Intimacy is terrifying, actually.
You could be rejected at such a deep and personal level.
To perform feats of intimacy, you need either extra safety (e.g. highly secure attachment, real community) or extra resilience (equanimity, relationship with god, realizing emptiness).
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A society where rocks are so central to culture that everyone has a PG, primary geologist. Rock insurance covers necessary geology services. I have to crowdfund because my quartz has a fissue and repairs are considered "cosmetic" despite it being a MAJOR STRUCTURAL ISSUE.
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the body does keep the score and you can just ask it what's up. it knows a lot of truth you haven't been ready for, and if you get serious about body awareness over time you become much, much harder to fool. to trust your gut, you have to have literally built trust with your gut.
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If yr pregnant and the fetus can't get enough calcium, your body will pull calcium out of your teeth, seriously damaging them. It's wild but that's what happens. Most people don't even know about this and don't take calcium supplements.
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Ugh yes the emotional aspects of COVID infection aren't talked about enough! Has your husband considered being an "embassador" and going door-to-door to share firsthand the effects of this disease and spread the knowledge? He can personally hand out masks!
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all I want is for someone objectively better than me to be extremely impressed with me and take care of me like a baby bird at the same time, idk why this is so hard to find
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For the folks here who thought this was what everyone sees: this is absolutely not what I see when I'm driving at night. I don't see angled beans of light unless I'm actively crying.
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The vast majority of Bernie in chair memes have been affectionate! There's just, like, 5 people who saw an old man in a chair and decided to be mad about it.
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The DSA is not the only (or even the best way) to participate in "left politics"?? My own involvement has been volunteering at my local free clinic, food justice orgs & projects, narcan distro, mutual aid projects, and protesting. This is a very reductive take, tbh.
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What has worked for me (most of the time) is:
-Switching to toothpaste that doesn't burn or foam (SLS-free, no mint or v light mint)
-Brushing in the shower (no mess, less coordination needed, warm)
-Using a very effective soft brush (3 sided electric or manual microbristle)
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Honestly, normalize explicitly sharing the level of confidence yr making statements with and normalize explicitly stating your level of agreement. Sometimes the way women are socialized is a better way of communicating! Men faking absolute confidence is bad, actually!
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It seems like they were trying to include nonbinary people who partially identify as women, but "womxn"...doesn't achieve that?
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Why not fund an afrofuturist film, Black science fiction, a vision of a better and more just world? Why the same stories about Black subjugation and trauma over and over and over and...?
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hell yeah. everything makes much more sense when we stop pretending the majority of our communication is conscious, voluntary, or explicit. "i keep pulling ppl into this enactment" is a much more useful frame than "there's something fundamentally wrong with me".
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I finally found a doctor like this and tbh I cry from relief and happiness after most of my appointments with her. Working with her has helped me resolve so much of my trauma around doctors treating me like shit, and I'm angry that everyone doesn't receive this level of care.
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In HS a friend showed up at my house crying bc his family reacted badly to him coming out. My mom let him in but called his mom to let her know he was safe. His mom called the cops, who made him go home.
Bio parents have too much power & control in ways that make kids less safe
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Since a lot of ppl haven't seen ANY examples of non-gendered clothes besides "unisex sack", I like to share this example from Gender Free World. I think they only do shirts right now, mostly button-downs, but this is one possible solution!
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It's still not FUN, but when I stopped trying to fix it with willpower and started trying to solve the very real problems I had with brushing, it got easier.
Like, mint BURNS and the pain + foam makes me drool so bad that mess happens and all of that objectively sucks.
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Good thing everyone on earth has the exact same expenses, number of dependents, and necessary costs of living as you! What a relief, you solved world hunger by personally not starving while making $8 an hour!
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When a friend is suddenly overcome with emotion and needs support, part of me is instantly like "just Be An Adult and dissociate so you can complete the necessary tasks, that's what I do".
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My question mark was meant to indicate disbelief, not actual confusion! I'm nonbinary and very queer.
