alyra

ah, thank you. that much is clear.

Hello to all, Recently Leo decided it was in our best interest to remove the reputation feature. A lot of people appreciated that change, and personally I am indifferent. But there is a part of what changed that really does matter in a positive way for this community. That is the ability to click a button on the bottom of the post, and indicate "hey I read your post and appreciated it" While the following three points are not the only positives to such a feature, these are three main factors that I personally find such a feature meaningful and healthy: It allows us to receive feedback from others that our words were agreeable. This is a small way for me to receive feedback from the community - AKA learning from them. As I understand it, the opportunity to learn from others is one of the purposes of these forums. It allows me to respond to posts people mention or quote me with, without making a long post - Part of these forums is a feature that restricts the frequency of posts. I presume the intention is to encourage meaningful posts, and discourage simple posts? Including a "like" button is a great way to balance that out in a more wholesome way. To allow "thanks" or "appreciated" or "no problem" or "agreed" to be communicated without a need for posts . It helps for there to be a sense of community for people. I understand why some folk approach enlightenment from a standpoint where they try to remove distractions, but as we do not want to be implying that one path is the righteous path - I feel it is important to realize that some of us are trying to do personal growth and enlightenment work in a way that revolves around community - in finding a way to self-actualize amidst all the distractions for better or for worse. I can accept and comply with the need others have to not have reputation, but the tool that left with that change - of leaving a response to a post without posting a response - that is something that I personally find very useful and positive and healthy, and I am sure many others appreciated that specific feature as well. Please return the "like" feature to posts. I would appreciate it.

I'm pretty sure eating is critical to the survival of the human domain. my point is simple. That growth requires a starting point, and a next step. Without mcdonalds, we had less. Mcdonalds is an effective way to provide food for a ton of people. Now that the population is booming, mcdonalds is booming evenmore, and this creates a situation where people rely too much on fast food and get fat. but all that is only describing the natural growth from "lack of ability to feed 7 billion" to "effective way to feed 7 billion" - trying to criticize how that has happened neglects the positive that it has happened at all! The next step is not to remove all "bad" ways of feeding millions - that would result in mass starvation and death and completely backtrack the growth. the next step is to improve the effectiveness of what already works. Or, perhaps replace bad habits with better ones. On the scale of a culture, rather than the scale of an individual human - replacing bad habits would be exactly what you call "competition" - or it could be "education" or perhaps "update to law that shifts supply". What if ther was a fast food chain that provided healthy food to people everywhere? A lot of people think that mcdonalds is bad because it is meat and fat and no nutrition. But that is not the full story. Mcdonalds is sugar, and lots of it - the increase in obesity historically correlated with the social rebellion against fat and the need for low-fat diet - which required the succeeding businesses to make their food tasty with sugars. Now we're at a point where the social scene is starting to realize sugar is dangerous too, and this could easily facilitate a change to fast food to make it healthier. It also could facilitate a change where fast food disappears as a new method of feeding millions surfaces. You say I am the one moralizing, yet you try to convince me that "if we are talking in human domain than sure they produce unhealthy food and it’s not really good for your health...." ? this is moralization just so you know. and anyway moralization is not bad, nor good. moralization happens. or it doesn't. you're over-complicating it really. you act as if I don't know what you're concerned with but instead I'm not concerned with what I notice you stating, and trying (poorly) to share what I've learned.

huh. Independance see - desire for others is not dependance. What even is independance or dependance? a monk is dependant too if you really think about it. True freedom and independence is not being alone and seperate. it's having the trust in yourself to trust in others. it's having the strength to have a difinition of who you are, without losing yourself in it. or maybe - maybe it is losing yourself in yourself isn't that curious... now I've got a lot to think about! but the point of my post is to say that you can't take "intense need" and call bs. maybe it's not quite what we believe it is tho, but if you can't trust that your experience has meaning, then you don't exist at all if one person feels "[insert symbolic means of abstracting a complex experience]" it is true. not bs. if anything, it could be with illusion or self-deceit, or with ignorance, that the belief dictates how the person reacts to the experience... y'know? sorry, I do not know how to say it. forget me, I'm nothing but a silly.

