Emerald

@integral I'm going to need some real scientific data to take these claims seriously. So, please provide them and make sure that they're not conducted by industries with conflicts of interest. I especially need the study where they found that some people have "Vegan genes" and others don't. According the World Health Organization, you can get all of your nutritional needs met on a Vegan diet except B12, and it's an adequate diet for any phase of life. And according to various meta-analyses (collections that cross-reference many studies), a Vegan diet is associated with lower instances of all-cause mortality... and is especially associated with lower levels of heart disease (which is the #1 killer in America) and stroke. So, the Vegan diet is associated with longevity. I've been ethically Vegan for about 8.5 years, and I was never super health focused until making some recent changes and my energy levels have been normal all the way along. I have gained some weight over the years from not paying much attention to what I eat as long as it's Vegan (including unhealthy processed foods)... but I've recently switched to a 100% whole food plant based diet with no refined oils, refined sugars, or processed foods. And I feel very energetic since switching and have started to lose some weight. But the weight gain is the exact opposite of "looking like a Vegan" stereotype or "looking like a skull". Usually, people who look like a skull just have an eating disorder and they use Veganism as a means of justifying why they're "not eating ____ because I'm Vegan." But it's really just a way of concealing an eating disorder. I also know Vegans who have been Vegan for 15+ years. And I have a friend of mine who has never eaten meat in his entire life. And they aren't gaunt or unhealthy. So, you can't just make a lot of alarmist claims. You have to actually provide some real scientific evidence.

What does that mean? And do you have experiences of the "end of Veganism" for yourself?

I wouldn't get too caught up in complex philosophies about what love is. That will just take you away from your inner compass, which is the only compass you need. You have to figure out what feels good to you in a relationship and what doesn't. And your feelings were indicating to you that you were going over your own boundaries and you weren't getting what you need to feel good in a relationship. And being aware of this enables you to communicate these things to her. And you communicating those personal truths helps you and her get on the same page so that the relationship feels good to both of you. Also, a little bit of pushback and conflict is good for deepening intimacy. And it's quite possible that she may have decided to end the relationship because you weren't really engaging her emotionally in the relationship because you were hiding your feelings of resentment. And you were negating yourself in the process of suppressing your feelings. If you were to express yourself authentically and show up fully as yourself, you'd say, "Hey. I feel like this relationship is really imbalanced and I feel resentful about it." And without that, it probably felt to her like she wasn't even connected to you at all because she could sense you weren't really letting yourself show. I know that I really need a guy to be expressive about how he's thinking and feeling to feel a sense of closeness and intimacy or I feel lonely. And conflict and communication of incongruences is necessary to work through emotional rifts. So, what was probably happening is that an emotional rift was growing. And that rift grew and grew because you didn't acknowledge and communicate your own boundaries. Then, she probably felt lonely and decided to end it because of that emotional rift.

You're welcome and thank you! Yes, different people have different purposes and journeys. And my path is specifically a Feminine path that has to do with a lot of Yin values like limitation, contraction, finiteness, surrender, Earthiness, embrace of death, embrace of suffering, meaning, beauty, imperfection, embrace of the illusion, duality, repetitive cycles with no trajectory, being, etc. But the Feminine path is also a dualistic path, so it also includes the Yang/Masculine counterparts of the ones I mentioned above (respectively) unlimitedness, expansion, infinity, triumph, spirituality/intellect, eternal life, mercy, emptiness of meaning, utility, perfection, transcendence of the illusion, oneness, progressive trajectory, doing, etc.

