Forestluv

No-mind

@Goodpeace My intention is to encourage people to treat their mind and body lovingly. In doing so, the amount of 5-Meo use (if any), will vary from person to person. Personal injury is a highly nuanced topic and I think it’s best for me here to simply encourage people to be careful with extended daily 5-Meo use.

@Jed Vassallo From the perspective of the person, setting certainly matters. It is very important in how pure presence will get contextualize by the mind and body as an experience. Your room is fine. You don’t need anything snazzy. No bells or whistles needed. Some of my deepest insights have come while staring at a white ceiling in my bedroom. I would avoid settings with a lot of people and those that could be perceived as unsafe.

One needs to be careful with the usage of terms to avoid misrepresentation. One could use the term “environment” to refer to an internal environment within the individual body. In this context, it would be accurate to say the (internal) environment of child is different than the (internal) environment of a adult. However, that is not the context of “environment” in the article you linked. Here, the term environment refers to the external environment outside the body. For example, the home someone lives in, the school system etc. In this context, to use the term environment to refer to internal physiology is a misrepresentation. As I quoted, the article you linked specifically said all the studies involved shared or similar environments. If you recontextualize the term “environment” is a misrepresentation of the data. As well, you are not seeing nuances with the terms “different”, “shared”, “common”, “same” and “similar”. To learn and expand in this area, I would recommend watching Leo’s video titled “Sameness and Difference”. Also his video on recontextualization. If you want to write about this study, it is important to use the term in its proper context. Otherwise you are misrrepresting and misleading. Using terms in their proper context is an extremely important component of intellectual honesty. Without proper context, one can misrepresent data to promote a personal agenda and propaganda. Have you read the article you linked? The article you linked is not a primary article. It is a review article that includes a variety of studies conducted by various researchers, including the other study you refer to. The same conclusions apply. Please read the review article you linked and see if includes the other study you are referring to.

@SoonHei This gets into cause and effect. “Blame” is merely assigning a cause to an effect. I.e. there was a person that stole my car. The person (caused) my car to be stolen (effect). This can have practical value in life, yet is often quite limited to a proximal cause. Upon closer inspection cause begins to expand to include many variables. This can give a more holistic view of a situation. For example what are all the variables in our community that is (collectively causes) car theft. Again, this can have practical value. Upon deeper inspection, the cause inputs expands into infinity - as do all things.

I would be mindful of the mind’s tendency to see in opposites and thinking that if a belief is false, then the opposite must be true. This can obscure understanding nuances. For example, the statement above is partially true, partially false. Some girls that get to know you will maintain their interest and may become more interested in you. Other girls will lose interest as they get to know you. And some girls may initially lack interest yet become interested as they get to know you. That’s how it is for everyone. The problem with saying one belief is false assumes the opposite belief is true. Believing in the opposite can also cause a problem. Saying girls will lose interest is delusional. Yet saying “this isn’t true!” and believing that girls will maintain interest is also delusional. This opposite belief will also cause confusion and frustration. The key is that there is an underlying assumption of a duality. That all girls will lose interest or that all girls will maintain interest. When confronted on this, the mind may think “well, I didn’t mean *all* girls would lose interest”. Yet if we’re honest, that is the underlying assumption the mind and body is oriented and experiencing. Notice how changing the orientation can entirely change the context and feeling: — Girls will lose interest in me if they get to know me — Some girls will lose interest in me if they get to know me and some girls will stay interested in me if they get to know me. — No girl will lose interest in me if she gets to know me These are very different orientations. Personally, I think the second orientation is the healthiest.

Well said. It’s like a natural spontaneous calling of “it’s time” that’s synched with mind/body/spirit. I’ve done psyches without it being synched up and there is a different vibe. I agree that it can have a trap/loop element to it. I ‘m better realizing the intuition of that integrated natural calling. Months could go by until that calling arises, or it could be tomorrow.

@Gili Trawangan ? ❤️

I’ve found that practices like meditation and yoga can relax the mind and body. This can allow space for insights to arise about deeper conditioning underlying patterns of discomfort. In this context, it can help with personal growth and well-being. Yet, there is also a facet that these practices will not promote progress toward, because in another context - there is nothing to progress toward. It’s always here and now - in whatever is happening here and now in direct experience. In this context, using meditation to progress to here and now can be a very frustrating and disappointing experience - since one has already arrived.

@Billy Shears Thanks for putting it in the larger context ?

