axiom

I can't speak for other statistics globally, but certainly in England and Wales the mortality rate from the virus alone is 0.008% for people under 65. This is based on: People in England and Wales under 65: 48,587,115 Covid-caused deaths in England and Wales for people under 65 (since start of the pandemic): 3774 This is approximately the same probability as: - Tossing a coin and getting heads 17 times in a row - Being fatally injured by a toilet - In a group of four people, one dying from the vaccine. People don't like mandates because: - They don't trust government (has your government lied to you before?); - They don't trust pharmaceutical companies. Maybe this is pretty reasonable too, considering that Glaxo's $3 billion settlement in 2012 was the largest civil False Claims Act settlement on record; and Pfizer's $2.3 billion settlement in 2009 ($3.5 billion in today's money) included a record-breaking $1.3 billion criminal fine. - They realise that if they give up this freedom, then it sets a precedent for the government in future to inject you with anything else they like, including (but not limited to) custard, Coca Cola, sewage, etc Is it really so far fetched at this point to imagine a future (say, 20 or 30 years hence) where your civil liberties will be compromised should you refuse to be microchipped? Even a few years ago, such an absurd notion would be laughed off by most sane people. Today, the idea doesn't seem so far-fetched at all. All they need is the narrative, and for enough people to be sufficiently suckered in to parrot the government's official policy to their social groups. People question motivations far less these days. Large numbers of us are becoming increasingly subordinate to government. Canada's moves here are Totalitarian, no question. If you believe in liberty, then even if you think vaccine mandates are a good idea for other reasons, you'd have to concede that this is not a great trend.

On the other point re mandates, the issue here is the precedent. The government should not have the right to inject you with whatever they deem to be safe or "in the national interest". It should be perfectly lawful to resist without coercion. The coercion as-is (threats to job security, freezing of bank accounts and the like) feels very much like a CCP-inspired social credit system. Anyone remember that tweet from China's US Embassy last year: Read: Forced sterilisation injections linked to social credit scores and personal freedom. Yes, I can see the benefit to mandates. I suppose the rationale here is that "desperate times call for desperate measures" ? The potential for Dystopian downsides massively outweighs the benefits though IMO.

It's not as simple as left or right though of course. A lot (perhaps most) torture, murder and genocide in world history was perpetrated by movements generally regarded as left-wing. Personally, I would feel silly identifying very strongly with either side. It's not about right or left for me at all. The pendulum will always swing from one side to the other. Personally I'd like to extend the time it spends moving through the centre. Maybe also see the swings themselves calm down a bit too.

Yep, the "right to health" is impossible to provide. It is influenced by too many factors that are outside state control, i.e. individual biological make-up, etc.

The right to good health is not the same as the right to be healthy. You have the right to be healthy or unhealthy as you so wish.

The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights states as follows: "Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice." Make of that what you will. I think Trudeau is toast personally.

People from Generations Y or Z have been known to think their lives are over because they don't get enough 'Likes' on Instagram. Everything is relative. There would be a re-calibration of what constitutes pain and suffering. What humanity considers absolutely trivial today would become politicised and magnified to hitherto unimaginable levels. This can already be seen with the passage of time between eras in living memory - the shifting of the Overton Window and its peripheral social effects. Much of the stuff we think of as being *really important* today would have been considered laughably inconsequential during the early to mid 20th century.

@Newborn First of all, realise that you are likely better off than 95%+ of the people on the planet. Secondly, take the focus off yourself. The 'I' has likely remained at the core of all of your efforts to shift the negativity thus far. Actually, it can be said that the extent to which you focus on yourself, your own shortcomings, your own dreams and aspirations IS the extent of your misery. It's the same thing. The secret to happiness is the absence of self. So... my advice for this juncture of your life is to: 1) Take the focus off psychedelics. They have their place, but not in your current frame of mind; 2) In fact, take the focus totally off self-improvement altogether. 3) Put the focus on *others* starting now. Volunteer to help people in your family with little jobs, or expand out to the wider community. Help an elderly person with their shopping for example. 4) By all means continue to meditate, but this must absolutely be supplementary to 3) above. Every time you start feeling sorry for yourself, think instead of the pensioner up the road who just lost their wife to cancer, has no immediate family, and is now totally alone. Look for opportunities to help others - and I bet that heavy, dense fearful feeling will soon evaporate. Good luck.

