Have you had the experience of seeing through the illusion of your own identity?

I agree people do that too much, but I don't think the other guy is necessarily doing that. Ironically I think we're both coming from the right place: the other dude is worried I'm being a judgmental asshole to OP, and I'm worried that OP is going to go down a road I've seen too many friends go down. And that I almost went down myself.

If I'm totally off base, then no harm done, OP can just go "this guy's wrong" and ignore me. But I wanted to get the warning out there.

I wrote some book recommendations out for OP that would have been just as much a projection, in a way, because it would have been a grab-bag of things that only might have interested him. But I realised that a lot of these recommendations are a pretty good justification for deepening dissociative disorder or triggering a nascent disorder (when, I think, that is NOT at all how they should be used).

People seriously into this kind of impersonalist mysticism are 40% cult-prone, 40% dissociative proto-schizos, 20% misfits. And the other 80% isn't just stupid girls on Facebook or anything, it's some of the most brilliant ones. I'm just jaded on recommending YEAH GO READ HUXLEY WOOOOO to people lately.

your view of other people is informed by your theory of mind, which you develop by understanding your own mind; therefore extrapolation is by definition projection. this is the only mode by which empathy operates

>percentages don't add up to 100
what did he mean by this

ty for sharing user.
I'm reading that comic right now. it's pretty awesome. i'll never look at star trek the same.

I understand you think you're being "helpful" but you seem to have an immature propensity for categorizing people you've never met to fit with the childish categories you've created to describe the people you have.

Plus you haven't even answered the main question in the thread (and for you the answer appears to be a resounding "no"), so this is truly a 10/10 shitpost.

I can't tell if you are sincere or not. When I get psychotic I do tend to search more intensily into certain stuff. But I'm not at all interested int o mysticism, I think it is a load of shit. I feel the same about continental philosophy after trying a bunch (this might get some of the usual responses). I however still do read a lot of (pop)-scientific stuff, even more as I used to. And I hate drugs by the way, I have spend some time with addicts.

I think you got causality wrong. Reading oriental thought and mysticism doesn't cause psychosis, rather once a psychosis happens people tend to look into it. Many schizos have religious experiences.
I declared myself God before Kanye West did.
>interesting. Can you explain how you see free will?
It is boring really. I just follow what've read from neuroscientist Dick Swaab (plus some other books) and use my experience as an argument in favor of there's. They think free will is an illusion. I think it might be too early to tell. On a related note I am very convinced that rationalization is an illusion. That's why I don't buy into most of what people say on here, or in general.

Since there are many genes associated with schizophrenia it seems like the environment plays a big role. Instead of talking of cruel world I would take a reductionist approach and call it stress. I think an overlooked cause of schizophrenia might be dietary, and there's some research hinting this but it is nowhere near consensus and still in its infancy.

If you talk with people you can learn their motives, thoughts, beliefs, etc. Which informs your views and hones your empathy.

What is there to understand about Identity? Youre an algorithm running on a meatbag able to navigate 3dimensions, clumsily sidestepping multidimensional hazards.

alright philosophy's over time to go home everyone

>Plus you haven't even answered the main question in the thread (and for you the answer appears to be a resounding "no"), so this is truly a 10/10 shitpost.

The answer is partly that I learned Latin, Greek, German, and (partly) Sanskrit in order to be able to answer this question myself, and have a bibliography of like 200 books I could recommend to the OP, not counting primary sources.

The answer is also partly that I have to pause my conversations in new age bookstores with non-crazy undercover Jungians when guys like you walk in, and want to talk about Youtube videos of Alan Watts for the 50th time, before asking for money for the 500th time because you tried peyote and it wasn't really peyote again. Because three years earlier when you had a vague interest in philosophy you asked 420chan how to go about it and they told you to read Shakara's Wikipedia page and then go blow a shaman in the Andes.

>Reading oriental thought and mysticism doesn't cause psychosis, rather once a psychosis happens people tend to look into it.

That's exactly my fear.

