SeaMonster

Because you're being unrealistically negative. You're discounting all the things that go well, focusing on the few that don't, and blowing it all of out proportion. That's a problem ripe for CBT or some kind of therapy.

Feelings don't necessarily mean what you think they mean. If I want to kill somebody, that usually means I didn't get enough sleep last night. You simply don't take them seriously, their surface meaning isn't the actual meaning. It's more like a sign that something in your life is off, like you're neglecting something.

I think you have a major problem -- you don't want to deal with actual reality. If you're in terrible condition, you should improve it by setting realistic goals, not wild Andrew Tate or FreshAndFit type fantasies. Believe me -- those guys are depressed and miserable, and the crazy lifestyle is a major cope. People don't understand basic psychology and can't see through the kind of overcompensation that e.g. Tate engages in. I repeat myself: he is definitely depressed and the outward behavior is a cope. So improve a few things before you set your sights on something so far out of your reach right now. You will feel a lot better about yourself. Maybe kick ONE of your addictions to start with. Maybe go to the gym more, and consume less toxic online content. Maybe develop some career goals.

I think the key is become comfortable with uncertainty in life. Even if NOW you're not living your dream, you have to have hope that things can change even if you currently can't envision HOW they would change. In other words, you have to keep yourself OPEN to opportunities to make your life better.

Depersonalization isn't psychosis, but it is a severe neurosis. Here's the issue: it is not something to take lightly. It is a response to powerful feelings of panic or anxiety that one can't handle, so the world and your sense of self turns strange. It's quite different from nondual awakening. They SOUND similar but are very different. You may want to practice more grounding techniques rather than those causing you to dissociate like this (or whatever intoxicants cause it.) You want to be more IN your body rather than OUT of it.

If that article is any indication of the content of his books, then maybe I was right in suspecting that he is some pop-psych hack that I shouldn't waste my time on. "The only way to be truly confident is to simply become comfortable with what you lack." AND HOW DO WE DO THAT, MARK? That's nearly the same level of advice as "just...be...confident." Just...become...comfortable...HOW? LOL what a hack.

"Nobody tells me what to do!" LOL. OK, honestly, I don't care -- be a child. I can't care more about you than you care about yourself.

LOL. Please don't play the stupid forum game of "these are just words and concepts." DP/DR is listed in the DSM, you can google it for yourself. Educate yourself, try to understand what happened and why it happened and what you need to do differently, because if that's not a wake up call for you, worse things may happen.

Quick question: WHICH scientific discipline would be studying Spiral Dynamics? Some branch of psychology? Well, good luck with that one. I breathlessly await the researchers establishing construct validity for being at some stage.

Sounds like you had an episode of depersonalization/derealization. I would guess you are insufficiently grounded in your life right now and prone to anxiety or panic.

It's just a dumb thing to bring up. How does talking about porn make you more attractive to her? Yeah, all the well-known attraction triggers: handsome, confident, good sense of humor...watches porn. Which one of these doesn't belong?

LOL. Doing psychedelics over and over is the very definition of self-destructive behavior. People who advocate that really don't understand themselves or the psychology of spirituality. Psychedelics put a great responsibility on you to make changes in your life based on all the insights they provide. Usually it doesn't take many trips to figure out what needs to change. It isn't rocket science. If you do psychedelics without making changes based on those insights, you're just inflating your ego (spiritual narcissism.) This results in more self-delusion than you began with.

In order to heal from trauma, you need to seek genuine understanding of your own psyche. I don't see Leo focusing on that much -- frankly, because I don't think he wants to change certain negative behaviors he partakes in. He is in denial that a lot of things he does are harmful to himself.

Trauma itself isn't the problem, in the sense that something once happened to me and now I experience negative emotions in certain situations (or generally.) The problem is how you ADAPTED to that trauma -- how you COPE with it. That is usually a bad habit of some kind. If you understood the mechanism of how the trauma has twisted your behaviors, you could change your behaviors and the trauma would no longer be an issue.

