Learning how to say 'NO'

There is a phase during childhood when the toddler has to say 'No' repeatedly

To say 'No' is to learn to set boundaries correctly - to distantiate ourselves from the others.

The toddler is realizing he is not part of the mother anymore ; it is starting to become independent

This is very useful, and not knowing how to say 'No' will otherwise become a potential pain in the growing teenager, then adult

Why?

Because a functioning adult that is unable to say 'No' will be influenceable, will be constantly taken for granted - sure, he will appear to be kind. But inside this adult will feel like he is drained all the time, and most of his friends will noticed that he does not seem to have a personality.

And one day, he might explode in burst of angers, shouting after everybody - because he had enough.

This burst of anger are the sure signs of a long period of silent acceptance, silent resignation and many 'Yes' that should have been 'No'

The 'False Yes' is the worse ; and we all experienced it 

When asked if a friend can stay over for a night, but then stay for a week

When asked to help moving a couple of friends, while we know we had to take care of sorting out some business first

When going on a vacation with a couple of other friends, but we found ourselves paying for all the notes...

Having clear boundaries is the basis of an adult life

I-Ching website down because of Adobe Flash retirement

As a person using the I-Ching since 2012 - where I learned about this divination method

I used this website - when I was struggling to decide - 

and today I discovered that because of Adobe decision to retire Flash, the website is no longer useable 

well, this is not good for me - Misfortune!

Classical divination with coins | Book of Changes (I Ching) answer There were "old" features in your gua (hexagram). It means that you have two hexagrams. The first one — is something that the Book tells you at the moment, the second is something it warns you about. The ridgepole sags to the breaking point. Misfortune.

Psychic Vampires and being nice

I could never quite understood the proverb that 'nice guy finish last'

It has bothered me for years, and recently I have realized that 'being nice' is usually not understood quite well

See 'nice people' are usually influenceable, and they default to being nice, instead of setting up proper boundaries, that's a fact

Let's just have a scenario to illustrate what I'm trying to demonstrate;

There is Peter and he is a nice person, and there is Julia (a single mother) she is a bit intrusive and using her charm to get what she wants from men, and so Julia goes to Peter's place every day - they are friends, and she ask Peter for various items, food, money and sometime for services like repair, and sometime car rides etc ... Peter is playing nice, because unconsciously he thinks that someday Julia will return favors - but she never do that. And at some point, Peter is getting very angry and feels miserable afterward because Julia then acts surprised and cut all contact with him.

A person with proper boundaries will have set the social contract first, establishing proper relationship between Julia and Peter, she asks for money, saying it will be for a couple of weeks, Peter agrees but then after 2 weeks passes - he wants his money back.

In the second scenario Peter does not play nice - he asked for his due and this action will prevent Julia to go any further - setting proper boundaries, would prevent the situation to perdure, and surprisingly maybe would have shown Julia that if she wanted to set a valid friendship she might actually give something back from time to time.

Psychic Vampires - YouTube

The Children of Fire Roleplaying Game

The Children of Fire Roleplaying Game: 

The storyteller starts a character down the path of enlightenment by awarding a character a single point.

With this receipt, the player now adds enlightenment to his character sheet. Once a point is given to a PC it can never be taken away. Hence, while it is possible for an enlightenment score to increase, it can never decrease.

A character's enlightenment score can increase in a number of different ways. 

Firstly, the character can attempt to practice and research his new found abilities. 

Second, the character can undergo another traumatic incident that grants him greater sight. 

Last, a character can enlist the help of one with a greater enlightenment score to increase his own score.

How to open multiple sub reddit at once

Q: How to open multiple sub reddit at once?

A: by adding the sub-reddit one by one separated with a '+' sign

Like so:
www.reddit.com/r/occult+psychonauts+zen+worldnews+buddhism+wicca

Helena Blavatsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
1 - Physical
2 - Astral (later called etheric)
3 - Prana (or vital)
4 - Kama (animal soul)
5 - Manas (mind, or human soul)
6 - Buddhi (spiritual soul)
7 - Atma (Spirit or Self)

Food for thought

Looking at my body, and understanding that I'm a composite of living cells, a self-replicating organism, needing food intake, air to breathe, in order to regenerate, a quite complex ensemble of body parts - a brain, a heart, a stomach, a complete digestive system ... that needs to be nourished, cleaned, taken care of, and entertained.

What are mood, emotions, feelings, anxiety, fear - for this body?

What are concepts, ideas, philosophical questioning - from the point of view of the stomach?

Why is my fingernails growing, why do I have hair growth?

What becomes of my dead skin cells?

Are these clipped fingernails - still me?

A hair is attached to my head, and then cut a fall down - am I on the floor - from the point of view of the cell in my former hair? 

What is all this?

and what is Death?

Want to watch something weird today

there you go : Alien Gods Return 2012 - YouTube

Ignorance is no longer acceptable

We all go through this question during childhood - and we ask this difficult question to our parents (or guide) 

Why do we have to die?