okay, so long story short - he was a shit match that looked delectable. I am sorry... It sucks to have someone you have deep feelings for, but to have to leave them in your past... no matter which way it occurs... and each time it happens, it happens a different way, and so it hurts on a whole new level. Who knows, maybe if you both had met a different stage in your life things could've been different. So - take the time to grow and become stronger, have more faith in the unknown - which don't mean blind faith - that can help but - it also means having the self-efficacy in the literal sense. trust in the literal sense. Grow, in general, and next opportunity will be more likely to be a match - not only because you will have grown, but the people who attract you will also be more mature too. And there's more out there than just a handful of matches. lots of people can mean even more to you than this one peer/stranger/friend did.

life is a dream because that's the literal function of the brain. to dream up its belief of reality based off its feeble attempt to measure it, just so "the conscious being" can try to model the world, try to make right choice, and try to make its own presence in the world as meaningful as possible. Even if you trust science as Truth, life remains a dream. We have no actual proof that anything exists as we believe it to exist. Our knowledge is nothing more than faith. We could be a Boltzmann Brain about to suffocate and freeze to death, for all we know.

same

it would still be strong. Healthy is not apathy nor equality. Consider the body. It is healthy. Nothing in the body is equal to anything else. nothing is greedy or toxic either, only the immune system is anything like that at all, The immune system is really the only major organ or system that can actively destroy the body if things go wrong. If the body is sick, it is due to infection or failure, not aggressive consumption where one or multiple organs devour the other for its own whim. Corruption has been necessary to drive the market in the past, because there were no large organizations capable of destroying corruption. so corrupt marketting methods have been what wins. But Now we begin to see businesses that are rampant and booming which seek healthful distribution. It'll take time for them to overwhelm the corrupt businesses. It ain't going to happen overnight, but as long as humanity doesn't devolve to war or meet unrecoverable famine, we should reach a future where corrupt businesses are the past. I give it 100 years. but I might be ambitious in that estimate. or, we could go lucky. or, things could just go completely wrong and we face apocalypse. But no, we can function and advance without systems, corporations and businesses. maybe / maybe not. nothing is inherently evil. There are a lot of nuances to why nothing is inherently good nor evil. What does McDonalds do but provide food for people to eat and jobs for people to build success in their life? envy and greed is the only reason such things come with suffering. Because they are abused I mean. Envy and greed are both personalities, and exist with purpose that can be useful. but when abused they become toxic forces. Imagine where the world would be if McDonalds never came into be? Now imagine where the world can go by slowly finding some better method than McDonalds to do the same things, but with a healthier balance of needs for the social world. The bottom line is we're facing tremendous population growth right now, and things that were sutainable before will fail to be so in the future. Humanity is in an age where they're forced to transcend to the next level of cultural existence, or collapse with apocalyptic failure. And they are simultaneously in an age where such growth is possible, empowered by interconnectivity that creates the power of visibility. As well as a long history of technologic and scientific advancement. If you want to be a part of that, find some niche where you can impact either a few people in dramatic ways, or many people in a small way. And help to contribute to the booming change that is to come, in a way that helps find health. And be careful - "higher consciousness" and "enlightenment" are not the only factors of a healthy dynamic. IF you treat them like the holy grail, you just become a religious extremist with dogma. They are not the only truths to the world, and you ain't going to find those truths looking inward - you will need to see the duality of the world if you wish to help it become healthy. And you will need to look outward, to learn from others and help them get what they want and need for their own sake, not warp what they want and need for your sake. That is awareness, is it not?