Just notice your current sense of self. What is going on? Can you even describe "the self" in terms of direct experience? Many people are simply picking some reference point on their body, like a few inches behind the eyes, focusing on it, and telling a story about it. That is their conception of "I." There is this perceived, separate-from-the-rest-of-the-world entity, with a center point. This idea of "I" is just a thought. It isn't any kind of reality. It's just literally a repeating thought, there ever since you remember. Unless you think that every idea that pops into your head reflects reality, then there is no reason to implicitly trust that this one does. So just...notice what's going on. Catch yourself being this "I".

LOL. The very existence of Israel "fuels terrorists", Leo. Get real. They gave back Gaza in 2005, that didn't seem to buy them any goodwill. Besides, this is clearly Iran-backed and assisted; it's too sophisticated for Hamas. Iran hopes to crush the emerging Saudi-Israeli peace. Iran is making its move. Saudis can't allow this to paralyze them, or they are the next target. That region is in for hard times.

There are plenty of autistic atheists and conventional believers. There are some spiritual seekers, but I don't think they are overrepresented. Secondly, autistic people can be VERY naive about things like politics, society, psychology of individuals, etc. Just abysmally gullible and easily brainwashed. They don't seem to have much "street wisdom" at all; something where a person can see through the bullshit without having all the evidence right in their face. I say this from actual experience with autistic individuals; the level of naivete is just stunning.

There isn't one answer, it depends on your particular life path.

To realize you're the prison guard.

Well, enlightenment doesn't cure bipolar disorder, if that's what you're asking, but it may encourage the person to properly medicate. Also, "problems" are in the mind of the beholder. A lot of people have "fake" problems -- in other words, they stem from ego attachments/aversions and trying to control what's not under their control. They refuse to let go of the egoic agenda. This is the essence of "suffering." What enlightenment does is give you the opportunity to decondition these attachments, which -- unlike some people think -- have nothing to do with "survival." It's not like enlightenment completely obliterates the primitive brain and you simply no longer care whether you starve, or die of thirst, or whether you're attacked and murdered, etc. That would be an idiotic kind of "rational" coping mechanism, not enlightenment (which integrates the higher and the primitive functions) "Survival" doesn't mean you need a million followers on social media, or to become a multimillionaire or anything like that, and then if you don't get that you feel like you're dying. A lot of people exaggerate what "survival" means. So if you're asking "why bother?" it's because the stupid ego-created "problems" are an enormous drain on one's life.

You're right and everyone else in this thread is wrong. Of course you sound like a Buddhist Rat (copyright Leo Gura 2023) so it's not going to be a popular opinion here. Leo is a hammer who sees the entire world as a nail. In other words, his blindspot is that his conceptualizations are REAL. He has a psychedelic experience, then he conceptualizes what he has experienced (turns it into words, ideas, subjects, objects, subject-object relations, etc.) Of course what he doesn't seem to want to understand is that his unconscious frame, or if you prefer, his state of consciousness OUTSIDE the psychedelic experience, is responsible for the conceptualization of what he has experienced. It is not some divine revelation that MUST be accepted. It is bringing the psychedelic experience into the normal, waking, dualistic state/frame. That state is filled with all kinds of baggage, obviously. When you try to explain this to him, he gets frustrated because he thinks you're "gaslighting him" -- "trying to fuck him in the ass." This is not the reasoning of a normal person, it's the reasoning of a paranoiac who associates changing one's mind when a better explanation exists with being dominated and abused. This is a symptom of childhood trauma that he refuses to face and move past -- very sad. There are three types of people and two of them unhealthy. One type has such a weak frame that even when they are right, they can be gaslighted into denying their perceptions. Another type, even if they are wrong, will stand by their errors and see any attempts to change their mind as attempted domination or abuse. And the third type is openminded enough to accept better explanations when they come up, but also strong enough not to be manipulated by insubstantial attempts to force them to deny their perceptions. So everyone on the forum needs to ask themselves which type of person they are.

You're imagining that I'm imagining everything. You guys fail at basic logic and language comprehension.

I prefer to feed Little Red Riding Hood within. She was truly Buddhist, picking the Middle Path.

Thumbs up.

verb (used with object),im·ag·ined, im·ag·in·ing. 1) to form a mental image of (something not actually present to the senses). 2) to think, believe, or fancy: So I'm not imagining "everything" if what is present to the senses is included in "everything." So no, you're incorrect.