Carl-Richard

There are many things that affect how you feel and that vary from day to day which can skew your perception of these things (e.g. what and how much you've eaten, how much sun exposure you've gotten, how much you've been moving, general mood). Many of these things even literally affect your zinc levels. This is analogous to "set and setting" with psychedelics, which as you know can produce strong dose-independent effects. And when it comes to more subtle things like supplements, especially low doses, the likelihood of misattributing some effect is probably very high. Try this: get someone to randomly give you either a placebo pill or a real zinc pill every day, and write down how it makes you feel (e.g. on a scale from 1 to 7). Let them write down what they gave you and each time they give you a random dosage within a selected range (say 0.1-50 mg). Then after 14 days or so, compare your feelings with the dose and see if there is a statistically significant correlation. Even better: try to guess the exact dosage you were given. Also, preferably introduce some blinding measures. For example, let them place the pill on a table so that you can take it without them being present (so there is a lesser chance of being influenced by their expressions, etc.), and of course avoid talking about the experiment with the person during the experiment (unless you somehow manage to introduce double-blinding, which is probably hard in an everyday context).

You're maxing out your feels. You don't know what your actual Zinc levels are.

It's like you're entering a black hole and time stands still, but somehow things are still moving and changing around you. You will be walking across your room, but you're not walking across it — the room is walking you across it.

You have to really mean it if you actually want liberation/enlightenment. That is why enlightenment is no joke. The price for enlightenment is your life. What — you expect to still have an ego while living in an egoless state? You expect to be able to do things, to have goals and desires, to feel accomplishment and pride, to feel like you're just a normal everyday person? Your only job while being enlightened is to channel God's will. There is no more you in that picture. Again, from the outside, you might look just like any other person; with goals and desires, with meaning and purpose; but from the inside, you're God's puppet.

How are you so convinced that 1 mg is sufficient?

It's probably based on feels. I take 25 mg zinc capsule every day and I feel fine.

Play dumb: a prototype of Spiral Wizardry.

Every time you meditate, accept that there is no tomorrow; essentially give up your entire life. Are you're worried about what you're going to do tomorrow, or next week, or in a few years? Let it go. Whatever is going to happen, is ok. Everything that has ever happened, is ok. As long as you're ok with everything as you're sitting in meditation, and if you meditate enough, that will start to become your default state. What this looks like in practice: any thought that might arise in meditation that concerns your life, let it go, no matter how important it is. How do you let it go? Tell yourself "I'm ok without this"; "If that happens, I'm ok"; "I don't need this". Now, this is of course not to say that your life doesn't matter. It does matter. But it can matter without it mattering to you.

I see. I might add that not all beliefs work exactly like this. It's just that some beliefs are really sneaky, and they tend to occur in situations that involve subtlety, uncertainty, social interactions, social reinforcement. Hence why I was compelled to recommend caution around beliefs like demonic possession.

That's true. But if you do happen to find yourself in a situation where you have adopted a poor explanation, that would be a question to ask yourself. Because that's the thing: I didn't feel like I consciously adopted the "negative energy" beliefs. I picked it up sub-consciously from hanging around people who believed it, even when I consciously told myself that it was irrational. That taught me a really valuable lesson: you don't choose your beliefs. And they often sneak through the back door, even beliefs you consciously know to be irrational or highly unlikely. Because "you never know", "it might be true", "better safe than sorry". That's how paranoia works.

Now, I'm not fundamentally opposed to paranormal explanations, but I could see many "physical" explanations there. Lights are known to do that sometimes. The light in my mom's basement sometimes turns off and on again at long intervals (maybe once every 10 minutes, lasting for maybe 30 seconds). There are no other signs of electric shortage, because it has happened while I was playing electric guitar. I was alone in the room. How do you explain that?

I'm not closed to that possibility, but I don't know what a demonic possession looks like, so it's not something I will think about much. Again, that's true. I'm probably the last person who will deny the reality of things outside of your personal mind; don't worry. So it's just indescribable? Then I guess you would need to be even more careful if you're prone to paranoia, but hey, I won't be your psychological nanny.

But a bacteria is not generally thought of as a malevolent actor (an autonomous entity willing to hurt you). One of the strongest predictors of life-long PTSD is being harmed by a malevolent actor (specifically combat, physical assault, sexual assault, childhood abuse/neglect; Noris et al., 2013). Other things like natural disasters or life-threatening accidents don't tend to produce the same severity of PTSD. So the moment you're invoking the concept of a malevolent actor, especially when there is a lot of uncertainty involved (which adds a paranoia element), you're in risky territory if you care about your mental health. Then why not just say "he was high and out of his mind"? What does "demonic entity" explain which "high and out of his mind" does not explain? I can understand using demonic entity or possession as a metaphor, but to treat it as its own distinct phenomena is a different thing. For example, I think demonic possession is a great metaphor for certain aspects of addiction: "you're possessed by a spirit that wants to control your mind, that is smarter than you and gives you clever justifications for obeying their commands, that makes you compromise on your morality, that knows your deepest weaknesses and insecurities and uses them to manipulate you, that knows your conscious and sub-conscious mind better than yourself,", etc. But then I'm acknowledging that I'm using it as a metaphor and that I'm indeed just talking about addiction. So if you're treating demonic possession as its own distinct phenomena, what is a key distinguishing feature of demonic possession? If you're simply treating it as a metaphor, then that's fine, but again, that's a different thing.

True. But still, "bacterias" is one type explanation, and "demonic entity" is another.

I used to believe normal people carry harmful negative energies that hurt you spiritually. It would even infect objects they touch. And I could feel these things quite strongly. It's mostly gone now, but it took at least a year of conscious effort for it to change. Now, that belief might have reflected some legitimate experience. For example, people can impact how you feel, and they might carry dirt or pathogens that could spread to an object. However, be wary if the belief is strongly persecutory or has some spiritual significance behind it, and especially if it's informed by psychedelics. Your mind can easily spin things out of proportions. These are a few questions worth asking: is the belief hurting more than it's helping? Is it based on a lot of uncertainty, and is there an alternative explanation which is more certain and which can explain the same things?

Staying blissed out among people is a tougher challenge Besides, you don't want to be this guy:

"IShowSpeed flees from mob of fans in chaotic Amsterdam stream" (Dexerto Article). This is a fascinating dive into the younger generation (and just the younger mentality in general) and a perfect example of Stage Red. Everything about it; the guy himself (IShowSpeed), the entire concept (walking around doing whatever psychopathic stuff), the age group of the fans (young teens), the obsessive "can I have a picture, Speed?", the mass hysteria; all of it is Red and "dead" to the core (pardon the zombie pun... it's not really a pun — they're literally infected by a mind virus). This could've actually turned really bad. They were lucky nobody got seriously hurt.

I'm just wondering why you would call it a demonic entity and not just e.g. psychopathic energy.

Why would you need to confirm a psychedelic experience (and what does it even mean to do so)? But ok, so you can't ever confirm it's a demon. Here is a softer question: what would be a reason to think demons exist and that it's not just say psychopathic energy?

So demon = psychopath/criminal?

@jacknine119 If you have trouble seeing when people respond to your topics, go to notification settings and check the boxes "Automatically follow new content I post" and "Automatically follow content I reply to" and "A notification when new content is posted".

My guy literally has 30 topics and only 7 normal posts 😂

The university is the prey. Capitalism and rivalrous games is the predator 😆

https://bigfive-test.com/ This test straight up tells you your level of introversion/extroversion.

University academics. Prey: graduate students.