Going to ponder this for a lot longer before I post more confused ramblings

How will they be alone when they don't exist? You are all that exists. Everyone else is imaginary. < This is the paradox that people are having trouble with. Can a better explanation clear this up, or is that as far as language can take it?

So I take this to mean that language is utterly insufficient here even as a pointer? And that's fine - I think we often expect too much from language. The scenario you've described is of course hugely paradoxical, and I have to assume that's a feature, not a bug.

@Leo Gura Do you think it can be explained in a way that can be understood? Or is language itself imposing some insurmountable limitation here?

Having sat in completely motionless meditation, 10 hours a day, for weeks on end, the realisation struck that any amount of pain can be transcended. All emotional pain and all physical pain is only within the imagined body and its conditioning. This is not merely a "trick" as some have suggested here, but is really just recognition of truth. There is footage out there of monks who have burned themselves alive as they sit motionless. I'm not advocating for anything here obviously. But when it is noticed that the body is just an idea, even such an extreme act is seen with complete calmness and peace. Could you do it?

Q: Hey Nahm, would you like to come out for a few drinks this evening? A: There is no Nahm. Q: Erm… ? A: There is no “come out”. Furthermore, there are no “drinks” Q: Uhm… right. You want to come out this evening anyway? A: There is no “evening”.

@Nahm At the relative level there is a sense of self and a sense of burning. God can convince itself it is the body.

Yes... I wonder if there was a struggle to remain disassociated as they burned. In at least one video I recall the monk appeared to be perfectly non-reactive.

I'm not asking whether you'd like to do it. I assume most people here wouldn't actually like to do this - unless they want to pay some sort of masochistic homage to Pringles My question is about whether you think you could do this and remain non-identified with the body throughout the experience?

The forum should teach non-attachment. One good idea would be a maximum period of time that any single user can spend here. 12 months max for example. The forum itself should have a clock somewhere counting down to the day it gets deleted, i.e. two years from today. This would be a good exercise in non-attachment for everyone.

God looks in your direction many times. Each glance is a lifetime.

Psychedelics perhaps aren't ideal if someone has a weak heart, but of course it has to be his own decision. I would step out of the way as much as I could though.

Holy moly. Is this one of those optical illusions? Because I only looked at it for 20 seconds, and when I looked away the room was spinning.

As I understand it, awakening is not originated by - and nor does it inform to any extent - the behaviour of an individual.

I think Leo is wrong about "God's will". "God" is happening. It has infinite presence and infinite unfolding, but not will.

There are things that seem to happen, in some cases, before awakening. Extreme trauma and hopelessness for example. Prayer. Psychedelics. Meditation. These things seem to more commonly "lead to" awakening. But In truth all of these things are just symptomatic. The awakening does not begin at the level of the body or the mind. It begins from the level of pure awareness which is nothing to do with the body, and which "you" have no control over. If you notice that you are experiencing extreme trauma in your life, or notice that you are taking psychedelics, or notice that you have a strong interest in awakening, then it is possible that you are exhibiting symptoms of awakening. But this does not start at the level of experience. There is absolutely nothing that you can "do". You are the witness, you are not the "doer" of anything at all. On another note, Eckhart Tolle was inspired by the 13th / 14th Century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart.

One thing I would say about mushrooms is that people don't usually take enough, or they don't take them in the right setting. They are FAR more powerful than most people realise. They are quite similar to other DMT variants. You can absolutely reach comparable states of shock, awe, infinite love, and complete ego death. Perhaps you can even go further than with other compounds. I have seen it suggested that mushrooms alone allow you to access the "Akashic records" and archetypal realms of consciousness (including "heaven", for example). Others say this is dualistic BS. The truth is, noone knows for sure. Try it and see. You may indeed feel like you're downloading an eternity's worth of information during the trip. I've certainly felt that way. There are stupefyingly, insanely profound levels to experience both above and below pure infinity. Entire universes of convincingly crystalline experience. Noone knows the depths this goes to. In essence, mushroom are shockingly powerful in the right set and setting.