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It's also blatant concern trolling coming from anyone who gets takeout, buys coffee at Starbucks, or does any of the million other things that produce plastic waste. Always felt like the real outrage was over the "laziness" of pre-cut fruit, just pure ableism.
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I started going to a nude beach when I was 15 and it fixed my crushing body image issues in one season. seeing "ugly" elderly people at peace with their bodies was revelatory. it's fucked that we sexualize the body & then keep healthy human variation a secret from young people.
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so much of what I thought was flowery poetics or self-delusion in spiritual writings and teachings was actually clear and specific pointers to the thing itself.
i was just so disconnected from my direct experience, as opposed to thoughts, that I wasn't trying the instructions.
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can't achieve intimacy with self if intimacy isn't experienced as safe! intimacy is intimacy.
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(Of course, it also sucks when women who ARE extremely confident about what they're saying are pressured into appearing less sure, but...most of us aren't 100% confident about what we're saying and that's actually fine.)
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Okay but me @ me. My autistic ADHD ass will design a perfect system and then say "well, I'm in a hurry today so just this once I'll..." for the rest of eternity.
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My mom literally called to say "your kid showed up, he's okay, he's planning to stay until he feels safe going home" and his family called the damn cops...who showed up like we had kidnapped this 16 year old and put him in a squad car to take him back to his homophobic parents
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I've worked with this research team, and though your broad ethics concerns are legitimate, this patient had severe lifelong depression that often left her bedbound. Recurrent stim has left her with a full range of emotions, but way less likely to spiral into a depression episode.
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dude, yes. i think that at an instinctive level, humans know it's not safe to sleep alone. i think about the anthropological reports of tribal peoples where there's almost always someone awake in the village, and compared to that, sleeping alone in an apt is insane.
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re-enchanting your life, sanctifying it, saturating it with care and awareness and intentionality, is also vulnerable, humbling, agonizing.
nothing can be held back, hidden, or written off — the truth waits patiently for you to tire out & surrender.
hurts a lot cleaner though.
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keeps dawning on me with horror that my body was all but anesthetized my entire life. my body is an exquisite tool, just unbelievable in its sensitivity and knowledge, and I was trying to escape from it. there's a whole new layer to reality when I'm in my body.
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Being an effective adult is definitely about dissociating and not feeling anything so you can tolerate daily existence, stellar life advice right here
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As a published academic in the field of LGBTQ+ health disparities, I can state definitively that the stress of marginalization and bias are the root cause of health disparities for all LGBTQ+ persons. Cis lesbians have higher rates of cardiovascular disease than...
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I lanced the abcess myself in my bathroom, to relieve some of the pressure. When I finally saw my dentist the next day he was horrified at the extent of infection. Cleaned it out, prescribed antibiotics & pain meds. If you can die from it, it should be a part of "healthcare"!
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oh shit, i was socially punished for being at my full expressiveness — i was too high-energy for other people, i was super annoying and got that feedback all the time.
those social rejections shaped me profoundly, i really overcorrected
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This is literally the example I use to explain intersectionality. Black women are the lowest paid demographic in the US, but Black men are more likely to be brutalized by the carceral state. Socially & politically, gender and race aren't some additive "oppression points" system.
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(And this approach still can't be done at scale; the study is a proof of concept that only accepts patients who have tried every existing treatment and are still profoundly depressed. They don't accept bummed out office workers.)
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tpot therapy discourse is clouded by our characteristic anxiety about relational and emotional contact: "a therapist" is not a thing, you are booking time with a specific person and the results are 95% based on their personal level of development/awareness and the relational fit.
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that's what I find so alarming about people not recognizing AI images —I'm not not using critical thinking, I'm using my gut feeling about something being off. why can't their mom FEEL how off this is?
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when you can trust that painful feelings are safe to experience, the unique qualities of the pain can become really fascinating, even beautiful. without a sense of personal threat, valence can be totally malleable or even irrelevant.