But yeah, the depersonalisation effect is actually an illusion, or is only a necessary (but not sufficient) first step on the reclaiming of the higher transcendental Self that grounds your psychological ego.

too true

>rationalization is an illusion
i suspect that people underestimate the role of mere habituation and familiarity in making them feel a statement or idea is true

i agree. but most (100-.1^10)% of us seem to act as though there is some extra layer of meaning on top of the machine you just described

>I think you got causality wrong. Reading oriental thought and mysticism doesn't cause psychosis, rather once a psychosis happens people tend to look into it. Many schizos have religious experiences.
You can both be right. Personally I recognized some features of my single psychotic episode in psychedelic art which got me interested in DMT for a while (never took it though thankfully). Recognizing your own experiences in some established belief system can be very mutually reinforcing to both your mental disorder and your occult interest.

I think this relates to this question a bit;
>But I also wonder whether people growing up in a less cruel world (for the sake of argument - it may never actually exist) would be allowed to express themselves more openly without fear of reprisal.
since if you can funnel your mental disorder (or whatever you want to call it) into some generally accepted religion, it might help you deal with it, and also will give you an acceptable place in society.

dude drugs lmao

>>The answer is partly that I learned Latin, Greek, German, and (partly) Sanskrit in order to be able to answer this question myself, and have a bibliography of like 200 books I could recommend to the OP, not counting primary sources.
>
>The answer is also partly that I have to pause my conversations in new age bookstores with non-crazy undercover Jungians when guys like you walk in, and want to talk about Youtube videos of Alan Watts for the 50th time, before asking for money for the 500th time because you tried peyote and it wasn't really peyote again. Because three years earlier when you had a vague interest in philosophy you asked 420chan how to go about it and they told you to read Shakara's Wikipedia page and then go blow a shaman in the Andes.
this is some good b8

>since if you can funnel your mental disorder (or whatever you want to call it) into some generally accepted religion, it might help you deal with it, and also will give you an acceptable place in society.
Yeah there's some hypotheses that schizophrenia is less severe in some cultures because of religion or shamanism. There's also a scientific hypothesis that schizophrenia hasn't been eredicated by natural selection because schizos were the shamanists of the day. But many anthropologists reject it and I have to say I prefer the "genes of schizophrenia but not schizophrenia itself posses some positive utility" explanation. Schizotypy is the less severe cousin of schizophrenia and is associated with creativity. Bernard Crespi has also done plenty of research into genes and schizophrenia (and autism).
I'm typing a bit fast so sorry if I make myself not entirely clear.

I want to take a stab at it but the fear is real lol.

>
OP here: I'm not really interested in book rec's. I'm just a dude who disabused himself of a lot of ideas concerning the apparent nature of reality and the self. And i was interested in what other people's personal experiences with this were.

>a necessary (but not sufficient) first step on the reclaiming of the higher transcendental Self that grounds your psychological ego.
I want to believe that you're not just regurgitating something from one of those 200 books (not including primary sources) you read

>i agree. but most (100-.1^10)% of us seem to act as though there is some extra layer of meaning on top of the machine you just described
I wonder. It's pretty easy to see that "identity" is just the amalgam of your memories and personality. Most people have this instinctive reaction against e.g. brain cloning but I think that's mostly because they just haven't given it any thought and it's the most comfortable position.

What meaning?
Its just systems of complex order trying to beat entropy.
Its impossible afaik but me personally, i do so for the lulz.

>dude hard materialism lmao phenomenology is meaningless just scan brains for answers
let the memes overtake you

I'm not attacking you, I just wanted to be a dick to the guy who was scare-quoting "helping" to try to make him more mad.

>I want to believe that you're not just regurgitating something from one of those 200 books (not including primary sources) you read

The problem is that it will say exactly the opposite. The single biggest issue with all mainstream mysticism, Orientalism, and Oriental philosophy: It's all impersonalist nihilism in the end, and more often than not, this is put into praxis through ascetic practices of self-negation that only succeed in attacking the psychological ego.

My personal experience is just that nihilistic pseudo-Buddhism/Hinduism and denial of the anthropic principle in existence is at best an intermediate step, at worst a mistake or dead end.

:)
srs question: does your biological family know they're nothing more to you than conceptual abstractions that happen to have some pragmatic purpose? if they do, how do they feel about it?