@Sahil Pandit oh, thanks it's my pleasure really! I like advice

#1 best advice is - test. test test test. don't commit major changes to your life if you haven't tested it out yet. I am not sure how this would mean for making a switch. but I do know that some of the common issues with online learning is, not having a dedicated time or place to study not having the pressing will or expectancy that keeps you involved losing the person-to-person interaction of a teacher/student relationship is a serious downside, is the #1 reason why school still looks the way it is, and will never fully go away not having "tried and true" plans - having to teach yourself means you have to be the teacher but with all the limitations of the students - you are likely to miss a lot of nuances that you wouldn't get from a classroom experience not having structured homework to give you pragmatic experience with the theory you're trying to learn having a lot of distractions a lot easier to catch you and waste your education time ultimately I wouldn't recommend it. If you've already graduated high school, and want to skip college - work, and learn. first thing to learn is - how to work full time without wearing yourself down... how to manage your energy. learn about that first. At the same time - learn about self-responsibility... habitualize all the personal care and homesteading you need to do to not get overwhelmed with the responsibilities of earning for yourself. THEN learn how to learn - and now that you've fit your work into your life without being overwhelmed by it, as well as the responsibilities of being independant, that is when you can fit in learning into your life. If you do it right, this'll be three years to get to that point - if you are lucky or already have a lot of those skills, then it will be sooner. If you can't do what I've suggested above... try to take that layout as a way to involve learning like you want to - from online/ your own research - into your life. if you are in school, and are unsatisfied with the learning - practice using your mind to learn during the class. notice the things the teacher is discussing, notice how you have more to your idea of it that makes you think she ain't qualified to teach, and then use what you know to explore the topic she's covering. #2 best advice is - you never. never. never. stop needing to work on the basics. the basics are the basics because they are always being used. If the basics bore you, you're doing something wrong. don't undervalue them. Everything you learn, develops from the basics - meaning the basics integrate into every new facet to your knowledge, and in that way - are not "the basics" but instead "the core that complexly interacts with everything else about this field of study in such a way that you will constantly be evolving what "the basics" means if you're truly learning the topic" this is what the basics are. they are the core. the backbone. if you don't respect your bones, they will mesh poorly with the rest of your body, and your muscles and connective tissue will suffer too, and you will come with a lot of chronic pain. the skeleton is essential.. just cause it's called "basic" don't mean it is "something to forget about ever" - never forget the basics, or disrespect them. #3 best advice - know what your goals are. you want to learn on your own? okay, why? list all the reasons you want to learn. investigate what this means pragmatically, what you will need to do to accomplish those goals. spend time looking into ways you can fail, and figuring out strategies to accommodate to prevent failure, and to respond to failure if it comes up. basically #3 best advice is - never gamble what you cannot afford to lose. also, this is basically the same as the #1 best advice in this way never gamble what you cannot afford to lose. Quitting school to lern full-time as a self-starter... there is a TON of fail-rate to this. don't make a sudden move.. unless you have had enough experience to trust that you can do it successfully... and the know-how to backtrack if you need to.

haha was about to say the same thing. wordpress has been popular for ages and while i don't myself have experience much, i also am thinking about getting webdevelopment under my toolbelt. and wix looks like it might be a better tool than wordpress, but like i said.. wix is new, wordpress is tried and true.

yes, I believe "success" means "someone who is fulfilled, passionate, with the strength to carry whatever load they do carry, and with habits of healthful body, mind, and spirit" so by definition anyone healthy is successful

why not ask? some time say, "hey I think your friend's behavior is inappropriate... does it bother you? I'm a little worried. but if it doesn't bother you, i trust you"

tell her you don't trust this guy. tell her his behavior sets off red flags for you. not sure if that phrase "sets off red flags" is something that is used outside of America I think it's from sports talk.... but tell her that what he's doing you see as signals of unsympathetic flirting that shows he does not respect her boundaries.

@Shinah, you miss the point, in infinite existence all that is contained is just as essential to existence. when wannabe yogis preach of how other folk waste their life or are hollow or other criticisms, it still remains to be no more than a defense mechanism to protect their own ego.... this is the point... you think that unactualized people necessarily suffer and actualized lifestyle removes suffering for all. but... have you actually gone and lived everyone's life? or do you just assume that everyone else is exactly the way you think they are, a belief for the sake of yourself? only one of those two is possible. learn to accept others as they are. it ain't an easy thing to do all we ever know is our own ideas and beliefs and experiences. and before you excuse this all away as "but we are the absolute" notice how the thread is the afghan. notice how the afghan rots away or is eaten by moths. this is what is meant when we are the absolute. I do not speak against actualization or enlightenment! any pursuit in life is beautiful. if you find beauty in yours, then see that beauty and follow it... the only thing I speak to reveal here, is the risk there is in disavowing the beauty of others in order to limit who you are to the identity you're afraid you might lose.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ a life wasted is still a life experienced.

paradigm shift - all people are consciousness people, you'd be surprised to find how wise everyone is if you take the practice to actually be humble and see it.

ahahaha y'all so funny with how little you know. I have nothing to say really tho, despite how much info I know on the subject matter, and I know a lot lmao. But the more important thing to know really is that there are 7billion+ individuals out there with complex personality and it can safely be said no two humans are exactly alike. Each person's relationship with their gender is individual to who they are. In a way, labeling oneself... for example with the identity label of a gender.... labeling oneself has a very intrinsic meaning to most people. that is for them to be able to use symbolism to capture through abstraction a complex nuance to their life experience that is hard to capture symbolically. it is to help guide their memory of their experience, and to help them declare and commit to the future before them. the label is not the experience of the person. the label is an abstract concept that roughly speaking attempts to give a sense of community to numerous people with similar experiences in this world. The label can easily be attached to pride, this is true. and a person who feels their identity is being denounced or erased or infringed upon or attacked, can become very defensive. this is all I have to say "peace!"

i am what defines me. my environment defines me. I am my environment.

sounds good.

