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Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

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Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#201

Post by john4534243 »

nomdep wrote: post #140
john4534243 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that what you really mean is Guevara fought for what you think is just. But that's a weaker statement. You might have mistaken me as a supporter of communism. I don't support communism. Osama Bin Laden exploited the religion for his personal gain. His goal is to become the caliph which is roughly equivalent to being the single military leader for entier Islam as said in the quoran. He did not bother about…

And yet, he became a mass murderer that you apparently idolize. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but you don't have an excuse.

There is a documentary about the people killed who had found to be guilty and they did not find a single evidence where some one is executed wrongly.

Now i will state my reasons why Che is an inspiration. First of all I am not an American or from the Latin country and i do not support Communism. I like Che because of his analytical thinking and hacker like personal traits. I read his book "Guerrilla Warfare"[1] and based on the title i expected the first page must preach about moral values or self righteous, but was very much surprised to find the explanation on the necessary conditions that must exist to start a revolution and goes on to describe how many core members are required, their preferred age and should not be married. He asks to treat the captured enemy nicely and does not make any false pretense of being noble about it. He is direct in pointing out that it is in their self interest. His arguments were logical and rational.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Warfare_(book)

Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#202

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

schoolornot wrote: post #192
tim333 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of a freaky story. Enough to put you off mind altering drugs in general.

Yeah, I'm sorry but there is clearly a pattern in the US and maybe elsewhere of mental professionals not being all that mentally stable and more often than not raising kids that have problems of their own. I'm not sure if it's a result of something innate or that their brains become sponges that soak up the worst in people and that translates into issues within their lives. Unless you are at a level where you can't f…

Agreed, JP has a rather simplistic understanding of addiction [0]. I wonder if his experiences with it first hand changes that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiHsEoPk0SY

Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#203

Post by heyitskoen »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #71

The comments here reminded me of Tulpas: https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your-head-... We are capable of holding more than one identity in our minds and switching between them. Some people use that ability to create "characters" (tulpas) that they interact with or even allow to take over their bodies. Apparently some people go as far as replacing themselves with a tulpa they've created (they call th…

So Tulpa= Adult imaginary friends

Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#204

Post by randomdude402 »

emptyparadise wrote: post #154

This is why I think it's a huge shame we moved to using real names and no alt accounts online. No more space to experiment.

That's very true on Facebook, and it's true that Facebook is the dominant online destination so far as numbers go.

There are still regular old forums for a lot of hobbies and interests though, and even on here people can use handles. Reddit and Twitter as well.

I will confess to having multiple alt accounts on Facebook.

There is room to experiment still.

Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#205

Post by DreamScatter »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #190
mr_overalls wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No worries! I'm familiar with Trungpa's warnings about spiritual materialism. I know the context of Vajrayana is quite different from the "Batman Effect" discussed in the original article, but I wanted to spur discussion in general about the power of assuming the identity (transitory though it may be) of a chosen figure. And for anyone who's interested in tantra, I'll spell out the warnings more explicitly: this kind…

Why do people on this website take this seriously? Is that because this whole stuff is incredibly in fashion in SV? I can visualise myself as Hitler; for all it is I can also visualise how I could consciously go all the way with whatever methods he employed. Are you trying to say I should not think about it because so will suddenly start World War III? How is this different from visualising myself as the all-powerful…

Consider the neurological danger of visualizing yourself as (e.g. hitler) repeatedly over and over. The exercise mentioned above is one of neurological conditioning (anpassen in german). You are training your neural pathways to take on a certain form of thought pattern. If you pick (e.g.) hitler as your mould, then you are training yourself as hitler. That's what the danger is with such a practice.

Therefore, you must be careful and wise about what neurological mould you are seeking to "impersonate" with your practice, since you would be creating new habits and neural pathways in practice.

I'm not an expert on this topic, but I can use my common sense to figure that out.

Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#206

Post by DreamScatter »

lokl wrote: post #92

I had an unwanted alter ego once. A colleague called me by the wrong name for the entire time we worked together (a few months). I considered correcting him, but I wanted to see how it would play out.

if you didn't correct him, then it wasn't unwanted. so how did it play out?

Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#207

Post by mr_overalls »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #190
mr_overalls wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No worries! I'm familiar with Trungpa's warnings about spiritual materialism. I know the context of Vajrayana is quite different from the "Batman Effect" discussed in the original article, but I wanted to spur discussion in general about the power of assuming the identity (transitory though it may be) of a chosen figure. And for anyone who's interested in tantra, I'll spell out the warnings more explicitly: this kind…

Why do people on this website take this seriously? Is that because this whole stuff is incredibly in fashion in SV? I can visualise myself as Hitler; for all it is I can also visualise how I could consciously go all the way with whatever methods he employed. Are you trying to say I should not think about it because so will suddenly start World War III? How is this different from visualising myself as the all-powerful…

> Is that because this whole stuff is incredibly in fashion in SV?

Well, I grew in the rural South and currently live in Wisconsin, so I don't think I'm succumbing to some kind of SV hippie group-think.

The literature and instruction of Vajrayana is filled with warnings about using the techniques improperly. And they are very powerful, with tantra having developed during the peak of sophistication of Indian Buddhism in the 6th-9th centuries. The Tibetans have refined things further. E.g. the emergence of Dzogchen and Mahamudra.

Re: Hitler: Playing with the boundaries of self-identity as a form of daydreaming for the average person probably isn't harmful. But tantra combines a number of introspective technologies that hugely amplify the depth of concentration and effects of the exercise on the entire body-mind.

Weaving together ritualized breathing practices, somatic visualizations (i.e. energy work), external auditory stimulus (bells, etc.), chanting, internal/external visual aids (mandala), in the social context of serious vows to one's teacher, the Buddha, and all other sentient beings in the universe. . . well, it turns everything up to 11, so to speak.

Submerging oneself in an imaginal identity as a deity under those circumstances can provide a sudden, inarguable new insight into the boundaries and nature of one's self-construct, so the so-called truth of anatta. It can reveal in a flash the moment-to-moment fabrication of a particular kind of self-narrative you've been engaging in your entire life. And you can experience the incomparable freedom of being freed from that straitjacket.

Or if you're winging it without proper instruction, a similar exercise can deeply fuck you up, leading to weird somatic illnesses, grandiose thoughts (you think you _are_ the deity, or Hitler, or whatever), manic states because you don't understand how to safely bring down your psychological arousal level, etc.

Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#208

Post by ta1234567890 »

alchemism wrote: post #128
ta1234567890 wrote: post #71

The comments here reminded me of Tulpas: https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your-head-... We are capable of holding more than one identity in our minds and switching between them. Some people use that ability to create "characters" (tulpas) that they interact with or even allow to take over their bodies. Apparently some people go as far as replacing themselves with a tulpa they've created (they call th…

This is also the foundation of so-called Chaos Magic. It uses the 'mental frameworks' of any belief system to obtain results by becoming a temporary adherent of it. Switching frameworks would be done with physical objects, e.g. a pair of spectacles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic

Thank you for the comment and that link. Fascinating stuff.

The basic philosophy behind Chaos Magic seems to be very much in line with some ancestral eastern philosophies and religions. The gnostic state is pretty much the whole goal of some forms of meditation and religious practices.

Are there any other resources or books you could recommend to dig deeper into Chaos Magic?

Re: Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

#210

Post by lopmotr »

john4534243 wrote: post #198
lopmotr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's are pretty complicated boundary between good and bad you've defined there. Political ideology is OK but not religious ideology? Being a 2nd in command is OK but not a national leader?

> Political ideology is OK but not religious ideology? Right. Religious ideology is without a doubt is exploitation. Political ideology that does not involve religion is probably coming out of good intentions. > Being a 2nd in command is OK but not a national leader? The point is he is not after power and did not try to become 2nd in command either. He left the minister position he had given after the war and left to…

If Guevara did everything the same but instead of Marxism, he was fighting to exterminate the blacks out of a genuine belief that it was a noble cause which would help people, would you still describe him in the same positive way?

You already said you don't like communism, and I guess you don't like ethnic genocide either. So that wouldn't be a distinguishing factor.

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