All of Elessar2's Comments + Replies

I guess I've crossed one of those plateau Rubicons several years ago and have managed to stay above it since-I too have done 1-2 hour workouts where I feel like I can just keep on doing indefinitely, tho I am well aware of the existence of The Wall (never hit it myself). 

The high itself (concur with description by Shoshannah upthread) can last for many hours, tho it does slowly fade as the day goes on but never completely goes away until the next session. Note I use an elliptical, do very vigorous intervals once every 2-4 minutes depending on my mood.... (read more)

If I am reading this entry correctly, I may beg to differ with it. It would be a sign of higher intelligence if someone IS able to be a generalist and collate and interpolate data and meaning across a wide variety of topics, but who also is able to wave the white flag of humility and admit when they are in over their head. If by contrast they are unable to do so, and just tend to forge ahead on the SS Dunning-Kruger to the Land of the Grand Fallacies of Ignorance, then yes I think I am justified to look down on their overall intellectual abilities. That th... (read more)

I'd go farther than zhukeepa goes, and declare that activating "unrealized afters" (higher perspectives and modes beyond mere conventional ways of existing) is potentially MUCH more transformative and powerful than releasing any childhood issues of the sort he describes.  As in, ok got all the crap cleaned out of me-now what? There's a limit to what that kind of therapy can do, IOW, as compared to the potentially limitless realms beyond the ego.  In those cases, it is society itself which tries to keep them unrealized, not the ego so much. Since the perennial philosophy goes into quite of bit of detail about that, I'll leave it there for his next entry on said subject.

Interesting to see this entry this week, as it dovetails very closely with a lot of conclusions I've come up with myself of late.

You use the term "Stockholm", as in identifying with your oppressors, be they individuals or organizations, if not the entirety of human society. Me, I've used the term "institutionalized", from the film Shawshank Redemption:

• Red: These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.

• Heywood: Sh*t. I could never get like that.

• Ernie: O... (read more)

Is this site just riddled with spammers anymore? Or is the way the site works just arcane or something?

I keep seeing ancient posts (usually by Eliezer himself from 2007-08) popping up on the front page.  But I'll scroll through the comments looking for the new one(s) which must have bumped it onto today's list, but they're nowhere to be found. Thus someone is bumping the things (if that is indeed how the site works), but if it was a spammer who got deleted before I saw the thread in question, I wouldn't see said spam post.

The above just goes to show just how abnormal true 100% contentedness is seen by this society, esp. for someone to even think that such a state would be "boring and empty", or that the individual(s) in question are somehow repressing their pain and/or dualities.

Please state the nature of the financial emergency.

Carl Jung is a perfect exemplar of all of that, because when he had his extended episode of such after his break with Freud, he indeed had a period where his ego was completely toast and nonfunctional, as he tells it.

BTW when I was 16, and my family and I had landed in Germany, I was suffering from a very bad case of jet lag, and in said state of utter exhaustion dreamt of Jung's Man Eater:

https://jungcurrents.com/carl-jungs-first-dream-the-man-eater

Every basic detail was the same: the underground cavern, the sense that the thing was alive and very dangero... (read more)

I am retired more or less, but aside from a bunch of financial loose ends that my late mother bequeated myself and my sister, no racing rats here.  [Sunsets maybe, in my car]  I have connected successfully with fellow wildlife volunteers and plan to start doing that again later in the spring (the key for me was birds and nature--a close encounter with a peregrine falcon got my all turned around, had 3 more subsequently, one where I could have reached out and touched it as it flew past me on a highrise balcony).

I like the "theft" angle, because in my case I know that is exactly what it was, when I was severely depressed.  "Oh pity poor little old woe is me!"

Me, I've found that I connect much more readily with animals than I do with humans.  I went into a local shop the other day, and one of the owner's dogs approached me, so I let her sniff my hand.  A few minutes later I was petting her head.  He was utterly beside himself, said she was a rescue from an abusive owner, and NOBODY other than himself could touch her like that.

I simply aim to move into my center, and let the flow reverse outwards into the world, vs. trying to grasp at things and draw them in.  I've also found that my energies... (read more)

As I read this, I actually put myself into his shoes, as another quirky gifted kid...but MY very first impulse upon reading about the fish was that my younger self would have insisted on putting him into an aquarium, keeping him there all summer (along with whatever other critters we can find: frogs, crayfish, snails, salamanders), releasing them on the final day.  Vote on names for him and his friends too.  Even back then I had zero interest in any Quien Es Mas Macho status games, but bring an animal into the mix and I am there front and center.

Same planet, different universes...

Unfortunately, in a substantial segment of society if one were to apologize and admit the actual truth, his or her status in that segment would go way down, likely to zero, esp. if it goes against the prevailing mores of the group in question who would rather keep on believing the Big Lie vs. admit that it and they have been wrong.

Usually when I see such an apology, it isn't directed at the in-group in question at all, but instead at the out-group who has been at odds with the in-group and is more receptive in principle to the said information.  In th... (read more)

He spells his first name "Jeffery", that's likely why.  The Finders is the book title.

I've read that book, and a fair amount dovetails well with my current existence, but quite a bit of it doesn't.  Strange that I cannot find a community of fellow Finders anywhere on da interwebz happily discussing how their lives are with each other and comparing notes and etc.-most Googling of the (correct) name and book title simply brings up a bunch of people going off about the author's course.

Anyway, I get frustrated with a lot of Buddhist thought & dis... (read more)

American baseball went thru something like this in 1908, the Merkle Game. Fred Merkle of the Giants was on 1st when a teammate singled to apparently win the game-but Merkle never touched second. Cubs got the ball out of the madding crowd and touched 2nd for the force, nullifying the run.

Merkle was roundly reviled for his boner, but just like in the cricket game the common practice at the time was to not run to second. But this time the defense broke the unwritten rule in question and the umpire likewise enforced it.

As an idealist I appreciate the senti... (read more)