I can agree with the first hypothesis, not so much with the second.
At the end of the day the brain is just complicated as fuck and it's not surprising that some things go wrong at the fringes of the spectrum of mental properties. Evolutionarily you can view shamanism/occultism/religion as a coping strategy for this, which allowed even greater brain development. I think we should view alcohol/tobacco/other drugs in the same way, since humans have been self-medicating for a long time. Hope I'm not yet sounding like a deluded hippie here..
But in the spirit of social darwinism, we also can't dismiss the idea that shamanism etc.. is just some mind virus that keeps itself intact even though it has no benefit to us.

That's not fair, I don't claim to have an answer to the hard problem (of consciousness), I just don't think the answer should be sought in souls or some other magical identity-giving entity.

What do you mean with "impersonalist"?
(I'm not OP)

there is no ego outside the psychological experience of having a spontaneous sense of control and ownership, you absolute pseud. buddhism is predicated on the idea that all forms are delusions. you seem to hold the view that "mainstream orientalism" is different from regular buddhism (which it is), but then go on to describe it as "impersonalist nihilism" which are features of buddhism.

i was that guy. sorry for being a dick desu. i just thought you came across as being preachy and judgemental when it didn't seem warranted.

>ascetic practices of self-negation that only succeed in attacking the psychological ego
i'll admit to not having talked to many people about this, but this is the first time i've seen this idea affirmed by someone else. my own experience has actually been that I needed to take the needs of my own damaged ego seriously in order to heal it, and eventually see through it. i'm not sure what else i can say at this moment.

i'm grateful for your sharing.

You remind me that I still want to read Robert Wright's book on buddhism. I think many might object against scientific interpretations of religion but that's what I like.
It discusses stuff like the illusion of the self and so on and so on.

Why should i be invested into subjective phenomena of others.
I mean i can pretend and act as if i cared, but that would increase entropy.

>Why should i be invested into subjective phenomena of others.
Well, you're on Veeky Forums taking part in ersatz socialization, so clearly your delusion of being self-reliant, coldly rationale, etc is just an act.

I know you're memeing but I really wish people would stop conflating the with morals and feelings. You're like those people who say you can't have moral responsibility if physics is deterministic.

>the
*metaphysics

Anyways I'm off, thanks for the cozy thread everyone.

Well, im not a robot, duh.
Also just abstractions, would you rather have me chime in the all is one canon?
Light candles, burn incense, shitpost unironically?

I don't think it has anything to do with physics at all. You can be completely ignorant of physics and still have no reason to believe in the existence of morality.

Or you could throw morality out the window and apply categorical imperative, be careful tho, you might have to Think and might make mistakes but you're atleast doing what you think is right instead of adapting to the mold of accepted behaviour society presents to you.

The self is not a mere illusion, but something real. It's a collection of experiences that have given birth to cognitive patterns and functions and ultimately, observable behavior. The mind analyzes this collective and deems it an identity and creates a 'self'. That the self is not static, but fluid and subject to change is why everyone passes it off as an illusion.

Alright i'm done spouting things from the top of my head. Someone tear this post apart

what are you retards even talking about?

bruhh I took lyk 4 drugs and now it's like WOWZA I don't identify wit myslf?!!1 :) XD XD ;)

are you not then that which is choosing not to identify with his cartesian ego?

"I choose not to identify with my thoughts, therefore I am" "I am not a self (therefore I am that which is making that non-identificatin with self)"

yu can't escape being a self. all your expeience has bult into it this sens of 'happeneing to me' 'mine' 'being felt by me'. your visual field is notjust free floating in some void, experienced by nothing, no it's YOUR visual field, looked at by your eyes, attached to your body, embedded within the YOUR specific socio-historical context (your own past, your families past, your countries past, the history of the human world , the scientific history of the world, etc)

I doubt I am a self, therefore I am that which doubts

you can't not be a self, well, at least you can't express it coherently to others.

maybe there are sefless experience such as when lost within a good taylor swift song (for example: goregous), or being completely observed into a movie, or completely droppedlost into a deep psytrip. but you can't then reflect on this experience without doing it through the mode of a self. it's some experience that happened in YOUR past

think of the self like an eye, that cannot look at itself, it is always behind that which is identifiying or in this thread not-identifying (which is still identification)

tldr I have taken over 35 drugs you can learn nothing from them you couldn't learn through basic philosophy

>atleast doing what you think is right
well that's a step up, but the notion that right and wrong exist in the first place, and that a "universal law" makes sense, is basically premised on unfounded assumptions. drop those assumptions and nothing is left to believe in.

