Posts by Joseph Bailey41

Grinja isn't actually a bacterium. 😂

It's a mite.

David Vaughn75 said:Yours and God's.

I mean, come on—God isn't exactly gonna drop something into your lap that you wouldn't personally consider an upgrade, right?

So what, we're all supposed to just eat crap because there are infinite ways to argue that crap is better than something else?

You haven't convinced me—I'm sticking to the good stuff.

So, if that's the case, what's the point of having a mediator at all? 😁

Melissa Cooper3 said:The whole idea of asking "what if I just changed my reality?" is honestly such an absurd, half-baked question because the possibilities and answers are quite literally infinite.

Exactly.

David Vaughn75 said:But man, what if life actually turned out way better if you just let someone else handle the tailoring?

Better by whose standards, though?

David Vaughn75 said:God just makes sure everyone gets exactly what's coming to them.

Look, at the end of the day, nobody is going to pile more weight onto your shoulders than the stuff you went out and cooked up for yourself. You know how it goes—you make your own mess, you deal with your own fallout. It’s all on you.

I’ve never even heard of some collective deer or owl nonsense before. Honestly, what are we even talking about here? Total gibberish.
Look, here’s the deal—you could basically become an owl if you reincarnate into one, and then that owl gets to be a man. It's all wild, right?

Look, if you really want to get down into the weeds of this stuff, there's only one true collective Over-soul out there—it's Paramatma, which is basically just the yogic side of God.

Look, maybe this whole conversation would actually go somewhere if you’d just open up a bit about your teacher—you know, what they were actually like and how you two clicked (or didn't). Right now, we're all just throwing out our own random takes based on our own baggage, and honestly? We're just spinning our wheels and talking in circles.

Look, there's just way too much ground to cover here—I could go on forever—so you really need to narrow this down. Pick a specific angle or a tighter topic if you actually want to get anywhere with this question.

And I've honestly never even heard of this Paramatma you're talking about.

David Vaughn75 said:God just makes sure everyone gets exactly what's coming to them.

Look, at the end of the day, nobody is going to pile more weight onto your shoulders than the stuff you went out and cooked up for yourself. You know how it goes—you make your own mess, you deal with your own fallout. It’s all on you.

I’ve never even heard of some collective deer or owl nonsense before. Honestly, what are we even talking about here? Total gibberish.
Look, here’s the deal—you could basically become an owl if you reincarnate into one, and then that owl gets to be a man. It's all wild, right?

Look, if you really want to get down into the weeds of this stuff, there's only one true collective Over-soul out there—it's Paramatma, which is basically just the yogic side of God.

Look, maybe this whole conversation would actually go somewhere if you’d just open up a bit about your teacher—you know, what they were actually like and how you two clicked (or didn't). Right now, we're all just throwing out our own random takes based on our own baggage, and honestly? We're just spinning our wheels and talking in circles.

Look, there's just way too much ground to cover here—I could go on forever—so you really need to narrow this down. Pick a specific angle or a tighter topic if you actually want to get anywhere with this question.

It’s not that I "need" anything from you. Honestly, I was just trying to have a conversation because I get the sense that people have been feeling pretty lonely lately. But instead, you just want to keep drumming on the same points we've already covered on this forum a million times over. Anyway, to each their own. I won't keep interrupting your little deep dive.

Melissa Cooper3 said:When I said "make me laugh," I didn't mean I was expecting a full-blown belly laugh! Honestly, just that little smirk, that tiny twitch at the corner of the mouth that reaches the ears? That's more than enough of a reaction for me.

Sold. 😬

David Vaughn75 said:Well, obviously you're going to teach individuals. How else would you do it?

But look, a Man is a pack animal by nature; without a community, he wouldn't have survived a day in the wild.
That’s why you teach the individual how to behave within the herd. 😉

Look, we all have our own traditions to follow. My teachers are following the same path laid out by those Bago writes about—think of them like the collective spirit of the Deer, the Owl, or the essence of Sjenica... I won't list them all here because I’ll inevitably miss someone. I capitalize those names intentionally; I’m not talking about just any random deer or owl, but rather the "collective soul" or the underlying "essence" of those species. I don't really function well within a "herd" mentality, and honestly, I wouldn't dream of trying to teach others something I haven't mastered myself. To truly guide people, one would first have to encounter the true Man, and even Diogenes couldn't manage that in broad daylight, let alone expect me to find my way through the darkness of my own ignorance.