One of the ways my mind gets trapped is black and white thinking. By thinking “my life is hell”, suggests it is 100% hell. That there are only two places: hell or not hell. And I’m trapped in hell and want to be in not hell. Realizing and accepting that my life is not 100% hell is a major breakthrough because it shatters the hell vs not hell trap. You just said there is something you love to do in life, so it’s not either hell or not hell. Now, the narrative becomes “my life is a mixture of hell and not hell”. This is a major improvement, because one can see there are parts of life they like and parts of life they dislike. This is a game-changer in narrative. Now one knows they are capable of loving life (at least aspects of life). This re-orients the mind and body. Perhaps the mind and body will desire to go into nature in which they love and reach deeper levels in nature they never knew possible. All sorts of possibilities can open when we are in this place of love. We might meet someone in nature that also loves nature. Perhaps an ecologist or bird watcher and we learn new things and get an even deeper appreciation of life. Perhaps we realize that we socialized pretty well in that scenario. Then we might think, “I’d like to go hiking with someone who loves nature”. Along the way, there will be resistance with thoughts like “I can’t do xyz. I’m not good enough with xyz” It’s the same trap with the statement “I can’t function in society”. This again suggests 100% functioning in society and 100% disfunctioning in society. That isn’t true. It’s another lie. You can name one time or one moment you were functional. It’s more accurate to say that you are a mix of functioning and nonfunctioning. We all are. Join the club. Personally, I don’t have the best social skills. Sometimes I can relate to other people well, other times I can feel awkward and uncomfortable. I also love nature and often prefer to be out in nature solo than with people. Yet, I’ve also found I need a certain level of social engagement for well-being. Quite often this takes work and effort for me. I am a natural in nature, yet generally not a natural in social situations.

Can you tell me one thing in your life right now that is not hell?

I’ve experience many different senses of an observer. It can be comforting, grounding, liberating. Yet also destabilizing, uncomfortable and anxious. I know the anxiety of being afraid of being stuck in a certain state. Whether it is a mental or physical state. The sense that I want out, I can’t get out and it’s never going to end. At the physical level, it’s the body’s fight-or-flight system that gets activated. Sometimes, I can relax and let it do it’s thing, yet “fighting” it often generally amplifies. I found it can be helpful to surrender into it, yet I also try to be open if there is body wisdom trying to communicate something. Sometimes there is not much to it, like with the anxiety I feel standing on the edge of a cliff. Sometimes there is something deeper and I go visit with that “person” activating the anxiety and fear and sit down with him lovingly.

Yep. John Lennon is deep green. I was in Central Park a couple years ago and he still has a presence there. Both in physical memoirs and visitors as well as in spirit.

From the perspective of the human mind, the dream can transform. We imagine, give meaning, and construct memories. It can feel like leaving the dream, then realization may arise that we left one dream and entered another dream within a larger dream. It’s like saying “there must be a way out of ISness”. From a human mind that contextualizes what is, it sure does seem like what is is continually changing. Look around, what is now is different than what was yesterday. Yet there is also an unchanging IS in which there is no way out. Try to exit IS right now. Whatever you do IS. You can mediate, jump in a lake, hide, do drugs, feel great, feel awful, create thought stories of an ego, create thought stories of destroying those thought stories of an ego. . . and on and on. . . all IS.

@Rob_91 It gets contextualized as an experience by the human mind, yet at the human level this can be deeply profound, insightful opening up space for expansion and growth. So in one context, it’s just another state of consciousness/experience. Yet in other context, it’s definitely not just another state of consciousness/experience. I’m glad it worked out well for you ? ?

@Kushu2000 Yes. A few. It has recently been discussed in the below mega thread.

@Goodpeace It depends on the individual’s experience, physiology, sensitivity and baseline consciousness level. I did daily 5-Meo for several weeks and it was a lot to handle for the mind and body. I would be careful with extended daily doses.