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it's cool as hell watching my capacity grow. i'll be directed back to a problem I became aware of 5 years ago and found completely overwhelming, only this time I can simply solve the problem. it's not even a struggle. the ripe fruit drops into my open hand.
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I was a teenager in the mid 2000s and this rhetoric got me so bad that I was worried about being fake queer right up until I got gay married. I literally had to have a lesbian wedding to stop worrying I was only queer because it was cool.
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As a behavioral researcher, this is repugnant. The risk of harm here is very similar to the "Little Albert" study from *1920*, which is now widely agreed to be unethical. Researchers deliberately and repeatedly terrified toddlers, who were given no context & no follow-up.
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God, I just realized even the measure they used for fear is invalid in this population. Delayed processing and incongruence between internal experience and facial expressions are both known features of autism...you know, the neurology they are ostensibly studying.
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Almost everything I attributed to autism/ADHD (overwhelm, social difficulties incl. eye contact, attention issues, sensory problems, going non-verbal) either resolved or became obviously actionable signal with trauma work. Still making sense of this, but the change wasn't subtle
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"experiences in some way known to the individual, but about which the individual is unable to think"
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And the vast majority of websites won't allow a password without numbers or special characters, so they won't accept the XKCD solution anyway. I'll be butting up against the PW character limit and still be forced to change it.
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I'm always uncomfortable with the framing of "trigger warning" rather than, say, "content notes". TWs suggest that material is inherently dangerous to people with Trauma™️, but offering info about what's in given media lets ppl choose what they're up for at any given time.
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I'll often get really stressed or angry for "no reason" and only figure out it was sensory when I turn the lights off or change into softer clothes and suddenly feel better. I'm not always consciously aware that something hurts, but it's still distressing!
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heterosexual cis women, and that risk rises and falls with how accepted vs threatened a given lesbian is. There is very little research on trans health disparities because funding organizations don't care to fund such research, but in LGB populations we see clear relationships...
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TERFs don't care about health disparities among trans people, they care about talking points that make them sound sympathetic. Marginalizing communities literally harms their health. That's all.
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A friend who desperately wanted top surgery starved, worked out 2x/day, and ultimately developed an ED trying to lose weight. When she was just over the wt limit at her pre-op appt, after losing 15 lbs that month, she mentally snapped & was 5150'd. Horrifying, intolerably cruel.
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One of those artists who makes good art but somehow doesn't understand what she's actually doing.
Her music: examines how women internalize the desires of men. juxtaposes glamour w/the tragedy of being disposable to the men they are dependent on
Her: ew wtf is feminism lol
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This is the same argument as "I shouldn't have to press 1 for English, the phone menu should be in English by default!". People *not* in the dominant group will be more able to access services and people *in* the dominant group only have to hit a button or tick a box. Not hard.
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When yr manager knows they should offer their employees extra leeway or time off but uhhhh they simply will not.
There was literally an attempted fascist coup yesterday??? No one can focus rn anyway, please stop prioritizing capitalism over people for literally 2 days???
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I got an ADHD dx so I could try meds, and the dx documentation both directly contraindicates ADHD dx and is factually incorrect based on what I told the provider. She wrote that symptoms started after a trauma when I was 16 (!!!). I told her they went back to pre-K. Total joke.
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I don't even mean to sound that hostile, I'm just bewildered by the suggestion that DSA membership is the only meaningful way people organize or improve our communities.
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controversial corollary: old dykes are the only people allowed to she/her me, culture has changed but in the context of her life she probably gets it
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full engagement with the world is mortifying, and that's wonderful, actually. you don't have to kill the ego, it'll burn off on its own.
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I agree it's frustrating how "unisex" = "menswear styles", but I shared this as an example of how to make a non-gendered fit, specifically. It's the only system I've ever seen that offers the same garment in multiple, clearly explained body shapes.
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Makes me think about the misuse of "your feelings are valid". From a therapist it means "your feelings are real and you don't have to deny them", but doesn't mean they're appropriate or actionable. I see it used as "your feelings are always appropriate and actionable".