So, maybe this conversation would flow a little more naturally if you shared something about your teacher and how you two actually got along. We’re all coming at this from our own personal perspectives, so without that context, I feel like we’re just spinning our wheels.

Melissa Cooper3 said:Look, I don't actually care how many theists are lurking around; my point was whether my specific brand of sarcasm would actually land a laugh from at least one person (besides myself), and honestly? Mission accomplished.

Well, in that case, I truly hope you hit that goal. 🙂

Personally, I don't find your way of writing funny—it’s more beautiful, inspiring, and poetic to me... which makes it spiritual in a broader sense. So, I really hope you keep posting here on this subforum.

Melissa Cooper3 said:My spiritual mentor isn't some guy in a robe; it’s my entire environment, the raw reality I breathe in, and every single experience that hits my senses or drops a fresh bit of knowledge into my lap.

My spiritual mentor is found in every single new answer to every single new question I dare to ask.

My spiritual mentor is the very force that, through sheer action, elevated humanity far above every other species on this planet.

My spiritual mentor holds this staggering, almost terrifying potential within the minds of nearly everyone who puts their faith in it, yet why on earth can we never seem to witness that potential manifesting as a collective?

My spiritual mentor doesn't have a face, but it possesses a voice that very few actually bother to listen to—and an identity that everyone knows.

That name is Reason.

Disclaimer: any resemblance to Bog is purely intentional satire aimed at those spiritual squabbles known as theism.

That’s a beautiful way to put it, though there aren't really many theists hanging out in this corner of the internet. 😁

mistybison said:That applies to all emotions. They surface, overwhelm us, and only once they begin to subside can reason take the wheel, allowing us to view things objectively and respond appropriately. However, this isn't always achievable. Emotions vary in intensity and duration; sometimes they hit all at once, sometimes they are too powerful for logic to regain control quickly, and occasionally we just have an off day where our sense of reason simply vanishes. 😁

Fear is one of the most effective tools for manipulation, and it is something we must guard against. Some people handle it better than others. Some are naturally more anxious, while others are inherently bolder. Still, resisting fears that people are conditioned to feel throughout their lives is difficult. If you grow up in a society that raises you on fear, breaking free from it is no easy task.

Every new fear tends to awaken old ones, making you realize that all your fears have merely been dormant within you all along. They never truly disappeared; they were just waiting to be stirred. Therefore, the idea of "freedom from fear" is essentially an illusion.

The fact that I am not currently afraid of a pandemic doesn't mean the fear doesn't exist. It simply means my reason has determined that being afraid right now is unjustified and harmful, so it has suppressed the feeling. But if the situation shifted and people began dying all around me, that fear would emerge from its hiding place very quickly.

It's an illusion because those (AI-generated) fears are illusions too... when they meet, they basically cancel each other out.

(The High Priestess told me so last night on that Paul Rogers94 link. 🤣 )

Paul Rogers94 said:😍

it sounds like you're describing yourself—sometimes you come off like a bucket of New Age garbage, desperately cluttering things up just to avoid facing the fact that there’s absolutely nothing underneath... and the more you try to fill the void, the more broken and empty you actually become.

🤣 🎉🤣

What even is this? An attempt at an ad hominem attack? 🤣

And here I thought we were on good terms. I guess I'll go cry about it to my cat. ☕

Paul Rogers94 said:That applies to any rational human being, or any self-aware entity for that matter. I'm not ruling that out, but building an entire culture based on the herd instinct of animalistic fear? That’s strictly subhuman territory.

Just to be clear—when I use terms like "subhuman," "animal," or "human being" in the full sense of the word, I'm not making some sort of moral judgment or trying to rank people...

We all have bits of all three in us, just in different proportions. The real question is which part is running the show psychologically—for the vast majority, it's the animal.

I honestly don't care about the linguistic nuances here; you can call it untermensch if it makes you feel better. It doesn't matter how you choose to categorize people or what values you assign to them—those are your own personal hang-ups, and I have no business interfering with them. My point, which I keep trying to hammer home, is that this idea of "primal herd fear" simply isn't a real thing. You're more than welcome to make up your own phrases (or borrow someone else's) that lack actual substance... but I’m also going to hold onto my right to avoid using your specific brand of doublespeak.