@Thanatos13 here I will give many words of advice... please notice that necessarily I am responding to what I can give advice on... and even in that, it is the case... that... see... you already have so much you have worked on and found, to not need advice... there is depth to that that is hinted at in many ways in your words... I do not try to deny you.... all I can say is to build upon you, from what I myself have to offer... there is no criticism I have of you in this post. advice is not disagreement, nor is it truth, nor is it the path you must take; it is only words - symbols which frame what could be, or what is. you say you have no desires. I will list the desires that I have seen evidence that you might hold: desire for community, intrinsically for coming where there is community; desire for meaning, as you consistently express a loss of it; desire to persist until the end; desire to be a part of infinity; desire for some kind of big picture passion or dream or goal; desire to numb your experience of the weight and of being crushed; the desire to match your body experience to your spirit experience; or vice versa; desire for help; desire for what is external, beyond your internal; desire for truth; the desire for things to make sense - or what I say to denote that, desire for clarity; desire for the empirical; desire for objectiveness, which is in fact not-empirical; the desire to have desire to pursue; desire to remember, and to resist loss; the desire to escape biases; desire for snarkiness and making a point; as well as blunt clarity; and you have expressed a link from the void to despair, which is meaning, which implies desire, but does not inherently reveal what that desire is - despair exists because desire is denied, this is the nature of despair, and the nature of desire.... see, all that desire there is desire you could find right now within yourself but naturally there is more desire that comes from within too - oh - let me give you a suggestion regarding passion/meaning/desire, something I heard myself, something which I have found quite meaningful in pursuit of desire and dream and passion - for I have felt many times without any meaning, without any passion, lost and worthless... It is that every tiny teeniest of desire can be worked with to bloom into huge flowing energy, given consistent practice of it, given time to grow - and even if none of them quite make a big splash on your life, searching there to start is always a great way to stumble upon something big and flowing. You speak of habitual behavior, but there is nothing lost in habit, in fact habit is exactly what is needed to obtain deep passion, perhaps you only simply need to introduce new habit into your toolbox of habits! perhaps in your experience of the void and despair, naturally this divorces yourself from your desires, and belittles them; this is actually okay in and of itself. there is many reason to be without desire, many reason to be with desire. many reason to be in despair, but even the strongest gravity of despair will never consume you. you say you have experienced void. if you experience it, then it is not void. even leo makes this mistake, he speaks of some kind of transcendant to experience and has named it in the past as "direct experience" - but even that is still an experience.... every time we witness a glimpse of void or infinity, it still remains limited, an experience - even when we claim it is "it" it is everything there is nothing more... see, our experience is the existence of limit, and in truth there is nothing beyond that experience - everything which we claim to be beyond our experience is necessarily within its reach. but it is out of reach too... oh... here: You have experienced void. but there is always a deeper void you have not experienced. some folk, find meaning in pursuing that void, or perhaps they call it infinity, or perhaps they call it god, but the more they discover it, the more life has meaning, and loses meaning, oh I am making no sense sorry. ... but you speak of the void as if it the absence of meaning. but, therein lies the truth! the absence of meaning is itself meaning; and as well the absence of meaning reveals all meaning. you even say, we can frame the concept of void but then that is not what is experienced. Very true! well said in fact. I encourage you then notice further, that by saying you have experienced the void first hand - you have framed a concept of it. And even if you had not said anything of your experience in words, you still remain with concept, for concept while it can be divorced from what it describes, from other concept - well, when you are at the core of experience it is synonymous with concept. you can derive or extrapolate or interpret that concept/experience/truth/reality into more concept, but at the core of it all, it is still just concept. you even say meaninglessness is not subjective... but inherently it is subjective to all meaning. and so as subjective as meaninglessness necessarily is, so too is all meaning objective as well - both are true, there are both facets to all meaning and all meaningless. what is subjective cannot be without what is objective; what is objective cannot be without what is subjective. I guess here what I am trying to say ultimately... is that your experience of the void will continually remain to be a reference point, an experience, it will never truly be nothing, for "nothing" is synonymous with "something". you reference free will a few times. the thing about free will that i take notice of - some may fall for the trick to think that there is no free will, but wait let us presume that there is no free will. all that that changes, is it changes the meaning of what free will really is - it changes the meaning to: "the experience of what we call free will" (yes, even tho