Carl-Richard

It's more an explanation than a prescription.

People who are prone to certain illnesses tend to get the illness through some kind of stressful influence (a.k.a. the diathesis-stress model of illness), e.g. traumatic events, poor socioeconomic situation, drugs, environmental toxins, etc. Doing things that are generally healthy will build resilience to that stress and decrease the likelihood of the illness developing or worsening.

So many people come to spirituality looking for an easy way out, wanting to be "saved". Counterintuitively, it's about facing the truly hard work, taking full responsibility for what is and not looking away from it. And through that work, that is where you'll lose yourself.

I recently tried to list my top 3 favorite bands. They have to be bands I've listened to all of their songs at least once, listened to regularly over the years, and of course they have to readily pop into my mind when I think about the question. For now, it's Opeth, Cynic and Tool. If I had to pick one album from one of them to bring to a deserted island, it would probably be "Kindly Bent to Free Us" by Cynic (which is actually what my profile picture is based on now that I think about it, the album cover). I don't know if my musical experience is just extremely limited or something, but I've always found Cynic to be completely unique, especially their later albums. I can't really place it anywhere or pin it down to any specific set of influences. It's just there, as it self, speaking to me at a very deep level.

Be an example of what you want her to be, and over time, she might directly ask you what's up.

Or just practice playing the game and you'll get used to dying that way.

And I'm saying it would be foolish to think you're not fully at the mercy of the ocean and that when you're thrown into a storm that rearranges the very structure of your ship, you should think twice about your navigating ability having anything to do with it.

I completely agree, which is why I write "bad energies" in quotation marks. Whatever people call bad energies is just feeling uncomfortable with an additional layer of neuroticism about spiritual teleology ("this is bad for you spiritually!"). It's a largely counterproductive framing for the reasons you mentioned. But I still won't willfully make myself feel uncomfortable in this way merely as some masochistic exercise. I also avoid real-life videos of people getting beat up or severely hurt or scared for the same reason.

Don't worry. It's only a handheld fan gently blowing air towards them ?

Do you connect to it, does it feel meaningful, does it make sense, does it enrich your experience? If so, then you understand it. Deep understanding is when you understand something in a larger context or in relationship to more things. For example, you might understand how somebody is feeling by picking up on their emotional expressions, but you'll understand it on an even deeper level if you've experienced what they're going through yourself. Another example can be in the realm of conceptual understanding, where deeper understanding is about being aware of the conceptual richness that surrounds a given subject, for example spirituality (). Is spirituality just one thing or many possible things? Does it have different facets and manifestations? Does it overlap with different concepts? Is it dependent on things like culture or personal dispositions? Generally, how does spirituality relate to other things? Then you also have things like art, literature and music, where it's about understanding the different layers of a composition, or the different levels of meaning or interpretation of a story. Or sports, where it's about understanding the different components that go into making the best athlete, how they have to perfect their every move on and off the field, during the execution itself and during the preparation. The list goes on.

I'll show them something stiff.

If you're worried about "bad energies", these are the types of videos you want to avoid.

I think I remember watching their videos like 10 years ago. And then you have Woox

The meaning crisis, the death of God, the spiritual void, consumerism, hedonism, the list goes on...

I could've done that, but when you concede to somebody's language game and work from the inside, you get closer to them, and things seem more familiar and easier to understand.

When you've already gotten to where you are, it's easy to downplay it, but I'm also talking about how you got to this point. It was due to a huge composite of influences pointing you in this direction; so-called "beliefs", promises, useful tools and frameworks, which lead to a ton of new insights that shattered previous notions, values and identities.

Ron Jarzombek was a technical metal innovator in his earlier years, and more recently, he has taken some novel approaches to songwriting similar to Meshuggah by starting from specific limitations. In this album, his melodies follow a type of serialism seen in modern classical composers, which gives off this mentally unstable vibe, as the goal is to have no single note that can be identified as the root note. He also wrote the songs as scores for different scenes from horror movies, so seeing those scenes together with the music, coupled with the unsettling tonal nature and the extreme metal soundscape, truly makes this an especially deranged piece of metal music.

Yet here you are, talking about it, learning about it, sharing perspectives about it. Have you never watched a video about non-duality? Did you make that video?

Well, we haven't finished the deconstruction yet. Like I've proposed before, mysticism (a.k.a. experiencing God or non-duality directly) is only one possible facet of spirituality. It was just easier for the sake of communication to keep that in the forefront, as that is what most of the "spiritual" people here care about. We have to peel back the layers in steps

Because this idea of carving your own path and all of it being about the individual doesn't just apply to your conception of spirituality. It applies to your conception of self-development, of fair government, of ethics, etc. Is that truly what spirituality is at its essence, universally across all cultures? I doubt that. You can just as readily if not more realize the truth of non-duality in a well-established community while following a certain tradition of rituals and practices. In fact, that is partially why you're here. Everybody wants to talk about deconstructing science but not deconstructing spirituality and religion ?

Is it just a coincidence that this perfectly lines up with your more general worldview given to you by your culture?

So again, postmodern and individualist: "I was just following my curiosity, choosing what to listen to"; values that you were born into. It's of course a bit different from a traditional religious person who is more loyal to a certain tradition, but there is nevertheless an element of faith present when you dedicate your time and effort to a proposed outcome which you haven't yet experienced for yourself and which you've only heard from other people.

Give me the pros and cons of JK from your current perspective.

I'll propose to you that you were told by someone that non-duality is true, told to meditate, and you did. You took all of that on faith. So yes, postmodern and individualist values; values that you were born into.