This guy is right

I would also like to add that if you think you see through your 'self', you are doing that through your 'self'. You see these fucking dumbass new-age spiritualists "giving up their ego" but they are just creating a new complex (giving up their ego with their ego). Just call it self improvement if you have to.

It seems to me that if you really wanna experience the death of your 'self', you'd have to actually die and experience that fall apart, or possibly use a lot of drugs to do that (but after the high, it all comes back, even if it's altered with that new experience)

I'm finished

We dont need to go there, you know how it ends. Right and wrong is quite easy, for me atleast, hardwired are pain and pleasure, optimizing for pleasure seems morally right to me, because if i happen to enjoy pleasure, chances are other conscious beings do so to.
Its all just premises, states and currency are exactly as real as santa and the teenage mutant ninja turtles, and still they shape our Reality.

are you not entertained?

Pretentious dumbasses will always make up for their own inauthenticity by learning how to string words together to impress others. Who cares about them?
Maybe this is more rare of an experience than I previously realized, but I know for a fact that it is possible to experience what you call death of the self and to perceive the world without the filter of self-preservation. Without any drugs whatsover. Old ways eventually crept in, but that's not surprising considering I am not a millionaire who can afford to retire to his own private island

ego death experiences are noncognitivist in nature and can't be describes through propositional statements
the rest you can figure out

I was about to dismiss this as a shitpost but it makes good sense lol

The only time I ever had a psychedelic-type experience from weed was when I was testing out some homemade tincture. I drank a shot of it, fell asleep after 3 hours of not feeling anything, then woke up an hour later high as shit, seeing colors in the dark, convinced I was the victim of a psychic attack carried out against me by a coven of witches. Good times.

Honestly, 90% of this thread is basically shitposting. The original question asked people to share their own experiences of perceiving the illusion of their identity, not "please offer your poorly written half-assed pseudo-philosophical unscientific ramblings on what the "self" is and why everyone else is full of shit.

The question appeared to be legitimate and make sense to some people. If it doesn't make sense to you, there are plenty of other threads on this board which are actively recruiting quality shitposts to sustain themselves.

Did you know that neurology says that you decide 0,5sec before you consciously decide? What do you reply?

tbqh I no longer have any reason to believe that I consciously choose to do anything. I'll admit that the illusion I had free will was a useful one while it lasted, and some things about life are difficult now, but I can never go back to assuming I am a causal agent.

ok i'm the andy sixx guy (LOGGED + CLOGGED)

one time I was in a tent dropped 3 tabs of lsd and an nbomb, storm rolled in my ipod ran out of battery it went dark and I started tripping way too hard just staring at the ceiling, it could to the point where my visuals were indistinguishable between when I opened and closed my eyes and I started not being able to breathe I was choking and sputtering and my heart was pounding it was like if I didn't breathe in the next second I was literally going to die just pure terror each breath was like this so I was breathing quicker and quicker just gasping like a pierfish my life became pure adrenaline just TERRORHORROR PUREHELL started getting really lightheaded and dizzy thought this is it I'm am genuinely about to die and ..... it was like I just became at peace with it, I let out a deep breath, at this point I could see the tent roof again and realized I had hands again and just lay there in this stillness, like a frozen pond on *pause*, I am going to die I am going to die I am going to die I just calmly chanted this then I remembered I brought a 12 pack so I slammed 2 but spewed up the beer foam because I was lying on my back so there I lay, covered in foamspew, about to die, but LSD is like waves and it was like a tsunami BOOM I lose contact with my body and world I enter a strange world upwards, reality is nothing more than the inner sides of a rectangle, and I became that rectnagle, no sense organse no real experience just this pure experiential form of 'inner rectangle reality' which is what "I" existed as, beyond time, man it was so fucked

kind of like how you smoke salvia and become things like a fencepost or a lego brick but it was so real when I re-entered the phenomenal world again it felt fake for a long time

I mean is the kind of response you want in this thread? drug ramblings from tards? go to erowid experience reports

also, I was familiar with that french dude's eeg experiments in the 80s (i think) with the timer and the button. can you pls give some recommendations on newer papers on that topic?

this was proven wrong

Maybe you could outplay the powers that be by avoiding short term decisioning and use your mind to reflect, analyze and formulate long term strategies.
Not believing in free will would render you incapable of acting against your environmental conditioning

sauce?