it is illusion by this presumption of its lack). But when free will is nothing but a fantasy experience - it is still experienced - and what is but what is experienced? when free will ceases to be true to reality; it still remains that it is experienced; and with that experience, returns to truth, to reality...... free will cannot be denied. for in its denial it rebirths itself. regarding trips, you say "because they feel something they think that means something" - hah you catch it on the nose right there! that is exactly the truth. meaning is as meaning is. some folk just need a little boost in their experience to realize the depth to what meaning can be; for it is unlimited. you say later that trips are not reality - oh, but reality is eternal! trip is reality, unicorns exist, god exists, in every belief of him; or perhaps in the belief of many gods; or no god; trips are reality. void is reality. meaning is reality. despair is reality. everything experienced is reality; and reality extends beyond the limit of our experience, even beyond the sum of all our experiences; for if you can sum up all that is reality and separate it from something which is not reality. then you have not yet summed reality. and even if you sum up everything and stop and say, there, I've finished, I have found every boundary to reality! then you have simply reached the limit of what you can be. but reality is unlimited, so you have not reached its limit for there is none to find. one does not need to find all of reality; one needs only to find presence within their own limits and accept it and trust in it. oh, I should comment on your pattern to say that the void brings despair. You do not trust us when we say that the void to use brings meaning; yet you expect us to trust you in your claim that we don't know the despair of the void.... I wholly do empathize with your experience of despair, and while I can never have any proof that I have found your despair in my experience, I trust that you have found despair, and know that I have found despair. and I know that I was able to wade through the misery and find hope and meaning and passion and growth and glimpses of the unfathomable infinity of it all, not in despair but rather in such a way that inspires - I trust that you too can find such inspirations, given time. for me, I was in despair for 4 long years and sometimes return to it. one could say I was in despair for 19 long years instead; but the despair of those 4 set them so far apart from the other despair that I felt dead without hope to a whole different level... but even that depth of it did not kill my desire to press forward. and that desire ruled over the void I experienced, and got me here where I am now. there are many times when I feel pain and sorrow, when I feel lost or beyond hope, when I get another glimpse of that void-despair... at least the amount of it that I do experience; but now, now I have more strength than before, more strength to resist its pulling weight, and if needed the resilience to flow with that weight as it sinks me down, and that indulgence in it I do with trust and with my resiliance and strength and diving into it only allows the anchor of the void-despair to slip away from me again and I bubble right back to the surface. you've stated that spirituality is biased - and wow I've been realizing the same thing for some time now, brewing it over, and idk for me that has brought some passion into my life. for, spirituality is exactly bias; existence is exactly bias; our life is exactly bias; it cannot be escaped, and should we believe that death is the escape -even that fails to be true, for the imprint of our bias will always have its notch in the infinite; infinity is composed of endless bias; even what is unbiased exists within the infinite as bias, out of our reach but existent somewhere in the infinity of absolute reality. infinity itself is its own absolute bias. you mention that the assumption that "spirituality leads to good" taints what is found. So why not assume that spirituality leads to evil? do you trust yourself to see where that leads you? and similarly, why do you not trust the bias of good some of us see in spirituality? and likewise, there is the deeper option, to seek the unbiased angle of spirituality; and naturally there is finally the last option to not seek spirituality at all. those are the four extremes of what path you can take in relation to spirituality - so - Which path do you trust yourself to follow? or perhaps you follow one path without trust, or perhaps you cannot keep ahold of any of those paths. this is all just what I ask, to try to ask you to find that answer. oh... I hope my point is self-evident here... you say that the case with any spiritual experience proves nothing. very precise again, right on the nose, you've got it; yet, you seem not to have it.... hmm... it is as if you need proof to believe. perhaps you need to find the value in the lack of proof. or perhaps find the proof that you experience everyday. or perhaps you are trying to rid yourself of the mechanism of need for proof at all; wait, I just said this already, I I am repeating myself. in one post you take many angles on truth. you are framing truth from many angles, but yet you do not see truth, you see only falsehoods; but that is not the nature of truth. what is limited is true. and you are right; that truth is unlimited and so what is limited isn't truth. but they are both the same statement. yin and yang. etc... idk there is not much to say. oh.... you frame truths and toss them asside as deceit. how ironic this is... yet how novel... what to really say... IDK. I hope I could have helped with these words. At the very least I hope I could show I have listened to your words. I dunno, I am no good at this lol... best regards and good luck.