Thank you. Of course, people are also influenced by the external. And that's what I think of myself as, as it comes to my children and to a lesser extent my husband. Just having a Vegan in the family and seeing me in a positive light can catalyze a deeper awareness in themselves. But truly it has to be their personal decision filtered through their own sense of sovereignty... or it won't stick. And they will go into conformity and rebellion mode relative to whatever is imposed from the outside. They will either conform, (but unsustainably while having intermittent binges on the restricted foods) to please mom. Or they will develop negative associations with both me, Veganism, and everything I represent and start eating the carnivore diet just to rebel. That's what happens if you try to impose on people who aren't choosing from a sovereign state. You can influence with the behaviors your modeling, but not impose. The same is true of the way that I went Vegan. I had to be in the right internal state to make that shift. And 6 months prior to going Vegan, I had never even considered it in the slightest. I knew I would never be Vegan. But my internal state aligned and put me in a state where I was susceptible to that change. My tendency has been to expand my awareness and be really spreading myself thin trying to come up with ways to "save the world". But it expends my energy in ways that are ineffective. In an Ayahuasca journey that I took, the medicine revealed to me that my life purpose was mercy. And it brought me back to all the memories of how that purpose had always been pulsing through me as my truest deepest will. And it brought me back into a memory of being 3 years old and seeing a commercial about people who were starving and to donate to help them. And I'd never seen one of those kinds of commercials before. And I started to cry and frantically said "I'll give them my food." And that's been my pattern... be aware of suffering I have no control over. And then, empty my own cup and spin my wheels about things I have limited power to influence or control. It's part of my problem with God complex of feeling so responsible for all the suffering in existence. So, it's a new thing that I'm doing to deliberately contract my aperture of awareness of suffering because all I'm doing is creating suffering for myself. And my medicine journeys have been all about mercy through limitation. It even showed me that the reason why I exist is because a part of God's consciousness was suffering too much with the awareness of infinite suffering and infinite knowledge and infinite love. I went through an ego death experience and there was no Emerald left. And it was just God's consciousness (the same consciousness that has been there my whole life). And God's consciousness was knowing and loving all things in all of existence that had ever been or would ever be at the deepest levels possible. And it was suffering all sufferings and grieving all griefs infinitely. And the points of awareness kept expanding infinitely in every instance. And then, the point of consciousness split from God... to where one consciousness became two. And that spit of consciousness was tended to by the rest of the consciousness. And this point of consciousness tapped out and chose mercy from the infinite. And then, I was reborn back into the ceremony area. And that's when it showed me my life's purpose... which is mercy. Specifically mercy through limitation and finiteness. But I have struggled with giving that mercy to myself, because there is this tendency to expand my levels of awareness further and further. And there are these grandiose God Complex-ish tendencies to try to alleviate all the suffering. But another component of these journeys is to recognize mercy and suffering as two sides to the same coin. A world without suffering is a world without mercy. But from another angle, it is valuable to minimize suffering as much as possible. So... it's like having a God-mind but a human-heart. And my human-hearted part of myself much contract and limit itself... or I just keep pouring from an empty cup as I've done my whole life because of the God complex and feelings of infinite responsibility. So, I have to really practice the serenity prayer and differentiate between what's in my power to control and what isn't. And it's trusting the universe, God, and other people to be able to handle what is not in the scope of my power. So I'm really practicing exercising sovereignty over widening and narrowing the aperture of my awareness as it comes to knowledge and suffering. I'm at a time where I have to let go of my neuroses about suffering and bringing a lot of energy and power back to myself. And I have power over what I eat.... what I do... what I say. And that's about it. I'm not even watching anything news or politics related at this juncture in my life. And as I fill my own cup, I can gain somewhat in my scope of power to help. Right now, my own cup is too empty to have maximum impact. All of these things are currently beyond my scope of power to impact. Though I'm sure I could find a few small levers of power from where I currently am that I'm not presently using. So, these are the types of things that I have to practice the serenity prayer with because I realize that I cannot control any of these things... and trying to will just waste my power and energy on spinning my wheels. I just have to practice trust and surrender to what is beyond my scope of power and responsibility. Focusing on these are all in the range of the "save the world" infinite expansion neurosis that I've had all my life. But I'm actively practicing contraction and limitation... and only putting my energy towards what's in my scope of power. And through doing this, I will become more powerful and potent... and gain more levers of power to have a wider impact. And a big part of this is to detach from outcomes and be okay with both life and death... and to be okay with both mercy and suffering... while doing what's in my power to promote life and mercy.

