Another important paradox is the one between good and evil. The fight between two opposites goes on in all of us and in almost everything in the world. There are two opposites in everything, whether it’s good and evil, yin and yang, life and death. And I do believe and hope that somehow, someway, we’re to understand that, eventually, there has to be harmony, mostly because everything is relative (aka what for one is total evil, for someone else is the greatest good).

The paradox is: The opposite things shouldn’t fight against each other. Neither of them will go away, neither are clear on their own and they’re all relative.

(hope I used “paradox” correctly, lol)

It is known that the biggest mind distraction is sex. I often make rude comments to fellow forumists (obviously on a forum), by the likes of: Yes, you could ponder over that bla bla you’re on about, or and this is a BIG OR, you could just have mind blowing sex. Problem solved. Next !

Now, after reading some more stuff, I realize that sex is not only a huge releaser of particular substances in the body (as endorphins and such, and stop fooling yourself that exercise or chocolate will ever make up for it), but you also do not think during it. That’s what some people like to call “stopping the voice in your head”. 

Life is made out of endless decisions. We constantly have so many thoughts that they become overwhelming. So many questions, so many ideas, so many ways to do things… Times we’re scared, times we’re happy and don’t want to lose it. Times we ponder upon the meaning of life like we’d know anything. LOL Times when we can solve problems (and drown in fame) and times when there’s nothing we can do about problems and we sob.

But if you cleared your mind… If you didn’t have one thought… What bliss that is. What perfect bliss.

They say ignorance is bliss. I think they do have a point.

So should you live your life having mind blowing experiences, over and over and over again, in the “chaotic” style I was speaking of? Everybody yearns for mind distraction, from the janitor to Bill Gates, from the woman with a moustache to Angelina Jolie, from the kid playing with his toys to the grown up releasing through video games (and much more).

So if everything we yearn for is mind distraction… Is that not the ultimate goal? To be as distracted as you can for the rest of your life?

There are numerous ideas pointing to this… Par example… If you get angry with someone and don’t let it out at them immediately, you may learn later that the anger has gone or at least softened.

However if we all were to lose ourselves in mind distraction, who would’ve invented cures for diseases? Who would’ve invented viruses? Who would’ve invented marvellous or terrible things?

Nobody, but…

Apart from having to work for a living (assuming you want to live, although technically nobody’s making you live), what else stops you from drowning in mind distraction and forgetting all about the complexity of this world and most of the “second hand information”?

“I didn’t lose my mind, it was mine to give away…”

Going back to basics… That’s what it is. Well the basics of living and the basics of the same “second hand information”, but basics nevertheless.

What’s so wrong with that, instead of tormenting yourself with questions you’ll never answer and truths you’ll never find (mostly because they’re already there)?

Now my mind’s sayin’: “But, but… What would I be if not for my knowledge, for my questions, for my truths?”

Yeah… What would you be? You? LOL You’d still be you. But a more torment free you.

“But, but… What about excellence, achieving and such?”

Yes, what… Do you come with a label that says “become excellent, achieve and such…”? LOL

“But, what about staying safe and such?”

Well nobody makes ya live… I have stated that before. And ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE, yet again. It’s pretty much the law. As for control and security – Still fiction, as Hellen Keller would put it.

Maybe what the samurai achieve isn’t so different. What chaotic people do through pleasure injection, samurai do through mind detachment. How’s that for an answer? Same goal, different ways.

“So what do you mean? The whole purpose of life is ignoring ourselves?”

I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that. I’m tired with searching for answers. Answers to what?

Men understood that they have to seek for pleasure, ditch pain and avoid death (aka the unknown).

It’s common inflicted law (by one way or the other).

Par example, I don’t want anyone to throw mud at me and call me a shame to society. I don’t want my career thrown to dust. I don’t want anything thrown to dust. I like those things = pleasure. I lose those things = pain. Makes sense?