>Not believing in free will would render you incapable of acting against your environmental conditioning
yes, this is a source of some difficulty

Oops copypasted twice

>What do you mean with "impersonalist"?

Almost all mainstream mystical traditions and Western-appropriated Oriental philosophies are so excited that the "ground" of the conventional psychological self is God or the Over-Soul (or whatever) that they assume that's the end of the inquiry. All they care about is winking at you with one eye while the other eye glimpses how There Is No One Winking.

The discovery of the Chandogya Upanishad, the TVAM TAT ASI, and the Isha Upanishad:
>He who perceives all beings as the Self (Atman), for him how can there be delusion or grief, when he sees this oneness (everywhere)? He who perceives the Self everywhere never shrinks from anything, because through his higher consciousness he feels united with all life. When a man sees God in all beings and all beings in God, and also God dwelling in his own Soul, how can he hate any living thing? Grief and delusion rest upon a belief in diversity, which leads to competition and all forms of selfishness. With the realization of oneness, the sense of diversity vanishes and the cause of misery is removed.

It's mirrored by ultimate reconciliation of all distinctions in Daoism, in the apersonalism of many Western pragmatist, idealist, and transcendentalist philosophies, in Buddhist nirvana, in Sufi fana', in some medieval mysticism. Many of which are influenced by advaita vedanta (non-dualist vedanta) and emanationist neo-Platonism. In seeing the common GROUND of life (i.e., nondualism) they try to dissolve everything back into that ground, and fail to notice the importance (not simply "maya," illusion, of individuation, creativity, and selfhood/freedom/agency) in the Source.

>do you currently feel like you "know" that identity is an illusion, or is it more the case that you can just remember feeling (when you were on THC or thinking about O&G) that way?
Yeah, I can recall the experience at will, and all of life and its important and all the negative emotions i have seem suddenly much more unimportant.

>Have any of these experiences changed how you perceive things on a day-to-day basis?
Yep. I try to remember this stuff at least once a day.

And what do you believe the "Source" to be?

OP,to be precise,I have felt sometimes the identity illusion, but for a very short while that lasts no longer than seconds
I have tried to understand this identity problem through analysing it and i have come up with a way to triggering it, at least something that works for me:
I have an habit of being really formal with the people i don't know all too well,even those I know I tend to keep a certain formality with.
So I look at myself in the mirror(or anything that has a picture of me) and I try to recall any recent action that involves interacting with other persons. Then I try to place myself as someone interacting with myself, naturally I try to use the same usual formality but the moment I feel it,I experience a certain detachment from myself and thus feel the identity illusion naturally.
I know it isn't really as strong as the ones psychedelics give but sometimes I get to feel INTENSE detachment to the point I can really judge my previous actions with absolute fairness and no bias
that's my experience with this topic
it is pretty limited though and sort of edgy so yeah
inb4 edgy

This is too black and white. For example some chicks like to be hate fucked, not that you kv's would have any xp with this. They get off on pain. Their right is your wrong. The fundamental principle of ethics is power. To even posit something as soft as utilitarianism is a diffuse expression of power

what's the secret user?

>the rest you can figure out
what did he mean by this?

Might is only right as long as you have power hegemony.
>le ebin bdsm degenerates
Their form of pleasure is just another flavour of pleasure, codified in absurdist ritual, they dislike being mangled by Sharp teeth the same way other prey herbivores do.