I read an article from a gay mormon who confessed the feelings and novel realizations he had to face as he and his wife realized they needed to be divorced. and it really opened my eyes. it really opened my eyes to see, how little that I know of myself, of this thing that entraps my self, this lump of clay and high fantasy. I think I have come to understood the "self" that is here but.. I have so little reality to that understanding... it made me realize that, I had no place to speak to others about things that I haven't proven about myself. IDK if I've had that issue here, I don't post very often and when I do it is mostly either a question or a statement of putting ... past contemplation to the significance of word... so it's a process that is necessary to grow, I believe, I do not know tho - because I came to realize. In other facets of life, I try to spread wisdom, to explain how things are, to give advice on what people could do, and what people have done. but, all I really say is either whisper down the lane or baseless hope I have in what I have not experienced. it was really deep to see this shift to the meaning of communication. I didn't explain it well.. sorry. it was just a thought I had about communcation recently. to realize, that communication is something that comes from the heart, from who I am in my self. oh, I dunno, I'm not sure how to really say what I discovered, in fact I don't really understand it exactly. I don't know what to do with it.

@Shin @Sri Ramana Maharshi everyone is enlightened, and not enlightened, at the same time

enlightened people aren't a threat to society. enlightenment and self-development are both endeavors that require understanding how exponential growth works in order to trust. On top of that they are big-picture theoretical, as well as spiritual/philosophical/psychological in nature, which are both things that results-oriented fact-and-logic-oriented western culture has a hard time trusting. Additionally, the western culture is more commonly about hard work and traditional values associated with success, which intrinsically biases most members of our society towards grinding through the thick of life through brute force alone. As such, people in our cultures are usually predisposed to dislike and distrust the theory and explanations and processes behind enlightenment and/or self-development. and naturally, it will not help the matter when most people who undergo spiritual journey go through several stages of hidden ego (ego in the traditional sense, not the higher/lower consciousness sense) where they believe they have removed themselves from cockiness and superiority complexes, and pull the cliche "Jesus saved my soul you need to love Jesus too" trope that every single human detests because of its intrinsic invasive social context, wherein the listener's perspective, life, and values are completely ignored and disrespected due to the speaker's annoyingly persistent insistence that their way is the right way. If you wish to connect to people, subvert your preconceptions about enlightenment and instead seek the value of listening to other humans and respecting and accepting who they are. Realize the conundrum in which you need empathy to connect to others in a more authentic way, however empathy does not truly exist as it is nothing but assumption, interpretation, and projecting one's own experiences onto another. To connect to a person in an enlightened way is more effective when you target your growth towards the pursuit of accepting them, trusting them, listening to them, remembering what they have said, and once you do that enough to actually have legitimate trust in your assumptions about who they are (rather than what you currently believe is trust in that aspect) - even then you still defer to who they are for their sake over what you want/believe them to be. You never know what is right for them. You can only ever know acceptance of- and trust in them. This can be done whilst also pursuing enlightenment of your own ego (in the consciousness sense) but as long as you consider others low-consciousness and as long as you expect them to love your life for their sake, you still have work to do to transcend that limiting ego of yours.

@Aquarius I think it'd be fine. be careful tho - if you're depressed or moody without music, that's when it's an addiction - but if it simply is something you enjoy. then keep doing it I say. totally agree about enlightenment being natural. me I like to just practice being mindful whenever I remember to. it's all I really need. the theoretical stuff - it's meaningless if I don't apply it, see... idk what I am saying. it's been a little hard for me on these forums 'cause everyone's all up all over enlightenment and ascetism and ego-death and all sorts of things that don't really matter to me. I see them all as synonymous really, I practice it through the daily motions - others practice it through dedicated time to be departed from it... and I guess we all like to try to be "wise" when we come here? but it gets kinda in the way. I try to talk to people from my experience, or to ask them a question with the hopes it'll help them take a step back from a catch-22 type of hiccup. idk. The law of attractions approach sounds totally strong approach to me 100% music effects our mood - that's so true. it's even both ways - the music I wanna listen to also changes from mood to mood. if you feel you're losing time to focus on other things, that's what I'd recomend focusing on - maybe trying to take a break from the music just to have a perspective might be meaningful, but also maybe it's something else entirely too. idk. i'm about to hit the sack so I'm sure this post made very little sense