If you want to test environmental effects on performance on a test, the most important experiment is to change environment. These studies did not do that. These studies look at environmental impact in healthy environments from childhood into adulthood. The environments are not “different”. The authors conclusions you state are based on SHARED environments and the authors stress this point and even ask the reader not to misrepresent the data by considering it to be different environments. Have you read the paper and put the conclusion you quote into context? Or did you simply cut and paste a statement from the abstract, assuming you know what it means without reading what the data and authors actually say about it in the paper? The conversation is not about wether IQ tests are biased toward one person with lots of resources over another person with lots of resources. The conversation is about whether IQ tests are biased toward a person with lots of resources over a person with few resources. The studies did not address that at all and these studies are not applicable to this domain. Regarding the studies you link: Neurological maturation follows an internal developmental genetic program that is influenced by the external environment. Different genes are involved at different stages of development. Genetics will interact with the environment to different extents during different stages of development. The article you cite includes studies in which twins were in shared or similar environments. It is saying that within shared or similar environments the genetic program is influenced by the environment to different degrees at different stages of development. This is somewhat interesting, yet not at all surprising. Importantly, the data cannot be extrapolated to more general conclusions that environment does not have considerable influence because these studies were done in a very narrow set of environmental conditions. The authors state: ” It is important to specify the populations to which any results can be generalized and not misinterpret what they mean. The samples were drawn almost exclusively from Western industrial democracies. These settings have characteristic environments. Only a few of the participants were raised in real poverty or by illiterate parents, and all study participants had access to the contemporary educational programs typical of those societies. This is the domain to which we can generalize.” The data in these studies cannot be extrapolated outside of this narrow domain. Generally, when people discuss the environmental impact on IQ, they are not talking about environmental impact of two people in essentially the same environment. The criticism is to those that are over-stating the genetic basis of IQ because the tests are biased toward individuals in healthy environments with resources. The discussion isn’t about environmental impact between two people with with lots of resources. It’s about the environmental impact on a person with lots of resources and a person that lacks resources. A person that is in a good environment and a person in a bad environment. The studies you linked do not address this and one cannot make any conclusions within this domain. Doing so is a misrepresentation of the data. The authors themselves ask the reader not to do this. This was your original statement to which you linked the article: ”Identical twins growing up in different environments (one good, one bad) will score the different scores when they are young. However, by age 60, their IQs will be identical again” You are misrepresenting the data of the studies you link in a way the authors themselves specifically asked you not to do. They specifically said the studies did NOT involve different environments of “one good, one bad” and specifically said the studies do not apply to that domain. The authors themselves say that doing so is a misrepresentation of the data. This is directly from the authors of the article you cite!

@possibilities Good luck!

If one designs a test that is dependent on development, the correlation will get stronger with development. For example, if a test involves abstract thinking, the correlation will be stronger when the twins are 20 than when they were 12, because the prefrontal cortex involved in abstract thinking begins to develop during teenage years. If the researchers used multiple tests for different ages and tried to normalize the tests as one set of IQ comparisons, it is comparing apples to oranges and loses relevance since each age-related test is assaying an age-dependent trait. It’s possible that researchers have designed methodology to address these concerns, yet I didn’t see it in the paper you linked and unaware if others have done so. As I’ve already stated, environment didn’t have a big impact because the environments were too similar. Even the authors state this in the discussion. If you want to test environmental impacts you don’t use similar environments. The researchers have designed tests that are able to detect a genetic input. Yet how strong the genetic input is was not established in the study due to the environments being similar. Environment has an input, these studies could not pick up the degree of environmental input. Yet the data does suggest that their tests are not highly sensitive to environmental input because slightly different environments did not show a large effect. Imagine testing the impact of temperature on iPhone performance. You test one iPhone at 72 degrees and another iPhone at 80 degrees. The phones perform about the same. We can state that minor differences in temperature did not have an effect, yet we cannot say that temperature does not have an effect. We would need to test a wider range of temperatures - for example temperatures ranging from 0 degrees to 110 degrees. The researchers in the article did not do this and it weakens the research. The reason they didn’t do it is because they are not allowed to intentionally place adopted kids into harsh environments. For determining ratios of genetic vs environmental input, twin studies are relatively weak and outdated. It’s like using a microscope from the 1950s. We have much more powerful technology today such as genome-wide association screens. I would recommend doing a search for “intelligence gwas”. I’m sure there have been dozens of studies conducted.

I’m heading to sleep now and can’t unsee that image. . .

@cetus56 I’ve woken up and been unable to “catch” the dream. I hadn’t considered that one reason is it doesn’t relate to waking reality. Almost like dream tripping. I’m going to keep that in mind in the future as I try to catch dreams.

@cetus56 Last week my first reality check (blowing through the nose) worked and I became dream conscious. The dream involved military invading the town I lived in. I was like “If this is a dream, I can play along and then go all super hero , kick their asses and save the town.” But the stakes seemed so high. What if I’m wrong and it’s not a dream? It wouldn’t work out well. I didn’t take the chance . . . I woke up and was like “really?? My first lucid dream is about confronting a hostile militia on my own and unarmed? What kind of twisted joke is that?”. How about something with a super model and a beach on Belize?

@Uncover The love and kindness of buying your gf a chocolate bar is a wonderful trait. Forgetting to actually give it to her is secondary. And there are two ways of looking at it. . . Perhaps you forgot to give it to her because you were present with her in the moment, sharing time together. On the other hand, forgetfulness can cause practical problems - stuff like forgetting her birthday or forgetting to feed the dog is more problematic. You could use a notepad. One thing I do is occasionally pause through the day and ask “Am I forgetting something?”. Sometimes, this jogs my memory.