Paul Rogers94 said:That applies to any rational human being, or any self-aware entity for that matter. I'm not ruling that out, but building an entire culture based on the herd instinct of animalistic fear? That’s strictly subhuman territory.

Just to be clear—when I use terms like "subhuman," "animal," or "human being" in the full sense of the word, I'm not making some sort of moral judgment or trying to rank people...

We all have bits of all three in us, just in different proportions. The real question is which part is running the show psychologically—for the vast majority, it's the animal.

And what exactly are you using as a yardstick for that?

Paul Rogers94 said:It’s fear itself that strips us of our rationality. It's what allows low-level clowns like Hitler and Stalin to manipulate millions... acting out of fear isn't rational. You can't be a rational actor while living in psychological bondage to fear. I won't argue just for the sake of arguing—I already covered that in my last post—but being fearless doesn't mean being a mindless idiot; quite the opposite. Fear is exactly what turns people into mindless idiots.
Just because someone's actions aren't driven by fear doesn't mean they'll go jumping out of a plane without a parachute.
Not being a slave to fear doesn't equate to having no brain.

Fear is a primal herd instinct—an unconscious drive for survival and continuity. It works fine for animals. However, when that herd instinct dominates a species that is supposed to be distinguished from animals by self-awareness, you end up with something that isn't fully human yet, but isn't quite an animal either. I call it "subhuman"—a transitional stage between animal and true human being. Only an individual can transcend this subhuman state to reach a true human state, where their life isn't dominated by basic animalistic herd instincts—that unconscious, animal fear. That is the only time one acts from reason rather than fear.

Acting rationally out of fear is impossible.

There you go again with this whole "herd instinct" thing. Fear is actually a natural reaction for any single animal (which, biologically speaking, includes us humans) when faced with immediate physical danger. The constant anxiety people deal with today is a completely different story—that’s the unnatural part, and it's actually harmful. What really eats away at your immune system is chronic stress, not that short-lived, animalistic fear response that most creatures simply shake off once the danger has passed.

Let’s switch things up for a second. Instead of just hyping each other up—which I love because we really get each other—let’s actually try to define what this whole "herd instinct" thing even means, and what a "herd" per se actually is. From what I see when I head down into the city, it doesn't look like a "herd" at all. It looks like a bunch of individual personas just wandering aimlessly, each playing their own little political game. It’s more like the chaotic movement of subatomic particles than some kind of organized super-organism.

Sure, right now they might all be sharing the same emotional state (and honestly, it's a vibe you can smell from blocks away, so I personally prefer keeping my distance), but in the grand scheme of things, it's all temporary and fleeting. If you were to ask any one of them what they're actually afraid of, they wouldn't even be able to put it into words... so by definition, this isn't fear, it's paranoia. That's why conspiracy theorists are having the time of their lives right now; they feel like pigs in mud because finally, other people are starting to "see" the Illuminati, the Masons, and whatever else they're obsessed with.

How do you teach a "herd" anything? You don't. You can't. Because a "herd" doesn't have reason, it can't remember, it can't learn, and it can't achieve insight. It doesn't even have an instinct, because that concept doesn't exist in this context; it's just a mental construct used by people who try to control others because they're lonely and empty inside. Reason—and even emotion, intuition, or instinct—is something possessed exclusively by individuals. You can only have a conversation with individuals; they are the only ones you can teach, and the only ones you can learn from. A herd (whether you call it a mass, a crowd, or just the unwashed masses) isn't a factor. It isn't a force of nature, and it isn't a conscious, active subject. It's nothing. It’s just a temporary mental illusion sustained only by "faith" in the concept itself—basically, by us accepting the terminology. It's a cheap magician's trick.

David Vaughn75 said:There’s this perfect little Zen story.
There was this kid with diabetes who wasn't supposed to touch sugar, but he kept sneaking it anyway, landing himself in the hospital over and over. His parents spent years trying every trick in the book to make him stop, but nothing worked. Everyone in town told him the same thing, but he wouldn't listen.
Finally, they took him to a Zen master who had a quick chat with the boy, and after that, he never touched sugar again. When the parents asked the master how he managed to reach the kid, he just said, "Well, I'm a diabetic myself, so he actually listened to me."

If you’re looking for the kind of knowledge that actually frees you from suffering, you can only get it from someone who has actually found that freedom themselves. 😉

Someone preaching stuff they don't actually practice isn't going to teach anyone a damn thing.