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the good news is that a lot of terrifying signal has nothing to do with the present environment — the alarm got stuck on, and if you can get the detector to update, it will turn off on its own.
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Hard disagree. It shows those men do understand consent and PREFER VIOLATING these womens' consent. Harassment is ABOUT the power trip for a lot of men. They're not "accidentally" making women uncomfortable, that's the entire point.
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This rhetoric masterfully weaponizes LGBTQ youths' desire for role models and community. There's a REASON some, and only some, kids think queer people and culture are the coolest thing they've ever seen. Completely cis/het kids are not sitting around googling "gay haircuts".
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self-regulation isn't for suppressing painful feelings under a blanket of false calm. it's for increasing your capacity to be present with, metabolize, and act on those painful feelings. when I'm well-regulated my pain tolerance goes up, but I suffer less bc it doesn't get stuck.
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There's this idea that good writing should pretend to be The Word of God and shouldnt acknowledge the limitations or subject position of the writer, and maybe that's not the best way to do things! In an option piece too much "I think" can be a bit redundant, but not always.
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1. I was horny on 2010 Tumblr, not acting like the purity police.
2. No one is saying all of gen-z is like this, it's just a substantial cultural trend that seems to be driven mostly by people in their teens and early 20s.
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between level of bias experienced and cardiovascular issues, mental health issues, substance use including tobacco and alcohol, and insufficient preventative care (like cancer screening or STI testing). Plainly, being treated like shit is stressful and stress has measurable ...
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Absolutely. My wife and I both work full time ("independent"!) but then use a massive chunk of our income on takeout, grocery delivery, etc. - we can either work or perform self care tasks, we can't do both. If we couldn't earn decent $ we would LOOK much less independent.
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Went to the ER once with dental abcess so severe my neck had swollen 3". Agony, & I worried about meningitis. It was a Sunday and I wanted, at least, antibiotics and pain meds to hold me until my dentist opened on Monday. They just accused me of drug seeking & sent me home.
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I'm chasing shame around the body and releasing it — it hides inside a dissociative splicing of consciousness, so I have to notice what I'm not noticing. A lot of shame in the belly. Around my eyes. Trauma work is somehow both an exorcism and a welcoming-home.
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People really think breaking the windows of a Starbucks is "violence" (but withholding lifesaving medications and medical care for inability to pay is nonviolent, of course).
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Being gay while being nonbinary. Nonbinary people have complex relationships to and personal histories with gender, and the language that exists for sexual orientation is limited. If an NBi person IDs as gay or lesbian, they aren't misusing or "appropriating" those words.
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The pop-psychology demonization of NPD is the new satanic panic. "Satanic ritual abuse" vs "narcissistic abuse". Like yes, a lot of abusers were traumatized themselves and are diagnosable with any number of disorders...but most people with any given disorder are not abusive.
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Perpetually furious that dentistry is considered distinct from medicine when people die from untreated dental infections (chronic & acute) all the damn time. I went to the ER when a jaw infection got bad enough to make my neck swell up, and they wouldn't do *anything* for me.
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It's shocking to me how many doctors pull scripts without 1. Checking if the pt still needs it??? 2. Making a plan for safe transition to another med if pt agrees 3. SAFELY titrating off of a med if they really must. They rly forget they're treating a person, not a hypothetical.
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hot people get away with much more, but it's a real hindrance bc they get less pushback about character flaws and stagnate.
if you're hot enough you can be 21 forever, and that's bad, actually
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The reality is many people (of all genders) eroticize things that are bad IRL. People don't choose these desires, but they have them; the desire isn't moral or immoral. Whether the way someone acts on those desires causes actual harm is the basis for moral judgment here.
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Honestly, loss of legitimacy. We're sick and on the brink of economic collapse but the stock market looks great, so what the fuck is the stock market for? A country full of desperate people are using what little power they have to send a "fuck you" to rich profiteers.
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This study is so novel & complex that these articles dramatically oversimplify & fail as sci comm. Getting to this point took at least a year and a half for this woman, working very closely w/ docs & researchers. She enthusiastically consented! This approach is not yet scalable!