It could be that. Though I would expect a lot of Carnivore and Paleo dieters in that context. I've noticed that techy business-oriented people tend to go for those types of diets. Those seem to be more in fashion.

Thank you and you're welcome That makes sense that the approach doesn't work for you. A tendency that I've struggled with is the tendency to be super emotionally aware of all the sufferings of the world... over which I have very few levers of power. And there's been this tendency to hyper-fixate on suffering... usually human suffering but sometimes non-human animal suffering as well. And this has led to this expending energy in a way that doesn't get traction... and just creates a lot of distress for me because my power to create mercy is limited. And I suffer in the spinning of the wheels and getting little traction. So, I've been deliberately imposing limitations and boundaries on myself when it comes to awareness of suffering. My boundary is that if I have no lever of power to impact things, I will tune out from the suffering. And I will only be aware of the suffering in the degree that my awareness leads through to a tangible benefit to the suffering. Right now is a period of time where I need to pull all of my energy towards myself and my family. So, I am deliberately contracting myself... instead of engaging in my usual patterns of being the single tablespoon of peanut butter trying to spread itself over every slice of bread in existence. The way that I contend with allowing others sovereignty while animals are denied that sovereignty is to recognize the limitations on my own power. Currently, reality runs in a way where most human beings regularly consume animals. And while a part of myself is upset by that and would want to make that stop by any means necessary, I understand that these shifts must happen from the inside out... not the outside in. Otherwise, they won't be sustainable. And I see that putting pressure on it from the outside will be counter-productive. The best I can do is to help compassionate people become conscious that their actions aren't matching their values. So, it's less values focused and more awareness focused. And my understanding of the progress that's being made is one that's 10 steps forward and 9 steps back. We lose a lot of wisdom as we go but we also gain more. But there's a lot of contrast between the positive and negative. The thing that we're moving towards is a more united world. And while some tribes may have had an advanced sense of compassion and heart-wisdom, they would tend to be wiped out by other tribes and nations that lack in the heart-wisdom that don't feel connected to the harm they're causing. And that becomes a problem that heart-wisdom has always been met with hostility and dominance by outside domineering forces that are far less wise. This was a problem with hunter-gatherer groups that eventually got absorbed into tribes. And it was a problem with tribes that eventually got absorbed into nations. It will likely also happen when our nations get absorbed into the world. And this will be a problem until we have a collective world identity, where there is no one outside of us. At that point, we can safely live from the space of heart wisdom without being assailed by the forces of external dominance. And to do this, we must first come together... which is part of what's happening. Eggs are breaking to make and omelette. This part of the process is always chaotic, messy, and even violent. And the heart-centered forces will likely once again be conquered by the unwise domineering forces to be united under authoritarian rule by the most disconnected among us. It's just like Rome was united through conquering and domineering... and lots of suffering and bloodshed. But once that happens, the barriers will erode more and more until unity is possible. And we will also learn more and more about collective healing. So, the suffering is part of journey towards mercy. And mercy and suffering are two sides of the same coin. Out of suffering awareness comes. And from awareness, mercy is born. But to render the armor obsolete, there are many ideological, technological, and paradigmatic changes that have to happen. And there is a lot that we have to collectively understand and integrate into our ways of rearing children and running society. And I see that it's happening. Now, with the "we don't have centuries" comment, I think you're referring to climate change. I see that as a problem that will quickly self-correct in a few generations through the drop in the human population due to lower birth rates. There will be some side issues with this that will impact our human systems for several decades or perhaps a half a century or so. But it will likely slow or solve that problem.

