Carl-Richard

The last half of this perfomance is one of the best live rock perfomances I've ever seen. The writer of the song jokingly called it their first "pop rock" song, and it's unironically such a good song, and they really nailed it here: 2:22

I had an idea for a book last year when I started having insights about the relationships between health, fulfillment, happiness, meaning and being, but then I discovered that these ideas have been known for millennia (e.g. "eudaimonia"). I did end up touching on some of it in a very limited fashion in my bachelor thesis though ("what is the relationship between mindfulness, physical activity and intrinsic motivation?"), which was of course a rather dry quantitative research approach rather than an authentically inspired literary approach, but it was interesting nonetheless, and I learned that there are growing areas of scientific research exploring these questions as well. I hope to explore some of these topics in the future, whether it will be adding to existing scientific research or writing a book.

I remember I had trouble pronouncing some select words when I was like 3-4 years old, and I thought I had a speech impediment, but then I noticed I was in fact overly "enunciate" (if that is a word) in my early teen years compared to my peers, but then I became sloppy again when I became a stoner in my late teens, and then I became somewhat better in my early twenties during my spiritual awakenings, and now it's bad again

Giving apes language...

30 000 - 50 000 years ago, we ate from the tree of knowledge and became self-aware (self-aware as in "I'm aware that I'm this but, not that; a form of duality). Language is likewise just a tool for saying "this is this, but not that"; which again is a form of duality. So self-awareness and language work in tandem to make you believe that there is something that is "not this", i.e. the very definition of delusion ?

Giving apes language was the greatest sin made by God

You work with what you got. It could always be worse. 1000 years ago, you had to suck up to some feudal lord while working as a serf.

I used to think I wanted enlightenment and that it would be cool and awesome, but in reality, from the perspective of the ego that thinks it wants enlightenment, it's terrifying and insane. The price for transcending your mind is nothing short of losing your mind. The price for transcending your life is nothing short of losing your life. My current "spiritual lifestyle" is trying to get to that point of being able to accept all that, to where the ego sees no alternative. The result will be the end of suffering, and merely existing in a selfless, timeless, doingless, knowingless state. Every time I've approached that state, it feels like I'm approaching a black hole. I have no idea what is truly on the other side, but from what I can feel when it's tugging on my body, and from feeling like time and space is collapsing, and from what I can imagine when I stare down the endless dark abyss, it's absolutely divine.

I'm accepting more and more that people will use whatever pointers they want, and even though some pointers absolutely suck and are constantly misunderstood in my opinion, most pointers kinda do suck and are constantly misunderstood. That is the case no matter how enlightened the messenger is, and in a space like this where all kinds of people can inhabit the role as a teacher, these things are inevitable. I don't often give this advice (because it's obvious), but if you want the truth, go discover it for yourself. In spirituality, forums like these are best used as practical advice and social support as a means to that end. If you like listening to people talk about awakening, actually listen to somebody speak in audio and preferably video format, even better face to face. The words are only a fraction of the communication.

Good stuff.

Nothing worse than a wino man

Huh?! Its clearly a crossover between a brain, a DMT entity, and a tree

But that seed exists for all of us. It's not special

What is that tree?

The sentence after it:

Frank Zappa.

In what way?

@UnbornTao I'm talking about the psychological meat and potatoes of addiction. You're talking about spiritual self-transcendence. I'm talking about a ground-up healing of the issue. You're talking about an orthogonal movement away from the issue. I'm talking about having a healthy psychology. You're talking about becoming trans-psychological. The reality is that you'll have a hard time only focusing on one of those frames, because both of them are leaky buckets.

Are DMT realms relative or absolute hallucinations?

Nah.

She didn't give me enough candy or video games, so I became a drug addict. What about you?

O_o

That's just my personal bias towards you Haha jk. My main advice or wish for how these types of disagreements can be alleviated is to not treat non-duality or awakening as something special, or as "the Truth and the only Truth", or as a reason to treat somebody as beneath you, or to criticize their character. Awakening is just one facet of life, and people have disagreements about what awakening even is. It's best to keep the format or style of the conversation as normal and empathetic as possible, just as if you were talking about the weather, or your favorite animal, or other less spiritual facets of personal development.

If you want to survive as an organism, pleasure and pain cannot be ignored. They can be approached in more or less conscious ways, but they're essential for survival. It seems like you're calling it a presumed lack because you can just choose to die. That is not a very relevant proposition (in my "living" opinion). I would say addictions tend to develop when there is something "wrong" (e.g. a lack in fundamental human needs or unresolved emotional issues or trauma), and it breeds on the compulsive and unconscious mechanisms fundamental to the human condition (the same mechanisms that force you to breathe, or drink water, or scratch your arm; "lower" forms of survival). And that is why they're so hard to unwind: they're so deeply ingrained into you. You have to essentially do a full system reboot to get a significant chance of change, which is why spiritual experiences or other extreme conditions like rock-bottom experiences are some of the very few reliable predictors of recovery.

I'm thirsty. Do I lack water or is that a presumed lack?