Weed just made me paranoid that everything I said was retarded. Even sober I feel like that's true but I'm not as self-conscious about it. It's impossible to have a thought when I'm high and not have myself criticize myself for having that thought or somehow doubting what I thought wasn't true. It's insufferable.

all i can talk about is my own experience. i can't assume it will be useful to any other, but fuck it. if it's useful even for one person years from now, when they say "oh ya, i remember that dude who sounded like he was on shrooms rambling about this shit", then it's worth it.
i never sought ought to achieve any goal other than understanding the reasons for my thoughts and behaviours, especially those thoughts and behaviours that were negative and caused suffering (and it's usually the negative aspects of our existence that motivate us to dig deeper - if i'd always been happy, i could've just focused my efforts on becoming a pro skier or something).
i never took eastern traditions like buddhism or any school of spirituality seriously, because it seemed like most of their teachings lacked any evidentiary basis, and that they mostly operate on the basis of giving deference to authority. i think this is why some people as i have come to learn end up disappointed - they start their self-inquiry with a whole host of assumptions of where this will lead, and what they need to do, whereas i proceded on my own, completely naive to an entire tradition/industry seeking to "achieve" and "aquire" a state of mind i wasn't even aware existed until i stumbled into it.
when i was younger, i often felt victimized by the world, by other people etc. at some point, i had the revelation that although other people had done me wrong, i have also done other people wrong, and that i cannot excuse my own actions without excusing others'. i cannot judge others without judging myself. while i had always been very sensitive toward perceived slights inflicted on me by other people, i gradually became more aware of how the things i say affect others. I think this brutal honesty with oneself is the most important and difficult thing to do.
i lived my life doing mostly normal things, but over several years i noticed that i was sort of coming into my own. looking back, i think you can say that i was practising a sort of mindfulness in some sense. when i was younger, i experienced feelings automatically and without explanation - e.g. if something bothered me, it *really* bothered me and i would simply be pissed off, and not really question *why* it bothered me. but now i was starting to see patterns in how i felt in different situations, especially social situations when you meet all sorts of people with all sorts of emotional baggage.
CONT because wall of text

CONT
i've always had the tendency to remember random things from the past when someone really offended me, or conversely when i did something to offend someone and now feel embarassed about. but at least i was starting to dwell on these memories less and less, because the more i learned about all the different ways i respond to others, all the different ways i can misinterpret others' words and be misinterpreted myself, the more i was able to understand *why* the people in my memories and myself acted the way we did. and the better you understand something, the less power it has over you.
Also, i think it's important to mention that as I gradually came to understand myself and others better, i also started to realize that a lot of the life plans i had made were not really representative of what i want to do with my life. school and romantic relationships and that sort of thing. and although it was difficult, at some point i made some pretty drastic decisions to abandon ship in more than one sense in order to focus on goals that were more genuinely my own. so i just wanted to mention that i feel taking meaningful action is just as important as developing one's intellectual awareness of things.

long story short:one day i was driving back to town from a particularly cold, miserable poorly planned backcountry trip, and just out of the blue i remembered an old memory of a friend of mine saying or doing something that had really bothered me at the time. this is someone with whom i had some conflicts with in the past, but i can't remember what this specific instance was about. anyway, i began wondering like usual, why would he do that etc. and all of a sudden i realized that this is something i've thought about before, and there's absolutely no point in thinking about it any further. in that moment i realized that he is who he is, and i can kind of understand why he would act that way given what he's like, and that there's nothing more to it. i didn't even need to forgive him - it was like i realized that there's nothing left to forgive.
it's hard to remember and even harder to explain, but basically over the next few days, i began to remember things from my past that used to bother me, and one by one i made peace with them (in a manner of speaking). and the massive change in how i began to perceive and feel about reality is hard to describe, but the way i thought about it at the time was that i had finally managed to resolve the contradictions in my ego and personality by understanding them, and by living a life that is consistent with my thoughts and feelings. Once these contradictions were resolved, my perception of the world was no longer filtered by a broken ego trying to make sense of itself, as there was nothing left to make sense of.
there is quite a bit more to this, but this has already turned into quite the wall of text.

Wew, DEWD

>mfw I've only just really begun to recover from 3 straight years of malpractice-induced acute benzodiazepine withdrawal

It strips you down to your barest frame, and takes away your ability to reference yourself, since none of your thoughts or physical sensations are your own and your idea of self begins to crumble.

Yeah, post-crisis life is a metacognitive nightmare.