It's apt that it's Vince McMahon on the gif. But to answer your question, it's deeply frustrating to me. I can feel a lot of rage because I can easily stand in the shoes of another being and imagine myself on the receiving end of their superior power and ignorance. But there are reasons why people tune out from their heart-wisdom that I have had the good fortune to see very clearly in several of my Ayahuasca journeys. Everyone is just a really sensitive vulnerable child deep down. And becoming callous and developing all sorts of intellectual and emotional armor is what seems to keep them safe... or perhaps did keep them safe at some point in their lives. So, I see the solution to the majority of our macrocosmic problems as coming from an ignorance to how to render that armor obsolete. I may not see it in my lifetime, but we are just now scratching the surface of how much collective healing we can do. And once that healing ripple gets going (which it already has been truthfully) we will start to naturally manifest a more compassionate societal structure and raise more compassionate children. But it may take some centuries to really see the cumulative effects of these shifts.

I tend to keep the visceral awareness of the suffering away from myself. When I first went Vegan, I watched Earthlings and really faced into those realities of suffering and made my choice from there... on the condition that I not dwell on it and instead focus on what little bit I can control. So with my family, I don't feel the visceral sense of awareness of animal suffering associated with their actions... or anyones. And this enables me to allow other people their sovereignty to make these decisions from an internal sovereign place rather than because I'm pressuring them to. And I see it as more likely that my children will one day make the decision to go Vegan from that sovereign place if I present myself as a role model than as an authoritarian source of pressure... which would backfire. So, I just remind myself that humanity is a work in progress out of our collective disconnection and that we are making strides, even if it's slow from the perspective of the individual human life. But a good thing that's come about is that my eating habits have influenced my husband's eating habits quite a bit. And so, we don't keep much meat or dairy in the house.

Thank you. That's a pattern that I notice a lot on here. And you are correct that it's in other places as well. But especially intellectual spaces... the people in them can be expert mental gymnasts to rationalize away all sorts of down to Earth truths that the youngest children can see quite plainly. All the intellectualizations are the Emperor's New Clothes.

That was always my impression of him... just as a gut vibe that I've gotten about him that he has an emptiness he's trying to fill. And clinging to eternal life corrupts the spirit. It's all yang with no yin. So, I was a bit surprised to hear him prioritize compassion. He always struck me as robotic and prioritizing longevity over all else.

These types of influencers make their money and get popular by pandering to men and telling them something affirming and validating... even if they're affirming negative things. For example, Blackpill panders to men who worry they're going to die alone by telling them "Yes, you've been right all along. You will die alone." And in this case, it gives this validation from a woman. So, it gives a false para-social kind of sense of bonding with the woman in the video because she understands you and empathizes with you 'while those other women won't'. It's also empowering because it's "Why men are deciding to remain single." It gives the sense of agency and power in dating because it's "I've decided dating women isn't worth it because women are ___." instead of "I feel really uncomfortable with dating because of my own internal reasons." It gives the illusion of power and someone to blame. And it's a victim narrative. And like you said, it also gives you rationalizations for why dating is a bad idea and isn't worth it so that you can maintain the status quo. Ultimately, all these kinds of channels (not just ones with female hosts) are looking to keep you in an insecurity cycles so that you keep clicking on the videos and keep buying their products and services. These people are just in the business of exploiting common male insecurities. And they have done market research to tell you what you want to hear in your own words. It's just like there are so many businesses exploiting women's insecurities by telling them they're not beautiful enough and selling them a fix.

That's interesting. And I do tend to share his views on society growing more compassionate as it develops. I'm actually somewhat surprised/impressed that his choice is coming from ethically Vegan place and that that's what he's prioritizing. The vibe I've gotten from him is that he values longevity as his primary value.

I thought he chose it because he looked at the studies of different diets' correlation with all-cause mortality and chose the diet associated with the lowest risk.

Of course that's true. Heart-wisdom without intellect-wisdom is an innocent child. Intellect-wisdom without heart-wisdom is a floating brain in a jar. But the problem with this particular context is the "brain in a jar" problem. Too wrapped up in intellectualizations to get in touch with grounded embodied wisdom and empathy. And not aware when they use their higher understandings to block out uncomfortable down-to-Earth truths. Too much up in the branches... not enough down in the roots. But the issue is actually lack of integration between intellect-wisdom and heart-wisdom... and using one to negate the other or seeing them as fundamentally opposed to one another.