So that’s pretty much what we do, whether it is our goal or not. Avoid pain, seek pleasure, avoid death (which again is supposed to be painful as it’s a step into the unknown).

Could it also be a vicious circle? Getting pleasure, avoiding pain, losing pleasure, getting pain?

So basically what I am saying is get as much pleasure as possible, face pain and screw death – you can‘t avoid them anyway.

Is that a truth, a goal? I have no idea. Lately I’m failing to see the meaning of life, really. I keep on thinking and thinking about it and simply CANNOT see it. Not unless you “think”, which is obviously a waste of time (at a particular extent). Thinking practically resumes at choosing to live or die. Easier said than done.

And there’s surely some bugger who won’t read this till the end because it’s boring. And they’re correct. It’s all boring thinking.

One last idea: I know I’ve talked about seeking pleasure, facing pain and death, but let’s get back to what we started. MIND DISTRACTION. THAT IS KEY. Call it detachment if you will.

Oh and one last, last thing… Why struggle when you can just let go?

And one last, last, last thing… Maybe in the end, mind distraction is just a way of fooling the body that it’s all ok. I don’t know. Who cares? You do not think of such things when distracted, you do not care, you do not talk about the fight club.

To quote on Jack… “What if this is as good as it gets?” No answer, no goal, no truth. Nothing, as someone else would say.

End of story.

Part of this text has been erased. I thought about some things I said and just wasn’t comfortable with them, so I erased them. Apologies.

Today I’m developing a bit on the harmony subject.

One of the questions I asked myself last night was “What do you exactly mean by harmony?”

Here’s what I answered:

In a world troubled with stress, pain, decisions and monotony, harmony is what can make you face them all easier. Harmony isn’t really a way to feel good, nor is it a way to feel bad. It’s more like a balance between the two. Good and bad are relative, as most things in life are.

Harmony would be easy to achieve if we had the key. As I said before, none of us are born trained Neos. Not even Neo himself. He had to train too. Moreover, before he started to believe in his strengths and work on them, he wasn’t the chosen one.

Now if we had the key, harmony would be very easy to achieve. It’s like making someone solve a mathematics exercise with them seeing numbers for the first time. They’ll have no idea on how to do it. Nevertheless, once they learn a bit of mathematics, everything may just come to sight in the easiest way possible.

So it goes for most things in life, including harmony.

For me, harmony means not caring. Not getting so involved into something that it completely controls you. You’ll never be able to control everything, as control itself is somewhat fiction. However, you can control some things and make them work on your behalf.

Going back to the not caring part… Do you remember how when someone extremely dear to you dies, par example, you feel like dying too? That you feel like nothing matters, as if you’re numb? That’s part of harmony, but without the bad feelings. Being at peace with whatever happens. That’s harmony. Not being scared of anything. Standing by your decisions, your life, yourself.

Harmony means not taking anything to its extremes. A feeling, a situation, a fact of life. Just observing it and choosing to get involved with it or not. Sure, that’s not so easy to do. There will be times, even when in harmony, when you’ll get involved in things which hurt you extremely or please you extremely just because you’re human and chemistry is part of you. Nevertheless, by whole, harmony makes life easier and less of a subject to sudden changes and explosions of whatever sort.

To achieve harmony you must work on it. It’s best if you’re able to take some time off and act like a monk for a while. Find a peaceful place and get to know yourself. It’s again crucial to know yourself. You have to know what ticks for you, what problems you have, what’s easy for you to do and what’s not. What pleases you deeply and what are your biggest fears.

Then you have to meditate on understanding that everything starts and ends with you. Nobody can force you do anything. As I previously said, even in the worst-case scenarios possible. If someone puts a gun to your head, if you’re living in a communist country or even if your job doesn’t please you… Nobody can force you do anything you don’t want to. You consider yourself forced only because you do not want to die and suffer or, by case, because you don’t want to starve, or simply want to have some benefits in life, even if the disadvantages are huge.