Hi guys i'm the most important person on the planet. Please reade my long ass story to realize how valuable i am. First you gotta ask yourself. Am i a winner or am i a loser isn't that the question of the day? Whenever you go into something picture yourself as some black dude from nigeria preparing for a fial at the olympic games. Are you even in preparation even in moving towards what you do already preparing to win? Are you? Because if you don't. You're a loser. And that's essentially how this whole dentity stuff works. Are you winning or are you losing. And if you're winning you have have the identity of a winner and if not you're a loser. And whether there is identity or not is not relevant. You must be aware of this, for even if you don't believe in it, it works, so it exists and you better believe in it.

Long blogpost short one day i was driving back to town from a particularly cold, miserable poorly planned backcountry trip and just out of the blue i remembered and old saying which went like this: Either you're a winner or you're an loser and that really opened my eyes. Holy fuck why had i wasted all of my precious time with this halfassed drivel. Number Ono are you aware of how much satisfaction there is in hard work? Are you aware that it feels better than the brand new Magnum Ice Cream thing or playing some cheapass video game success simulation? Are you aware than nothing in life feels better than winning? Why do men like sex? Because there and only there do they win over females, to which they otherwise lose all the time. Ask my senpai Simone de Beauvoir about it. So was i a winner or was i a loser? That was what relaly mattered. There was some light reflections on the steering wheeel and i tried to clean it up as to be able to focus on this question but it remained and i realized how silly it was to clear light away. I am a winner i whispered but i felt like a loser. And it was because despite of knowing better, despite of wanting it to succeed i had made my trip fail so miserably. I... i was doing it again. I was being enraptured in a game of identities i was set to loose. by being split. By contemplating and obsessing over my failure and to take it as wrong doing i was enacting the role of the loser. I had to stop that. No! I am stopping it i thought and looked straight ahead just thinking nothing. I decided to focus on the most profane things that exist, or better that i see as to involve my whole sensorial body into this work. I looked straight ahead registering and counting. M insides were boiling but nobody can stop a winner. "Nobody can stop a winner" i said and put on a fake smirk to express superiority. Orange rock with dust on it. Street. White stripe on street. Several white stripes on street. Various clouds who have adopted various forms. I feel nothing towards them. They are clouds. I have seen them many times. There is a plane i think. A car driving past me in the colour of red. mine's worth more and i fucked up the godd

Im writing my paper on Advanced shitposting and its potential misuses by irresponsible Users.

identity? i never had an identity... im so jealous of you guys. when i was young i walked down the streets of Rambach thinking then and now a few thoughts about this and that and my face would quiver occasionally. i carried many pains in my heart at that time but it was in those days, i call them the days of long noons and sorrowful minutes, in those days and minutes i was assured of who i was, even if not in very concrete terms i was able to place myself in various struggles pertaining to my existance, i had a sense of right and wrong an image of who i was and who i wanted to be. It was muddy and painful but it was there. Since then countless amounts of time have passe. I saw the sun rise and fall a lot.... i witnessed trees growing twice their size. My beard was hit by recession but the financial markets were fine. The exact moment of change ocurred when i had entered my first job as an accountant of a video game company which focussed on very comlex simulations ofnumerous things. When i joined they were working on an authentic neighbourhood simulation. You could do whatever you want but you were embedded in a very thick and all-encompassing web of relations and the laws, concrete and symbolic, that constituted them. What it meant was that while the game, in the selected space provided to you and the simulation of natural laws found on earth, allowed you to do whatever you wanted. But the existance of yourself as a physical bodies with needs and an actual society around you restricted you in ways which in a strange way seemed to steer most people towards the extreme. These restrictions in their ferocity turned 80% of playtesters into a very twisted kind of murderers, trying to top each other in their creativity and effectiveness of murder sprees without being caught or recognized. The game of destruction and the game of masks was what attracted the people to this game, though not everyone was satisfied with it. Many playtesters were not up for the challenge and beside didn't like to live in fear of physical harm. They suggested to add mini games into the game. So the developers lead by the charismatic swedish feminist Erika Tösenström added Alienware PCs into the video game. You could actually connect to your steam account in the game and utilize your stream library. The game was terrible and development abandoned but still i carry the vision of it in my heart. What happens to us if we are undefined members of a complicated all-encompassing web of restraints and restrictions? Who are we then, how do we define ourselves. It seems impossible to define oneself as just an individual of this web. I am a member of society, i could never say that for this doesn't meet me at all. The web is real and i am forced to interact with it and this interaction is certainly constitute of who i am but it is an identity that i must reject for i must reject the web for i despise it, for i can not sympathize. My answer is: I am the body which i am. My terrible tru