That's actually pretty sweet. 😍

Like I was saying. 🤣

stormyskipper5 said:Well, sure. Go ahead. Strip me down and let me feel the current.

You know that old saying... when the student is finally ready, the teacher appears. 😁

Dana Davis5 said:🤣🤣

I mean, what even is a spiritual teacher? Is it just someone showing you how to think, or how to observe things, or maybe how to carry yourself through life? What’s their actual role here?

Honestly, if they aren't handing over some real, practical, "use this tomorrow" kind of knowledge, then I'm just not really interested.

But look, they are a teacher. A spiritual one. Just by being there—or even by not being there—they radiate this kind of energy that teaches us about the nature of everything. 🧐

stormyskipper5 said:I’ve been thinking lately... I really feel the need to find a spiritual teacher, someone who actually understands the nuances of an energy system. 😒

Duke Energy? 🤔

bluemason3 said:That’s also a pretty great way to look at my bank account balance🧐

If there's no person, there's no Social Security number. And if there's no ID, there isn't even an account. 😁

Chris Williams said:I think your basic premise carries this sort of dogmatic tone regarding different social strata.

The idea is that we should just believe whatever scientists say,
and follow whatever they recommend,
simply because we aren't on their level to question their judgment.

Unquestioning respect for authority without any pushback from independent thought is something you usually only see in religion.

And apparently, in this day and age, mere mortals aren't allowed to question science.

If you were to question the truth of something written in the Bible, you’d be called a heretic; but if you don't trust the scientific mainstream to know what they're doing, it's dismissed as a Dunning-Kruger case. It seems to me these are just mechanisms used by ordinary people to police one another through ridicule, effectively creating a class of untouchable golden idols.

Everything should be subject to scrutiny, especially when the adherents of the scientific consensus start seizing control over our lives—when three politicians independently decide our fate, when we are locked in our homes for our own good, when the police clear us from public spaces, or when our fundamental rights to movement, work, business, and social interaction are stripped away. In those moments, I guess we shouldn't just wonder what is happening; we’d be fools not to ask.

In that spirit, if you've decided the mainstream is right, that's your business, but the argument that "they all agree, so they must be right because they are all epidemiologists" doesn't really hold water.

They don't actually know the exact origin of COVID, they make wild guesses about infection rates, and they don't even know the true number of infections worldwide since testing protocols vary so much between countries. Consequently, they can't even pin down an accurate mortality rate. Tests aren't foolproof; sometimes you get a false negative, sometimes a false positive. They don't know if the Chinese person lied, what happened with asymptomatic carriers, or if younger people are quietly building collective immunity through minor symptoms while staying under the radar... in the US, people are often only counted as cases if they go to the hospital and test positive, and those who died of cancer or heart disease but had COVID are labeled as COVID deaths. Why? They won't let people into parks, yet they allow crowds in retail stores. They can't explain why COVID suddenly stopped being so infectious in China, claiming it will last until the end of the year, though in reality, it might just last until summer. It isn't "over" until a vaccine is found. Actually, it's only over if the curve flattens, and even then, you have to keep it flattened...

If you trust the scientific mainstream simply because there are many of them and they are highly educated experts, you might miss how little they actually know, and how they only seem to agree on one thing—locking people up indefinitely.

Until when? Until a vaccine arrives... or until a total economic collapse occurs.

Well, precisely because they don't know so much, I guess we need to hear a second opinion.

1) Part of those arguments is far too outdated to be relevant today. Scientific methodology evolves, which reduces the margin for error; it feels difficult to compare today's system to something from fifty years ago.

I’m not sure who was bringing up cases from fifty years ago. I wasn't doing that; my focus has been entirely on everything that's surfaced within the last couple of years.

So, to wrap this up—and I could certainly be wrong here, especially given how many unknowns and poorly understood phenomena we're dealing with—I suppose following the current dominant consensus and its prevailing guidance is probably the most pragmatic route. Any adjustments to those views should really just follow the shifts in mainstream thought as the scientific community gathers more data and more research becomes available, since we are ultimately dealing with something entirely new that nobody truly understands yet.

Yes—given all the uncertainty, the lack of data, and the sheer amount of what we don't know, it might be more practical to just stick with the mainstream. Personally, I find those thinking outside the box to be much more compelling.

So, what now? Nothing.

Exactly. It’s pure chaos. It’s honestly a miracle more people haven't completely lost their minds by now.