Birch

Interesting comments in the reviews.

Getting used to vs wearing off. Yes I'd say it gets easier to deal with. I just thought up a sort of a paralell. Do you remember what it was like to be thrown into the world as a child? All that everything everywhere? I reckon there's a bit of that. Fox News is unhelpful everywhere:-) Not much to be done about the fluorescents, maybe explain sensitivity and try to work nearer natural light? Perhaps an outdoor volunteer organisation? You do have to figure out what's best for you. That doesn't mean going against others. I thought I'd put that there as the 'what about other people' thing keeps cropping up. Cat is very good at this stuff;-) Edit: autotext:-(

The lighting thing. Yes, I prefer to stay away from fluorescents because I can see them vibrating. Houses with lots of electrical stuff have a 'hum' in them that's not audible exactly but can be felt. Sometimes if I plug in two things they resonate off each other to the point of making a weird irritating noise that I couldn't find until I figured it out. I shock myself on light switches and metal objects (a spark jumps across). Or maybe that's just my badly-wired house:-) People have 'signatures' to them that's pretty difficult to explain. That's very subjective. I can't spend too much time in malls with too much visual crowding because it makes me tired, it's like metal kitchenware clanging in my face. That's very subjective. There's a whole bunch of stuff, but as Malikshreds said, it seems to be par for the course. I'd advocate a good teacher too. One that knows what they're doing and knows this stuff. Edit: switches not sockets (that would make sense;-))

What situations make you feel angry? (Take note of them) What are the other situations that are similar? (Take note of them) What's the farthest back you can go and remember a similar situation? (Take note) All of that in detail, the people, the sensations, the emotions, the thoughts, what it made you believe about yourself, others, and so on and so forth for all of them until you have full consciousness of what happened. In full honesty and acceptance of your feelings and thoughts and ideas. That's how I've been doing it. I found meditation brought a lot of it up unasked and that mindfulness practice does the dot-connecting part. I also went in for psychotherapy. Not finished but I understand it a hell of a lot better.

Find out why.

You will also hear people saying outright that it's part of good military and political strategy to do so. I don't expect governments not to have strategies. What I'd prefer is that they don't use the ones I disagree with. Haha. Were the people ruled by Confucious any better off in their understanding of the forces shaping their lives? I threw in that last part because when I complain about the way things are, I like to consider where and when there has ever been a time where these things weren't in effect.

+10 for that excellent post Apech. I'm not confounding sensitivity and confidence. In fact IME, the more sensitive one is, the more real confidence (and self-mastery) one NEEDS to handle it well and not mistreat self or others in the process. Unfortunately, what I reckon happens, is people are so affected by their own sensitivity (and, no, we haven't had an overarching culture that deals with it adequately for several thousand years) that they shut it down and shift it to the unconscious. So many people walking around that seem filled with confidence are simply unconscious or acting to cover up their real feelings and perceptions for the sake of some form of collective 'peace'. In passing, making that kind of 'confidence' a goal is the reverse of what I'd consider a goal, but I digress.

I think this is a moment or a stage related to meditation. I 'failed' at the acceptance of everything and everyone part and had to move on from some relationships that weren't any good for me. I didn't go anywhere, just changed the scenery. I know this is going to sound 'unspiritual' but sometimes a jerk is just a jerk. I don't discuss my 'spiritual' experiences with anyone (I tried at the start and I think I sounded like a nutcase) so I keep that part for the TTB's. What has really helped my confidence in 'society' has been psychotherapy. Acceptance of self as well (I think that part gets missed out sometimes). And I can't speak highly enough of travelling. It'll force you to learn more than any Dale Carnegie book (although his suggestions are useful:-))

Yes it did! Took a couple of sessions.

Interesting points and speculations Harmonious. I ought to go drag up a few of these studies so we can discuss whether it is behaviour being discussed in them (and do we include things like access to nutrition as a behaviour to be reformed or an aspect of fate?) I don't know what to make of your idea of relating for now. I reckon it might be a bit more involved than 'defensive behaviour'. But I'll sit with it. I don't know what makes other people act morally. I've done it in the past simply out of education (conditioning) or to avoid punishment. Which isn't very moral IMO:-)

" This type of thing is not even remotely uncommon in some traditional cultures" Butting in here:-) That smacks of determinism to me. However, I do agree that one's fate (place, time of birth, family, culture etc) are determining with respect to one's destiny. Check out the many 'poverty trap' studies. Would one argue that character defects are what are keeping these people from enjoying a better life? Under what circumstances is poverty a defect of character? Perhaps looking at that with an aim to helping them overcome them, don't you think? This is not sarcasm BTW. I'm quite serious. As I understand it, fate is "stuff we have no control over" and destiny is 'stuff we have influence over'. The argument that our influence should be in a moral direction because it's one way of improving on an otherwise rotten fate is an interesting one. I'm not as convinced about this as I used to be. I feel like I want to be closer to the truth these days. What if there's really no reward for acting morally? Would you still do it? Why? I think that's the kicker (well it is for me anyway:-)) Edit: formatting

It depends on where and what the world is.

I think this is a great thread:-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanzhen_School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Gate_Taoism Can't vouch for the veracity of Wikipedia info but I thought these two sounded familiar in that vein

Interesting books. Thanks!

I figured something like that. You might get some real benefit out of that link I posted above:-)

Were you offended when I pointed it out? My gut says that this could be an indication that 'something else' is mixed up with that compassion. But maybe not:-)

Valerian tea is great. It's super stinky. Need airtight storage option:-) I used (and still do a bit) MCO 'like asprin' while going through the rough stuff. Thanks to Turtle shell for the suggestions:-) Good stuff

This is such a huge topic. My take is there is a lot of 'stuff' hiding under the term 'healthcare' and that some of it is more about other interests than those of the patients's health. I've seen few decent unpackings of this. The term runs all over the place from moral issues to commercial issues to religious issues to social issues to political issues. Which ones do we pick to tackle first?

Are they distinct? I'm having doubts and suspicions that they aren't. This is fueled by reading, personal cultivation but no 'magical' work beyond stuff I've already mentioned here and there on the TTB's. The 'culture' I'm in doesn't seem (at least superficially) to use 'traditional Western magic' which I'd be hard-pushed to recognize anyway.

I did go through a worse version of it, but I also cared more at the time. Got that fixed via acupuncture. This time it's just mildly annoying. There's other more annoying stuff left but what I'm learning is that it tends to be related to stuff I'm doing. Or not doing.

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TR/2012/tr2012.pdf

I won't say it's easy:-) I guess it depends how much whatever you're doing is subject to dominant belief systems:-)

Right, the stuff you're being told is for the other's convenience (for whatever reason). I guess it's interesting speculating on what those reasons are and to be honest I'm tempted to offer some speculation, but I just don't know -although I could give you guys a trapdoor into my psyche by offering up a guess:-) but I'm practicing not doing that.

Mr MH, I didn't ask you for help:-)! Can you point out where you got that idea from? Owledge, yes, this stuff is everywhere (I have found) and I do seem to be especially attuned to it (lots of experience haha). As many things are, it's a bit of a 'rabbity hole' and to me at least it has more to do with Daoist practice than one initially might suppose IMO/IME. From one of the experts in the link I posted: "Telling a person she shouldn't feel the way she does feel is akin to telling water it shouldn't be wet, grass it shouldn't be green, or rocks they shouldn't be hard. Each person's feelings are real. Whether we like or understand someone's feelings, they are still real. Rejecting feelings is rejecting reality; it is to fight nature and may be called a crime against nature, "psychological murder", or "soul murder".