issue. i'm afraid of being too critical of other people when there is a risk that it is really i who should keep myself in check. my neighbours want to be "free" and i think the one on the right next to me just seems really happy and joyful with his sudden hysterical outbursts and spontaneous singing. it feels weird to go around knocking on doors to tell people to be more quiet, but i have in fact already talked to him about his musical activities and suggested that we can agree on some hours for him to practice (at least i would know when to plan on going for a walk then).... but i guess he didn't want to limit himself, although he reassured me that he's done practicing after 10. i have also emailed my landlord about a month ago, but there's no official rule or anything to say that neighbours must be more quiet. a few days ago i messaged them again because there used to be more insulating stuff around my door frame until someone removed it last year and hasn't replaced it since. anyway, i decided to visit my grandma next week and hopefully that can give me some time off to think more clearly.

@Salvijus 🙏🏻

oh i see...

@Raze thanks for the links:) i'm not 100% sure if hyperacusis is the correct term in my case, since noises aren't painful per se. they just make me anxious depending on the context they occur in. the same thing can happen when i see people twisting their thumbs, for example, which is super random and i feel kind of bad for being this easily annoyed by stuff. i'm also not sure if my panic attacks are real panic attacks. they do have me sobbing uncontrollably and hyperventilating and when that goes on for too long my hands go numb, but there's an element of relief or willingness to that. like i'm almost glad to let it all out and there's no fear about the way my body reacts because i know what's going on. idk if me feeling that way disqualifies it from being a panic attack ...can anybody relate?

you can download individual episodes on spotify and listen to them on your walk. this way you won't need internet access.

aaah....struggling with that profile picture again. I'd love to have one, just to prove to myself that I can. But it's so difficult to select one that I'm happy with, and then I get lost looking back at old pictures. It's so stressful when I get started thinking too much about my appearance.

@Leo Gura okay:)

@Leo Gura Okay I'll check it out:) Is insane consciousness the same thing as God consciousness, or simply a different dimension of consciousness? Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm just trying to understand (at least conceptually) how the two are related.

@Leo Gura Thank you for your reply, this makes sense to me:) In the video, you also say that every day hundreds of people are admitted into mental institutions and insane asylums because they are experiencing God and cannot cope with or contextualise it. I am very curious to hear where you got that number, or if that is merely an estimate you personally came up with?

Thank you for the new episode, Leo! I am very grateful for your work and it seems to be connected to my own journey in so many ways. Lately, I have been watching some of your older episodes and it all ties together really neatly:) In the video, you actually touch on something I have been meaning to ask you about, which is the intersection of "insanity" and awakening. For example, one diagnostic criterion of borderline personality disorder is an unstable sense of self - which made me wonder because...isn't that normal in the sense that everybody's sense of self is constantly fluctuating, and ultimately illusory? But then we somehow use that to diagnose an illness in some people and pretend like it would be normal to have a fixed, rigid sense of self...which is a little backwards and it is the opposite of what you teach. At the same time, it is reasonable and even important to acknowledge an inherently unstable self-image as a lack of health and holistic well-being in a human being - especially since the ego is most likely still rigidly identified even with the shifting, unstable self-definition, which is antithetical to awakening and true self-realisation. A good friend of mine @Exystem explained this to me by saying there first needs to be a grounded, well-developed ego before someone is ready to do spiritual work and deconstruct the self. Is that the same explanation you would give? I am also asking because, to me, my struggle with mental illness is somehow infused in my spiritual journey and was intricately connected to an ego death I had in 2020, less than a year after I discovered your channel and first learned about the possibility of awakening. If I had to give my personal opinion, I would say that mental illness can be destabilising and very much antithetical to awakening, truth, and self-realisation most of the time, but sometimes it can cross that boundary-line:) and go full-circle, getting so absurd in its instability or desperate attachment that the ego can push itself to its own fault lines, if that makes sense. It's like mental illness can definitely impact my state of consciousness in the negative sense, but that itself can sometimes be revelatory. (which is of course not to say I'm advocating for that, it's simply the dynamic I have observed in myself) I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! @Leo Gura

@integral it's okay:) thank you

@Yimpa i had green tea, does that count?

@integral yeah i felt a bit stupid when i realised that it was probably the caffeine...oops

@integral so you're mainly allergic to perfume?

i think i may have had too much caffeine today...maybe that had something to do with it

yes i mean i have of course tried that, but that doesn't block out the noise entirely and sometimes that makes it even worse for me

@integral okay i haven't considered that before...might be worth looking into this

@integral do you know what kind of biological issue? do you think it's related to psychological stuff or (at least originally) a separate neurological thing?

Hm i've tried these but then i hear sort of muffled, indistinct sounds which is probably even worse because i know there's something going on outside but i am not fully aware of what it is

That's like another point where i'm hyperaware of how vulnerable i am...when i'm on the verge of falling asleep and then people are noisy during a time when i know i need to rest.

and the thing with the noise is something i also experience around family. i think it causes an intense sense of vulnerability because there is nothing i can do to protect myself and people just get right at me and through me and into me and into my emotions and head and body...headphones don't help at all. and it just makes me so anxious, which is no one's fault but idk what to do about it. i have been in this flat for almost five years and until recently, noise wasn't that much of an issue. now it's suddenly a huge deal, idk if i've changed or if the other people in the hall have changed.