>dude you act 0.5 seconds faster than you realise therefore you don't exist lmao

I used to induce panic attacks so I'd go into massive states or derealization/depersonalization by smoking vast amounts of synthnoids, just for the experience of 'just having come into existence and seeing things for the first time' ("seeing meaning an attitude towards all my conscious experience -including that of a self - not just visual")

Identity is an abstract concept.

I am not good with abstract concepts. I have never fundamentally understood identity or oneself in the first place.

Incidentally, I dissociate when I have focal aware seizures.

Aw, shit, bro.

I've been on the benzos for more than a year now and I keep putting off coming off them for precisely this reason.

babby's first ego death

>I have never fundamentally understood identity or oneself
i'm curious - do you get offended when people disparage things you care about? i'm asking because it seems like people who identify as e.g. american might feel personally slighted if they hear a random person disparaging americans, so how do these situations affect you?

Not really.

I'm not American, and living in American society looks and sounds like a terrible time for any living being, so that's not really a very good example. Apparently, all of the store-bought bread over there is sweet except sourdough. Like, they put more sugar than necessary for the yeast to work in all of it. No wonder there's so much obesity.

Also, no universal healthcare is such a strange stance? After my first annual $500 in prescription medication fees, all further medication is subsidised and thus free, so usually around April or May I go from paying for my anti-epileptics to getting them for nothing. And I can go to the neurologist through the public health system three or four times a year without having to pay thousands of dollars that I don't possess.

This is a fucking LITERATURE BOARD

>empathy is for normies amirite

...

The longer you wait, the more drawn out and painful it will be. Do it now user.

No. I'll have to do the zopiclone at the same time because they're cross-addictive or whatever, and I've been on that for five years.

I just can't face the akasthisia, panic attacks, paranoia, anxiety, agitation, insomnia, and derealisation. I've got things to do. I don't have however many months or years to deal with going completely off the rails as I withdraw.

Red-pilled indeed kek

Yeah. Also, there's only like two rehab clinics in my country and I'm not allowed back at one of them.

lol deliver story user

Rehab clinics are a meme and often make things worse. Get liquid medicine if it's legal in your country so you can and do a gentle bell-curve taper. If not, buy a jewlers scale and cut the pills down by 0.003g/day. Take 100mg of OTC Pyridoxine (vitamin B6, naturally occurring in dark green vegetables like spinach) to help temporarily decrease withdrawal symptoms. If you're in other compounds, get rid of those first before tackling he benzos (cross-interactions can make benzodiazepine withdrawal worse).
Everyone here is whacked out to hell going through this, but some people actually know what they're talking about.

benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?board=145.0

Wether you like it or not, life has other plans for you user. Your denial is the most dangerous thing. Struggle through it or die.

edgy

It's also a private psychiatric hospital. I was in for mental stuff that turned out to be a particular type of hard to diagnose epilepsy without ever having a tonic clonic seizure in my life.

Anyway, I was a Bad Patient and the staff found me very trying. Probably because I was having uncontrolled seizures where I entered an altered state of mind and was significantly disorientated, often lasting up to 15 minutes, often more than once an hour.

> If you're in other compounds, get rid of those first before tackling he benzos
I don't know where to start.

Fuck, seizures definitely make this a lot more dangerous. What other compounds are you on? I may not be a psychiatrist, but if you tell me what you're taking I might be able to point you in the right direction. Also if you're in the United States I could give you the name of someone who specializes in cleaning up these types of messes.

At the moment, only topiramate. But if the seizures ratchet up in intensity again, it'll be back to the old topiramate, carbamazepine, gabapentin, and lacosamide combo. Makes me feel like shit, but, you know.

The zopiclone was added in to the mix because of seizure-induced sleep deprivation.

Also, I'm not in the US.

damn sounds rough dood