Sure. That's true. But I see a lot more of the logical-minded traps in this context than the heart-centered traps. Lots of people using rote memorization of higher truisms to lie themselves out of their embodied heart wisdom

Yes, I agree with that. I thought you meant something different at first. It's the problem of the two thorns... You can use the mind and use deep contemplation to take away your blinders or to cement them on. But the pattern that I notice is that people tend to reach for top shelf absolute truths to overwrite and ignore more practical and heart wisdom truths. It's using intellectual understandings of the Truth to hide the truth from ourselves. Very sneaky of us.

Explain a bit more. Do you mean the metaphorical chopping block? If so, yes we could end up in situations that induce suffering because someone is exploiting us. But if you mean literally... it's highly unlikely for a human being to be raised in a factory farm and slaughtered. That's pretty obvious. That said, you could empathize deeply and imagine being farmed. You could watch Earthlings. And that's what would awaken some of that heart wisdom I was talking about. But you could potentially be trafficked or put in a concentration camp or in a prison with not human rights... which is possible for humans to experience. People experience it all the time. So, we can be exploited and killed... just not usually in the same exact way.

Only if an alien race comes down and starts farming humans for meat and milking them.

Yes, exactly. And it tends to be that the types of animals we consume from factory farms are bred to be domesticated and cannot live in the wild. Like broiler chickens were selectively bred (during a contest that many farmers participated in back in the 50s) to grow extra large to produce more meat. But it's very unhealthy for the broiler chickens. And they don't live very long. And they certainly couldn't live in the wild. It's a little like how we bred pugs to suite human aesthetic tastes. But they have all sorts of health issues because of the selective breeding.

The reason why we have billions (though probably not trillions) of these animals in existence at any given time is because we continuously breed them into existence specifically for the purpose of consumption. So if we imagine a theoretical world where humans totally abstained from all animal agriculture and no one consumed animal products, that means that there would be no profit incentive to breed so many of them into existence. And farmers simply wouldn't breed them. And there are Vegan activists who have framed how we could taper that number down over time while allowing them to live out their lives. I don't recall the specifics of it though because it's been a while since I looked at it.

I'm the only Vegan in my house. I went Vegan after both of my kids were born. But if my husband and I were both Vegan when we had kids, then I'd have probably wanted to raise them Vegan from the get-go. But I would not interfere with the status quo and upend their person sovereignty in those choices. The way that I see it is that I'm able to have a much more positive and long-lasting impact on them by simply modeling the behavior and allowing them to behave in the way they're used to.

Sometimes I feel like this lower vs higher perspective thing (while indicating something that's true in the absolute) can be a way to ignore embodied heart-based wisdom by writing over it with a disconnected intellect-based rationalization that is meant to maintain homeostasis. I notice this can often be a problem on this forum in particular. Everyone's always looking for the superior intellectual framework. But many miss what really matters. And the servant becomes the king and the king the servant. And doing this intellectual trick can be used as a way for a person to hide their embodied heart wisdom from themselves through a series of abstract higher truth intellectualizations. And they can use these higher truth intellectualizations to poke holes in Veganism so that they don't have to become conscious of the incongruence between their actions and their heart-wisdom. And they can maintain the status quo without sensing their cognitive dissonance. And this doesn't just happen with Veganism. I've seen people do it with other harm/suffering related topics as well. But Veganism is a good example to use because most people aren't Vegan. Like if you're a human being and you say "There's a reason for evil to exist because the nature of God is infinity... which includes suffering." or "Morality is relative." These statements are true in the absolute. But people can use these absolute higher truths to rationalize away their heart wisdom. But if we were a cow at slaughter, we would not be able to ignore the heart wisdom. It is only from the armchair of privilege that we can intellectualize with the taken for granted solace that we will not be on the chopping block in this life.

RIP David Lynch. I really enjoyed Twin Peaks. But I also like his other strange ideas... like his show Rabbits. And his book about "Catching the Big Fish" is really helpful for people aspiring to be creative. I read it like 10 years ago or so and it opened me up to new ways of thinking about creativity.