The fact that we are mortal, is sort of a shock - since as a child we just arrived in this world. And discovering that we are not knowing why we are here, what is our life purpose, and then we are confronted to the big question of mortality

What happened afterward, will impact us for the rest of our life

Depending on the response, maybe religion will be introduced, maybe a mere smile 

maybe just a shrug of the shoulder, that is usually also when as a child we discover to our big surprise that parents, adults don't have all the answers...

But the fact is we HAVE to move on - we have to accept the fact, that nobody knows for sure what happened after we die, and this is the biggest design flaw of this life

From there will start - enormous pitfalls

• the comforting introduction of the concept of Heaven and an afterlife 

But then will also follow the introduction of Hell, and the creation of Satan - the adversary, the evil demon - that will lead many into the denial of our responsibility ; and ultimately will make us powerless ... 

All human knowledge bears the sign of its own restrictions, of its own ignorance. 

Once we realize this - desperation may follow, or total indifference, and possibly the gratitude of realizing that nothing really matter and we might actually enjoy it for what is, and stop asking questions.

But just for a minute contemplate the immense philosophical shift that will follow the discovery - of what really happen after we die ...

Unable to be happy

There are days worse than others

To be fair, nothing was really special about today - but I'm feeling upset

My mind is racing, my thoughts are all over the place

There is this voice in my head, that keeps repeating

you can't be happy

you're not able to be happy

you're a loser

you're going to die

I wish I was dead already

But I have to work, I have things to do 

and this is getting annoying

Deleted a reddit account

Today I Deleted my Reddit Account

This is something I’d been considering doing for quite some time, and had just been putting it off. 

This morning, however, I found myself in an argument with a random internet stranger over something very small and trivial - this doesn’t happen often, at all. 

I think in the two years I’ve been on Reddit, I’ve experienced this maybe three times. 

Nonetheless, today it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I realized, afterward, that I was actually getting upset over something this person, somewhere on the other side of the internet, whom I would never know and never have to interact with, was saying. That’s not healthy.

I started examining how I’ve been using Reddit over the past several months and realized that the site was cutting into a significant chunk of my day. Reddit hadn’t interfered with my work productivity, but it had become a thing to do late at night, a way of killing time and distracting myself.

One thing was clear: Reddit had ceased to become a useful, positive thing for me.
For someone with an addictive personality (admittedly my own shortcoming), a site like Reddit can easily suck you in with distractions and lead to a lot of time being wasted over what is largely trivial, petty, and inconsequential content.

There are those who jump to defend the community (I’ve been there myself) and would say that Reddit isn’t a site you can really take at face value ; that in order to get the most out of it, you need to get past r/all and build your own collection of specific subreddits relevant to your interests.

That’s very true. This does greatly improve the quality of content you’re exposed to while on the site, but the signal to noise ratio is still very high.

I realized that the vast majority of useful links, news, insights, and resources I was collecting came from other sources, like Hacker News, Twitter, or more often, friends and co-workers. 

Usually, by the time I saw something interesting on Reddit, I’d already heard about it from some other source.

As I said, Reddit had ceased to be a positive thing for me and had simply become a distraction. 

There are any number of things I could be doing besides Reddit that would make me a happier person.

I could work on personal projects, spend more time with friends and family, start a new hobby, write more, or even give my beagle more belly rubs.

So goodbye, Reddit. It was fun, until it wasn’t.

E c o s y s t e m

This planet is a pretty robust ecosystem

Currently nature is getting slowly better because humanity is under covid lockdown 

this in itself is a harsh criticism of what humans do - the modern man at least

To be fair, the ancient men were more in line with nature - except the violent conflicts, the various Empires (Greek, Roman, French, British, ...) ; the general cruelty, and the religion fanaticism - at least in Europe - men back then had little impact on the planet itself.

In the America back in the day, tribal life was just a really good and natural way to live, the carbon footprint was nonexistent,  nowadays the remaining tribes are the exception - see the Kogi Columbian tribe in the Sierra Nevada - their style of life is peaceful, and very much a 

The industrial era brought the madness of men to its climax, the World War 1 and 2 followed by the cold war - brought us where we are now - humanity has become arrogant, and indifferent to the other species - while we still are in an ecosystem, We are part of this planet, we are not different (even if we think we are).

We are part of this ecosystem, we are still thinking that progress can be constant, and the important thing is to earn a salary to enjoy the modern distraction, while eating industrial food, and living in smaller and smaller properties, paying bills, and buying new mobile phone - driving electric or hybrid vehicle - and sending kids to school and universities to perpetuate the idea that this can go on and on forever...

Covid has brought a slowdown on this madness, and covid has brought more madness too

As a conclusion:

You want something scary to watch

there you go 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqSZhwu1Rwo

The Big One

 We should congratulate ourselves a bit, these last 4 years have been rough

now the current mood is not great

Worldwide a pandemic is in place, the big one - lucky for us the virus is not too deadly, but it takes life

many people are infected, many people recover 

we all are getting distant from each other, we all isolate ourselves

that is actually the enforced policy, wearing masks and being distants

no physical touch

no contact

no crowd, no celebration

we are dying inside of this lockdown

At the same time, the effect of less human activities seems to have a good impact on the planet itself - less pollution, less global warming, ... 

The medias are pushing this idea of the 'next normal' which means implicitly that this situation will last ... Amazon (tm) is doing good though