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Ppl bothered by standard email sign-offs need to get their heads out of their asses. We're all just trying to exchange information so we can do our jobs, don't go out of your way to assume the worst of other people for no reason. None of them have Secret Meanings!
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"How much can I talk about snakes at work to make it a Fun & Quirky personality trait NTs find charming and not an uncomfortable and unprofessional Problem for them to deal with?"
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I'm trans, and I don't know how to help from the US. Direct donations to individuals are always helpful, but this is a major, entrenched political issue. I was seriously considering moving to the UK for grad school, too, so it's been shocking how fast this has ramped up.
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Feels like most online advice communities "trained" on ppl stuck in terrible situations due to an extreme sense of obligation, e.g. "my husband is literally abusing me but I don't want to abandon him, what should I do". Then advice givers overgeneralized.
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health outcomes. We don't know for sure whether there is any risk to lifelong use of HRT, but we know for sure that transphobia causes health disparities, and ofc the risk of death by suicide if HRT is denied is MASSIVE. Which is why insurance usually covers it.
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Or treating the roommate like a person and not a political adversary by asking them to wash the dishes and checking in about whether they've been struggling lately. Like...sometimes someone's having a depressive episode? Sometimes a household needs a chore wheel???
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I'm nonbinary and have a lesbian relationship with my wife! I know the online discourse may be the only "community" that's accessible right now, but I promise all IRL queer spaces & communities aren't...like that. Lots of us don't do identity policing BS. ❤
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do you have any favorite music, videos, meditations etc. for unblocking yourself when you're struggling to cry? i need some help catharting over here.
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keeps fucking me up that other ppl start a mediation practice and THEN have awakening experiences...like, why the hell were you practicing if you hadn't noticed god yet??? i have never been that disciplined in my life??? didn't u get super bored???
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universe has me on a massive learn-to-ask-for-support quest, explicitly declared, and it's still so fucking hard to be vulnerable and let ppl know how to help. feels like i've made a ton of progress but i'll catch myself like
i can't just ask for a hug :(
like wtf, why not???
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i'm trying to square my experiences pre and post awakening, & yes, to my pre awakening self, my current experience is incomprehensible. yet i now have what i always wanted: purpose, connection, joy, confidence, truth. feels urgent to find faster routes to direct realization.
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"It's not enough to be able to recognize what is true. Truth changes. To know it is to make a dead thing of it.
You have to live it."
Anything you practice to the level of effortless mastery will become a prejudicial frame that filters your experience of the world. The metaphors native to human activities - whether vacuuming the rug, making love or going to war - once these are ritually practiced, they become boundaries in consciousness.
Paradoxically, to attain maximum effectiveness - presence, clarity and freedom - in a given situation, you have to be totally free of prejudice and compulsion. Only then will you have the ability to respond spontaneously, with maximum skillfulness, to the conditions of the present moment, and no more.
You must have boundaries in consciousness, in order to recognize your boundlessness. Creativity without constraint withers, like a vine plant with no structure that spreads across the ground and dies in the sun.
To pursue liberation means rigorously practicing effortlessness, maximally biasing toward unbias, conditioning oneself to be free of conditioning. It means action. It means changing yourself, for real. It means embodied practices that increase your flexibility, your adaptability, your ability to thrive outside your comfort zone. Your ability to love without condition.
Knowledge without action makes a wasteland of life. It gives rise to a special kind of hell in which you can sense the truth, but you feel that is always outside Being, always hidden, always apart from you. Your experience becomes suffused with an ever present, inextinguishable longing for elsewhere.
It's not enough to be able to recognize what is true. Truth changes. To know it is to make a dead thing of it.
You have to live it. That is what integration means: real concrete change to who you are and how you conduct yourself. It's not enough to do it once. It can never be done enough. There is nowhere to arrive, nothing to finish.
You have to practice the truth into your bones. And you have to practice until you are bones.
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