As I said, those are worst-case scenarios. They’re extremely rare (well apart from the job thing). So imagine what you could do with regular things. With situations much less terrible. Like everyday situations. Like relationships and such.

Everything starts with you… I can’t stress this enough.

Going back to harmony (which, again, naturally, presumes you’re not your own enemy, but more like your friend – not necessarily your best one though as it‘s a question of balance), once achieved it has to be cultivated and sustained. You’re the one who chooses how to do that. Like when you have the time and where you’d like to cultivate it.

Harmony, as my coach would say, is an extremely solid base on which you can build practically anything. And, par example, if you were to build a house, you wouldn’t want to build it on hardly sustained surfaces or at high-risk locations, now would you?

You also have to understand how perception works and that there are things you simply cannot change. You have to understand what it’s like to not get too involved into anything, unless YOU WANT to get involved.

So that was my not so little insight on harmony. Hope it made sense and hope I remember it.

Ok… So listen up. This is particularly pointed at all you peeps suffering from mild to medium OCD or OCPD, but I’m sure others can benefit from it too.

Here are the three ways you can beat your thoughts:

1. Give prey to them. Be a simple observer (spectator) or just let them beat you up til they get tired.

2. Promise your mind powerful punishment/reward if it goes on/stops.

3. Get extremely powerful mind distraction.

You have to choose carefully from those three ways. One way doesn’t always work.

Number 1 works only when there’s really no reward/punishment you can promise yer mind. When whatever you’re obsessing on is much worse/better than any punishment/reward you could possibly promise.

Number 2 is the key for the usual mild obsession. You can even promise punishment if they don’t stop and reward if they do stop. Or one of the two. Your choice.

Number 3 is the best in all cases, but it’s mostly hard to find. If you find it easily then you’re lucky and it will be most easy for you to beat your thoughts.

And as we’re on the mind subject… I’ll throw some freebies on how to achieve your goals. You may know them already, but they’re always worth repeating.

1. Focusing is extremely important.

2. You have to focus on one thing at a time.

3. You can beat everything!

4. Use your obsession in your favour and call it focusing instead of obsession. You can make it work. You can use it as a + instead of a -, trust me.

Good luck, maniacs!

As long as the levels of a certain substance get to the point where the brain feels truly pleased… Well that’s about that. So, needless to say, really, if you would find the same pleasure in eatin’ a bucket of popcorn as you do in  riding a roller coaster, the brain wouldn’t care which of the two you’re doing.

I laughed my bum off a few days ago when I realized yet again, through a personal experience, that the brain really doesn’t care. It’s like a kid, really. I’m not trying to be cynical and say everything is strictly chemical. It’s probably not. But when you just sit and observe how chemical things send you from O to hero in a matter of minutes… Well… Yeah. And when you know that there are certain diseases which can make you go from joy to sorrow (for real) and from laughter to tears, in another matter of minutes. I mean, no, really… Ha!

The  bigger the addiction, the bigger the pleasure, the harder they are to replace, of course.

Why can’t you have an addiction that won’t affect you when you lose the stimuli?

(This will be a long one, so bear with me).

Because, as I have previously explained, it’s in our nature to be addicted.

There might be addictive personalities, with certain chemical traits in their systems, but, bottom line is…

We are supposed to be addicted. That’s how we’re designed.

We’re even addicted to water.  Through its definition, the body is addicted to things in order to keep its quality of being alive. So saying addiction is wrong is just as correct as saying breathing is wrong.

I lately started to believe that all things, except for death and illness (although they’re questionable too, as you can bring yer own death and so on) depend on our decision.  What happens to you is your decision. If you decide to work or hunt so you don’t die, that’s your decision. If you drink water so you don’t die nor hurt, that’s your decision. And if you avoid pain in other fields, it’s still your decision, just as much as it is when you chose to take the pain for the advantages are worth it.

It’s hard, I know, to believe that everything is your decision, but I believe it is.

