Carl-Richard

Lust in itself isn't really a problem. Getting stuck on it like it's the only solution to your life is more like a problem.

What does that look like to you?

He got stuck in one of the dimensions 😁

It ignites and opens up your experience of the world. It pushes you and guides you. It emboldens you and enlightens you. There are some theoretical definitions of meaning. Here is one with four components: Purpose is about goal-oriented behavior; setting goals, making plans, finding a purpose to strive towards. It gives you a sense of direction, progression and growth. You can strive to become something better, something more valuable. That is why having a life purpose is a great source of meaning. Significance is when something is intrinsically valuable. Flow states, pleasurable experiences, virtues and ideals: things that you do for their own sake, things that valuable in and of themselves; be it eating ice cream, playing football or reading fiction, be it seeking wisdom or spiritual enlightenment. Coherence is when something makes sense; when there is an orderliness to things and things are understandable. Logic and rationality are big sources of coherence; theoretical frameworks, heuristics, maps (Spiral Dynamics is an example); stories, narratives, language itself. Coherence is a big reason why reading fiction (or reading any thing at all, even dry scientific articles) can be experienced as meaningful. Mattering is when you do something of value to others, when it matters to something outside yourself. You want to make society a better place, you want other people to wake up, you want people to suffer less, to become more aware, less ignorant, more wise. Being a part of a community, a family or an organization is therefore a big source of meaning which is also routinely neglected in Western society.

I remember seeing this my first times on LSD (100-150 mcg range) and I've always been mystified about why it happens: I've also gotten it from MDMA, especially on the comedown (the metabolite MDA has substantial 5HT2A activity), and also very slightly from weed (CB1 circuits with 5HT2A activity). Even nowadays while fully sober, I can get mesmerized by looking at simple textures on the ground or any grainy surface, although I don't see the overtly symmetrical textures. Curiously, this amplified quite a lot after I reduced my fluoride exposure (flouride is known to cause eye problems and dampens brain activity in general).

If you come across a problem in your life where you currently see no optimal outcome, you will probably think a lot of negative thoughts, but you'll also become very creative in trying to find that optimal outcome. However, there eventually comes a point where the negative thinking becomes too much of a burden and hinders your ability to find an optimal outcome, and then you need to come to terms with what is, and that requires accepting the situation and moving forward. Accepting the situation might involve reframing what is an optimal outcome and seeing the positive sides in a situation, i.e. positive thinking. It might also require a radical leap in how you fundamentally approach your own values, or even a leap in the very way you think, hopefully towards a place of more complexity and nuance (an evolution) and not a place of more simplicity and black-and-white thinking (a de-evolution).

You're missing out because you're spending 1 hr at the gym a couple of times a week and 0.5-1 hr to cook every day? Man, you must be a busy person. I can admit I started working out because of looks (and because my mom wanted me to be healthy lol). But what kept me working out is that it feels too good not to. It's like a drug without any side effects (roughly speaking), and it makes you more functional in virtually all domains (bodily, cognitively, energy levels, etc.). But it's not like I stopped caring about looks either. The times I have gotten an injury where I had to slow down my training, I felt dysphoria, like I was not in the right body. But when I'm in peak shape, I feel pretty fine about my body. People with body dysmorphia basically never feel fine about their bodies, and that can definitely be a problem.

First LSD trip. I had planned so many things to do which I thought would be fun to experience on the substance, but when I did them, I was left with a huge feeling of emptiness inside me. That taught me about the truth of suffering (Dukkha), which in hindsight was better than anything I could ever want.

You're talking about intelligibility.

Of course.

It does affect your consciousness in a subtle way, but so does many other things, and it's hard to control for these things just based on your feels.

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.