The only rule is… There are no rules. Ha! There’s no control. No, I haven’t discovered hot water, but I feel the need to write this down as most of us know it, but don’t apply it.

All you have control on is the present moment and not even that. As I have said before about the water pouring from my hand. That’s all you get.

Going back to addiction… To elaborate a bit, not that I’m the first one to do it, yet again…

You can’t replace addiction easily, that’s why it hurts. Some parameters have to be present, to replace one’s addiction. They do not need to be equal in form or characteristics of the stimuli you’re addicted to, but they have to be equal in the matter of pleasure intensity and type the addicted one gets from the stimuli.

The brain is often satisfied with being focused on a goal. Or obtaining a certain dose of a substance, regardless of how that happens.

What sometimes stops us from giving the brain a certain dosage of a substance are personal priorities. Such as the priority  of avoiding pain, or the fact that it’s just not worth it when you draw the line.

Have you noticed that when someone you love dies, when you’re in love or when you’ve lost everything, nothing else matters?  That should reveal yet again how powerful the brain is when it’s focused on only one thing. I’ve always believed that if you want to do something well, you should focus on that and only that (well maybe except for the basic needs pyramid thing) until you’ve completed it. It always works like charm.

When addictions aren’t chemically induced in artificial ways, they’re mostly created on pleasures you can’t easily get somewhere else. That’s regarding to what Allen Carr was wondering about the “20 crabs”. Now I’m not trying to vulgarise the subject, nor find the key to everything, jus’ tryin’ to shed some light.

The key words to addiction are: Habit and lack of painless control. If there’s no habit and you control it without pain, then it surely ain’t an addiction.

And now… There are artificial chemical substances which can activate certain substances, such as Prozac, and some may have an extreme brain power so they can fool themselves into believing they’re getting the pleasure somewhere else. And by that I come to the conclusion that addiction cannot be stopped without pain, unless you replace it.

I have recently found that there might, just might, be a possiblity for one to replace addiction with a boom, instead of another addiction. As in… You find the same pleasure somewhere else, but just once, not as a habit. That’s very interesting and I wonder to what extent it works and if it does so without other aids, as on a first thought it does seem to fool the brain. It perhaps works in the sense that you discover you can find the same pleasure elsewhere, with the same ease,  so they cancel each other. Funny, huh?

Addiction is only created through habit and pleasure. Therefore, the earlier you break the habit, the easier it is to get rid of the addiction, even if you don’t replace the pleasure.
I mean… I love amusement parks, but I don’t feel the need to go to one every single day. And even if I’d like it, it’s not a habit. If it were, I might indeed become an adrenaline junkie.

In general, habit’s got a habit of transforming itself into addiction. And addiction appears only through habit. Any sort of habit. Pain however is directly proportional to the pleasure and the advantages obtained from the stimuli.

Also, if the stimuli isn’t unstable (like, par example, a human being), you’ll never feel pain whilst having the addiction. You’ll only feel it when you’ve lost it, obviously.

To conclude, I’d like to note two options, for decreasing the pain when having an unstable stimuli addiction:

1. You can embrace the pain and become imune to it (by accepting it), as  TUZIO would say (although I’d say that if you become imune to the pain, the pleasure might not have the same intensity, as the two are extraordinary only in contrast, and, after all, we’re trying to escape pain, not get used to it, well some of us anyway lol).

2. You can embrace the craving and concentrate on the current advantages and pleasure,  not on the pain.

I must note that one good key to the whole shabang is dettachment. Dettaching yourself into a fine observer. The body and the observer as two separate things, as liberatedself would put it – I think. The body who’s living it, into substances and all sorts of things, and the observer who’s just watching the whole thing and entering the body just when they desire to do so. That’s how you get a better perspective on everything…

So… Dettachment is key.

And an excellent article on how dopamine and addiction go together can be found here.

And another one here.

Hope I haven’t been too foggy today.